Shades of Twilight

by Lind Howard

  She didn’t need a light; she had wandered Davencourt so much at night that she knew all of its shadows. Silently she drifted down the hallway, her long white nightgown making her look like a ghost. She felt like a ghost, she thought, as if no one ever really saw her.

  She paused in front of the door to Webb and Jessie’s suite. A light was still on inside; a thin bright ribbon was visible at the base of the door. Deciding not to knock, Roanna turned the knob. “Jessie, are you awake?” she asked softly. “I want to talk to you.”

  The shrill scream tore through the soft fabric of the night, a long, raw sound that seemed to go on and on, straining, until it broke on a hoarse note. Lights flared in various bedrooms, even down in the stables where Loyal had his own apartment. There was a gabble of sleepy, confused voices crying out, asking questions, and the thud of running feet.

  Uncle Harlan was first to reach the suite. He said, “Godawmighty,” and for once the too-smooth, too-hearty tone was absent from his voice.

  Her hands stuffed into her mouth as if to keep another scream from escaping, Roanna slowly backed away from Jessie’s body. Her brown eyes were wide and unblinking, the expression in them curiously blind.

  Aunt Gloria rushed into the room despite Uncle Harlan’s belated attempt to stop her, with Lucinda close behind. Both women stumbled to a halt, horror and disbelief stunning them to immobility as they took in the gory scene. Lucinda stared at the tableau presented by her two granddaughters, and every vestige of color washed out of her face. She began to tremble.

  Aunt Gloria put her arms around her sister, all the while staring wildly at Roanna. “My God, you’ve killed her,” she blurted, each word rising with hysteria. “Harlan, call the sheriff!”

  The driveway and courtyard were a snarl of vehicles parked at random angles, bar lights flashing eerie blue strobes through the night. Every window in Davencourt blazed with light, and the house was crowded with people, most of them wearing brown uniforms, some of them wearing white.

  All of the family, except for Webb, sat in the spacious living room. Grandmother was weeping softly, her hands ceaselessly twisting a delicately embroidered handkerchief as she sat with slumped shoulders. Her face was ravaged with grief. Aunt Gloria sat beside her, patting her, murmuring soothing but meaningless words. Uncle Harlan stood just behind them, rocking back and forth on his toes, importantly answering questions and offering his own opinions on every theory or detail, soaking in the limelight currently shining on him because of his luck in being the first one on the scene—discounting Roanna, of course.

  Roanna sat alone on the opposite side of the room from everyone else. A deputy stood nearby. She was dully aware that he was a guard, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. She was motionless, her eyes dark pools in a colorless face, her gaze both unseeing and yet encompassing as she stared unblinkingly across the room at her family.

  Sheriff Samuel “Booley” Watts paused just inside the doorway and watched her, wondering uncomfortably what she was thinking, how she felt about this silent but implacable rejection. He assessed the thin frailty of her bare arms, noted how insubstantial she looked in that white nightgown, which wasn’t much whiter than her face. The pulse at the base of her throat beat visibly, the rhythm too fast and weak. With the experience of thirty years in law enforcement behind him, he turned to one of his deputies and said quietly, “Get one of the paramedics in here to see about the girl. She looks shocky.” He needed her lucid and responsive.

  The sheriff had known Lucinda for most of his life. The Davenports had always been hefty contributors to his campaign funds when election time rolled around. Politics being what they were, he’d done a lot of favors for the family over the years, but at the base of their longtime relationship was genuine liking. Marshall Davenport had been a tough, shrewd son of a bitch but a decent one. Booley had nothing but respect for Lucinda, for her inner toughness, her refusal to relax her standards in the face of modern decline, her business acumen. In the long years after David’s death, until Webb had become old enough to begin taking over some of the burden, she had run an empire, overseen a huge estate, and raised her two orphaned granddaughters. Granted, she’d had the benefit of immense wealth to smooth the way for her, but the emotional burden had been the same on her as it would have been on anyone else.

