Chapter 4
Apparently, Lady Justice had a name; it was Augusta Aldridge.
Less than two hours after Ian’s hearing, with his exit procedure completed, he made a beeline for the door, half-expecting to find Augusta waiting outside. She had paid his bail, but not in person—she had sent her attorney instead. He didn’t exactly know how to feel about that. He did know he felt both relief and disappointment that he didn’t spy her strawberry-blond head outside the station, though he wasn’t sure what he would say to her, aside from
thank you.
He hadn’t been able to get her off his mind.
During the three weeks spent for the most part in his own head, Augusta’s face had been a constant ghost before his eyes. The look on her face as they’d handcuffed him and hauled him away after her sister’s ordeal had cut him deeper than he might have expected, especially considering that he really didn’t know her. He’d spent one night with her. One night.
But one helluva night.
Augusta was not the sort of girl you easily forgot. Brash. Honest. Beautiful. She spoke her mind and wore her heart on her sleeve. Exactly the sort of woman he could go for . . . if he were free. But he wasn’t free.
What was worse, he was lost.
He still hadn’t quite processed his excommunication from the Church—not that celibacy had ever been a welcome requisite, though he had been fully prepared to do what he had to do. But that wasn’t his problem right now.
Right now, as much as he would like to walk away and forget everything he knew—forget there was a murderer out there snuffing out innocent lives—he couldn’t. Bottom line: Someone was willing to derail his life to get him out of the way. Someone was watching him. And if they were watching him, it meant he was getting close, even if he didn’t know what it was he was getting close to. But he was no longer moving under the radar—possibly never had been. If he let Augusta Aldridge anywhere near him, he’d be placing her in danger, too. Because now more than ever, Ian was determined to find out who was at the bottom of Jennifer Williams’s disappearance. He had a hunch that person was also responsible for the deaths of at least three other women and possibly more. In fact, he was sure of it. Though there was as yet no body for Jennifer, he knew in his gut that the disappearances and murders were all connected—including the disappearance of Amanda Hutto, a six-year old girl from Folly Beach who didn’t fit the profile of the known victims.
He hailed a cab and went straight to the nearest rental car dealer, renting the cheapest vehicle they had—a red Ford Focus that would unfortunately make it real easy for everyone to spot him. His Acura had been impounded so they could go over it for evidence. Hopefully, they hadn’t destroyed it during the process. Maybe he’d get the damned thing back soon, but in the meantime, he had to have something to drive and he needed a little more time to consider what to do about his poor little rich girl.
With some luck, her sister Caroline would keep her nose—and her fish-wrap paper—out of his business, although he was pretty sure that wasn’t her style. Well, he would tear down that bridge when he got to it. First things first. He resolved to get home and see if there was anything at all the cops had missed when they had searched his house. Someone had planted evidence to incriminate him and Ian intended to find out who. He had never seen that bag before, nor its contents, but whoever had put the hit bag together had known precisely what to put inside, including the same roll of tape used to tape the victims’ mouth shut and a vial of blue dye, along with various other items.
Pulling onto the expressway, he headed over the Ashley River, toward James Island, shoving thoughts of Augusta Aldridge out of his head.
For her own good.
For his own good.
For better or worse, the deed was done, and now Augusta braced herself for the worst. She drove her mother’s old lemon-yellow vintage Lincoln Town Car onto the gravel drive and stopped in front of their house, cutting off the engine, considering the house.
Right in front, inside a circular garden, a massive oak stood surrounded by shivering azaleas. Through the windshield, Augusta peered up at the ancient tree, which now stood humpbacked and burdened on one side with limbs that stretched toward the ground like a mother swooping up her children. On the other side, where the branches had threatened the roof, they had been lopped off, amputated like the legs and arms of Confederate soldiers.
That was the trouble here, Augusta mused. What most people saw on the outside—the storybook gables peeking through majestic oaks liberally painted with Spanish moss, the gracious wraparound piazza—none of it spoke to the dark secrets tucked inside those old walls.
