Scandal in Copper Lake (15 page)

Anamaria stilled, her breathing growing slow and steady. Her eyes closed, she looked as if she might have been asleep, and for an instant, the photograph of Glory from the police file flashed into his mind. She had looked asleep, too, except for the gash on her forehead.

Anamaria opened her eyes again. “I don’t feel her—Charlotte. I don’t feel anything at all. No imprint, no memory, nothing.”

“You said you don’t usually see things about people close to you.”

“I don’t see futures, but I saw our mother’s death. Why can’t I tell anything about Charlotte’s?”

“Maybe they were wrong. Maybe she didn’t die here.” With a lot of rain, the river current would have been swifter than usual. Maybe it had carried the baby beyond the range of sensing.

He shook his head. He was cold and wet, and the muscles in his thighs were starting to cramp, yet there he sat having a conversation about visions of death and spiritual imprints as if they were rational things.

He eased to his feet, taking her with him. “Let’s go back to the car.”

She nodded, but when he started up the hill, she remained where she was, staring at the river. He retraced his steps, took her hand and pulled her up the slope. On the path he retrieved their lanterns, switched his on and headed back toward the paved trail, keeping her chilled fingers wrapped in his.

They were halfway there when she stopped abruptly, dragging him to a halt, as well. “Maybe she’s not dead.”

He gazed at her, but when he opened his mouth to speak, she laid her free hand across it to silence him.

“They never found her body. They never found anything. Mama Odette knows people’s fates,
especially
people close to her, but she doesn’t know Charlotte’s. And Mama doesn’t know, either. Maybe they don’t know because Charlotte isn’t dead.”

He pushed her hand away, then gripped it as tightly as he held the other. “Then where is she?”

Anamaria didn’t answer. She wanted to—he could see it in her eyes—but there was nothing to say. The baby was dead. Her first breath had been damn near her last. And Glory and Mama Odette didn’t know because people didn’t
know
that
sort of thing. It was all part of the scam the family had been running for generations.

Her lips compressed, her brows furrowed, as anxiety, need and hope crossed her features. For an instant, the hope faded, then returned just as fiercely. “What about the shawl? Where is it?”

Glory had wrapped her shawl around her before leaving, Anamaria had said. “Your grandmother’s probably packed it away somewhere.”

She shook her head. “That shawl was special. Mama Odette made it, and Mama never went anywhere without it. She wore it when she was chilled or wrapped it around me when I was cold. We had picnics on it. She covered me with it when I fell asleep in church. There was a piece of fabric in it from every Duquesne in the last hundred years. If Mama Odette had it, she would have given it to me.”

“Maybe Glory forgot it somewhere.”

Again she shook her head solemnly. “You’d be more likely to forget your Vette somewhere.”

“Maybe she dropped it in the river.” Robbie swiped his hair from his forehead, then brushed back her hair. “I know what you’re hoping, Annie—that someone came along, that they found Charlotte, took the shawl and wrapped her in it and that she’s safe, alive and well somewhere. But look around. What are the odds that someone happened along on a night like this? You’re not going to have any fishermen, no hunters, no joggers, no hikers. No one came along. No one took Charlotte. No one saved her.”

A breath shuddered through her, and for a moment he thought she might cry. Instead, she raised her chin, stiffened her spine and fixed a determined look on him. “My sister did not die back there.”

He stiffened his spine, too, and used the harsh, con
fronting tone that stood him well in courtroom cross-examinations. “Where she died doesn’t matter. All that matters is that she did die.”

“If the police were wrong about where, they could be wrong about how. They could be wrong about
whether.
”

“Why don’t you call them?” he demanded as she pulled her hand free, crossed her arms over her middle and started along the path. “Tell them your mother lost an old handmade shawl that night and that you can’t feel her dead baby’s
imprint
on the riverbank. I bet they’ll want to open an investigation immediately.”

“Maybe I’ll do that. Tommy Maricci is a conscientious detective, and he’s got believer’s blood flowing through his veins.” She tossed her hair over one shoulder. “On top of that, he likes me.”

Jealousy curled, hot and ugly, in Robbie’s gut. “And do you like him?”

