Share No Secrets (3 page)

Adrienne caught a flicker of movement again. Uneasiness flowed through her and impulsively she picked up her camera, taking several shots. If they discovered that someone had broken into the hotel and stolen or damaged furnishings, she might have caught an image of the thief or vandal.

She sat still for a few more minutes, camera poised. Then the idea that whoever was lurking in the woods might do her or Skye harm abruptly popped into her mind. Her nerves erupted to life. Something was
wrong.

“Skye, come back right
now!”
Adrienne yelled shrilly at the exact moment a nearby Skye shouted, “Brandon, come here!”

“Skye, let the dog go and come sit with me! I think someone is in the woods.”

“Yeah. Me and Brandon.” Adrienne could hear the exasperation in Skye’s voice. “I’ll be back as soon as I get him.”

Adrienne was annoyed that the girl wouldn’t do as told, but at least she was safe and she was close by. It probably
had
been Skye she’d seen darting through the thinning mist, Adrienne reasoned. The fog and the loneliness of the abandoned La Belle Rivière had unnerved her. Besides, all of her life she’d experienced dark premonitions and not one of them had come true. It was always the unexpected disaster that jumped up and slapped her in the face.

Assured that charging into the woods after Skye would be foolish, Adrienne forced down her uneasiness. Tucking the camera into a slit pocket in the flannel lining of her jacket so she wouldn’t lose it, she shifted her gaze far to the right where a six-foot-high white lattice fence enclosed an Olympic-sized pool. It had been drained over a year ago, when Ellen Kirkwood closed the hotel, but Adrienne could still almost feel the tingle of its cold water on a blazing summer afternoon.

She and Kit and their friend Julianna Brent had spent endless hours poolside, Julianna always earning the most attention with her astonishing body clad in one of her many skimpy bikinis. Adrienne smiled at the thought of the venomous looks Julianna had drawn from so many females, while the males gazed at her with expressions varying from shyness to pure lust. Not in the least reserved, Julianna had loved every moment of the fascination she caused. If either Adrienne or Kit had been jealous of her, the feeling was overwhelmed by their pride at having a gorgeous friend everyone knew was destined to someday smile from the covers of national glamour magazines.

On the warm summer evenings after an afternoon of swimming and sunbathing, the three of them had ridden around town in Kit’s red convertible. They’d flaunted their tans in cutoffs and halter tops, flirted with boys congregated on street corners, and endlessly listened to Julianna’s favorite song, “Sweet Dreams” by the Eurythmics, which she played at ear-shattering volume, singing along with Annie Lennox. Those were the summers when Kit, Julianna, and Adrienne were sixteen and seventeen. They were great summers, Adrienne thought. Probably the best, most carefree times of the

Okay, now you’re being morbid, Adrienne thought as she felt depression descend. It’s stupid for me to get so devastated over a building scheduled for demolition when everything else is so good in my world.

A crow cocked its head and looked down at the mumbling woman with unmistakable ridicule. At least it seemed unmistakable to Adrienne. She glowered back. She’d talk to herself if she liked. Then all six birds flapped up from the telephone wire when an explosion of barking ripped through the quiet morning.

“Brandon!” Skye shouted. “Don’t you dare go in that hotel!”

In the hotel? Adrienne thought. At this time of morning, every entrance door to the hotel should be shut and locked.

More barking from Brandon. More yelling from Skye. “No! You’re wet and dirty! We’re gonna get killed if you go in there—” A moment of silence except for the birds fluttering back to the telephone line. Then a familiar, “Morn, I need you!”

Adrienne dropped her sketchpad and pencil and headed to the west end of the hotel, from where Skye’s voice had come. She was glad she’d worn running shoes because the grass was laden with dew. “Where are you, Skye?”

The slender girl with her long pale blond hair and fashionably torn jeans appeared at the corner of the hotel. “There’s a door standing wide open on this end and Brandon ran inside. Mrs. Kirkwood will
kill
us if he does any damage!”

“He’s not destructive,” Adrienne said in relief when she reached her daughter to see the only problem was a runaway dog. “He won’t hurt anything.”

“But he’s acting weird.”

“He’s just acting like a high-spirited dog. Don’t get so worked up, Skye. We’ll find him.”

