by Lisa Jackson
“Got it,” Nikki said as her own phone pinged with an update on local news. The feed read: Owen Duval found dead in his home. Police on the scene. Possible suicide. “Keep me posted,” she said, and cut the connection. “Damn it all to hell.”
What was she supposed to do?
Wait here for Reed?
Hope that he would give her inside information on her “exclusive”?
“Fat chance,” she muttered just as her phone pinged and a text came in. From her husband:
Don’t hold dinner.
Hung up at the scene.
I’ll call later.
“Swell, Reed,” she said into the phone. “Just swell.”
Another text came in. Again from Reed:
You okay?
“No, by the way, I’m not,” she said aloud but didn’t type the words. “Thanks for asking, but I’m not all that great. Not only am I shut out of this investigation, but you and I, dear husband, are one heartbeat away from inheriting Sylvie Morrisette’s children.” She sent him an emoji, a thumbs-up.
He responded:
Good.
Lock up.
She sent another checkmark emoji.
“You bet,” she muttered. Then to Mikado, who was lying on the ottoman in the family area and staring at her, “Just call me the dutiful little wife. Maybe I should go ‘freshen up’ for my man, have a drink waiting when he gets home, ask him how his day is going? Seduce him while a pot roast is roasting in the oven?”
She heard herself and rolled her eyes as she realized she was mocking her own mother and Charlene’s marriage, which had been far from perfect, but then was there such a thing as perfect wedded bliss? Of course not. And her parents had made it work despite their differences.
She punched out her mother’s number and Charlene picked up on the second ring. “Nicole!” she said with a smile in her voice, and Nikki cringed inside, silently promised she wouldn’t be so distant. “How’re you doing?”
“Fine, Mom. I was just throwing a frisbee in the yard and thought I might bring Mikado out to stretch his legs soon—” Nikki felt even more guilty when she thought of her niece. How long since she’d seen Phee, Lily’s daughter? It had been weeks, if not months, and soon she would be starting school again. She was seven now, had lost several teeth and was growing like a weed. “Not today, Mom, but soon. I promise,” she said, then sat at the table, where the crumpled pages of Sylvie Morrisette’s will and trust agreement spelling out her wishes were scattered. She changed the subject. “So, Mom, can you tell me a little more about the Beaumonts?”
“So this isn’t a social call? You didn’t just want to catch up,” Charlene said, obviously a tad miffed.
“I am working on a story.”
“Oh, Nicole. You’re married. Want to become a mother and . . . well, there’s no talking to you about this. I know. I’ve tried.”
Nikki didn’t argue. Her mother was right. It wouldn’t do either of them any favors. “You told me once that you thought Baxter Beaumont was involved with Margaret Duval.”
“They were.” She said it as if it were fact.
Okay, time to plunge on. “So was it possible that Margaret’s youngest daughter, Rose, was Baxter’s kid?”
A pause.
Nikki’s pulse ticked up.
“There was talk,” Charlene said evenly, “but it was primarily conjecture.”
“Because of Rose’s age?”
“Yes, and because she didn’t look like her sisters. The first two were dead ringers, two years apart, but nearly identical except for size, and Rose wasn’t. Now that could be just a case of genetics. Siblings sometimes don’t look a thing like each other. Look at you and Lily, for example, but the fact that she was a little different, facial shape, hair not quite as fair as the others, gave the gossipmongers more grist for their mill.”
Okay, so that told her a little more.
“What do you know about the Channings?” Nikki asked. “The neighbors of the Beaumonts who have the vineyards.”
“Not much.”
“I never saw them at any of the parties we went to at the Beaumonts’,” Nikki said.
“Well . . . that was because of Nell, I suppose. Eleanor, her name was.”
“Baxter and Connie-Sue’s daughter?” The dead girl who had drowned in the river, the one whose spirit still walked through the woods according to local legend.
Charlene was thoughtful. “It was a long time ago and I wasn’t there, mind you, but the way I heard it, the little girl was playing unattended, well, except that her brother was there. He was with the Channing boy, what’s his name?”