  Lucinda had lost too many loved ones, he thought. Both the Davenport and Tallant families had suffered untimely deaths, people taken too young. Lucinda’s beloved brother, the first Webb, had died in his forties after being kicked in the head by a bull. His son, Hunter, had died at the age of thirty-one when his small plane crashed in a violent thunderstorm in Tennessee. Marshall Davenport had been only sixty when he died from a burst appendix that he ignored, thinking it was just an intestinal upset, until the infection had become so massive his system couldn’t fight it off. Then both David and Janet, as well as David’s wife, had been killed in that car wreck ten years ago. That had nearly broken Lucinda, but she’d stiffened her spine and soldiered on.

  Now this; he didn’t know if she could bear up under this latest bereavement. She’d always adored Jessie, and the girl had been mighty popular in the elite society of Colbert County, though Booley himself had had his own reservations about her. Sometimes her expression had seemed cold, emotionless, like that of some of the killers he’d seen through the years. Not that he’d ever had any trouble with her, never been called on to cover up any minor scandals; whatever Jessie was really like, under the flirtatiousness and party manners, she’d kept her nose clean. Jessie and Webb had been the sparks in Luanda’s eyes, and the old girl had been nearly bursting a seam with pride when the two kids had gotten married a couple of years ago. Booley hated what he had to do; it was bad enough that she’d lost Jessie, without involving Webb, but it was his job. Politics or not, this couldn’t be swept under the carpet.

  A stocky paramedic, Turkey Maclnnis, entered the room and crossed to where Roanna was sitting, hunkering down in front of her. Turkey, so called because of his ability to imitate a turkey call without benefit of any gizmos, was both competent and soothing, one of the better paramedics in the county. Booley listened to the casual matter-of-fact voice as he asked the girl a few questions, assessing her responsiveness as he flicked a tiny penlight in her eyes, then took her blood pressure and counted her pulse. Roanna answered the questions in a flat, almost inaudible tone, her voice sounding strained and raw. She regarded the paramedic at her feet with a total lack of interest.

  A blanket was fetched and wrapped around her, and the paramedic urged her to lie down on the sofa. Then he brought her a cup of coffee, which Booley guessed to be heavily sweetened, and cajoled her into drinking it.

  Booley sighed. Satisfied that Roanna was being taken care of, he couldn’t put off his onerous duty any longer. He rubbed the back of his head as he walked over to the small group on the other side of the room. For at least the tenth time, Harlan Ames was recounting the event as he interpreted it, and Booley was getting heartily sick of that greasy, too-loud voice.

  He sat down beside Lucinda. “Have you found Webb yet?” she asked in a strangled tone, as more tears slipped down her cheeks. For the first time, he thought, Lucinda looked her age of seventy-three. She had always given the impression of being lean and strong, like the finest stainless steel, but now she looked shrunken in her nightgown and robe.

  “Not yet,” he said uncomfortably. “We’re looking for him.” That was an understatement if he’d ever made one.

  There was a slight disturbance at the door, and Booley looked around, frowning, but relaxed when Yvonne Tallant, Webb’s mother, strode into the living room. Technically no one was supposed to be allowed in, but Yvonne was family, even though she had distanced herself several years back by moving out of Davencourt into her own little house across the river in Florence. Yvonne had always been a woman with an independent streak. Just now, though, Booley wished she hadn’t shown up, and he wondered how she’d found out about the trouble here tonig
ht. Ah, hell, no use worrying about it. That was the trouble with small towns. Someone in dispatch, maybe, had called home and said something to a family member, who’d called a friend, who’d called a cousin who knew Yvonne personally and had taken it upon herself to let her know. That was always how it worked.

  Yvonne’s green eyes swept the room. She was a tall, slim woman with streaks of gray in her dark hair, the type described more as handsome than pretty. Even at this hour, she was impeccably clad in tailored slacks and a crisp white blouse. Her gaze lit on Booley. “Is it true?” she asked, her voice cracking a little. “About Jessie?” Despite Booley’s own reservations about Jessie, she had always seemed to get along with her mother-in-law. Besides, the Davenport and Tallant families were so close that Yvonne had known Jessie from the cradle.

  Beside him, Lucinda gulped on a sob, her entire body trembling. Booley nodded an answer at Yvonne, who closed her eyes against welling tears.

