A Case of You

by Pamela Burford

  He descended two steps on the ladder and carved another hunk of tree. She watched the play of muscle in his gleaming back and shoulders and wondered if she was turning into a dirty old woman at twenty-six. His skin had taken as much of a tan as a redhead could expect and was beginning to turn pink on the high spots. He let the log fall.

  “Were you and Jo friends?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer right away, but his expression was painfully eloquent. Where Jo was concerned, this boy’s emotions were close to the surface. Too close.

  Good Lord. Joanne had been ten years older than Bryan. Kit hoped to God her friend had exercised self-control, a rare commodity for Jo under such circumstances.

  “I thought we were friends,” he said sullenly.

  His answer surprised her until she realized what it probably meant: Jo hadn’t responded to his crush. Perhaps her friend had finally begun to develop a sense of propriety and good judgment.

  You wouldn’t approve. He’s not suitable.

  Then again, perhaps she hadn’t.

  Bryan pulled a red bandanna from his back pocket and wiped his face, then tied it around his forehead. He continued cutting pieces from the first trunk until he reached the crotch of the tree. The ground was littered with the debris of the once-live thing he was methodically dismantling. He turned off the saw and set it on the ground, then stretched his back to loosen the kinks.

  With no tree parts crashing down around her, Kit felt safe approaching him once more. “Bryan, did you and Jo arrive at the treasurer’s party together?” She held her breath.

  He laughed. “You think I was invited to that thing?” He leaned against what was left of the tree and said, “I crashed that sucker. Grace Drummond has no use for me.”

  “Did you see Jo before she... ? I mean, you know, did you speak with her?”

  “Tom Jordon asked me the same thing. He’s our police chief. Have you met him?”

  “I’ve had the pleasure,” she deadpanned.

  Bryan grinned. “Guy’s a prime bozo, huh?”

  At least Henry and Bryan agreed about something. “Yes indeed, and he’s not playing nice,” she said. “Won’t share. So did you talk with her?”

  “I wanted to. I wanted to... explain some stuff, you know? Clear the air.” He started picking at the paper bark again. “We’d had, like, this fight. A disagreement, I guess. Anyway, she wouldn’t talk to me.”

  “What did you argue about?”

  “Betrayal.”

  His expression said, Don’t ask, so she didn’t, though it was killing her.

  “Did you notice who she was talking with?”

  He shrugged. “The Drummonds, of course—Grace and Al. Some of the local bigwigs and the people Jo worked with.”

  “Henry David?”

  “King Henry, sure. And his wife, Lady Nip and Tuck.” His eyes narrowed. “Got to suck up to the boss man, right?”

  So the hostility was mutual. But Lady Nip and Tuck? “I met Bettina David this morning,” she said. “She looks like a natural beauty to me.”

  “She ought to. She’s spent enough of her daddy’s money on the wonders of modern medical science.” With both hands he stretched the skin of his face back into a rictus intended, no doubt, to emulate the results of cosmetic surgery.

  “Her father’s rich?”

  He snorted. “Carter Sheridan? What do you think? Owns, like, this humongous multinational conglomerate.”

  “Sheridan hair-care products?” That Sheridan?”

  “Bingo. Plus he owns a few other little companies you might’ve heard of,” he said. “Emerald Valley drink mixes. Conti-Meeker Pharmaceutical. Et cetera, et cetera.”

  “Wow. Talk about deep pockets. Kind of a hodgepodge, though, huh? I mean, what do those companies have in common?”

  He laughed. “Chemicals.”

  Kit thought of the Davids’ lavish lifestyle and absence of gainful employment. The pieces began to fit together. “Henry could’ve done worse than marry into that family,” she observed.

  “That’s how he started that rag of his, the Citizen. With the old man’s money. A wedding gift, can you beat that? Bettina asks, Daddy gives.”

  Something about that didn’t sit right. Then it came to her. “Bryan, the Citizen was started the year after Anita died.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So Henry couldn’t have had Sheridan’s money back then. He couldn’t have been married to Bettina back then because she would’ve been... Let’s see, she’s about forty now.”

