The Night Before (10 page)

“He’s not stalling.” Sugar, too, was irritated by all the hoops, obstacles and delays that had been thrown at them, but she refused to give up. Flynn Donahue, Attorney at Law, had promised Sugar, Dickie Ray and Cricket that he would find a way to get them their fair share of the Montgomery fortune. After all, they were all grandchildren of Benedict Montgomery, just the same as his legitimate heirs were. The fact that their grandmother, Mary Lou Chaney, had been his secretary rather than his wife was of little consequence. Blood was blood, Donahue had insisted when he’d taken their case nearly a year ago.

Yeah, and what about the rumors that good ol’ Uncle Cameron could be your father?
Sugar had heard nasty gossip all of her life. And now was banking on it.

“Nothin’ like keepin’ it all in the family,” Brad Norton had teased in the eighth grade. His whiny voice had cracked and Sugar couldn’t help but notice he was getting a major case of zits. Good. “I guess you all just like you all. I mean
really
like.” He’d followed the comment by raising his bushy blond eyebrows before sniggering loudly, and his friends, a group of blockheads, had joined in, laughing and pointing.

“What’s it like, Sugar? Is it
sweet
to think that yer uncle is yer pappy?” Billy Quentin had thrown in, hitching up his pants that were always trying to fall down beneath his big belly. He’d been a fat, stupid boy whose father had bred hunting dogs, poached deer and distilled his own whiskey. No one liked Billy so he was constantly shifting from one creepy clique to the next, hoping to score points. That hot September afternoon, Billy had been hoping that by putting Sugar in her rightful white-trash place, he’d score points with Brad and his friends and elevate his own pathetic social position.

“Better’n knowin’ my dad is a jackass and my momma’s a whore like yours. I’d be wonderin’, if I was you, Billy, why your daddy likes his dogs so much. It might help explain why yer so stupid.” She’d walked off and Brad and his friends had laughed at Billy’s expense. To that she’d turned, looked over her shoulder, and said, “And I’d be careful if I was you, too, Brad. Your daddy’s a preacher and you probably wouldn’t want him to know that you got yerself a messa
Playboys
under yer mattress.”

“I don’t!” he’d yelled, outraged, but Sugar had just smiled.

“So then you lied when you were braggin’ the other day over at the gas station?” she’d asked, and his mouth had dropped open so wide he could have caught flies. He hadn’t known Sugar had been in the rest room of the gas station on the other side of the door with the broken window transom and she’d heard him boasting to his miserable pack of friends.

That had been just one of dozens of incidents when Sugar had been reminded of the incest that was rumored to be a part of her family. She’d suffered through all the painful laughs, sniggers and disparaging looks. But now, damn it, she was finally going to get her own back. If the damned rumors were true, then she figured it was her right to cash in on the Montgomery fortune.

But the wheels of justice were grinding slow enough to get on Sugar’s last nerve. She was sick of living in this double-wide tin can, sick of being considered white trash by the holier-than-thou legitimate side of the family, and sick to death of dancing for a bunch of drunken middle-aged men who practically came in their work pants when she kicked up her legs. As if any of them would have a chance with her. She was a stripper. Not a whore. It took a whole lot more than a couple of twenties stuck into her G-string to get her to meet some loser in his pickup and give him a blow job.

The sooner Flynn could wrap up this lawsuit, the better. She and her siblings were contesting Cameron’s will, claiming their stake of half of whatever Berneda and her brood had inherited, which just happened to be a shit-load of money. She wasn’t sure how much, but it was in the millions.
Millions!
Even split seven ways between Cameron’s surviving progeny, that was more money than she’d see stripping in her lifetime. What she could do with just a portion of that money! Not only her, but Cricket and Dickie Ray as well.

“You want it, too,” Dickie Ray observed, as if he could read her mind. “So bad you can taste it.”

“Flynn said this could take years.”

“Bullshit. I might not have years.”

“He’s doing everything he can.”

“That fat turd?” Dickie Ray snorted his disgust.

“Haven’t you heard that patience is a virtue?”

“Don’t you believe it. If you want something bad enough, you’ve got to make it happen. I learned that a long time ago,” he said as she looked pointedly at the clock mounted over the refrigerator.

“I’ve got to get down to the club,” she said, reaching for her purse.

“Fine.” Dickie Ray squared his hat upon his head again and started across the scratched linoleum to the front door. “Tell Donahue he’d better get the damned ball rollin’ and soon. Elsewise I just might have to take things into my own hands.” He winked at her, and she had the uneasy sensation that he’d already begun.

