Low Pressure

by Sandra Brown

  For a time they clung to one another. He said all the things he knew she wanted to hear. He told her that Van Durbin and his ilk would soon be exploiting someone else’s personal tragedy, and that, until then, they would rely on each other for support as they always had.

  Eventually she sat up and blotted her eyes. “There’s something else. I hesitate to tell you because it’s almost as upsetting as the business with Van Durbin.”

  “What could be that bad?”

  “Bellamy is with Denton Carter.”

  He hadn’t seen that coming. He’d been as shocked and put off as Olivia when Bellamy informed them that she had booked a flight with him. Some situations were best left alone. But, after sensing the animosity on both sides, he’d thought yesterday’s flight would be the last they saw of him.

  “By ‘with,’ what do you mean, exactly?”

  “I shudder to think. She told me that Van Durbin had confronted her and Dent as they left our building. I think it was a slip of the tongue, because her voice skipped and then she went on talking in a rush and didn’t mention him again.”

  He pressed her hand reassuringly. “There could be a simple explanation for why he was there. Something about payment for yesterday’s charter, maybe. Don’t borrow trouble.”

  She gave him an odd look.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You said those very words to me when Susan started going out with him and I wanted to put a stop to it. I didn’t have to borrow trouble, Howard. He is trouble, and I still blame him for what happened to our daughter.”

  “That ought to hold her.” The locksmith tested the newly installed lock on the utility room door, then moved aside and invited Dent to test it for himself.

  Satisfied, he nodded. “Thanks for coming out so soon. What’s the charge?”

  Dent paid him in cash and tipped him ten bucks for treating the repair as an emergency. After seeing the locksmith on his way out the back door, he went into the living room, where Bellamy was in conversation with the two police officers who had responded to their summons.

  She was sitting on the sofa; the officers were standing amid the boxes of knickknacks and books she still hadn’t unpacked. Dent, who had an ingrained aversion to cops, didn’t venture any farther into the room but propped his shoulder against the door frame, which was a good observation point.

  He had followed Bellamy home from Lyston Electronics, keeping one eye on the road and the other on his rearview mirror. He didn’t believe Van Durbin had followed them, but he probably didn’t need to. Surely EyeSpy had a battalion of underpaid Internet geeks doing research and electronic investigative work. Finding out Bellamy’s new home address would have been duck soup.

  When they reentered her house and saw again the evidence of last night’s intruder, Dent had said, “With Van Durbin in town, you’ve got more to worry about than media coverage of this. Call the police.”

  She’d capitulated without further discussion, apparently having seen the wisdom of having the break-in on record. Two uniformed officers had arrived a few minutes later. They’d questioned both of them, walked through every room of the house as well as the backyard, poking about. They’d called in another officer to dust for fingerprints. He’d already come and gone.

  The questions being put to Bellamy now were similar to those the sheriff’s deputy had asked of Dent earlier at the airfield, the implication being that the vandalism was retribution for something she had done.

  “Have you had any cross words with a neighbor? Maid? Yardman?”

  She shook her head no.

  “Co-worker?”

  “I don’t have co-workers.”

  One of the policemen looked over at Dent. “You said you followed her home last night?”

  “I flew her to Houston and back yesterday. She left something in my airplane. I was returning it to her.”

  He nodded and, with one eyebrow eloquently arched, exchanged a meaningful look with his partner. Going back to Bellamy, he said, “We, uh, took the pair of underwear for evidence. Using a personal garment like that to paint the words on the wall… Well, ma’am, it suggests the perpetrator has, uh, intimate knowledge of you.”

  “Or he’s read my book.”

  One’s face lit up and he snapped his fingers. “I thought you looked familiar. You’re that author.” To his partner, he said, “She’s famous.”

  She passed a copy of Low Pressure to the one who hadn’t recognized her. “It’s a murder mystery. Fact based. The victim was my sister. Her underpants became a key element of the investigation.”

  “Any idea what was meant by the warning?”

  “Isn’t the meaning obvious?” Dent said impatiently. “She’s in danger from this guy.”

  Neither officer acknowledged his remark, but one of them asked Bellamy if she’d received similar threats or warnings. She told them about the rat and the break-in of her car.

  “Did you report these incidents?”

  “No. They were dissimilar. Different states. I thought they were random. But after this, I believe they could all be related, and the common denominator is my book.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Timing, for one thing. Nothing like this happened to me before the book was published. Besides, I can’t think of anything I’ve done to elicit this kind of malice.”

  After a considerable pause, and another glance toward Dent, one of them said, “Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with your book. Could someone in your personal life bear you a grudge? An ex-husband? A boyfriend you’ve recently broken off with? Anybody like that?”

  Dent was interested to know the answers to those questions himself.

  “My ex lives in Dallas,” Bellamy told them. “Our divorce was amicable. He’s remarried. I just moved here from New York. I haven’t been seeing anyone.”

  “What about up there?”

  “No. Only in the most platonic sense.”

  The two exchanged another look and seemed to agree that they had covered everything. “We’ll put your house on a drive-by list. Our patrols will keep a close eye on it. Call us immediately if anything, even the smallest thing, happens.”

