Page 12 of Our Lips Are Sealed
Liamdreamedofdancingwomen.
It began on a beach, just like the one laid out under the townhouse balcony where he slept. A lone female figure twirling around a bonfire blazing on the sand, moving to music Liam couldn’t hear. Now and then, he would catch glimpses of her face as she danced, the woman reminding him of Jamison in all her beauty.
A second woman joined and, like the first, was dressed all in white. The pair danced together under the full moon, laughing and singing.
There were others there, too. Four more women waited their turn, standing on the edge of the fire’s glow.
Liam didn’t need to see their faces to know their names.
Morgan Albright, Rachel Henderson, Christina Porter, and Lindsey Miles.
The four victims whose horrific deaths had brought him to this place.
Waking before dawn, Liam lay in the dark, rolling over the discoveries made since his arrival.
Besides his women killed in Missouri, Liam’s field office in St. Louis had discovered four more victims coming out of Miami, murdered years earlier in the same gruesome manner.
And at three of the four murder sites, the killer left behind breadcrumbs of evidence that led straight to Haven House. Two paintings and a stuffed animal. Obscure items belonging to a family with no ties to any of the victims.
The artist of the paintings, Laura Jean Eddins, was a woman who seemed to have been loved by many before her death twenty years ago. Engaged to Benjamin Fairweather, her death cut the pair’s love affair short, destroying what sounded like a whirlwind romance.
Laura Jean’s daughter, Evie Eddins, was the owner of the stuffed animal. But in a phone call with Ben after its discovery, Liam learned the toy originally belonged to Evie’s father, Albert Eddins. Dr. Eddins had been Laura Jean’s husband, and Ben’s best friend, dying in a car wreck when Evie was just a baby.
Liam’s point of contact with local law enforcement, Detective Mathis, informed him right away that he would need a roadmap when dealing with the Fairweathers, and Liam soon learned the man wasn’t kidding. Whenever he thought he had these people figured out, something else would throw him for a loop.
And considering his own upbringing, that wasn’t an easy thing to do.
Even so, one thing was certain.
The Fairweathers were liars.
Since the beginning, they’d led him to believe that Laura Jean Eddins had passed away from health issues. They also fed him the lie that Simone Howard’s husband, Devon, died in an accident on the dock at the estate.
Detective Mathis never produced a death certificate for either when requested, causing Liam to go around him, using his father’s connections to get the documents.
And last night, with the autopsy reports in his hands, Liam learned that on July 4, 1999, both Devon and Laura Jean were gunned down at Haven House. The records of their deaths weren’t easily obtained, meaning someone purposely hid them from prying eyes. Benjamin Fairweather had enough money and power to pull off concealing something like this, but the question was, why?
And who was he protecting?
The man had clearly loved Laura Jean Eddins, and for him to hide her killer meant that the person had to be someone important to Fairweather. From what Liam had gathered, that was an extremely short list.
The eldest of Ben Fairweather’s children, Selah, lived happily in Atlanta with his fiancée. The man had a baby on the way and a good job managing a homeless shelter in the city.
Selah’s mother, Simone, continued to live at Haven House with her twins from her marriage to Devon Howard. Annabeth and Abraham were more similar than they probably liked to admit. The main difference being that Abe could move freely outside of Haven in his wheelchair, while Annabeth remained trapped inside the house by her mind. She suffered from agoraphobia and was currently working on overcoming the disorder.
The twins had been perhaps six or seven when the murders took place and wouldn’t have been capable of taking out two grown adults. Liam was positive neither of them could be the shooter.
Simone Howard came off as devoted to Devon as Ben Fairweather did to Laura Jean, so he’d knocked her off his list, too.
He’d also ruled out both of Laura Jean’s daughters.
Jamison was only a toddler at the time of her mother’s death. Her older sister, Evie, had taken Laura Jean’s death quite hard, suffering from debilitating panic attacks ever since.
Which, as far as Liam could tell, only left Samuel Fairweather.
The son of Ben and his wife Miranda, Samuel had probably been groomed since birth to take over Fairweather Holdings. And while the man did exhibit sociopathic tendencies, something in Liam refused to believe that Samuel was his guy.
For one, his bond to the “family” didn’t align with the profile of a killer. These people were close, although not all related by blood, and Samuel was no exception.
