Into the sunroom and outside the French doors, Callie took a seat in a floral-cushioned wrought-iron chair. The view faced a thick copse of pines, blackened silhouettes this time of night, but she knew a foreclosed house half the size of her parents’ sat empty just on the other side. In the courtyard, with its decadent horticulture, flagstone, and landscape lighting, she could pretend no bad luck or evil deeds existed. This was where Beverly would hide for a while. Callie didn’t blame her.
Callie set her glass on a short table and scrubbed her face with fingertips. This wasn’t her home any longer. But Edisto wasn’t either. Boston was out of the question, with no chance of affording that cost of living without a job. Boston PD might take her back, but she didn’t want to be a cop again. Besides, she’d never leave Jeb a thousand miles away. Maybe he’d come with her? What kind of tuition would that be?
No place felt right.
Daddy, did you give us the house to keep us close or make me put my life back together again?
Moths fluttered around a coach lamp. A mosquito sang in her ear before she brushed it away for it to quickly return. A sweat bead trickled down her temple. It was too hot and irritating out here, even for June.
She reached to collect her glass, but between the dark and the gin, she knocked it off the edge. Thin crystal shattered into slivers and shards and skittered in all directions.
She fell back, lifting bare feet off the flagstone. “Well, shit.”
Beverly stuck her head out the door, her shoulder leaning on the frame for balance. “Why don’t you go back to Edisto, dear? I don’t need a sitter.” She started to shut the door.
“Mother!” Callie called just loud enough not to wake neighbors or Jeb.
The door reopened. Beverly repositioned herself against the other half of the French door with her blouse dangling wrinkled and unkempt over her skirt, waiting as if she’d made her move, and it was Callie’s turn to draw a card.
“You might need some help,” Callie said, struck awkward at her mother’s remark. “You stayed with me when John died.”
“I seem to recall someone telling us to give her space,” Beverly slurred. “Your father and I left two days after the funeral.”
The air between them had been thick as pudding then, as Callie recalled. Lawton had known how to temper the tense moments when his daughter’s nerves unraveled and Jeb couldn’t get out of bed. Her mother, not so much, which stung Callie sharply at the time, because Beverly Cantrell had a full grasp of social etiquette and the proper phrases to say. Just not words meant for a daughter in need.
“Well, I had Jeb. You have no one,” Callie said.
Beverly lifted one shoulder, brushing off her daughter’s remark. “My friends will harbor me and tend my needs. Tomorrow I’ll receive even more food, more cards, calls, and visits.” She waved slowly toward the stars, as if beginning a soliloquy. “The Cantrells thrive here. From your great-great-grandfather to your father, four generations of public servants. Mayors, councilmen, state representatives. The legacy means the town holds an obligation to pay its respects for the long term.” She lowered her arm. “I’ll be anything but alone. You”—she pointed at Callie—“on the other hand, will stand in a corner observing, picking up used hors d’oeuvres napkins and washing unbroken drink glasses in an attempt to stay busy and avoid societal well-wishers.”
Callie rose up and turned to her mother with an exhausted anger. “You love the attention. I don’t.”
“Yes, you do,” Beverly said, her stocking-covered feet still inside, protected by the marble floor. “Just on your own terms, and most people don’t tolerate your terms. Makes for a short list of friends, I’d say. Those who get you, as you used to be so fond of saying.”
Callie stepped forward. Glass pricked her left foot, under her toes, then another under her right heel, but she walked over to Beverly anyway, not stopping to analyze the damage. “You’re a mean drunk, Mother.”
“Are there sweet drunks, dear?” She took another sip as if to anchor the question mark.
Callie hated her mother’s word play. “Maybe I should leave.” She edged around the woman and went inside, walked a few feet, and then noticed the trail of dark marks on the beige marble floor of the sunroom.
“Stop. Don’t go any further and track blood on my hall carpet. Here,” Beverly said. “Take my napkin.”
