Til Death Do Us Part (47 page)

On some level he heard her, but didn't take time to acknowledge her presence.

Beatrice rushed outside, followed by Oralie and Perry. Daphne waited in the doorway.

“Come on, honey,” Roarke said, then breathed into Cleo's mouth again.

She choked, then spit up mouthfuls of water. She gasped for air. Relief relaxed Roarke's tense body. He laughed as he ran his hands up and down her arms. She coughed repeatedly. When she tried to sit up, he put his arm around her shoulder and lifted her.

“You scared the hell out of me, honey.” He grasped her shoulders, bunching the sleeves of her jacket. The light pressure of his fingers drew droplets of chlorinated water out of the linen material.

Cleo reached out and touched Roarke's cheek. “What—what happened?”

“I found you in the pool, unconscious.”

“Someone hit me.” She coughed again and again, then breathed deeply. Her lungs ached as the air entered them. “They hit me over the head and—” she coughed once more “—they pushed me into the pool. I tried to call out, but everything went black.”

Roarke ran his hand over her head gently, threading his fingers through her wet hair. Lifting his hand, he looked at his palm and saw fresh, bright red blood. Maneuvering himself around without moving Cleo, he inspected her head, and discovered a small tear in the skin an inch or so above her right ear. A thin, water-mixed rivulet of blood seeped down the side of her neck.

“Did you see anything?” Roarke asked. “Do you have any idea who hit you?” Where the hell was that ambulance? Despite the fact that Cleo seemed all right, he couldn't help but wonder if this second blow to her head in such a short period of time might not have done some unseen damage. And what about the baby? Would those few minutes Cleo's body was without oxygen have harmed their child in any way?

“I heard something behind me.” Cleo tried to get up. Roarke held her, forcing her to stay seated on the stone floor. “I want to get up. I'm wet and soggy. My head hurts. Take me upstairs and let me change clothes.”

“No, no, you must stay still, dear,” Beatrice said, moving closer to Cleo. “An ambulance is on the way. You need to go to the hospital and let Dr. Iverson make sure you're really all right.”

“I am all right.” Cleo crossed her arms over her chest. “Look, I don't want to waste time on an unnecessary trip to the hospital. Someone just tried to kill me.” She turned
her head, then cried out in pain. When Roarke reached for her, she brushed his hand aside. “One of you—” Cleo pointed to Perry Sutton, then to her aunt Oralie and finally to Daphne “—tried to kill me.”

“Nonsense,” Oralie said. “You must have slipped, hit your head and fallen into the pool. It had to have been an accident.”

“It was no accident!” Cleo grabbed Roarke's hand. “And you were in the dining room with Daphne, so…that leaves only Aunt Oralie or Uncle Perry.”

“Honey, I want you to stay calm and take it easy until Dr. Iverson checks you over,” Roarke said. “Think about the baby, if not yourself.”

“I am thinking about my baby,” Cleo told him. “I'm thinking about what would have happened if you hadn't found me so soon.”

“Good thing he was close by, like he always is,” Pearl said. “You was keeping an eye on her through them doors.” Pearl pointed to the open French doors, where Daphne stood. “Didn't you see anybody?”

“Daphne!” Roarke bellowed her name. Releasing Cleo, Roarke stood and glanced at Beatrice. “Aunt Beatrice? Please?”

He nodded toward Cleo, and her aunt immediately understood that he was turning his wife over into her care. Roarke glared at Daphne. “Come here,” he said. She took several hesitant steps toward him, then when she looked into his angry eyes, she hurried to him.

“Don't harass my poor baby,” Oralie said. “Isn't it enough that you've put one of my children in jail? Must you persecute Daphne?”

“You stopped me from going out on the patio with Cleo. You closed the doors and tried to divert my atten
tion. You knew I wouldn't help you, knew talking to me would be useless,” Roarke said.

Daphne turned to flee, but Roarke caught her wrist. “Let me go. I've done nothing wrong.”

“Oh, but you have. You helped someone scheming to harm Cleo. You tried to separate me from Cleo just long enough for your partner to make another attempt on Cleo's life.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” Daphne's eyes widened. Her chin quivered. She tugged on her wrist, trying to free herself from Roarke's grasp. “All I did was ask you to help Trey and help us. Mother insisted I talk to you as soon as possible this morning. She believed that I could convince you to use your influence with Cleo.”

