Now you have to clean up, she told herself. Gather up all your things, put them in the garbage sack, and get ready to leave.
Andrea Willis woke at six o’clock. Something was wrong. She could sense trouble. It was unlike her to wake so early, especially after she’d taken a sleeping pill. And whenever she got a sense of foreboding, it usually involved Laura. Suddenly she remembered that neither Laura nor Sheridan had come home last night. She didn’t worry so much about Sheridan. That feisty young woman could take care of herself. But what about Laura?
Andrea got out of bed, slipped into her house shoes and robe, exited the bedroom where Cecil was still sleeping, and walked down the hall. She knocked on her daughters’ door. No response. This time she didn’t wait. She simply flung open the door and turned on the overhead light. Neither of the twin beds had been slept in. Both were still made up from yesterday morning.
What was that odd sound? Where was it coming from? She stopped dead still in the center of the room and listened. Someone was weeping, and the pitiful sobs were coming from the adjoining bathroom. Had one of the girls returned? Was Sheridan or Laura crying? If Jamie Upton had done something to hurt Laura again, she didn’t know what she’d do. Yes, she did. She’d make Cecil forbid Laura to marry the sorry son of a bitch and they’d take Laura home today.
When Andrea eased open the bathroom door, she gasped when she saw Laura, totally naked, standing in the shower. The shower was off, but Laura was soaking wet and shivering. Tears streamed down her face.
“Laura?” For a couple of seconds Andrea couldn’t seem to move. “What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”
Laura turned her head slowly and gazed at Andrea. That’s when Andrea knew that Laura had had another spell. She rushed to her daughter, grabbed a large towel from the rack by the shower stall, and wrapped it around Laura.
“Come on, sweetie, let me help you.”
With great gentleness, Andrea urged Laura into motion, helping her step out of the shower. She rubbed Laura’s body dry, then took another towel and wrapped it around her head turban-style. Taking Laura’s trembling hand, she led her daughter into the bedroom, where she eased her down on the edge of the bed. Laura continued weeping. Softly. Mournfully.
While she searched the closet for something suitable for Laura to wear, Andrea thought about what must be done. Cecil would fight her, but she didn’t care how much he objected. Laura needed help. If she couldn’t make Laura leave Cherokee County today and if Cecil wouldn’t back her up, she’d call a local doctor and see if he could at least give Laura some medication. Something to soothe her nerves.
Andrea worked quickly, helping Laura dress in loosefitting lounge slacks and top. Then she combed Laura’s long blond hair, and all the while she spoke softly, soothingly to her troubled daughter. When Andrea sat down on the bed beside Laura and took her hand in hers, Laura
stopped crying.
“Feeling better?” Andrea asked.
Laura nodded.
“What’s wrong? Tell me about it. Why were you crying?”
“I don’t know,” Laura said. “I—I can’t remember.”
“Where were you last night and early this morning? I checked in here and both you and Sheridan were gone.”
“I don’t know.” Laura squeezed Andrea’s hand. “I remember Jamie kissing me good night and I came upstairs to get ready for bed. Sheridan wasn’t here. I was alone.”
“And then what?”
“That’s all I remember until a little while ago. I—I was in the shower, scrubbing my body. And I was crying.”
“Are you saying you don’t remember where you were all night?” Andrea’s heart caught in her throat. Please, God, please, don’t do this to us. Laura isn’t to blame for the way she is. And Cecil, my poor Cecil, can’t go through this again.
“Oh, Mother, it’s happening again, isn’t it?” Laura flung herself into Andrea’s arms. “I’m losing my mind. I’m having another nervous breakdown, aren’t I?”
Andrea hugged her daughter fiercely. Protectively. “No, no, sweetie, you’ll be all right. No one knows you weren’t here all night. And you mustn’t tell anyone. Everything will be all right. Trust me to take care of things, to take care of you.”
“Oh, Mother, what would I do without you?” She laid her head in Andrea’s lap.
Andrea stroked Laura’s damp hair. Help us, dear God, help us.
