A Grave Mistake

by Stella Cameron

  He made to walk past Nat, who grabbed him around the neck and landed a not-so-light punch in his gut. They went down and rolled. “Elevator. Turn right out of here. Around first corner. Mess up my face a bit.”

  Guy frowned and gave Nat’s nose a swipe. Blood appeared on cue. “Asshole,” he ground out.

  “Fucker,” Nat snapped back, then, “I’ll be around,” very softly.

  Guy struggled to his feet, gave Nat a kick and left.

  Those cameras could be out here, too. Pretending to be dazed, he started back toward the bar, stopped, shook his head, and went in the opposite direction. If he was being watched, he’d have company before he ever reached his goal.

  An elevator with stainless-steel doors was exactly where Nat had said. Guy peered closely at it, swayed and pressed a button. “I’m comin’, honey,” he said, hitching at his jeans.

  The elevator opened and he fell inside. He pressed a button again and in a second the car rose swiftly, silently upward. Out of habit, Guy adjusted the left side of his jeans jacket. The Sauer was right where it should be.

  All the way to the third floor in one smooth ride and the doors opened again. He stepped far enough forward to cut off the sensor and keep the door open, then he glanced left.

  “I won’t do your dirty work anymore.” A woman’s voice, not so loud but high and breaking, came from a room on the opposite side of the corridor and to the right. Exactly where Amy had said Wes liked to have his special lunches.

  “I’ll help you with her. Then I’ll get what we need and meet you where we said.” Guy recognized Wes’s voice. He also swallowed hard, twice. He could figure what they were talking about.

  Black rage welled in him. If Jilly had died, so would they. It would be all the justice she got—experience had taught him that.

  Placing heel and toe carefully, he blessed the soft carpet and approached the room. Once inside, the balloon would go up. He’d have a second, maybe two or three to size up what he faced.

  Jilly dead.

  Guy reached the open glass doors, flattened his back to the wall outside and pulled his gun. He crooked his arm, held the weapon at shoulder height and rolled forward.

  Wes and Laura Preston stood toe to toe with Laura where she couldn’t see Guy. Wes had his back to him.

  Guy took in the scene rapidly. Divans heaped with cushions. The only thing missing was a tent.

  Blood smeared one wall, dragged down in a wide swath.

  “I know I have to be the one to get what we need,” Wes said, shaking his wife. “We’re wasting time we don’t have. When we’re out, I’m shutting and locking this room until we can clean it up.”

  “I’m not transporting a body,” Laura said.

  Guy cocked his gun and swung into the room—and saw Jilly. On the floor, facing the bloodstained wall, her body was at a strange angle. The arm he could see hung behind her and blood soaked her shredded blouse. He couldn’t see her face.

  “Look,” Wes said. “I’ll make it worth your while. What do you want?”

  Laura didn’t laugh, didn’t scoff and didn’t ask him for anything.

  “Anything you want is yours, sweetheart. Anything.”

  “Anything?”

  Guy jumped Wes and took them both down under his weight. Laura screamed and she yelled “Daddy!” She disgusted him.

  Striking again and again with the hand that held the gun, Guy worked on autopilot. He wouldn’t let himself look at Jilly, only at the two who would pay.

  He saw the moment when Wes went for a shoulder holster. The man hadn’t done it often enough to be smooth and Guy disarmed him. He threw the gun behind a divan.

  Laura sprawled on the carpet, bleeding from her nose and mouth, and whimpering. She got to her hands and knees and started to crawl. Guy pulled her hands behind her back and slapped on handcuffs. She moaned and pleaded with him, but he shut her out.

  Gasping to get his breath, Wes huddled against a divan, curled over as if his gut was broken. Guy reached for a second pair of handcuffs and the man launched his body at him. Guy took the blow in his chest and belly and it was his turn to fight for breath and hold his seared diaphragm.

  Reaching for Guy’s Sauer, Wes straddled him. He spread himself out, clamping Guy to the floor.

  He got a hand on the gun wrist and Guy held on. He locked his fingers and they rolled over and over with Wes slamming Guy’s hand down at every opportunity.

  “Wes.” Laura gave a warning shout—too late.

