“Oh my God. Evangeline!” Even as she breathed her friend’s name, Laurel knew it was futile. Nevertheless, she crouched and placed her fingers on Evangeline’s wrist. The flesh was tepid and still beneath her fingers, with much the texture and density of a block of mozzarella. She jerked her hand back hastily. A sudden urge to vomit came over her, her body’s sympathetic response to the acrid stench of bile from the fluid splashing Evangeline’s chest, arm, and chin. Laurel rose and backed into the hall, careful not to touch anything even in her flustered state. She leaned back against the wall, getting control of her breathing and her stomach. When she was reasonably sure she wouldn’t throw up, she pulled her cell phone from her pocket and dialed 911, telling the dispatcher there’d been a death.
She answered the woman’s questions as best she could, noting with surprise that her voice was level and calm. She didn’t sound like she’d sustained the biggest shock of her life. When she hung up, she stayed in the hall for a moment pinching the bridge of her nose. It was all too much to take in. She breathed deeply and returned to the breakfast parlor. She must not have looked as calm as she sounded talking to the dispatcher, because Ellie immediately said, “Good heavens, Laurel. You look like you’ve seen a ghost. What’s wrong?”
She started to answer but her voice didn’t work. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Evangeline. Evangeline’s dead.”
“What? She can’t be.” Disbelief sounded in Ellie’s voice.
They all stood, chairs scraping against the wood, and Dawn put a hand on the table to steady herself, as if she were dizzy. Geneva’s cocoa-colored skin had taken on an ashy tinge, and she wrapped both arms around her belly.
“I’ll go check,” Ellie said, with the same tone, Laurel suspected, that she’d use to tell her husband she’d find the mustard in the fridge when he said it wasn’t there.
When she moved to block Ellie from compromising the scene, Dawn streaked past them, hair flying out behind her, calling, “Evangeline! Evangeline!”
Glancing at one another, the three others quickly followed. When they reached the hall, Dawn’s tear-thickened voice howling “No, no, no!” stopped them. She’d fallen to her knees in Evangeline’s doorway, arms stretched up to clutch the door jamb on either side. Her whole body shook.
Ellie reacted first, hurrying toward her. She put her hands on Dawn’s shoulders and stood behind her, crouching slightly and murmuring to her. Laurel caught the exact moment that Ellie understood the scene in the bedroom: she swayed, and Dawn yelped as if Ellie’s grip had tightened.
“I don’t want to see this, do I?” Geneva asked. Her nostrils flared. “The smell—”
“No, you don’t. Think about Lila. Stay here.” Laurel closed the gap between herself and the women in Evangeline’s doorway. “We shouldn’t be here.”
Ellie turned a shocked face toward her. “It’s awful. Poor Evangeline. She’s all twisted and—you didn’t say—what the hell happened to her? Why’s it so hot?” Anger seeped into her voice and snapped her brows together.
Laurel had seen it before. Some people found it easier to cope with tragedy if they got angry. It kept the anguish at bay … for a while. “Help me get her up,” Laurel said, hoping to distract Ellie. They each put a hand under Dawn’s arms and hauled their unresisting and now quietly sobbing friend to her feet. “Come on. I called the police. They’ll be here any minute.”
They steered Dawn toward where Geneva waited, and the four of them returned to the breakfast parlor together. Geneva guided Dawn to a chair and brought her some juice. “Drink it.” She held the glass to Dawn’s lips. “The sugar will help.” Dawn drank, the glass chattering against her teeth.
Ellie came to where Laurel stood near the door listening for the police to arrive. “It looked like there was a fight in there,” she said. “The wheelchair knocked over, the lamp.”
“It doesn’t look like a natural death,” Laurel admitted. The weight of what she’d seen pressed down on her. Unshed tears made her sinuses ache, but she couldn’t cry. Not now. “We all need to stay here until the police have done what they need to do.”
Ellie bridled. “You’re saying … you’re saying … What are you saying?”
Leaving Dawn to finish the orange juice, Geneva made her way over to them, shaking her head back and forth very slowly. “Poor Vangie. She seemed to be doing so much better. Her life was on track … she was going to walk again. She had Ray. Oh my.”
