Dead on the Delta (33 page)

Libby probably has similar reasons for defending Grace, but at this point I need her to cut the bull and be straight with me. Lies aren’t going to help us discover if she has a killer living under her roof.

“Listen.” I work my jaw, trying to get my throat to relax. “I know she was your sister, and you were close, but—”

“We weren’t that close. Not at the end. But I loved her very much.” Her fingers worry the skin where her ring usually sits.

Her ring … her
ring
. She’s missing a ring. Dr. Hollis found a ring … inside a cat who lived in the bayou and ate a dead girl’s hair tie …

“I’m sure you did.” I stare at the white band of flesh and wonder things I don’t want to wonder. “Um, I know this is a little off topic, but have you lost a ring?”

She looks up, surprised. “Yes, I did. I lost it while I was potting flowers, but I can’t seem to find it.”

“Really? What did it look like?”

Her fingers still. “It was turquoise,” she says. “My birthstone.”

Turquoise. Just like the one Dr. Hollis pulled from Gimpy’s stomach. There’s a chance Gimpy found his way inside the gate to where Libby was doing her potting and scarfed the ring down along with a few petunias, but my gut knows better. My gut knows Gimpy swallowed that ring because it was dropped outside the gate, probably near Grace and the heart-shaped hair tie that drew his eye. Maybe it slipped off in the rain … while Libby was wiping her fingerprints off her sister’s dead body.

I swallow—trying to think of some gracious way to excuse myself and make a run for the police station—then swallow again. Or at least I
try
to swallow. But the liquid in my mouth simply sits there for a few seconds before finally trickling down my swollen throat.

It isn’t emotion that’s choking me up; it’s some kind of allergic reaction. My tongue tingles and itches and
my throat keeps squeezing tighter and tighter, until my next breath leaks out with a wheeze.

“It was Grace’s, too. She was born two days after my birthday. She was so beautiful.” The tears in Libby’s eyes spill over, leaking down her pale cheeks. “I really did love her. She was everything I ever dreamed my daughter would be.”

Oh.
Smack
. Literally, I would
smack
myself in the face for not at least suspecting that Grace was Libby’s if I weren’t in the middle of choking on my own tongue. Barbara Beauchamp didn’t just happen to adopt a girl who eerily resembled her older children; she adopted her own granddaughter, keeping the girl in the family while sparing herself the shame of a pregnant unwed teenage daughter. Libby must have been only fifteen or sixteen, and scared to death.

A part of me feels for her. The rest of me fears her. I have to get out of here. I have to tell Hitch and Cane that there’s a damned good chance Libby is the killer.

I set my tea back in its saucer and bring a hand to my throat and then to my lips, trying not to panic when I feel just how inflated my face has become. Shit.
Shit!
If I remember my rare food allergies, some people are as allergic to rhubarb as I am to shellfish. I must have hit the allergy jackpot. It’s just my luck that I decide to try a new food capable of sending me into anaphylactic shock only minutes before I figure out my new best friend is a murderer.

I fumble with my purse, but my hands are also
swelling, making it impossible to open the simple latch.

“Annabelle? Are you okay? You look—”

“Call … 911 … ” I gasp, praying she’ll understand me.

“Let me help you,” Libby says, pulling my purse from my lap.

For a second I consider snatching it back, but think better of it. So Libby’s going to see my gun? So what? She’s seen it before and I don’t have time to waste concealing the fact that I’m concealing a weapon. It’s getting harder and harder to breathe. I’m guessing I have fifteen or twenty minutes before my throat closes up completely.

Libby grabs the phone, lifts it high above her head … and
smashes
it down onto the table with enough force to shatter the glass. Then she turns back to me with frightened eyes, as if
I’m
the one who just destroyed a choking woman’s property. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you, Annabelle. I really
did
want to be friends. I promise.”

O
h no. Oh hell, no. I curse myself and my crappy poker face. Libby must have smelled my suspicions and decided against letting me share them.

Her hand shakes as she tosses the broken phone onto the table. “Percy told me she talked to Deedee and that all three of you knew about Grace being in the barn … ”

Okay. So maybe it wasn’t my crappy poker face that tipped her off.

“I didn’t think I had any other choice.” She sucks in a breath and coughs it back up with a sob. “I remembered what you said about the shrimp. So I ground some up. They were … They were in the muffin. I’m
so
sorry.”