While some kids might have visions of sugarplums dancing through their skulls, Augusta had entertained images of malaria-stricken women and slave babies laboring in rice fields. That was what growing up around rows of slave quarters did for a child’s imagination. She had never been able to comprehend how Sadie could make her home in that damned overseer’s house. But that was Sadie’s problem, not Augusta’s. She had long ago resigned herself to the fact that it was Sadie’s right to sleep wherever she wished to sleep—and if she happened to want to lay her head where men once slept who had tortured her ancestors . . . then so be it. It wasn’t as though the “big house” didn’t have its own share of troubles—not the least of which had been introduced by the present generation of Aldridges—herself included.
She sighed—an expulsion of breath that was part wistful, part relief and part trepidation.
When she was a kid, magazines like
Southern Living
and
House Beautiful
had come to photograph the aging memorial of days gone by, snapping shots of the colorful drifts of azaleas that surrounded the whitewashed wooden façade . . . the high dormer windows that, to Augusta, had always looked like sinister eyes peering out at the world. Her eyes were drawn upward to the widow’s walk. Its highest point rose nearly forty feet into the trees, its copper weather vane nearly invisible in the blanket of limbs and moss that surrounded it. No one ever went up there anymore, but it was a true widow’s walk, not for show. Access was only available through the attic now, but she and her sisters had used the walk to maintain their suntans. She wondered—not for the first time—how many widows had waited up there for husbands and sons to come hobbling home from the war, with sawed-off limbs and the shadow of death in their eyes.
Tapping her fingers on the steering wheel, she let her thoughts return to Ian.
Had they released him yet?
She inhaled a shaky breath, wondering whether he would call.
What the hell would she say?
For that matter, what would her sisters say when they discovered she’d paid his bail?
Really, she was no different from this house. She offered a façade to the world, and behind that façade were secrets that, if ever shown the light of day, would color everyone’s perception of her. And despite all of Augusta’s best intentions, she seemed to be adding to those secrets day by day. For her sake, she had to believe all those sins could be washed away.
Shoving Ian resolutely out of her thoughts, she studied the house she had come to despise, wondering what part of the renovation to tackle first. Somehow, even with all the drama surrounding them, she was going to
have
to make time to do it—sometime between funerals and aiding and abetting accused murderers. Jesus, what a mess she was! And pretty soon, if she didn’t get to work on the house, she was going to be a broke-ass mess, as well.
Maybe she would call in a contractor tomorrow? She had a few recommendations, but that was as far as she had gotten.
When she’d first considered the task of restoring the old house, she’d approached it resentfully and without any real purpose. In fact, the only thing that had even remotely excited her was the prospect of gutting the sucker—literally—and getting rid of every stick of furniture. Absolutely nothing would have given her greater pleasure than to toss those old Civil War muskets hanging in her mother’s office and the family portraits of people she didn’t really want to be related to into a raging bonfire. But here she was, and after three months of whining over the task her mother had set before her, it was beginning to become important to her to believe this old place could somehow be redeemed . . .
Maybe her mother had known something after all?
Nah, she decided, refusing to give her mother any credit. Florence W. Aldridge had remained completely absent from their lives; she didn’t get to start parenting from the grave.
Plucking her keys out of the ignition, Augusta got out of the car. She slammed the door, locking it. It used to be that you didn’t even think about having to lock your car outside your own front door, but after all that had transpired you couldn’t be too careful.
She paused at the top of the porch steps, looking out over the marsh. There was always a slight breeze this close to the water, and the marsh grasses bowed submissively under the oppressive afternoon sun.
Where will Ian go first? Will he come here? Back to the ruins? He was searching for something, but what?
She’d kept her cell phone near, even though she wasn’t even sure whether she planned to answer. Poor Cody had disappeared from the old abandoned church where she and her sisters had played as kids. Even then the place had seemed sinister. Why were kids drawn to danger?
