Esther beat Wyn to the door. It opened before he could knock. “Oh, Wyn. Come in. Come in.”
“I wanted to talk to Jo.” He was desperate to see her. Desperate to know if that kiss they shared the night before had changed anything for her. One thing he knew for certain, it had changed him.
“Sure, hon.”
Wyn stepped over the threshold.
“Is that Wyndel Smith?” The soft voice floated over the balcony from above.
Wyn answered for the housekeeper. “It is, Mrs. Hayes.”
“I’d like to speak to you, Mr. Smith. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind joining me in my sitting room?”
Her request flabbergasted him. He looked at Esther for guidance. The night before she’d already been abed. Perhaps Jo mentioned his request.
“You go on, hon. She can’t manage the stairs by herself and her nurse is having her lunch in the kitchen.”
“I’ll send up tea and I’ll let Josephine know you’re here.” Esther toddled off into the depths of the house. Toddle didn’t seem quite the right word. She was Jo’s height and twice her weight. Then again…
“Mr. Smith?”
“Coming.” Wyn took the stairs two at a time. At the top, he took the older woman’s arm and let her lead them down a different hall than the one he’d brought Jo to the night before.
The sitting room had its own door off the hall. It opened to a feminine abode filled with delicate furniture covered in a floral brocade of bright reds and pinks. The color was so vibrant, it overtook the gloom outside the windows. A soft glow from an electric lamp in one corner filled the space.
Wyn assisted Mrs. Hayes to a comfortable chair, then lowered himself onto the small couch across from her. It looked almost sturdy enough to hold him. There wasn’t much in the way of personal paraphernalia. Only one picture of the three small girls at very young ages with people Wyn assumed were their parents. No other pictures of family were present, no knick-knacks, or any other evidence of Mrs. Hayes’s personal touch or feelings. He briefly wondered if Lydia placed the framed photograph there as a reminder of their time before Wallace Hayes.
“Who would want to hurt my Josephine?”
Her question startled Wyn from his musings. She was a frail woman with shoulders stooped from years of…what…he couldn’t say, but he knew he had to tread carefully. “What makes you believe someone wants to hurt Jo?”
She bristled. “I’m not dead yet, Mr. Smith. My hearing works fine.”
“Er, yes. My apologies, Mrs. Hayes. I meant no offense.” In a flash, he realized he’d just been handed an excellent opportunity. “Did you happen to ask Jo who… who…”
“You are aware that my daughter doesn’t speak to me?”
A smile tugged at him. “Touché. Uh, why doesn’t your daughter speak to you? If you don’t mind my asking.”
Her eyes clouded over. She dropped her gaze to her suddenly twisting hands. “Because Mr. Hayes hurt her, and I didn’t protect her.”
White hot fury blazed through him with the images her words provoked. So she’d known. All along, she’d known. He squeezed his hand into a fist to keep his fingers from shaking. He pushed the images away and concentrated on something more immediate than Wallace Hayes. “Is it possible Robert Kingsley is Jo’s father and not Charles Weatherford?”
His question startled her. After her stunned silence, stark red crawled up her neck and stained her cheeks.
“I’m sorry—”
She cut him off. “—That is quite impossible.” Her features cleared and her tone returned to its previous softness. “Do you think that’s why Josephine is so angry with me? Do you think Mr. Hayes is responsible? Is he the one who tried to hurt my Josephine?”
Wyn leaned back and drummed the fingers of one hand on his knee. “I can’t say why she might be angry with you,” he said gently. “But I think Mr. Hayes wanting to hurt her, well, that is a distinct possibility. Mrs. Hayes, I wonder if you wouldn’t mind answering a couple of questions for me.” He wouldn’t blame her for turning him away.
“Anything. Anything, at all, Mr. Smith.”
“Out of curiosity, do you remember having visitors during your stay at Auburn?”
“Oh, no. Just Mr. Hayes, and then Lydia found me.” She spoke so quietly, Wyn had to lean in to hear her. “Oh, and Mary came once…I think.”
Shock vibrated through him. “Mary? Mary Montgomery?”
