Thick as Thieves

by Sandra Brown

  “Afraid you would turn me out,” he said with a heat that matched hers. “And then you would have been completely defenseless.”

  “Instead, you deceived me into thinking…” She covered her face with both hands and spoke from behind them. “All sorts of things.”

  “Not everything was a lie.”

  She lowered her hands. “No? Which part was honest?”

  “You know which part.”

  “Don’t you dare mention last night.” Her voice cracked on the last two words. She shot from her chair and headed for the room she slept in. “You know your way out.”

  He went after her, putting his shoulder to the door she tried to slam in his face.

  “Get out of here! I’ve had it with you and your infernal cold war with Rusty Dyle. In my opinion, you two were made for each other.”

  “Will you please calm down for a minute and listen to me?”

  “What for?”

  “Because Rusty isn’t done yet. Ask yourself why he all but admitted to killing Hawkins and threatened to implicate us? Hear me out. Please.”

  She hesitated, then backed up to the bed and sat down.

  Ledge looked down at the floor and ran his hand around the back of his neck. “Several weeks before Easter of 2000, on a Saturday morning, Rusty cornered me in a diner. He laid out his plan to rob the store. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, and basically told him he was crazy and to fuck off. I was on the verge of leaving when he threatened me with reprisal if I didn’t go along.

  “He was sly, subtle, but his message hit me like a hammer. For all my badass attitude, I was convinced that if I told him no soap, he would punish me for it, and I would have to live with knowing that I had caused destruction or death to something or someone I cared about.

  “So, weighed against my uncle’s bar, his life, I chose instead to commit a felony crime. That doesn’t excuse what I did, but that’s the reason I did it. I wish I could undo it. I can’t.”

  She looked in the area of his upper arm where she knew the tattoo to be. “Infinity.”

  “That’s right. It’s forever.”

  She assimilated all that, then sharpened her gaze on him. “How did my dad get away with the money?”

  “I swear on my uncle’s head, I don’t know.” He told her about Rusty’s appointing himself keeper of the cash for six months, when they would divide it. “Minutes after we split up, I was arrested.

  “I don’t know what happened beyond that point, but Rusty somehow lost possession of that bag, because he’s still bitter over being cheated out of the money. Bitter enough to get vengeance.”

  He walked over to her where she still sat on the bed. “Hate me. You’re entitled. But don’t underestimate him. You know firsthand what he’s capable of. I think he has more in store. That’s why I fear for your safety.”

  Startling them both, another voice intruded on their conversation. “How touching.”

  Chapter 37

  Lisa stood in the open doorway, taking in the tableau with a frown of disapproval. “I knocked, but I guess you didn’t hear me above the storm.”

  Ledge couldn’t tell if she meant that literally or metaphorically. He looked to Arden to gauge her reaction. She stood but stayed where she was and didn’t greet her sister with either a welcoming hug or even a smile.

  Stilted, she said, “I wasn’t expecting you.”

  Lisa slid a glance in his direction. “Evidently.”

  Arden motioned toward him. “This is—”

  “Oh, I know who he is. His fear for your safety obviously extends to sharing your bedroom.”

  “Who I share my bedroom with is none of your business,” Arden said. “Although I understand that you made it your business yesterday.”

  Ledge didn’t know what she was talking about, but it was apparent that Lisa did. Defensively, she raised her chin a fraction.

  “Jacob called me last evening,” Arden said. “He left a voice mail, but I didn’t listen to it until this morning. He told me that you had showed up at his house yesterday, unannounced, and that you created quite a scene when he refused to disclose personal information about me and my relationship with him.” Arden paused to give Lisa time to comment. She didn’t.

  “He said you became so contentious, his wife threatened to call the police. Jacob persuaded her not to go to those lengths, but the upshot was that he had to order you, in no uncertain terms, off his property.”

  “All right, yes,” Lisa said. “I tracked him down.”

  “After intercepting and reading a letter he sent to me. Who gave you the right to do that?”

