The Night Before (36 page)

But the old rusty skills still came in handy.

He neatly picked the lock, but thought better of driving his car through the gate. He didn’t want to be trapped. If someone came, he could hide and sneak away fairly easily—but not with the car parked out front announcing he was inside.

With that in mind, he parked his car at an abandoned gravel pit half a mile away and jogged back to the old gate, slipped inside and continued down the gravel lane, which was little more than two ruts with weeds growing between them. Guarded by oak and pine, the lane was shaded and secluded, but not forgotten. The grass and weeds were bent in places, and he wondered if Kelly, or Kacie, was at home.

What then?

It was possible she was a murderess.

People were dying daily.

Whoever she was, she wouldn’t want to be exposed, would want to protect the privacy she’d worked so hard to create. He felt a chill, as if he were walking a path evil had already taken, as he rounded a corner and saw the house. It wasn’t much. Not by Montgomery standards. Set in the trees with a view of the river, it had to be a hundred years old. Maybe more. Painted green and brown—well, once anyway and a very long time ago—it was nestled in the forest at a bend in the river and looked like a little hunting or fishing cabin.

Hoping he wasn’t met by a man with a shotgun, he rapped on the front door. He’d be straight with anyone who answered, say he was looking for Kacie, and hope that whoever was inside didn’t take offense and blow him away.
She could be a murderer. Remember that. And don’t be macho enough to think that you can overpower her because she’s a woman. She’s killed before.

He knocked again. Waited. Strained to hear some movement inside.

But there was no noise over the wind in the trees, the lap of the river or the occasional call from some marsh bird.

Carefully, he circled the small home, trying to peer through the windows, though most of the blinds were shut, dead insects and cobwebs and dirt between the closed shutters and the dirty glass. If Kelly Montgomery lived here, she was a pig. The front door was bolted; a small door to a lean-to carport was also locked tight. At the back of the house, he noticed footprints in the mud and dirt near the back veranda, cigarette butts crushed in the sand. Someone had been here recently.

On quiet footsteps he walked up two steps to the deck. It creaked under his weight, protesting his intrusion. The French doors were locked as well, but he withdrew his picks and quickly sprung the mechanism.

Slowly he pushed open the door. Then, telling himself he wasn’t a common burglar, that the only law he was breaking was that of trespassing, he stepped inside.

It took a minute for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. The place wasn’t unused, that much was certain. Just uncared for. It smelled of dust and mildew and smoke, probably from the ashes left in the crumbling brick fireplace. The curtains were old and faded, and not one picture adorned the dingy walls.

He was supposed to believe that Kelly Montgomery, pampered and spoiled princess, was living here, driving to a job from here?

No way.

No damned way.

He walked to the desk, where a dusty phone/answering machine sat, red light blinking, next to a picture of Caitlyn’s little girl, Jamie. Kelly’s one nod to her family? Or something else? He sensed that there were more layers here than were first visible. Something he was missing. He’d had the feeling for sometime, but it had intensified during the past few days and then last night . . . Jesus, what had he been thinking?

Disgusted with himself, he pressed the play button on the answering machine and waited while the tape rewound, then heard Caitlyn’s voice leaving a message, the message she’d left from her house last night. While he was there with her. Then he heard his own voice identifying himself and asking Kelly to return his call.

His jaw slid to one side.

Hearing his own voice seemed eerily out of sync. Warped.

In a second of paranoia, he swept his gaze over the walls and ceiling, half expecting to find some sort of tiny camera or bugging device, as if he’d been lured here and then was going to be photographed and studied. But why? What the hell was going on here?

Fleetingly, he remembered the night before and mentally kicked himself from one side of Georgia to the other. How had he let himself get so carried away; how had he ended up making love to her? He frowned at his duplicity. He’d risked everything. His profession. His honor. His beliefs. His damned marriage, such as it was. All for a quick roll in the hay. Absently, he rubbed the ring finger on his left hand and noticed the indentation, still visible though he hadn’t worn his band for a long time. How had he allowed himself to get so carried away?

Because the woman got to you. Intrigued you. Face it, you’re falling for her. She’s an enigma, Hunt, and that’s what you like, what you’ve always been attracted to. Think of Rebecca. Another flighty, fascinating woman who caused you a few hours of joy and years of grief.
That’s what had started it all, his need to find Rebecca, and he’d discovered another woman, one far more complicated, one perhaps more emotionally dangerous.

