Everything She Ever Wanted by Ann Rule

Pat's
    rapid-fire speech, but he talked a lot.
     
    "There was a girl that committed suicide on my granddaddy's farm," he
    suddenly remembered.   "She was an alcoholic.   I flat know my daddy was
    playing around with her.   My granddaddy said Daddy got all her stock in
    her company when she died.   But I know for a fact my daddy was playing
    around with her-that old gal would get drunk and she'd just talk and
    talk and talk.   That's back when I was in college."
     
    The woman had been married, Tom-explained.   "She used to come over to
    the house all the time, get drunk, and crawl all over him all the
    time.
     
    My mother wasn't there, and I don't think [her husband] knew anything
    about it.
     
    Tom paused in deep thought.   "You know, I still loved him as a father,
    but it was kinda hard to understand at the same time what he was
    doin'."
     
    Tom denied that he had a bad temper.   He had never had a fight or hit
    anyone-"off a football field."
     
    "Paw called me tonight," Tom said, recalling his conversation with his
    grandfather.   "I asked him to call the sheriff's back there, and let
    them know I was here.   He said, 'Are you all right?"   and I said,
    'Yeah, except for I'm going to Jail."   He said he heard I was shot, and
    I said, 'Well, I'm not."
     
    Tom had a scrape on one leg.   That was all.   He figured he had got that
    somewhere while he was walking home from East Point.
     
    Sixty miles.   A very, very long walk.
     
    Tom was adamant that he had not been at his parents' home earlier in
    the evening, or anytime in the past several months.   He himself had
    begun to wonder-after talking to Margureitte Radcliffe-if maybe
    somebody was trying to set both him and his father up, some unknown
    enemy stalking them.   Both Tom and Walter had been getting weird,
    threatening phone calls.
     
    Could that be possible?   Was there someone who didn't care if both Tom
    and Walter Allanson died, someone who might even have something to gain
    from their deaths?   It was a far-out theory.   Too far out.   A dozen
    hours after the murder, the East Point detectives were almost positive
    that they had the right man in custody.
     
    Tom Allanson.
     
    As soon as Tom arrived in East Point, he learned that Pat had hired an
    attorney for him: Calhoun Long.   On his attorney'sand his
    wife's-advice, he had nothing more to say to detectives.   . . .
     
    All murder seems senseless.   But this double murder seemed more so than
    most.   Two responsible, well-known citizens of East Point were dead and
    their son was in Jail.   He wasn't a man with a criminal background, nor
    a man on drugs or on the street.   He was a man with a new marriage, a
    fine farm, a good reputation among horse people and with everyone he
    had worked for.   He was a good old boy, easygoing, likable, and kind.
     
    Nobody but his ex-wife and his parents had ever had a bad word to say
    about him.   Why would Tom Allanson throw all of that away in a moment
    of blind rage?
     
    Even Tom's demeanor on the long ride back from Zebulon warred with the
    image of a man given to blind rages.   Rather, he had showed no emotion
    at all.   His parents had not been dead twelve hours, and yet the three
    detectives had seen no tears nor heard any choking up in his voice as
    he discussed their deaths.
     
    That bothered them.
     
    Susan and Bill Alford were far away from Atlanta when they heard the
    devastating news of the double murder of Pat's in.
     
    laws.   They were headed to Colorado to pick up some prize Morgan horses
    for Kentwood Morgan Farm.   Before dawn, they received a call at their
    motel telling them to come back home at once; there had been a
    tragedy.
     
    Both Susan and her great-aunt Alma had had some foreboding of disaster,
    a sense that "something bad was fixing to happen," but this news was
    beyond anything they might have envisioned in their worst nightmares.
     
    Pulling a still-empty horse trailer, Bill and Susan Alford