Hour Game skamm-2

by David Baldacci

  She rolled over on her back, put her feet up in the air and took her time sliding each stocking down her leg and then balled them up and tossed them at him. After that she pointed at him and laughed again. Kyle felt his blood pressure shoot upward even as other parts of him deflated.

  “You little bitch!” His fantasy would finally be realized, and he was going to teach her a lesson at the same time. He rushed forward and then stopped just as quickly when the pistol swiveled in his direction. It must have been hidden under the bedcovers.

  “Get out.” This was the first time she’d spoken in a normal tone to him. He didn’t recognize the voice. However, he wasn’t focused on that. His gaze was on the gun that moved up and down, aimed first at his head and then at his crotch.

  Kyle started to back up, his hands up in front of him as though to deflect a bullet. “Hey, just stay cool, lady. I’m going.”

  “Now,” she said in a louder voice. She wrapped the blanket around her and stood in front of him, holding the gun with both hands like she knew exactly how to use it.

  He raised his hands even higher. “I’m going. I’m going! Damn!”

  He turned to leave.

  “Put the money on the table,” she said.

  He turned slowly back around. “Excuse me?”

  “On the table, the money.” She motioned with her gun.

  “I brought you what you wanted. That costs money.”

  In response she let the blanket drop once more and ran one hand along her curvy, nearly naked body. “So does this,” she said very firmly. “Take a good look, little boy, it’ll be the last time you see it.”

  He bristled at this insult. “A thousand dollars! For what? A frigging peep show? I wouldn’t pay a thousand bucks even if I got to screw you.”

  “No amount of money would be enough to let you even touch me,” she said bluntly.

  “Oh, yeah? Boy, you’re quite the catch. A druggie exhibitionist living in a room in a strip club? And hiding behind a scarf and those big dark glasses. Waving your naked ass in front of me and then not giving it up. Who the hell do you think you are? Huh?”

  “You’re boring me. Get out.”

  “You know what? I don’t think you’re going to fire that gun, not with lots of people around.” He looked at her in triumph. The look was short-lived.

  She tapped a cylindrical object attached to the gun’s muzzle and said, “This is a suppressor. Really makes for a silent shot.” She pointed it once more at his crotch. “Would you like a quick demonstration?”

  “No,” he yelled, backing away. “No.” He dropped the money on the table, turned and ran out of the room, slamming the door closed behind him.

  The woman locked the door, went back to her bed and swallowed several pills. A few minutes later she was moaning on the floor, happy again.

  Outside the woman’s door, Sylvia ducked out of the way right before Kyle came running past. She had heard everything. Rushing back outside, Sylvia was just in time to see Kyle spit gravel out of his Jeep’s tires as he raced out of the parking lot. Sylvia slipped the hat off her head and let her hair down. Her suspicions had been confirmed. Kyle was stealing drugs and then selling them to the woman in the room. Sylvia decided to wait out in the parking lot to see if she came out.

  Hours passed. It was very early in the morning, and Sylvia had watched well over a hundred people, mostly men, leave the building. She was just about to give up when someone emerged. It was a woman, her head was wrapped in a scarf and she wore sunglasses even though it was very dark outside. She seemed a little wobbly on her feet but got into a car parked near the rear of the building and drove away. Sylvia did not follow, because she would have been too easily spotted. However, she did see the car the woman got in. She drove off. While some questions had been answered tonight, troubling new ones had taken their place.

  Chapter 49

  The day of Robert E. Lee Battle’s funeral started out under a blue sky that soon turned cloudy. By the time the procession reached the cemetery, a warm, gentle rain was falling. The army of black sat around the freshly dug hole under an enormous white tent.

  King looked at many faces he knew and many he didn’t. It was said that the regional airports in Charlottesville and Lynchburg were lined wingtip-to-wingtip with private jets belonging to friends of the Battles’ who’d come to pay their last respects. Morbid curiosity had probably enticed more than a few attendees.