They had let Peter and Paul loose the minute Scotsman’s Bluff came into view. The sheriff’s deputies and policemen had followed the bloodhounds, running at top speed to keep up with the lumbering dogs. Big Jim waited with Genny and Dallas outside Jacob’s truck, parked on the side of the road. Jacob radioed to the truck several times, giving them updates, letting them know the dogs hadn’t lost the scent.
Daybreak came quietly, all hint of bad weather vanquished. Last night’s distant thunder that forecast rain hadn’t kept the promise of a downpour. The few sprinkles that fell hadn’t even settled the dust. Undoubtedly the clouds had bypassed Cherokee County and deposited rain farther north. The morning sky held no hint of red, which Genny’s granny had said always predicted bad weather. Luscious pinks and lavenders streaked the edges of the sky.
“Dallas!” Jacob’s voice came over the radio, easily heard through the pickup’s open door.
Dallas jumped up in the truck and responded. “Yeah, Jacob, I’m here.”
“We found Jamie.”
“Alive?”
“No.”
Dallas glanced at Jim Upton. The old man went chalk white.
“I’m sending a couple of our men back down to take Big Jim home,” Jacob said. “But…I need Genny to come up here. I’m no forensics expert, but I’d say the killer covered her tracks pretty darn good.”
“Please, I want to see my grandson,” Big Jim said to Dallas. “Tell Jacob—”
“She tortured him to death. He’s a sorry sight,” Jacob said. “You tell Big Jim that he doesn’t want to see Jamie this way. Tell him to take my word for it.”
“Dear God!” Jim Upton crumbled before their eyes. A big, robust man, brought to his knees by grief. “Who would—” His voice broke as he wept.
Genny put her arm around him. “You must go home, Mr. Upton, and tell your wife that Jamie is dead. And you’ll have to tell Laura and her family.”
“Yes.” Jim swallowed in an effort to stop crying, but tears still trickled down his cheeks.
“Jacob needs me to take a look at the crime scene and see if I can pick up on something.” She patted Jim’s back. “I promise that I’ll do everything I can to help find out who killed Jamie.”
Jim asked, “You don’t think Jazzy would—”
“No! No, of course not. Jazzy isn’t capable of such a thing.”
Jazzy would never torture another human being, never inflict pain on any of God’s creatures. She had a good heart. A kind and loving soul. But some people would suspect her. They would point fingers in her direction. Their accusations could hurt Jazzy, and if Jacob didn’t find the real murderer, if Jazzy didn’t have an ironclad alibi…Genny knew with a heart-wrenching certainty that even in death Jamie Upton would wreak havoc on Jazzy’s life.
Chapter 11
Andrea Willis waited until the medication she had persuaded Laura to take took effect. Then she quietly left her daughter’s bedroom, but not before glancing back to check on her one final time. She had been caring for and protecting Laura since she’d been a little girl, hoping beyond hope that some sort of miracle would spare their daughter from the curse she had inherited. Poor little Laura. If only she could have loved the child more. But she’d done her best. Even Cecil had often said that they had both done everything in their power to help Laura. But Andrea felt that she had failed Laura, that she hadn’t done enough, hadn’t pushed Cecil hard enough to admit the truth.
Andrea didn’t stop by the guest bedroom she shared with her husband. Instead, she went straight down the back stairs to the kitchen. Startled at first by the
housekeeper’s presence, she paused on the bottom step and considered whether she should slip back upstairs before Dora saw her. But then she heard Sheridan’s voice in the kitchen. Her younger daughter was laughing and talking to Dora.
Andrea marched into the kitchen. Sheridan sat at the table, a breakfast plate in front of her. One look at Sheridan reassured Andrea that she was perfectly all right.
With her mouth half filled with eggs, Sheridan said, “Morning, Mother.”
“Good morning, Mrs. Willis.” Dora looked up from where she busily prepared biscuit dough. “Coffee’s made and I can fix you something to eat now if you’re hungry. Biscuits won’t be ready for another half hour, but—”
“Coffee will be fine. Nothing else for me right now, thank you.” Andrea walked into the kitchen, poured herself a cup of fresh black coffee, then sat down at the table beside Sheridan. “Mind telling me where you’ve been all night?” she asked quietly.
