Beverly shifted an arrogant glance at Sophie and returned her attention to her daughter. “I came to pick up something.”
“Sure, what is it?” Callie asked.
“My Neil Diamond albums,” she said.
“Wh . . . why?”
“They’re special to me. That’s all.”
Surprisingly unnerved, Callie went to the kitchen and rinsed a glass. This could not be happening. Those albums were her musical diary. She knew which covers were bent on their corners, which still had their sleeves, and how the water ring accidentally found its way to the Love Songs cover. In Boston, this music had celebrated Callie’s promotion to detective, even Jeb’s spelling bee ribbon. She’d relied on those songs when John left for a week shortly after Bonnie died, to collect himself. Then after the fire had consumed her collection, she’d paced the confines of an extended stay motel, pulling up a custom radio station on her laptop to play Diamond for twelve hours straight. These songs were her childhood, her freedom to mourn, forget her past, or avoid her future. They’d helped her accept Chelsea Morning as home, welcoming her as part of the house’s being.
Callie’s mind raced as she returned to the living room, searching for some damn excuse to keep them. She’d never replace the antique sound of that LP player, the texture of its linen speaker cover, or the slight squeak of the top’s hinge. Until now she didn’t realize how much those details meant to her. But every argument for Callie was equally as justified for her mother.
Fact was, the records had never belonged to Callie. She rubbed her forehead. This was stupid, so stupid. She ought to just give the woman the damn albums. So why was it so challenging not to?
“They’re just old music,” Beverly said. “I’ve had those forever, and they make me feel better.”
Callie scratched her scarred arm. “Let me buy you a set of CDs to replace them. Or an mp3 player. If you need the albums, I’m sure I can find them on Amazon or eBay.”
“Good, then find them for yourself. If you need my credit card, let me know.”
Callie shut her eyes again, to hide building tears she could not define the root of. She sniffled and rubbed the corner of her eye. Another hole in her world, that’s what this was. First her father and then Stan. She wasn’t sure she could stomach another loss, even if it was just music.
Confused at the dizzying onrush of weakness, all she knew was that this package, this player and its twenty LPs, connected her to sanity.
Tears sneaked down her face at the realization that they might be Beverly’s sanity, too.
She gripped the counter’s edge. What was wrong with her?
No, she was more mature than this. She straightened. Maybe if she relinquished the albums, she’d take her first step toward healing. If she couldn’t function without them, she’d go on a mission to replace the vinyls. Hell, Mason would adore the opportunity to find them, even fly them in for her, anything to make her beholden to him.
“Don’t make me remind you that they’re mine,” Beverly said.
Callie’s back went rigid as her sympathy dissipated like smoke in a March wind, replaced with the familiar, raw-edged rancor that defined her relationship with Beverly. Callie turned and faced the arrogance seated on her sofa, rabid at the callousness in this woman’s soul. Now that Lawton was gone, she could picture her mother deteriorating from annoying to two shades away from malicious.
Beverly pondered her daughter. “Antidepressants might help you. I can put you in touch with a good doctor. Amos Canady has done wonders for your father, and Harriet from my Sunday school class says—”
“I don’t need your help,” Callie replied, still raw from Seabrook’s similar reference to her demons.
“Honey, you’re a mess. Sure you need help. You’re like your father in so many ways.”
“Thank God for that!”
Beverly never flinched. “Get those pills. It’ll temper you from being so pernicious.”
Callie rolled her eyes and sighed deep. “I’ve had it. Leave, Mother, before I get so damn pernicious I throw something.”
Unruffled, Beverly crossed her legs. “I’ll need that new key first.”
Callie bent closer to speak plainer, colder. “Chelsea Morning is my house now, not yours. At first I thought it presumptuous of you to tell me where to live, but we’ve decided to make it work.”
Beverly grinned, and Callie about came undone. “Exactly what I told your father would happen. See? We may be older, but we knew what was best for you. I’ll need the key so I can check in on you periodically, to make sure you’re on the right course.”
