“Ariel?”
I’m not ashamed to admit I shrieked and jumped a bit. I spun around, trying to catch my breath. “You scared the crap out of me, Dustin!”
“I’m sorry.” He was wearing black sweatpants and a ribbed red muscle shirt about a size too small. Black and gray hairs were escaping at the neckline, and his feet were bare. He was holding a toothbrush, and there was some white foam in the corners of his mouth. “I heard you calling Kayla. Is everything okay?”
I joined him in the hall, closing Kayla’s door behind me, and gestured for him to follow me down the hall back to my room. He gasped when I opened the door and he saw the mess.
“I guess it’s safe to assume this isn’t how you left it?” he asked, folding his arms. The muscles in his shoulders and arms bulged. His voice was grim. “Is anything missing?”
I sat down on the bed, reaching down to pick up a couple of pairs of my underwear. Under normal circumstances I would be mortified to have a man—anyone—I barely knew see my undergarments scattered all over the floor. But this was hardly normal, and what Dustin thought about my underwear was the least of my concerns.
“The only thing of value in here that’s mine is my laptop.” I pointed to it on the nightstand. “I don’t have jewelry that’s worth anything. And they left the laptop.” I stopped myself from mentioning the pictures being deleted from the computer and my cloud storage. I didn’t know him well enough to trust him.
Okay, sure, he was a best-selling historian, and I’d seen him on television any number of times.
But he also had a room on the third floor. No one would question him going up the stairs to our floor, and he was the only other person staying up here. Both Kayla and I had been gone.
Could Kayla have done this?
Before we left for Lindsay’s, I’d waited for both her and Bast downstairs. Both had been late, so it was entirely possible either of them could have gone to my room, deleted the pictures from my computer, and made the mess. I was calming down—thinking rationally always helped. Yes, it would have only taken a moment to open the drawers and throw everything around, take pants and sweaters and blouses from their hangers and toss them up in the air, strip off the bedclothes, and tip the mattress off the bed.
I could probably do this myself in maybe three minutes, tops. And my laptop was a MacBook—finding the pictures on it would have been a piece of cake.
Hollis was always warning me I needed to password-protect my laptop and set it to lock when not used. She was right, as always. I’d do that before I went to bed.
Although I wasn’t sure I could sleep in this bed.
“I’m thinking it’s not safe here,” I heard Dustin saying. “First a murder, then the fire, and now this?” He gestured around the room with shaking hands. “I think I’m going to take the train back into the city in the morning. Do you want me to get help?”
“No, thank you.” No, there was no point in calling the cops. Nothing had been taken. There was actually no reason for the mess, now that I thought about it more, other than it being a nuisance. Whoever had done this could have just accessed the pictures on my computer and deleted them, closed my laptop, and who knew how long it would have taken me to notice? I might have even thought I’d done it myself by accident—I’d done far stupider things on my laptop before. It could have been days before I’d noticed the pictures were gone. Whoever did this didn’t know I hadn’t deleted them from my phone after I’d copied them to my computer.
In fact, most people just uploaded their pictures directly to the cloud. I still did it the old-fashioned way, manually.
Someone was clearly worried about the pictures, so it stood to reason that whoever the figure was in the pictures with Angus was probably his killer.
Lindsay had thought it was Peggy.
Or had she been lying to me, trying to throw me off the trail? I couldn’t tell who it was in the pictures. I wouldn’t put anything past Lindsay. I didn’t trust her.
Maybe she was working with the killer?
Maybe she was the killer.
But she couldn’t have done this to my room, and anyway, I’d shown her the pictures, so she knew they were backed up.
Anyone, even someone with a very limited knowledge of computers and the internet would have assumed I’d backed the pictures up.
My stomach clenched.
Whoever had done this wanted me to know they’d been in my room.
I felt dinner turning in my stomach.
That was even more terrifying. This was a warning of some kind, a warning that the killer could get to me anytime he or she wanted to.
Dustin was right. Sea Oats wasn’t safe for me anymore, either. The smart thing to do was lock the door tonight and take the train back into the city in the morning.
The killer was a member of the family, or someone close to them.
I got up from the bed and walked over to the bathroom, which was still pristine, the way the cleaning women had left it.
I turned on the sink and splashed cold water onto my face. Dustin was gone by the time I walked back out into the bedroom—probably back in his room packing, which was what I should be doing.
But as the shock and terror started fading away finally, I felt myself starting to get angry.
How dare someone get into my computer and throw my clothes around like this! The absolute contempt for me that showed.
Well, I was damned if I was going to be driven away from Sea Oats.
I walked back over to the hallway door and looked both ways. There was still no sign of life out there. All the doors I could see were closed. Kayla was probably downstairs with Bast in his room—she was keeping her clothes in another room in deference to Peggy, at Bast’s insistence, but I doubted if Kayla would do more than pay lip service to the separate bedrooms thing.
I closed the door and turned back to face the mess. I started with picking up my scattered underwear, my hands still slightly shaking as I folded the items and put them back in the bureau drawer where they belonged. The thought of someone having their hands on them—I felt my gorge rising and I put my hand down on the bureau, lowered my head, and took some deep, cleansing breaths until my stomach subsided. Just the thought of someone touching my clothes, riffling through them…I seriously doubted I was going to be able to sleep well. How could I?
