by Kylie Logan
“What is it?” Levi fought his way over to my side. “What’s happening?”
I grabbed his hand. “We’ve got to get to them. Quentin and Riva. We’ve got to catch them!”
He didn’t question me. Hanging on tight, he elbowed a path for us between corporals and generals, Southern belles and Northern widows. By the time we got to the lobby, I knew we were too late. Half the partygoers were out on the veranda watching something.
I was only too afraid I knew what.
“They’re getting away!” I called to Levi.
We got outside just in time to see Riva and Quentin hop into one of the waiting golf carts, and Levi shouted to one of the valets to bring him a cart—and for all I know, that actually might have happened quickly if we all didn’t freeze in our tracks and gasp in horror.
As they motored down the driveway, Riva and Quentin grabbed the torches that lit the path and tossed them. One of them got tangled in the branches of a nearby tree, and in an instant, the bunting decorating that tree caught. The fabric was light and airy and the fire consumed it immediately, then moved along the rope from which the bunting hung, eating up inches of it, catching the leaves and small branches of the tree on fire. Sparks rained down on a nearby planter and the peacock feathers in it went up in flames. By the time we were ready to jump into Levi’s golf cart, the front yard of Tara was as bright as daylight, with fires burning on the lawn and above our heads in the trees.
I heard Luella call out to Frank to start herding everyone out the back door and into the gardens for safety just as Levi untied his red sash and handed it and the scabbard to Kate so he could hop into the golf cart unencumbered. I was already there, and though I knew I didn’t have to tell Kate, I yelled for her to call the police and the fire department and we took off after the Twins, weaving our way down the drive, doing our best to avoid the flaming bits of fabric that fell from the trees and started a smoldering fire on the head of the toy horse at the front of the cart.
“Watch it!” Levi yelled when a fiery wad of fabric landed on my filmy red shawl and caught instantly. One hand on the wheel, he grabbed the shawl and yanked it away, then tossed it out of the cart, but not before my arm got singed.
A tree limb crashed in flames in front of us, and he screamed, “Hang on!” then veered to the left, rolling over the front lawn and between a couple of the torches that the Twins hadn’t knocked over. A peacock screamed its displeasure with the whole thing and darted out in front of us, and Levi put out one arm to keep me from sliding forward and slamming into the dashboard and jammed on the brakes, and when the bird ran to the other side of the drive and disappeared into a thicket, I joined Levi in a hearty chorus of curses.
The crowds that had been having a party of their own out in the street saw the fire ignite, and we heard screams and a couple cheers from people who obviously thought it was part of the planned entertainment. In the distance, I heard the pulsing sound of a siren.
“Where do you think they’re going?” Levi yelled above the noise.
I didn’t know, but I knew who would. “Twins?” I asked the people who surged forward to try and see what was happening inside the grounds of Tara, and one woman pointed over her shoulder.
“Downtown!” I yelled to Levi.
It was slow going, what with the crowds already there plus the people who came running at the first signs of the commotion, but with every inch, the crowd thinned a bit. Soon there was nothing ahead of us but empty road.
And the dim, red glow of taillights.
“There!” Levi didn’t need me to, but I pointed ahead of us. “That’s got to be the Twins.”
He stepped on the pedal and we shot forward, but let’s face it, golf carts aren’t the swiftest of vehicles. Our only consolation was that the Twins were in a golf cart, too, and if they were slowed down for any reason, we might be able to close the gap.
We watched them turn on Toledo and head toward downtown. “I think I know where they’re going,” I told Levi. “Try the marina.”
By the time we arrived, we saw their golf cart, empty, parked up against a telephone pole.
By now, our toy horse had a fiery halo. Levi grabbed his hat, filled it with water from a nearby spigot and doused the horse, then took the time to look around. “What do you think?”
There was a loud party going on in the park, with hundreds of people over there dancing and carrying on. On the dock, boat owners sat on their decks and played music and passed plates of food and bottles of wine. Twinkling lights swung over many of the boats to the slow sway of the waves and created soft, undulating shadows, and carousel music from across the park mixed with Beach Boys songs from someone’s iPod.
“They could be anywhere,” I told Levi, but even though I knew it was true, I listened to my gut. If I wanted to get off an island . . .
I grabbed Levi’s hand and jumped onto the dock.
We raced from party to party and boat to boat, sometimes to the sounds of people asking us to join in and a couple times to complaints that if we didn’t have a boat berthed there, we really shouldn’t be on the dock. Like Scarlett O’Hara and a Union officer are going to pay attention?
We finally found what we were looking for—who we were looking for—on an unattended sailboat at the end of the dock. While Levi pulled out his phone and called Hank, I jumped on board.
And no, it wasn’t easy in that skinny dress, but I managed, if not gracefully.
I was just in time to see Riva toss a carpetbag under one of the benches and then run over to the mast and fight to get the sails raised.
“You’re not going anywhere,” I told her.
“Where I’m going is none of your business.” I am not a sailor, but she apparently knew what she was doing; she untied some ropes and came around to where I stood to untie some more, bumping my shoulder—hard—when she went by.
