Share No Secrets (17 page)

“Oh. Yes, sir. Drew. I’ll remember that. But in front of my dad, I have to call you Mr. Delaney. It’s one of his rules.”

Screw his rules, Drew had almost said, but kept silent. Encouraging Claude to defy his father would only get the boy into trouble.

Drew had waited in the Corvette outside the drugstore for Claude, drawing the admiring looks of several fine-looking girls, in which he’d basked. When Claude had emerged from the store, his shoulders no longer drooped and his step was almost jaunty. To his amazement, Drew realized he couldn’t stand to whisk Claude right back to the hotel and his father. Instead, he’d taken him to the Dairy Queen, where they’d each had a chocolate sundae, then he’d roared around town a couple of times, radio booming, to show off the car. Claude had actually laughed, and Drew realized that in all the years he’d had been allowed to hang around the pool at la Belle because he was Kit Kirkwood’s friend, he’d never seen Claude even smile.

They’d returned to the hotel in a little over an hour, much quicker than Claude could have made the trip on foot. The boy had climbed from the Corvette, looking enraptured, and beamed at Drew. “Thanks, Mr. Delaney. I mean Drew.” He’d blushed. “Honest, this has been the best day of my whole life!” Then he’d bolted toward the little cottage, smiling and clutching the bag of medicine for his mother who Drew had heard was slowly dying of cancer.

When Drew had returned to Point Pleasant less than two years ago, he couldn’t believe the change in the once wide-eyed boy with so much joy bottled up inside. Clearly, his spirit had been broken, no doubt by the formidable Mr. Duncan, whom Kit Kirkwood’s mother had always tolerated because he ran la Belle so smoothly. A few times over the last couple of years, Drew had bought Claude a drink in a local bar and chatted with him for a while, but the encounters were depressing. Claude never had much to say when he wasn’t drunk, his wits dulled by emotional abuse and alcoholism. When he’d been drinking, he was alternately a depressed whiner or a ridiculous braggadocio. Drew had felt immensely sorry for the man Claude had become.

And now the poor guy was dead before he’d reached the age of thirty.

Drew had still been at the hospital with Adrienne when Claude had been brought in last night, horribly burned. A nurse Drew had once dated had told him confidentially that Claude had second- and third-degree burns over eighty percent of his body. Even if he’d been alive when he reached the hospital, he would never have stood a chance. But she’d also heard a doctor observe that the pupils of Claude’s eyes were completely constricted, indicating ingestion of drugs. She said she hoped Claude had been “out of if before the fire got to him.

Claude’s death could have been accidental, Drew thought. After all, la Belle had suffered more than its share of deaths over the years. But two in less than twenty-four hours? Even for la Belle that would be hard to imagine. Unless the deaths were connected. But Drew wondered what possible relation Julianna Brent could have had to Claude Duncan. Certainly not romantic. Certainly not business. Something they both knew? But what? The identity of Julianna’s lover? Hell, Claude couldn’t keep any information to himself for more than a day. If he’d known who was her lover, he would have blabbed the name all over town, swearing everyone he told to secrecy. Drew was convinced Claude hadn’t known the name of Julianna’s lover. So, what could have been the link in their deaths?

Drew closed his dark eyes and shook his head. Sometimes his reporter’s curiosity wore him out. His mother had called it plain old nosiness and warned that it would get him in trouble someday. But that hadn’t happened yet, nor had he learned to turn off the inquisitiveness of his mind.

Yellow police tape surrounded the remains of the cottage. A middle-aged, dumpy deputy with a perpetually red face Drew knew as Sonny Keller strode toward him. “I don’t know how you got past the roadblock on Rivière Lane, Delaney, but you’re not supposed to go near the cottage.”

“I simply walked around the roadblock through the woods, and I’m nowhere near the cottage,” Drew answered pleasantly.

“Sheriff Flynn doesn’t want a bunch of souvenir-seekers up here.”

“I didn’t intend to raid the place. Besides, it doesn’t look like there’s much left to take.”

Keller shook his head. “It was a hell of a mess. There wouldn’t be anything at all left if somebody hadn’t spotted the fire from the highway and called it in right before that second cloudburst hit. All that rain’s the only thing saved Claude.”

“For a short, agonizing time at least.” Drew shuddered inwardly. “Any idea what caused the fire?”

