If You Ever Tell (11 page)

“I hadn’t given a thought to talking about it with Sharon. She’s nervous enough already, although I don’t know why. She didn’t used to be that way.”

“I regularly beat her.”

Teresa closed her eyes. “This is not the time for bad jokes, Kent. Let’s concentrate on the matter at hand, which is Roscoe Lee Byrnes denying that he killed Dad and Wendy and stabbed Celeste. We
have
to talk about it whether you want to or not.”

Kent flung out his arms in exasperation. “Well, what is there to say? Do you expect me to do something about it?”

“I expect you to think about the effect what he said is going to have on us. Sure, Byrnes might be lying, but I don’t know why. He knows it can’t save him, and I don’t buy your theory that he’s seeking last-minute fame and glory. He’s not the type.”

Kent gave her a hard look. “Are you an expert on serial killers now, Teri?”

“I’ve read quite a bit about them the last few years. I’m no expert, but… well, some of them try to be flashy and make names for themselves.”

“You think Roscoe Lee Byrnes is the flashy type?”

“No. I’m just offering a suggestion to explain what he’s doing—a desperate and unprofessional suggestion, I admit.” Teresa sighed. “I hate to say this, Kent, but though he’s a psychopath, I think he’s telling the truth because he believes he’s going to see God soon and he wants to have a clear conscience, or whatever psychopaths have instead of consciences.”

“Maybe so, but how can we stop him from making a show before he’s executed?”

“We can’t. He’s already done it. We have to think about the fact that a lot of people will take him seriously—people here, where we live, where we do business. How will we handle that?”

Kent’s expression turned to one of a furious little boy. “I don’t think anyone will believe him,” he said with childish bravado. “I don’t think they’ll believe him one little bit.”

In spite of her misery, Teri burst out laughing. “Kent, you sound like you’re about Daniel’s age because you’re afraid people
will
believe him and you feel helpless.”

Kent glared at her, flushing. She knew she’d hit the nail on the head and she wished she could just drop the matter, pretend Byrnes had never recanted his confession. But he had, and she and her brother had to deal with the fallout, not hide from it.

“Kent, there’s more going on than Byrnes altering his confession.”

He closed his eyes. “Oh no. Please don’t make this worse.”

“Sorry, but I can’t help it. You told me Celeste had started speaking yesterday in Bennigan’s. What did she say?”

Kent’s gaze darted away from Teresa. “It’s just a lot of nonsense, Teri. Forget it.”

“I will
not
forget it. You said you’d get all the details from the churchgoers this morning. If they didn’t say much to you, I know they did to Sharon and she would have told you. Now you tell me or…”

Kent looked back at her and raised an eyebrow. “Or what? You’ll beat me up?”

“Don’t look so cocky. If you’ll remember, I did a pretty good job of thumping you when you were eleven and tore up my Barbie doll.”

“I accidentally set her hair on fire and all you did, tough girl, was kick me on the ankle. Big deal. It didn’t even hurt.”

“Oh yeah? Then why did you limp for two days?” Kent came close to grinning. “Tell me what Celeste said in Bennigan’s or I’ll kick you again and this time it won’t be on the ankle!”

Kent shook his head. “You’ve always been a glutton for punishment, Teri; otherwise you wouldn’t have settled in this town when you could have lived somewhere else. Okay, here’s all I know. Apparently Celeste said that the night of the murders there was someone in the house wearing a hood.”

Teri’s stomach tightened as the image of a hooded figure flashed in her mind. “Go on.”

“Celeste said she’d gotten up to go to the bathroom and just as she was going back to bed, the figure—obviously the killer—opened the door to Hugh and Wendy’s bedroom, saw her, seemed surprised, and then stabbed her.”

Teresa drew back, surprised. “So the killer stabbed her in a reflex action. Maybe the person didn’t mean to kill
her
—only Dad and Wendy—but he thought Celeste had seen him so he went after her. My God, we never knew this. Did she see who it was?”

Kent looked uncomfortable. “I don’t think so. Not that anyone heard, that is. She said after she was stabbed, she ran back to her room and someone came after her.”

“
That
had to be the killer! The person I bumped into in the hall.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Well, she said something about the killer wanting to stab her some more.”

“So she did know it wasn’t me who came to her room first.”

“I guess.”

“She had to know it wasn’t me!”

