“Thank you.” Caitlyn’s throat grew thick again even though she knew from personal experience that Joshua Bandeaux was a liar and a cheat. She hadn’t believed it at the time, but now she realized that he’d married her for her name and her money, gotten her pregnant to that very end.
It hurt to think that Jamie’s conception had been part of Josh’s long-term plan to get at Caitlyn’s money. And then, to think he would actually file a wrongful death suit against her . . . as if she would ever do anything to injure her child.
“Caitlyn?” She heard her name as if from a distance. “Caitlyn?”
She blinked.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Lucille asked, jarring Caitlyn out of her reverie.
She found herself watching the beads trail down her glass of tea, a glass she didn’t remember accepting. “Right as rain,” she said sarcastically. She couldn’t help but catch the quick look sent from Troy to Berneda, a shared understanding that she wasn’t quite all there, that she was somehow “misfiring” or “not running on all eight cylinders.”
“I’m sorry,” Caitlyn finally said, forcing a smile she didn’t feel. “I just spaced for a second.”
“It hasn’t been an easy day,” Berneda said.
“You don’t have to make excuses for me, Mom. I just wanted to come out and tell you about Josh.”
Her mother nodded and sighed. “Troy said that he thought you might stay out here for a few days.”
Caitlyn shot her brother a look guaranteed to kill. “I don’t think so.”
“He mentioned the police might be bothering you.”
“Just asking questions.”
“Surely they . . . they don’t think you had anything to do with Josh’s death?”
Her fingers nearly slipped on the glass. So there was already speculation. Wonderful. She sent Troy another killing glance. “I don’t know what they think, Mom.”
“But that’s ludicrous—” Berneda began as the sound of a car’s engine roared up the drive. “Now what?”
Brakes squealed to a stop and for an instant Caitlyn thought the police had chased her here—that they were standing on their brakes, guns drawn, ready to arrest her just as if she were some wanted criminal in one of those action movies. Sweat broke out over her forehead. She wanted to run. Instead she took a long drink of iced tea, told herself to remain calm as fast-paced footsteps clicked loudly against the back walk.
Amanda Montgomery Drummond, Caitlyn’s oldest sister, in black skirt and jacket, flew around the corner. Her short-cropped hair looked as if she’d jabbed her fingers through it a dozen times on the way over and her silk blouse was uncharacteristically wrinkled. “I’ve been trying to call you,” she said to Caitlyn as she reached the porch. She dashed up the steps. “What the hell is going on? I saw on the news that Josh is dead. Is that right?”
Troy nodded and stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on the porch railing.
“And no one thought to call me?” She was furious, her eyes narrowing on her brother.
“Caitlyn called me,” he explained as he plowed stiff fingers through his hair.
“That still doesn’t explain why I’m sitting in my office and Rob Stanton—you know, one of the senior partners who just happened to be working today—pokes his head in and suggests I go into the conference room to catch the noon news. Jesus, couldn’t someone have thought to pick up the damned phone so I might not get blindsided?” She was seething, her cheeks flushed, her lips turned in on themselves.
“It was a mistake,” Troy said.
“So then I try to call you—” She turned on Caitlyn. “And all I got was your machine.”
“I turned off the phone. Reporters.”
“Figures. They’re the worst kind of carrion eaters around. Just the hint of a scandal and they come out of the woodwork.” She took in a deep breath and shook her head as if to clear it; then her expression softened. “God, Caitie, how’re you doing?”
“I’ve been better.”
“The police have been asking her questions,” Berneda cut in.
“They just dropped by to tell me about Josh.”
“But you said you weren’t a suspect.” Berneda’s skin turned the color of the weathered siding.
“What she said was that she didn’t know what the police were thinking,” Troy explained to his older sister. “Josh may have committed suicide or . . . well, there could be foul play, right, Caitlyn? Isn’t that what you made of it?” he asked, making sure he’d gotten all the facts straight.
“That’s essentially what Detective Reed said.”
“Damn it all,” Amanda muttered.
“If it turns out to be homicide, then they’ll take a closer look at all of us.” Troy glanced at his mother’s horrified expression. “Come on, Mom, you know the drill. The people closest to the victim are always at the top of the suspect list. We’ve been through this before.”
“Too many times,” she agreed as she watched a butterfly flit near a lilac bush.
“But they’re not sure it’s homicide. That’s good.” Amanda was thinking aloud.
“There is nothing good about this,” Berneda whispered.
Amanda’s face was grim, the wheels in her mind obviously already turning at a rapid pace. “Marty from Accounting knows someone on the force. Maybe he could get the guy to tell us what the police are really thinking.”
