Murder on Edisto (The Edisto Island Mysteries) (3 page)

Bending until her cheek touched the ruffled cotton pillow sham, Callie inhaled, taking in the aroma of lilac fabric softener. She ached to crawl under the quilt’s protection—to escape to a time when her life was one amazing ride after another, and her heart wasn’t so bruised.

Over two years later, and she still couldn’t call herself a
widow
.

Beverly labeled Callie’s emotional concerns as
spells
. Jeb babied her, when it should be the other way around. But deep in the recesses of her soul, her panic attacks and fear-ridden dreams stemmed from the fact she’d always consider the Zubov family a threat to her family’s well-being. Leo had died, but there were dozens of them still breathing. She didn’t know how to get over that.

Leo had given the order to kill everyone in her house that night. She was as sure of it as the barnacles clinging to the beach piers. John just happened to be the only one there. Zubov meant to send a strong message.

She’d gotten the point then, and every day and night since.

Then the bastard had died before witness protection could whisk him away. Stroke. The Russian mafia martyred him as they did all their dead. The fact that Leo’s obese body and lavish lifestyle exacerbated his demise meant nothing. To his family, the people who cuffed him became the focus for revenge.

Her mother’s voice lifted in singsong fashion from the other room, her Carolina drawl thick. “Callie? Would you like me to sort your hanging clothes in any order? I have my closet color coordinated, but—”

“No.” Callie cleared her throat, regretting her harsh reply. “Just hang them. I’ll sort everything later.”

This room had so many little girl memories. What she’d be when she grew up. How to kiss a boy. When to wear make-up. Crying herself to sleep over acne ruining her life. She smiled.

Callie dragged herself up and left the bedroom, hefting a box containing framed pictures and her small jewelry collection onto the dresser in the other bedroom. Her parents’ dresser. Hers was in the room with seahorses and starfish, and she bet she’d still find grains of sand in the recesses of the white rattan. After her folks left, she might switch rooms.

“I’m sorry, dear, but I went ahead and sorted your clothes.” Beverly’s muffled announcement radiated from the closet. “I think you’ll like what I’ve done.”

Callie shook her head at the woman’s remarkable gift to turn a deaf ear. Yeah. She would definitely switch rooms.

Callie lifted a family picture of Jeb, John, and herself on Jeb’s fourteenth birthday, spent on a Boston shore, tiny Bonnie in her arms. Callie brushed her finger across the glass. “I only intended to visit Edisto for the summer, you know.”

Beverly ventured out of the closet. “Did I hear you right, dear?” She spread her arms wide. “We just gave you all this, so I—”

“Don’t get it.” Callie set down the picture and faced her mother. “You’ve never gotten it.” A tear threatened, not what she intended, but she held her composure. Who got mad over a new house?

Her lithe, prim mother with a magazine-perfect bob of white waves and celery capris shifted her feet, but left her gaze on her daughter.

An overwhelming year of biting her tongue, stifled under the same roof with her parents’ overbearance, spilled over. “Where I went to school, my choice of husband.” She mimicked her mother’s voice. “
Massachusetts is a long way from good people, dear
.” Callie inhaled, regretted the overreaction, and waited for her mother’s next blow.

Instead, her mother sighed. “I know you feel you must lash out, dear, but it’s been over two years since John left.”

“And Bonnie.”

“Yes,” her mother said. “But they left some time ago, don’t you think—”

Callie’s jaw tightened. “For God’s sake, Mother, they’re dead, not on vacation.”
And buried in Boston, a thousand miles away.

“I understand that,” Beverly replied, seating herself on an ottoman. “Like it or not, the house is yours. Sell it if you wish, but we wanted to give you a place of your own.” She cocked her head like a petulant headmistress. “It’s time for Jeb to have a home, too.”

“Jeb’s home is
my
decision to make! Where I live is
my
choice.” Callie tucked trembling hands in her jeans, unable to mark that one point in time that caused the chasm between her and her mother. To identify what to fix—and fix it.

