HIGH MUSEUM’s COUP, read the headline. ASSISTANT DIRECTOR BRINGS PRICELESS TREASURES TO THE ATL. Further down in smaller captions, another article started: Will Dani’s Gus Become Georgia’s Gus? Supporters Say Si, Pollsters Say Probably.
Fran must have brought the magazine up to show John so they could gloat over the free publicity for their candidate.
A sudden thought made her frown. Could Fran’s warmth toward Victoria have an ulterior motive? She hoped not. It would be wonderful if Fran and Victoria hit it off.
Come on, be honest. Fran’s happiness was the last thing on her mind. She was thinking that with an attractive, sexy television personality out of the way, she’d have no competition for Rennie.
For shame. Whatever character she had was rapidly going down the tubes.
Discarding the magazine, she lay back and stared into space.
She had to figure out what to say to Rennie on the drive home. This morning he had ignored her like he was embarrassed. After the way she’d thrown herself at him last night, conversation was bound to be strained going home.
That could be why he was avoiding her today. Because of her outright assault on his virtue.
Heat rose up her neck. Had she been that aggressive? Had she really ground against him until he’d had enough?
One thing was clear. No matter what happened, their old easy friendship was ended. Either she would make him see her as an available sexual partner rather than a little sister, or else they’d retreat to being mere acquaintances.
Far too late to go back to where they’d been before.
Nor did she want to.
****
When Rennie started to hike toward Smith Lake with the others, he kept remembering Autumn. She had watched them leave with the set face and false brightness that reminded him of the frightened child who’d first entered the Degardoveras’ lives.
She didn’t deserve to be so miserable. Him being the cause made it worse.
A quarter of a mile down the trail, where it crossed the road leading back to the cottages, he stopped. What he was doing, tramping through the woods while she was so desperately unhappy? He needed to talk to her, to explain that yes, he was attracted to her but that he couldn’t take advantage of his friends.
Especially her. Autumn was the last person in the world who deserved to be stuck with someone like him. No matter what she thought now, sooner or later she’d find out the truth about him and Sarita. If they became lovers, he’d have to tell her himself.
But no matter how she found out, he’d lose her respect and disgust her so much she’d never want to see him again. He needed to be straight with her, and the sooner, the better.
“I forgot something,” he told the other hikers. “Meet you back at the cabin.”
As he headed for the road as the quickest route back to the cabin, a crackle broke the woods silence.
Then a van passed, heading toward the main road.
Not unusual but…
A growing uneasiness drove him until, rounding a bend, he saw the dark rooflines of the cabins.
Lining the parking places off the road between the cabins and him, stood the row of cars. His Lexus along with John’s Ford and Fran’s Mazda.
The ditzy neighbor’s Ferrari took up the last space.
Everything was fine here. Nothing was out of place. He was imagining stuff.
No. Something was off.
Was it the dead silence? After the previous crackling, not a sound, not even a squirrel’s chatter, enlivened the air.
Maybe it was the morning sun diffused through the concealing overhead mist that painted everything—trees, shrubbery, and cottages—with an eerie gray translucence.
Whatever it was, it made him mindful of his surroundings.
Then he saw her, a twisted heap lying face down between the cars and the steps leading down to the cabins. One arm pinned down an empty plastic bag, and her jacket was stained red.
No!
The blood in his veins changed to ice. The pit of his stomach threatened to spew its contents.
Later, he didn’t remember covering the yards separating them. Only the anguish. “Autumn, Autumn!”
Rolls of paper towels lay to one side, a six-pack of beer to the other. Blonde hair was discolored by a deep brown-red. One small hand rested on a box of light bulbs as if she had tried to rescue them when she fell.
Rings covered the fingers, rings that didn’t sparkle in the overcast light.
The ice melted in a flash of thankful heat.
Rings.
Not Autumn thank you God not Autumn. Not Autumn thank you God not Autumn.
His heart, crammed into his throat, fell back into place. His stomach settled. Sanity returned.