“Oh, my God, you’re worried.” Berneda struggled to sit up higher in her chair, and Lucille was at her side in an instant, plumping her pillows.
“I just can’t believe Josh would kill himself,” Caitlyn insisted.
“You don’t know that.” Amanda dropped into one of the chairs surrounding the table. “No one knows what someone else is thinking. Look at Bill Black. From outward appearances the guy had it all—partnership in one of the best legal firms on the East Coast, a beautiful young wife, two cute, healthy kids, a house worth a fortune and another place in the Catskills. Free and clear. Then one day, for no apparent reason, he goes into the garage, puts a hose in the tailpipe of his new Mercedes and ends it all. No one knew that he was being blackmailed, no one knew that he was accused of raping and impregnating an underage client. No one, not even his best friend, thought Bill had a problem in the world. They were wrong.”
Caitlyn shook her head and stared at the hills to the west and the lowering sun. “I know Josh.”
“Knew him,” Troy corrected. “And Amanda’s right. Let’s just wait and see what the police come up with.”
Berneda turned her attention to her eldest daughter. “But if Caitlyn needs a lawyer, could you help her?”
“I’m not a criminal attorney,” Amanda said, her voice tight. “I gave that up years ago. I deal in tax law and estates. You know that.”
“I know, I know, but I’m worried. You worked for the District Attorney.”
“And hated it, remember? Dealing with all those lowlifes and idiots and . . . anyway, I’m glad I gave it up.”
“Can you recommend someone?” Berneda asked, worrying the pearls at her neck.
“Jesus, let’s not borrow too much trouble!” Troy searched in his shirt pocket for his cigarettes. “Caitlyn and I already discussed it. I don’t think she should talk to the police without representation, but let’s not all act as if she’s a suspect.” He found his lighter and clicked it several times until he was finally able to light up. “Okay?” he asked her as he exhaled.
“Of course not.”
“Didn’t think so.”
“I just think it’s good to be prepared,” Berneda said as Lucille appeared again.
“Are you all stayin’ for dinner?” Lucille’s smile was benign, as if she had no idea how serious the conversation was.
Berneda nodded. “Of course they are.”
“Not me.” Amanda checked her watch. “I’ve got tons more work to do.
Tons.
I won’t get home until midnight as it is.” She caught the wounded look in her mother’s eye and sighed. “I just ran out here to see that you were okay. I know this kind of thing shakes you up. When I get this project done, I’ll come out for a weekend. How does that sound?”
“Like it will never happen,” Berneda said, though she brightened a bit.
“Of course it will. It’s a date. Promise.”
She’d barely said the words when her cell phone chirped and she fished in her purse to find the phone, flip it open and put it to her ear. She walked to the far side of the porch, started talking in hushed tones and turned her back on her siblings and mother. “I know, I know . . . but there was a tragedy in the family. I’ll be there. Yes. Tell him twenty minutes, thirty tops . . . hey, I get it, okay. Remind him it’s Saturday. He’s lucky I’m working.” She snapped the phone shut and let out a long sigh, then squared her shoulders and faced her family again. “I really do have to run right now. But I’ll be back, promise.” Dropping the phone into her bag, she brushed a kiss across her mother’s cheek. “I’ll bring Ian, too,” Amanda vowed and Berneda’s smile froze at the mention of her son-in-law. Amanda’s husband was a corporate pilot for a timber company. He was often away, rarely making an appearance at any family function. Good looking and fit, he was the kind of man who could charm the birds from the trees. The only trouble was that as soon as they got close enough, he’d shoot them. Dead. And love every second of it. There was a dark side to Ian Drummond, one he seldom showed, one Caitlyn had once caught a glimpse of, though she’d never admitted it to a soul. Would never.
Amanda touched Caitlyn lightly on the arm, her fingers grazing the bandage under her sweater. Caitlyn froze, hardly daring to breathe. What if Amanda felt the gauze wrapped so tightly around her wrist? She pulled her arm away. “Call me if you need to,” Amanda said with the trace of a smile. “And if you’re not going to answer your phone, at least turn on your damned cell. I tried that, too.”
“I will,” Caitlyn promised and Amanda squeezed her arm, nearly sending Caitlyn through the roof of the porch.
“Do.” She slipped her sunglasses onto the bridge of her nose and hurried down the path, leaving with a roar of her car’s engine, disappearing as quickly as she’d come.
“Well, that’s that,” Troy said, scowling as he drew hard on his cigarette. “She’s done her duty.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Berneda was pushing herself upright.
“Just that Amanda does the bare minimum as far as the family is concerned.”
