by Alice Sharpe
She called Robert’s name again. When there was still no answer, she became concerned and, taking a steadying breath, stepped into the new hallway, an ominous feeling pulling her forward.
The outside door emptied onto an attached, small private deck about ten feet square. A backless bench bolted to the deck stood near the edge, located where the deck jutted farthest out over the gorge. Robert Banner lay atop this bench, dressed in a dark suit, blond hair whipping around his face, eyes closed, hands crossed on his chest.
For one interminable moment, he looked like a sacrifice.
And then he turned his head as if sensing her presence and looked right at her.
“Cassie! Is it noon already?” He sat up. It was windy on the gorge and very cold, but he seemed oblivious to the elements. He reached out a hand and she approached cautiously. That bench really was close to the railing, which seemed too frail considering the drop beyond.
He took her hand when she was close enough and pulled her to sit beside him.
“It’s a little breezy out here,” she said, glad she’d braided her hair that morning. Still, long tendrils were already working loose and blowing everywhere.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “This little patio is my sanctuary. Did you see the restaurant?”
“It’s not as busy as it was the last time I was here.”
“My chef quit. He said he didn’t want to be associated with the Banner name—it might ruin his reputation. The whole town feels that way.”
“You’ll survive this,” she said. “It’ll work out.”
He hadn’t released her hand yet, and now he squeezed even harder. “I hope you’re right,” he said, his voice shaky.
“Robert, are you sleeping okay?” she asked, as she took in the dark circles that sagged beneath his eyes. He looked more wasted than he had two days before.
A hasty “Yeah” was followed by a choked laugh. “Who am I trying to kid? No. I’m not sleeping worth a damn.”
“Maybe you need to talk to someone,” she said, as tactfully as she could. She withdrew her hand and held onto the bench.
“What’s the point? Everything is falling apart.”
“I know it must seem that way now,” she said. “But this is your place, not your family’s, and things will improve.”
“For all intents and purposes my parents own this restaurant,” he said.
“I had no idea.”
“Well, you’re the only one around here who doesn’t.” He rose abruptly, standing between the fence and rail. His expression went from pained to angry. “I won’t drag you through all the finances. Suffice it to say that people don’t want to support a family under suspicion of murdering their own matriarch.”
“Do you think your father killed your grandmother?”
“No,” Robert said. “Why would he? Grandma’s death made everything worse for him. All his underhanded dealings came out right into the open. Why focus that attention on himself when keeping her alive meant he’d have time to either figure out how to replace the money he took or talk her into a face-saving compromise of some kind?”
He’d said he wanted to talk about Donna. That was why she’d come, and suddenly she wished she hadn’t made Cody linger in the bar. “I can’t stay long. Tell me about Donna.”
“She found out her husband ran off with another woman,” he said, “just like Mom told her he did. She’s livid. Who knows what she’ll do? But her first goal is getting money, and I think she has her sights set on you and your husband. She’s staying with my mother and they plot and plan. I think Donna is framing you so she can then try to buy you off.”
“You mean like blackmailing me?”
“Something like that. She was out here yesterday and she was acting crazy.” He shook his head as though trying to banish bad thoughts. Then his voice grew soft, he looked out over the gorge and added, “Sometimes I just want to take a flying leap off this deck.”
“Robert! Don’t talk like that.” She stood beside him, grabbing the railing for support but released it at once when it wobbled. She took Robert’s arm and tugged. “Come away from here.”
He didn’t seem to hear her. “I mean it. A few weeks ago I had a good business and a decent family. Now my grandmother is dead, my father is in jail, my mother is pressuring me to repay my loan so she can afford Dad’s defense. She even fired the maid. Can you imagine her washing her own dishes?”
“What do you mean she can’t afford your father’s defense? Isn’t she set to inherit a boatload of money? Aren’t all of you?”
“Grandma’s murder is under police investigation, plus my mother is the executor of her estate and she’s a suspect. The lawyers are going to have a field day with this. And right now, no money is going anywhere. Everything is up in the air.” He pounded on the railing and made a desperate sound somewhere between a cry and a shout.
“Robert, come away from that railing,” Cassie said, stepping close with the intention of grabbing his sleeve.
He clutched the railing even tighter and shook it as though trying to punish it for all the anxiety he felt inside himself.
“Robert—”
A loud cracking noise heralded a section of the railing breaking off into Robert’s hands.
Cassie screamed as she reached for him.
His momentum had been such that he swung forward. One leg hung over the near vertical drop as he grabbed for something to stop him from falling. Cassie had been holding his arm, and she slipped forward with him now. One of his hands grasped her wrist. The other clutched a piece of railing that was still intact—for the moment.
Cassie knew she wasn’t strong enough to stop his fall if the railing gave way. She would fall, too. She was headed for the edge. The cold air seemed to reach up and pull—
“Hold on!” a new voice yelled, and she managed to look from under her arm to see a pair of boots she would have known anywhere.
