The Kill (30 page)

“Yeah, I get that. But so quickly? And who told? I sure didn’t. You didn’t. Both Margaret and Thompson agreed to keep quiet about it.”

The look Manning gave her said
so what?
“Michael, Larry, Doc Paley, Kevin.”

“Who is Kevin?”

“The blacksmith. Look, Abby, does it really matter? Someone obviously said something to someone. Nothing we can do about it now.”

Manning’s tone was clipped, as if it was an effort to get the words out. Abigale knew she should drop it, let him get some rest. Still, she had to ask. “What if someone didn’t tell Percy?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if he already knew.”

His eyes narrowed. “What—you think Percy tampered with Richard’s saddle? No. No way.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. How did you come up with that, anyway? Just because Percy knows I was riding in Richard’s saddle, you think that means he cut the billet straps? That’s as far-fetched as Mother suggesting I’m a suspect in Richard’s murder because I can’t remember what I did that afternoon.” Manning scowled at her. “Jesus Christ, Abby.”

“That’s not the only reason,” Abigale said, regretting that she’d ever brought it up. “It’s also something Smitty told me the other night.”

She repeated what Smitty had told her about Percy’s land deal. Halfway through, Manning was already shaking his head. “Percy’s going to sell that property one way or the other, Abby. If Charles Jenner doesn’t get his equestrian subdivision approved, Percy will sell it to someone else. It’s a valuable piece of property. There are other buyers out there.”

Abigale held her hands up in surrender. “Okay. I didn’t realize Percy had so many other options. Smitty made it sound like it was a make-or-break deal with Charles Jenner and they really needed Uncle Richard’s help.”

“Maybe for Jenner, but not for Percy. Besides, even if it was, Percy would never do something like that.”

“All right. I’m sorry I brought it up. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You didn’t upset me. I’m just pissed off. I feel like shit.” He raised his arm in the air. “And I can’t stand this goddamned cast.”

Abigale looked at her watch. “You still have two hours before you can take more Vicodin. Why don’t you lie down and elevate your arm for a little while?”

“And what will you do, sit there and watch me sleep?”

“Do you have Internet access?”

He nodded.

“Say no more.”

A
bigale sank onto the couch, sighing as the deep cushions swallowed her with a soft caress. She pulled her MacBook onto her lap and watched firelight flicker off the screen as the computer booted up. She’d won the fight with Manning about who would sleep on the couch, but he’d insisted on starting a fire for her before he’d trod wearily off to bed.

She hoped he’d be able to sleep for awhile. He’d been snoring softly when she’d last checked on him. And she’d been able to cajole him into swallowing half a bowl of chicken noodle soup when he’d taken his pain meds, so with any luck he wouldn’t get nauseated again.

Abigale plugged the cable from her camera into the laptop and waited for the pictures to load. She’d caught up on her email earlier when Manning was resting, spent some time poking around the Internet. Googled Percy Fletcher, Charles and Tiffanie Jenner. Found a slew of articles about the proposed development. She’d discovered a group called Foxhunters Online and followed a long string of discussions about her uncle’s murder. She’d had no idea how well-known and well-loved her uncle was. And not just in Middleburg. There were posts from foxhunters in Tennessee and Nebraska. Even one from Ireland.

Most of the online chatter seemed to take it as fact that he’d been murdered by a “Hispanic road worker,” but the discussion flared more than once into accusations of racial profiling. There was one particularly fiery post chastising people for convicting Dario Reyes before he’d even been located by the police and given the opportunity to speak out. It concluded by cautioning people to wait and see, that things are often not as they appear. Almost as if the writer knew something. The post was from a woman identified only as Michelle, with an email address of
[email protected]
. Could it be the same Michelle she’d met that morning, Michelle de Becque?
Chiencheval
. Dog and horse in French. It was certainly possible. Of course, it was just as likely the post was from France, given that the Internet group was international. Abigale sent an email message, identifying herself and asking if the woman would be willing to talk to her privately.

