Page 68 of The Night Before (Savannah 1)

“I won’t hold my breath,” Sugar said, then immediately regretted the words as Cricket muttered something obscene and headed inside. A few minutes later Sugar heard the old pipes creaking as the water was turned on. She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. She’d had it with Cricket’s bad attitude. Where did she get off looking down at her older sister? If it hadn’t been for Sugar, Cricket would have been kicked around from one foster home to the other after their mother died. Worse yet, she could have landed in juvenile court half a dozen times for drinking under age, marijuana possession and other miscellaneous infractions. Cricket and the police had a long history.

But so did Sugar. Fortunately she had a friend on the force—her own personal leak. She’d even called him Deep Throat behind his back. He, thinking he might someday get into her pants—or more likely her thong—kept her informed. Even about the Joshua Bandeaux case. He seemed to think the detectives in charge of the investigation were leaning toward murder rather than suicide, which Sugar found interesting. She wanted more details, but her leak had been a little reticent, and she figured he was just angling for another shot at getting her into bed. Fat chance. The likelihood of her sleeping with him was about the same as the old snowball’s chance in hell.

She stared across the surrounding fields. Dry. Weed-choked. This five-acre patch wasn’t exactly prime Georgia real estate. But it was hers. She’d bought out Dickie Ray and Cricket when they’d inherited it. Both of her siblings could make cracks about her job at the club all they wanted, but she made more money in three months than the two of them did combined for an entire year. Maybe that wasn’t such an accomplishment considering that Cricket could barely hang on to a job and Dickie Ray spent most of his time as a welfare and disability cheat. When he wasn’t being a small-time crook who spent most of the pathetic money he made on loose women, booze, cock fights, video poker, and when he could afford it, cocaine. Why she put up with him she didn’t know.

Because blood is thicker than water.

Yeah, go tell that to the Montgomerys.

Sugar scowled as she thought about it. Took a long pull on her diet soda. It was funny, and kind of sick, how the Montgomerys and Biscaynes were all tied in together. Sugar looked enough like the Montgomery sisters—Amanda, the twins and Hannah—to pass as their full-blooded sister. Dickie Ray and Cricket, too, but the whole damned thing was so incestuous. There was a reason Dickie Ray wasn’t all that smart. She’d heard someone say, “the lights were on but no one was home.” In Dickie Ray’s case, the lights had burned out long ago.

For years Sugar had heard the whispers, the rumor that her mother, Copper, had been involved in an on-again, off-again affair with Cameron Montgomery, who was, in fact, Copper’s half-brother. How sick was that? And if the old scandal was true, that Sugar might be the spawn of that union, it made her nauseous. That would mean she’d have more Montgomery blood running through her veins than the legitimate side of the family.

The legitimate side of the family. What a joke. There was not and never had been anything remotely legitimate about the Montgomerys, who, in her opinion, all playacted at working and lived off their damned trust funds, all the while pretending as if the Biscaynes were white trash or worse—like damned lepers. That Grandpa Benedict had kept Mary Lou Chaney as his mistress wasn’t scandal enough. That he’d sired a daughter out of wedlock along with his children, Cameron and Alice Ann, was only the tip of the iceberg. From that point on it got chilly, with Copper, hellion that she was, determined to embarrass the old man to all lengths, including engaging in an affair with Cameron.

Could he be her father? Sugar didn’t know, but her options weren’t all that great because the man Copper had married, Earl Dean Biscayne, was a loser of the lowest order, a liar, a cheat, a man who thought a “whuppin’ ” was the only answer to disobedience. His cruel streak ran deep, and Sugar wasn’t unhappy that he was out of their lives. He’d disappeared at the same time that his wife had been killed, here on this very plot, when her single-wide trailer had burst into flames. Careless smoking had been the official cause, according to the fire department, but Sugar knew her mother well enough not to believe that she’d dropped a cigarette in her bed. Copper had never smoked much in the house—and only in the kitchen. Then Earl Dean had disappeared. Hadn’t even shown up for the funeral. But Earl Dean had never put much stock in appearances or protocol. And some people figured he had found out about her cheating, killed her and taken off. Even Sugar wasn’t sure if that was true.

