The Final Victim(113)

And that was precisely what he was banking on the day he first met her, as if by chance, at the one place where she was willing to open up and show her vulnerability: the bereaved parents group.

Of course, before he could join, he had to become a bereaved parent…

A simple enough task, if you really put your mind to it.

As he likes to tell Odette, No children or animals were harmed in creating this scam.

But he doesn't expect that to hold true for much longer.

"Lianna!" he bellows, running his hands over the molding around the closet door. "Lianna!"

An eternity seems to have passed from the time Charlotte dragged herself to her feet and the moment she arrives at the stone entrance to Oakgate.

The gates are closed; she can't open them without her electronic remote.

She runs alongside the old stone wall until she reaches a spot low enough to easily scramble over. On the other side, she darts across the stretch of well-tended lawn dotted with old trees and blooming shrubs.

The summer lush and verdant landscape is littered with downed tree limbs and clumps of wind-tossed Spanish moss, the ground spongy and flooded beneath her feet. Several times Charlotte skids in the muddy grass, but manages to keep her balance somehow; manages to propel herself toward the house.

At last it looms ahead, framed by swaying oak branches against a turbulent black sky; its windows darkened and tightly closed against the gale.

Charlotte stops short as she reaches the top of the drive, where a massive oak has fallen beside a car: Nydia's car.

Her heart takes a death plunge as she spots a pair of feet protruding from the mountain of boughs.

Dear God in heaven…

The tree took a human casualty on its way down.

For a moment, Charlotte can only stare. Then she rushes forward, propelled by sheer dread; knowing she is bound to discover that the feet belong to one of a handful of Oakgate residents. Charlotte prays fervently that the victim is still alive-and that it isn't the child she loves more than anything on this earth.

No.

It isn't Lianna.

Numb with shock and revulsion, Charlotte moves closer, whimpering, her feet becoming entangled in the vinelike branches that snake at her ankles.

Charlotte gazes into the eyes of Grandaddy's housekeeper, frozen within a grotesque mask of terror as Nydia stares at the last thing she ever saw on this earth.

She must have seen the tree coming at her.

Her skull is split, a gaping wound bisecting her forehead from the bridge of her nose straight up through her blood and brain and rain matted hair.

"Drop the gun, Jeanne." Aimee's voice is no longer as deadly calm as it was the first time she said it. Frozen on the stairway, her hand still clutching the rail, she doesn't dare to take a step forward, or back.

She's afraid.

She thinks I'm going to kill her.

I think I'm going to as well.

'Jeanne, this is ridiculous. Drop the gun."

Jeanne shakes her head, clutching her mother's pearl-handled revolver in both hands, aiming directly at the woman on the stairs. The woman who murdered poor Nydia and dragged her body out into the storm.

"Where is Melanie?"Jeanne demands again.

"I told you a hundred times. I have no idea. She isn't here."

"What did you do to her?"

"I haven't seen her, Jeanne. She left hours ago. I have no idea where she went"

Jeanne knows where she went: to the liquor store on the island's southern end, to buy Jeanne a botde of bourbon.

"Please, Melanie, my nerves are just shot with this storm and all that's happened with my grandnephew,"

Jeanne had told the nurse, handing her a couple of twenty-dollar bills.

"Where did you get this?"

"I saved it. Keep the change."

"Oh, Jeanne, you don't need liquor to calm your nerves. How about if I sing to you?"

In that moment, Jeanne knew she was doing the right thing.

Nobody in this house, not even Melanie, can possibly understand the depth of Jeanne's misery.

Nobody understands that it will take more than a little song to lift her spirits; that it will take more, too, than bourbon.

The only two souls who would have understood-Mother and Eleanore-departed this earth years ago: one in a suspicious freak accident, the other by her own hand.

Sleeping pills and liquor.

A lethal combination.

Just as effectively lethal as firing a bullet through one's brain. But Eleanore lacked the courage, or perhaps merely the means, to do that.

Jeanne has the means. In the end, what she inherited from her mother is far more valuable than china and crystal.

But she doesn't have the courage. If she did, she'd have done it weeks ago, when she learned that Gilbert had left her nothing.

All these years, she had foolishly held out hope that he would defy their father.

All these years, she had been a fool.

All these years, she had feigned dementia, dunking that if he saw that she was incapable of taking care of herself, he would feel sorry enough for her to take care of her.

And had it worked… to an extent. He didn't put her in a nursing home-she knew he wouldn't. It wouldn't do to have all of Savannah buzzing about Gilbert's batty sister. The family honor had to be protected, at any cost.

So, ever since she "lost her mind," Jeanne has had a familiar dormered roof over her head, a sturdy tabby foundation beneath her.