Grandmother looked as if she might refuse—she was so accustomed to doing that—but instead she rose and led the way down the halls to the salon. “Every single piece in here came from distant lands. That chandelier is from France, those tables from India, the vases from China. The rugs are Persian, the lace is from Brussels, that glasswork from Murano. Captain Howard never made a voyage that he failed to bring home some treasure for the house he intended to build.”
Reece seated herself in an uncomfortable chair that looked as if it might have come from France, as well, and immediately asked her first question. “What went wrong that my father left this house intending never to return?”
Grandmother’s posture stiffened even more than its usual boardlike state. “He fell in love with your mother.”
“People fall in love and move away from home all the time and still go back for summer visits, holidays, birthdays.”
“Your father came back.”
“How often in the sixteen years he was away? Twice? Three times? And he couldn’t even speak to Grandfather when he was here.”
Grandmother’s scowl was stern, her gaze sharply disapproving, and would have made adolescent Reece quake and flee. Not this time. “Elliott and his father had some silly falling-out. With the misguided passion of youth, Elliott never forgave him, and then…it was too late.”
“Is that Grandfather’s description? A silly falling-out? Because my father didn’t hold grudges over silly falling-outs. He was a loving and forgiving man. Whatever happened to him was serious, and it was Grandfather’s fault.”
Grandmother managed an inch more rigidity in her bearing. “You will not speak of your grandfather like that in his house. Whatever happened between him and Elliott was their business, not yours, not mine. Now, if that’s all you want…”
Gazing at her, Reece realized the old woman meant what she’d said. Maybe she’d actually believed it all along, or maybe Grandfather had told her that so often over the years that she’d come to accept it as fact. But the falling-out had cost her a relationship with her son and granddaughter, as well. How could that not be her business? How could she have not wanted to know why?
“No,” she said abruptly as Grandmother began to rise. “That’s not all. The summer I lived here…you told me Valerie had left to take care of things back home. Was that true? Or was she receiving treatment for her drinking?”
Grandmother’s mouth pursed as if she’d sucked a lime. “You have a habit of asking the wrong people your questions, Clarice.”
“Well, Daddy and Grandfather are dead, and Valerie doesn’t discuss the past. Since you’re the one who told me the lie…”
She soured even more. “Yes. Your mother had to enter a rehabilitative program. I insisted. She was a weak woman. Between the medicines the doctor gave her and the alcohol she took from Arthur’s study, she was barely able to get out of bed. But she begged me not to tell you, so I didn’t. I had no idea that keeping a promise to her would offend you all these years later.”
“I thought she had abandoned me, like Daddy. I thought she’d left me with people who obviously didn’t want me any more than she did.”
“Your father didn’t abandon you, Clarice. He died.” Grandmother didn’t bother to dispute the last part of Reece’s statement, sending an ache through some small part of her that still wanted… Instead, shaking her head, she scowled. “I’d hoped you would outgrow this melodramatic bent, but you obviously haven’t. These things happened years ago. Why are you making a fuss about it now?”
Reece wanted to give in to that melodramatic bent and stamp her feet, throw a few priceless antiques and scream, I was a child! A mourning, distraught, terrified child! I needed love and reassurance and to believe someone wanted me!
But her grandmother’s response would likely be one she’d given before: You always were rather spoiled.
“I’m making a fuss now,” Reece said, imitating Grandmother’s stony calm, “because I can’t remember most of that summer, because something happened then, something besides my father dying and my mother leaving me. Something that gives me nightmares, that—” She paused, considering the wisdom of going on, then did it, anyway. “Something that Grandfather’s spirit wants to keep secret. He’s been warning me away since I got here.”
