The Final Victim(74)

Just as she wonders whether her own mother's fatal fall from a horse while out riding alone was truly an accident-or instead a murderous reprisal for drawing a gun on her own husband.

Marie feared her husband's fierce temper. That much is clear in her journals.

But Jeanne will never know the whole truth.

And whatever her brother Gilbert might have known, or suspected, about their parents' dark past was buried with him in the grave he shares with Eleanore.

Only the pearl-handled pistol and the journals remainin Jeanne's possession-as evidence that any of it ever ever, happened at all.

Now, listening to the police moving through the floors beneath this one, Jeanne knows that she must get to it before they do.

She turns to Melanie. "Can you push me over to the bureau, please? Hurry."

*

"I said I'm not answering any questions without my attorney present," Gib insists, fixing the pair of detectives with a flinty stare.

"And we just asked where you were on Saturday night. If you don't have anything to hide, Mr. Remington, there's no reason why you should have a problem answering that simple question."

"I have absolutely nothing to hide," he lies, hoping his narrowed gaze masks his inner turmoil. "But I happen to be a lawyer myself, so I know better than to tell you anything that might be used against me.

The door to his room was left slightly ajar when the detectives came in to rouse him from a sound sleep. Now he can hear activity in the hall and beyond; scurrying footsteps, the rumble of unfamiliar voices, even what sounds like furniture being moved about.

Obviously, the police are searching the house. They must have a warrant.

It's only a matter of time before they make their way in here and start going through Gib's things.

And when they do…

Feeling sick, Gib watches Williamson idly lift his cell phone from the dresser. The detective examines it, turning it over and over in his beefy hands as though he's never seen such an object before. Then he sets it down again, wearing a thoughtful expression.

My phone…

Even if their search of Gib's room somehow neglects to turn up anything incriminating, the police are going to go through his telephone records.

Gib's heart beats faster, his thoughts careening wildly through a mental roster of potentially damaging calls he's made lately.

There are plenty, should the detectives go to the trouble of tracing the numbers.

But none that can prove I had anything to do with what happened Saturday night.

"If you won't tell us where you were," the other detective, Dorado, says casually, "maybe you can just tell us whether you're going to have somebody who can vouch for you. That way, we can start making calls."

"I told you, I'm not saying anything until I can get a lawyer."

And that's going to take quite some time. Enough time to allow him to come up with a suitable alibi… and cover his tracks.

There's a knock on the door.

"Yeah? What is it?" Williamson asks in the same brusque tone he uses for interrogation.

The door opens wider.

A uniformed officer pokes his head in. "Mr. Remington's attorney is here, Detective."

Startled, Gib raises an eyebrow.

"You already called an attorney?" Williamson asks, equally startled.

"No…"

"I did." The door opens wider, and Gib sees Charlotte standing there.

Behind her is Tyler Hawthorne.

"Oh, my God, I'm so happy to see-hey, who's she?" Devin is standing on the elevated stoop of her parents' house on East Jones Street, watching Aimee wave as she pulls away from the curb.

"Royce's daughter." Reaching the top step, Lianna gives her friend a quick hug.

"I didn't know he had a daughter."

"Yeah, she doesn't live around here. She's here because… well, you know."

"Right. How is he?"

"Fine, I guess. I mean, he will be."

"What's she like?"

"Aimee?" She rolls her eyes. "She's a major pain in the butt."

"Why?"

"She talks too much. I swear to God, my ears are ringing after being with her for the past hour."

All right, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, Lianna admits, but only to herself.

Aimee does talk a lot, though it wasn't necessarily nonstop chatter. She asked a lot of questions on the way to Bojangles, about what music Lianna likes, and which TV shows she watches, and where she goes to school, and what her favorite subjects are.

They're the same basic, boring questions all grownups ask when they're trying to make conversation, and Lianna grudgingly answered them all.

Until Aimee asked, just as casually as she posed the others, "So do you have a boyfriend?"

In the passenger's seat, Lianna instantly went from sprawled to stiff-spined. Did Mom tell Aimee about Kevin? Did she instruct her to try and get Lianna to spill the details about him? Is that why she relented on the grounding, and asked Aimee to drive her to Savannah?

When Lianna didn't answer, Aimee glanced over at her, and she must have seen the look on Lianna's face, because she said, "Not a good topic, huh?"

Lianna shook her head, turned up the radio, and remained silent all the way to the restaurant She wasn't planning to order anything when they got there, out of spite. But when she smelled food, her appetite returned with a vengeance. She realized she hadn't eaten much of anything since the yogurt late Saturday night. When it was their turn at the register, she found herself ordering a big biscuit with sausage gravy, and fried chicken on the side.