The Final Victim (46 page)

    "No. We tried to find her in New Orleans, but there's no listing. We'll need to talk to your husband about her, and we'll need to get an address and phone number for her."

    "I'll call you with it as soon as I get home."

    "Actually…" Dorado gestures toward the door. "Let's call your husband right now."

    "Do we have to do it this way?
Over the phone?
Please, Detective, he's recovering from a major trauma."

    "And we're trying to investigate the source of that trauma." His voice is gentle, but firm. "Let's call."

    
"Aimee?"
Royce calls from the parlor.
"Aimee!
What the heck was that crash?"

    "I don't know," she calls from the far side of the house. "I'm trying to see."

    It sounded as though one of the tremendous trees came down alongside the house. This storm is far worse than he had anticipated. And where on earth is Charlotte?

    This day has gone downhill fast, ever since he looked up and saw that lifeguard standing in the parlor.

    He hears Aimee's hurried footsteps in the hall. "Did you find out what it was?"

    She appears in the parlor doorway.
"One of the live oaks right next to the driveway.
It almost crushed Nydia's car and it took down some wires, too. I can't believe we didn't lose the electricity."

    "I'm sure it'll go sooner or later. The lights keep flickering." He exhales nervously. "Where is Nydia?"

    "Still upstairs somewhere, I guess. I
haven't
heard her."

    
That doesn't mean she's not around
, Royce thinks, knowing how the housekeeper tends to creep around the house, popping up where you least expect her.

    For all he knows, she could be eavesdropping on the other side of the parlor door. It wouldn't surprise him in the least.

    "This storm is nasty," Aimee comments, as the wind lashes at the closed parlor window.

    "And Charlotte is out in it somewhere."

    "I know. Try to get her on her cell again. Maybe she'll pick up this time. Here, I'll dial; you talk."

    Royce nods, taking the receiver Aimee hands him.

    She begins pressing buttons, but he quickly shakes his head.

    
"Wait, there's no dial tone."

    "Sorry."
She jiggles the cradle button,
then
begins dialing again.

    "Still no dial tone," he says sharply. 'The phone is dead."

    "What about your cell phone?"

    "I have no idea where it even is.
Probably in a pocket somewhere in my closet or the hamper."
“I’ll go upstairs and look for it."

    "I'll help you. It'll be faster."

    "What about the stairs?
And your leg?"
Aimee asks.

    "Don't worry. I'm fine… and everything else is going to be fine, too."

    "I'm not worried."

    "Yes, you are.
About Charlotte.
I can tell."

    "So are you," she accuses.

    "You're right. But I know her better than you do. There's no way she isn't doing everything in her power to get home. I'm sure she'll be here any minute now."

    "I hope so."

    "She will." He opens his arms wide. "Come over here, scared little Baby Girl…"

    "Don't call me that," she protests, but her mouth quirks
wiuh
a suppressed smile.

    "You come over here and let your daddy give you a hug," he says, grinning too as he pulls her close and tenderly strokes her blond hair. "We're going to be just fine. I promise."

    In the library, Mimi sits before the microfiche screen, disappointed.

    Obituaries sometimes mention the precise cause of death-or at least indicate what it was, with a request for a donation to a charitable fund for
Kepton
-Manning Syndrome.

    But according to every old newspaper she checked, Connie June Remington
"died at home after an extended illness. Donations can be made to the new Remington Ambulatory Wing at-"

    The lights flicker.

    Disconcerted, Mimi glances up, then out the window at the gale. She has to get out of here. She really does.

    "Excuse me, ma'am, the library is going to be closing early because of the storm."

    Not looking up from the computer keyboard, Mimi nods. "I'll be finished in just a few minutes."

    
Googling
Connie June Remington's name yields no new information.

    Even as Mimi tells herself that she should give up and go home, her left index finger strays toward the T key, and her right immediately slips one space over, to the H.

    
No! Don't do it! That has nothing to do with this.

    No, it doesn't, but seeing Royce Maitland today brought it all back.

    It doesn't take much.

    Her middle finger on the left hand presses the E key.

    
Why are you doing this? What do you think
you 're
going to find?

    At the time, she refused to read the papers, or watch the news, or listen to people discussing the tragedy. And never once, in the past three years since, has she allowed herself to look for it on the Internet.

    But maybe
it's
time she did.

    Maybe seeing it here, and facing head-on her own role in the tragedy, will help her to put it to rest. Maybe she'll stop having that awful nightmare that haunts her even now, when she's sleeping beside her dying husband, living a nightmare that's even worse.

    After
Theo,
she quickly types
Maitland
,
hits
enter
, and holds her breath.

    Detective Dorado was right. The storm has definitely begun, and with a vengeance.

    Charlotte keeps one eye on the rain-spattered window, and the swaying trees beyond, as she calls her home telephone number.

    A recorded voice comes on the line.
"All circuits are busy. Please try your call again later."

    She looks at Dorado, who must have overheard.

    He nods. 'Try again." '’They said later."

    "It's later. Try again."

    She does. This time, there's a click, followed by a rapid busy signal.

