See How She Dies (49 page)

“Thanks,” Adria said, but Zachary only shook his head and glowered at the stairwell as if he were afraid Ginny might disappear again.

Mrs. Bassett frowned suddenly. “I thought you called the police.”

“We did. They should be here any minute—” Adria said.

“Is there another way out of the basement?” Zach asked suddenly.

“Oh, no…well, there's a coal chute, but it's been closed for years, and some old cellar stairs, but they're boarded over. If there were a fire, the windows are large enough—”

“Christ!” Moving with the speed of a cheetah, he raced out of the parlor, across the foyer, and down the stairs with lightning speed.

How could he have been so stupid? Vaulting over the rail of the stairs, he landed loudly on the cement floor and felt the cool rush of fresh air before he saw the curtains fluttering noiselessly in the breeze.

The basement was dark and he walked unerringly to a small, cozy room in a back corner where the bedroom light glowed warmly. “Ginny?” he called, feeling an eerie breeze, the premonition of doom scurrying up the back of his neck.

Muscles rigid, Zach stepped into the room. A suitcase, lying open, had been thrown on the bed. Clothes dangled from hangers in the open closet. One drawer in a tiny bureau was askew, underwear and nightgowns falling onto the floor. “Ginny?” he called again, but there was still no answer.

The hairs on the back of his neck raised as he crossed the room and threw open the door to a tiny bathroom. Red splashes were everywhere. Blood stained the walls and splattered the sink and toilet. Ginny Slade was lying on the cracked linoleum. Her tongue hung limply from her mouth, her eyes stared blankly at the ceiling, and her wrists were slashed, blood still oozing from the open wounds. A sharp knife was clenched in her right fist.

Zach stepped back, recoiling from the room splattered in blood and the sightless eyes that stared up at him. “Call 911!” he yelled up the stairs. “Adria, call the police! We need an ambulance.”

He heard the thunder of footsteps and turned to find Adria on the landing. “Don't come down here and for God's sake keep the kid upstairs!” he ordered.

“What—” She stared past him to the blood creeping from the bathroom and onto the bedroom carpet. “Oh, God.”

“It's Ginny—call 911!”

“Mrs. Bassett already has.”

But Zach wasn't listening. He forced himself to return to search for a pulse, to find some sign of life, but he knew that it was useless. Ginny Slade, the only witness to what had happened to London Danvers all those years ago, was dead.

“You're saying she didn't kill herself?” Adria asked after giving her statement to the police. She was seated in an interrogation room, her chair on one side of an old Formica-topped table, Zach leaning on wainscoting near the door. The room was bare save for the ever-present smell of smoke, an overflowing ashtray, and a trash can half filled with empty plastic coffee cups.

The man in charge was John Fullmer, an investigator who wore thick glasses and whose one vanity seemed to be to disguise his baldness by combing long, sandy-colored strands of hair from the back of his head forward.

Fullmer was full of nervous energy. He smoked and chewed gum at the same time, alternately popping his stick of Wrigley's spearmint and taking a drag from his Camel.

It had been hours since Zach had discovered Ginny's body and Adria had believed that Ginny, knowing that she would be exposed as a kidnapper, had decided to end her own life. Fullmer had other ideas.

Warming her hands around a strong cup of coffee, Adria asked, “But how would someone have known where to find her?”

“We're not sure yet, and we don't like to give out the kind of information that only the killer would know, but there are clues. The window had been forced, so it looks like someone was in the house, waiting for her.” He took off his glasses and polished them with the hem of his shirt. His gum snapped loudly.

Zach stared at Adria. “It's because she's left-handed,” he said flatly. “The knife was in her right hand and she was left-handed. The slashes were angled wrong.”

The detective's head snapped up and he stared at Zach, long and hard. “You know that?”

“I remember.” Zach's gaze traveled to the center of the room but Adria guessed he was miles away, lost in a time when he was only a boy.

“How?” Adria asked.

“Because once…a long time ago when London was still living with us, Ginny had a pair of scissors—used them for mending, I think. She left them out once and I picked them up. I had to open some package and couldn't find my knife. I tried to use her damned scissors, but they didn't work. I couldn't figure it out for a minute, then I discovered they were left-handed. Unique at the time. Ginny caught me and had a fit, told me to leave her things alone.” He shrugged. “We didn't get along all that well.” His gaze focused on Adria again. “But that's no surprise.”