“Your mother?” Roarke jerked Daphne by the wrist, pulling her around to face Oralie. “Is that right Mrs. Sutton? Were you the one who sent Daphne to divert my attention?”

“I most certainly did not!”

“Mother?” Daphne stared questioningly at Oralie.

“Where were you five minutes ago, Mrs. Sutton?” Roarke glanced at Perry Sutton. “Was she with you?”

“No,” Beatrice answered for him. “Perry was with me. We had—” she lowered her voice, as if what she was about to say was a secret “—we went for a walk together this morning, as we often do. We had just returned, when we ran into Daphne in the hall.”

“When you went upstairs to get your parents and your aunt, did you find them?” Roarke asked Daphne.

“You don't have to answer him!” Oralie backed slowly toward the house, all the while glaring daggers through Roarke.

“Mother?” Daphne asked. “Please, Mother!”

Oralie turned quickly and ran from the patio, brushing past her daughter as she fled inside the house.

“Oralie!” Perry called to his wife as he rushed after her, following her inside the house.

“Your mother wasn't upstairs, was she, Daphne?” Roarke asked. “She was already downstairs somewhere, waiting and hoping for another chance to kill Cleo.”

“No!” Daphne cried. “No. She just wanted me to talk to you. She didn't want Cleo to throw us out of the house. Please, try to understand. She didn't…she wouldn't…”

“Simon?” Cleo fought off Beatrice's attempts to keep her seated on the patio floor. Grabbing a chair for support, Cleo rose to her feet.

“Stay here. Wait for the ambulance,” he told her. “Let me handle this.”

“Do as he asks,” Beatrice pleaded.

Cleo sat down in the chair. “You think Aunt Oralie—”

“Hush, sweetheart.” Beatrice patted Cleo and hugged her head against her stomach the way a mother would in comforting a child. “Oralie has always been jealous of you, but I never dreamed that she…it isn't in her to murder. I thought she'd gotten over her…but she hasn't. Why didn't I realize that she's been pretending all these years?”

“What are you talking about?” Cleo lifted her head and stared up at Beatrice.

“Oh, my dear, dear girl, it's all my fault.” Tears streamed down Beatrice's face. “When your father was killed and your mother deserted you, Daddy and I brought you home to live with us. You were such a tiny little thing. None of us had ever seen you. You were born after James went to Vietnam and Arabelle wasn't on good terms with us.”

“Please, Aunt Beatrice, what does all this have to do with Aunt Oralie?”

“Oralie has always been terribly jealous of me, of my relationship with Perry.” Beatrice hung her head, avoiding any eye contact. “After I brought you home and made such a fuss over you, and when Oralie saw how Daddy doted on you, she got the ridiculous idea in her head that you were my child, and not really James's little girl.”

“What?” Cleo turned around too quickly. Pain shot through her head. She suddenly felt very dizzy.

“You've always resembled me a great deal, Cleo.” Beatrice smiled sadly. “We both take after Daddy's mother. She was a petite, green-eyed redhead.”

“Oralie assumed that Perry was Cleo's father,” Roarke said.

“Yes,” Beatrice replied. “For quite some time nothing we said or did could convince her otherwise. She tormented us with her accusations. But finally, she said that she would accept Cleo into the family and forgive Perry, as long as he stayed away from Cleo and never paid any attention to her.”

“That's why Uncle Perry—”

“He didn't dare be more than civil to you.” Beatrice wept openly, gasping with sobbing breaths. Calming herself, she looked directly at Roarke. “Please, Simon, go on and do what must be done. There's no telling what Oralie will do now that we've found her out.”

Roarke shrugged off his wet jacket and tossed it on the table. “Stay put,” he told Cleo.

Roarke found Perry Sutton standing in the middle of his and Oralie's sitting room, his arms outstretched to his wife. Oralie had opened the double doors leading outside onto her balcony. She stood facing Perry, her back to the balcony. Daphne sat rigidly on the edge of the bed in her parents' bedroom. Her eyes were dazed, her face deathly pale. Roarke halted a few feet behind Perry. But Perry
didn't turn around. With his arms open wide, he kept saying, “Come to me, Oralie,” over and over again.

