Page 102 of The Night Before (Savannah 1)

“No!” She sat bolt upright, the towel falling away, her damp skin exposed to the air. This was all just a bad, macabre joke. Shaking, she tried to get to her feet. Couldn’t. The room seemed darker, and she remembered the bloodstains that had smeared the walls that Saturday morning . . . the handprints on the door casings. The smears on the curtains. The sticky pool on the floor.

Her head pounded. Her heart raced.

When the bough breaks

The cradle will fall

Down will come baby

Cradle and all.

Tears rained from her eyes. She couldn’t move as the blackness came and above it all, in the faintest of childish whispers, she heard her daughter’s voice.

“Mommy? Mommy? Where are you?”

Twenty-Five

In his office, a cold, congealed cup of coffee sitting on a stack of unread policies and procedures just handed down from the brass, Reed studied his list of suspects in the Joshua Bandeaux murder. Not suicide. Murder.

The list was long enough. More than long enough. He scanned the now-familiar names. All the Montgomerys were included along with the Biscaynes, Naomi Crisman, Maude Havenbrooke Bandeaux Springer, Gil Havenbrooke, Lucille Vasquez, Flynn Donahue, Bandeaux’s clients, his ex-partner, Al Fitzgerald, Morrisette’s friend Millie Torme . . .

Pretty damned much half the citizens of Savannah.

But most of them did have alibis that were confirmed. He’d had people working around the clock checking and double-checking, and he’d narrowed the field considerably to close friends and, of course, the Montgomery family. Even Millie Torme had checked out, and though she’d expressed no regret at Bandeaux’s untimely passing, she’d sworn she’d been spending the weekend with her feeble mother in Tallahassee. Which had checked out, unless all the senior citizens in Laurelhurst Adult Community happened to be consummate liars.

Millie had also indicated that Morrisette had never approved of her fling with Josh Bandeaux, had insisted that Morrisette hadn’t had her own quickie affair with the cad. But Reed, suspicious by nature, wasn’t convinced. Not with Morrisette’s track record. As far as he was concerned, the jury was still out on that one.

However, he had a new little wrinkle in the Bandeaux case. Some of the suspects who had wanted The Bandit dead would have had no reason to kill Berneda Montgomery or to make an attempt on Amanda Montgomery Drummond’s life, at least none that he knew of.

But the others?

Who the hell knew?

More than half had O-positive blood, and the department wasn’t even certain that the secondary blood at the scene had been spilled that night. Even the maid, Estelle Pontiac, couldn’t convincingly say that the few drops hadn’t been in the den earlier.

The person most tightly connected to the deceased was, of course, Caitlyn Bandeaux. She had talked to or been seen with each of the victims and potential victims within forty-eight hours of their untimely demises. She had called Bandeaux on the night he was murdered. Her car, or one like it, had been spotted at the scene by the neighbor. It seemed as if she was the person who had last seen him alive. The police had gone over Bandeaux’s last forty-eight hours and nothing had been out of the ordinary. He’d seemed normal, according to his secretary, whatever the hell that meant. Then there was the evidence. Caitlyn Bandeaux wore the kind of lipstick smudged on the wineglass in his dishwasher, she had a dog with hairs that probably matched those found in the den. Her damned blood type had been found mixed with that of Bandeaux. Her fingerprints had been found on the premises, though she had, once upon a time, lived there and visited often enough. Probably with that damned mutt of a dog. The yappy little thing had belonged to Josh Bandeaux once as well.

There wasn’t a lot of hard evidence, no murder weapon, no witness to a fight, no accusations, no DNA yet, but there was the divorce and wrongful death suit, and she did have a history of mental problems. He figured he had enough circumstantial evidence to arrest her and take the case to the grand jury, but he would like something more. A substantial link that would make the case airtight.

As for Berneda Montgomery’s death, no one suspicious had been at the hospital. But Caitlyn Bandeaux, along with her brother and sister, had been at Oak Hill, the Montgomery mansion by the river, and any one of them could have doctored the nitroglycerine tablets.

But someone else could have done it, as well. The doctor, or an intruder, a repairman or servant.

Rubbing the back of his neck, he considered bumming a cigarette from Morrisette, but fought the urge. He’d quit once before and then, after the debacle in San Francisco, had started up again. It had only taken one drag and he was hooked, doomed to the weeks of nicotine withdrawal once more when he’d quit again, just before rejoining the force here in Savannah.

He walked into Morrisette’s office and found her talking on the phone.

“. . . okay, okay, I’ll be there. Give me twenty minutes.” She hung up and rolled her eyes expressively.

“I’ve got to go home. Looks like Priscilla might have a case of the chicken pox. It’s a big panic. The sitter’s freaking out.” Morrisette was picking up her purse. “I’ll be back once I calm her down. Maybe I can find someone else . . . someone who’s not afraid of a damned virus to watch the kids. Oh, shit . . . Oh! This is such a pain.” She reached into her purse and scrounged in the bottom until she came up with two quarters and a ruined piece of gum. “At this rate I’ll be in the poorhouse by the end of the month and the kids’ll be rich, collecting fucking dividends on their stocks.” Wincing at her own language, she pulled another quarter from her fringed bag and dropped all three in the pencil shelf of her desk drawer. The coins joined enough change to buy beer for the department for a week—well, maybe for one round. “Don’t say anything, okay?” she asked as the quarters clinked together when she slammed the drawer shut. She tossed the stick of gum into the trash. “At least I’m trying self-improvement.”

“And for once it’s not another piercing.”

“You know, Reed,” she started, shooting him a look that had made stronger men cower, “there are other body parts that could be used for adding metal. And it’s not just a female thing. For Christmas I think I’ll get you an engraved dick stud and it’ll either say ‘This dick’s a stud’ or ‘This stud’s a dick.’ Depends on my mood. That is if you don’t piss me off. And what’s the chance of that? Zero? And piss is not a swear word.”

“If you say so.”

“I do,” she muttered irritably. “Now, did you want something or did you drop by just to yank my chain?” she asked as they headed through the reception area filled with desks and cops. Telephones jangled, pagers beeped and conversation buzzed over the hum of computers and the shuffle of feet. They walked toward an outside entrance, passing a couple of beat cops escorting a surly-looking suspect with stringy hair, dirty jeans and a don’t-fuck-with-me expression tattooed over his face. His hands had been cuffed behind his back and he reeked of booze as he struggled to walk without stumbling.

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