“I hurt, too, you know,” Beverly said, slipping easily into her feel-sorry-for-me voice. “I never got to see my granddaughter.”

There it was. Callie clenched her teeth at Beverly’s well-worn trump card.

“
Your
daughter lived,” Callie replied. “Anyway, you never came to Boston to visit.”

“My dear, you never asked me to.”

Callie moved the box of photographs to the floor with a thud. She’d decided years ago that to become a self-assured police officer, she couldn’t afford the emotional bombardment of her mother’s judgment. “Don’t you see
why
I moved so far away? To get away from your control. John, Jeb, and the Boston PD completed me, and Bonnie . . .” She drew in sharply. “Bonnie became the cherry on top.”

Her mother folded her hands slowly, which she always did when she wanted to cement a point. “Law enforcement changed you, dear.”

Callie’s eyes narrowed. “Law enforcement
defined
me, Mother.” Her clenched fist struck her chest. “It led me to John and gave you grandchildren. All achieved without your input.”

“That’s enough,” said her father from the doorway.

Jeb peered uneasily over Lawton’s shoulder.

Callie’s heart sank at her father’s mask of disappointment. These thrusts of iron will dug under Callie’s skin. Here she stood, caught between the guilt of being an ingrate and her need to be a grown woman with a mind of her own.

“Wish you wouldn’t fight,” Jeb said softly, the pain clear in his eyes.

Beverly wouldn’t think such a comment was directed at her, so Callie stopped arguing. Just like she always did.

“We’re fine, dear,” Beverly said, the timbre of her voice now oh-so-damn level.

If Callie heard
dear
one more friggin’ time.

She approached her father, the parent who could display affection, and employed the nickname that melted his bones—given to him the first time he let her drive the boat when she was only eight. “Captain?”

Lawton yanked an initialed handkerchief from his pocket, the cloth a traditional stocking stuffer from Beverly each Christmas. “What, Callie Scallywag?” Her father’s cheeks and neck flushed red from the heat as he wiped his forehead with the handkerchief.

“Jeb and I don’t need help unpacking,” she said, rubbing his sweaty sleeve. “We’d like to enjoy the peace. Walk the beach maybe.”

“The beach sounds great,” Jeb said, a huge smile returning to his face.

Lawton studied his daughter.

“Nonsense.” Beverly strode past toward the kitchen, drawing them behind her into the living room. “I can throw together a snack for us to eat on the porch.”

Lawton winked at Callie and pushed his handkerchief back into his pocket. “Bev, sweetheart, don’t I have some sort of breakfast meeting tomorrow morning?”

“Yes,” Beverly said, peeking around the refrigerator door. “You’re due at the Rotarians’ breakfast at seven.”

Lawton ran an arm around Jeb’s shoulders. Both men were six foot, the long noses and chins obviously alike. He squeezed Jeb once then faked a punch to the boy’s gut, raising a flinch then a grin from Jeb. “I haven’t even thought about preparing what to say,” Lawton said.

Beverly appeared with cheese and condiments. “You don’t ever prepare.”

Lawton walked to the kitchen, lifted the items from his wife, and returned them to the refrigerator. “Let’s go.”

“But—”

He took her arm gently. “They need time to themselves.”

As her mother walked off to get her purse, Callie ran to her father and threw her arms around his neck. “Thanks for the house, Daddy,” she whispered.

“You’re welcome,” he whispered back. “I’ll tell your mother.”

TENSION DRAINED away as Callie’s gaze followed her parents’ white BMW on its way toward Highway 174, back to their Middleton kingdom. From his duffel bag in the hallway, Jeb dug out swimming shorts, flip-flops, and sunglasses before bolting toward the door.

“Got your phone?” Callie hollered.

He frowned. “It’ll get messed up or stolen.”

Her concern escalated as he touched the doorknob. She had to adjust to him being out of reach. The ocean was just down the street. She walked over and caressed his warm cheek. “Okay, but try not to stay too long. You’ll burn.”

His mouth twisted into a familiar half-grin that made her heart leap at the memory of John. She nudged a blond lock back from his face. “Go. Have fun.”