“Don’t do anything stupid, Dickie.” She found her purse and searched for her car keys.

“Me?” he asked, raising his hands toward the low ceiling, his expression the picture of innocence.

Sugar was starting to get a bad feeling about it. Her fingers curled around the key chain.

“Anything I do, I do for us.” He winked as he reached the door. “Remember that.”

The screen door slammed behind him, and Sugar felt as if the devil himself had breathed against her spine. Dickie Ray was dangerous. A loose cannon. If he wasn’t careful, he’d screw up everything for all of them . . . she couldn’t let that happen. Taking his empty cup into the kitchen and dropping it into the sink, she heard her brother’s pickup start with a deafening roar. “Don’t do it,” she whispered as dread settled over her as tight and close as a funeral shroud. “Whatever it is, Dickie, please . . . don’t do it.”

 

 

Which was as it should be. Atropos slipped the key into its lock and walked into the wine cellar where ancient, forgotten bottles climbed the walls. She crossed quickly and found the hidden lock which, when engaged, moved the rack enough to reveal the door that she slid silently through. She closed the door behind her and felt a calm come over her, here, in this secret spot.

The interior was painted stark white, the fixtures gleaming chrome, polished to a mirrored surface. No dust lingered on the tile floor, and the chair in one corner was white vinyl, the desk brushed metal. A chrome lamp, white leather recliner, stereo with a neat stack of CDs that could play softly from hidden speakers that were buffered from the rest of the old building by soundproof panels, filled the room. Every surface was spotless.

It was a private space. Closed off from the world. Away from the city and yet near enough for convenience. Hidden and isolated. Perfect. If she could only push out the noise in her mind.

She slipped surgical slippers over her feet and a cap over her head, then pulled surgical gloves from a dispenser and pushed a button on the stereo. Soft baroque music filled the room in soothing tones. If anyone found her hiding spot, she was certain she’d left no real clue to her identity, though her artwork would garner some speculation.

Carefully she withdrew a small plastic package from her purse and made her way to the desk. With her key she opened the top drawer, then stared smugly at her treasures. A clear plastic bag of photographs and a zippered case.

Humming softly, Atropos opened the plastic bag and let the snapshots fall onto the top of the desk. She sorted quickly through them, shuffling the glossy, battered photographs as deftly as a Las Vegas dealer, spying blurry images of familiar faces, stopping only when she found the photograph of Josh Bandeaux.

“Tsk, tsk. What a bad boy.” She unwrapped the thin plastic that surrounded the pair of surgical scissors. The stainless steel instrument gleamed to a mirror finish except for the dark stains that remained on the tips of the blades. Josh Bandeaux’s blood ... no longer fresh, but dried on her weapon.

Atropos remembered the look on Bandeaux’s handsome face as he’d caught a glimpse of his assassin, the horror to know that it was his time, his personal Armageddon. It had been so easy. Remarkably easy. A necessary task that had offered a little thrill, not so much in the killing as in the knowledge that Bandeaux realized what was happening. His sheer terror had been evident in the twisted comprehension of his Hollywood-handsome features. Even now, remembering the fear in his eyes, she felt a sweet rush of adrenalin, a pleasant peace that helped quell the rush of noise in her head.

Unfortunately she didn’t have time to bask in the thrill of the kill. She’d had to work fast. Now she studied the snapshot of Josh. Tanned, and wearing only a Speedo swimsuit, he had an arm slung around the shoulders of a beautiful woman dressed in a scanty yellow bikini. Palm trees and an incredible sunset were the backdrop for Bandeaux and the woman, who was not, of course, his wife. No, this nearly naked, bronzed blonde—wasn’t her name Millicent?—was no one important. Not even to Josh. A whore. Nothing more. Nothing less. Someone unneeded.

Time to get rid of her.

The scissors flashed under the flourescent light. With a clean cut, the photo was halved and the smiling beauty fluttered to the floor to land forgotten on the white tile. “Sayonara,” Atropos whispered.

Then, in the remaining portion of the snapshot, Josh was standing alone, a drink in his hand. But not for long.

Off with his frothy island cocktail, and oops, part of his hand as well. Oh, too bad.

But Josh was still smiling, offering up that wide, sexy, woman-killer grin to the camera.

That wouldn’t do.

No more smile. No, Josh’s head floated slowly downward to join the other scraps of his body parts.

What about his dick?

Oh. The most important part. Can’t leave that attached!

Gone. Josh Bandeaux’s legs and groin were neatly separated from what was left of him—just a naked, hairy chest and neck. Not very flattering. Not any longer.

