The Night Before

by Lisa Jackson

  “No problem.”

  Reed was already shouldering open the thick door and flipping open his cell phone as he stepped into a hallway where the floor tiles gleamed with layers of wax and the walls were painted a soft, quieting green. He took the stairs to an outside door and shoved it open. Heat, thick as tar, blasted him. The natives barely noticed, but it was hot as hell to a man who had grown up in Chicago and spent a lot of his adult life in San Francisco. Even the recent rain shower hadn’t done much more than settle the dust and leave a puddle or two on the streets.

  Ignoring the fact that he was already sweating, he dialed the station, asked for Morrisette’s extension and was put on hold, only to be referred to her voice mail box. Damned automation. Frustrated, he left a terse message, walked the few blocks to the station and landed at her desk just as she was hanging up from a call that had brought a flush to her face and pulled the edges of her mouth downward.

  “Fuck—effin’ ex-husband,” she muttered as Reed kicked out a side chair and dropped into it.

  “Got your page. I was with the M.E.”

  She lifted an eyebrow. “Bandeaux?”

  “Yep.”

  “Anything interesting?”

  “A lot.” He gave her a quick rundown of what St. Claire had told him. “He put a rush job on this. We’ll have the complete, typed report tomorrow.”

  “GHB? Jesus, what’s that all about? Not date rape.”

  “Maybe date murder. Unless Josh was experimenting.”

  “With Midnight Blue? Then he was nuts.” She stood and stretched, arching her back as if it ached. “So you’re thinking someone killed him.”

  “Very possibly. It’s looking that way.” Reed rubbed the inside of his palm with a thumb. He just wasn’t sure.

  “So why try to make it look like a suicide?” Morrisette asked.

  “Good question. Whoever did it did a half-assed job, though. And what’s with the wine? Was it a mistake? Did the killer not realize that he was allergic to certain kinds, and gave him the wine as a way of administering the GHB?”

  “But wouldn’t Bandeaux have been careful about the wine?”

  Reed lifted a shoulder. “Maybe he didn’t know it had sulfites. And there’s a chance it wasn’t the wine. We’ll have to check with Bandeaux’s M.D., see what exactly he was allergic to.”

  “Okay, but for now, let’s assume it was the wine for lack of some other substance found in his body, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So if it was a life-and-death matter what kind of merlot or chardonnay you guzzled,” she said, lines collecting between her plucked eyebrows, “wouldn’t you check to make sure you weren’t drinking the wrong stuff?”

  “Yeah, but probably only the bottle, not the wine itself.”

  “Meaning?”

  “That the bottle could have been doctored—the labels switched, or someone could have poured the bad stuff in another room and carried it in to him.”

  “Someone he trusted,” she amended.

  “Yeah, so did we find a wine bottle on the premises?”

  “Only about two hundred in the wine cellar, but they were full,” she said, bending over the desk and reaching for a file. “I think there was a bottle in the garbage; let’s see . . . I’ve got a list of everything collected . . .” She pulled a computer sheet from the file and ran a silver-tipped nail down the first couple of pages. “Here we go . . . a bottle of pinot noir. Imported. France.”

  “Did we locate a cork?”

  She looked again. “Yessir, we sure did.”

  “Anything strange about it?”

  “Not that was mentioned. What’re you getting at?”

  “Have the lab check and see if there’s anything left in the bottle. I want to know what it is and see if the cork was tampered with, or if the wine matches what the label says . . . What about the lipstick on the wineglass?”

  “Nothing yet.”

  Reed didn’t like what he was thinking. Too many puzzle pieces didn’t fit, no matter how he tried to force them. Unless the murderer was in a hurry or a complete moron, he or she did a really bad job of making the scene appear suicide. “So what do you think?” he asked Morrisette. “Suicide or murder?” She dropped back into her desk chair, nudging her computer in the process. The blank screen flickered and the image of Josh Bandeaux slumped over his desk and very dead, appeared. “Why try to kill him twice?”

  “Maybe it was suicide. I know, I know, I really don’t believe Josh Bandeaux would kill himself, but let’s run with this theory and see where it leads us—just for the sake of argument. Maybe ol’ Josh was depressed, but the wine and the GHB weren’t working fast enough, so he grabbed a knife.”

