“Now?” Monica asked, startled. “Where?”
“Just out.” He was as restless and fractious as a stallion who could scent a mare in season, but couldn’t get to her. His blood was throbbing through his veins, urging him to action, any action. He felt as if there should be a violent thunderstorm brewing, but the weather was calm, and the lack of thunder frustrated him. “I don’t know what time I’ll be back. We’ll get to those papers tomorrow, Alex.”
Baffled, worried, Monica watched him stalk out of the room. She chewed her lip some more. It sounded as if Gray was getting increasingly involved with the Devlin woman. She couldn’t understand how he could do it, after all the misery her family had caused. And Michael had been out to her house! Monica didn’t want him anywhere around Faith Devlin; those Devlin women were like spiders, spinning sticky little webs that trapped the men unwary enough to wander into their vicinity.
Alex shook his head, his own eyes worried. “I’ll go say good night to your mother,” he said, and went upstairs. Noelle had retired to her own sitting room not long after dinner, pleading fatigue, but the truth was that she was simply more comfortable upstairs.
He stayed up there for half an hour. Monica was still sitting in the study when she heard him coming down the stairs, his step slower than when he had gone up. He came to the door and paused, looking at her. Monica’s head came up and she stared at him, stricken. His hand went to the light switch. Monica froze in dread, her breath clogging in her lungs, as he turned out the light.
“My dear,” he said, and she knew the words were spoken to the woman upstairs.
• • •
Faith prowled the house, unable to interest herself in either reading or television. Despite her insistence on staying, she was more disturbed than she wanted to admit. She had to force herself to go into the kitchen, the memory of that box on the table was so strong. It was a relief to see the table bare, to find that the association faded as she made herself a skimpy meal. Skimpy or not, she could only eat half of it.
She called Renee again. She knew it was too soon, but some faint, long-buried instinct made her reach out to Mama, not so much in search of comfort but because there was a link between them beyond kinship: the Rouillard men.
To her relief, Renee answered. If her grandmother had answered, Faith knew that Renee never would have come to the phone.
“Mama,” she said, and was disconcerted to hear her voice shake a little. “I need help.”
There was silence on the other end of the line, then Renee said warily, “What’s wrong?” Motherly concern wasn’t a natural response for her.
“Someone left a dead cat in my mailbox, and I’ve gotten a couple of threatening notes, telling me to stop asking questions or I’ll end up like the cat. I don’t know who’s doing it—”
“What kind of questions?”
Faith hesitated, afraid Renee would hang up on her. “About Guy,” she admitted.
“Damn it, Faith!” Renee yelled. “I told you not to be nosing around, but would you listen? No, you have to stir shit up, and now the stink’s gettin’ too bad for you. You’re going to get yourself killed if you don’t shut up!”
“Someone killed Guy, didn’t they? You know who did it. That’s why you left.”
Renee’s breathing sounded over the line, harsh and rapid. “Stay out of it,” she begged. “I can’t tell, I promised never to tell. He has my bracelet. He said he’d blame the killing on me if I ever told, he said he’d put the bracelet where it would look like Guy and me had had a fight, and I’d killed him.”
After the weeks of suspicion, of sifting through old rumors and continually coming to dead ends, to suddenly hear the truth was startling. It took Faith a moment to recover from the shock, to absorb it.
“You loved Guy,” she said, her own conviction ringing in her voice. “You couldn’t have killed him.”
Renee began to cry. It wasn’t noisy sobs, designed to gain sympathy. Her tears were betrayed by the sudden thickness in her voice. “He’s the only man I ever did love,” she said, and Faith knew that whether or not Renee really had loved Guy, she believed she had, and that was enough.
“What happened, Mama?”
“I can’t tell—”
“Mama, please.” Desperately Faith searched her mind for a reason that would mean something to Renee. It would take a lot to overcome her mother’s basic self-interest, and in this case, Faith couldn’t really blame her for looking out after number one. The only thing that had ever been greater than Renee’s self-absorption had been her greed . . . “Mama, as far as everyone is concerned, Guy is still alive somewhere. He hasn’t been declared dead, so that means his will hasn’t been read.”
