The Night Before

by Lisa Jackson

  “How did he know her?”

  “I’m not sure, but I think they met at some kind of fund-raiser.” She was pulling together now, the threatening blackness receding. “ Josh is . . . was . . . involved in a lot of philanthropic causes.” She caught the look between the two detectives and suddenly it struck her that they weren’t just here to deliver the bad news, but that they were digging for information.

  “Do you know her?”

  “She was dating my husband, Detective,” she said and sniffed back her tears for a husband who hadn’t loved her. “That doesn’t make for a buddy-buddy situation.” Swiping at her eyes and feeling the bandages hidden beneath her sleeves, she added, “Thank you for coming by to tell me about my husband . . . I’ll want to see him if that’s possible . . . but you’re asking me a lot of questions and you said this might be a homicide, right?”

  “We’re not certain yet.”

  “Am I a suspect?” The idea was unthinkable but as she stared at the unmoving expressions of the two cops, she knew that she was considered a possible killer. Which was ridiculous. Absurd. “How did my husband die?”

  There was a slight hesitation.

  “He was still my husband,” she pointed out, angry and wanting to lash out at someone. Anyone. These people intruding into her home, giving her the horrid news, were as good a scapegoat as anyone. “I think I have the right to know.”

  Detective Morrisette nodded. “It’s possible your husband took his own life, but, as I said, we still have a lot of unanswered questions about what happened to him. We found him in his den. His wrists had been slit.”

  She cringed. Saw the vision of him slumped over his desk in her mind’s eye. How could she have known? “Suicide,” Caitlyn whispered, disbelieving, then thinking of the cuts along the insides of her own arms. “No way. He wouldn’t do that.” She was shaking her head, trying to dispel the image of her husband bleeding to death. “He . . . he’d use his rifle, or fire up his Mercedes and let it idle in the garage or . . .” Her voice faded as she realized she had their rapt attention.

  “Or what?” Reed asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  He didn’t prod, but the look in his sober eyes said, Sure you do. You lived with the man. You knew what made him tick. And you just might have killed him. He was divorcing you. He was after your money. He had another woman. He was threatening to sue you for the wrongful death of your child. And then there was all the blood in your bedroom. But the detectives don’t know about that. At least not yet. “Look, if you’re finished, I think . . . I think I’d like to lie down.”

  “If you can bear with us, we only have a few more questions,” Detective Morrisette insisted with the hint of a kind smile that Caitlyn was certain she practiced. “Then we’ll get out of your hair.” And she was true to her word. They asked some general questions about Josh, his family and business dealings, of which Caitlyn knew little, and then stood as if they were finally ready to leave.

  “Just one more thing,” Reed said. “Where were you last night?”

  Every muscle in Caitlyn’s body froze. “I was out.”

  He made a note. “All night?”

  Oh, dear God. “I went out around eight-thirty or nine and was home sometime after midnight. I’m not sure of the exact time,” she admitted, feeling Reed’s unflinching gaze bore deep, searching for a lie.

  “Did you visit your husband last night?”

  She nearly wilted. “No. As I said, we were separated,” she said, telling herself that what she’d seen was a dream, that was all. Then why did it seem so real? Why are you getting flashes of Josh at his desk, his wrists covered in blood? “Do I need a lawyer, Detective?” she demanded, suddenly stronger.

  “I’m just trying to figure out what went on last night.”

  Me, too! “When you do, would you fill me in?” she said, feeling heat climb up the back of her neck.

  “Of course,” the woman, Morrisette, cut in. She shot her partner a warning glance. “Now, I would feel better if there was someone here with you,” she said, touching her on the arm gently, inadvertently putting pressure on the wounds.

  Caitlyn gritted her teeth against the pain. The last thing she wanted was to deal with anyone. Except Kelly. “I can call one of my sisters or my brother.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes. Please. I’ll be fine.” Liar! You’ll never be fine!

  Reed looked skeptical, but the woman cop bristled, sending him a silent message that warned him to hold back whatever protest he was about to voice.