  Michelle sat next to King. She was actually wearing a dress! King knew better than to make any comment. His arm was still aching from his last wisecrack.

  The Battles were in the front row, Eddie and Savannah on either side of their mother. Chip Bailey was next to Eddie. Dorothea sat at the end of the row, arms crossed. Mason stood off to one side, his gaze on the heavily veiled Remmy. Ever the dutiful servant, thought King.

  On the other side of King sat Harry Carrick. The man was dressed as dapper as ever, his white hair even more striking against the backdrop of his dark suit. He’d given Michelle a peck on the cheek and King a firm handshake before sitting down.

  “Quite a crowd,” King whispered to him. Michelle leaned over to listen.

  “Bobby and Remmy had lots of friends and business associates. Throw in the curious and the ones who came merely to gloat, and you have a staggering turnout.”

  “So I guess the Junior Deaver case is over,” said King.

  “Technically yes. You can’t prosecute a dead man for burglary; what would be the point?”

  “Technically, but…,” said King, watching his friend closely.

  “But if my assumption is correct and Junior was innocent, I’d still like to catch the thief.”

  “You want us to keep investigating?”

  “Yes, I do, Sean. I have his wife and children to consider. Why should his little ones grow up thinking their father was a thief if he wasn’t?”

  “In fact, we have our own motivation to follow that up.”

  “I can see that, considering how Junior was killed.”

  “Exactly. What are you doing after the funeral?”

  “I’ve been invited to the Battles’,” answered Harry.

  “So have we. Maybe we can find a quiet corner and discuss tactics.”

  “I look forward to it.” They all sat back and listened as the preacher commenced his talk about the dead man, the resurrection and life eternal. The rain continued to fall, making a somber afternoon even more depressing.

  As the lengthy homily finally ended, the preacher went forward to comfort the family. King’s gaze moved beyond the group assembled by the grave, and out in grids to the surrounding area. It was the same technique he’d used when in protection detail at the Secret Service. Then he’d been looking for potential assassins; now he was looking for someone who’d already killed.

  King spotted her as she came over the slight rise of ground to the right.

  Lulu Oxley was dressed all in black but, unlike Remmy Battle, wore no veil. And then it suddenly occurred to King: Junior’s funeral had been today as well. And there was only one cemetery in the area. Appearing behind Lulu as she marched toward them were Priscilla Oxley and the three Deaver children.

  “Oh, shit,” whispered King to Harry and Michelle. Michelle had already seen them coming. Harry hadn’t until King pointed her out.

  Harry jerked back and said, “Oh, good Lord.”

  Lulu turned and motioned for her mother and children to stay where they were. They instantly obeyed, and then Lulu kept right on coming. King, Michelle and Harry rose as one to head her off. Others in the crowd had seen her too, because the murmuring was growing louder.

  When they reached her, about fifty feet from the Battles, King said, “Lulu, you definitely don’t want to do this.”

  “Get the hell out of my way!” said Lulu in a voice that told King she’d been drinking.

  Harry took her by the arm. “Lulu, listen to me. You listen to me now!”

  “Why the hell should I? I listened to you before
and Junior’s dead!” To King she looked like she might collapse any moment or else pull a gun and start shooting anything with clothes on.

  “No good can come out of your being here,” continued Harry. “No good. Mrs. Battle is grieving too.”

  “She should be rotting in hell for what she did!” She tried to jerk her arm away from Harry’s grip, but the old man somehow held on.

  His voice was steady and calm. “There isn’t a shred of evidence that she had anything to do with Junior’s death. In fact, everything points to his being killed by the same person who killed all the others, including Bobby Battle. The same person killed both your husbands.”

  “Then maybe she had her husband killed, I don’t know. But she threatened Junior and now he’s dead.”

  King looked back and saw that Remmy Battle had raised her veil and was now staring at them. And then King’s worst fears were realized. Remmy went over to Mason, said something to him as she pointed at them, and then she started walking over holding an umbrella against the rain.