“Jacob.”
“Yes, that’s it. They were roughhousing or playing some game in the river, which is dangerous enough, and little Nell tried to join them and somehow unfortunately drowned. Connie-Sue blamed the Channing boy, though according to the police reports, it was just a horrible, horrible accident. A tragedy. Connie-Sue never got over it. Eventually she made Baxter move, and the boys weren’t allowed to see each other, at least not that their parents knew.”
“You think that Jacob was involved in Nell’s death?”
“No, no, I think it was a tragedy. Horrible. And sometimes when a child dies, it’s natural for the parents to want to blame someone.”
“In this case Jacob Channing.”
“Yes.”
“What about Tyson? He was there, too.”
“But he was their son. Their only son.”
They talked a little longer and as she ended the call, Nikki vowed she would visit Charlene this coming weekend. Come hell or high water.
She eyed the clock, read over Sylvie Morrisette’s last wishes for the second time and then searched through accounts of Nell Beaumont’s death. All the articles came to the same sad conclusion: accidental drowning.
Reed wouldn’t be home for hours, probably.
She bit her lip and considered her options.
There was no way she could sit here idle. She remembered the gleam in Kimberly Mason’s eye as she, while on her cell phone, climbed into the news van and the big white van took off out of the church parking lot, hot on Reed and Delacroix’s tail. That burned her. Then Nikki thought of Norm Metzger at the crime scene trying to interview Reed.
That did it!
She knew what she had to do and it wasn’t sit around here and mix martinis or sweep the kitchen floor. She headed to the garage and climbed into her Honda, leaving the Jeep parked in Reed’s space. Backing out, she planned her evening. Since she couldn’t interview Owen Duval, his story about the night that his sisters disappeared would never change, so she decided to follow up on what her mother had told her and decided to talk to Jacob Channing.
Jacob had been Tyson’s friend.
He’d been at the river the day Nell had drowned.
He’d been blamed for Nell’s death by Connie-Sue Beaumont.
He lived next door to the Beaumont estate.
And he’d been rich enough to date Ashley McDonnell.
She couldn’t wait to talk to him.
* * *
“I’m not sure it’s suicide,” Delacroix said to Reed as they stood over Owen Duval’s body. “Check out the back of his hand. GSR’s not right.”
The victim was slumped in his chair, his right arm hung over the arm rest, a pistol, the obvious weapon that ended his life, on the carpet beneath his fingers. He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, his eyes fixed and glassy, his color gray, his mouth open and the round dark hole at his temple encrusted with blood visible.
Reed eyed the back of Duval’s right hand—presumably his gun hand.
“There would be more,” she said, nodding. “Wait ’til the tests come back.”
When he glanced at her, she said, “I took classes about gunshot residue and blood spatter while I was in New Orleans. This is all wrong.” Her eyes narrowed on the victim. “Staged. I’d bet my badge on it. And get this. According to the landlady, Owen Duval was left-handed. Like me. Hele
n Davis said she’d watch him write out checks and saw him hold a hammer or screwdriver when he was fixing stuff for her, like a broken shelf.”
Reed looked at the scene. Owen’s drink and pill bottles were at the left side of the chair, on a table with the television remote. On the right little table, only a box of Kleenex.
“So you’re saying homicide.”
“Definitely.”
She had a point, he saw it as well.
“Did we find out about forced entry?”
“None noted according to the first cop on the scene.”
“Tina Rounds?”
“Yeah.”
When they’d first arrived, Delacroix had zeroed in on Rounds, while Reed talked to a couple of cops outside, helping them set up barriers as a crowd of neighbors had already started to gather.
“Rounds checked everything out when she got here. The door wasn’t forced, locks not broken, but the window in the bathroom was cracked, and then there’s the door between the units; and Mrs. Davis, the widow who owns the place, said she did notice that her side door was unlocked and she can’t remember if she left it that way by mistake or not. Originally she thought Owen, here, had left it unlatched.