“I do.” With that blunt response, she strode ahead. He stood looking after her, wondering what the hell he was doing. He could be at home, warm and dry, kicked back in front of the television. Packing his car and heading off for a long weekend at his uncle Travis’s beach house on Kiawah Island. Driving west to Atlanta for a few days of easy relaxation and easier sex with an ex-girlfriend he still saw on occasion.

But, no, he was soaked to the skin, cold, frustrated, jealous of his own best buddy over a woman who was as ill-suited to his life as he was to hers, and worried about her. Worried she would convince herself that Charlotte was alive. Worried about the disappointment when she had to accept—again—that it wasn’t true. Worried about the guilt she felt. That the memories she’d unlocked tonight might have been better forgotten.

He worried that someone had vandalized her house, whether the act had been random or deliberate. That she might get hurt.
That he might hurt her. That she might hurt him. That he would disappoint her as he had always disappointed everyone.

Damn, Harrison Kennedy wasn’t paying him nearly enough for this case.

By the time he caught up with Anamaria, she was waiting at the car, her defensive posture relaxed. “Her father,” she said as he drew near. “Charlotte’s father could have taken her. Glory had two appointments that evening. One was Lydia, but no one knew who the second was, just that it wasn’t any of her regular clients. Maybe it was Charlotte’s father. The baby was due in a few days. Maybe he needed assurance that she wasn’t going to tell anyone his name. Maybe she needed money for the medical bills. Maybe that was why she was out along the river, where no one could possibly see them together. And she went into labor and he couldn’t help her, but he took the baby. His baby.”

“
If
you’re right…” He clenched his jaw. It was believable: a man with a pregnant mistress, a single mother who wasn’t looking for marriage but needed money, an out-of-the-way meeting place. But if the man had needed reassurance from Glory, if he’d taken the baby but left her, then it became very possible that Glory’s death hadn’t been accidental at all. She hadn’t just
gone
into labor, according to the autopsy; she’d fallen and hit her head, and the trauma had precipitated labor.

Instead of falling, maybe she’d been shoved. Or maybe the blow to the head had come first. Maybe Charlotte’s father had assured her silence by killing her.

What kind of bastard killed the woman carrying his own child?

One with a lot to lose. Even twenty-three years later.

Anamaria had a lot to lose, as well, if that was the case.

He opened the car door and waited for her to settle inside, then circled to the driver’s side. He didn’t speak on
the way back to her house, and neither did she. When he pulled into the driveway and shifted into Park, she turned as if to say good-night, but the words faded unspoken as he shut off the engine and got out. He wasn’t leaving her alone. Not yet.

They left their slickers, shoes and socks on the porch. She unlocked the door, stopped a few feet inside, then gave a soft sigh. “It’s all right.”

He checked anyway, making sure each window was locked and intact and that the back door was locked, as well. When he finished, he found her in the bathroom, stripped of her wet clothes, wrapped in a bath towel and blotting water from her hair with another towel. Arousal stirred in his groin, along with something else. Something unfamiliar, possessive…tender. Something that knotted in his chest, aching even when he absentmindedly rubbed it.

She smiled at his reflection in the mirror, a subdued, tired gesture. “Thank you for going with me.”

He managed a
you’re welcome
as the phone rang in the kitchen. Her gaze flickered that way, but she made no move from the sink. “Will you get that for me?”

“Sure.” He padded down the hall and into the kitchen, grabbing the phone on the third ring. “Hello.”

There was a moment’s silence, and immediately he thought about the person who’d sneaked out of the woods that afternoon to give Anamaria a malicious welcome-home. The hairs on his arms stood on end, and he was reaching for the cell phone in his pocket to call Tommy when the caller finally spoke.

“Well. Here I am on my deathbed, picturing my grandbaby just worrying herself sick about me, and instead she’s entertaining a gentleman and not giving me any thought at all. Isn’t that a fine situation?”

Mama Odette’s voice was similar to Anamaria’s, but the
cadence of her speech was slow, befitting a Georgia woman born and bred, and her accent was heavy as honey.

“I doubt you’re on your deathbed, Miz Duquesne, and I’m no gentleman at all.”

She laughed, a rich rumble. “Then what kind of man are you, Robert Calloway?”

