“Quite the résumé,” she murmured drily.
He pressed a kiss on her lips. “Yes, it is. And if you did fail, well, I’d help you pick yourself up again. We’d evaluate the circumstances, look at the courses of action, and—I’m doing it again, aren’t I? Mentoring you. I’ll try to stop.”
Smiling, she let her head rest on his shoulder and inhaled the familiar scent of him—Dove soap, warm skin, and spearmint gum. “Can we still do that weekend away?”
“I told the colonel I’d be gone for at least a week, and ordered my deputy not to call unless a satellite falls out of the sky,” he said, squeezing her tight. “We can leave here tomorrow and head for Charleston or anywhere else you want to go.”
“Charleston,” she said. Lightness invaded her. “You remember the first time we made love?”
“Like I could forget.” His lips curved.
“Well, there’s no pool here, but there’s a hot tub … ”
Thirty-One
Laurel woke later than she expected and blinked in the sunlight glaring through the drapes. It took her a moment to get oriented, but awareness trickled in in spurts. Geneva and her baby. Stephen Abbott holding Dawn at knifepoint. Finding Geneva. Mrs. Abbott’s arrest. Kyra’s accident. Swinging her legs out of bed, she dressed, brushed her teeth, and splashed water on her face, and then hurried toward the breakfast parlor. She heard voices coming from the dining room and poked her head in. She found Boone sitting on one side of the table with Ellie across from him, looking unselfconscious in a cotton camisole, pajama bottoms, and rumpled hair. Between them was a flimsy box holding assorted donuts, and a carrier with three cups of coffee with the Starbucks logo. Ellie held the fourth Starbucks cup, and Boone had his insulated Frozen cup.
“For us?” Laurel asked, entering and pointing toward the coffee.
When Boone nodded, she said, “Oh thank God,” and reached for one of the coffees. Unable to resist a chocolate cake donut, she picked one up with a napkin and took a large, sugary bite. She almost moaned with pleasure.
“I figured you wouldn’t get much of a breakfast here this morning,” Boone said. “Not since I put your innkeepers in jail. It seemed the least I could do.”
“Thank you,” Laurel mumbled around a mouthful of chocolatey goodness. “Where’s Scott?” she asked when she’d swallowed.
“Off to the hospital to pick up Geneva for the memorial,” Ellie said with a smile that suggested their reunion had been hot despite the late hour. “She called first thing and says she feels fine—take my word for it, she’s lying—and that the doc has signed her out. Baby Lila will stay at the hospital until we’re done.”
“Do I smell coffee?” Dawn stood in the doorway, dressed and made up, gripping her roller bag by the pull handle. Something in the way she held herself, canted ever so slightly backward as if determined not to enter the room, gave Laurel the impression of a deer about to take flight.
Laurel passed her a coffee cup. “Courtesy of New Aberdeen’s finest,” she said.
“Thanks,” Dawn murmured, cracking the lid and blowing on the steaming liquid.
“I’ve got a search to organize, so let me fill you in,” Boone said, sitting up straighter. He kicked a chair out in mute invitation.
Clearly reluctant, Dawn entered, towing the suitcase as if it were a lifeline connecting her to the highway and freedom. “I have to hit the road. Kyra gets released from the hospital today and I am going to be there to take her home, if she’s up to it. I don’t have time to stay for the memorial.” She kept her eyes on the table, not looking at Laurel or Ellie.
“You’re having a memorial for Evangeline Paul?” Boone asked.
Ellie nodded. “Who knows when or if there’ll be a funeral? We want to remember her together.” She looked straight at Dawn, who met her gaze briefly and shook her head.
“Did you catch Stephen Abbott?” Laurel asked.
“We did. At the South Carolina border. He was headed for Mexico with seventy-eight thousand hidden in the door panels of his car. According to Nerys Abbott, they have more in an offshore account. She broke down and told us everything before we brought him in. They were bitter about the castle being sold out from under them, about being forced into retirement. They didn’t have much of a nest egg, apparently, and they talked themselves into believing the corporation owed them. Stephen Abbott came up with the idea of siphoning off some of the furniture and other antiques and selling them for their own profit. He has a buddy in the antiques business in New York City, and he was making the connections with the buyers. They ‘only’ took about a fifth of the castle’s contents, Mrs. Abbott told us, all self-righteous, because they figured that’s what they had coming to them after twenty-plus years of running the B and B.”
