Wall-To-Wall Dead
Page 28
Wayne arched his brows at the suggestion that Josh was living with Shannon, but he seemed to recognize that I was saying it to reassure Mrs. Livingston that nothing was going on with Josh and Jamie, because he didn’t quibble. Although by now, surely Josh had told him that something had gone on with him and Jamie at least once.
Josh did have Jamie’s number. He did not, however, inquire why his dad wanted it. I thought that boded well for Shannon, since yesterday, I thought I’d detected a little softness on Josh’s part for Jamie—at least until Derek had warned him to spend the night elsewhere because she’d come knocking.
“Here,” Wayne said, “you call. Don’t say anything overt, but try to feel her out.”
I nodded. And took a deep breath and dialed.
The phone rang and rang. At first it went to voice mail, and Wayne told me to try again, while I stepped out from behind cover so they could see through the window that I was the one trying to call.
I didn’t think they were going to answer this time, either, but finally the phone was picked up. Jamie’s voice was even softer than usual, the Southern accent more pronounced, and she sounded scared to death. “Yes?”
“It’s Avery,” I said. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” She sounded the opposite, and probably felt that way, too.
“Are you hurt?”
She said she wasn’t. I resisted the temptation to complain. But darn, we couldn’t use that as an excuse to try to talk Amelia—Nan—into letting her go!
“Your mom wants to talk to you,” I said. “I’m gonna put you on speaker, OK?”
Hopefully she’d take the hint and do the same on her end, so Amelia—Nan—could hear, too.
I handed the phone off to Mrs. Livingston, who cleared her throat. “Hello? Jamie Lee?”
“Hi, Mama,” Jamie said. “What…You didn’t tell me you were coming. What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to surprise you,” her mother said, with that slight hint of accusation that mothers excel at. “And I knew if I suggested it, you’d come up with some reason why it wasn’t convenient.”
That must have happened before, because Jamie couldn’t come up with an answer. Then—
“I’m sorry. I knew you’d get upset if I told you I wanted to move out of the dorm and into an apartment with a friend.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Mrs. Livingston said. “I don’t care. I just wanted to see you. To know you were safe.” Her voice was still shaking.
“I missed you, too, Mama,” Jamie said, and sniffed. The whole thing was so sweet it made my teeth ache, and what made it worse was that if something went wrong, this might be the last conversation the two of them would have. And we were no closer to figuring out how to get Jamie out.
And then I straightened with a gulp when I heard the next thing Mrs. Livingston said. “May I speak to Nan?”
“I’m Amelia,” Amelia’s voice said from a distance. “Not Nan. Nanette’s dead.”
“She says Nanette’s dead,” Jamie reported. “She’s Amelia.”
Mrs. Livingston glanced at Wayne, who nodded.
“Of course. I’m sorry. May I speak to Amelia, please, Jamie Lee?”
Jamie must have conferred, probably silently, with Amelia/Nan, because the next thing that happened was that the older woman came on the phone. “Hello, Denise.”
Mrs. Livingston smiled, but I wasn’t sure whether it was in acid appreciation or just polite habit. In either case, the smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Amelia. It’s been a long time.”
I’m sure “Amelia” was thinking that it hadn’t been long enough, but she didn’t say so. “You have a lovely daughter,” she said instead. Wayne’s eyes narrowed, as I’m sure he tried to discern from the tone whether the statement was intended as friendly conversation or a threat.
Denise Livingston must have wondered the same thing, but she managed to keep her voice steady. “Thank you. I’m sure she has appreciated getting to know you. I told her about you, you know. It made me sad that you never came home.”
“I’m sorry, too,” “Amelia” said, “but after what happened…it just felt disloyal to Nan’s memory to go back.”
She seemed determined to keep behaving as if she were, in fact, Amelia. As if there were a chance that we’d actually believe it.
Or was it possible that she actually thought she was Amelia? Had she taken the lie so far that she’d started believing it herself?