Reed eyed the surroundings.
Cops were crawling all over the place, taking pictures, searching for trace evidence, going through the place, while the landlady, Helen Davis, holding a one-eyed cat, was just on the other side of the open door that connected this studio apartment to the main house where she lived.
Obviously upset, she walked back and forth from her kitchen to her living area and kept watching what was happening. She’d already given her statement to the first officer on the scene, and the story was simply that she’d returned home a day early from a trip out of town, discovered her cat hungry and without water, so she’d gone to Duval’s outside door to ask him about it. He didn’t answer, but she’d known his car was parked outside, so she’d gone back through the house, through the usually locked connecting doors and found him as he was. Dead. She’d called 911.
Reed walked through the doorway and introduced himself.
“I told the other officer all I know,” she said. A small, round woman with tight gray curls and laugh lines cut into mocha-colored skin, she surveyed Reed as if he might be the devil himself. “I found Owen just as he is now. Dead. The gun there on the floor. I went over to ask him why he hadn’t taken care of Romeo here like he promised and, well, really, I was going to give him a piece of my mind. That’s no way to treat an animal, don’t you know, and there he was.” She bit her lip. “He wasn’t a bad man, not like everyone says. He was decent, don’t you know, went to work every day, paid his rent on time, even helped me out when I needed someone to move the refrigerator when it leaked or change a lightbulb I couldn’t reach. He gave me no trouble, not one bit, and so I was surprised when I got home and found Romeo cryin’ for his dinner!” She let out a breath and stroked the mottled gray cat in her arms. “Anyway, that’s all I know.”
* * *
Jacob Channing was just locking up the tasting room of Channing Vineyards, which was part of a compound of Italianate buildings with wide eaves and cornices supporting flat tile roofs and spread around a central parking area composed of pavers.
She parked next to his sleek BMW. He looked up and smiled, still a hint of a boyish dimple showing in a square jaw that sported three days’ growth of beard. In a tight T-shirt and shorts, he was tall and lean, with deep-set eyes and blond hair that appeared a little unkempt. He had that whole casual, I-look-good-and-don’t-have-to-work-at-it vibe going. “I know you,” he said. “Nikki Gillette, right?”
“Right.”
“And let me guess, you’re here because they found the bodies of the Duval girls next door.”
“Basically.”
“I figured.” He unlocked the door of the tasting room. “Come on in.” Checking his watch, he added, “You’ve got twenty minutes. Then I have an appointment with my trainer.”
Inside, he walked behind a dark wood bar and found a bottle, two glasses and, without asking, poured. “Sit,” he said, pointing to a stool and handing her a glass. Then he pressed a button and classical music began to drift from speakers hidden high overhead. “You may as well have the full experience.”
“You drink before working out?”
“I taste before working out sometimes.” He held out a glass and she took it, sipping the cool white as she slid onto the proffered stool while Jacob remained behind the bar, polished wood separating them. The room had high ceilings, open beams and French doors that opened to terraced grounds, umbrella tables and views of the rows of vines stretching across the slight hill.
Jacob took a swallow, then said, “Look, I don’t know what happened to those girls, have no idea. I was surprised as anyone that their bodies were found at the Beaumonts’—actually, I was blown away that they were there and dead. I kinda had this idea that they’d show up sometime, y’know, not that I thought about it all that often. I didn’t even know them. They were a lot younger than me.”
“Their mother worked over at the Beaumont house. As a nurse.”
“A nurse? Oh. For the old lady?”
“Yes, Beulah.”
Jacob screwed up his face. “Did she? I don’t remember. But then that was probably after I was persona non grata over there. Connie-Sue, she made the edict.” His expression darkened. “Blamed me for what happened to Nell.”
Here we go, Nikki thought. “Because you were there the day she drowned.”
“Yeah, we were all just screwing around in the water and it just happened. She got in over her head, couldn’t swim and Tyson saw her, but it was too late.”
“So why did Connie-Sue blame you?”
