The Final Victim (16 page)

    It doesn't come.

    "Okay. Please call me as soon as you can. I need to talk to you."

    It takes three stabs at the cell phone's keypad with a shaky index finger before she manages to press the end button.

    She stashes the phone back in her purse.

    Now what?

    Her migraine is growing worse. The car is stifling: doors closed, windows rolled up. She reaches for the keys she tossed onto the passenger's seat when she got in.

    She can't just sit here in the parking lot of Tyler Hawthorne's law firm all day, trying to digest what just happened.

    But she isn't particularly anxious to go home, either.

    Not with
Phyllida
and
Gib
inevitably waiting there to pounce on her.

    She fumbles with the key ring, pushing aside a plastic-framed souvenir photo: of herself and Royce, posing before a picture-perfect artificial backdrop of the Grand Canyon. They were there in May, for their anniversary. In reality, the canyon was shrouded in mist that day.

    
It seems like a lifetime ago.

    
Finding the right key, she pushes it into the ignition.

    "
Grandaddy
, what have you done?" she whispers, resting her forehead against the steering wheel.

    Unable to bear another moment in the suffocating heat of the car, Charlotte at last turns the key. Her sweat-dampened forehead is struck by a welcoming blast from the vent Okay, good.

    Now what?

    
Of all the days for Royce to have an important meeting.
If she could just see her husband, talk to him, she'd feel better. She always does when he's around. But she'll just have to wait Right now, there's nothing to do but pick up
Lianna
and go home to face her cousins.

    "Will you please just shut up so I can think straight?"
Gib
rakes a hand through his blond hair and paces across the small second-floor sitting room, shuttered against the strong afternoon sun.

    "Don't tell me to shut up."

    "I'm sorry," he tells
Phyllida
, if only to prevent a petty argument with the drama queen. "I'm just trying to figure out what the hell could have happened to cause this."

    "Nothing /did, if that's what you're thinking."

    It is what he's thinking. He doesn't trust his sister. Never has. As far as he's concerned,
Phyllida
is a lying, scheming diva whose only interest is herself.

    And maybe her kid, he allows.
To be fair.

    
Remingtons
are nothing if not fair.

    
Yeah, right
.

    "I
haven't
even talked to
Grandaddy
in months,"
Phyllida
informs him, to further prove her innocence.

    "Well, neither have I."

    "Maybe that's the problem."

    "Oh, please. Do you really think he cut us out because
she
gave him more attention than we did?"

    "Do
you
?"
Gib
shrugs.

    "Why did he do it,
Gib
? This is crazy."

    It is crazy. What can their grandfather possibly have against them?

    
Grandaddy
was a pretty staunch Southern Baptist.
Unreasonable, in Gib's opinion, at times.
Did he and his sister somehow offend the old man's morals?

    What if…?

    
No
,
Gib
tells himself sternly.
There's no way he knows about you. No way on earth
.

    It had to be something else.
Something that involves
Phyllida
, too.

    "Maybe it's because he didn't like Mother," he suggests.

    "What does she have to do with anything?
Grandaddy
cut her out years ago, after Daddy died. You know that"

    "I know, but maybe he knew that if we got the money we'd use some of it to help her, and he didn't like that idea."

    "You're really reaching here,
Gib
,"
Phyllida
tells him. "I doubt
Grandaddy
has even thought about Mother in ages. And you saw him waltzing with her at my wedding. I think he decided to let bygones be bygones."

    "I think he was senile and had no idea who she even was."

    She snorts. "
Grandaddy
might have been old, but he wasn't senile. He knew it was Mother. He was laughing and talking to her."

    "Yeah, well, he didn't write her back into the will after that, did he?"

    "No, but I don't think he wrote us out because of her."

    "I guess not."
Gib
is quiet for a moment, thinking. "Maybe if she convinced him to do it…"

    
"Mother?"

    "No! Charlotte. Maybe she talked him into giving it all to her."

    
Phyllida
shakes her head. "She's too damned nice. I honestly don't think she cares about the money all that much."

    "Nice people like money too."

    "I don't know…"
Phyllida
toys with the edge of a tabletop lace doily, rolling and unrolling it. "Don't you think she seemed as surprised as we were?"

    "Maybe she was faking it."

    "She's no actress."

    No, but you are,
Gib
can't help thinking. He wonders again if his sister could be hiding something.

    Then again, who isn't?

    He, at least, is more skilled at it than most.

    Anyway, even if
Phyllida
did do something to upset
Grandaddy
, why would
Gib
be cut out of the will as well? That doesn't make any sense.

    No, it seems far more likely that the one person who benefitted from the change in the heirs apparent would be the person responsible for it.

    "At least you got the cufflinks,"
Phyllida
tells him pettily.

    He knew that was coming.

    "Only because nobody else can use them," he's obliged to point out. "You know how much he hated to see anything go to waste. Remember when we were kids? He saved twist ties off bread bags." 'The cufflinks are platinum. They're worth something if you sell them."

    "I'm not going to sell them,
Phyllida
." Not right away, anyway.

    "You're going to wear them?"

    He shrugs.
"Why not?"

    "Oh, right, I forgot. You're a fancy lawyer with fancy shirts."

    He chooses to ignore that, as he does her other, frequent comments about his wardrobe.

    He also ignores his sister's catty, "I'm surprised
Grandaddy
didn't also leave some jewelry to Nydia."

    At least, until she adds a provocative, "Considering what people have been saying about the two of them."

    "What have people been saying?"
Gib
asks with interest.

