2 On the Nickel (22 page)

From outward appearances, he was
the perfect male. Handsome, successful, single. Why hadn’t some woman snatched him up and married him? Did Evan date? I couldn’t remember his name being linked with anyone recently.

Evan returned with two TV-dinner tables.
Sturdy and walnut-toned, they matched his gleaming coffee table. The glossy
tropical brochures next to the flickering candles struck me as odd. But what
did it matter? I’d hate for anyone to analyze the things on my coffee table.

I set out the food, my brain
refusing to settle. A litany of data streamed through my thoughts. Travel
brochures. Jimmy Buffet music. Tropical atmosphere. Fun things. Vacation
things. “Going somewhere?”

Emotions flickered across Evan’s
face as he sat down across from me in the matching overstuffed chair. “This has
been such an ordeal. I need to get away for a few days.”

I nodded, sympathy welling. “This
week hasn’t been easy for any of us.”

We shared a look of understanding
over our egg sandwiches. I wolfed my food down too fast. Evan ate his food
deliberately, as if he were savoring each bite. With a buff physique like his,
this meal must be a real departure from his standard diet. I hoped I wasn’t
leading him too far astray.

On the stereo, Jimmy Buffet
switched to a Cajun tempo and sang about gypsies in the palace. In the song, some house-sitting friends threw a wild party. Chaos ensued.

I couldn’t help but draw an
inference to the festive mood in this place. Evan’s apartment had a celebratory
feel to it, not one of mourning and despair. My curiosity kicked into high
gear.

“What did you want to talk to me about?” Evan asked.

Now that my stomach was full, I
felt positive I was doing the right thing. “I’m canceling my personal training
sessions and giving up my gym membership. I wanted to tell you in person.”

He glanced up sharply. “Because
of mother and Eleanor?”

“No. It isn’t them. It’s me. I thought physical fitness would help my golf game. Only, I need to practice my golf game to get better at golf. I don’t have time for both activities. This has nothing to do with you
or your family.”

Evan folded the waste paper into
flat rectangles, every corner perfectly square. “You got something good going with the golf pro?”

Did I ever. But I wasn’t here to
talk about my hot sex life. Jimmy Buffet sang about a volcano blowing up. The
reference to hot molten lava in the midst of thinking about Rafe and sex made me blush. “We’ve been dating for a couple of months.”

Evan started gathering up the
trash.

I beat him to it. “I’ll take care
of this. Where’s your trash can?”

“Under the kitchen sink.” Evan
folded up the TV tables and headed back to the hall closet.

I dashed into the kitchen,
intending to deposit the trash and get the heck out of here, but Evan’s
calendar lay open next to his phone. I slowed on my way past it, observing his
extensive color coded notations on various recent dates. That stopped me altogether. I flipped back to the previous month and saw similar markings. Mama’s name was there. So was Eleanor’s.

Warmth fled and a hard chill
filled the void. I shivered against the cold. The hair on the back of my neck
snapped to attention. My brain seized on one thought: Why would Evan record
Mama’s schedule?

The date of Erica’s murder was
circled in red ink.

A bitter taste pervaded my mouth.
Air leaked from my lungs. Think, I told myself. Think this through. There’s
probably a rational explanation.

But what if there wasn’t anything
rational about this? What if the calendar notations were the blueprints for
murder? If that were true, I was in big trouble.

Was Evan Eleanor’s accomplice?

I couldn’t imagine her letting
him walk. Her reaction had been the polar opposite. She’d wanted nothing to do
with him.

That brought up another, more
chilling possibility. Eleanor wasn’t the killer at all. Evan was.

My heart stopped for a long
minute.

Lord, Lord.

I’d stepped in it now.

My brain kicked back on. I had to
get out of here. Fast. Get out of here and call Britt. He’d know what to do.

Air seeped in my lungs. That was
a good plan. Quickly, I shoved the remains of our breakfast in his trash can
and whirled on my heel to leave the kitchen.

What I saw pushed my elevated
heart rate into overdrive.

An aquarium on steroids occupied
the entire interior kitchen wall. The wood-framed glass structure had a hasp
and combination lock securing the mesh top. Two lights were mounted in the rear
corners of the aquarium. The entire bottom of the glass case was filled with a
multicolored snake.

