The Third Grave

by Lisa Jackson

  “Then you could have just looked me up!” Margaret said, as if it were that simple, as if all the years could be erased, as if she weren’t afraid that she might be found out by whoever had stolen her sisters away.

  “I was hoping to find Holly and Poppy.” She thought of Holly’s locket, the one thing she could steal from the evidence department, a bit of the sister she barely remembered. Of course, she’d had to return it and she was in trouble for that, too. Her days as a cop were numbered, but that would be okay. Being a cop and playing by the rules was way too restrictive.

  At least for her.

  She stared at the canary locked in its cage and pecking at its own reflection and figured the bird probably understood.

  “So why the disguise?” the reverend asked.

  “I didn’t want to come forward until I had all the facts, until I knew what had happened. Until I was ready. And once the other girls were located, I couldn’t change my appearance, could I? These days with all of the technology, the computer enhancements, the cameras, I thought it best to stay hidden. As I said, until I was ready for the media circus that was sure to erupt.”

  Which it had.

  She hadn’t had a moment’s peace since the story had broken, but she’d promised an exclusive to Nikki Gillette, and Pierce Reed had helped her keep some sanity in her life.

  Of course, it would never be the same.

  “I’ve missed you, Rose,” Margaret said. And she reached up and touched the smallest trace of a scar near Delacroix’s temple, the one she now remembered she gave herself while trying to cut her own hair at four, the one she’d covered with makeup and the bow of those stupid clear lensed glasses she didn’t need. All part of her disguise.

  “I know. But you lied. About me.” Jerking her head away, she stared the woman who had borne her straight in the eye. “From the beginning. You lied to Harvey. You lied to me. You lied to the world.”

  Tears glistened in Margaret’s eyes. “But I never, not for one moment, stopped loving you.” She sniffed and lifted her trembling chin. “I’ve lost all of my children but you,” she said. “I’m hoping that we . . . we can have some kind of relationship. Start over. I know you have other parents, but they lied, too.” That much was true. In her investigation she’d talked to Reggie Scott, Owen Duval’s biological father, the man who, along with his girlfriend at the time, had sold Rose. Through a friend of a friend, they’d learned of a couple desperate to adopt a child, by any means possible. Owen had enlisted his father’s help and thereby had owed him, having to loan his old man money upon occasion, just to keep Reggie’s lips sealed about Rose’s whereabouts.

  So yeah, Margaret was right, they, too, had kept the truth from her and from the world.

  “I’ll, um, see what I can do,” Delacroix said, and stood. “Look, I gotta go.” She’d had enough of the emotional trauma for the day.

  “Please, honey.” Margaret didn’t try to stop her. “Come again. We’ll . . . we’ll start.” She looked to her husband for approval, and the reverend said, “I think it’s time we all mended fences.”

  Maybe so, Delacroix thought, but she wasn’t certain as she drove out of town to the Beaumont estate. Ignoring the NO TRESPASSING signs and the flap of yellow tape that still remained wrapped around the trunk of a solitary pine, she hiked back to the old house, through an overgrown rose garden and past live oaks with Spanish moss draped and dancing in the breeze. The house was cold and dark, a crumbling behemoth from another era.

  Delacroix broke in, picking a lock and using a flashlight for illumination as she made her way down the narrow stairs and across the moldy basement to the crypt where her sisters had been buried. She opened the concealed tomb with its secret latch and shined her beam over what had been the final resting place of Holly and Poppy Duval, her half sisters.

  The truth was she barely remembered them. They’d been older and interested in boys and friends and Rose had probably been a pain to them, a little chattering person they had to babysit or occupy. Be that as it may, Rose was the reason they’d died and that still hurt.

  “Sorry,” she said, and placed a kiss on the old bricks over the gravesite. “I did the best I could.”

  They couldn’t hear her, of course. They were no longer alive. Their bodies didn’t even remain here, but she thought there just could be a piece of their souls left behind.