  “Thank you, I will.”

  “You should look into getting an alarm system installed.”

  Bellamy told them she would do that, then got up to walk them out. As the officers went past Dent, they tipped their hats, but their expressions didn’t leave him with a warm fuzzy. They left with a promise to report back to Bellamy if their investigation led to an arrest.

  “Hell will freeze over first,” Dent said after she closed the door behind them. “But at least there’s a police record of the break-in, and they might’ve lifted his prints. Considering the mess they made, I hope something comes of it.”

  He ran his finger through the smudge that had been left on the newel post, then wiped it on the leg of his jeans. “The deputy also dusted my airplane. If this piece of shit is ever arrested, they’ll be able to connect him to both crimes and maybe even to the delivered rat.”

  “Maybe we should have told them about your airplane.”

  “And get into all that history?” He shook his head.

  “I didn’t want to, either.”

  “Let them nail a suspect first. Then we can connect the remaining dots for them.”

  She folded her arms across her middle and hugged her elbows as she looked up the stairwell in the direction of her bedroom. “I was really coming to like this house. Now it’s been tainted.”

  “It’ll clean up. But what about your landlord? Should you notify him?”

  “He’s absentee.”

  “Out of town?”

  “Afghanistan. When he was deployed, his wife went to stay with her folks in Arizona. I leased for a year. I see no need to worry them. I’ll cover the charges.”

  He took a business card from his shirt pocket. “The locksmith’s brother-in-law does make-ready cleaning on houses and apartments. Painting included. For a fair pric
e and a signed copy of your book, he’ll have the house looking like new. And I was told that for next to nothing he’ll install an alarm system.”

  She took the card. “I’ll call him.”

  “First, come into the kitchen.”

  “What’s in there? More damage?”

  “No. I’m hungry.”

  Five minutes later they had assembled a lunch of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and glasses of iced tea. He ripped open a bag of Fritos he’d found in the pantry, and when she declined the chips, he dug in.

  Around a bite, he asked, “Any word from Houston?”

  “I called Olivia on the drive here. Daddy opted for another round of chemo. They’re clinging to the hope it will do some good.”

  “Did you tell her about your house?”

  “No, I didn’t want to add to her worry. I did tell her about Van Durbin, though. I hated to, but at least I prepared them. They won’t be caught off guard by his column tomorrow.”

  “Tell her about my airplane?”

  “No.”

  “So, as far as she knows, we parted company after we landed last night.”

  “Actually, when I told her about being accosted by Van Durbin, it slipped out that you were with me.”

  “Hmm. I wonder which upset her most, knowing that you’d been bushwhacked, or that I was at your side.”

  “Don’t be provoking, Dent.”

  “I haven’t provoked anything. Yesterday I was completely professional, but your stepmother has always treated me like a turd in the punch bowl, a contaminant, and yesterday was no exception. Not that I fucking care.”

  “That’s the very attitude that’s provoking.”

  He could’ve said more on the subject of Olivia, but decided against it. The woman’s husband was dying, after all. Besides, he’d never lost sleep over what Olivia Lyston thought of him, and he didn’t intend to. “How’d she take the news about Van Durbin’s upcoming column?”

  “Unhappily.” She pinched off a morsel of bread crust and rolled it between her thumb and finger, studying the forming ball of dough. “I can’t say that I blame her for being upset.”

  “If you didn’t want to upset your family, you shouldn’t have published a book that aired their dirty laundry.”

  She looked at him with asperity. “I told you why I wrote it.”

  “Yeah, so you could make a bad period in your life tangible, then wad it up, throw it away, and forget it. Good therapy for you, maybe. But it sucks for everybody else involved. Why didn’t you pour your heart out in a journal, then lock it up and throw away the key, or bury it in the backyard, or drop it into the ocean? Why’d you have to turn your therapy into a best seller?”

  Pushing his empty plate aside, he placed his forearms on the edge of the table and leaned across it toward her. “Those of us who lived the story are a bit vexed to find ourselves in your spotlight, A.k.a.”

  She came out of her chair. “So you’ve said. I don’t need to hear it again.”

  He stood up and rounded the table to stand toe-to-toe with her. “Yeah, you do. Because somebody has moved past vexed. He’s good and truly pissed off. And he’s gonna be even more pissed off when it comes out tomorrow that maybe the case wasn’t as tightly sewn up as believed. Susan’s murder is going to be given a good, hard second look. I’ve got a hunch that’s not going to sit well with whoever scrawled that warning on your wall.”

  She was staring up at him in defiance and denial of every word.

  “You think I’m wrong?” he asked.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but suddenly the starch went out of her. She lowered her head and rubbed her temples with her fingertips. “I wish you were, but I don’t think you are.”

  He backed down. “Okay,” he said in a softer voice, “who’s the mystery guest?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You need to find out before his little pranks turn really ugly.”

  She lowered her hand from her face and looked up at him. “Brilliant idea. How do you suggest going about it?”