“You don’t believe she’s busy?” Berneda shook her head and Caitlyn noticed a few silver hairs that had dared make an appearance in her mother’s mahogany colored tresses. “You two have never gotten along.”
That much was true. Caitlyn remembered the animosity between her eldest sister and her brother. It seemed to have existed from the moment Troy had been brought home from the hospital and still lingered today, over thirty years later. “Where’s Hannah?” Caitlyn asked, as much to ease the tension as anything.
“Out.” Berneda looked away. “She left last night.”
“For where?”
“I don’t know. She was angry.”
“With—?” Caitlyn urged.
“The world. Me. Lucille and whoever happened to call.” Berneda lifted one hand in a gesture of dismissal. “You know how she gets. Has a stubborn streak. Just like her father had. I don’t know . . . I don’t know if she’s even heard about Josh yet, but she will.” Berneda checked her watch. “There’s certain to be something on the evening news. I suppose, whether we want to watch it or not, we should.”
Caitlyn didn’t know if she could get through an evening sitting on a couch and staring at the television while reporters dissected, rehashed, explained and made conjectures about her husband’s death. But she had to. Sooner or later she had to face the truth about what happened to her husband. In the next few days, it certainly wasn’t going to get any easier.
Eight
“They all belong at Warner Brothers Studios,” Sylvie said as she sauntered into Reed’s office bringing with her the scent of some musky perfume and a whiff of recently smoked cigarettes. She’d been home and checked on her kids, but had obviously found another sitter and was back at the station.
“Who belongs at Warner Brothers?”
“The Montgomerys, that’s who. Those people are looney-effin’ -tunes!” She leaned against the windowsill in his office, bracing herself with her hands.
“Effin?”
“I’m tryin’ to clean it up, okay?” She rolled her eyes expressively. “My kids are seven and three, and you don’t know how bad your language is until you hear it come back at you from them. What’s the old saying, ‘From the mouths of babes . . .?’ Well it’s the truth. The other night I’m doin’ the dishes and the kids are in the family room, just around the corner. I hear Toby call his sister a buckin’ pwick . . . probably overheard me talking about his dad.” Sylvie shrugged. “Anyway, Priscilla laughed and told him how stupid he was, that girls couldn’t be pricks and it wasn’t bucking but fucking . . . Oh, well, you get my drift.” Her lips twisted at the irony of it all. “I told ’em both to knock it off, but Priscilla reminded me that my language was as bad as a sewer rat’s so we all agreed to put a quarter in the Hello Kitty bank . . . Now wait, don’t give me that look! Surely you’ve heard of Hello Kitty.” She stared at him as if he’d told her he had three balls.
“I don’t even get it. Hello Kitty?”
“I forgot you lived on another planet.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Forget it. You don’t have kids. You’re out of it. The point is, I should never have agreed to the deal. Now they chase me around waiting for me to fuc–screw up. Damn! Oh, geez . . .” She rolled her eyes. “I figure I’ll save enough money this year to get me and the kids to Disney World.”
He leaned back in his chair until it creaked. “You had something to say about the Montgomerys.”
“Boy howdy.” She shook her head. “Talk about nut cases! It’s one after another. It goes back for generations. There’s a history of major screws loose in that family. And tragedy. Hunting accidents, boating accidents, car accidents and enough scandals to make Jerry Springer salivate. It’s like a fuc–an effin’ soap opera! Did you know that there was a whole other side of the family? We’re not talkin’ a bastard or two. No way. This is just all kinda kinky.
“Cameron Montgomery, Caitlyn’s father and heir to the cotton and shipping fortune, had himself another family. Right around here.” She swirled one long finger in the air, apparently to indicate Savannah. “Not only did Cameron have seven kids with his wife, but he managed to have another one or two, maybe more, with a woman named Copper Biscayne, a low-rent sort who lived out of town. She’s dead, by the way, along with a whole lotta other people who were related to the Montgomerys. Josh Bandeaux is just the latest in a long line of casualties.”
“Any others that look like suicides?” Reed asked.
“Now you think he killed himself?”
He shook his head. “The jury’s still out on that one. Just thinking aloud. We know that someone was with him that night; we just don’t know if whoever it was decided to kill him.”
“You think someone staged the thing, to make it look like a suicide.”
“Just one of the possibilities,” he said, reminding himself. He rubbed the back of his neck. “But we’ll find out more when we get the autopsy report and the crime scene results. My guess is there’ll be some evidence pointing to the missus. She had means, motive and opportunity and she can’t scare up even a flimsy alibi.”
“I’m not sure you gave her the opportunity.”
“I asked her where she was last night and she said she was out. That was about it.”