I did have those sleeping pills my doctor had given me, but did I want to sleep that deeply? Wouldn’t I be better off if I could wake up if I needed to?
I had finished with the underwear and had slipped the covers back onto the bed. By breaking it down to tasks—put the bed back together, pick up the clothes, then sort them, and put them away—I managed to stay focused and keep my mind under control, kept it from going to the dark, scared places it wanted to go. My hands were still shaking as I made the bed again, finding the pillows and covers in various corners of the room. I was just about to spread the coverlet back on it when there was a light knock on my door. “Come in,” I called as I snapped the coverlet out and let it float down to the bed.
“Did Clarice not make your bed?” Peggy asked from the doorway in her I’ll have a chat with her the next time I see her and this won’t happen again voice.
“Someone searched my room,” I replied grimly as I tucked the bedspread under the pillows. It was good enough like that, I decided, and started picking up the rest of my clothes. I started sorting them into piles, and Peggy joined me.
“But why?” Peggy asked, folding a pair of jeans. “Why would someone do this?”
I decided to be blunt. “The other day after running into you and Charlotte out by the maze, I took some pictures,” I replied. “The way the colors were combining in the pre-storm light…Anyway, I just started clicking away with my phone, not really paying any attention. It turns out that I managed to get Angus in some of them.”
“Angus? You mean—”
“Right before he was killed, yes.” I nodded. “I didn’t realize it at the time—it wasn’t u
ntil I downloaded the pictures and started going through them I noticed he was there. And you can almost see—well, you can’t really make out anything, but there’s a bare glimpse of someone else, in the shadows cast by the maze. I can’t tell who it is. And since it’s likely Angus was killed shortly after I saw him…” I shrugged. “You do the math.”
“Oh my God.” She dropped the shirt she was folding and sat down hard on the bed. Her face had gone white. “You think—you think you took a picture of the killer?”
“Maybe. But whoever it is—if it is someone—you can’t tell who it is. At least I can’t. I’ll be turning the pictures over to the police as soon as I can. Maybe there’s something they can do with the pictures, enhance them somehow, I don’t know, but maybe they can make it clearer.”
“But why search your room?”
“Nothing’s missing, at least that I can tell. But they went into my laptop and deleted the pictures.” I folded my arms. I wasn’t sure I could trust her, and not just because of Lindsay’s accusation. She would do anything she could to protect Bast and Charlotte. I knew she would lie for them—but would she kill?
I hated not being able to trust Peggy, but she’d invited me to Sea Oats for her own reasons—first I’d thought as a pawn to break up Lindsay and Charlotte, then as a ploy to control the stock. But maybe there were other reasons she wanted me here.
“So the pictures are gone? I don’t understand. How can you give them to the police if they’ve been deleted?”
There was no point in hiding the truth from her—Lindsay, Bast, and Kayla knew they were still on my phone. “I still have the originals on my phone.”
“Oh, God.” Peggy buried her face in her hands. “You need to get out of here. It’s not safe for you here, Ariel. I’ll get Joseph and have him drive you home tonight. You need to go.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said, more bravely than I felt. “Whoever did this wants me to go, Peggy. I’m staying.”
“I’m afraid I have to insist—”
“I showed the pictures to Lindsay tonight.” In for a penny, in for a pound. “She seemed to think it was you in the pictures with Angus.”
“What?” Her face turned red. “She said that?”
I nodded. “I don’t think she was serious. I mean, you really can’t tell who it is, there’s too much shadow, and the corner of the maze really is in the way. But why would she say such a thing?”
She tossed her arms up. “Who knows why Lindsay does anything she does, besides Lindsay?” She shook her head. “I’ve long since given up trying to figure her out, Ariel, and so has Charlotte. Why Char has started seeing her again is a mystery to me.”
“Peggy, why am I here, really? Why did you send for me?”
“If I’d only known…” She shook her head. “All right. I’ll tell you the truth. I owe you at least that much, for putting you in danger. I—”
“Yes, you do owe me,” I replied. “I thought you wanted me and Char to get back together. But there’s more, isn’t there?”
She took a deep breath. “Ariel, I know Charlotte still loves you. If you both could just sit down and be honest with each other…”
“We will, Peggy, I promise you that. Even if it’s just to work out how to handle the divorce.”
“Don’t say that.” She winced. “Please don’t say that, don’t even think it.”
“You have to know that divorce is on the table. I don’t know if we can ever get back to what we once were, and you’re deflecting, anyway. What is going on, Peggy?”
“You’ve probably picked up on some of the tension in the house.” She made a face. “And you’ve probably heard something about what is causing it.”
“Bast.”
She nodded. “Yes. Bast. Bast did something extraordinarily stupid—”
“I’ve heard some of it. He borrowed a lot of money and lost it, is what I’ve gathered. But I don’t understand why it’s such a big deal. Why did he have to borrow money?”
