Charley's Web (5 page)

“I suppose someone could have planted them there.”

“Which doesn’t explain what
her
voice was doing on the tapes. She also had access and opportunity, plus her fingerprints were found at the scene, and her DNA was all over the victims.”

“What—no videotapes?”

Charley shrugged. There’d been rumors of videotapes, but despite extensive police searches, they had never been recovered. “What are you suggesting? That you think I should actually consider going to see her?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Good. Something we agree on.”

“But you will.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Charley snatched the letter from his hand and returned it to her purse, all the while shaking her head. Smug bastard, she was thinking. “You think you know me, don’t you?”

People think they know me.

They don’t.

“Well enough to know she’s got you hooked.”

“Is that so?”

Actually, I think we have a lot in common.

“Who’s got who hooked?” Bram said from beside her, opening his eyes and lifting himself up on his elbows. If he was surprised to find himself in a strange room with his sister and the man who’d knocked him unconscious, his expression offered no sign of it. If anything, he looked rested and serene. “Did I hear you say something about Jill Rohmer?”

“Well, it’s about time you woke up,” Charley chastised, fighting the urge to shake him by the shoulders. Even with a large bruise sitting on his cheekbone, Bram was by far the best-looking of the four Webb children, with pale porcelain skin, large, luminous gray-blue eyes, and lashes so long and thick they looked as if they’d been pasted on.

“You know I used to go out with her sister,” he said matter-of-factly, long slender fingers smoothing the front of his blue silk shirt.

Charley felt any patience she had left quickly abandoning her. “What are you talking about?”

“I went out with her sister—what was her name? Pamela?”

“What are you talking about?” Charley said again, louder this time.

“I went out with…”

“When, for God’s sake?”

“I don’t know. A few years ago. Right after I came to Florida. We took a few classes together.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me this?”

“Why would I? It was just a couple of dates. It didn’t mean anything.”

“You never said a word about knowing Jill Rohmer all through her trial.”

“I
didn’t
know her. I knew her sister. Why are we talking about Jill Rohmer anyway?”

Glen walked to his office door. “I think your brother could use a cup of coffee.”

“No, that’s all right,” Charley protested.

“I would
love
a cup of coffee,” Bram said at the same time.

“Be right back.” Glen closed the door behind him as he left the room.

“What’s the matter with you?” Charley hissed at her brother.

“Whoa. Hold on there. What’s
your
problem?” Bram grabbed the sides of his head, as if to keep it from falling off.

“What’s
my
problem?
You’re
my problem,” Charley raged, trying to keep her voice down. “You’re so damn irresponsible.”

“Just because I got a little drunk…”

“You didn’t just get a little drunk. You got a lot drunk. And God only knows what else. And you would have driven home in that condition if Glen hadn’t stopped you.”

Bram’s hand moved gingerly to his cheek. “Yes, I vaguely remember something about that.”

“Do you vaguely remember we were supposed to get together yesterday?”

“Do you have to talk so loud?”

“Do you think I enjoy driving all the way to Miami for nothing? Do you think I like being phoned at work by some guy I’ve insulted in print, telling me he’s got my brother? What made you pick this place, for God’s sake?”

“I read about it in your column. It sounded interesting.”

It was Charley’s turn to grab her head. “Okay, that’s it. The rain’s letting up. We’re going home.” She grabbed her brother’s arm, dragged him to his feet. He loomed over her like a tall tree.

“My coffee,” he protested, as Charley pushed him out of the office toward the front door. “I’ll follow you in my car,” he said as they reached the parking lot.

“You sure you’re okay to drive?”

“I’m fine,” Bram insisted. “I’ll be right behind you.”

“Promise?”

Bram nodded his silent consent as he folded his body inside the tiny MG.

But when Charley turned right on South County Road and looked into her rearview mirror only seconds later, he’d already disappeared.