“She had to blame someone, didn’t she? Couldn’t be her son’s fault, or God forbid, hers for not keeping an eye on the kid.” He finished his glass in one swallow. “Anyway, the upshot was that I was banned from the property. And eventually they moved and let the damned house fall into ruin.” He shook his head. “Who does that?”
“No one else was ever there?”
“After they moved out?” He shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. As I said, I was ordered off the grounds and I stayed away.” He eyed her and poured himself another half glass. “And if you want to know if I saw anyone carrying any dead bodies up there, the answer is no. And I sure as hell didn’t hear anyone screaming or anything. There’s acres separating these places, so I guess I can’t help you.” He took another swallow and glanced at his watch.
She didn’t take the hint. “And you knew Bronco Cravens?” “Yeah, he lives just—lived just across the river.” He studied the contents of his glass as he twirled the stem in his fingers. “Shame about him. He wasn’t really a bad guy, you know.”
“And what about Owen Duval?” she asked, assuming he’d not heard about Owen’s death. Nikki decided in this case, and to keep her husband from going ballistic, that discretion was the better part of valor. Jacob Channing wouldn’t hear about the alleged suicide from her.
“Owen?” Jacob repeated. “What can I say? Weird dude.”
“You think he killed his sisters?”
“What? Hell, no.” Jacob shook his head, his pale hair shivering.
“He wasn’t weird that way, wasn’t perverted or anything, at least not that I ever saw, just out of step. Different.”
“So did you and Tyson stay friends after his sister died?”
“Kinda. It was never the same, though, but yeah, we hung out sometimes.”
“You both dated Ashley McDonnell.”
Involuntarily, his jaw tightened. “In high school? Yeah. What does that have to do with anything?”
“Just curious. And she’s Owen Duval’s alibi.”
“I know. Strange, huh?” He seemed genuinely perplexed. “I didn’t get it then, but now I think she might have connected with him on more of an intellectual level.”
“So you all dated her. You and Owen and Tyson.”
“If that’s what you want to call it. Ashley and I went out, yeah. Had a thing for a while, or at least I did, but it would never have worked out.” Once more he finished his glass.
“Why not?”
“Because she was hung up on Tyson. That’s why the Owen Duval thing didn’t make a lot of sense to me.”
“Because she was hung up on Tyson Beaumont.”
“Yeah, I mean, I expected that they’d end up getting married one day. But then I hear that she’s marrying some guy she met in college or something. A computer software guy worth a fortune. Kind of blew me out of the water, you know. I didn’t even know she and Tyson weren’t a thing.”
“How did Tyson take it?”
He shrugged. “How does he take anything? How would I know?” “You were friends.”
“Past tense. Remember?”
“But he got over it?”
“Sure. I mean, I guess.” He glanced at his watch again. “Hey, I’ve really got to go.” He finished his drink. “I guess you didn’t like yours?” he accused, and swiped her glass from the bar.
“No, no. I just don’t drink much of anything when I’m driving.”
He gave her the oh-sure look but didn’t ask if she was pregnant, though she saw the question in his eyes. She didn’t explain and hiked her purse strap a little higher over her shoulder.
“He’s never married,” she observed as she climbed off her stool.
“Who? Tyson?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s not exactly a crime,” he said. “Look at me. I got close a couple of times, but it didn’t work out.”
“What about Tyson? Has he ever gotten close?”
“Again, you’re asking the wrong guy. But I’ve never heard that he has. As I said, I thought Ashley was the one he’d end up with.” He ushered her out and locked the door. “Good thing I’m not a betting man.”
He jogged to his sports car and she climbed into her Honda. She wasn’t certain he was telling her the truth, or at least not all of it.
Thoughts of their conversation still lingering, she drove down the long lane and out the gates, noting that the BMW was right behind her. She turned toward town and right before the bridge, Jacob blew by her, the sports car roaring past and practically flying over the river. “Idiot,” she said, though of course he couldn’t hear her. He was flashy. Flashier than Owen Duval or Tyson Beaumont.