And now he’d join the others. She looked at the one piece of art in the tiny space, a large family tree covered in Plexiglass.

The Montgomery family tree.

All members of the family were listed in the spreading branches, and the branches included those married, then divorced; bastard children; anyone who had married in. Like Bandeaux. Some of the branches had pictures attached, snapshots of those who had met their preordained fate.

Carefully, she removed the frame from the wall, laid it upon the desk and using a screwdriver she located in her zippered case, she unscrewed the corner pieces. After lifting off the top covering of Plexiglass, she placed what was left of the snapshot of Josh—his hairy torso—beside his name on the tree. She found his life strand . . . red and black thread carefully braided together and pre-measured by her sister, Lachesis. Gently Atropos glued his life strand to the trunk of the tree and ran it along his particular branch . . . a withered branch, one attached only because he’d married into the family. Once it was in place, she eyed her work.

In her estimation, Josh “The Bandit” Bandeaux had never looked better.

The press was camped out at her front door when Caitlyn returned home. Turning the corner into the alley that ran behind her house, she noticed a reporter and a cameraman, each smoking a cigarette, seated in a white van. The streetlights had just turned on. Twilight was settling on the city, but still they waited for her.

The day was rapidly going from bad to worse. From the sideview mirror she saw them crush their cigarettes and throw open the front doors of the vehicle. Great. Caitlyn pushed the garage door opener, turned the corner and had to wait as the door ground slowly upward. “Come on, come on,” she growled at the lazy mechanism as she spied the reporter hurrying along the alley. Caitlyn punched the throttle just as there was enough clearance so as not to scrape the roof. Her Lexus shot forward. She cut the engine and pushed on the opener again. The door started downward but not before the reporter, a square-jawed, fit man with an impossibly thick head of hair, stepped agilely into the garage, placing his leg in front of the electronic eye. The door stopped abruptly.

“Mrs. Bandeaux, I’m Max O’Dell with WKAM,” he said over the clicking of the jammed mechanism.

“I know who you are.” She was already out of the car.

He grinned as if she’d handed him a compliment. “If I could have a word with you about your husband. I hate to intrude, but I just have a few questions.”

“No comment.” Caitlyn slung the strap of her purse over her shoulder just as the cameraman, toting his shoulder-held camera, jogged into the driveway.

“Please. It’ll just take a couple of minutes,” O’Dell insisted.

“Not right now.”

“But—”

“You’re in my garage and I’m asking you to leave. I have nothing to say to you.” From the corner of her eye, she saw the cameraman focusing. “I don’t want to call the police, but I will.”

“You were separated from your husband.”

“And you’re trespassing.” From the side door to the garage, Oscar was barking wildly. “I’m going inside. If you’ll excuse me . . . and even if you don’t.” Slapping the button, she heard the garage door start again, this time elevating. Her eyes, behind her sunglasses, narrowed on the reporter. “I’m closing the door before I let the dog out and telephone the police, so if I were you, I’d beat a hasty retreat.” She didn’t wait for him to respond, just jabbed the button again and walked through the side door to be greeted by Oscar, who was jumping up and down as if his legs were springs.

Caitlyn actually smiled as she reached down and picked up the fluff of wild fur. Her face was washed by a long pink tongue. “Yeah, I missed you, too,” she whispered as the dog’s wet nose brushed her cheek. “Big time.” She half expected the pushy reporter to follow her, but she heard the sounds of voices on the other side of the courtyard wall and realized Max O’Dell and his cohort from WKAM had given up for the evening. Thank God.

Inside, she fed the dog, then hung up the telephone and listened to the messages that had collected on voice mail. Three reporters, including Nikki Gillette, left numbers for her to call back. Caitlyn deleted each message. There were two other hang ups and a short message from Detective Reed at police headquarters asking her to return his call. Her heartbeat suddenly raced. Warning bells clanged in her mind. What could he want? What did he know? Hadn’t Troy told her not to talk to the police? But she couldn’t ignore them, and she wasn’t about to start hunting down a lawyer today.

Squaring her shoulders, she punched the number Reed had left. An operator told her Detective Reed was off duty for the night. Caitlyn left her number then tapped her fingers nervously on the counter.

Kelly still hadn’t called. Maybe she was out of town. As a buyer for one of the biggest department stores in the city, Kelly was gone often . . . but she usually checked her messages. Caitlyn walked through the house and looked through the front window. The van for WKAM was no longer at the curb. Thankfully, Max O’Dell had taken the hint and left.

But he’d be back. And there would be others.

