“It just doesn’t seem right yet,” Caroline defended. “And now with Rose and Cody . . .”
He’d been tense from the instant they’d sat down, avoiding the reason he’d asked her to lunch in the first place. As pleasant as the morning was, and as happy as she was to see him after spending the night away from him last night, they had been seated now for more than thirty minutes since opening the place up.
“Augusta was with Ian Patterson last night,” he blurted.
Caroline’s stomach sank somewhere beneath her chair.
“If it’s any comfort, Caroline, I don’t believe the man’s guilty.”
For a moment, Caroline stared at her own plate, trying to determine what to say. She couldn’t control Augusta, but she couldn’t handle Jack defending the man, too. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was struggling with the burgeoning possibility that Patterson could be innocent, but if she accepted that fact, it meant she had gone after an innocent man with the tenacity and grace of a pit bull, thinking of nothing else but the story. Right now she couldn’t figure out which was worse—the idea that she had been so terribly wrong, that she was becoming exactly like her mother or that her sister had taken a total stranger’s side over hers—because that’s what it felt like, even though her rational side told her it wasn’t true.
“He didn’t kill Pam,” Jack said more certainly. “We know that.”
She knew better than to ask him how he knew. They had made a pact to stay away from potentially explosive subjects. “Okay,” she said, taking a moment to process the information he had given her. “So what about Cody?” she asked, steering the conversation to safer ground. “Any word there?”
He shook his head. “No.”
He peered down at his plate, suddenly shoving it away, with half a gyro still on it. She realized he was taking Cody’s disappearance hard. Did he feel they had wasted time with Ian Patterson and that it was Caroline’s fault they didn’t have the right man behind bars?
She couldn’t blame him for those thoughts, because they were exactly the same thoughts she had been struggling with herself.
Her desire to help—in some way—was overwhelming, but this time she had handed the story over to her editor-in-chief, Frank Bonneau, and walked away, putting her energy into comforting Cody’s family. It made it easier that she trusted Bonneau implicitly—nearly as much as she trusted Jack—so she let the subject of Augusta and Ian Patterson go entirely . . . for the moment. Still, she had to ask. “It’s been days, Jack. Do you think he’s still alive?”
Jack nodded, but then shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s impossible to say. I don’t think this guy’s killing them right away. The official stance from the public information officer is that we’re hopeful he’s still alive.”
So that was what she was bound to report.
Caroline hoped it was true.
The phone rang, waking Augusta out of a dopey sleep. She fumbled for the receiver, wondering who would be calling on her mother’s landline. It wasn’t a private number, but neither was it a number she gave out.
“Hello?”
A dial tone was her answer, but not right away. For a few brief seconds, she heard the sound of music playing on the other end of the line . . . or maybe the music was playing here in the house? She couldn’t tell. She hung up and heard the music like an echo in her brain.
Admittedly, morning wasn’t her best time of the day.
Within seconds, as soon as she set the receiver down, the phone rang again, and she stifled a curse as she lifted the receiver to her ear. “Yes?” she said, irritated.
“Lucas Skywalker, Skywalker Construction,” the voice offered.
Augusta lay there, disoriented and confused for a moment. It might have been a prank, except that she had actually gone to Skywalker Construction yesterday afternoon to meet with a contractor. She simply hadn’t realized that was the guy’s full name.
Correctly interpreting the silence, he offered, “I know, sorry. It always takes people by surprise at first. That’s why I rarely use my real name. I’m part Cherokee,” he explained. “At least that’s the explanation I prefer over admitting my parents were stoned when they signed the birth certificate.”
Augusta laughed. “Hi,” she said.
“You can call me Luke.”
“Hi, Luke,” she said, and spoke to him briefly about his schedule, relieved to hear that he could start first thing this morning. Luckily, her mother’s reputation in the community still loomed large, even from the grave. Plus, Augusta had hinted at their first meeting that money wasn’t an object. She supposed she wasn’t above throwing her name around after all—not when it meant saving her and her sisters from having to forfeit thirty-seven million bucks.
