Authors: Carlene Thompson
Sloane gave her a long, steady look. “You never could lie, Christine. You were just rotten at it.” He paused. “You should have taken lessons from Dara. She was as good at it as my mother.”
Christine had begun to shake, but she couldn’t think of anything to do except keep talking until she found out where Jeremy was. “Your mother? Catherine? Wasn’t that her name?”
“No, it was Lula. Lula was well known in certain circles as a woman of many exotic talents. Or perhaps I should more accurately say
erotic
talents.”
Christine was at a loss. Sloane had told her all about his parents, lovely and graceful Catherine, handsome and prestigious Preston. He’d told her of his beautiful younger sister, Amelia, an artist. He’d described the majestic ancestral home they’d lived in so idyllically on the impressive River Road. His hazel eyes had filled with tears when he’d talked of the threesome’s tragic deaths in a car wreck while he was away at Harvard. She’d even seen his photograph album. There was a picture of him at age twelve splashing in the family pool. Another had been taken when he was a teenager and clowning in front of a strip bar in the French Quarter. But her favorite had been an unforgettable image of the four of them together, posed in front of their Greek-columned white home, Sloane at least twenty, Amelia clinging to his arm, all of them looking so happy. What on earth was he talking about?
“I don’t understand, Sloane,” she said, trying to keep
her voice kind and calm. “Who’s Lula? Your mother was Catherine Caldwell.”
“I think I know who my mother was,” he said sarcastically. “My father is a different matter. My biological father, that is. I know very well who lived with Lula from the time I was four. Bobby Ray. He lived off her ‘earnings,’ called himself her husband, and ‘reared’ me with a gentle wisdom that included frequent beatings and constant badgering and belittling.”
“But you showed me photographs. The house, your family . . .”
“The photographs are of a family named Devereaux. I started helping the gardener with their lawn work when I was twelve. They were wonderful people and they became quite fond of me. They always told me how smart I was, how ambitious, how handsome, how they wished they had a son like me. Amelia loved me and her parents thought that was fine. I believe they had plans for us to marry. Amelia was delicate. She needed someone strong to look after her.”
He seemed to drift off into his memories for a moment before snapping his attention back to Christine. “They treated me like family, Chris. They even sent me to Harvard. I was there when they were all killed in that car wreck. I thought I’d die, too. But they’d always been thinking of me, always looking out for me. In his will, Preston left money for me to finish my education, to go on to law school.” Sloane laughed harshly. “Don’t think Lula didn’t try to get that away from me! She tried every trick in the book, but Preston had anticipated her. That will was ironclad. She didn’t stand a chance. And so, I became a graduate of Harvard Law School.” He looked at her and smiled. “That’s why Dara called me ‘the Brain.’ ”
“Oh, my God,” Christine breathed. “So you
were
one of her lovers.”
“
One
being the operative word.”
The clouds had moved across the moon, and Christine realized how big Sloane looked against the silvery landscape. Big and cocky and a little crazy around the eyes. “Sloane, where is Jeremy?” she asked gently.
“I never dreamed Lula would find me in a place like Winston,” Sloane went on as if he hadn’t heard her. “But somehow she got the money for a private detective. I don’t think it could have been her former means of employment, given what she looked like by that time. Especially with AIDS. And Bobby Ray was long gone. I’ll give it to Lula, though. She always was wily. She hunted me down like a bloodhound when I’d been here less than a year. Wanted money. A steady income or she’d let everyone in this town know what I really was—the illegitimate son of a prostitute. So I had to kill her. It was remarkably easy. I should have done it years earlier.” He looked around. “She’s buried over here. I can’t remember exactly where.”
Christine’s mouth had dried to the consistency of cotton. She felt her vision dim, as if she might faint. She clung to consciousness fiercely, though. As much as she would like to simply fade out of this nightmare scene, there was still her brother.
“Jeremy,” she almost whispered. “Sloane, please tell me you didn’t . . .”
“Can’t quite get it out? Didn’t what? Kill him?” He stared at her and she felt weightless, without substance, hung suspended in the night with a cold breeze that had come out of nowhere. “Christine, I pride myself on personally dispensing only with worthy adversaries. Dear, dim-witted Jeremy hardly falls into that category.”
Her breath came out in a rush. “Where is he?”
