Robert stopped rocking. “How did you know to come here?”
“I had Noelle followed. I never believed her story.”
“Why not? I went over and over it with her. It made perfect sense that Sonny would be her lover. He could have planned everything, carried it all out. Most of what she told you was true. She didn’t even have to lie very much.”
Cal tried to smile, grimaced. “Yes. But I've been lied to so much, I guess I've come to expect it.”
Robert took a deep, shuddering breath and sat erect. “If Sonny had left after Johanna's wedding when he was supposed to, none of this would have happened.” Remnants of his old authority returned. “I couldn't understand his staying on until I overheard him talking to Claire about selling something. Then I heard her and Tip discussing Sonny. That's when I realized Johanna was Claire’s child and that Sonny was blackmailing her.”
“So you didn’t know about it till then.”
“My God, no! I wouldn’t put Claire through... Sonny was an asshole. His share from your diamonds should have been plenty for him to get Lynnette de Graffen. If he'd left the goddamned diary alone, no one would ever have known what we'd done. “
“You were worried he'd get caught and expose you.”
“I was furious that he was blackmailing Claire. She should never have been involved,” Robert cried. “I just wanted to scare him. I called Noelle once everyone left Monday, got her to bring my gun. When I let her inside the back gate, Sonny was coming back from Matthew's. I met him by the pond.”
“Met him and killed him.”
Robert slumped. “I didn't want to. He laughed, said he'd got money from Matthew as well as Claire.” He put his head in his hands. “Greed, that’s all it was. I gave him half the money from your studs.”
“So you murdered Sonny, stole his share of the bonds and also the cash Matthew had given him earlier.”
Robert wouldn’t meet Cal’s eyes. “I didn’t mean to kill him. It was an accident. He tried to get the gun away from me and it went off. I thought if I left some of the bonds, you’d blame him for the theft and wouldn’t look any further. Especially if you thought he was Noelle’s lover. When I got his share out of his suitcase, I found copies of Lila’s diary with a safety deposit key and receipt from the bank in Las Vegas.”
“So you sent Noelle to pick up the journal.”
“I was going to give it back to Claire.” A bit of spittle had dribbled out of the corner of Robert's mouth. He wiped it away with an apathetic hand. “What are you going to do?”
Cal looked at the bloody handkerchief. Noelle's face was waxen. “Wait for help.”
“Is she still alive?”
There was no pulse beneath his fingers. The glassy eyes stared without focus.
Cold hit him all over. “I don't know.”
But he did.
As did Robert. “She's dead. I can tell. She looks like Sonny did after… I loved her, Cal. Not like I loved Claire, no, never. But Noelle looked up to me, needed me. She did things I'd never ask Claire to do. Golden showers, bondage, leathers... Noelle let me do whatever I wanted because she needed me. Claire never needed me. But Noelle did.”
“How'd you meet her?” Surely to God help would arrive soon, before Robert changed his mind and decided he had nothing to lose by shooting someone else.
Someone like Cal.
The gun lay on the floor between them, but he left it. No need to remind Robert it was there.
“I picked up Johanna last year from a fitting at Jane's. While I was waiting, Noelle came out. We struck up a conversation and it was one of those things. She was so artless, so giving. I love Claire, I've always loved Claire, but Claire knew my background, what I had come from. She never said a word but I knew she looked down on me. Nothing I did would ever make me good enough for her. But Noelle didn't care what I was or wasn't. I could do anything to Noelle and she didn't care. She loved me.”
“Claire never looked down on you.”
“All of you did.” Reaching a decision, Robert got up and stooped for the gun.
Cal tensed but Robert turned. The cushion of the padded executive chair behind his desk whooshed as he sat down. The sound died away as the casters swiveled in the unnatural hush. “I could never live up to the McIntyres' reputation, Cal. Lila divided her shares between Claire and you. Not a one to me. Even though I'd worked my ass off for the company.”
The revolver fell with a thud onto the desk’s mahogany surface. His hand took up a pen in its stead. “Everyone constantly compared me to Lila, to Claire. Even to you.” He let out a thin laugh. “To you, with all your women and partying, all your expensive hobbies. Pretty rich, isn't it? I do all the work, but you're the one who gets a free pass.”
Sickness filled Cal. How many times had he dealt with those same inadequacies? How many times had he tried to please his mother and failed? “No one compared you to anyone, Robert.”
Robert ignored him. “Not that it matters now. I guess I blew it.” Pulling a yellow pad to him, he began to write busily beneath the beam of the shaded lamp, write as if he was working on an important memorandum that had to be finished right away. As if he had not killed a man and a woman.
Callaway covered Noelle's face with her coat. She had infuriated him and he had despised her, but he couldn’t stand to see the vacant eyes. Amanda...
Fresh pain washed over him. God, how would he tell Amanda? How would she react? Would she hate him because he hadn't saved Noelle?
A page ripped from the yellow pad. Robert carefully placed it in the middle of his desk blotter.
“My confession.” He showed a ghastly smile. “Don't worry. I didn't give details about Johanna or the diary, just that I shot Sonny and Noelle to cover up my embezzlement. You'll want to leave now,” he went on like they were having an ordinary conversation. “Tell Claire I'm sorry. And the boys. Tell them I love them all. Ask them to forgive me. Maybe one day they can.”
Not until Robert picked up the gun and said again, “You'll want to leave,” did Cal understand.
For one moment, he nearly broke under the pressure of Robert's unnatural calm. But he didn't. Somehow he stood upright. “Robert. No. This isn’t necessary.”
“Tell Claire and the boys that the strain of being named CEO was too much, that I snapped. You’ll know what to say. You always know what to say.”
Not this time. But he tried. “You don't have to do this, Robert. Too much stress can break anyone. They'll understand that. We’ll get you lawyers.”