Renee sniffed, but the word “will” caught her interest. “So what?”
“So if he left anything to you, it would be in his will. You could have had a lot of money coming to you all these years.”
“He always said he’d take care of me.” A whining note of self-pity entered Renee’s voice. She took a deep breath, as if to calm herself, and Faith could almost hear the decision being made.
“We met at the summerhouse, as usual,” Renee said. “We’d already . . . you know. Done it. Anyway, we were lyin’ in the dark talkin’ when he drove up. We didn’t know who it was, and Guy jumped up and grabbed his pants, afraid it might be one of his kids. He didn’t never worry about his wife none, because he knew she wouldn’t care.
“They went out to the boathouse to talk. I could hear them yellin’, so I put on my clothes and went down there. Guy opened the door and came out just as I got there. He stopped and looked back, and I’ll never forget, he said, ‘I’ve made up my mind.’ That’s when he was shot, right in the head. He fell on the grass, there in front of the boathouse. I was on my knees beside him, yellin’ and cryin’, but he was dead when he hit the ground. He never even twitched.”
“Was it Gray?” Faith asked, agony in her tone. It couldn’t be. Not Gray. But she had to ask. “Did Gray kill his daddy?”
“Gray?” A startled note sounded through the tears. “No, not Gray. He wasn’t there.”
Not Gray. Thank you, God. Not Gray. No matter how she had told herself that he couldn’t have done it, there must have been a hidden reservoir of doubt, because she felt a sudden relief, a lightening of spirit.
“Mama—Mama, no one would believe you shot Guy. Why didn’t you go to the sheriff?”
“Are you kiddin’?” Renee gave a sharp laugh, which ended in a sob. “People in that town would believe anything about me. Most of ’em would’ve been glad to see me arrested even if they knew for certain I was innocent. Besides, he had it all figured out—”
“But you didn’t even have a gun!”
“He was goin’ to kill me, too! He said he’d put the gun in my mouth and make me pull the trigger, his hand over mine, if I didn’t promise to leave and never come back, and never say nothing about it to anybody. He’s strong, Faithie, strong enough to do it. I tried to fight him and he hit me, I couldn’t get away—”
“Why didn’t he kill you, then?” Faith asked, trying to make sense of why a murderer would deliberately let a witness go.
Renee couldn’t answer for a moment, she was crying too hard. Finally she gulped, and regained shaky control of her voice. “He—he didn’t mean to kill Guy, he was just so damn mad, he said. He didn’t want to have to kill me too. He told me to go away, and he t-took my bracelet. He said if I ever came back, he could make it look like I’d killed Guy, and I’d get the death sentence. He can do it, you don’t know him!” Her voice rose shrilly on the last sentence, and she dissolved once more into wrenching sobs.
Faith felt her own eyes burning. For the first time, she felt pity for her mother. Poor Renee, without education, influence, or friends, with all her wild living and lack of responsibility, had been a prime target for anyone who wanted to make her a scapegoat. She had seen the one man she cared for, the man she was depending on to make her life easy, shot to death
, and then been threatened with having his death blamed on her. No, the killer had gauged her well; there was no way Renee would have gone to the sheriff. She would have believed everything he said, probably with good reason.
“It’s all right, Mama,” she said gently. “It’s all right.”
“You—you won’t say anything? This has to be our secret, or he’ll have me arrested, I know he will—”
“I won’t let anyone arrest you, I promise. Do you know what he did with the body?”
Renee hiccuped, caught by surprise. “His body?” she asked vaguely. “I guess he must have buried it somewhere.”
That was possible, but would the killer have wasted time digging a grave, a grave that might be noticed, with the lake right there? Weight the body, and the problem of disposal was solved.
“What kind of gun did he use? Did you see it?”
“I don’t know anything about guns. It was a pistol, is all I can tell you.”
“Was it a revolver, like the ones used in Westerns, with the round chamber that the bullets fit into, or was it the kind with the clip in the handle?”
“Clip in the handle,” Renee said after a moment’s thought.
An automatic. That meant the shell casing had been ejected, somewhere inside the boathouse. The killer had had a body to dispose of, and a witness to terrify into fleeing. Had he thought about the casing, gone back to pick it up?
