Writ on Water (21 page)

The thought made her blink and then shudder. She didn't know which was the lesser of the two evils.

And what about the girl?
This was asked with a nod in her direction, and Chloe again froze in place.

Shock. The doctor had been called. A good night's rest. Perhaps a sedative. No doubt she would be able to talk to them tomorrow. Not that she knew anything, but just for the sake of formality and thoroughness. Of course they would call. Just as soon as the doctor said she was fit to make a statement.

The doctor arrived as the sheriff was leaving. The two men exchanged words in the doorway.

A tranquilizer was offered immediately, and as Sheriff Bell still lingered, watching her with his bright gaze, Chloe took it. Then she closed her eyes on the nightmare of strange people and questions and waited for everyone to go away.

Soon the room was quiet. But Chloe intuited that she was not alone. She knew the feel of the Patricks by then, and both Rory and MacGregor were still with her. She guessed that their words to the sheriff aside, they probably wouldn't leave until they had talked with her.

It took a massive effort of will, but she forced her eyelids open.

“I'm okay,” she croaked in a voice totally unlike her own. “Sorry for hitting you, Rory.”

Rory's eyes assessed her condition.

“That's okay. I shouldn't have come up on you like that in the dark. So, how much of our conversation did you follow?”

MacGregor made a wordless protest. He looked as exhausted as she felt.

“Sorry about making you carry me, MacGregor. I guess I didn't show real well in this crisis.”

“That's okay, girl. That wasn't a sight for a lady to be seeing—and I'm so sorry it happened.”

Chloe agreed heartily, though she didn't think it was a sight that a gentleman needed to see either. Especially not an elderly one with a heart condition.

“Well, you'll have ample opportunity to repay the debt to my father,” Rory told her. Then he added to his sire: “Sit down, before you fall down.”

Chloe wasn't so far gone that she misunderstood what he was saying about her debt. “You aren't going to say anything to the sheriff about the family cemetery?” she asked MacGregor.

The two men stared at one another and then at her.

“No.
We're
not,” Rory answered.

Chloe gazed at him, and for one instant wondered if the situation had been different—if one of them had found the body instead of her—would Isaac have been reburied and the police never called at all? That would certainly be the easiest thing for them. Rory's voice was soft, and his actions had been almost sweet, but the sugarcoating did nothing to hide the steel will underneath. He was waiting for her answer to the unspoken plea.

“I understand,” she whispered. “There's no need to say anything, is there? The . . . the body wasn't anywhere near the family cemetery. It can have no bearing on the investigation.”

“No, it wasn't anywhere near the other cemetery.”

“But the shovel and crowbar? They came from Botanics.” She went slowly, wanting this all to make sense.

“Probably.”

“And he was going to . . .”

“Obviously, he was going to rob the cemetery—just as MacGregor feared. Possibly he brought them with him. Or he might have taken them from the nursery. It would explain the break-in.”

Rory and his father again exchanged a look she couldn't read.

“He was going to rob the slave cemetery.”

“So it would appear.”

Chloe tried to swallow this. It wasn't going down smoothly. Why rob the slave cemetery? There was nothing there.

“And Claude stopped him?” Her brain tried on this concept, but in its damaged state, the idea didn't fit quite right. Her reading of Claude's character said that he was much more likely to have suggested that they both go and rob the family's memento mori. There wasn't enough of value in that poorer boneyard to make it worthwhile. She knew that, and they must have known it as well if they had any contact with the funerary thieves. They wouldn't want those rotting old stones, and there wouldn't be anything buried with the bodies. The only place that would interest the funerary brokers to the tune of twenty thousand dollars was in the family cemetery.

But perhaps she was simply so prejudiced against the missing Claude that she was misjudging his character. Maybe he actually shared the Patrick obsessive reverence for the dead. They had never really spoken together because of Chloe's fear of Isaac Runyon. She should accept MacGregor's
and Rory's judgment about their kinsman. Shouldn't she?

“Apparently he did stop him,” Rory answered again. “Permanently.”

That part was indisputable.

“And then Claude just panicked? He took his car and ran away?” She turned to look at MacGregor. His gray face showed neither contradiction nor confirmation of her question.

“It makes sense, doesn't it?” he asked her on an odd note of pleading.

“And when they find Claude?” Chloe asked him softly. “What will happen then?”

MacGregor looked over at his son.

“If they find Claude,” Rory said, “then they'll know exactly what happened.”

“If?”

“I think Claude is hidden away somewhere. I doubt that Sheriff Bell will ever find him.”

Hidden.
Where the sheriff would never find him.

Chloe began to shiver beneath her afghan. She turned her eyes toward the window. She couldn't bear the weight of the combined Patrick gazes. It seemed safer to stare into the night.

“Okay, I won't say anything about the other cemetery either,” she whispered, unhappily committing herself to the collusion. “I don't trust Bell at all.”

“Let me help you up to bed.” Rory's hands were gentle as he raised her to her feet, and for a brief
moment she allowed herself to lean into his strength and warmth.

It might have been her imagination longing for comfort, but it seemed to her that he dropped a kiss into her tangled hair and breathed a soft
thank you
.

Or maybe it was
thank God
.

The day which we fear as our last
is but the birthday of eternity.
—Seneca

Somehow Chloe managed to get through her interview with the police on the morning following the murder without breaking a sweat or giving anything away. It helped that the room where she was interviewed was air-conditioned to the point of causing frostbite, and that Rory and MacGregor were omnipresent and prepared to act as watchdogs against any less-than-gentle questioning by Sheriff Bell—though at moments, she honestly wondered if Rory was watching her more closely than the police.

