Say Yes to the Death

by Susan McBride

  “But that’s why he took Olivia’s laptop and her phone!” I’d said, throwing up my hands. “He had to be sure no one found his footprints. He had to protect himself and Vernon Ryan.”

  “You don’t know for sure that she was sleeping with the senator,” Allie had shot back, shaking her head. “That’s a huge accusation, and not one we can throw around without something to back it up.”

  “Why don’t you tell the DA to check for a DNA match between Olivia’s unborn baby and the senator,” I’d said, shaking with frustration. “That should give the police enough to start digging into Vernon Ryan’s connection to Olivia.”

  “I’ve had enough,” Cissy had said and put an arm around my shoulders, quietly telling me, “You’ve done all you can, Andrea. It’s time to let go.”

  And she was right.

  I didn’t know what else I could do to help Millie except sit back and wait for the chips to fall where they may. I was pretty sure that Terra Smith would never speak to me again much less help plan my wedding (not that I’d want her to). Ditto Draco and Jasper Pippin. At least I’d given Brian and Allie a ton of food for thought—­and more suspects to consider—­and I had to believe that the truth would win out, despite Millie looking as guilty as ever with that carefully edited video playing on YouTube showing her telling Olivia, “One day, you’ll get what’s coming to you, and it won’t be any too soon!”

  As I got behind the wheel of the Jeep and started the engine, I told myself, Hang it up, Nancy Drew. I’d given sleuthing my best shot, and I’d failed.

  The drive back to my mother’s house was a fairly silent one until Mother’s phone trilled. “Stephen!” I heard her say, and her voice joyfully rose. I quickly gathered from the conversation that he’d landed ahead of schedule and was already at Beverly Drive, waiting to see her. “Oh, sweetheart,” she cooed, “I’ve missed you, too!”

  Hearing the affection in her tone gave me such bittersweet emotions. Though I wished to God every day that I still had my father, I figured Stephen wouldn’t be a half-­bad stepdad. He was kind and smart, and he was manly without being macho. He made my mother happy—­and softer somehow—­and that was worth scads.

  When Mother hung up with her beau, she turned to me and said, “Step on it, would you? My man is back!”

  Um, hello, wasn’t I the woman who drove like a bat out of hell?

  But I gave the Jeep more gas regardless, making the engine vroom, which made Mother’s smile even wider. Maybe all wasn’t quite right with the world, but you wouldn’t have known it by looking at Cissy in that moment.

  I offered to drop her off in front so as not to crash their reunion. But Mother insisted I come inside.

  “Nonsense,” she said once I’d pulled into the driveway, “Stephen will want to see you and hear all about us being locked in the dressing room at the World Trade Center.”

  I wasn’t so sure that I wanted to tell that story again, considering the reception it had gotten from my own fiancé, but what else did I have to do but go back to the condo, work on clients’ Web sites, and wallow in self-­pity? And, admittedly, my mind was not on Web design at the moment.

  “Sure, I’ll come in for a few minutes.” I caved, turning off the ignition and getting out. Mother had already climbed down from her seat by the time I came around the hood, and she was smoothing down her skirt when I saw the front door open.

  “Sweetie!” she cried as Stephen appeared.

  “Cecelia!” he called to her and started down the steps, his arms opened wide.

  She scooted across the cobbled driveway like a gazelle in three-­inch heels.

  Cecelia?

  Wow. I hadn’t heard that name uttered in eons, not since I was about ten and my great-­grandmother had been on her way out of this life. We’d visited her in the nursing home when she had late stage dementia and thought I was my mother. “Cecelia,” she’d said, “your nails look filthy. Don’t you ever wash your hands?” I remembered my mother explaining to me that Cecelia was her given name but no one ever used it. She’d always been Cissy to everyone, including me and my father.

  Except for Stephen, I mused, but I thought I understood. Since neither Daddy nor I had ever called her Cecelia, maybe that was why she didn’t mind Stephen doing it. It made him separate from us and what we’d had. It could be her way of starting fresh.

  “Hey, lovebirds,” I said and cleared my throat to get their attention. “Maybe I should duck out and leave you alone.”

