She looked up at him, Joe Hardy mad as hell, his handsome face grim and intent.
"Lies, lies all over the place." He bit the words off. "Was there anything in the police report about Ross quarreling with his father that afternoon? No. Not a word. Not a single word. Just a bland statement. 'Subject found dead of a gunshot wound at the family hunting lodge at shortly before five in the afternoon.' Have you ever heard of anybody going hunting alone at five o'clock on a Saturday afternoon?"
What Annie knew about hunting could be summed up in one word: nothing. So she just murmured a noncommittal "Hmmm?" and hurried to keep up.
"As for the autopsy report—body of young, white, healthy male, a bullet wound to the right temple, evidence of contact from powder burns, powder residue on the right hand. That doesn't spell accident to me." They turned the corner onto Ephraim Street. The river, dark and quiet, ran to their right. "But if it was suicide, why not say so?"
"The Family," Annie said with certainty, taking a little hop. There was a pebble in her right shoe, but now was not the time to deal with it. She tried to avoid limping. "Can't you imagine how upset everyone would be? And in a small town like this, people would keep it quiet. But suicide doesn't jibe with the letter Amanda Brevard sent to Courtney's mother. Amanda wrote that 'Ross was not guilty.' Not guilty of what? Not guilty of suicide? Does that mean that he was murdered? Or was it an accident, after all?"
Max shook his head impatiently. "I don't know, but I'm going to find out."
They passed three of Chastain's oldest and loveliest homes, which Annie had come to know well when she provided the mystery program for the annual house-and-garden tours. Next came the Swamp Fox Inn, now under new management. It had been freshly painted. Annie glanced from the former tabby
fort that served as the headquarters of the Chastain Historical Preservation Society across the street to Lookout Point, where Courtney Kimball's abandoned car had been found. No lights bobbed on the river tonight.
A single dark figure stood at the cliff's edge, staring out at the swift river.
"Max." She heard the tightness in her voice.
At his glance, she pointed across the street.
Max's stride checked. "Walker," he said quietly. Abruptly, he reached out and wrapped a hard arm around her shoulders and held her tight for a long moment.
Annie understood.
Max gave one more look toward the river, then said brusquely, "Come on."
This was where Ephraim Street dead-ended. They curved left onto Lafayette Street. The river curved, too, but here it was hidden behind the houses on Lafayette Street. Now the beautiful homes were to their right. The river—and the path where Amanda Brevard had fallen to her death—ran behind the elegant old houses. They passed Chastain House, with its remarkable Ionic columns and gleaming white pediment. It blazed with lights. Annie frowned at the luxurious classic Bentley in the drive. So Sybil Chastain Giacomo was in residence. Annie's hand tightened on Max's arm.
He mistook the pressure and slowed, looking down. Annie pointed at the next home. "There's where Miss Copley lives."
Then they reached Tarrant House, huge and dark behind its enormous bronze gates.
"You could practically fit Sherwood Forest in there," Annie murmured. She slipped off her right shoe, shook out the pebble, and put it back on.
Max stared somberly at the old mansion. "If those walls could talk . . ."
A car passed them in a hiss of tires, turned in next door. Miss Dora's guests were beginning to gather.
Max took her elbow. They walked swiftly up Miss Dora's drive. Despite the light showing through chinks in the shuttered windows, the old tabby mansion, deep in the shadows of a phalanx of live oaks, had the aura of a ruin, as gloomy as the burned-out shell of Thornfield. An owl hooted mournfully.
Annie was swept with dark foreboding.
9:07 A.M., SATURDAY, MAY 9, 1970
Chapter 10.
Amanda Tarrant's portrait, made for Mother's Day, sat on her dressing table. It pictured a cameo-lovely woman with smooth magnolia skin and gentle blue eyes. Rich auburn hair framed her oval face in luxuriant waves.
Amanda reached out, picked up the frame, and stared at her image. Her eyes smeared with tears, and she turned the frame facedown. She huddled in the chair in front of the ornate rosewood dressing table in a room fragrant with the lily of the valley perfume she always wore, and, unwillingly, almost in disbelief looked in the mirror. Mirror, mirror . . . She couldn't look like that! She couldn't! Her hair in blowsy disarray, her eyes wild and filled with misery, her lips trembling . . . And she couldn't stop the little hiccups of distress or control the jagged rhythm of her breathing. She lifted a trembling hand to touch the bright-red mark on her cheek where Augustus had struck her. That was hideous, but worse, much worse, was the threat he had made, his voice as cold as death.
She might as well be dead.
Suddenly, the perfume she loved so much seemed overpowering, threatening to choke her. Striking out, she overturned the ornate crystal scent bottle. It shattered into sharp fragments, and perfume spread across the gleaming dressing table. She scarcely noticed the cut on her palm and the blood mingling with the scent.
Oh, God, what was she going to do?
Annie knew the outcome of the gathering at Miss Dora's couldn't be predicted, but her first shock came when she and Max entered the elegant, austere drawing room and Sybil Chastain Giacomo flicked her an incurious, bored glance, then focused on Max, her dark eyes suddenly alive and lusty. A quiver of a smile touched those full, sensuous lips.
Annie felt her cheeks flush. What was Sybil doing here? Sybil lived just two doors away from Miss Dora, but that, of course, was irrelevant to this evening. Or was it? Shrewd old Miss Dora never acted without reason.
But there'd been no mention at all of Sybil in any of the materials about the events at Tarrant House on May 9, 1970.
Sybil wore a green, dйcolletй gown. Very dйcolletй. She was a striking, vivid figure against the cool ivory of the walls. An aura of wildness invested Sybil's every glance and every throaty remark with a current of fascination. Her presence dominated the room. Each woman and each man was acutely aware of her flamboyant, unrestrained sexuality.
Sybil knew it, of course, knew and took some pleasure in it, although her brown eyes held a depth of unhappiness that no momentary pleasure could relieve.
Miss Dora, her ever-present cane tightly gripped in her left hand, thumped across the floor to Annie and Max. "You know Sybil."
Sybil moved closer to Max and gave him her hand. "Not nearly well enough. But perhaps we can remedy that." Sybil gave him a come-on-over-tonight-honey look, ignoring Annie altogether.
It only added to Annie's fury that Max, dammit, was enjoying every second of Sybil's high-voltage performance. It would serve him right if Annie abandoned him to Sybil for the rest of the evening. He might learn something about the old adage that those who play with matches can bloody well get singed.
But there were no flies on Miss Dora. Somehow—Annie wasn't certain how—Sybil was bypassed, and she and Max were on a circuit of the room with Miss Dora. "My young friends from Broward's Rock, Max and Annie Darling," Miss Dora announced to each family member in turn.
Milam Tarrant was minimally polite but obviously uninterested. His long—by Chastain standards extraordinarily long—blond hair curled on his collar like that of an Edwardian dandy. He wore a pink dinner jacket that didn't hide a heavy paunch.
Milam's wife, Julia, smiled pleasantly but her eyes had the lost and lonely look of a neglected child. Her evening dress was old and shabby, its once vibrant black dulled to the color of a winter night sky.