  Bryan’s bark of laughter stopped her short. Again he performed that grotesque finger facelift and announced, “Bettina will be fifty-two next month, Kit.”

  “No!”

  “She was nineteen when she married Henry. His first wife wasn’t even cold. They’d been carrying on for, like, a year behind her back.” His hatred was palpable.

  “What do you have against Bettina?” she asked.

  “If it wasn’t for that bitch, my grandfather would still be alive.”

  Chapter Five

  MY GRANDFATHER WOULD still be—

  “Bryan, what are you saying?”

  “I said it. He’d still be alive.” There was a mulish set to his features.

  What could he mean except that if Bettina hadn’t had an affair with Henry, then Anita might not have taken up with Ray, and Ray wouldn’t have killed her and—

  Good Lord, could it get more complicated?

  “Bryan—”

  “Forget it.” He picked up the saw. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m not going to say anything else till I have the proof. Then I’ll show everyone.”

  Proof. So the kid was conducting some sort of investigation of his own. Pratte had a sudden infestation of amateur sleuths. Kit knew she wouldn’t get anywhere badgering Bryan for details, and decided to back down gracefully. For the moment.

  He started to turn back to his work, and she stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Bryan, I need to know some things about how it was when you found Jo.” She felt him stiffen. “Can you tell me about it?”

  The depth of emotion in his glittering eyes rocked her. It might have been anguish she saw, or loathing. Maybe even remorse. Possibly some unholy mixture of all three. He’d loved Jo, she was pretty certain. Had he hated her, too?

  “No,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Please. I loved her, too, Bryan,” she whispered, her grip tightening. “She was like a sister to me. Closer. I need... I just need to hear it all.” She released him. “I know you hurt, but I hurt, too, and I need to hear it.”

  When he met her eyes, the world-weariness she saw shocked her. His resemblance to his grandfather was startling. She saw his Adam’s apple rise and fall. His eyes bore a suspicious sheen. He cleared his throat and fiddled with the chain on his saw.

  “After Jo wouldn’t talk to me, I stuck around long enough to get half-crocked. I guess I kinda just hung around to ride her case, you know, like glare at her and stuff from a distance when she was trying to talk to people. Let her see me getting sloshed. You know. Rattle her.” He shrugged, then smirked at the memory. “Real mature, huh? Well, so anyway, I went to snag one last beer, and that’s when I lost sight of her.”

  “How long had the party been going on at that point?” Kit asked.

  “Hour, maybe a little more. So I couldn’t find her and I figured the hell with her, I’m outta here, only I didn’t want to cut right through the party and run into Grace Drummond, so I sorta skirted around the edge of the lawn, through the trees. That’s when I found her.”

  He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “She was on—” He swallowed convulsively. “She was on the ground, behind a bunch of these.” He slapped the birch trunk. “No one would’ve seen her from the party. Which I guess was the point, huh? And she wasn’t... making a sound.”

  A shudder raced through Kit. “But she was conscious, right?” According to Noah.

  He took a deep breath. “Yeah. She was fight
ing hard to breathe, turning, like, blue. You could see she knew what was happening to her.”

  “But she couldn’t tell anyone who did it.”

  A long pause, then a whispered, “No.”

  “Bryan.” She waited for him to look at her. “Who do you think did it?”

  A subtle change came into his eyes. He was staring at her but seeing something or someone else, she knew. Finally he said simply, “The same one that did the first.”

  “The first?” He couldn’t mean the same person who killed... “Anita David?” She swallowed hard. “Bryan, your grandfather murdered Anita David.”

  His smile was one of gentle tolerance, and a shiver scuttled down her spine. “People ignore what’s, like, right in front of their eyes when it goes against what they think they know,” he said.

  Jo used to say the very same thing. What was he trying to tell her? That Ray Whittaker didn’t murder Anita David?

  Bryan powered up the chainsaw. “People are lazy, Kit. Up here.” He tapped his head. “Afraid of new ideas when they think they know what’s what. Afraid to shake up the status quo, you know?”