  Ledge reasoned that Arden must have listened to the voice mail before joining him in his kitchen that morning. Maybe if Rusty hadn’t arrived she would have told him about it. But it was clear to him now why she wasn’t overjoyed to see Lisa, who, even though called out, had retained her cool.

  She said, “We should be having this conversation without an audience.”

  “Don’t mind Ledge,” Arden said. “He knows all about Jacob.”

  As Arden explained the nature of her relationship with Dr. Jacob Greene, Ledge witnessed the slow disintegration of Lisa’s hauteur, and he enjoyed watching it.

  Arden didn’t let her off easily, either. “By accusing Jacob of adultery, you degraded me, him, his wife, but most of all yourself. You made a complete fool of yourself.”

  “No, you made a fool of me,” Lisa fired back. “Why didn’t you tell me you were having that procedure?”

  “Because I didn’t need your consent, and I didn’t want to hear all the reasons as to why it was a bad idea.”

  “You misled me into thinking that you were carrying on with a married man.”

  “No,” Arden said, dragging out the word. “You drew that conclusion without any help from me, and I wasn’t going to defend myself against an assumption that was baseless and false.”

  She paused and swallowed hard. “My daughter, who I desperately wanted, was dead. Vindicating myself for how she was conceived—no matter how it had come about—was not a priority. I didn’t care whether you approved.”

  As though to underscore that declaration, lightning lit up the room. The flash was followed by a crack of thunder that rattled the windows, calling Lisa’s attention to the blistered paint on the sills. She took in the room as a whole, her critical gaze eventually drifting across him.

  She said to Arden, “I thought you had told him his services weren’t wanted after all.”

  He’d been leaning against the bureau with intentional indolence. Now, he pushed himself off it. “You don’t need Arden to act as a go-between. You can speak to me directly.”

  Finally deigning to look at him straight-on, Lisa sized him up. “You’ve changed since I last saw you.”

  “Not you. You’re exactly the same.”

  He hadn’t meant it as a compliment, and she got that. She arched an eyebrow. “Your shoulders are broader, but the chip on them is still firmly fixed.”

  “That’s not all I’m shouldering these days.”

  “Oh? What else is burdening you? Isn’t that dive of your uncle’s doing well?”

  Arden stepped in. “That was uncalled for, Lisa. What’s the matter with you?”

  Ledge put up a staying hand. “It’s okay. She can’t think any worse of me than she already does. Not that I give a shit what she thinks. In fact, feel free to share with her what I told you just before she got here, see how she reacts to that.”

  Arden looked at him with apprehension and gave a small shake of her head. “We’ll talk more about that later. You need to go check on your uncle.”

  Lisa said, “Actually, I would like to hear what he has to say. Why is he fearing for your safety? Does he fear this roof will cave in on you, that a high wind will—”

  “Arden is in danger from Rusty.”

  His terse statement shut her up. A tad more of her arrogance slipped. “Rusty Dyle?”

  “That’s the one.”
/>   She turned to Arden. “When we talked about him yesterday morning, you seemed not to know him.”

  “I didn’t until half an hour before I called you.”

  Ledge looked between the two sisters. “You two talked about Rusty?”

  Arden said, “Mostly in the context of your rivalry with him over Crystal.”

  “Crystal,” Lisa said as though with enlightenment. “That was her name.”

  “Still is,” Ledge said.

  “Is the rivalry ongoing?”

  “More cutthroat than ever.”

  “Aren’t you two a little old to be feuding over a girl?”

  “Crystal is a woman, but she’s no longer at the heart of our feud. Rusty’s main beef now is that he lost out on the money we emptied out of Welch’s safe.”

  Lisa’s features went slack.

  “You heard right,” Ledge went on. “I’ve confessed to Arden that I was in on the burglary.”

  Arden shot him a reproving look. “You didn’t have to admit it to her.”

  Speaking softly and directly to her, he said, “Yeah, I did. For twenty years it’s been eating at me. I’m glad it’s out.” They shared a look redolent with unspoken meaning, then he turned back to Lisa.