The detective drew on his cigarette, then crushed it in the full tray. “I don't have an official report on cause of death. We'll have to wait for the M.E. for that, but there were signs of a struggle—footprints in the blood and the splatter pattern—that suggests she was killed. It looks like someone subdued her, took the knife, wrapped the fingers of her right hand around it and opened her veins. End of story.”

Adria shuddered and rubbed her arms.

The detective dumped the ashtray into the trash, before lighting up again.

They talked for a while more, then were allowed to leave. “Look, we know you two didn't do old Ginny in,” the detective said, handing them each a card, “but we might have a few more questions…”

Zach's eyes met Adria's. “You can find us through Danvers International, or the Hotel Danvers in Portland,” he said, scribbling the numbers on the back of a business card for his construction company in Bend.

They left the station and Adria felt drained, her entire life turned inside out.

So she was London Danvers.

So she would inherit millions of dollars.

So what?

“Come on, I'll buy you dinner,” Zach offered, though he looked as tired as she. Beneath the shadow of his beard his tanned skin seemed paler, his eyes haunted. The strain was telling on them both and she wondered how long they could keep up this charade, pretending that the attraction they felt for each other didn't exist. “I know a great place in Chinatown. We'll stay in town tonight, then go home and break the news.”

Home. Would she ever think of Portland as home?

She shuddered to think how quickly Ginny's life had ended. “Who do you think could have done it?”

“I wish I knew,” he said, frowning as they stepped outside where darkness had fallen. The wind blowing in off the ocean was cold, cutting in icy gusts that climbed the steep hills of the city; it swept through her jacket and cut her to the bone.

Zach took her hand in his. She tried to pull away, but his fingers tightened over hers as they walked the three blocks to the space where he'd parked the rental car.

Once inside the Ford, he checked the mirror, then melded with traffic. “Watch in your side-view,” he said, moving from one lane to the other.

“You think someone is following us.”

“Good guess, don't you think?”

“Here in San Francisco?” she asked, but she'd leaped to the same conclusions as he, the same one drawn by the police.

“You think that we led the murderer…” Her voice trailed off and she stared hard in the mirror, watching other cars switch lanes, seeing nothing out of the ordinary.

“Obviously there was a conspiracy of some kind years ago,” Zach said, his brows drawing together. “And it didn't involve your mother or…or Witt. So we have to assume that whoever wanted you out of the picture then, was willing to kill Ginny to keep his secret.” His fingers tapped upon the steering wheel. “It makes me wonder about Kat. Was it suicide or murder.”

“Oh God.” Adria shivered. “You think the two deaths, Ginny's and Kat's, were linked.”

“Not just linked but committed by the same killer.”

“But who?” she whispered.

“Could be anyone.”

“Someone in the family.” Her stomach knotted. Someone she was related to.

“Maybe.”

“Or someone from the Polidori family,” she said, though the list of suspects was shrinking. True, Anthony Polidori could have been behind the kidnapping and she was certain that he was having her followed, but the Danvers heirs as well could have been a part of the kidnapping. Jason was power-hungry, Trisha, a wounded animal wanting to hurt her father as much as she was hurt by him. Nelson would have been too young, only about fourteen at the time, and Zach, he had been a kid, too.

Satisfied that they weren't being tailed, Zachary drove to Chinatown and parked in an alley. The restaurant was small, noisy, dimly lit, and packed nearly to capacity. Dishes rattled, people spoke in sharp foreign phrases, and grease sizzled through the open window to the kitchen. They were offered a table for two near the kitchen and Adria didn't object, though she could barely understand the waitress or any of the patrons who all seemed to speak rapid-fire Chinese.

Still, she was grateful for the crowd. It made things easier. Being alone with Zachary was the difficult part. They ate hot-and-sour soup, spicy chicken, and some shrimp dish that was so hot her nose ran, and washed it all down with Chinese beer. But the food seemed tasteless and she couldn't forget Ginny Slade's ashen face, her unseeing eyes, and all the blood in the small bathroom.

After the meal, she drank a thin tea with a flowery aroma that filtered up her nose and brought back a memory—harsh and ugly. The night of the attack, she'd smelled something sweet as this blend—the underlying scent of jasmine. Her fingers slipped. The cup slid to the table and rolled, spilling tea across the varnished surface. Hot tea dripped from the table to her thighs.

“Adria?” Zach asked.

She knew the instant the smell of jasmine reached her nostrils who had attacked her.

“What is it?” Zach demanded, staring at her with harsh gray eyes.

