The Final Victim (25 page)

    It isn't until she's hung up that Charlotte realizes this is the first conversation she's had with either of her cousins since the meeting in Tyler's office the other day. Now she'll be forced to come face-to-face with them as well.

    But
Phyllida
and
Gib's
lingering animosity and
contestment
of the will are the least of her worries.

    Right now, all she cares about is Royce.

    She reaches into her pocket and finds his cell phone, which the nurses gave her along with the rest of his personal belongings. For the second time since the shooting, she searches the phone's memory base for his daughter's cell phone number,
then
presses send.

    It takes a few rings for Aimee to answer, with a fumbling sound as she does.

    "Sorry, Charlotte, I'm at the airport trying to get to the gate," she says, sounding a little breathless.

    "I'm glad you got a flight." Charlotte can hear the noise from the terminal in the background.

    "I'm on the next plane out of here, but I have to connect through Atlanta so it's going to be a while. How's Daddy? Is he out of surgery yet?"

    "Not yet. What flight are you on, Aimee? Do you want me to have somebody meet you at the airport?" Even as she asks the question, she hopes her stepdaughter will say no. Who, after all, could Charlotte possibly send to the airport?

    The chauffeur is away, she wants Nydia to stay at home with
Lianna
, and she isn't comfortable asking her cousins for yet another favor. Nearly all of Charlotte's friends in Savannah are traveling this summer, and she hasn't been in close contact with them, anyway, since moving out to
Oakgate
. Not close enough to involve them intimately in something like this.

    But it doesn't matter, because Aimee tells her she'll just take a cab to the hospital when she lands.

    "Make sure you tell the cab driver that it's the hospital off the expressway… Are you at all familiar with Savannah?" Charlotte asks.

    "No-hang on a second, they're making an announcement…"

    In the background, Charlotte hears,
"The aircraft that will make up Delta Airlines Flight 640 to Atlanta is now at the gate and will begin boarding momentarily. Please have your tickets ready so we can board the plane for an on-time departure."' "I have to go," Aimee says in a rush. "I'll get there as soon as I land."

    "Have a safe flight."

    Delia Airlines flight 640…

    That's the one Royce always takes home to her from New Orleans, first thing in the morning. Ironic that just days ago, Charlotte was sitting in the Oyster Bar, worried about something happening to him.

    Maybe it really was a premonition.

    
And maybe the next time you have one, you should listen
.

    Remembering to stop in the cafeteria, she waits in line for coffee with yet another group of casual, chatting staff members, along with a smattering of patients' loved ones. They're easily identifiable, not just by their street clothes and hushed conversations, but by their drawn faces etched with telltale concern.

    To the workers, who seem disconcertingly oblivious to the life-and-death domestic dramas unfolding around them, this is just another morning on the job.

    As Charlotte flips a black lever and watches steaming, aromatic liquid pouring into her white foam cup, a long-forgotten detail flits into her exhausted mind.

    She remembers being huddled in the sand on the dusky beach off
Achoco
Island, some distance from the cluster of divers that had just emerged, empty-handed, from the depths of the sea.

    She couldn't hear what they were saying as they removed their equipment.

    Then the wind shifted abruptly and the unmistakable sound of laughter reached her ears. As she listened in disbelief, it became clear that they were discussing bets they had placed on the weekend's opening games of the NFL season.

    Somebody's son had been lost in the treacherous Atlantic, and the men responsible for finding the child were engaged in lighthearted, meaningless conversation.

    She never forgot it.

    Nor did she ever tell Royce.

    The divers were human. They were doing their job. Their cavalier talk of football wagers had nothing to do with the fact that they didn't retrieve Theo Maitland's body.

    Intellectually, she knew that. Of course she did.

    She just never got over that feeling of betrayal-or the realization that the immediate family, despite the hustle of activity by the many helping hands that materialize in their time of need, is unalterably isolated in any loss.

    Feeling lonelier than she has in years, Charlotte pays for her coffee, grabs a couple of creamers and a packet of
Splenda
, and makes her way back to the elevator.

    Upstairs, the nurse spots her coming toward the station and shakes her head.
"Nothing yet, Ms. Remington."

 
 
'Thank you."

  
 
And it's
Mrs. Maitland
.

    Toting Cameron on her hip, Mimi steps into the kitchen of her mother's small tract house in Tidewater Meadow to find Maude Gaspar seated at the table with a cup of
coffee,
utterly fixated on the small portable television on a metal stand in the corner.

    
"Good
mornin
', Honey Buns.
How's Jed today?"

    
"Still asleep.
He had another restless night"
And so did I.

    "I lit a candle for him down at church this morning." Maude's eyes remain fastened to the screen even as she holds out her arms for Cameron. "Where's my precious grandson? Come here to Granny, sugar, and let me give you some
lovin
'."

    "Is there coffee?" Mimi asks, placing her son in her mother's embrace.

    "Is the sky blue?"

    She glances out the window above the sink, framed by limp, once-white curtains trimmed with red rickrack. Today, it is."

    "
Gonna
stay that way till about noon,
accordin
' to the weatherman."

    Mimi crosses to the counter, and the electric percolator her parents received as a wedding shower gift three decades ago. Her mother has used it faithfully every morning, but Mimi wonders now how much longer it can possibly last without Daddy here to tinker with it the next time it goes on the fritz.