Robert didn't listen. He was intent on the gun, cradling it in both hands and turning the barrel. “Yes. That's it. Too much stress. Tell them that.” He jerked his head toward the door. His eyes remained on the gun. “Go on, Cal. You won't want to be here. If you stay, I'll have to kill you, and then Claire won't have anyone.”
Cal tried to speak.
He couldn’t leave. He ought to stay and try to keep Robert from harming himself.
But his feet meekly obeyed Robert. They took him past the leather guest chairs, two upright and two on their backs beside the overturned round table, until he found himself walking across the deep brown carpet to the thick wooden door that he barely got closed before he heard Robert's final act.
The door muffled the shot.
Horace, hurrying down the hall with his arms full of blankets, saw Cal's face and froze.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Amanda squealed the tires of her minivan as she pulled up to the McIntyre headquarters in Roswell. Whirling red and blue lights blocked the entrance to the twelve story building. People rushed in and out.
Her throat trapped her heart and refused to let it loose.
What was going on?
Parking as close as she could, she got out and ran.
A van screeched up. Its doors crashed open, people popped out. They carried television equipment.
Something bad had happened.
Hurry, hurry
.
Inside the lobby, a modern architectural delight of glossy pink granite and polished gray marble and lustrous black metals, a weathered security guard talked to a policeman and a petite African-American woman. He gestured with both arms as he spoke. “… so I went up top with the blankets and next thing I knowed, bam! Dead, right there in Mr. Winslow's office.”
Dead?
Callaway!
Amanda stopped sprinting. “Who? Who are you talking about? Who's dead?”
They turned, looked at her in disbelief.
“You aren't allowed in here.” The policeman shifted so that he was between Amanda and the others. “All reporters outside.”
“I'm not a reporter.” An image of Callaway hovered, his face as he had gone from her apartment such a short time earlier.
He had known the danger, known what to expect when he had left her. He had almost told her. She had almost read something from what he wouldn’t say. But he had held it back and she hadn’t wanted to nag.
No, surely, it wasn't Callaway dead. Not him.
“Who is it?” she all but screamed. “Who is it that's dead?”
Somehow, without realizing it, she had put her hands out and they were bunching up the policeman's lapels.
He tried to undo her hands gently. “I can't say, lady. Hey, now, you calm down.”
He was annoyed, but she didn't care. “Tell me.” She yanked at his coat. He shoved her back so hard that she stumbled and slid out of his grip onto the slick marble floor.
He held out a cautious hand to help her up. “Come on, lady, calm down. We'll find out in a minute what's happened. You just calm down till we hear something, okay?”
He wasn’t going to tell her.
A rustling sound came from the side. Gleaming black elevator doors opened and the back of a uniformed man emerged wheeling a stretcher.
With a moan, Amanda flung the outstretched hand away and started down the length of the lobby.
The startled policeman called, “Hey,” and belatedly lumbered after her. “Come back here!”
She ignored his shouts. She had to find out whose body lay beneath the covering.
Noelle or Callaway.
Callaway or Noelle.
I'll make it up, she promised. The lobby seemed a hundred feet long. Her legs were sticks that refused to obey. I'll make up for whatever I thought about getting tired of her. I didn't mean it. She's my sister. And Callaway. I never meant to hurt him. If he’s all right, I swear I'll let him go without a word. I won’t try to hang on when he’s ready to leave.
Oh, God, don't let it be Callaway. Don't let it be Callaway.
“Not Callaway,” she heard the words as she ran. “My fault. I promise I'll never see him again. Not Callaway. I'll let him go, I will. Not Callaway.”
The EMTs saw her coming and moved to block her way.
“No!” She tried to dodge them and reach the gurney.
The policeman's hands came from behind and caught her by the shoulders and wrested her away, hard, as she fought to get free.
As she twisted and kicked, she saw Callaway step out of a second elevator and shrieked in thanksgiving and then he was at her side, saying something to the policeman, taking her into his arms, kissing her, holding her, calling her name over and over. “Amanda, Amanda...”
“I didn't know who it was.” Her words flattened against his neck, as, unable to stop, she kept crying and crying and crying. “They said someone was shot and I thought it was you and, oh, Callaway, I thought you were dead, I thought you were dead. I couldn’t have stood it.” She held him tightly while great choking, wrenching sobs shook her entire body. He held her back tightly, murmuring in her ear and stroking her as she regained control.
“Amanda,” he said after a bit, when her frenzy had turned to soft weeping and she no longer trembled. He sounded distant. “Amanda. Oh God, Amanda, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I have to tell you but I don't want to tell you. Oh God.”
She knew. In one lightning flash of intuition, she knew what he was going to say.
Noelle. She had forgotten Noelle in the terror of thinking Callaway dead and in the joy of finding him alive.
She jerked her head back convulsively so she could meet his eyes. They were anguished, full of dread.
She didn't want to hear his words.
“Amanda.” He caught her face in both hands so that she couldn't look away, couldn't move. “Amanda. I'm so sorry, Amanda. Noelle's dead.”
Then her knees gave way and she sank into the comfort of his enfolding arms again. He didn't let her go but held her as she keened for the little girl who had been her sister.
* * * *
Atlanta's hottest September in twenty years parched the trees and shrubs, and turned the concrete parking lots around the big shopping malls into gigantic heat collectors. May, then the rest of summer, had passed with a dreamlike depleting quality. Somehow, despite the stupor of grief, Amanda had managed to do nine weddings, attend a New York fashion showing, renegotiate a long-term mortgage on her shop, and clear out belongings from the Perimeter apartment Noelle had shared with Robert Winslow.
Noelle was gone, but the emptiness she left behind sometimes overwhelmed Amanda.