The Final Victim(117)

Step-by-step, she descends into the black void, remembering that day; that awful, awful day eight years ago.

Her brother wasn't supposed to have his autographed baseball at the beach, or anywhere outside the house, for that matter. Dad had bought it for him, and told him he had to keep it on a shelf in his room.

But Adam couldn't part with it. He snuck it into the beach bag so that he could show his friends. Lianna saw him do it; he made her swear not to tell.

She didn't.

No, she did something far, far worse.

When Mom was opening the cooler to set out the sandwiches she'd brought for their lunch, Lianna grabbed Adam's precious ball and threw it with all her might, into the surf.

It was a joke.

She laughed at Adam's dismayed expression, then snickered behind her hand as he snuck back down to the water, away from Mom.

But Lianna's amusement transformed quickly into fear as she watched the current sweep the ball farther and farther from Adam's grasp.

The lifeguard was blowing his whistle, but Adam paid no heed.

Then, suddenly, he was gone, swept away in a riptide, leaving Lianna to stare in shock as her mother looked for him on the sand-her puzzled, then frantic voice calling Adam's name.

That was the first time, the first of many, that Lianna wished she had been the one…

Wished she was the one who had died, not Adam.

Now, as she continues the long, slow descent to the cellar, step after painstaking step, she can't help but wonder if the first part of that wish might be about to come true.

"Jeanne killed herself?" Joe asks Odette in disbelief. *Yup. I've never seen anything like it What a mess."

He shakes his head, not sure whether to believe her. She isn't the most honest gal in the world…

Which is why we're a perfect match.

He didn't always think so. He was originally smitten by her older sister, Pammy Sue: the slender, green-eyed blonde who, ironically, the formerly frumpy Odette now resembles so closely.

But Pammy Sue lacked her younger sister's clever ingenuity. Fortunately for Odette and Joseph, she also lacked the natural curiosity that might have made anyone else at least wonder why they were being asked to take an early-morning flight from New Orleans to Savannah.

Dull-witted Pammy Sue did it, no questions asked, carrying her sister's ID and baggage, for a couple hundred bucks. Odette had assured him that after she picked up her sister-with the luggage and ID-at the airport that morning, she drove Pammy Sue straight to the bus station and put her on the Greyhound back to Tennessee. Still no questions asked.

Joseph sometimes forgets that he had ever chosen Pammy Sue over Odette. And he isn't the only one who did. Their mother, the volatile redheaded Mrs. Krupp, blatantly favored her eldest daughter. No wonder poor Odette always resented her big sister. No wonder she worked her butt off to get out of Pigeon Creek and make something of her life. Nursing school was her ticket…

Nursing school, and later, Charlotte Remington.

So look who's on top now, Babe, Joseph likes to point out to her. Forget Pammy Sue. You're the one who's got it all: looks, brains, me… and, pretty soon, millions of dollars.

"I'm serious, Joe," Odette is saying now, ever industrious. "All we have to do is leave Jeanne just the way she is. The gun is still in her hand; her prints are the only ones on it. All the forensics experts in the world will come to the same conclusion: that she killed herself. It's the truth."

"Why do you think she did it?"

"Because she's a nutcase? Because she was watching out the window when the tree fell on poor old Nydia, and she just lost it? Who cares? We can use this, Joe. You'll say that the tree fell, the old bat shot herself, and Charlotte and Lianna took off in their car to get help. They were driving too fast, all shaken up, and… Bam.1" She slips the palm of one hand across the other, simulating a car going over a precipice.

"It could work."

"It will work. This is a terrible storm. People get killed in this kind of weather. It happens all the time. Nobody's going to question it."

"No, I know. That's why we took advantage of the storm. But we weren't counting on the old lady, and the housekeeper, and-" 'Joe, relax. You were already shot once. Nobody's going to suspect anyone but Gib of anything. And even if they do, they'll assume Gib hired someone to pull it off. He's connected. The cops didn't miss that, trust me. They didn't miss much, when it comes to Gib."

Joe's lips curve into a smile as he recalls how he slipped the cufflinks out of Gilbert's jewelry box, leaving them on the ledge outside the back door, with the dress shoes, for Odette to take.

Joseph teased Odette relentlessly when she informed him that with the addition of a few cotton balls to stuff the toes, Gib's shoes fit her oversized, clodhopper feet perfectly.

Then she had the nerve to complain that they were hard to run in, that she nearly twisted an ankle that night as she fled across Colonial Park Cemetery.

Twisted an ankle? he echoed. At least you didn't have to get shot in the leg.

But it was worth it in the end, just as he'd known it would be. The worst part was taking that bullet-made slightly more bearable thanks to a local anesthetic, courtesy of Odette, that he had injected into his thigh while pretending to remeasure the bathroom.

If Gib Remington hadn't been so easily framed, thanks to the unexpected bequest of the cufflinks that enhanced things so nicely, the whole plot might have become transparent at any given stage.