“It’s lip balm.”
“Whatever, come on already.”
She swung her purse to her shoulder. “You owe me for this.”
“Yeah, well, add it to the list.”
They blew by Mrs. Winningham who was weeding her flower bed. “Wait! I want to talk to you two!”
“Some other time, Mrs. Winningham!” Carlotta promised the woman as they ran for the garage.
“But someone has been parking on the street and watching our houses! Don’t you care?”
“No!” they yelled in unison, ducking under the opening garage door and bolting for the Monte Carlo.
“Christ,” Carlotta muttered under her breath. “It’s probably that Detective Terry snooping around.”
“Yeah, probably,” Wesley said in a noncommittal voice.
Or any one of several other undesirables, she conceded miserably. “Do you have the address?” she asked as she backed out.
“Yeah, it’s in Buckhead.” He read off the street name and number and Carlotta frowned. “Hmm, that’s a nice area. Did he mention the neighborhood?”
“Yeah, it’s Martinique Estates. Know it?”
She frowned. “Maybe. It sounds familiar, but I can’t place it.” She’d probably crashed a party there sometime, but didn’t want to say so in front of her brother. Besides, those days were behind her—no more party-crashing. She’d made an exception the other night and it had put her in the path of Peter Ashford, a scene which may have caused the humiliating takedown today at work. Her skin crawled at the memory and she touched the tender place on her throat. Thank God Lindy hadn’t called the police or the situation could have spiraled into something much more messy.
“Did someone have a heart attack in their home?” she asked.
“Coop didn’t say, but that’s a good guess.”
Unbidden, her parents came to mind. They would be in their mid-fifties now. If her mother was still drinking, she couldn’t be in good health. And her father had smoked like a chimney and enjoyed his bourbon. Occasionally she wondered if she and Wesley would even be notified if they were sick…or worse. But according to the postcard that Wesley had kept hidden, they were still kicking.
She glanced sideways at her brother in the dark cab of the car, unspoken words simmering on her tongue. But his face was a mask of concentration. It wasn’t an appropriate time or place to bring up their parents’ latest communication.
Ten minutes later they were winding through the community of Buckhead, Atlanta’s premier address, featuring enormous tree-laden lots and even more enormous amenity-laden houses. Old money met new money behind the soaring gates of the private communities where residents lifted a collective nose at the rest of Atlanta. Carlotta knew, because she’d grown up in just such a neighborhood.
“You missed the turn,” Wesley said, exasperated.
She frowned and looked in her rearview mirror. “I’m doing the best I can. It’s so dark out here!”
“Turn around!”
“Shut up and put on your seat belt!”
They bickered until they pulled up to the wrought-iron gates of Martinique Estates. A squad car with a silent, flashing light sat next to the gatehouse.
“Lot of commotion for a heart attack victim,” she said, impressed.
A security guard accompanied by a uniformed police office approached the car as she rolled down the window. Wesley leaned forward and flashed an official-looking badge with his photo and something about the medical examiner’s office. The policeman looked at it, then handed it back and signaled for the gatekeeper to let them in.
Recalling all the tickets that Wesley had counterfeited for her, she frowned. “Is that a fake badge?”
“What? No. Coop gave me this. I’m official. Turn here.”
She did and again had the feeling that the street name was familiar for some reason. She stared up at the monstrous brick houses that looked more like compounds than homes and, God help her, she felt a stab of envy. Money didn’t buy happiness, but it made certain aspects of life a whole hell of a lot easier. She’d lived on both sides of that wrought-iron gate, so she knew.
Wesley was craning for house numbers, but that became a moot point when they both caught sight of a squad car and an ambulance, lights flashing, and various other official-looking vehicles parked at angles on the curb and in the downward-sloping driveway. The megamansion sat below curb level, judging by the way the land fell away and by the downward gaze of the onlookers. “I think we found the right house.” She guided the car closer, picking up an approaching cop in her headlights, then stopped and zoomed down the window.