Her face, pressed as she was against the pine needles layering the packed earth, was hidden. But he knew.
Kiki Ballencer, the woman who had exclaimed over Autumn’s jacket and his own likeness to Elena.
Blood clotted the blonde hair and stained the blue wool.
Rennie didn’t want to touch the unmoving form, but he knelt down and felt for a pulse.
The dead woman. Autumn.
The blue coat. The blonde hair. Both like Autumn’s.
But Autumn was safe; Kiki was the one hurt. What was going on?
Was Autumn all right?
He jumped up and rushed toward the steps and the cabin.
Please, please, don’t let Autumn be like Kiki.
He didn’t know what he was terrified of finding or why this disjointed urgency, but he flew past the azaleas and down the railroad tie steps, fumbled for the doorknob and rocketed inside.
“Autumn,” he called, and again, panicked when she didn’t answer. “Autumn!”
“Rennie?” Autumn, partially hidden where she lay on the loveseat, sat up. Her mouth and eyes rounded. Blood drained from her face at sight of his. “What is it?”
She was safe. “Autumn!” His legs went limp.
“Rennie? What’s wrong?” She half-rose so that one foot rested on the floor, the other knee on the cushion.
He’d scared her.
No wonder. He was so scared himself he’d snarled at her. “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong.” He caught a breath, bounded to her.
Autumn was here and she was all right.
Conscience made him stop short, kept him from taking her into his arms and hugging her hard. He panted from wrestling with it while his hands clenched and unclenched.
“Rennie?” She stood up.
“Autumn. Thank God.”
“Rennie, tell me what’s wrong!” There was a groggy, tousled aura about her. She trembled.
To hell with his conscience.
In two steps, he’d caught her, kissing her face and hair and any other place he could reach. He clutched her to him, afraid she might be taken away at any moment. He touched her eyes, her ears, her nose, her throat, murmuring, “Autumn, Autumn, Autumn.”
She didn’t fight him or object. “Rennie, what’s wrong? Rennie?”
He lifted his mouth from her soft skin. “Kiki’s…I thought she was you.” He buried his face in her hair, breathing in her rose scent, rejoicing in the fine strands stroking his cheek. “I thought she was you, Autumn. I’ve never been so terrified in my life. Madre de Dios, I thought she was you.”
“Kiki? Is she hurt?” Unlike the night before, Autumn was the first to draw back, the one recalling responsibilities. “What’s wrong? Does she need help?”
One more moment to hold her. Just one more moment, he told himself. Then he steadied as her hands rested on his chest and her eyes looked at him with a trust that made him want to damn responsibility and carry her off to a place where she would be safe and they could be together.
He was confused, out of his head. He needed to pull himself together, get back to normal.
Except nothing was normal any more.
“Kiki’s—I think she’s dead.” He pulled his cell out. “Damn, I forgot there’s no signal here. Autumn, I
need to run up to the lodge, have them call an ambulance.” He pushed back her hair, mussed and tangled from his frantic caresses. “Someone needs to stay with her. She… It, it’s too late for her but I have to go get help.”
She understood immediately. “Let me put on my shoes.”
“No!” He couldn’t ask her to stay with that ruined husk. “Maybe you’d better go up to the lodge and I’ll stay.”
She stood. “I’ll do it, Rennie.”
Back to the old Autumn. No hysteria, no tears.
The panic belonged to him when, at the door, she grabbed the blue jacket off a duffel bag packed and ready for the trip back to Atlanta.
That coat was dangerous on her. It looked too much like the blood-soaked jacket that hadn’t protected Kiki.
No time to worry why, but she couldn’t wear it.
“Don’t put that on.” He jerked the coat from her and threw it down, stripped off his own down jacket and held it out. “Humor me, Autumn. Please.”
One mystified look, but she put on his jacket without question.
Bless her. Either of his sisters would have argued if he told her to get out of a sinking boat.
