Intimate Portraits (20 page)

When Rennie started to hike
toward Smith Lake with the others, he kept remembering Autumn. She had watched
them leave with the set face and false brightness that reminded him of the
frightened child who’d first entered the Degardoveras’ lives.

She didn’t deserve to be so
miserable. Him being the cause made it worse.

A quarter of a mile down the
trail, where it crossed the road leading back to the cottages, he stopped. What
he was doing, tramping through the woods while she was so desperately unhappy? He
needed to talk to her, to explain that yes, he was attracted to her but that he
couldn’t take advantage of his friends.

Especially her. Autumn was the
last person in the world who deserved to be stuck with someone like him. No
matter what she thought now, sooner or later she’d find out the truth about him
and Sarita. If they became lovers, he’d have to tell her himself.

But no matter how she found out,
he’d lose her respect and disgust her so much she’d never want to see him again.
He needed to be straight with her, and the sooner, the better.

“I forgot something,” he told the
other hikers. “Meet you back at the cabin.”

As he headed for the road as the
quickest route back to the cabin, a crackle broke the woods silence.

Then a van passed, heading toward
the main road.

Not unusual but…

A growing uneasiness drove him
until, rounding a bend, he saw the dark rooflines of the cabins.

Lining the parking places off the
road between the cabins and him, stood the row of cars. His Lexus along with
John’s Ford and Fran’s Mazda.

The ditzy neighbor’s Ferrari took
up the last space.

Everything was fine here. Nothing
was out of place. He was imagining stuff.

No. Something was off.

Was it the dead silence? After
the previous crackling, not a sound, not even a squirrel’s chatter, enlivened the
air.

Maybe it was the morning sun
diffused through the concealing overhead mist that painted everything—trees,
shrubbery, and cottages—with an eerie gray translucence.

Whatever it was, it made him mindful
of his surroundings.

Then he saw her, a twisted heap
lying face down between the cars and the steps leading down to the cabins. One
arm pinned down an empty plastic bag, and her jacket was stained red.

No!

The blood in his veins changed to
ice. The pit of his stomach threatened to spew its contents.

Later, he didn’t remember covering
the yards separating them. Only the anguish. “Autumn, Autumn!”

Rolls of paper towels lay to one
side, a six-pack of beer to the other. Blonde hair was discolored by a deep
brown-red. One small hand rested on a box of light bulbs as if she had tried to
rescue them when she fell.

Rings covered the fingers, rings
that didn’t sparkle in the overcast light.

The ice melted in a flash of thankful
heat.

Rings.

Not Autumn thank you God not
Autumn. Not Autumn thank you God not Autumn.

His heart, crammed into his
throat, fell back into place. His stomach settled. Sanity returned.

Her face, pressed as she was
against the pine needles layering the packed earth, was hidden. But he knew.

Kiki Ballencer, the woman who had
exclaimed over Autumn’s jacket and his own likeness to Elena.

Blood clotted the blonde hair and
stained the blue wool.

Rennie didn’t want to touch the
unmoving form, but he knelt down and felt for a pulse.

The dead woman. Autumn.

The blue coat. The blonde hair.
Both like Autumn’s.

But Autumn was safe; Kiki was the
one hurt. What was going on?

Was Autumn all right?

He jumped up and rushed toward
the steps and the cabin.

Please, please, don’t let Autumn
be like Kiki.

He didn’t know what he was terrified
of finding or why this disjointed urgency, but he flew past the azaleas and
down the railroad tie steps, fumbled for the doorknob and rocketed inside.

“Autumn,” he called, and again,
panicked when she didn’t answer. “Autumn!”

“Rennie?” Autumn, partially
hidden where she lay on the loveseat, sat up. Her mouth and eyes rounded. Blood
drained from her face at sight of his. “What is it?”

She was safe. “Autumn!” His legs
went limp.

“Rennie? What’s wrong?” She half-rose
so that one foot rested on the floor, the other knee on the cushion.

He’d scared her.

No wonder. He was so scared himself
he’d snarled at her. “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong.” He caught a breath, bounded to
her.

Autumn was here and she was all
right.

Conscience made him stop short, kept
him from taking her into his arms and hugging her hard. He panted from
wrestling with it while his hands clenched and unclenched.

“Rennie?” She stood up.

“Autumn. Thank God.”

“Rennie, tell me what’s wrong!” There
was a groggy, tousled aura about her. She trembled.

To hell with his conscience.

In two steps, he’d caught her, kissing
her face and hair and any other place he could reach. He clutched her to him,
afraid she might be taken away at any moment. He touched her eyes, her ears, her
nose, her throat, murmuring, “Autumn, Autumn, Autumn.”

She didn’t fight him or object. “Rennie,
what’s wrong? Rennie?”

He lifted his mouth from her soft
skin. “Kiki’s…I thought she was you.” He buried his face in her hair, breathing
in her rose scent, rejoicing in the fine strands stroking his cheek. “I thought
she was you, Autumn. I’ve never been so terrified in my life. Madre de Dios, I
thought she was you.”

“Kiki? Is she hurt?” Unlike the
night before, Autumn was the first to draw back, the one recalling responsibilities.
“What’s wrong? Does she need help?”

One more moment to hold her. Just
one more moment, he told himself. Then he steadied as her hands rested on his
chest and her eyes looked at him with a trust that made him want to damn
responsibility and carry her off to a place where she would be safe and they
could be together.

He was confused, out of his head.
He needed to pull himself together, get back to normal.

Except nothing was normal any
more.