“At my house. Drugged. I stopped at the fitness center after work and saw him. A plan just fell into place like it
was meant to be. I offered to take him to your house so you wouldn’t have to bother, but I said I needed to pick up something at my place first. Then I offered him a cup of that nasty hot chocolate he likes, only I’d put a little something extra in it—forty milligrams of Valium. Then I held a gun on him and made him call you.” He smirked. “He was quite obedient about it.”
“He trusted you, Sloane. He’s always looked up to you. How could you do that to him?”
“I can’t help it if the fool trusted me.”
“Did Dara trust you, too?”
His smirk vanished. “At first.”
Christine swallowed. She’d caught a dim glimpse of the gun Sloane held by his side. If she tried to run for her car, he’d shoot her. The only thing she could do was keep him talking until, or rather
if
, the police could get here. “Did you begin seeing her before or after we were engaged?”
“After.”
“Did you love her?”
“Love Dara?” He shook his head. “I loved Dara’s looks. I loved Dara’s expertise in bed. But I did not love Dara.”
“Then
why
?”
“Because I didn’t love you, either. I didn’t even find you all that appealing.” Christine recoiled. “So why the proposal? Because you were the perfect wife for the rising young lawyer. Excellent background. Excellent student. Behavior beyond reproach. And a very attractive trust fund.”
Christine asked in a small voice, “Didn’t you love me at all?”
“No, Christine, I didn’t. But I wanted you to be Mrs. Sloane Caldwell. I would have had to put up with Jeremy for a year or two before he had an unfortunate,
fatal accident, but having a class act like you, and Ames Prince for a pseudo-father-in-law, would have been worth the trouble.”
Christine felt as if her heart had turned into a small chunk of ice. “You planned all along to kill Jeremy?”
“Well, I certainly couldn’t put up with him for long. Aside from being an embarrassment, he set my nerves on fire. You don’t know the strength it took for me to be nice to him. But if it was what I had to do to have you, then I made myself do it.”
“You didn’t love me, but our engagement, our marriage, was important to you.”
“Extremely.”
“But you had to have Dara, too.”
“Dara was an unfortunate carnal lapse on my part. Very unfortunate.”
“She thought someone was following her around in the last weeks of her life. Was that you?”
“I’m embarrassed to say that it was. I knew she had another lover. Oh, not Reynaldo. I knew she kept him around for show. But there was someone else who really meant something to her. And
that
bothered me. She finally even stopped having sex with me. Claimed she had an ovarian cyst that made intercourse painful. And then she turned up pregnant.”
“She told you that?”
“Oh yes. It seems the little bastard’s father refused to marry her. She was terrified of abortion, certain that it would kill her. And she couldn’t stand the thought of marrying Reynaldo because she knew if she did, he’d never let her have a divorce. She’d never be free of him. So she came to me. She said we only had to stay married a year and then get a divorce. I refused. After all, I was engaged to you, and if I married Dara, I’d lose you forever. So finally she tried to blackmail me. ‘Marry me or I’ll tell
everyone about us,’ she said. ‘My father will fire you. Christine will never have anything to do with you again. You’ll be finished in this town.’ ”
“And that’s when you snapped and killed her?”
“Not then. I did try to be reasonable. I tried to scare her first, scare her so badly she’d have an abortion. But after she made a spectacle of herself at that party, after she did everything except announce her pregnancy and you walked out on me, I knew what I had to do. In just a week the perfect time rolled around. The night of the Black Moon. She talked that witchcraft shit all the time, and I knew she’d be down at the creek. So I paid her one last visit.”
“You killed her and your unborn baby.”
“It wasn’t my baby, Christine. It belonged to either Cimino or the other guy she was screwing. What a whore. Just like my mother.” Disgust twisted his face for a moment. “Then I wrapped her in the plastic I’d brought along and threw her in Crescent Creek.”
“Why didn’t you bury her over here with your mother?”
“It was flood time. I wasn’t sure I could get over here with her and back safely. Besides, she loved this place. She didn’t deserve to be buried somewhere she loved.”
“You smashed out her teeth. You cut off her fingertips. All that so she wouldn’t be recognized. But you left her ruby ring with the body.”
“That was an accident. It must have fallen out of my pocket while I was wrapping her up. I was nearly in a frenzy to get back to the house and gather up some of her stuff so it would look like she’d run away and they wouldn’t launch a full-scale investigation immediately. I didn’t realize I didn’t have the ring until I got home.”
