Tressed to Kill (23 page)

Chapter Twenty-two

ALTHEA’S DECLARATION SHOCKED US ALL TO SILENCE. The truth hit me after only a short moment.
“His son,” I said. “Greg must be Carl Rowan’s son, all grown up. Didn’t he have a son who was about eleven when Carl and William disappeared?”
“I think he had a couple of kids,” Althea admitted.
“This must be him. The age is about right . . . he looks to be in his mid-thirties. And I don’t think he linked up with Simone by accident, do you?”
“That would be too much of a coincidence,” Mom agreed.
“Let me think this through.” I stood up and paced. “We know Martina Rowan moved away not long after Carl went missing. She went to Richmond, according to Marty. Then she remarried and moved to New Jersey with her new husband. Want to bet his name is Hutchinson and he adopted Greg and the other kids?” I looked around at Mom, Althea, and Rachel.
“So how did he, like, hook up with Simone?” Rachel asked. Her eyes were wide, and she had settled cross-legged on the floor, for all the world like she was listening to a campfire story. Mom and Althea were still on the floor, too, looking up at me as I pieced it together.
“The mother raised him up on stories of his father’s death,” Althea suggested, pulling the pillow underneath her and settling more comfortably. “She filled his mind with poison, taught him to hate the DuBoises.”
“Or maybe she just told him about the property,” Mom put in, “and he grew up thinking he has a right to it, that the DuBoises cheated his family out of it.”
“Either way, he’s got a grudge against the DuBoises, right?” I said. “Could be he tracked down the family when he got older and found out Simone was living right around the corner, as it were, in New York City.”
“Why’d he wait so long?” Althea objected. “The boy’s in his thirties. If he was after revenge, wouldn’t he have done something sooner?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Maybe he was busy earning a degree or getting his career started. There’s no way to tell. The point is, he engineers a meeting with Simone, seduces her, and voilá—they’re engaged. She brings him down here to meet her mom, and Constance recognizes him, like you did, Althea. Didn’t you see him at the Rothemere gala?”
Althea shook her head.
Well, he was in costume, and the ball had been crowded. It wasn’t too surprising that Althea hadn’t run into him.
“So what?” Mom asked unexpectedly. “Why would it matter if Constance recognized him? She can hardly tell Simone that Philip Senior had Carl and William done away with, if that’s what happened.”
“That’s what happened,” Althea said grimly.
“Maybe, like Philip Junior said, she thought Greg was only interested in Simone for her money. Maybe she threatened to tell Simone that he wasn’t who he appeared to be.” I rethought that. “Well, he is Greg Hutchinson, but he’s also the former Greg Rowan with a history in St. Elizabeth that I’ll bet Simone doesn’t know about.”
“Didn’t you tell me that Simone inherited Sea Mist Plantation when Constance died?” Mom asked.
I nodded.
“Well, then he’s got what he wants—his daddy’s property back again.”
“But only because Constance died,” Althea pointed out. “That makes him the number one suspect, in my opinion. Especially when you consider how nervy she was when she came back in here after arguing with him.”
“But he doesn’t really own Sea Mist, does he?” Rachel said. “It’s Simone’s.”
We all stared at her, and a taut silence hung over the salon. A
drip-drip
from the shampoo sink’s leaky faucet sounded loud in the stillness. “With that photo Rachel took of Greg playing kissy face with another woman, I’m not sure he’s in this marriage for the long haul,” Mom said after a long moment.
“And he’d risk losing Sea Mist in a divorce,” I added.
“I think Simone’s in danger,” Mom said. “We need to warn her.”
“I’ve got her cell phone number somewhere, from the committee,” I said.
“We can’t call her,” Mom said, giving me a reproving look. “Something like this needs to be done face-to-face. She’d just hang up on us if we called and accused her new husband of being a gold-digging murderer.”
“The sins of the fathers will be visited on their children,” Althea said. “The DuBois family is coming by its just desserts.”
“I never did think much of that particular passage,” Mom said with asperity. “God’s not punishing Simone because her father did something wicked a quarter century ago. That’s not the way He works.”
“We’d better get going, then,” Althea said, pushing herself slowly to her feet. “Damn, I’m too old to be sitting on the floor. My behind’s gone to sleep.” She rubbed the afflicted area.
I helped her up. Rachel bounced up with the flexibility of youth and gave my mom a hand.
“We should call Special Agent Dillon,” I said.
“Rachel can call him and wait here for him so he can see the photograph she took,” Mom suggested. “We don’t have time to fill him in on everything. We need to warn Simone
now
.”