    "Oh, I must have dialed the old number," she realizes, and disconnects the call. "Sorry."

    "Try again."

    "I will," she snaps-and immediately wishes she hadn't. Not at him, anyway. He's just trying to do his job-trying to help her, and Royce-she should appreciate his kinder, gentler approach, as opposed to his partner's.

    It's just that her nerves are rapidly fraying. Genuine premonition or irrational fear… all she wants is to get back home before something happens.

    She calls the number again, more slowly this time, taking care to dial the right one.

    
Again, the unnerving up-tempo busy signal.

    She looks anxiously at Dorado. "You don't think anything is wrong over there, do you?" 'The storm," he says with a discouraged shake of his head. "The phones must be out of commission."

    "I'll try my husband's cell phone."

    She does, but it goes right into voice mail. Listening to his reassuring voice on the outgoing message, she wonders how much to tell him. Now isn't the time to get into the detective's request, or the investigation. She opts to leave a brief message: "Royce, it's me. I'm on my way home right now, but it might take me a while because of the weather. I love you. See you soon."

    She hangs up. "Can I please go now? If it's that bad I really have to get back there to my family."

    "If it's that bad," Dorado returns, "I really wouldn't advise your going anywhere."

    "I have to. My husband is injured and my daughter is only thirteen, and my poor aunt is old and feeble. They all need me at home."

    "Are they alone?"

    "No," she admits. "My stepdaughter is there, and the housekeeper-and my aunt
does
have a nurse, but… I need to be there."

    "It sounds like they're in good hands, Mrs. Maitland. Don't you have a house right down the block? Why don't you stay there?"

    
"Because I'm going home."
She meets his worried brown eyes with a defiant glare.
"
Home
to
Oakgate
."

    
Huddled beneath a black umbrella that does nothing to shut out the rain blowing sideways, Tyler crosses the deserted expanse of Forsyth Park.
He moves as quickly as his old legs can carry him. That isn't saying much, thanks to increasingly fragile bones and his recent injury, which
happened
a stone's throw from here, on a day almost as blustery as this.

    Today, as then, he would much prefer to be snug at his home on Abercorn Street, perhaps enjoying a Cuban cigar and a single-malt scotch.

    
Ah, but Gilbert wouldn't approve
, he finds himself thinking, then acknowledging, once and for all, the irony that a man who disapproved of such "immoral" vices as smoking and drinking would go to the immoral lengths he did to save his fortune, and his pride-at the expense of countless people's lives.

    And you helped him to do it
, Tyler reminds himself as he steps into the crosswalk where he was nearly killed last winter.
You and Silas
.

    Silas's role in the cover-up was far more incriminating than his own. But in the end, were any of them any less, or more, guilty?

    Tyler's injured leg is aching, but he forces himself to take the stairs, rather than the elevator. Punishment, he thinks wryly, but hardly harsh enough.

    
His mind flashes to
Gib
Remington, sitting behind bars, having confessed to the drugs but not to attempted murder.
He won't be jetting off with a beautiful blonde any time soon.

    Tyler wonders, again, about
Gib's
role in what happened here in Savannah-and at
Oakgate
.

    Perhaps the truth about Gilbert's death will never be known.

    But the truth about his life will.

    In his office, Tyler goes to the tall wooden file cabinet and opens the locked bottom drawer using his key-the one whose duplicate nobody, including his grandnephew Jameson, has.

    It takes him a long time to remove all the hanging files and stack them neatly on the floor beside the cabinet. Then, prying with a pocketknife on his key ring, he lifts the false bottom from the drawer and removes the
manilla
envelope beneath it.

    Unlike the other two members of the Telfair Trio, Tyler Hawthorne won't carry blind loyalty-or toxic guilt-to his grave.

    Nothing comes up in response to Mimi's Google request.

    Nothing that pertains to a child's drowning death off
Achoco
Island, anyway. She scans the beginning of a long list of references to the names Theo and, separately, mentions of the last name Maitland. It would take her hours to wade through this.

    She types in
Theodore Maitland AND drowning
, a trick she learned in a college computer class, to narrow down the search engine's hits.

    The results pop up with plenty of entries that contain either
Theodore
or
Maitland
or
drowning
, or even two of the three words. But none of it is what she's looking for, at least, not right here at the top. She has hardly begun scanning the lengthy pages of entries when the librarian interrupts her.

    
"Ma'am?
We really are closing."

    "I'm
sorry,
I'm just about finished here."

    She can't waste time wading through this list.

    Biting her lower lip intently, she types in
Theo Maitland AND Royce Maitland AND New Orleans AND drowning.

    There!

    The name
Royce Maitland
jumps out at her.

    
"Ma'am!
Please!"

    "I'm sorry. I'll shut down."

    But before she does, she scrolls rapidly to click on the link for the first Royce Maitland entry.

    Moments later, Mimi is running for the exit in a race that has nothing to do with the library's closing or the impending storm.

    
You are such a freaking baby
,
Lianna
scoffs at herself as she cowers on her bed against the inner wall, as far from the rattling windows as she can possibly get. She closed and locked them when the rain started blowing in… as if that can really keep a storm this fierce at bay.