The same reason adults are,
a little voice in her head pointed out.
What the hell is Ian if not dangerous?
Damn, but she didn’t relish having to explain her actions to her sisters.
She was so lost in her own thoughts, wondering what to say to them, that she didn’t hear the raised voices until Sadie was near the front door.
“Of all people, Savannah! I wouldn’t have expected this from you!”
The door opened abruptly, and Sadie, purse in hand, gave Augusta an angry glare, then, muttering something unintelligible, tried to close the door before Savannah could follow her out.
Savannah stepped out before Sadie could shut it, and Sadie turned and marched down the stairs without waiting for the door to close. Taken by surprise, Augusta moved out of her way and Savannah came out of the house to plead a little desperately, “Sadie, I didn’t go behind your back—please! Listen to me!”
Sadie kept walking, shoulders straight, making her way down the drive toward her house. “If you girls get hungry,” she said without turning, “you know exactly where the fridge is!”
Augusta was pretty sure that was meant for her, since clearly, Sadie wasn’t pleased with Savannah and didn’t give a damn whether she ate or not.
Savannah’s hand went to her hip. The left hand, which was still in a cast after a nasty fall from a kitchen stool, hung helplessly at her side. “Sadie!” she shouted.
Sadie kept walking, ignoring her.
“What the hell was that about?”
Savannah gave Augusta a disgruntled look and turned to open the door, stepping aside so Augusta could precede her into the house. “Obviously, I pissed her off.”
“You?”
“Don’t sound so damned smug!” Savannah chafed.
Her youngest sister was probably the least likely of them to piss anyone off, and Sadie was not the easiest woman to rile. “How the hell did you manage that?”
As the door slammed behind them, Savannah marched by Augusta, straight toward the kitchen. The scent of food made Augusta’s belly grumble. It was only then she realized she hadn’t eaten all day because she had been so stressed out about Ian.
“Hungry?” Savannah asked, ignoring Augusta’s question.
“A little.”
“Sadie was in the middle of cooking. I guess we can finish what she started. Do you feel like opening a bottle of Mom’s good wine?”
Augusta laughed. “Hell, yes!” she declared. “It must have been a doozy of an argument for you to dive into Mom’s stash.”
Savannah peered back at her. “I like wine. I just don’t like drinking,” she said, and gave her a little smile.
In principle, Augusta shared that opinion. She was a long way from being the lush her mother was, but wine did relax her and she wasn’t quite principled enough to say no to a great bottle of vino. In that way, she was a lot like her mother, and if it weren’t for Augusta’s intense dedication to being nothing like Flo, she might have ended up a pill-popping alky like their mother. But it would be a cold day in hell before she took on any of her mother’s traits. Plus, her taste in wine was far too expensive to really indulge it often. Her practical nature wouldn’t allow it.
“I’ll get the wine,” she offered, and set her purse and keys down on the counter, then made her way to the wine fridge her mother had had installed sometime before she died. Although it was new, Augusta knew exactly what was in it and didn’t waste much time making her choice. She grabbed a 2007 Gaja Barbaresco, an Italian red that probably cost her mother about two hundred and some change, but Augusta wasn’t paying for it, so what the hell. This one would be perfect for commiserating. She brought the bottle to the counter and then ferreted out two wineglasses. “Is Caroline home yet?”
Savannah stood at the stove, assessing their abandoned, half-cooked dinner. “Not yet. Do you know anything about making a roux?”
Augusta took out a third wine goblet, but set it on the counter out of the way, eyeing Savannah. “Nope. Caroline does.”
“Well, we can’t wait for her. I’ll have to give it a try.”
Augusta poured wine into one glass and then lifted it, tasting. “It’s just fat and flour, right? Fry the flour in the butter until it looks brown and goopy. We’ll live if it’s not exactly right. We’ve got worse shit to worry about.”
Savannah sighed. “Yeah.” She turned to watch Augusta top off her glass, then pour a second. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Sadie that angry,” she worried.