The Night Before

by Lisa Jackson

  “Any others that look like suicides?” Reed asked.

  “Now you think he killed himself?”

  He shook his head. “The jury’s still out on that one. Just thinking aloud. We know that someone was with him that night; we just don’t know if whoever it was decided to kill him.”

  “You think someone staged the thing, to make it look like a suicide.”

  “Just one of the possibilities,” he said, reminding himself. He rubbed the back of his neck. “But we’ll find out more when we get the autopsy report and the crime scene results. My guess is there’ll be some evidence pointing to the missus. She had means, motive and opportunity and she can’t scare up even a flimsy alibi.”

  “I’m not sure you gave her the opportunity.”

  “I asked her where she was last night and she said she was out. That was about it.”

  “You didn’t press the issue.”

  “We weren’t sure we were dealing with a murder.”

  “We still aren’t.”

  “But we do know they were separated, there was another woman, he wanted a divorce and her money and he was filing a civil wrongful death suit against her for the kid’s death. A neighbor saw her car at the scene.”

  “But,” Sylvie urged. “I hear it in your voice, Reed—there’s a ‘but’ coming.”

  He picked up a pen and clicked it as he thought. “But she’d have to have been one stupid killer to leave so many clues at the scene. She didn’t strike me as stupid.”

  “Maybe she was freaked. Didn’t mean to kill him and then took off.”

  “Didn’t mean to kill him? With his wrists slit? That’s not the same as a gun going off accidentally in a struggle. Did you see the man’s arms? Whoever slit them—and I’m not ruling out the victim—intended for him to bleed to death.” He narrowed his eyes on his partner. “There’s something about this that doesn’t feel right.”

  “Something? Try nothing,” Sylvie said, as she reached into her pocket for her pager. Frowning at the numeric display, she started for the door. “Nothing about it feels right. Yet. But it will. We’ll figure it out.”

  “You think so?”

  She glanced over her shoulder and threw him a smile. “Effin’-A.”

  “What a pity,” Sugar Biscayne muttered sarcastically, smirking as she watched the news and slid her jeans and panties over her hips and down her legs. “Another bastard bites the dust.” She kicked the faded Levi’s into a corner of her bedroom and slipped into a red thong and short shorts that barely covered her butt. The reporter was going on and on about Josh Bandeaux as if he was some kind of Savannah god or something. Yeah, right. Swirling the remains of her drink, she felt a slight buzz. Probably from the vodka, but it didn’t hurt that another Montgomery pig had bought the farm. And Bandeaux was the worst, weaseling into the family, trying to cozy up to the money. What a shit. She raised her glass in a mock toast. “Enjoy hell, you sick son of a bitch.”

  A fan moved hot air from one end of the master bedroom to the other, whirring so loudly she could barely hear the television, where the screen was filled with an image of Bandeaux at the annual policeman’s ball. Handsome prick. Sexy as hell. Yeah, and dead as a doornail. That thought gave her a little bit of pleasure as she stared at the screen.

  Dressed in what looked like a designer black tuxedo with a shirt that required no tie, Bandeaux clenched a drink in one hand and flashed his sexy grin straight at the lens of the camera. God, he loved the limelight. More than one Savannah woman had found that smile irresistible. Sugar thought that it was the embodiment of evil.

  She took another drink. Felt the cold vodka slide down her esophagus to hit her stomach in a burst of flame. She shuddered, remembering how she’d felt when she’d heard the news that Caitlyn Montgomery had married the slimeball. All because Caitlyn had been naive and stupid enough to let herself get pregnant. How in the hell did that happen these days?

  Go figure.

  Any woman, herself included, would have found Bandeaux sexy enough for a roll in the hay—Sugar would admit that much—but it took a really dumb one to marry him. Pregnant or not. Tying yourself to that prick only spelled trouble of the worst order. And Caitlyn had found it. Big time. Not that Sugar cared. Sugar had always thought Caitlyn was a few eggs short of a dozen when it came to brains. Caitlyn had inherited plenty in the beauty department, but lacked something when it came to smarts.

