Die Job (31 page)

Lucy watched me not unsympathetically. “You get attached sometimes,” she said simply.

I just nodded, feeling foolish. Taking a deep breath, I said, “Stuart says they would know for sure if they had a hair or fingernail sample to work with.”

Lucy hesitated, her lips working. Finally, she said in the voice of one goaded beyond endurance. “We do. For Cyril anyway. The funerary hair art, remember?”

“Would you—?” I hardly dared ask her to allow me to send a sample to Stuart for testing.

“Not if they have to cut it up or dissolve it or—”

“He said he could run the test on one hair.” I plucked a single strand from my head and waved the delicate filament at her. “One.”

Calculation gleamed in her eyes. “I suppose it would be okay . . . if you agree to be a docent.”

“How often would I have to be here?”

“Maybe a couple days a month?” Lucy said. Her hand went to the cameo at her neck, and I wondered if she were regretting the offer.

I’d found reading the old letters and learning about Clarissa amazingly interesting. It might be fun to learn more about the history of this area and the Rothmeres. Mind you, I didn’t want to turn into Lucy, half convinced I was a Rothmere, or even Mom’s beau Walter Highsmith, who spent weekends reenacting Civil War battles, but it wouldn’t hurt to become more familiar with the rhythms of plantation life that had shaped St. Elizabeth society and culture. Maybe I’d start by looking up Althea’s great- whatever-granny Matilda.

“Deal,” I said, surprising Lucy and myself.

I LEFT LUCY IN HER OFFICE AND WANDERED BACK TO the main hall. Laughter came from the dining room down the hall, and I figured Mom and Althea had hooked up with the television people. I didn’t see Agent Dillon and I wondered where Hank had sequestered Mark and his father and where Hank’s partner had taken Lindsay. The hurricane still raged outside, rain swishing against the weathered oak boards of the house, and wind ricocheting through the tree limbs, down the chimneys, and against the windows. Carefully avoiding the cables that still crisscrossed the foyer and trailed up the stairs, I mounted the staircase, drawn to the portrait of Cyril and his family.

Before I reached the landing, a shout came from above me. “She’s gone! Agent Dillon, the Tandy girl escaped.”

SUDDENLY DILLON WAS BESIDE ME AND WE CHARGED up the stairs. Up here, closer to the roof, the rain sounded louder, pounding like a million woodpeckers trying to drill through the slate. I followed Dillon as he ran down the hall toward the distraught officer. Medium height with strong biceps swelling the short sleeves of her blue uniform, Officer Ally Qualls had short dark hair and wore a guilt-ridden expression.

“She needed to go to the bathroom, sir,” Officer Qualls said as Dillon slid to a halt. “I didn’t think—It’s a hurricane! She climbed out the window.”

“Damn it,” Dillon said forcefully. “She could die out there. Those slate tiles have got to be slicker than ice with all the rain, and the winds . . .”

“I know, sir. I’m sorry. I should have gone in with her.” The
cop met Dillon’s gaze for a moment, then let her head droop.

Dillon didn’t waste time chewing her out. “Find Parker. Have him meet me outside. We’ll scan the roof, see if we can find the girl. You call the fire department and see if they can get a ladder truck out here. If they’re tied up with storm emergencies, call a tree-trimming company—anyone who might have a cherry picker we could use to retrieve the girl from the roof.”

Officer Qualls was already contacting the dispatcher as Dillon wheeled and thudded down the stairs. His foot caught on one of the cables and he lurched forward, grabbing the handrail. I followed him, stepping into the foyer as he wrenched open the front door and wind gusted in. Our eyes met for a moment as he turned to heave the door closed, and I said, “Be careful.” I couldn’t tell if he heard me.

Knowing Officer Qualls was still upstairs, I ran from room to room calling for Hank until I found him in what must have been a music room, keeping watch over the Crenshaws. An antique piano held pride of place in the room, with a harp backed into a corner.

“Dillon needs you,” I gasped. “Lindsay . . . roof.”

Hank didn’t hesitate and I had to admit he wasn’t a coward. Directing a terse, “Stay put,” at Mark and his dad, Hank strode from the room. I heard the door open and slam shut again and felt the draft from the wind, even thirty yards away from the entrance.