  “Roanna did it,” Gloria hissed, glaring across the room at the small, blanket-wrapped figure lying on the sofa.

  Yvonne’s eyes flew open, and she gave Gloria an incredulous look. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she snapped, and purposefully strode over to Roanna, crouching down beside her and stroking the tumbled hair back from the colorless face, murmuring softly to her as she did. Booley’s opinion of Yvonne jumped up several notches, though he doubted, from the look on her face, that Gloria shared it.

  Lucinda bowed her head, as if unable to look across the room at her other granddaughter. “Are you going to arrest her?” she whispered.

  Booley took one of her hands in his, feeling like a meaty, clumsy ox as his thick fingers folded around her cold, slender ones. “No, I’m not,” he said.

  Lucinda shuddered slightly, some of the tension leaving her body. “Thank God,” she whispered, her eyes squeezing shut.

  “I’d like to know why not!” Gloria shrilled from Lucinda’s other side, rearing up like a wet hen. Booley had never liked Gloria nearly as much as he did Lucinda. She’d always been prettier, but Lucinda had been the one who’d caught Marshall Davenport’s eye, Lucinda who had married the richest man in northwest Alabama, and envy had nearly eaten Gloria alive.

  “Because I don’t think she did it,” he said flatly.

  “We saw her standing right over the body! Why, her feet were in the blood!”

  Irritably, Booley wondered why that was supposed to have any significance. He reached for patience. “From what we can tell, Jessie had already been dead for several hours before Roanna found her.” He didn’t go into the technical details about the progression rate of rigor mortis, figuring Lucinda didn’t need to hear it. It wasn’t possible to pin down the exact time of a death unless it was witnessed, but it was still a sure thing that Jessie had died at least a couple of hours before midnight. He didn’t know why Roanna had paid her cousin a visit at two in the morning—and he’d definitely find out—but Jessie had already been dead.

  The little family group was frozen, staring at him as if they couldn’t comprehend this latest twist. He took out his little notebook. One of the county detectives normally would have done the interviewing, but this was the Davenport family, and he was going to give the case his personal attention.

  “Mr. Ames said that Webb and Jessie had a lulu of a fight tonight,” he began, and saw the sharp look that Lucinda gave her brother-in-law.

  Then she took a deep breath and squared her shoulders as she mopped at her face with the mangled handkerchief. “They argued, yes.”

  “What about?”

  Lucinda hesitated, and Gloria stepped into the breach. “Jessie caught Webb and Roanna carrying on in the kitchen.”

  Booley’s gray eyebrows rose. Not much surprised him anymore, but he felt mildly astonished at this. Dubiously, he glanced at the frail, huddled little form across the room. Roanna seemed, if not childish, still oddly childlike, and he wouldn’t have figured Webb for being a man who was turned on by that. “Carrying on, how?”

  “Carrying on, that’s how,” Gloria said, her voice rising. “My God, Booley, do you want me to draw you a picture?”

  The idea of Webb having sex with Roanna in the kitchen struck him as even more unlikely. He was never surprised at the depth of stupidity supposedly smart people could exhibit, but this didn’t ring true. Odd, that he could see Webb committing murder, but not fooling around with his little cousin.

  Well, he’d get the true story about the kitchen episode from Roanna. He wanted something else from these three. “So they were arguing. Did the argument turn violent?”

  “Sure did,” Harlan replied, only too eager to take the spotlight again. “They were upstairs, but Jessie was screaming so loud we could hear every word. Then Webb yelled at her to get a divorce, that he’d do anything to get rid of her, and there was the sound of glass breaking. Then Webb came storming downstairs and left.”

  “Did any of you see Jessie after that, or maybe hear her in the bathroom?”

  “Nope, not a sound,” Harlan said, and Gloria shook her head. No one had tried to talk to Jessie, knowing from experience that it was better to let her cool down first or her fury would erupt on the erstwhile mediator. Lucinda’s expression was one of growing disbelief and horror as she realized where Booley’s questioning was headed.

  “No,” she said violently, shaking her head in denial. “Booley, no! You can’t suspect Webb!”

