Skirting the Grave (21 page)

For York, the conspicuous latecomer raised her paddle often and countered every bid. Finally she stood, and the room stilled. “One hundred thousand dollars.”

Nobody applauded at first except Brandy, Justin, and Dolly, but after the shock wore off, confetti rained down from the ceiling, signaling the successful end of the auction. The winner went onstage to claim York, and on their way offstage, she somehow hooked arms with Isobel, so the three of them disappeared together.

York had been the final bachelor, the pièce de résistance, so heck, maybe Isobel made the first move. I hadn’t been watching that closely.

We ordered another round of drinks to celebrate, except for Nick and Eve, who were furious with me, Sherry who had a backache and asked Justin to take her home, and Tricia, also pregnant, who thought going home was a fine idea, so she and my brother, Alex, left as well. When the orchestra started again, I stood to look for Isobel, and when I didn’t see her, York, or his winner, panic rushed through me. I grabbed Nick’s hand, then Werner’s, and pulled them out of their chairs and didn’t let go until they followed me on their own, at a near run across the ballroom.

Eve and Kyle got up and followed.

I looked behind the stage, we all did, but York wasn’t there, and neither was Isobel or the winning bidder.

Giselle?

Thirty-eight

In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.

—COCO CHANEL

Behind the stage, the back terrace doors stood open, so we went outside into the dark, empty night, Nick calling for backup.

Before us rolled about a half mile’s worth of sloping lawns to the cliff’s edge, and the Mystic River beyond, with a deadly, rocky drop to the beach.

A gun went off.

A scream echoed in the distance.

“Isobel!” I called.

Werner and Nick took off at a run across the lawn toward the water. I gave Kyle Nick’s keys. “Get the Hummer near the carriage house, and drive it down to the cliff. Headlights would be a big help.”

“Ack,” Eve said, “Kyle, be careful not to drive over the edge.”

He chuckled and ran.

I went back to the terrace and flipped on a bank of light switches, but it wasn’t nearly enough illumination to reach that far. From experience, Eve and I both knew to kick off our shoes before we started running.

It wasn’t long before I saw a body and swerved toward it.

“What the hell?” Eve snapped, making a sharp left ahead of me and doubling back.

“A body,” I said, kneeling beside it, but then I released my breath. “Not a body. A dress and shoes.” I picked them up and continued running.

“Drop the clothes!” Eve yelled. “You’ll make better time.”

“I can run as fast carrying them.”

“Why would you want to?”

“Armani Privé? Manolos? One of a kind? Worth more than Kyle’s car.”

“You can be such a fruitloop!” Eve screamed, and took the running lead. The lights of Nick’s Hummer came over the hill before the Hummer itself, and lit our way, though Kyle drove like he was drunk. Then I realized he was scanning the area with the lights.

When everything appeared clear, Kyle gunned the Hummer across Cort’s million-dollar lawn, but who cared? People’s lives were in peril.

Five people went out ahead of us—Nick, Werner, York, Isobel, and the latecomer—and only one person stood at the edge of the cliff. “Oh God.”

I stopped to catch my breath and lay the outfit on a wrought iron bench Cort kept down there, the Manolos on top so the gown wouldn’t blow away.

“Nick,” I called, “where’s Werner?”

Nick was waving a flashlight. “He’s gone down for Isobel.”

I looked over the edge. Two young women lay at the base of the cliffs, looking like broken dolls in the sand, though they’d landed a distance away from each other. And they were both wearing black cocktail dresses, when one of them should be in her slip, or less. The latecomer must have been wearing two layers. I couldn’t tell which was which. “Oh God. Isobel, are you all right?” I shouted.

Kyle parked the car and left the headlights on.

Ambulances and police cars, no lights, no sirens, cut through Cort’s neighbor’s yard for easier access to a set of steps through the cliff rock to the beach. I took Nick’s tux jacket off him, stepped out of my dress behind it, and slipped into it.

“Here. Hold this,” I said, giving him the dress. Then I buttoned myself into his jacket and made my way down the face of the cliff.

“Good thing you’re a spider monkey, fruitloop,” Eve called after me. “I’ll put this dress with your stash. You’d better not fall. I’ll never forgive you, if you . . .”

Her voice cracked, but I kept going.

I went to Werner, kneeling over one of the girls, the one nearest the water. The gash on her head bled profusely into the sand.