O
kay, that’s it. I’m not doing this anymore,” Charley exclaimed, tossing her cell phone back into her purse as she turned off Old Dixie Highway, and made her way through the twisting warren of streets behind the Palm Beach Convention Center, heading for home. It was almost three o’clock in the afternoon. She had returned to the office after attempting many times to contact her brother to no avail. She’d even resorted to subterfuge, calling from a variety of different phones in an effort to get around his caller ID, but still he wasn’t answering either his home phone or his cell. She’d left at least half a dozen messages. (“Bram, where the hell are you? Stop being such an idiot.”) Not surprisingly, he hadn’t answered any of them. Clearly he didn’t want to speak to her. And after a few hours of aimless research for her next column, she decided to call it a day.

“You want to get drunk and get yourself beaten up, end up in jail, or worse, that’s your problem. Not mine,” she said now, nodding at her reflection in the rearview mirror, as if to underline her newfound resolve. “I will not be the one riding to your rescue anymore. I will not show up at the morgue to identify your bruised, broken body. Let Anne do it,” she said, reminded of her sister in her pillow-filled New York apartment, as she drove past tiny New York Street. “Maybe she can fit it in between speaking engagements. And maybe, just
maybe,”
Charley continued, turning onto New Jersey Street and pulling into her driveway, “her publicist can even convince
People
magazine to send a photographer down with her. How’s that for an angle?” she said, turning off the engine and climbing out of the car. “Beats the hell out of the whole Brontë thing,” she said, recalling her sister’s words. “Damn it, anyway. What’s wrong with everybody?”

“Everything okay?” a voice asked, and Charley spun toward the sound. The house next door was undergoing extensive renovations, and a worker in a yellow hard hat was regarding her quizzically from the driveway next to hers, his hands resting on slender hips, sweat staining the front of his white T-shirt, a blue-and-gray-checkered shirt belted around his waist. “We tried to keep the dust and everything away from your property as much as we could,” the young man explained. “If there’s a problem…”

“Everything’s fine,” Charley said. Except for my brother, my mother, my sisters, and the fact I’m getting threatening hate mail, she thought of adding. Oh, and did I mention that I got a letter from a convicted child killer who wants me to write her life story? “Just fine,” she muttered, feeling the worker’s eyes on her backside as she walked up the narrow concrete path to her front door.

“At least it’s stopped raining,” the man said.

Was he trying to prolong the conversation? Charley wondered, glancing toward the still-gray sky, then back at the worker, who was approximately her age and quite cute under that yellow hard hat. She turned away before she could do something stupid, such as inviting him inside her house for a drink. The last time she’d impulsively invited a man into her home, he’d ended up staying for three weeks and fathering her son. “When do you think you’ll be done?” she asked as she unlocked her front door.

“Oh, we’ll be another month at least.”

“See you around then.”

“Count on it.”

Charley smiled, deciding she liked his arrogance almost as much as the cut of his triceps.

“What’s going on out here?” another voice suddenly interrupted.

Charley felt her shoulders slump. I should have gone inside while I had the chance, she was thinking. The last thing she wanted was to get into an altercation with yet another pissed-off neighbor. “Just asking how things are going with the renovation,” Charley said, seeing the scowl on Gabe Lopez’s face even before she turned around.

“Everything’s right on schedule.” Black eyes glared at her from beneath a bushy black unibrow. “No thanks to you.”

“Okay, well…” Charley said, pushing open her front door, “…good luck.” She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. “Asshole,” she muttered. “No wonder your wife left you.” She kicked off her black slip-ons, stepped from the cold tile of the tiny front foyer onto the living room’s warm hardwood floor. “Which wasn’t my fault, incidentally,” she yelled back in the general direction of the front door.

“Do you always have to talk so loud?” her brother asked from the sofa.

Charley gasped, stumbling back against a bamboo table that sat against one ivory-colored wall, almost upsetting a glass vase of red-and-yellow silk tulips. “My God! You scared me half to death. What are you doing here?”

“You said to follow you home,” he reminded her, pushing his skinny arms above his head and stretching his reed-thin body to its full length, so that it seemed even longer than its six feet, two inches. At the same time, he brought his feet up to rest on the glass coffee table in front of him.

“Which you didn’t.”

