Chapter 28
Cecil had wandered out into the garden seeking solitude from not only his wife, but from everything incomprehensible that his life had become recently. How had he reached this point? What had he done to deserve such misery? Wasn’t every man entitled to a few mistakes?
All the old nightmares had returned. He’d dreamed about Margaret last night. Vivid, ugly dreams. It had taken him years to put the past behind him, to live without fear that someday the truth about Laura’s biological mother would be revealed to the world. His sweet, precious Laura. Except for the pale blond hair, she actually resembled him much more than she did her mother. That alone had been a blessing. If every time he’d looked at his elder daughter he’d seen the madwoman who had almost destroyed his life nearly twenty-five years ago, he wasn’t sure he could have loved her. But he did love Laura. And oddly enough, so did Andrea. Oh, he knew she didn’t love Laura the way she did Sheridan, but the fact that she loved his child at all never ceased to amaze him. It had been Andrea who had defended Laura time and again. It had been Andrea who had insisted Laura receive the psychiatric help she’d needed as a young girl. And it had been Andrea who had cared for and protected Laura during these black days following Jamie’s brutal murder.
Cecil finished off his tea, then set the china cup and saucer on the glass and metal patio table. Herbal tea often soothed his nerves, but he suspected that tonight he would have to take another sleeping pill if he wanted to rest.
He wished he could stop thinking about something that had been tormenting him since Jamie’s death. If he didn’t know for a fact that Margaret was dead, that she had died in the fire that swept through the private mental hospital where she’d lived, he would wonder if she had been the one who’d killed Jamie. Margaret had tortured his father, had almost killed him. And at her trial, a gruesome truth had been revealed. Margaret’s own father had been found brutalized—castrated—when Margaret was only fifteen. Although there had been no proof that Margaret had killed her own father—and the judge couldn’t consider that crime evidence against her—everyone involved, from the police officers to the district attorney, had been convinced that Margaret was a psychopathic killer.
Laura. His poor Laura. She must never know about Margaret. Although Laura had always been emotionally fragile, Cecil had never seen any evidence that she had inherited her mother’s evil sickness. Not until that Roberts boy had accused her of trying to run him down with her car.
But that was only one incident, he reminded himself.
Until Jamie’s murder.
No! Absolutely, unequivocally no! Laura is incapable of such cruelty. You can’t allow yourself to think, even for one minute, that she has killed two men.
Jumping at the sound of her voice, Cecil gasped and turned to face his elder daughter.
“Yes, Laura, what is it?”
“Are you all right?”
He offered her a smile as he walked toward her. “Just concerned about you. You’ve been through so much lately. Jamie’s death. Losing the baby. And now this asinine attempt to blame you for Jamie’s death.”
“Do you think I killed him?”
She looked at him, her heart in her eyes, and Cecil wanted to pick her up and set her on his lap as he had done when she’d been a little girl.
“Of course not. I know you didn’t—”
“I don’t remember where I was the night Jamie was killed.”
“What?”
“Mother told me that I mustn’t say anything to anyone about it. But I had one of those odd spells, like the one I had when—”
Cecil grasped Laura’s shoulders. “Your mother is right. Don’t ever repeat to anyone else what you just told me. If the sheriff were to find out…” Cecil shook his head. “No, no, that mustn’t happen. He wouldn’t understand. He could use that fact as evidence against you.”
“But, Daddy, what if I did kill Jamie?”
Cecil shook her gently. Tears welled up in her eyes. “You didn’t kill him. I know you didn’t.”
“Your father is right, Laura. You didn’t kill him,” a female voice said. “I did.”
Cecil searched the darkness for the source of the voice, a voice that seemed oddly familiar.
“Who said that?” Laura clung to her father as she looked all around her.
A small gray shadow moved out of the tall shrubbery that lined the back garden wall.
Cecil held his breath as she came into view, the soft patio torchlights casting a golden glow over the woman. He stared at her for an endless moment.
“My God, it can’t be.”
“But it is,” she said. “I’ve come for you. And for Laura. Surely you knew that I would.” She lifted her hand and aimed a sinister-looking gun directly at him.
“How?” It was the only word Cecil managed to say.
“How did I get inside the locked gates of the Upton compound?” the woman asked, smiling wickedly. “I used Jamie’s remote control, of course. I found it in his pants pocket when I stripped him.”
“Who are you?” Laura managed to ask.
“Didn’t your father tell you about me? No, of course he didn’t. He’s ashamed of me. But he should be ashamed of himself, because he hasn’t been a very good father. A good father never would have allowed you to become involved with Jamie. He was a bad man. A bad man like you, Cecil. He deserved to die.”