“Madeira,” the girl said. “I love working for you. I hope this doesn’t change anything.”

Isobel never called me Madeira, ever. She called me boss so often, I was starting to get sick of it. “You’re Giselle, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yes. Giselle, that’s the one.” She touched her head. “I’m the favorite. I’m supposed to be the favorite. It’s my turn to have all the money. Giselle lives so far away—no, I . . . I live so far from the family, it’ll be easy to be Giselle. They won’t know. They don’t care.” She groaned. “I have a really bad headache.”

Not Giselle, I realized then, but Payton trying, and failing with her last breath, to claim Giselle’s life and fortune. I looked at Werner, and he shook his head like he doubted she’d make it. I agreed.

“Where’s York?” I asked him.

“On an outcropping of rock. He’s been shot by Payton here, but he’s moving. They’re about to bring him up, see?”

I left Werner with Payton and went to Isobel. “Isobel, you okay?”

“My sister’s gone, boss. Giselle is the one who died.”

“I know that now, sweetie.”

“Payton was the killer all along. Payton bid on my dad; what a joke if she’d succeeded and won him as her father, exactly as she wanted. Except that she also wanted to kill him.”

“That’s why she had the body cremated. She planned to take Giselle’s place,” I said.

“Yes, Payton told me as much on our way down here. She thought she should get all the money since she’d never had any of it. It was time, she said. She shot my dad when he tried to reason with her. She didn’t think we’d recognize her in that getup. She said she was sorry about Giselle but only after she fell. She was bringing us to that boat. My dad and I were supposed to drown tonight. Is my dad okay?”

“It looks like he is. I can see him responding to the medics. He’s moving his hands.”

Isobel smiled. “He does that.”

“Looks like you’ve been shot in the shoulder,” I said.

“And my side, I think, but the shoulder hurts more.”

“Medics,” I called at the top of my lungs.

Werner joined me. “I got a statement, but she’s gone,” he said. “That was a self-inflicted wound.”

Isobel wept. So did I, though I tried to comfort her.

Werner put an arm around me.

“You just left Payton, you know? She was the killer. Giselle died on the train.”

“Isobel and Giselle both worked for Robear,” Werner said. “Isobel as a model, Giselle as a call girl.”

“What?” I didn’t know he knew that.

“Robear led a double life. She was literally a madam. I talked to Sevigny in France. The French authorities forwarded his sworn statement. Did you know, Isobel, about Giselle working for Robear, too?” he asked.

“Robear tried to recruit me as a call girl when I first started modeling for her. Going by the name of Madam C., she sold high-priced models to men who could afford anything. I told Giselle because I was upset—that’s when we lived together—and thought nothing more about it. I modeled, and that’s all.”

I dabbed at Isobel’s brow with the corner of Nick’s jacket.

“During the course of this investigation,” Isobel continued, “after the body was identified as me, then Payton, it did make me think of how easy we could pretend to be each other. I thought of Robear’s offer and Giselle’s travels. But Robear had left the country by then, and I couldn’t ask her. I think I subconsciously chose not to believe that of my sister.”

“Do you think Robear knew that you were two different people?” I asked.

“I think it’s very likely that Robear didn’t know,” Isobel said. “Giselle could easily have called herself Isobel. Robear paid her call girls in cash, after all, and Robear wouldn’t have made the mistake of identifying the body as me if she knew about Giselle.”

I sighed. “Rickard and Payton wanted us to think Payton was dead, because Payton intended to take over Giselle’s rich lifestyle, away from the family who could identify her,” I said. “And of course, she told Rickard she’d keep him in money to shut him up about her new lifestyle. He thought he had something on her. And he did, until Giselle was cremated, the proof was gone, and Payton killed him.”

Werner nodded. “You’re right, Mad; it was like the shell game.”

I nodded. “Did Payton tell you what she used in those syringes to kill Giselle and Rickard?”

“Insulin, which doesn’t show up in a tox screen, because it’s already in the bloodstream,”

Werner said. “What bothers me is that she succeeded, so why come into the open, tonight?”

“She wanted to be rid of us all,” Isobel said. “My father and I were about to be lost at sea.”

“When did Payton tell you that?” I asked.

“On our way down here, but she was talking crazy like Grand-mère had earlier today,”

Isobel said, looking pained. “I’m not sure if all this killing wasn’t too much for Payton. She was always the emotional one. I thought it was for attention but maybe not.”