What were the chances that a shell casing would still be there after twelve years? Almost none. But the place had fallen into disuse after Guy’s disappearance, so it was likely only the minimum upkeep had gone into the boathouse. The casing could have landed in the boat, or even in the water, to be lost forever.
It could also have landed in a corner, or behind something. Stranger things had happened.
“Don’t say anything,” Renee begged. “Please don’t say anything. You never should have moved back there, Faithie; now he’s after you too. Leave before you get hurt, you don’t know him—”
“I might. Who is he, Mama? Maybe I can do something—”
Renee hung up the phone, the connection breaking in the middle of a sob. Faith slowly replaced her own receiver. She had learned so much tonight, and still not enough. The most important thing was that Gray was innocent. The most frustrating thing was that she still had no idea who was guilty.
The killer was a “he.” That eliminated Andrea Wallice and Yolanda Foster, even if Faith hadn’t already decided they likely weren’t guilty. Supposedly Lowell Foster hadn’t known about his wife’s affair with Guy until afterward, but the way gossip moved through the town like fat through a goose, it was possible some self-righteous busybody had taken it upon himself to enlighten the wronged husband. Never mind that the wronged husband had been screwing around with his secretary; that was different. So Lowell had to remain on her list.
Who would have been arguing with Guy that night, and why? A business associate, upset at some financial wheeling and dealing? The way Guy got around, an enraged husband was more likely. Who else had he been sleeping with that summer?
Faith couldn’t find the answer to those questions tonight. She could, however, see for herself whether or not a stray shell casing was still lying overlooked in the boathouse.
She glanced at the clock. It was nine-thirty. If she was going to do it, night would be the best time, with much less chance of running into Gray and a much better chance of avoiding him if she did.
Faith wasn’t one to tarry once she’d made a decision, though this time she paused long enough to put on sturdier shoes. She grabbed a flashlight on her way out the door.
She started to drive right to the summerhouse, on the private road, but changed her mind at the last minute. Someone might see her turn onto the road and notify the Rouillards, which she definitely didn’t want. And if the god of misfortune smiled on her twice, and someone was at the summerhouse, she didn’t want her headlights to give advance warning.
So she drove instead to the same place she had parked before, even though it meant walking a mile through the woods at night. It wasn’t a problem for her. She had never been afraid of the dark, or of snakes and the other denizens of the forest, though she did pick up a stick to be on the safe side, if she did come upon a snake before the shy creature could slide away.
The woods at night were noisy, filled with rustles as the nocturnal animals went about their business. Possums and raccoons clambered in the trees, owls hooted, frogs croaked, insects zinged, night birds called, and crickets chirped frenetically. The breeze added its own whisper to the cacophony, the pine trees swaying gently. Faith took her time, making certain she didn’t wander off track; when she came to the little creek, in exactly the same place she had always crossed, she smiled at the accuracy of her old instincts. She paused to shine the light around the creek to make certain no water moccasins were enjoying a swim, then stepped onto the flat rock in the middle of the water and from there onto the other bank. From here, it was only a couple of hundred yards to the summerhouse.
Five minutes later she stopped at the edge of the clearing, taking stock before she left the cover of the trees. The house was dark and silent. She listened, but heard only the normal night sounds. The lake murmured, slapping against the dock pilings, its glassy surface rippling occasionally with a breeze and disturbing the reflection of the three-quarter moon. Night-feeding fish added their own ripples and the occasional quiet splash to the subtle commotion.
Faith walked down the slight slope to the house, her steps soundless.
She didn’t know what she would do if the boathouse was locked, which, of course, it probably was, though the house had been open the other day when she’d been here. But Gray had also been here; he could have unlocked the house, gone inside to make certain nothing had been vandalized.
If she were a truly adventurous type, she thought wryly, she could swim under the wall of the boathouse and come up in the boat slip. To hell with locked doors.
Not bloody likely.