“Everything.” She started wiping up the tea, refusing to look at him, telling herself over and over again she had to be wrong. But she knew. She
knew
. He grabbed her hand, squeezing it, refusing to let her keep mopping the spill with her napkin.

“What?”

“I think I know who attacked me in the motel,” she said unevenly, wishing she didn't know the truth.

“What?”

“The person who sent me the nasty notes.”

“How?”

“This tea.” She motioned to the cups on the table. “It's jasmine, the same scent that was on the person who attacked me.”

A knot formed at the hinge of his jaw and he sniffed the brew. Denial seemed about to fall from his tongue before he shoved the cup of tea away, sloshing hot tea onto the table. “Eunice,” he bit out, his eyes mere slits.

Adria nodded mutely, unable to form the words that hovered between them—that Zachary's mother had killed Ginny Slade.

 

“I need to speak with you. Alone.” Eunice left the message on Zach's cell phone. “There's something important I need to tell you and the only way you'll ever learn the truth is to talk to me. Please, Zach, I know you think awful things about me, but they're just not true. Let me explain what really happened. You're the only one I can trust.” She slid the receiver into the cradle of the wall phone in her kitchen and didn't doubt for a minute that Zach would show up.

Soon.

As she sat at the kitchen table and read the newspaper article about Ginny Slade's murder, Eunice knew that it was only a matter of hours before Zach would come and accuse her of killing Ginny.

He wouldn't believe her when she denied it.

Frowning, she glanced through the paned windows to the greenish waters of Lake Oswego, as if in looking at the murky water she could figure out what to do. Few times in life had Eunice given up and she wasn't about to start now.

But who had killed the wimpy little nursemaid? Surely someone associated with the family; perhaps even a family member.

One of her own children?

Someone clever enough to know that Zach, and probably the police would accuse her. Someone, perhaps, who knew that Kat's death hadn't been a suicide, that Eunice had played a vital role in the second Mrs. Witt Danvers's demise.

“Bloody hell,” she muttered, angry that her plans had gone awry. Why hadn't that little money-grubbing bitch left town? Why hadn't she backed off from her claims to be London, Witt's most precious baby?

It made her sick. Even now her stomach roiled and filled the back of her throat with a horrid taste and the rage she felt, the white-hot fury, pumped through her blood. She'd borne Witt four fine children.
Four!
And he'd turned away from them when that gold digger had batted her fake eyelashes at him.

Foolish, foolish old man.

He'd gotten what he deserved by losing his special child and finding his arm-candy wife in bed with his son. Her knees buckled at the thought of Zach and Kat. Sick, that's what it had been. Dirty. Incestuous; and now…now he was taking up with that horrid woman's child.

It was unthinkable.

Eunice had no doubt that Adria was London; the girl's resemblance to Kat was eerie. It made Eunice's skin crawl. If only Zach had been sired by Anthony Polidori, everything would have been better. So much easier. Cleaner.

As it was…

Eunice shivered and rubbed her arm where a huge bruise had formed when she'd tackled Adria in that horrid dive of a motel. She was sore and still limped because of the attack that hadn't quite worked. She'd been so angry, so worked up, so frenzied. She remembered lying in the dark, waiting, knowing that Adria, like Kat, was with Zach.

Jesus, why didn't he learn? Why was he drawn to his own stepmother and her daughter? His half-sister? Eunice thought she might throw up at the thought and she began to shake violently.

Calm down…you must remain calm. That's the only way. You need to deal with Zach. Soon. And possibly London!
God, why hadn't Ginny Slade kept her end of the damned bargain. No doubt Zach knew all about the kidnapping and he would have deduced his own mother's part in the crime.

For a second, she considered running. There might still be time to get to Canada or even Mexico.

And then what?

Katherine will win.

London will win.

“No!” she ground out, her fists clenching so hard her fingernails dug deep into her palms.

She had to finish what she'd started.

The next step was facing Zach.

She knew her children well and understood Zach better than the others. By now, he would have figured out that she was behind the attacks against his precious Adria and he'd want a face-off.

Well, he'd get one. She walked from the kitchen to the master bathroom and opened the medicine chest. An array of vials and bottles were lined up on the slim glass shelves, the result of her complaints of nagging aches and pains that no one doctor could pinpoint. Because there had been no pain. Despite her claims to the medical profession, she felt as fit and able as she had at thirty-five, perhaps even stronger, but she'd managed to collect samples and prescriptions from nearly a dozen doctors and combined with her own basic knowledge of chemistry, anatomy and medicine, she was able to create her own little “cocktails.”