I turned to go, but Mark’s hand on my arm stopped me. “What’s happened?” he asked, his dark eyes searching mine. “What’s happened to Lindsay?”

“She escaped,” I said. “Out a second-story window.”

“Oh my God,” Eric Crenshaw said. He rose from the chair he’d been sitting
on and put an arm around Mark’s shoulders. “She’ll be okay, son.”

Mark shot him an incredulous look. “There’s a hurricane out there, in case you hadn’t noticed. She will not be ‘okay’ unless we can get her down.”

“There’s nothing you can do,” Crenshaw said. “Officer Parker told us to stay here.”

“Screw that.” Mark pushed past me and into the hall.

I caught up with him as he started up the stairs toward a startled Officer Qualls, who was still on the phone. “I know there’s flooding,” she was saying, “but this is a police emergency.”

The response obviously angered her because she flipped the phone closed sharply and faced Mark with her holster unsnapped. “Back off.”

Mark raised his hands to shoulder height, placatingly. “I just want to see where she went.”

Officer Qualls exchanged a look with me and then shrugged. “The bathroom down here.” She led the way past a couple of bedrooms to a small bathroom on the north side of the house. A toilet with a wooden seat and water tank above it, a sink with chipped porcelain, and a claw-footed tub sat surrounded by mildewed aqua tiles, someone’s unfortunate remodeling job, which the Rothmere Trust hadn’t been able to return to period authenticity yet. Although, I wasn’t sure what “authentic” meant in terms of nineteenth-century toilets. An outhouse? A hole in a bench? When had flush toilets become a standard-issue item in upper-class houses?

Mark lunged toward the window and struggled to push the sash up, breaking my pointless train of thought. Wind drove rain at us and I gasped at the hurricane’s fury in the confined space. Officer Qualls grabbed at Mark, her hand snagging
in his belt, as if afraid he were going to follow Lindsay out the window. “I’m only looking,” he said with an impatient glance over his shoulder.

Having learned her lesson, Officer Qualls kept her hold on him as he stuck his head and shoulders out the window, craning his neck first left and then right. He pulled his head back in, like a turtle ducking into its shell, and looked at us with worried eyes. Water dripped from his brows and eyelashes. “I don’t see her. Do you think she fell?” Water slid off his bald head and spattered on the floor. I handed him a dingy towel from a ring by the sink and he swabbed it over his head and neck.

“They’d’ve found her if she fell,” Officer Qualls said pragmatically.

“How could she be so stupid?” Mark cried, turning to stare out the window again. The lightning had moved past us and flickered from farther north, illuminating billowing clouds. The wind still blew with the force of the Atlantic behind it, and I didn’t know how anyone could cling to the roof for a minute, never mind the ten or so minutes that Lindsay had now been out there.

A thought came to me. Lindsay wasn’t stupid. Desperate, yes; stupid, no. Even if she’d clambered out the window impulsively, seizing the opportunity to escape without planning for it, mere seconds on the roof must have convinced her she couldn’t make it to the ground. Not in this weather. Not with climbing handholds like gutters slicked with rain. She might have lodged herself someplace relatively secure, like against a chimney, and planned to ride out the storm, or . . .

I slipped out of the bathroom, unnoticed by Mark and Officer Qualls, and made my way down to the next room on the same side of the hall. A bedroom. Bare. Window closed. The
next room down was the room where Glen and I had found Lindsay’s sheet. I pushed the door and it yielded with a whine. Cautiously, I poked my head into the room. Nothing looked different. The bed with the rag doll sat undisturbed. The window was closed. The armoire was closed. I turned to leave, wondering if I’d guessed wrong, when something caught my eye. A footprint. A wet footprint in the middle of the rag rug by the bed. My gaze drifted to the armoire, the only hiding place in the room. Should I leave to summon Officer Qualls and risk having Lindsay escape to the roof again, or should I talk to the girl and convince her to turn herself in?

I compromised. Tiptoeing to the armoire, I leaned my back against it, bracing myself, and yelled, “Officer Qualls! Ally! She’s in here.”

