Crystal hit him in the face with a pillow. Mom barked a sharp, “Scott!” before he could throw it back. I heaved myself up off the couch and poured us each a tot of B&B. There’s nothing like a small nip of Benedictine & Brandy to round out a successful, if slightly frantic, day.
Finally, since no dishwashing fairy made a magical appearance, we pried ourselves out of our comfortable sprawls and went to work. When the dining room table was cleared and the first massive load swishing in the dishwasher, Scott and I shooed Mom and Crystal to a well-earned rest while we tackled the oversize pots and pans.
Scott, up to his elbows in suds, suddenly said, “Gwynie . . . I may have messed up.”
Not again! I didn’t say it out loud, but my last Santa cookie rose in my throat.
“You know when you asked me about Jeb? Well, I shouldn’t have blown you off. Not that I think you ought to be butting into the cops’ job, but, well, you’re my sister, and . . . murder’s worse than being a snitch, right?”
My hand paused in the midst of drying a six-quart sauce pan. My brain snapped to attention. “Definitely,” I assured him.
“What did Jeb tell you?”
“He turned drama queen, confessing it was all his fault. Says he lost it when he saw Martin collapse and accidently jibbed the wheel.”
“Bullshit.”
“Nobody’s perfect,” I reminded him. Gently. Into the seething silence I added, “He denied any interest in Vanessa Kellerman. Evidently he’s into cradle-robbing. Some seventeen-year-old named Cary Knight has him bagged and tagged.”
Clang! Scott’s hand slipped, banging Mom’s favorite ceramic casserole dish hard against the sink. I squeaked in protest. He stood there, holding the thankfully intact dish and looked down at me, shaking his head. A lock of wavy blond hair slipped down toward his lively blue eyes. “How gullible can you get?” he demanded. “Jeb nails every female he can get his hands on, the more the merrier. He does business with Cary’s father, so, sure, he takes what’s offered, but Jeb monogamous? No way, no how.”
“What business?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Fine.” Scott was right. I had enough problems. “So who’s Jeb sleeping with besides Cary?”
“Hell,” Scott muttered, “where to begin? “I mean, there’s not a boating emergency every minute, is there? You wouldn’t believe what you can see from a berth that overlooks the Yacht Club marina and Fat-cat Row, as well as every boat heading down the Waterway. And I hear things too, lots of stories floating around—”
“For real, or just rumors?”
Scott shrugged. “Where there’s smoke, and all that.”
“So tell me.”
“Vanessa Kellerman for sure. I’ve seen her eyes damn near eat him up when Jeb was sunning on his deck.”
“Doesn’t mean she was sleeping with him.”
“Get real, sis. Take my word for it. And then there’s Martin’s ex-girlfriend—”
“His what?” I nearly dropped the glass pot lid I was drying.
“What?” Scott mocked, blue eyes wide. “You thought Martin went all celibate like you after his divorce? I got news for you, Gwynie. He’s a guy. His latest chick before Vanessa took him by storm was Sherry Lambert.”
I blinked. “Sherry Lambert from Mom’s office?”
“Playgirl. Twice divorced. Really likes a good time. Word is, Jeb took ’em both on, just for the challenge of keeping them from killing each other.”
“That’s sick,” I breathed. “You are saying what I think you’re saying?”
“Menage à trois, baby. And Jeb keeps a few other chicks on the string. He’s like one of those sultans with a harem. He can take his pick.”
My stomach churned. Gullible idiot! “What about Cary?” I asked. Faintly.
“She’s seventeen. She does what she’s told.”
“Including providing alibis.” It wasn’t a question. Dear God, I’d swallowed Jeb’s story hook, line, and sinker. And I’d led Boone Talbot astray as well.
Scott could be wrong.
I needed to dig deeper.
That was a good one. The naive twit who’d believe anything was considering playing detective again.
Scott and I finished up in the kitchen. Before leaving for his apartment over the garage, he enveloped me in a bear hug. “Careful, Sis,” he whispered. “Questions can get dangerous.”
I dead-bolted the door after him, then climbed the stairs to my room, the last vestiges of Christmas cheer draining out of me with each step.
