Stay Dead (Elise Sandburg series)

by Anne Frasier

  “Can I see the clothing?” Her heart was beating in fresh dread, and at complete odds with John Casper’s innocent excitement.

  “Over here.”

  She followed him to a corner of the room. Spread out on a table, as if the body had simply evaporated, leaving the fabric behind, was a shirt, a leather belt, and a pair of jeans. But it was the shirt that got Elise’s full attention. Flannel. Plaid. And not your average plaid. This one was yellow and black.

  She made a big deal out of checking her watch. “I have to go,” she said.

  True. She had to get out of there. Get back to the plantation. To the third floor and a certain trunk. And also, Casper was surprisingly astute. He read people. And she didn’t want him reading her. “Let me know what you find during the autopsy.” She already knew what he would find. Death caused by blunt-force trauma to the skull.

  CHAPTER 36

  Thirty minutes later Elise pulled up to the plantation house. Above her, clouds were moving fast, darkness coming on even though it wasn’t night. That weird kind of darkness that made her feel both excited and nervous.

  She got out of the car, closed the door, and just stood there a moment staring at the house in the pre-storm silence. John Casper had been right. She was in pain. A great deal, in fact. Pushing herself too hard with the Tremain case, but the attempt to row Strata Luna’s boat had been the kicker. And now, on top of everything, her head was pounding, maybe due to the threatening storm and sudden drop in barometric pressure.

  Unable to step out of cop mode, she did a mental appraisal of the situation. Tremain would soon be taken care of, Audrey was coming home, and Elise would pick her up in the morning. And Anastasia? What about Anastasia? And the body at the morgue . . . Not good, but not life threatening. Not evil-psycho-killer stuff, but now that the Tremain case was under control, and now that they might have a lead on the people trafficking body parts, she had to deal with her aunt. It wouldn’t be pleasant.

  Why, oh why had Anastasia dumped the body? A jury might sympathize with her when it came to insurance fraud, but failing to report a murder, then covering it up? Then disposing of the body? Anastasia had made the mistake so many criminals made. She didn’t stop when an arrest was inevitable, and she’d instead embarked upon something that would only make things worse for her in the end.

  Elise walked up the plantation house steps, opened the door, and stepped into the kitchen. The table had been set with one plate. Something porcelain and vintage, decorated in a pink-rose design. A cutting board, a knife, a loaf of French bread. An unopened bottle of red wine. A delicate wineglass. A bouquet of some type of wildflower with yellow blooms. Next to the plate was a sheet of unlined paper, folded once in the center.

  Elise picked it up and opened it: a handwritten note from Anastasia.

  My dearest Elise,

  I will cherish our recent time together, and it breaks my heart to think I will never see you again. I wish we could have visited more when you were younger, but I’m grateful for the time we did have. You know that I’m a free spirit. I cannot be contained or held down or confined. The idea of prison hurts my soul even as I write this. But rest assured that I will always carry a bit of you in my heart, and I never meant to deceive. I just wanted to keep my precious plantation. That was wrong. I understand that now.

  I am off on a new adventure. Maybe I will leave the country and give myself a new name. I will paint under a blue sky, and I will wear a red scarf around my neck and ride a bicycle and drink wine. In other words, I will live. Please don’t ask Melinda where I’ve gone. She’s been compromised enough in this ordeal. Just believe me when I say I love you. Be happy, and dance in the moonlight.

  Anastasia

  PS: Look in the refrigerator. I’ve left you something, lovingly prepared by me.

  Elise put down the note and stared into space. What the hell? Didn’t anybody in her family do what they were supposed to do? Audrey, not staying in Sweden. Anastasia, bolting. Not only bolting, but apparently attempting to dispose of a dead body before hitting the road. Jackson Sweet, possibly pulling a return from the great beyond.

  How long had Anastasia been gone? Elise wondered. She needed to give police a heads-up so airports could be notified.