    "You know… that
Grandaddy
had been…"

    "What?"

    She bobs her perfectly waxed eyebrows provocatively.

    "You think he was doing the housekeeper?" he asks with perverse delight. The thought had never entered his mind.
So much for old-fashioned Southern Baptist morals.

    Well, good for the old geezer, getting regular action at his age. That's more than anybody can say about
Gib
at the moment.

    It's been over a week since Cassandra took off, meaning it's more than a week since he's been with a woman.

    He actually called her in Boston to see why she'd left, hoping he might be able to persuade her to come back, at least for the weekend.

    No such luck.

    Her reason:
Sorry,
Gib
, funerals and families just aren't my thing
.

    Yeah, like funerals and families
are his thing
? Anyway, she knew why they were coming down to Georgia. She didn't have to accept his invitation to come down here with him-not that she was entirely sober when she did. And not that they had known each other for twenty-four hours at that point, having met in a bar at Logan Airport after getting off separate but equally turbulent flights home to Boston.

    She claimed to be returning from a business trip- not that there was anything remotely corporate about her skimpy outfit.

    Then again, he told her the same thing. But at least he looked the part, in his custom-made suit and silk tie.

    He was well into his second Dirty Martini-his mind filling with significantly dirty thoughts as his hand made its way from Cassandra's arm to her bare knee-when his cell phone rang with the news about
Grandaddy
.

    He didn't cry.

    It was a call he'd been waiting for. He knew it would eventually come. He just didn't know exactly when, or who would make it.

    As it turned out, it was Charlotte, and she sounded pretty broken up over
Grandaddy's
death.

    
Gib
tried to at least sound sorrowful, but it was hard for him to carry on much of a conversation with the noise in the lounge and the announcements over the airport PA system. In the end, he simply told her to hang in there and promised her that he'd catch the next plane down to Savannah.

    "What happened?" Cassandra asked when he hung
up,
watching him quickly drain what was left of his drink.

    So he told her.

    He wasn't entirely serious when, fueled by too much gin, he asked her to come to Savannah with him.

    Nor was he entirely surprised when she said, "I might as well-my bag is already packed and I really don't have plans for the weekend."

    Several hours and several cocktails later, they were landing in Savannah. Cassandra didn't bat an eye when he suggested that they spend that night in a hotel and wait until the next day to go to his family's place.

    That was some night. The room had a king-sized bed, a Jacuzzi, and a dazzling view of the riverfront. Not that
Gib
and Cassandra spent much time looking out the window.

    
Too bad about her.
Really, it is. She was
Gib's
kind of woman.

    At this point, however, pretty much any halfway attractive female would be his kind of woman… She might not even have to be a blonde.

    "So how do you know about
Grandaddy
and Nydia?" he asks his sister, his curiosity piqued.

    "I overheard a couple of his old cronies talking about it at the funeral. They said she was probably in the tub with
Grandaddy
when he had his heart attack. That she was why he had the heart attack, actually."

    
"No way."
Gib
finds it hard to imagine a skinny,
housefrau
like Nydia nude, giving anybody a heart attack… not in a good way, anyway.

    Still, maybe there's some truth to the theory. After all, Nydia is the one who found his body…

    "We need to call Mother,
Gib
,"
Phyllida
says, effectively curtailing his titillating thoughts.

    
"Mother?
Why?"

    "Because she's counting on this money as much as we are. She doesn't want to live with Aunt Rosemary the rest of her life, and work in some store waiting on people who used to be her friends."

    "I know, and she won't have to. We're going to contest the will. Why upset her?"

    
Phyllida
shrugs. "I just think she needs to know."

    
No, you just need to go crying on her shoulder, as usual
, he thinks, aggravated.

    "Don't tell her,
Phyll
. Don't."

    He can tell by the look on her face that she isn't planning to heed his warning. God, she's as pathetically needy now as she was when they were growing up. She always ran to their mother with the slightest problem, whining and wailing for attention.

    She always got it, too.

    Mother might have coddled his sister, but she admired and respected Gib. He's always been content in that knowledge.

    And he sure as hell isn't going to burst her bubble now.

    "Don't tell Mother," he tells
Phyllida
one last time. "I mean it."

    "Well, I definitely think we should confront Charlotte about
Grandaddy
when she comes home, Gib."

    "About him getting it on with the housekeeper?" he asks facetiously, just to get on her nerves.

    
"About the will!"
Phyllida
is suitably exasperated. "Don't you think we need to talk to her?"

    "Not really." He paces across the room, then back again. "What do you think she can possibly tell us?"

    "Who knows? We need to put her on the spot."

    "Frankly, I'd rather avoid her for the time-"

    
Gib
stops pacing abruptly, struck by something that hadn't occurred to him until now.

    He was wrong earlier.

    Charlotte isn't necessarily the
only
person who benefits from the changed will.

    "Kevin, I'm totally serious. Cut it out."

    "Why?"

    
"Because!"
Lianna
slaps his hand away before it can creep beneath her T-shirt again. The glider they're sitting on groans beneath her shifting weight as she moves away from him.

    He moves closer. "It was okay five minutes ago."

    "So? It's not okay now."

    
"Why not?"

    "Because…" She juts her
Up
to blow her own hot breath on her face in a futile effort to cool off. "I'm all sweaty."

    "Who cares? So am I."

    
Yeah, no kidding.
The faint, pungent, unfamiliar odor of masculine perspiration mingles with the heady scent of Casey's mother's climbing roses that cover a nearby arbor.