He didn’t want to think he was so twisted around by a woman, any woman, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that both Rebecca and Caitlyn were more than they first appeared and were, in that sense, perhaps like each other.

Eyeing the surroundings, he walked through the sparse rooms. Leather couch, coffee table, dusty television. A bedroom with an antique iron bed and an old quilt, the bathroom stocked with the bare essentials, a bar of soap, tube of toothpaste, near empty bottle of shampoo and small box of tampons. One set of towels. The kitchen wasn’t much better. Three bottles of Diet Coke and a bottle of ketchup in the refrigerator, an unopened bag of corn chips, one can of tuna and a jar of peanut butter with one finger scoop removed. A roll of paper towels and one set of mismatched dishes that would serve four if stretched. The flatware was odds and ends that looked as if they’d been picked up at garage sales or secondhand stores. Certainly not the kind of place one would expect an heir to a damned Southern fortune to call home.

No one called this place home.

Except for the rats, snakes and termites he figured slithered and crawled around the foundation or burrowed in the closets. The little house looked like a place teenagers would break into and claim as a secret gathering place—except there were no beer bottles or trash to be found. Not one speck of garbage.

He walked to the desk and opened the drawer. Not much inside, just a few pictures . . . all of members of the Montgomery family. So someone came here. Someone associated with Caitlyn. He looked around one last time and slipped out the way he’d come. He’d found nothing of consequence and certainly nothing to help him in his quest to find Rebecca.

If push came to shove, he’d go to the police. He’d have to. And endure their skeptical looks and disbelief when he explained about her.

In the meantime, there was Caitlyn. Beautiful, puzzling Caitlyn. What the hell was he going to do about her?

 

 

Sugar opened a bleary eye. It was dark and she was lying in a bed . . . but not her bed, not in her bedroom. Music was playing faintly. A song she should recall. What was it? Had she heard it in the club?

Why couldn’t she move? Couldn’t think straight.

Def Leppard. That was it and the song, “Pour Some Sugar On Me,” or something like that. What the hell was going on? She squinted, tried to think clearly. The only light came from moonlight filtering through the windows, lots of windows with lacy curtains. The bed was soft, and there was the scent of honeysuckle drifting in through the lacy curtains billowing at the windows. She was lying on her back, naked . . . wait a minute . . . she couldn’t move and her mind wasn’t working right; the images were blurry, as if she were on a bad LSD trip. She tried to roll over but couldn’t, finally realizing that she’d been bound. She was tied to the bedposts, her legs spread-eagled, her arms pulled tight to one post over her head.

She shifted and realized with mind-numbing fear that she wasn’t alone.
Shit!
She turned her head and saw her sister. Christ! Sugar jumped. Her bonds didn’t move. Cricket, too, was naked, lying on her back, her head twisted to one side so she stared blankly at Sugar. All over Cricket’s body were little reddish pockmarks, stings or pimples or bites . . .

Sugar tried to let out a scream, but no sound came from her throat. She tried to strain and buck, but she didn’t move. She’d been drugged for certain. She heard a movement, looked down to the foot of her bed and recognized her captor. All hope sank as she stared into the condemning eyes.

“So you’re awake. We, your slut of a sister and I, have been waiting. Do you know who I am?”

“I’m Atropos. One of the three fates. Not that you would understand, you cretin, but I wanted you to know. And I’ve been watching you, seen what you’ve done . . . oh, yes.”

Sugar felt cold fear. She knew. Oh, God, she knew about Sugar’s lover. Sugar didn’t doubt for a second that this was the person who had made the terrifying calls. This was the person who’d been stalking her.

“You’ve wanted to be a Montgomery for so long and now you can. Do you know where you are? Can you guess?”

“Oak Hill. You’ve always wanted to see inside, haven’t you? Well, here you are, and now you can stay. Atropos moved slowly out of the shadows. She walked to a table and picked up a jar. “No more guessing games.” As she walked closer, Sugar, terrified, saw that she was wearing gloves. “This is honey, and it’s just the start, to make sure the rest sticks.”

The rest? The rest of what?
Sugar was trying to buck away, terrified. Whatever this sick bitch had in mind, it would be awful. She’d already killed Cricket, that was for sure and now . . . and now . . . She didn’t feel the sticky stuff being poured over her body, between her legs, over her breasts, on her lips, in her hair. Her attempts at trying to shrink away were fruitless and her mind was wandering. This couldn’t be happening. This was nuts. A horrid dream.

