Low Pressure

by Sandra Brown

  “You knew about… everything? All of it? And didn’t do anything about it?”

  “Steven—”

  “You didn’t stop it. Why?”

  “I couldn’t,” she whimpered.

  He trembled with rage. “It ruined my life!”

  She covered her mouth to stifle her sobs. Her entire body was racked by them, but he bore down on her mercilessly. “Why didn’t you stop it?”

  “I—”

  “Why? Why?”

  “Because of Howard!” she cried. “It would have destroyed him to know.”

  For long moments, Steven stood there, staring into her stricken face. “It would have destroyed Howard, and you couldn’t have that. But it was okay for me to be destroyed.”

  “No,” she wailed, reaching for him.

  He slung off her hand.

  “Steven! Steven!”

  She was still screaming his name as he took the stairs two at a time.

  Chapter 29

  Dent pulled his car to a stop in the semicircular driveway in front of the Lystons’ house. “Gall’s timing couldn’t be worse, but I asked for the meeting, so I feel like I should go.”

  “You definitely should,” Bellamy said.

  “I’ll make it short and sweet.”

  “This is important to you, so don’t rush it on my account. Besides, I’ll be busy mending fences. When I left here yesterday everyone was upset and angry.”

  “You came to me and spent the night. For that alone, they probably scratched you out of the will.”

  “It was worth it,” she said softly.

  “Yeah?”

  They exchanged a warm look, then, remembering why they were there, she said, “They’ll want to hear about everything that happened today, and there’s a lot to tell.”

  “Which is another reason why I don’t want to leave you. I hate letting you out of my sight with Strickland still at large.”

  “There’s a police car parked outside the gate.”

  “I’m glad of that. If the detectives hadn’t suggested it, I would have.” He looked up at the sky through the windshield. “It also looks like rain. Maybe I should wait out here while you go inside—”

  “You’ll do no such thing. You braved the police station for me all day today. I appreciated your presence, especially knowing the discomfort it cost you to be there. The least I can do is brave a rain shower.”

  Their parting kiss left them wanting to get their separate obligations done with so they’d be back together sooner. She waved him off, went up the steps and into the house. No one was about on the lower floor, which was surprising since she’d notified Steven that she was on her way.

  She called out to him and Olivia, but it was the housekeeper Helena who appeared, coming from the direction of the kitchen. “I’m sorry, Ms. Price. I was just about to leave for the day and didn’t hear you come in.”

  “Where is everybody?”

  “Mrs. Lyston is upstairs in her room. She asked not to be disturbed for a while.”

  “And my brother?”

  “He left.”

  “He went out?”

  “No, he and Mr. Stroud are flying back to Atlanta.”

  “I thought they weren’t due to leave until tomorrow.”

  “He told me they’d had a sudden change of plans.”

  Sudden was an understatement. Steven must have left shortly after their telephone conversation.

  Seeing Bellamy’s disappointment, the housekeeper said, “He left a note for you on the desk in Mr. Lyston’s study.”

  A note. That was all she warranted? He couldn’t have delayed his departure long enough for them to say a proper good-bye?

  “Do you need me for anything before I go?”

  “No, I’m fine, thank you, Helena.”

  “I’ll say good night then.”

  Bellamy went directly into the study. The built-in bookshelves were filled with memorabilia that chronicled her father’s life, from a black-and-white photograph of him with his parents on the day of his christening to a picture taken of him just last year playing golf at Pebble Beach with the president of the United States.

  But for all its comfortable clutter, the study seemed empty without him. She and her dad had enjoyed long talks in this room. It put a lump in her throat just to walk into it. Usually it represented warmth and security. Today, it was gloomy and oppressive, its dimness unrelieved by the open drapes. Outside, the sky had grown increasingly overcast.

  She switched on the desk lamp as she sat down in her father’s chair. The squeak of the leather was familiar and, again, she was almost overwhelmed by a wave of homesickness for him. She was made even sadder by the envelope with her name written on it lying on the desk.

