by Lisa Jackson
“With Owen Duval as our number one suspect. Some things don’t change over the years,” she said. “Be interesting to see what he has to say. It’s all set up to meet him at his lawyer’s office.”
“He’s already hired an attorney?”
“I guess, but the place is out of town. Attorney’s name is Austin Wells.” Her eyes narrowed behind her glasses. “You know him?”
“Of him. Thought he was retired.”
“Apparently not. We’re scheduled to meet him at five thirty. Gives Owen time to get off work. He works at the Chevy dealership. Mechanic. Gets off at five. Oh, and we’re not meeting at the law office; it’s located in the Winslow Building, damaged in the hurricane. We have to go to Wells’s home.”
“They could have come down here.”
“Apparently Owen Duval refused to step inside the building. Something about hating police stations and interrogation rooms. He spent a lot of time here twenty years ago.”
“He might not have a choice.”
“I know, but for now, I figured we could be somewhat accommodating.” She slid him a sly smile. “If we don’t like what he has to say or think he’s holding out, we can always change our minds and haul his ass down here.” Arching a brow, she said, “My grandma always said, ‘you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.’ ”
“Did she?”
“Yeah, but then she’d always add, ‘but if the honey don’t work, haul out the fly swatter and smack that son of a bitch dead.’ ”
Reed had to laugh as he reached for his jacket. “A woman I’d like to meet.”
“Too late. She’s long gone. I barely remember her. Come on, let’s roll.”
CHAPTER 13
“If you ask me, the whole family was a little off, if you know what I mean,” Chandra Johnson said to Nikki. They were standing on one side of a rail fence at the equestrian center while a girl of about eight in riding clothes and a helmet was astride a prancing bay horse with a wide white blaze, trying and failing to gain some control of the gelding.
The place was much as Nikki remembered it, with a huge covered arena, wide barn doors opening to this outdoor paddock, the acres around it grassy aside from an occasional pine tree and an orchard nearer to the house. Across a gravel lot, a two-story brick house that had seen better days stood in a grove of pecan trees, a weedy garden to one side.
Nikki had parked on the wide gravel strip between the house and arena. Inside the enclosure, the horse shook his head, dark mane shivering in the late-afternoon sunlight. To the rider, Chandra instructed, “Ease off on the reins, Willa, quit fighting him.” Under her breath, she muttered, “That girl has the touch of a blacksmith. Oh, for the love of God!” To Nikki, she said, “Give me a second, will ya?” And then she was through the gate of the fenced enclosure and striding toward the horse. “Whoa,” she said softly as she approached horse and rider. She took hold of the reins and laid a hand gently on the gelding’s shoulder, then spoke softly. Nikki couldn’t hear any of the one-sided conversation, but it seemed to calm both horse and rider.
She remembered being the girl on the horse and Chandra’s annoyance and advice and way with horses. Chandra, a woman who might be more comfortable with animals than people, was older now, thicker around the middle, her brown hair still plaited in a single braid that snaked down her back, though now the plait was dull and dyed, gray roots visible surrounding a rounded, tanned face. She was wearing a dingy orange T-shirt with a Grateful Dead logo and faded, dusty jeans that seemed identical to the battered pair she’d worn twenty years earlier.
“Now give it another try, and remember, hold the reins lightly,” she said more loudly as she backed up. “Remember, Oliver can feel what you want. Communicate with the horse. Trust him.” With those parting words she slipped through the gate again, her eyes rolling toward the sky. “Lost cause,” she said to Nikki, then watched as the rider urged the horse forward and he started at a quick trot around the perimeter of the oval arena.
A chain saw started to roar in an orchard nearby as a wiry jean-clad man bent over a downed peach tree, but the horse didn’t flinch, just kept his pace, the little rider teetering slightly. “Oh, for . . . would you look at that? I told Chuck not to clear the damned trees until after Willa’s lesson.” She sighed, then waved frantically, finally getting the grizzled man’s attention. She made a slashing motion across her throat and the chain saw died as Chuck frowned, lifted a baseball cap from his balding head, but nodded, getting the message.