“And now what they’ve got coming is a prison sentence,” Laurel murmured.
“It’s sad,” Dawn said.
“Don’t waste your pity on Stephen Abbott.” Boone shifted his jaw to the side. “Although he denies it, in all probability he killed Mindy Tanger. He admits that she was blackmailing him. She told him she’d figured out what was going on, and she had photographs of the truck they were using to haul stuff away—”
“From their son-in-law’s business,” Laurel said.
“Right.” Boone’s mouth ticked up at one corner, saying she’d surprised him yet again. “We haven’t found her phone, so we can’t verify that part of his story. He says they were supposed to meet by the lake Sunday night, where he was going to hand over twenty-five thousand in cash to keep her quiet. His story is that she never showed. It’s likely their real rendezvous was the fifth floor. It looks like he whacked her with a two-by-four and then dragged her body to the elevator shaft and shoved her over.”
“I hope she was unconscious,” Ellie said. “Poor Braden.”
Boone acknowledged her concern with a nod. “Abbott was probably hoping that a fall similar to the one Ms. Paul suffered ten years ago, plus the murder and the four of you here as likely suspects, would confuse the issue, at the very least.”
“Likely?” Ellie asked with affront.
He ignored her, rubbing his bristly jaw. “He’ll confess, eventually. His wife admits he was out Sunday night, so he doesn’t have an alibi. Regardless, we’ve got him on the charges related to you”—he nodded at Dawn—“and to kidnapping Ms. Frost.”
“And Evangeline?” Dawn asked, her voice pitched low. Her head was slightly bowed and she looked at Boone from under her brows. Her fingers plucked at her cup’s rim, peeling away the rolled edge.
“That investigation is still open, but I’m leaning toward the suicide theory,” Boone replied. “Unfortunately, Ray Hernan, who was apparently Ms. Paul’s accomplice in staging the suicide as a murder, is out of the country for an unknown period.” He gave Laurel a slit-eyed stare. “When I get a chance to talk to him and verify what he told Laurel—Ms. Muir—I’ll close the case. Until then, it’s still open. I know where to find you if I need to.” He made eye contact with each of them for a long moment.
“So it’s okay if we leave? We’re free to go?” Dawn asked, making as if to stand.
“You’ve always been free to go.”
The sound of the front door opening, and then footsteps, presaged Geneva’s entrance. “You didn’t start without me, did you?” Dark circles under her eyes testified to a sleepless night, but she looked utterly happy, Laurel thought, with a grin wider than the Mississippi splitting her face. Her maternity top billowed over her deflated belly.
“Sit down,” Ellie said, sliding a chair out.
“Should you be walking around?” Dawn asked, her brow puckering.
Geneva waved a dismissive hand. “I’m tired and sore, but fine. Better than fine. Before we all got so germ-phobic and precious, women had babies out in the fields and went back to picking cotton, or they popped out a baby in the covered wagon and went ba
ck to goading the oxen.” Moving a little gingerly, she seated herself. Her gaze landed on the remaining coffee cup and she sniffed. “Coffee. Oh my God, real coffee. Please tell me that cup has my name on it.”
“Be my guest.” Boone smiled and pushed it toward her.
Geneva cracked the lid, inhaled deeply, and then took a long swallow. “Ah, bliss, thy name is coffee,” she said, making them all laugh.
“Does Geonwoo know you left the hospital already?” Laurel asked shrewdly.
Geneva looked sheepish. “Scott’s picking him up at the airport. He’ll bring him back here and we’ll go get Lila. The pediatrician’s a little worried about jaundice, so they want to do another blood test or two this morning. I need to be back to feed her in a couple of hours.”
“That’s my cue,” Boone said, pushing to his feet. “I’ll leave you ladies to it. We’re searching this place today to see if we can turn up Mindy Tanger’s phone. A hopeless task, but we’ve got to try.”
