Finding Laura (16 page)

“I think there is. Listen, I know I upset you—”

“Upset me? First you convince me to spend the night,
and then you needle me until I change my mind. Why would that upset me?”

“Josie—”

She gestured angrily, cutting him off. “If you want to end it, Alex, just say so. Maybe men your age like playing games, but I’m a little beyond that, so let’s cut to the chase, all right?”

He sighed and folded his arms across his chest. “Age has nothing to do with it, Josie—not yours and not mine. I won’t let you use that as an excuse.”

“You won’t let me? Since when is this my fault? Dammit, Alex,
you’re
the one who ran me off Saturday night—and don’t you dare try to deny it.”

“All right, I won’t.”

His mild agreement took the wind out of her sails, leaving Josie feeling unexpectedly flat. “Well, why?” she demanded.

He shrugged. “Because … you didn’t want to stay. Oh, you agreed to, but only because I more or less forced you to. And when that happened, I realized it wasn’t the way I wanted it to be. I didn’t want to wake up in the morning and see you regretting we’d spent the night together.”

Josie frowned at him. “Then why didn’t you say something about it instead of—of being cruel and driving me away?”

“Was I cruel? No, Josie—unless the truth is cruel.” He smiled slightly, his greenish eyes very intent on her face. “I know I probably sounded harsh, and I suppose that was intentional. It just seems to me that it’s time you said good-bye to Jeremy. Unless, that is, you really do want to end up like Amelia, still wearing black and living in a mausoleum forty years from now. Is that what you want?”

No!
But she couldn’t quite voice that answer, as badly as she wanted to. Something held her back. Slowly she
said, “My feelings about Jeremy are none of your business.”

“They are when he sleeps between us in my bed,” Alex said bluntly. “A ménage à trois isn’t quite what I bargained for.”

She felt hot tears sting her eyes, and wasn’t even sure why. “You didn’t complain in the beginning,” she said shakily. “Why start now?”

He hesitated, then said, “Maybe because it offends my sense of justice to see a beautiful young woman bury herself with her dead husband. Maybe because I can’t believe Jeremy would have wanted you to stop feeling when he died. Or … maybe I just resent knowing there’s a ghost in my bed. Take your pick, Josie. It really doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me.”

“Does it?” Alex shrugged again. “All right, then. I don’t like it, sweet. I just don’t like it. Every time I take you in my arms, I know damned well you think you’re cheating on Jeremy. And I really don’t enjoy feeling like the other man. I took it as long as I could, and now I just can’t take it anymore.”

Josie drew a breath. “I can’t help how I feel.”

“Neither can I.” He leaned forward, bracing his hands on the edge of her desk, and held her gaze steadily. “Make no mistake, Josie—I want you back in my bed. But not until it’s just the two of us. Leave Jeremy in your inner sanctum if you have to, his picture on your dresser. Apologize to him there, if you have to, for being with another man, and do penance if he demands it of you—or you demand it of yourself. But the next time you come to me, you come alone.”

Josie didn’t say a word, watching silently as he straightened, turned, and walked to the door. She didn’t call him back, as badly as she wanted to, when he opened the door and went out, leaving her alone in the room.

When he was gone, she sank down into her chair and
looked rather blindly at the schedule of Atlanta’s upcoming charity events she had been studying when he had come in. She couldn’t think of anything beyond Alex’s ultimatum and the confusion of her own feelings.

And when she could think, long minutes later, she realized that her uneasy questions about what he’d been doing in Peter’s room later on Saturday night, and what he and Daniel were up to, had completely slipped her mind when he was standing in front of her and might have answered them. But now those questions tormented her as surely as his ultimatum did.

Alex had gotten up and dressed after she’d left him, and she had to wonder if it had been the first time. Or had he, the previous Saturday night, also dressed and left his room—and possibly this house—after she had returned to hers?

“…  a woman killed Peter. That’s what they said, isn’t it?”

Laura had agreed, Josie remembered. But her expressive face had said clearly what had occurred to Josie—that it was believed a woman had killed Peter only because a woman had been seen with him that night.

There was no reassurance in that thought. Only doubts.

Too many doubts.

“S
O THIS IS
Amelia Kilbourne.” Cassidy studied the second sketch Laura had made at the house, shaking her head almost unconsciously. “She looks like something out of the last century.”