  A shot blasted out and Guy recoiled before Wes fell on top of him again. A loose, leaden weight.

  Guy pulled his head back to look at his opponent. A line of blood drizzled from his mouth. He looked puzzled and opened his mouth to speak. He choked on blood that rushed out of his mouth now.

  The wail Guy heard was Laura’s. “Daddy, Daddy, help me.”

  He’d like to take her by the throat and shake her, but it wouldn’t help anything.

  With a shove he pushed Wes away until he lay on his back. Blood had flowed from his mouth to spread a bright red stain on his shirt. He attempted to speak again and could only gurgle.

  “My son,” Sam Preston said, a weapon hanging loosely at his side. “My only son. He never believed I loved him. He kept trying to prove I should. Jilly, Jilly.” He looked at Guy with puzzled recognition.

  “We need an ambulance,” Guy said quietly. “Call 911 and make it quick.”

  He scrambled across the room and dropped down beside Jilly. He stroked her wildly mussed hair and said, “I love you, cher. I’ll always love you. They broke your arm,” he whispered. “So much pain.”

  “Just as well Sam Preston isn’t in the mood to shoot you,” Nat said, but Guy didn’t look at him. “Help’s on the way, my friend. Hold on.”

  The eye Guy could see was hugely swollen shut with dried blood caking the lashes together. Garish colors had already formed. Dreading it, he leaned to see what he could of the rest of her face. The other eye was slightly open, blood from her nose smeared her face. He glanced down and where her blouse was torn away, he could see the point of a fractured collarbone extending through the skin.

  “He beat her,” he said to Nat. “She’s a little thing. She couldn’t hurt anyone. This was torture. Why?”

  “She wanted what wasn’t hers,” Laura said. “And Daddy was going to put her in the will. She’d have had an allowance and she’s nobody. She’s white trash like Edith. I’d rather be a smart black than white trash.”

  Nat ignored the insult. “Stay where you are,” he said, throwing Sam on a divan, facedown, before he cuffed him. “I’ve called for backup. We’ll be taking you in.”

  “But I stopped my son from killing…him.”

  “Save it.”

  Guy huddled over Jilly. He should have been able to protect her. A generous woman, full of life and fun—and so much love.

  He brought himself to feel for a pulse. Nat tapped him on the shoulder and pointed. Guy looked and saw the lashes on Jilly’s good eye blink. And her pulse beat beneath his fingers. She tried to see him better, and she cried, mixing blood with tears. Guy couldn’t speak at all, only stare at her, and kiss her cheek gently.

  A furor broke out in the corridor. “Medics,” a man said loudly. “Where are you?”

  Nat went to the doorway and said, “Hi, guys. This way.”

  Police arrived with the medics and Nat took charge. A medic came to Jilly at once. “Hey, you,” he said, kneeling and opening a bag. He listened to her heart and said, “Still beating. Did you take a blow to the head—other than the obvious ones?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “At the back but I feel okay.”

  “No, you don’t,” he said. “You feel like something a tank ran over.”

  She mumbled and he leaned close. “I promise you it wasn’t a Hummer.”

  He looked puzzled. “Can you tell me your name, please?”

  “Jilly Gable from Toussaint. I run a bakery there.” She whimpered with each shallow breath.
/>
  “I think her arm’s broken,” Guy said. “You can see her collarbone, too.”

  “Nice people you hang out with.” The medic examined the arm and every time he moved it a fraction, Jilly wept. His strong, practiced fingers felt gently around her shoulder. “It’s probably a dislocation,” the medic said. “I don’t want to risk a reduction with the clavicle like that on the same side. We need to get her to Emergency.”

  “This one’s gone,” another medic said, working over Wes. “The other two need to be taken in.”

  Guy turned toward Laura. “Did Wes break in at Jilly’s house?”

  She gave him a drooling leer. “Scared her, didn’t he?”

  “This one needs to go in, too,” the medic with Jilly said.

  “I’m all right,” she said, almost breathless. “I’ll drive home carefully and come back in the morning.”

  “Her brain got knocked loose,” Guy said.

