Tell No Lies (8 page)

Her cell phone rang, startling her, and she glanced down at the number.
Caroline.
Her sister had been calling from the moment she’d got into the office this morning and Augusta knew why: By now Caroline knew Augusta had paid Ian’s bail, but she wasn’t in the mood for one of Caroline’s lectures. She waited for the ringing to stop to be sure she wouldn’t accidentally answer and shoved the phone into her back pocket.

Really, she should simply turn it off, because she was getting texts by the dozens—mostly from pissed-off folks who didn’t agree that she should have paid Ian’s bail. It was none of anyone’s business, and it had been a grievous mistake to give out her personal phone number as a contact for the reward money for Amanda Hutto. All of Charleston seemed to be calling her. Right or wrong, she was never going to hear the end of it now.

“What are you doing out here?”

Augusta started at the sound of Josh’s voice. “Shit!” she exclaimed. “You scared the hell out of me!”

She put a hand to her breast, settling her heartbeat. She hadn’t realized how spooked she was to be out here alone where her sister had nearly been murdered, and where two more women had vanished. “Looking around, I guess. What the hell are
you
doing here?”

“I saw the Town Car at Mom’s.”

With his hands in his pockets and dressed in his usual politician’s uniform, Josh seemed like a stranger to her—hardly the little boy she had grown up with. Unlike Josh these days, that kid hadn’t always had an agenda. “She wasn’t home,” Augusta offered. “So I came out here to poke around. You know where she is?”

“Yep,” he said, but offered nothing more, simply gave her a very patient, somewhat condescending look.

Augusta took offense. Irritation prickled up her spine. “Well?” Whatever fight Sadie had with Savannah, it wasn’t Augusta’s fault. She didn’t appreciate his attitude.

He took his hands out of his pockets but stood right where he had appeared—probably worried he would get his Armani suit dirty. Augusta peered down at the hem of her jeans, noticing for the first time that hers were covered in black ash.

“Damn,” she said, brushing her pants.

“Mom doesn’t want to talk to you right now. Just give her time.”

“You know Savannah didn’t mean to upset her,” Augusta offered, feeling helpless and a little disconnected without Sadie in their lives. As long as she could recall, Sadie had been the one to clean up their scrapes. She’d been the one to hand Augusta orange juice when she came in sweaty and hot after playing outside. Their own mother had never been around for that.

“Doesn’t matter what she intended, Augie. The fact is, Mom’s feelings are hurt.”

“None of us believe she had anything to do with the missing codicil, Josh—not even Savannah.”

Josh shrugged, apparently unconvinced.

“For God’s sake, she’s a writer!” Augusta reasoned. “She’s got to ask questions, no matter what she believes!”

“Yeah? So I’m an attorney,” he countered. “Questions are my business, too, but I’d defend you without hesitation, because I just
know
. Seems to me you should have just known.”

Never mind that Augusta had had nothing to do with any of it. The self-righteous look on Josh’s face pissed her off. “People make mistakes, Josh,” Augusta argued. “In this case,
Savannah
made a mistake. Is Sadie really going to punish all of us because of something one of us did? I mean, come on!”

Josh shook his head. “Like I said . . . give her time. Anyway, it’s not like you and Mom had any real relationship, did you? If you’re worried your socks won’t get folded, hire a maid.”

Augusta rocked back on her heels, feeling as though he’d slapped her across the face. Josh more than anyone knew how she felt about Sadie’s employment at Oyster Point. It was Augusta who had taken offense over the incestuous relationship his mother had with this relic of slavery. She couldn’t even find her voice to speak to defend herself. “Are you angry at me, too, for some reason?” she asked him directly. “It seems you’ve kept your distance, and I told myself it was because of Caroline, but I feel like you have a bone to pick with me.”

He shook his head again. “Nope. Not angry. I learned a long time ago that everything in life takes a backseat to your crusades, and it seems you’ve made Ian Patterson your latest campaign.”