“Where do you think?” Sheridan whispered her reply. “I met this really interesting guy last night while I was in town.”
Andrea sighed. “I thought as much.” She reached across the table and grasped Sheridan’s wrist. “You were careful, weren’t you? You made sure he used protection.”
“Yes, of course, I did. I’m not a fool. I always take care of number one.”
She hoped Sheridan was telling her the truth. Despite their closeness, her younger daughter had lied to her on more than one occasion. “Yes, you do. Usually. I only wish your sister…”
When Sheridan’s eyes widened inquisitively, Andrea realized she’d already said too much. Although she loved Sheridan with all her heart—yes, more than she loved Laura—their older child had required the bulk of both Cecil’s and her attention. And over the years Sheridan had grown to resent Laura more and more. Andrea supposed she couldn’t blame her, but the tension between the two girls only complicated an already complex situation.
“What’s wrong with poor little Laura now?” Sheridan asked.
“Lower your voice,” Andrea told her. “We do not air our dirty laundry in front of servants.”
“God, Mother, get real. You’ve never fooled anybody. Not our servants at home. And not the Uptons’ servants.”
“Must you always—” Andrea cut her complaint short, realizing she was taking out her frustration about Laura on Sheridan. “If you need to shower and change clothes, shower in our bathroom. And I’ll get your things out of Laura’s room. She had a restless night and is just now sleeping peacefully. I don’t want you disturbing her.”
“What happened? Did she have another one of her crazy-as-a-Betsy-bug spells?”
There was no use denying it to Sheridan. She’d seen Laura at her worst. “I plan to speak to your father this morning about taking Laura home and putting her…placing her somewhere for treatment.”
“Glory hallelujah. About damn time!”
Genny waited outside the dilapidated cabin, Dallas at her side and a handful of specially chosen lawmen scouring the area around the ramshackle old house for signs of any evidence. Jacob had ordered the inside of the cabin off limits to everyone until the crime scene investigators went over the entire place with a fine tooth comb.
“I’m using the most qualified of Dallas’s people and mine,” Jacob had explained to the deputies and policemen on the scene. “And if they need help, we’ll contact Knoxville.”
When Jacob finished another phone call—only one of many he’d made in the past thirty minutes—he came over to Genny. “I might have missed something in there, but to the naked eye, it looks as if she cleared out any evidence that might have linked her to the scene.”
“There’s always something,” Dallas said. “The problem is that if our investigators find something, will it be anything useful? Without even one suspect”—Dallas paused momentarily—“or possibly with too many, unless our people find DNA evidence that we can match—”
“That’s one of the reasons I need Genny.” Jacob looked to his cousin. “I gi do, I hate to ask you to look inside the cabin at Jamie’s body, but you could be our only hope of finding his killer.”
Whenever he wanted to emphasize the importance of what he was about to say, Jacob called her sister in their ancestors’ Cherokee tongue. “I understand,” she told him.
“I don’t want you to go inside. Just go to the door and take a look, then let me know if you pick up on anything.”
“I’ll go with her,” Dallas said, keeping guard at her side.
“We’ll both go with her.” Jacob moved to her other side so that she was flanked by two large, overly protective men who loved her.
The threesome walked up the rickety steps and across the porch. Then, using a gloved hand, Jacob opened the door. He moved aside just enough to give her a direct view into the shadowy room. The nauseatingly metallic odor of blood assailed her senses. And no wonder. The room looked as if it had been painted in blood.
She took a deep breath and willed herself to be strong as she focused on Jamie Upton’s barely recognizable naked body. Nausea rose from her stomach and burned a trail up her esophagus. She turned and ran to the edge of the porch, then vomited violently. Dallas rushed to her and put his arm around her trembling shoulders. He jerked a handkerchief from his jacket and wiped her perspiring forehead and her damp mouth.
“She’s not going to do this,” Dallas told Jacob.
Genny grabbed Dallas’s arm. “Yes, I am. I’ll be all right.”
“Damn it, can’t you see what’s it already doing to you?” Dallas glared at Jacob. “Tell her she doesn’t have to do it.”
