“It’s just like Evangeline,” Laurel said in a low voice, almost as if she were talking to herself. “She was so … broken. She had to have fallen from the fifth floor, don’t you think?” Her gaze, sharp again, queried Ellie.
“Do I look like an expert on how screwed up you get by falling five stories versus four?” Ellie asked, not wanting to think about it.
“Of course not. Sorry.”
An ambulance’s whoop broke in on them, and the vehicle swayed around the last bend in the driveway, lights flashing. It skidded to a halt, spraying gravel, and the EMTs sprang out.
“I guess no one told them there was no hurry,” Ellie murmured, watching them disappear inside.
Two police cars and an unmarked sedan pulled up beside the ambulance and she felt the first prickings of fear. First Evangeline, now Mindy. Where would it end?
Leaving Ellie under the tree, Laurel walked toward the lake, suddenly needing time alone, distance from humanity, from the kind of person who would shove a young mother into an elevator shaft and let her fall five stories to her death. She didn’t for one second think Mindy had fallen accidentally. She hadn’t known Mindy well enough to mourn for her personally, but there was something to that “no man is an island” idea, and the young woman’s death saddened her. And, if she was honest, frightened her a little. Two deaths already … would there be more? The sun’s heat coaxed rich smells from the mud at the lake’s edge and a heron hunted in the shallows, sharp blue death for any frog or minnow fooled by his stillness.
Who was fooling them? The thought teased at Laurel as she left the path and wandered to where the land sipped at the water. Water striders skidded busily across the surface, and dragonflies flitted. She’d been convinced Evangeline was fooling them, that she’d spun an intricate web of lies and calculation designed to ensnare one or more of them with a murder charge. But now … Mindy’s death changed things. She couldn’t make it fit. Who among the people at the castle hated both Evangeline and Mindy enough to kill them? Or, could Mindy have killed Evangeline for some reason, and then, out of guilt or remorse, committed suicide?
That would be a neat answer, a solution that didn’t implicate one of her friends, but Laurel couldn’t make herself believe it. If it weren’t for Braden, maybe. But she couldn’t see Mindy jumping down the elevator shaft and leaving her son to fend for himself. Another possibility presented itself: Mindy had seen Evangeline’s killer. For some reason, she hadn’t spoken up immediately, and the killer had silenced her to protect himself or herself. Laurel swatted at a gnat buzzing around her ear. This idea felt more likely than the murder-suicide scenario, only why hadn’t Mindy told the police if she’d seen Evangeline’s killer?
The heron stabbed the water suddenly and then tossed his head back triumphantly, letting a snip of silver slither down his throat. Feeling the damp seeping through her sneakers, Laurel moved on. The heron gave her an affronted look and flapped his heavy wings, rising up only far enough to glide to a spot a hundred yards away. A bleat from a siren, quickly cut off, brought her head around in time to watch the ambulance leaving. It was probably empty; Mindy’s body would stay where it was until a medical examiner had looked at it and Sheriff Boone’s team had finished with photos and evidence collection.
She debated returning to the house to face the music. Boone must be ready to start his interrogations by now. A strangely rebellious feeling rose up. She didn’t feel like being the responsible citizen right now, the duty-bound judge. She noticed a paneled delivery van pulling up to one of the outbuildings, down a slope behind the castle. It backed up to the shed door and the driver got out to let down a ramp. Mr. Abbott appeared, walking slowly from Cygne’s back door, and unlocked a padlock securing chains that linked the building’s sliding doors. He and the driver each pushed one door aside. Laurel headed toward them, wondering if the Abbotts had even heard the news. They’d known Mindy for many years; her death would undoubtedly devastate them.
By the time she reached the men ten minutes later, sweat trickled between her breasts and at the small of her back. The men were hefting a carved armchair with a brocade seat into the van, Mr. Abbott saying, “Careful, Nat. Don’t scratch the finish.”
