The Novels of Nora Roberts, Volume 4

by Nora Roberts

  “Leave my father out of this.”

  “You won’t,” Liz tossed back. “You’ll be calling Daddy for help any minute. We’ll match the bullets from the rabbit. Then there’s the dead snake, the dead rat. Upped it from the doll you mutilated and left for her. I’m betting you upped it from wildlife to Roy Squire.”

  “I don’t know anything about any damn dead rabbit.”

  “The doll,” Phoebe said quietly, even as Sykes narrowed his eyes.

  “You know something about the doll, don’t you? You got sweatier over the doll.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Messed up the doll like you’d planned to mess up the lieutenant,” Sykes continued. “Rang her bell one night and left it outside her door. Then the dead rat, then right up to Roy Squire. Yeah, smells like pattern to me.”

  “That’s bullshit. Maybe I tossed a doll by her house, so what? That was weeks ago, and I haven’t gone near her place since. I haven’t gone near Mac Namara since…”

  “Since you beat her in the stairwell?” Sykes finished. “Since you put a fucking bag over her head and stripped her down? You don’t have any friends here, Arnie. Nobody wants to help you, so you keep lying. Makes me warm inside. You keep right on lying your way into a cage, and this time there’s going to be a hotshot on the other side. There’s a needle waiting for you, you sack of shit.”

  “You’re out of your goddamn mind.” Arnie was sheet white now, and running sweat. “I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t shoot any damn rabbit either.”

  “We got motive, means, opportunity. Yeah, keep lying, fuckhead. You know how the DA loves it when a coward killer whines and lies. He’ll go for the needle, no question.”

  “I didn’tknow the son of a bitch. I haven’t been to Hilton Head where you said he lives. You can’t put me there.”

  “Give us time. I was never happy, were you, Liz, with the way this asshole skated after messing with the lieutenant?”

  “Me, I wanted to see him get some serious tuning on that. This time…”

  “She’s behind it.” Arnie swiped the back of his hand over his mouth. “You know damn well. Trying to set me up, that’s what she’s doing. I saw the damn doll at a yard sale, just used it to give her something to think about. I didn’t kill anyone, I haven’t been to goddamn Hilton Head. She’s trying to fuck me over. She can go to hell. I wasn’t anywhere near Bonaventure last night.”

  “Where were you, Arnie? Prove it, and make this go away.”

  “I got me a girlfriend, okay? My wife’s not giving me any support, or any sex, or anything else. So I’ve got someone who will. I was with her last night at her place. And I was banging her until after two in the morning.”

  “Name.” Liz shoved a notebook across the table. “Address. We’ll ask her how much she got banged.”

  “She’s got a husband, okay? He was up at Myrtle Beach playing golf for a few days, so we used her place. You’ve got to let me talk to her first, tell her this is serious shit so she won’t blow it off. Her husband finds out, he’ll knock her around. She has to know you’re not going to use her name.”

  “Let you talk to her first, prime her?” Sykes snorted out derision. “Not going to happen, Arnie. You’re telling the truth, we’ll keep her out of it. Sounds like you deserve each other.”

  “My wife’s already talking divorce, and all because Mac Namara—”

  “Oh yeah, all this is Mac Namara’s fault. Sure. She tricked you into busting her up just so you’d get tossed off the job. Write the name down, Arnie.”

  “She’s an exec at Terrance, Inc. You go see her there, not at her place. You go talk to her at her office. You have to give me the courtesy of being discreet.”

  Sykes’s eyes were hard as stone. “You lost the right to courtesy from anyone here when you jumped Lieutenant Mac Namara in that stairwell. You remember that, asshole. Ain’t nobody on your side. You want to save yourself, you write down the name. Otherwise, you’re going in on assaulting an officer and you’re staying in until we put all these ducks in a row.”

  As he wrote, Phoebe turned to Dave.