“You didn’t press the issue.”
“We weren’t sure we were dealing with a murder.”
“We still aren’t.”
“But we do know they were separated, there was another woman, he wanted a divorce and her money and he was filing a civil wrongful death suit against her for the kid’s death. A neighbor saw her car at the scene.”
“But,” Sylvie urged. “I hear it in your voice, Reed—there’s a ‘but’ coming.”
He picked up a pen and clicked it as he thought. “But she’d have to have been one stupid killer to leave so many clues at the scene. She didn’t strike me as stupid.”
“Maybe she was freaked. Didn’t mean to kill him and then took off.”
“Didn’t mean to kill him? With his wrists slit? That’s not the same as a gun going off accidentally in a struggle. Did you see the man’s arms? Whoever slit them—and I’m not ruling out the victim—intended for him to bleed to death.” He narrowed his eyes on his partner. “There’s something about this that doesn’t feel right.”
“Something? Try nothing,” Sylvie said, as she reached into her pocket for her pager. Frowning at the numeric display, she started for the door. “Nothing about it feels right. Yet. But it will. We’ll figure it out.”
“You think so?”
She glanced over her shoulder and threw him a smile. “Effin’-A.”
“What a pity,” Sugar Biscayne muttered sarcastically, smirking as she watched the news and slid her jeans and panties over her hips and down her legs. “Another bastard bites the dust.” She kicked the faded Levi’s into a corner of her bedroom and slipped into a red thong and short shorts that barely covered her butt. The reporter was going on and on about Josh Bandeaux as if he was some kind of Savannah god or something. Yeah, right. Swirling the remains of her drink, she felt a slight buzz. Probably from the vodka, but it didn’t hurt that another Montgomery pig had bought the farm. And Bandeaux was the worst, weaseling into the family, trying to cozy up to the money. What a shit. She raised her glass in a mock toast. “Enjoy hell, you sick son of a bitch.”
A fan moved hot air from one end of the master bedroom to the other, whirring so loudly she could barely hear the television, where the screen was filled with an image of Bandeaux at the annual policeman’s ball. Handsome prick. Sexy as hell.
Yeah, and dead as a doornail.
That thought gave her a little bit of pleasure as she stared at the screen.
Dressed in what looked like a designer black tuxedo with a shirt that required no tie, Bandeaux clenched a drink in one hand and flashed his sexy grin straight at the lens of the camera. God, he loved the limelight. More than one Savannah woman had found that smile irresistible. Sugar thought that it was the embodiment of evil.
She took another drink. Felt the cold vodka slide down her esophagus to hit her stomach in a burst of flame. She shuddered, remembering how she’d felt when she’d heard the news that Caitlyn Montgomery had married the slimeball. All because Caitlyn had been naive and stupid enough to let herself get pregnant. How in the hell did
that
happen these days?
Go figure.
Any woman, herself included, would have found Bandeaux sexy enough for a roll in the hay—Sugar would admit that much—but it took a really dumb one to marry him. Pregnant or not. Tying yourself to that prick only spelled trouble of the worst order. And Caitlyn had found it. Big time. Not that Sugar cared. Sugar had always thought Caitlyn was a few eggs short of a dozen when it came to brains. Caitlyn had inherited plenty in the beauty department, but lacked something when it came to smarts.
Blessed with smooth, white-Southern-belle skin, plump lips, and wide hazel eyes, Caitlyn was tall and athletic-looking except that she had big tits. Great tits. Sugar always noticed, not because she was into women, but because she always sized up the competition. All women, even rich society types, were competition.
Especially relatives.
The picture on the screen flipped to a shot of Josh Bandeaux with his wife and daughter. The kid was probably eighteen months or so at the time the photograph was taken. They seemed the perfect family aside from the fact that Caitlyn’s smile appeared strained as she stood next to her husband in an obviously posed family portrait. “Perfect, my ass,” Sugar said, tossing back the remains of her vodka and biting on a piece of ice as she scrounged in the second drawer of her dresser and found a decent tank top. She tugged it over her head and smoothed out a few wrinkles so that it hugged her figure.
The reporter was saying something about the suspicious circumstances of Bandeaux’s death when she heard an engine—a truck from the sound of it—pull into her drive. Who the hell would be showing up now? Inwardly groaning, she made an educated guess that her brother was paying her a visit. Dickie Ray was the last person she wanted to deal with.
She snapped off the old set with its crummy reception and walked into the living room, where she opened the door of her double-wide before her brother could start pounding the hell out of it.
Her dog, part pit bull, part lab, and one hundred percent bitch, was on her feet and let out a low growl.