Ellie shot her a sharp look. “You think she killed herself?”
Geneva looked puzzled. “Laurel said it didn’t look natural.”
“What did it look like to you, Laurel?” Ellie asked.
She could tell from Ellie’s voice and her expression that they shared a fear about Evangeline’s death. “I’m not going to speculate,” Laurel said, annoyed with Ellie for putting her on the spot. The Abbotts came in—why hadn’t they come running when Dawn screamed?—and she broke the news of Evangeline’s death matter-of-factly, eliciting a gasp from Mrs. Abbott and a frown from her husband.
The doorbell bonged and everyone stilled. Exchanging a look, both Abbotts hurried toward the front hall. Breakfast was forgotten, eggs hardening on the plates and syrup pools congealing. The fatty bacon smell hanging in the air that had been so appetizing earlier made Laurel’s stomach turn. The bright sunshine now seemed an affront; even as Laurel had the thought, Geneva stepped to the windows and lowered the blinds. The sound of muffled voices carried from the foyer.
The Abbotts returned, looking shell-shocked. “The officer took one look and called for the sheriff,” Mrs. Abbott said. She removed her glasses and polished the lenses with her apron hem. Her hand shook. “This is only the second death we’ve had at the castle in all these years. Diabetic coma, the other one was, maybe six years back.”
“Ray,” Geneva said suddenly. “Someone needs to tell Ray.”
“The police will do that.” Ellie pulled a chair forward. “You should sit.”
“I’m not an invalid.”
Ellie stepped away as if she’d been stung. “I didn’t say you were,” she said.
“Oh, Ellie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you,” Geneva said. Contrition scrunched her face. “I’m not used to this.”
“None of us are,” Dawn observed, surprising them. She set down the juice glass and stood, one hand braced on a chair back, hair straggling over her forehead. Her eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed. She gave a brittle laugh that had no humor in it. “Or, maybe we all are. Used to it. This is all too much like that last weekend, isn’t it? Maybe Evangeline will turn out to be alive this time, too. Another miraculous resurrection from a near-death experience.” She flung up a hand like a magician flourishing a wand.
The hint of hysteria made Laurel eye her with concern. She was about to reiterate that Evangeline was truly dead when a heavy footstep made her pause. They swung around as one to observe the newcomer on the threshold.
Laurel’s heart sank at the sight of the wide-shouldered figure backlit in the doorway. It was like an effect from a cheesy western. Of all the bad luck …
“The usual suspects, I see,” said Sheriff Judah Boone.
Twelve
His voice, rumbly and rich as cocoa, had the soft edges and slow cadence of North Carolina. It released a flood of memories in Laurel. The four of them waiting in the cold glare of fluorescent lights at the hospital to find out if Evangeline would live. Coffee from the ICU waiting area vending machine that tasted like burned mud. Mrs. Paul’s piercing shrieks when the doctors told her Evangeline was paralyzed. Then-Deputy Boone’s penetrating brown eyes, and the questions he whipped at them like a pitcher tossing curve balls. His conviction that Evangeline’s fall hadn’t been an accident, and the thwarted look on his face the day he told them they were free to return to their own homes. “Don’t ever play the lottery,” he’d said on parting, “because you’ve u
sed up all the luck you get in this lifetime.”
Now he stepped into the breakfast parlor and Laurel had to make herself not retreat. He was a shade under six feet tall but he had a presence that made him seem larger. He hadn’t changed much in ten years, although he must be pushing fifty. More gray grizzled his wiry black hair, and the corrugations on his rich brown forehead were deeper, but the wide-set eyes that gave him a deceptively open look were the same, as was the rumpled uniform shirt pooching over the hint of a belly. He was still fighting the good fight against middle-age spread, Laurel thought, imagining him on a softball field with his deputies, or playing basketball in an over-forty league. He had hands that could palm a basketball, strong and long-fingered. His voice was his only exceptional characteristic; that, and an intellect as sharp as any Laurel had ever come up against in court. He’d lulled her initially with his lawman-from-the-sticks routine, with his disheveled persona and laconic questioning, but it hadn’t taken her long to recognize the penetrating mind behind the slow speech.
