Half Past Dead (29 page)

A lone tear crawled down the high arch of Tori's cheek. “She got pregnant with you by accident.”

An accident.

The word hit her with the force of a physical blow, and she had to suck in a stabilizing breath. Well, that explained a lot. An ache too deep for tears filled Kat, but she forced herself to focus on the positive aspects of her life. At least she'd had her father's love. No one could take that away from her.

Tori swiped at her tears with the back of one hand. “Let's go. We need to talk.”

 

D
AVID RETURNED
to the
Trib
and Connie greeted him in the foyer. “You put the paper to bed?” he asked, bone-weary and wishing he could go to sleep. He was too old for an all-night drive followed by a full day of work.

“Yes. Kat wasn't here to help. I guess she's still planning the service for her mother.”

David walked toward his office, Max beside him. “She'll need a few days off for the funeral and to settle things.”

“I was going to run a death notice about Loretta Wells.”

David sat in his chair and did his best not to let his shoulders slump. “Check with Kat for a photograph, blow it up, and run it. Don't charge Kat a dime.”

Connie nodded but the scowl she tried to conceal told him that she didn't approve. Obituaries were just a few lines, giving the deceased's name, date of death, funeral arrangements, and a bit of other data. Funeral notices with photographs and information submitted by the family were a source of revenue for every paper. Connie had turned them into a cash cow for the
Trib
, but David refused to take money he knew Kat didn't have.

“We've received lots of e-mails and calls about your article on Lucas Albright,” Connie said with a smile he found a little flirtatious.

“Good,” he replied, ignoring her attempt to be overly friendly. “Have we had an update on Albright's condition?”

“Kat was supposed to call this morning, but she ran out after I gave her the message from her sister. I phoned the police in Jackson. Lucas has been transferred to a regular cell until he can be returned to the penitentiary.”

“Thanks. I knew I could count on you. Did you run an article about it?”

“You bet.” Connie beamed at him. “Check it on the dummy sheet. I told about the transfer and reused some of the article you wrote.”

David kept his concern to himself. Today, he'd revealed more information about a source than he should have. He prided himself on being a professional. He didn't want anyone—even Connie—to know Kat had written the article and used his byline.

“Y
OU VISITED
M
OTHER
just a few nights ago,” Tori told her.

Oh my God,
Kat thought. Her temples throbbed and she was suddenly light-headed. It took a second to reorient herself. “I did?”

She stared wordlessly at her sister. How could she have possibly forgotten something so important? But some distant part of her brain had remembered. She'd had a
feeling
her mother was going to die.

“Yes. She served you lemonade.”

They were standing in the living room of her mother's small condo, having stopped to pick out a dress for their mother to be buried in.

“I can't imagine forgetting, but I don't remember seeing Mother.”

Tori looked away for a moment, then gazed at Kat with bloodshot green eyes. Tori motioned for Kat to sit on the sofa. She dropped onto cushions that had been recovered since she'd lived here, and Tori sat beside her.

Her sister had behaved differently today, she thought—less self-absorbed, less intense. Death takes something out of you, changes you. Kat was sorry her mother was gone, sorry they hadn't had the opportunity to make their peace, yet she wasn't as distraught as Tori seemed to be.

That's because I lost my mother by degrees, Kat reasoned, then corrected herself. No. She'd never had a place in her mother's heart. She'd learned at a very young age not to expect affection from anyone but her father. Even if she foolishly kept hoping to earn her mother's love, she'd never counted on it.

Kat realized she'd let go of her mother almost completely while she'd been in prison. Loretta Wells had been alive, but in Kat's mind she'd died when she refused to return Kat's calls after her arrest.

Now she knew why.

Kat couldn't imagine not loving a child, but her mother had always been a little bit like Tori. Her world revolved around herself. There had never been much room in it for anyone—except Tori.

Her sister interrupted Kat's thoughts. “You don't remember visiting Mother?”

“No. Didn't you hear about it? Someone must have slipped poison into my food. I don't recall much before I woke up in Mavis Hill's bed.”

“It's strange that you would go blank like that.”

“Mavis believes someone gave me a rare drug called belladonna. It causes amnesia, and it's usually fatal.”

