The Kill (5 page)

He turned around.

“Where are you going? You can’t drive anywhere.”

“Why not?”

“Your car’s still at the Blackthorne. Remember? You were in no condition to drive last night so I brought you home with me.”

Manning stared at her, trying to recall some of what had happened the night before.

Julia’s plump lips parted in a pouty glare. “You do remember, don’t you?”

“Not exactly,” he murmured.

“Oh, boy. You were in worse shape than I thought. I guess you’ve learned to hide it well.” Julia slipped out of bed and opened the door to her closet. “Give me a sec. I’ll throw on some clothes and give you a lift to your car.”

A
bigale’s eyes burned. A fine dusting of Afghan sand coated her lashes and hair. She ran her tongue over parched lips and felt grit crunch between her teeth. She was back at camp, eager to get to her laptop computer so she could view the photos she’d shot on the ridge. But first she needed to check on Joe.

She and Alex wove their way through the medical tent, where they found Joe on a cot hunched over his laptop, pounding away on the keyboard. His leg was bandaged, but other than that he appeared to be okay.

“Don’t go getting any ideas about embellishing your account of what happened,” Abigale said. “I’ve got pictures that tell the real story.”

Joe spun to face them but didn’t crack a smile at Abigale’s teasing.

“You lucky son of a bitch, no doubt you earned yourself a first-class ticket out of here,” Alex said.

“Yeah, they’re putting me on the next chopper. Abigale too.”

“
Me?
Why?” Abigale asked.

Joe’s eyes flickered to Alex, then back to her. “London’s been trying to reach you. There’s been a family emergency.”

Abigale’s heart lurched in her chest. “My mother.”

“No,” Joe said. “Your mother’s okay. She’s the one who called the bureau. It’s your uncle in Virginia. He’s been shot.”

“Uncle Richard?
Shot?
What happened? Was he deer hunting? How badly is he hurt?”

Joe regarded her somberly as he handed her the satellite phone. “Call Max.”

Abigale couldn’t stop her hand from shaking as she punched in the number for her editor. She clutched the phone to her ear, waiting what seemed like an eternity for the call to go through. Joe scooted over and patted a spot next to him on the cot. She dropped down on the edge facing away from him as a hollow
ring-ring
trilled in her ear.

“Max Chapman.”

“It’s Abigale.”

“Jesus. Abigale, I got a call from your mother. I guess Joe told you. Your uncle in Virginia—Richard—he’s been shot. We’ve got you on the next chopper out of there.”

“How badly is he injured?”

There was a long suffering pause. “He’s dead, Abigale. Your uncle was murdered.”

M
anning parked his BMW in front of his mother’s house behind Wendy Brooks’s Jeep. Thompson’s Explorer and the hunt’s kennel truck were parked farther up the drive.

He killed the engine, leaned over, and rummaged through the glove box for a tin of breath mints. As he straightened back into the driver’s seat, he glanced at his reflection in the rearview mirror. He popped a mint in his mouth and shoved his fingers through his hair, forcing the blond waves into some sense of order. God, he looked like shit. He had skipped shaving before hunting yesterday and now the two-day-old growth of beard made him look like some Hollywood bad boy. Nothing he could do about that now. Nothing he could do about his bloodshot eyes, either.

Manning grabbed his tweed jacket off the passenger seat and climbed out of the car, slipping the jacket on and turning the collar up against the drizzle as he hurried along the stone walk toward the house. He saw lights on in the kitchen and veered off the walk, cutting across the lawn to the back. Through the glass in the mudroom door he saw his mother standing by the kitchen counter, talking on the telephone. Her back was to him. He stomped his feet on the doormat and opened the door.

She glanced over her shoulder as he entered and he saw her eyes travel down to his boots. He smothered a sigh.
Don’t worry, Mother. I remembered my manners and wiped my feet
.

Manning shook the rain off his jacket and hung it on a hook in the mudroom. As he walked into the kitchen, Margaret banged the receiver back on the base. He spotted a tremble in her hand.

“If one more person tells me that Richard is in a better place, I think I’ll scream,” she said, turning to face him.

Manning wrapped his arms around her and she gave him a quick squeeze before backing out of his embrace. “We’ve been looking for you all morning,” she said, settling against the counter, her arms clamped across her chest.

“I came as soon as I heard.”

“Um-hmm.” Her lips puckered into a crooked line and her blue eyes blazed as she gave him a good once-over. “Where were you? You look like you just climbed out from under a rock. Still dressed in yesterday’s hunt attire.”

Manning glanced away.

“Never mind. I already know the answer.” Margaret drew in an exaggerated sniff. “You reek of some woman’s perfume. That and day-old whisky.”

God, Mother
. He released a slow breath, refusing to be baited into an argument. “Tell me what happened to Richard.”

Margaret turned and grabbed a coffee mug off the counter by the phone, wrinkling her nose as she took a sip. “This is cold.” She flung the contents in the sink and reached for the glass carafe in the drip coffeemaker, glancing at him as she poured steaming coffee into her mug. “I just brewed a fresh pot of coffee. Would you like a cup?”