I glanced at Wayne, who shook his head, finger to his lips.
“I wish you’d come out, Amelia,” Mrs. Livingston was saying plaintively. “I haven’t seen my daughter for a year. And I haven’t seen you for more than twenty. Not since you and…and Nan left for college. Won’t you come out so we can all sit down and talk? And get to know each other again?”
“I already know Jamie,” fake Amelia said, her voice suddenly sharper, “and Jamie and I want to stay here.”
Jamie and I? Stockholm syndrome, or was she simply speaking for Jamie because she wanted Jamie to stay?
Probably the latter. Jamie was a smart girl; she wouldn’t want to spend her time with the woman who had killed Candy and Miss Shaw and the real Amelia Easton. The woman who was keeping her from her mother. At gunpoint.
But again, maybe Nan—Amelia—really had gone around the bend and honestly believed she was Amelia.
Or maybe she just wanted us to think she did. Setting up that “innocent by reason of insanity” defense for later.
“Do you think she’ll try to kill herself?” I asked Wayne out of the corner of my mouth. “If we push her too hard? Will she do that rather than let herself be arrested?”
He answered back the same way, not taking his eyes off the building. “It’s possible. She’s looking at going on trial for three murders. All the evidence is circumstantial, but it all hangs together, and taking Jamie hostage is an admission of guilt if I ever saw one.”
“Will she shoot Jamie first, if she does?” I held my breath while I waited for his answer, my eyes on Mrs. Livingston, a few feet away, still arguing back and forth with “Amelia” about letting Jamie go. Hopefully she was too busy to listen to us.
“She might,” Wayne said. “To punish Jamie’s mother for recognizing her. It isn’t impossible.”
I had my mouth open and was about to respond when—
“Well, then,” Mrs. Livingston said firmly, “I’m coming in.”
She headed for the door to the office, still clutching the phone. It was squawking, but by now she was too far away for me to hear what “Amelia” was saying. Wayne made an abortive movement forward, perhaps thinking to stop her, but he checked himself.
“Are you just going to let her go inside?” I said.
He glanced at me, and then back to Mrs. Livingston. She was on her way up the steps to the door. “It’s her daughter. If it was Shannon in there, Kate would do the same thing.”
“Would you let her?”
He didn’t answer, but it might have been because Mrs. Livingston reached for the door. I held my breath as I waited for “Amelia” to blow her away.
But the shot, when it came, came from inside the office. There was something like a thud, and then another bang I recognized as a gunshot, and then a really loud bang from right beside me that sounded like a clap of thunder. I blinked and shook my head as the front window of the office collapsed in what looked like slow motion, a cascade of glass. Wayne lowered his gun and said something, but I couldn’t hear it. All I could hear was the reverberations from the shot.
He had probably told me to stay put, because the next thing he did was run up the steps to the office and kick the door in. In was quite impressive to watch, actually, and I’d have appreciated it more had my ears not been ringing.
And then I forgot my ears and everything else when I saw Derek through the now missing window, standing in the middle of the room inside, with his hand pressed against his side with blood trickling through his fingers.
I was up t
he stairs and through the door in seconds. “Derek!”
“Flesh wound,” my boyfriend said. “I didn’t get out of the way fast enough.”
I looked around. Mrs. Livingston had wrapped Jamie in a hug, and it looked like both of them were crying, while Wayne was kneeling on the floor next to “Amelia Easton.” The back door was standing open, the lock splintered. Derek must have kicked it in while Mrs. Livingston was distracting “Amelia.” When he came through, she had shot at him, and then Wayne had shot at her. And dropped her.
“Is she dead?” My voice was perfectly steady. I wouldn’t be sorry if she were.
Wayne shook his head. “I aimed for the stomach. The ambulance is on its way. It was waiting just beyond the trees.”
“You called them earlier?”
“Guns,” Wayne said. “Someone usually gets shot.”