  She broke the seal and read Steven’s brief note.

  Dear Bellamy,

  Had the circumstances of our lives been different, maybe I would have been the brother you wished for and I wished to be. As it is, I’m doomed to disappoint and hurt you. I apologize again for Dowd. Honorable intentions, but a bad idea. I wanted to protect you, because I do love you. But if you have any love in your heart for me, for both our sakes, please let this good-bye be final.

  Steven

  The message pierced her heart, making her hurt as much for him as for herself. She held the note against her lips and fought back tears. They were heartfelt, but to cry was futile. She couldn’t undo the past that had left such deep scars on her stepbrother’s soul.

  Her eyes strayed to the framed photograph on the corner of her father’s desk. She wondered if Steven had noticed it when he left the note. If so, he’d probably found it as disturbing as she did.

  Once, she had asked her dad why he kept this particular photograph where he would see it every day. He’d told her that it was the last picture taken of Susan, and he wanted to remember her as she looked in it: smiling and happy, alive and vibrant.

  It had been taken that Memorial Day before they left for the state park. They were all decked out in their red, white, and blue clothing, which Olivia had mandated they wear for the occasion. They’d assembled on the front steps of the house, and when they were posed, their housekeeper at the time had snapped the picture.

  It was similar to the Christmas family portrait only in that it revealed so much about their individual personalities. Steven look sulky. Susan was radiant. Bellamy appeared self-conscious. Olivia and Howard, standing arm in arm, smiling, looked like the embodiment of the American dream, like tragedy couldn’t touch them.

  A low rumble of thunder caused Bellamy to turn her head and glance nervously out the window. Rain was spattering the panes. She rubbed her chilled arms and got up to pull the drapes. A masochistic bent forced her to look up at the sky.

  The clouds were malevolent looking and greenish in color.

  She closed her eyes for several seconds, and when she opened them again, saw that the clouds weren’t green at all. They were gray. Scuttling. Moisture-laden rain clouds. Nothing more.

  Nothing resembling the apocalyptic sky on that afternoon eighteen years ago.

  She turned back to the desk and picked up the framed family photograph, holding it directly beneath the lamp-shade to maximize the light, tilting it this way and that so she could look at it from different angles.

  What was she looking for, exactly?

  She didn’t know. But something was eluding her. Something important and troubling. What was it? What was she missing? Why did it seem essential that she find it?

  A bolt of lightning struck close by, followed by a sharp crack of thunder.

  Bellamy dropped the picture frame. The glass inside it shattered.

  Dent entered the Starbucks near the capitol building where the state senator had suggested they meet. Most everyone in the place was pecking away on a laptop or talking on a cell phone, except for the two men who were waiting for Dent. Gall had dressed for the occasion, trading his greasy coveralls for a clean pair. He was nervously gnawing on a cigar.

&nb
sp; The man who stood up with him as Dent approached their table was sixtyish and balding. He wore a plaid shirt with pearl snap buttons. It was tucked into a pair of pressed and creased Wranglers held up by a wide, tooled leather belt with a silver buckle the size of a saucer. His broad, sunburned face was open and friendly, and the hand that clasped Dent’s as Gall made the introductions was as tough as boot leather.

  He pumped Dent’s hand a couple of times. “Dent, thanks for coming. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. Have a seat.” He motioned Dent into the chair across the small table from him.

  Just then a clap of thunder rattled the windows. Dent looked out and saw that it had begun to sprinkle. When he came back around to the two men, he said, “I can’t stay long.”

  His rudeness caused Gall to glower, but the senator smiled genially. “Then I’ll make my pitch quick. Gall has already laid out your terms to me, and, frankly, I don’t think they’re fair.” He paused, then laughed. “I can do you better.”

