Page 16 of The Night Before (Savannah 1)

Pausing to wipe her forehead with the hem of her apron, she glanced down the long drive, as if expecting the bearer of bad news, even Satan himself, to appear. But the late morning was deceptively quiet. Too still. Only the lapping of the creek and the buzz of a hornet searching for its nest were audible over the whispers of the ghosts.

Pushing her broom around terra-cotta planters bursting with petunias and marigolds, she kept a wary eye out for palmetto bugs and listened to the raspy voices. Lucille heard them and, she suspected, others did as well; they were too frightened to admit to the existence of the undead.

Caitlyn . . . now that poor child was cursed. Just like her grandma Evelyn . . . another tortured soul. Lucille made a quick sign of the cross over her bosom without breaking stride as she swept. She’d bet a month’s wages that Caitlyn heard the voices, that the dead whispered through her head. As they had with Evelyn.

She paused again. To listen. The lawn mower growled as the gardener cut the grass near the stables. A squirrel scolded from one of the live oak trees, and further away traffic rumbled on a distant highway. Yet, above it all, Lucille heard the sounds of the spirits—quiet, angry voices. She felt the ghosts moving, churning, causing a hot wind to brush against her cheeks. Evil seemed nearer somehow, though Lucille could not pinpoint it; didn’t know its source.

It had started last night.

She’d gone to bed at eleven, as was her usual time, after giving Miss Berneda her final dose of medication and some warm milk with honey. Once Berneda had dozed off and begun to snore, Lucille had pulled the curtains around her bed and eased out of the room. She’d climbed the back staircase to the third floor, the arthritis in her knees complaining as she made her way up each narrowing riser, her breathing exaggerated with the effort. She was getting too old and fat for the hard work she did, and though she was compensated well and she loved the Montgomery family as if it were her own, she would have to retire soon, to Florida maybe to be with her sister, Mabel.

But not as long as Berneda Montgomery drew a breath. Lucille had promised Berneda’s husband that she would take care of his wife for the rest of Berneda’s years. With the good Lord’s blessing, large doses of Extra Strength Excedrin, a shot of brandy each night and her own pacemaker keeping her tired heart beating regularly, Lucille intended to keep her vow to Cameron Montgomery even though he’d been a contemptible son of a bitch if ever there was one. Lord knew none of Berneda’s children were capable of caring for their ailing mother. They all thought Berneda’s pacemaker and nitroglycerine pills could ward off her heart problems, but Lucille knew better. Death was clamoring for Berneda Montgomery, and once he’d started calling, there was no stopping the bastard.

She snorted as she lifted the dustpan and glared at the hot sun inching its way across the clear sky. All those kids and not one worth his or her salt.

Then again, who was she to point fingers? It wasn’t as if her own daughter was much better. No, Marta, bless her thoughtless heart, was another one of this generation who did as she pleased, letting the chips fall where they may, “doing her own thing,” leaving destruction in her wake and never once looking back. Even now. She was supposed to have visited, but never did, was supposedly dating some hotshot cop named Montoya in New Orleans, but that must’ve gone south, too, as he’d called looking for her. That was the trouble with Marta. She was a flake. But then that wasn’t a surprise. Lucille had spent over thirty years questioning her own foolish decisions. Decisions she’d made before Marta had been conceived. Even now, Lucille felt sharp shards of guilt about her only child. She loved her daughter with all of her guilty heart and had been Marta’s single support since the kid was five. Yet, sometimes it seemed the bad had outweighed the good.

But one would have thought, with all the children Berneda and Cameron Montgomery had brought into this world, one of them would have turned out decent enough. Lucille tossed the contents of the dustpan over the porch rail, the debris falling to a growing pile beneath a thick wisteria vine that twisted and turned as it curled around the eaves. What chance did any of the Montgomery progeny have with all the bad blood that trickled through their veins? None, that’s what.

She checked on the sun tea she had brewing on the porch railing. Sunlight glinted against the glass jar. Like buoyant bodies on a tepid sea, the bags floated and danced in the amber liquid.

From inside the house, the phone jangled.

Lucille’s old heart missed a beat.

No one had to tell her it was bad news.

“Let me get this straight,” Troy said as he folded his suit jacket over the back of one of the chairs in Caitlyn’s kitchen. “Josh is dead. It could be suicide or it might be homicide. The police are still trying to figure out which. Have I got that much right?”

“Yes.” Caitlyn poured fresh water into Oscar’s dish and hoped she didn’t appear as ragged as she felt. She’d called her brother at Montgomery Bank and Trust as soon as Detectives Reed and Morrisette had driven away. Two hours later, after getting her message and calling her back, he’d arrived, made his way through the cluster of reporters hovering near the front gate and landed here, looking more pissed than sad that his brother-in-law was dead.

As Detective Reed had predicted, television crews and reporters for the local papers had shown up shortly after the police had left, knocked on her door, and when she’d refused to answer, taken up residence on the sidewalk in front of her house. She’d caught a glimpse of one slim woman in a smart purple dress and black scarf standing near her front gate while a cameraman filmed her. Caitlyn’s stomach clenched. Not again. No cameras. No reporters. No questions about the intimate details of my life.

“Can’t they tell whether someone did him in or he killed himself?” Troy asked, jarring her back to the here and now. Oh, God, she had to pull herself together; she couldn’t let anyone, not even Troy, know about her own fears.

“Oh . . . yes, I mean . . . I’m sure they can. It just takes time.”

Troy snorted his disgust and jingled his keys in the pocket of his slacks. “Savannah’s finest. You didn’t tell them anything, did you?” Hard blue eyes examined hers, looked for a crack, for the lie.

“I couldn’t. I don’t know anything.” Except that there was blood smeared upstairs. So damned much blood. It wasn’t Josh’s lifeblood. It couldn’t be! She slid into one of the chairs, exhausted and scared to death.

“But you’ve got to be one of their prime suspects,” Troy said, frowning. His hair was as dark as hers, just the hint of gray visible at his temples. He stood arrow-straight, wide shoulders and slim hips, a man of thirty-three in excellent shape. “It’s no big secret that he was having an affair and going to divorce you.”

“Nice, Troy,” she muttered. “No reason to sugarcoat things.”

“Exactly. What you’ve got on your hands here is a crisis.”

“Me?” she asked, then saw the white lines bracketing his lips. “What’re you saying? That I killed Josh?”

“Of course not.”

Still, she was burned. “You know, I could use a little support. It’s been a helluva day and it’s not over yet.” Tears blistered her eyes, but she didn’t swipe at them. Wouldn’t give in. Oscar, sensing a fight, slunk to his favorite spot under the table.

Troy’s keys jangled as he stared outside to the back garden. “I’m sorry. I . . . I’m not very good in the support department.”

“No argument there.”

“But you do have to face the fact that you’re an obvious suspect.” Plowing the fingers of both hands through his hair, he let out a world-weary sigh. As if being the only living Montgomery male was sometimes too much to bear. “Maybe you should move home for a while.”

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