Keller looked at him cagily. “I know your game. You’ll run right back to your newspaper and print every word I say. Flynn said for us to keep quiet about what we know.”

“Then you
do
know what caused the fire.”

“I didn’t say that.”

‘Oh,” Drew said in mock disappointment. “I figured with all your experience, Keller, you of all people would probably know something.”

“Well, actually,
I
do.” Drew had known Sonny Keller couldn’t keep his mouth shut if someone hinted the lawman didn’t have all the answers, no matter what Lucas Flynn had ordered. “Flynn’s having an arson expert come to look at the place this afternoon,” Keller almost whispered, looking over his shoulder although no one was near. “Can you believe that? We don’t need some smart-aleck so-called expert up here messing around. It’s plain as day that idiot Claude got drunk, turned over his bottle of whiskey, passed out, and dropped a lighted cigarette in the alcohol.
Voilà!”
he ended triumphantly, pronouncing the word
vi-o-lay.

“Hmmm.” Drew nodded solemnly as if he were thinking this over. Then he said, “But Claude could hold a lot of liquor. If he’d drunk so much he’d passed out, there couldn’t have been enough alcohol left in his bottle for a cigarette dropped into it to cause a fire big enough to wipe out this place, Keller. How do you explain that?” he asked in polite perplexity.

Sonny Keller hesitated, clearly troubled by the complication Drew had thrown into his simple explanation. Finally he drew a deep breath and said with bravado, “Well, I say a cigarette in a little alcohol could have caused it. Dozens of ways the cigarette could have ignited the liquor to cause a big fire. Yes indeed, that’s the answer.”

“Maybe so,” Drew said casually, “but I knew Claude a little bit and I see two problems with that scenario. One, Claude didn’t smoke. His mother died of lung cancer and he swore never to touch a cigarette. And he kept that promise. Never had a pack on him and never accepted one if someone offered. And two, the doctor who examined him before he died said his eyes showed he was pumped full of some drug. Now I happen to know that Claude was
terrified
of drugs. Liquor he couldn’t get enough of, but he would never have voluntarily taken anything except an aspirin or an antibiotic.” Drew looked at the increasingly glowering deputy. “And Keller, all of that says to me that someone must have helped Claude Duncan on his way last night.”

A shrine. That’s what this place was—a damned shrine to Julianna Brent.

Gail Brent stood in her mother Lottie’s cabin. She hated the place. Lottie had lived in it all of her life and called it “humble.” Gail called it a dump, which hurt Lottie and made Juli angry. But it
was
a dump, Gail thought defiantly. It was small, primitive, full of furniture bought at yard sales and some crude pieces built by her grandfather, with faded rag rugs on the cheap wooden floor no amount of varnish could make presentable. And to make matters worse for Gail, over the last sixteen years, the walls had become almost covered with photos of Julianna in fashion layouts and on magazine covers with names like
Vogue, Glamour,
and
Cosmopolitan.
None of Gail’s school papers bearing As and glowing comments earned places. They were just smiled at, vaguely commented on, then tucked away in a cheap folder. Meanwhile, every time Lottie prominently displayed another picture of Julianna, Gail had felt like a voodoo doll being stabbed with a needle.

Gail’s watch showed that it was ten till eight in the morning, but Lottie wasn’t home. Gail was certain her mother hadn’t been home for at least twenty-four hours. There were no cooking smells, no open windows, and the cat on the front porch was mewing hungrily. Why had Lottie been gone so long? Was she just out wandering? Or in light of Juli’s murder, was Lottie’s absence more significant?

Gail’s gaze fell on a particularly striking photo of her sister in a forest-green sequined gown with her auburn hair pulled high, and her golden-brown eyes innocent and coquettish at the same time. Gail hated to admit she thought her sister was beautiful, and she couldn’t stop comparing herself to Julianna. There was no contest, she thought glumly, walking over to a small mirror for a self-study.

Her hair was shoulder-length, a glossy natural dark blond. My hair is great, Gail thought. Her boyfriend, Deputy Sonny Keller, seemed half in love with her hair, which he once compared to honey-colored satin when he was drunk. He loved her hair and her big breasts, even though she thought they were too big and were beginning to sag although she was only thirty-two and had never nursed a child. And although her teeth were perfectly straight and white, looking at her round face with what everyone called “chipmunk cheeks,” her small and murky blue eyes, her snub nose, and her too-thick neck sent Gail into the habitual fit of depression.