At Kiki’s body, she gave a quick intake of breath before lifting her hand to her mouth.
In his too-big jacket, she looked fragile and defenseless. He couldn’t leave her alone with Kiki’s pathetic corpse.
She read his mind. “I’m all right. Go on.”
He caught her shoulders in both hands, squeezed them bracingly. “I’ll be back as soon as I get help.”
“I know.” She sounded like Autumn. Unruffled. Capable. “I’ll be fine, Rennie. Go on now.”
If she had been Norma or Laney, he would have had to waste time dealing with the inevitable hysterics. But Autumn never dissolved into tears. Still, he lingered. “I’ll hurry.”
“I know. Go on so you can get back. I’ll be fine.”
He started to run, hating to leave her, hating she’d have to stay alone with the thing on the ground, hating every step that took him away from her.
A family at the next cluster of cabins were loading suitcases in their SUV as he ran by. They greeted his tale with suitable shock and volunteered to send help from the lodge.
Autumn, sitting on the steps near Kiki’s remains, looked askance when he ran back.
“I found some people up the street,” he said between gasps. “They’re going to the lodge to get help.” He bent over, rested his hands on his knees and inhaled oxygen to his starved lungs.
“Good.”
In the midst of the unexpected tragedy, her calm was remarkable. How he did love her for that.
She looked at where Kiki sprawled. “She was so animated. So alive. It doesn’t seem possible that she’s dead. What happened, Rennie? Did she fall?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t?” Silence. “Her husband?”
Had it not been for the blood coagulating into dark red splotches, the small form would have seemed that of a large rag doll, dropped and abandoned by an uncaring owner.
He didn’t like looking at Kiki’s body, didn’t want Autumn to look at it either. “I don’t know.” He dropped down on the railroad tie beside her, put his arm around her and turned her face toward him, away from Kiki. “I don’t know, Autumn.”
“Who else would have done it?”
He shook his head.
She must be shocked, but she covered it up well. “How horrible to think a marriage could end up like this. What could make a man want to do this to his wife?”
“I don’t know. Jealousy, maybe. Money. We don’t know the whole story. Probably never will.”
Somewhere in the back of his mind was a germ of truth, something he needed to remember. But he couldn’t think of it. Whatever it was eluded him.
Beneath his arm, she shuddered. “I can’t imagine anyone hating another person enough to do something like this.”
“Of course you can’t.” He squeezed her. She had no idea of the evil in people, his Autumn. For that matter, she had no idea of the depravity to which a normal person could sink.
Even ones who tried their best to be upright and moral.
He didn’t want to be the one to break her rosy glasses. His teeth clenched. I won’t be.
She laid her head on his shoulder. He shouldn’t have let her, but he did. Together they waited.
They didn’t speak again until after the emergency team came.
Chapter 13
A protective numbness had descended over Autumn the moment she saw Kiki’s pitiable body. Murmurings of bullet wounds from White County EMTs and deputies caused the sense of unreality to linger.
Kiki was murdered, but Autumn couldn’t take it in.
Investigators asked her and the others question after question, many of them unanswerable.
“I don’t know,” came most of the replies.
But sometimes it varied. “I didn’t meet her at all,” said Fran.
“I spoke to her for a minute,” said Victoria.
“We talked long enough to find out she was terrified of her husband,” said Laney.
“We were walking and didn’t see anything,” said John.
Autumn was as vague as the rest. “I was sleeping. Something woke me up, but I don’t know what. I didn’t hear anything.”
Rennie remembered seeing a beige van when he came back to the cabin, but he hadn’t noticed the driver or the tag plates.
As they waited, Autumn kept thinking that if they’d talked more to Kiki, accepted her invitation to go over for dinner, maybe Kiki wouldn’t be dead.
I should have been nicer to her.
No matter how pushy Kiki was, no one deserved to end up on the ground covered in her own blood.
Afterward, the only thing Autumn recalled clearly from that afternoon was the pearly gray light cast from the cloud-distorted sun and the chill that would not leave no matter how many layers she put on.
