Page 36 of The Night Before (Savannah 1)

She picked up the hand-held phone and walked into the living room where the flowers she’d bought last week were beginning to fade and drop petals on the coffee table. Falling into the soft cushions of the couch, Caitlyn glanced over at the baby grand. A framed picture of Jamie rested upon the glossy piano. Oh, sweet, sweet baby.

Blessed with curly brown hair, eyes as clear and blue as a June sky, and a button nose with freckles upon its bridge, Jamie had been a chubby, adorable imp. In the photograph she was staring over the photographer’s head, looking skyward, her hands clasped, her smile showing off tiny teeth . . . the teeth that had made her cranky and drool as they’d appeared. Caitlyn’s throat thickened. Was it possible that she was gone . . . so precious a life cut short after only three impossibly brief years?

Caitlyn remembered how quickly a runny nose had become a fever, the virus attacking so swiftly it had been frightening. Friday night. By Saturday morning, Jamie had been listless. Caitlyn called the pediatrician’s office, but it had been closed. By afternoon, Jamie was worse and Caitlyn had taken her to the hospital where, despite the efforts of an emergency room team, her only child had died from a high fever and an unexplained virus. Caitlyn had never forgiven God.

“. . . so leave a message.” Kelly’s recorded message jolted her out of her reverie. She realized that tears were drizzling silently down her face and her heart was as heavy as an anvil, sitting deep in her chest, aching so badly she could barely breathe. She clicked off the phone. Kelly was probably on a buying trip. The truth of the matter was that her twin was gone more often than she was around. No doubt because of the family’s attitude toward her. It works both ways. Kelly’s attitude about the Montgomery clan is far from stellar.

So what should she do now?

Josh was dead.

Murdered or the victim of suicide.

Josh whom she had loved so passionately.

Josh who had cheated on her.

Josh who was the father of her only child.

Josh, who in his anger, rage and grief, had lashed out at Caitlyn both privately and publicly, insisting she was an unfit mother and screaming that she should be tried for criminal negligence if nothing else.

Josh who was going to make good his threats with the wrongful death suit. Shivering, she rubbed her shoulders and the slashes upon her wrists pulled tight and itched beneath their bandages.

She stared at the cold fireplace and tried to concentrate. Last night Kelly had left a message on her cell and suggested they meet downtown. Yes, that was right. Caitlyn had been bored out of her mind, creating a website that was driving her nuts, so she’d leapt at the chance to get out of the house. She’d thrown on a pair of khakis and a T-shirt with an open blouse as a jacket, then driven to the waterfront . . . and then . . . she’d gone into the bar. One Kelly had discovered. The Swamp.

She leaned back and felt a lump between the cushions, and she dug her fingers down to find her cell phone, turned off as usual, hidden in the couch. She didn’t stop to wonder how it had ended up here in the living room. Didn’t care. She switched it on. The battery was fading, nearly dead, but she was able to read the Caller ID and sure enough, Amanda, as she’d said earlier at Oak Hill, had left a message.

The other one was from Kelly.

She dialed the message retrieval number and heard Amanda’s exasperated voice. “Jesus, don’t you ever have this turned on, Caitlyn? I’m trying to get hold of you. I heard about Josh and I’m really sorry. Let me know what I can do. Call me back.”

Caitlyn erased the message and then, clear as a bell, Kelly’s recording played. “Caitlyn. It’s me. I got your message, but, as usual, you don’t have this damned phone on. Call me back when you can. I’ll be in and out, got to leave town on a buying trip for a couple of days, but I’ll call you back. Pull yourself together, okay? I know you feel awful about Josh, but come on, let’s face it, the bastard’s death isn’t that much of a loss.”

“Let me get this straight,” Reed said as Gerard St. Claire yanked off his latex gloves and discarded them into a trash can that was marked for medical waste. A glum assistant wearing earphones was cleaning off the stainless steel table in the autopsy room, getting ready for another corpse. It had been a slow weekend for deaths, and Bandeaux’s case had been given top priority; hence the quick results. “You’re saying that Bandeaux died from loss of blood, right?”

“His body was pretty much drained.” The medical examiner pulled off his cap, dropped it into a basket of dirty laundry and was left in his scrubs. The rooms smelled of disinfectant and formaldehyde, death and sweat despite the cool temperature. Stainless steel sinks, tables and equipment gleamed starkly against old tile and dull paint. “And, from what the crime scene team has put together, some of it’s missing.”

Reed stopped short. “Missing? How?”

“Not enough blood was found at the scene to account for his blood loss. Not even with evaporation. So unless Bandeaux gave a gallon at a local blood bank or came up against a vampire or has a pooch with a blood thirst, we’ve got ourselves a problem. Some of the blood is missing.”

“As in stolen?” That didn’t make any sense. “What if the body was moved?”

“It wasn’t. Diane Moses and I agree on that one, and you know that we never see eye to eye.”

“So he could have lost blood somewhere else . . . and made it back home . . . then lost more.”

“No blood trail. And I don’t think so. Because of rigor and the way the blood settled in his body and his loss of body function—the urine that had leaked to the floor—I’d bet he died at the desk.” St. Claire ran his hands over his forehead. His bristly white hair showed a little sweat. “He lost most of the blood through the cuts that were different than the others—they snipped through a small artery on each wrist. The others were pretty superficial and were made after the initial cuts.”

“To make us think it was a suicide.”

“That’s the way I see it.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “And that’s not the only puzzle we’ve got going on with Bandeaux. It looks like old Josh was allergic to something, perhaps the sulfites in a domestic wine. He had a severe reaction, went into anaphylactic shock, would probably have died from it if left alone, but we’re still looking at the chemicals in his blood. He might have been able to get the antidote. However there was another drug in his system, GHB, Gamma Hydroxy Butyrate, that would have rendered him immobile.”

“The date-rape drug?”

“One of ’em,” St. Claire agreed.

“Which means there’s a chance that even if he had an antidote kit with epinephrine, he couldn’t have gotten to it.”

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