“Oh, the stupid trusts.” She grimaced. “You know both he and Charlotte only get a regular income from the trusts, and can’t touch the principal unless both of them sign off on it, right?”
“Vaguely.” I remembered Charlotte explaining it—or rather, trying to—when we were first married. “Charlotte lives on her salary and puts her income back into the trust.”
“Yes. Well, Bast—even when he makes money, he goes through it very quickly.” That was the most disloyal thing I’d ever heard her say about Bast. Usually, wild horses couldn’t drag something negative or critical about Bast out of her. He could do no wrong in her eyes, or so I had thought. It was good to know her eyes weren’t completely shut when it came to him.
“So he borrowed money and put up his shares of Swann’s as collateral. Is that right?” I pursed my lips. “Charlotte wouldn’t release the money from the trust?”
She raised an eyebrow. “That’s part of it, yes. But it’s a lot more complicated than you think. When Frank Swann created the trusts in the first place, there wasn’t any intent in them being permanent. He was more concerned with the family money being divided up, as well as company ownership. He inherited the company and a fortune, of course, but he was worried it would just keep being divided and divided until no one owned a majority share of Swann’s and the money had been divided so many times it didn’t matter. Two years before Charlotte married you, she wanted to take the company public to raise some capital to pay some debts, get the company on solid footing, and invest back into the stores.” She tilted her head to one side. “But to do that, she had to break the trust. It was easy enough to do, but it was a process. I don’t understand completely how precisely it was done, but the majority of the company stock remained in the trust under Charlotte’s and Bast’s names, and they were able to issue enough stock so the trust remained the majority stockholder—so control remained within the family—but the trust was going to be dissolved. It was dissolved the summer you married Charlotte.”
“And Charlotte didn’t have me sign a prenup.” I got up and walked over to the window. That was what Lindsay was hinting at. Since there was no prenuptial agreement in place, if we were to get divorced, I would have a claim on some of Charlotte’s holdings.
And if there was a struggle for control of the business, every share mattered.
“Is that why Charlotte hasn’t divorced me?” The last shred of hope I had that we might reconcile, that she might still have feelings for me, faded away. She hadn’t divorced me because she was facing a proxy fight for control of Swann’s. “I don’t want anything from her. You can tell her that for me, Peggy. I got everything I wanted or needed from her when I left, and I can stand on my own now. I don’t want anything from any of you.”
“Charlotte hasn’t divorced you because she still loves you,” Peggy insisted. “She didn’t know I invited you to come.”
“You still haven’t said why you did.”
“I was hoping…I was hoping if you two were finally to come face-to-face you’d both get over your hurt pride and reconcile.”
I sat down on the windowsill, my back to the window. “And weren’t you a little afraid that the people who want to take over Swann’s might come to me, try to get me on their side?”
“Would you do that to Charlotte?”
“I don’t know.” I didn’t. I’d like to think I was mature enough that I wouldn’t want revenge. But if I’d been properly approached…I pushed those thoughts out of my head. “Not now. I wouldn’t now. But if someone had come to me after I went to New York, when I was still angry, I might have done something I’d regret now. And besides, this has everything to do with Bast, not me. If Bast hadn’t been…” I let my voice trail off. Her face had started hardening the moment I mentioned his name.
No matter what he did, Bast would always be her little darling.
“You needn’t worry, Peggy,” I said, picking up the sweaters and putting them back in a drawer. The room looked more tidy now, althoug
h it needed vacuuming. But it didn’t look like a tornado had swept through it anymore, and now I could handle staying in it.
One more night, at any rate.
Yes, police or no police, I was getting on the train and heading back into the city first thing in the morning. I’d had enough Swann drama. I’d turn the pictures over to the cops on my way to the train station. Once I was back in New York I’d get a lawyer and file for divorce. It would be simple. I didn’t want anything from Charlotte or her family anymore. I just wanted to be left alone, forget all of them, forget that I was ever married.
Closure. I’d finally gotten some closure on the whole mess.
But…
I still had feelings for Charlotte, but I’d get over them in time. Her total lack of interest in me, and the way she’d successfully avoided me since that first accidental meeting out by the maze, told me everything I needed to know about how she felt about me. There wasn’t a future here for me. There was nothing for me here anymore.
And the sooner I got back to the city, to my actual life, the better.
“I’ll file for divorce as soon as I can find a lawyer,” I went on. “But I don’t want anything. Money, stock, I don’t care. I just want to have my life back and pretend none of this ever happened.”
“You love her still, don’t you?” Peggy said. She stood up, smoothed the coverlet back. She always wanted everything perfect. “Don’t lie to me, Ariel. I can see it in your face, hear it in your voice every time you say her name. Stay and fight for her.”
“She doesn’t feel the same, Peggy. She just sees me as a mistake she made. And I’m fine with it, Peggy. I am, really. I’m not sorry I came. I’m glad I saw her again, saw all of you again. I would have always wondered…”
I could feel myself starting to get emotional. I turned my back to her and looked out the window again.
“I wish I knew how to convince you that you’re wrong.” Peggy hugged me from behind, held on to my shoulders for a moment, and then I heard the door close behind her.
A Lamentation of Swans Page 14