Season of Secrets (16 page)

She'd crept to the stairs, her hand gripping the railing. She'd leaned over. And then…

Nothing. Her mind shrank back, wincing, closing over the wound. Don't go in, don't go in, don't go in.

She clenched the pencil so hard it snapped off in her hand.

Please, God.
She stopped, not sure what to pray. And then she knew.

Please, Father. If it's Your will, let me remember. I'm open to whatever You have for me.

Slowly, very slowly, the tension drained out of her. She straightened, wiped her eyes then looked down at the paper on the desk in front of her. And saw what she'd drawn.

It was the Citadel crest, drawn over and over again across the page.

 

Marc pushed back from the computer, looking out the study window. It was getting dark already, and he was sitting here with only the glow of the laptop screen for company. He'd managed to lose himself in work for over an hour. He'd managed to forget so easily the pain he'd caused Dinah.

Rotten timing, that's what it had been. He'd known for days that he had to talk to her again about what she might remember from that night, but he'd kept putting it off, not wanting to cause a breach between them.

And now, because he'd been frustrated after that futile conversation with Draydon, he'd brought it up to Dinah at the worst possible moment. She'd already
been used up by what must have been a terrible experience for her with the girl, and he'd barged in and trampled on her feelings.

He leaned back, rubbing the nape of his neck. Dinah was stuck in the past, able to help other people bring the memories out and face them, but unable to do the same for herself.

I'd like to believe I did it for her sake, Lord, but I know that's not true. I chose that moment because I'm desperate for something that will clear me. If I'm charged, what will happen to Court?

No excuses. He was making excuses, and there weren't any.
I was wrong. Forgive me. And please, show me what to do, because I'm at the end of my rope. I thought I knew what was right. Now I just don't know
.

He heard a key turn in the lock of the front door. Court, coming in ravenous for supper? Or Dinah? She was the only other person with a key.

He had reached the doorway when Dinah met him. She shoved past him into the study, thrusting a sheet of paper at him. Her face was nearly as white as the page.

“Dinah? What's happened?” He looked at her, not the paper in his hand.

“I tried.” Her voice shook. “I tried to do what you wanted, and that's what happened.”

He glanced down at the sheet. It was an image of the Citadel crest, done over and over in Dinah's delicate pencil drawing, some a simple doodle of a couple of lines, others shaded and rounded.

“I don't understand.” Instinct told him not to ap
proach her. She looked as if she'd shatter like crystal at an unwary touch.

Her eyes, dark with shadows, focused on his face. She took a ragged breath and seemed to search for calm.

“I tried to remember. I opened myself to whatever memories I might have hidden away about that night.”

Excitement surged through him, but he forced his voice to remain calm. “Did you remember anything?”

She was looking into the past, her eyes wide, the pupils dilated. “Playing outside with Court on the swings after supper. It was so hot, but he had to be outside. I pushed him. He kept saying, ‘Higher, higher.'”

“What happened when you came inside?” Gently. Don't startle her out of the memory.

“He was all sweaty, his hair wet and curling on his neck.” She smiled slightly. “I hugged him. We were laughing.” The smile slipped away. “Annabel was upset. Angry with you, for not coming home. Angry with me, for letting Court run around outside in the heat. Angry with Court, for putting his dirty hands on her clean skirt.”

“It didn't mean anything, sugar. It was really me she was annoyed with, not you and Court.” She was hurting. He didn't want her to hurt. But he needed her to remember.

“I know.” She shook her head a little, seeming to come back to the present. “But I got mad at her. It seems so wrong, that I got mad at her and a few hours later she was dead.”

“We all felt that way.” He longed to put his arms around her in comfort, but he didn't dare. “Did you yell at her?”

She looked shocked. “No, of course not.”

Of course not. Shy little Dinah would never have yelled at the grown-up cousin she adored.

“What did you do?”

“I took Court up and gave him a bath. We played, read stories. Afterward…” She hesitated for a long moment. “Usually, if you weren't there, I'd go down and watch television with Annabel. But I was still angry with her. So I just went in my bedroom, found a book to read and went to bed.”

That explained why Annabel had been alone downstairs. But why had she been in the front parlor? That had never been explained. Then, as now, they used the family room almost exclusively unless they were entertaining.

“You woke up,” he said quietly. “At some point, you woke. Do you know what woke you?”

She shook her head, black hair moving against the white cashmere sweater she wore. She'd come out without a coat.

