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Fatal Family Ties

Page 8

by S. C. Perkins


  I grinned, pulling up the crossbody purse that rested on my hip to rummage for my leather business card case. “I have every respect for that. I was already predisposed to like Mrs. Singer after trying her turtle brownies, but now I’m really looking forward to meeting her.”

  “Oh, no doubt you’ll love her. She’s got a great sense of humor and keeps an eye on my condo when I’m gone.”

  I laughed. “Not to mention making you all your favorite desserts.” I stopped my rummaging just long enough to tap his stomach. “Admit it, she has you pegged.” Before he could retort, I stopped under one of the carriage lights to get a better look into my little purse.

  “Missing something?” Ben asked.

  “I can’t find my case with my business cards,” I said. I rummaged around once more, even though I knew the green leather case wasn’t there.

  “Okay,” Ben said. “When’s the last time you saw it?”

  “This morning,” I answered immediately, “after I realized you’d have lipstick on your face from our make-out session in the car.” I flashed him a sassy wink, thinking back to the moment at the Alden museum when I’d dropped my phone in my tote after sending him my warning text. I’d seen the card case then. I snapped my fingers. “Wait. My tote bag tumped over at Charlie’s house and a few things fell out. It happened right by a side table, and I was looking at Charlie most of the time, so maybe the case ended up under the table where I didn’t see it.”

  Ben looked at his watch. “It’s only seven twenty-five. I’m sure it’s not too late to call Camilla and ask if she’ll look for it.”

  I thought about this for a second, worrying I might wake up Charlie, then reasoned Camilla would probably have her phone on silent if her great-uncle was asleep. Sliding my phone from my purse, I found her contact and hit call. She answered on the second ring and I could tell instantly that she was in her car and distracted.

  “Hi, Camilla,” I said. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”

  “What? Oh no,” she replied. “I’ve just done a pharmacy run for Uncle Charlie’s meds and now I’m trying to find his favorite deli to get him some soup. Are you calling about your green business card case? I found it just before I left.”

  I opened my mouth to suggest I could pick it up tomorrow, but at the same time, the surfer-cowboy launched into an energetic version of Willie Nelson’s “Whiskey River.”

  “From the music I can hear in the background, it sounds like you’re out, too,” she said in my ear. “If you have time, you can swing by Uncle Charlie’s and I can give it to you. He’s feeling better after visiting the doctor and is napping right now.”

  “I’m so glad to hear that about Charlie,” I said. “But I don’t have to disturb y’all tonight. I can come tomorrow, if that’s easier.”

  “Tonight’s better,” she said firmly. As if knowing she’d sounded abrupt, she added in a more normal tone, “Plus, I’ll be waking him up anyway to make sure he eats a little dinner and walks around a bit to keep his circulation going.” She paused, then said, “I found out that Uncle Charlie has had some heart problems for the past year or so that he never told me about, but the doctor doesn’t think his current issues are related to it. In fact, she thinks he may be feeling stronger soon, but she wants him to rest tomorrow anyway, undisturbed.”

  “I’m glad the doctor is optimistic,” I said, then I relayed Camilla’s suggestion that we pick up my card case tonight to Ben. Unfazed, he offered me his hand. I took it and we turned back as I told Camilla that we would head in her direction.

  “This is the guy who’s got you glowing?” she said, but didn’t give me a chance to answer. “Anyway, I’m at the deli now, so I’ll be back at Uncle Charlie’s in about twenty minutes or so. Come to the side door. It’s off the driveway, kind of hidden by a trellis, and faces Elaine’s house. The door has a touchpad combination lock. The code is the year Texas won its independence, plus the pound sign. I don’t need to be more specific, do I?”

  I grinned at the slight note of challenge in her voice. “Of course not,” I said. “Thanks, Camilla. We’re on our way.”

  TWELVE

  Even without rushing, the light traffic heading away from the heart of the city meant I was pointing out Charlie’s little blue house with the white trim in less than a half hour. The porch lights glowed as Ben and I walked up the driveway and to the side door, which was blocked from view by a tall trellis covered in yellow Carolina jessamine vines. Passing the kitchen window on the way, I saw Camilla had just arrived, too, and was unloading her purse and the take-out bags onto the counter.