“Oh, really, Clarice.” Grandmother put more scorn in those three words than Reece would have believed possible. She rose from the sofa, looking inches taller and way too imposing. “His spirit…for heaven’s sake. I blame your father for this, encouraging you to believe in ghosts, and both your parents for this self-centered, inappropriate and hysterical behavior. Your grandfather wanted nothing to do with you in life, and he certainly wouldn’t change that in death. As if such a thing were even possible.” At the doorway, she turned back. “I do believe you should consider ending your visit here soon. Welcomes do wear out, you know. Sooner for some than others.”
Chapter 10
“It’s human blood.”
Jones was standing in the shed door, Maricci beside him, watching silently as the lab geek who’d come with the detective performed her test. Marnie Robinson wasn’t much of a living-people person, Maricci had told him, but she was very good with dead people and all things pertaining to them.
Now, at the certainty in her voice, Jones’s gut tightened. He’d known it was blood. Reece had been positive of it. But hearing it confirmed made it that much more real.
It could be Glen’s blood. He could be one step closer to knowing what had happened to his brother.
“Is it as much as it looks?” Maricci asked.
Marnie gazed at him owlishly. “Losing this much blood would be incompatible with living.”
“Can you get DNA from it?”
“Depends on the degree of degradation. Can I take the tarp back to the lab?”
Maricci shifted his gaze to Jones, who walked a few yards off to the east, where the building hid them from any view inside the house. Maricci followed. “If we take it without permission from Miss Willa or a warrant, the results will be inadmissible in court, and if there’s any way it implicates her husband, she’s not likely to give permission. There’s a missing-persons case open on your brother. The sheriff’s investigator has probable cause to get a warrant.”
“The old man is dead. Kind of limits any legal action that can be taken against him.”
“If he’s the killer.”
Everything pointed to Arthur, and Reece was certain it was him warning her away. “Who else would it be? Miss Willa? Mark? Reece? An old woman or a couple of scrawny kids?” Glen had been too wiry, too strong, too used to fighting with bigger and smaller brothers. No way he could have been overpowered by any of those three, unless they’d bashed his skull from behind, and no way any of them could have crept up and caught him unaware.
“I’ve heard stories about Arthur Howard,” Maricci said. “That he was scary, menacing, more than a little odd. I don’t have trouble believing he could lose his temper and kill someone.”
“You’re a detective,” Marnie said from the doorway of the shed. “You don’t have trouble believing anyone could do anything. Do I bag the tarp or not?”
Both of them looked at Jones. He and Reece had been led to the shed for just that discovery, but not to prosecute a dead man. Not to destroy Miss Willa’s life—and besmirching her respected family name would do that—or any chance Reece might have a relationship with her only grandmother. All he wanted was answers: Was it Glen’s blood? Had he died here at Fair Winds? And maybe, if God took pity on Jones, where was his body?
Maricci turned to Marnie. “Bag it. And get a DNA sample from him for comparison.”
Surprise flickered across the woman’s face, but she nodded and disappeared back into the shed.
In a few minutes, they were driving away, the tarp and Jones’s DNA sample both bagged and tagged. He closed the door, wincing at the metallic shriek, then started toward the house. The tarp’s discovery didn’t change the fact th
at he had a lot of work to do.
He was mixing concrete in a wheelbarrow with a hoe when Reece came out the front door. The instant he saw her, some of the tension left his shoulders and jaw, and a smile came automatically. She wore the same clothes as the afternoon before, with smears of dirt, sweat and mortar on both shirt and shorts.
“I didn’t bring any real work clothes with me,” she commented as she approached, “so I’m already stinky and dirty.”
And beautiful.
“How did it go with the detective?”
“It is human blood, and taking the tarp without a warrant means anything they find is inadmissible in court.”
She made an obnoxious sound. “Like that matters in this case.”
“How did it go with Miss Willa?”
“She confirmed that Valerie was in rehab those months. She also said I was hysterical, melodramatic and unwanted when I was here then, and that I had worn out my welcome now and should consider leaving. Of course, being a proper Howard, she won’t throw me out. Not just yet, at least.”