The Saturday after Christmas was relatively quiet at DreamWear. All our costumes came back on time, with little wear and no rips or tears. There would be no costume rush for the Hospital barbecue. Everyone was expected to have some form of Western wear in the closet. We were, after all, the West Coast of Florida and, in spite of snowbirds and tourists never venturing beyond our downtown boutiques, our miles of sandy beachfront, and our golf courses, we were still ranch country. In spite of the landowners who had sold out for housing developments that were rapidly tripling the size of Golden Beach’s population.
It used to be that cattle ranches began on the east side of the Bypass, less than a mile from downtown. Now, except for a hold-out or two—their cattle sandwiched between low-rise condos and trailer parks—you have to drive at least four miles east on our main street, Golden Beach Avenue, before you begin to run into tree and flower nurseries, orchid farms, ostrich farms, horse farms, riding stables, and of course cattle ranches. The Yarnells, who own a remarkable portion of undeveloped land that sprawls over two counties, were farthest out, their property extending well beyond the Arcadia River, where our ruler-straight, ten-mile-long main street came to an end at Bud’s Snook Shack. The Yarnell ranch was, in fact, so large it extended all the way to Three Rivers, a low-lying town southeast of Golden Beach.
Three Rivers was a town caught up, then thrown aside by the development boom in the sixties. Hundreds of miles of roads were paved, street signs erected, ready and waiting for houses that were never built. Gradually, grass grew up through cracks in the pavement and the Florida jungle closed in on each side. Some roads now led nowhere, cut off by the construction of I-75.
A ghost town for more than thirty years, Three Rivers had finally begun to grow from a few houses and businesses clinging to the edges of the Tamiami Trail when newcomers discovered it offered real estate bargains far below the area’s norm. But even now, ninety percent of the aging roads were deserted, so far from civilization that there were always rumors of drag racing, keg parties, cattle rustling, and even small drug-smuggling planes landing on the deserted fringes of a town that was more myth than reality. The isolated roads also offered access to the far reaches of two major ranches, both prime hog-hunting territory.
Not surprisingly, the oddity of a town like Three Rivers was not something I thought about very often. But it was brought home to me with considerable drama as the shop’s front door slammed all the way back, thudding against the wall next to the display window, and a man stomped in. Scott had urged me to keep a real gun amid all the fakes in our accessory chest. I’d refused. At this particular moment I regretted my decision.
The man, who moved so fast he was already within a foot of the counter, was rail thin, maybe six-two without the slouch. Mousy brown hair that looked as if it had never seen shampoo straggled to his shoulders, exaggerating skin so pale the word vampire leaped to mind. His scruffy beard looked somewhere between deliberate growth and couldn’t-be-bothered-to-shave. A closer inspection suggested he might be ill, suffering from depression, or just out of a psych ward. Maybe all three. He was wearing a wrinkled and stained blue chambray shirt and jeans that looked as if he never took them off. Angry sparks lit his sunken eyes. Add in his belligerent stance, and he was more than a little menacing.
I’ve always enjoyed being alone in the shop, just me and my costumes. But not now, not today. I gulped and stood my ground, summoning my best, if a trifle shaky, customer smile. “
How can I help you?”
“You can tell that miserable, thieving brother of yours not to shoot Yarnell pigs!”
I took a second look, staring into blue-green eyes I’d never forget if I lived to be one hundred. My legs wobbled. I sat down abruptly on my stool. “Chad?”
“Damn right!” growled the ragged apparition before me. “I tried to track Scott down, but he was off in the Gulf somewhere, so you can pass along the message. Keep off Yarnell land.”
I wanted to cry. This was my hero, the great crush of my teenage years? I’d seen homeless men living in cardboard boxes on the streets of New York who looked better than Chad Yarnell did at the moment.
My brain went on autopilot. “I didn’t know you were back in town.”
“Shocked the family Christmas Eve,” he drawled, his tone somewhere between sarcasm and self-mockery. “Living at the ranch ’til I find a place of my own. This little errand is Mom’s way of seeing that I earn my keep.”