One by one, the images from Abigale’s camera popped up on the screen and she saved them all to the hard drive. The shots of the soldier on the flight from Ramstein had turned out well. She spent a few minutes adjusting the brightness on the picture of the soldier holding his son’s photo, corrected a shadow on his face. She smiled as she noticed a soldier seated across the aisle saluting the injured soldier.
Nice
. She hadn’t noticed that when she’d snapped the shot. No surprise. When she focused on a subject in her lens, she blocked out everything happening around her. A skill she’d learned from a veteran photojournalist in Iraq. She wrote a short email to the soldier wishing him luck and attached the photographs.

Abigale scrolled to the end of the downloaded photos, to the shots she’d taken down by the pond. She’d snapped a couple of Manning without him knowing, and she clicked on the first one, enlarging it to full screen. She zoomed in on his face. There was no denying Manning still took her breath away. He wasn’t exactly classically handsome. His hair was too unruly, his nose a tad crooked from when he’d broken it as a kid, and a faint scar ran the length of his right jaw. But his eyes were deep enough to drown in. The curve of his lips held the promise of a kiss. She advanced to a shot of Manning leaning against a willow tree, his arms folded across his chest. His shoulders looked about a mile wide.

“God, get a grip,” she muttered, jabbing at the keyboard to exit full-screen mode. She viewed the shots of the blue heron, a couple of which were nice. The shots of the red fox in the field at Dartmoor Glebe captured the moment just as she’d hoped they would. Her mother would love them. She scrolled up to the shots she’d taken in the woods behind Margaret’s. The shot of the swimming rock was bathed in soft morning light, the river glistening gently in the background. Beautiful.

“What are you looking at?” Manning asked. His voice, deepened by sleep, seemed to rumble across the quiet room.

Abigale jumped. “God, Manning! You scared me. What are you doing up?”

“I couldn’t sleep.” He rubbed his eyes as he flopped down next to her on the couch. He wore a pair of orange UVA athletic shorts and a gray T-shirt. He propped up his bare feet on the coffee table. “Are those the pictures you took at the pond today?”

Abigale snapped the laptop lid down. “It’s just a hodgepodge of photos.”

“Can I see?”

She splayed her hands across the lid, embarrassed for him to see the shots she’d taken of him by the pond. “I still need to edit them.”

“I don’t care if they’re not edited.” He grabbed the lid with the thumb and forefinger of his broken arm and tugged it open a couple of inches.

Abigale slid her hand over his, stopped him.

“What the hell?” Manning stared at her for a minute, then grunted, pulling his hand away with a hollow laugh. “Never mind, I get it.”

“You get what?”

“You were looking at the photo you got on your cell tonight. The one with your boyfriend in it.”

“My boyfriend?”

“Yeah.
Emilio.”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“No?”

“No.”

He smiled. “Does he know that?”

“Screw you, Manning. For the record, we broke up before I left Kabul. And I wasn’t looking at photos of him.” She raised the lid. “I was viewing the photos I’ve taken in Virginia to select some to send to my mother.”

Manning’s eyes shifted to the screen. “That’s the river behind Mother’s.” He peered closer. “Is that our swimming rock?”

Abigale nodded. “I took a hike yesterday morning and snapped a bunch of shots. Here, I’ll go back to the beginning.” She scrolled back to the first picture and enlarged it.

“Can you do a slide show?”

“Sure.” She clicked it on automatic and slid the computer over to Manning.

He settled lower into the cushions and raised his knees. The legs of his nylon shorts slid back, revealing well-muscled thighs. Manning balanced the computer on his lap and angled it slightly in Abigale’s direction, shifting so his shoulder rested against hers.

Abigale’s stomach clenched as the pictures slowly advanced toward the shots she’d snapped of the cross. She felt the muscles in Manning’s arm stiffen, but neither of them said anything as the photos of the cross faded one into the other on the screen. She eased out a breath when the scene shifted to the shots of the fox. The corners of Manning’s mouth hinted at a smile when he saw the snapshots of him by the pond. When the slide show ended, Manning shut the laptop lid and set the computer on the cushion next to him.