“A real mother would sit me down so she could tend her daughter’s cuts.” Callie leaned on the stair banister and lifted one foot, then the other, noticing the heel bleeding, but the ball of her foot not showing the tiny piece she still felt embedded.
Beverly pushed off the door and moved with a shaky dignity toward Callie. “Sit down, then, if that’s what you need.”
“Can you even tell how many feet I have right now? No, thanks.”
Her mother halted, swaying slightly. Leaning on the cherry hall table, she softened her expression. “What will we do without your father, Callie?”
Callie studied this lady who’d birthed her, not sure she felt the genetic connection as deeply as she should. Lawton had bridged them. What would they do?
“I don’t know, Mother.”
Beverly shoved off the table and weaved her way back toward the family room. “Well, I meant what I said. Go back to Edisto. Leave Jeb if you wish, but if you stay we’ll cause a nuclear holocaust this town doesn’t need to read in the Journal Scene. I think you follow, dear.”
Even in mourning, her mother worried about appearances, but for once, Callie agreed. If she stuck around, she and her mother would only rub each other raw and make for gossip which would only be remembered as the atrocious, uncouth manner in which the Cantrells commemorated their monarch’s passing.
Guess she’d go back to Edisto . . . for now.
Chapter 21
AROUND TWO P.M. the next day, Callie drove the long way to Edisto along Highway 61. The old road ran ten miles farther than Highway 165, but she couldn’t bring herself to pass the accident’s location. She begged Jeb to take the alternate route as well when he returned to the beach in a few days. For now, he could stand guard over Beverly if Callie couldn’t and return in John’s old car. Lawton never did tune it up.
Driving with a grip at ten and two, she felt more alone and vulnerable than ever. This road ran more traffic than the other, and a driver couldn’t be too careful. Four-and five-foot wide oaks climbed seventy-five feet toward the clouds, dripping ten-foot clumps of Spanish moss under a canopy of branches. The highway guided cars from Middleton, past historic Middleton Plantation and Magnolia Gardens, to the West Ashley area of Charleston. Sunlight flickered like a disco ball through the leaves. Emotional exhaustion dragged her into the seat, but this wasn’t a highway to drive tired on. Not with the oaks almost atop the asphalt.
Punching the radio search button, Callie dialed for hard rock, any sort of musical racket. Screeching Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Metallica. Distraction. The radio blared a few decibels short of max, but she could not clear her head or shut down the continual unsettled concern over . . . she wasn’t sure what. Everything?
But fact was she had nobody to call for aid anymore.
After Seabrook delivered the news five days ago, she’d thrown clothes in the car and held it together until they reached Middleton around ten p.m. Seabrook’s headlights had followed them most of the way.
Jeb had locked himself in his room. Her mother had medicated herself, and Callie had tucked her into bed. Callie had then taken a bottle to her parents’ courtyard and slung it across the yard in grief, wanting so damn much to drink it down like an iced Coke on an August evening.
Now, her wheels hummed easy on the pavement.
Callie wasn’t sure what Beverly was to her now. Lawton had kept the family civil. And Beverly’s first overt action as a widow had been to ship her daughter away. Jeb already served in
Lawton’s stead. Okay to a point, but Beverly was not dragging Jeb too deeply into her world.
The stark reality of her family’s hobbled state had first engulfed her when the funeral director told the three remaining Cantrells where to stand for the receiving line. Beverly and Jeb were all she had left. A family that had shrunk from six to three in two years.
She had no reason to return to Chelsea Morning, yet had nowhere else to go.
Callie smacked the steering wheel. Stop it! Her mind wandered in ridiculous directions, with common thoughts twisted into misshapen anxieties. Where was her head?
She caught herself thinking of Seabrook again. She’d thrown up a wall from the moment they’d met. Of all the characters on Edisto, Seabrook could probably relate to her the most. He wanted to sympathize, yet she hadn’t let him near enough to express it.
