Isabella Moon (36 page)

The bathroom held nothing of interest except a pair of worn toothbrushes, some men’s boxer shorts, and some shaving gear. But when he went into the bedroom and opened the nightstand drawer, he found the .22 that had caused him so much trouble.

Where she’d gotten the gun, he didn’t know. He’d surmised that it must have come from the Beaufort house. He couldn’t see his Mary-Katie walking into a gun store asking for the best sort of gun to kill her beloved husband. And even the biggest sort of fool wouldn’t have sold her a pop gun like the .22. He slipped the gun into his overcoat pocket.

There was little jewelry in the small box on the dresser: a few pairs of gold-plated earrings, a rather good cameo that he thought he remembered seeing on the grandmother, a gold bracelet with some sort of inscription inside (his eyes weren’t the best for close-up work, and his reading glasses were in the car), and a couple of necklaces. All of her good jewelry, the jewelry he’d given her (including her wedding ring, he’d found to his dismay) was down at the island house. He’d caught Cammy—the woman who’d been living with him for the past few months and fancied herself his wife—trying it on one afternoon when she thought he was out of the house. He hadn’t hesitated to backhand her because of it, though he suspected that she liked to be hit by surprise in that way. Cammy’s baser tastes had initially repelled him, but she’d shown him some things in bed that his Mary-Katie could never imagine, let alone do.

When he opened his Mary-Katie’s lingerie drawer, he was overcome by the scent of her. Grabbing a handful of her panties, he crushed them against his mouth and nose, inhaling the lavender air of them. Her taste for pretty underwear had grown in their time together, and it was something of which she obviously couldn’t let go. The fine lacework caught on his beard, but he rubbed them over his skin anyway, from his lips to his ears to the underside of his chin. He remembered how he would use his teeth to remove panties like these from his Mary-Katie’s body, pulling them down to expose the sweet puff of her pubic hair. The scent of the panties gave him an ache in his heart and in his groin. A soft moan came from his throat as he thought of all the nights of their being together that she had stolen from him.

38

FRANCIE STOOD
a few feet away from the convertible as Kate said goodbye to Caleb. There was a coolness in the way Kate kept looking away from him, as though she didn’t want to hear what he had to say. In the last year, Francie had come to think of Kate and Caleb as an inseparable entity, and the idea that anything was seriously wrong between them shook her a bit. But Caleb was an open, no-nonsense kind of guy. She wondered if their distance didn’t have something to do with the discovery of the little Moon girl’s body.

It hadn’t been lost on Francie that it was found so close to where her mother had died. What connection there was between them, she couldn’t imagine. Her mother had never even known the girl. But it seemed a bizarre coincidence.

After Caleb drove off, Francie led Kate into the house. As they crossed the threshold, Kate squeezed her arm.

“I know,” Francie said. “It’s still Mama’s house. Every time I come in here now, I expect her to call out for me to make sure I’ve wiped my feet.”

But today, at least, a breeze swept through the house, ruffling the curtains and cleansing it of the funk that had seemed to descend on it after her mother’s murder. The couple from church who had watched the house during the funeral had left the windows open on purpose, she supposed, perhaps thinking to let Lillian’s spirit out of the house. She didn’t know, but was grateful all the same.

“It doesn’t feel right,” Kate said. “God, Francie, I feel so responsible.”

Francie tensed. She’d been waiting for Kate to speak, to tell her what had gone on between her and her mother.

“I can listen now,” Francie said. “I wasn’t ready before. I don’t know how to explain it, but I wasn’t myself.”

As they sat in Lillian’s still-tidy living room, a rush of words poured forth from Kate, who apologized again and again for not telling Francie sooner, for not trusting her.

“Stop,” Francie said. “Stop apologizing, Kate. I don’t know if I would have believed you anyway.”

“I almost didn’t believe it myself,” Kate said. “Until they found the girl’s body. That night with your mother—I wish I could describe it better. It scared the hell out of the both of us.” Her voice was a whisper that Francie could barely hear.

