The Final Victim (52 page)

    At first, when she told Joseph, he thought they might just blackmail the old man with what they knew.

    Then Joseph looked a little more closely at the illustrious family tree, and realized that there might just be an old-fashioned, legitimate way to inherit the entire Remington fortune: by marrying into it
Maybe
he should have left it at that. As Charlotte's husband, even with Charlotte inheriting just one-third of the fortune, he would be set for life. Nobody would ever have to know who and what he really was.

    But his own greed, and Odette, got to him.

    He wanted it all.

    So he took a gamble-and he won.

    He'd guessed that Gilbert actually had a conscience- and could be convinced that leaving Charlotte all his money was the best way to appease it. What better way to compensate his unwitting granddaughter for Gilbert's own role in her mother's premature death?

    What Joseph didn't count on was that Charlotte would work her way under his skin-or that it would be so damned hard to see this thing through to the end.

    Odette is much more cavalier about it than he is. As she likes to tell him,
"You've just got to do what you've got to do. You can't let emotions get in the way."

    He's come to realize that she's absolutely right
And
that when the time comes, he will push aside his emotions to do exactly what he's got to do.

    Heedless of the howling wind and driving rain, Charlotte races around the perimeter of the house, trying first the side door, and then the back.

    
Locked, both of them.
Just as she expected.

    But that's okay. She knows where
Grandaddy
keeps the key.

    
Heart pounding, she scurries across the garden to the old stone sundial.
With trembling fingers, she reaches into the overgrown plantings around the base.

    Where is it?

    She begins to claw frantically at the rain-drenched weeds and perennials.

    The key has to be here…

    It has to, because now it's her only means of getting to
Lianna
.

    Finally, she gives up the fruitless search.

    Think! There just
must
be another way.

    Joseph Borger watched Charlotte for months, while making an honest living for a change, thanks to the technological skills he learned after a youthful stint in prison. Fortunately, he hasn't been incarcerated since he became proficient at his illegal career and computer-savvy at his legal one.

    Not that the computer training hasn't been beneficial in other ways. The document forgery was a snap; so was implementing the software to fake that airport phone call from Odette's cell phone.

    It wasn't hard for Joseph to initially keep a low profile in Savannah, or even on the island. Not many people paid much attention to a quiet "computer nerd," as Odette liked to call him back then.

    But she wasn't the only one who was undergoing a physical transformation.

    Eventually, Joseph had his teeth done, too. He hired a trainer, too, and bought gym equipment that he used religiously. He also bought a new wardrobe, with the help of a personal shopper.

    All the while he was preparing to become the dashing Royce Maitland and sweep Charlotte off her feet, he was noting that the grieving mother kept to herself, didn't date, didn't have friends or a social life. That the only people who seemed able to permeate the walls she had built around herself were her daughter, her grandfather, and the members of her support group.

    Creating a fictional son was as easy for Joseph as it was for him to come up with a fake identity for himself and Odette. Nobody ever questioned that his name was Royce Maitland, or that his son had been lost in the water that day.

    The beach was jammed with people. Nobody paid him any attention at all until he ran screaming for the child who didn't exist.

    But "Royce" had the documentation to prove that Theo had, should anyone think to question it: birth certificate, social security card, death certificate… Anyone who knew their way around the Internet as well as he did could come up with that stuff.

    He'd done it plenty of times, for simple insurance cons.

    But none of those could compare to this.

    No other scam demanded the patience, the complex planning; none promised to deliver the staggering payoff.

    
Not yet, though. We're not there yet
.

    "Why'd you go and shoot the old lady?" he asks Odette in disgust. 'There wasn't supposed to be another body left behind. It was hard enough to cover up what we had to do with our little eavesdropper."

    
Nydia.

    Yes, if she had just minded her own business, she'd still be alive. But she always did have a way of popping up when you least expected it. Chances are, she didn't overhear anything, but Odette wasn't taking any chances. And when Nydia popped up one time too many, she happened to be conveniently within reach of the same brass andiron that silenced
Phyllida
Harper when she walked in on them in bed in the wee hours of Saturday morning.

    "I told you we should have drugged her, too," Odette hissed to him back then, as she prepared to drag
Phyllida
out of the parlor.

    
"How?
I doubt she's any more likely than you are to touch that disgusting sweet tea. Too many
carbs
," he added, echoing Odette's response to just about every food she must avoid to maintain her new figure.

    But it's worth it. He enjoys being with a woman who looks like her-as much as he's secretly enjoyed being with Charlotte.

    That was the part that just about did Odette in, more than once. It killed her to know that he was making love to his new wife, though he repeatedly claimed that he didn't enjoy it. He swore that he thought only of Odette when he took Charlotte in his arms.

    What a shame that he didn't get to do just that to celebrate his return from the hospital.

    Ah, but a jealous Odette saw to it that it wouldn't happen. He found it almost amusing that she ingeniously rendered the elevator inoperable, just so that he wouldn't be able to share a bed with Charlotte these last few nights. Amusing, too, that she made sure Charlotte would sleep soundly through the night so there was no risk of "father and daughter" being caught sharing the hospital bed behind closed parlor doors.

    
Phyllida
Remington Harper did catch them-which rendered her yet another casualty of the best-laid plans going slightly awry.

    But nothing will go wrong from here on in.