  It was like running full speed into a wall. The sick suspicion that she’d never find the answers she needed, because she was asking all the wrong questions.

  “Bryan. Why did you move to Pratte?”

  He flashed a Ray Whittaker grin and said, “To shake up the status quo. Why else?”

  Max alerted them to his master’s divine presence just then, and they turned to see Noah crossing the lawn.

  “So, what did you want to see me about?” he asked, all business.

  “Do you mind if we get out of the sun? My Irish complexion has reached its limit.” And I want to see Ray Whittaker’s wallpaper.

  Noah stared unblinkingly just long enough to let her know he wasn’t fooled for an instant. “Come on.” He turned and led the way back to the house. Max trotted along with them as far as the porch, then took off toward his siesta spot again. Noah opened the screen door and held it so she could precede him.

  “Does Bryan always drive himself like that?” she asked.

  “He’s a hard worker, but he’s really been overdoing it lately.”

  “Since Jo died?” She glanced over her shoulder and caught something unguarded in his eyes before he shuttered them. Something at once wary and menacing. Something that made her nape prickle.

  “You two have yourselves a nice little confab?” he asked.

  She turned to face him squarely. “Was Bryan in love with Joanne?”

  The question didn’t seem to surprise him. “Yes.”

  “Was she in love with him?”

  “No.” Just like that.

  Go for it, girl. You’re on a roll. “Were they lovers?”

  He smiled. “That’s so quaint. I like that. ‘Were they lovers?’”

  Something about the way Noah said “lovers,” wrapping that southern silk around each syllable, made her insides clench. Way down low. And that irritated the hell out of her.

  He moved around her to cross the slate-floored porch and hold open the door to the house. Walking through, she found herself in what looked like a breakfast room, with a round, glass-topped table and caned Breuer chairs. Apparently not every furnishing dated from the sixties.

  He led her past the huge, old-fashioned kitchen into a parlor. Threadbare Oriental rug, sofa and love seat, age-darkened wainscoting, and—she smiled—faded green floral wallpaper. The room even smelled old underneath the lemon oil. She waited as he crossed the room and opened a door adjacent to his medical office. He called to Alice.

  “Would you bring Bryan a pitcher of something cold and some sunblock? I think there’s a tube in the blue bathroom.” He started to close the door and turned back. “And harass him till he uses it, okay?”

  Kit heard Alice’s nicotine-rusted “No problem, Noah,” and knew Bryan didn’t stand a chance. He’d probably be given a choice between wearing that sunblock and eating it.

  She followed him into the kitchen. The glass-fronted cabinets were knotty pine, the small black-and-white floor tiles worn and chipped, but clean. He opened the squat, rounded refrigerator and pulled out a pizza box.

  “Lunch around here isn’t exactly haute cuisine,” he said, detaching a slice from the congealed, half-eaten pie, “but you’re welcome to join me.” He took a bite.

  She patted her midsection and reminded him, “Etta’s waffles.”

  He grunted. Enough said. “Free cholesterol test with every fill-up.” He pulled off a second slice, grabbed a paper napkin, and led her out of the kitchen and back to the covered porch. “It’s too nice to stay indoors. Your complexion’ll be safe out here.”

  She sat on a wrought-iron chair whose ornate curlicues were softened by multiple layers of white enamel, while Noah settled himself on a matching cushioned chaise that let him stretch out his long legs. He knew precisely what he was doing to her, the bastard. He’d given her a taste of the interior, but just that. Kit was itching to explore. She just knew Jo wouldn’t have been put off this easily. But then, Jo had her own methods. Which led Kit to the next order of business.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” she charged.

  He paused midbite, his expression asking her to jog his memory.

  She wasn’t about to go through the “lover” thing again. “Were Jo and Bryan sleeping together?”

  “Sleeping?”

  She itched to choke that impish twinkle out of his eyes. “Were they having sex, goddammit!” She shot a quick look out to the lawn, but apparently her outburst hadn’t carried to Bryan’s ears.

  He shrugged. “Beats me.”

