The Last Word (13 page)

Olivia stared at the bright red drop. It was too vivid on a face that had already taken on the waxy pallor of death. She imagined him at the mirror, a handsome man in his midfifties, wiping away the fog with the corner of a towel. After squirting a cone-shaped measure of shaving cream into his palm, he’d have spread the foam over his face, noting the contrast between its whiteness and his tanned skin. Pivoting from side to side, he would have performed the daily ritual he’d begun many years ago as a shrill-voiced, lanky teenager. He would have winced at the cut, briefly, more irritated than injured, and stuck a shred of toilet paper on the wound to soak up the initial rush of blood.

“And then someone came to the door,” Olivia mused aloud. “And you let them in dressed like this. Did you recognize the killer?”

Knowing her proximity to the body could contaminate the crime scene, she tarried only long enough to examine the hardcover resting near Nick’s right arm. The book had been opened toward the middle and a handful of pages had been roughly torn from the binding. The header on an intact page identified the book as
The Barbed Wire Flower
. Nick Plumley’s mouth had been stuffed with pages from his own bestseller.

“Jesus,” Olivia whispered and stood up. Carefully maneuvering around the shards of glass, she returned to the patio. The force of the sunshine burned her eyes, but she was grateful for its heat. The wash of light made her acutely aware of her vitality, and she threw her arms around her agitated poodle.

“It’s all right,” she murmured as he bathed her face with kisses. “The chief’s on his way.”

Olivia and Haviland walked around to the front of the house. In the lee of a nearby sand dune, they waited for the police to arrive.

Rawlings was in the lead car. He jumped out, readjusted his utility belt, unclipped his holster with the practiced flick of a finger, and strode up to Olivia. Echoing her words to Haviland, he issued a firm command. “Stay here.” He then signaled to one of his men. “Please wait with Ms. Limoges.”

The officer in question tried to conceal his disappointment over having to babysit a civilian, but Olivia rendered his assignment void the moment she rushed after the chief. “The front door’s locked. I had to break a window around back to get in.”

Rawlings stopped and turned, blood rushing to his face. “And you did that because?”

“I had to see if I could help him,” Olivia stated with a calm she didn’t feel. “I couldn’t just sit on the patio and wonder if the man inside could be saved by CPR.”

Mumbling under his breath, the chief gestured at the officers following in his wake and jogged around the side of the house. Olivia glanced at the uniformed watchdog standing beside her and said, “I’d better show the chief what I touched in there.”

The young man was too eager to argue. He led the way with Haviland shadowing after him. Like most of Oyster Bay’s police force, the policeman had seen the poodle inside the station several times and knew he posed no threat. “How did you end up finding the body?” he asked Olivia.

“I walked over from my place to show Mr. Plumley a painting,” she explained.

The officer nodded. “And did your dog sense anything when you got here? Did he bark or seem nervous?”

Olivia reached out and touched Haviland’s head. “That’s an astute question, Officer . . . ?”

“Gregson, ma’am.”

They rounded the corner of the building, and Olivia stopped at the edge of the patio. “Haviland didn’t act like there was a malevolent presence nearby. If he had sensed any violence within the house—shouting or a physical altercation—he would have barked out a warning to me. But he didn’t and that makes me think the killer was well away before we arrived.”

Gregson’s brows rose. “The killer, ma’am?”

Olivia pointed to the shattered door. “You’ll see.” She sank into a lounge chair and invited Haviland to sit in the shade of the patio’s umbrella. “Don’t worry, I won’t move from this spot.”

During the course of the next hour, officers filtered in and out of the house. Olivia listened to the sounds of their work: the rapid-fire clicking of a camera, the crackle of radios, and the slap of measuring tape laid against the bare floor.

The men and women of the Oyster Bay Police kept their voices hushed, following the chief’s example. Olivia had witnessed Rawlings’ demeanor at crime scenes before and knew that he demanded respect be shown to the victim at all times.

Even now, she could picture him reservedly turning out the pockets of Nick Plumley’s robe or touching the stretched skin of his cheeks with his surprisingly gentle, bearlike hands.

