Deep Waters (41 page)

Charity's footsteps echoed on the pier timbers. It was nearly six. The Crazy Otis Landing shops had emptied for the day. The last of the customers and browsers had departed. The carousel was silent and still. The parking lot was empty except for Davis's Jaguar, Elias's Jeep, and her own small Toyota.

She paused to listen to the water lapping at the pier pilings. The incoming tide created a murmuring sound. At times like this when she was alone on the landing it seemed to her that she could actually hear the waves whispering, just as the old legend claimed.

It was so important that Elias and Davis become friends.

Charity became aware of the tension in her shoulders. Deliberately she stretched to release it. She took several deep abdominal breaths and felt the stress level sink. She continued on her way to Charms & Virtues.

“Don't worry, Otis, I'm still here,” she called out as she pushed open the front door of the shop. “You haven't been abandoned.”

Otis grumbled from his perch.

“You're going to come back to my shop with me for a while. You can sit on the coatrack just like you used to do before Elias arrived.”

“Heh, heh, heh.”

Charity went behind the counter and found the old towel she had used in the past to protect her skin from Otis's claws. She wrapped the towel around her arm and then held out her wrist. “Hop aboard. I'll bring your food dish.”

Otis muttered but stepped smartly onto her arm. Charity braced herself. The bird was heavy. “Nothing personal, Otis, but I think you may be putting on weight.”

He glared at her.

She picked up his feeding dish and walked back toward the front door of the shop. “We'll pick up your travel cage when we leave.”

“Level with me, Winters. What are you doing out here in the sticks? This isn't your style.” Davis took a swallow of beer and settled back in the booth. “I don't give a damn if you sell the entire town of Whispering Waters Cove to one of your mysterious offshore clients, but I don't want Charity hurt.”

“Off-shore clients aren't what they used to be.” Elias mused. “There was a time when you could do almost any kind of deal with them so long as it involved the magic words
waterfront property,
but those days are gone.”

He wrapped one hand around his beer glass and idly surveyed the moderate crowd that had gathered in the Cove Tavern. It was six-thirty, and the handful of local business people and shop clerks who had drifted in after work had already gone home to dinner. Local folks with families dined early in Whispering Waters Cove.

The early evening crowd, which consisted of a couple of truckers, a handful of tourists, and the town's few singles, most of whom were single for a good reason, had begun to settle in for the evening.

“I want an answer, Winters. I'm not leaving until I get it. Charity's been through a lot.”

“I know.”

“Has she told you all of it? How she took over
Truitt Department Stores and single-handedly pulled it out of the quicksand in which my father had managed to sink it?”

Elias wrapped his hand around the wet beer glass. “I'm aware of the fact that she was the guiding force behind its comeback. Everyone in the Northwest business community knows the story.”

“Yeah, well, you may not be aware of the fact that she had to work night and day to hold the company together. Meredith and I were still in college. We were too young and inexperienced to be of much help back in those days.”

“I know.”

“It was Charity who took over the full responsibility of day-to-day operations. She revolutionized the way Truitt did business from top to bottom. She had incredible instincts for marketing and for managing.”

Elias smiled. “Did she issue every clerk a feather duster? She's very big on dusting the goods.”

“This isn't a joke, damn it. This is my sister we're talking about.”

“Yes.”

“She was obsessed with saving Truitt because she felt she had a responsibility to the family. The stores belonged to Meredith and me, she said. It was our heritage. She saved it for us.”

“That sounds like Charity.”

Davis frowned. “Hell, I don't think she even liked the department store business. She once told me that being responsible for so many people and their jobs kept her awake at nights. If it hadn't been for her sense of duty, I think she would have sold Truitt after Dad died.”

“Yes.”

“Meredith and I, on the other hand, took to the business right away,” Davis mused. “We went to work
for Truitt full-time right out of college. But Charity was still running things, naturally. The company needed her. Things were booming. And then Brett Loftus approached her with his idea for a merger.”

“I know the rest of the story.”

“Meredith and I thought the two of them were perfect for each other. Hell, everyone thought they were an ideal couple.”