  “It wasn’t him. He’s a pig, and he’s stupid with it. He didn’t kill Charles Johnson or Roy. He hasn’t got the stones or the smarts.” She turned back to the glass. “He’d really like to hurt me. He’d still like to make me pay. But he wouldn’t understand that killing that boy, that killing Roy, hurts me, that it makes me pay. He doesn’t understand me at all. Whoever did those things does.”

  “We’ll check out the woman, see if the alibi holds.”

  “Yeah. I’m going home. I’ll start going through the files. He’ll be in there. He’s in there somewhere.”

  As Phoebe stepped out of observation, Liz slipped out of the interview room. “I was just coming back to talk to you. Got a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  “Let’s, ah…” Liz glanced over, gestured toward the women’s room. “Take it in here.”

  When they were inside, Liz leaned back on a sink. “Hard for you, watching that. Watching him. The glass isn’t much of a barrier.”

  “Yeah, it was, and no, it’s not. But it had to be done.”

  “He’s not the guy, Phoebe.”

  “No, he’s not the guy. You and Bull did good in there. His alibi’s going to check out, and we’ll be able to eliminate that avenue.”

  “How are you holding up?”

  “Truth? I have no idea.” Phoebe ran her hands over her face, back into her hair. “I’ve got my family holed up inside the house like a group of hostages. No choice. Whoever did this to Roy has made us all hostages, and I don’t know the terms. I don’t know what he wants or why. I can’t negotiate their safety if I don’t know the terms.”

  “You want to go grab some coffee?” As she asked, Liz tipped back her watch to check the time. “I can take thirty while Bull wraps up.”

  “I look that bad?”

  “You look like you could use a cup of coffee and a friend.”

  “I could, but I need to get home. Pull out the linchpin, the wheel slips off. Right now, for my family, I’d be the linchpin. Could you let me know if and when his alibi’s confirmed?”

  “No problem.”

  Phoebe opened the door, shut it again. “I wish it was him. Wish it was that son of a bitch. Roy’s dead, can’t change that. Part of me wishes it was Meeks so it would be over and done, and I’d know my family’s safe. But there’s another part, Liz, just as active, just as sharp, that wishes it was him so he’d go down. All the way down. And not for Roy, not in the guts, you know? So he’d go down for every minute inside that stairwell. I thought I’d come to terms with the way all that shook out, with the payment made. But standing in there, looking at him? I haven’t come to terms with it.”

  “Understandable.”

  “Is it?”

  “Scales are only balanced when your gut tells you they are. You may have to accept the payment. You don’t have to like it.”

  “I don’t.” Something loosened in her chest because she’d been able to say it, to spew it out to someone who understood. “I don’t like it one damn bit. He should do a little time helpless and terrified, then maybe…” Phoebe shook her head. “Problem for another day. I think I have enough others to fill the plate for now.”

  “You should give some thought to talking to the counselor.”

  “I will. Really. I need to get through this first.” She managed a smile. “That was better than coffee. Thanks for the ear, Liz.”

  “I got two when you need another.”

  24

  She put it away, locked up the turmoil that seeing, hearing, watching Arnie Meeks had made swirl inside her. No time, no place for it now. It would come back, she knew, spurting up to twist her belly into knots. When it did, she’d just have to find a way to uncoil them until there was time, until there was a place.

  She had a whole checklist of priorities ahead of that one.

  On Jones, she parked,
got out of the car. Why, she wondered, did the house seem toloom sometimes? She could go weeks, even months, without thinking of it as anything but home—a beautiful, graceful place to raise her child, to house her mother, her friend. A place to eat, sleep, live, even entertain occasionally.

  What did it matter that she hadn’t chosen to live there, tobe there? In the end, it was only a house. Only brick and glass. Cousin Bess’s ghost had long since moved on.

  Lack of choice, she thought. It was all about choice, and not having options.

  Despite the fact she was needed inside, Phoebe walked around to the courtyard gate. Away from the police car, away from that looming face of brick and glass.

  Here, at least, there’d been choices, even if she’d left them almost entirely up to Ava. Gardens and paths and shady nooks, graceful tables, whimsical statuary.