Eventually, the coroner arrived and the body was removed. A pair of officers left to interview the neighbors. With half an acre separating the homes, Olivia doubted the men would glean any useful information, but Rawlings was methodical. Everyone living on the Point would be interviewed right away and then, when no clues were discovered, the chief would begin to widen his circle.

Impatient to provide him with her own statement, Olivia peered inside the house and saw that Rawlings was alone. He stood in the middle of the room, arms folded across his chest, head bent. He appeared to be staring at the damaged copy of
The Barbed Wire Flower
.

Car engines started in the driveway, and Olivia knew that a lone officer waited inside the remaining sedan. He would be sitting in the car for a long time, as Rawlings always lingered at a crime scene long after everyone else had left. He doled out assignments and his team leapt to work, but he chose not to focus on the raw data in the beginning of a case. His interest was in the story behind the crime.

He’d stand without speaking for a full thirty minutes in the place where violence had occurred. Whether a dank alley or a million-dollar home, he would become as still as a stone, close his eyes, and feel his way through the events leading to the crime.

Olivia watched him in silence and then eventually picked up the canvas bag containing Harris’s painting and stepped across the threshold of the open door. “I moved him,” she said softly. “He was facedown and I rolled him over. I couldn’t know that he was beyond help until then.”

He nodded, his gaze still on the book.

“May I come in?” she asked, examining the evidence of the police work. The body outline, the measurement marks on the floor, fingerprint and shoeprint dust, a scattering of sand.

“You seem to have a magnetic pull toward dead bodies, Ms. Limoges,” the chief remarked, his tone unbend-ingly formal. “Tell me what happened.”

They moved to Plumley’s kitchen, and Olivia began her recitation by describing how she’d first met Nick at Grumpy’s and continued by explaining the author’s unusual interest in Harris’s house.

“So your plan was to bring the painting here in order to elicit a response from Mr. Plumley?” Rawlings inquired.

“Yes,” Olivia answered. “By this point I’d put aside the theory that he had sinister motives. In fact, I felt guilty for assuming that he wasn’t sincere in his offer to help Harris polish his manuscript or provide the rest of us with tips on becoming published authors. Bringing the painting here was a peace offering, though Nick wouldn’t have realized that’s what it was meant to be. I did want to know whether it was pivotal to his research pertaining to the sequel to
The Barbed Wire Flower
, and if so, why hadn’t he just admitted that to Harris?”

Rawlings grew quiet, absorbing what she’d told him. He then unzipped the tote bag and spent a long time studying the winter scene.

Olivia was ready to get away from the beach house. The delayed shock of leaning over Plumley’s distorted face asserted itself now, turning her palms and forehead clammy. Unbidden, her mind flashed on a vision of her nephew lying in his incubator. A strange and unfamiliar emotion welled inside her, and she sucked in a deep breath to force it back down. Tiny babies, Plumley’s tortured corpse—those images didn’t belong on Olivia’s agenda. She should be concentrating on the hundreds of small details she needed to see to before Friday’s grand opening, but she couldn’t. Olivia squeezed her eyes shut, trying to focus all of her senses on the feel of the cool glass tabletop beneath her palms.

“Hey.” Rawlings reached over and touched her wrist. “Are you okay?”

She flipped her hand over in order to grab hold of him. His skin was warm and solid beneath her touch. It calmed her instantly. “Sawyer, the last twenty-four hours have been hell.”

Rawlings listened as she told him about Anders, his hazel eyes softening as he witnessed her relive the fear and worry. When she had finished, his mouth curved into the hint of a smile. “This kind of emotional display could damage your ice queen reputation, you know.”

Pushing her chair away from the table, she put a hand on each of his cheeks and, after drinking in his scent of aftershave and coffee, leaned over and kissed him. “With your help, I may defrost yet,” she whispered, relishing the feel of his rough skin under her hands.

Carefully and with infinite tenderness, Rawlings pushed her away and rose to his feet. “I need to concentrate, Olivia.”

She nodded, unashamed, and pivoted until she faced the spot where Nick’s body had lain. Just touching Rawlings had brought her back to herself. She felt grounded again, in control of her feelings and ready to help him work through what had occurred in this living room.