Poor Margaret. Margaret Yarnell, with the aid of Chad’s younger sister and her husband, had run the Yarnell ranch for years, ever since her husband had been killed in a five-car pile-up in fog on I-75. She was probably trying to get Chad to reach out, touch the world that once was his. Talk. Re-integrate. Good luck with that. Her ploy didn’t seem to be working.
Chad knew I was Scott’s sister. I guess that counted. I’d never been sure he had any idea who I was.
In the careful, calm tones one uses to a toddler or an adult on the brink, I told Chad about the Hospital Auxiliary barbecue and Mom assigning Scott the job of providing the wild hogs. And that the land where Scott and his father used to hunt was now a golf course surrounded by a thousand homes. As I spoke, I could see a semblance of awareness flow back into the man who had once been the Prince of Golden Beach. He shoved his scraggly hair back off his face, glanced down at his stained and torn clothes. He closed his eyes for a moment, then stepped back a good two feet from the counter.
“Tell Scott he can shoot all the Yarnell hogs he needs,” he mumbled. “Damn hogs turn the ranch roads into wallows, so good riddance. I’ll explain to Mom. No problem.”
I thanked him, but my brain was still on hold. I couldn’t take it in.
“Laura?”
I was so astonished he knew my name, I made no effort to correct him.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you.” Chad looked down at sneakers that were as battered as the rest of him. “I’ve had a few problems,” he muttered. “It’s going to take a while, maybe a long while, to adjust.”
And, naturally, I leaped at his apology, all too ready to forgive him anything. No matter how changed, this was Chad, my hero. I found myself confiding something I never, ever, talked about. “I had a bad time in New York,” I told him. “More than bad. It’s been five years, and sometimes it’s still a struggle. I know it’s not the same thing,” I added hastily because I was pretty darn sure he’d seen and done far worse things than I could even imagine, “but at least it helps me to understand.”
Chad remained head down, shoulders slouched. I thought he was going to take off, but he added, “Did I hear you have a new name now?”
“Gwyn. Gwyn Halliday. You know how kids are. I thought it sounded more exotic for a designer trying to make her way in the big city.”
“Yeah. Kid’s dreams. We all had those once.” Without ever looking up, he slouched toward the door at half the speed of his initial charge. With his hand on the knob, he paused, turned. Across twenty feet the turquoise eyes flashed something undecipherable, but no words came.
I watched the broken-down love of my life walk out, watched the door slowly swing shut behind him. Then I broke into great gulping rivers of tears.
Chapter 11
I was still red-eyed and mopping away tears when Alyce Jahnke walked through the door. I grabbed a whole handful of tissues from the box in my lap and scrubbed at my face, hiccuping. It could have been worse, I supposed. Alyce could have been a customer.
“Gwynie! What’s happened?”
I tried to be calm as I recounted the scene with Chad. I tried to act like only the shock of seeing him in such bad shape had sent me over the edge, but Alyce wasn’t fooled.
“Oh, Gwyn,” she said on a long whoosh of breath. “Not you too. Every girl in town was in love with Chad Yarnell, but I thought you had better sense. That boy was the moon. Us local girls were nothing more than silly groupies with our feet planted firmly in Florida sand. No way were we ever going to reach that high. I don’t think we were even blips on his radar. Sure, the Yarnells worked the land, but that land is darn near half the county. Chad dated nothing but the cream of the crop. Remember? There was that girl from some hi-falutin’ prep school up in Sarasota?”
“The state senator’s daughter.” I sighed.
“And the one his mom imported from West Palm, some society deb.”
I nodded. Everything Alyce said was true, but it didn’t matter. Chad had been the glorious golden dream that kept me going when I realized I was different from the people around me. That I was an exotic in a sea of healthy sun-tanned natives who were happy in service jobs, earning their daily bread by catering to tourists and snowbirds, while I wanted to soar.
And now, here we both were—Chad and I—our wings clipped, back where we started.
“Sorry,” I muttered. “I know it’s silly, but it’s hard to see a dream fall so far.”
Alyce’s expression shifted from concerned to guilty. “And I’m about to make it worse. That’s why I’m here. I’m sorry, I probably shouldn’t be passing on gossip, but I thought you ought to know . . .”