A tremble racked Callie’s body, then continued in little aftershocks down her arms.
Jeb walked in the back door. He halted and took note. “I don’t see blood on the walls—yet.”
“Hon-ney,” Beverly cooed, arms outstretched as if reunited after months of separation.
Jeb shook his head. “I just saw you two hours ago, Grandma. I told you I’d be coming back to Edisto today.”
She beamed. “But I never tire of you walking in.” She turned to Callie. “Now, get my key, pull out my albums, and—”
“How about we split them. Ten and ten,” Callie said, alarmed at the desperation in her own voice.
“They’re mine, dear,” Beverly said. “And they aren’t safe with all these burglaries.”
Callie wiped her face on her sleeve, ready to give in. Her mother raised a brow, as if waiting for Callie to admit she’d stolen cookies from a plate destined for one of Beverly’s afternoon teas. And in that moment, Beverly’s plan became so clear.
“You’d planned to sneak in and take them.” Callie’s fuzzy mind mapped out what her mother had schemed, and it sickened Callie. “You would then head home, as if nothing happened,” she said with a crack in her voice.
The tiny reaction on Beverly’s mouth told it all. “So what? They’re nothing to you.”
“I would have gone crazy thinking I was robbed.” Callie let that comment sink in a second. “How do you even know what those records mean to me? You never just talk to me to understand anything about me.”
Beverly scowled, her lips pursed, the red lipstick making wrinkles more prominent. “Oh my word, Callie. You’re not sixteen. Temper the drama.”
Betrayal filled Callie, like she was about to accuse a spouse of cheating when the evidence wasn’t clear. But the danger overrode any embarrassment in the words she was about to say. Alarm seized her as to what had been seen or heard on hidden cameras. A hidden cam would have revealed Callie inviting Lawton to come over, when he could be intercepted. When Callie was home, when Jeb was asleep and vulnerable. Surely Beverly wouldn’t . . . “Did you ever slip into this house before I changed the locks?”
“What?” Beverly said.
Jeb echoed, “Mom!”
“May I offer everyone some chamomile tea?” Sophie hopped off the barstool. “I can crush some lemon balm in it, Melissa officinalis. Soothes tempers, plus it tastes great. Won’t take me a sec—”
“No,” Beverly said. “It’s probably got marijuana in it.”
“Grandma!” Jeb exclaimed.
Her heart aching at the thick tension, Callie almost heard her father storming into the room to holler, “Enough!”
Beverly strutted across the den, jerked the desk away from the wall, and yanked the turntable’s plug loose. “Enough of this,” she said.
Callie shivered at the bastardized use of Lawton’s command. “What are you doing?” She tried to sound even-tempered, a farce after all that had been said.
With the cord wrapped around her hand repeatedly until it was contained, Beverly lifted the player and commanded, “Jeb, open the front door.”
He scrambled to do her bidding.
“Good boy,” she said. “Now, g
o retrieve my albums.”
Fear crossed his face, and he searched for an answer via a long, desperate stare at Callie.
“Jeb? Didn’t you hear me?” Beverly said from the porch. She made it down the first dozen steps to the landing.
Jeb studied the back of his grandmother, then swung around. “Mom? What am I supposed to do?”
“Mother,” shouted Callie. “Don’t put Jeb in this position. I’ll give you—”
Thuds and thumps rebounded from the stairs. A crack sounded, a smash. “Umph” and a long moaning “Oooh.”
Then silence.
“Oh no, Mother?”
Beverly lay sprawled at the bottom of the steps, face down, the turntable busted in pieces around her.
Chapter 26
JEB DASHED DOWN the stairs and knelt by his grandmother who sprawled belly flat across the shells and gravel. “Grandma, are you okay?” Jeb jerked around. “Mom!”
Callie hurried around the other side of him. “Mother, can you talk? Jeb, get me the phone.”