After packing up the painting, Olivia said, “Plumley must have known his killer, to have invited someone in while wearing only a robe and boxer shorts.” She took a few steps forward and pointed at the book. “This was personal. Someone took pages from Nick’s own work and forced them into his mouth.” She hesitated and then asked, “Is that what killed him?”

“The medical examiner thinks he was strangled first. From behind. The pages were put in posthumously. That will have to be verified, of course, but that’s his initial assessment.”

Olivia felt a shiver of trepidation. “Feels like a crime of passion to me. The murderer choked the life out of Nick and then stuffed this own writing down his throat.”

“Made him eat his own words,” Rawlings declared solemnly. “Leaving us with the most significant question unanswered: Why? Who hated this man or his work enough to stop him from writing another word?”

There was no ready answer, of course. Olivia and Rawlings stood side by side for a long moment, and then he gave his gun belt a tug and gestured at the front door.

“I’d prefer your exit be less dramatic than your entrance,” he said with the ghost of a smile. “You made the right choice, Olivia, in coming to Mr. Plumley’s aid, but his killer could have still been inside. I wish you’d learn to curb your impetuousness.”

Olivia waved off his concern. “Haviland would have rescued me from harm, even if it meant shredding his paws on broken glass. I have complete faith in him.” She touched the chief’s shoulder before stepping outside. “And in you too.”

Pleasure flitted across the chief’s face, but he quickly hid it by sliding on a pair of mirrored sunglasses. The pair stepped outside, and Rawlings raised a hand at the officer waiting in the police cruiser. He then asked Olivia if she’d like a ride.

“No, thanks. I’ll provide an official statement when I come into town. I need to get to the hospital by eleven to give Hudson the key card for the hotel in Greenville.”

“You’re the only person in Oyster Bay who dictates when they’ll show up at the station.” Rawlings shook his head in mild exasperation. “Still, I know you’ll fit us into your schedule. And, Olivia, I might call on you to help dig up information on the previous inhabitants of Harris’s house.” His sunglasses glinted in the light. “I want to know what connection, if any, they had to that painting and, possibly, to Mr. Plumley.”

While Rawlings had been speaking, the other officer had eased out of the car, leaving the driver’s door open and the engine running. Obviously, it was now his task to watch over the house until it could be properly sealed, but he kept his distance until Rawlings made it clear that he was ready to leave both the crime scene and Olivia behind.

“I’d be glad to help, Chief,” Olivia replied, pleased that he’d asked. She kicked at some loose gravel, reluctant to part from Rawlings.

At that moment, Haviland ambled around the house from his napping place under the chaise lounge. He glanced at the chief and yawned widely, his white teeth gleaming in the midmorning sun.

Rawlings gave the poodle an affectionate pat on the flank.

“Keep her safe, Captain,” he murmured just loud enough for Olivia to hear. And with a professional nod in her direction, he climbed into the car.

Olivia watched the sedan reverse down the driveway in a cloud of sand-infused dust, gave a friendly but fatigued wave to the officer left in charge of the house, and climbed over the dunes toward home.

 

 

Standing in her kitchen, Olivia surveyed the three objects on her kitchen table. Her fingers moved past the canvas tote bag containing Harris’s painting and the hotel key card she needed to deliver to Hudson within the hour, to a tumbler filled with two ice cubes and an inch of Chivas Regal. She preferred to consume the twenty-five-year-old blend of Scotch whiskies before dinner, but her thoughts were too fractured, too frenzied for her to continue on with the day’s plans. Downing the contents of the glass in one gulp, she felt a rush of steadying warmth flow through her.

“That’s better,” she told Haviland, who was busy consuming his second breakfast.

She refilled the tumbler with tap water and drank it with more deliberation. Her hands stopped trembling and the tumultuous images swirling in her mind separated into cohesive, orderly thoughts.

Rawlings needed her help. She’d be no good to him if she couldn’t find the time to research the families who’d lived in Harris’s house.

Decisively, Olivia grabbed her car keys and the other items off the table and drove to the hospital. She told Haviland his wait would be brief and called Hudson from the lobby. Olivia wasn’t ready to see Kim today. She just did not possess the strength or the proper words to comfort a woman separated from her newborn son.