  “I have to,” he replied, trying to keep his voice gentle. “They were arguing, violently. Now, we all know Webb has quite a temper when he’s stirred up. No one saw or heard a peep out of Jessie after he left. It’s a sad fact, but any time a woman’s killed, it’s usually her husband or a boyfriend who does it. This hurts me bad, Lucinda, but the truth is Webb is the most likely suspect.”

  She was still shaking her head, and tears were dribbling down her wrinkled cheeks again. “He couldn’t. Not Webb.” Her voice was pleading.

  “I hope not, but I have to check it out. Now, what time was it when Webb left, as near as you can remember?”

  Lucinda was silent. Harlan and Gloria looked at each other. “Eight?” Gloria finally offered, uncertainty in her voice.

  “About that,” Harlan said, nodding. “That movie I wanted to watch just had come on.”

  Eight o’clock. Booley considered that, chewing on his lower lip as he did so. Clyde O’Dell, the coroner, had been doing his job for just about as long as Booley had been doing his, and was damn good at guessing the time of death. He had both the experience and the knack for adding the degree of rigor with the temperature factor and coming up with pretty close to the right answer. Clyde had put the time of Jessie’s death at “Oh, ten o’clock or thereabouts,” with a rocking motion of his hand to indicate the actual time could slip either way. Eight o’clock was a mite early, and though it was still within the realm of possibility, that did throw a bit of doubt into the mix. He had to make damn sure of his case before he presented it to the county prosecutor, because old Simmons was too slick a politician to take on a case involving the Davenports and Tallants unless he was sure he could make it stick. “Did anyone hear a car or anything later on? Did Webb maybe come back?”

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Harlan said.

  “I didn’t either,” Gloria confirmed. “You’d have to be driving a transfer truck before we could hear it in here, unless maybe we were in bed and the balcony doors were open.”

  Lucinda rubbed her eyes. Booley had the feeling she wished her sister and brother-in-law would shut the hell up. “We can’t normally hear anyone driving up,” she said. “The house is very well insulated, and the shrubbery deadens the sound, too.”

  “So he could have returned and you wouldn’t necessarily have known it.”

  Lucinda opened her mouth, then closed it without replying. The answer was obvious. The upstairs balcony that circled the huge, elegant old house was accessible from the outside stairs on Webb and Jessie’s side of the house. Moreover, each bedroom had double French doors t
hat opened onto the balcony; it would have been ridiculously easy for anyone to go up those stairs and enter the bedroom without anyone else in the house seeing them. From a security standpoint, Davencourt was a nightmare.

  Well, maybe Loyal had heard something. His apartment in the stables probably wasn’t as soundproof as this massive old house.

  Yvonne left Roanna’s side and came to stand right in front of Booley. “I heard what you’ve been saying,” she said quietly, her tone even despite the way her green eyes were boring a hole in him. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, Booley Watts. My son didn’t kill Jessie. No matter how mad he was. he wouldn’t have hurt her.”

  “Under normal circumstances, I’d agree with you,” Booley replied. “But she was threatening to have Lucinda cut him out of her will, and we all know what Davencourt means to—”

  “Bullshit,” Yvonne said firmly, ignoring the way Gloria’s mouth tightened like a prune. “Webb wouldn’t believe that for a second. Jessie always exaggerated when she was mad.”

  Booley looked at Lucinda. She wiped her eyes and said faintly, “No, I would never have disinherited him.”

  “Even if they divorced?” he pressed.

  Her lips trembled. “No. Davencourt needs him.”

  Well, that undercut a damn good motive, Booley thought. He wasn’t exactly sorry. He would hate like hell to have to arrest Webb Tallant. He’d do it, if he could build a strong enough case, but he’d hate it.

  At that moment a flurry of voices came from the front entrance, and they all recognized Webb’s deep voice as he said something curt to one of the deputies. Every head in the room, except Roanna’s, swiveled to watch as he strode into the room, flanked by two deputies. “I want to see her,” he said sharply. “I want to see my wife.”

  Booley got to his feet. “I’m sorry about this, Webb,” he said, his voice as tired as he felt. “But we need to ask you some questions.”