  Frowning hard, Reed snapped his notebook closed. “We could phone someone for you. One of the siblings you mentioned.” He scratched his chin, seemed lost in thought as he glanced out the window to a spot where a bird feeder turned slowly as it hung from a limb of her magnolia tree. A cardinal balanced on a small perch and was busily pecking at the tiny seeds. “You’ll need someone with you. Some reporters were already showing up at your husband’s house as we left.”

  Her heart nearly stopped beating. “Reporters?”

  “It won’t be long before they put two and two together and show up here,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “Wonderful.” Dealing with the police was tough enough; she couldn’t imagine taking on the press. Not now.

  “I wouldn’t talk to them if I were you.”

  Don’t worry.

  Detective Morrisette nodded her agreement as she slid her dark glasses onto the bridge of her nose. “They can be nasty. Please let us call someone. A friend or a family member. You shouldn’t be alone right now.”

  “No—I’ll be all right . . .” A ridiculous statement. She would never be all right. Maybe never had been. Now Josh was dead and there was so much blood in her own bedroom and her dream . . . was it a dream? If only she could get through to Kelly and find out what the hell had happened last night. She forced a calm, humorless smile. “I’ll call my brother, Troy. He works downtown at the bank.” Both officers appeared skeptical as she walked them to the back door.

  “It’s Saturday,” Reed pointed out. “Aren’t the banks closed?”

  “Not Montgomery Bank and Trust,” she said, glancing at the clock. The bank was open a few hours in the middle of the day, an innovation her grandfather had incorporated years before. “I don’t need anyone to call my brother. I’ll be fine,” she insisted, knowing that she was lying. “Just give me some time alone to pull myself together.”

  Reed looked as though he was about to say more but caught a quick shake of his partner’s head and held his tongue. Caitlyn watched as they walked through her front yard. The old gate creaked as they passed through and Oscar, spying a neighbor’s cat lurking in the branches of the sassafras tree, started barking insanely.

  Before he could race outside, Caitlyn closed the door, and as it latched she leaned against the cool panels. Somehow, some way, she had to figure out what had happened last night.

  Josh was dead. Dead.

  Probably murdered.

  And she couldn’t even swear that she hadn’t killed him.

  Four

  This morning the spirits were still restless.

  Angry.

  Hissing as they darted through the shadows.

  Mocking.

  As they had been all night long.

  Their movements had kept Lucille from sleep, haunting her, touching her mind if she dared drop off even for a second. They’d started around midnight, sighing through the branches of the live oaks, causing the Spanish moss to sway. The wraiths grumbled by the old waterwheel that creaked as it turned in the stream flowing past the orchard, and they hid in the rafters of the third story of this grand old decaying manor where Lucille had tried and failed to sleep. She’d thought they would disappear into the shadows with the morning light. But she’d been wrong. They were still annoying her as she swept the wide porch of Oak Hill, the Montgomery plantation, poking her broom at a cottonlike nest of spiders in the corner.

  “You all, jest git. Go away, l
eave me be,” she muttered, her lips flattening over her teeth as she spied the gardener’s boy clipping dying blooms off the roses. He didn’t look up from beneath the bill of his cap, but she knew he’d heard her. She’d have to be careful.

  Though some people thought she was a little touched in the head, that some of the Montgomery lunacy had somehow invaded her, Lucille was as sane as anyone she knew. Saner. She was just cursed with the ability to hear those who should have passed on, and she was certain the old three-storied home with its beveled windows, crystal chandeliers and pillared brick porch was haunted. She knew some of the ghosts’ names, had read them time and time again on the crumbling gravestones. Some of the angry, bodyless beings had been slaves over a century before, some had been children, poor little souls who’d never had a chance to grow up, but what they had in common was that every last one of the angry souls had been born with at least one drop of Montgomery blood running through their veins.

  She just wished they’d be silent. Slide back into their tombs where they belonged. But that was not to be because something vile and dark had happened last night; she just didn’t know what. Yet.