Caitlyn had dealt with reporters before, and if they smelled a story, they kept on the trail, never giving up. They reminded her of trained hunting dogs on the scent of wounded prey.

She picked up the hand-held phone and walked into the living room where the flowers she’d bought last week were beginning to fade and drop petals on the coffee table. Falling into the soft cushions of the couch, Caitlyn glanced over at the baby grand. A framed picture of Jamie rested upon the glossy piano.
Oh, sweet, sweet baby.

Blessed with curly brown hair, eyes as clear and blue as a June sky, and a button nose with freckles upon its bridge, Jamie had been a chubby, adorable imp. In the photograph she was staring over the photographer’s head, looking skyward, her hands clasped, her smile showing off tiny teeth . . . the teeth that had made her cranky and drool as they’d appeared. Caitlyn’s throat thickened. Was it possible that she was gone . . . so precious a life cut short after only three impossibly brief years?

Caitlyn remembered how quickly a runny nose had become a fever, the virus attacking so swiftly it had been frightening. Friday night. By Saturday morning, Jamie had been listless. Caitlyn called the pediatrician’s office, but it had been closed. By afternoon, Jamie was worse and Caitlyn had taken her to the hospital where, despite the efforts of an emergency room team, her only child had died from a high fever and an unexplained virus. Caitlyn had never forgiven God.

“. . . so leave a message.” Kelly’s recorded message jolted her out of her reverie. She realized that tears were drizzling silently down her face and her heart was as heavy as an anvil, sitting deep in her chest, aching so badly she could barely breathe. She clicked off the phone. Kelly was probably on a buying trip. The truth of the matter was that her twin was gone more often than she was around. No doubt because of the family’s attitude toward her.
It works both ways. Kelly’s attitude about the Montgomery clan is far from stellar.

So what should she do now?

Josh was dead.

Murdered or the victim of suicide.

Josh whom she had loved so passionately.

Josh who had cheated on her.

Josh who was the father of her only child.

Josh, who in his anger, rage and grief, had lashed out at Caitlyn both privately and publicly, insisting she was an unfit mother and screaming that she should be tried for criminal negligence if nothing else.

Josh who was going to make good his threats with the wrongful death suit. Shivering, she rubbed her shoulders and the slashes upon her wrists pulled tight and itched beneath their bandages.

She stared at the cold fireplace and tried to concentrate. Last night Kelly had left a message on her cell and suggested they meet downtown. Yes, that was right. Caitlyn had been bored out of her mind, creating a website that was driving her nuts, so she’d leapt at the chance to get out of the house. She’d thrown on a pair of khakis and a T-shirt with an open blouse as a jacket, then driven to the waterfront . . . and then . . . she’d gone into the bar. One Kelly had discovered. The Swamp.

She leaned back and felt a lump between the cushions, and she dug her fingers down to find her cell phone, turned off as usual, hidden in the couch. She didn’t stop to wonder how it had ended up here in the living room. Didn’t care. She switched it on. The battery was fading, nearly dead, but she was able to read the Caller ID and sure enough, Amanda, as she’d said earlier at Oak Hill, had left a message.

The other one was from Kelly.

She dialed the message retrieval number and heard Amanda’s exasperated voice. “Jesus, don’t you ever have this turned on, Caitlyn? I’m trying to get hold of you. I heard about Josh and I’m really sorry. Let me know what I can do. Call me back.”

Caitlyn erased the message and then, clear as a bell, Kelly’s recording played. “Caitlyn. It’s me. I got your message, but, as usual, you don’t have this damned phone on. Call me back when you can. I’ll be in and out, got to leave town on a buying trip for a couple of days, but I’ll call you back. Pull yourself together, okay? I know you feel awful about Josh, but come on, let’s face it, the bastard’s death isn’t that much of a loss.”

 

 

“Let me get this straight,” Reed said as Gerard St. Claire yanked off his latex gloves and discarded them into a trash can that was marked for medical waste. A glum assistant wearing earphones was cleaning off the stainless steel table in the autopsy room, getting ready for another corpse. It had been a slow weekend for deaths, and Bandeaux’s case had been given top priority; hence the quick results. “You’re saying that Bandeaux died from loss of blood, right?”

“His body was pretty much drained.” The medical examiner pulled off his cap, dropped it into a basket of dirty laundry and was left in his scrubs. The rooms smelled of disinfectant and formaldehyde, death and sweat despite the cool temperature. Stainless steel sinks, tables and equipment gleamed starkly against old tile and dull paint. “And, from what the crime scene team has put together, some of it’s missing.”