  If leaving the country, would Anastasia fly out of Savannah? Maybe Jacksonville. Jacksonville would give her a better chance of a direct flight abroad. But then Elise thought of her aunt in that red scarf, sitting outside a café in some country far, away. And then she thought of her sitting in a prison cell.

  She didn’t need to check, but she checked anyway. With the help of the antique cane, she went up the three flights of stairs, to the room at the end of the long hallway, past the walls that had been stripped down to the lath, wood that whispered and smelled of a hundred years gone by, and wallpaper that might have come from France. Peeling, but still beautiful in its decay.

  Anastasia’s room was closed. Elise reached for the glass knob and opened the door. Inside, she turned on the light near the bed, the light with the red shade and the claw feet. Everything was as it had been the day she’d found her aunt living there, down to the dirty dishes and the coffee cups with lipstick stains. Elise could smell Anastasia’s perfume, that mixture of vanilla and lavender, along with a hint of something woodsy. Like moss. Like crushed live-oak leaves. Like the damp soil along the edge of the river. All of those things were Anastasia.

  There was the record player. Elise turned the control dial and placed the needle on the waiting LP, feeling a need to hear the music her aunt had last listened to. A song filled the small space. The Everly Brothers.

  Even though Elise didn’t have to look, she walked across the hall to the steamer trunk and lifted the lid. Women’s shoes. The black bathing suit. A rubber swimming cap, and a towel. But no body. Of course there was no body.

  Downstairs, Elise went to her room, or rather to Anastasia’s old room, and searched through the bedside dresser for the pain medication she’d avoided taking for several days.

  She popped a pill and removed her holster and gun. Then, in the kitchen, she found a homemade apple pie in the refrigerator, along with a platter of cheese covered in plastic wrap. She cut a slice of pie, poured herself a glass of wine, and sat down at the table. An idiot knew not to mix pain medication with alcohol, but she planned to take just a few sips in honor of her aunt.

  Her phone buzzed, indicating a text message.

  David, with an update on the Tremain situation.

  I tried calling, but it didn’t go through. We have the house surrounded. SWAT team is here. Sharpshooter on a nearby hill. It’s getting dark, so we’re hoping to complete the capture before the sun goes down. If not, we’ll stick it out as long as we have to.

  Elise told him about Audrey. About how Audrey was stuck in London. Her flight gets in late tomorrow morning. I don’t know the exact time yet.

  Go easy on her.

  I will.

  What are you doing right now? David asked.

  I’m at the plantation, eating homemade apple pie and drinking a glass of wine.

  I’m glad you’re relaxing. Get a good night’s sleep. I gotta go. They’re ready to storm the house. This will be wrapped up soon. I’ll text you when it’s over.

  Elise let out a giant sigh of relief, put her phone aside, and took a bite of pie.

  CHAPTER 37

  Everybody lies.

  Those little lies you tell when someone asks if you feel okay, or if you liked a song, or if you liked a movie, or if you liked the meal a friend just spent hours preparing. Then there were the other ones. The embellishments. Rounding up. Five days of torrential rain instead of four. Two thousand miles instead of 1,800. A temperature of 110 degrees instead of 107. Those things that you find yourself doing just to give your story a little extra punch.

  Earlier that day, David told Elise a big lie. A huge lie. The one ab
out not killing Tremain. Now, as David and the SWAT team waited for darkness to give them the cover they needed to approach the Francis house, David didn’t feel bad about his lies. He’d kill Tremain and go to prison. That was okay. And Elise was wrong about not being able to get by without him. She’d gotten by without him before; she could do it again.

  David wanted to do something right. This was right.

  The SWAT team and the Lumpkin County Police Department had no problem allowing him to tag along. His old FBI credentials got him into a lot of places his detective badge couldn’t, and he was not ashamed to play that card. He hadn’t lied about being an FBI agent. They knew he was ex-FBI, but that was more impressive than never having been FBI. It actually might have given him more leverage, because there was none of the resentment that came when FBI agents were sent in to save the day with their brilliance. Been there, done that, had the footprint on his ass to prove it.