Levi stepped up behind me. “No, you’re really not going anywhere,” he said, one hand on my shoulder. “The police are on their way.”
“Police? Gee!” The lake was calm, but in the light that oozed over from a nearby boat, Quentin looked as gray as the color of his uniform. There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead. “Hurry up, Riva. Can’t you do that any faster?”
She shot her brother a look. “Maybe if you helped—”
“I don’t know how!” Quentin wailed.
“But you know plenty about what happened to Vivien.” Yeah, I was taking a chance but I knew desperation when I saw it. I also knew I was lucky to have reinforcements; a patrol car screeched to a stop at the end of a dock, light bar flaring, and the sounds of running footsteps pounded the dock. Hank hopped aboard just as I closed in on Quentin.
“This all has to do with you two getting kidnapped, right?” I asked him.
Before he could even open his mouth, Riva spit out, “Shut up, Quentin! Don’t you dare say a word.”
She could intimidate her brother. Me, not so much.
“Come on, Quentin,” I said. “You might as well just confirm it all for me. I’ve got it all figured out.”
“You do not!” Riva yelled. She swung a narrow-eyed look at Hank. “She does not.”
“It’s your turn to shut up,” the chief told her. “Go ahead, Bea,” he said, and I was grateful that he could bluff for all he was worth with a straight face, since I knew he had no idea what was going on. “Explain.”
I looked over Riva, my mirror image in the same red dress and with the same dark hair.
“It was the wig,” I told her. “That’s what made all the pieces click. You were wearing dark wigs . . . both of you . . .” I looked at Quentin, whose eyes were wide and whose nervous fingers picked at the buttons along the front of his jacket. “You were both wearing dark wigs that day Estelle showed you my house when it was for sale. Before I bought it.”
Hank’s dark brows slid down over his eyes. �
��But when your house was for sale . . .”
“Was when the Twins here were being held prisoner by their kidnapper. Yeah.” With one slow step, I closed in on Riva. “Only those pictures Vivien found, they proved you weren’t being held captive, didn’t they? Is that why you killed her?”
“She wanted money,” Quentin howled at the same time his sister warned him again, “Shut up!”
I concentrated on the weak link and turned my attention back to Quentin. “Vivien found the pictures when she was cleaning out Estelle’s house.”
He nodded. “Picture. Just one picture. And when Vivien saw it, she knew what it meant. Orrin Henderson was stupid. He didn’t kidnap us. It was our idea. The whole thing was our idea. Henderson, he was just . . .” Quentin hauled in a breath, and since he couldn’t find the word, I supplied it for him.
“He was the patsy.”
Quentin nodded. “When Vivien saw the picture of us with Estelle, she knew we’d never been kidnapped. She knew we had—”
“Quentin!” Riva’s voice dripped loathing. “You stupid idiot. Keep your mouth shut!”
But Quentin was beyond listening. “Vivien said if we gave her money . . .” Quentin’s eyes were moist. He looked toward Hank. “If I tell you this, you’re going to help me out, right? If I tell you what she did?”
I wasn’t sure which woman Quentin was talking about. “She? Do you mean what Vivien did? Or what Riva did?”
“Quentin . . .” Riva should have known her brother was too far gone to listen. Tears streamed down his cheeks.
“We went there,” Quentin said. “We went to Estelle’s and we gave Vivien ten thousand dollars just like she wanted, and she gave us the picture that showed us over at Bea’s house back when everybody thought we were being held captive. And we thought . . . we thought that was the end of it.”
I thought back to everything I knew about Vivien when she was alive, and all I’d learned about her since she died. “She double-crossed you. How?”
“She showed us a receipt from a drugstore. You know, for copies of the photograph. She had more pictures made,” Quentin said. “She said she had them hidden and—”
“And that’s why you tore apart her house and her office. That’s when you whacked me on the back of the head.” There’s a reason they call it righteous indignation and Levi must have known it, because he tightened his hand against my shoulder before I could go after Riva.
“She did it!” Quentin blurted out. “Riva, she did everything. Vivien told us that she had those other pictures, and she said she was going to show them to the police if we didn’t give her more money. That’s when Riva—”
His sister didn’t let him finish. Before any of us could move to stop her, Riva raced across the deck, flattened her hands against her brother’s chest, and shoved him overboard into the lake.
• • •
While the fire department took care of fishing Quentin out of the drink, Hank slapped handcuffs on Riva and had another officer take her out to the waiting patrol car. That’s when I pointed out the carpetbag under the bench.
Hank unzipped it and whistled low under his breath. “Coins,” he said. “Plenty of them.”
I knew better than to touch evidence, but I peeked inside. “Desiree Champion’s million-dollar collection of Civil War coins, no doubt.”
“Stolen by the Twins,” Levi said.
“Who never were kidnapped and were laying low for a while before they came up with the story of how Orrin Henderson engineered the whole thing. They must have hidden the coins in my house that day they were there with Estelle.”
“Which explains why they wanted to put you out of business,” Levi said.
“And why they offered to buy my place.”