“Daddy?” Trembling from head to toe, Laura clung to Cecil.
“It’ll be all right Laura,” he promised her, praying fervently that he could keep that promise.
“He’s right, Laura. Everything is all right, now that I’m here. I’ll make sure no one ever hurts my baby. I’m a good mother. I was always a good mother, but they took my little girl away from me. That wasn’t right, was it? And Jazzy raised my little girl and told her she was her mother. Jazzy and Jamie were so…”
She stared from Laura to Cecil as if she couldn’t quite remember who they were. If only he dared to jump her, Cecil thought, dared to go for the gun and try to stop her. But what if she accidentally shot Laura?
“That’s not right, is it? Jamie was mean to you—” She pointed the gun at Laura and Cecil gasped. Then she pointed the gun back at him. “I killed him because he was mean to my baby. And you’ve been a bad father, Cecil. A very bad father. And Jazzy was a bad mother. It was wrong of her to take you away from me. She had no right to tell my baby she was her mother.”
“Daddy, what is she talking about? Do you know her?”
“Yes…Daddy…tell her what I’m talking about. Tell her who I am.”
Andrea swung open the French doors and marched out onto the patio. She had given Cecil more than enough time to brood on his own. It was time they talked, time they made plans to protect themselves and their daughters. Whatever it took to keep the truth hidden, they must do it. If anyone in their circle ever found out about Margaret, it would ruin them. And it would destroy Laura. She hadn’t invested twenty-four years of her life in Cecil’s daughter to let it be for naught. She loved Laura, as much as it was possible to love another woman’s child, and for Cecil’s sake she had protected the girl. Of course, loving Laura hadn’t been difficult at first, not when she’d been an infant and toddler.
“Cecil, where are you?”
No response.
Damn, had he gone off for a walk and not told her? She glanced around and suddenly noticed two rather odd things—Cecil’s empty teacup and saucer lay scattered in broken pieces on the brick patio floor. And only a couple of feet away, one of Laura’s house slippers rested upside down, as if she’d lost it while running.
An unnerving sensation fluttered through Andrea’s stomach. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. Laura wouldn’t have taken a walk with her father without her slippers. She had such sensitive feet that she’d never been able to play barefoot as a child the way Sheridan had.
“Cecil!” Andrea shouted. “Laura!”
Oh, God! Oh, God! She had no idea what had happened, couldn’t even imagine why she felt so panicky. But her instincts told her that her husband and daughter were in danger. Serious danger.
Andrea rushed back inside and screamed, “Dora!”
The housekeeper came running as fast as a woman her age could. “Yes, ma’am, what’s wrong?”
“Have you seen my husband and Miss Laura?”
“No, ma’am, not since Miss Laura came by the kitchen and asked me where her father was. I told her he’d taken a cup of tea out on the patio.”
“Call Sheriff Butler immediately and tell him that Mr. Willis and Miss Laura are missing.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Call the sheriff right now. Something terrible has happened to my husband and daughter.”
She tried to be gentle with Laura, but the girl was afraid of her. That was his fault, of course. In order to keep from hurting Laura, she’d been forced to use the chloroform on her as well as on Jamie. No, not Jamie. Cecil. Cecil Willis. A bad husband. And a bad father.
She had taken them back to her cabin. Since she would be leaving town as soon as she finished what she’d come here to do, there was no reason she couldn’t kill them here in the cabin she’d been living in for quite some time. After all, she’d used an alias and a phony ID. And once she left Cherokee County, no one would be able to trace her. She had new identities chosen for herself and her baby, with all the necessary papers to prove they were who they would say they were. And she could do as she’d been doing for two years now, charge everything to credit cards, pay a little along, and then change identities and disappear. She had been waiting and planning, knowing that she would eventually be able to punish the ones who had hurt her, the ones who had taken her baby away from her.
Her baby. Where was her baby? She’d left her sleeping when she’d gone to get Cecil, but when she brought him and Laura back to her cabin, her baby was gone.
Think, think, think. She tapped herself on the temple. Jazzy has your baby. She’s been pretending to be her mother. Jamie gave your baby to Jazzy.
No, that wasn’t right. It hadn’t been Jamie.
But Jazzy had taken her baby. Jazzy had to pay with her life. She’d hurt…
Who had Jazzy hurt?
Laura.
Jazzy had hurt Laura.
She leaned over Laura Willis, who lay sleeping on the sofa, and caressed the girl’s soft cheek. It hadn’t been too difficult to drag the girl from the car. She was small and slender. Getting Cecil into the cabin had been more difficult because he was bigger and heavier. But she had managed by sheer determination.