  “Ten minutes until we move.” That came from the commander of the SWAT team. David nodded and went back to his prison fantasy.

  Hopefully inmates wouldn’t know he’d been a detective. Yeah, they’d know. He’d most likely be put in some special area where he wouldn’t be killed the first day.

  He and Elise would write letters and she’d come to visit. Maybe at some point she’d meet someone, remarry. Erase that. He didn’t like thinking about that.

  Focus.

  He rechecked his weapon and slipped it into his shoulder holster under his jacket. He wished he’d had time to write Elise a letter. But what would he have said? Given her his recipe for pumpkin bread? Because anything more would just make her feel bad, feel worse, and that was the last thing he wanted to do. Maybe he would have explained that he was doing this as much for him as for her. Yeah, that was good. So she wouldn’t feel guilty.

  “Ready to move.”

  The house was under heavy surveillance, with the SWAT team a quarter of a mile away. Now they moved through the woods, their feet silent on the needle-strewn forest floor. No one spoke, and the only illumination came from one flashlight pointed at the ground.

  Everybody in black. Helmets. Boots. They’d made David put on a bulletproof vest, but he’d told them he’d stay out of their way. Another lie.

  He wondered if Audrey was flying into the Savannah airport. And what would Elise do? Hug her daughter and tell her she was glad to see her? Because that’s all that really mattered in the end.

  There was the house.

  A one-story shack with lights burning behind thin curtains. No sign of life. No sign of movement. In the driveway was the silver Chevy Malibu that had been stolen from the used-car dealership in Savannah.

  They moved forward.

  How could such big men move so quickly and so silently? But they did. Running in a crouched position, flanking the front door while more men in their black gear moved to the back of the house to guard the only other way in or out.

  It was all about speed and surprise. The idea was to take the perpetrator down in a minute or less. It could be done, and when the carefully choreographed dance went according to plan, it was beautiful to behold.

  There was the signal.

  The door was kicked open, and now the boots were no longer silent. Now the men shouted and ran, weapons drawn but pointed toward the ceiling. David drew his own and followed, bracing it in two hands, muzzle pointed at the floor in the way he’d been trained.

  A woman. The mother. Sitting at the kitchen table. Getting to her feet, hands raised, mouth open wide.

  Boots thundering through the house. Boots returning. The leader reporting. “Nobody.”

  David did a mental shake of his head, a clearing of his ears. “Check again.”

  “There’s nobody else here.”

  “A crawl space. A cellar.”

  “No.”

  David pivoted to the woman. “Where is he?”

  Tremain’s mother was in her late sixties and dressed in a pale blue T-shirt, jeans, and white sneakers. Overweight, with teeth that needed work, and two inches of gray roots, the rest of her hair a faded orange. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “When did he leave?”

  “A few hours ago.”

  “I’ve been here five hours,” said one of the men who’d watched the place from a nearby hill. “In that time nobody has come or gone. I never blinked. I never took my eyes off the house.”

  Everybody lies.

  David introduced himself, then asked, “How long ago did your son leave?”

  “Maybe it was more than a few hours,” she stammered, lowering her hands. “I don’t know. I tried to keep him here like the detective said, but he wouldn’t stay.”

  “She’s lying,” David said to the others in the room.

  And worse, he was beginning to suspect they’d all been tricked. “Your son was never here, was he?”

  “He was here.”

  “We’ll find out eventually,” David told her. “Dust for prints.”

  He could see her brain falter. See her doubting her lies, wishing she’d told better ones.

  “I understand,” David said. “You were trying to protect him.”

  She relaxed a little.