Now what? “Tell me,” I said.
“There was talk at Christmas Mass—lousy timing, I know, but few of us are candidates for sainthood, right? Word is, Vanessa Kellerman’s been meeting a guy at some sports tavern down in Three Rivers. A place with a band on weekends . . . and pool tables.” Alyce paused, eyes dark with intent, waiting for the significance to sink in.
“No.” I shook my head. “No way. She must be ten years older—”
“Have you taken a good look at baby brother? He’s almost as much of a babe magnet as Chad was.”
“I’m going to be sick.”
“You gotta face facts, Gwyn. Scott and Jeb are the biggest hunks in town, and most everyone knows Jeb’s got a mean streak. He’s not ‘couth,’ as my mother used to say, while Scott loves everybody, and everybody loves Scott.”
Not the county cops, the local cops, and the Florida Highway Patrol, I thought as my stomach bottomed out. If Scott’s name came up in an investigation, they weren’t going to cut him any slack. How easy, they’d point out, for Scott to gain access to any boat. And tie a bag of peanuts, or maybe peanut butter, to a Christmas tree.
Never! He wouldn’t. I knew it. But would the cops believe it?
I felt a bit better when I realized Jeb Brannigan had exactly the same problem. He, too, could have sabotaged the Christmas tree. And Vanessa Kellerman. Mustn’t forget darling Nessa, who had so much to gain. Much better motive than Scott or Jeb, yet she was a woman who could turn men blind, deaf, and dumb. Twist the strongest around her little finger like a wet noodle.
Maybe even the cops.
In a cloud of I’m sorry, I probably shouldn’t have said anything, and Forget I mentioned it, Alyce slunk out and returned to Caroline’s Fabrics. I called Scott, who was on a rescue, but fortunately not so far out that he was beyond range of a cell tower. At the last moment, my better judgment won out over my sisterly need to know. I passed along the news about Chad’s return and his carte blanche on boar-hunting. I didn’t mention Vanessa Kellerman. That would come later when I could tackle Scott face to face.
It was four-forty. I closed early and went home.
If Scott came home that night, it was long after I went to bed. And he was gone before I got up on Sunday morning. Perhaps he hadn’t come home at all. Which would be all right most nights, but not, dammit, when I wanted to talk with him. And I certainly did
n’t want to confront him at the marina, where anyone, particularly Jeb, might overhear.
Grumpily, I scanned the Sunday Herald-Tribune, then started on the latest issue of the Gazette, Golden Beach’s twice-weekly newspaper, looking for details on the Hospital Fund-raiser. Naturally, Mom expected me to be on call for anything and everything that day, so it might be a good idea to know exactly what activities were planned.
I was folding the paper to the article on the barbecue when a headline caught my eye. SUSPICIOUS DEATH. More on Martin? Were the police admitting to doubts about how he died? Barbecue forgotten, I started to read.
Basil Janecek, age 86, was found dead in his bed on Christmas Eve. Although police report his death may be from natural causes, his live-in health care worker, Virginia Mills, has disappeared and is considered a person of interest . Neighbors report Mills has not been seen in more than a week.
Not Martin, but a second suspicious death within a two-week period. Definitely strange—not Golden Beach at all. Prickles swept from my scalp to the tips of my fingers. What was that line from Macbeth? By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.
The article went on to say in terse newspaper terms that, according to neighbors, Mills had obtained a Power of Attorney so she could handle Janecek’s affairs. She had seemed competent, but kept to herself, not mixing with anyone in the neighborhood. A thorough audit of Janecek’s finances was planned.
I assumed that meant police were suspicious that Virginia Mills had emptied Basil Janecek’s accounts and gotten out of Dodge in a hurry.
The house phone rang. Major surprise. Both heart and head did a happy dance as Boone Talbot asked me to the barbecue. Good thing Crystal wasn’t around because my aura had to be well beyond neon, maybe even giving off sparks. Not only was I willing to put aside Boone’s harsh words the last time we met, but there was absolutely no one I wanted to talk to more. Not even Scott. Though perhaps not quite for the reasons Boone presumed.
Death by Marriage Page 10