  After I entered the digits 1-8-3-6 on the backlit electronic touchpad, the dead bolt retracted and Ben and I walked through Charlie’s mudroom and into the kitchen. It was galley-style and, unsurprisingly, as spotless as the rest of the house, except for a take-out bag from Barry’s Deli and several cartons of food. I called out a soft hello to Camilla just as she was concentrating on placing a bowl of soup—matzoh ball, as it turned out—carefully in the microwave to heat up.

  “They gave you cold soup? That’s not nice,” I said with a smile as the microwave began whirring.

  Wiping her hands on a dish towel, Camilla shrugged with a mildly disgruntled expression. Then her eyes fell on Ben. “Is this your boyfriend, then?”

  “Yes, this is Ben Turner,” I said, feeling my cheeks heat with pleasure—it was the first time I had admitted out loud to anyone other than my best friends that he was, indeed, my boyfriend. “Ben, this is Camilla Braithwaite. We worked together in Houston at the university library before I set up my own business. She’s an accomplished researcher.”

  I didn’t know if it was my compliment or Ben’s full-wattage smile, but I could have sworn my former coworker melted a few degrees as the two exchanged pleasantries.

  The microwave dinged. Camilla pulled out the bowl of soup and said, “Well, I’d better get this to Uncle Charlie before it cools down again. Your card case is just over there by the fruit bowl, Lucy.”

  She used her elbow to point to the far end of the kitchen counter, by the open doorway that led to the living room full of Charlie’s photos. Earlier, at dinner, I’d told Ben about Charlie’s art gallery of sorts, and had learned that my new boyfriend harbored a secret passion for photography and black-and-white photos were his favorite.

  Picking up my card case, I said, “Camilla, do you think Charlie would mind if I let Ben have a quick look at his room of photos before we go? He loves black-and-white photography, too, and I told him how amazing Charlie’s are.”

  “She did rave about them,” Ben agreed.

  Camilla hesitated, then said, “Go right ahead. Only, don’t stay long, please. If Charlie knows you’re here, he’ll feel like he should play the host. I know he’d love to see you again, but he really doesn’t need to overexert himself tonight.”

  “Of course,” I said, and decided I would never tell her how much she sounded like Elaine Trudeau in that moment. I thought about pushing my luck and asking if I could let Ben see Charlie’s piece of the triptych as well, but she was already walking down the hallway to Charlie’s bedroom, tray in hand.

  Ben followed me into the living room, and I found the light switch, then grinned at his instant expression of awe. From down the hall, I could just hear Camilla speaking to her great-uncle over the sounds of a movie playing on low volume. Her voice was cheerful and warm. “Knock, knock. Are you awake, Uncle Charlie? Your matzoh ball soup is here.”

  I didn’t hear Charlie give a reply, since, true to our word, Ben and I weren’t lingering. I pointed out a few cool photos I’d seen yesterday as we moved around the room. “Camilla told me that Charlie has thousands of photos and he likes to switch them up often, adding new ones, rearranging existing ones,” I said. “It’s almost never the same view twice.”

  It seemed that Charlie or Camilla had already been at it again, in fact. I gestured toward an area of wall with a photo of a stone house standing in a field of wildflowers in rura
l Virginia from 1993, one of a smiling, dark-haired woman walking in Paris on a windy day in 1971, and one from 1965 of two little boys hugging a huge Saint Bernard. “Case in point: I’m pretty sure yesterday this space had a photo of a cricket match in India from the mid-nineties, a moody view of the London Eye, and a neat one of two women and a man at the Kentucky Derby in 1982.”

  I looked around for that one. I’d remembered it not because of the fabulous hats, but instead for its emotion. The man, shouting with excitement in a straw fedora and seersucker suit, had his arm slung around one of the women’s shoulders. Big sunglasses shaded her eyes and her long, dark hair shone in the sunlight under her feathered fascinator as she tilted her head back in exultation. The other woman, who was taller and had lighter hair under an enormous, wide-brimmed hat trimmed in ribbons, was grinning delightedly Charlie’s way, yet his lens seemed to be irresistibly focused on the passionate woman in the sunglasses. Several feet away and close to the floor, I finally spotted the photo of the London Eye. The other two, though, had either been switched out entirely or were lost within the myriad of photos covering the walls.

