The Final Victim(116)

But that's okay. She knows where Grandaddy keeps the key.

Heart pounding, she scurries across the garden to the old stone sundial. With trembling fingers, she reaches into the overgrown plantings around the base.

Where is it?

She begins to claw frantically at the rain-drenched weeds and perennials.

The key has to be here…

It has to, because now it's her only means of getting to Lianna.

Finally, she gives up the fruitless search.

Think! There just must be another way.

Joseph Borger watched Charlotte for months, while making an honest living for a change, thanks to the technological skills he learned after a youthful stint in prison. Fortunately, he hasn't been incarcerated since he became proficient at his illegal career and computer-savvy at his legal one.

Not that the computer training hasn't been beneficial in other ways. The document forgery was a snap; so was implementing the software to fake that airport phone call from Odette's cell phone.

It wasn't hard for Joseph to initially keep a low profile in Savannah, or even on the island. Not many people paid much attention to a quiet "computer nerd," as Odette liked to call him back then.

But she wasn't the only one who was undergoing a physical transformation.

Eventually, Joseph had his teeth done, too. He hired a trainer, too, and bought gym equipment that he used religiously. He also bought a new wardrobe, with the help of a personal shopper.

All the while he was preparing to become the dashing Royce Maitland and sweep Charlotte off her feet, he was noting that the grieving mother kept to herself, didn't date, didn't have friends or a social life. That the only people who seemed able to permeate the walls she had built around herself were her daughter, her grandfather, and the members of her support group.

Creating a fictional son was as easy for Joseph as it was for him to come up with a fake identity for himself and Odette. Nobody ever questioned that his name was Royce Maitland, or that his son had been lost in the water that day.

The beach was jammed with people. Nobody paid him any attention at all until he ran screaming for the child who didn't exist.

But "Royce" had the documentation to prove that Theo had, should anyone think to question it: birth certificate, social security card, death certificate… Anyone who knew their way around the Internet as well as he did could come up with that stuff.

He'd done it plenty of times, for simple insurance cons.

But none of those could compare to this.

No other scam demanded the patience, the complex planning; none promised to deliver the staggering payoff.

Not yet, though. We're not there yet.

"Why'd you go and shoot the old lady?" he asks Odette in disgust. 'There wasn't supposed to be another body left behind. It was hard enough to cover up what we had to do with our little eavesdropper."

Nydia.

Yes, if she had just minded her own business, she'd still be alive. But she always did have a way of popping up when you least expected it. Chances are, she didn't overhear anything, but Odette wasn't taking any chances. And when Nydia popped up one time too many, she happened to be conveniently within reach of the same brass andiron that silenced Phyllida Harper when she walked in on them in bed in the wee hours of Saturday morning.

"I told you we should have drugged her, too," Odette hissed to him back then, as she prepared to drag Phyllida out of the parlor.

"How? I doubt she's any more likely than you are to touch that disgusting sweet tea. Too many carbs," he added, echoing Odette's response to just about every food she must avoid to maintain her new figure.

But it's worth it. He enjoys being with a woman who looks like her-as much as he's secretly enjoyed being with Charlotte.

That was the part that just about did Odette in, more than once. It killed her to know that he was making love to his new wife, though he repeatedly claimed that he didn't enjoy it. He swore that he thought only of Odette when he took Charlotte in his arms.

What a shame that he didn't get to do just that to celebrate his return from the hospital.

Ah, but a jealous Odette saw to it that it wouldn't happen. He found it almost amusing that she ingeniously rendered the elevator inoperable, just so that he wouldn't be able to share a bed with Charlotte these last few nights. Amusing, too, that she made sure Charlotte would sleep soundly through the night so there was no risk of "father and daughter" being caught sharing the hospital bed behind closed parlor doors.

Phyllida Remington Harper did catch them-which rendered her yet another casualty of the best-laid plans going slightly awry.

But nothing will go wrong from here on in.

Just as long as he doesn't get sloppy and leave a trail.

"We have to do something about the old lady," he says, his thoughts racing.

"Oh, don't worry about dear Aunt Jeanne, Joe. She took care of herself. I didn't have to."

"What are you talking about?"

Odette laughs. "Poor thing put a gun into her mouth and blew her brains out before I could do it for her."

Her palpitating heart constricted in her rib cage, Lianna doesn't linger on the unstable third step, feeling the old wood begin to buckle beneath her weight.

She swiftly lowers her foot to feel for the next, more solid, tread below. Safely there, she proceeds to the next, and then the next…