  Dent listened as the senator proposed a sweet deal, which only a damn fool would walk away from. But most of his attention was on what was happening outside. The wind was buffeting the sycamore trees planted at intervals along the sidewalk. The sprinkles had turned into a heavy rain. Lightning and thunder had grown more frequent and violent.

  Bellamy would be afraid.

  “Dent?”

  He realized the senator had stopped speaking, and that whatever he’d last said necessitated a response of some kind, because both he and Gall were looking at him expectantly.

  “Uh, yeah,” he said, hoping that was a suitable reply.

  Gall took the cigar from his mouth. “That’s all you’ve got to say?”

  Dent stood up and addressed the senator. “Your airplane’s a wet dream. And I can fly it better than anybody. But right now, I’ve got to go.”

  As he wended his way through the tables he heard the senator chuckle. “Is he always in that big of a hurry?”

  “Lately, yeah,” Gall said. “He’s in love.”

  Dent pushed through the door, which the wind caught and jerked out of his hand. He didn’t stop to close it, but bowed his head against the pelting rain and took off running.

  With trembling hands, Bellamy shook the shards of broken glass from the frame, then ran her fingertips across the photograph itself. She looked carefully at each family member individually, trying to figure out what was bothering her about the picture.

  Lightning flashed. She cringed. And for that instant, she was twelve years old again, in the wooded area of the state park, petrified with fear as she crouched in the underbrush. She needed to take cover from the weather, but she was too frightened to move.

  The flashback was so intense her breath started coming in loud, rushing gasps. Taking the photograph with her, she scrambled around the desk to the nearest bookcase and dropped to her knees in front of the cabinets beneath the shelves. Inside were all the research materials she’d collected while writing Low Pressure. She’d had Dexter send her all the files, which she’d left behind when she fled New York. When they arrived, she had asked her dad if she could store them here in a space he wasn’t using.

  Moving unsteadily, she stacked the bulky folders on the floor in front of her and began rapidly sorting through them until she found the one containing photographs of the tornado and its aftermath. She’d clipped them from magazine write-ups and newspaper articles, and printed them off the Internet, until she had dozens of pictures that had been taken that fateful Memorial Day in Austin.

  But she was searching for one in particular, and her search was so frantic she flipped through all the photographs twice before she located it. It had been captioned: Prominent family searches for loved ones among the rubble.

  A Lyston Electronics employee who’d had his camera at the barbecue had taken the picture within minutes of the tornado. In the background, the devastation looked surreal. The snapshot had captured people in tears, in tatters, still in the throes of panic.

  In the forefront were Howard, Olivia, and Steven.

  Howard was clutching Olivia’s hand, his face streaked with tears. Steven’s arm was raised, his face buried in the crook of his elbow. Olivia’s expression was stark, vastly different from the smile she’d been wearing in the photograph taken that morning on the front steps of her home.

  Bellamy held the photographs side by side.

  Yes, the contrast between Olivia’s facial expressions was pronounced.

  However, not so noticeable was the difference in her blouse. In the photograph taken earlier, it had a bow at the neck. In the second photo…

  Bellamy dropped the photographs and covered her face with her hands as the memory jolted her. As though she’d been propelled supersonically through a time warp, she was suddenly back there picking her way through the woods, looking for Susan, who’d left the pavilion with Allen Strickland.

  Bellamy wanted to find them together so she could embarrass Susan the way Susan had embarrassed her by saying what she had about her and Dent.

  But when she came upon her sister, she was lying facedown on the ground, the skirt of her sundress flipped up, showing her bottom. Clutched in her hand was her small purse. She wasn’t moving. Bellamy knew she was dead.

  As shocking as that, Olivia was standing over her, looking down. In her hand was the tie that belonged around the neck of her blouse. The end of it was trailing on the ground.