“You need to keep moving, ma’am.”
“We’re here to help transport the body,” Wesley said, sounding amazingly mature. He handed the badge to the cop, who, after scrutinizing it, handed it back. “Okay, but you’ll have to park here and walk onto the property. The pool is down there.”
“Pool?” Wesley asked.
“The woman drowned,” the cop said curtly.
Carlotta shuddered, then looked at Wesley. “Do you see your boss’s vehicle?”
“No, but he’s probably parked near the house.”
“I’ll pull over and wait a few minutes. If you don’t come back or call my cell, I’ll know you found him and I’ll go.”
He sighed. “You worry too much.”
“I know. Go.”
He scrambled out of the vehicle and disappeared down the driveway. Carlotta pulled over to the curb and put the car into Park, giving the cop a little wave. Headlights shone in her rearview mirror, and then a car parked behind her. A suited man climbed out and walked by her car, his destination obviously the house. With a shock she realized it was Detective Jack Terry, just as he turned and recognized her. He stopped and tapped on her window. Reluctantly, she zoomed it down.
“Ms. Wren, what are you doing here?”
“Just dropping off my brother, Detective. He got a job with a local funeral home operator who contracts with the morgue to…uh…move bodies.”
He pursed his mouth. “Did he now? Well, that explains why a hearse was parked in front of your place a couple of days ago.”
She glared. “Stop spying on us.”
His gaze raked over the Monte Carlo and one side of his mouth lifted. “I like the car—not exactly what I thought you’d be driving, though.”
She put her hand on the gearshift to keep from swinging at him. “Good night, Detective.”
Suddenly another set of headlights shone in her rearview mirror, these from a smaller car approaching very fast. Detective Terry flattened himself against the Monte Carlo as the little car careened past and screeched to a halt at a haphazard angle, leaving the smell of burnt rubber in the air. It was a dark Porsche, but she couldn’t discern the model.
“Looks like the husband is home,” the detective said, his voice rueful. “This is always the hard part.”
Carlotta felt an unexpected stab of compassion for the detective as he walked toward the man who flung himself out of the car. How horrible it must be to work with angry, distraught, and sometimes violent people, day in and day out.
And based on the body language of the man who was trying to push past the detective, those were just the survivors.
Riveted, she watched as Detective Terry visibly tried to calm the man. They were about the same height, but the detective’s bulk gave him the advantage of leverage. He led the man to where they could look down upon the house. From the way the man bent over and gripped his knees, she presumed they could see the pool from where they stood—and the body. Then the husband turned, as though to gather himself, and lifted his head in Carlotta’s direction.
The breath froze in her chest as recognition slammed into her.
Peter Ashford, looking disheveled and inebriated.
She glanced at the monstrous house, eerily illuminated by uplights and headlights. This was Peter’s house?
Which meant, she realized with dawning horror, that the woman w
ho was dead was…Angela Ashford.
14
T he lost look on Peter’s face made Carlotta’s heart swell in agony. Before she had time to think, she was out of the car and moving toward him in the semidarkness. “Peter?”
He turned at the sound of her voice and when he saw her, his face creased in confusion. “Carlotta? What are you doing here?”
“I dropped off Wesley. He’s here…in an official capacity,” she said vaguely. “We had no idea this was your house…that Angela—” She broke off, at a loss for words.
He embraced her and she could feel desperation palpating through his heated skin. She could also smell the gin on his breath and on his shirt. He was drunk, and she wondered how much his clinging to her was to keep himself upright. Then he buried his face in her hair and pulled her body against his. She ached to give him the comfort he sought, but when she realized that Detective Terry was gaping at them, she reluctantly pulled away and cleared her throat.
Detective Terry’s eyebrows sat high on his forehead. “I take it you two know each other?”
“Old friends,” Carlotta supplied quickly, then her gaze caught on the pool about twenty yards below them, shrouded in the mist that rose from the surface of the heated water. Angela’s body, clad in black, lay on the pale background of the concrete pool surround, her limbs at awkward angles. Carlotta swallowed hard against the cold truth that Angela was dead.