Reed stopped short. “Missing? How?”

“Not enough blood was found at the scene to account for his blood loss. Not even with evaporation. So unless Bandeaux gave a gallon at a local blood bank or came up against a vampire or has a pooch with a blood thirst, we’ve got ourselves a problem. Some of the blood is missing.”

“As in stolen?” That didn’t make any sense. “What if the body was moved?”

“It wasn’t. Diane Moses and I agree on that one, and you know that we never see eye to eye.”

“So he could have lost blood somewhere else . . . and made it back home . . . then lost more.”

“No blood trail. And I don’t think so. Because of rigor and the way the blood settled in his body and his loss of body function—the urine that had leaked to the floor—I’d bet he died at the desk.” St. Claire ran his hands over his forehead. His bristly white hair showed a little sweat. “He lost most of the blood through the cuts that were different than the others—they snipped through a small artery on each wrist. The others were pretty superficial and were made after the initial cuts.”

“To make us think it was a suicide.”

“That’s the way I see it.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “And that’s not the only puzzle we’ve got going on with Bandeaux. It looks like old Josh was allergic to something, perhaps the sulfites in a domestic wine. He had a severe reaction, went into anaphylactic shock, would probably have died from it if left alone, but we’re still looking at the chemicals in his blood. He might have been able to get the antidote. However there was another drug in his system, GHB, Gamma Hydroxy Butyrate, that would have rendered him immobile.”

“The date-rape drug?”

“One of ’em,” St. Claire agreed.

“Which means there’s a chance that even if he had an antidote kit with epinephrine, he couldn’t have gotten to it.”

“Or to a hospital or to a phone to call 911.”

“Right. The final analysis of his blood will tell.”

“Why GHB?” Reed asked.

“A street drug, relatively easy to get if you have the right connections. Easy to slip into a drink. Then Josh is putty in our killer’s hands. I can’t tell how out of it he was, maybe he was nearly comatose, but there’s a good chance that he knew what was happening to him.”

The doors on the far side of the room opened, and a gurney with a body bag strapped to it was being maneuvered inside by a heavyset EMT. As the doors shut, Reed caught a glimpse of an ambulance parked on the cement ramp that led up to the street.

“Can I get someone to sign for this?” the EMT asked.

St. Claire’s assistant looked up and nodded as he wiped his hands. With a much-practiced toss of his head, his headset fell to his shoulders and the throb of a deep bass thrummed through the sterile room.

St. Claire said, “So, in my opinion, Bandeaux didn’t die from a suicide. Something else was going on, and oh . . . take a look at this. I put it in my report.” The M.E. walked to a refrigerated drawer and opened it. There, draped in a sheet, his body bluish, was Josh Bandeaux. St. Claire pulled the sheet back carefully so that Reed got a view of the naked body with its odd color, lack of animation and incision lines where the medical examiner had made his cuts to examine Bandeaux’s internal organs. St. Claire gently lifted one of Josh’s hands. “Take a look at the marks on his wrists. Most of them are consistent with a right-handed person slicing his own skin. They match the blade of the knife with his prints on it; the knife you found on the carpet beneath his body. But if you look here . . .” He pointed to a spot on Josh’s arm. “You’ll see that these cuts are at a different angle, as if the blade was positioned straight up—vertically. As I said, the cuts are deep, the veins snipped cleanly, made by something very sharp. Like a surgical instrument or maybe a boning knife. These are the cuts that assured Josh of dying. They would have been very difficult to make by the victim.”

“So you’re saying the suicide was staged.”

“I’d bet my Ferrari on it.”

“You don’t own a Ferrari.”

“Yeah, but if I did.” He let the drape fall into place, then pushed Josh back into his refrigerated tomb. “The family wants me to release the body. You got any problem with that?”

“Not if you found everything we need.”

“I did,” St. Clair said as he braced himself on a table while leaning down to remove the green slippers that covered his shoes.

Reed’s pager beeped. Glancing at the readout, he recognized Morrisette’s number. “Gotta run. Thanks for pushing this through so fast.”

“No problem.”

Reed was already shouldering open the thick door and flipping open his cell phone as he stepped into a hallway where the floor tiles gleamed with layers of wax and the walls were painted a soft, quieting green. He took the stairs to an outside door and shoved it open. Heat, thick as tar, blasted him. The natives barely noticed, but it was hot as hell to a man who had grown up in Chicago and spent a lot of his adult life in San Francisco. Even the recent rain shower hadn’t done much more than settle the dust and leave a puddle or two on the streets.