The Final Victim (17 page)

    Kevin reaches for her again.

    "Come on, stop it! I mean it! My mother's coming."

    His head jerks around to examine the garden path beyond the glider's canvas awning.

    "She isn't here now, you idiot,"
Lianna
says with a laugh, tucking her shirt back into the waistband of her shorts. "Do you think I'd just be sitting here with you if she was?"

    
"Nope."
Undaunted at being called an idiot, he smirks.
"You'd be running away to hide."

    "So would you."

    "You know it." He glances at his Timex. "Anyhow, I thought you said she wasn't coming for at least another hour."

    He's right. She did say that.

    But that was before he tried to go further than she expected.
Again.
It's getting to be a pattern with them over these past few weeks-yet, one she doesn't necessarily want to avoid.

    After all, Kevin's cute, and a good
kisser,
and he really likes her.

    She just isn't comfortable making out with him outside in broad daylight, that's all.

    Things might be different if they could really be alone together, in private. Sometimes, she thinks she's ready for that. Other times, she knows she's not.

    Being Kevin's girlfriend is confusing.

    "Listen, I have no idea when my mother's going to show up, actually. You need to go, so I can get out front and wait for her on the steps."
Lianna
inches away from him on the green and white vinyl cushion, feeling around with her feet in the grass for the rubber flip-flops she kicked off earlier.

    "Won't she think something's up when you're outside and your friend's not around?"

    Maybe she will, come to think of it. But the plan to use Casey's house while her friend's family is away on vacation seemed like a good one when
Lianna
came up with it last night.

    "I'll make up something," she tells Kevin.

    "Like what?"

    "Like Casey was eating this cinnamon taffy and she broke a bracket and had to go to an emergency orthodontist appointment."

    "That's pretty good," Kevin says admiringly.
"Cinnamon.
How'd you think of that? Telling the flavor, I mean."

    She shrugs. "You've got to use details. That makes it real."

    "Wow. You're a great liar."

    "Thanks."

    "You're so beautiful, too."

    She so isn't. She has buck teeth and knobby knees and it's taking forever for her to grow out her hair from that layered cut she got last spring that her mother thought would look good on her.

    But Kevin really must think she's irresistible, because he slides close to her and the next thing she knows, he's pulling her into his strong arms again, pressing a hot, wet kiss on the damp skin of her neck, beneath her hair.

    
Lianna
finds herself stirring with an unfamiliar longing despite her resolve to get the heck out of here. She manages to squirm out of Kevin's grasp, only to have him grab her and kiss her again, this time on the mouth. She immediately kisses him back.

    Later, she'll go over and over the moment, analyzing everything about it.

    How his hand was slipping under her shirt again, and this time, she didn't bother to stop it…

    How her own arms circled up around his neck almost against her will, like they belonged to somebody else…

    How her heart must have been pounding too loudly for her to hear footsteps approaching on the gravel path…

    How it must have looked to her mother when she came around the corner of the house and saw them.

    
Lianna
will analyze the moment because she'll have little else to do, having been grounded-without her cell phone-for the rest of the summer.

    "Mr. Remington?"

    
Gib
stops short, halfway down the second-floor hall to his bedroom. He looks over his shoulder to see Great-Aunt Jeanne's nurse, Melanie.

    "Yeah?" he asks, his gaze flicking with interest from her blond hair pulled back into a becoming ponytail to her ample breasts straining the floral fabric of her nurse's smock. Even in the frumpy uniform, she's hotter than the blazing Georgia sun.

    "Your aunt asked me to come down and find one of you."

    "One of me?" he asks, fixing her with a lazy grin, his troubles momentarily forgotten. "You can have all of me."

    She smiles at the flirtatious comment "I mean, she asked me to find you, or your sister, or your cousin Charlotte."

    "I'm the most interesting of the bunch… I promise you that."

    He sees the pink flush coloring her cheeks before she ducks her head, charmingly flustered.

    "All right, so let's go on up and I'll talk to the old gal. What's it about? Does she need me to move a piece of furniture? Or stop all those annoying devil voices in her head?"

    He laughs at his own joke.

    The lovely Melanie seems to lack a sense of humor. "Don't make fun of her… She's a sweet lady."

    "I know she is. Sweet and," he can't resist leaning so close he can smell her fresh herbal scent-lotion, not perfume, "you have to admit, just a little bit…" He rotates an index finger alongside his ear.

    To her discredit, Melanie again fails to crack a smile. She turns on the heel of her sensible white shoe and heads down the hall in the opposite direction of the third-floor stairway.

    "Hey, where are you going? I thought we were going up to talk to Aunt Jeanne!"

    "You are," she calls over her shoulder without a backward glance. "I'm going to get her some hot tea."

    
Your loss
,
Gib
thinks with a shrug as he takes the stairs up two at a time.

    
And Aunt Jeanne's
, he adds, as a wall of heat hits him.

    
Hot
tea?
Is Melanie trying to kill the old bat?

    "Cripes, it's a sauna up here," he comments to the old woman, who's facing the opposite direction in her wheelchair. "You need to open some windows, Aunt Jeanne."

    He strides toward the nearest dormer, deciding the lovely Melanie lacks a sense of humor and common sense.

    'They are open," Aunt Jeanne tells him, and he realizes she's right. Several electric fans are whirring as well.