  “And scratched himself up? The wounds that killed him were made from another weapon, a surgical tool or hunting knife.” Reed wasn’t buying it.

  “Which we haven’t found,” she said, chewing on her lower lip as she studied the report.

  “And then there’s the GHB. How does that fit in?”

  “It doesn’t.” She shook her head and glanced at the computer screen. “But nothing does. If he was murdered, why would the killer, if he took the time to make it look like suicide, leave the wineglasses and bottle and traces of wine, knowing that we would find out that he was allergic to the sulfites?”

  “If that’s what happened,” Reed said. “Either the murderer is dumb as a stone or she’s flaunting it, rubbing it in our nose that she got away with it.”

  “She?” Morrisette repeated. “As in Mrs. Bandeaux?”

  “She’s certainly on the suspect list.”

  “Along with half the denizens of Savannah. Seems like everyone Bandeaux knew had a bone to pick with our boy,” she muttered. “The Bandit got around.”

  Reed couldn’t argue. Morrisette was right; there were other suspects worth examining. But as the investigation wore on, he was starting to believe that Caitlyn Bandeaux was guilty as sin. He’d read a copy of the wrongful death suit Josh Bandeaux was filing against his ex-wife. Nasty stuff. In the document Bandeaux charged Caitlyn with being neglectful to the point of being an unfit mother. And neighbors had seen her coming and going; even the maid who found Bandeaux’s body swore that Caitlyn had been a regular visitor to her estranged husband’s home. Despite the fact that Bandeaux had a girlfriend. “Has anyone found Naomi Crisman?”

  “Not yet. One of Bandeaux’s friends thinks she’s out of the country. Probably doesn’t even know he’s dead.”

  “What about phone messages? E-mail?”

  “None and deleted.”

  “Mail?”

  “Still being sorted, along with the garbage. So far the crime scene team hasn’t come up with much. Except that a button was found on the floor near the desk. It looks like it came from Bandeaux’s dress shirt.”

  “So it fell off?”

  “Nope. Was cut. The thread was clipped neatly, not frayed, nor unraveled. Someone deliberately cut the button off that night. No way would Josh have worn a shirt without a button.”

  “Why would someone do that intentionally?”

  “Maybe they were trying to hit a vein and missed.”

  “Or maybe not,” Reed said aloud, not liking the turn of his thoughts. “Maybe whoever did it was making a point.”

  “Which was . . . what? ‘Hey, Josh, you’d look better in cuff links’?”

  “No—more like, ‘Hey, Josh, look what I can do to you.’ ” Reed tried to imagine the scene of the crime and his thoughts turned dark as he imagined Bandeaux at his desk with a killer in the room, the victim paralyzed, the wineglasses—two of them—the music that had been playing, the open doors to the verandah. The scene had somehow been intimate. “I think it might have been that the murderer was adding a little bit of terror to the scene. Bandeaux was immobilized, couldn’t move. So why not show him how sharp the weapon was? Why not take the time to scare him to death?”

  Ten

  The funeral was excruciating.

  Caitlyn felt th
e weight of dozens of curious gazes, not only in the church, but also here in the graveyard as a preacher finished the service with a final prayer and sunlight streamed from between the clouds. The mourners, primarily dressed in black, had scattered among existing graves. Expressions grim, eyes downcast, they’d bent their heads to pray, all the while whispering among themselves.

  It had been three days since Josh’s body had been discovered, and if anything, the media interest in Josh Bandeaux’s death had been intensified. Whether they were admitting it or not, the police seemed to think that Josh had been murdered; the talk of suicide had muted, though it was still a consideration, or so she thought.

  Caitlyn noticed members of the press in attendance, and standing slightly apart from the rest of the crowd, Detective Pierce Reed was leaning against the bole of an ancient oak tree, dark glasses hiding his eyes, though, Caitlyn guessed, he was surveying the people who came to pay their respects to her husband. Or maybe he was watching her reaction.

  The entire ceremony in the church had seemed surreal. The organ music, the prayers, the candles and eulogy seemed as out of sync as the funeral procession that had snaked through the city streets to this remote cemetery with its ancient gravestones, tombs and moss-draped trees.