Nighttime underwater swimming wasn’t her cup of tea. The thought of stripping down to her underwear and sliding beneath the surface of that dark water was enough to make her shiver. If the boathouse had been closed all these years, it was probably inhabited by mice, snakes, squirrels, maybe a raccoon or two, all of which would be startled by a visitor suddenly popping up from the water. No, she would much rather give any boathouse occupants sufficient warning to skedaddle, by jiggling door locks or maybe breaking windows, if the boathouse had a window. She had never noticed.
The boathouse loomed over the shiny black water, the white walls ghostly in the moonlight. As Faith crossed the graveled drive, she flicked the flashlight beam across the front of the wide doors, and stifled a groan of disappointment. A thick, shiny padlock was looped through both hasps, securing the doors with stainless steel. She might have jimmied or broken a normal door lock, but she couldn’t do anything with that big padlock. Her only recourse now was a window.
There wasn’t one on the side facing the dock, only smooth blank wall. She walked around to the other side, and stared with mixed feelings at the window that sat like a black eye in a pale face. The good news was that it was a window, with breakable glass. The bad news was that solid ground ended about a foot shy of being directly underneath it. The window was also high enough that it would be difficult for her to hoist herself through; not impossible, not if she set her mind to it, but definitely difficult.
A very warm, very solid hand closed over her bare arm and whirled her around, bringing her against a hard, muscled body. “I told you what I’d do if I caught you here again,” Gray said softly.
Sixteen
He carried her onto the porch, where the screens would protect them from the mosquitoes and other biting insects. Frightened almost out of her wits by his abrupt appearance, a panic that wasn’t much relieved by recognition, Faith could do no more than cling to his shoulders as he lifted her in his arms and carried her swiftly across the grass, to the ho
use.
She was submerged almost at once by a dark tide of desire, sucking her below the level of reason or will. Protest wasn’t an option; the needs of her body, so long suppressed, surged to the forefront and pushed thought aside. She was shaking by the time he released her legs and let her body slide down, all along the front of his, the sweet friction almost painfully arousing. It was time. Dear God, it was past time. She wanted him with a blind, ferocious need that could no longer be delayed, and she clung to him, her body pliant, willing.
He backed her up against one of the square columns supporting the porch, pinning her against the wood. Despite the bright moonlight, it was dark there on the porch, dark and warm, scented with the perfumes of summer and his own hot, musky smell. His breathing was fast and urgent as he leaned heavily against her, pushing himself into the yielding softness of her body. He thrust his fingers into her hair, holding her skull cradled between his big, powerful hands, holding her head still for the deep thrust of his tongue into her mouth. He was fully aroused, his erection as hard as marble, straining against her belly.
Faith whimpered into his mouth, squirming hungrily against him, trying to lift herself enough so that she could cradle that thick ridge in the yielding notch between her legs. She was aching and empty, so empty, growing moist with the need to have him there.
His shirt was hanging open. The flesh where her fingernails dug into his shoulders was covered by cloth, but his chest was bare. She could feel his skin, slick with sweat, and the roughness of curly hair. Her breasts grew taut, her nipples rising hard and tight, throbbing with the need to be touched.
He tore his mouth away from hers, gasping for air, his chest working like bellows with each breath. Faith licked her bruised lips, tasting him on them, and tugged on the back of his neck to bring him back down to her. He obliged at once, his mouth hard and biting, the primal force of it exciting her beyond what she had ever known before.
He cupped both of her breasts, roughly kneading them, and the relief was so acute that she made a small keening sound of both pleasure and want, but in only seconds that wasn’t enough. He knew her need, or perhaps his own was the same, for he jerked at the front of her blouse and sent buttons flying, the small popping sounds loud in the bubble of silence that surrounded them. With one hand he released the front clasp of her bra and shoved the cups aside, baring the firm rise of her breasts to his hungry, demanding mouth. He wrapped one arm under her bottom and lifted her, his open mouth sliding down her chest, a damp path marking where his lips had been. A taut nipple popped into his mouth and he sucked hard at it, making her breast prickle with a sharp sensation that had her arching against him as if to throw him off. He responded by holding her tighter, gripping her bottom and grinding his erection into the soft notch between her legs. The blatant sexuality of his movements let loose the firestorm of her response, and helplessly she felt herself sliding down the dark, slippery tunnel toward climax.