  Blessed with smooth, white-Southern-belle skin, plump lips, and wide hazel eyes, Caitlyn was tall and athletic-looking except that she had big tits. Great tits. Sugar always noticed, not because she was into women, but because she always sized up the competition. All women, even rich society types, were competition.

  Especially relatives.

  The picture on the screen flipped to a shot of Josh Bandeaux with his wife and daughter. The kid was probably eighteen months or so at the time the photograph was taken. They seemed the perfect family aside from the fact that Caitlyn’s smile appeared strained as she stood next to her husband in an obviously posed family portrait. “Perfect, my ass,” Sugar said, tossing back the remains of her vodka and biting on a piece of ice as she scrounged in the second drawer of her dresser and found a decent tank top. She tugged it over her head and smoothed out a few wrinkles so that it hugged her figure.

  The reporter was saying something about the suspicious circumstances of Bandeaux’s death when she heard an engine—a truck from the sound of it—pull into her drive. Who the hell would be showing up now? Inwardly groaning, she made an educated guess that her brother was paying her a visit. Dickie Ray was the last person she wanted to deal with.

  She snapped off the old set with its crummy reception and walked into the living room, where she opened the door of her double-wide before her brother could start pounding the hell out of it.

  Her dog, part pit bull, part lab, and one hundred percent bitch, was on her feet and let out a low growl.

  “Mornin’,” Dickie said, one eye on Caesarina. The dog didn’t like him. Never had. But then, she had good taste.

  “It’s nearly seven at night and I’m late for work. I’ve got a job,” Sugar reminded him, pointedly checking her watch, thinking that she didn’t want to let him inside. Once flopped on the old couch, Dickie Ray had an inclination to park it and down a six-pack while staring at some kind of sports program for hours. Once he got inside, it would take a crowbar to get him out. He wasn’t a bad guy, just lazy as hell.

  “You call what you do a job?”

  “Legitimate work,” she said. He didn’t so much as flinch. Thought collecting disability was as good as work. “I perform a service.”

  Dickie Ray snorted. “So now giving drooling, drunked-up losers a hard-on is a service.”

  “I dance.”

  “With your clothes off. Face it, Sugar, you’re a stripper. Period. You can call it what you want, but what you do is show off your tits and ass so that the guys in the bar want to jerk off.”

  “That’s their problem.”

  “They don’t see it that way.”

  “Neither do I. Let’s drop it.” She hated it when Dickie Ray was surly, or as Mama would say, “in one of his moods.” He was certainly in one now, tweaking that nerve of hers that always showed when she discussed how she earned her wages. She wasn’t proud of what she did, just the way she did it. She was good at her job, in great shape, and, when she’d socked enough money away, or when she ever got her hands on the inheritance she’d been promised, she’d give it all up, go to school, learn to run a computer and become a receptionist in some big corporation. But she just couldn’t swing it yet.

  “Hear about Bandeaux?” Dickie Ray asked as he walked into her kitchen, opened a cupboard and found a half-eaten box of Cheez-Nips.

  “I was just listening to the news.”

  “A shame.” Dickie Ray tossed a handful of the crackers into his mouth. He could have been a handsome enough man if he ever got rid of the beer gut and stringy hair hanging down to his shoulder
s. He kept the sides short, but let his blond curls fall free, probably in the hopes of disguising the fact that he was thinning on the top. To offset that problem he was always wearing a baseball cap, pulled down low over his eyes, the bill nearly touching the top of the aviator sunglasses forever on his face. Probably to hide the redness in his eyes. Dickie had a tendency toward benders, alcohol and cocaine whenever he could get his hands on it. His goatee was untrimmed. “You think he was kilt?” Dickie had found himself a plastic Big Gulp cup in one of her cupboards. He opened the refrigerator and hung on the door, letting the cool air blast over his face as he surveyed the meager contents. Finally he settled on a Dr. Pepper.

  “Murdered?” Sugar asked.

  “Isn’t that what ‘suspicious circumstances’ usually means?”

  She turned that thought over a couple of times. “That’s probably what happened. Bandeaux pissed too many people off in this town.”

  “Wonder who did it.” He took a sip and wrinkled his nose. “You know this here soda is flat?”