There was a satisfied glint in his eyes when he said, “Stay put. I’ll be back to talk to you once I’ve seen the deceased. No half-measures this time, I hear.” Without waiting for a response, he left, directing a veteran patrol officer to stay with them.
The spark in Boone’s eyes made Laurel think of a boxer getting another chance at the heavyweight title after having been beaten. She knew it had grated on him when he’d had to let them go ten years ago. Milling about in nervous silence after he left, she and the other finally settled into chairs, not making eye contact. Laurel sat beside Geneva, who shifted uncomfortably for five minutes before pushing herself up and telling the officer, “I’ve got to pee.”
The policeman, standing with his arms crossed and his back against the wall leading to the hall, grunted his permission.
As if Geneva’s initiative had freed them, Mrs. Abbott began to stack dishes. Her husband joined her. The clatter of stoneware and the clinking of utensils chased away the silence.
Dawn pulled out her cell phone, dialing a number and frowning with frustration when it apparently went to voicemail. “Call me as soon as you get this,” she said. “Please.”
“He didn’t say we couldn’t talk,” Ellie said in a low voice, coming to sit in the chair Geneva had vacated. She turned it so her back was to the officer. “Tell me what you think. Could she have killed herself?” Ellie’s clear blue eyes looked into Laurel’s.
“Of course she could have,” Laurel said, “but I don’t see why she would have.”
Her words lay between them for a moment before Ellie said regretfully, “No, I suppose not. If she was going to do that, it would have been years ago, right after she was paralyzed and had to go back to living with her mom. I’m going to call Scott. I don’t know what he’ll say. He didn’t want me to come.” Tapping her smartphone, she moved away.
Laurel wished she had someone to call. Last time, she’d called George. This time, there was no one. She gave a second’s thought to how the Denver papers would play the story: “New Judge Interrogated as Murder Suspect.” Murder. The word lingered in her brain, flashing and crackling like a neon sign on the fritz. Such soft syllables, almost like “murmur,” for such an ugly act.
The sound of the front door opening and closing and of more footsteps tromping through the hall made Laurel look up, even though she couldn’t see into the foyer from where she sat. She mentally ticked off the probable arrivals—medical examiner, crime scene techs and photographer, more cops—all of them with shoes and boots muddied by last night’s storm.
She was rising to help the Abbotts clear the last of the dishes when Sheriff Boone reappeared.
“Who found the body?” His gaze swept the room.
Laurel stepped forward, unconsciously squaring her shoulders. “I did.”
His eyes met hers and his lips thinned and lengthened in a way that creased his cheeks but wasn’t really a smile. “Ms. Muir, right?”
“Good memory.”
“The lawyer.”
“Judge, now.”
One brow quirked up. “Congratulations, Your Honor. Come with me and let’s chat about what you were up to when your friend was murdered.”
Laurel followed him from the room, suddenly not nervous. She had done nothing wrong. In fact, she and Boone were on the same side because they both wanted to get at the truth. She caught up with him before he entered the dining room where they’d eaten last night and seated herself at the table while he adjusted the rheostat so the chandelier overhead glared its brightest.
“Make yourself comfortable,” he said drily, sitting across from her. A jug-eared deputy appeared and settled himself in an inconspicuous corner, laptop at the ready. Despite the notetaker’s presence, Boone put a notepad on the table. Then he pulled five or six butterscotch candies from a pocket and set them beside it. She’d forgotten his butterscotch habit. He clicked his pen and poised it over the paper. “Name and address.”
Laurel supplied them, and asked, “Do you know the cause of death?”
“Not until after the autopsy.”
“What’s your best guess?”
“I don’t ‘guess,’ Your Honor,” he said, giving the words a twist Laurel found highly annoying.
She refused to rise to his bait. “Well, you wouldn’t be talking about murder if the ME suspected food poisoning, so I’m going to guess poison.”