  She sat on the steps of the veranda, looked out, and imagined that lovely courtyard somewhere else. New Orleans maybe, or just another street in Savannah. Could be Atlanta or Charlotte.

  And what difference, really, at the base of things?

  All the difference, she admitted. All the difference in the world.

  She heard the door open but didn’t turn. So much, she thought, for solo brooding time.

  Carter sat beside her, put a glass of wine in her hand. And said nothing at all.

  She took the first sip in silence, with only the elegant music of the fountain trickling through. “I’m having a sulk.”

  “Hence the wine. Want me to go back in?”

  “No. I decided to pick at an old scab. Cousin Bess, this house and the locks she put on the door I can’t open. Nothing to do about it, so it’s a good one to sulk about as I don’t have to find the solution.”

  “Which in every other instance you do.”

  She looked at him. “It’s what I do, isn’t it?”

  “It’s what you’ve taken on, almost as long as I can remember. Reuben was the big demarcation, but there was stuff before that. In the blurry before time.”

  She leaned her head against his shoulder a moment. “Everything changed when Daddy died. For me, beforethat’s the blurry time. She could’ve helped us then, you know. Cousin Bitch. There might not’ve been a Reuben if she’d done the right thing by Mama then. But she didn’t, and there’s no point speculating on what might’ve been.”

  She sat silent awhile, drinking wine, studying the fountain. “Mama came through for us, every day.”

  “I know it.”

  “It must’ve been so hard. When I think about it, I can’t fully imagine what it was like for her. The worry, the work, the grief. The fear. But she always came through for us. Then, she takes a chance on someone who makes her think she’s special, and who starts off treating her so well. And it nearly kills her and her children. Hardly a wonder she started closing doors.”

  “I never blamed her for that.”

  “No, no, you never have, and sometimes I do. God, it shames me that sometimes I do. It doesn’t matter what I know, sometimes it just pisses me off she won’t walk outside, go down to the market, go to the damn movies. Anything. It doesn’t matter I know she can’t. Sometimes…”

  She shook her head, took another sip of wine. “I think about now, this situation, and how I can’t send her and Carly away somewhere. I wouldn’t have to worry so much if I could put them on a plane to anywhere else until this is over.”

  “We need to talk to her about therapy again. Not now,” he said before Phoebe could answer. “Not when she’s already tied up. But later, when…like you said, this is over. Josie and I could move in. Not just temporarily.”

  “You wouldn’t be happy.”

  “Phoebe—”

  “You wouldn’t. And I am happy here, most of the time. I’m just having a champion pissy spell. I got all these wires crossed in me right now. Arnold Meeks is clear on Roy. I knew that before I went down there to observe. But observing got me twisted up and mad and scared all over again. I’d rather be pissed than scared, so I’m out here concentrating on that part.”

  “Doing a good job.”

  “That’s the important thing.”

  Across the courtyard a hummingbird, bright as a jewel, flirted with the riot of morning glories climbing the iron trellis against the wall. Free to choose any blossom, Phoebe thought, free to fly on.

  People weren’t birds.

  “How’s Mama?”

  “Crocheting. Before he left, Duncan had her working on ideas for stock and cost analysis. God knows. Just the right thing to keep her mind off all this. He’s good at that. Working people.”

  She lifted her eyebrows. “Compliment or complaint?”

  “I like him. He got Carly in on the discussion about stock. Fashion consultant. She was completely into it.”

  “As a future personal shopper should be.”

  “Knowing what buttons to push, well, that’s a talent, and he’s got it in spades. How and when and where you push them shows what you’re made of, to my way of thinking. So yeah, Phoebs, I like him just fine.”

  “I more than like him fine.”

  “Oh. Really?” Eyes narrowed now, Carter took a long look at her face. “And that worries you because?”

  “I didn’t say I was worried.”

  He rolled his eyes, then tapped a finger on the faint line dug in between her brows. “Right there says you are.”

  She shrugged, then rubbed the line away. “Come on, Carter. Crappy track record.”

  “Roy was a jerk. Everyone’s entitled to screw up with a jerk once. And I’m sorry I said that, sort of, because I just remembered he’s dead. Still.”