  “You weren’t kidding. These are incredible,” Ben was saying as he took in a fish-eye shot of the Donegal coastline in northern Ireland and I admired a photo of a neighborhood soccer match in Kenya.

  “Hey, look at this.” Ben pointed to a photo near the ceiling. “It says ‘Braithwaite Family Reunion, 1988.’” He then pointed at something in the background. “Is that the triptych?”

  I glanced up, then put my hand on my hip, reminding him dryly, “Even in my heels, you’ve got more than half a foot on me, so I really couldn’t tell you.”

  Grinning, he glanced toward the hallway, then pulled out his cell phone and snapped a photo of it, saying in an undertone, “I’ll delete it straight away.”

  “You could have just taken the picture down,” I teased.

  “And run the possibility of it dropping and cracking and having Camilla chew me out for it?” Ben said in my ear, using his fingers to enlarge the photo on his phone screen. “No thank you.”

  I grinned and looked at his phone. Beside a handsome Charlie Braithwaite in his early fifties were three framed paintings hanging together.

  “Holy frijoles, you’re right, it’s the triptych,” I said. “Wow, and I thought Charlie’s third was terrible.”

  Ben was staring incredulously at the photo. “So you’re telling me that Camilla’s ancestor—the guy who captured the first-ever Juneteenth celebration in 1865 with such precision and talent—painted these?” He pointed to the screen, and just as I was about to say “I told you they weren’t pretty,” I picked up on an odd sound.

  We were near the other open doorway that connected to the hallway. I could hear Camilla’s voice again, but it was no longer cheerful. Something was off. There was a keening noise between her words, for one thing, and she sounded choked up. I set one foot in the hall, craning my neck to better hear.

  “Please, Uncle Charlie. Wake up. Please wake up. Don’t be dead.”

  With a worried glance back at Ben, I started down the hallway.

  “Camilla?” I called out. “Is everything okay?”

  The keening noise I’d heard turned into full-scale wailing, and I ran the last few steps to the bedroom door, which had been left cracked open. I pushed through the door, Ben right behind me, and stopped to get my bearings.

  The only light was coming from a television sitting atop a large chest of drawers. It was showing Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid on the classic movie channel, the volume now muted. Camilla, it seemed, had used the light from the television to put the tray with the matzoh ball soup on an upholstered bench, and now she was bent over the side of her uncle’s bed. One hand was grasping a king-size pillow. Her other hand held Charlie’s forearm, but there was no movement from her great-uncle.

  “Camilla?” I said, inching closer. “What happened? Did Charlie go downhill all of a sudden?”

  I reached out to put my hand on her shoulder, but stopped when I caught sight of Ben’s face from the corner of my eye. He was staring at the bed, with its rumpled sheets and blankets. Charlie’s legs were twisted in them and at odd angles, even his bad leg. It looked as if Charlie had thrashed around in his bed before dying.

  “A seizure?” I said, as much to myself as to Ben.

  “Doubt it,” he muttered, so low I could barely hear it. His eyes were now narrowed at the pillow Camilla was holding.

  “Ms. Braithwaite,” Ben said. His voice was gentle, but underneath was the steely professionalism I’d heard last year when I’d first dealt with him on a case. “That pillow you’re holding—where did it come from?”

  Camilla turned to us, tears coursing down her cheeks, blinking as if she didn’t understand Ben’s question. Then she looked down and almost seemed surprised that she was grasping the pillow by the middle of its sham, which was navy with a white border and a crisp flange.

  “It was on his face,” she said in a whisper. “It was sort of half covering his face when I walked in. I was talking to him, but he never responded. Then I noticed he wasn’t moving. I pulled it off him, and …”

  She couldn’t finish the sentence and I turned to look at Ben. I read in his face what he wasn’t saying. Camilla must have understood what had happened at the same time, because she dropped the pillow and covered her mouth with her hands.

  Someone had used that pillow to suffocate Charlie Braithwaite.