    But with the late-afternoon sun beaming in through the glass and baking the roof overhead, there is little that can be done to sufficiently cool the large space.

    Why central air was never installed in this old house,
Gib
will never understand.

    Maybe these crazy Southerners are accustomed to the heat, but he personally can't wait to get back to Boston.

    Literally "
crazy
Southerners" in Aunt Jeanne's case, he notes as she turns her wheelchair to face him, looking somewhat wild-eyed.

    "I need to know, Gilbert."

    For a moment, hearing the cryptic demand and the formal name nobody ever, ever calls him, he wonders if she thinks he's her dead brother.

    Then, her gnarled old hands rolling the chair closer to him with surprising speed, she says, "I need to know what was in that will."

    
The will
.

    It comes crashing back with a vengeance; all the angst of the calamitous session in Tyler Hawthorne's office.

    "Do you mean what was in it for you?" he asks the expectant Aunt Jeanne.
"Because that would be the same thing that was in it for me.
Nothing."

    
"Nothing?"
Her voice is tremulous, yet there seems to be a curious lack of expression in her wrinkled face.

    
"Nothing.
He left everything to dear cousin Charlotte."

    Aunt Jeanne is nodding. For a moment, he isn't sure she even heard what he said.

    Then she says, her jaw set in what seems to be resignation-or even, oddly, acceptance, "That's just as I expected."

    People really shouldn't play favorites.

    It isn't nice.

    Who was it who once said a little healthy rivalry never hurt anyone?

    
Probably your mother… who else?

    Well, she was wrong.
About a lot of things.

    But now isn't the time to worry about that.

    Now is the time to make the final preparations of the cabin that continues to look for
all the
world like a vine-covered nursery rhyme cottage-or some lucky little girl's adorable playhouse.

    
Lucky little girl…

    
Pammy
Sue
.

    Now there was a lucky little girl. With her blond ringlets and big green eyes, she was the apple of everybody's eye: Mama's, and Aunt
Chessie's
, and Pastor Brigham's…

    
Everybody's but mine.

    But
Pammy
Sue never figured that out, not as a child, not even now, all grown up. It would simply never occur to her that one of her nearest and dearest could possibly dislike her.

    
Dislike?

    Hah.

    Even
loathe
is an understatement.

    Yet nobody in all those years ever seemed to suspect the pure hatred expertly concealed by a mask of benevolent affection.

    
Pammy
Sue might have won the lead in every school play, but her so-called acting talent
didn
't
hold a candle to mine
.

    It's ironic, even now, to recall that the spotlight and the applause always belonged to
Pammy
Sue when the truly masterful performance was unfolding right before everyone's eyes, undetected.
Unappreciated.

    Blind, smitten fools.

    
Yes, and you were right there in the front row every time, beaming, clapping for
Pammy
Sue along with those blind, smitten fools.

    Ah, well, the perpetual deception was certainly good practice for all that lies ahead.

    And it won't be long now before the ultimate curtain call is carried out in vengeful perfection.

    The marsh after dark isn't a particularly appealing place to be… not even with a couple of kerosene lanterns. Their flames flicker eerily on the brick walls, casting the lone human shadow larger than life.

    
Which is as it should be.

    
At least I'm the master of this domain
.

    
Yes, but what good is that?
taunts
an inner voice.
It's still empty
.

    
Although not for long.

    Just outside the door lies a brown carton, its sides damp and pungent with absorbed humidity.

    Inside are the last few items necessary to turn this little house into a home.

    First, a large flattened cardboard box must be
lain
across the mud floor like a fine carpet. The new door came inside it.

    Next, the pieces of furniture are arranged one by one on the makeshift rug: a small wooden table and three small chairs.

    Finally, the family materializes.

    Three small dolls-a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead-perfectly scaled to occupy the furniture, their plastic lips frozen in garish smiles, unblinking eyes unable to witness what will unfold within these walls.

    The lush, landscaped grounds at
Oakgate
might be inviting during the day, but at night, even with a three-quarter moon hovering above the oaks, it's the opposite.

    
Phyllida
is glad she thought to stop in the kitchen and hunt down a flashlight-she found it in the utility drawer-before slipping out the back door; she wouldn't want to be alone out here in the dark.

    She doesn't want to be alone out here at all, but she has to make this call. Brian and Wills are asleep in her room upstairs and she doesn't want to disturb them. Nor does she want to risk being overheard by anybody in the house.

    So here she is, clad in a filmy summer nightgown, making her way through the shadowy back garden. The wet grass brushes against her bare feet in hastily donned flip-flops. She tries not to think about
snakes,
or anything else that might be slithering nearby, as she heads as far away from the house as she dares to go.

    The night is still and moist; the live oaks form a canopy overhead, although it's anything but protective.
Phyllida
won't imagine what creatures might be tucked amid the foliage webbed in dry Spanish moss, poised to drop on her head at any moment.

    She comes to a halt when she reaches the small cemetery surrounded by a low ironwork fence.

    Gravestones of her ancestors loom eerily in the night. Some are thin, leaning slabs whose etching is all but worn away, glowing white beneath the moon. Others, like the large one belonging to
Grandaddy
and the grandmother
Phyllida
never knew, are elaborate monuments carved in polished black granite, rising from the earth like formidable warriors standing guard over fallen comrades.