“You’d only known me for what, a couple days or so. I’m supposed to believe I charmed you into defying your employer? That’s ridiculous. Nothing about me is charming, and I can’t imagine a couple kisses got you that hot and bothered.”
“For the record, they did. Also for the record, I’d made up my mind in the first five minutes I knew you.”
“Before or after I knocked you on your ass?”
He smiled. “I’ll never tell.”
“So where do we stand now?”
He hesitated. “I still work for Mason.”
“Gotcha. Thanks for the heads-up.” I was more disappointed than I should have been, but at least he’d told the truth.
“Look, Rebecca—”
“How many times do I have to tell you my name is Beck? I loathe Rebecca with every fiber of my being.”
“Why?”
“None of your business.” I tightened my grip on the steering wheel, my knuckles turning white. I could hear my mother—my aunt—screaming that name, drawing it out, mocking. I got to where I refused to answer to it at all, which pissed her off even more. And all because she didn’t like the way I was conceived.
Well, you don’t blame the children of rape; they’re victims too. I was just as much a victim of my father’s shenanigans as my mother, and really, all he did was give her a litter instead of twins. I was simply a business deal gone bad. Aunty Mommy had nothing to do with any of it. What right did she have to be so pissed at me?
“I will get it right from now on,” Damon promised.
I could feel his gaze on me, heavy and probing. Like he was trying to get a peek inside of me.
“What?” I asked finally. “Just ask already.”
“I don’t even know where to start.”
“How about answer one for me, then?”
“Shoot.”
“How did you—a contracts lawyer—end up being the one to contact me?”
“I’ve proven trustworthy to Mason, and I’ve wanted an opportunity to move deeper into his inner circle. Hell, into his inner circle at all.”
“So kidnapping me was to impress him with how well you did your job?”
“Stupid, I know.”
“Yeah, but I get the ambition thing. I mean, short of kidnapping.”
“Mason had emphasized that you were in danger.”
“Doesn’t make it right.”
“No, but I’d kidnap you in a heartbeat if I thought it would save your life.”
“So nothing’s changed.”
“Everything’s changed,” he said flatly. Then before I could follow up on that particular little bomb, he switched subjects. “How much training have you had in using your magic?”
“Nothing.”
“None at all?” he asked in disbelief.
“Trial and error. Oh, and what I could figure out from watching Aunty Mommy.”
Damon rubbed his hands over his face. “That woman was criminally negligent.”
“It wasn’t negligence. It was entirely deliberate. She hated me and she did everything she could to show me just how much. Anyhow, I never let on that I could do magic. It would have made things worse.”
“Didn’t you try to leave?”
I wanted to tell him where he could stick that question. I settled for a terse, “No.”
“Why not?”
I gave him a saccharine smile, my blood starting to boil. I didn’t need him or anybody else judging me. What the hell did he know? Aunty Mommy had threatened Jen, Lorraine, and Stacey if I stepped out of line. Given she hadn’t been shy about fucking with them while I was toeing her line, I never had an urge to test her.
“Maybe I’m just sadomasochistic.”
I ignored him after that as every mile brought us closer to Aunty Mommy’s hellhole. Several times Damon tried to speak to me, but I couldn’t even think about him anymore. I’d half promised myself that I would never go back to this place. Every molecule of my being wanted to run in the other direction, which, because I never liked letting my mother—make that Aunty Mommy—win, it also made me want to walk in there and strut around. I’d lived through her curse and now I was in her house. Maybe I’d even pee on the carpet.
I pulled up at the elaborate gate. Joseph came out of the guardhouse. The brown skin of his bald head gleamed in the morning light. His gray uniform was crisp and ironed, the creases down the front of his legs sharp as a knife blade, just the way Aunty Mommy liked it.
I rolled down my window.
“Good morning, Miss Wyatt.”
“Hi, Joseph. I need to go inside. Behind me are the detectives investigating my mother’s death. The guy in the Beemer is the new owner of the place.”