  “Rusty coerced me into doing it. I should have bucked him. I didn’t. We’re long past being prosecuted for it, but that doesn’t make me any less guilty.”

  “Why would you confess now?” Lisa asked.

  “It’s good for the soul. Besides, I plan to put Rusty out of business before he draws more blood.”

  “Draws more blood?” Lisa looked over at Arden. “What is he talking about?”

  “It’s Rusty who’s been keeping a nightly vigil on me. I discovered that yesterday.” She told Lisa about her disturbing encounter with him at the courthouse. “We, Ledge and I, believe that he, not Dad, killed Brian Foster.”

  Lisa looked even more shocked. “What?”

  “Late that night, Rusty set up an elaborate alibi scenario with Crystal,” Arden said. “Possibly for only the burglary, but it’s more likely he needed an alibi for something else, some violent encounter.”

  “Like a fight to the death with Foster,” Ledge said. “He also has a vendetta against your father. But he isn’t here, so Rusty’s going after Arden.”

  “How so?” Lisa asked, turning to Arden.

  She described the dog attack and their showdown with Hawkins. She was blunt, sparing her snooty sister none of the gorier details.

  When she finished, Ledge said, “There’s a footnote. Hawkins was found dead this morning. You can guess who silenced him, and this fresh taste of blood has only emboldened him. Rusty all but confessed to us.”

  Looking queasy, Lisa backed up to the wall. “He’s the district attorney, for godsake.”

  “Which only gives him license to do what he wants with impunity,” Ledge said.

  “Your fear for Arden’s safety is justified, then.”

  “Thanks all the same, but I don’t need your okay. Not for anything, but especially not anything concerning Arden and me.”

  Lisa gave him a dirty look, then turned back to Arden. “I told you repeatedly that moving back here was a terrible idea. You didn’t listen.”

  “Because I had no idea of what I was walking into,” she exclaimed. “I didn’t know I had a built-in enemy. Did you?”

  Lisa held her ground for a time; then her shoulders slumped, and she gave a small nod.

  Arden regarded her with incredulity. “You knew about Rusty, his part in the burglary? All that?”

  “Yes. All that.”

  “For how long?”

  “From the night it took place.”

  Arden gaped at her. “You allowed me to stumble into this blind, Lisa. All those times you tried to dissuade me, why didn’t you simply lay it all out?”

  “I couldn’t ‘simply.’ I couldn’t warn you about Rusty without…without telling you that I saw Dad that night. With the stolen money.”

  Lisa abruptly left the bedroom and went into the kitchen, where she helped herself to a soda from the refrigerator. Ledge and Arden followed her but declined anything to drink.

  Ledge posted himself as lookout where he could see out onto the backyard as well as have a clear shot of the front door through the empty dining and living rooms.

  The position also gave him a head-on view of Arden. He wanted to read her reactions to what Lisa had to tell her. She needed to hear it. At long last. But he dreaded the next few minutes for her. Apparently, she shared his apprehension. Seated across the table from each other, Arden was regarding Lisa as though she were a stranger she had never seen before.

  Lisa fiddled with the soda can, idly turning it on the tabletop. Ledge wondered if she was buying time in order to fabricate a plausible partial truth that Arden would swallow. Or was she choosing words that would soften the blow of the hard facts?

  She said, “I thought that by now Rusty would have given up the idea of regaining his booty.”

  “He hasn’t,” Ledge said before Arden could speak. “She’s been in Rusty’s crosshairs from the day she moved back. If you know anything about how Joe wound up with the cash and made his escape, now would be the time to tell us.”

  “Us? Whatever I tell my sister will be in private.”

  “Nuh-uh,” he said. “I want to hear.”

  “Anything relating to our father is between Arden and me.”

  Arden said, “Lisa, Rusty has threatened to blame Hawkins’s murder on Ledge. He deserves to know what you know about that night. He stays.”

  She relented. “All right. Where to start?” She took a sip of her soda, then began. “Directly after dinner, Dad left, saying he was going to the cemetery.”

  “I remember.”