“Cody,” she gasped. The fact he was there gave her the strength she needed as he reached around her and grabbed Robert’s hand, taking the floundering man’s weight himself. Cassie sagged with relief as Cody hauled Robert quickly and efficiently to safety. Robert collapsed onto the bench.
Cassie’s hair had come free and now flew around her face. Cody held her for a long moment. “I have to admit I was standing right outside his office when I heard you scream,” he said. “I came as fast as I could.” He gripped her shoulders and walked her away from the edge. She more or less planted herself against the security of the restaurant as Cody turned to Robert.
“What in the world were you doing?” Cody yelled. “Are you nuts?”
Robert stood with his back to them as he gazed through the gaping hole. “Cody, go hold on to him,” Cassie said softly.
Cody walked quickly toward Robert and snagged him by the arm.
Robert looked from the yawning break to Cody and then back to Cassie. “Are you okay?” he asked, as he lurched around the bench toward her. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know how that could have happened. Thank goodness your husband was here.”
“It’s not your fault,” she said, hugging herself.
Cody had remained near the damaged area and now squatted, resting his butt on his heels as he examined the wood. When he stood, his expression was fierce. “Who knows you come out here?” he asked, his gaze burrowing in on Robert.
“Everyone. Why?”
“Because I think this railing has been tampered with,” Cody said, moving back to Cassie’s side. “Anyone want you dead, Mr. Banner?”
Chapter Fourteen
“I just want to take you home,” Cody said an hour later. He’d made himself sit through lunch because he’d felt sorry for Robert. But Robert had pushed his food around on the plate as he apologized over and over again.
The man looked like he needed a stiff drink or a week in the hospital—maybe both.
And now Cassie was insisting they drive to the Priestly house.
“With any luck, I’ll
never come back here again,” she said from her seat beside him. “But Robert is in some kind of serious trouble and he needs help, and I can’t think of anyone to do that except his mother.”
“She doesn’t seem like the real motherly type,” Cody said. They were driving through the old-town area of Cherrydell, only this time it was midafternoon and all the shops were open.
“She’s all he has. Robert needs help before he takes a leap off that deck. Besides, I want to see Donna, and apparently she’s staying with her mother.”
She then proceeded to tell him Robert’s theory about Donna plotting to try to get a payoff from them.
“That makes little or no sense,” Cody said. “The jewelry is part of an estate, and it will have to be accounted for. It’s not Donna’s to fool around with. She can’t legally excuse you from its theft.”
“I know. I think Donna is setting me up, but not the way Robert thinks.”
“Why does she need money, anyway? Aren’t they all rich?”
“They’re all afraid the inheritance is going to be tied up in courts and eaten up by lawyers because of the family’s involvement in Mrs. Priestly’s death. Robert needs money to pay off the loan for the restaurant. Victoria needs it to pay off Emerson’s lawyers. Donna apparently wants to try to buy back her husband’s love. They all need money, and the quickest way to get it might be to steal the jewelry from the estate. The family has to make it look like theft, and I believe you’re talking to the scapegoat. While I’m sitting in jail, they’ll be fencing diamonds and emeralds.”
“What does this have to do with all the attempts on your life?” he asked, as he pulled the truck up across the street from the Priestly estate.
“I don’t know.”
“And how do we know that the railing giving way like that wasn’t another one?”
“That seems like quite a stretch. No one knew I was coming except Robert, and he’s the one who almost went over the edge. You know, he said his sister had come to see him the day before. I can’t imagine why she’d try to hurt him, but she had the opportunity to tamper with that railing.”
“Robert is falling apart at the seams,” Cody said softly. “If he knows something that’s dangerous to someone else in his family, he may be close to telling, and that might make him a giant threat.”
“I didn’t think of that,” Cassie said.
“Well, he promised he’d have his police friend check it out and let us know.” Cody stared over Cassie’s head at the looming gingerbread mansion across the street. “Let’s get this over with.”
IT WAS SO STRANGE COMING back to this house. For months it had been Cassie’s home, and yet it held few distinct memories beyond the night she’d gone outside looking to confirm or at least explain what Mrs. Priestly saw through her window.
Was it because Cassie herself wasn’t the same person who had lived here? How long had she been gone? A week or so? And yet everything was different and the interval at this house seemed hazy and unreal.
Cody took her hand as they climbed the few steps up to the porch. She rang the bell and they waited. He clanked the door knocker and they waited some more.
“No one’s home,” she finally said.
“Not even the maid?”
“Robert said his mother fired her.”
“Why?”
“To save money.”
“Or to get rid of her if she happened to have planted that jewelry on you,” he grumbled.
“Either way, it looks like you get your wish. We might as well go home.”
As they left the porch, he paused and turned to her. “Feel like living dangerously?”
“Frankly, it seems to me that’s all I have been doing lately. I keep expecting someone to try to shoot me.”
“Don’t say that.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“I’d like to see where the old woman thought she saw a murder.”