Jones stared at her, then took her hand, but she wouldn’t let him tug her around the wheelbarrow so he could hold her. Her eyes bright with tears, her fingers holding tightly to his, she forced a smile. “It’s nice to know where one stands, isn’t it?”
So much for preserving some kind of relationship between them, he thought bitterly. “You don’t need her.”
“I know.” She shrugged. “I never really had her in my life. Just the possibility that someday… But it’s okay.” She sounded as if she meant it. There was disappointment in her voice, but acceptance, too. Not resignation—that would have been painful for both of them—but simple acceptance.
“Families suck sometimes, don’t they?”
She laughed. “Yeah, they do. That’s why God gives us the chance to make or pick our own.”
They finished the last course of bricks on the south bed, then moved to the bed north of the steps. The sun was warm, the air smelling of the river and the pines that edged the yard but lacking the crisp scent of fall Jones had become accustomed to on many of his jobs farther north. Sometimes he missed the change of seasons, but not enough to move someplace where the months brought drastic weather.
In fact, he might be willing to consider relocating farther south instead, where the biggest seasonal difference was warm versus hot, damp versus suffocatingly damp.
New Orleans would do nicely.
If he had the proper incentive.
Around eleven, Miss Willa drove past in the big old Caddy, never glancing in their direction. Jones watched Reece’s expression, but saw nothing more than momentary curiosity. Soon after, the housekeeper brought out a tray of chicken-salad sandwiches along with two dainty dishes of salad and a pitcher of iced tea. “I fixed the food before Ma’am told me about her appointment with Robbie Calloway,” she announced, “and she won’t eat leftovers, so I’m not letting it go to waste.”
Reece didn’t say anything, so Jones thanked the woman. After she returned inside, they gave their hands a cursory wash with the hose, then sat on the porch steps, the tray between them.
“Robbie Calloway is her lawyer,” Reece said before picking up a sandwich half. “Either you’re getting your contract at last, or I’m getting officially disinherited, if I wasn’t already.”
“I don’t know if I still want the contract.” He wasn’t sure he’d ever actually wanted the project. His work had been a way to gain access to Fair Winds, to find answers about Glen. If that tarp provided at least some of those answers, and he had this knot in his gut that said it would, would he want to stay around for months on end, working for the widow of his brother’s murderer?
Even if he didn’t get answers, his opinion of Miss Willa had taken a serious hit today. He wanted to pursue this thing with Reece. How much trouble would it cause if he was working for the grandmother who’d deliberately caused her such needless pain to restore the place that gave her such nightmares?
“Maybe someone who works for you could oversee it,” Reece remarked. Then she shook her head. “Strike that. Grandmother isn’t the sort to settle for the number-two guy. She’d want your attention twenty-four hours a day until the job was done to her satisfaction.”
“Yeah. Some of my clients think a contract with my company entitles them to that.” He grinned. “I charge them a little extra for attitude.”
She finished her sandwich, then picked up the delicate crystal plate and heavy silver fork, both elaborately monogrammed with an H. “I don’t see the point of salads like this,” she remarked. “A small serving of mixed greens, one slice of cucumber, two cherry tomatoes and raspberry vinaigrette. I like plain old lettuce, and I want lots of stuff on it, all topped with rich, thick blue-cheese dressing. You know, a salad of substance.”
“The difference between you and Miss Willa. She’s superficial. You’re about substance.”
“Thank you,” she said with a wry smile. “Right now I’m about embracing the differences. It’s hard to imagine that my dad came from these people.”
“Because he made a conscious decision to leave here. To leave them.”
“Like you did with your family.”
It was the perfect opening to tell her about his family, both good and bad. He’d rehearsed different openings in his head, ways to tell her his background without making his family seem nearly as bad as hers, because they weren’t, honest to God. But the opening came and went without a single word making it from his mouth before she returned to the subject of the contract.