That last news made him blink but didn’t crack his impassive facade. “Yes, Miss Wyatt. I’ll let the house know you’re on your way.” Which meant there would be refreshments ready.
The estate encompassed more than three hundred acres. The house sat up on a hill with two broad wings on either side of the grand entry. It looked like a castle with four turrets on the ends and gargoyles along the roofline, hanging off the corners, and spewing water into and out of downspouts. The fortress contained twelve bedrooms and seventeen bathrooms and was surrounded by manicured formal gardens and lush emerald lawns.
I went right around the central fountain and pulled up in front. Ajax followed on my heels. He shook himself and sniffed around, lifting his leg on one of the fluted pillars holding up the stately entrance portico.
“Good boy,” I murmured as he trotted over to another likely spot and repeated his territorial marking.
“Nice place,” Damon said, joining me.
“If you say so.” My stomach was knotting almost the way it had when she was alive, and I knew I was walking into hell. Maybe this little tour would teach my subconscious that the Wicked Bitch really was dead and I was safe now.
A few minutes later, the detectives and Mason joined us.
I led the way up the sweep of steps to the front door. It was opened before I could knock.
“Thanks, Linus,” I said to the man who answered. He wore pinstriped slacks, a charcoal jacket, and a snow-white dress shirt.
“Miss Wyatt. It’s good to see you.”
I raised my brows but didn’t challenge him. The entire staff knew Aunty Mommy and I had hated each other. They’d always been as kind as they were allowed to me, but they’d also been loyal to her. Not that I blamed them. Who knew what she’d have done if they weren’t? Plus, she paid them well, and it was never a good idea to bite the hand that fed you. To say it was good to see me was a little over the top, though. Or maybe Linus had heard about the shop or my time in the river and was glad to see me upright and breathing.
The entry was beyond grand. It rose up three stories to a vaulted ceiling. A crystal-encrusted chandelier sparkled about midway down. An alabaster stairway swirled elegantly up to the second floor. Priceless modern art covered the walls in complete contrast to the medieval look of the outside. Light poured in from the domed frosted glass far above.
“I have to get back to talk to my employees and call my insurance company,” I said to the detectives. “Let’s get this over with quick.”
“Let’s start out back,” Ballard said and clearly she’d already been in the house because she needed no guide to find her way.
Mostly the house seemed deserted, though I knew the house staff numbered at least six, and the grounds crew was probably double that. Dierdre, the housekeeper, overtook us as we entered the long garden room. It had always been my favorite place in the house. The rear wall was nothing but glass, giving a lovely view of the back patio and gardens.
“Miss Wyatt, I have had the chef prepare refreshments for you. Would you like them served here or in the breakfast room?”
Dierdre was a small, birdlike woman with dark skin, walnut eyes, and sleek black hair. I wasn’t sure how old she was. She didn’t look any different now than when I was a child. Everything about her was enigmat
ic. I never knew what she was thinking or feeling. She’d never been particularly unkind to me, making her relatively safe in my world.
“Thank you, Dierdre. Put it in here, why don’t you? The detectives have some questions for me, but I’m sure that after, they would appreciate your hospitality.” I gestured at Mason. “This, by the way, is—” She wouldn’t get it if I called the woman formerly known as my mother Aunty Mommy. I settled for, “My uncle. He’s the new owner of the place.”
She cast him an inscrutable look. “Good morning, sir.”
“Good morning,” he replied.
“If you’ll excuse me, I’ll bring out the refreshments,” she said before vanishing through the door leading into the kitchen area.
Ballard opened a set of French doors and stepped out onto the broad patio. The edges were scalloped like seashells, with steps all the way around. We went along the left wing of the house. The patio narrowed before widening to spread out in a large apron around one of the turrets. Crime scene tape wrapped a temporary chain-link fence around most of it. Inside was a cracked fountain and a scaffolding that now lay tipped on its side.