  “We start with the people who were directly involved. Begin with the key players and work outward, eliminating them one by one, until the son of a bitch is left standing, exposed.”

  “We? What about the police?”

  “Do you think Starsky and Hutch there are going to go digging into an eighteen-year-old murder case?”

  “They investigate cold cases.”

  “Not after the culprit has already been caught and convicted.”

  “Convictions are overturned all the time.”

  “But they’ve got to have a compelling reason to reopen the case. Can you provide them one?”

  She shook her head.

  “Right. My opinion? They’ll wait until you’re physically assaulted and/or dead before they take the threat seriously, because they probably concluded that it had something to do with me. And you believe I’m right. If you didn’t, you would have spilled the whole sordid story to them while they were here. You saved yourself the breath because you have no more faith in their getting to the bottom of this than I do. And I have none. Which leaves it up to us.”

  “What do you know about police work?”

  “Only that I don’t trust it.”

  “You would drop everything and—”

  “I’m grounded, remember? I’ve got nothing else to do. Besides, I have a vested interest in finding this jerk. And when I do, for what he did to my airplane, I’m going to bash in his skull.”

  “Lovely. Do you expect me to be your accomplice?”

  “Get this straight.” He took a step, bringing them closer. “I don’t play nice, Bellamy. I never have.”

  After a taut moment, she broke his hard stare. “All right. For the time being, at least, we’ll help each other. But where do we start? Who do we start with?”

  He went to the chair she’d left empty moments earlier and held it for her. “We start with you.”

  Chapter 6

  “Me?” Bellamy exclaimed.

  “You were as close to Susan as anyone. You were with her all that day until just before she was killed. Talk me through everything that happened from your point of view.”

  “I did that with the lead character in my book. I wrote it from the viewpoint of a twelve-year-old girl.”

  “I skipped the long paragraphs and only read the dialogue.”

  “You still know what happened.”

  “Not the behind-the-scenes stuff.”

  “That’s the stuff in the long paragraphs.”

  “Is there something you don’t want me to know?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Well, then. I wasn’t at the barbecue, remember? I need details.”

  “You could go back to the book and read the parts you skipped.”

  “Or you could just tell me.”

  She gnawed her lower lip. He cocked his head to one side, prompting her. Then she suddenly began to talk, as though fearing she might change her mind if she didn’t.

  “Daddy had initiated the company-wide Memorial Day barbecue two years earlier. It was the first party he and Olivia hosted as a married couple. Daddy used the occasion to establish Olivia as the new Mrs. Howard Lyston and to introduce Steven as his adopted son.”

  Dent held up his hand. “Detail. If your dad adopted him, why didn’t he change his name to Lyston?”

  “Olivia would have preferred it, I think. But Steven wanted to honor his late father by keeping his name.”

  “Hmm. Okay. So the barbecue became an annual event. Brisket and ribs, kegs of beer, live music, dancing. Red, white, and blue banners.”

  “Blue Bell ice cream. Fireworks at nine-thirty.”

  “Quite a shindig.”

  “Nevertheless, it had its detractors.” With her fingertip she followed a trickle of condensation as it slid down the side of her glass of tea. “There was a row at the breakfast table that morning. Steven didn’t want to go to the barbecue. He called the whole thing dumb. Oli
via told him, dumb or not, he was going. Susan was acting like a bitch royale because…” She shifted her gaze up to him. “Because of the fight she’d had with you.”

  “I came over on my motorcycle early—”

  “Waking everyone up.”

  “Someone inside the house had to activate the gate so I could get in.”

  “It was me.”

  “See? A detail I didn’t know. Anyway, I had to come early because Susan hadn’t answered her phone. I didn’t want to leave a message, but I had to tell her that I’d be late to the barbecue.”

  “You were going flying with Gall.”

  “He’d been doing some repairs on this guy’s plane and wanted to take it up, check things out. He asked me if I wanted to go along. I jumped at the chance. I told Susan I would hook up with her at the barbecue when we got back.”

  “That didn’t go over well.”

  “To put it mildly. She blew a gasket and issued an ultimatum. Take her to the barbecue when it started, or don’t bother coming at all. I told her I was going flying with Gall. She said fine, she’d have more fun without me.”

  “She was in a snit. She told me…” She hesitated, then said, “She said she’d rather die than play second fiddle to that nasty old man.”

  Those portentous words silenced them for several moments, then Bellamy picked up the story. “She was determined to teach you a lesson. Over Daddy’s protests, she drove her own car to the park. She left ahead of us, and I remember thinking how gorgeous she looked when she sailed out the door.

  “She was wearing a new sundress, one that Olivia had bought her for the occasion. The blue color set off her eyes. Her legs were smooth and tan. Her hair was golden, shiny, and perfect. In fact, everything about her looked perfect to me.” She laughed softly. “Probably because I was so imperfect.”

  “You improved. A lot.” He teamed his drawled compliment with a lazy-eyed once-over that he could tell flustered her.

  “I wasn’t fishing for a compliment.”

  “Well, you caught one anyway.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” He shot her a teasing grin, then returned to the serious nature of the topic. “Susan went on ahead.”