“Genny, he’s right,” Jacob said. “You don’t have to—”
“Yes, I do.” She jerked away from Dallas’s protective hold and marched straight back to the open front door. “Both of you stay away from me for a few minutes. Allow me to concentrate.”
She looked into the bloody room, focused on Jamie’s mutilated body, and let the darkness surround her. Thick, heavy darkness. Filled with anger. So much anger.
The moment Genny staggered, she felt strong arms holding her and knew that despite the dark evil encompassing her spirit, she was safe. Safe because Dallas would bring her back before she went in too deep.
Insane rage! The woman who had tortured Jamie had taken perverse pleasure in punishing him. She had wanted him to suffer as she had suffered, as others had suffered at his hands. Had she killed Jamie for revenge? Perhaps, but Genny got a sense of something as strong, perhaps even stronger than revenge. In the woman’s sick mind, she had killed Jamie to protect someone. Herself? Or someone she loved?
Concentrate on this woman, Genny told herself. Can you see her? See her body? Her face? Even a shadowy image?
The darkness swirled faster and faster, sucking Genny deeper into a metaphysical realm. Evil. Tormented. Do not be frightened away, Genny told herself. Seek deeper. Look beyond the veil and reach for the truth.
Flashes of a human form danced through Genny’s mind. A female form. Naked. Bathing herself in cool water, rinsing away the bright scarlet blood. It dripped from her fingers, ran in rivulets down her back and buttocks. The image was vague, unclear, unrecognizable. Except her short, stylish red hair.
Jazzy’s hair!
Genny gasped. Her eyelids shot open. She grabbed Dallas’s arm and held on tight. Unable to speak, she moaned, refusing to believe what she’d seen. It wasn’t Jazzy, she told herself. It was a woman who had hair the same style and color as Jazzy’s.
“Genny, honey, what’s wrong?” Dallas caressed her face.
She shoved his hand aside and closed her eyes again. Go back and take another look. Find the woman again. Prove to yourself that it wasn’t Jazzy.
“Genny, for heaven’s sake, what do you think you’re doing?” Dallas demanded. “Come out of it. Don’t—”
“Let her go,” Jacob told him. “I’ve seen this before. She needs to go back because something she saw disturbed her.”
That’s right, Jacob, soothe Da
llas. Make him understand. Genny eased slowly—carefully—into that mystic realm, going just deep enough to connect once again with the woman’s image.
Short red hair mussed by the morning breeze. The wind whipping around and about her as she traveled at high speed. Try as she might, Genny could not see the woman’s face—only her hair, only a shadowy outline of her body. And then clearly, distinctly, she saw the car the woman was driving. A small, sleek green sports car with a tan interior.
Genny gasped for air as she brought herself back to the present moment. “Definitely a woman. I saw her washing away Jamie’s blood. I couldn’t see her face, couldn’t make out who she was or if I knew her. She had red hair.” Genny opened her eyes and looked first at Dallas and then at Jacob. “I think she was wearing a wig so that her hair was identical to Jazzy’s. While she showered, she was also washing the blood from her hair…from the wig.”
“Are you saying this woman was trying to pass herself off as Jazzy?” Jacob asked.
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t know. All I could make out was her hair. I sensed she wasn’t really pretending to be Jazzy. Maybe she just wanted anyone who saw her at a distance to think she was Jazzy.”
Jacob frowned. “Anything else?”
Jacob’s inquiry seemed odd to Genny; she picked up some peculiar vibes from her cousin. “Yes, I saw the car she was driving.”
“And?” Jacob came closer, his eyes narrowing as he approached her.
“It was a small, green sports car. Something new and sleek. The interior was tan. And there was something wrong with the car.”
“What?” Jacob and Dallas asked simultaneously.
“The driver’s side appeared to be damaged. And the glass surrounding the front headlight on that side was broken out.”
“I’ll be damned!” Jacob stormed off the porch and headed straight to his truck.
“Jacob!” Genny went after him, forgetting how much her psychic trips weakened her. When she stumbled, Dallas was there to catch her. She glanced up at the man she loved and told him, “I need to find out what’s going on with Jacob.”
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