  THIRTEEN

  Ben stepped forward and placed two fingers on Charlie’s neck to feel for a pulse. He looked back at me and gave a small shake of his head. Camilla uttered a heart-wrenching sob and hid her face in her hands.

  I glanced uneasily at my former coworker, then back at Ben. The ugly thoughts that were flowing through my brain made me feel terrible, but I couldn’t help it. Could Camilla have just killed her great-uncle? Again, I noted the tangled sheets and the angles of Charlie’s legs. Yes, he’d obviously thrashed around. But if Camilla had just killed him, surely the struggle would have made noises that Ben and I would have heard, right? However, it had been maybe two minutes between the time Camilla had taken Charlie his soup and the moment I’d rushed down the hall. Would that have been enough time to suffocate him? I didn’t know.

  I recalled how the back door had been securely locked, how the kitchen had been clean and orderly, and the fact that Charlie’s photo-filled walls were as neat as I’d seen them earlier today. We hadn’t noticed the front door ajar or any broken windows, so what did that mean? Had Camilla really been out driving around when I’d called her earlier? Or was my call just well timed and her suggestion—no, almost insistence—that Ben and I drive to Charlie’s house tonight to pick up my business card case a convenient part of her plan to establish an alibi for herself?

  From the way Ben’s jaw had tightened, I guessed his FBI agent’s mind was thinking along the same lines as mine. Though when I noticed his eyes darting toward the bathroom, then out toward the hall, I knew he’d realized something I hadn’t: if Camilla hadn’t killed her great-uncle, then someone else had, and that person could still be in the house.

  Reaching under his tweed sport coat, he pulled his Glock from a pocket-like holster in his undershirt. I recalled him telling me that even off duty, he was required to carry his service weapon, but I was still surprised. It rested along his rib cage and I hadn’t even noticed it was there.

  He moved past Camilla, using the motion to steer me a few feet away from her without making it seem deliberate. “Stay here,” he said to both of us, then moved swiftly to Charlie’s bathroom and checked that it was free of unwanted visitors, stopping first to peer at the lock on the sliding patio door. I noticed his walk change from his normal, almost loping gait to smooth, small steps that no doubt reduced the possibility of stumbling.

  “Bathroom is clear,” he said. “Lucy, please call nine-one-one.”

  I pulled out my phone and we both looked at Camilla again. She hadn’t move
d, and appeared to be in shock as she stared at her great-uncle.

  “I need to check the rest of the house,” Ben told me. I looked up into his blue eyes, which were telegraphing a question to me: Did I feel safe being alone with Camilla?

  I answered by projecting confidence in my voice as I said, “We’ll stay here, and if something happens, I’ll be ready with my self-defense moves.” I added the merest glance in Camilla’s direction for emphasis.

  He nodded once and moved to the door. He’d been proud of me for signing up for self-defense classes last fall and taking my safety into my own hands. Just yesterday afternoon, in fact, he’d helped me practice my jabs and kicks. It had been fun then, with lots of laughing and joking around as he nevertheless corrected my stance and showed me a tip or two. Even though I only knew basic moves, they were still good ones, and Ben knew I wasn’t afraid to use them.

  “Be careful,” I whispered to him, just as the 9-1-1 operator answered the call. Ben gave the merest of nods before I shut the door and locked it. He had lots of training, I reasoned, and I had to trust that he knew what he was doing. I needed to focus on what he’d told me to do.

  Camilla hadn’t shown a note of shock at my boyfriend pulling a gun from under his jacket. Her hands were still over her mouth and tears were causing her mascara to run. Keeping my senses tuned for any weird moves from her that would signal danger, I kept one ear trained toward the rest of the house for noises that might mean Ben was in trouble while I spoke with the emergency services operator.

  All the while, I never let Camilla fully out of my sight as I glanced around the bedroom. Like the rest of Charlie’s house, it was very clean and simply decorated. The bedside table by which Camilla was standing held a lamp, a couple of travel books, a bottle of water, a box of tissues, and a jade figurine of a horse sitting up with its legs tucked under its body. The other bedside table had a lamp atop a few more books, but nothing else. There weren’t any medications by the bed, but I wondered if there had been at some point. After all, Charlie hadn’t been well for some time.

 

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