Page 31 of The Night Before (Savannah 1)

“I don’t even get it. Hello Kitty?”

“I forgot you lived on another planet.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Forget it. You don’t have kids. You’re out of it. The point is, I should never have agreed to the deal. Now they chase me around waiting for me to fuc–screw up. Damn! Oh, geez . . .” She rolled her eyes. “I figure I’ll save enough money this year to get me and the kids to Disney World.”

He leaned back in his chair until it creaked. “You had something to say about the Montgomerys.”

“Boy howdy.” She shook her head. “Talk about nut cases! It’s one after another. It goes back for generations. There’s a history of major screws loose in that family. And tragedy. Hunting accidents, boating accidents, car accidents and enough scandals to make Jerry Springer salivate. It’s like a fuc–an effin’ soap opera! Did you know that there was a whole other side of the family? We’re not talkin’ a bastard or two. No way. This is just all kinda kinky.

“Cameron Montgomery, Caitlyn’s father and heir to the cotton and shipping fortune, had himself another family. Right around here.” She swirled one long finger in the air, apparently to indicate Savannah. “Not only did Cameron have seven kids with his wife, but he managed to have another one or two, maybe more, with a woman named Copper Biscayne, a low-rent sort who lived out of town. She’s dead, by the way, along with a whole lotta other people who were related to the Montgomerys. Josh Bandeaux is just the latest in a long line of casualties.”

“Any others that look like suicides?” Reed asked.

“Now you think he killed himself?”

He shook his head. “The jury’s still out on that one. Just thinking aloud. We know that someone was with him that night; we just don’t know if whoever it was decided to kill him.”

“You think someone staged the thing, to make it look like a suicide.”

“Just one of the possibilities,” he said, reminding himself. He rubbed the back of his neck. “But we’ll find out more when we get the autopsy report and the crime scene results. My guess is there’ll be some evidence pointing to the missus. She had means, motive and opportunity and she can’t scare up even a flimsy alibi.”

“I’m not sure you gave her the opportunity.”

“I asked her where she was last night and she said she was out. That was about it.”

“You didn’t press the issue.”

“We weren’t sure we were dealing with a murder.”

“We still aren’t.”

“But we do know they were separated, there was another woman, he wanted a divorce and her money and he was filing a civil wrongful death suit against her for the kid’s death. A neighbor saw her car at the scene.”

“But,” Sylvie urged. “I hear it in your voice, Reed—there’s a ‘but’ coming.”

He picked up a pen and clicked it as he thought. “But she’d have to have been one stupid killer to leave so many clues at the scene. She didn’t strike me as stupid.”

“Maybe she was freaked. Didn’t mean to kill him and then took off.”

“Didn’t mean to kill him? With his wrists slit? That’s not the same as a gun going off accidentally in a struggle. Did you see the man’s arms? Whoever slit them—and I’m not ruling out the victim—intended for him to bleed to death.” He narrowed his eyes on his partner. “There’s something about this that doesn’t feel right.”

“Something? Try nothing,” Sylvie said, as she reached into her pocket for her pager. Frowning at the numeric display, she started for the door. “Nothing about it feels right. Yet. But it will. We’ll figure it out.”

“You think so?”

She glanced over her shoulder and threw him a smile. “Effin’-A.”

“What a pity,” Sugar Biscayne muttered sarcastically, smirking as she watched the news and slid her jeans and panties over her hips and down her legs. “Another bastard bites the dust.” She kicked the faded Levi’s into a corner of her bedroom and slipped into a red thong and short shorts that barely covered her butt. The reporter was going on and on about Josh Bandeaux as if he was some kind of Savannah god or something. Yeah, right. Swirling the remains of her drink, she felt a slight buzz. Probably from the vodka, but it didn’t hurt that another Montgomery pig had bought the farm. And Bandeaux was the worst, weaseling into the family, trying to cozy up to the money. What a shit. She raised her glass in a mock toast. “Enjoy hell, you sick son of a bitch.”

A fan moved hot air from one end of the master bedroom to the other, whirring so loudly she could barely hear the television, where the screen was filled with an image of Bandeaux at the annual policeman’s ball. Handsome prick. Sexy as hell. Yeah, and dead as a doornail. That thought gave her a little bit of pleasure as she stared at the screen.

Dressed in what looked like a designer black tuxedo with a shirt that required no tie, Bandeaux clenched a drink in one hand and flashed his sexy grin straight at the lens of the camera. God, he loved the limelight. More than one Savannah woman had found that smile irresistible. Sugar thought that it was the embodiment of evil.

She took another drink. Felt the cold vodka slide down her esophagus to hit her stomach in a burst of flame. She shuddered, remembering how she’d felt when she’d heard the news that Caitlyn Montgomery had married the slimeball. All because Caitlyn had been naive and stupid enough to let herself get pregnant. How in the hell did that happen these days?

Go figure.

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