  The medic smiled. “Nothing wrong with your brain, huh, Jilly? You want out of here because you’re a smart woman. You ought to be screamin’ by the way.” Arthur, as his name tag read, sat back on his heels and filled a syringe, then he flicked it with finger and thumb. “This is just to make you comfortable.” He gave the shot inside the elbow of Jilly’s good arm and assembled his equipment. “Try to keep her still. I’ll be right back with a gurney.”

  Wes lay where he’d died. His father and Laura were already on their way downstairs. Nat sat on the couch and Guy held Jilly as if she were a sand sculpture.

  She opened her eye and looked at him, managed a little smile, bringing an amazing twinkle to that eye.

  “What’s funny?”

  With his heart still beating too hard, he waited.

  “You look strange,” she said, forming each word carefully and as if it hurt her mouth.

  “You gave me a scare. I’m still scared. Jilly, Amy Girard and Edith helped us find you in time.”

  Jilly nodded, and winced. “Something to say to you. Got to. I love you, Guy. I’ve got to say these things now. Something could drop me and what I think would never be known.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Thank you.”

  Again he didn’t know what to say.

  “For telling me you love me and you always will.”

  “We’re going to have things to do,” Guy said seriously. “You’ll marry me, right? Do you like diamonds? I’ve been told I must give you something meaningful for you to remember me by.”

  If Nat were a gentleman, he’d leave the room. Instead he leaned farther and farther forward, listening.

  “I won’t forget you,” Jilly said. “Not ever.”

  “We’ll get out and choose a ring,” Guy said.

  “Later,” Jilly said. “We don’t need to rush it.”

  “Yes, we do.” He raised his voice.

  Nat laughed and said, “It’s okay, Jilly. Leave it to Guy. You need to rest now. They’ll immobilize that arm before you go.”

  Leave it to Guy? Did that mean he was supposed to buy a ring for Jilly all on his own?

  Arthur returned with another man. They carried a gurney and set it up close to Jilly. “Let’s make sure we’ve got you comfortable and we’ll take you to the hospital to get checked out.”

  “May I ride along?” Guy said.

  The medics looked at each other and nodded. “That’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll follow,” Nat said.

  Jilly looked up at Guy. “I think we’re going to be a threesome.” She winced and the corner of her mouth bled again.

  “No, no,” Nat said. “I’m not coming in the ambulance.”

  Jilly frowned. “I meant Guy, Goldilocks and me.” Her words grew thicker. “I love you so much, Guy.”

  The professionals did their work and transferred her smoothly to the gurney. They covered her with a blanket and headed out.

  “Too bad people mess up so badly,” a cop commented while they rode the elevator down. “That Mrs. Preston loved her creep of a husband.”

  Jilly grimaced and her other eye closed.

  “She insisted on telling him something,” the man said. “What she really wanted, she told him, just like he was listening, was to have their baby.”

  Epilogue

  Two weeks later

  At least she’d persuaded Guy out of renting a hospital bed, and out of insisting she be at his house because it was all on one floor.

  There was nothing wrong with her legs, apart from a few almost faded bruises.

  After two weeks she still hurt, but she wasn’t an invalid, never had been.

  Guy scuffed quietly into her dark bedroom and peered down at her. “You asleep?” he whispered.

  To lie or not to lie? He checked on her all night every night—and he refused to as much as sit on her bed in case he hurt her. “Awake,” she said. It wasn’t that she was mad at him, just that she wanted him between the sheets with her, and with her arm brace, wound dressings, slowly healing ribs and black eyes. Well, the eyes were only green now.

  “You’re not sleepin’ enough,” Guy said, and turned on a lamp. He pulled his chair as close as he could get to her, sat and did a close facial examination. “Any pain?”

  “I’m as good as well, Guy.”

  He raised his brows. “That’s good to hear. Wonderful. The reception’s going to be at Rosebank. Reb’s all riled up because she wanted it at Clouds End, but with her due date so close…” He shrugged.

  “What reception?” Jilly asked. “When?”

  “In about three weeks. You have a reception after a wedding.”

  “Ooh.” She sat up, wished she’d moved more slowly, but shot out her good arm and pulled him, almost nose to nose, by the lapel of the old bathrobe he wore. He wore it every night, over nothing. She knew because she’d found ways to check.