Holy. Southern-fried. Shit. She did this on purpose. She’s trying to kill me with a shrimp muffin. It’s positively diabolical, Martha Stewart School of Murder with a side of Extra Craftiness.

I dive for my purse, hoping to get to my gun. If I
can’t call for help, I can at least make enough noise to attract attention. Or shoot Libby and take my killer out with me.

Libby and I wrestle for the purse for a few seconds—skinny fingers digging into skinnier fingers and knobby knees bumping under the table—but I’m not fit for a struggle. My wheezing becomes choking, choking becomes gasping, and I slide to the floor in a dizzy fog, all focus devoted to the momentous task of sipping in my next breath.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Libby repeats, her voice rising into hysterical territory. “I’m so—”

“Libby? What’s wrong? I heard you all the way in the—” James breaks off with a swift intake of breath. I can just barely see his shiny black shoes through the clawed feet of the table, but I suppose he can see me just fine. “Oh my God. What happened?”

“She, um … she-she,” Libby stutters. “She-she-she—”

“She what? Spit it out, Libs.” James hurries to my side, gently rolling me onto my back and probing at the swollen skin at my neck. I bulge my eyes and jab a finger at Libby, but my words come out as a sickly groan.

“It’s okay. Just relax,” he says, mistaking my freak-out for antics of the normal “I’m about to die” variety.

“She ate some shellfish by accident,” Libby finally spits out. “She said she’s allergic.”

“Shellfish. That makes sense.” James nods, but keeps his eyes on me, continuing to evaluate his
patient. “We’re going to get you some help. You might be going into anaphylactic shock, but your airways aren’t closed. You’re going to be fine as long as we get moving.” He turns over his shoulder, directing his next words to Libby. “Get the van keys. We’ll take her to the ER. It’ll be faster than calling the ambulance.”

“But I—”

“But nothing. We’ve got to move. Let’s go.” James slips his arms under my knees and shoulders and hoists me into the air. I never expected this guy would be my savior, but I’ll take a savior in any form I can get.

“No.” Libby punctuates her refusal by raising the gun she must have rummaged from my purse while James and I were playing doctor. She takes aim at her brother’s chest, clicking off the safety with the air of a woman who knows her way around a firearm.

“Libby? What are you doing?” James asks, as stunned as any innocent man would be. “Where did you get that gun? We—”

“I can’t let you take her to the hospital,” Libby says with a ragged sob. Fresh tears spill down her cheeks and her nose starts to run. She swipes at it with the back of one hand, reminding me of Deedee and the trail on her tiny arm. God, where
is
Deedee? If she told Percy what she confided in me, she must have done it recently. Like in the sliver of time it took for me to get dressed and get to Camellia Grove. She must be here … somewhere, hopefully someplace far from this kitchen.

“Libby, please, she needs immediate treatment.” James starts forward, but Libby—and her gun—step into his path.

“She knows.” Libby sniffs. “She knows I put the shrimp in her muffin on purpose.”

“You what? You—”

“I had to do it.” Her bottom lip trembles. “Deedee saw Grace in the barn before I moved her. I don’t know when, but she could have seen me put the rag on her face. She could have seen me moving her. She could have seen anything!”

“Well, if you’d just carried her farther from the gate, then this wouldn’t—”

“I couldn’t.”

“You
wouldn’t,
because you’re too—”

“She was heavy! And I was crying!” Libby screams, then hiccups, then sobs some more.

“Okay, calm down,” James says. “We’ll figure this out.”

Oh. Shit.
Again.
Brother’s in on it too. I would punch him in the face if I weren’t working so hard to stay alive. As long as I remain limp and relaxed in James’ arms, it’s possible to pull in shallow breaths, but it might not be for long. I can feel the swelling getting worse, puffing up my cheeks until I can’t close my mouth without catching flesh between my teeth.

“Who else knows?” James asks.

“Deedee told Annabelle and Percy,” Libby says. “And I think she told Annabelle about the rabbits
and my missing ring. I think that’s all, but I can’t be sure.”

“Where are Percy and Deedee now?” James turns first one way and then the other, uncertain what to do with me now that he’s decided I’m a necessary casualty.