“Sugar. Such a sweet name. And it has so many possibilities.”

Then she heard a ripping sound and saw Atropos standing over her with a huge sack. She began to pour, and white powder, sugar, came rolling out, covering Sugar’s body. “Such a sweet name,” Atropos said, then hummed along with the music that played over and over and over, that song . . .

Sugar wanted to cry. To scream. To rail against this horrid, sick woman, but she could only watch.

One bag wasn’t enough. Atropos ripped open another, and the pouring continued, over the bed, over Cricket, over Sugar. She was saying something about insects and soft tissues, and Sugar being a whore, but she couldn’t hear it over the roar of the sweet crystals falling over her body, in her hair, on her hands and finally, over her face. She gasped and sputtered, disbelieving. No, no, no!

The problem was, Reed couldn’t be two places at once. With Montoya and Morrisette, he stopped by Caitlyn Bandeaux’s house, found her not home and delegated the search to a couple of detectives he worked with. He trusted Landon and Metzger to do a thorough job and figured he could run down to St. Simons and be back within a few hours if he pushed the speed limit. He might miss Caitlyn’s return, but he’d deal with her later. Once they knew what she’d hidden away. He was hoping for a murder weapon, but he’d take any bit of evidence that would link her to the crime.

The trip to St. Simons took over an hour, but they didn’t have to stay long.

Viewing Rebecca Wade’s body wasn’t easy; nor, Reed thought, had it been necessary. He could have asked for pictures, though there was something compelling about actually seeing the victim rather than flipping through pictures, not that they wouldn’t have been bad enough. They’d seen the remains and he’d wanted to heave, as he imagined had both Morrisette and Montoya, but they’d all managed to get through the ordeal without throwing up and had learned an interesting piece of information from the deputy in charge.

“. . . The dentist we got the records from knew her pretty well. She’d gone to him for years and he was pretty upset to think that she might have been killed, let me tell you.” Deputy Kroft, a fleshy man pushing the last loop of his belt buckle as he edged ever closer to retirement, nodded to himself as they walked out of the morgue to the intense sun of Georgia in June. Water was visible, sunlight skating off the surface, nearly blinding in its intensity. “And the kicker is that he said she was married. Didn’t you say you didn’t know if there were any next of kin?” Kroft asked, taking off his hat to smooth his hair, then squaring it onto his thinning patch of gray.

Reed nodded. “We don’t have much information on her.”

“Well, she’d grown up in Michigan, small town outside of Ann Arbor. The dentist, Paxton, his name is, Timothy Paxton, he knew her as a kid, knew the family, remembered her getting married to another student at the university. The folks passed on a few years back, but Paxton was sure she was married to a guy named Hunter or Hunt or Huntington or something like that. Never had any kids that he knew of, but he never heard much about a divorce, neither.”

“Adam Hunt?” Reed asked, exchanging a look with Morrisette.

“That sounds like it. Yep. Could be.”

There was no ‘could be’ about it. Reed was sure of it. Crap. How had they missed that? He took the information, and filling Montoya in, they drove north toward Savannah. Morrisette took the job of calling the dentist and verbally pushing her way past a receptionist who didn’t want to put her through, some idiot who thought an impression for a new crown was more important than an ongoing murder investigation. Eventually she got through. She plugged one ear and listened as Reed drove ten miles faster than the speed limit.

She hung up and said, “Looks like Deputy Kroft’s information is on the money. The dentist was an old family friend, choked up about Rebecca.”

“What did he have to say about Hunt?”

“Not much more than we learned from Kroft. Rebecca met him in college where they were both psych majors, lived with him a while, married him after she’d graduated and then lost touch with Dr. Paxton. Her folks are dead, and apparently so was the marriage.”

“Hunt has a lot of explaining to do. Did anyone ever talk to him?” They were driving through the swampy flatlands, the highway cutting close to the coast.

“I tried a couple of times. Should have pushed it,” Morrisette admitted, frowning and reaching for her cigarettes. She and Montoya lit up, cracking the windows of the Crown Victoria. “I went to the office twice, figured I’d catch him there. Called just yesterday.”

“But he never called back.”

“Nope.”

“Let’s find him. Give him the news that his wife or ex-wife is dead.”