He reassured her that he was gathering his crew as they spoke, although they wouldn’t be available until after lunch. “That’s fine,” she said. “I’ll be here. Thanks so much,” she said, and hung up.
Still groggy, she sat up in bed, cocking her head toward the persistent sound of music coming through her closed bedroom door. A small headache lurked in the back of her brain, but not enough to make the idea of rising all that daunting. The clock by her bedside read 11:38 A.M. and she grimaced. She had never been an early riser, but the last time she had gotten up near noon, she had had a roommate and test scores to worry about. Since then, she’d been running on a gerbil wheel. Without a doubt, life was slower paced here than in New York, but waking up at noon was just unacceptable.
Stumbling out of the bed, she opened the bedroom door, and the sound of music spilled into the room. She could make out the disoriented melody of Harry Nilsson’s “Blanket for a Sail” playing downstairs as she went back to fish a pair of shorts out the dirty pile of clothes in her closet. As a child, Savannah had loved that song, but it was a weird choice to be listening to now—not that she had anything against Harry Nilsson. The man was a genius. But it was a song she recalled from a children’s collection—one that included songs like “This Old Man” and “Itsy Bitsy Spider.”
“Savannah?” she called, as she made her way back into the upstairs hall.
Savannah didn’t respond, but Augusta knew she must be around because she didn’t have anywhere else to go—nor would she have simply taken the car without waking Augusta to ask for the keys. They were sharing it right now, but it was understood that Augusta needed to be mobile if she was going to get the house restored, while it was Savannah’s job to plant her ass in the office chair and write. Although neither of them had done much to those ends, Augusta had been busy with plans for the fund-raiser—something she still wanted to get done, though it didn’t seem appropriate now to have some huge community gathering when women were being murdered and kids were disappearing.
The thought gave her a shiver as she walked down the corridor, stopping at Caroline’s room on the way to Savannah’s. She found the door shut. She opened it, throwing it wide. Empty, of course. Caroline would be at work right now.
Augusta’s room was the farthest down the hall, away from the stairs. Caroline’s was closest, with Savannah’s on the other end of the corridor past the stairs. The closer she got to the stairs, the louder the music played.
“Savannah!”
With the music blaring downstairs, shouting was pointless, she realized. Clearly, Savannah was not in her room, unless she had cranked the stereo so she could hear it upstairs. But that wasn’t like her at all. A peek into her bedroom revealed that it, too, was empty. The door was open. Unlike Augusta’s room, it was neat and orderly, not a shred of clothing out of place. That was probably the only character trait Savannah had inherited from their mother, though physically Savannah was the spitting image of Flo, with her willowy frame and deep gray eyes.
Expecting to find Savannah downstairs, Augusta made her way down, belatedly wondering where Tango was. He wasn’t at the bottom of the stairs where he seemed to plant himself all day long waiting for Caroline to come home, so she called his name, too.
Neither Tango nor Savannah answered, and Augusta wandered toward the sound of music, her nerves a little on edge. The music was coming from the den, the string accompaniment sounding a little like the Psycho danger music in its percussive intensity. “Blanket for a Sail.” Nilsson was talking about a tiny little skipper keeping the boat afloat. The song immediately reminded her of Sammy. He’d loved that little inflatable raft of his, and would run around with his little pirate flag, waving it like a banner, yelling, “Yo, ho, yo ho, it’s a pirate’s life for me!” The memory would have made her smile, except that she began to feel a little creeped out when the song came to its orchestral conclusion, paused, then started over again.
In the den, she found her mother’s vintage turntable on, the receiver blaring. Savannah was nowhere in sight. Harry Nilsson’s voice was crooning the refrain, “Way out on the ocean . . .”
Augusta yanked up the arm, dropping the needle on the vinyl. It scratched briefly before she caught it and placed it back on its perch, shutting off the turntable. “Jesus,” she said, and called out again, “Savannah!” She turned to assess the room and cursed softly to herself.