“One more idiot to deal with,” Chandra confided. “Now, what was I saying? Oh, right, you were asking about that Duval family who lived up the street from us. I got a weird vibe from them, but it was probably because of the older boy, what was his name? Owen. Yeah, that’s right. Sullen little bastard. Always staring at you from behind a mop of dark hair, like he was hiding; y’know, a predator in a cave.” She gave a little involuntary shudder.
“You think he was behind the girls disappearing?”
Chandra let out a snort. “Course he was. Who else? And he was supposed to be in charge, now, wasn’t he?” She glanced at the rider as the horse trotted past. “That’s better, Willa, now, slow him down. We’re about done here.”
Bouncing atop Oliver, the waif of a girl nodded, her face ashen, her eyes round, the helmet slipping a bit. If she was enjoying her lesson, she was hiding it well. She yanked back on the reins and the horse stopped suddenly.
Chandra bolted through the gate. “That’s good, that’s good,” she said, snagging the reins just as a gray minivan rolled down the lane to park behind Nikki’s Honda. A frazzled-looking red-haired woman climbed quickly out from behind the wheel. With a runner’s body, she was lean and taut, her age landing somewhere in her forties. “Come on, Willa,” she called, waving at her daughter as Willa, with Chandra’s help, dismounted. Yanking off what appeared to be a hated riding helmet, the girl bounded through the open gate. Chandra tied the reins loosely over one of the rails beneath a shade tree, then followed.
“How’d she do?” Mom asked, checking her watch and ruffling her daughter’s hair.
Chandra equivocated. “Improving.”
“Good, good,” Mom said, not really interested. To her daughter, she added, “Look, honey, you get in the car. Quick. Chop. Chop.”
The girl didn’t need any more encouragement and dived into the minivan.
Mother apologized, “Sorry. We’re already late for the boys’ lessons.”
“Do I have to go?” Willa whined from the interior of the minivan, but Mom ignored it. To Nikki, she offered an apologetic smile. “Martial arts. Tae kwon do and we’re late. Well, I’m always late. Twins. Six-year-old boys. Willa hates waiting, and I can’t say that I blame her, but, well, you know, it is what it is.” She shook her head as if she couldn’t believe her life. “After martial arts, it’s swim lessons for all of them.” She was flustered and breathless. “Crazy, I know.”
“Mo-om,” Willa called from the interior of the van. “Can we just go now?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming,” she threw over her shoulder, then, turning back to Chandra, “Oh, damn. I forgot the check. I’ll . . . I’ll Venmo the next month’s lessons when I get home. Okay?” She was already heading back to her vehicle.
Chandra’s smile faded. “And this month’s.”
“Right, oh, yeah, right, right! That’s totally what I meant.” Blushing, she threw Chandra an oh-silly-forgetful-me look, then was off, diving into the minivan, getting behind the wheel and slamming the door shut in one quick motion. She maneuvered a quick three-point turn before driving quickly down the lane, dust kicking up in the gravel in her wake.
“I’m not going to count on that, the Venmo thing,” Chandra said, almost to herself, then turned back to Nikki. “Sorry. Business. You were asking about that Duval family.” She shook her head. “They were a strange lot.”
“They were? How so?”
“First of all, the parents weren’t happy. I felt it in their faces, s
aw it in the way they interacted with each other. That’s no crime, of course, happens all the time, but they were different. It was”—she squinted up at the sky, where thin white clouds slid over the sun—“it was this weird vibe. It went beyond unhappiness or not trusting each other to, like, wariness.”
“Before the girls went missing,” Nikki clarified.
“Before, during, and after. It was just always there. And the kids felt it, too, at least the oldest one, uh, Holly did. I sensed it. She was always edgy around her folks. Clammed up, like she was afraid to say anything. But—a lot of people are odd or have different kinds of relationships. As for the Duvals, the entire family seemed, I don’t know, ‘off,’ I’d say. Frankly, I was surprised that Harvey and Margaret stayed together for as long as they did because before the girls went missing, there was talk of them not getting along or having affairs or whatever.” She scratched the back of her neck, beneath her braid. “I never saw any sign of it myself, and gossip runs through Savannah like wildfire through tinder, but who knows? Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, y’know? Smoldering somewhere, but it’s a damned shame about the kids.” She clucked her tongue. “Cute little things, all of ’em. And that little Rose, she had a special spark. Holly, she was suspicious, and the middle one . . . uh, Poppy, she was kind of sneaky and a really good student, I think, and like I said, little Rose, she took after her mother, looked more like Margaret than the other two. They favored Harvey, but that wasn’t bad. They were a good-looking group, just . . . off somehow.”