Oralie pointed a finger at Roarke and laughed hysterically. “If she hadn't married
him,
it would all be over now. She'd be dead and my children would be safe. It would all be ours, not hers. Not Bea's.”

“Oralie, honey, everything will be all right if you just come on back in here with me.” Perry took a tentative step toward her.

She backed all the way onto the balcony until her hips rested against the wooden banister. “Don't! I'm not going to let you trick me. Not any of you.”

“No one's trying to trick you,” Perry said. “I just want you to come back in here and let's talk this over. We can make everything all right. Cleo's fine. You didn't hurt her.”

“I wish I'd killed her. I tried!”

“Hush, honey, you're only upsetting yourself.” Perry stood perfectly still.

Roarke placed his hand on Perry's shoulder. “Has she threatened to jump?” Roarke whispered.

Perry nodded affirmatively.

“What's he saying to you?” Oralie screamed. “Don't you believe anything he says. He's Cleo's husband. He'll take her side. But you mustn't take her side. You have to be on my side. Mine and
my
children's.”

“I am on your side.”

“No, you're on Cleo's side, too. Because she's Beatrice's child. Yours and Beatrice's. You lied to me. All of you. Uncle George. Beatrice. You. But I knew better. I couldn't allow you to love Beatrice's child more than my children. That's why I tried to drown Cleo when she was a little girl. If only I had succeeded then, everything would have been all right.”

Marla Sutton gasped loudly. She halted in the doorway of Perry and Oralie's suite. Cleo and Aunt Beatrice stood directly behind her.

“Yes, Oralie, I know,” Perry said. “Remember? You promised me then that you'd never try to harm Cleo again.”

“Yes, I promised.”

“You broke your promise, didn't you?”

“It was easy, you know.” Oralie put her hands behind her back and grasped the banister. She tossed back her head and laughed. “I almost got caught getting those spiders out of the science lab at Covenant. I did run into Professor Martindale, but he didn't remember who I was. Wasn't that fortunate? And the poison was so simple. I just got it out of a smelly old sack in your greenhouse. I remembered that one day when I went down to the greenhouse, you said you needed to get rid of some of those old insecticides and a sack of rat poison. But you never did. Wasn't that lucky for me?”

Cleo gripped Beatrice's hand. “Did you know that Aunt Oralie tried to kill me years ago? Did Uncle Perry tell you?”

“No, I had no idea,” Beatrice said. “We all assumed that your nearly drowning when you were a child was nothing more than an accident. We were always having to scold you children for playing around the pool unsupervised.”

“The little buzzers under the saddle were the most fun.” Oralie's voice boomed with a maniacal strength. “I found those in a sack in Trey's dresser. They'd been left over from some party that he'd given a few years ago, before he and Marla married. I had so hoped that when Sweet Justice bucked her off, Cleo would break her neck.”

Marla gasped a second time. Cleo tightened her grasp on Beatrice's hand.

Oralie lifted one of her legs and swung it over the banister.

“Don't, Oralie,” Perry pleaded. “We can fix things. We can make things right again.”

“I tried to make things right and I failed,” she said. “I can't let y'all call that silly Phil Bacon to come and get me. He'd put me in jail, just like he did Trey. I'm not going to jail. They'd take away all my jewelry.” She fiddled with the rings on her fingers. “And I couldn't wear my nice clothes.” She stroked her silk blouse. “And they wouldn't let Pearl bring me breakfast in bed when I'm having one of my bad days.”

“You won't have to go to jail.” Perry turned around and looked at Cleo and Beatrice. “Please, tell her that she won't have to go to jail. Please.”

Cleo closed her eyes momentarily. A part of her didn't care if Oralie jumped to her death. Another part of her wanted desperately to save her aunt.

“Aunt Oralie, please come back inside.” Releasing Beatrice's hand, Cleo walked over and stood beside Roarke. “No one is going to take you off to jail.”

“You're lying!” Oralie laughed again, the hysteria accelerating, the laughter growing louder and louder.

“Mother.” Daphne rose from the bed and walked into the sitting room. “Please, don't do this. Don't. I love you. I—”

“I'm sorry, my darling girl. So sorry.” Oralie lifted her other leg over the railing and sat on the narrow banister, her feet dangling over the side.