  “I love you,” she said to the dank, shadowy cavern, “and I’ll always remember you.” She felt a cold brush of an autumn breeze filtering through the cracked mortar and touching the back of her neck. She pretended it was her sisters, letting her know that they’d heard her, even if they couldn’t forgive.

  “I’ll be back,” she promised, and left, locking up and jogging through the knee-high dry grass and tumbling weeds to her car. She climbed inside, blinked back tears, silently cursed herself for being a sentimental idiot, then switched on the ignition.

  The drive back to the city was by rote, her mind caught in a swirl of what-ifs.

  What if she had gone with her sisters and Tyson that day?

  What if Owen hadn’t saved her?

  What if Reggie Scott hadn’t found someone to adopt her—someone with shady connections who could make the sudden arrival of a five-year-old daughter legal?

  What if she hadn’t landed the job in Savannah?

  What if Wynn Cravens hadn’t died and Bronco hadn’t found the bodies?

  What if, what if, what if?

  She’d never know. And, really—it didn’t matter. She’d felt a lot of hostility over the years and lately she’d targeted Nikki Gillette. The damned woman had kept getting in her way, so she’d had to use the nosy reporter to help track down the truth. She’d probably even allowed Nikki to get into serious danger, and at times she’d wanted to throttle the nosy reporter herself.

  But, of course, she never would have let any real harm come to Gillette.

  She thought about that, thought about how razor-focused she’d been to track her down. It had been to stop her, right? So that Nikki wouldn’t intentionally or just plain stupidly get in her way.

  And just how far would you have gone?

  She glanced in her rearview, caught a glimpse of the doubts in her blue eyes and refused to dwell on it. Not now . . . not ever . . . not even if she ended up on a psychiatrist’s couch.

  She pulled into her parking space, surprised no reporter was camped out near her unit. But then other stories had broken over the past two months and so she was less interesting, thank God. She passed by the leafless trees along the path to her front door and felt lonelier than she had in months. A squirrel scrambled to the top of her roof and scolded her as she unlocked the door and sent him a withering glance.

  Inside, Delacroix surveyed her few belongings—a sofa, bookcase, TV and side chair, along with three computers—her passion. The Internet was knowledge and knowledge had led her here.

  To the tangled mess that was her life.

  A mess that hopefully Austin Wells, her new attorney who had once represented Owen Duval, would help her out of. His fees were astronomical, but then, she really was a Beaumont, if she chose to go that route, and her story was worth a small fortune, one she alone could write despite what Nikki Gillette might think.

  She shrugged off her jacket and tossed her keys on the table, then she reached into her freezer and brought out a bottle of vodka. After scooping ice cubes into a glass, she poured herself a shot and stared out the window to the common area, where a mother was watching two toddlers playing hide-and-seek in the shrubbery.

  She took a long, cool swallow. Felt the alcohol slide down her throat to settle and warm her belly. She could be a rich woman if she gave a crap. She might be able to find another job as a cop, because she was a good one, but she had too much of a blemish on her career here to think that would happen.

  But she could become a PI.

  That sounded good.

  She sucked in an ice cube and cracked it between her teeth. Then watched the
mother gathering her two kids into a double stroller. Her eyes narrowed. She thought about a family of her own.

  What if . . .

  “Get real.” She swallowed another long drink from her glass and looked at the door to her bedroom.

  One step at a time, she reminded herself.

  She’d start with a dog. She finished her drink and left the glass in the sink. A rescue dog. A big, unwanted mutt. Yeah, that’s what she’d do. She’d get herself a dog.

  Maybe they could rescue each other.

  * * *

  Reed climbed the stairs to Nikki’s office. She looked up from her computer as he appeared and offered him the smile he’d found so intriguing all those years ago.

  “Got an errand to run. I’ll be back in an hour or so,” he said.

  “Want company?” she asked, but he knew she was neck-deep into plotting out her next story, that there was already interest in the Duval case from her publisher and she was trying to put the synopsis of the story line together.