“Maxie seemed to think that you had a special insight into them.”
“Oh. Well.” She rubbed her chin. “I can see things sometimes, especially if I concentrate, but all I saw about that family was trouble, lots of strife, and the cause of it? The older brother. He’s just a bad seed.”
“And you know this how?” Nikki asked. Just because a teenager didn’t meet your gaze didn’t indicate that he was troubled.
Chandra bit her lip. “Well . . . okay . . . I guess I can tell you, but don’t you print it. Got it? Anything I tell you is from an ‘anonymous source,’ right? Otherwise it’s got to be completely off the record.”
“Understood.”
“Good.” Leaning against the top rail, she glanced at the horse, still saddled, switching his tail at a bothersome fly. “Maxie probably told you, or you’ve heard that I sometimes see things, you know. It’s not like it happens all the time, but sometimes. Definitely.” She rubbed her chin, her eyes narrowing as she remembered. “And it happened with that family once, at the Marianne Inn, just up the river, here.” She hooked her thumb toward the north. “I took a trail ride up that way with a couple of friends, oh, God, it’s been over twenty years, of course. I was riding in the lead, I remember, on Zeus—he was my favorite gelding at the time. Sorrel with a stubborn streak but could race like the wind. Man, I loved that horse . . .” She was squinting, thinking, her mind turned inward. “Anyway, that’s when I came across them and there was this, this . . . oh, just something that gave me pause.”
“An aura around Harvey and Margaret?”
“No . . . it was the girls—no, that’s wrong. She paused, her eyebrows drawing together. “Just the oldest one, Holly. I sensed some sadness in her, more like a wave of despair. And then, upon hearing the horses, she looked up, saw us coming and the tears that I’d seen falling dried quickly.” Chandra’s voice was quieter. “The feeling I got, the energy from her, changed immediately. She just forced a smile, then ran off.”
“To the lodge?”
“Yes.” She nodded thoughtfully as the horse nickered softly. “It was open back then.” Clearing her throat, she added, “I’d better see to Oliver.” She stepped to the still-open gate.
“You said, ‘them.’ You saw ‘them.’ So who besides Holly?”
“That’s just it. I sensed there was someone else there, saw a flicker of something, or someone, but not sure who . . . or even what. A shadow. I remember there were bees that day—wasps, no hornets, I think. I remember swatting at them and urging the horse forward. To get away from them.” Her brows drew together and she rubbed her forehead, leaving a smudge. “Funny the things you recall.”
“But you saw someone else. With Holly.”
“Yeah, I felt a presence. Maybe the brother—Owen. Coulda been him.”
“And you think he’s capable of murder?”
“Now, don’t you go twisting my words. I don’t know what he’s capable of, I just said he’s a bad seed. That’s all.” She was getting angry now, as if feeling Nikki was reading more into what she was saying than she meant.
“What was Holly Duval doing at the Marianne Inn?”
“Beats me.” She shrugged as she untied the bay. “That, I can’t tell you.” She waved to the man in the orchard, making a swirling motion over her head, and he got the message. The chain saw screamed, biting into wood again.
Nikki watched Chandra lead the horse to the trough and as he dipped his head and drank, she wondered about Chandra’s claim. If the woman fancied herself some kind of prognosticator or seer, she was a damned poor one. And there was something more to the woman, Nikki thought. Beneath the civil, rancher-like exterior was something darker, something Chandra worked to keep hidden. As Nikki drove away, checking her rearview and spying Chandra Johnson staring at her through a cloud of dust, Nikki couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that she’d just been speaking with a charlatan rather than a psychic.