Augusta moved toward him, the ruins forgotten now. “So that’s what this is about?” she asked angrily. “Ian Patterson?”

He shrugged again.

“Who I help—who I care about—is none of your concern, Josh!”

He stood his ground, his look dark. “So you care about him now? Is that right?”

The question took her by surprise, and she halted in her step. “I didn’t say that!”

His hands went back into his pockets and he gave her that “attorney look” he had mastered so well. “I would argue that you did.”

That simple fact stilled her tongue faster than anything else could have. Her hands shook. She might consider herself a woman of the world, able to sleep with a man without consequence, but that obviously wasn’t the truth.

Her head spun. There was too damned much going on. Tears stung her eyes.

Josh’s dark brows narrowed over bright blue eyes. “The math is pretty simple. You don’t pay one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for some guy you don’t give a shit about, Augusta.” He was angry now and apparently wanted her to know it. “Donating ten grand to help find a missing kid is one thing, shelling out one hundred and fifty Gs for a suspected murderer is another matter entirely. You can’t explain that one away without a little exchange of body fluids. Fuck me! Did you ever consider Caroline in this? Or Jack?”

He’d left himself out, she realized. She knew he didn’t give a damn about Caroline or Jack. Josh had always been Josh’s greatest concern. Augusta’s chest constricted with anger. She wanted to rail at him, tell him it was none of his business
whom
she slept with.

He made it sound so clinical, sordid and ugly.

He made her sound selfish and uncaring—things she strove hard not to be. On the day she finally closed her eyes, all she really wanted to be remembered for was giving.

She wanted to tell Josh that she could never love him—ever—no matter what their history. She wanted to say that she had run away from him—from his expectations and hurt puppy dog looks—as much as she had from her mother and this dysfunctional house. She couldn’t help that her heart didn’t feel what his did.

“Go to hell!” she said, and stormed past him, hurrying toward her car. She knew he wasn’t following, but she couldn’t get away fast enough.

Josh simply stood and watched her go, the wedge between them deepened to what seemed an irreparable rift. Sadie drove up as Augusta reached her car, but Augusta couldn’t find her voice to speak, much less reason with her about Savannah. She pulled open the car door as Sadie got out of her vehicle and stood there staring at Augusta, mouth agape, while she started her mother’s Town Car and peeled out in front of her.

“What was that about?”

Josh shrugged. “She can dish out the truth,” he said. “Apparently she can’t take it herself.”

 

Ian spent the greater part of the day putting his place back in order—literally. It wasn’t as though he had all that much to his name, but everything he owned had either been rifled through then discarded once it was determined to be useless to the investigation, or confiscated. The only real loss here was the notebook he had kept to chronicle his investigation. Far from incriminating him, that one piece of evidence would have served to validate his story.

Unfortunately, he was going to have to put his life into the hands of a jury who, after following Caroline Aldridge’s witch hunt in the papers, couldn’t possibly be objective. He hadn’t been lucky enough to have had the charges dismissed; for the time being, the court was moving forward with a trial, though his attorney was filing a motion to suppress evidence. The police claimed his door had been left ajar and that suspicious articles had been left in plain sight. But that was impossible. Ian didn’t have anything to hide, but he wasn’t stupid enough to leave his house unlocked—nor did any of the “evidence” found in his home belong to him. If the house was open, it was left open by whomever had planted the hit bag. The police had probably dusted the entire house for prints, so he was certain that hadn’t yielded anything, or he would have heard by now. Despite the fact that they had gone after the wrong man, they were thorough and diligent.

He sat on his bed—because that was the only true piece of furniture in the house—a fact that probably hadn’t helped his case much. He was a transient as far as everyone was concerned—an ex-priest with a record. He fell neatly into their profiling net. He got that. In retrospect he supposed most of his decisions were suspect.

He’d chosen this rental house because it was near the ruins, because that was the last place he could track Jennifer to. The fact that now at least two of the possible victims had visited that site as well, and Caroline Aldridge had been lured there, too . . . led him to believe there was some significance to the place. But what it was exactly, he didn’t know.