He was inching up the ramp with his back to her, and he lurched and almost dropped the chair when she said, “Mr. Abbott.” He regained his grip on the chair and his head swiveled. A flush stained his cheeks when he spotted her.
“What the—? Put it down, Nat.”
The other man set the chair down inside the truck and mopped his brow with a handkerchief. “Hot,” he observed. He was a pleasant-looking man in his mid-thirties, with a round, open face and receding blond hair only partially concealed by a Texas Longhorns ball cap.
With his brows beetled together, Mr. Abbott stepped toward Laurel. “What are you doing down here? You don’t belong—”
“I didn’t know if you’d heard,” she said, forcing herself not to back away from the fury in his face. What the hell was he so revved up about? She’d cut him enough slack; getting laid off didn’t excuse his continued rudeness to a paying guest. “About Mindy.”
He half-turned away from her and flapped a dismissive hand, as if her news didn’t interest him. “Has she turned up? Better have, or her paycheck won’t be as fat as she’s expecting come week’s end.”
“She’s turned up,” Laurel said. “Dead.” So much for breaking the news gently. The man rubbed her the wrong way with his touchiness and ill temper. Had he always been like this? “Didn’t you notice the police cars?”
“I thought they were here about the other one, that Evangeline,” he said, scraping a heavy knuckle against his temple. His eyes shifted uneasily. “I’d better get back to the house. Nerys will be having a fit. Mindy had her ways, but she was a good worker and Nerys was fond of her. Nat, we’ll have to finish up later. Serve the company right if this stuff is late to the auction house.”
“But—” Nat began.
“Later.” Stripping off his heavy work gloves, Abbott marched away, the set of his shoulders telling Laurel he didn’t want her company.
Nat lingered only long enough to loop the chain around the shed doors before starting up his dirty truck. Laurel backed away hurriedly as it lurched forward, stirring up a dust cloud. She coughed. She watched it trundle down the hill and sighed. Might as well go back and face the music.
Ellie was just leaving the dining room when Laurel came down the hall. “His royal sheriffness is asking for you,” she said, “and he’s in a pissy mood. Can’t blame him, I guess. Scott’s coming tomorrow. He’s convinced I’m next on the killer’s agenda and he’s taking me out of harm’s way.” She looked gratified. “My knight in shining armor.” Her voice held a little wonder, as if she wasn’t used to thinking of her husband that way.
“He’s a good man,” Laurel said. She’d always liked Scott. In college he’d had a serious streak, a hint of gravitas, that set him apart, something that went beyond the ROTC uniform he’d had to wear once a week.
“Yes, yes he is.” Ellie smiled, but it faded quickly. “Sheriff B’s on the warpath. I think he’s looking to crucify one of us.” She whisked around the corner toward the bedrooms, and Laurel entered the dining room.
Boone sat at the head of the table, writing in a notebook. With his head down, he didn’t immediately notice her. One hand massaged his scalp. The sun beaming through the window behind him glinted off the silver flecks in his hair; Laurel hadn’t realized he had so much gray. As if sensing her presence, he looked up. With the light behind him, his eyes were hooded, unreadable, but Laurel got an impression of mingled anger and weariness.
“Sit.” He beckoned to her. “I guess that puts paid to your suicide theory,” he said when she joined him at the table. There was no satisfaction in his tone. “Unless you want to argue that Evangeline’s ghost, or that other one Ms. Infanti talks about, pushed Mindy Tanger down the ele
vator shaft?”
Laurel met his gaze levelly and didn’t answer.
He sighed. “When did you last see Mindy Tanger?” The laconic, half-mocking tone was gone, as if he were too tired to bother with the persona.
She fought the urge to touch his hand where it lay on the table. Really, what was she thinking? She cast her mind back. “Saturday lunch maybe? I don’t think I ran into her after that.”
He crunched down on a butterscotch. “It has been suggested,” he said carefully, “that Mindy might have helped herself to odds and ends from customers’ rooms.” He leaned back and waited to see what she would say.