  “Not this time. I won’t be gone long,” he said, and didn’t want to pique her ever-present curiosity. “I’ll be back with takeout. What’d’ya want?”

  “Ummm. Surprise me.”

  “Impossible.” He’d been on medical leave since waking up in the hospital, his left arm pinned together by surgeons after his humerus had been shattered by Tyson Beaumont’s bullet at the Marianne Inn in August. He was “healing nicely,” the orthopedic surgeon had told him, and his physical therapist was putting him through his paces.

  “What errand?” she pushed.

  “I’ll tell you about it later.”

  “Ooh, so mysterious.”

  “It’s just that I’m late.”

  “Then, go. Go. I’ll see you later,” she said as he kissed the top of her head. He started to walk away, but she grabbed his hand. “You okay?”

  “Sure.” He nodded. “You?”

  She hesitated a beat, her green eyes catching his for a second, a shadow passing behind them. “Yeah, there’s still time.” She smiled and he believed her. This morning she’d suffered the disappointment of realizing she wasn’t pregnant. Again. Each month it got harder and harder, but he told himself as he walked down the stairs, the dog following, Nikki was nothing if not resilient. “I’m letting Mikado out,” he yelled up two flights.

  “Okay. I’ll get him in a few.”

  Patting his pockets to make certain he had the things he needed, he slid open the door and Mikado took off like a shot, bolting and barking at a squirrel that had the audacity to cross his yard. Hastily the offending rodent scrambled up the magnolia tree to sit and scold the dog, who whined at the tree’s base.

  Yeah, things were back to normal.

  Almost.

  He climbed into the Jeep and backed out, then headed across town. Currently he was not only not working yet, but still without a partner. It was his guess that Jade Delacroix, aka Rose Duval/ Beaumont, would never regain her job. He wasn’t even certain she wanted it.

  It was complicated. Her biological parents, Margaret Le Roy and Baxter Beaumont, were still living, but they’d lost all of their other children, and Rose was a painful reminder of all that had been sacrificed.

  The ironic twist was that while Tyson had worked so hard to ensure himself to be the sole heir to his family’s fortune once his father and mother had died, the girl he’d tried to kill, the half sister who had eluded him, could end up inheriting it all.

  “What goes around, comes around,” he said, and looked over at the passenger seat as if Morrisette could hear him. He imagined her there, playing with the window buttons, glancing over at him.

  “You got that right,” she replied as he turned onto the street of the apartment building and parked at the curb under the branches of a pine tree. Checking his watch, he settled in to wait and in that time he thought about Jade Delacroix. Their conversations after the night at the Marianne Inn had been intense.

  “You should have been straight with me,” he’d charged, back at the station as they were wrapping things up and she was still seated at Morrisette’s old desk.

  “I couldn’t drag you into it.” She’d been defiant, nearly belligerent, staring at him with eyes as blue as a mountain lake since she’d ditched her contacts.

  “You put my wife’s life in danger.”

  “No, man,” Delacroix had argued. “She did that herself. She didn’t need any help in that department! I was just trying to piece together my life. And keep her from exposing me before I’d figured it all out. And I wouldn’t have hurt her or let anyone else harm her.”

  “Good to know,” Reed had said with more than a bit of sarcasm.

  “You realize she’s a pain in the butt, right? That she could have messed up the investigation.”

  He hadn’t argued.

  Delacroix had glared at him. “And it’s a good thing I followed her to the lodge. I probably saved her butt.”

  Maybe.

  Still, Reed had trouble understanding the woman who had lied about her identity, who had worked with, yet against him. Yeah, she’d had a vendetta against the person who had kidnapped her sisters and altered the path of her life, but she hadn’t needed to dupe everyone else involved.

  Or had she?