Her eyes glazed to a distant past. “I thought there was someone else. A man she argued with. I thought I recognized him, but—Charles, my dear Charles was dead.” She shook her head and her gaze focused. “My memory is hazy, Mr. Smith. I’m sorry, it must have been Mr. Hayes. He visited me regularly and was always so…so cross.” She shuddered and rubbed her arms with her hands.
“What of Mr. Styles?”
“Mr. Styles? I vaguely remember a Mr. Styles. He never visited. That would have been improper. He worked in shipping as I recall. He was quite happily married, you see. His wife was lovely. They had the cutest little boy…”
The door flew back, and Eleanor’s avenging angel stood in the arch. “Mother. Are you all right?” Lydia rushed over and kneeled, taking her mother’s frail hands. After taking a long moment to study her, she rose and sat down next to her.
“It’s all right.” Eleanor patted Lydia’s hand. “I’m fine, dear.”
Lydia turned and glared at Wyn
One of the maids had followed Lydia and was weighed down with a full tea tray. Wyn rose quickly, took the tray, and set it on the low table between them.
“Mr. Smith was just asking me about Mr. Styles. I don’t know that you would remember him, Lydia dear.”
“He was here the other night,” Lydia said.
“That’s impossible, dear. Mr. Styles died around the time your father did. In the war. You were much too young to remember him.”
Alarm clanged Wyn’s senses. “What do you mean he was here the other night?”
“When Jo—er, when Jackson brought—er, when you spoke to…” Her eyes implored him to understand.
But this was important. “Styles? Was here?”
Lydia shot a glance to her mother. “Perhaps we should talk about this at a later time.” She rose to her feet and moved to the small settee. “Tea, Mother?”
“Why, yes, dear. That would be lovely.”
Esther appeared at the door and Wyn ran a finger around his shirt collar. The room grew stifling with all the people crowding in. “I’m sorry, Sheriff. Miss Josephine isn’t here. I found this note on her nightstand.”
Wyn took the note from her outstretched hand. “When did this come?”
Eleanor wriggled in her chair. “Earlier. Harriet brought it to me after she’d breakfasted. I told her I would give it to Josephine. I thought it might be a nice way to break the barrier between us.” She shook her head sadly, her cloudy eyes tearing up.
He glanced down and scanned the note. It was short.
Jo. Meet me at the lighthouse. Don’t tell anyone. Hurry. Jackson.
20
T
he hike to the lighthouse was much more difficult than usual due to Jo’s sore ankle. The blustering wind and blowing rain and sleet obscured her vision to almost nil. She huddled deep within her coat. She should have brought Frizzle, but there was always broken glass on the ground left by the kids who hung out there. Things hadn’t changed all that much in the past twenty years and probably wouldn’t for another twenty.
She shivered beneath her wool coat, wishing Jackson would have at least let her call Wyn. The boots she wore helped with the difficult footing, but she could still barely see the path beneath her feet, let alone Serpent’s Point.
By the time she reached the lighthouse, the rain had dissipated enough for her to determine the exterior hadn’t been whitewashed in years. The dull gray cladding matched the afternoon’s ominous clouds and the deafening crash of waves added to the Point’s haunting effects.
She reached the metal door on the far side of the building and gave the handle a pull. It was stuck. Her nearly frozen fingers made it difficult to pry open. After considerable effort, the ice around the frame broke and the door gave way, complete with squeaking hinges and a bottom that scraped against the concrete floor. The only light came from small windows that followed a winding staircase up the narrow tower. Visibility was, at best, pitch gray. She could still make out the stairs in the deep shadows. She wished she’d thought to bring a portable light.
It was quite eerie. She’d been to the lighthouse on a few dares as a child, but as a rule, Jo was, in fact, a rule follower. She hated everything about the lighthouse. She hated the name Serpent’s Point. She hated its location—so far out on the Point. She hated its unnerving mise en scène. It felt like a serpent’s point.
Her rubber-soled boots made squeaky sounds on the concrete flooring that was lost in the cavernous spaciousness. Her skin crawled in the frighteningly sinister ambience. There wasn’t a more sophisticated phrase to describe the disquieting effect of feeling spectral eyes about.