“I was just awake. I thought I heard someone downstairs, so I went to the door. Opened it. I went to the top of the stairs.” She stopped. “That's all. That's all I could remember.” She closed her eyes for an instant. “But there's something else. Something Aunt Kate told me yesterday.”

His heart thudded. He'd been convinced Kate was hiding something from him. He'd been right. “What? What did she say?”

Her lips pressed together, as if she didn't want to let the words out. She swallowed, the muscles in her throat
working. “She overheard Annabel on the phone. Talking to a man. She said…” She stopped, her mouth twisting.

Shock and pain clawed at his chest. “It can't be.”

“She blames herself for not confronting her.” Dinah's voice was thick with tears. “She's sure it's true that Annabel was involved with a man that summer.”

Another man. How could he have not known, not guessed that something that serious was wrong?

“What about you?” The words came harshly. “Did you know?”

“Of course not. I never imagined anything of the kind.”

There was something in her voice that caught at him. He grasped her hands, swinging her around to face him. “Tell me the truth, Dinah.”

“I am! I just—” She wrenched her hands free, wiping at her tears like a child. “Ever since you came back, I've felt as if I had to protect her memory. Maybe, somewhere deep, I suspected. I don't know!”

He struggled to stop reacting and start thinking. A man. “Who? Who was around that summer?” He knew the answer to that. The usual group of friends—people he knew well, people he'd never dream would betray him. “This is crazy,” he muttered. “She must have been wrong. Aunt Kate. She must have misunderstood.”

“I'd like to believe that.”

“But you don't.” He shot a look at her, irrationally angry with her, as if she were to blame.

She shook her head tiredly. “I don't know, Marc.” She nodded toward the crest. “But that has to mean something.”

He finally got it. “You think this points to me, don't you? With Annabel's affair providing the motive.”

“That's not what I said.”

His stomach churned, his finger curling into fists, crumpling the paper. “You didn't have to.” He shook the paper at her. “Your drawing says it for you. You identify me with the crest.”

She seemed to be looking at him from a great distance. “You used to wear a Citadel tiepin whenever you wore a tie. It was gold. Annabel gave it to you.”

“And you'll convict me on that.” He wanted to shake her.

Anger flamed suddenly in her eyes. “You're the one who wanted me to remember. I tried, and that's what happened. Don't blame me because I couldn't come up with the answer you wanted.”

He wasn't sure when he'd been this angry. Dinah, the one person he was sure believed in him, thought he was guilty.

Carefully he put the paper down on the desk. “You'd better keep this safe. Draydon might want to see it.”

“Marc—”

He shook his head, grabbing his jacket from the back of the chair. “I'm going out. Tell Court I'll pick him up later.”

Later. As in after he regained control of himself. Without looking at her, he stalked out of the room and out of the house.

W
hen the door slammed behind Marc, the house seemed to shudder in response. Dinah sank down in the desk chair and leaned back, head throbbing. Raw emotion still hovered in the tightness of her throat.

But she couldn't cry anymore. She was all cried out. She closed her eyes, tried not to think. She was tired, so tired. Too tired to get up, cross the road to Aunt Kate's, deal with the questions Aunt Kate and Court would have.

So she sat, unwilling to move, unwilling even to think. She'd just rest for a while. Try not to think. Just rest, until she felt able to cope again.

She wasn't sure how long she sat there before the images started to form in her mind. Against the blackness of her closed lids, she saw her bare toes curling into the stair carpeting. Saw her hand reach for the railing. Felt herself lean against the railing, looking down at the hallway.

The white tiles glowed softly in the dim light of the small lamp Annabel kept burning. Voices murmured. The door to the front parlor must be ajar. She couldn't
see it from where she stood, but light streamed out in a pale yellow band, crossing the tiles, touching the table, the jasmine, the mirror.

She shot bolt upright, a shudder working its way through her body. She was remembering. After all these years of insisting she'd seen nothing, knew nothing, she was remembering.

She was alone in the house for the first time in years, if ever. Was that why? She gripped the leather arms of the desk chair, holding on as if afraid she'd fall.

Alone in the house. Once this had been a second home, but after Annabel died she'd avoided it as she'd have avoided walking through a cemetery at midnight.

Then Marc and Court came back. That sense had faded, a little painfully, perhaps, but it had gone. She wasn't afraid here any longer.

Because of Marc. That was it. Because at the deepest level of her soul, she wasn't afraid of him. She knew he hadn't been with Annabel in the parlor that night. He hadn't struck out at her.