Reed wondered how the guy was involved. If he was involved. The police would find out if a missing persons report had been filed, if Hunt and Wade had been married at the time of her death, if he’d been around before, if there was a will, insurance money or another man or woman involved. He remembered seeing Hunt on the doorstep of Caitlyn Bandeaux’s house, kissing her as if they were lovers. He gave the Crown Vic a little more gas and discussed Adam Hunt and what they were going to do about him all the way back to the city.

He pulled up in front of Caitlyn’s house, where the search was still going strong. Handing the keys to Morrisette, he said, “Check out Hunt. Tell him about Rebecca Wade. Find out what he knows. I’ll catch a ride back with Metzger.” To Montoya he said, “You can go with her if you like . . . make sure she doesn’t get into any trouble.”

“Blow it out your ass!” Morrisette said with a twinkle in her eye. “Make that your big, hairy, effin’ ass.”

One of Montoya’s eyebrows arched.

“Don’t ask. She can tell you all about her deal with her kids on the way over to Hunt’s. It has to do with a kitty-cat bank.”

“Hello Kitty,” she said as Reed climbed out of the car and Morrisette took over the wheel.

“Wear your seat belt,” he advised Montoya, then slapped the side of the car and hurried up the brick walk. From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a news van rolling toward the house.
Great. Just what he needed.

Before the reporter could clamber out of the van, Reed was inside the house, the door closed firmly behind him. The detectives had taken the liberty of putting the little dog in his kennel in the laundry room and, according to Landon, “The mutt hasn’t shut up for a minute. Always with the yapping!”

“The owner hasn’t returned?”

“Not yet,” Landon said. He was big, black and beautiful, as they used to say. Tall enough to have played college basketball and smart enough that when the NBA didn’t come knocking, he’d earned himself a B.S. in criminal justice. Landon was taking law classes at night and had his eye firmly on Katherine Okano’s job. He shaved his head these days, sported a soul patch and had one of those sculpted bodies that only came from a military-like dedication to lifting weights. “Good thing we had a no-knock-and-search,” he said now.

Reed agreed. It would have been a pain if they’d been restricted by having to ask for Caitlyn Bandeaux’s permission. “You found anything?”

“No weapon, nothing like that, but come upstairs.” Landon led Reed to the second story. “Take a look here . . .” He pointed to discolorations on the carpet. “And in here. Check out the shower.” He nodded toward the bathroom, where the glass shower door had been cracked, the fissures radiating from a hole in its center. “We think the stain in the bedroom might be blood. We found a few flecks on the baseboard, so we’ve already called the crime scene team. They’re going to go over the place with Luminal.”

“Good. Check it out.” The Luminal test would prove if there had been blood on the carpet or anywhere else in the room. “And find out the type or types.” He was getting a bad feeling about this.

“Looks like a lot of blood,” Landon said. “But the victim was killed elsewhere, right—at his home? Could we have it wrong? Maybe he was killed here and transported.”

“Unlikely from the way the body was found, rigor and the way the blood had settled in his body, but the kicker is that someone took the time to stage his suicide in a clumsy attempt to make everyone think he’d slit his wrists, but there wasn’t enough blood at the scene or in his body to explain it.”

Landon snorted. “You were missing blood?”

“Yep.”

“My guess is you just found it.”

 

 

“Hannah?” Caitlyn called, knocking loudly on the door of the old house she’d once called home. She was worried. Hannah hadn’t returned her calls, and Caitlyn had spent most of the day trying to track her down. First in town at the few places she hung out, because she hadn’t answered; then, finally running out of options, she’d left another message saying she was coming to the house and would wait for her baby sister. She didn’t like the idea of Hannah living out here in the middle of nowhere in this old, empty, falling-down mansion. There were rust spots on the down spouts, shutters listing from the windows, mortar crumbling away from the bricks of the wide front porch. Where once this house had held a huge family, it now was nearly empty. Only Hannah remained, and that wasn’t good. No one her age should be tucked away in this old dilapidated museum of a home. When her sister didn’t answer, Caitlyn walked to the back of the house where the table and chairs were positioned on the wide back porch. It had been only days since she’d sat here, her mother in one chair, worried whether Caitlyn would be charged with murdering her husband.

Good Lord what had happened in those few days?

And what about last night? What had happened then? One minute you were kissing Adam, fairly throwing yourself at him, really getting it on, and the next you don’t remember anything, you blacked out again, lost hours . . .
hours.
How?