Loops and loops of big, fat,
slithery snake.

Enough snake to hurt someone.

A scream boiled out of me, the shrill sound piercing my eardrums. I clapped a hand over my mouth. I didn’t hate snakes,
but I didn’t like them either. Afraid, I checked the floor for more snakes. The
spotless white floor gleamed.

No snakes in sight.

“What is it? You okay, Cleo?”
Evan poked his head in the door.

“S-s-snake.” I pointed across the
room. The jumbo reptile opened his slitted eyes and studied me. “What kind of snake is that?”

“Monty is a Burmese python.”

Monty looked like he could crush me and swallow me for a midmorning snack. I took a step backward. The sharp edge of the kitchen
counter pressed into my lower back.

Knees trembling, I tried to hold
it together. Bad enough to be cooped up in here with a Hodges who might be a
murderer. The snake added another dimension to my fear. Seeking solace, I
shoved my hands in my pockets, palming the golf ball I found there. My fingers
traced over the familiar dimpled surface. “How’d he get to be so big?”

“I’ve had Monty since I was a
kid.”

I shuddered.

I couldn’t imagine having a
reptile in the house with my kids. How had Eleanor and Erica tolerated Monty?

Evan joined me by the sink. He casually closed his appointment calendar. His action reminded me he’d had my mother’s whereabouts on his calendar.

I was so unnerved by the huge
man-eating snake that words babbled out of my mouth. “God, Evan. That thing is
huge. How do you keep him from eating you?”

Evan’s spine stiffened. “Monty is
tame. He’s not dangerous. What is it with women and snakes? Mother and Eleanor
were scared to death of him.”

“Because he’s a predator. A
reptile. Women are predisposed to dislike snakes. That Adam and Eve thing, you
know. It’s not our fault.” No wonder Eleanor had perfect attendance for
everything. She didn’t want to stay home with the monster snake.

Inside his glass cage, Monty
shifted position, his coils bulging and squishing as he moved. His oblate head
cruised the top half of the cage, as if testing for an exit point. In the
silence, I noted the music had ended. Now the place felt hot and close and
oppressive. A thick musty smell filled the air.

Keeping one eye on the snake and
another on the door, I asked, “He can’t get out, can he?”

Evan regarded me steadily, much like the snake had done. “Monty is quite an escape artist, but I’ve got him
locked in there pretty tight right now.”

I couldn’t imagine perfect
Eleanor sharing a house with a supersized snake. I exhaled slowly. “Have you
always kept him in the kitchen?”

“No. I had to keep him in the
basement when I lived at home. Otherwise, Mother and Eleanor would flip out.”

“You didn’t like them very much,
did you?”

Evan’s eyes narrowed. “They hated
Monty. Mother kept trying to kill him by turning off his light while I was in
school. So I let him have free range in my room.”

I gasped in a puff of snake air. “I
bet that went over real big.”

“Kept them out of my room and off
of my back. You have no idea what it was like to grow up with them belittling
everything I wanted to do.”

“Hey, I went to school with
Eleanor. I know exactly what you’re talking about. Teachers constantly compared
us to her. It was annoying, wasn’t it?”

He nodded and rubbed his buzzed
head. “It used to drive me crazy. If I got a ninety-eight on a test, Eleanor
got a hundred. No matter what I did, it was never good enough.”

He was opening up to me. More questions bubbled out. “So you stopped trying? Is that why your mother disinherited
you?”

“She hated me because I didn’t do
what she wanted. I was supposed to grow up to be a banking whiz like
Grandfather Crandall. She cut me out of her life when I didn’t stay the course.
I’m the only Crandall ever to work their way through college.” He snorted. “Get
this. She said fitness wasn’t a career. It was a rich man’s hobby.”

“That’s harsh. It’s obvious you
like what you do at the gym.”

“Thanks. It wasn’t an easy
choice.”

“You stood up to her though. You
kept your snake and studied the career you wanted. I had no idea you’d
struggled so hard to be yourself.”

“Mother had no respect for
anyone. When she found out she couldn’t manipulate me the way she could
Eleanor, she wrote me off.”

“Didn’t that put a wedge between
Eleanor and you?”

“We were never close.”

His statement clunked in my head
like a rock stuck in a tire tread rolling down the highway. “Funny. I thought
she had dinner here the night your mother died.”