He’d been patient with her running on the beach, gun in her waistband. Hiding from the evening sun. And he’d probably given up on her. Completely alone, she could see herself leaving the television on, going out, and coming home terrified someone had broken in. Or worse, someone hiding in a closet or under the bed.
There had to be a reason for her reluctance to let him close, but she didn’t want to think about that now.
Who would be her foundation now? Tears spilled down her face. Her father was gone.
Highway 17 appeared in the distance. Her gaze dropped to the dashboard. What? Shit! Her speedometer read ninety. She yanked her foot off the accelerator and slammed weight on the brake. The car fishtailed. Her fingers vise-gripped the steering wheel. Her forearms and biceps knotted rock hard.
The car squealed to a halt ten feet into the crossroad, missing the rear end of a passing Honda by a yard. Her whole body shook as she flipped the transmission into reverse and eased back behind the stop sign.
She searched the rearview mirror for blue lights . . . then gasped at her reflection.
Tears coated flushed cheeks, shiny with red blotches. Eyes wide and red-rimmed, she appeared completely emotional. A cop would have given her the once over and snatched her keys, maybe her license, and hauled her in until somebody could determine her state of mind.
Arms crossed on the steering wheel, Callie rested her forehead on them. Inhale. Exhale. Count it out.
She thought she’d made progress with this shit.
This was regression. And she was driving back to a serial criminal. A murderer. But heaven help her, she preferred the beach and its calamities to the echoes of her mother’s mini-mansion.
The hammering in her chest settled back into a lesser degree of somersaulting thump and bump. She didn’t expect calm for quite some time to come, but for now she was sane.
Callie checked her mirror again. What the—
A red smear swished across her brow. She licked her fingers and rubbed, licked them and rubbed the spot again, this time recognizing the telltale copper taste. Studying her face, then the rest of her, she was surprised, then wasn’t.
Somewhere between Middleton and an almost-disastrous halt at Highway 17, when her brain tore her sensibilities to pieces in a maelstrom of bass drum and steel guitar, she’d clawed at the scar on her arm. Irregular maroon shapes dotted her linen shirtsleeve, the material now ruined with blood. She gingerly pushed the sleeve up to her elbow. Shallow scratched wounds oozed blood in a dozen places.
She didn’t even remember digging fingernails into the scar.
A waiting car honked.
Accelerating, her car barely missed a truck veering out of her way. She pulled into the traffic pattern, pulse revved again.
She didn’t crave a drink this time. She wanted the whole bottle.
WEAK-KNEED BUT in better control of her car, Callie slowed as Chelsea Morning came into view. A rented white Taurus sat in the driveway.
Parking on the other side of her stairs, up under the house, she tucked her Glock in her jeans waistband and slung her purse over her shoulder. Peters was nowhere around. She sure would appreciate his presence now with a stranger on her property.
One hand on the refurbished outdoor banister, the other reaching behind to her belt, Callie stepped on the bottom riser, staring up, giving time for the visitor to show himself before she committed too far.
“Chicklet!” growled Stan Waltham with a Chuck Norris grin, rising from one of her rattan chairs.
“Stan!”
Callie sprinted up the stairs and tackled the huge man so eagerly that even her tiny frame moved him back a half step. Then she leaned back to take full gander of her old boss.
“How long have you been here?” she asked breathlessly. “How did you know to come to Edisto? How long can you stay?”
“First get me out of this steam bath,” he said. “Damn, it’s hot!”
She giggled irregularly, excitement ruling. “Of course.” Fumbling in her purse, she found her keys, then scratched the doorknob trying to enter. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you,” she said, stopping once to wipe joyful tears away. “Was your flight okay?”
Stan laughed at her childish excitement, but then concern etched his expression, turning down the corners of his mouth. “Flight was fine. They gave me three days off. Everyone sends their best, by the way.”
“Tell them thanks. I so miss them.”