“No,” Beverly ordered. She pushed up, then rolled to her bottom.
At least she seemed okay. No blood except for her right palm. “Don’t move,” Callie said, feeling down the woman’s arm, then across her back. “Let a doctor go over you first.”
Beverly shrugged Callie away. “I said no. Give me a second to catch my wind.”
Callie plopped on the last step three feet away, watching as her mother inspected herself. Hopefully the hole in the side seam of her pants wouldn’t be discovered until she got home. Jeb gave his mother the phone and squatted, obviously lost as to what to do.
Sophie flew out of the house, the door slamming behind her. “Here’s a wet cloth.”
“Did you hit your head?” Callie asked Beverly. “Sophie, there’s a medical kit still on my coffee table.”
Sophie scampered back up the stairs, the door slamming again.
Beverly dabbed the rag to her face then felt her scalp, touching tenderly. “All right, I think. Nothing hurts.”
“Arms seem all right?” Callie had managed too many accidents in her job not to know that adrenaline disguised injuries, and this way she’d make Beverly concentrate on one body part at a time. Eventually, the verdict was Beverly suffered no more than scrapes, bumps, and bruises on her backside and legs, maybe her shoulders. Regardless, she’d be sore for a few days, especially at her age.
“You still need to go to the emergency room,” Callie said. “I’ll take you.”
“No, I most assuredly do not. Hopefully nobody wasted time with 9-1-1.”
“No, we didn’t, but I’m still not sure we shouldn’t. Let me at least bandage those cuts.” Callie took the medicine kit from Sophie.
Beverly reached for Jeb, who assisted her up. She slowly unfolded, trying to hide the fact she sensed for damage, then she shuffled a step, appearing able to manage herself. “I seem to recall that Cantrell women tend their own cuts.”
Touché, Mother.
Sophie held up the record player’s broken arm. “I put the pieces in your back seat, Ms. Cantrell, but I’m pretty sure the player’s DOA.”
“What?” Beverly turned her head, as if listening from one ear.
Sophie held out the arm. “I mean it’s busted to hell.”
Beverly’s sigh could have blown the trees along Charleston harbor an hour away. “So be it,” she finally murmured. Callie spotted the hurt in her face as she turned away, and for the first time in a long while, she felt something for her mother. Beverly had fought to hold onto old comforts in the place of her husband. Callie now felt heartless.
Beverly snatched the arm from Sophie and owned it like a microphone, snapping Callie from her reverie. “I’m going home.”
Lips pressed tight, Callie nodded for Jeb to return inside. “Go get them.”
With youthful leaps, he ran up the two dozen steps. Gone only a moment, he treaded carefully down again, arms loaded. “Here, Grandma.” Carefully, he placed the LPs in the backseat.
“Thank you, sweetheart.”
Sophie held out the woman’s purse. “You’re still welcome to come to yoga. I can show you how to ease those muscles and—”
Beverly spun on her. “I don’t need your goddamn yoga, girl. How dense can you be?”
The lot of them fell silent, chastised like children as Beverly strode to her car with nary a limp.
Jeb leaned against Callie. “Mom . . .”
Callie walked toward the car. “Mother, let Jeb or me take you home and help put you to bed. We’ll be happy to stay with you.”
Beverly looked back from the driver’s door. “I’m not ancient and definitely not some old woman needing your pity.”
Jeb moved a step forward then checked himself. “We didn’t say you were, Grandma.”
Beverly wanly smiled. “You’re a good boy. Come see your Grandma once in a while, would you?” She eased into her seat and shut the door, then winced wrapping her seatbelt around her.
The BMW cranked up, and it seemed to drive away slower, as if achy itself. The three of them stood stoic, still stunned, as the vehicle disappeared up Jungle Road.
“Should I follow her?” Jeb asked.
“Yes,” Callie replied. “Call me when you get there. Need gas?”
“No, ma’am, I’m fine. I’ll go get my keys.”