One of the gargoyles lay nearby. Like all of those standing guard in niches on top of the exterior walls, this one had—or used to have anyway—a large, protruding penis and cantaloupe-sized balls. The rest of the stone creature was vaguely bat-shaped with bear claws on its feet and arms and a leopard head, but with longer ears. A tail wrapped its feet, and its wings folded tight against its back.
All that was left of its three-foot penis was a little stub. That was the worst of the damage, but the creature’s nose and one ear had also been chipped off. Three of the curved claws on its left paw had snapped away as well.
“So it’s true,” I said, unable to help the smile that spread across my face. “Aunty Mommy was stabbed by a gargoyle penis.” I looked at the detectives. “Tell me I can have copies of the pictures. Please. I’ll pay you whatever you want.”
Jeffers scowled at me. Ballard jumped in before he could spew whatever was bubbling up in his craw.
“Miss Wyatt—I’m sorry, did you say Aunty Mommy? What does that mean?”
She was sharp, I’d give her that. “According to my uncle here,” I gestured at Mason, “the bitch was my aunt, not my mother. She stole me from her sister right after I was born.”
Ballard scribbled notes after a startled glance at me and Mason.
“She kidnapped you?” Jeffers asked, letting go of his annoyance with me and sliding into detective mode.
“Yes,” Mason replied. “Until I received a letter following her death, no one in the family knew of her whereabouts. She vanished without leaving any trace we could follow, and we made every attempt.”
“Are you sure? Is it possible Miss Wyatt’s biological mother or father learned of Anne Wyatt’s location and came to confront her?”
“Her real name is Adriane.” He didn’t correct the last name. “I haven’t informed anyone else of Adriane’s and Rebecca’s whereabouts. You can bet that if her parents knew where to find Rebecca, nothing could stop them from being here.”
I don’t know why, but that startled me. Okay, I did know why. As far as my so-called father goes, he was little more than a sperm donor and an egg thief. Sure, he’d plotted to get an extra kid out of the birthing contract, but that was twenty-six years ago, and I couldn’t believe he’d be all that eager to find me now. As for my actual mother, she’d never intended to keep the other two kids from the litter, so she wasn’t all that likely to be excited that I’d invaded her uterus.
Damon had been looking through the fence and now turned to the detectives. “It appears that the scaffolding collapsed and dropped the gargoyle on her. What makes you think it was intentional?”
Good question. Gold star for him. I looked at the detectives expectantly.
Jeffers motioned us to follow him.
He unlocked the gate and ushered us through. “Try not to touch anything. The techs have been over everything, but it’s still an active crime scene.”
He took us over to the scaffolding and showed us where the supports fixing the gargoyle in place had torn free. “Our techs tell us that the statue’s weight wouldn’t have caused damage in this fashion. The screws simultaneously released, which isn’t possible unless they were tampered with.”
“That doesn’t mean Adriane was the target,” Mason said. “Or even that anybody was. It could be someone was playing a malicious trick that ended up accidentally killing my sister.”
“Even so, it’s still manslaughter,” Jeffers said. “But that’s not all. We found a camera up along the wall that allowed the perpetrator to watch for his intended victim. If you look on the bottom of the scaffolding, you’ll see where the side struts melted away completely, causing the scaffolding to topple and the gargoyle to fall. We’ve not found any evidence for how it was done yet, but once the tests come back, we’re sure to find there was an exterior force at play. It was all well planned and choreographed.”
I could see Damon and Mason arriving at the same conclusion with all the speed of a runaway freight train. Magic had played a hand in it. Melted struts here and melted locks at my place. I wasn’t ready to say that magic was involved or that the same people had done it. Anyway, why go to such elaborate lenghts? Why not just pick up the gargoyle and drop it on her? Why leave any evidence of foul play?
“What could do that?” I asked. “Melt the steel, I mean.”
“We’re looking into it,” Jeffers said vaguely.