“You mean the fountain in the back?”
“Yes. Maybe we could approach it from the river. There’s a path down there, right?”
“Yes, but the gate is latched and sometimes locked, so you wouldn’t be able to get back into the garden. There’s also a path around the side of the house. I’ll knock on the back door just to cover our bases in case Donna or Victoria are hovering out of sight. It’s around this way.”
She led him through a rusty-looking gate, noting to herself that it didn’t appear the gardener was coming around anymore, either.
Cassie knocked on the back door, but this one had a glass panel, and a peek inside revealed the house looked dark and currently unoccupied. She led the way through the garden along the brick path to the fountain and, despite the fact there was absolutely nothing amiss, felt a shudder run through her body.
The big, round fountain was the showpiece of the garden. It was built into a central diamond-shaped area with paths leading away on all four sides. Brick columns located on each corner held lights, although in Cassie’s time at the mansion only three had ever worked, and on that last night when she’d come out here in the rain, there’d been no outdoor electricity at all.
Cody took the west path past the fountain and toward the river gate, which he peered through for a minute before returning to her side.
“So this is the fountain?” he said, standing with his hands on his waist and staring at the trio of fish spitting water into the air. “Show me which window was hers, Cass.”
Cassie counted one over from the middle of the house, two stories up. “That one.”
“How did she get up there?”
“There’s an elevator leading to all three floors.”
He studied Mrs. Priestly’s window again. “That’s quite a distance from her window to this fountain.”
“Yes. And at night with lousy weather and ninety-three-year-old eyes, it’s a stretch to think she witnessed a murder.”
“And yet you keep looking up that drowned man they found downriver.”
“Yes. This morning I read that they had an ID.”
“Who is he?”
“A drug dealer named Bennie Yates.”
“From here?”
“It wasn’t clear where he’s from.”
He kneeled down and regarded a loose paver that rested against the foundation of the fountain. Several of the bricks had buckled and cracked over time, and this one was ajar. “Has it always been this way?”
“As long as I’ve been here, yes.”
“I imagine the police looked closely at this area.”
“I would think.”
He stood again and surveyed the diamond.
“Must have been pretty once,” he said, as his gaze swept over the brick light stations and the benches between the paths. “Very symmetrical, isn’t it?”
“Very.”
“I know how much you like water. Did you spend your evenings out here?”
He asked the question casually; she glanced at his face and saw only regret. They’d come a long way in the past week or so, traveling from blame and anger to a place of compassion. Could it last, or were they always going to be a breath away from saying and doing the wrong thing?
“I loved it out here in the afternoons,” she told him, “but the electricity was wonky, so the lights didn’t work all the time. One of them never worked. So, while the late summer evenings were nice, as it began to get darker earlier, it got a little creepy, what with the trail leading down to the river right on the other side of the fence.”
He took her hands in his and embraced her. Then he let her go and walked over to the brick column closest to the river. Each of the pillars were about four feet high and two feet square, with an ornate metal cage on top that fit over a light fixture. The sides of the cage were made of brass grillwork, while the top surface itself was solid.
“Is this the broken one you mentioned?” he asked.
“Yes. How did you know?”
“I didn’t. There’s something sparkly on the ground around the base
that caught my attention.” As he spoke, he gestured at the ground, and Cassie saw sparkly pieces of glass, or maybe mirror. Cody lifted one edge of the metal grill, and it swung open on a long piano hinge along one side. As Cassie joined him, she could see there was no bulb in the socket.
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
“I don’t have the slightest idea.” He jiggled the fixture but it was solid.
“The columns must be hollow,” she said. “You know, for the wiring. I wonder why no one just replaced the lightbulb.”
“Doesn’t appear upkeep was big on the Banner list of things to do.”
“No, I imagine they’ll sell this place as soon as it’s theirs to sell.” As she spoke she looked at the bricks on the north side more closely. One looked askew, and maybe it was her imagination, but the lichen on that brick looked different than on the adjoining bricks.
“Cody?” she said. “What do you make of this?”
He kneeled down and touched the brick she indicated. They both heard it grate against the others. When he grasped it by the top and bottom edges and pulled, it slipped out in his hand. Attached to the back was an eyebolt, and attached to that was a chain. As he pulled on the chain, he looked up at Cassie. “There’s something tied to the end.”
“Like a murder weapon? Maybe we should call the police.”
“A murder weapon? Oh, you mean for the guy Mrs. Priestly thought she saw murdered. I though you’d given up on that. At any rate, let’s see what it is before we call the cops.”
“Wait.” Cassie dug around in her handbag for a package of tissues. She handed Cody a couple, which he used to keep his fingers from touching any surface that would take a print.
What showed up was a small, brown plastic case that fit through the eleven-by-four-inch hole without much trouble.
Using another tissue, Cassie closed the hinged top of the column, making a flat surface for Cody where he could set the brick and the attached box.
“Maybe there’s a gun or a knife inside,” she said.