And in this case it had been my fiancé. I turned to him nervously. He didn’t seem overly bothered by the fact that he was bleeding, to be truthful. He gave fake Amelia a visual scan—albeit without getting down on the floor next to her—and pronounced that she would survive. “No arterial bleeding. Although you may have nicked something in there. Intestines or kidneys or something. Nothing that can’t be fixed.”
“You?” Wayne asked.
“I’m fine. There’s nothing in this part of the body that can be damaged. Just a flesh wound.”
“Are you sure?” I said nervously.
He smiled and reached out to me. “I’ve seen a lot of gunshots, Tink. I used to work on them all the time in the ER. This one’s no big deal. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
“Good,” I said, and snuggled into his good side.
—Epilogue—
“Do you, Avery,” Barry said, “take Derek to be your lawful wedded husband?”
He said a lot of other things, too, but I was too worried about missing my cue to listen. When he paused, I nodded. “I do.”
Barry smiled approvingly before turning to my right. “And do you, Derek…”
“I do,” Derek said, hitting his cue right on.
Barry nodded. “In that case, with the power vested in me by the state of Maine, I pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.”
He grinned at Derek, who grinned back before turning to me. “What do you say, Tink?”
“Do your worst.” I braced myself.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Barry said above my head, “I’m happy to present Mr. and Mrs. Derek and Avery Ellis.”
There was a round of applause that I didn’t really hear because of the rushing in my ears, but when Derek let me go and I turned toward the pews, I saw my mom and Cora wiping away tears while Kate grinned from ear to ear, and a lot of other people looked quite happy for us both.
The ceremony had gone off without a hitch, something that couldn’t be said for yesterday’s rehearsal dinner. It had been raining cats and dogs outside, so we all arrived at the church soaking wet, leaving puddles in the vestry, after almost slipping off the road a few times due to the slick pavement.
“I hope it stops by tomorrow,” I told my mother as I shook out the umbrella and leaned it in the corner.
She shook her head. “Rain in the wedding veil is supposed to bring good luck.”
Great. So now I had to hope for rain on the most important day of my life.
The rehearsal itself started late, because the organist had run off the road in the rain—luckily with no injury to herself or the car—and then it limped along as everyone struggled with nerves and concentration. We’d gotten to the point where the minister said, “Speak now or forever hold your peace,” when the doors to the church opened. When I turned around, I saw my friend from New York, Laura Lee, slip through and onto a pew in the back, her pink rain slicker shining wetly. She had been followed by what must have been her date for the occasion: a tall man in a leather trench coat, shaking raindrops from his shoulder-length brown hair.
“What the hell…” had slipped out of my mouth.
Barry had looked startled and my mother had looked shocked. Derek had looked at me and then over his shoulder. After a second he’d turned back to me, lips twitching. “Did you invite him?”
“No! Are you crazy?”
Why would I invite my ex-boyfriend to my wedding? I’d made a point not to invite him.
“You invited Melissa,” Derek had pointed out.
“That’s different.” Melissa lived here. She’d been—unfortunately—part of both of our lives for as long as I’d lived in Waterfield. Excluding her would have looked petty.
Of course, I had hoped she’d be sensitive enough to decline the invitation, but no such luck. Sensitivity is not one of Melissa’s conspicuous qualities.
“Think he’ll object?”
I’d turned back to Derek, who still looked amused rather than upset or worried. “What?”
“Tomorrow. Think he’ll object?”
“Lord, no.” I shook my head. “And it wouldn’t do any good if he did. I’m marrying you whether you like it or not.”
“Good thing,” Derek said, and turned back to Barry. “Carry on.”
Barry nodded and got back to it.
I did exchange a few words with Laura Lee and Philippe after the rehearsal was done, but I had to get to the rehearsal dinner and they had to get to the B&B where they were staying after the long and treacherous drive. “We’ll talk more tomorrow,” Laura promised me, with a sort of significant look.
