The Final Victim(48)
Royce looks up from the box of tumbled marble squares he's been counting. "Very good, honey. I think you're great at making nice, straight lines."
She grins. "I mean, what do you think of the colors? Which do you like better?"
They're different colors?"
"One is antique blue, one is colonial blue." 'They both look plain-old blue-blue to me," he says with a shrug, and goes back to the box of tiles.
"You're a lot of help," she grumbles good-naturedly, and steps away from the wall, around both roller trays and a stack of sample-sized paint cans on the floor, to get a better look.
"Is there going to be enough tile?" she asks now, hoping they aren't going to come up short.
"Shhh, you'll make me lose count again."
"Sorry."
She crosses all the way to the far side of the room, coming to a stop beside the window overlooking the street. From here, the blue paint stripes really do look identical.
Oh, well.
Maybe she'll be able to tell which she prefers tomorrow, with natural daylight coming in.
Right now, there's only the light from a bare bulb protruding from the ornate plaster medallion in the middle of the ceiling, where a light fixture will hang-which they really do need to pick out before this weekend is over, according to the message the general contractor left earlier on her cell phone's voice mail.
There's so much to do before the renovation can be completed. Mostly just finishing touches, but they combine into a series of daunting tasks.
Today, despite her physical exhaustion and all she's been through this week, Charlotte welcomes the distraction.
Still, she wonders in retrospect if they would have taken on the project had they known how complicated and drawn out it would be. She might have been content to buy a newer home, outside the historic district, in the suburbs, maybe.
But there was something about this house, an original Greek Revival that was later remodeled in the Second Empire baroque style. Its architectural quirks appealed to her, even in its former state, with peeling paint, broken windows, and overgrown shrubs.
There was a time, at least a decade before Charlotte's own childhood, when the historic district was riddled with such neglected places. Then came the revitalization that transformed the mansions, one by one, to their former glory.
This frame structure on East Oglethorpe Avenue was one of the last historic homes in the district to have escaped preservation-or the wrecking ball. Its longtime owner had been placed in a nursing home years ago and refused to sell, clinging to the hope that she would go home again one day. That wasn't to be.
The owner's sole surviving heir, a distant cousin living in Chicago, couldn't wait to wash his hands of the place. Charlotte and Royce snagged it for a song-only to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on the renovation.
Not that it matters, in the big picture.
They can afford it.
Especially now, she thinks, her heart sinking as she remembers the inheritance.
What she and Royce spent on the house is a tiny percentage of the fortune she's about to receive from Grandaddy.
She again considers, and quickly dismisses, her husband's suggestion that she give away two-thirds of the money to her cousins.
She hasn't come up with a likely motive for Grandaddy's decision, though she spent most of yesterday combing through his papers, searching for a clue.
Nothing yet.
But sooner or later, something is bound to turn up. And until it does…
Don't worry, Grandaddy. I won't give away your money to anybody who doesn't deserve it.
*
"Hey. You've reached Vince's cell phone. Leave me a message, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can."
Lianna ends the call in frustration, unwilling to leave yet another message for her father, who is apparently missing in action.
He called this afternoon to say he was looking at a couple of commercial real estate properties in Brunswick, but would be by later to take her to dinner.
"I made a reservation for us at a nice upscale place," he told her. "It's called the Sea Captain's House. Ever hear of it?"
"Oh, yeah."
The Sea Captain's House is the fanciest place on the island. Lianna has eaten there lots of times with her mother and Royce, but never with her dad. It killed her to tell him she couldn't go because she was grounded.
Naturally, he wanted to know what she'd done to deserve that.
When she told him, all he said was, "Well, that's your mother's rule and you have to live with it"
But she could tell he thinks Mom is too strict She was about to ask him to intervene on her behalf when he said, "Listen, it wasn't easy to get that dinner reservation, so… You won't care if I go myself, will you?"
"Of course I won't care," she said, masking her disappointment "I just wish I could have seen you tonight that's all."
"I'll come by and visit after dinner, okay?"
But here it is, long after dinner, and he has yet to appear. Nor is he answering his cell phone. In fact it must be turned off, because it goes right into voice mail every time she calls the number.
Missing her own cell phone, Lianna replaces the receiver in its cradle on the wall opposite the kitchen sink.
It wouldn't be so bad if this old house at least had a cordless phone she could carry back upstairs to her room, not to mention more than just three phone jacks in the whole place.