As the latch caught behind him, Callie inhaled, then glanced around, absorbing what was now hers. Her fingers rubbed a knotted piece of driftwood on the bookcase. The cliché coastal decorations had to go. She would repaint the canary yellow walls to a neutral and turn the place into a real residence.

She returned to the bedroom to unpack. The nearest box stood out from all the others with no label. After ripping the tape free, the flaps sprung up. Bonnie’s white blanket ballooned out, the one from her car seat, the only item of hers unclaimed by fire and smoke.

As her hands entwined in the cotton, sobs crept up, then unable to fight them back, she let them engulf her. Her body shook as she hugged the blanket, rocking, rocking. That tiny, sweet-smelling baby girl. How often did she have to relive the morning she’d found Bonnie cold and oh so blue?

Her heart hit her chest and scared her. The first sign. Spinning around, she fumbled for her water bottle on the nightstand, missing it twice before she snared it and darted to the front porch. She rested elbows on the railing, head drooped, forehead almost touching the wood, breathing deep as she surveyed the crushed-shell drive. A renter’s golf cart puttered alongside Jungle Road fifty feet away.

Don’t panic. Don’t panic.

She forced in deep breaths again and again to lower her racing pulse.

The house had turned claustrophobic without warning.
Damn it.
Sucking in, she closed her eyes and counted to ten. She listened to her breathing and her pulse, controlling them both by sheer act of will. A sip of water helped. She opened her eyes, assimilating the surf noise, the gulls overhead. She eased back into the world.

And now she was tired.

A gull squawked and landed on the step ten feet away, dropped a sticky white present for her and lifted off again. She smiled. That sort of crap was doable. Lifting elbows, she brushed off the grains of sand.

She had tossed the antidepressants back in Boston, not wanting a crutch. Then during one particularly needy night, she’d learned alcohol provided a decent substitute. Running held off the escalating urge to drink herself into oblivion, so she’d bought two hundred dollar sneakers to guilt herself into keeping the habit. Pouring herself into sport instead of a glass, she had dropped a scary fifteen pounds off her petite frame, but earned it back in muscle within two months. Twice she’d run so long she almost collapsed . . . back in Boston. Middleton had been another story. Anyway, time to sweat out this day and burn off the melancholy.

A local patrol car in white and navy crawled by, the sandy-haired officer’s elbow draped out the open window, his tanned hand holding the roof. He raised a couple fingers off the steering wheel as their eyes met.

The uniform; the love of seeing a man wear it.
A deep sense of longing stirred. She waved a reply in kind, a benign hello she still used when she saw another badge. She missed the work and being married to a man who also loved it.

The warm gust of brine-laden breeze whipped a lock into her eyes. She tucked overgrown bangs behind her ears and filled her lungs again with the salt air. Jeb would come in near dark, his hair sticky, cheeks sun-kissed, and she’d have to remind him to leave his gritty shoes at the door. He’d earned the right to enjoy his life, and she was determined to ensure that happened.

She straightened to go inside for her sneakers when a rebellious gust of wind raised the clackety echoes of a bamboo chime from the gray-sided house next door.

Where
was
Papa Beach today? Her favorite neighbor had yet to make an appearance. Surely her father had called to let him know they were coming.

She’d make him her first house guest to celebrate their arrival, even ask him to bring his Korean War photos that Jeb enjoyed. She went inside to get her new keys, unable to leave a door unlatched like the natives. Shoes on and house locked, she clomped down the stairs.

Making her way across the twenty yards between them, she headed up the neat, well-tended steps to Papa Beach’s residence next door. Her mood lifted as she forecasted the hug, the joke about how big she’d grown—though she’d seen him only three weeks ago—and a piece of grape saltwater taffy.

Which hand holds the surprise, Callie?

Um, that one, Papa B
, she’d say, only for it to always be the other.

She reached the top landing of his tiny home, half the size of most on this end of the island. Her smile vanished.

The doorknob hung by its guts, the doorframe splintered. She tensed and instinctively reached for her Glock only to grab an empty waistband.