The Final Victim (33 page)

    She sighs, pressing her forehead against the screen, wishing she could go, too.

    Royce will wonder why she isn't there. She told Aimee to tell him that she had some things to see to at home first and that she'll be along shortly.

    "If he asks what they are, make up something," she cautioned her stepdaughter. 'Tell him I… I had to pay bills, or something."

    She hates to lie, or have Aimee do it on her behalf, but there's no reason to alarm Royce by letting him know what's going on around here. Not right now, when all he should be focused on is recovering from his ordeal.

    A floorboard creaks, and Dorado reappears in the doorway, a questioning look on his darkly handsome face.

    "My daughter's gone," she tells him.

    He nods.
"All right."

    She sees a flicker of sympathy in his eyes and wishes he would say something, anything, to make this less disturbing.

    But he simply turns to leave the room, undoubtedly going to alert Williamson that the coast is clear.

    The backup officers are already on their way, she knows. As soon as they arrive, Charlotte is certain, chaos will prevail.

    
Gib
and the others will be questioned, and the detectives will be free to execute the search warrant they obtained before they arrived.

    If
Grandaddy
really is haunting
Oakgate
, he's got to be furious about this, Charlotte thinks, shaking her head in dread as she hears heavy footsteps going up the stairs already.

    "I still have no idea why you left everything to me and not to my cousins, but I really don't think
Gib
is guilty,
Grandaddy
," she whispers to his ghost. "I want to help him somehow. But there's nothing I can do for him now."

    Then it comes to her, as if her grandfather's spirit really does exist, and is channeling thoughts into her head.

    There is one thing she can do.

    She hurries out of the parlor to make the necessary phone call.

    Perched in her wheelchair before the oval mahogany cheval mirror, Jeanne stares vacantly at her reflection.

    One story below, she can hear heavy footfalls, creaking floorboards, doors opening and closing, and the rumble of unfamiliar voices.

    "Something is going on down there." Melanie's voice is an octave lower than usual and she frowns as she runs the brush through Jeanne's long white hair. "I don't like the sounds of it, Jeanne, do you?"

    "No…"

    The bristles tug at a snarl; Jeanne winces.

    Melanie's reflection reveals that she doesn't even notice; her eyes dart expectantly toward the door with every stroke.

    "What do you think is happening?" Jeanne asks nervously.

    "I have no idea. Do you want me to go down and check?"

    "I don't know. I'm afraid…"

    The distinct crunch of rubber tires on the crushed-shell driveway floats up through the open window at the front of the house.

    "Do you hear that? Somebody else is here," she informs Melanie, who has already lowered the brush and r is hurrying over to peer out.

    "It's definitely a police car," she reports. 'This time, it's marked. But I knew those others were cop cars, too.
f
One, two, three… Why are all these police here, Jeanne? This isn't good. It isn't good at all."

    Gnarled hands clenched into fists in her lap, Jeanne remains silent, staring at herself in the mirror-this time, really seeing what is there.

    
A sad, lonely old woman.

    There was a time, in her youth, when she was quite beautiful, almost as great a beauty as her grandniece Charlotte, minus the distinctive Remington cleft chin, of course.

     The first time Jeanne laid eyes on Charlotte the day Norris and Connie June brought her home as a newborn, that chin of hers surely put to rest any doubt that Charlotte was a Remington, through and through…

    
More importantly, that her father was, before her.

    Unlike his older brother,
Xavy
, Norris never did favor his father's side of the family. He had the same long, lean build, but his coloring was different, lighter. He looked so little like a Remington, in fact, that outsiders occasionally teased
Eleanore
about the mailman.

    She never laughed.

    Within these tabby and brick walls, there was no teasing about Norris's looks. Gilbert managed to treat his second son the same as he did his namesake. But Jeanne knew her brother had his doubts about his paternity.

    More importantly,
Eleanore
knew as well. Nothing would convince her stubbornly suspicious husband of her faithfulness.

    
Nothing during her lifetime, anyway.
Eleanore
didn't live to see the granddaughter whose birth put the question to rest.

    Before Charlotte came along, Jeanne herself used to stare at Norris, looking for any resemblance to Jonathan Barrow, the handsome financier
Eleanore
met at one of her own dinner parties not long after
Xavy
was born.

    In the wake of Gilbert's accusations, Mr. Barrow was banned from
Oakgate
forever.

    Jeanne longed to come right out and ask her sister-in-law, point-blank, if it was true she'd had an affair. Jeanne would have understood-in fact, wouldn't have blamed her sister-in-law if she had packed up the babies and left Gilbert altogether.

    Nor would she have been surprised if
Eleanore
had threatened to take Gilbert's life-and her own-just as Jeanne's mother, Marie, had threatened, decades earlier brandishing a mother-of-pearl-handled pistol.

    One would think that her brother-after watching his own mean-tempered father drive his mother in the arms of another man-would have learned. On would have expected Gilbert Remington H to do everything in his power to make his own marriage work.

    But then, Gilbert never did see the worst of what had happened between his parents. Only Jeanne was here, cowering in her bed, on the night when the gun was drawn. Gilbert was safely off at Telfair Academy.

    Thus, the sins of the father were passed to the son, along with the alma mater, the Remington millions- and the widower's curse.