When she was growing up, Lottie had continually told her she was cute, even pretty when she smiled, but Gail had been certain Lottie was lying. She knew Lottie hated her because Gail looked like her father Butch, who’d been short and squat, an uneducated but smart man whom Lottie had driven away with her craziness. Gail had seen a goodness in her father no one else ever seemed to notice, and she knew her father had loved her, even though Juli had always captured all of his attention and his kisses. Julianna and Lottie had been
happy
when Butch left, Gail seethed inwardly after all these years.
Happy!
She’d been devastated.

Gail unconsciously clenched her teeth at the thought, then quickly relaxed her jaw. She didn’t want to chip a beautiful tooth by reverting back to the clenching and grinding that had plagued her as a child. But she couldn’t seem to help herself lately. She despised Julianna’s latest romantic involvement. She found it filthy, almost unholy if she had been religious, which she was not in the least. But most of all, Gail viewed it as sickeningly unfair. Once again, Juli had gotten what she wanted, just like
everything
was for her!

I should have done something about the situation years ago, Gail chided herself. Julianna had caused a man who loved her too much pain. Instead, Gail had let things drift while she worked out a plan. But as usual, she’d vacillated, afraid to take action until she’d poked every possible hole into every scenario she’d concocted. In the meantime, the situation had reached critical mass and gotten completely out of control. And to top it off, now Julianna had probably become a saint to the man Gail loved more than life.

Feeling hot tears of grief and frustration beginning to run from her murky blue eyes down her chipmunk cheeks, she pushed aside a heavy trunk and looked at a piece of scuffed wood beneath it. Gail got one of her mother’s kitchen knives and began gently running it around the edges of a barely visible square crack in the wood. Around and around, careful not to damage the already worn varnish. After nearly three minutes, she was able to pry the blade into a crack and lift up an eight-by-ten-inch piece of wood. She laid the piece aside, reached inside and clutched a velvet sack that had covered a particularly fabulous bottle of Crown Royal given to her father by a Christmas-generous boss. Neither the boss’s mood nor the Crown Royal blended whiskey had lasted long, but Gail had cherished the bag, worked on a secret hiding place for it every time she found herself alone in the cabin, and used it for safely squirreling away keepsakes for years.

Gail knew Lottie was nowhere near the cabin—she could almost feel the absence of Lottie’s “aura”—but she still glanced over each shoulder before she dumped out the contents of the velvet bag. She smiled when she saw the hair ornament her mother had made—there had been two—one for her, one for Juli. Two barrettes almost two inches long, made in the shape of a butterfly with tiny chips of blue, green, and pink Austrian crystals sprinkled on the gossamer wings.

She picked up one diamond stud earring. The man Julianna had cared about for a while and Gail had adored wore it almost constantly until it disappeared from his dresser one day. The last item in the velvet bag was her love’s picture, a small sketch she’d done, not very good, but recognizable. That was why she’d obliterated the face, just in case her hidey-hole were ever discovered. Besides, she didn’t need to look at a picture to remember his face. It was burned into her brain.

Gail wanted to take her treasures home, but she didn’t dare. She didn’t think she was under suspicion for her sister’s murder, but you could never be too safe. She wiped off each item and slipped it back into its velvet bag and down into the hole. She carefully put the trunk back in place, and walked out of the cottage.

On the porch, she glanced around. A fierce morning sun had washed the sky and the air clean. Beside Gail, her mother’s small cat Calypso let out a tiny, pitiful mewl of hunger. Gail looked at the cat for a moment, gave it a slightly lopsided smile, said, “Things are tough all over, cat,” and walked purposefully to her small white car, the cat looking pathetically after her.

“Good heavens, did a tornado blow through here?” Kit Kirkwood surveyed the shambles of Adrienne’s living room. “It’ll take forever to get this place back in shape.”

“Not really.” Adrienne slid a heavy seat cushion back onto the couch. “Only a couple of little things were broken. The rest was just
tossed,
as Lucas says.”

“Let me help you clean up.”

“I can manage. Skye is helping.”

“And with me helping, things will go even faster.”