She paused to get her bearings, her breathing loud, her heart pounding, seeming to echo against the metal. A rasp sounded that set her nerve endings afire. “Jackson?” Though she spoke softly, her voice bounded all around her.
“Jose-phine.” The rasp was harsh and scratchy. “Get… out of… here.”
Despite her trepidation, Jo followed the voice to the underside of the stairs. It was so dark, she couldn’t see. “Jackson?” She hurried to his side and crouched down to her knees, ignoring the throb in her ankle. “Julius. Where’s Jackson?”
“I don’t know who...” He was slumped back against the wall. “Look…y-you nee-d…”
“Shush.” Jo put her hand on his shoulder. He gasped, and she jerked her hand away. Felt the warm wetness. “Oh, my God. You’re hurt. Were you shot?”
“It’s too late for me. Jo—get out of here.”
“But you’re hurt.”
His breathing grew hoarser. “No. Leave. The sheriff—”
“Wyn?”
“Hurry, there’s no… time. The sheriff. You… need to—” His head slumped to one side.
“Julius?” She tapped his face. “Julius.” Panic seized her. What did he mean about Wyn? She had to get out of there. She had to call someone. Her father. She’d call her father. That’s what fathers were for, weren’t they? God, how would she know? She’d never really had a father.
Jo pulled herself to her feet and limped to the door, her ankle throbbing profusely. By the time she reached it she could barely breathe for the claustrophobic sensation suffocating her. She clawed at the door, crying, her hand slipping due to the blood. “Let. Me. Out.” It took a moment for her to realize all she had to do was grasp the edge because it wasn’t shut all the way. She gave it a yank. Again, the metal scraped the floor, sending the screeching sound rebounding against her ears.
Sleeting cold air stung her face, but she welcomed it, inhaling in great gasps, falling to her knees just outside, tears streaming. A phone. She had to get to the manor house. She crawled to her feet, engulfed with great gulping sobs.
Jo made it to the path, her vision blurred by both the weather and her tears. The brutal wind made it difficult to keep her balance. She reached the bluffs where she could hear nothing but crashing of the waves and could hardly see the path beneath her feet, and bumped into a warm body.
“Josephine? What is it?”
She blinked her vision into focus. Her knees gave way and she slid to the ground, crying and trembling. She glanced up. “We need to help him. Julius. He’s in the lighthouse,” she panted.
Bobby Kingsley knelt to eye level. The desperation that filled his eyes warmed her through. Here he was. Her father. Right when she needed him. “Darling, are you all right?”
She huddled deeper within her cloak, teeth chattering, the stinging, biting sleet mixed with the salty tears already spilling down her face. “It’s not me that needs help.”
His normally pressed trousers were wrinkled beyond repair, his blond hair matted and unwashed.
“Come on, let’s get you out of this weather. We can make it to the lighthouse before all hell breaks loose.”
The lighthouse.
“No. No. We need to get help. Julius has been…” she gulped back a sob. “He’s… bleeding.”
“You were in the lighthouse? Alone?” He pulled her up and steadied her on her shaking legs. “We’ve got to get you out of this weather.”
“Let her go.” The dark, menacing voice sent a different sort of shiver up her spine.
Jo glanced over her shoulder. “Wyn?” she whispered.
“Where’s Jackson?” Wyn demanded.
Her teeth chattered. “I-I don’t know.”
“Come here, Jo.” He spoke gently. “Beside me.”
“No. She’ll stay with me,” her father said. He gripped her arm in a bruising hold, despite her heavy coat.
Wyn’s arm raised, and she almost fainted right then, stumbling back in her shock. “What-what are you doing? Put away the gun, Wyn.” She tried backing away and lost her balance, falling again to her knees.
Wyn raised the pistol higher with a steadiness Jo couldn’t fathom. Her heart thudded hard enough to pound from her chest and bounce over the bluff to crash onto the rocks below. “Step away from him, Jo. He’s not your father.”
In the blink of an eye, she was jerked to her feet and locked against Bobby’s chest, his unyielding arm banding her waist.