“The kind you probably warned Anamaria about.”

“The best kind.” She laughed again, but underneath it he heard the whoosh of hospital equipment.

“No one’s called me Robert in twenty-five years.”

“No one’s called me Miz Duquesne in about that long. If you’re not comfortable with the Mama part, you can just call me Odette.”

“And you can call me Robbie.”

From down the hall came the sound of bathwater running. He thought of Anamaria, naked, sliding into a tub smelling of jasmine and piled high with bubbles, and his body responded, albeit accompanied by guilt, since he was on the phone with the grandmother who’d raised her. Swallowing hard, he shut off the overhead light, leaving only the bulb over the sink burning, and stretched the phone cord so he could sit at the table.

“Anamaria’s told you about me.”

“Not so much. I see more than I hear.”

“Yeah, that’s right. You’re a psychic, too.”

“And you’re a skeptic. But that’s all right. Everyone learns eventually. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth,’ and all that.”

An elderly con artist quoting Shakespeare to him. That was a first.

“Is my girl handy where I can talk at her a minute?”

He gauged the length of the phone cord, figuring it would fall about fifteen feet short of the bathroom. “She, uh…” Well,
hell, there was something too damn intimate about his being in the house while her girl took a bath. Even the most naive of parents would make the leap to the fact that they were sleeping together, and Odette, based on all he’d heard, wasn’t naive.

Once again she laughed, a sound that obviously came easily to her. “Now I
know
I didn’t interrupt you in the act, because you’re not all out of breath, and I don’t hear Anamaria at all. It’s perfectly all right for you to say, ‘She’s soaking in the tub.’ I’m way down here in Savannah, and in a hospital bed to boot, so it’s not like I’m gonna come looking for you with my shotgun. Besides, she’s a grown woman now. She chooses who she chooses.”

His face flushed hot. He was a skeptic and a coward and a pain in the ass, but he was circumspect about sex. If the women he was involved with chose to share, fine, but he usually kept his mouth shut. It was probably the only thing he had in common with his old man. Gerald had been so expert at hiding his affairs that Sara’s first clue had come after his death, when she’d discovered nine-year-old Mitch.

Had Charlotte’s father been as expert?

“How’s my girl doin’?” Odette asked, then went on before he could answer. “I hated to ask her to go there and take care of my business for me, but these doctors won’t let me out of here. They keep telling me I’m gonna die. Well, heavens, chile, we’re
all
gonna die. It’s just a matter of when. I just couldn’t go, though, without knowing more about my baby’s last days. I had twenty-three years of good health to find out, but…”

All the pleasure faded from her voice. “It was such a hard time for all of us, but especially Anamaria. Oh, she loved her mama. You never seen a mama and baby as happy as them. When she come here to live with me, it was like all the light had gone out of her. She fretted for her mama and for that baby sister she never got to know, and then she just put it all out of
her mind. Did such a good job of forgetting that when she wanted to remember, she couldn’t recall a thing.”

He thought of her, recent moments flashing through his mind. “She’s all right. She’s strong.”

“Oh, chile, Duquesne women has always had to be strong. We don’t have the kind of life that other women have, but God gives us strength enough to handle it. How about you? How strong are you?”

His head aching, he squeezed his eyes shut tight. “Not enough.”

“I don’t know. You know right from wrong, even if you don’t always do it. I bet you were a wild one when you was a boy. Probably gave your mama every gray hair she’s got, you and your brothers. And that’s okay. That’s how boys should be. But you know what? When the time comes, you’ll do what you have to.”

There was a pause, another voice in the background.
Time for your medication, Mama Odette.
Then she turned her attention back to him. “Tell my girl I called and I love her and she’s all right. And you—you watch out for her, too. You’ll do that.”

It wasn’t a question, but he answered it anyway. “Yeah, I’ll do it.”

She chuckled. “Good night, Robbie Calloway. You know, there’s more to you than you think.”

He waited until the line went dead, then slowly hung up.
You’ll do what you have to.
A lot of faith from someone who clearly didn’t know him. Outside of his office, he didn’t live up to obligations; he didn’t accept burdens. He was the irresponsible one.