Peter looked at the scene and dragged his hand down his face. “I have to go to her,” he said, and the detective relented with a nod, falling into step behind him.
Carlotta didn’t know whether to stay or to go, or to walk down with the men. She didn’t relish seeing the body up close, but she also didn’t want to just leave. She hugged herself, running her hands up and down her arms to ward off the damp chill that blanketed everything that didn’t move—which would include Angela’s body, she noted ruefully.
Peter turned back. “Carlotta…I could use a friend right now.”
She hesitated, darting a glance at the detective, who looked extremely irritated at the idea of her going with them.
“Try to stay out of the way,” Detective Terry said, then continued tromping down the incline.
She followed them, careful to stay behind while still in Peter’s peripheral vision. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. He seemed so…so…disconnected. She wondered if he was in shock. No tears, no prostrate hysterics. Maybe the alcohol had numbed his senses, but back when they had dated, alcohol had always made him more emotional.
He moved like an automaton, staring straight ahead, his hands hanging limply by his sides as he walked by the vehicles parked in the paved turnaround in front of the house, including a car with the medical examiner’s shield on the side and a plain white van that Carlotta assumed belonged to Cooper Craft. As they approached the tall wrought-iron fence that enclosed the pool, Carlotta glanced around nervously.
She took in the palatial lines of the brick house, the sweeping steps that led from the turnaround, the huge fountain, the two-story entryway and the soaring Palladian windows, eerily dark. The house looked cold, empty…dead. By contrast, the gated pool area adjacent to the house was blazing with lights, the deep water an unnatural blue. With steam rising from the surface, the water resembled a witch’s cauldron. Taking deep breaths against the turmoil in her stomach, she followed the men down a short lighted stone path to a gate that had been propped open. The scent of chlorine burned the air, which seemed swollen with humidity and sadness.
Wesley and Cooper stood off to the side of the pool next to a small waterfall, apparently waiting for the police to complete their investigation. A youngish man with Medical Examiner on his jacket stood over Angela’s body, taking photos. Carlotta made eye contact with Wesley, who looked confused at her appearance. Then his gaze went to Peter and back to her, wide-eyed. She nodded, trying to answer the questions that must be whirling through his mind, and walked over to where they stood.
“Isn’t that Peter Ashford?” Wesley whispered.
“Yes,” she murmured.
“And that’s his wife?”
“Yes.”
“Jesus,” Wesley said. “Nice place.”
“Wesley!”
He looked contrite and pressed his lips together.
“Do you know the family?” Cooper asked them asked under his breath.
“That’s sis’s old boyfriend,” Wesley offered. “The one she was crying—”
“Do you know what happened?” she cut in, shooting Wesley a lethal look.
“Accidental drowning is what I was told,” Cooper offered quietly. “She must have fallen in.”
Her gaze cut to Angela’s still body and the gray wetness around her on the concrete from her saturated clothing. When she’d been shopping for swimsuits, Angela had mentioned that she didn’t know how to swim. She was still wearing the chunky-heeled black knee boots that Carlotta had sold to her—they must have felt like lead when she’d gone under the surface of the water. The pool was about twenty-five feet wide—she would have been a mere body’s length from safety. The vision sent a shudder through Carlotta. The entire scene was surreal, an unimaginable nightmare.
“The maid found her,” Wesley added, nodding to an open sliding glass door leading into the house. A small, older woman stood in the doorway, her shoulders hunched, a handkerchief covering her face.
The uniformed officers apparently had been waiting for Detective Terry to arrive because when they saw him, they straightened from the body. Peter’s knees buckled and Detective Terry steadied him, guiding him toward the open door into the expansive house. She heard the detective say something about coffee. The maid scurried aside and turned on a light. The wall facing the pool was made almost completely of glass. From where Carlotta stood, she saw Peter sink into a chair around a table in a room that appeared to be a sunroom or a casual dining room. He covered his face with his hands.