    
Just as long as he doesn't get sloppy and leave a trail.

    "We have to do something about the old lady," he says, his thoughts racing.

    "Oh, don't worry about dear Aunt Jeanne, Joe. She took care of herself. I didn't have to."

    "What are you talking about?"

    Odette laughs. "Poor thing put a gun into her mouth and blew her brains out before I could do it for her."

    Her palpitating heart constricted in her rib cage,
Lianna
doesn't linger on the unstable third step, feeling the old wood begin to buckle beneath her weight.

    She swiftly lowers her foot to feel for the next, more solid, tread below. Safely there, she proceeds to the next, and then the next…

    Step-by-step, she descends into the black void, remembering that day; that awful, awful day eight years ago.

    Her brother wasn't supposed to have his autographed baseball at the beach, or anywhere outside the house, for that matter. Dad had bought it for him, and told him he had to keep it on a shelf in his room.

    But Adam couldn't part with it. He snuck it into the beach bag so that he could show his friends.
Lianna
saw him do it; he made her swear not to tell.

    She didn't.

    No, she did something far, far worse.

    When Mom was opening the cooler to set out the sandwiches she'd brought for their lunch,
Lianna
grabbed Adam's precious ball and threw it with all her might, into the surf.

    It was a joke.

    She laughed at Adam's dismayed expression,
then
snickered behind her hand as he snuck back down to the water, away from Mom.

    But
Lianna's
amusement transformed quickly into fear as she watched the current sweep the ball farther and farther from Adam's grasp.

    The lifeguard was blowing his whistle, but Adam paid no heed.

    Then, suddenly, he was gone, swept away in a riptide, leaving
Lianna
to stare in shock as her mother looked for him on the sand-her puzzled, then frantic voice calling Adam's name.

    That was the first
time,
the first of many, that
Lianna
wished she had been the one…

    Wished she was the one who had died, not Adam.

    Now, as she continues the long, slow descent to the cellar, step after painstaking step, she can't help but wonder if the first part of that wish might be about to come true.

    "Jeanne killed herself?" Joe asks Odette in disbelief. *Yup. I've never seen anything like it
What
a mess."

    He shakes his head, not sure whether to believe her. She isn't the most honest gal in the world…

    
Which is why we're a perfect match.

    He didn't always think so. He was originally smitten by her older sister,
Pammy
Sue: the slender, green-eyed blonde who, ironically, the formerly frumpy Odette now resembles so closely.

    But
Pammy
Sue lacked her younger sister's clever ingenuity. Fortunately for Odette and Joseph, she also lacked the natural curiosity that might have made anyone else at least wonder why they were being asked to take an early-morning flight from New Orleans to Savannah.

    Dull-witted
Pammy
Sue did it, no questions asked, carrying her sister's ID and baggage, for a couple hundred bucks. Odette had assured him that after she picked up her sister-with the luggage and ID-at the airport that morning, she drove
Pammy
Sue straight to the bus station and put her on the Greyhound back to Tennessee. Still no questions asked.

    Joseph sometimes forgets that he had ever chosen
Pammy
Sue over Odette. And he isn't the only one who did. Their mother, the volatile redheaded Mrs. Krupp, blatantly favored her eldest daughter. No wonder poor Odette always resented her big sister. No wonder she worked her butt off to get out of Pigeon Creek and make something of her life. Nursing school was her ticket…

    
Nursing school, and later, Charlotte Remington.

    
So look who's on top now
,
Babe,
Joseph likes to point out to her.
Forget
Pammy
Sue. You're the one who's got it all: looks, brains, me… and, pretty soon, millions of dollars.

    "I'm serious, Joe," Odette is saying now, ever industrious. "All we have to do is leave Jeanne just the way she is. The gun is still in her hand; her prints are the only ones on it. All the forensics experts in the world will come to the same conclusion: that she killed herself. It's the truth."

    "Why do you think she did it?"

    
"Because she's a nutcase?
Because she was watching out the window when the tree fell on poor old Nydia, and she just lost it? Who cares? We can use this, Joe. You'll say that the tree fell, the old bat shot herself, and Charlotte and
Lianna
took off in their car to get help. They were driving too fast, all shaken up, and… Bam.1" She slips the palm of one hand across the other, simulating a car going over a precipice.

    "It could work."

    "It will work. This is a terrible storm. People get killed in this kind of weather. It happens all the time. Nobody's going to question it."

    "No, I know. That's why we took advantage of the storm. But we weren't counting on the old lady, and the housekeeper, and-" 'Joe, relax. You were already shot once. Nobody's going to suspect anyone but
Gib
of anything. And even if they do, they'll assume
Gib
hired someone to pull it off. He's connected. The cops didn't miss that, trust me. They didn't miss much, when it comes to
Gib
."

    Joe's lips curve into a smile as he recalls how he slipped the cufflinks out of Gilbert's jewelry box, leaving them on the ledge outside the back door, with the dress shoes, for Odette to take.

    Joseph teased Odette relentlessly when she informed him that with the addition of a few cotton balls to stuff the toes,
Gib's
shoes fit her oversized, clodhopper feet perfectly.

    Then she had the nerve to complain that they were hard to run in, that she nearly twisted an ankle that night as she fled across Colonial Park Cemetery.

    
Twisted an ankle?
he
echoed.
At least you didn't have to get shot in the leg
.