  “It’s Cricket’s,” Sugar explained.

  “Where is she?” Dickie looked around as if, for the first time, he realized that his younger sister wasn’t on the premises.

  “Working. You know, earning her keep. She doesn’t get off until eight.”

  He glanced at his watch, then searched in the cupboard over the refrigerator for a bottle. “Got any scotch or rye?”

  “No.”

  “A man could die of thirst around here.”

  “That’s the general idea,” she said and meant it. Her last boyfriend had sponged off her for a year. Her ex still came sniffing around, looking for a handout. Either money or sex. She gave him neither. No wonder she had such a bad attitude about men; she surrounded herself with losers. She had a fleeting thought about her current relationship. A relationship only Cricket knew anything about. Even then Sugar kept most of the details to herself. The affair was clandestine. Hot. Off limits.

  Dickie Ray scrounged through the cupboard and found a pint of Jack Daniels with a trace of liquor in it. Frowning at the scant amount, he nonetheless drained the bottle into his cup. “Hardly worth the work,” he muttered, stirring his concoction with an index finger.

  “No one’s got a gun to your head.”

  “Leastwise not today,” he said with an enigmatic wink, then lifted his cup. “Let’s drink one to whoever it was that had the balls to get rid of Bandeaux.” With a quick nod, he took a long guzzle of his drink and wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve.

  “You talk to Donahue lately?” he asked, finally getting to the reason for his visit.

  “Not since the last time you asked.”

  Dickie snorted. “Some hotshot attorney.” Dickie’s bad mood quickly got worse.

  “He’s doing what he has to.”

  “It’s been months,” Dickie grumbled, and Sugar picked up his empty soda can and dropped it into the overflowing trash can. Caesarina wandered over to sniff the trash, then settled on her rear on the yellowed linoleum and scratched behind an ear with a back leg. “I think he’s stalling us.”

  “He’s not stalling.” Sugar, too, was irritated by all the hoops, obstacles and delays that had been thrown at them, but she refused to give up. Flynn Donahue, Attorney at Law, had promised Sugar, Dickie Ray and Cricket that he would find a way to get them their fair share of the Montgomery fortune. After all, they were all grandchildren of Benedict Montgomery, just the same as his legitimate heirs were. The fact that their grandmother, Mary Lou Chaney, had been his secretary rather than his wife was of little consequence. Blood was blood, Donahue had insisted when he’d taken their case nearly a year ago.

  Yeah, and what about the rumors that good ol’ Uncle Cameron could be your father? Sugar had heard nasty gossip all of her life. And now was banking on it.

  “Nothin’ like keepin’ it all in the family,” Brad Norton had teased in the eighth grade. His whiny voice had cracked and Sugar couldn’t help but notice he was getting a major case of zits. Good. “I guess you all just like you all. I mean really like.” He’d followed the comment by raising his bushy blond eyebrows before sniggering loudly, and his friends, a group of blockheads, had joined in, laughing and pointing.

  “What’s it like, Sugar? Is it sweet to think that yer uncle is yer pappy?” Billy Quentin had thrown in, hitching up his pants that were always trying to fall down beneath his big belly. He’d been a fat, stupid boy whose father had bred hunting dogs, poached deer and distilled his own whiskey. No one liked Billy so he was constantly shifting from one creepy clique to the next, hoping to score points. That hot September afternoon, Billy had been hoping that by putting Sugar in her rightful white-trash place, he’d score points with Brad and his friends and elevate his own pathetic social position.

  “Better’n knowin’ my dad is a jackass and my momma’s a whore like yours. I’d be wonderin’, if I was you, Billy, why your daddy likes his dogs so much. It might help explain why yer so stupid.” She’d walked off and Brad and his friends had laughed at Billy’s expense. To that she’d turned, looked over her shoulder, and said, “And I’d be careful if I was you, too, Brad. Your daddy’s a preacher and you probably wouldn’t want him to know that you got yerself a messa Playboys under yer mattress.”

  “I don’t!” he’d yelled, outraged, but Sugar had just smiled.