  Pausing to wipe her forehead with the hem of her apron, she glanced down the long drive, as if expecting the bearer of bad news, even Satan himself, to appear. But the late morning was deceptively quiet. Too still. Only the lapping of the creek and the buzz of a hornet searching for its nest were audible over the whispers of the ghosts.

  Pushing her broom around terra-cotta planters bursting with petunias and marigolds, she kept a wary eye out for palmetto bugs and listened to the raspy voices. Lucille heard them and, she suspected, others did as well; they were too frightened to admit to the existence of the undead.

  Caitlyn . . . now that poor child was cursed. Just like her grandma Evelyn . . . another tortured soul. Lucille made a quick sign of the cross over her bosom without breaking stride as she swept. She’d bet a month’s wages that Caitlyn heard the voices, that the dead whispered through her head. As they had with Evelyn.

  She paused again. To listen. The lawn mower growled as the gardener cut the grass near the stables. A squirrel scolded from one of the live oak trees, and further away traffic rumbled on a distant highway. Yet, above it all, Lucille heard the sounds of the spirits—quiet, angry voices. She felt the ghosts moving, churning, causing a hot wind to brush against her cheeks. Evil seemed nearer somehow, though Lucille could not pinpoint it; didn’t know its source.

  It had started last night.

  She’d gone to bed at eleven, as was her usual time, after giving Miss Berneda her final dose of medication and some warm milk with honey. Once Berneda had dozed off and begun to snore, Lucille had pulled the curtains around her bed and eased out of the room. She’d climbed the back staircase to the third floor, the arthritis in her knees complaining as she made her way up each narrowing riser, her breathing exaggerated with the effort. She was getting too old and fat for the hard work she did, and though she was compensated well and she loved the Montgomery family as if it were her own, she would have to retire soon, to Florida maybe to be with her sister, Mabel.

  But not as long as Berneda Montgomery drew a breath. Lucille had promised Berneda’s husband that she would take care of his wife for the rest of Berneda’s years. With the good Lord’s blessing, large doses of Extra Strength Excedrin, a shot of brandy each night and her own pacemaker keeping her tired heart beating regularly, Lucille intended to keep her vow to Cameron Montgomery even though he’d been a contemptible son of a bitch if ever there was one. Lord knew none of Berneda’s children were capable of caring for their ailing mother. They all thought Berneda’s pacemaker and nitroglycerine pills could ward off her heart problems, but Lucille knew better. Death was clamoring for Berneda Montgomery, and once he’d started calling, there was no stopping the bastard.

  She snorted as she lifted the dustpan and glared at the hot sun inching its way across the clear sky. All those kids and not one worth his or her salt.

  Then again, who was she to point fingers? It wasn’t as if her own daughter was much better. No, Marta, bless her thoughtless heart, was another one of this generation who did as she pleased, letting the chips fall where they may, “doing her own thing,” leaving destruction in her wake and never once looking back. Even now. She was supposed to have visited, but never did, was supposedly dating some hotshot cop named Montoya in New Orleans, but that must’ve gone south, too, as he’d called looking for her. That was the trouble with Marta. She was a flake. But then that wasn’t a surprise. Lucille had spent over thirty years questioning her own foolish decisions. Decisions she’d made before Marta had been conceived. Even now, Lucille felt sharp shards of guilt about her only child. She loved her daughter with all of her guilty heart and had been Marta’s single support since the kid was five. Yet, sometimes it seemed the bad had outweighed the good.

  But one would have thought, with all the children Berneda and Cameron Montgomery had brought into this world, one of them would have turned out decent enough. Lucille tossed the contents of the dustpan over the porch rail, the debris falling to a growing pile beneath a thick wisteria vine that twisted and turned as it curled around the eaves. What chance did any of the Montgomery progeny have with all the bad blood that trickled through their veins? None, that’s what.

  She checked on the sun tea she had brewing on the porch railing. Sunlight glinted against the glass jar. Like buoyant bodies on a tepid sea, the bags floated and danced in the amber liquid.