“Loftus was too big for her.”

Davis scowled. “What?”

“Never mind.”

“Things seemed to be going along just fine until the night of the engagement party. That was a year ago.” Davis slanted him a quick, searching glance. “I suppose you heard about that?”

“Yes.”

Davis winced. “You had to know Charity well to understand what a bizarre scene that was. So unlike her. Completely out of character. She just sort of came unglued. Right there in front of everyone. The rest of us couldn't believe it.”

“She said she went bonkers.”

“She had an anxiety attack of some kind.” Davis sighed. “I hate to say it, but that evening was the first time that Meredith and I fully understood what the pressure of running Truitt had done to Charity.”

“You can stop worrying about her, Truitt. She's okay now. She's happy running her bookstore. She says being a small-businessperson is a calling.”

“Well, it's definitely not your calling.” Davis narrowed his eyes. “So why are you pretending to operate that stupid little curio shop?”

“What you don't seem to grasp here, Truitt, is that I'm not pretending.” Elias exhaled slowly. “There's something else you should know.”

“What's that?”

“I'm going to marry Charity. If she'll have me.”

Shortly after seven-thirty, Charity abandoned any pretense of trying to concentrate on the order forms that she had intended to complete. With a groan, she threw down her pen and sagged against the back of her chair. She used her feet to push the seat around in a half circle so that she faced Otis.

“I keep thinking about that chipped acrylic nail, Otis. Crimson Jennifer.”

Otis, who had been dozing atop the coatrack, opened one eye and gave her a baleful look.

“I'll bet you any amount of sunflower seeds that Jennifer was having an affair with Rick Swinton.”

Apparently realizing that he was not going to be allowed to nap, Otis opened his other eye and stretched his wings.

“Everyone keeps saying that Leighton Pitt had the perfect motive to murder both Gwen and Swinton. He lost everything because of them. He even lost his trophy wife. But when you think about it, Jennifer lost everything, too.”

“Heh, heh, heh.” Otis made his way from the branch of the coatrack on which he had been perching to the one where Charity had hung his feeding dish.

“Everyone seems to agree that Jennifer married Leighton for his money. Even Leighton has come to that conclusion. And then Leighton's ex-wife hits town with a plan to ruin him. Said plan, carried out with the able assistance of Rick Swinton, works. Result? Leighton Pitt is ruined. When Jennifer files for divorce, she'll get nothing.”

Otis thoughtfully cracked a seed with his powerful beak.

Charity leaned forward and folded her arms on her
knees. “If you want to compare motives, Jennifer's are just as good as Leighton's. When he lost everything, so did she. I'll bet no one has checked her alibis for either murder.”

Otis finished munching and hiked back to his original coatrack perch. He half-closed his eyes.

“You know, Otis, I'm getting a weird feeling.” Charity rose and began to pace the room. “Look at the facts. Everyone who deprived Jennifer of whatever she hoped to get out of Leighton Pitt is either dead or in jail. It makes you wonder, doesn't it?”

Otis did not respond.

“Don't go to sleep on me. We need to work this out. If Leighton Pitt manages to prove his innocence, we're going to have a problem on our hands. I just know that Tybern will start casting suspicious glances at Elias again.”

Otis, apparently unconcerned by that possibility, started to close his eyes.

“The more I think about this, the less I like it.” Charity came to a halt in front of the coatrack. “That does it, I need to talk to Hank Tybern. I want him at least to look into Jennifer's alibis for the times of the murders. It's a perfectly reasonable request from a concerned citizen.”

Charity picked up the worn towel and wrapped it around her forearm. “Come on, Otis, there's no telling how long Elias and Davis are going to talk. Let's you and me go find Hank.”

Otis muttered under his breath, but he stepped onto her towel-wrapped arm.

Charity grimaced. “You're really going to have to start watching the seed intake, Otis. Middle-age spread in a parrot is not an attractive sight.”