The medics showed up, and we stood to the side so they could stabilize Isobel. After they did, they put her on a stretcher and hauled her up the cliff; I monkeyed my way back up, Werner behind me.

“Mad, where’s your dress?”

“On a bench up top.”

“Nice legs.”

I stopped and turned to him. “Maybe you should go ahead of me.”

“A gentleman always lets a lady go first.”

“Some gentleman.”

At the top, Eve threw herself into my arms.

“Did you take good care of my dresses?” I asked.

“Up yours,” she snapped.

“That’s my feisty girl,” Kyle said, squeezing Eve’s shoulder.

Eve sobbed and about strangled me with another hug.

Nick took me in his arms after her, and he held tight, and nobody disputed his right to do so. And me, I felt as if I’d come home.

“I can’t figure out how the heck Payton expected to get away with this,” I said afterward.

“It’s such a public place.”

Nick turned me and pointed toward the river. “There’s a yacht waiting not too far distant. Could be kidnapping was the plan. A police boat’s on its way out there.”

“Oh, you’re right. Isobel told us so. I saw a motorboat at the base of the cliffs. Thought it was Cort’s. How’s Candidate York?”

“He’ll pull through,” Nick said. “Giselle?”

“Nick, Giselle’s been dead for days. That’s Payton in the sand. She turned the gun on herself and made a success of that, at least.”

The party in the Vancortland mansion, up over the rise, seemed to continue. Nobody had come outside to see what was happening, and the music continued to drift down toward the water uninterrupted.

My cell phone rang, and I fished it from Werner’s tux pocket.

He looked surprised. “When did you put it in there?”

“When we were dancing. Shh.” I listened to my caller and hung up. “Let’s go,” I said.

“Where?” Werner asked. “I’ve got a crime scene.”

“Meet me at the hospital when you’re done, then.”

“Are you hurt?” Werner and Nick asked together.

“I’ll be on the maternity ward. Sherry’s on her way into the delivery room.”

Werner looked skeptical.

“When you’re there, you can check on Isobel and her father and write your report. As for me, I’m Sherry’s backup coach, in case Justin can’t go the distance.”

I called my dad and Fiona, Brandy and Cort, and Alex and Tricia, while Nick drove us to the hospital in his Hummer.

Sherry was still in labor when I got to the maternity ward while Nick parked the Hummer. Justin sat in the waiting room, head in his hands. “Ten minutes, and I passed out,” he confessed.

I rubbed his arm. “No wonder she wanted a second string.”

Justin groaned. “Because I fainted at the ultrasound.”

I bit my lip and went in to coach my sister.

By the time the family arrived, and I mean everyone, I was standing beside Sherry’s bed in her hospital room showing off babies Kathleen and Reilly Vancortland, a boy and a girl, both named after my mom, her maiden name having been O’Reilly. Mostly I did it because Sherry was exhausted, and I liked holding them.

Sherry and Justin had kept the twin part a secret to surprise us all. Justin cleared his throat. “Mad, Nick: Sherry and I want you to be Reilly’s godparents.”

“Of course,” I said.

Nick beamed. “You betcha. I’d be honored.”

“We’re not done,” Justin said. “Alex and Tricia, will you be Kathleen’s godparents?”

I handed Kathleen to Tricia while Nick and I concentrated on Reilly.

“Hey,” Nick said, kissing me on the brow. “We have a boy.”

Werner arrived at that moment.

Everyone got quiet.

“Look, Werner,” I said. “Nick and I are going to be Reilly’s godparents.”

He firmed his lips. “Congratulations. Sherry, Justin, congrats to you, too. I’ll stop in tomorrow.” Werner left.

I looked up at Nick. “Don’t go anywhere.”

His gaze held mine. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

I gave him the baby and ran after Werner. He wouldn’t turn, but I caught his arm near the elevator.

“It’s okay, Mad,” he said. “Nick’s practically a member of the Cutler family.”

“I wouldn’t let my family choose my guy. I chose him a long time ago. I’m sorry that I forgot that for a while.”

“I’m not. You’re not getting engaged or anything like that, are you?”

“I guess we’ll see what time brings.”

“Then there’s hope.”

“Lytton, I haven’t been fair to you. You deserve somebody . . . spectacular.”