“And why they were up in Suite 6 the night of the Chamber meeting,” Levi added. “Trying to find a way into the attic.”
I shook my head in wonder. “Every inch of every room in that house was restored and redone and redecorated. But not the attic. I bet the coins were tucked under a floorboard.”
Hank scratched a finger under his nose. “But then how did they get them?”
I started to tell him I didn’t know, but as it turned out, I did. “The ladder was moved!” I said. “When I got back from Tara the night Quentin tried to convince me that I might get the highboy back.” I groaned. “No wonder he wanted to talk to me at Tara. He needed to get me out of the way so that Riva could break into the attic and find the coins. Just like she must have slipped out of Estelle’s house and tried to break into my place the evening Vivien was killed. I thought Chuck from the hardware store came and fixed the loose roof shingle, but that wasn’t it at all.”
“We’ll need to get over to your place and have the crime scene techs check it out,” Hank said, and he knew I wouldn’t object.
I never had a chance to, anyway.
By this time, the people who’d been partying on their boats were gathered all over the dock, watching the excitement, and out on the street, I saw a line of golf carts arrive. Luella, Kate, and Chandra made quite a picture pounding down the dock in their gowns.
“It was those Twins, wasn’t it?” Chandra fluffed the skirt of her dress. “I just knew I didn’t like them.”
“We should have known.” Kate crossed her arms over her chest. “As soon as they started spreading lies about you—”
“They needed to get into my attic,” I explained. I knew I’d tell them all the details later, but for now, that at least got the point across. “That’s why they wanted to put me out of business.”
The harrumph of indignation that came out of Chandra was worthy of Belle Watling herself. “Losers! They tried to put you out of business! They thought they were better than you! Wait until they find out you’re really FX O’Grady!”
By the time the words escaped her lips, it was already too late.
“FX O’Grady!”
The name went through the crowd like the fire over at Tara, and before I could move, cell phone cameras were pointed my way and people were calling out questions.
“Are you really?”
“Can I have your autograph?”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
Levi leaned in close and spoke out of one side of his mouth. “Looks like the cat’s out of the bag.”
Honestly, at that particular moment, I didn’t care, because I knew I was surrounded by friends in a place I was proud to call home, and I’d found the man of my dreams.
I wrapped my arms around Levi’s neck. “Frankly, my dear,” I told him, “I don’t give a damn!”
21
Three weeks later, and my phone was still ringing off the hook. Thanks to Chandra’s announcement, word had gone around the island—and farther—that FX O’Grady was in town and her B and B was open for business.
It wasn’t what I wanted. I mean, not the notoriety or the goggling fans.
But it sure didn’t hurt to have my suites full and satisfied customers singing my praises.
Even if a whole lot of them did want pictures and autographs.
I’d just gotten off another call for another reservation and walked to the front porch, where Luella, Chandra, and Kate were waiting to share a late-afternoon bottle of wine and the yummy-looking hummus and pita chips Chandra had brought over.
“It will quiet down,” Luella promised me.
“Yeah, one of these days.” Kate crunched into a chip. “Until then . . .”
“Until then, I’m lucky for what I have.” I settled on the wicker couch and poured the sauvignon blanc. “I’m lucky to have all of you.” I lifted my glass in a toast to my friends. “I’m lucky to have my home and my business—”
“And Levi!” Chandra giggled.
“Yes,” I admitted. “Things are going well between us. I’m very lucky about that. Now if we can just keep our lives n
ice and quiet and murder-free, life here on the island will be perfect.”
They agreed, and we sighed and smiled and chatted.
At least until Hank’s patrol car pulled into my driveway.
“Uh-oh.” Chandra wiped a dribble of hummus from her chin. “This can’t be good.”
“Just because Hank is here doesn’t mean something bad has happened.” Brave words, but I didn’t sound all that convincing, even to myself.
He bounded up the steps. “What? The four of you look like you’re waiting to hear a death sentence.”
“It’s not”—I swallowed hard—“another murder?”
“Not one anywhere around here.” Hank leaned against the front porch railing, and since he was on duty, I didn’t offer him a glass of wine but he did take a plate of chips and glop hummus on them. “Here’s the thing . . .” He gulped down a chip. “Once we knew the Twins had engineered the kidnapping and made up the story about what had happened to them and what they went through, it got us thinking. And once we got thinking, we contacted the authorities out in New Mexico where the Twins surfaced after their ‘ordeal.’”
He gave the last word a twist.
“And . . ?” I asked him.
“Found Orrin Henderson’s body. Or at least what was left of it.”
Even the wine wasn’t enough to wash down the bad taste that suddenly filled my mouth. “The Twins?”
“Riva. At least that’s what Quentin says. Henderson never stood a chance. They got tired of depending on their mother for their money and decided they wanted some of their own, so they talked Henderson into helping pull off the heist and promised him a share when they sold those coins. Then they got rid of him the first chance they got.” Hank heaved himself away from the railing and set his dish on the table in front of the couch. “Thought you ladies would like to know.”
After he left, we sat in silence for a few long minutes.
“That’s awful.” Luella shivered.
“Terrible.” Kate shook her head.