“If your mother hadn’t come after me, I don’t know what would have happened,” she said. “I was losing my mind, Francie. Lillian was the only thing between me and I don’t know what. If she hadn’t pulled me out of there—I felt like I was going to be sucked into the ground. And I know that sounds insane, like I’m making it up.”

“Maybe,” Francie said. “But I’m trying to believe you, Kate. I just don’t understand why you had to have Mama there.”

“It wasn’t like I
asked
her to come,” Kate said. “I swear. You know how she was. She believed me when I told her about that night I followed—Okay, yes.” Kate nodded emphatically. “I was following a ghost and I know how stupid that sounds. But Lillian told me that maybe Isabella was trying to tell me something and that I needed to listen. I needed to find out.”

Of course, it sounded to Francie exactly like something her mother would have said. Lillian hadn’t been superstitious, but she’d always been open-minded.
You never know how God’s going to reveal Himself. You have to listen.

And the idea of the little girl—the
dead
little girl, Francie reminded herself—asking for help, would appeal to her mother. Girls like Isabella Moon had been her mother’s life’s work.

“But how in the hell did my mother end up dead in our backyard, Kate?” she said, agonized. “How could someone do that to my mother? Do you think your ghost just up and stuck a
pitchfork
through her?”

She looked at Kate for the answer and wanted, really wanted, Kate to say something. Anything. At that moment, she would have gone along with it if Kate had told her that, yes, she thought it was the ghost. But Kate just sat there looking miserable. Kate had no more answers than she herself had.

Outside, a car door slammed and they looked toward the window. Francie got up.

“Kate,” she said. “Do you think you could go in the kitchen and make us some tea?”

Paxton stood on the welcome mat looking even worse than he had at the funeral. And then the scene he’d made at the cemetery! But seeing him standing there, still looking so helpless, distressed her all the more. Should she put him off, or should she take him in and try to make him understand that they couldn’t ever be together?

“Baby,” he said tenderly. He started toward her, but Kate picked that moment to come back into the living room asking about the teakettle.

“What the hell is that bitch doing here?” Paxton asked. “We don’t need her sniffing around.”

“Be quiet,” Francie said. “I’ll call you later. Just go home, Pax.” She laid her hand gently on his chest. If she could just get him to take his time and let her handle things, she knew they’d both be better off.

But instead of leaving, Paxton wrapped his arms around her, pulled her to him, and kissed her hard. Francie didn’t pull away, but neither did she respond enthusiastically. This wasn’t the way she wanted Kate to find out about her relationship with Paxton. But something had come loose in Paxton. He’d always been impulsive, but now she feared he’d completely lost his grip. He let her go.

“I guess you’re coming in,” Francie said. She stepped back into the living room. She gave Kate a weak smile and held her hand up to indicate that Kate should hold on a minute before she spoke.

Kate was having none of it.

“I don’t know what to say to you, Paxton,” she said. “Francie?”

“For starters, you can leave,” Paxton said. “This isn’t any of your business.”

“Stop it,” Francie said.

Paxton held on to her hand like an anxious child. She turned to Kate.

“There just didn’t seem to be a good time to tell you. I kept meaning to, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.” Suddenly, the enormity of her secret, her reluctance to tell even her closest friend about her relationship with the man standing beside her, came to rest on her heart. Had she been so ashamed of herself, of Paxton, that she thought she had to lie? Now that her mother was gone, she had to ask herself if it had been worth it. She knew now that she wasn’t meant to stay with Paxton. It was already over.

Kate looked confused for a moment, but then Francie saw realization dawn slowly on her tired but still lovely face.

“Please understand, Kate,” Francie begged. She wanted to tell her, too, that it didn’t matter now anyway. But she knew that she owed it to Paxton to break it off with him when they were alone, even though the idea frightened her. There was no telling how Paxton would react in his current state. She no longer felt safe with this man who, for so long, had been her only lover.