With the bird on her arm, Charity turned off the lights and locked the doors. The fog had thickened
considerably since she had brought Otis back to Whispers. The last light of dusk had been drowned by the heavy mist that had moved in to blanket the cove during the past couple of hours.

The pier was isolated in an unnatural gloom. It was impossible to see beyond the nearest rail, but down below, the waters whispered darkly. To Charity it seemed as if she and Otis moved through a nightmarish landscape.

“Hang tight, Otis.” It was not really cold, but there was a chill in the damp air. She held her jacket over Otis to protect him as she hurried toward the door of Charms & Virtues. “We'll get you inside your cage and put a nice warm blanket around you. And then we'll pop you into the car and turn on the heater. You'll be fine.”

Otis muttered. He sounded disgusted. Charity had the distinct impression that he was telling her he was no wimp and that a little fog didn't bother him.

“Typical male.” Charity came to a halt in front of the door of Elias's shop and fished out the key ring he had given her. “Always trying to prove how macho you are.”

She got the door open and stepped inside. The interior of Charms & Virtues, never bright even at high noon and with all the lights turned on, was shrouded in deep shadow tonight.

Charity groped for the old light switch near the door. “If I've told Elias once, I've told him a dozen times to install better lighting.”

“Heh, heh, heh.”

“You always take his side.” She found the switch and flipped it. The few lamps above the long rows of display tables glowed weakly. They cast sullen yellow pools of light that did not reach beyond the edge of the cluttered counters.

The effect was certainly atmospheric. Too much so for her taste. Charity shuddered as she carried Otis toward the far end of the shop. She could hardly make out the cash register counter.

She caught a whiff of an acrid odor. “Otis, do you smell gasoline?”

The strange chill of uneasiness that had gone through her a few minutes earlier when she had stepped out into the fog returned in a jolt just as she reached the counter. Another shiver went through her. Otis must have felt it. He stiffened on her arm.

“Oh, damn.” Charity recognized the feeling with a sense of deep dismay. “Please don't let this be the start of an anxiety attack.
Please.
I've been doing so well lately.”

“I'm glad someone has.” Jennifer Pitt walked out of the darkened office. Light glinted evilly on the barrel of the gun in her hand. “Because I sure as hell haven't been doing well at all.”

Charity froze. So did Otis. They both had to look up to see Jennifer's eyes.

Tall, with a figure that had been honed to perfection on her home gym, Jennifer looked as out of place as she always did here in Whispering Waters Cove. Her voluminous streaked hair was a mass of California-style blown-dry curls around her perfectly made-up face. She wore a snug red suede vest over a white silk shirt and silver-studded jeans. A pair of sunglasses perched on top of her head.

The only thing that was different about her today was the raw fury in her eyes.

“It's all so goddamned unfair,” Jennifer whispered. “I worked so hard to make things come out right. I was going to leave this town with half a million dollars in my pocket. Half a million dollars. And they ruined everything. All my plans. Everything.”

Charity had to swallow several times before she could speak. “Jennifer, it's okay. Take it easy.”

“That bitch Gwen wanted revenge, you see?” Jennifer's eyes had a feverish glint. “Leighton kept telling me about the big deal he was going to pull off. I decided to stick around until he had the money. There would be so much of it, he said. The biggest deal of his life. I planned to leave him as soon as I knew I could count on the cash.”

“Put the gun down. It's over now, Jennifer.”

“But Rick told me the truth toward the end. He warned me that Gwen had other plans. She had set a trap, lured Leighton into it, so that she could have her revenge.”

“You confronted her the night the spaceships were supposed to arrive, didn't you?” Charity asked softly. “You found her in her motor home and shot her.”

“I didn't intend to kill her. But she laughed at me. Called me a fool. Told me that I would never get a single dime out of Leighton. Then she slapped me. The gun went off.”

“An accident,” Charity said quickly. “Not murder.”

“I just wanted to scare her. Make her give me some of the money she had taken from Leighton. It was my money, you know. I sacrificed a year of my life to get it. You don't know what it was like having to put up with his grubby hands on me. I hated it. I hated every minute of it, but I had to pretend to like it.”