If She Should Die (41 page)

Jan began to whimper against his chest. Michael ran to Bethany, who was already struggling to scoot backward, away from the long, strong body of the snake that still writhed in its death throes. Michael aimed and shot the snake again. Its body jerked, almost whipping up into the air, then collapsed. Motionless. Dead, finally, Michael thought. He put his arm under Bethany’s back and under her lifted knees, raising her from the ground, carrying her a couple of feet away from the snake. Then she struggled out of his arms and ran to Jeremy and Jan.

Jan lay limply in Jeremy’s arms, her face blank with blind terror. “Oh God,” Bethany moaned. “It got her.”

“It didn’t,” Jeremy said as the child clung to him while Bethany and Christine hovered, touching Jan, shaking. “It didn’t bite her, honest.”

Michael reached them. He touched Jan’s arm and she
began to squirm and cry in long, loud howls, emerging from the paralysis of freezing fear. “She’s just scared, Mrs. Burke.”

“Bethany!” She began to sob. “I don’t want to be called Mrs. Burke. That stinking, selfish son of a bitch and his snakes! If she’d been killed, it would have been his fault. Even in death he’s hurting us, sacrificing our happiness, our
safety
, for his pleasures! I hope God damns him to hell!”

And so the hatred she’d coiled herself around earlier during their interview came flooding out in a torrent of tears and cursing and shuddering. Jeremy handed Jan to her and she clutched at the child, kissing her, crying into her hair, before she turned viciously to Michael.

“You people said you took all the snakes away!”

“It wasn’t the police who took the snakes away. It was the DNR. They must have missed one. You told them there were twenty snakes. There must have been another one.”

“The Gaboon viper,” Bethany said. “One of the worst!”

“Jan said that’s what it was. How did she know? Travis didn’t take her into the snake house, did he?”

“Do you think I’d allow that?” Bethany asked fiercely. “He showed her pictures. In books. And he took Polaroids of
his
snakes and showed her. He made her learn a lot of names.”

“You have a Polaroid camera?” Michael asked.

“Yes.” Bethany crooned over her little girl. “My sweetheart. My darling.”

“Mrs. . . . Bethany, we need to get both of you to the emergency room,” Michael said. “She might be going into shock. And you, too.”

“Oh God.” Bethany hugged Jan tighter. “I’m all right. But she’s getting hysterical.”

“Christine, you take Bethany and Jan to the hospital,” Michael said. “I’ll call the DNR. I want them to come
back out here and search for any other snakes that might be loose. And, Bethany, I don’t think you and Jan should stay here.”

“After the hospital, we’re going to check into a hotel,” she announced. “And we are
never
coming back to this house. I’m going to level that snake pit to the ground, then sell this place. I can’t live here anymore.”

Michael watched as Bethany’s spine seemed to stiffen with resolve. She marched into the house with Jan in her arms and Christine and Jeremy behind her, resolve and anger seeming to emanate from every line of her posture.

She’s not a little mouse anymore. But then, maybe she never was, Michael thought as he remembered Bethany, who’d said she was terrified of the snakes, going after a deadly viper with maniacal vengeance.

Four hours later, Michael stopped at Christine’s house. Although his visit had been unannounced, she and Jeremy both seemed happy to see him. They ushered him into the beautiful house that smelled of coffee and cinnamon buns Christine had just baked, and Michael felt warmth spread through him, a warmth that frightened him just a little. These people were beginning to mean too much to him, he thought. He should pull back, guard his emotions that were still raw, live in safe solitude for at least another year. That’s what he should do, he told himself. But that’s not what he wanted to do.

In a few minutes, the three of them sat at the dining room table drinking coffee and eating the cinnamon rolls. Rhiannon sat sphinxlike on the buffet table, her paws tucked beneath her, her beautiful golden gaze taking in all the activity.

Jeremy reached for one of the still-hot rolls. “So the doctor said that Jan’s just fine, didn’t he, Christy?”

“Yes. Like you said, she was just badly frightened, but she’s a tough little girl. She’d stopped crying and seemed to be relaxing by the time we dropped off Beth and her at the hotel. Tess came by the hospital. She said she’d gone to the house and found you and the Natural Resources people and you’d told her what happened.”