Good grief, Adrienne thought in irritation. Skye acted as if Brandon were a six-week-old pup. But she understood the girl’s protectiveness. At her tenth-birthday party, Skye’s father, Trey, had presented her with Brandon, already full grown and rescued from the dog pound less than twenty-four hours before he was to be “put down,” which made him even more precious to the animal-loving girl. That night, Trey had been killed in a motorcycle accident. In a way, for Skye the dog had become the last precious legacy her father had left to her.

Adrienne entered the side door behind Skye. It was dark, but Adrienne saw a panel of switches in the dim morning light coming through the open door. She flipped two, and bulbs sprang to light beneath crystal fixtures on the ceiling.

Brandon barked in the distance. “Hurry up, Mom! If he jumps in that fountain in the lobby—”

“The worst he’ll do is bump his head. The fountain is empty. You’re acting like a hysterical mother, Skye. Settle down.”

They entered the lobby in time to see one hundred pounds of shining black and white hair charging up a winding staircase to the second floor, barking for all he was worth. Odd how slowly Brandon ambled across the backyard when she wanted him to come in for the night, Adrienne mused. She’d thought he was getting arthritis, but today he moved like he’d been shot out of a cannon.

“Brandon, come back here!” Skye shouted.

“Save your breath,” Adrienne said. “He’s not coming back on his own.”

“But what about that caretaker guy?”

“If he’s upstairs, he’ll catch Brandon. Claude certainly won’t hurt him.”

Skye took the stairs two at a time. Adrienne suddenly felt every one of her thirty-six years as she tried to keep up. I need more exercise, she thought. Jogging, aerobics, yoga. Learning to use the Pilates machine she’d just bought. It all sounded exhausting.

The second-floor hall was dimmer than below. Only one light glowed beneath a crystal cover midway down the hall, and a strange, sweet scent filled the area. Skye stopped. “What’s that smell?”

Adrienne sniffed. “Flowers. Jasmine.” She sniffed again in slight alarm. “I also smell smoke. Maybe we should go back downstairs—”

Brandon let out three deafening barks. Skye darted down the hall yelling the dog’s name. He barked again.

He wouldn’t be leading us into a fire, Adrienne thought, panicked nevertheless by her daughter’s headlong rush toward the barking. “Skye, wait!”

The girl halted almost immediately, but Adrienne could tell it wasn’t in response to her command. Skye stared into one of the hotel rooms from which flickering light spilled into the dim hall. Her lips parted and she said softly, “Brandon, come here,” as she knelt and held out her hand.

Adrienne reached Skye’s side. She looked into the room and saw candles flickering on the dressers. The heavy, sweet scent of jasmine floated from the wax. Brandon sat stolidly near the foot of a bed. That was all Adrienne could see. Brandon and the foot of the bed covered by a lush bedspread of ivory brocade. What the dog stared at near the head of the bed escaped her range of vision. But she had the strange sensation that she was supposed to go into the room. Something
waited
for her in that room.

The feeling grew. I should pull my daughter away from the door, Adrienne thought as dread grew in her mind. I need to get Skye away from here because nothing good lies on that hotel bed Brandon is staring at. Nothing that Skye should see.

But Skye rose and strode into the room before Adrienne could grab her shoulder. Skye jerked to a stop about five feet away from Brandon, her eyes widening as they fixed on the bed. Brandon looked up at her and whined. The frozen look on Skye’s face and the dog’s pathetic whine drew Adrienne into the room almost against her will. She stopped at the foot of the bed, staring, unblinking, disbelieving.

Two thick pillows in creamy satin pillowcases rested against the padded headboard. A woman’s head lay against one. She was deathly pale, but her expression was peaceful, the lips shut, the eyelids closed, the long russet-colored hair smoothed like silk away from her face. The hair had been combed behind the right shoulder but spread over the neck and down over the left shoulder, partially obscuring her cheek and neck until it fanned out where the top of her left breast disappeared beneath the bedspread.

In the wavering candlelight, Adrienne caught the flicker of a barrette on the left side of the woman’s hair, near her temple. It was nearly two inches long, made in the shape of a butterfly with tiny chips of blue, green, and pink Austrian crystals sprinkled on the gossamer wings. Adrienne had seen the barrette a hundred times and she suddenly knew with sick certainty who lay pale and stone-still in that lavish bed.