Carlotta’s body strained toward him, but she forced her attention away from the man with whom she had been so recently and so bizarrely reunited and back to the scene unfolding around the pool.
The officers talking to Detective Terry gestured toward the water, perhaps indicating where they had found the body. At the end of the pool sat an outdoor kitchen with a stone fireplace, appliances and a bar. From her vantage point she could see at least two bottles of gin, along with a silver flask that looked like the one Angela had drunk from in the dressing room. Behind the bar area was a small cottage—the guesthouse, Carlotta presumed, recalling what Peter had said about the pool addition being more than he had envisioned.
But she silently applauded Angela’s ambition. It was a garden paradise, with huge sago palms in clay pots, beds of lush flowers and a flagstone path to a hot tub lined with mosaic tiles. It was a picture out of Better Home and Gardens…except for the body lying poolside. Angela Ashford hadn’t lived to enjoy the luxurious addition to her posh home.
Next to the pool, Detective Terry had been in discussion with the medical examiner, and now knelt over the body, pulling a set of plastic gloves from his jacket pocket. He snapped them on and lifted the mass of golden hair that had fallen across Angela’s neck. Then he lifted her lifeless hands, one at a time. Carlotta tried to reconcile the still form lying on the concrete with the animated, angry woman who had been so alive just hours ago. Her stomach rolled, sending acid to the back of her throat; she thought she might be sick.
“Maybe you should go,” Cooper suggested quietly, his mouth near her ear. “This isn’t something that everyone should see, especially if you have a connection to the deceased.”
She nodded, breathing deeply, and turned to leave. She walked to the open door where Peter sat, staring off into the distance, his jaw clenched. He looked up and a desperate look came into his eyes. He lifted his hand to her. With her heart clicking, she stepped into the house, immediately assailed by a sense of grandeur—the scale of the wood-lined ceilings alone was awe-inspiring.
“
Will you close the door?” he asked, turning his head away.
She did, glad to shut out the sounds of hushed voices and staticky police radios. The vacuum of the door closing sealed her into a room where the air was surprisingly stale, as if the house was rarely used. Through the wide doorway in the back of the room Carlotta caught a glimpse of the maid bustling around in a large kitchen. Hallways and stairways that extended out of her line of vision spoke of the house’s spaciousness. The scent of strong coffee wafted on the air.
The room she stood in was another designer feat, a den with a soaring brick fireplace, built-in cherry-wood cabinets jammed with expensive-looking bric-a-brac, over-stuffed leather couches and chairs, plus a long carved mahogany table and twelve matching chairs. Peter sat in the chair near the end of the table, his back to the pool, fingering the tip of a flower in what had to be the most hideously huge silk flower arrangement that Carlotta had ever seen.
“We argued about this stupid flower arrangement,” he said, still staring straight ahead.
She stood motionless, letting him talk.
“It didn’t matter that it was ugly,” he said with a laugh. “What mattered was that some upscale florist came to our house and designed it especially for Angela. He even gave it some ridiculous name, and I’d be ashamed to tell you how much it cost. Do you believe that we had a party so that people in the neighborhood could come and look at the damn flower arrangement?”
He looked up as he finished, the anger in his voice traveling to his startling blue eyes, hardening the drunken lines of his face until he looked almost…mean.
Carlotta was glad when the maid appeared with a coffee tray and set it on the table. The woman filled a cup and slid it in front of Peter, then offered Carlotta a watery smile. “Coffee, miss?”
Carlotta shook her head. “I don’t think—”
“Please,” Peter implored. “Sit with me, just for a little while.”
She hesitated, then took the chair opposite him. Too late, she realized it gave her a direct view of Angela’s body. The woman’s pale face was turned toward Carlotta, her eyes slightly open. It was as if she were determined to watch Peter and Carlotta, even in death.
Body Movers Page 12