“Teri, I told you I wasn’t sure I know exactly what she said. I don’t know if
she’s
sure of exactly what she thought or knew that night.”

“I collided into that hooded figure when he was coming down the hall from Celeste’s room and I was going
to
her room to see if she’d been murdered. That’s when he cut my arm,” Teresa said emphatically. “I’ve told you that a hundred times!”

“Okay, settle down. I’m not contradicting you—I’m telling you what Celeste said, and that’s secondhand. I didn’t hear her and I don’t believe even the people in Bennigan’s who did hear her either got straight what she was saying or aren’t making it more dramatic.”

Kent looked up at Teresa from his position in the armchair, his tired gaze full of sympathy and trust. “
I
know you didn’t go to Celeste’s room to stab her. It had to be Byrnes, but he didn’t find her and then there was all that ruckus and he thought he’d better get out of there in a hurry, just like the FBI said. God, Teri, do you think I believe you would have stabbed that little girl? Or Dad and Wendy, for that matter.”

Teresa took a deep breath. “You didn’t believe it, but the police did.”

“Well, I’m not the police.” Kent leaned forward and gently took her hand. “Now who’s acting like an enraged little kid?”

Teresa forced her lips into a weak smile. “You’re right. I’ll try to act like a calm and rational adult.” She took a deep breath. “Okay, what about this chant you said Celeste was repeating? A chant that mentioned me.”

“Nobody could remember it exactly.” Kent sounded reluctant, as if he’d rather be talking about anything else in the world. “There was something about a clock striking three.”

The grandfather clock, Teri thought immediately. She remembered the grandfather clock chiming three times when she was going into Hugh and Wendy’s bedroom. “Go on.”

“Well, also something about death coming for her and something about you. She said it over and over.”

“It was a rhyme,” Teresa said with certainty. “Even when she was a child, she loved making up rhymes. She did it constantly.”

“Okay, well that’s all I know, Teri. Honestly. The crowd at Bennigan’s said after she’d begun shouting this chant, or rhyme, or whatever you want to call it, her father rushed her out of the restaurant.”

“I see.” Teresa was amazed at how composed her voice sounded. She didn’t feel at all composed—she felt shaken and slightly sick. “So Celeste starts talking after eight years, she mentions death and
me
, and then Roscoe Lee Byrnes decides to tell the world he didn’t kill Hugh and Wendy Farr. What fabulous timing.”

Kent attempted a nonchalant shrug. “It’s just a coincidence. We have to stop thinking about it.”

“Stop thinking about it? Is that your answer?” Her brother looked away as Teresa went on relentlessly. “We
can’t
stop thinking about it! Look, Kent, I don’t want to dredge up all of this any more than you do, but who were the main suspects in the murder of Dad and Wendy? Me and Mom.”

“Well, Mom’s dead,” Kent said dully.

“We don’t know that.”

“We just haven’t seen or heard from her for eight years.”

“No, we haven’t, but that doesn’t mean she’s dead. But because we haven’t seen her for eight years—and, as far as I know, no one around here has—that leaves two other people with a very strong motive for murdering Dad and Wendy. I know you had an alibi for that night, but not everyone was convinced it was true. Have you forgotten you and your friends being questioned, over and over, because a lot of people didn’t believe you were really in Virginia at a party that night?”

Kent looked up at her, his dark eyes filled with misery. “Dear God, do you think I don’t realize that, Teri? We’re the ones whose mother was dumped like a bag of garbage by our father, and we’re the ones who inherited his estate. Who wouldn’t look at us as prime suspects?”

“Yes,” Teresa said softly. “But I’m the only one of us who had absolutely no alibi, not even a shaky one. I was the one who’d let everyone know how much I hated Wendy, how much I resented Dad for what he did to Mom, how I hated being forced to live in that house with them. God, I had a big mouth!”

“You were seventeen and mad as hell.”

“Yes. I was also the one in the house that night who wasn’t seriously injured. If the police had found one scrap of evidence—the murder weapon, traces of blood in the shower, or blood-soaked clothes—I would have been locked up.” Teresa, deciding to be completely honest, took a deep breath. “And I didn’t tell you earlier, but based on a note I found in my car last night and a fax I received this morning, in spite of Byrnes’s confession eight years ago, I’m also the one somebody has
always
believed is guilty.”