Meaning, none of your business, if we wanted you to know, we’d tell you. Or else he didn’t want to let on that they didn’t have a clue. I was leaning toward the latter.
“Doesn’t this strike you as a ridiculous way to murder someone?” I asked. “I mean, a gun, knife, or poison would be a lot more efficient. Hell, running her over with a car or shoving her down the stairs. This seems really involved and kind of stupid. So many things could have gone wrong.”
“Which is why we think it must be personal,” Ballard said. “Someone went to a lot of trouble to kill your ... aunt ... in this most unusual fashion. It has to mean something. Did the gargoyles have any particular significance to Adriane?”
“Where we grew up, they were believed to be household guardians,” Mason said before I could answer. “It’s quite traditional and they continue to be used in modern building even today. They are common decorations on most family buildings. An homage to the past.”
“Where was this?” Ballard asked, scribbling in her notebook.
“Europe, mostly,” Mason said. “Italy, France, Germany, Ireland—we had homes in various places.”
That earned him a sharp look from the detectives. Money was always a good motive, and clearly the family was swimming in it. Plus, Mason had just inherited another big pile. I didn’t know if I was ready to believe he was capable of murder, but I didn’t know that he wasn’t either.
“How extensive is her estate?” Jeffers asked.
“Millions,” Mason said as though he were talking about the change you found in the couch cushions. “It’s difficult to know. I wasn’t in charge of managing her funds in her absence, and of course, she’s clearly accumulated a small sum in her new life.”
Small? I winced. I considered myself comfortable. I made a good living, I bought the clothes I liked, drove the car I liked, ate out, and entertained myself without worrying a lot about the costs, and I put money away for retirement and more for a rainy day. Aunty Mommy was stinking rich, and that didn’t include whatever she had left stashed in her former life. That Mason was entirely unimpressed by such an enormous addition to his finances spoke volumes for how much he was worth and how different his entire existence was from mine.
“‘Small?’” Jeffers repeated with raised brows and then shook his head. “‘Small,’ he says, and I’m scraping to pay the mortgage on my salary. Where can I get a small sum like this so I never have to work again?”
“Lottery,” Ball
ard suggested.
“That’s throwing money away.”
“Can’t win if you don’t play.”
“Guess I’ll have to stick with good, old-fashioned nine-to-five.”
“More like twenty-four/seven.”
Their easy back-and-forth told me they were comfortable with each other—friends as well as partners. It made me like Jeffers a tiny bit. He wasn’t all gruff annoyance and rudeness.
“Are you aware of anyone who might mean you sister harm?” Ballard asked Mason.
“No.”
I wondered if the fact he was lying was as obvious to everyone else as it was to me. My unknown father definitely had an ax to grind with Aunty Mommy, and so did my biological mother, for her snatching me away. If that bothered my biomom, which I had doubts about. The whole business of contracting children was so foreign to me that I couldn’t imagine she wanted me or my siblings. Holy crap. I had brothers or sisters or one of each.
“How do I find my brothers? Or are they sisters?” I demanded, spinning to confront Mason.
“One of each,” he said. “I’ll be happy to tell you about them.” He glanced at the two detectives. “Later might be more appropriate.”
He was right but it still irritated me. Twenty-six years old. Twenty-six years and I had a brother and a sister I’d never met. We were triplets. I wanted to know about them now.
“Do they know about me?”
Mason scratched his forehead. “I couldn’t say.”
I frowned. “How well do you know them?”
“We have met from time to time.”
“So not real close.”
He hesitated, considering his words. “Their father didn’t want them spending much time with our side of the family.”
“Divorce?” Ballard asked.
Mason nodded in a total lie. I guess he thought telling the cops about the whole contracted-babies thing might sound a little repulsive. Or just plain horrifying, not to mention unbelievable.
“How long since they divorced?”
“Just after the birth of the children.”
The detectives nodded and I realized they assumed that my kidnapping had something to do with their parting ways. I wanted to laugh.
Putting the Fun in Funeral Page 19