“Those are nice,” he said. “You obviously have a gift for photography. Something beyond what you learned at Cornell.”

“Actually, I never took a photography class at Cornell.”

“I thought you did.”

She shook her head. “I begged my father to let me study photography, but he wouldn’t even discuss it. As far as he was concerned, it was the Cornell Hotel School or no school.”

“So where did you get your training?”

“I joined the staff at
The Cornell Daily Sun
. All of my photography training was strictly hands-on.”

He arched an eyebrow. “That’s impressive. I hope you gave the
Sun
credit when you won your Pulitzer.”

She smiled.

A log settled in the fireplace, scattering sparks across the hearth. Manning gazed thoughtfully at the fire. The reflection from the flames danced in his eyes. “I came to see you once at Cornell.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. I played polo for UVA and we had a match at Cornell. I knew you were going to school there, so I decided to look you up.”

“But you never found me.”

“Yes, I did.”

She frowned. “I don’t understand.”

Manning rubbed his hand along his jaw. “Your roommate answered the phone and told me you were studying outside at—what’s it called—the hill?”

“The slope.”

“Right. The slope. So I went there.”

“And?” Abigale demanded when he didn’t continue.

“And I saw you with a guy. You were lying on a blanket with your books all spread out, but you weren’t doing a lot of studying. I found out later he was your fiancé.”

Abigale’s chest ached, imagining how Manning must have felt that day. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

He shrugged. “You looked so happy. I figured there was no point. But, for the record,” he cracked a grin, “we beat the hell out of Cornell in the polo match that day.”

She smiled, her thoughts drifting back to her time at Cornell. Manning was right; she had been happy there. Happy to be in America, at Cornell, on staff at the
Sun
. Happy with Peter. Not with the same manic, head-over-heels, partners-in-crime passion she’d had with Manning. But Peter was her rock. An island to cling to as the stormy future her father had crafted swirled around her, threatening to suck her under.

“What did your father say when he found out you were pursuing photography despite his wishes?” Manning asked.

“He didn’t. My father was oblivious. As far as he knew, I was happily on track to spend my life as an hotelier.”

“He must have figured it out at some point. You’re famous.”

“Hardly,” Abigale said, rolling her eyes. “My father did eventually learn about my passion for photography, but it wasn’t until after I graduated from Cornell. When he discovered Peter, my fiancé, had the passion for the hotel business that I lacked, he tagged his future son-in-law as his heir-apparent to run the hotel. Then my father no longer had a reason to dictate my future. At least not my career.”

“So he let you become a photojournalist and ship off to a war zone?”

“Are you kidding? I started out interning for a Swiss fashion magazine. It wasn’t until after my father’s death that I was free to pursue photojournalism.”

Manning’s expression darkened. “I’m sorry about your father. And your fiancé. I wanted to write you—started to several times—but decided I was probably the last person you wanted to hear from. That must have been hell for you and your mother. You weren’t skiing with them when it happened, were you?”

“No. It was my father, Peter, and six of our hotel guests. Americans. The avalanche danger was high that day and my mother begged my father not to go. She tried to talk him into skiing at St. Moritz, only sixty kilometers away. But helicopter skiers are adrenaline junkies. The risk only seemed to fuel their enthusiasm, so my father agreed to take them. Two of the Americans died along with Peter and my father.”

“Jesus.”

“The conversation between my parents wasn’t unlike many I heard between Margaret and Uncle Richard, arguing about whether the footing was too treacherous to hunt on a given day.” She gave a hollow laugh, remembering. “Uncle Richard used to say he owed it to the hunt members to go out, the same argument my father made. And Margaret’s response was always the same as my mother’s: that he owed it to the hunt members not to risk their necks hunting in sloppy footing. The only difference is Uncle Richard usually had the sense to yield to Margaret’s better judgment. My father didn’t. I can still picture my mother that day, framed in the arched front door of our hotel as my father drove away. She stared after the van until it disappeared beyond the shadow of the castle, no doubt hoping he’d change his mind.”