* * *
Reed slid a pair of sunglasses over the bridge of his nose while Delacroix sat in the passenger seat of his Jeep, riding shotgun, her eyes focused, as usual, on the screen of her cell phone as they drove along the river.
“We’re about to Wells’s place.”
“Mmm.” She nodded, looking up, her own pair of Ray-Bans hanging from the neckline of her shirt. “I don’t think his story is going to change. He was interviewed three times and I watched them all twice.”
“Me too.”
“Nervous, wasn’t he?”
“Very.” In the interviews, each a little more intense than the one before, Owen Duval, only sixteen, had come in voluntarily. But he’d stared at the interviewing officer belligerently, his arms crossed over his chest, his right leg visibly jumping beneath the table in the interview room. Each time, he’d held fast to his story, barely changing the wording, and each time he was backed up by an airtight alibi from his girlfriend, Ashley McDonnell, at the time.
As if she’d read Reed’s mind, Delacroix said, “Ashley McDonnell, who is now Ashley Jefferson, still lives in the area. Married, a couple of kids, rocking the island lifestyle out on Tybee.”
“You get hold of her?”
“Yeah, but she tried to brush me off. Too ‘busy’ with the kids, hubby and some sort of mommy blog, you know, but I used my considerable powers of persuasion to convince her otherwise. She agreed to meet me, albeit reluctantly, later, probably today or tomorrow. Worked for me. I wanted to see what Owen has to say first.”
“What ‘powers of persuasion’ are those?” he asked, spying the turnoff and driving down a smooth lane.
“The power behind the badge,” she said, staring through the windshield as they drove through a grove of pecan trees and up a small rise to a large, plantation-style home of two stories. With gleaming white siding, a wide front porch, huge pillars and tall windows that winked in the dying afternoon sun, the house was surrounded by a trimmed lawn and the front doors flanked by huge ceramic pots overflowing with trailing flowers.
“Man, oh, man,” Delacroix said, clucking her tongue while Reed parked behind a triple garage and next to a dusty, ten-year-old Chevrolet Silverado, the windows tinted, and from the plates, Reed knew the vehicle belonged to Duval. “Wells isn’t exactly a public defender, now, is he? How in the world does a guy like Owen Duval afford this kind of lawyer?”
“Pro bono, I’d guess. Wells is probably doing it for the publicity. So people get to know his name. He’s got ambitions.”
&nbs
p; “Such as?”
“Governor.” Reed shrugged. “Or senator, maybe.”
“You know this how?” she asked dubiously, as he pocketed his keys and they both climbed out of his Jeep.
“Common knowledge. And who knows? Maybe he’s looking to get a book deal out of it.”
“Like your wife?” she said, shooting him a knowing look.
“Maybe.”
“Pretty hard with attorney-client privilege.”
“Been known to happen.”
“Hmm.” As they reached the edge of the lawn, she said, “I’m going to push Duval a little.”
“Okay.”
“So don’t get in my way.”
“Why would I?”
“You know, the lead detective thing. And the man thing. Just go along.”
“If I can,” he said, slightly annoyed, but maybe it would be good to see her in action, see if they really could make a team out of their new partnership. He doubted it but was game.
For now.
They walked along a brick pathway to the front door, which was opened as Reed pressed the doorbell and chimes pealed softly from within.
“Detectives,” a tall, slim man with a shock of white hair and rimless glasses over deep-set blue eyes answered. Austin Wells was in slacks and a white shirt, sleeves rolled up, an easy smile sliding across his tanned jaw, his voice deep, with just a hint of Georgia drawl. “We’ve been expecting you.”
Reed and Delacroix introduced themselves while Wells led them inside, through a two-storied foyer to a den at the base of a sweeping staircase. The room was an octagon with several sets of French doors cut between floor-to-ceiling bookcases, each entryway offering a different view of the surrounding grounds.
Owen Duval, dressed in clean jeans and a polo shirt, sat in a side chair near a massive wooden desk. His hair was still dark, but cropped close, a goatee surrounding his lips, his eyes dark and gray and haunted. His hands were clasped in front of him, and he didn’t get up when they entered.