  “A jerk, dead or alive. True. Crappy track record,” she repeated. “Demanding career that often messes up personal plans.”

  “A guy’s dating a cop, he’s got to figure on that already. I don’t buy either worry. Sorry. Try again.”

  “A seven-year-old daughter. I’m not saying she’s a problem or a worry. She happens to be the love of my life. But she’s a factor. Her happiness is first. And forging a serious, lasting relationship with someone when they have to accept someone else’s child as part of the package is tricky.”

  Carter flicked that away with his fingers. “People do it every day. Several times a day. I could do a Google search and get you stats.”

  “They do, but those people aren’t me, or Carly, or Duncan for that matter. Add in this house. He has this fabulous place out on Whitfield Island. He built it. I couldn’t—say if things went to a much higher level—ever live there. I can’t move. And there’s Mama. Take me on, take her on, too.

  “Now, maybe one of those factors isn’t such a deal, just one thin string. But add them all up, that’s a big, messy ball of sticky twine. And tying it all up? I don’t know if he more than likes me fine.”

  “Could ask him.”

  “Yeah, easy for you to say. You man you.” She blew out a breath. “Well, I’ve succeeded in depressing myself on that score, which has nicely distracted me from my brood, which distracted me from this horrible situation. Now it’s time to leapfrog back to horrible situation.” She got to her feet. “I need to work awhile.” She leaned down, kissed Carter’s cheek. “Thanks for the wine, and the rest.”

  “It was your wine but the rest is always available.”

  It could have been worse, Phoebe thought. With Ava and Josie huddled in the kitchen and her mother and her daughter closeted with designs and yarns, Phoebe had a solid chunk of time to work undisturbed.

  For a house under siege, she decided, theirs was clicking along at a remarkably normal pace.

  In the morning, she thought, she’d contact the FBI, relay the situation and request copies of files where she was a part of a crisis team.

  Long time gone, she mused as she opened more current files. But she’d take no chances.

  Every case file she read took her flying back. Amazing, she realized, how every detail popped clear. Four years, five, it didn’t matter how long ago. Once the log was i
n front of her, she remembered.

  Suicides, domestic disputes, robberies gone wrong, custody battles, embittered employees, revenge, financial gain, grief, mental or emotional instability. Any and all could and did arrow toward hostages.

  And sometimes, no matter what was done, negotiations failed. She failed.

  She organized by year, and started with the first year she joined the Savannah police.

  By the end of that year she’d lost three. One suicide, one hostage and one hostage-taker. It didn’t matter that there’d been dozens more she’d talked down, or talked out. She’d lost three, and now each was fresh in her mind.

  So fresh she began second-guessing the steps she’d taken, the words she’d spoken, the tone used. Too long a pause—not enough of one.

  Fruitless to do so, she knew. Even dangerous.

  Still, three lives had slipped out of her hands. Was Roy dead because of one of them?

  She started a fresh file with the names of the dead, the year, the place, the nature of the crisis. Then began to chart the names of those connected to them personally, professionally. And added the names of team members.

  She was halfway through the second year when Ava gave her doorjamb a knuckle rap. “You’ve got to come up for air. And a meal.”

  “I’m fine, Ava. Promise.”

  “You’re not. None of us are. But we need to breathe and eat and sleep.” She crossed to the desk. “Your mother and your daughter need to see you doing those things, even if it’s only for a bit here and there.”

  “All right, I’ll come down. Ava, I know you’re planning to take a couple weeks with Steven out West later in the summer. I was thinking you ought to bump that up. The semester’s over in just a few days anyway. You could head on out, hook up with him early, then—”

  “Be out of harm’s way, if by any chance I’m in it? Seeing as we’re all stuck in this house for however long that might be, it’s pretty shortsighted of you to make me mad on day one.”

  “I’m not trying to make you mad, Ava. I’m trying to give myself one less person—two, actually, as Steven’ll be coming home—to worry about. You’d be doing me a favor if you and Steven take your vacation now.”