J. A. MacKenzie wiped the bar of his empty club, leaned down, looked sideways at the black teak length gleaming with a coat of polyurethane, and smiled when he saw no smears, not even a fingerprint. His waiters and waitresses always cleaned up after the bar closed at night—a service for which they were well recompensed—but Mac was never happy until he’d cleaned Club Rendezvous himself on Sundays. Maybe it was because daylight exposed more spots, crumpled cocktail napkins, and peanut halves embedded in the carpet around the bar. Or maybe it was because his mother had always kept her own house and that of the Farrs immaculate. The “compulsive housecleaner” gene had been passed on to
him
, he mused ruefully. His twin sisters were satisfied if their apartment looked passable and thrilled if someone actually called it neat.

Although Mac would never have admitted it, he enjoyed being alone in the club during the day when he could simply stand and gaze at the elegant ivory, black, and azure expanse. It reminded him of all he’d accomplished since his father left Mac’s mother with three children and no words of explanation or apology. It reminded him of his early teens when he’d risen at five o’clock on icy mornings to pedal his old bike on a paper route and later when he’d thought he’d die of heat exhaustion from frantically mowing as many lawns as possible, earning money to help his mother and sisters. It reminded him of those two pretty, intelligent sisters he was able to put through college. He sighed. Mostly, it reminded him of Teresa Farr.

She was sixteen when he’d first seen her. He was mowing her father’s backyard and singing Billy Idol’s “Sweet Sixteen.” Mac had felt as if someone was watching him and looked up to see a girl with long hair like black satin and ebony eyes in an oval face just a shade lighter than tawny. She wore a tank top and looked at him calmly, her arms resting one over the other on the windowsill. He was almost twenty, but he’d blushed like a kid, let out a strangled laugh, and shouted in a voice that cracked, “Sorry. Got carried away.”

“I liked it. You’ve got a great voice.”

To his horror, Mac had felt his blush deepening and wondered why he didn’t just give her a dismissive smile and get back to work. But he couldn’t look away from that face or those eyes that twinkled down at him with a mixture of spontaneity, flirtation, and knowledge beyond her years. “I’m Teresa Farr,” she called. “And you must be the Mac MacKenzie all the girls have a crush on.”

“Yeah, I’m Mac.” Snappy comeback, he’d thought. He tried again to sound cool and confident but failed, stumbling out an almost shy, “I don’t think all the girls have a crush on me, though.”

“You’ll just have to take my word for it.” Teresa had tilted her head, her hair falling like a silken veil to her right elbow. “It’s funny that you were singing ‘Sweet Sixteen’ when I was sitting right up here in my room with the window open. Did you know I was here and that
I’m
sixteen?”

“No.” That was a lie. At least partly a lie. He hadn’t known she was in her room. But his mother, the housekeeper at this house, had told him last month that the Farrs’ “sweet, shy little girl” was just turning sixteen and her mother, Marielle, was throwing a surprise party for her. Sweet and shy? Mac thought, feeling like laughing. Mothers could be easily fooled. “I mean I didn’t know you were in your room. I didn’t know where your room was. I didn’t even think anything about where you were or what you were doing. I was busy—”

“Singing.”

“Yeah. I mean no. Mowing grass. I wasn’t slacking off.” He’d wiped sweat off his forehead, decided the motion looked as if he were trying to indicate how hard he’d been working. “Really hot out here today. Humid. I don’t mind heat, but humidity just kills me. Well, it doesn’t make the job impossible, just harder. Not that it’s
too
hard for me to do well.” He’d paused as she smiled languidly, seeming to enjoy his clumsiness at witty repartee. “Did you know you have a lot of crabgrass in the backyard?” he’d ended miserably.

“No, I didn’t. Should we do something about it?”

“There’s stuff you can sprinkle on the ground that doesn’t kill the regular grass, just the crabgrass. That should be done in early spring before the crabgrass germinates and again in midsummer.” Mac had known he was talking too much. “I’d better get back to work,” he’d said abruptly, wishing he could stop staring at this jailbait vixen leaning out the window, but he couldn’t.

“Will you sing ‘Sweet Sixteen’ some more? Some of my friends are really into rap, but that’s not for me. I like a lot of the older songs, even some from the
sixties
! I love it when Billy says he’d ‘do
any
thing’ for his sweet sixteen-year-old girl.” She’d grinned, flipped her hair, winked at him, then called, “Oops, I hear my father coming up the stairs! I have to go now, but I’ll see you again, Mac MacKenzie.”