But if Earl Dean wasn’t her daddy, then most likely Cameron Montgomery was, and so she had a double dose of the Montgomery blood. She didn’t want to think too much about that or the mental illness that seemed to run rampant in the family because she might have double the genes. There were those times when she just couldn’t seem to think straight, when she got all screwed up with what she remembered, when reality seemed out of kilter, as if there were some electrical wires crossing in her mind. Then she was scared to death that something was wrong—really wrong—with her brain. But right now, for the moment, it was working fine, clicking along.

She’d have to call that lazy-ass lawyer and tell him to start pushing harder for a settlement. He needed to start earning his two-hundred-dollar-an-hour fee. She figured that if Flynn Donahue couldn’t handle the job, she had one last resort to try and get money from the Montgomerys. If the legal road was suddenly blocked, then they would take a different path. Dickie Ray was more than willing to work behind the scenes with the Montgomerys on what he called “a more personal level.” He’d smiled his toothy wicked smile and suggested, “Let me handle those rich snobs my own way.”

Which worried her.

Heretofore Sugar had reined him in.

But it might be time to let the reins slip a notch or two.

With one last look around the yard, Sugar took a final pull from her near-empty bottle and heard the pipes moan as the water was shut off. She pushed herself to her feet and considered the phone call again. Someone repeating her own words. Maybe it was nothing, a natural response.

But she sensed it was more. Something deadly and evil.

As if it was lurking nearby, just out of sight, hidden in the lengthening shadows that stole across the marshy acres, slipping through the reeds and cattails.

Caesarina felt it, too. The battered old hound stared across the unmoving landscape, and the skin beneath her coat quivered. Her stitches were an ugly reminder of something not quite right. Something evil. Caesarina let out a worried whimper, and Sugar’s heart turned as cold as death. The warning whispered through her mind and skittered up her spine again:

You drop dead.

Atropos drove like a maniac. The wind whipped her hair. Adrenalin fired her blood. She’d heard the fear in Sugar Biscayne’s voice, felt her terror. God, what a rush! The little bastardess was getting some of her own back. Big time.

A semi with a load of chickens was blocking the road, so Atropos shifted down and nosed into the oncoming lane. It looked clear and so she floored it, shooting past the stacked cages where doomed foul were huddled and losing feathers onto the roadway. As she reached the cab of the truck, the driver, who damned near looked the part of a redneck chicken farmer, with gray hair poking out of a baseball cap, stared down from his cab, grinned and blasted his horn in an attempt to flirt.

As if!

Atropos looked up, gave him a dirty little smile, then flipped the bastard off as she saw the oncoming pickup and swerved in front of the semi, earning herself another blare from the trucker’s horn.

Oh, bite me, she thought, the speed exhilarating, replaying in her mind Sugar Biscayne’s terror at the last phone call. She was becoming unhinged and wasn’t that fitting. All of her life Sugar wanted to be a Montgomery so badly she could taste it, and now she was getting the feel of what it was like to be one. Atropos wasn’t biased. She’d mete out her punishment to everyone connected to the Montgomery money in equal parts . . . and wasn’t that what Sugar had always desired, to be treated like a true, legitimate Montgomery?

Well, now, it was happening. She was going to get exactly the same treatment as the rest of the family.

Atropos switched on the radio . . . and a song was playing that gave her a little inspiration. Who was the artist? Def Leppard . . . that was it. And the song? “Pour Some Sugar On Me.”

Now, there was an idea.

A damned good idea.

Seventeen

“Tell me about the boating accident,” Adam suggested as Caitlyn settled onto the couch for her next session. Some of the weirdness of being back in Rebecca’s office had vanished,

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