She didn’t want to think about the blackouts; they were coming too close together, too often, her life spinning out of control. It was stress, that was it. The police were breathing down her neck, she was guarding this incredible secret about all of the blood she’d found the morning after Josh was killed, her mother had been murdered and now . . . oh, God, now, she was worried about Hannah.

She had a key. One she’d never given back when she’d moved out. Finding it on her key ring, she decided to let herself inside. She pushed the door open and walked into the house. Her heart tightened as she glanced at the table where she’d eaten breakfast with her siblings before school, saw the hooks by the back door where their backpacks and jackets had hung.

The floorboards creaked beneath her feet, and though it was still light outside, the clouds had covered the sun and the broad porches flanking the first floor had cooled the house and shaded the windows, making it seem dark. “Hannah?” she called, but heard nothing. The house felt empty and yet . . . did she hear music or a television on? Playing from somewhere upstairs? “Hannah? Are you home?”

Her cell phone rang and she jumped, then chided herself for her case of nerves. This old manor had been her home; she’d grown up here. And bad things had happened here. Along with the good.
You remembered the nights you hid beneath the bed, the menacing footsteps in the hall outside your door, the frightening shadow that would pass, blocking the slice of light under the door as they moved on the other side . . . monster . . . brother . . . Charles with his hot breath and rough hands . . .

She was breathing fast now, adrenalin pumping through her blood. The phone jangled sharply and she gasped, then dug through her purse and dragged it out. “Hello?” she said breathlessly as she hit the talk button. Silence.
Oh, no, not now.
“Hello?” Nothing. She clicked off quickly. Shut the damned thing off. Whoever had decided to terrorize her knew her cell phone number. How much more? What other intimate details of her private life did they know?

Hannah wasn’t here. She should just leave now. But she started for the stairs and was certain she heard soft voices and thin music playing, coming from upstairs. Fear pounded in her heart.
Don’t be a wuss. You’ve climbed these stairs a million times in your life. For God’s sake, Caitlyn, you’re being foolish. It’s broad daylight. This was your mother’s home. Yours.

Taking in a deep breath, she climbed to the landing, and the sound of music grew louder. Maybe Hannah had dropped off while watching television. She walked up the stairs but stopped. Hannah’s door was open. The light off. No radio or television playing.

But there was in Caitlyn’s room. The door was closed, but the muted sounds were definitely emanating from the other side of her room at the far end of the hall. Music. Vaguely familiar. She hesitated, watched the shafts of sunlight pierce the colored glass of the skylight above the landing, and told herself it was now or never. She could leave and never open the door, she could call Kelly or Troy or Adam and wait for them to show up, or she could just goddamned show some guts and walk into the bedroom where only a few days before she’d slept in her old canopied bed.

Or . . . the door to Charles’s old room was open as well. Swallowing back her fear, she eased into the room. It wasn’t disturbed. Had been left the way he’d had it when, at nineteen, he’d been killed. Athletic trophies lined a shelf, his high school letter, faded now, was still pinned to a bulletin board, and beside his bed, in the nightstand, should be his pistol. She opened the drawer and there was the little gun . . . just as he’d left it.

No bullets were in the chamber and she had no idea where . . . Her eyes narrowed on one of his shooting trophies, one that was a cup. Years ago, before he’d died, she’d seen him empty this little pistol and place the bullets in the cup. “To be safe,” he’d told her and winked when he’d caught her watching from outside the door. Could it be? Would she be so lucky? She took the cup from its resting place and sure enough, along with an unused and ancient condom, was a box of tiny bullets. Before she could think twice, she loaded the gun and slipped the rest of the box in her purse. Then, armed and dangerous, she eyed the only closed door on the second floor.

“Go for it,” she muttered, disregarding the sweat prickling her scalp and the warning hairs rising on the back of her arms. Her running shoes were muffled against the hall runner as she forced herself down the hallway and twisted the doorknob.

The door opened, and she walked into the room.

She wasn’t alone.

Two women, two naked women, were lying tied to her bed.

Caitlyn gasped. Stepped back. Terror gripped her as the television flickered. Tied to the headboard, Sugar Biscayne and her sister Cricket stared sightlessly at her. They were dead; their flesh, where it hadn’t been bitten or eaten, white where it was covered by mounds and mounds of white crystals. Pounds of sugar that in turn was crawling with insects. Ants. Crickets. Flies. Hornets. Music pulsed through the room, was playing from a small CD player set up in the corner, the same song over and over . . .
Pour some sugar on me . . .
The television flickered with some muted cooking show.