“I don’t think it was me you didn’t want to tell,” Kate said, her voice flat. She was staring at Paxton in a way that caused Francie to catch her breath.

“You’d better shut up,” Paxton said, taking a step toward Kate. Francie pulled him back. Caleb and the sheriff weren’t around to protect Kate, and she knew that Paxton meant to frighten her.

“Tell us, Paxton,” Kate said, pushing him further. “What did Lillian have to say about the two of you? She knew, didn’t she?”

“Mama didn’t know anything,” Francie said, defensive.
Was she so sure about that?
There had been hints from Lillian, but she hadn’t wanted to listen. So much of her life in the past few months had been about pretending.

“You don’t know shit,” Paxton said. “You’re just some loose piece of trash that blew into this town.”

Francie saw that Paxton had begun to perspire, much as he had in church. He looked worn out, as though he’d been doing manual labor all day and threw on a jacket and tie when he’d finished up.

“Stop,” Francie said. “Both of you. I want both of you to leave.”

“What happened to Lillian, Paxton?” Kate said. Francie had never seen Kate look so determined, so certain and angry. Speaking up about the ghost seemed to unleash something in her. Francie was still having a hard time believing her story, but it was harder still to believe the direction in which Kate’s accusations against Paxton were heading.

“I’m begging you, Kate,” Francie said. “Just leave us alone. I’ll deal with Paxton. I promise everything will be okay.”

“You’re a motherfucking freak is what you are!” Paxton screamed at Kate. “Making up all that bullshit about a ghost. You don’t know anything about any of it.”

Kate tried to speak over him, accusing him of knowing about the death of Isabella Moon, and Francie heard her say something about his being involved in both murders. She thought her head would explode from the noise the two of them were making. Kate’s impossible accusations echoed in her mind. There was no way in the world that Paxton could have killed her mother. He wasn’t capable of it and couldn’t have hidden it from her even if he had done it.

Francie picked up a tall glass vase that Lillian had kept on the coffee table. Although she’d never liked its garish turquoise color, she said a frantic, silent apology to her mother as she threw the thing, to shatter against the wall.

Kate and Paxton were immediately quiet. They stared at her.

Francie could hardly speak, she was shaking so.

“Kate,” she said. “You have to go. Take my car if you want. Whatever. Just leave.”

“But I can’t leave you here with him, Francie.”

“Just go. Please, Kate,” she said, her voice pleading.

Paxton was oddly silent as Kate looked from Francie to him and back to Francie again. Francie could see that she didn’t want to go, but that she would because she trusted her. Francie didn’t feel particularly trustworthy. She had no idea what she was going to do when the door shut behind Kate.

39

KATE KNEW
she wasn’t in any kind of shape to walk the mile and a half to the cottage. Her side and ankle ached from her run-in with Janet, and by the time she was out of the East End and reached Carystown proper, her feet were sore in the narrow black pumps she’d worn for the funeral.

She called the cottage on her cell phone, thinking Caleb might pick her up, but there was no answer. They had reached a tenuous sort of détente, one that didn’t include any plans for even a few hours into the future.
Was he in Janet’s bed at that moment? Could he be so callous?
She should have told Bill Delaney when he was standing in her living room that Janet had tried to kill her. By letting Janet off the hook—for the moment, anyway—she knew she had let Janet win in some way. But she had enough trouble in her life right now without adding the spectacle of weeks in court with Janet. The day might come when she would turn Janet in, but right now she had more important problems to deal with.

Her heart ached for Francie. Why had she taken up with that animal, Paxton? And why hadn’t Francie trusted her enough to tell her? Lillian was the answer, of course. Now, in Kate’s recollection, Lillian’s genteel dislike for Paxton became palpable evidence of their enmity.

Kate had assumed that Paxton was just another spoiled playboy. But she’d obviously been wrong. Paxton was dangerous. Murderous. As she walked, she even looked over her shoulder from time to time, worried that he might have followed her.