“What possible reason could you have to steal Jackson’s car and try to run Jo over with it?” The calm nature in which Wyn made his accusation stunned her. Frightened her.
“It was you at the asylum, wasn’t it?”
The asylum? Eleanor? Jo’s brain had frozen along with her fingers.
“You have no proof of anything, Smith.” Bobby’s voice grew shrill.
But Wyn didn’t relent. “You poisoned Mary Montgomery because she saw you. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“How would you know Eleanor?” Jo said through chattering teeth. His iron grip about her waist tightened.
He laughed, a maniacal sound that would haunt her for life. “High school sweethearts, my dear.”
“You a-aren’t my f-father?”
“I could have been, until that bastard Charles snuck in. Claudia Montgomery! What a harridan your grandmother was. The minute she got wind of my intentions, she accepted him over me.”
“What exactly are you saying?”
“You’re as dimwitted as your mother, aren’t you?”
“Oh, God.” Her knees buckled beneath, her but he had her in a stronghold. “And, what of Julius?” she choked out.
“He was nothing but a stooge. Now, shut up.”
Jo gasped.
“Why shoot Victor?” Wyn said.
“Enough. Both of you just shut up.” Bobby crept to the cliff’s edge, and a terrifying premonition overcame her. Suddenly the weather didn’t mean a thing. She kicked, clawed, scratched, fighting him at every step. “Stop it. You’ll send us both to our deaths.” He screamed over the wind. “Drop the gun, Smith, or I throw her over.”
Wyn tossed the gun aside and held out both hands in surrender then tucked them into his pockets.
“Why did you do it, Kingsley? There was no reason to tell Jo you were her father. Why lie to her?”
“Why wouldn’t I? How else could I get hold of the money? I needed it. I had no choice. The mob is after me.”
“But how did you know about the inheritance?”
“I knew Claudia would never have let her granddaughters go hungry. But I never figured on the codicil or Victor’s special twist in the will.”
Jo stilled. “The will?”
Another blast of his madness filled the air. “I learned all their little secrets, and then they belonged to me.”
Jo’s brain cells were frozen.
They must be because she had no idea what Bobby was talking about. The wind was picking up. The tips of her ears, her nose, numb.
“But killing Mary? What purpose did that serve?” Wyn spoke calmly.
Bobby’s arm tightened around her chest. “I went to see Eleanor. At the asylum. I thought I could talk some sense into her, but she was insensible. All doped up on something. Mary was there. She saw me. She heard me. Told me about the will. She knew Victor planned to keep her on a short leash. She had a plan. Mary Montgomery was a bitch.”
“What? What plan?” Jo was stymied. Cold and stymied.
“Mary hated Victor, wanted the bastard dead.” Bobby’s mirth was maniacal. Jo’s chill went bone deep. “Mary’s the one who gave me Guthrie’s secret from fifteen years ago.”
“Guthrie? My attorney, Simon?” The confusion was mounting. “What does Mr. Guthrie have to do with any of this?”
“His kid. Mary believed Guthrie’s kid raped that Knox girl. Killed her.”
Jo gasped.
“And Styles?” Wyn’s voice took on that hypnotic quality Jo forced herself to focus on. It was her only hope.
Behind her, she felt Bobby’s entire demeanor shift to something ominous. It wrapped her in glacial layers. Her eyes fell on the gun lying between her and Wyn.
“His father practically bankrupted their shipping business. He was after the money too.”
“You mean Styles did need the money,” Jo bit out. “He doesn’t need it now, does he? Because he’s dead. Because you killed him.” With a violent struggle she broke his hold, dove from him, plummeting to the ground on her bad ankle, smacking her cheek on the butt of the pistol.
Bobby landed on top of her, grabbing up the gun before she could get her frozen hands on it.
“Jo!” Wyn’s frantic cry blistered her ears before the blast.
The icy sensation that began in her shoulder quickly fanned out in a blazing furnace despite the arctic air, blackening her nerve endings with pain. She was going to die. Right there on the bluff. She wondered if this was what Uncle Victor…
A Bullet to the Heart Page 12