  “Oh, this just gets better and better,” muttered King under his breath. All others in the crowd sat watching, waiting for a catastrophic collision of widows.

  With long, methodical strides Remmy reached them quickly. King immediately blocked her path to Lulu.

  “Get the hell out of my way, Sean. This is not your business.” Her southern drawl had never been more prominent, at least in his experience. Her look and tone brooked no opposition, and King reluctantly did as he was told.

  Harry was the next barrier, but it only took a fierce expression from Remmy to move him aside as well. Probably sensing the futility of it, Michelle didn’t even try.

  Remmy was now face-to-face with Lulu, who stared back at her on tottering legs, the tears running down her face, which was twisted into an expression of hatred.

  Without looking back at them Remmy said, “I want to talk privately with Ms. Oxley. We have some things to discuss that are just between us.”

  Lulu began, “I got nothing to say to—”

  Remmy held up her hand, but King, who couldn’t see her features, concluded it was probably the look on the older woman’s face that had halted the usually indomitable Lulu from launching into her tirade.

  “Please let us talk,” said Remmy in a calmer tone.

  The three of them slowly moved away. King remained nearby, tensed to leap if the women started throttling each other.

  Remmy immediately took Lulu’s arm in a firm grip. At first the other woman resisted, but Remmy leaned toward her and began to talk quickly, though none trying to eavesdrop could hear what was said. Long moments passed, and King looked on in amazement as Lulu’s features calmed. Even more miraculously, after a few minutes of conversation Lulu reached out and gripped Remmy’s arm for support. The two women finished their conversation and started to walk toward King.

  Remmy said, “The Oxleys will be joining us at the house. But first I’m going to pay my respects to Junior.”

  As they walked off, King saw that Mason had collected Priscilla and the children and was leading them down to the Battles’ limousine.

  “In my seventy-plus years I’ve never seen anything as strange and inexplicable as that,” said Harry, stunned.

  As the two women disappeared over the slight rise in the ground, King said to his two companions, “Stay here.” He started off at a jog, following the two women.

  Junior’s grave site had no tent and was far humbler than Bobby Battle’s funeral in every other respect. It was Saks versus Kmart, which overlooked the indisputable fact that both men were equally dead.

  The only people around were the two men whose task it was to lower the simple wooden casket into the ground and cover it with six feet of fill. King watched from behind a large ornate sculpture of a mother and child that marked a nearby grave as Remmy spoke to the workers, who nodded respectfully and stepped away. The two women knelt on the fake green grass carpet in front of the casket and clasped their hands together in prayer. They remained there for several minutes. When they rose, Remmy went over to the coffin and placed a single red rose on it. Lulu nodded at the men, who came forward once more as the women walked off arm in arm.

  King drew farther back as they passed by his hiding place, and watched as they disappeared over the rise. King turned back to Junior’s grave. The cemetery workers had headed back to their nearby truck probably to get their shovels. King thought about going over to pay Junior his own last respects. King hadn’t known the man very well, but his wife and children obviously loved him very much; every man should leave behind such a legacy. King hadn’t seen too many tears at Bobby Battle’s interment, costly though it had been.

  As he was about to head back, he stopped and ducked farther behind the statue. Someone had flitted out of a nearby patch of trees. This person walked quickly toward the grave, looking nervously all around. There seemed an abundance of guilt in the figure’s furtive movements. King couldn’t make out who it was or whether it was a man or a woman, since the person’s outfit consisted of pants, a coat and a cowboy hat pulled low.

  As the person knelt in front of the grave, King crept forward for a better look. And then the hat came off as the person’s head bowed in prayer. It looked to be a woman, given the length of the piled-up hair. However, from this angle King couldn’t make out the face. Should he walk up and confront the person? But that would give him away as well. He thought some more and then ducked behind the large statue of mother and child once more, picked up a pebble, aimed and sent it sailing toward another large marker about twenty feet to his right and close to Junior’s grave. The result was as he’d hoped.