Her numbness was beginning to wear off by the time the sheriff dismissed them.
Fran and Victoria immediately left for Atlanta. He was due back in Atlanta early to prepare for the High Museum reception that night, and Victoria saw an opportunity for a news story; Kiki’s estranged husband, the ex-football player, was a possible suspect and she was personally acquainted with him. Fran had been happy to oblige when she begged for a ride.
Part of Autumn’s reviving brain noticed how well the two were getting along.
Fran’s interest in Victoria might be due to his trying to wangle favorable coverage on CNN for Gus Huertole. Or it could be due to Victoria’s glamor. Or there was the chance Fran thought Rennie was interested in Victoria, which meant Victoria was simply another way to score off his big brother.
Well, she wouldn’t worry about Fran. Or Victoria, who might also have an ulterior motive. The reporter been pumping Fran about Gus Huertole and his wife, asking about their finances and influence in obtaining this new exhibit for the High Museum.
Not that it mattered.
Whatever the reason the two had hit it off, Autumn was glad, particularly since Rennie’s uninhibited display that morning.
He no longer avoided her, but neither did he treat her any differently than before. If anything, he had withdrawn into himself like he’d done when she first asked about Jane.
How was she ever going to make him admit his interest in her?
Assuming he had an interest in her.
No, he must. After the way he had rushed into the cabin, grabbed her up, held her, kissed her. He wouldn’t have been so panicky if he didn’t care for her.
Those weren’t brotherly kisses, either.
Uh uh.
So why had he urged Laney and John to join him and Autumn for a belated lunch in Helen? “We can view the last live gluckenfeel of the weekend,” he added enticingly.
If Autumn were a gambler, she would have bet he was putting off being alone with her for as long as possible.
That was okay. They had
a long drive back to Atlanta. With nothing to do but talk.
Both couples were subdued as they window-shopped and waited for the glockenspiel to begin. Kiki Ballencer’s murder, despite none of them having met the woman before this weekend, had laid a pall over the festive getaway.
“Do you think Autumn’s fall last night was connected to what happened today?” John asked Rennie in a low voice as Laney hovered over a display of music boxes.
Autumn didn’t miss Rennie’s flicked glance and tiny hesitation. “I don’t know. I did think the coincidence ought to be mentioned and that’s why I told the investigator. With the jackets looking so much alike, it just seemed…strange.”
Laney tore her eyes from a particularly enchanting box shaped like Cinderella’s coach. “It was Kiki’s husband who did it, I’m sure it was. I know you think she was laying it on kind of thick, John, but she was running scared. And he’s had brushes with the law before. I’ve heard rumors of their domestic problems for months through the battered women’s shelter.”
“You may be right, but it won’t hurt Autumn to stay with someone for a few days,” Rennie said. “At least until they find the guy.”
“She’ll stay with us,” Laney said.
“Good.”
Autumn raised her brows. Was he seeing her as a friend or sister to be protected? Or as a woman he cared about sexually? “I don’t need a babysitter.”
“I didn’t say you needed a babysitter.”
“The same thing.”
“Rennie’s right, Autumn,” Laney said. The cold air had pinked her cheeks and made her dark eyes sparkle. Wavy black hair fell from beneath a crimson beret onto a bright green turtleneck and maroon pea coat. A few snowflakes and she could go on the front of a Christmas card. “It won’t hurt to be careful. In case something’s going on we don’t know about. You’ll stay with John and me.”
“No, thank you, Laney. I’ve slept on the sofa bed in John’s office before. I’ll pass.”
“You could come to Mom’s.” Rennie refused to look at Autumn. “She has plenty of room.”
So Rennie thought she was a helpless female, did he? She wasn’t. Okay, maybe she was a little concerned, especially after Kiki’s death. But her fall off the bridge and Kiki’s murder had to be coincidences. That was all they could be.
Intimate Portraits Page 14