Curled up in the chair in her living room, Laura sipped the hot chocolate she’d just made—as a sort of defiant good-bye to summer, whether it had really gone or not—and nodded. “She’s just that way, in looks. Sort of the way she talks sometimes as well. But I get the idea it’s
because she favors a more elegant time—and knows she looks good in the setting.”

Cassidy put the sketchpad aside and eyed her friend thoughtfully. “That sounds awfully … calculated.”

Laura was momentarily surprised, but then nodded. “I guess so. I think Amelia is very aware of how things look. Not just appearances, but the meanings behind them. She’s … an interesting woman.”

“Umm. What about the others? That sketch you did of Josie is especially good, by the way; I’d certainly know her if I saw her. Your best work.”

Laura smiled, but shrugged off the compliment. “I like Josie. And, at a guess, she wasn’t involved with Peter because she is involved with Alex Kilbourne. I just think so, mind you—I don’t know for sure. But there seemed to be a lot of tension between them. A man/woman kind of tension. The thing is, I think it occurred to Josie just today that just because a woman was seen with Peter the night he was murdered doesn’t necessarily mean a man couldn’t have killed him. She’s worried. I don’t know if something in particular is bothering her or if it’s a general uneasiness because we don’t know who killed him, but she’s pretty anxious.”

“Think maybe she suspects Alex?”

“Maybe. She said he was at the house Saturday night, but she was awfully quick to defend him. I mean, to say that even though he and Peter didn’t get along, it wasn’t hatred. Ergo, he wouldn’t have murdered him.” Laura shook her head. “I don’t know, she might suspect he had something to do with it.”

“What do you think?”

“I talked to the man for barely a minute, hardly enough time to make that kind of guess.”

“Guess anyway,” Cassidy suggested.

Laura frowned. “He seemed perfectly nice, charming. Not exactly the buttoned-down lawyer type, judging by
his necktie—Looney Tunes characters. But he
is
a lawyer, and I can’t see this particular lawyer stabbing a man to death in a motel room.”

“Okay. What about Daniel?”

Laura’s first reaction to that question was an instant and definite negative.
No
. No, not Daniel. He hadn’t killed Peter. It wasn’t possible. That kind of hatred wasn’t in him. He hadn’t stood over his brother’s body in that shabby motel room driving the knife in again and again.…

“Laura? Hey, what’s wrong?”

“It’s cold in here,” she heard herself murmur. “That’s all.”

“That’s not all. You went white. What is it?”

After a moment, Laura said, “I keep forgetting the reality of it. That a man was brutally murdered. And then, suddenly, something makes it real to me.”

Cassidy nodded in understanding, but asked, “What made it real to you this time? That I asked about Daniel?”

“Not so much that as … I just got an image in my head. How it must have happened. I told you imagination was a curse.”

“I guess so.” Cassidy studied her thoughtfully and added, “I hate to repeat the question, but …?”

“Daniel?” Laura tried to think objectively, and when she couldn’t, tried to at least convince Cassidy that she was able to. “I don’t know, Cass. He seems awfully calm and … controlled. And way too smart to do something so hasty and reckless—to say nothing of illegal and immoral. I just can’t believe he went to a seedy motel and stabbed his own brother to death.”

“No matter what the provocation?”

Laura lifted her shoulders in a helpless shrug. “I don’t know that there
was
provocation—I mean, beyond the usual type of sibling rivalry. Apparently, Peter didn’t have much to do with the family business, so I doubt he was
involved in this power play I think is going on between Daniel and Amelia. And so far nobody’s said a word about Daniel and Peter not getting along.”

Cassidy nodded, obviously not convinced but willing to move on. “Okay. How about the Widow Kilbourne? You met her, right?”

Realizing only then, Laura said slowly, “You know, every woman in that house with the Kilbourne name is a widow. Amelia and Josie, Madeline—and Kerry. All of them are widows.”

“Doesn’t say much for the longevity of the Kilbourne males, does it?”

Laura started to mention Josie’s comments about the history of the family being filled with untimely deaths by accident or violence, but decided not to get into all that. Instead she said, “It’s Kerry you’re wondering about, isn’t it? Peter’s widow?”

“Right.”