Michael sipped coffee and nodded. “She was off like a rocket when I told her about Jan almost being bitten. I should have given her a speeding ticket the way she tore away from the house and headed down the highway. Her tires squealed.”

“Really?” Jeremy asked in delight. “That’s so cool. Christy drives like a snail. She never makes the tires squeal.”

“I don’t drive like a snail!” Christine said indignantly. “I’m just careful.”

“You’re a slowpoke. You drive slower than Bethany.”

“Honey,
no
one drives slower than Bethany,” Christine laughed.

They ate and talked meanderingly for a while. Everyone seemed relaxed, almost giddy from the excitement of the day. Michael once again felt like part of something, a member of a family, and the feeling scared him a little. This kind of happiness was too tenuous, too easily lost. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to leave.

He was lost in contemplation of his feeling of ease and contentment in this lovely house with Christine and her brother when Jeremy suddenly announced, “I think someone let out Travis’s snakes on purpose. I think someone wanted him to get killed.”

Michael knew Christine had not said anything to Jeremy about the possibility of murder. “Who would want him to die?” he asked casually.

“Someone who didn’t like him. Or someone who was jealous.” Jeremy bit into another cinnamon roll and said around it, “Maybe he was Patricia’s boyfriend.”

Christine looked shocked. “What makes you say that?”

“Well, I told you about that day I heard her with somebody in the barn. I kind of knew the guy’s voice, but I couldn’t get who it was.”

Michael couldn’t keep the excitement from his own voice: “And now you think it was Travis?”

“I’m still not sure, but maybe.”

Michael had not told Christine about identifying the owner of the boom box the police had found in the barn loft. He could see that the idea of Travis Burke being Patricia Prince’s lover was a new thought for her, although she’d told him Jeremy was certain Patricia had a “boyfriend.” “If you think about it some more, could you remember for certain?” Michael asked Jeremy.

“I don’t know, but I’ll try really hard. But if someone did want Travis to die, who would it be?”

Bethany, Michael thought. If she knew. Ames Prince. If he knew. He wanted to get Jeremy off the subject before these disturbing possibilities cropped up in his mind.

“It could have been an accident, Jeremy. The pathologist—” Jeremy frowned. “The
doctor
who looked at Travis’s body after he was dead did a test on his blood that revealed he’d been drinking. Maybe he just got careless.”

“I try really hard not to be careless, but I am sometimes,” Jeremy said earnestly. “But you don’t think someone like Travis would be careless. With
snakes
.” He shivered a little. “I sure hate snakes.”

“Some are harmless,” Michael said, “but it’s best to be careful around all of them.” He looked at his empty plate.
“I can’t believe how many of those cinnamon rolls I ate. They were great, Christine.”

“Why, thank you. I took the dough right out of the can and put it on the cookie sheet all by myself. I’m exhausted.”

Jeremy laughed. “Christy makes some stuff really good, but not this kind of thing. Her cakes come out all lopsided and her cookies are hard as rocks.”

“I never claimed to be a good cook. Our mother was wonderful. I think being a good chef is a gift, like being a musician or an artist.”

“Wouldn’t know myself,” Michael said. “I’m prone to opening a can of beans and eating over the sink.”

“I love to do that, but Christy won’t let me!” Jeremy exclaimed.

Michael laughed again, realizing he felt happy—too happy to worry about being cautious. He wanted this evening to last forever, as silly as he knew that was. But he didn’t feel like worrying about being silly, either.

The beautiful weather had not held. Although the rain did not resume, the day had been gloomy and was now spinning down into an early dusk.

Jeremy finally retired with Rhiannon to his room, vaguely claiming he had “stuff to do.” When he’d gone, Christine said, “He has a TV show at this time he never misses, but he didn’t want to seem rude.”

“I don’t mind being abandoned for a TV show,” Michael said. “Everyone has priorities.”

“Television is one of Jeremy’s. But I’m glad. He watches quite a range of shows for someone with his IQ and he learns from them, although I haven’t quite gotten him to watch more than a little of PBS.”

“A little PBS is fine. But you need action/adventure and fantasy as well.”

Christine poured the last of the coffee into his cup,
then said thoughtfully, “Even in all the excitement, I didn’t miss your asking Bethany if she had a Polaroid camera,” she said. “You were thinking about the photos I got.” He nodded. “You can’t think Bethany would send pictures like that.”