“Kiki’s—I think she’s dead.” He
pulled his cell out. “Damn, I forgot there’s no signal here. Autumn, I need to run
up to the lodge, have them call an ambulance.” He pushed back her hair, mussed
and tangled from his frantic caresses. “Someone needs to stay with her. She… It,
it’s too late for her but I have to go get help.”

She understood immediately. “Let
me put on my shoes.”

“No!” He couldn’t ask her to stay
with that ruined husk. “Maybe you’d better go up to the lodge and I’ll stay.”

She stood. “I’ll do it, Rennie.”

Back to the old Autumn. No
hysteria, no tears.

The panic belonged to him when,
at the door, she grabbed the blue jacket off a duffel bag packed and ready for
the trip back to Atlanta.

That coat was dangerous on her. It
looked too much like the blood-soaked jacket that hadn’t protected Kiki.

No time to worry why, but she
couldn’t wear it.

“Don’t put that on.” He jerked
the coat from her and threw it down, stripped off his own down jacket and held
it out. “Humor me, Autumn. Please.”

One mystified look, but she put
on his jacket without question.

Bless her. Either of his sisters
would have argued if he told her to get out of a sinking boat.

At Kiki’s body, she gave a quick
intake of breath before lifting her hand to her mouth.

In his too-big jacket, she looked
fragile and defenseless. He couldn’t leave her alone with Kiki’s pathetic
corpse.

She read his mind. “I’m all
right. Go on.”

He caught her shoulders in both
hands, squeezed them bracingly. “I’ll be back as soon as I get help.”

“I know.” She sounded like Autumn.
Unruffled. Capable. “I’ll be fine, Rennie. Go on now.”

If she had been Norma or Laney,
he would have had to waste time dealing with the inevitable hysterics. But
Autumn never dissolved into tears. Still, he lingered. “I’ll hurry.”

“I know. Go on so you can get
back. I’ll be fine.”

He started to run, hating to
leave her, hating she’d have to stay alone with the thing on the ground, hating
every step that took him away from her.

A family at the next cluster of cabins
were loading suitcases in their SUV as he ran by. They greeted his tale with
suitable shock and volunteered to send help from the lodge.

Autumn, sitting on the steps near
Kiki’s remains, looked askance when he ran back.

“I found some people up the
street,” he said between gasps. “They’re going to the lodge to get help.” He bent
over, rested his hands on his knees and inhaled oxygen to his starved lungs.

“Good.”

In the midst of the unexpected
tragedy, her calm was remarkable. How he did love her for that.

She looked at where Kiki sprawled.
“She was so animated. So alive. It doesn’t seem possible that she’s dead. What
happened, Rennie? Did she fall?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t?” Silence. “Her
husband?”

Had it not been for the blood
coagulating into dark red splotches, the small form would have seemed that of a
large rag doll, dropped and abandoned by an uncaring owner.

He didn’t like looking at Kiki’s
body, didn’t want Autumn to look at it either. “I don’t know.” He dropped down
on the railroad tie beside her, put his arm around her and turned her face
toward him, away from Kiki. “I don’t know, Autumn.”

“Who else would have done it?”

He shook his head.

She must be shocked, but she
covered it up well. “How horrible to think a marriage could end up like this. What
could make a man want to do this to his wife?”

“I don’t know. Jealousy, maybe. Money.
We don’t know the whole story. Probably never will.”

Somewhere in the back of his mind
was a germ of truth, something he needed to remember. But he couldn’t think of
it. Whatever it was eluded him.

Beneath his arm, she shuddered. “I
can’t imagine anyone hating another person enough to do something like this.”

“Of course you can’t.” He
squeezed her. She had no idea of the evil in people, his Autumn. For that
matter, she had no idea of the depravity to which a normal person could sink.

Even ones who tried their best to
be upright and moral.

He didn’t want to be the one to
break her rosy glasses. His teeth clenched.
I won’t be
.

She laid her head on his shoulder.
He shouldn’t have let her, but he did. Together they waited.

They didn’t speak again until
after the emergency team came.

Chapter 13

A protective numbness had
descended over Autumn the moment she saw Kiki’s pitiable body. Murmurings of
bullet wounds from White County EMTs and deputies caused the sense of unreality
to linger.

Kiki was murdered, but Autumn
couldn’t take it in.

Investigators asked her and the
others question after question, many of them unanswerable.

“I don’t know,” came most of the
replies.

But sometimes it varied. “I didn’t
meet her at all,” said Fran.

“I spoke to her for a minute,”
said Victoria.

“We talked long enough to find
out she was terrified of her husband,” said Laney.

“We were walking and didn’t see
anything,” said John.

Autumn was as vague as the rest. “I
was sleeping. Something woke me up, but I don’t know what. I didn’t hear
anything.”

Rennie remembered seeing a beige
van when he came back to the cabin, but he hadn’t noticed the driver or the tag
plates.

As they waited, Autumn kept
thinking that if they’d talked more to Kiki, accepted her invitation to go over
for dinner, maybe Kiki wouldn’t be dead.

I should have been nicer to her.

No matter how pushy Kiki was, no
one deserved to end up on the ground covered in her own blood.

Afterward, the only thing Autumn
recalled clearly from that afternoon was the pearly gray light cast from the
cloud-distorted sun and the chill that would not leave no matter how many layers
she put on.

Her numbness was beginning to
wear off by the time the sheriff dismissed them.

Fran and Victoria immediately left
for Atlanta. He was due back in Atlanta early to prepare for the High Museum
reception that night, and Victoria saw an opportunity for a news story; Kiki’s
estranged husband, the ex-football player, was a possible suspect and she was personally
acquainted with him. Fran had been happy to oblige when she begged for a ride.