“She was in California, remember? At least, I haven’t heard anything to indicate otherwise. Josie says she usually travels swathed in scarves and wearing heavy makeup, but there doesn’t seem to be any doubt that it was her—”

“Wait a minute. Scarves and heavy makeup?”

“I would have thought your tabloid sources would have mentioned it,” Laura said a bit dryly. “Kerry is badly scarred, Cass. Most of one side of her face. It looks like a burn or something like that.”

Cassidy looked shocked. “Scarred?
Peter’s
wife? How?”

“Well, I don’t know. To be honest, I didn’t even think to ask Josie—and Amelia isn’t exactly someone I
could
ask about it. The scars don’t look recent, though, and something about the way Kerry speaks and acts tells me she’s been that way for quite a while.”

It was Cassidy’s turn to shrug helplessly. “Does this mean anything about Peter’s death?”

“God knows.” Laura sighed, feeling abruptly tired. “I spent an entire day at the house, and I’m more confused than ever. Nobody seems to be grieving over Peter’s death—except his mother, naturally, and I haven’t met her yet—but nobody’s admitted to hating him, either. I feel definitely odd asking them where they were the night he was murdered, and besides, the police
must
have. So all I can do is go on sketching Amelia and pick up what I can.”

“Any luck finding out about the mirror?”

“Still more questions than answers. Josie said she didn’t see how it could be valuable to the family, or she would have known about it, and she’s probably right about that. But she also said that Peter was in charge of doing the inventory before the sale, and that Daniel didn’t see the entire inventory until it was over with—that afternoon. Shortly before Peter came to see me.”

“So … now you think Daniel might have been the one to want the mirror back? But I thought he said he didn’t know anything about it?”

“He did. But I thought—felt very strongly—at the time that he was lying. That he does know something about the mirror. I don’t know
why
he would have lied, though. And the fact is, I still don’t know why Peter tried to buy the mirror back. Whether it was his idea or someone else’s.”

Cassidy pursed her lips thoughtfully. “It’s sounding more like a long shot every day that the mirror had anything to do with the murder.”

“I know.”

“But you still think there’s a connection?”

“I think I have to find out if there is.”

“Mmm. So you go back to that—what did you call it?—that oddly dark and repressive house?”

Laura nodded. “Tomorrow morning at nine.”

Unusually grave, Cassidy said, “Look, be careful, okay? I don’t know if any of these people murdered Peter Kilbourne,
but it sounds to me like most of them have things to hide. And people protect their secrets.”

“Yes,” Laura said. “I know.”

“S
O, YOU’RE LAURA.”
She came into the west wing den where Laura was waiting on this overcast Tuesday morning for Amelia to return from a phone call, a young woman a little older than Laura who very much resembled a younger Amelia. “I’m Anne Ralston. Amelia’s granddaughter.”

Laura nodded a greeting. “You look like her,” she offered.

Anne didn’t seem entirely pleased. “Yeah, so I’m told.” She eyed Laura, frowning, and said abruptly, “You look like someone Peter would have hit on.”

Laura was taken aback, but only momentarily. She glanced down at the current sketch of Amelia, then returned her gaze to meet Anne’s almost defiant stare. “Do I?” Her voice was mild.

Anne found a chair and slouched down into it. “Oh, I’d say so. He liked redheads. But you already know that, don’t you?”

“I’ve been told.” Laura was determined not to let this angry woman put her on the defensive. “Actually, though, I hear he just liked women. All kinds of women.” Unobtrusively she turned to a fresh page and began sketching Anne with rapid, spare lines.

Anne’s lips tightened. “You sound just like the press, painting him as a horny son of a bitch who couldn’t keep his fly zipped.” She didn’t seem aware of being sketched.

“Is that what he was?” Her hair was easy, Laura decided absently, as severely short as Amelia’s was elegantly long, almost spiky, and suited to her narrow face and sharp features.

“He was okay,” Anne declared, her chin rising.
“Maybe the press thinks he was nothing but a womanizer, and maybe certain members of this family can write him off without a second thought, but Peter was okay. He was a lot smarter than some people think, I can tell you that.”

“Smarter how?”

“He had plans. He was going to make people sit up and take notice.” Her voice was truculent. “Maybe Daniel thinks he’s the only one who can make money for the family, but—”