  The woman looked up quickly at the sound of the rock hitting the marker, giving King a clear look at her face. She put her hat back on and ran for the cover of the trees.

  King had no reason to give chase. He knew who it was.

  Yet why would Sally Wainwright, the Battles’ horseperson, be praying in front of Junior Deaver’s grave?

  Chapter 50

  Casa Battle, though very large, was very full. Long linen-covered tables had been set up on the main floor with food and drink. After filling their plates and glasses Harry had led King and Michelle to the second-floor study to talk things over.

  He explained, “I don’t think we’ll be interrupted here. It’s far enough away from the food and, more important, the liquor. Death makes people especially thirsty, I’ve found.”

  King looked at the antique writing desk against one wall. There were fancy writing instruments, heavy bond paper with the initials REB on them, a leather ink blotter and several old-fashioned inkwells.

  “Even more than me, Remmy is a letter writer from the old school,” said Harry, who was watching King. “The lady doesn’t believe in e-mails or even typewriters. And she expects missives in kind.”

  “I’m glad she has the time to communicate that way. I guess that comes with being really rich. I saw Remmy and Lulu go off together when we got here,” said King.

  “Remmy has a private chamber near her bedroom on the third floor,” answered Harry. “I’d love to be a fly on the wall there.”

  “I can’t imagine what Remmy said to Lulu to make an instant peace,” said Michelle. “Talk about miracles. I feel like I almost saw the Virgin Mary.”

  King took a swallow of his wine and smiled appreciatively. “Valandraud of St-Emilion; Remmy didn’t hold back on the good stuff.” He looked at the older man. “I can fathom a guess about Remmy and Lulu. How about you, Harry?”

  Harry adjusted his bow tie and smoothed down his hair before sampling the wine and a crab cake on a plate resting on his knees. “I believe we can take what Michelle said quite literally; in other words, she did make peace, across the board.”

  “Meaning what exactly?” asked Michelle.

  “That she told Lulu she doesn’t believe Junior committed the burglary and therefore isn’t going to sue for the return of the items. With the criminal prosecution dropped due to Jun
ior’s death, the matter is officially closed.”

  “I’m sure she added that she had nothing to do with Junior’s death and is deeply sorry Lulu has lost her husband as well,” commented King.

  “And there was probably talk of Remmy’s setting up college funds for the Oxley children,” added Harry.

  “And perhaps financial help for Lulu, to finish the house and all,” said King. “She’d already offered that to Junior when she thought he was behind the burglary. She probably felt guilty for all the trouble she’d caused them.”

  Michelle stared at the two, bewildered. “You think she covered all that in a few minutes at the cemetery?”

  Harry raised his wineglass in a salute of sorts. “Remmy isn’t the sort to let the grass grow under her feet. She might not always make the right decision, but when the woman acts, people know it! Not unlike a certain female investigator of my acquaintance.”

  Michelle smiled at his remark and then quickly grew serious. “And Remmy’s change of heart is due to what?”

  “As we said, she knows or at least believes Junior was innocent of the burglary,” said King. “In addition, there’s no way Junior could have killed Bobby. Even if he had the necessary medical knowledge, which he didn’t, he would have been hard to miss at the hospital. And I checked: he had an alibi for the time Bobby was killed.”

  “So Remmy must be thinking that the murder of her husband and the theft of the things from the house are related,” said Michelle. “If Junior didn’t do one, he couldn’t have done the other.”

  “Exactly,” said Harry. “Which proves he was framed.”

  King looked around at the walls of books and then glanced out the window at the afternoon gloom. It had started to rain harder. He watched the drops splatter on top of the cars parked in the front motor court.

  “When I followed Remmy and Lulu to Junior’s grave site, I saw another mourner there,” said King. “A very unexpected one.”