There was such a thing as being in the right place at the wrong time. Maybe the fact that all three women had been there previously was a coincidence? Until the fire, it had been a private place, concealed from view. It had taken him more than a few forays into the surrounding area to locate the spot he’d seen only in a photo.

The shot had been taken close up, with only a blurry view of the ruins of a chimney at her back. Judging by the smile on Jennifer’s face, she had not only been familiar enough with the photographer to hand him her cell phone, but she obviously admired him. There was that look in her eyes—the same one she had given Ian—the same look that had compelled him to send her home with a lecture and a note for her mother, a plea for her mom to seek help for Jennifer.

He pulled out a new notebook and made a list of people connected to the Aldridges. He wrote the names of all three sisters, stopping to underline Augusta’s—not because he suspected she was involved, but because he couldn’t stop thinking about that look on her face as they’d cuffed him and shoved him into the police car.

She wasn’t alone.

He added Joshua and Sadie Childres to the list—the Aldridge housekeeper and her only son, an ambitious attorney with his sights set on both the solicitor’s office as well as a mayoral desk if James Island managed to keep its newest incorporation status. Josh had an impeccable reputation—graduated
egregia cum laude
—a distinction he’d earned by pursuing a rigorous political science curriculum along with his law degree.

As for Jack Shaw, Caroline’s fiancé, apparently the investigation had brought those two back together. Awfully convenient—especially considering that one of the dead girls was Jack’s ex-girlfriend . . . the other was an employee of the
Tribune.
It was feeling like a very incestuous crime, except that at least half the supposed victims had no connection with the Aldridges at all: Amanda, Jennifer, Amy.

He stared at the notebook, mulling that over.

At the bottom of his list were Florence and Robert Aldridge, both dead. Then there was Sam—the son who drowned back in 1989. Not much to go on there. As far as Ian could tell, the kid had gotten into his little inflatable boat and sailed away into the great unknown. These things happened—especially around Charleston, where the currents were strong.

The father apparently died the same year—heart attack; the mom four months ago—accident. She fell down her stairs. According to the paper, the housekeeper found her the following morning. Nothing out of the ordinary there. For all intents and purposes, the Aldridges seemed to be a decent family, if maybe a little too far up their own asses. If one of them tripped, the world read about it—and now the oldest sister was at the helm of the nation’s eighth oldest paper. He really felt sorry for Jack Shaw. That woman could be a ballbuster.

He put question marks by Jennifer Williams’s and Amanda Hutto’s names. Like Jennifer, Amanda was still missing.

Amy Jones was the first victim. The girl had been a senior at the College of Charleston, and as far as Ian knew, had no known connection to the Aldridges. He had helped her put gas into her car the night of her death and what he got for his trouble was a murder charge—even though he had an alibi that was sticking.

Unlike Pamela Baker and Kelly Banks, she had no connection to the Aldridges. There seemed to be no pattern there . . . but somehow, Ian knew in his gut the deaths were all connected.

What did a seventeen-year-old runaway, a twenty-two-year-old college kid, a thirty-year-old police dispatcher, a six-year-old girl and a twenty-three-year-old reporter have in common?

Then there was Cody Simmons—still another connection to the Aldridges, although with a history in the city older than God, who wouldn’t know the Aldridges? Cody had nothing in common with the rest of the list of possible victims. Maybe the kid was just unlucky enough to have seen the murderer?

He jotted down Cody’s name, tapping his pencil. He knew exactly which cemetery the kid was nabbed from, because he’d been there a few times while scouring the area. At least for a while, getting in there would be impossible, because the police would have the place cordoned off. The paper claimed Cody hadn’t been alone, but they wouldn’t disclose the name of his friend. Smart move, but good luck keeping that one a secret. Twelve-year-old boys liked to talk. So did angry mothers.

The doorbell rang, an annoying chime that thankfully didn’t go off often.