  Other than his two ex-wives, Josh had no family of his own. A single, spoiled child who had come to his parents late in life, he had no siblings and his mother had died not long after her husband nearly ten years earlier. Caitlyn had never met one member of Josh’s family. Other than his first wife, Maude, and stepson Gil, both of whom were in attendance. As was Naomi Crisman, dressed in elegant black. But there was not an uncle, aunt or cousin to be seen; nor had she ever heard of any. Caitlyn, as his wife, had asked that his body be released. He had no other familial ties.

  Caitlyn took in those who’d shown up.

  She slid a glance in Josh’s first wife’s direction. Maude was tall and elegant in her designer suit. She hid behind wraparound sunglasses and a broad-brimmed hat. Contrarily, her son looked as if he’d just rolled out of bed after a hard night of rock music and drugs. He wore jeans, an Ozzy Osbourne T-shirt and an attitude that suggested, “bite me.” His hair was pushed out of his eyes, but he hadn’t bothered to shave, and his mouth was pulled into a tight I-would-rather-be-anywhere-else-on-earth scowl. Where Maude was reed-slender, Gil was already running to fat, his stomach rolling over the top of his jeans.

  A few feet from Gil, Naomi Crisman kept to herself. She was Josh’s most recent love interest, another woman who’d hoped to become the next Mrs. Bandeaux, but she pointedly avoided everyone’s gaze by averting her eyes and staring at the ground. Barely twenty-five, Naomi was suitably subdued in a simple black sheath. Her long streaked hair had been loosely piled up on her head and held with what appeared to be enamel chopsticks. She sighed often, whether from sadness or boredom was anyone’s guess.

  Standing a few feet away, close enough to be considered part of the mourners, but distanced so as to draw attention to the fact that they didn’t quite belong, were the Biscaynes. Sugar, Dickie Ray and Cricket. All dressed in their Sunday best, standing a little apart from the crowd, and yet blending in. For as much as the Montgomerys fought the truth, the evidence of Benedict’s betrayal—the genetic stamp—was evident in the faces of his illegitimate grandchildren. Their hair might have been lighter, thanks to their grandmother’s natural blond shade, but the eyes were round, their noses straight and strong, their cheekbones high, all characteristics of Benedict Montgomery.

  Don’t discount your own father, for God’s sake.

  It’s possible that one or more of them are not only your cousins but half-sisters or brother.

  Caitlyn’s stomach turned, but she remembered playing hide-and-seek with Griffin in the carriage house and hearing the bedsprings of an old iron four-poster creak and groan in the attic above. Later, still hidden in the shadows of the tractor, she’d seen two people sneak down the back stairs. Enough moonlight had filtered through the windows for her to recognize her father, Cameron, and a tousled-haired woman. They’d paused at the foot of the steps and the woman had curled her sinuous body into him and kissed him long and hard, their mouths locking, his hand cupping her buttocks beneath the short summer dress with its button front.

  “Later,” he’d growled.

  “Don’t forget.” Her voice was deep, husky, and as she’d turned to light a cigarette, the match flaring enough that Caitlyn could see her features, Caitlyn had recognized Copper Biscayne. She’d gasped and a bat had swooped out of the carriage door as Copper had searched the dark interior.

  “Someone’s here,” she’d whispered, but Caitlyn’s father had chuckled. “It’s just the bats. You’re jumpy. Go on. Git. Before somebody does come along.” He’d patted her on her rump and she’d hurried off, her high heels crunching on the gravel path that lead to a side shed and equipment access road.

  Cameron had looked over his shoulder, as if assuring himself that no one was hiding inside. Caitlyn had held her breath. Griffin stared at her with round, frightened eyes, and then her father had slipped through the open door, closed it behind him and latched it shut.

  If not for the fact that she’d climbed the stairs to the attic and the room that reeked of cigarette smoke, liquor and musk to slip out the window and shimmy down the oak tree, they would have been locked inside.

  As it was, she’d escaped, but had never forgotten that night and her father’s betrayal. She’d been only eleven at the time, but the memory was still as fresh as if it had happened yesterday.