  They stopped hugging the lights out of each other, and Mother swiveled in Stephen’s arms so I could see her pink cheeks.

  “You’ll do no such thing!” she called. “Stephen said he has pictures from Augusta to show us!”

  Yeeha.

  I should have slipped away while I’d had the chance.

  Unable to extricate myself gracefully, I followed them up the steps, across the porch, and inside.

  “It’s so good to have you back,” Cissy told her beau, squeezing him around the waist. “Do you need a drink?”

  Good thing I wasn’t thirsty ’cause she didn’t even ask.

  “I’ve already got a cold beer in the living room,” he said.

  “Then let’s head in and rest our feet,” Mother suggested.

  “Sounds good to me,” I replied, though, again, nobody asked.

  I sunk down into an easy chair while Cissy kicked off her heels and dumped her suit jacket on the back of the sofa. She looked so cool and crisp in her pink dress and pearls as she tucked her stocking feet beneath her. Stephen settled down at her side, an open bottle of Peroni propped on a coaster on the coffee table, easily within arm’s reach.

  “Let me see the pictures,” Cissy said, sticking a hand in his jacket pocket.

  Stephen laughed, batting her fingers away and withdrawing a paper packet. He slid photographs from the sleeve and handed them to my mother.

  “Have at it,” he said.

  “Oh, you look like you were having fun,” she murmured as she began to flip through the stack of them. “Ah, there’s the Eisenhower tree . . . and the Big Oak.”

  My mother had gone with my father to Augusta more than once when I was little and Sandy had babysat me. I was sure she knew each landmark well.

  “So Andy,” Stephen said while Mother continued to admire his pictures. He had his hand on Cissy’s knee, and she didn’t seem to mind. “I’ve heard you’ve had quite a time while I’ve been gone. Your mother said you lost a classmate in a pretty rough fashion.”

  “Yes, Olivia La Belle,” I said, slumping against the pillows at my back. “She was a bitch and a half. But murder is a harsh way to go.”

  “It definitely is.” He raised his eyebrows, which were cinnamon tinged with white, like his hair. “You didn’t like her?”

  “No, she was awful,” I admitted, squirming. “But I didn’t know she was having a baby. Maybe she wanted to change. I’d like to think so, anyway.”

  I rubbed my eyes, thinking of something Olivia had said to me. I had thought she was about to apologize. Perhaps, in a way, she was.

  I can’t always do what’s right and I can’t always please everyone, can I? I have to look out for myself and sometimes that makes me a little too—­

  Dead, I thought, and I sighed.

  “So the police haven’t arrested anyone yet?” Stephen asked, and I shook my head.

  “No, not yet, but Brian said they’re building their case against Millie. I’m sure Mother already told you that I’m part of the reason Millie’s in trouble, because I walked into Olivia’s office and saw her with the body. But she didn’t do it,” I said, more certain than ever. “You know she stayed here last night?”

  “So your mother mentioned,” Stephen replied and nodded at Cissy. “I wanted to fly back sooner but she wouldn’t let me. She didn’t want Millie to feel unwelcome, and I trusted her instin
cts.”

  “Really?” It was my turn to be surprised. I glanced at Mother, but she still had her head down as she went through the photos. “I thought she’d have begged you to come home and set things to right.”

  He smiled. “Well, I’m here now. Any way I can help? Though I know Millie’s in great hands with Brian on the case.”

  “I don’t know if there’s anything else we can do except support her,” I said, resigned to the fact that I had to sit on the sidelines.

  “And we will support her to the fullest,” my mother chirped, glancing up. She tapped the photos together on the coffee table then passed them across to me. “Have a look, Andrea. See what fun a vacation can be? Seems to me you haven’t taken one in a long time. Though I guess your next one will be your honeymoon, n’cest pas?”

  “I guess you’re right,” I said and took the photos.

  She turned to her beau and they started chatting about his trip, the weather in Augusta, how much golf he’d played, and what he’d scored.

  It was as though a murder hadn’t happened and everything was hunky-­dory.

