by that's me
One would think that her brother-after watching his own mean-tempered father drive his mother in the arms of another man-would have learned. On would have expected Gilbert Remington H to do everything in his power to make his own marriage work.
But then, Gilbert never did see the worst of what had happened between his parents. Only Jeanne was here, cowering in her bed, on the night when the gun was drawn. Gilbert was safely off at Telfair Academy.
Thus, the sins of the father were passed to the son, along with the alma mater, the Remington millions- and the widower's curse.
Life went on… for everyone except Eleanore.
Jeanne wonders to this day whether her brother secretly blamed himself for his wife's suicide.
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 remain-in 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.
"Fried chicken for breakfast?" Aimee asked dubiously. "Does your mother give you that at home?"
"My mother would probably spoon-feed me Gerber strained peaches from a little jar if she had her way," Lianna retorted.
Aimee laughed. "Parents are tough, aren't they? I'm twenty-five and my father still calls me 'Baby Girl.' Order what you want. I just can't believe they really serve fried chicken at this ho
ur."
Aimee just ordered a cup of coffee, saying she never eats breakfast. "If I did, I'd look like… well, like her," she said with a tilt of her head toward the large woman adding napkins and condiments to her loaded tray of chicken and fries.
Lianna told herself that that was really mean, even though it was the kind of thing her friends would say, and she would giggle at.
The truth is, she doesn't want to like Aimee. She never wanted a sister, older or younger, step or otherwise, no matter what her mother likes to think.
Now, with Devin apparently waiting for her to go into detail about Aimee, she just shrugs and asks, "Are we going inside, or what?"
"Nah. My mother and Ray are still sleeping. They were out late at some party, and I bet they're really hung-over. Let's just get out of here."
Lianna's first thought is that her mother probably thinks she's spending the day safely at Devin's house.
Her next thought is, who cares what her mother thinks? If she was so eager to unload Lianna for the day that she doesn't even remember she's been grounded, that's her problem.
"Where do you want to go?" she asks Devin.
"Do you have any money with you?"
Aimee asked the same thing, just before she pulled up at Devin's.
When Lianna said no, she reached into her purse and pulled out a couple of twenties. "Here," she said easily. "Take it. You know… in case you and your friend want to do something later."
"Like what?"
"Like go to a movie, or shopping, or something. I don't know, what do y'all usually do when you hang out?"
Wondering again if she was being baited by a nosy stepsister on behalf of a nosier mother, Lianna just shrugged.
But she took the money with mumbled thanks.
When she nods, Devin decides, "We'll go to the mall, then. I need to get some stuff for school."
"It doesn't even start for weeks."
"Whatever. It's an excuse to buy new clothes, right?"
Lianna grins. "Right."
"Your mother's not going to show up here looking for you any time soon, is she?"
"No way. She's going to the hospital. Trust me, she won't even think about me for hours."
"That's great."
Yeah, Lianna thinks, following Devin back down the steps to the street. Just great.
Tyler closes the door to Gilbert's private study with a quaking hand, trying not to remember what transpired the last time he crossed this particular threshold, with Silas Neville on his heels.
He pauses to gather his composure before turning to face his late friend's grandson.
Gib has taken a seat-or rather, collapsed-on the couch across from the antique desk where generations of Remington men have conducted their very successful business dealings.
Never, Tyler thinks, would any of them have imagined that one day, the lone remaining Remington son-the only hope for carrying on the family name-would be sitting here accused of an unthinkable crime.
Tyler can't help but acknowledge the bitter irony: After the extraordinary lengths Gilbert went to in order to preserve the legacy, this young, cocky successor has seemingly destroyed the whole damned thing.
He knew plenty of brash young men like Gib Remington in his days at Telfair Academy. Arrogant offspring of wealthy families, believing that the rules didn't apply to them. They started out breaking curfews.
Some-like, perhaps, Gib Remington-went on to break laws.
I was one of them, Tyler thinks, a wave of nausea swishing through his gut.
But that was long ago. Too long ago to dwell on now-or here.
This is about a new generation-not the Telfair Trio.
Gib's face is drawn; he's obviously quite shaken.
"Is there anything you want to tell me?" Tyler studiously avoids Gilbert's tidy desk as he pulls a chair adjacent to the couch and sits down to face his would-be client Gib shrugs, refusing to meet his gaze. 'Just that I haven't done anything wrong."
Tyler nods. It's not as though he expected a confession. He crosses his legs and leans forward, his chin resting on his fist as he studies Gib's face.
If he subscribed to the theories of Lavater's physiognomy, as some trial lawyers-and, subconsciously, jurors-do, he would deem Gib Remington innocent just based on his looks. With that shock of blond hair, wide-set eyes the shade of a summer sea, and strong jaw, he's a mirror image of his grandfather at that age, right down to the cowlick. In other words, Gib, like Gilbert before him, is the polar opposite of the beady-eyed, unshaven caricature of a criminal.
So what does that tell you?Tyler asks himself wryly.
All right, then, when it comes to nonverbal indications of possible guilt, he's far better off considering demeanor-and Gib's is telling, particularly in response to the next question.
"You might as well tell me now: is there any chance at all that those detectives are going to turn up anything of interest when they search your room?"
Gib doesn't reply, but the answer is plain to see in a pair of fists that clench and unclench in his lap.
Then he looks up, but not at Tyler-and not in resignation. Gib's gaze shifts directly toward the window, where a slight breeze stirs sun-dappled boughs. "Why are you here, Mr. Hawthorne?"
Irritated by the indolent tone-or perhaps, by the realization that it echoes his own, and Gilbert's, in their own youthful era of entitlement-Tyler snaps, "Well, it's not because I have ESP, that's for damned sure. You heard what your cousin told the detectives in there, didn't you? She called me."
"No, I mean, why did you agree to come rushing right over here? You're Charlotte's lawyer, not mine."
"No, I'm not her lawyer, either. I'm your Grandaddy's lawyer." And his oldest, most faithful friend, dammit.
"As you may recall," Tyler can't resist adding with a tinge of sarcasm, "I represent his estate."
"Which he didn't leave to me."
"Which has nothing to do with this." Tyler deliberately inserts a significant pause before asking, "Does it?"
"No!" Gib raises a hand to thrust his blond cowlick farther away from his forehead, a gesture Tyler noted repeatedly in his office last week, as the tension mounted after the will was read.
But Gib's current level of stress doesn't necessarily mean he's guilty. Anybody would be uptight under these circumstances, Tyler acknowledges.
Nor has Gib Remington been formally accused of any crime… yet.
"Do you want me to leave?" Tyler asks, entirely poised to do so. "I'm not about to waste my time here, or yours."
"With any luck, this is going to turn out to be a waste of everyone's time," is the surly reply.
Tyler uncrosses his legs and begins to stand.
"Wait!"
The word is spoken sharply-almost desperately.
He looks at Gib to see a row of perfect teeth-professionally whiten
ed, no doubt-descend over his lower lip and bite down, hard. When they lift, a bead of blood appears.
Then, for the first time, Gib Remington looks Tyler in the eye.
"Don't go," he says heavily. "I think I'm going to need you."
Charlotte leans in the doorway of Gib's room, arms folded across her middle in as laid-back a posture as she can manage. Inside, she's a mess, her thoughts racing with possibilities she never before would have willingly entertained.