  “Where did the car come from?” he asked. “How did it get here?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “You know you’re going to be arrested for aiding and abetting a fugitive and suspected murderer, don’t you?” He just threw the suspected in there, because they all knew damn well Tremain was guilty.

  Someone slapped handcuffs on her, and another officer read the woman her rights. Then they began leading her away. David knew this was his last chance. He needed to say something that would trigger an unguarded response. He couldn’t think of anything. “Your son is a murdering sack of shit.”

  She turned to stare at him, her hands cuffed behind her. Her face became feral as her lips curled back from her teeth. Everything he needed to know was in that response. “I was helping him. I was protecting my son so he’d have time to get away.”

  “You helped a killer escape.”

  “This is a witch hunt. My son would never hurt a fly.”

  “Your son kidnapped my partner. He held her hostage.”

  “But did he kill her? No! Because he’s not a killer! My son is not a killer! And now, by the grace of God, he’s been saved. If he was a bad person, God would never have raised him from that coma. My son is good. He’s good!”

  David almost felt sorry for her. She believed what she was saying. She needed to believe what she was saying.

  “And just look. The murders . . . they kept happening even when he was in a coma. How do you explain that?” She was shouting, her face bright red. David was afraid she might have a stroke right there in the kitchen.

  “Oh, Savannah!” she said. “I’ll bet you money that somebody—the mayor or somebody—put pressure on you to find the killer, and my son was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was handy. And yes, I helped him get away. Why? Because he’s innocent, and helping him was the right thing to do. I love my son. I’m a good mother.”

  Ah, and there it was. Because the mothers of killers had a lot of guilt to carry, always wondering if they should have seen the signs, or if they’d done something to create the monster. And many, like Mrs. Francis, simply refused to believe the truth because they couldn’t live with it. David had seen mothers sobbing at executions, proclaiming their sons’ innocence all the way to the final injection.

  “He paid somebody to drive the car here,” she said, suddenly eager to let them know just how her son had outwitted them. “I don’t know who. The guy just parked it, handed me a letter with instructions, and left in another car.”

  “Found it.” An officer held up a piece of lined paper. Evidence.

  “Bag that,” somebody said.

  “Right
now my baby is on a plane to some other country,” Mrs. Francis said. “Or on a boat, going far away.”

  David hoped to hell that was the case, but it didn’t fit Tremain’s profile. Running was probably the last thing the guy would do. And then David remembered that Elise was alone at the plantation.

  CHAPTER 38

  After eating the slice of pie, Elise went to the bedroom and lay down on the feather mattress. The medication had kicked in, and she was without pain for the first time in days. What a concept. To simply feel better because she didn’t hurt.

  She hadn’t meant to sleep, but she dropped off, waking up an hour later groggy and disoriented. She checked her phone to find a text from Avery, telling her he’d gotten the mojo bags to the DNA lab. Nothing new from David.

  The last text was from Audrey with her flight numbers and departure times. Elise would be relieved when all of this was over, when Audrey was back home and Tremain was behind bars.

  When she was working a case, she got lost in it and forgot about her own life. But now, with the finalization of two big concerns, Tremain and Audrey, her focus shifted, and she found herself once again thinking about her life and the path she’d taken. Before long, Audrey would be out of high school and off to college. These few years were so important, and having a mother with her head buried in case files and investigations and death and brutal crimes . . . What kind of life was that for a teenager?

  Elise’s thoughts shifted to the coffee shop. What would they call it? Sweet Kitty. Yes. And she and Audrey would wear pink aprons with black cats on them, and the latte and espresso foam would have a cat design. And where would David fit in? He’d come to the shop and drink a latte. Maybe he’d tell her about a case he was working, and maybe he’d even consult with her at times.

  Propped up in bed, Elise picked up the receiver to the landline phone and began dialing the department to report Anastasia, but she couldn’t make herself complete the number.

  Police work was black and white, but life wasn’t. There was so much gray. And maybe deep down she was glad her aunt was getting away.