Die Job (30 page)

I rolled my eyes while Althea swatted him with a dried cattail she took from an arrangement on the table. It exploded into a cloud of fluffy seedlets, speckling Hank’s uniform, the table, and the floor.

“Now look what you’ve done, Althea,” he said, brushing at the tan flecks on his sleeve. They clung stubbornly.

“Maybe next time you’ll think before you open your potty mouth,” she said, pulling another cattail from the vase and waving it threateningly.

Mom hid a smile behind her hand as Hank stomped into the hall. I
followed him, anxious to get back to the parlor. “There are worse things than being stuck together for the night in an old plantation home, right?” Hank said. “Remember that B and B we stayed at, over near Vicksburg? It was a lot like this place. We had ourselves a real good time there.” Hank waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

“We are not stuck ‘together,’ ” I said, picking up my pace so I was half a step ahead of him. “You are here in an official capacity. I am here with my mom and Althea. Separate. Apart.” I pushed open the parlor door before he could reply. It didn’t look like anyone had moved or said anything in the few minutes I’d been gone. Mark and his stepfather sat side by side on the sofa, not looking at each other. Lindsay stared at Mark as if willing him to look at her. Her telepathic powers weren’t working because he kept his eyes fixed on the floor as if memorizing the rug’s pattern. Agent Dillon sat on his tufted chair, flipping through the pages of the notebook he had propped on one knee.

Hank explained the situation, concluding with, “No one’ll be able to leave until the eye passes over in another hour or so.”

Dillon nodded, accepting the inevitable. “All right. Find a room for Mr. Crenshaw and his son. They want to call a lawyer. Stay with them.”

Hank nodded and made for the sofa as if to pull Mark to his feet. Eric Crenshaw forestalled him, standing and helping Mark rise with a hand beneath his elbow. It wasn’t until they were halfway out the door that Lindsay cried, “Mark!”

He started to turn around, but his stepdad nudged him forward and Hank closed the door.

“I don’t have to say anything,” Lindsay said belligerently, crossing her arms over her chest.

“No, you don’t,” Dillon agreed. He turned back to his notebook
and crinkled his brow as if puzzling over something on its pages.

I drifted to the window and watched the rain slanting down, a solid silver sheet in the light from the windows. The wind ripped at the live oak tree closest to the window, flailing its branches and making it genuflect to the great god hurricane. Water puddled on the lawn, turning it into a shallow lake, and I wondered uneasily exactly how far Rothmere was from the river. The house stood on a rise, but the storm surge could push the water up the hill in a scarily short time.

“Look, all I did was talk to Braden.” Lindsay’s exasperated voice broke the silence.

She leaned forward and I noticed the upholstery around her was damp from her wet clothes and hair. She must be freezing. Dillon flipped a page in his notebook, not even looking up.

“You’re not listening!” Lindsay’s fist pounded the cushion beside her. “I was really going to the bathroom, but then I saw Rachel go in and I knew Braden was on his own. I thought it would be a good time to talk to him about what he was doing to Mark. He was going to tell the Naval Academy stuff he had no right to tell them. He was going to ruin Mark’s life!”

Or save it, I thought.

“So I slipped on the sheet, thinking I could give him a scare, even if there was no one else around, and I glided onto the landing, making this sort of moaning sound.” She demonstrated. It was a low, pain-filled sound, not at all like the yowling Lonnie and Tyler had used. “Braden came up the stairs and then, I don’t know how, he tripped and fell.”

“Really?” Dillon raised his brows in pretend puzzlement. “I thought you said you talked to him?”

“Well,” she hesitated, looping a strand of hair around her forefinger and pulling on it. “I guess I might’ve said something about how he was wrecking Mark’s life and he should just mind his own effing business.”

“And then he just fell,” Dillon said, nodding as if it were plausible.

Lindsay’s eyes shifted from side to side, like she knew her story was weak, but she said strongly, “Right.”

Anger at her callousness fizzed in me like a carbonated beverage shaken too long. “Then why didn’t you get help?” I blurted.