“And the notes that have come to Ames from around the country?”
“A friend, or rather a man on whom I have some damaging information, has obliged me by sending those notes Ames sets such store by.”
He stepped closer to her. Dear God, she wondered, where are the police? She knew a 911 call had been placed. They should be rushing to her rescue. Then she remembered the bridge. And she thought about the police cruisers. Crown Victorias. They weighed approximately two thousand pounds more than her car. They’d never make it across Crescent Creek Bridge. If the police were coming, they were coming by foot.
“Who was Dara’s other lover?” she asked suddenly. “Didn’t you ever find out?”
Sloane glanced away for a moment. The wind lifted his thick hair to expose a high, noble forehead. So much for facial features revealing the mind, Christine thought dryly. “I’m rather embarrassed to admit it, but I didn’t know who it was at the time. She assured me she’d stopped having sex with Cimino, and by the hangdog expression that had become habitual with him I was certain she was telling the truth.” He looked at her, then reached out and delicately touched her cheek. She forced herself not to draw away, not to show fear or revulsion. “Actually, Christine, Jeremy finally told me who the lover was.”
“Jeremy?”
“Yes. ‘Snake Charmer,’ Travis Burke. He was supposed to be my friend, but suddenly it all made sense. Dara used to talk about his class. Then suddenly she stopped. I didn’t notice at the time. Now I know she’d become wary. And of course, she said in the diary she was in love with S.C. I learned that by listening outside the night you were reading the diary with Streak, even though I still didn’t know who S.C. was.” Sloane sighed. “Then he compounded his error with Patricia.”
Christine’s lips parted in surprise. “You were involved with Patricia, too?”
“Well, I had to pass the time with someone until you calmed down enough to come back to me. You see, I never gave up on the goal of marrying you. But I wasn’t meant to be a monk.”
“There are other women in the world besides Ames’s daughter and wife,” she said waspishly, and immediately regretted it when he looked as if he were going to hit her.
“I know that, Christine, but they were convenient. And attractive. And for a while, quiet about our liaisons.”
“But then Travis took Patricia away from you, too.”
“He did
not
take her away from me,” Sloane said harshly. “I was through with her.”
“Not jealous?”
“Worried. You see, I’d kept a few things of Dara’s. That ring of her mother’s she always wore on a chain around her neck. Her mother’s crystal ball—by the way, that’s what I crushed her skull with.” Christine thought of the beautiful crystal ball crashing down on Dara’s head, covered in her blood and strands of her hair, and her stomach turned. “I never washed her blood off that ball,” Sloane said, smiling. “I kept it wrapped in plastic along with Dara’s hair. She had such lovely hair, and I cut about six inches of it off. Tied a red ribbon around it as a keepsake.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Then, one day near the time I was about to end things with Patricia because her lovemaking had lost its luster, she stopped by my house with that horrible little dog. I’d left a closet door open. While I was talking to Patricia, the dog went in the closet, climbed into a box, and started trying to gnaw through the plastic to the hair and the blood-covered ball. Before I could stop her, Patricia had dashed into the closet after the damned mongrel. I wasn’t sure how much she’d seen
or if she’d even realized
what
she’d seen. After all, the ball was covered with blood that had turned dark. And what’s a bit of hair and an unremarkable little necklace? I decided not to worry about the incident.
“Then I learned Travis was Patricia’s new lover. He thought we were friends, the fool. He told me in that annoying way he had—like a sniggering little boy getting away with something bad. He even went into details about how he left notes for her in her garden under the statue and how they met in the loft of the barn and made love while listening to music on his boom box. It was so ridiculous, I almost laughed in his face in spite of my anger, but I listened. I always listen, and I always remember.
“By this time, Patricia had begun acting jumpy around me. I thought her nervousness could have something to do with our affair, but that answer didn’t feel right. I think after the body turned up and she was sure Dara had been murdered, she’d begun to dwell on Dara’s last weeks, on the way Dara had begun to act around me, and figured out that I’d been involved with her. And perhaps she’d gotten an inkling of what she’d seen in my closet. Black hair, a spherical object, a grayish ring on a chain. So I decided not to take any chances. I pushed Patricia out of that barn loft and set up Travis with his very own boom box I’d taken out of his car and left playing as loud as it would go in the loft.”