“Only ’cause I knew a shortcut. Figured I could get here quicker. Which I did. Been waiting for you all day. Where’ve you been?”

“I went back to the office.”

“Too bad. I was hoping you went grocery shopping. Do you know you’re out of coffee?”

Charley shook her head in exasperation. “I don’t believe you.”

“It’s true. You can check for yourself.”

“I’m not talking about the coffee, you moron.”

“Hey, hey. Let’s not get nasty.”

“Where’s your car?”

“End of the block. In front of that house with the huge American flag. Isn’t that the place you wrote about, where they have all those orgies?”

“It was a Passion Party,” Charley corrected.

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

“Oh, God.” Were they really having this conversation? “I’ve been calling you all day. Don’t you ever check your messages?”

“Battery’s dead on my cell phone. Keep forgetting to plug the stupid thing in.”

“You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”

“And you have a question.”

Charley looked helplessly around the room. What was the point in arguing? She’d never been able to win an argument with her brother. And besides, he was here, wasn’t he? Which was what she’d wanted. (Be careful what you wish for, she thought.) And everything seemed to be in its proper place. The furniture was where it always was: two oversize rattan chairs sat facing the small beige sofa in the middle of the natural sisal rug; a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf completely occupied the north wall, so stuffed with hardcover books that some had recently formed their own shelf on the floor; photographs of her children covered the mantel behind the sofa, as well as the table by the front bay window. Nothing seemed to be missing. “How’d you get in here anyway?”

“Used my key.”

“Where’d you get a key?”

“You gave me one.”

“The hell I did,” Charley protested.

“You did,” Bram insisted. “That time I baby-sat…”

“(A) You’ve never baby-sat,” Charley interrupted, “and (B) I never gave you a key.”

“Okay, so maybe I found a spare one lying around last time I was here for dinner,” he acknowledged with a sheepish grin.

“You took my spare key? I spent days looking for that.”

“Should have asked me.”

“Why would I ask you?”

“’Cause I had it.” He smiled.

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

His smile widened. “I am, yeah.”

Charley fought the urge to throw the nearby vase of silk tulips at his head. “Give me back my key.”

“Aw, come on, sis.”

“Sis? Since when have you ever called me sis? Don’t give me this ‘sis’ shit.”

“You know you have a bit of a lisp?” Bram asked provocatively. “I think it comes from yelling. Do you yell at your kids as much as you yell at me?”

“I never yell at my kids.”

“No? You were sure yelling when you walked through that door. What was that about anyway?”

“What?” Charley shook her head, trying to clear it. Her brother had always been a master of keeping her off-balance.

“As I recall, the word
asshole
might have passed your lips.”

“Oh, that. My stupid neighbor.” Charley flopped into one of the rattan chairs and lifted her feet to the coffee table, so that her bare toes were almost touching the tip of her brother’s black boots. “He’s renovating, in case you didn’t notice the mess next door. And his nose got all out of joint when the neighbors objected to some of the changes he wanted to make…”

“His neighbors being you?”

“I was one of them. He wanted to build this giant two-storey addition that would have totally blocked out all the sun from my backyard…”

“I seem to remember reading something in the paper about insensitive residents flouting long-standing bylaws and ruining lovely old neighborhoods.” Bram folded his hands behind his head, pretended to be thinking. “Where could I have read that, I wonder?”

“Okay, so maybe I mentioned something about it in my column, but the whole street was upset. It wasn’t just me. Besides, what’s done is done. Get over it already. You want something cold to drink?” Charley jumped to her feet, headed for the white-and-brown kitchen at the back of the house.

“A gin and tonic?” Bram suggested hopefully.

“Fat chance of that. How about some orange juice?”

“How ’bout a beer?”

“How ’bout some orange juice?” Charley repeated.

“I think I’ll have some orange juice,” Bram said.

“Good choice.” Charley poured them each a drink and returned to the living room.

“Why would he blame you for his wife leaving him?” Bram asked.

It took Charley a second to realize they were still talking about Gabe Lopez. “Trust me. I had nothing to do with that.”

