The Final Victim(104)

Again, the unnerving up-tempo busy signal.

She looks anxiously at Dorado. "You don't think anything is wrong over there, do you?" 'The storm," he says with a discouraged shake of his head. "The phones must be out of commission."

"I'll try my husband's cell phone."

She does, but it goes right into voice mail. Listening to his reassuring voice on the outgoing message, she wonders how much to tell him. Now isn't the time to get into the detective's request, or the investigation. She opts to leave a brief message: "Royce, it's me. I'm on my way home right now, but it might take me a while because of the weather. I love you. See you soon."

She hangs up. "Can I please go now? If it's that bad I really have to get back there to my family."

"If it's that bad," Dorado returns, "I really wouldn't advise your going anywhere."

"I have to. My husband is injured and my daughter is only thirteen, and my poor aunt is old and feeble. They all need me at home."

"Are they alone?"

"No," she admits. "My stepdaughter is there, and the housekeeper-and my aunt does have a nurse, but… I need to be there."

"It sounds like they're in good hands, Mrs. Maitland. Don't you have a house right down the block? Why don't you stay there?"

"Because I'm going home." She meets his worried brown eyes with a defiant glare. "Home to Oakgate."

Huddled beneath a black umbrella that does nothing to shut out the rain blowing sideways, Tyler crosses the deserted expanse of Forsyth Park. He moves as quickly as his old legs can carry him. That isn't saying much, thanks to increasingly fragile bones and his recent injury, which happened a stone's throw from here, on a day almost as blustery as this.

Today, as then, he would much prefer to be snug at his home on Abercorn Street, perhaps enjoying a Cuban cigar and a single-malt scotch.

Ah, but Gilbert wouldn't approve, he finds himself thinking, then acknowledging, once and for all, the irony that a man who disapproved of such "immoral" vices as smoking and drinking would go to the immoral lengths he did to save his fortune, and his pride-at the expense of countless people's lives.

And you helped him to do it, Tyler reminds himself as he steps into the crosswalk where he was nearly killed last winter. You and Silas.

Silas's role in the cover-up was far more incriminating than his own. But in the end, were any of them any less, or more, guilty?

Tyler's injured leg is aching, but he forces himself to take the stairs, rather than the elevator. Punishment, he thinks wryly, but hardly harsh enough.

His mind flashes to Gib Remington, sitting behind bars, having confessed to the drugs but not to attempted murder. He won't be jetting off with a beautiful blonde any time soon.

Tyler wonders, again, about Gib's role in what happened here in Savannah-and at Oakgate.

Perhaps the truth about Gilbert's death will never be known.

But the truth about his life will.

In his office, Tyler goes to the tall wooden file cabinet and opens the locked bottom drawer using his key-the one whose duplicate nobody, including his grandnephew Jameson, has.

It takes him a long time to remove all the hanging files and stack them neatly on the floor beside the cabinet. Then, prying with a pocketknife on his key ring, he lifts the false bottom from the drawer and removes the manilla envelope beneath it.

Unlike the other two members of the Telfair Trio, Tyler Hawthorne won't carry blind loyalty-or toxic guilt-to his grave.

Nothing comes up in response to Mimi's Google request.

Nothing that pertains to a child's drowning death off Achoco Island, anyway. She scans the beginning of a long list of references to the names Theo and, separately, mentions of the last name Maitland. It would take her hours to wade through this.

She types in Theodore Maitland AND drowning, a trick she learned in a college computer class, to narrow down the search engine's hits.

The results pop up with plenty of entries that contain either Theodore or Maitland or drowning, or even two of the three words. But none of it is what she's looking for, at least, not right here at the top. She has hardly begun scanning the lengthy pages of entries when the librarian interrupts her.

"Ma'am? We really are closing."

"I'm sorry, I'm just about finished here."

She can't waste time wading through this list.

Biting her lower lip intently, she types in Theo Maitland AND Royce Maitland AND New Orleans AND drowning.

There!

The name Royce Maitland jumps out at her.

"Ma'am! Please!"

"I'm sorry. I'll shut down."

But before she does, she scrolls rapidly to click on the link for the first Royce Maitland entry.

Moments later, Mimi is running for the exit in a race that has nothing to do with the library's closing or the impending storm.

You are such a freaking baby, Lianna scoffs at herself as she cowers on her bed against the inner wall, as far from the rattling windows as she can possibly get. She closed and locked them when the rain started blowing in… as if that can really keep a storm this fierce at bay.

Yes, but this is a solid old house. It's been here for nearly a hundred and fifty years.

Uh-huh. So has the tree that came crashing down outside.