    Behind her, Cameron squeals, "Bob!"

    "Bob?" Maude bounces him on her lap. "What does that mean?"

    "He wants to watch
Bob the Builder
.
On TV.
It's his new favorite show."

    "I thought you didn't like him to watch television."

    "I don't."
I didn't. But that was before I needed to distract him from the misery our lives have become.

    "When is it on?"

    "It was starting when we left home just now, and I promised him he could finish watching it here."

    "Oh, all right, sweet pea. Let Granny change the channel for you."

    "You don't have to do that, Mom." Mimi pours steaming coffee into a chipped mug from the plastic drying rack beside the sink.

    Using the remote to change the channel, much to Cam's delight, Maude says, "I was just
watchin
' the news, but all that's left now is the sports and your daddy is the only one who liked to watch that part. I just like the news. Have y'all seen what happened in Savannah?" She rises from the chair and sets Cam on it, in front of his program.

    "No, what happened?" Mimi turns to the refrigerator for creamer:

    Thus, her back is turned to her mother when Maude informs her, "Charlotte Remington's husband was shot right on Oglethorpe Avenue last night. You must know her, don't you?
From when you used to run around with that Remington boy?
What was his name? I know it was Gilbert, after his daddy and
Grandaddy
, but what did they used to call him again?"

    Gib
.

    "I know Charlotte-I mean, I knew her a long time ago." Ignoring the other question, Mimi lifts the carton of half-and-half from the shelf with a trembling hand. "I don't know her husband, though. Is he…?"

    "Serious condition in the hospital is all they're
sayin
' on the news."

    "Do they say who shot him?"

    Maude shrugs. "It's just like those snipers that go around
shootin
' up cities up North.
Can't believe it's
startin
' down here."

    "I can't, either." Mimi fumbles for a spoon in the drawer,
then
stirs her coffee so violently that it spills over the top of the mug.

    "Everybody always thought those
Remingtons
had it all," Maude muses, stooping to pick up a little truck from the collection of toys she purchased at yard sales and keeps in a plastic laundry hamper for Cameron. "I'm
startin
' to think all they really have is a whole lot of money. I wouldn't trade places with any one of '
em
.
How 'bout you?"

    "Of course not," Mimi murmurs, watching her son happily grasp the used toy in his chubby little hands.

    Tucked into the pocket of his lightweight black-wool dress pants,
Gib's
cell phone rings just as he reaches the Bryan Street parking garage where he left his rental car the night before.

    He contemplates not answering it, hardly in the mood to talk after the night he just had.

    But curiosity gets the better of him and he reaches for the phone to see
who's
calling.

    The number on the caller ID screen isn't local, and it takes
Gib
a moment to place the area code.

    Oh. California.

    He flips the phone open.
"Yeah,
Phyllida
."

    "Where are you?"

    "Why?"

    "Because I want to send you flowers," is the sarcastic response. "What do you think? For one thing, it's Sunday morning and I'm assuming you never came home last night and I have no idea where you are."

    "Save the worrying for your kid,
Phyll
. I'm a big boy. Sometimes these things happen."

    "Trust
me,
I'm not all that worried about you right now, Gib. But I need you to get back here as soon as you
can,
and…"

    "And what?" he asks edgily when she trails off.

    "And I hope you can account for every second of the last twelve hours."

    "Why?" he asks, his heart pounding.

    
"Because somebody shot Charlotte's husband."

    Pacing the narrow aisle between two short rows of uncomfortable chairs, Charlotte instantly recognizes the slender young blonde who bursts into the private surgical waiting room, pulling a rolling suitcase.

    
Royce's daughter.

    At last

    "Charlotte Maitland?"

    "That's me. You must be Aimee."

    "Yes." Her stepdaughter rushes over to her, grabbing her in a tight embrace.

    Caught off guard by the fervent greeting, Charlotte returns it gratefully. These have been the longest, loneliest hours of her life, and Aimee feels less a stranger to her than her own cousins did when they were here earlier.

    "I'm so glad you're here," Charlotte tells her, but the words sound more strained than she intended.

    Probably because I've never met her before in my life, and here I am clinging to her like she's my long-lost best friend.

    She releases Aimee from her grasp.

    "My luggage," the girl says, turning to the suitcase she left behind in the doorway.

    "I'll get it. Sit down." Charlotte hurries over to grab the bag, noticing the airline tag around the handle. "You had to check it?"

    
Too big for carry-on.
I didn't know how long I'd be here, so I just threw everything into the biggest bag I had." 'That's good." Charlotte nods, trying to think of something else to say, and missing her husband more than ever. This wasn't how she was supposed to meet Royce's daughter for the first time.

    "When I didn't see you in the big waiting room I was worried that something went wrong and he was still in surgery, but I can tell by your face that Daddy's okay. He is, isn't he?" Aimee adds anxiously.

    "He's out of the OR but still in recovery. They told me I could wait in here instead of going down to the big waiting room."

    "Why?"

    The question is perfunctory, yet Charlotte doesn't want to answer it.

    She suspects the nurses allowed her to remain in this small, empty waiting room rather than mingle with the masses because she's a Remington, a VIP. Or maybe it's because of the commotion caused earlier down the hall when a couple of pesky reporters tried to question her, before a stern nurse ordered them out.