“I’m going to get Jazzy and bring her back here. I want her to watch me kill him, but before I end his life, I want him to hear her screams. I’ll make them pay, baby, I promise. I’ll make them pay for everything they’ve done to us.”
Jazzy staggered around in her office. She was a bit tipsy. Not drunk, just feeling very little pain. That third shot of whiskey had soothed her. And the fourth had numbed her. What she needed now was to get upstairs to her bed and sleep for about a hundred hours. Once she’d slept, once she’d erased both Caleb and Jamie from her mind, she would be able to decide what to do. Tomorrow.
Lacy could close up shop without her. She’d done it numerous times. And there was no need to bother her. I’ll just sneak out the back way and go home. Don’t want nobody making a fuss over me.
“Who the hell would do that, Jazzy, you damn fool?” she hollered.
She placed her index finger over her lips. “Sh—be quiet. You’re talking too loud.”
What if when you go home you can’t sleep? What if you’re not drunk enough to pass out? You’ll be in the bed where you and Caleb made love for the first time. Will you be able to lie there and not think about him? Hell, no! You’ll wind up crying, that’s what you’ll do. Because you’re in love with him. In love with another damn Upton.
So don’t go home. You’re part owner in a couple of dozen cabin rentals. Choose one that’s empty and spend the night there. But which one? The one where Reve Sorrell stayed. I don’t think anybody has rented that one again.
Jazzy stumbled across her office, back to her desk, stepping over scattered debris on the floor. She rummaged around in the desk drawers until she found a set of master keys to the rental cabins.
Now what was the name of the cabin where Reve had stayed? Pines something or other. Two Pines. No, Twin Pines. That was it.
She dragged her sweater off the clothes rack in the corner, inadvertently crashing the rack into the wall. Ignoring the total mess she’d made of her office, she stuffed the huge key chain in her sweater pocket and headed for the door.
Music mixed and mingled with other honky-tonk sounds and drifted down the hallway. Jazzy glanced up the hall, saw no one, and then went straight toward the back door that led into the alley. Her car was parked at the end of the street, on the corner by the alley near the outside stairs that led to her apartment over Jazzy’s Joint. She felt in her jeans pocket for her car keys and sighed when she felt them there.
She’d taken only a few steps when she thought she heard something. Hearing bogeymen again? Ignoring the sound, she kept walking up the alley, toward the street ahead. When she’d almost reached the street, she heard a noise again.
“Is somebody there?” she asked as she turned around, then gasped when she saw the dark figure step out of the shadows. “What do you want?”
“I want you, Jazzy,” the woman said. “I’ve come to take you to your lover.”
“Who are you? What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m the mother of the child you stole. I’m the wife of the man you seduced.”
Jazzy tried to get a better look at the woman, but all she could see in the shadowy darkness was the shimmer of blond hair. “You’re crazy. I’ve never fooled around with a married man. And I sure as hell never stole anybody’s baby.”
“Lying won’t help you. Not now.”
The woman moved closer, close enough for Jazzy to see her face clearly and to recognize the wild-eyed creature pointing a gun right at her.
“We’re going to take a little ride.”
“I don’t think so,” Jazzy said.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” the woman told her.
“I’m afraid it’s going to have to be the hard way.”
Before Jazzy realized the woman’s intent, she aimed her gun at Jazzy’s midsection and fired. The bullet entered Jazzy’s belly like a hot serrated knife, ripping her apart with fiery pain.
When Jazzy dropped to her knees, the woman came closer and stood over her. Jazzy couldn’t believe this had just happened, couldn’t believe this crazy bitch had actually shot her. Gripping her belly with both hands, she felt the warm stickiness of her own blood. Oh, God, please help me.
The woman grabbed Jazzy by her hair. Jazzy yelped. She took hold of the nape of Jazzy’s sweater and started dragging her down the alley. Damn, for a small woman, she was strong as an ox.
“Where…where are you taking me?” Jazzy asked, knowing that she was on the verge of fainting.
“Back to my cabin, of course. I have Cecil and Laura waiting for us.”
Cecil and Laura? Laura Willis and her father? Jazzy realized she was fading fast and her thought processes probably weren’t working all that well, but none of what this woman had said made any sense.
You’re going to die if you don’t do something, Jazzy told herself. But what could she do? She was bleeding profusely and about half a minute away from passing out. Leave a clue. It’s only a matter of time until somebody misses you and comes looking for you.
While the woman continued tugging on the neck of Jazzy’s sweater, pulling her along the rough alleyway, Jazzy managed to muster enough strength to ease out the big key chain from her sweater pocket and slide it quietly down on the ground.