Julianna Brent. The Julianna whom Adrienne had known since childhood. The beautiful Julianna who used to smile and flirt and throw back her head and sing with the pure joy of life. Later, Adrienne recalled the one inane thought that tolled through her mind during the awful moment when she felt as if she were free-falling through space …

Julianna Brent would never again sing along with her favorite song, “Sweet Dreams.”

Brandon started toward Julianna, edging toward a woman he knew well, who always petted him and lovingly rubbed his ears. But Skye grabbed the dog’s collar and held him back. “No, Brandon,” she said tonelessly. “We mustn’t disturb her.” She looked up at her mother with huge eyes. “It’s Julianna, isn’t it?”

Adrienne nodded slowly. “I think …” She swallowed. “I’m afraid it is.”

“Oh God, Mom. How? Why?” Skye took a deep breath. “You probably should check to see if she’s really dead.”

“Honey, she must be,” Adrienne said softly. To her own ears her voice sounded as if it were coming from far away. “She’s not moving and she’s so
pale …”

“But you can get real pale from blood loss and shock. I learned that in my first-aid class. She might just be hurt.” Skye made a hesitant move toward the bed. “If you don’t want to touch her, I’ll check and see if her heart’s still beating.”

“No,” Adrienne said quickly. “I’ll do it. You stay back and hold on to Brandon.”

Adrienne moved in a state of blurry shock to the right side of the bed, the toe of her shoe banging against a heavy glass bottle. A wine bottle. Shards of cream-colored ceramic littered the floor. She realized it was the base of a lamp when she saw a battered shade and an electric cord on the floor.

Adrienne looked down at Julianna’s white face, marred only by a small cut and a faint bruise on her forehead. She started to touch Julianna’s neck to feel for a pulse. When she gently moved aside the hair, though, she saw a large, ragged hole just beneath her left ear. Blood saturated the back of Julianna’s auburn hair and soaked the pillow, already turning to a dull red. Adrienne shuddered and paused. She fought the hot water rolling into her mouth and concentrated.

The hundreds of murder mysteries she’d read in her life, along with having dated the local county sheriff for over a year, had taught her she shouldn’t disturb the crime scene in any way, shouldn’t touch Julianna more than she had already. But she needed to know for certain if Julianna was dead, whether or not to tell the people manning the 911 emergency number to rush an ambulance to a dying woman and to instruct her about what to do for her friend until they arrived.

She pulled back the bedspread, light cotton blanket, and satín sheet Julianna lay naked to the waist beneath the bedding. Adrienne lifted Julianna’s left arm. It was cooler than her own but felt soft, indicating the muscles beneath were still pliable. Julianna was not yet in rigor mortis. But when Adrienne pressed her fingers to the woman’s slender wrist, she felt nothing. She shifted her fingers again and again, searching for, praying for, a beat, even a flutter of a pulse. Nothing.

“Mom?”

“She’s dead,” Adrienne said flatly. “I’m almost certain she’s dead.”

‘Oh no,” the girl quavered. “How?”

“There’s a hole in her neck. She’s been stabbed with something. There’s lots of blood. You can’t see it from where you’re standing.”

Adrienne took a step away from the bed, still looking down at her friend. Then the shock that had so far kept her calm surged from her body. Her hands turned icy as the floor seemed to shift beneath her. Her legs felt weak.

“Oh God—” Adrienne choked, then began to shake violently. In an instant, Skye stood next to her, enfolding her in her sweater-clad arms, holding her up. At five feet five, Adrienne was the exact height of her daughter, but at the moment, she felt small and shattered beside Skye’s youth and strength.

“Mom, I’m so sorry.” Skye’s voice trembled. “She’s been your friend forever.”

“Since we were six. She was so beautiful. And fun. Even then.”

“I know.” Skye patted her back, going on mechanically. “I thought she was terrific. Everybody did.”

Adrienne clung to her daughter, eyes tightly shut. Then she opened them and looked around in confusion. “What was Julianna doing here? The hotel’s empty. Why would she be sleeping in this place?”

Skye shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe she thought it was fun, or she wanted to spend the night here because the place is going to be torn down. You know how crazy she could act sometimes. Daredevil crazy. Fun crazy.”

“No, that’s not what happened. She wasn’t alone,” Adrienne stated with abrupt certainty. “She didn’t come here to spend the night alone. She could be reckless but she wasn’t a fool. She would have known a deserted hotel could be a magnet for vandals.”