Whatever that image of the Citadel ring meant, it didn't mean that. Marc had jumped to the conclusion she was accusing him, but—

Wait. Why had she thought of it as a ring? She'd identified it to Marc as the crest, which could have been on any piece of jewelry or clothing.

The paper lay on the desk, where Marc had thrown it. She snatched it up and smoothed it, peering at the drawing in the glow of the computer screen.

She touched the most developed of the drawings,
probably the one she'd done last. There—was that the suggestion of a curve, as if the crest were set in a curving band?

It wasn't evidence. Even if she generated a complete memory, which she had no idea if she could do, that wasn't evidence. But to her, it was better than evidence. It was proof. Marc hadn't worn any ring except his wedding ring. So whoever the drawing pointed to, it wasn't Marc.

She pushed herself out of the chair, and moved silently over the soft carpet. She'd go home, pull herself together and find some way of making Marc understand.

Judging by the way he'd rocketed out of the house, that wouldn't be easy. For the first time she realized she was standing in near-dark, with only the glow of the computer screen for light.

She reached toward the lamp, then drew her hand back. Go home. Marc would have to go there to pick up Court. She'd talk to him then.

She went quietly to the door, her feet making no sound on the soft carpet. She opened it and stopped, heart in her throat.

There was a light on in the front parlor. The door was ajar, sending a band of yellow light across the tiles.

A shiver went through her. No voices, not this time. But noise. Someone was in the room, moving around.

Marc? Could he have come quietly back to the house without her hearing him? Well, obviously someone had.

Somehow she didn't want to click across the tile
floor in her heels. She slid out of her shoes and picked them up. Then stood, torn with indecision.

If it was Marc in the room, she'd feel like a fool for trying to sneak out of the house without speaking to him. It couldn't be Court. He'd never enter the house or any other place that quietly.

No one else had a key. Whoever had rigged the cellar steps to fall hadn't needed a key.

She'd been a coward for most of her life. If she didn't at least try to see who was in the parlor, she'd be a coward for the rest of it.

Please, Lord.

She'd slip across the hall, staying in the shadow. Whoever it was, he obviously thought he was alone. Either it was Marc, in which case she had no need to fear. Or it was someone else, and she'd never forgive herself if she didn't try to find out who that someone else was.

 

Marc sat in his car, staring across the street at The Citadel. True to its name, in the dusk it looked like a medieval citadel, its pale walls glimmering. It had taught generations of cadets the meaning of discipline and honor. It had given him an excellent education and friendships he'd thought would last a lifetime. Now it had also given him a frightening puzzle.

He'd driven around the city in a haze of anger until he'd found himself here, face-to-face with his past. The anger faded, forcing him to recognize how futile and foolish it had been.

Dinah was right. She'd done what he asked, at who
knows what cost to her psyche. She'd told him the truth about Annabel, even though it ripped her apart with pain. And he'd repaid her with anger.

Somehow the idea that Dinah believed in him had become a part of his assumptions about himself. About her. The fear that she didn't trust him had rocked him more than he'd have believed possible.

Because he considered her his only friend here? No.

Truth time. It wasn't friendship he felt for Dinah. Without realizing it, his feelings for her had deepened over the past weeks into love.

Hopeless love, probably. He'd known from the first surge of attraction that there could be no future for them. The only thing he could do that might help Dinah to heal was to get to the bottom of this.

All right. Dinah had brought back some images of that night, and the crest was part of that. The only thing he had to work on, in fact. But he began with the knowledge that he hadn't killed Annabel. So the implication of the crest was that the person who'd been in the house that night hadn't been an ex-con like Hassert or a casual worker like Carr.

It had been a friend. Who? The man Aunt Kate heard her talking to?

His eyes closed. They'd entertained that summer, but not much. Annabel had said she was too tired much of the time. But when they did have people over, the crowd had inevitably included two people who had reason to wear a ring or a tiepin with that insignia. James. And Phillips.

His friends. The three musketeers.

But James could barely manage to be civil to him now. Because he thought Marc had killed Annabel? Or because of his own fear and guilt because he'd done it?

His stomach churned, his hands tightening on the wheel. Dinah had said that James cared for Annabel. He'd never realized that. How was it that the naive teenager had seen what he hadn't? Could Annabel have come to return those feelings? Had a lovers' quarrel turned deadly?

His instinct was to rush to James's office and confront him, but what good would that do? He had no evidence, nothing that would remotely convince Draydon, for instance. Just Dinah's drawing and a barely realized memory. And Draydon would be far more likely to consider that he now had motive, means, and opportunity against Marc.