  From inside the house, the phone jangled.

  Lucille’s old heart missed a beat.

  No one had to tell her it was bad news.

  “Let me get this straight,” Troy said as he folded his suit jacket over the back of one of the chairs in Caitlyn’s kitchen. “Josh is dead. It could be suicide or it might be homicide. The police are still trying to figure out which. Have I got that much right?”

  “Yes.” Caitlyn poured fresh water into Oscar’s dish and hoped she didn’t appear as ragged as she felt. She’d called her brother at Montgomery Bank and Trust as soon as Detectives Reed and Morrisette had driven away. Two hours later, after getting her message and calling her back, he’d arrived, made his way through the cluster of reporters hovering near the front gate and landed here, looking more pissed than sad that his brother-in-law was dead.

  As Detective Reed had predicted, television crews and reporters for the local papers had shown up shortly after the police had left, knocked on her door, and when she’d refused to answer, taken up residence on the sidewalk in front of her house. She’d caught a glimpse of one slim woman in a smart purple dress and black scarf standing near her front gate while a cameraman filmed her. Caitlyn’s stomach clenched. Not again. No cameras. No reporters. No questions about the intimate details of my life.

  “Can’t they tell whether someone did him in or he killed himself?” Troy asked, jarring her back to the here and now. Oh, God, she had to pull herself together; she couldn’t let anyone, not even Troy, know about her own fears.

  “Oh . . . yes, I mean . . . I’m sure they can. It just takes time.”

  Troy snorted his disgust and jingled his keys in the pocket of his slacks. “Savannah’s finest. You didn’t tell them anything, did you?” Hard blue eyes examined hers, looked for a crack, for the lie.

  “I couldn’t. I don’t know anything.” Except that there was blood smeared upstairs. So damned much blood. It wasn’t Josh’s lifeblood. It couldn’t be! She slid into one of the chairs, exhausted and scared to death.

  “But you’ve got to be one of their prime suspects,” Troy said, frowning. His hair was as dark as hers, just the hint of gray visible at his temples. He stood arrow-straight, wide shoulders and slim hips, a man of thirty-three in excellent shape. “It’s no big secret that he was having an affair and going to divorce you.”

  “Nice, Troy,” she muttered. “No reason to sugarcoat things.”

  “Exactly. What you’ve got on your hands here is a crisis.”


  “Me?” she asked, then saw the white lines bracketing his lips. “What’re you saying? That I killed Josh?”

  “Of course not.”

  Still, she was burned. “You know, I could use a little support. It’s been a helluva day and it’s not over yet.” Tears blistered her eyes, but she didn’t swipe at them. Wouldn’t give in. Oscar, sensing a fight, slunk to his favorite spot under the table.

  Troy’s keys jangled as he stared outside to the back garden. “I’m sorry. I . . . I’m not very good in the support department.”

  “No argument there.”

  “But you do have to face the fact that you’re an obvious suspect.” Plowing the fingers of both hands through his hair, he let out a world-weary sigh. As if being the only living Montgomery male was sometimes too much to bear. “Maybe you should move home for a while.”

  “This is my home.”

  “I know, I know, but it might be better if you got out of town, moved out to the country, stayed with Mom at Oak Hill.”

  “You mean ‘lay low’?”

  “I didn’t say—”

  “I’m not a criminal, Troy,” she insisted, forcing herself to her feet and steadfastly shoving aside the doubts in her mind.

  “Just a victim.” His lips pursed in repressed anger. “Always a victim. Jesus!”

  “I knew I shouldn’t have called you,” she spat.

  “Why did you?”

  She reached for a bottle of water in the refrigerator and twisted off the cap. “The police didn’t want me to be left alone.”

  “So you called your brother?”

  “You were the closest.” Sometimes Troy was a royal pain, but then weren’t all of her siblings? She’d known it had been a mistake the minute she’d dialed his office. She took a long pull on the water. “Let’s just get this straight. It wasn’t because you’re a male, okay?”