Family Sins(11)

Nita looked up at the looming three-story mansion and shifted nervously in her seat.

“Leigh was scary, wasn’t she?”

Fiona sighed.

“Yes. With the scratches on her face and arms, and all that blood on her clothes, she looked like she’d been in a war, not to mention her sons were very protective of her.”

“And those sons are absolutely gorgeous,” Nita drawled.

Fiona gasped.

“Seriously, Nita! That sounded incestuous.”

Nita glared.

“It was just a comment about their physical appearances. I didn’t hit on them, for God’s sake.”

Fiona wheeled the car beneath the portico and slammed on the brakes, then looked up in the rearview mirror.

“Charles is right behind us, so I guess Blake is calling in the family as you asked,” she said.

*

Blake’s son, Charles, had just turned twenty-one and was constantly teased by the family that he drove like an old man, never speeding. He was a stocky, muscular young man, more like his mother’s people than the Waynes. After he’d turned sixteen, he’d chosen to live with his father instead of his mother, who’d returned to her family home in Florida. Charles had his eye set on a future in the family conglomerate. As he pulled up beneath the portico, he noticed his aunts were still in the car beside him.

He greeted them as they all got out together.

“Hey, Aunt Fee, what’s all the rush about getting home?”

“You’ll find out soon enough,” Fiona said, and led the way into the house.

Within minutes Justin arrived, and Blake was right behind him. As they were pulling up to park, their Uncle Jack came around the corner of the mansion with a tennis racket in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. He was the CEO of Wayne Industries and their father’s youngest brother. It was the first day he’d taken off in ages, and it appeared the moment he had, they’d all left, too.

“What in the world’s going on?” he yelled. “What are you all doing here? Why aren’t you at work?”

“You’ll find out soon enough,” Blake said, and led the way into the house.

They went to the library because it was always where the family gathered, usually for festive occasions, although this was anything but.

Nita was pacing in front of the French doors that led out to the tiled terrace, and Fiona was already nursing a whiskey and Coke when they walked in.

Charles was pouring a Coke over ice for himself. He hadn’t thought much about the phone call to go home until he realized his aunts were nervous. Then, when his uncles suddenly appeared, he set the drink aside and stared. He’d never seen everyone in such a state.

Blake and Justin had entered in tandem, well-dressed executive look-alikes. All the Wayne men took after their mother in looks, which was unfortunate, because their mother, God rest her soul, had been a skinny blonde with small features and a less than defined chin, while the girls took after their father—black hair, high cheekbones, pretty features and dark flashing eyes. Nita and Fiona had been coloring their hair for years, and until today, when they’d seen Leigh and that mane of wild, dark hair with only hints of gray, had all but forgotten what their natural color used to be.

Jackson Wayne strode into the library in his white tennis shirt and shorts, tall and tan and obviously angry. “Well, we’re here!” he said, glaring at Blake. “What the hell’s so damn important?”

Blake pointed to his sisters.

“It’s their story to tell,” he said.

Nita looked at Fiona.

“You tell them,” she said.

Fiona nodded. “Stanton Youngblood has been murdered.”

Charles frowned. “Who’s Stanton Youngblood?”

Blake frowned back at his son and then realized he was within his rights to be confused. Leigh’s name was rarely mentioned in this house, and Charles had been born long after all of that embarrassment had faded away.

“He’s your Aunt Leigh’s husband,” Blake said.

Jack waved his tennis racket over his head.

“What does that have to do with us?”

Fiona sighed.

“Less than an hour ago, Leigh and three of her sons came into Eden driving all crazy on their way to the police station. When she got out she was covered in blood, her hair was all wild and tangled, and her sons were right behind her, armed to the teeth. She confronted the chief and told him that Stanton had been murdered. He supposedly scratched the name of the killer in the dirt before he died.”

“Sweet Mother of God,” Justin muttered. “It takes you forever to tell anything. Just get it said.”

“The name he wrote was Wayne. Leigh called us out in front of the chief and the whole town. She said one of us killed her husband and when she finds out who it is, they will wish they’d never been born, or something to that effect.”

Justin wiped a shaky hand across his face. Leigh was his twin, and as loyal to her family as he was to his. Imagining her like that felt weird.

Jack was furious. “She can’t just come out and accuse someone without evidence!”

“Well, there is the fact that Stanton wrote our family name in the dirt before he died,” Nita drawled. “And there is that other fact that our family already threatened to kill Stanton years ago, so trying to claim innocence puts us in an awkward position. What I want to know is, what the hell’s been going on in this family that I don’t know about?”