“It wasn't belladonna,” Tori said in a low voice charged with emotion. “It was arsenic.”

“Arsenic? I don't think so. It doesn't cause—” The expression on her sister's face stopped Kat cold.

“It could,” Tori said, a whipcord-thin muscle in her neck pulsing. “Drugs and vitamins and even herbal supplements interact with each other and cause all sorts of problems. I saw it with Mother, and read about it in a magazine. Hundreds of thousands of deaths are caused each year when people mix drugs and harmless things like vitamins and herbal supplements.”

Kat nodded her agreement but her brain was riveted on a single word.
Arsenic.
“What made you say it was arsenic?”

Tori's face clouded with an uneasy expression. “I found a box of rat poison here, at Mother's condo.”

“That doesn't mean—”

“Yes, it does,” Tori emphatically insisted. “Mother talked about getting rid of you.”

Jagged, painful memories like shards of glass pierced Kat's emotional shield and triggered a raw ache. She'd known her mother hadn't loved her, but at least Tori had always tolerated her. At times, her sister had actually been nice to her. “Did she hate me that much?”

She inclined her blond head and studied the carpet for a moment, then raised her eyes. “Mother was deceiving herself. I'm just a pawn that Judge Kincaid can play when it suits him.”

Kat didn't know how to respond to the self-ridicule she detected in her sister's voice. At least Tori realized the judge was using her. A small step, Kat decided.

“You know how obsessed Mother always was about my marrying Clay.” Tori rushed on without waiting for a response. “She thought your troubles would ruin my chances.”

“I know she never loved me. That isn't a surprise, but trying to kill me…Well, I just can't believe Mother—”

“Believe it,” Tori countered in a voice like acid. “Mother was capable of things that neither of us could have imagined.”

Kat had heard enough. She couldn't bring herself to ask what else Tori knew. Part of her didn't want to know.
You've been through enough,
the rational side of her brain reasoned.
Let the past go.

“She was crazy about my father,” Tori told her after an awkward silence.

That wasn't news to Kat. How many times had her father been forced to endure stories of how wonderful, how handsome, how exceptional Vincent Conway had been? Nothing Parker Wells did could measure up to the myth of Tori's father. Loretta had never let Kat's father forget he'd been second best. If Vince had lived, Loretta wouldn't have looked twice at Parker. How devastating that must have been for her father.

Tori stood, gracefully unfolding like a long-stemmed rose, Kat thought. Her sister walked over to the window and opened the set of shutters facing the street.

“Neither of us really knew Mother.” Tori pivoted slowly and faced Kat, a steely resolve firing her green eyes. “She lived a lie her entire life.”

Kat's thoughts spun in disbelief as she listened to how Tori's father had walked out on his wife and infant daughter. Tori was right; in her wildest dreams, Kat couldn't imagine her mother doing this. “Mother never divorced him?”

Tori shook her head and a wealth of glistening blond hair skimmed the shoulders of her expensive dress. “No. She married your father to get a meal ticket.”

Kat's pulse began beating erratically. Her father had loved this woman and received nothing in return. Nothing. He'd been a kind, gentle man who'd deserved better.

“Funny, I always felt superior to you. I arrogantly believed I had it all. Both my parents adored me. In truth, we each had the same thing. One of our parents loved us. The other didn't.”

Unexpectedly, Kat's temper flared. “My father would have loved you like his own daughter, but Mother wouldn't let him. She didn't want to share you, so he was stuck with me.”

Tori dropped onto the sofa again and spread her hands wide. “It doesn't matter now, does it? They're both gone.”

Kat wanted to say: All we have is each other. The words refused to leave her lips. She waited for Tori to say something—anything—that would bridge the differences between them. All her sister said was, “I have a black suit you can wear tomorrow for the funeral.”

 

K
AT DIALED
Justin's cell phone and he picked up immediately. “It's me,” she said, attempting in vain to keep the distress out of her voice.

“Where are you?”

“At the
Trib.
Everyone's gone home.” She opened the car door to let the heat escape. Even though dusk was falling, the air was still warm and laden with moisture and the faint scent of wild honeysuckle.

“Where've you been?”

“With Tori. We had to plan the funeral. We talked…a lot.” She didn't want to discuss their conversation over the telephone. “I think we're all set for tomorrow.”

