The Final Victim(26)

Then again, Silas's will was straightforward; no surprises there. He left everything to Betsy, his fourth wife, who spent more time fluttering around Savannah than she did at Silas's bedside during his last months on earth, after the stroke that paralyzed just about every function but his speech. As Betsy so eloquently phrased it, "I've always been a little squeamish. Those hospice nurses are much better at this kind of thing than I am."

If Tyler had any anxieties about the prospect of reading Silas's will, they were based on the fear that Betsy might put her hand on his thigh beneath the table, as she was reputedly inclined to do even when her husband was alive.

It didn't happen. The will was read without a hitch-and Betsy went on to get rehitched just six months later, to a man her own age-or perhaps a decade younger. As Gilbert dryly stated at the time, he probably needed someone to pay his college tuition.

I miss you already, Gilbert.

And you, too, Silas.

This world seems to get lonelier with every passing week.

Tyler is acutely aware of his status as a widower himself, and as sole survivor of a lifelong threesome referred to back in their boarding school days as the Telfair Trio. He sinks into his leather swivel chair behind the mahogany desk at which two previous generations of Hawthornes practiced law.

The days of standing weekly golf games and lunches at the club with Silas and Gilbert were long gone well before his friends died. But despite having drifted with old age from their social and recreational rituals, the bond forged four score-give or take a year or two-ago, remained.

The trio staged some risky schoolboy pranks and escapades in their days at Telfair Academy-always knowing they had each other's backs.

That loyalty-that willingness to cover for each other, even if it meant lying to an authority figure, or a spouse-lingered into adulthood. They knew each other's deepest and, in some cases, darkest secrets.

Thanks to Silas and Gilbert, Tyler's beloved Marjorie went to her deathbed never knowing of his foolish, youthful indiscretions.

And thanks to Silas and Tyler putting their own careers as doctor and lawyer on the line, Gilbert's family fortune remains intact-and, perhaps even more importantly, the Remington name untarnished.

Perhaps it was the Telfair Trio's final escapade, that ultimate test of their allegiance, that pushed them all too far. After that, things were never quite the same. On the surface, yes. But deep down, Tyler suspects, guilt had finally caught up with all three of them.

Perhaps Gilbert most of all.

But it all happened years ago. Another lifetime, it seems.

Tyler drums his fingertips on the green blotter and turns a nervous eye toward the swinging pendulum of the wall clock opposite.

In about five minutes, Gilbert Remington II's descendants are going to walk through that door, fully anticipating that they will walk back out set for life, millionaires many times over.

One won't be disappointed.

*

"Remember, you need to be ready when I come back here to get you." Parked at the curb in front of Casey's house on Bull Street in Savannah's historic district, Mom taps the steering wheel of her white Lexus SUV with both hands for emphasis.

Lianna almost wishes old Stephen had driven her into town instead of her mother. But the chauffeur has gone to visit his daughter in Atlanta for a few weeks, and Great-Grandaddy's shiny black car sits unused in the carriage house until he gets back.

"I'm going to call your cell phone when I'm on my way," Mom goes on, "so you'll have plenty of warning, and I swear, if you're not ready "

"I will be," Lianna says, wishing her mother would stop talking to her, and frowning over at her in the passenger's seat, as if she's a naughty little girl. It's enough to make her add, snippily, "Just don't call and say you're coming back a half hour from now and expect me to be happy to see you."

"Don't use that tone with me." Mom's violet eyes darken ominously.

Lianna can't help but notice, jealously, that her mother is strikingly pretty even when she's angry. It isn't fair. Why can't Mom look like a regular person, the way her friends' mothers do? Or, if she has to be so beautiful, at least Lianna could have inherited her looks.

Lianna apparently resembles not her father, with his dark good looks, but his side of the family, though she doesn't know firsthand. Her paternal grandparents died long before she was born, and she hasn't seen her father's only sister in years. For that matter, she doesn't see a whole lot of Dad himself-but only because Mom won't let her. That's what he says, and Lianna believes it wholeheartedly.

Mom wasn't even nice to Daddy at the funeral, after he drove all that way to offer his condolences.

Too bad that he couldn't stay longer or that Lianna couldn't go home with him. He said his apartment is too small, but he's working on getting a bigger one, so she can start spending every other weekend with him, the way she's supposed to-and never has.

"You heard what I said, Lianna." Mom is still glaring at her. "When I get back, you'll be ready to come home with me."

"Yeah, well… Oakgate isn't home. Just so you know. In case you forgot."

Shut up, Lianna tells herself. Why are you making things difficult? Why don't you just get out of the stupid car before she decides to take you with her to the stupid lawyer's office?