“Mornin’,” Dickie said, one eye on Caesarina. The dog didn’t like him. Never had. But then, she had good taste.
“It’s nearly seven at night and I’m late for work.
I’ve
got a job,” Sugar reminded him, pointedly checking her watch, thinking that she didn’t want to let him inside. Once flopped on the old couch, Dickie Ray had an inclination to park it and down a six-pack while staring at some kind of sports program for hours. Once he got inside, it would take a crowbar to get him out. He wasn’t a bad guy, just lazy as hell.
“You call what you do a job?”
“Legitimate work,” she said. He didn’t so much as flinch. Thought collecting disability was as good as work. “I perform a service.”
Dickie Ray snorted. “So now giving drooling, drunked-up losers a hard-on is a service.”
“I dance.”
“With your clothes off. Face it, Sugar, you’re a stripper. Period. You can call it what you want, but what you do is show off your tits and ass so that the guys in the bar want to jerk off.”
“That’s their problem.”
“They don’t see it that way.”
“Neither do I. Let’s drop it.” She hated it when Dickie Ray was surly, or as Mama would say, “in one of his moods.” He was certainly in one now, tweaking that nerve of hers that always showed when she discussed how she earned her wages. She wasn’t proud of what she did, just the way she did it. She was good at her job, in great shape, and, when she’d socked enough money away, or when she ever got her hands on the inheritance she’d been promised, she’d give it all up, go to school, learn to run a computer and become a receptionist in some big corporation. But she just couldn’t swing it yet.
“Hear about Bandeaux?” Dickie Ray asked as he walked into her kitchen, opened a cupboard and found a half-eaten box of Cheez-Nips.
“I was just listening to the news.”
“A shame.” Dickie Ray tossed a handful of the crackers into his mouth. He could have been a handsome enough man if he ever got rid of the beer gut and stringy hair hanging down to his shoulders. He kept the sides short, but let his blond curls fall free, probably in the hopes of disguising the fact that he was thinning on the top. To offset that problem he was always wearing a baseball cap, pulled down low over his eyes, the bill nearly touching the top of the aviator sunglasses forever on his face. Probably to hide the redness in his eyes. Dickie had a tendency toward benders, alcohol and cocaine whenever he could get his hands on it. His goatee was untrimmed. “You think he was kilt?” Dickie had found himself a plastic Big Gulp cup in one of her cupboards. He opened the refrigerator and hung on the door, letting the cool air blast over his face as he surveyed the meager contents. Finally he settled on a Dr. Pepper.
“Murdered?” Sugar asked.
“Isn’t that what ‘suspicious circumstances’ usually means?”
She turned that thought over a couple of times. “That’s probably what happened. Bandeaux pissed too many people off in this town.”
“Wonder who did it.” He took a sip and wrinkled his nose. “You know this here soda is flat?”
“It’s Cricket’s,” Sugar explained.
“Where is she?” Dickie looked around as if, for the first time, he realized that his younger sister wasn’t on the premises.
“Working. You know,
earning
her keep. She doesn’t get off until eight.”
He glanced at his watch, then searched in the cupboard over the refrigerator for a bottle. “Got any scotch or rye?”
“No.”
“A man could die of thirst around here.”
“That’s the general idea,” she said and meant it. Her last boyfriend had sponged off her for a year. Her ex still came sniffing around, looking for a handout. Either money or sex. She gave him neither. No wonder she had such a bad attitude about men; she surrounded herself with losers. She had a fleeting thought about her current relationship. A relationship only Cricket knew anything about. Even then Sugar kept most of the details to herself. The affair was clandestine. Hot. Off limits.
Dickie Ray scrounged through the cupboard and found a pint of Jack Daniels with a trace of liquor in it. Frowning at the scant amount, he nonetheless drained the bottle into his cup. “Hardly worth the work,” he muttered, stirring his concoction with an index finger.
“No one’s got a gun to your head.”
“Leastwise not today,” he said with an enigmatic wink, then lifted his cup. “Let’s drink one to whoever it was that had the balls to get rid of Bandeaux.” With a quick nod, he took a long guzzle of his drink and wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve.
“You talk to Donahue lately?” he asked, finally getting to the reason for his visit.
“Not since the last time you asked.”
Dickie snorted. “Some hotshot attorney.” Dickie’s bad mood quickly got worse.
“He’s doing what he has to.”
“It’s been months,” Dickie grumbled, and Sugar picked up his empty soda can and dropped it into the overflowing trash can. Caesarina wandered over to sniff the trash, then settled on her rear on the yellowed linoleum and scratched behind an ear with a back leg. “I think he’s stalling us.”