“I'm glad you called. I was getting worried. You were at the funeral parlor a long time.”

“After we made all the arrangements, we had coffee, then picked out a dress for Mother to wear.”

There was a long pause. “Are you two getting along better?”

Kat wondered how she could put into words what had happened with her sister. “A little, I guess. She told me some stuff.” She heard the quaver in her voice.

“Are you okay?”

She braced herself and said, “Tori told me that Mother poisoned me.”

For a moment there was complete silence. “Oh, babe, I'm sorry. I wondered about your mother, but it just didn't seem possible a mother could—”

She cut him off. “Let's discuss this when I see you.”

“I'm onto something. I can't leave,” Justin told her. “I want you to go by the station and pick up Redd. Spend the night at David's. I don't know how late I'll be.”

“Okay,” she reluctantly agreed. She'd been anticipating spending the night in his arms again.

“Call me when you get there. I want to know you're safe.”

Safe? Now there's a concept, she thought as she slid into her car. How could she ever feel safe again, knowing her own mother had tried to kill her?

 

T
ORI WAS STANDING
in the living room of her condo when she heard Clay drive up. She didn't bother going to the door with a welcoming smile the way she normally would have. Instead, she kept opening the mail she'd brought in after Kat left. Already, dozens of friends—business acquaintances really—had sent or dropped off condolence cards and bouquets of flowers.

A few seconds later, Clay opened the door with the key she'd had made for him and breezed in. “Tori, sweetheart, I heard about your mother.”

He gazed down at her with loving eyes. For an instant, it was the way it always had been—just the two of them. Without their parents hovering in the background, his disapproving, her mother insisting she'd been born to be Mrs. Clayton Ambrose Kincaid.

Things had changed, Tori thought while he murmured his sorrow for her loss. Loretta Wells had departed from the world of the living. Tori was finally free. Her mother's dying confession had somehow released her.

Clay guided Tori over to the couch. “Babe, I can't tell you how sorry I am that I wasn't there for you.”

Clay sat, pulling her down with him. She didn't ask where he'd been or why he hadn't taken the time to call. He knew she'd been trying to reach him. She'd left enough messages for him.

“When are the services?” he asked.

“The viewing's tomorrow at nine,” Tori replied in a wooden voice. “Kat and I—”

“Your sister is going to—”

“She's Mother's child as well.”

“I just thought that under the circumstances…”

She glared at him. “We'll receive people in the mourning room right after the viewing. The funeral will be at two.”

“My family sent a special arrangement from Mother's florist in Jackson. It's all white orchids.”

Orchids, of course. His mother's favorite. Loretta Wells had loved yellow roses. Over the years, Clay had stopped numerous times with Tori when she'd bought her mother yellow roses for various occasions. Obviously, he hadn't remembered, or maybe it was easier to do what his parents wanted than to think for himself.

Tori forced herself to say, “That's very kind of your family.”

Clay rose and went over to the armoire that served as a bar. “Want something?” he asked, reaching for the bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label that she always kept on hand for him.

She watched him splash a lot more than his usual two fingers of scotch into the cut crystal glass. He kicked back first one swig, then another. He exhaled with a satisfied grin.

“What's the matter, babe? You're awfully quiet.”

Aren't you going to explain where you've been? Why couldn't I reach you when I needed you the most?
“My mother's gone.”

He tossed back the remainder of his drink. He walked toward her, saying, “I know how you feel, babe.”

“How can you?” she blurted out. “You still have both your parents.”

“True,” he conceded, sitting down beside her. “I didn't expect you to be so upset. You've known for a long time your mother was going to die.”

“That doesn't make it any easier.”

He slid his arm around her shoulders and gave her a smile that could almost pass for genuine. His father's smile. Until now, Tori had never realized that Clay by subtle degrees was morphing into his father. He'd never possess the judge's cunning instincts or razor-sharp intelligence, but it was clear to Tori that Clay had begun to pick up his mannerisms.

“About the funeral,” Clay said in a tone that some might have mistaken for regret. “Tomorrow isn't a good day for me. I have to be in Memphis with Dad and Mac, but I'll send Mother.”

Tori stared into the blue eyes she'd adored for much too long. For once, she didn't say anything.