He shot me an inscrutable look. “How’d
you know about that?”

“Britt told me. Did she tell you about her brilliant plot to frame my mother?”

Evan barked out a harsh laugh. “Eleanor’s
never had an original thought. Mother told her what to think, night and day.”

Another inconsistency. And his
neck was bright red. I recklessly plunged ahead. “I disagree. Eleanor’s plan
was brilliant. It must have taken weeks to plan the frame job.”

Evan shook with emotion. “Eleanor
is not brilliant. She’s a stupid bitch, and she’s going to rot in prison the
rest of her life.”

I’d hit a nerve. The snake’s
tongue flickered in the glass cage. I ignored the snake and concentrated on the
new information. The schedules I’d seen on his calendar. Evan knew them.
Eleanor didn’t. Evan couldn’t stand Eleanor being smarter than him. I seized on
that. “She is quite clever. It took a keen mind to coordinate the schedules so
Mama took the blame. How did Eleanor know about Mama and Bud anyway?”

“All she had to do was to follow
them around.”

“Follow them?”

“Yeah, follow them,” Evan said. “People
do the same dumb things over and over again. They’re stupid cows.”

“It must really gall you Eleanor
figured that out.”

Evan’s hands clinched into tight
fists.

Interesting. He didn’t like it
when I pushed him a bit more. I used that. “I wonder what it must have been
like to sit in that big powerful Olds and aim it at your mother. I wonder what
Eleanor thought as she punched the accelerator.”

A faraway look came into Evan’s eyes. Like he was in the zone. The killing zone. “Die bitch. You can’t hurt me any longer.”

An icy chill ran through my blood
at the smoldering rage in his voice. I’d gotten it wrong. Evan killed his
mother. Not Eleanor. I knew it sure as I knew my name but I couldn’t prove it.
Britt needed proof. “How did it happen? What did Eleanor see as she drove at
your mother? Would your mother have been blinded by the approaching headlights?
Did she roll up on the windshield?”

Evan slid deeper into the weird
zone, his body quieted in an almost hypnotized trance. “She stood there,
shielding her eyes. She called out, Delilah, why are you stopping out there?
Why did you ask me to meet you here? The car rammed her, and her head struck
the hood before she fell to the ground. One of her sequined gold shoes flew
through the air like a sparkling firework.”

I thought of the discarded shoe
I’d seen beside the body. That information had not been released to the public.
I sensed victory. “And then Eleanor drove off?”

“No. The car backed up and ran
over Mother again.”

“She struck her twice?”

“Three times. The car hit her
three times.”

Britt would be keenly interested
in how Evan knew these details. “I don’t understand why Eleanor killed her.
Your mother would have given her the money to save Crandall Brain Clinic.”

“Not hardly. Mother gambled our
fortune away. When Daddy tried to stop her, she killed him for interfering. She
said she’d kill us if we ever told. Eleanor and I have been afraid of Mother
our whole lives.”

My eyes rounded in horror. What a
terrible burden to carry for a child to carry. “She can’t hurt you now, Evan.
She’s gone.”

Evan blinked. His eyes focused on
me, the same way Monty’s had. Like I was dinner.

Oh, shit.

Think, Cleo.

Get out of here.

I edged sideways, slow and
crab-like. “I have to go.”

“I don’t think so.” Evan moved
between me and the door. The muscles in his arms flexed. “You know too much.”

I tried to downplay what I knew. “You
had a terrible childhood. But your Mother can’t hurt you now. Eleanor, either.”

“Damn it.” He smacked his palm on
the granite counter. “You know. How did you figure it out?”

I eyed the distance to the front
door. Could I escape? I was not in top physical shape. Evan was. In a foot
race, he’d beat me. In hand-to-hand combat, he’d beat me.

I had no gun, no large Saint
Bernard to save me this time. I was in a deep pot bunker with no easy way out.
Evan stalked closer. The only way to avoid him was to walk closer to Monty’s cage.

Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.

The golf ball in my pocket.

I could throw it at Evan.

It wasn’t much, but it was something.

My fingers closed around the
familiar dimpled ball just as Evan grabbed my left arm. “You can’t leave, Cleo.
I’ll kill you and hang your death on the dumb golf jock.”