The doors bucked, bruising my back and behind. Running footsteps pounded down the hall. “In here,” I called as the doors banged against me with such force I went flying onto my hands and knees. Dang. I really needed to work out more. Looking over my shoulder, I saw that Lindsay had braced herself against the back of the armoire, drawn her knees to her chest, and exploded her legs against the doors. Now, she tumbled from the armoire, arms and legs sprawling, but quickly leaped to her feet. She turned toward the bedroom door, hesitated as the footsteps drew nearer, then lurched toward the window.

“Don’t!” I shouted. Unable to get much purchase on the smooth wood floor, I flung myself sideways toward Lindsay, stretching an arm out as she threw up the window sash. My hand snagged around her ankle.

“Let me go!” She kicked out at me, like a mail carrier trying to detach a Rottweiler from her leg. Her foot connected with my jaw, and my teeth snapped together with a crunch
that reverberated up through my temples and down my neck. I felt my hand slipping off her ankle and clutched desperately at the hem of her jeans.

“Let go. I will stomp you like that squirrel, you nosy bitch.” She raised her foot and aimed at my face. I rolled but still caught a blow on my cheek that made me see stars.

The door burst open and suddenly a crowd of people—Mark, Officer Qualls, Dillon, Hank—surged into the room. Mark rushed to Lindsay and grabbed her around the waist. She strained against him for a moment, then collapsed into his arms, sobbing. I flopped onto my back, dazed and bruised, happy to lie still.

Dillon came and stood over me, smiling slightly. He was drenched and water sluiced off him, spattering me. He reached down a hand, but I ignored it for a moment, not up to moving.

“How’d you know?” I asked. “That she was up here?” I gazed up at him, liking his face with its crooked nose and strong jaw from this upside-down perspective.

“No body on the ground,” he said succinctly. “So being the experienced detective that I am, I figured she snuck back into the house. C’mon.”

He leaned over and hooked his hands under my armpits, hauling me to a sitting position. Our faces were close together and the look in his blue eyes, a mix of concern and appreciation, warmed me. I put a finger to a bruise blossoming on his forehead.

“Tree branch,” he said.

Hank had hauled Lindsay away from Mark and was cuffing her hands behind her back. The clink of the metal cuffs sliding together brought my head up. It was quiet. Still. The wind had stopped. Rain no longer thrummed against
the house. As if we all noticed it at the same time, we looked toward the window.

“It’s the eye,” Hank said.

The eye of a hurricane is a calm space in the middle of the storm with light winds and little precipitation. I didn’t know what caused it, but Mom always said it was the storm taking a rest before socking you again with winds blowing from the opposite direction.

“Let’s take advantage of it,” Dillon said, helping me clamber to my feet. “We might have twenty or thirty minutes. Get Miss Tandy and the Crenshaws down to the station.” Hank and his partner hustled the young pair out the door.

I stepped into the hall, intending to find Althea and Mom, but something drew me toward the opposite wing and the portrait.

The corridor grew dimmer as I left the landing and the huge chandelier behind. I didn’t know where the light switches were in this part of the house—I guessed I’d find out when I did docent training—but it didn’t matter. I didn’t need to see the painting clearly. I stopped six inches in front of it, barely able to make out the figures, and closed my eyes. The rain had faded to a delicate plinking with no more force than tears. Weariness dragged at me. It had been a brutal week, emotionally and physically, and although I was thrilled that Braden was going to be okay, I was sad about Clarissa’s untimely death and the knowledge that Lindsay’s life—and maybe Mark’s—was ruined by a moment’s impulsive action. She probably hadn’t planned to kill Braden, but when he refused to give in to her pleas, she’d snapped and pushed him, just like she’d snapped when she saw me in the car with Mark. And when she’d heard that he was being moved from ICU to a regular hospital room, she must
have thought that meant he was coming out of the coma. Fear of what he might say when he recovered consciousness drove her to try to smother him, I figured. That was much harder to forgive or understand than the impulsive striking out on the landing. And the knowledge that his girlfriend had tried to kill his best friend wasn’t going to ease Mark Crenshaw’s depression, either. The whole thing was a mess. I sighed.