“Are you saying she was a thief?” Laurel shook her head. “I can’t imagine—I mean, I know money must have been tight for her as a single mother, but a thief? The staff here was small—I don’t know how she could have gotten away with stealing for twenty years.” She hesitated, trying to decide if telling him about her conversation with Geneva would be betraying a confidence. Not in the current situation. “Geneva mentioned that Mindy might have tried to blackmail her once with … with something she found in her room.”
“‘Might have tried’?”
The way he said it made her think the idea of Mindy as blackmailer was not new to him. “Geneva didn’t go for it.”
He made a note and looked at her from under his brows. “Can you account for your whereabouts last night? If so, you’ll be the only one. Everyone else was in bed asleep, alone.” He repeatedly thumbed the pages of his notebook so they zzped.
“Add me to that group,” Laurel said. “We all had dinner together, and then I talked to the Abbotts in the kitchen for a few minutes at roughly eight thirty. Mr. Abbott stomped out in a huff. Then Dawn and I chatted for a while and found the snake, and I went back to the kitchen to get some tea. The Abbotts were both gone by then, but I thought I heard a car or truck go past, headed toward their house.”
“At nine o’clock at night?” Boone’s brows went up. “Did you see who it was?”
“No,” she said apologetically. “I took Dawn her tea and went to bed. That’s it.” She bit her lower lip, debating, and then said, “I presume you’ve considered the possibility that Mindy saw something related to Evangeline’s murder?”
He gave her a tight smile. “You’re free to presume whatever you want, Your Honor.”
“Stop it.” The exasperated words were out before she had time to think about them.
“I beg your pardon?” Boone said with an exaggerated look of affront.
“You know what I’m saying. Yesterday, you let me look through Evangeline’s apartment. Today—”
“Today I have another murder on my hands,” he said.
“You don’t think I’m a killer.” She stated it as a fact.
He twisted his mouth to one side and finally said, “ My contacts on the Denver force say you’re okay, for a lawyer.”
“You asked about me?” Of course he had. She was a murder suspect. She wondered what rumors were floating around the cop shop now. None that would make it easier for her on the bench, she was sure.
As if reading her mind, he said, “Don’t worry about your rep. I didn’t mention that you were a suspect. I let them think I had a personal interest in you.” His tone was matter-of-fact and she could read nothing into it.
“Oh, that’s much better.” She found herself wondering if he might find her attractive, and was mad at herself for the thought. He was a small-town lawman who couldn’t be bothered to iron his uniform, who was hooked on butterscotch candies, for God’s sake, and enjoyed needling her with his “Your Honor”ing. Not her type at all, so why did she care what he thought of her?
“As for Mindy Tanger, smart money says the deaths are connected. However,” he continued, raising a hand when she started to break in, “I already fucked up this case once, maybe twice, and we’ve got another body as a result. I’m playing it by the book from here on out.”
In answer, Laurel pulled the key to Evangeline’s apartment from her pocket and slid it across the table to him. He pocketed it without comment.
“It wasn’t your fault.” She wanted to erase the self-blame tightening his mouth and knifing a line between his eyes.
His expression bleak, he said, “You have no evidence to support that theory, Your Honor. If I’d put one of you in prison ten years ago, none of you would be back here now, in all probability. Ergo, this chain of events wouldn’t have been set in motion, and a young boy would still have his mother.” Boone shoved back from the table and checked a text. When he finished reading, he closed his eyes for a moment and then snapped them open. “We’ve located Mike Tanger. I’m off to tell a man his ex-wife is dead and that his son is motherless. I’ll be back.”
Twenty-Five
Her head whirling through the possible scenarios, Laurel went for a long run and returned an hour later, at three o’clock, dripping with sweat and eager for a shower. Passing no one as she entered Cygne, she headed for her room. About to step into the tub, she spotted the empty shampoo and conditioner bottles; the room hadn’t been serviced. No wonder, with Mindy dead and the Abbotts coping with the police presence and probably notifying the corporate owners that another murder had occurred on the property. After a brief hesitation, she slipped into the robe with the cursive C embroidered on the chest and walked barefoot down the hall to the housekeeping closet where Mindy’s cart resided when she wasn’t using it.