    Life went on… for everyone except
Eleanore
.

    Jeanne wonders to this day whether her brother secretly blamed himself for his wife's suicide.

    Just as she wonders whether her own mother's fatal fall from a horse while out riding alone was truly an accident-or instead a murderous reprisal for drawing a gun on her own husband.

    Marie feared her husband's fierce temper. That much is clear in her journals.

    But Jeanne will never know the whole truth.

    And whatever her brother Gilbert might have known, or suspected, about their parents' dark past was buried with him in the grave he shares with
Eleanore
.

    Only the pearl-handled pistol and the journals remain-in Jeanne's possession-as evidence that any of it ever
ever
, happened at all.

    Now, listening to the police moving through the floors beneath this one, Jeanne knows that she must get to it before they do.

    She turns to Melanie. "Can you push me over to the bureau, please?
Hurry."

    "I
said
I'm not answering any questions without my attorney present,"
Gib
insists, fixing the pair of detectives with a flinty stare.

    "And we just asked where you were on Saturday night. If you don't have anything to hide, Mr. Remington, there's no reason why you should have a problem answering that simple question."

    "I have absolutely nothing to hide," he lies, hoping his narrowed gaze masks his inner turmoil. "But I happen to be a lawyer myself, so I know better than to tell you anything that might be used against me.

    The door to his room was left slightly ajar when the detectives came in to rouse him from a sound sleep. Now he can hear activity in the hall and beyond; scurrying footsteps, the rumble of unfamiliar voices, even what sounds like furniture being moved about.

    Obviously, the police are searching the house. They must have a warrant.

    It's only a matter of time before they make their way in here and start going through
Gib's
things.

    And when they do…

    Feeling sick,
Gib
watches Williamson idly lift his cell phone from the dresser. The detective examines it, turning it over and over in his beefy hands as though he's never seen such an object before. Then he sets it down again, wearing a thoughtful expression.

    My phone…

    Even if their search of
Gib's
room somehow neglects to turn up anything incriminating, the police are going to go through his telephone records.

    
Gib's
heart beats faster, his thoughts careening wildly through a mental roster of potentially damaging calls he's made lately.

    There are plenty, should the detectives go to the trouble of tracing the numbers.

    
But none that can prove I had anything to do with what happened Saturday night.

    "If you won't tell us where you were," the other detective, Dorado, says casually, "maybe you can just tell us whether you're going to have somebody who can vouch for you. That way, we can start making calls."

    "I told you, I'm not saying anything until I can get a lawyer."

    And that's going to take quite some time. Enough time to allow him to come up with a suitable alibi… and cover his tracks.

    There's a knock on the door.

    
"Yeah?
What is it?" Williamson asks in the same brusque tone he uses for interrogation.

    The door opens wider.

    A uniformed officer pokes his head in. "Mr. Remington's attorney is here, Detective."

    Startled,
Gib
raises an eyebrow.

    "You already called an attorney?" Williamson asks, equally startled.

    "No…"

    "I did." The door opens wider, and
Gib
sees Charlotte standing there.

    Behind her is Tyler Hawthorne.

    "
Oh, my God
, I'm so happy to see-hey, who's she?" Devin is standing on the elevated stoop of her parents' house on East Jones Street, watching Aimee wave as she pulls away from the curb.

    
"Royce's daughter."
Reaching the top step,
Lianna
gives her friend a quick hug.

    "I didn't know he had a daughter."

    "Yeah, she doesn't live around here. She's here because… well, you know."

    
"Right.
How is he?"

    "Fine, I guess. I mean, he will be."

    "What's she like?"

    
"Aimee?"
She rolls her eyes. "She's a major pain in the butt."

    "Why?"

    "She talks too much. I swear to God, my ears are ringing after being with her for the past hour."

    
All right, maybe that's a slight exaggeration,
Lianna
admits, but only to herself.

    Aimee does talk a lot, though it wasn't necessarily nonstop chatter. She asked a lot of questions on the way to
Bojangles
, about what music
Lianna
likes, and which TV shows she watches, and where she goes to school, and what her favorite subjects are.

    They're the same basic, boring questions all grownups ask when they're trying to make conversation, and
Lianna
grudgingly answered them all.

    Until Aimee asked, just as casually as she posed the others, "So do you have a boyfriend?"

    In the passenger's seat,
Lianna
instantly went from sprawled to stiff-
spined
. Did Mom tell Aimee about Kevin? Did she instruct her to try and get
Lianna
to spill the details about him? Is that why she relented on the grounding, and asked Aimee to drive her to Savannah?

    
When
Lianna
didn't answer, Aimee glanced over at her, and she must have seen the look on
Lianna's
face, because she said, "Not a good topic, huh?"

    
Lianna
shook her head, turned up the radio, and remained silent all the way to the restaurant She wasn't planning to order anything when they got there, out of spite.
But when she smelled food, her appetite returned with a vengeance.
She realized she hadn't eaten much of anything since the yogurt late Saturday night. When it was their turn at the register, she found herself ordering a big biscuit with sausage gravy, and fried chicken on the side.

    
"Fried chicken for breakfast?"
Aimee asked dubiously. "Does your mother give you that at home?"