I nodded. No doubt.
And now here we were. Tomorrow. Going through the ceremony again, for real this time. The weather had cleared up. It wasn’t precisely sunny, but it wasn’t raining hard, either. Everyone had gotten to the church on time—“See?” my mother said. “A bad dress rehearsal means a good performance.”—and we’d all remembered our moves and our lines. When Barry asked if anyone knew a reason why Derek and I should not be joined in holy matrimony, I held my breath. Not because I thought anyone would really object—least of all Philippe, who didn’t want me back any more than I wanted him—but no one did. And then we said our vows, and Derek put a ring on my finger, and I put one on his, and I was Mrs. Derek Ellis.
“That was beautiful!” Mother sniffed afterward at the buffet-style reception next door to the church. She was dabbing at her eyes with a lace handkerchief and smiling through the tears.
I smiled back. “It felt beautiful, too.”
“And you look lovely. Beautiful gown.”
“Beatrice’s,” I said. “I had to chop off about a foot of fabric on the bottom, but that’s OK. She’ll never wear it again.” Nor—if fate was kind—would I. “And this way I got to wear white to my wedding.”
Mother sniffed again as more tears came to her eyes, and gave me a hug. Behind her, my stepfather Noel beamed.
Everyone who was anyone in Waterfield was there. Barry had changed out of his vestments and into a suit, and was walking Judy through the buffet line. She was almost a head taller than him due to the heels she’d put on with her purple dress, but neither of them seemed to care. Next to them in line was John Nickerson, who was talking to—I squinted. She had short hair and was dressed in lavender, and there was something familiar about both the lady and the dress.
Then it hit me. “That’s Sandra Lawrence!”
“Who?” Mom said.
“The woman John’s talking to. It’s Sandra Lawrence. The medical examiner. From Portland.”
“Who’s John?” Mom wanted to know. I pointed him out, and Mom squinted at Dr. Lawrence. “What about it?”
“He used to be in love with her little sister fifty years ago. Susie. They went to school together.”
“Yes,” Mom said patiently, “but why are you so excited?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Susie’s married. We went to her daughter’s wedding to one of Derek’s friends a month or two ago. But Dr. Lawrence is single. And so is John. And they look awfully chummy, don’t they?”
They did. Mother agreed with me.
Back when I was living in New York, we both worked for Philippe. I was his textile designer and girlfriend, while Laura was his business attorney. There’d never been anything more between them that I knew of, although now I felt compelled to ask. Although I waited until after she’d finished hugging me and telling me how lovely the ceremony had been and how gorgeous Derek was. This was her first time seeing him, since I hadn’t brought him to New York with me last August, and Laura hadn’t come to visit me in Maine.
“Speaking of gorgeous,” I said, “what’s with you and Philippe? Are you dating now?”
“Lord, no!” Laura said, dismissing Philippe with a flick of a pink-taloned hand. She’d always had beautiful nails. “He dumped Tara after a few months—or maybe she dumped him. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-two, and he’s pushing forty, so it wouldn’t be surprising if she got tired of him.”
Not surprising at all.
“He hasn’t been seeing anyone regularly. And I’m not stupid enough to take him on.” She brushed a strand of her straight black hair behind her ear.
“Whose idea was it to bring him here?”
She grinned. “Oh, it was his. He liked it here when he was up last summer. Says he wants to buy a summer house.”
Really? Maybe we could talk Melissa into selling him the house on Rowanberry Island. And soak him for every penny we could while we were at it. It seemed fair.
“Or,” Laura added, winking, “maybe he just can’t resist keeping his hand in.”
“His hand isn’t in,” I said. “His hand is nowhere near any of this.”
Laura smiled. “I can tell. You couldn’t ask for a better guy than Derek. And you seem happy. When you left New York, I honestly didn’t think it would last. I thought you’d be back after a few months.”
It was my turn to smile. “Once I met Derek, there was no going back. And I love it here now. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”