“I wonder how the mean lady’s luncheon went. I’m guessing Anastasia doesn’t shine in the hostess department.”
“I wondered too,” he says, “so I drove by there about an hour and a half after we got back to the office.”
“You drove by there?” No one drives by Easy Street. It’s not on the way to anywhere.
He shrugs. “I was curious. Anyhow, all the guests had already left by the time I got there. Just one car in the driveway, a jalopy. Aside from that heap, the place looks like a magazine cover. No more cops. No more yellow tape. It looks like the goddamned Cleavers live there.”
“Right now Anastasia Rawlings and Lance Phillips live there,” I tell him. “A far cry from the Cleavers.”
“The Addams Family?” he tries.
“Now you’re talking. And now that Morticia and company have set up camp in there, I’m wondering if Louisa will ever be able to get them out.”
Harry looks up at me and shrugs. “It might not matter in the long run.”
“What does that mean?”
“Your move,” Luke announces.
“If Louisa goes to prison,” Harry says, focusing on the chess-board again, “the house will pass to Morticia anyhow. Along with everything else her father owned.”
He looks up at me again and I shake my head. “Why do you say that? Anastasia is specifically excluded from Herb Rawlings’s will.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Harry leans back against the overstuffed chair behind him and Luke groans.
“If Louisa is the sole beneficiary of Herb’s will,” Harry continues, “and she’s convicted of his murder, the will is automatically null and void. It’s as if he died without one, intestate. And if he had died intestate, Anastasia would have inherited the whole kit and caboodle—aside from the government’s take, anyhow—because she’s his only child.”
I knew that, of course. But I hadn’t given it a thought until now. And I’m astounded that Harry knows it. It’s not the kind of information that normally interests him. “Now who’s the nerd?” I ask. “Don’t tell me you actually attended your trusts and estates classes?”
“Hell, no.” The look on Harry’s face suggests I accused him of showing up for ballet lessons—in a pink tutu. “That’s one of the many legal principles I learned when I got out of law school,” he says, “about ten years out, as a matter of fact. I was assigned to a guy who couldn’t wait to get his mitts on his wife’s family money. She’d left him everything in her will, but dammit, she just wouldn’t die fast enough. So he fed her a lethal overdose of barbiturates with her nightly highballs. Then he realized he couldn’t move the body.”
“Speaking of moving,” Luke interjects, “why don’t you?”
“I don’t remember anymore,” Harry continues, “but I guess she must’ve been a full-figured gal.”
Luke groans again.
“’Course, my guy wasn’t exactly Atlas,” Harry adds.
“Bet he could’ve lifted one of those pawns,” Luke mumbles.
Their banter continues, but I’m not listening anymore. I’m registering that feeling again: my stomach running laps around my brain. I force myself to ask the question a second time. I have to be certain about this. “So because the guy was convicted of his wife’s murder, her will leaving everything to him was automatically null and void. It was as if she’d died intestate.”
I had been talking to myself, really, but Harry nods anyway. “That’s why her schmo of a husband ended up in the Public Defender’s Office.” He looks over at Luke and arches his eyebrows. “The guy wasn’t playing with a full deck.”
“At least he was playing,” Luke answers.
I move Danny Boy’s head from my lap and leave the couch. I hurry into my bedroom, change into jeans and a turtleneck, leather jacket, and hat—all black—then check to make sure the Lady Smith is fully loaded. It is. I tuck it into my inside jacket pocket and head for the kitchen door. “I forgot something,” I tell Harry and Luke. “I’ll be back in a little while.”
“Don’t worry,” Luke says, “take your time. We’ll be here. Right here. Right in this very spot.”
Harry looks like he’s full of questions, but I’m not hanging around to answer them.
The Herb Rawlings jigsaw puzzle isn’t finished yet, but the border pieces are starting to connect. Whoever used a TFR to secure Herb to his watery grave knew exactly what he was doing. He knew the pop-up would let go. He knew Herb Rawlings’s body—whatever was left of it, anyhow—would float away from the weight that held it on the ocean floor.
Taylor Peterson’s words come back to me as I start the Thunderbird and back out in the moonlight. He was wrong about Herb Rawlings being at the helm when the Carolina Girl left the dock. But he was right about a few other things. Whoever dumped Herb’s body in the Great South Channel knew how to negotiate the cut. He also knew a pop-up when he saw one. And, as Taylor put it, the dead guy surfaced on schedule.
CHAPTER 31
The full moon bathes Easy Street in a pale yellow glow and scores of stars light the sky. I don’t give a damn about the scenery at the moment, but I am glad to be able to leave my flashlight behind in the glove compartment. Free hands seem like a good idea—I might need them to strangle Lucifer. I pat the small weight of the Lady Smith in my inside jacket pocket, cut the engine, and get out of the car.
I’m parked at number two, the saltbox, behind a row of hydrangeas on the side. My tires aren’t doing anything good for the manicured grass, but I can’t worry about landscaping right now. It occurs to me as I hurry down the hill toward number one that Louisa might have to foot the bill for her part-time neighbor’s lawn repair. And if my hunch is even close to accurate, she’ll have plenty of cash to cover it.
The forecast Judge Long mentioned was on target. It’s cold. For the first time this fall, I can see my breath. And as I get closer to the water, the wind picks up, making it feel even colder. I zip my jacket to the top and pull my hat down over my ears.
The jalopy Harry talked about isn’t in Louisa’s driveway. I’m hoping Lance took the little lady—and her mini-poodle—out to dinner after their difficult day. But it’s possible only one of the humans is out, the other inside, so I take a quick spin around the perimeter of the house, slipping behind bushes to look in the windows. A lamp is on in the living room—as is the light over the kitchen sink—but no one is here, at least not on the first floor.
I head for the front door out of habit—Louisa’s got me trained—and, as usual, it’s unlocked. I let myself in and walk quickly through the foyer to the living room, then check the kitchen and sunroom. Everything’s in order; the place is tidy. And the rooms are unoccupied, the house still. No one’s home, not even the beast.
With the exception of the unmade bed, the master bedroom is tidy too. It’s lit only by moonlight streaming through the veranda’s double doors. They’re closed and locked, but I check out there anyway. Empty.
The Queen’s Spa is dimmer than the bedroom, the moonbeams muted by the block glass behind the hot tub. I don’t turn a light on, though. I don’t need one.
The crunch of oyster shells in the driveway paralyzes me. But it isn’t a car pulling in. It’s not loud enough, and it’s not the crushing sound made by tires.
Footsteps. They move from the shell driveway to the wooden deck. And it isn’t one of the neighborhood foxes passing through, either. I have company. Human company. And whoever it is didn’t drive here.
I force myself to leave the Queen’s Spa and move to a window in the bedroom, where I’ll be able to see anyone who approaches the front door. The footsteps don’t travel in that direction, though. They head toward the side of the house. And they stop. There’s no sound at all. Anywhere.