“What happens if you decide you don’t want a project? You’ve got a lot of time in here—these beds, the research, the sketches, all the preliminary work. You just write that off and move on?”
He grinned. “I don’t know. I’ve never turned down a job of this size and significance.”
She gazed into the distance a long time, then abruptly said, “I think you should do it. You and Grandmother both said the gardens here were historically significant. Even if you don’t need it on your résumé, who could turn down the chance to bring history back to life?”
“And to thwart Arthur in the process?”
Her smile was sunny. “Well, yeah, there’s that, too.”
“Pursuing it could bring disaster into Miss Willa’s life. Gl—whoever’s blood is on that tarp might not have been your grandfather’s only victim. Once we start digging out here—” His words broke off as ice rushed through his veins, appropriately chilling to the image of mounds of dirt and piles of bones.
As she looked across the expanse of yard, her gaze darkened. Imagining how many bodies could be buried there? Wondering if her grandfather could have been that kind of monster?
After a moment, her hand unsteady, she gestured toward the two new beds. “At least we haven’t uncovered any bodies so far.”
He met her weak smile with his own, choosing not to point out that so far, the digging had been relatively shallow. If Arthur were burying a body permanently, surely he’d dug deeper than two feet, as the heavy equipment would. “It would shake Miss Willa’s world to its foundations, having to face the truth about her husband.”
“That’s on Grandfather, not you. If he really did kill someone—maybe multiple someones—those families have the right to know. The world has a right to know what he was.” Sounding less certain, she added, “Grandmother would deal with it. She’s a Howard. Besides, I could be wrong. That could be Grandfather’s blood, or Mark’s, from an injury they suffered while out hunting or working.”
Jones didn’t repeat Marnie Robinson’s comment about the blood loss being incompatible with life.
“It was August,” Reece remarked.
His gaze jerked toward hers. “What?”
“The day I surprised Grandfather in the garage. It was August. And the truck was in the garage, not the shed.”
Glen had disappeared in August. What were the odds that someone else had disappeared from the area at the same time and not been
missed?
Not good.
Leaning his head against the pillar, Jones closed his eyes, easily calling his brother’s image to mind. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, Glen had usually been smiling, often laughing, always feeling whatever he felt with passion. Jones had wanted a different life, but it had been Glen who first suggested actually trying for it. He and Siobhan were in love, but they’d both been promised to someone else since they were kids. They’d decided on the runaway plan, and Jones had jumped at the chance to join in.
If they had changed their minds, if Jones had warned their parents, if anything had happened differently…
Things happen as they’re meant to. Granny’s voice echoed in his head.
Opening his eyes, he looked at Reece. “Do you believe in fate?”
She wasn’t quick to answer. She finished her tea, then stood and walked to the bottom of the steps before facing him again. “I do most of the time, but sometimes I wonder. Was it fate that Daddy died so young? That Valerie wasn’t the best mother? That I wound up here that summer?” She shrugged, an easy, graceful movement. “I do believe things happen for a reason, that good comes out of bad, but I also believe we have influence, too. We can make decisions that can alter our fate. Though then, Martine asks, how do you know you weren’t fated to make that decision?” She smiled faintly.
“What good came out of your father’s death, your mother’s deficiencies and your summer here?”
Again she smiled, but this time it was the real thing, the kind that involved her entire face and affected him like a punch to the gut. “I met you.” She turned, tossing a look back at him over her shoulder, as she sashayed—no other word fit that sassy, sexy sway of her hips—to the work site.
Warmth spread through him, easing doubts and guilts and fears in its path, and for the first time in a very long time, he realized, he was falling for a woman. It was too hard and too fast, at least if a man wasn’t prepared for it.
But his subconscious had been preparing for it even if his conscious mind hadn’t. All that talk about long-distance relationships, all that wanting—needing—to take care of her, all that thought about relocating to New Orleans… Oh, yeah. Some part of him had been headed this way without his even realizing it.
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