  “You and I watched a movie. At bedtime, I tucked you in, secured the house, and went to my room. I worked on an assignment for one of my classes and didn’t go to bed until after Dad came back. That’s not when I saw him, though. He went straight to his room, I assumed to bed.”

  “What time was that?” Ledge asked.

  “I don’t remember,” she snapped. “At the time, I didn’t know it would be important to note.”

  He stared back at her but made no further comment.

  She continued. “Hours later, I woke up to a noise downstairs. I got up and checked your room. You were sound asleep. I came downstairs, and when I got here to the kitchen, I was stunned to see Dad. I thought he was still upstairs.

  “But he hadn’t only left his room, he’d left the house without my being aware of it. His shoes were muddy, his pants legs were wet. Stickers and twigs were stuck in the fabric. He was also flushed and sweaty. He wouldn’t have returned from the cemetery that way.

  “Then I noticed a canvas bag, sitting on the floor, just inside the door. ‘Where have you been?’ I asked. ‘What’s that?’ And he said, ‘That’s the cash stolen from Welch’s store tonight.’ Just like that.

  “I thought for certain that I was having a nightmare. But, no, the basket of Easter eggs we had dyed was on the table. The faucet was dripping as it always was. I could smell the whiskey on Dad’s breath. All my senses were sharpened, exaggerated. As much as I wanted to deny that it was actually happening, it was all too real to be a dream.”

  Ledge observed Arden. She sat rapt, barely breathing, taking in every word.

  She said, “Ledge said that when the group split up, Rusty had the money. How did Dad get it from him?”

  Lisa divided a look between them. “I can only tell you what Dad told me, which was that Brian Foster called him with a warning. Rusty was going to use Dad as a scapegoat. Foster told him that you,” she said, looking over a Ledge, “had been arrested for possession of marijuana, and Rusty feared that you would barter what you knew about the burglary in exchange for getting a walk on the drug charge.”

  Arden held up a hand to signal a timeout. “So, all this time, not only did you know that Rusty was in on the burglary, you knew that Ledge
was.”

  He said, “She told you I was bad news.”

  Lisa jerked her head around to look at him. “You always have been and continue to be. If you had stayed away from Arden, she wouldn’t have drawn Rusty’s attention.”

  “If I’d stayed away from her, God knows what would have happened to her.”

  “Stop it, you two,” Arden said. “Go back to that night, Lisa. To the phone call. What else did Foster tell Dad?”

  “According to Dad, Foster was falling apart. Foster had agreed to meet Rusty and hide the money, but then he got cold feet. Dad persuaded him to keep that meeting so Rusty wouldn’t be tipped off to his betrayal.

  “Hoping to prevent a bad situation from getting worse, Dad sneaked out of the house, walked to the cypress grove, and used that old boat of his to get to their meeting spot. But he didn’t make it in time. They were there ahead of him. Rusty was in a canoe. Foster was standing at the waterline.

  “Dad overheard Foster—stupidly—inform Rusty that he’d told Dad everything, that basically the cat was out of the bag. With that, and just like that,” she said, snapping her fingers, “Rusty hit Foster with a paddle. Dad told me he thought that Rusty had killed him right then. Apparently Rusty thought so, too.”

  She told them about Foster’s rising up out of the water and pulling Rusty out of his canoe. “Dad said their fight was brutal. Foster held out for as long as he could, but he never really stood a chance.” Softly she added, “Certainly not against the alligators.”

  None of them said anything for a moment; then Lisa continued. “During the fight, Rusty’s canoe had drifted close to where Dad was hiding in his boat. He spotted the bag lying in the bottom of the canoe. He snatched it and rowed away.”

  “Rusty didn’t see him?” Ledge asked.

  “There was no indication that he did. Dad said he didn’t go across open water, but stayed close to the shoreline, in the shadows, under trees. He knew every square foot of this lake, all the bayous. Even pickled, he could find his way.”

  For a ponderous time, no one said anything. Arden didn’t stir, then she got up suddenly and rounded her chair, placing her hands on the back of it as though to keep a grip on her temper. She was seething.