“Nothing?”

“I don’t think I ever said more than two words to the woman in my entire life.”

“By any chance, were those two words ‘dump him’?”

“Very funny. You missed your calling. You know that?”

Bram took a long sip of his juice, made a face. “Something’s missing, that’s for sure. This could use a little vodka.”

Charley sighed. “What are you doing, Bram? What’s the matter with you?”

“Aw, come on, Charley. Don’t start.”

“You’re way too smart to waste your life this way.”

“I’m only twenty-four,” he reminded her. “And I’m not that smart.”

“You told me you were going into rehab. You said you were joining AA. You promised.”

“And I will.”

“When?”

“Whenever.”

“Bram….”

“Come on, Charley. You think I like waking up on some strange guy’s sofa? Which, come to think of it, must be how you feel a lot of the time.”

Charley rolled her eyes. “That was so not funny.”

“I’m gonna clean up my act.”

“Try starting with your mouth.”

“Ouch. I think I touched a nerve.”

“I’m not a slut, Bram.” Charley walked to the front window, watching the young man in the yellow hard hat climb up a ladder to the roof of her neighbor’s house. “Just because I had two children by two different men doesn’t mean I’m easy.”

Although what can one expect from a woman who prides herself on never having married either of her children’s fathers?

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply…”

“Of course you did.”

Of course you did,
her mother’s voice echoed.

“Hey, I’m just yanking your chain,” her brother said, taking another sip of his juice. “Just trying to get the focus off me.”

Charley watched a small yellow school bus pull around the corner and come to a stop in front of her house. “Kids are here.” She took a deep breath and walked to the front door, pulling it open. “Try not to say anything too stupid in their presence.”

“Yes, Dad,” she heard Bram mutter.

She felt a sharp stab of guilt, remembering the way her father had always spoken to his son. Bram was right, she’d realized. She sounded exactly like their father. “I’m so sorry, Bram. I didn’t mean…”

“Mommy!” James shouted, jumping off the bus, all dimples and hair and moving parts. Even while standing at the curb waiting for his sister, he was in constant motion, right hand lifting in the air to wave hello, left hand tugging at the top of his khaki pants, his weight shifting from his left foot to his right in order to kick at a small piece of rubble, as his eyes darted from one end of the street to the other.

“Hi, sweetie pie,” Charley called back, waiting as Franny made her way from the back of the bus to the front. Franny always liked to make sure the bus had come to a complete stop before getting up from her seat. Only then would she begin the trek from her seat near the back, latching onto the tops of the other seats on her way to the front.

She’d always been a cautious child, Charley realized, choosing careful deliberation over snap decisions, even as a toddler. Charley recalled the many times she’d stood beside her daughter at the playground while Franny tried to decide which swing to select. Her brother would have already taken a dozen plunges, face-first, down the giant slide, and still Franny would be standing beside the sandbox. It was the same at mealtime. James would be finished and squirming in his chair, having virtually inhaled his dinner in two quick breaths, while Franny would be taking her first tentative bites. Quiet, contemplative—the complete opposite of Charley—she never spoke unless she had something to say.

“She’s a very thoughtful child,” her grade-two teacher had pronounced at the start of the school year. “You can actually see the wheels turning.”

She must get it from her father’s side of the family, Charley thought now, picturing the broodingly handsome man who was Franny’s father, as Franny grabbed her brother’s hand, looked both ways, then led him across the street. As soon as they reached the curb, James broke free of his sister’s grasp and raced up the front walk to Charley.

“We painted a picture today in school. I painted an alligator and a snake.”

“You did?”

“Where’s my picture?” James asked, as if she should know. He spun around. “Oh, no. I lost it.”

“I have it,” his sister said calmly, coming up behind him. “You dropped it on the bus floor.” She offered it to Charley.

“Look,” James exclaimed triumphantly, pointing to a shapeless blob of fluorescent green and a narrow streak of purple. “There’s the alligator, and there’s the snake. Can we tape it to the fridge?” Already he was racing through the front door.