Callie ignored his expression and let her old friend in. She locked the door, glanced out the oval window, and hauled Stan by the hand to the living room.
She hugged him again, arms barely meeting around the bulk, the squeeze tight enough to draw a grunt from him. Stan pried her off. “Got something cold to drink?”
“It’ll have to be a soft drink or water. I just got back in from . . . well, anyway, I can make iced tea if you don’t mind waiting a few minutes. Or I might have bourbon.”
“Cola’s fine, if you got it,” he said, sitting on the sofa.
Ice clinked in the glasses. The pure delight of seeing her boss shot her spirits through-the-clouds high, as if God decided to intervene. This was Stan, the man who understood her and remembered what she used to be.
Drinks on coasters, she sat on the sofa, two feet between them, stroking his sleeve briefly once.
His smile fell away. “I’m sorry about your father.”
Her smile vanished as well. “Thanks. Got your voice mail, but, you know, we were so scattered for several days. I’m not sure it’s sunk in yet. There’s just this big hole. Daddy was like, immortal in a Dick Van Dyke kinda way.”
His glass seemed so tiny as the big man took a drink and set it back. “Flew in when I could. Your phone must be turned off, so I had to call your mom. She told me you were headed here.”
“So you just arrived.” Callie leaned over to the end table and retrieved her cell phone. The screen wouldn’t even light up. She plugged it in and set it back down. Two dings rang out as texts came in from Jeb. She returned to her seat, still giddy.
Then it hit her that Stan had come alone. “How’re you holding up without Mindy?”
“I’m fine. We’re fine.” He took her hand, then with his other, pushed up her sleeve now dried with blood. “What’s this?”
She drew back, but he held firm. “Nothing,” she said. “Scratched myself without thinking.”
“The hell you say.” He rose to his feet. “Where’s your medicine cabinet?”
“The bathroom,” she said, pointing.
Stan returned with the supplies. He laid a towel on his knee and tugged her arm over, causing her to scoot closer. Cotton balls dabbed peroxide on her cuts, teasing the clots away, prepping the small wounds for a bandage. “I remember when this thing was a mess,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“I remember when you were a mess.”
She gave him a half smile. “Yeah, that too.”
They sat in
silence as he taped the gauze, maybe overdoing it, but she knew the slow actions were his way of leading into something. Stan never was one to leap into what he had to say.
A new text dinged on Callie’s phone.
“Your mother?” Stan asked, applying the last piece of tape and lowering her sleeve. “I imagine you two are close these days.”
“Jeb,” she replied. “I make him keep me posted each hour he’s away from me.”
His brow raised, giving his old supervisory expression. She’d joke about her being a civilian now, but the time didn’t seem right.
She pushed the first aid supplies to the center of the coffee table, her way of changing the subject. “These break-ins bother me.” She gestured toward the entryway. “A little over a week ago, someone came in while I was gone. I found the front door unlocked. I never leave a door unlocked.”
Stan’s button-down tropical shirt over khakis and loafers gave him a CEO-on-vacation appearance, especially with the salt and pepper, tightly-groomed hair. He reared back on the sofa, arm draped over the cushion, one ankle over the other knee. The man projected a huge presence, commanding police troops like a two-star general, but those near to him knew his personal side more resembled a gruff linebacker cradling a puppy with a few baby-talk words.
“See the gray house over there?” Callie nodded toward the porch.
He leaned forward and peered outside.
“That’s where someone set me up. Put a lamp in the window and a radio on a table. Then in the kitchen they placed a coffee cup John gave me, with hot chocolate in it!”
“So you said. Sounds like pranks, Morgan.”
She huffed, irritated, desperate to make him see. “Except for coming in my house and stealing the cup to do it. Then placing it in a house where my friend was murdered. That’s more than a prank.”
“I know, I know. Just taking it in. Don’t get your hackles up.”
Murder on Edisto (The Edisto Island Mysteries) Page 22