Dillon shot me a “shut up” glare, but Lindsay answered. “I could see he was dead and I was scared. I didn’t know what I was doing, so I just ran down the back way and out to where they were doing the fireworks.”

“But he wasn’t dead,” Dillon said softly.

“I thought he was,” she said. A self-satisfied smirk crept across her arrogant young face. “That’s how it happened. I admit I lied to you at first, okay, because I was scared about how it would look. But it was an accident and you’ve got no one to say it wasn’t.”

Dillon looked her dead in the eyes. “Except Braden McCullers.”

“YOU’RE LYING!” LINDSAY’s EYES WIDENED, AND ONE trembling hand pulled her hair again, squeezing drops of water from it.

Feeling like I’d been punched in the stomach, I looked at Dillon. His eyes were on me, not Lindsay, and he mouthed, “Sorry,” before turning back to the girl.

Anger, shock, and relief warred within me. Suddenly, little things I hadn’t understood made sense. Like Braden’s family leaving town immediately after his death. Like no funeral or memorial services. Like Catelyn referring to Braden in the present tense. He was alive. He’d survived the attack and the police and his family had put out the word he’d been killed to forestall other attempts on his life. Was he still at the hospital in Brunswick, or had they moved him? Had he come out of his coma? A moment’s thought told me that if he had, he didn’t remember much about his encounter
with Lindsay at Rothmere; if he did, Dillon would never have sanctioned the charade this evening.

“You failed at the hospital,” Dillon said, leaning into Lindsay’s space.

“I didn’t!” she blurted. “The lines on the machines went flat. His—” She cut herself off as if suddenly realizing what she was admitting.

“The nurse revived him,” Dillon said. “That’s the only reason you were able to get away. By the time they had him stabilized and the nurse was able to describe you, you were long gone.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lindsay said. Her hand clawed through her wet hair, and I thought she was going to yank a section out.

“We’ll have a search warrant for your house as soon as I can get hold of a judge,” Dillon said. “What do you want to bet we find a werewolf costume in your closet or under your bed? And it will have Braden McCullers’ DNA on it.”

“You won’t,” Lindsay said with a triumphant smile. “I’ve never had a werewolf costume. I went as a genie to Ari’s party. Ask Mark. Or Ari or anyone.”

Dillon didn’t look perturbed, although I thought Lindsay’s confidence meant she’d gotten rid of the costume, maybe in a Dumpster in Brunswick, even, where the cops would never find it.

“And if we don’t find the costume, I suspect we’ll find someone who remembers selling it to you.” His voice was still conversational, his posture relaxed, but his gaze never left Lindsay’s face. “You stand out—tall, beautiful, young—the clerk will remember you.”

Lindsay looked suddenly less confident. Smothering Braden in the hospital had all been too last minute; I could read in her face that she hadn’t thought to get the costume in Jacksonville
or somewhere she wouldn’t be noticed. “I love Mark,” she said. “More than anything in this world.” Her voice throbbed with passion and I believed her.

“And you tried to kill Braden because he was trying to split you up. He was going to make sure Mark didn’t go to Annapolis.”

“He had no right!” Lindsay burst out. “He said he was worried about Mark, worried the pressure would get to him and he’d try to kill himself. But I make Mark happy. I do! As long as we’re together, he wouldn’t—” A sob choked off her words and quickly turned to a crying jag that had tears and snot running down her face and her breath coming in gasps. I spied a box of tissues on an antique writing desk and handed them to her silently. She flung the box at me and wiped her nose defiantly on her sleeve as her sobs turned into hiccups. “I want—
hic
—a lawyer.”
Hic. Hic
.

Agent Dillon nodded and made a show of turning off his recorder and slipping it back into his pocket. “That’s your right. I’m afraid you won’t be able to get one until the hurricane lets up a bit, though. C’mon.”

He prodded Lindsay to her feet and guided her through the door I opened. We emerged into the foyer to see Avaline, still garbed in the white dress, talking to Cyril. Only now Cyril had mahogany-colored hair poking through a net that held it close to his scalp and his face was half natural looking as he rubbed off white makeup with a towelette of some kind. He still wore his mid-nineteenth-century clothes but had pulled off the boots and was padding around in navy argyle socks.