  “So then you lied when you were braggin’ the other day over at the gas station?” she’d asked, and his mouth had dropped open so wide he could have caught flies. He hadn’t known Sugar had been in the rest room of the gas station on the other side of the door with the broken window transom and she’d heard him boasting to his miserable pack of friends.

  That had been just one of dozens of incidents when Sugar had been reminded of the incest that was rumored to be a part of her family. She’d suffered through all the painful laughs, sniggers and disparaging looks. But now, damn it, she was finally going to get her own back. If the damned rumors were true, then she figured it was her right to cash in on the Montgomery fortune.

  But the wheels of justice were grinding slow enough to get on Sugar’s last nerve. She was sick of living in this double-wide tin can, sick of being considered white trash by the holier-than-thou legitimate side of the family, and sick to death of dancing for a bunch of drunken middle-aged men who practically came in their work pants when she kicked up her legs. As if any of them would have a chance with her. She was a stripper. Not a whore. It took a whole lot more than a couple of twenties stuck into her G-string to get her to meet some loser in his pickup and give him a blow job.

  The sooner Flynn could wrap up this lawsuit, the better. She and her siblings were contesting Cameron’s will, claiming their stake of half of whatever Berneda and her brood had inherited, which just happened to be a shit-load of money. She wasn’t sure how much, but it was in the millions. Millions! Even split seven ways between Cameron’s surviving progeny, that was more money than she’d see stripping in her lifetime. What she could do with just a portion of that money! Not only her, but Cricket and Dickie Ray as well.

  “You want it, too,” Dickie Ray observed, as if he could read her mind. “So bad you can taste it.”

  “Flynn said this could take years.”

  “Bullshit. I might not have years.”

  “He’s doing everything he can.”

  “That fat turd?” Dickie Ray snorted his disgust.

  “Haven’t you heard that patience is a virtue?”

  “Don’t you believe it. If you want something bad enough, you’ve got to make it happen. I learned that a long time ago,” he said as she looked pointedly at the clock mounted over the refrigerator.

  “I’ve got to get down to the club,” she said, reaching for her purse.

  “Fine.” Dickie Ray squared his hat upon his head again and started across the scratched linoleum to the front door. “Tell Donahue he’d better get the damned ball rollin’ and soon. Elsewise I just might have to take things into my own hands
.” He winked at her, and she had the uneasy sensation that he’d already begun.

  “Don’t do anything stupid, Dickie.” She found her purse and searched for her car keys.

  “Me?” he asked, raising his hands toward the low ceiling, his expression the picture of innocence.

  Sugar was starting to get a bad feeling about it. Her fingers curled around the key chain.

  “Anything I do, I do for us.” He winked as he reached the door. “Remember that.”

  The screen door slammed behind him, and Sugar felt as if the devil himself had breathed against her spine. Dickie Ray was dangerous. A loose cannon. If he wasn’t careful, he’d screw up everything for all of them . . . she couldn’t let that happen. Taking his empty cup into the kitchen and dropping it into the sink, she heard her brother’s pickup start with a deafening roar. “Don’t do it,” she whispered as dread settled over her as tight and close as a funeral shroud. “Whatever it is, Dickie, please . . . don’t do it.”

  Josh Bandeaux.

  Interloper.

  Liar.

  Cheat.

  Dead.

  So dead.

  Which was as it should be. Atropos slipped the key into its lock and walked into the wine cellar where ancient, forgotten bottles climbed the walls. She crossed quickly and found the hidden lock which, when engaged, moved the rack enough to reveal the door that she slid silently through. She closed the door behind her and felt a calm come over her, here, in this secret spot.

  The interior was painted stark white, the fixtures gleaming chrome, polished to a mirrored surface. No dust lingered on the tile floor, and the chair in one corner was white vinyl, the desk brushed metal. A chrome lamp, white leather recliner, stereo with a neat stack of CDs that could play softly from hidden speakers that were buffered from the rest of the old building by soundproof panels, filled the room. Every surface was spotless.

  It was a private space. Closed off from the world. Away from the city and yet near enough for convenience. Hidden and isolated. Perfect. If she could only push out the noise in her mind.