  I tuned them out and halfheartedly shuffled through the pictures. Ah, there was Stephen with his buddies on the golf course. There they were drinking beer after golf. There were the obligatory sunsets, a giant loblolly pine, a pretty bridge, and an older dude standing in front of a fountain with his arms hooked over the shaft of a golf club.

  I peered more closely and noticed that those arms happened to sport tattoo sleeves that looked an awful lot like roses and thorns. I couldn’t help but think of Pete the Cameraman, and my heart skipped a beat.

  “Who’s this?” I asked Stephen, interrupting him and Mother as I handed the photo back.

  He shot me a toothy grin. “That’s an old Navy buddy of mine. His name’s Bill McGill. Handicap’s twelve, but he’s got a hell of a chip shot.”

  “So are the tattoos military?”

  “They can be,” Stephen said with a nod. “They are for Bill. The thorns represent every tour he did. The roses are for his wife and kids. He got a bone frog on his ass after he retired, but I don’t have a picture of that, thank God.”

  “Oh, you!” Cissy giggled.

  “A bone frog?” I said.

  “It’s a skeleton frog,” Stephen explained, “for Navy special ops. You don’t want a thing like that on your body while you’re serving, in case you run into trouble and have to wiggle out. In my day, only a few of the guys had tats, but all the young ones do it now. The old-­timers waited to get ink until they mustered out.”

  I knew I’d seen a tattoo like that somewhere. But my brain was too filled with other stuff to remember where. But the rose and thorn tattoos I could never forget.

  So who was Pete the Cameraman really?

  He’s not just the biggest oil tycoon in the state, but he’s a political heavy hitter, kind of like a wannabe Koch brother. And he comes with his own goon squad. They’re probably armed better than the Dallas Metro Police.

  I’d bet Dickens’s goon squad was made up of military vets who’d gone into private security. I had no doubt that Pete the Cameraman wasn’t a cameraman at all. He was former military with the tats to prove it. Did he work on Lester Dickens’s crew? There were an awful lot of dots to connect, but I could see the picture they were painting pretty clearly already.

  Why couldn’t Allie and Brian see it, too?

  I squeezed my eyes shut, recalling a remark Lester Dickens had made about Vernon Ryan at Penny’s wedding reception: Damned fool . . . a man can’t reach his full potential when he’s distracted by women and babies.

  He hadn’t been referring to Penny’s baby, as I’d thought then, not entirely. He was talking about Olivia’s pregnancy, too. Maybe Vernon Ryan’s affair with the wedding planner alone wouldn’t have kept Lester’s candidate from aiming for the White House, but a baby born of that affair surely would have put an end to any presidential dreams. Once Olivia had given birth—­even if they’d stopped sleeping together—­that child would have been a constant reminder of the conservative politician’s indiscretions.

  And Lester couldn’t have that hanging over Vernon Ryan’s head.

  Lester Dickens had Olivia killed. Of course, he hadn’t gotten blood on his own hands. That was what guys like Pete were for.

  Ugh.

  I dropped my head into my hands, feeling sick to my stomach.

  “Andrea,” my mother said, leaning forward, “what is it? You look nauseous. Is it morning sickness? You can have it any time of the day, you know.”

  “Morning sickness,” Stephen repeated. “Andy, are you—­”

  “No,” I said as my phone started playing AC/DC. I reached for my bag, which hung low on my hip. I didn’t recognize the number but answered anyway.

  “Oh, thank God!” I heard a voice that seemed vaguely familiar. “You have to help me. Terra told me to call if something went wrong.”

  “Draco?” I said, recognizing the flat Midwestern twang interspersed with the mangled European accent, like he wasn’t sure which one to use at the moment. “What’s going on?”

  So much for figuring I’d never hear from him again.

  “It’s Terra,” he said, and he sounded on the verge of tears. “She’s missing.”

  Chapter 30

  “Right after you and your mother left the showroom, she started acting weird,” he began to explain before I’d even asked. “She seemed really nervous and said she had somewhere to go. When I asked where, she just kissed me hard and said that it was time to play the big money card. After that, we’d be set for life.”