“I’m just trying not to overlook any possibilities. And let’s not forget that the camera belonged to Travis, too.”

“What possible reason could he have had to send those pictures to me?”

“The same reason someone attacked you in the gym and made that phone call to the hospital. To scare you into a shell, to make you stop nosing into who might have killed Dara Prince. And I’m pretty sure the
S.C
. in her diary did refer to Travis.”

“You think he was one of her lovers.”

“Yes, and I’m guessing Bethany suspected it. And his other infidelities.”

“I hate that for Bethany.”

“I do, too. Why risk a marriage by fooling around, especially when you have a child?” He shook his head. “Anyway, back to the photos. I did some investigating I haven’t had a chance to tell you about. The card they came in was put out by a company named Wonderland. The only place in town I’ve been able to find Wonderland greeting cards is Ned’s News. No one there could remember who had bought the card, although I showed a copy of the cover to the staff. The owner said they sell thirty or forty Wonderland cards a month. So I’ve hit a dead end on tracing the buyer of the card.”

“And I’m sure there weren’t any fingerprints on it.”

“Nope. The sender was careful.”

“I’ll bet if you could get those letters supposedly from Dara away from Ames, you wouldn’t find any fingerprints on them, either.”

“I’m pretty sure of that, too. I think they were sent by
whoever killed her to stop an intense investigation by making everyone think she was still alive.”

“She isn’t,” Christine said flatly. “I know that body in Charleston is hers. Her ring, the pregnancy . . .” She shook her head. “In spite of the way Ames is treating me, I feel so sorry for him. There can’t be any greater pain than losing a child.”

“There isn’t,” Michael said softly.

“You sound as if you’ve experienced it.”

He nodded. “My little girl, Stacy.”

Christine paused a moment before saying, “I assumed her mother had gotten custody after your divorce. You mean she’s—”

“Dead. At two years old.”

“Oh, Michael, I never dreamed!” She reached out and touched his hand. “I’m so sorry. How did it happen? No, forget I asked that. It’s none of my business and the memory must be terrible for you.”

“It is, but I feel like I need to talk about it if you don’t mind listening.”

“Of course I don’t mind, Michael. Talk all you need to.”

He reached out and took her hand, holding it tightly. “Stacy was such a beautiful child. She looked like her mother—auburn hair, green eyes. Lisa is an actress. Well, she wants to be an actress. So far all she’s gotten are commercials. But she’s driven where her career is concerned.”

Michael drew a deep breath. “One day she was giving Stacy a bath. The phone rang. We had an answering machine to screen calls and normally Lisa wouldn’t have answered while Stacy was in the tub, but it was her agent. So she left Stacy in the water, answered the phone, and got completely carried away when she heard she’d been given an audition for a situation comedy. We had a cordless phone. She could have stayed with Stacy while she
took the call, but she didn’t. Apparently Stacy tried to get out of the tub by herself and fell, hit her head, and knocked herself unconscious. She slid back into the water and drowned.”

“Oh, Michael. How terrible!”

“I didn’t get the truth out of Lisa for a couple of weeks. She said she’d only left Stacy alone for a minute while she went to get a towel. Then one day her agent called and I picked up the phone. The agent was abject. She said if she hadn’t called exactly when she did, if she hadn’t gotten Lisa so involved in conversation, the accident might not have happened. I confronted Lisa and she broke down.” He closed his eyes. “She could have been prosecuted for negligent homicide, even with the towel story, but I had a lot of good friends on the force and they backed off. They knew how much I loved Lisa, and they thought I’d been through enough. But it was the end of my marriage.”

Christine squeezed his hand. “You must have been through hell the last couple of years.”

“That’s why I left Los Angeles. My grandfather lived in Winston all his life. When he died, he left his house to me. He always worried about me in LA. He thought I’d be safer here. You might have known him. Corbin Winter.”

“Corbin Winter was your grandfather?” Christine exclaimed. “He owned that old-fashioned general store and played Santa in the Christmas parade.”

“The very one.”

“I met him right after Jeremy and I moved here. Jeremy loved to go into the store.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Michael said slowly. “He wrote to me about a boy and his sister who had just moved to town. He said the boy was like my cousin. I don’t think he ever called Jeremy by name, but he must have been talking about you two.”