  The jury was still out on that, and he was certain she’d never be a cop again. But she was out of the department and when he went back, he’d be assigned yet another partner. Hopefully one who was a little more forthcoming. Make that a partner who was a lot more forthcoming and a lot less complicated.

  He tried to convince himself that her intentions had been good.

  But he still wasn’t certain.

  Probably never would be.

  He heard the rumble of a huge engine and looked up to spy the school bus lumbering down the street. It stopped in front of the apartment building, its doors opening with a screech. A handful of teenagers piled out, talking and laughing, one lone boy with a backpack, nose-deep in his cell phone, bringing up the rear.

  Reed was out of the car and across the street in an instant. Toby Yelkis looked up from his phone.

  “I think this belongs to you.” Reed tossed the e-cigarette to Toby Yelkis and the kid snatched it out of the air, pocketing it quickly, as if his dad might appear at any second.

  “It’s not mine.” He shifted his backpack from one shoulder to the other as the big bus lumbered noisily away.

  “Really?” Reed sent him a look of disbelief. Reed had been waiting for Morrisette’s kid and wanted to catch him alone, so he’d waited here, at the bus stop outside of the apartment building that Bart Yelkis called home. “It’s got your initials on it.” TY. After he’d gotten out of the hospital and found the Juul in his jeans pocket, he’d initially thought the e-cigarette was marked for Tyson Beaumont, but then he remembered Toby at his mother’s funeral, that he’d been limping, perhaps because Mikado had tried to take a chunk out of his calf when he’d been in the house.

  “I said, ‘It’s not mine!’” He tilted his chin up belligerently and Reed noticed the peach fuzz on his jawline, acne breaking out over his nose. An awkward age. On the precipice of manhood, where the mistakes you made could haunt you for the rest of your life. Reed remembered.

  “I just don’t understand why you broke into my house.”

  “I didn’t.”

  Reed sighed. “I’m a cop, Toby. Don’t bullshit me.”

  “Dad says you want to take me and Priscilla away.”

  “Nope.” Reed shook his head. “Wouldn’t do that, unless I thought you were being harmed, you know. Or in some kind of trouble.”

  “We’re fine!” More defiance.

  “Good.” Reed glanced up at the sky for a second, watched a crow land in a bare branch of the solitary pine. “So the next time you come over, knock.”

  Toby glowered up at him and seemed not sure about what to say. “Your wife killed Mom.”

  “No, Toby.” He met the kid’s angry eyes. “Your mother died in the line of duty.
My wife wasn’t making good choices that day, that’s true, but your mom, she did what she was trained to do and it was a horrid accident. If you want to know the truth, I miss her. Every day. And you do, too, but that doesn’t mean you break into someone’s house, even if it’s just to scare her, because you’re mad or hurting.”

  “I . . . I . . .” Toby stared at the ground for a moment, dry leaves scattering with a gust of cool October air. “I never meant to hurt nobody.”

  “I know that,” Reed said, his suspicions confirmed.

  “So you’re not going to take us away.” He needed to hear it.

  “As long as your dad is good to you.”

  “He is.”

  Reed reached into his pocket and withdrew his key chain. He unclipped his keys and handed the star to Toby. “This is for you,” he said, and the kid looked up. “It was your mom’s. I’ve had it for a while. Gave me a little pleasure, you know. Made me think she was nearby. I think she’d want you to have it.”

  Toby hesitated, bit his lip, snagged the key chain from Reed and rammed it into his pocket. “You mean you stole it.”

  “Borrowed it.” But Reed smiled. “You’ve got my number, right?”

  Toby shrugged.

  “Well, you know where I live. We’ve established that. So, if you need anything, or just you know, want to shoot the shit?”

  Toby’s head snapped up and he almost smiled. Just not quite.

  Reed invited, “Come on by.”

  “Your dog—?”

  “Will be fine with it. Just ring the bell. Don’t break in.”

  Toby didn’t answer, his cell phone buzzed and he took off toward the front door of his father’s unit as the crow cawed from its wobbly tree limb.