  “Set for life, huh?”

  I got a big knot in my belly, sure now that Terra had known who Olivia’s lover was all along. But instead of telling the police, she was going to get herself killed trying to scam a boatload of money from good ol’ Lester Dickens. And I’d thought she was smart.

  Hmph.

  “You should call the cops,” I told Draco, wondering what he thought I was going to do about it. “You need to talk to them anyway.”

  “I did call them!” he said. “They won’t lift a finger, not until she’s been gone at least forty-­eight hours. She gave me your number before she took off and said if anything went wrong I should call you.”

  Why? Did Terra think I could do something the police couldn’t?

  “Have you tried her cell?”

  “I’ve called and texted at least a dozen times in the last four hours. All the calls go straight to voice mail. My texts don’t get answered.”

  “Did you mention to the cops that she was Olivia La Belle’s assistant?” I asked, getting up from the chair while Mother and Stephen looked on with concern. “Have they forgotten what happened to Olivia?”

  “They think I’m overreacting.” He snorted. “They said she probably went shopping or out for a drink with some girlfriends, but she didn’t. Terra hated shopping for herself, and she didn’t have any real girlfriends here. She just had me.”

  Considering how she’d treated me and Mother and her penchant for fashion circa 1980, I was convinced.

  “Have you checked with Uncle Jasper?” I asked dryly.

  “He hasn’t seen or heard from her either, and he’s worried, too. She borrowed his car again, and it doesn’t have OnStar.” Draco paused, and I could hear him breathing heavily. I hoped he had a paper bag handy in case he started to hyperventilate. “I think she’s in serious trouble, Andrea. I think she’s meeting with Olivia’s boyfriend.”

  “What’s his name, Draco?” I asked, tired of being jerked around, though I was pretty sure I knew who it was already.

  “I don’t know any more than what I already told you. I heard Olivia call him Frog, and Terra did, too. I figure she had something of Olivia’s the police didn’t find, something that incriminates the guy.”

  “Ya think so?” I rep
lied, unable to keep the sarcasm from my voice. “Was she the one who stole Olivia’s laptop and phone?” I asked. “Did she have them this whole time?”

  “No, she would have told me,” Draco insisted. “She even turned her office laptop over to the police. She’s only had her old laptop these past few days. It was one she didn’t use for business.”

  Ah, yes, Terra’s spare laptop, I thought, wanting to tear out my hair.

  It’s my insurance policy, she’d told me, and I’d figured at the time she just meant it was her backup in case the office laptop crashed. I suddenly remembered where I’d seen that photo of the bone frog tattoo: in a file on Terra’s computer labeled “Big Money Shot.”

  I had a feeling that butt wasn’t Draco’s.

  “You don’t have a frog tattooed on your ass, do you?” I asked, only to get a befuddled, “What?” in response.

  “Oh, man, that’s it,” I moaned as the light went on in my brain, and, like Eliza Doolittle, I think I finally got it. Senator Ryan had been in the Navy. I’d wager it was his butt with the tat and the brown mole in the photograph. I was pretty sure that a forensics expert could compare the photo and the actual ass to confirm it.

  Was that the evidence Terra had? Or was there more to it? Maybe she had emails or texts or sexts. Who knew? Technology was making it too damned easy to keep anything private anymore, and she’d worked closely with Olivia for months.

  No wonder Terra had been so silent when I grilled her and Draco about Olivia’s lover. It wasn’t because she didn’t know who he was. She just hadn’t wanted to share. She’d been gearing up for a big blackmail attempt.

  “Did she take that spare laptop with her?” I asked Draco.

  He paused. “Yeah, I saw her carry it out. It’s hard to miss with that stupid pink sticker.”

  “If you know where she went, you’d better tell me now,” I demanded, and my face got hot. “Olivia’s killer doesn’t care about Terra. He’d just as soon get rid of her, too.”

  “She said the meeting was at Alva’s, but I don’t know who that is, I swear.” He paused to sob then got ahold of himself. “I guess we’d both been keeping secrets.”