Rachel pushed her lips out in a rebellious pout. “You’re not going to let me come with you, are you? You think I’m too young. Well, I’m not. I’m going to graduate, like, next year. I’m old enough to join the military and almost old enough to vote, so why can’t I come?”
Momentarily distracted by the thought of goth Rachel in a military uniform, I recovered quickly as Mom said, “Rachel, honey, how would I ever explain it to your folks if something happened to you? We may be completely wrong about Mr. Hutchinson, but if we’re not, and he’s with Simone when we arrive, he might get angry.”
“Well, like duh,” Rachel said. “If you call him a two-timing murderer to his face.” She rolled her eyes.
I didn’t take the time to explain that accusing Greg of murder to his face wasn’t our preferred approach. “We’ll try to get Simone alone,” I said, hatching a plan. “I’ll tell her I have to talk to her about committee business.”
“That’s good,” Althea said. “You can call her while we’re driving over there. We’ll take my car.”
Leaving Rachel sulkily dialing police headquarters, we hustled out the side door and climbed into Althea’s old Ford LTD. Formerly maroon, it had been faded by the sun to a dismal pinkish color. The car must be nearly as old as I was, I thought, thunking the heavy back door closed and fastening my seat belt. Mom had barely shut her door before Althea gunned the engine and reversed down the driveway. We bumped off the curb and onto the street with a scraping sound and sparks from the front bumper. It was wise to have your life insurance paid up when riding with Althea behind the wheel. She seemed to view traffic laws such as speed limits and stop signs as loose guidelines and had a habit of facing whoever she was talking to so the car veered from one side of the road to the other. She was exceeding the speed limit by a good twenty miles per hour, but both Mom and I knew enough not to distract her by commenting on it. At least she wasn’t trying to talk, so her eyes stayed on the road.
We were three-quarters of the way to the DuBois house when a thought struck me. “Didn’t Philip inherit the house?” I asked. “What if Simone and Greg aren’t living there?”
“Well, now’s a fine time to bring that up,” Althea said, craning her head around to frown at me. The car headed for the opposite curb and a man walking two beagles. His eyes widened at the sight of death coming at him in the form of a runaway LTD.
Mom grabbed the wheel. “Althea, pay attention,” she said, wrenching the car into its proper lane.
I let my breath out and realized I was gripping the seat so hard my fingers were cramping. “I’ll call Philip and find out. Damn. I don’t have his number.”
“We’re almost there now,” Mom said as I dialed directory assistance. “We’ll just knock and ask him.”
“Yeah, he won’t think that’s strange,” Althea muttered.
Two minutes later we pulled into the circular drive fronting the DuBois family home, a mini-mansion that looked like it belonged in the English countryside. Althea crunched over a border of Johnny-jump-ups and pink ice plant lining the oyster-shell driveway, and I leaped out of the back seat before she came to a full stop. “I’ll be right back,” I flung over my shoulder.
Racing up the front steps, I rang the bell and pounded on the front door.
It opened to reveal Susan DuBois, an attractive blonde whose bee-stung lips looked fuller than they had at Constance’s wake. She must have had them plumped. “Grace! What on earth—?” Her raised brows expressed her disapproval of my knocking technique.
“Hi, Susan. I need to see Simone, but I don’t have her address. Can you tell me where she’s staying?”
“Who’s that in the car?” she asked, peering over my shoulder.
“My mom and Althea Jenkins,” I said. “The address?”
Suspicion lurked in her gray-green eyes. “Why are you so all fired up about finding Simone? It’s not like you were ever best friends.”
“It’s about the mayor’s committee,” I said. “I’ve got some data I need to give her to put in the PowerPoint presentation.”
“Well, I don’t see how that’s such an emergency,” Susan said. But she rattled off the address.
“Thanks,” I yelled over my shoulder, trotting back to the car.
“Well!” Susan stared after us as the tires spewed oyster shells and Althea slewed onto the road like a moonshine smuggler trying to outrun the revenuers. I waved through the back window.
Simone and her new husband were renting a Cape Cod- style house that backed to the river at Sea Mist Plantation. It was at the west end of the Plantation, in an area just being developed. The Hutchinsons had no neighbors yet, only the framed shell of a house on the opposite side of the culde-sac. The construction workers had knocked off for the day, and the area hummed with crickets, owls, and other critters beginning to stir as dusk descended. The three of us were grimly silent, infected by an urgency that was hard to explain. Althea stopped the car with the passenger-side wheels on the sidewalk. We all piled out and hurried up the walkway to the glossy blue front door. When I pushed it, the doorbell ding-donged deep in the house, and we fidgeted on the small stoop. No one came. I rang again, trying to peer in the narrow windows that flanked the door. Blinds prevented me from seeing much except a strip of oak floor. Althea cut across the grass and stood on tiptoe to look into the garage. Then she walked around the side of the house and stood on tiptoe to peer over the fence.