“No. Thanks.”

Her disapproving eyes roved over him. “Are you sure? You look like you could use one.”

Before he could respond there was a knock, and the door that led to the hall creaked partially open. Smitty poked his head into the kitchen. “Can I come in?”

“Of course,” Margaret replied, lifting the mug to her mouth and eyeing Manning over the rim as she took a sip.

Smitty’s gaze shifted back and forth between Margaret and Manning as the door swung closed behind him. “Wasn’t sure if I was interrupting something.”

Manning looked away and perched on the edge of the kitchen table, rubbing the back of his neck as he stretched it from side to side.

“What do you need, Smitty?” Margaret asked.

“Percy Fletcher just showed up at the front door, all full of questions. I told him you were on the phone, but he’s made himself at home in the library with Thompson and Wendy. Seems to think that being your neighbor gives him the right to intrude.”

“That’s all right. I’ll go talk to him.” Margaret glanced at Manning as she pulled open the door. “Are you coming?”

He sighed and shifted to his feet. “Yeah, I’ll be right there.”

A
burn shot through Manning’s gut as he watched the door swing closed behind his mother.

Smitty arched a bushy eyebrow. “You all right?”

He took a breath. “I just don’t get it, Smitty. Richard’s dead and she can’t get beyond the fact that I didn’t show up to work at Longmeadow this morning, that it took her a while to locate me.”

“You’re her son. She needed you this morning. It’s her way of showing her disappointment that you weren’t there.”

“Mother needed me? I doubt that.”

“It’s the truth.”

“You can’t tell that from the way she’s acting now.”

“She’s shed all her tears. At least publicly. You know how your mother is.”

“Oh, yeah.” Manning’s fingers curled in the air like quotation marks. “Just get back on the damn horse and get on with it.”

Smitty clamped his mouth into a pucker and slowly shook his head. There was an uncharacteristic hardness in his eyes. “She’s not getting any younger, Manning.”

Manning narrowed his eyes. “What are you saying?”

“You need to step up to the plate, son. Your mother just lost her oldest and dearest friend. She and Richard have had each other’s backs since high school—that’s more than fifty years. Margaret would kill me for saying it, but she can’t go through this alone. She needs you by her side.”

Shouldn’t that work both ways?
Manning thought. He was grieving Richard’s death, too, but his mother wasn’t there for him. He eased out a slow breath. “Yeah. All right.”

Smitty gave him a tired smile and plucked a bottle of Virginia Gentleman from the liquor cabinet. “I think you and I might need a little something to help us get through today. What say I make us both a proper cup of coffee?”

They carried their steaming mugs to the library, and Manning dropped down in a barrel chair next to Percy in front of the fire. He took a healthy draw of the spiked coffee as he listened to his mother recount how she had found Richard in the stewards’ stand at Longmeadow. She said it appeared Richard had been shot with his own hunting rifle during a robbery, and that the authorities were going to interrogate the members of the nearby road crew repaving St. Louis Road.

“Jesus Christ.” Manning ran his hand along his jaw, his fingers rubbing noisily at the stubble of his beard. “It just doesn’t add up. How would someone from the road crew have spotted Richard? You can’t see the racecourse or the stewards’ stand from the road.”

Thompson looked at him as if he were dense. “No, of course not. But one of those characters could have seen Richard turn in the entrance to Longmeadow. Margaret said the gate was closed when she arrived, so if someone saw Richard drive through and close the gate they could make a pretty good assumption that he was alone and wasn’t expecting anyone to join him.”

“Someone might have seen Richard drive in, but I don’t think Richard was the one who closed the gate,” Margaret said. “It makes no sense for him to do so while he was at the course. You know we always open the gate when we arrive and fasten it when we leave. I think it’s more likely the killer closed the gate to delay the possibility of someone driving in and finding Richard’s body.”

“When was Richard killed?” Percy asked.

“I don’t know if the medical examiner has determined a time of death yet, but Richard had clearly been dead for some time before I arrived.”

“So he might have been murdered last night,” Percy murmured. He shot a look at Manning. “Was the gate open or closed when you left Longmeadow yesterday afternoon?”

“What are you talking about?” Manning asked.

“The
gate
. When you left Longmeadow yesterday afternoon, was the gate open or closed?”

A chill wrapped around Manning. “I wasn’t at Longmeadow yesterday.”

“Since when? After the hunt yesterday, that’s where you said you were heading.”

“Is that true, Manning, that you went to Longmeadow?” Margaret asked.

“No.”

Margaret raised an eyebrow at Percy.

“Bull-
shit!
” Percy drawled. “When I left the tailgate, I asked if you wanted to grab a beer with me after you took your horse back to the barn and you said you were heading over to Longmeadow to help Richard work on the course.”

Had he?
Manning avoided his mother’s accusatory glare and drained the last of his coffee. “I might have said that’s where I was going, but that’s not where I went.”