  Bellamy wanted to cry out, but she was frozen with fear and shock. She remained perfectly still and held her breath. It would have been hard to breathe anyway, because the air had turned so thick. The woods had become preternaturally silent and motionless. Nothing moved. No birds or insects, no squirrels, not a single leaf. It was as though everything in nature had stopped to watch Olivia choke her stepdaughter to death.

  Then suddenly the stillness was interrupted by a strong whoosh of wind, and the silence was split by a roar that knocked Bellamy to the ground. The change galvanized Olivia, who turned and thrashed her way through the trees and underbrush at a run, moving in the direction of the pavilion.

  Bellamy clambered to her feet and stumbled blindly through the woods as the wind beat at her and stole her breath, as the charged atmosphere caused her hair to stand on end. The noise was unlike anything she’d ever heard. It was like the roar of a dragon bearing down on her.

  But she hadn’t been running from the terrifying elements of the storm. She’d been running from what she’d seen. She was blindly seeking not shelter from the wind and natural debris that was whipping around her, but rather refuge from the unthinkable.

  When she finally reached the boathouse, lungs bursting and heart racing, she stumbled inside and instinctually sought a corner in which to cower, even as a section of the metal roof was ripped away and another sliced through the cavernous building like the blade of a guillotine, cleaving a boat in two. Weeping uncontrollably, she covered her head with her arms and made herself as small and invisible as possible.

  Rain was lashing at the study window now. A jagged fork of lightning struck close. Following a loud explosive pop, the lamp on the desk flickered, then went out.

  She wanted to seek cover and hide, as she had that day in the boathouse, but she was no longer a child, and if she gave in to her fear now, she might never learn what even her unlocked memory couldn’t tell her.

  Reaching up from her place on the floor, she grabbed a corner of the desk and used it as leverage to pull herself to her feet. She closed her eyes against the lashing fury of the storm, took several deep breaths, then let go of the desk and walked from the room.

  All the lights in the house had gone out, but she found her way to the main staircase. Gripping the newel post, she paused. Its curving length seemed rife with menace. It was so dark she couldn’t even see where it ended at the top, but she forced herself to plant her foot on the bottom tread and start up.

  She was blinded by periodic flashes of lightning, causing her to grab the banister and wait un
til her vision returned. When she reached the second-story landing, she looked down the long hallway. It was dark. But a faint light shone beneath the door of the bedroom Olivia and Howard had shared. Bellamy walked toward it and didn’t even pause to knock before turning the doorknob and going in.

  A candle votive flickered on the nightstand. Olivia was lying on the bed, the covers pulled up to her chest. “Olivia?”

  She raised her head from the pillow. “Bellamy.” Then, more weakly, “Steven left.”

  Bellamy crossed the room to stand at the foot of the bed. Olivia glanced down at her hand, in which she clutched the two telling photographs. When her gaze moved back to Bellamy’s face, she looked deeply into her eyes for ponderous moments. Finally, she said, “You know.”

  Bellamy nodded and slowly sat down on the edge of the bed. For a time they just looked at each other, saying nothing. Olivia broke the taut silence. “How did you piece it together?”

  “I didn’t. With the help of these photographs, I finally remembered.”

  Olivia looked at her quizzically.

  Bellamy explained her memory loss. “Even when I was focused on that day and writing the book, I couldn’t remember snatches of time. Not until just now did it all come back.”

  “You saw me do it?” Olivia asked quietly.

  “I saw you standing over her body with the tie to your blouse in your hand.”

  “It was detachable. After the tornado, no one noticed that it was missing. People had had their clothing blown off. One child was found completely naked. The funnel had literally sucked her clothes off her.”

  “You just dropped the tie amid the rubble. The murder weapon vanished when the storm debris was cleared.”

  “All this time it’s been assumed that she was strangled with her underpants.”

  “So the pair of panties that was found in Strickland’s house today—”

  “Oh, I’m certain they’re hers. Allen could have given them to his brother before his arrest, so he wouldn’t be caught with them.”

  “You knew he had them?”