“Car is there,” she announced, rejoining us. “Can’t see over the fence.”
“Whose car?” Mom asked.
She shrugged. “Dark green Camry with New York plates.”
Since none of us knew what Simone drove, we didn’t know if it was her car, but I thought it must be, since I’d seen Greg driving a BMW when he picked her up at the town hall.
“Here, let me,” Althea said, shouldering me out of the way. She banged the brass knocker hard enough to startle two squirrels chasing each other in the yard. They scampered up a dogwood sapling.
Footsteps sounded inside the house, and a man’s disgruntled voice said, “Coming.”
We stepped back as the door swung open and Greg Hutchinson stood in the doorway, looking casually elegant in belted khaki shorts and a crisp white shirt with the top button undone to show a spritz of chest hair. His shoulders almost filled the doorframe, and the look on his face hovered between welcoming and exasperated. When he saw me, he forced a smile. “Hello, Grace.” He looked from Mom to Althea but didn’t say anything.
I introduced them, worried by the look of hostility on Althea’s face. “We’re looking for Simone,” I said. “Is she in?”
“I’m sorry. She isn’t here right now. I’ll tell her you came by.”
He started to close the door, but I stopped it with my hand. “It’s kind of important,” I said with an apologetic smile. “I have some data she needs to include in the PowerPoint slide show she’s making for the mayor. Do you know when she’ll be back?”
“Oh.” He hesitated, his hand still on the knob. “I’m not sure, exactly. She went shopping. You know how women are when they smell a sale.” His grin faded as the three of us glared at him. “Look, just give me the stuff, and I’ll see that she gets it when she gets back.”
I scrambled for a way around his reasonable suggestion. “Uh, it’s in the car.”
“I’ll fetch it,” Mom said, taking her time about returning to the car and pretending to search the back seat. Greg tapped his foot.
“And I need to explain some of it to her,” I said.
“Good thinking, baby girl,” Althea murmured.
“Then leave your number, and she can call you,” he said impatiently. He raked a hand through his brassy gold hair. “I’m sorry, but I’m working on a real estate deal—”
“I’ll call her now and maybe we can meet up with her,” I said, pulling out my cell phone. “I’m sorry we bothered you.” Finding the entry for “Simone Cell,” I dialed.
“Wait,” Greg said, reaching for the phone.
I jerked it back out of reach as the strains of “My Way” sounded from inside the house. We all stared at Greg. Before he could react, Althea had pushed past him, saying, “Sounds like she’s still here after all.” She raised her voice. “Simone-honey! We’ve got that paperwork you needed.”
“Hey,” he said. “You can’t—”
Greg grabbed at her shoulder, but Mom and I bumped against him as we crowded into the foyer. “Simone!” we called.
The door closed hard behind us, and I heard the deadbolt shoot home. I turned to see Greg pocketing the key, an ugly look on his face. “I don’t know what you think you’re—” he started when Althea’s voice interrupted him.
“Oh, my God!”
Ignoring Greg, Mom and I hurried in the direction of Althea’s voice. We skidded to a stop where the wood floor of the hall gave way to the greenish slate tile of the kitchen. A maple table with four lyre-back chairs dominated an eating nook. The back door to the left of the table was open a crack, and the wet smell of the river drifted in. Simone lay on the floor by the door I assumed opened to the garage, Althea kneeling beside her. Peaches was licking her mistress’s face and whining. Two wineglasses sat on the granite counter beside a nearly empty bottle.
“Is she—?” Mom asked.
“She’s alive,” Althea said, her fingers pressed to Simone’s neck. “But she needs help. You poisoned her,” she said to Greg, her gaze flashing from the wineglasses to his face.
“Just a little Rohypnol,” he said.
He herded us closer to where Althea huddled over Simone, trying to wake her by pinching her cheeks. With a growl that sounded like it came from a dog twice her size, Peaches launched herself at Greg and latched onto his ankle. “Get off, you rabid flea,” he said, kicking out so hard that Peaches went flying, thumping into the pantry door and lying still.
I caught my breath at the brutality as Mom went to the little dog and stroked her, glaring at Greg.