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“Wait!” Tyler said.
She’d been about to close the door. He stepped past her and ran a finger over the top shelf. He lifted the finger—and there was a slight smudge on it.
“Paint?” she asked.
He nodded. “We’ll get a sample to the lab. ”
“But if there was a painting here, it’s gone now. ”
“The more we know—or think we know—the better off we’ll be. ”
“Hey!” Logan was standing in the doorway to the music room. They turned to see what he wanted.
“Showtime!” he announced. “They’re arriving. ”
Allison followed Tyler out to the narrow hall and down to the entry. Ethan leaned on his cane, Cherry stood next to him and Nathan was just coming in. She walked forward to welcome them all, her heart beating fast, but behaving as naturally as she could.
“Let’s adjourn to the grand salon, shall we?” Logan invited. “We can sit around the table. ”
“Ohhh!” Cherry said with dismay. “Look what you’ve done to this table! It’s over two-hundred years old, you know!”
“It’s covered with a plastic tarp that lets nothing through,” Logan reassured her. “Not to worry. Please, have a seat. Coffee, tea—anything?”
They heard a key in the door. “I’m here!” Jason called from the entry.
“This way!” Tyler called back.
“Ethan, I just don’t know if it was such a good idea, bringing this unit in. Sorry, you all, but really. You people don’t seem to have any answers,” Cherry said.
“This will be solved. ” Ethan spoke in a low, confident voice.
“I’m curious. Evidently, you’ve discovered something,” Nathan said cheerfully. “I, for one, am agog to hear!”
Annette arrived just after Jason. She acted as if she didn’t want to be in the house; she was hostile and whispered to Allison, “I’m not coming back to work here. I don’t want to wind up like Julian or Sarah. And I don’t want to be accused of hurting anyone, either!”
“Sarah had an accident,” Cherry murmured.
“Now that we’re all present… If you’ll sit down, we’ll tell you what we believe we can prove,” Tyler said.
He remained standing while the others took chairs. “First,” he began, “take a look at these likenesses. ”
He passed out copies of the computer images Jane had devised, melding Allison’s face with the images of Lucy Tarleton.
Annette let out a little gasp. She stared across the table at Allison. “Oh, my God! That is uncanny. ”
“We don’t think it’s uncanny. We think its heredity,” Logan said evenly.
“That’s ridiculous!” Cherry snapped. “Lucy didn’t have children. ”
“We believe she did, and we can prove it,” Tyler said. “We want to do DNA testing. ”
“What?” Cherry gasped.
“Why not? Cool!” Jason said.
“I don’t know… Disturbing the dead?” Ethan asked haltingly. “I need to speak with Adam. ”
“You may do that, of course, Mr. Oxford,” Logan said. “I’m afraid he had to go back to D. C. yesterday, but you can call him, and of course, we’ll bring him out again. We’ve concluded that someone is afraid of the discovery that Lucy did bear an illegitimate child. That someone is so obsessed with history, he or she doesn’t want the truth known. ”
“About a possible descendent?” Nathan asked. “But…that’s not logical, is it? That makes the story all the more appealing! It means we have a flesh-and-blood replica of our beautiful Lucy!”
“Wait a minute,” Cherry protested. “Just because you can play with a computer and make Allison look like Lucy? I repeat—ridiculous!”
“That’s not the only aspect of our theory, Cherry,” Tyler said. “Martin Standish has letters in a safety deposit box that appear to have been written by Lucy. Reading between the lines, they indicate she was never in love with Stewart Douglas, that they were very good friends, and there was no reason for either Stewart Douglas or Brian Bradley to have killed her. ”
“Well, someone killed her. She ended up very dead!” Cherry said.
“So, we’ll find a way to do the DNA testing. ” Logan cleared his throat. “I don’t know how many of you are aware of this, but Allison was attacked at the hospital today. Someone dressed up in hospital scrubs came after her with a needle. A lethal dose of some kind of drug, I’m sure. So, where were you all today?”
“What?” Cherry demanded, rising.
“You’re accusing us?” Nathan burst out.
“Well,” Tyler said, sitting on the edge of the table, “we know it’s one of you. It has to be. We just have to figure out which. You’re the only ones who know the house well enough. So, if we can trace your movements today?”