“You might start with the housekeeping cart,” Laurel said, the idea coming to her suddenly.
“Not a bad thought.” He dipped his chin in thanks or farewell and strode out of the room.
A strange pang hit Laurel as she watched him go. Was that goodbye, or would she see him again before she returned to Denver?
When the door closed behind him, Ellie cleared her throat. “Where shall we do the memorial?” she asked. “Geneva suggested the lake, and I think that would be lovely, but I’m not sure she can—”
“I’m not staying.” Dawn stood.
“Dawn! You have to—” Geneva started.
Dawn shook her head, tendrils of dark hair bobbing around her face. “No. I wanted to say goodbye to Evangeline, but that was before we found out what she tried to do to us. She tried to have one of us convicted of murder. She plotted and schemed and found ways to implicate all of us.” Her hand clenched and flexed on the suitcase handle. “She sent Ray to Texas, for God’s sake, to buy rat poison to make it look like I poisoned her. And she put you in her will, Ellie, not because she wanted to help you out but to give you a motive for murder! I can’t remember the good times or celebrate her life, not now.” She shook her head and her curls tossed wildly. “Maybe not ever. I can’t believe you want to say nice things about her, either.” Her gaze challenged each of them in turn.
“Maybe not,” Ellie agreed slowly, “although I’ll never forget how kind she was when she found out I was pregnant. She helped me make up my mind to leave school and have the baby. She bought your paintings, Dawn—”
“That wasn’t kindness,” Dawn shouted, throwing her arms out so the suitcase spun away and cracked against a table leg. “I was so happy, over the moon, when the gallery owner told me my showing had sold out. I finally knew I could make it as an artist, that people liked my work, my art. And then to get here and find out that she’d bought them all, every one, kept other people from buying them, even … it broke something inside me. By buying out the exhibit, she was saying she knew no one else would want my art. It was pity, the equivalent of a mercy fuck. Well, she fucked me over, all right. I knew then that she was right, that I didn’t have what it took, that spark, that vision that sets a true artist apart. I was a hack, suited for teaching or advertising or what I’m doing now. I wasn’t a real artist and I was never going to be. You expect me to revere her ‘kindness’ in showing me that?” She paused, panting.
“You were so hurt and so mad that you pushed her off the balcony, didn’t you?” Laurel said softly.
Ellie’s eyes widened. “Laurel! You can’t say—” She stopped, her gaze resting on Dawn, who had half turned away. “You did,” she whispered. “Oh, Dawn.”
Laurel leaned forward. “You pointed out that there didn’t have to be a link between what happened ten years ago and Evangeline’s death this weekend. That’s because you pushed her ten years ago, but you had nothing to do with poisoning her, right?”
It felt almost like a courtroom: the three of them, sitting, impaneled as jurors, and Dawn, standing, the prisoner in the dock.
Dawn’s lower lip trembled and she bit down on it. “I was drunk, furious, humiliated. Heartbroken—I was heartbroken. I didn’t set out to hurt her, you have to believe that.” She swung in a semicircle, meeting each of their eyes in turn. “I didn’t! I went to her room, planning to have it out with her, that’s all. I wanted—needed—to tell her what she’d done, make her understand how she’d, she’d crushed me. I knocked, but she didn’t answer, and I knew she was avoiding me, knew she didn’t think it worth her time to even talk to me.”
She flung her hair back, thrusting her pointy chin up. “Well. I went in. I was going to make her listen whether she wanted to or not. I didn’t see her at first, but then there was the breeze and I knew she was on the balcony. I called her name, but she couldn’t even be bothered to turn around and talk to me. I … I’m not sure what happened next.” Her gaze shifted to her hands, clasped together so tightly every bone stood out. “Before I knew it, I was on the balcony, leaning over the rail—the stone was rough under my hands, so rough.” She rubbed her hands together lightly, as if the palms were sore. “I could see her sprawled on the ground, broken.” She let out a single loud sob and swallowed the next one with a sound like a hiccup. “I didn’t mean to.”