This was an odd notion, but when she had been shown some of the crime scene photos, particularly the one with the pistol in it, Rory had all but pressed noses with her as he waited for her reaction. Maybe, after her hysterics the night before, he had been expecting her to faint.

Of course, she didn't swoon. Didn't even come conveniently close. For once in her life, Chloe was happy for the lingering vestiges of male chauvinism that haunted Riverview and its environs. She greatly appreciated the fact that Sheriff Bell obviously believed that old chestnut about females being fragile flowers and rather too inattentive to their surroundings to recall any useful details in moments of distress. This meant that he did not press her very hard when she pleaded faulty memory about certain facts and events and refused to look at any other photographs of the dead man because it
upset
her.

The excuse of a temporary memory failure wasn't a complete lie. The details about the hours right after finding the body were a little hazy because they had gotten mixed up with her nightmare. However, the actual physical state of the corpse was branded into her brain. Remembering things—images seen through her camera—was part of her job.

And if she needed her memory refreshed, she had better means than the poor-quality police photos at hand to do it. The digital camera in her bag had a built-in display and could zoom in up to a 3 × enlargement of the photo. And the images would be even clearer once loaded onto the computer. If she loaded it onto the portable. Chloe was pretty certain that she had disabled the automatic backup software that would send her backlog of photos to the server at work when she returned to
the office and docked the portable with the computer in the office. But, in this case,
pretty certain
wasn't certain enough.

The interview wasn't a long one, as no one had anything new to add to the previous day's statements, and MacGregor wasn't encouraging anyone to linger for coffee. Chloe was soon allowed to return to bed and sleep around the clock without interruption.

Now it was a new morning and she was still in her room, alone with her camera and a guilty conscience. Chloe slumped against her pillows and groaned at the thought of what was sitting in her bags.

Though she knew that everyone, from her police-friendly father right down to the less than stellar-intentioned Sheriff Bell, would say that she was wrong to hold back her own photographs of the crime scene, she did not mention them to either the police or the Patricks. She had taken the stick from the camera before going to bed that night and had put it away in a waterproof pouch where it would not get damaged or lost. It was a cowardly impulse, but she would have liked to have been rid of the horrid thing altogether. However, her conscience, which would not allow her to produce the documentary film, would not let her destroy it either.

For a time, in the dark stretches of the night when she had lain awake in a tranquilized haze trying to come to terms with what had happened, she toyed with printing out selected images onto
photographic paper and bringing the sheriff the crime-scene photographs by themselves.

But once the police had those prints, they were probably just bright enough to ask for the original source material as well, and then she'd have to explain about the digital camera and the computer—where the family cemetery photos had been uploaded before she erased and reused the memory sticks—and she had promised MacGregor—
twice
—that she would never tell a soul about his cemetery.

“Damn,” she muttered.

There was probably a way to selectively delete photos from the computer without leaving obvious gaps in the memory, but she wasn't at all sure how to completely get rid of all traces of the photos short of wiping the disk. And even if she reformatted the whole thing, she wasn't certain that the images would be completely lost. She'd heard about computer experts being able to retrieve stuff from erased hard-drives.

And even if she hadn't twice made that promise of secrecy, Chloe wasn't certain that she would give up her film to Sheriff Bell anyway. She was still in some weird state of shock, but she was thinking clearly enough to know exactly what would happen if she revealed the family cemetery to this particular police force. Not mincing words, Bell was ambitious scum who couldn't keep his mouth shut—and he wouldn't pass up the opportunity to look important in the world's eyes. She
was convinced that consideration for the Patrick family, or its treasures, would never sway him from seeking fame.

Indeed, since he seemed to actually dislike the Patricks, revelation of their secrets would in point of fact look twice as attractive to him. He would probably call the tabloids—she felt it likely that he was the type who had their numbers taped to the drawer in his desk, and that he'd had them there for years just waiting for his big moment to come—and
The Treasures of the Lost Cemetery of Riverview
where
Family Curse Strikes Grave-robber
would be an overnight sensation in both the printed press and shortly after in the small screen.

Well, Sheriff Bell could just take his ambitions and get real intimate with them!

If word of the cemetery got out, by dawn of the next day, every grave robber and reporter with access to CNN or a radio would be on a plane for Virginia, making plans on how to pick over the bones of the living and dead Patricks, their preference of targets depending upon whether they were tomb raiders or paparazzi.

Perhaps worse still were the possible machinations of the politicians. Granny Claire was nuts about some things, but her views about the state government had always seemed very coherent and unflattering. Chloe wouldn't put it past the state to try to step in and declare that Riverview was some sort of state historical treasure and seize the land from MacGregor. She was a little hazy on
the rules about eminent domain, but there had been some recent cases that went against landowners, and it seemed that the avaricious politicians would find
some
way to profit from the situation. It was the nature of the beast to lust after wealth—and there were millions upon millions of dollars just sitting there at Riverview, unprotected except for that antler hedge, some thorny creepers, and one old gate.

Of course, the Patricks could sue for damages to their property, but the art in their cemetery was irreplaceable, and there probably wasn't enough money in the entire state—never mind the county—to compensate the family monetarily for the damage that would be done.

The bizarre story—and injury from sensation-seeking reporters—could spill over into Rory's business as well. They would find some way to link the break-in at Botanics to their story.
Curse of Riverview
they would call it
,
or something equally lurid.

And that, of course, was the least of the losses the Patricks would sustain. Seeing his family's graveyard disturbed by trespassers and robbers would probably kill MacGregor.

MacGregor might kill someone else, too, before he would let them near his Nancy.

Chloe rubbed her forehead, liking the last thought least of all. The image of a lonely MacGregor sitting at his wife's grave would not leave her. But there was another vision there as well—a
berserker MacGregor, standing on Nancy's tomb and swinging at reporters with a battle axe.