Jason raised his hand. “Hey, call Evan McDooley! I was working all day. ”
“I’ve already been accused,” Annette said. “And I’m too short!”
“This is ridiculous,” Cherry muttered again. “Fire them, Ethan. Get rid of them!”
“Cherry, you do stand to lose the most, you know,” Tyler said in a reasonable voice. “No longer being the star of the history center—I mean, hey, a real live descendent of Lucy Tarleton?”
“That’s not what a murder is committed for!”
“No, it’s not, is it, Cherry?” Tyler asked.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” Annette said abruptly. “You’ll have to excuse me. ”
She got up to leave the room but asked, “Do I need a guard?”
No one spoke and she headed toward the back.
“So?” Tyler asked. “Who’s next?”
“I was in my house all day. My housekeeper can vouch for me,” Ethan said indignantly.
“Stockbroker and business,” Nathan said.
“Oh, please. I was at the gallery,” Cherry said.
As Cherry’s words died, they suddenly heard a high-pitched scream. Annette was yelling in a panicked voice. “Help, help! Oh, my God!”
Allison jumped up, ready to run. Tyler was ahead of her, thrusting her behind him as Logan dashed toward the rear of the house, the others following him.
Allison slammed into Tyler when he stopped at the door to the bathroom. “It bit me!” Annette screamed. “It bit me!”
Logan dialed 9-1-1; Tyler stepped past him.
There was a copperhead coiled behind the trash basket. As it started to strike again, Tyler pulled his Glock and shot the snake, then crouched down by Annette.
It was while he bent to minister to her that Allison felt the pinprick in her leg. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came. She felt someone’s arms around her, dragging her back. She tried to blink to see clearly; Logan and Tyler were involved with Annette. She saw Cherry’s face, filled with concern. Jason Lawrence had knelt down beside Annette.
She didn’t see Ethan Oxford or Nathan Pierson.
But she knew one of them was behind her. He’d drugged her and was dragging her away, and she couldn’t speak or blink, and soon, everything was black.
18
The snake had been a fairly small copperhead, but Tyler didn’t believe for a minute that it had just made its way into the house—any more than a copperhead had just made its way into Sarah Vining’s car.
He knew the emergency crew would arrive shortly, but he fastened a tourniquet created from Jason’s tie beneath Annette’s knee.
She was crying and screaming all the while, and he knew the others were rushing around, trying to get her water, trying to help.
With the tourniquet in place, he looked at the wound; there was no need to try sucking out the poison and spitting it out himself. The EMTs would deal with it much more efficiently than he could ever manage. Copperhead bites were common enough in the area.
“I’m going to die!” Annette cried.
“You’re not going to d
ie. Put your arms around my neck. I’ll carry you out to the sofa. When the EMTs get here, they’ll give you an antidote. You’ll spend the night in the hospital. ”
Cherry Addison came running up, her high heels clicking away, as he brought Annette to the sofa. Logan was still on the line with the 9-1-1 operator, taking her directions and nodding to Tyler that he’d done the right thing.
“I hate this house!” Annette sobbed as he set her down. “I hate this house. It’s evil. It’s evil, evil, evil. And now, I’m going to die in it. Oh, no. Oh, my God! I’m going to become one of the ghosts of the Tarleton-Dandridge House!”
Jason knelt down beside her. “Annette, come on! The house isn’t evil. ”
“I don’t ever want to see it again. I hate it!”
Tyler could hear the sirens; the emergency crew would arrive any minute. He stood, leaving Jason at Annette’s side and Cherry standing close by, the glass of water in her hand.
He looked around. Ethan Oxford, his complexion gray, was right behind him.
But he didn’t see Allison.
Or Nathan Pierson.
“Logan!”
“Yeah?”
“Where’s Allison?”
Logan, too, looked around. “I’ll take the upstairs,” he said urgently.
“Nathan?” Tyler turned to Ethan. “Where is he? Where did Nathan go?”
Ethan shook his head, looking old and defeated. “I…I was watching Annette,” he said.
Tyler raced to the front, letting the emergency crew in. They came from their vehicle with “poison control” bags in their hands.
“Back there,” he said briefly. He ran outside, but there was nothing to see. He pulled out his phone and called Jenson at the local station, telling him to get some officers out, that the area had to be searched immediately. They needed an emergency canvas.