Phillips wore a Citadel ring. The thought drifted through his mind and then clung like a burr. Not Phillips. It couldn't have been. Phillips was one person who could have had no possible reason to harm Annabel. He hadn't been attracted to her—just the opposite, in fact. He'd been polite to her, but made it clear in his subtle way that he thought her an idle debutante with nothing more serious in her head than the next cotillion.

And Annabel had dismissed Phillips as stuffy, stuck in the past, unable to talk about anything but his beloved history.

He shook his head, trying to clear it. He was groping in a fog, trying to come up with scenarios that would
explain the inexplicable. There was only one reasonable next step. He had to go back to Dinah, apologize, and convince her to probe more deeply.

Something had put the image of the crest into her mind, projected it through her clever fingers. The memory had to be there, if only she could access it.

He pulled out his cell phone. Apologize. He'd treated Dinah badly, raging out at her that way. He had to make up for that. He was forming the phrases in his mind when he realized the phone had gone straight to Dinah's voice mail.

He clicked off. This was not a message that could be delivered via voice mail. He had to talk to her in person.

She'd be at Kate's, of course. It was dinnertime. He'd go there, he'd apologize, and Dinah would forgive him. He couldn't let himself envision any other possibility.

 

The door to the parlor stood ajar. She'd taken a long time to cross the hallway, step by cautious step, holding her shoes in one hand. She stopped a few inches from the door, barely breathing.

It wasn't too late. She could back away as quietly as she'd come. Go out the back door, run for help. Call the police, call Marc—

If she hadn't rushed out of the house that way, with nothing in her hand but that drawing, she'd have her cell phone. But she'd been acting on instinct, knowing she had to get to Marc.

That in itself showed that she'd known he couldn't have killed Annabel. She hadn't taken the time to see
that, and Marc had been so shocked that he'd jumped to the worst possible conclusion. He'd recognize that, as soon as he calmed down enough to think. He'd put that analytical mind of his to work figuring out what the crest meant.

But she would know. Because she wasn't going to back away. She was going to find out who was in that room.

She leaned close to the crack of the door. She could see a sliver of the room—the fireplace, with its ornate mantel and gilt-framed mirror. The tall secretary desk that had once stood in Annabel's bedroom, brought down from the attic to make the room look furnished.

The front flap of the desk lay open. Someone stood in front of it. She could see part of a dark-jacketed shoulder, an arm.

Not Marc, then. He'd gone rushing out without a coat, and his sweater had been a cream fisherman's knit. But she'd known that all along, at some level.

She had to see who it was. Palm resting gently on the panel, she pushed the door wide enough to see the curve of neck, the fair, slightly graying hair. He was bent over the desk, looking at something she couldn't see.

She must have made some sound, perhaps the faintest gasp. He swung toward her.

“Dinah!” Phillips tried to smile, but it was an awkward twitch of the lips. “Goodness, you startled me. I thought there was no one home.”

Too late now to run away. But Phillips—Annabel's killer couldn't be Phillips, could it?

“I was in the study.” She got the words out through stiff lips and forced herself to step inside the room. To do anything else would look unnatural. If she bolted toward the door, he could be on her in an instant.

Act. Pretend. Make him believe you don't suspect a thing.

He gestured toward the desk. “I wanted to find a pen and paper, so I could leave a note for Marc. Do you know when he'll be back?”

Her mind raced. Was it better for him to believe Marc would show up at any moment? Or might that precipitate the very action she wanted to avoid?

“I don't know.” She attempted a smile. “Court is over at Aunt Kate's, and dinner is almost ready. I'm sure Marc will show up soon.”

Better. She sounded almost normal, didn't she? She turned, oh so casually, toward the door.

“I'd best get back to the house before Aunt Kate sends Court over to fetch me. I think you'll find a pen and paper on Marc's desk.”

Her gaze hit the gilt-framed mirror over the mantel. The mirror reflected her face, chalk-white. Phillips standing by the desk, straightening his glasses in a characteristic gesture, the glint of the ring on his hand.

She froze, unable to speak, to move. She knew. Beyond all doubt, she knew.

“Oh, Dinah.” He sounded grieved. “I can't let you go anywhere now.”

Please, Lord, let me get out of here.

“Phillips, I don't know…” She swung her head to look at him, and the words died in her throat.

Still smiling that vague, scholarly smile, Phillips pulled a gun out of his pocket and pointed it at her.