“Percy’s in the cellar. I hit her over the head with the cast-iron skillet and she fell down the stairs. I couldn’t find a pulse. I’m pretty sure she’s dead.” Libby whimpers, as if horrified by her own words. Holy Moses. This woman is on her way to being a mass murderer.

“And where’s Deedee?” James asks, fear in his voice.

“I don’t know, but she’ll probably be back soon.”

Thank God. Deedee’s okay. For now.

“I don’t think she’ll go to the police,” Libby says, “but we have to decide what to—”

“Dammit, Libby.” James curses as he heads across the kitchen. Libby follows, gun floating to her side. “Why did you do this? These people didn’t have to die.”

“What was I supposed to do?” She eases in front of him, opening a door and flipping a switch on the wall inside. Seconds later, James hustles down a set of stairs into a musty-smelling place I’m betting is the cellar. Where Percy’s body lies at the bottom of the stairs, where
my
body will lie if I don’t figure some way out of this mess. “If anyone told the police about Grace’s body being in the barn, then they would guess
it was someone in the house. We’re the only ones who have the keys to the barn. And when they find out Grace isn’t my adopted sister, they—”

“They won’t find out.”

“The FBI agent asked for some of my hair. The man came by this morning after the woman left.” Libby stops on the stairs, watching James carry me the rest of the way down.

Hitch
. He was here and suspicious of Libby. Maybe he’ll come back. I cling to the thread of hope as I suck in another desperate breath. I loathe the damsel in distress role as much as any intimacy-and-relationship-avoiding, self-sufficient, modern woman, but at this point, having someone save my ass is my only chance.

“What?” James stumbles off the last step and edges around a large obstacle. From my position in his arms, I can’t see anything but the planks of the ceiling and a single yellowed bulb lighting the darkness, and I’m glad of it. I don’t want to see the body of a woman I talked to less than an hour ago, a woman I stupidly thought was a murderer.

“Agent Rideau came by while you were on the way to Baton Rouge,” Libby says. “He said he needed a sample of my hair.”

“And you just
gave
it to him?”

“I had to. If I refused, it would have looked suspicious.” Libby stays on the stairs, watching as James moves a bag of potting soil and puts me down on a table in the center of the room. My blood pressure
spikes as I imagine being stabbed in the heart with a garden trowel and buried in the rose garden to fertilize Barbara’s award-winning Pink Promises.

He won’t stab you. All he has to do is wait for you to suffocate and then throw your body in the swamp. Much less mess.

“God, Libby.” James stares down at me with a concerned expression. “Now they’re going to find out that Grace wasn’t adopted. They’ll be able to pull DNA from the hair and—”

“I know that, James. I’m not stupid. That’s why we have to leave.”

“We can’t leave. It’ll kill Mama if we leave right after—”

“It’s going to kill Mama anyway, when she learns what we did. We can’t wait. The police are going to find out.”

“They’ll find out that Grace was your daughter,” he says. “But they didn’t have to. Mama got the birth certificate out of the safety deposit box and hid it somewhere no one will ever find it.”

Not what I’d thought Barbara was doing in Baton Rouge, but it makes sense. She must have known the investigation would lead to questions about Grace and wanted to make sure there was no paper trail connecting Grace and Libby.

“And I was taking care of the rest of it,” James says. “I was making sure someone else was going to be blamed for everything.”

“I know what you did.” Libby takes another step
into the cellar, but still seems reluctant to join James by my side. “You put the refrigerator we found in the swamp in that man’s house, with some of Grace’s hair.”

So
James
had planted the evidence. I
knew
the drugs and the murder were connected. It’s good to know that Fernando is as innocent as I thought. My detective instincts aren’t completely off base, just off base enough to get me killed.

It’s getting harder to breathe, even when I lie still. The beams above me waver and my head feels light enough to float away and leave the mad, mad world behind.

“How did you know?” James asks.

“I told you, I’m not stupid.” Libby’s voice is soft, hurt, but tender at the same time. “I know you were trying to help, but that man is a good man. He’s innocent.”

“Innocent people go to jail all the time,” James says, turning his back on me to confront Libby directly. It’s the perfect opportunity to make a run for it, but I can’t. I’m too dizzy, spinny. “We could have gone to the police and said we remembered seeing a man matching his description hanging around the house. We could have waited until he was convicted and then moved away. We—”