Where the hell was Savannah?
The house appeared empty. At the moment, it felt a little like one of those eerie mansions in a horror flick, where ghosts were tormenting the home owners, but Augusta didn’t believe in ghosts. As unlikely as it seemed, her sister must have left the stereo on. Maybe she’d taken Tango for a walk?
Augusta poked her head into the kitchen and called for Tango again. She heard a whine coming from the pantry and went straight to it, opening the door. Tango stood there, panting heavily, looking at her with gratitude. The pantry was hot.
“How the hell did you get in there?” she asked him.
He came out, wagging his tail sheepishly, drooling on the kitchen floor, as though he thought he’d done something wrong, and Augusta decided someone must have accidentally locked him in the pantry and left the house in a hurry. But if Tango was in the pantry, obviously Savannah wasn’t walking him, so she continued looking for her sister, walking through the house, not once, but three times, before wandering outside and heading out toward the dock. The car was in the driveway, exactly where Augusta had left it, so Savannah must be somewhere on the premises.
Tango followed her around, and she was grateful for the company as she made her way toward the dock, half-expecting Savannah to be out in the boathouse for some reason. She wasn’t there. Back inside the house, the attic stairs were up, not down, so there was no way she was up in the attic again, rummaging through boxes for the fund-raiser.
Tango followed at her heels, panting heavily as she made her way back to her room. She glanced at the clock and, seeing that it was nearly twelve-thirty, snagged her cell phone out of her purse. In the process, she spotted the photograph of Sammy in the side pocket.
A tiny chill ran down her spine.
It was eerily coincidental that she would find that photograph last night and then wake up this morning to that music, but it was entirely possible Savannah had found the picture, and then, feeling sentimental, had woken up with a desire to hear that song.
Either that, or they had a ghost in their house. Maybe Flo was somewhere wandering around, trying to explain why that stupid shoe of hers was out in the woods. Or maybe she was simply pestering Augusta to begin the renovations, she thought wryly.
Feeling a little anxious, she punched in Caroline’s number.
Chapter 12
“It’s about time!” Caroline said, answering her phone on the first ring.
She mouthed the word “Augusta” and got up from the table to walk outside, hoping to spare Jack the sight of her foaming at the mouth. “Where the hell have you been, Augusta?”
“Sleeping. I just woke up.”
Caroline slid outside the door of the tiny Greek restaurant, narrowly avoiding a shoulder bump with a businessman. “Last night?”
“What do you mean, last night? Since when did you become my mother, Caroline?”
“Never mind! I already know where you were, no thanks to you!” Caroline countered. “Don’t even throw out that mother bit!”
“If you knew, why bother to ask?”
Caroline clutched the phone tighter. “Maybe because I wanted to hear it from your own two lips, for once.”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“How would you know? You haven’t tried me, Augusta! You don’t talk to anyone anymore. You keep to yourself and assume nobody gives a crap—well, some people do, and you had me worried out of my mind last night!”
Augusta’s tone was full of her usual sarcasm. “Right, so you’re okay with Ian and all you care about is my well-being?”
“Of course! There’s a murderer out there, in case you haven’t heard?”
“Jesus, how could I miss that, Caroline? You shouted it from the rooftops, even before you had a clue what the truth was.” Her words were defiant and angry, though she sounded deflated. Caroline’s anger wavered as she realized there was truth in Augusta’s accusation. “Are we really going to fight over this, Caroline? I’m thirty-two years old. I have a right to see whomever I want. And I don’t believe Ian is guilty. It’s that simple. It’s my money, not yours.”
“Believe it or not, I wasn’t going to bring up the bail money. There’s not a lot more I have to say about that. What’s done is done.”
“Good,” Augusta said. “Anyway, I only called to ask you where Savannah is and why she left the stereo blaring.”