  Caitlyn had no idea how long Copper and her father had been lovers, but certainly long enough that there could have been a child or two conceived.

  A dyed-in-the-wool bastard, just like his father.

  Caitlyn didn’t even cringe at her emotions for Cameron. She’d come to terms long ago with the fact that she’d hated him when he was living and she could bloody well hate him now that he was dead. She didn’t blame the Biscaynes for wanting their share of his estate. By blood they deserved it.

  “Jesus, they’re nervy,” Amanda whispered as she followed Caitlyn’s gaze. “Know who the man with them is? Their attorney. Hails from New Orleans, and he’s as shady as one of these old oaks,” she said, rolling her eyes to the branches overhead.

  Caitlyn didn’t respond but as Sugar glanced in her direction, she tore her eyes away and tried to concentrate on the preacher’s last words. She stood at the grave site with Troy on one side, Amanda the other. Her mother and Lucille sat on chairs set up on a fake grass carpet and surrounded by floral sprays beginning to droop in the heat. Hannah, hiding behind dark glasses and a dour expression, was positioned on the far side of Troy and stared dully at the ground.

  Whereas Caitlyn, Amanda and Kelly took after their mother with thin, willowy builds, deep mahogany-colored hair and hazel, near-green eyes, Hannah and Troy looked more like their father. Their features were larger, their hair darker, almost black, their eyes a sharp, intense blue. As her older brother, Charles’s had been. He, as had been often stated, had been the spitting image of their father. Tall and good-looking, a natural athlete and competitor, Charles had been groomed to step into Cameron’s expensive shoes.

  Until he’d died.

  One of the many tragedies that scarred the thick, twisted branches of the Montgomery family tree. Caitlyn had only to shift her eyes a little distance away and see the tomb for her family members. In earlier times the Montgomerys had been buried in the ancient cemetery near the old plantation house at Oak Hill. Generation after generation. But in recent times, the family had taken their final resting plots here in the city. The first to have been buried here was Benedict and later his wife. Charles rested here and Baby Parker, who had died of SIDS, at least according to Doc Fellers, before his first birthday.

  “Amen,” the crowd whispered as the final prayer was finished. The preacher raised his head. He motioned at Caitlyn. She stepped forward, her legs wobbly, as she dropped a single white rose onto J
osh’s coffin. It was still impossible to believe—really believe—that he was dead. If nothing else, Josh had always been a vibrant man, so full of life.

  She’d spent the past few days making funeral arrangements, speaking briefly to the police, avoiding the press and trying to sort out what had happened. She hadn’t been able to sleep in her own bedroom—the thought of the blood spilled everywhere had been too unnerving—so she’d spent the last two nights tucked under a coverlet on the sofa, unable to fall asleep without the aid of some kind of tranquilizer Doc Fellers had offered up.

  “I know you hate to take pills,” Berneda had said, pressing the tinted bottle into her palm, “but these will help. I had an appointment anyway and asked if he’d prescribe something for you.”

  “Don’t you think you should have asked me?” Caitlyn had replied, but had accepted the little dark bottle anyway. The lorazepam had come in handy, helping her calm down, getting her through the days as well as the nights.

  She still hadn’t talked to Kelly; they just kept missing each other, but Kelly had promised to call once the funeral was over, once the press was looking elsewhere for a story, once the gossips found other fodder for their grisly mill. “You know I can’t come to the funeral,” she’d said. “I’m not that much of a hypocrite, and Mom would freak, absolutely freak, so I’m not gonna make any waves. Not right now. We’ll get together once Josh is in the ground. Hang in there . . .”

  Caitlyn was trying. But having a helluva time. Her work was neglected, piling up, clients leaving messages of condolence mixed with inquiries as to when their particular projects would be finished. Tomorrow, she thought, tomorrow she’d have to start returning calls and somehow begin living her life again.

  If the police would let her.

  If her conscience would permit it.

  “Come on,” Troy said, shepherding her toward the waiting town car parked in the shade of one of the trees. The solemn driver, a heavyset man employed by the funeral home, waited, his hips resting against a front fender. Caitlyn had focused upon him and didn’t notice a stranger approach until a shadow fell in front of her feet.