  Guy rested his lips on hers.

  Jilly smiled and put an inch or so between their mouths. “You’re incorrigible. You’ve arranged a wedding for three weeks’ time. What am I going to wear—green and yellow to match whatever color my baggy eyes are by then?”

  “I love you in green. Or yellow.”

  She punched his shoulder. “Change of subject before I explode. Wally Hibbs called again.”

  “To ask if the puppies are born? I hope he remembered to ask how you are.”

  “He did.”

  “The way things are goin’ we may not have enough pups to go round. We’re keepin’ one.”

  Jilly shook her head. “I used to make decisions.”

  “You still make all the decisions,” Guy said. “I didn’t want another oyster casserole for dinner, but did I say so? Nope, I ate it because you wanted it.”

  He watched her face, loving the mock resignation in her eyes, and the curve of her lips. “We’ll have a girl.”

  Her eyebrows shot up.

  “A girl puppy. The one we’ll keep.”

  “The one we keep,” she said. “Of course, I must have forgotten discussing that.”

  “Funny woman. Just a minute.” He went quickly to the other bedroom where he slept, and where Goldilocks sat in her upscale whelping box. Her eyes followed every move he made. He gave her a good scratch between the ears and stroked her bulging sides.

  Back to Jilly. He couldn’t stand not being with her.

  “Edith came while you were at Homer’s today,” she said in a small voice.

  “Why didn’t you say so before?”

  “I guess I avoid talkin’ about any of it. Amy and Wazoo came with her.”

  “That’s too many people. I’ll—”

  “You won’t do anythin’ about it. Edith moved out of Edwards Place. She’s stayin’ with the Hibbs at the Majestic. And she’s just about taken over at All Tarted Up. She’s sad about that man but I think she’s relieved he’s not a danger to her anymore, too. She’s not sad they got Michael.”

  “Good.” He surely hoped he’d manage to warm up to Edith Preston. Not only was she going to be his mother-in-law but s
he showed no signs of leaving Toussaint. “We’re never goin’ to know more about the matchbook, but we found out from Preston that Pip had come to him asking for money back. He won’t admit to anythin’ about the killin’ but it happened the same night Pip made his demands.”

  She looked at him for too long.

  “What?” he said, with an unpleasant feeling he’d flubbed something. “Tell me, Jilly.”

  “Same old thing. I don’t think you should leave the department. You’re still talkin’ about ‘we’ and meanin’ you and Nat. You belong there. And maybe you owe Nat, too.”

  He didn’t entirely disagree, but pretty much. “I won’t be losin’ touch with Nat. Hell, he’ll probably be hangin’ around Wazoo so much we’ll think he lives in Toussaint. You’re wrong about the rest. I want to be here with you, and all the rest of the crazies who live in the town. Homer’s helpin’ me come up with ideas for a career change.”

  “Homer? You haven’t said a thing about it to me.”

  “I haven’t wanted you worrying your pretty head.”

  “Guy Gautreaux, do you have a death wish?”

  “Um, did I tell you they’ve made progress tracing ownership of Jazz Babes? Some glorified accountant, or maybe it’s a lawyer, anyway, he’s enjoyin’ hangin’ around in the Caymans and diggin’ around for bankin’ records.”

  “I didn’t think you could get them there.”

  “We’ll see, but everyone’s an expert in somethin’.”

  She held his hand and took it to her mouth. Holding it there, she said, “Be grateful I’m incapacitated. I’d be doin’ one of my ‘behind the laundry’ numbers otherwise.”

  Guy shifted on his chair. The woman could talk him into serious sexual frustration anytime she felt like it. “You’re gettin’ better every day, cher.”

  Whump, whump, whump. Goldilocks swayed into the room, walked a slow circle, stood to be stroked and swayed out again.

  “She likes to check on her people,” Guy said. He frowned. “Preston’s a coward. People who do what he did usually are. Greedy, pampered and scared. He and Laura are goin’ to be household faces. They already are, but wait till the trials start.”

  “Yes.” Jilly looked at the ceiling. “I’m glad Edith’s out of that.”