  All that for a Beats me? “So. Jo didn’t return Bryan’s affection. And we don’t know if they were lovers, “ she said defiantly. “You want to know what I figure, I figure it’s a good bet she had a thing going with you.”

  There. She’d said it.

  He looked downright amused, damn him. He swallowed his mouthful of pizza and said, “Why didn’t you ask me when we first met? I know you were thinking it.”

  “I did ask you when we first met.”

  “You asked if I knew who she was seeing. That’s not the same thing, is it?”

  She leaned forward, a surge of blood pressure lending bite to her words. “I’m trying to find out the most basic things about my friend’s life in this town, Noah, and you’re sure as hell not making it any easier for me. So if you’re through playing your little games, I could use a straight answer.”

  His amusement evaporated. “I don’t date my patients, Kit.”

  “‘Date’? What a quaint term for what we’re talking about.”

  His gaze snapped to her face, and she was irrationally pleased to see a glimmer of respect in his eyes.

  “And would you admit it if you had ‘dated’ Jo?” she persisted.

  He took his time answering, and she could tell he was giving the question serious consideration. “It would depend who asked, and why. Since it’s you who ask, and under these exceptional circumstances, I would have to say yes.”

  “Oh,” was all she could think to say for long seconds. Then she added, “But let me guess. She wanted to.”

  He stared at her a long moment, then tossed the pizza onto the table, his appetite apparently gone. Kit wondered if the southern gentleman in him was hesitant to answer truthfully and besmirch a lady’s reputation. “She wanted to, yes. But for the wrong reasons.”

  Her breath caught. How could he know Jo’s reasons for getting close to him, unless...

  This guy, he found out about the book.

  The door to the house swung open and Alice bulled through, carrying a sweaty-cold liter bottle of root beer and a tube of SPF 30 sunblock. She barely acknowledged them on her way outside. Kit and Noah watched Bryan’s grateful acceptance of the soda as he drank straight from the bottle, and his grudging use of the cream after Alice’s hectoring.

  Kit returned her attention to the porch, with the idle thought th
at this patio furniture must have dated from Ray’s tenure. Then it came to her.

  “What’s wrong?” Noah asked, watching her face.

  “Nothing, really. It’s just that I recall seeing this table and a couple of these chairs in one of those old snapshots Henry showed us this morning.” She decided to get to the point. “Why didn’t you tell me about Ray when I spoke to you yesterday?” Assuming Noah hadn’t discovered Jo’s real reason for moving to Pratte, he couldn’t know the significance of his omission.

  He watched Alice make her way back empty-handed, and thanked her as she trudged through the porch and back into the house. Finally he answered, “I asked you to go home, Kit, to leave this business alone, remember?”

  “So you just decided I was better off not knowing about the parallel murder. Even after you’d agreed to help me!”

  “Parallel?”

  “An accurate term, I’d say. Henry said you agree Jo was the victim of a copycat killer.”

  “That would seem the only logical explanation,” he said.

  She spent a few moments pondering this “logical” explanation. “Am I the only one who just doesn’t get it? One of Grace Drummond’s guests, some well-respected member of the community, suddenly takes a notion to duplicate the most notorious event in Pratte’s history? After thirty-two years?”

  Her gaze drifted to Bryan, sitting on the tree stump drinking his root beer. What was it he’d said? People ignore what’s right in front of their eyes. Was she still asking all the wrong questions?

  “If that’s the only logical explanation, maybe we should start looking for illogical ones,” she said. At Noah’s curious look she added, “Bryan said Jo was killed by the person who did the first murder.”

  He stiffened, his hazel eyes boring into hers. She’d struck a nerve. Slowly he turned that cold gaze on the youth outside. “Bryan has his own agenda,” he said.

  No kidding. “Which is...?”

  “I wish I knew,” he murmured, still studying the boy. “He’s been nosing around a lot since he came to Pratte. I figured he needed to come to grips with his heritage.”

  “Must be a mindblower to learn you’re descended from a cold-blooded murderer. Maybe he thinks his grandfather was innocent.”