Page 26 of The Night Before (Savannah 1)

were from Kelly’s little cabin on the river.

Upstairs, she threw on a sleeveless cotton dress that she covered with a lightweight but long-sleeved sweater, then walked across the hall to her den.

Snagging her keys from her desk, she figured her hair would dry on the way to Oak Hill. But she stopped when she saw the digital readout of her office clock. It was correct. Hadn’t lost so much as a minute of time. Showed no sign of a power interruption.

Unlike the clock radio in her bedroom.

She looked at the other clocks in the house. All were keeping perfect time. There was no sign of any interruption of electricity to them.

The hairs on the back of her neck rose.

If there hadn’t been a power outage, then there had been some kind of power interrupt, as if the clock had been unplugged. But when she’d cleaned up earlier in the day, the plug had been firmly in the light socket. And it wasn’t that particular socket because the lamp, attached to the same source, had been just fine.

Someone unplugged the clock either on purpose or by accident and then, in his hurry to leave, forgot to reset it.

Who? Why? And for God’s sake, what did it have to do with the blood that had been spattered all over her bedroom?

A fleeting image burned behind her eyes.

The bar. Loud music. People laughing, talking, packed in so close you couldn’t move. Caitlyn sat in a booth, two drinks in front of her, waiting, looking at her watch, noticing the bartender staring at her through the crowd, sipping one drink . . . then another . . . come on, Kelly. Come on. Where the hell are you?

The image shrank away as quickly as it had appeared, and Caitlyn was left knowing no more of what happened than before. But she couldn’t dwell on it now. Her family was expecting her.

She double-checked that the doors were locked, then was out the door and on the road, driving east out of the city, glancing in her rearview mirror to make sure no one from the press or police was following her.

“You’re paranoid,” she muttered, catching her reflection in the rearview mirror as she stopped at a traffic light. The other vehicles seemed innocuous, no dark van or SUV with tinted windows hovering a few cars behind. She made a few extra jogs though the shady, narrow streets just to be sure, then berated herself for her apprehension. As she turned onto the main highway and cruised out of the city limits, she stepped on it, needing to get out of the city, away from the police, away from the press, away from the blackness that surrounded last night.

She pushed the speed limit, her thoughts spinning as rapidly as the wheels of her Lexus. So why hadn’t Kelly called? she wondered, flipping down the visor.

Maybe she did. While you were out walking Oscar. Or while you were in the shower. You were the one who turned off the ringer on the phone. There’s a chance that Kelly was one of the sixteen calls, you know.

Gnawing on her lower lip, Caitlyn realized her mistake. She should have checked the messages and tried once more to catch her sister before she faced their mother. Now, she’d have to wait several hours and she didn’t dare mention Kelly’s name at Oak Hill.

Caitlyn’s fingers tightened over the steering wheel and her palms began to sweat as the suburbs gave way to fields and marshes. She shoved in a Springsteen CD and tried to get lost in the music of the E Street Band, but it proved impossible. She couldn’t forget that Josh had been killed, that the police seemed to think she was somehow involved, and even she herself couldn’t explain her whereabouts or actions at the time of his death.

And all that blood in your room . . . how did it get there? Drained from your body? Come on. If you’d lost that much, you would be in a hospital right now, probably on the receiving end of a trasfusion.

She swallowed hard, nearly missed a corner, the car’s wheels sliding in loose gravel strewn upon the road’s shoulder. Heart racing, she eased off the gas.

So whose blood was it? Josh’s? But he was blocks away in his own house.

Maybe you moved the body.

Maybe you moved it in this car.

Her stomach clenched.

Sweat dotted her forehead and she slid a glance into the back seat. No dark stains. Nor on the passenger side. Of course she hadn’t killed Josh and taken him home. What was she thinking? This was crazy. Nuts.

Just like Grandma Evelyn.

She began to tremble. First her abdomen, then her calves. Don’t do this . . . don’t think this way. She concentrated on the road. The ribbon of asphalt with its middle broken stripe, up and down, over small rises and into shallow gullies. Her breathing was coming in short gasps. Horrid images sped through her mind. A quick vision of Josh at his desk, of the blood. On the corner of the desk was a copy of the damned lawsuit claiming she’d been negligent in their child’s death.

Negligent! As if Jamie hadn’t been everything to her; the very reason for her life. “Bastard!” she spat, tears beginning to well as she thought of the hours she’d spent at her daughter’s bedside, the mad rush she’d made to the hospital, the mind-numbing terror as the doctors and nurses in the ER tried and failed to get her precious baby to respond and then . . . then . . . the horrible words, wrapped in sympathetic looks, kind gestures, a gentle touch on her arm when she was told that Jamie had “passed on.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Bandeaux,” Dr. Vogette had said softly to her in the hospital’s waiting room with its soothing blue and green couches, potted palms and piped-in music. His expression had been sober, his eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses, concerned. “Sometimes this happens with a virus. We did everything possible . . .”

“No,” she said vehemently, nearly veering off the road. “No, you didn’t, you bastard. None of you did all you could!”

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