“. . . a full size too small,” he said, nodding at the discarded boots, which lay near the bottom of the stairs.

“Really, Bruce, it’s not like we had a lot of time to do wardrobe,” Avaline
said, dismissing his complaint with an airy wave of her hand. She swanned toward Dillon with a sultry smile. “Happy?”

He nodded briefly. “I think we got the outcome we were hoping for.”

“We make a great team,” Avaline said, leaning forward to plant a red kiss on his cheek. Laughing, she rubbed at it with her thumb.

I turned my back on the nauseating scene. “You were great,” I told the actor. “I don’t know how you did it on such short notice.”

“Thanks.” He beamed. “I always had a flair for improv. Scripts are just too confining.”

“It was a trick?” Astonishment had startled Lindsay’s hiccups out of her. “You’re not really—?”

“A ghost?” Bruce laughed. “Not me, darling. Not for a good many more years, God willing.” He knocked on the wooden banister.

If looks could kill, Lindsay’s glare would have turned him into a ghost on the spot.

“I’ve got to tell Mom and Althea,” I told Dillon, who had extricated himself from Avaline’s clutches and was signaling to Officer Qualls to come take Lindsay off his hands. Residual anger bubbled up. “How could you?”

“Lie about McCullers being dead?”

“Yes! I blamed myself. I felt horribly guilty. And Rachel! How could you?”

“I’m not going to apologize for trying to save the kid’s life, Grace. It was obvious the murderer was going to keep trying until she succeeded. We picked the easiest and most effective way of stopping her. His parents went along with it.”

“You could have told me.”

Dillon looked at me and slowly shook his head. “No. Not anyone.”

I bit my lower lip. “I’m going to find Mom and Althea.”

He nodded. “You can tell them Braden is at a specialized facility outside of Atlanta. He regained consciousness yesterday and the doctors are hopeful that there won’t be any permanent damage.”

Despite my anger and hurt, a bubble of light floated up inside me and I almost ran down the hall to Lucy’s office, where I shared the wonderful news with my mom and Althea. Tears moistened Mom’s eyes when I finished, and Althea said, “Well, thank the good Lord.”

“We’ve got to tell Rachel,” I said.

“Her folks picked her up just before the hurricane got nasty,” Mom said. “Call her.”

I did, using the land line on Lucy’s desk when my cell wouldn’t connect. Rachel gasped when I told her that Braden was still alive and asked me, “Are you sure?” three times before seeming to accept my news with tears and laughter. “I’m going to see him, like, now,” she announced.

“Better wait until the hurricane peters out,” I said as her mom’s voice in the background said, “You’re not going anywhere in this weather, young lady.”

Hanging up, I sobered a bit as I related Lindsay’s story to Mom, Althea, and Lucy. “She didn’t exactly admit to trying to kill Braden,” I finished, “but I think the cops will be able to dig up the evidence now that they know where to look. And, of course, there’s always Braden’s testimony.”

“Hallelujah,” Althea said. “C’mon, Vi. I’m hungry. Let’s go see if those TV folk packed anything to eat. I know I saw a cooler.” She dragged Mom into the hall, leaving me with Lucy.

“The important thing is that Cyril’s been cleared,” Lucy said, folding
her hands primly on her desk. “As if a Rothmere would be guilty of murder. Why, they’re a family that’s always known the meaning of the word ‘honorable.’ ”

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” I said. I told her what Stuart Varnet had said about Cyril and maybe Clarissa being victims of poisoning.

“That’s ridiculous,” Lucy said, affronted. “Everyone knows Cyril died after falling down the stairs, and Clarissa died in childbirth five years after she married Quentin Dodd.”

The news broke over me like one of the waves that had smashed me to the sea floor earlier in the week. The air left my lungs and a sharp stab of sadness felt like a sword in my ribcage. I had so hoped that Clarissa had lived a long life and died in her eighties or nineties, surrounded by children and grandchildren. The news that she’d died so young almost brought tears to my eyes. I blinked rapidly.