Leaning back in the chair, he rolled his hand in a “continue” gesture. His expression was that of a man prepared to indulge her whims. It made her want to slap him, or impress him. Angry with herself for the latter thought, she decided not to play his game; she’d keep her speculations to herself for now.
“Tell me about finding Ms. Paul’s body. Why were you in her room? What did you touch?”
Laurel told him about everyone gathering for breakfast and missing Evangeline. “We thought she might need help, so I went to see.”
“Why you?”
“I helped her get ready for bed last night, so it made sense for me to go.”
He unwrapped a butterscotch and popped it in his mouth. She caught a whiff of the buttery aroma and said, “I knocked. When she didn’t answer, I opened the door.” Cold crept over her as she recounted finding Evangeline. “I’m pretty sure I only touched the light switch and her wrist.” She cast her mind back, and then nodded decisively. “Yes, that’s all.”
“Then you returned to the breakfast room and told your friends. How did they react?” Boone leaned back in his chair, fingers interlaced on his broad chest, eyes fixed on her face.
Laurel hadn’t prepared herself for that question. She drew her brows together. “Just how you’d expect—they ran to check on her, but no one went in the room. They were shocked and upset.”
“I don’t have any expectations about people’s behavior,” Boone said, “so spell it out for me: who was shocked, who was upset, and what did they say, specifically?”
Laurel told him, as best she could remember, ending with, “Ellie asked me what I thought after Geneva reacted like it was suicide.”
“And you said?”
“That I wasn’t going to speculate.” She lifted her chin a notch, wishing she had on one of her power suits rather than the comfy chinos and lemon-colored polo shirt she was wearing.
“Let’s go back to last night, Your Honor—”
“Stop calling me that!”
His wide mouth dented in at one corner and she could have slapped herself for giving him the satisfaction. “You say you helped her get ready for bed … so you were the last person to see her alive?”
The idea made Laurel’s fingertips tingle, as if the blood flow were constricted. She rubbed them together. “I might have been. I don’t know. I suppose it’s possible someone else came by, or that she called her fiancé.”
“Fiancé?” Interest flashed across Boone�
��s face. “What fiancé?”
“Ray. This whole weekend was about celebrating their engagement. We made a small party of it last night.”
“Ray what?”
Laurel crinkled her brow. “You know, I don’t think I caught his last name. We hadn’t met him before. Evangeline sprang him on us as a surprise.”
“What did he do? Where was he from?”
Laurel was forced to shake her head again. “I don’t know.”
“You spent an evening with the man and you learned nothing about him?” Boone gave her a skeptical look.
“He wasn’t here for the party. He got called away—work, Evangeline said—in mid-afternoon. He was a Blue Devils fan,” she offered.
“Wonderful. That narrows it down to half the male population of North Carolina,” Boone said. “Anything else you want to tell me?”
Slowly, Laurel said, “You know, I think he was deliberately vague about himself. I asked about what he did for a living and where he went to school, how long he and Evangeline had known each other—stuff like that—and he didn’t give me a single straight answer. I didn’t notice it so much at the time, but looking back, it feels like it was deliberate.”
“Maybe he’s just one of those guys who don’t like to talk about themselves,” Boone said dismissively.
“No such thing,” she shot back.
That earned a real smile. Small, but real. He quickly suppressed it. “Thank you, Your Honor. I suppose I don’t need to tell you not to run off. I’ll have more questions for you.” As she started to rise, eager to get outside and process things on her own for a bit, he said, “One more thing. Ten years ago. Who pushed her off the balcony?”
Her mind scurried around possible answers. She didn’t want to point a finger at one of her friends; even if she’d been willing to, she didn’t know who. She’d thought about it off and on for ten years, had visualized each of her friends on that balcony, shoving Evangeline off in a fit of anger, but she couldn’t fix any of the images in her mind for long. No witnesses, no physical evidence, no alibis. The kicker was that all of them had motives. She considered ducking the question by reminding the sheriff that it had been ruled an accident, but she no longer believed that, if she ever had. After a good thirty seconds of silence, she finally said, “How do you know it wasn’t me?”
That Last Weekend Page 11