“If you had gotten up this morning, instead of sleeping off a party night with Ian, or if you’d bothered to talk to anyone but Ian, you’d know I took Savannah to the airport this morning. If she left the stereo on it was an accident.”
That disclosure seemed to deflate Augusta’s anger completely. She paused for a moment, and then asked in a subdued tone, “Savannah’s gone?”
Caroline took the opportunity to encourage a cease-fire. “Yeah.”
“But she’s coming back, right?”
“Yeah, she’s just finally doing what you and I did when we first resigned ourselves to mother’s will. She’s gone back to D.C. to put her affairs in order. Though I’m pretty sure she’s getting rid of her apartment and moving back to Charleston permanently. She’s done in D.C. Besides, I think she needed time to think about this whole ordeal with Sadie. She’s pretty upset over it all.”
“How did yesterday go at the Simmonses?”
“Not great,” Caroline admitted. “Sadie pretty much had nothing to say to either of us. She’s clearly not in a forgiving mood. Josh wasn’t there.”
“Well, that sucks. But on a brighter note, I have a contractor arriving in a few minutes—oh wait,” she said suddenly. “That could be him now. I gotta go. I’ll go by and talk to Sadie after he leaves.”
Caroline didn’t even have a chance to say good-bye. Augusta simply hung up on her, and Caroline found herself shell-shocked by the fact that Augusta had actually taken steps to complete the task their mother had bequeathed to her. “Wow,” she said to herself, and made her way back into the restaurant to give Jack the details.
Skywalker Construction came prepared to work, Augusta noticed.
Luke—she had a hard time taking his name seriously—arrived at the house about thirty minutes ahead of his crew, and took some time to look over the problem areas Augusta had identified—most notably the peeling exterior and deteriorating siding and the loose boards at the top of the stairs. The boards themselves weren’t such a concern, but Augusta worried that somehow Flo had painted over water stains on the ceiling and that there was, in fact, damage from a past leak in the roof.
That was his first order of business once she was done showing him around; she wanted to be certain there wasn’t anything of structural importance to be corrected. The siding itself wasn’t a structural issue. But in the muggy Charleston climate, it wasn’t unusual to hang a wooden garage door and find it completely rotted away the following year
. Wood had to be treated before being painted, and if it wasn’t, it was common to find moisture damage, particularly around the marshes. Replacing the siding with vinyl or composite was not an option, because Augusta thought the house should remain true to its original construction. How she’d come to that conclusion when she hated the original house, she didn’t know, but somehow it didn’t seem appropriate to alter its construction with plastics or metals. The closest she could come to comprehending her own decision was that she was a bit of a purist. In this, she knew her mother would approve.
Luke was clearly the right man for the job because he knew exactly what needed to be done. Augusta thought he was kind of cute, in a rugged, alpha sort of way, and wished Savannah was around to meet him. Her sister could do worse, she decided. The man owned his own construction company but sounded like a professor. But since Savannah wasn’t around, and she had a renewed sense of purpose, she set him loose on the house on his own. Feeling a sense of accomplishment, she decided she had earned enough goodwill to go ask Caroline about Jennifer Williams.
Leaving Luke with instructions and a key, along with her cell phone number, she headed out the door.
The man was here.
Staring down at him.
Cody heard him come into the building from somewhere near the lockers. He slithered in through a hole in the floor, dripping wet, his footsteps slapping like fins against the floor. He could hear banging and the hollow ting of metal being abused. And then the rotting floor creaked as he neared.
It was the heat of the day, as his grandma Rose would say. Cody’s hair was plastered to his face and the inside of his face felt like it did when he stood on his head and all the blood rushed into it.
He kept his eyes closed, afraid to open them, afraid to see the man, though he could sense the light from the window being blocked by his body. Possums played dead and sometimes it worked. He waited a long time, slowing his breathing, hoping the man would leave, but he stood there so long the water he’d brought in on his shoes puddled beneath his feet and trickled down the slanted floorboards toward Cody’s face, tickling his chin.
Tell No Lies Page 15