A hush fell over the room. No one moved, and Laurel figured they were all visualizing the scene.
“You’re not sure what happened? You didn’t ‘mean to’?” Ellie’s voice, loaded with scorn, exploded into the silence. “Is that a ‘the ghost made me do it’ defense? Total BS. I’ll tell you what happened: you came up behind your best friend, shoved her between the shoulder blades as hard as you could, and watched her fall five stories.” She stopped, shuddering, and turned away from Dawn.
Laurel could see that Dawn’s confession had quenched Geneva’s happiness. Her face solemn, Geneva reached out a hand. “Dawn, why didn’t you come forward? Tell us, the sheriff, what had happened?” Her hand dropped and anger seeped into her voice. “You let him grill us, put us through the wringer. Do you know how I fought to stay sober through that time, how scared I was that they’d arrest me because I was the black woman with a record?”
“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone, certainly not any of you,” Dawn said, taking a step toward them, leaning forward like a supplicant. “Not like Evangeline. Look how she’s tried to hurt all of us, tried to send us to prison.” Her voice grew impassioned as she tried to convince them. “She played God with us—she has for years. She outed me by kissing me in front of my sister and caused no end of trouble with my family. She seduced your boyfriend and lost you your scholarship,” she said, facing Ellie, who turned toward her. “And what she did to Geneva was the worst of all.”
Geneva shook her head slowly. “I take full responsibility for what happened that night. It was Vangie’s idea, sure, but no one put a gun to my head and forced me to go on a drug buy, and no one siphoned vodka down my throat for a year thereafter. I’m not proud of any of it, but it’s all on me, not Vangie.”
A thin silence settled and held for fifteen seconds after Geneva spoke. Laurel steeled herself. An abdominal muscle spasmed, reacting against how tightly she was clenching her abs. It would be so simple to leave things as they were. They knew the truth about Evangeline’s fall now. That should be enough … but it wasn’t. Only the whole truth would suffice. Those who remained could never heal their friendship without the whole truth. She licked her dry lips. “What about Mindy?”
Dawn stumbled backward as if struck, sloshing coffee on herself. She set the cup down with a trembling hand. “What about Mindy? Abbott killed Mindy, we know that. The sheriff said—”
“Do we know that?” Laurel asked. “Abbott denies it.”
“Of course he does.” Geneva frowned at her.
“I think Mindy was blackmailing you, Dawn,” Laurel said. She stood, too, so that they were
level, facing each other. “She found the rat poison box and receipt that Evangeline had planted in your room. In the trash, I’ll bet. I think she was in the habit of going through the trash. She brought them to you, didn’t she?”
“No! She … I … ” Dawn’s face reflected her confusion. As Laurel watched, the confusion turned to anger. “How can you accuse me of that? I admit that in a moment of drunkenness, near insanity, really, I … I pushed Evangeline. I’ve regretted it every day since then, every day. You can’t think that I would—”
Laurel swallowed hard around the lump of regret and disappointment clogging her throat. Sadness weighed her down, like the time she tried on a cop’s Kevlar vest. She’d felt unbalanced, clumsy, and slow, like now. “When we were in my room, you said something about not being able to prove where you were at 5:08 on any particular Friday. That’s the exact time that was on the receipt.”
“So? I—”
“The receipt was in my robe pocket. You didn’t see it in my room, so you couldn’t have known the time on it unless you’d seen it before. In fact, you wouldn’t even have known the box implicated you unless you’d seen that the receipt was from San Marcos. Mindy showed it to you.”
Dawn’s face went expressionless. Laurel couldn’t begin to imagine the calculations going through her head. She didn’t give her a chance to come up with a story. “Mindy was stepping up her blackmail activities, building a nest egg for when she was jobless, I suspect. She blackmailed the Abbotts, and she came to you, too. She showed you the box and receipt and said she’d give them to the police if you didn’t pay up. You didn’t know how they’d ended up in your trash can—how could you at that point?—but you knew they were incriminating and you didn’t need Boone taking a hard look at you, not with last time on your conscience. Did you suggest meeting on the fifth floor, or did she?”
That Last Weekend Page 27