The closet wasn’t locked. The cart was shoved just inside the door, blocking access to the shelves lined with towels, cleaning supplies, and box upon box of tiny shampoos and conditioners. A bucket, mop, broom, and vacuum occupied a narrow vertical niche. A metal flap labeled “Laundry” covered the entrance to a chute that undoubtedly took dirty linens down to the castle’s laundry room. Reaching across the towels stacked on top of the cart, Laurel grabbed one of the small shampoo bottles from the recessed bin. Her elbow unbalanced the towels, and the top few began to topple. She grabbed for them and managed to catch two, but another two slid to the floor. As she was retrieving them, wondering if she should refold them and put them back on the cart or toss them down the laundry chute, a rustling sound caught her attention.
She shook the towel she was holding, and a brown paper bag dropped out. Curious. She stooped to retrieve it and was about to plunk it into the cart’s garbage can when she felt the outline of a box through the bag. Reaching in, she pulled out a rectangular cardboard box with a cartoon depiction of a dead rat lying on his back, legs in the air, long whiskers crinkled and broken. Rat poison.
The implications swept over her and she fumbled the box, almost dropping it. Cursing herself for having added her fingerprints to whoever’s were on the box, she slid it back into the paper bag. Something blocked it and she used her thumb and forefinger to pull out a slip of paper. A receipt. Warier now, she pinched the corner between the fingernails of her thumb and forefinger and lifted it so she could read it. It was dated three weeks ago and came from a ranch supply store in San Marcos, Texas.
She went cold. San Marcos was just up the road from San Antonio, where Dawn lived.
“Hey. Can you grab me a towel while you’re in there?”
Laurel whirled at the sound of Dawn’s voice, banging her elbow on the cart so it sang with pain and her forearm and hand went numb. The bag dropped. She casually slid her hand with the receipt into the robe’s pocket.
Dawn bent and retrieved the bag, handing it to Laurel without peeking inside. “You all right?” she asked. Concern shone from her brown eyes. “You look peaky.”
“Ran too long in the heat,” Laurel managed. She couldn’t believe it. Not Dawn. Dawn had been half in love with Evangeline for years. Surely she wouldn’t … Experience in the legal system fought with her memories. Nine times out of ten, a murderer turned out to be someone who “loved” the victim—a spouse or boyfriend, a mother or father, occasionally a son
or daughter. Realizing Dawn was still studying her, she said, “I just need a shower, need to cool down. I’m fine, really.” She edged past, burning to get away and think this through.
“Okay.” Dawn grabbed a towel and washcloth from the cart. “Geneva said something about all of us getting together for dinner in town to give the Abbotts a break from cooking. Are you up for that?”
“Sure. Good idea.” It took a slight effort to turn her back on Dawn, and Laurel hated that she was afraid of her longtime friend. She resisted the urge to look over her shoulder, but she felt like she had a target on her back as she walked to her room. Not until the door closed behind her did she relax a little. Setting the paper bag with its incriminating contents on the dresser, she shucked off the robe, stacked clean clothes atop the closed toilet lid, and plunged into the shower, shivering under the cold needle-spray until the castle’s hot water heater kicked in. The warming water seemed to release the stranglehold that surprise and fear had on her brain. The analytical facilities she’d long relied on snapped into action.
The rat poison box did not mean Dawn had poisoned Evangeline or killed Mindy, any more than her own fight with Evangeline was proof she’d killed her, or Geneva’s fingerprints on the glass, or Ellie inheriting twenty thousand dollars. The thoughts washed through her mind as clear as the water cascading off her shoulders. The more she thought about it, the more she was inclined to stick with her original theory: Evangeline killed herself and tried to frame one of them. A bright eucalyptus-mint scent filled the stall as she shampooed her hair and seemed to bring further clarity to her thinking.
That Last Weekend Page 22