As he drove out, Callie plopped on the bottom step again, too exhausted to climb back inside. No sleep, Stan, Peters, Seabrook, hidden cams, and now this. Thank heaven there wasn’t more than twenty-four hours in a day.
Sophie joined her. “Wow, your mother’s worse than my ex-husband.”
“Hmmm,” was all Callie could say.
“You okay?” Sophie asked.
“No. And I’m sorry you had to see that.” Callie tried to rub the edge of a headache out of her temple.
“Where’s that man you were with yesterday?”
Callie moaned. “So not a good time for that question, Sophie.”
Sophie reared away. “Okay, okay.”
Time ticked by. Then the yoga teacher brushed off her behind and took steps toward her house. “Want me to bring you anything?”
“No, thanks.”
“Well, you know where I am.” She hesitated to leave. “I do want to thank you. You know, for taking charge when I freaked about Peters being in my house. You were awesome, Callie Jean Morgan.”
Callie smiled.
Sophie returned one of her own. “Do try to relax. As spacey as you may think I am, I do worry about you.”
“Sophie—” Callie didn’t need girl talk right now.
The neighbor zippered her mouth shut with pinched fingers. “See you later. Be happy.”
As the sun sank, Callie escaped back inside, spent and mentally comatose. She had no gin to dull her thoughts of regret and missed opportunity. The bourbon was her father’s, and for some reason, she wanted the last quarter of that bottle to remain untouched, in remembrance. Too tired to drive to the liquor store, she remained sober by default.
No record player. No music. Yet plenty of noise galloped in her head.
And she still had to search for cams.
A half hour later, she’d combed every nook and cranny in her room, the kitchen, Jeb’s room, and the living area. Her eyelids weighed like fishing lead, her feet like anchors. With an iced tea, she retreated with notepad to an Adirondack on the screen porch, in an attempt to regroup and refocus on whom she wanted to interview, and in what order. She read her old notes, but the words blurred. She avoided thinking about Beverly.
About someone maybe running her off a highway, too.
Callie jerked awake and put down the notebook that had tried to slip from her fingers.
Her mother would want littl
e to do with her for at least for a week or two. To think that before today, Callie would have relished that thought, like she had in Boston. Lawton’s absence, however, made a difference. He’d expect more of his daughter. Guilt had her gut in knots, but she hadn’t pushed her mother down the stairs. She’d simply denied her the albums, which in hindsight seemed dense.
She took a sip of tea. Stan probably walked in Mindy’s door about now.
A shiver rolled over her at the memory of his hand on her belly. She dropped her own across her front, as if to emulate the warm touch.
Work. Think work. Use your skills. Doing nothing was like allowing the situation to worsen.
She glanced up at the window in the Beechum house where the sign had appeared, then disappeared. No light.
That one word: Whore. A word to tease her reaction? Pauley came across as a dufus, but would he dare plant cameras? She shivered at how much of her the creep might have seen.
But was it even Pauley? Her cup had been stolen before Pauley returned to Edisto. Or had he been here and not made his presence known?
She ran the cold, dripping glass across her face to wake up. Then she wrote interview questions, asking the various players to describe what they saw or heard and whom they considered guilty. Why they might have been chosen as targets. Geez, she wished she could interview Pauley. No chance of that happening.
She expected no answers of substance from these people. Everyone ignorant or oblivious. It would take someone like her to sift their remarks for clues. But not tonight. She threw down the pen, lifted the tea, then thought about the liquor store barely a mile away.
No, Callie. Besides, the store’s closed.
Eyes closed, she designed a mental map. All the victims lived on Jungle Road. All were permanent residents. A fortyish couple, a young family of three, a middle-aged woman. Sophie, Papa, and her. The Rosewoods had lived on Edisto for twenty plus years. Mrs. Hanson the same. The Maxwells two years. Papa for fifty. Sophie three. Callie, not quite two weeks.
Murder on Edisto (The Edisto Island Mysteries) Page 27