Shades of Twilight (40 page)

"So you don't think it was just a burglar?"

"Not now, I don't. Nothing has happened at Davencourt for the past ten years, until I came home."

Carl grunted, and stroked his jaw some more as he studied Webb.

"Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

"I didn't kill Jessie," Webb growled.

"That means someone else did, someone who was in our rooms. Normally, I would have been there. I never did go in for the late-night bar scene, and I didn't fool around with other women. Maybe Jessie surprised him, the way Roanna did. Roanna met up with him in the front hall; mine and Jessie's rooms were on the front left side, remember? Corliss has the rooms now, I sleep in a bedroom on the back, But the so-called burglar wouldn't have known that, would he?"

Carl whistled softly between his teeth.

"That would make you the intended victim all along, which means this is the third attempt to kill you. I tend to believe you, son, mainly because there wasn't a reason for you to kill Miss Jessie. That's what had us so buffaloed ten years ago. Whoever did it must have thought it was real funny, you being blamed for killing her. That would be better than killing you himself. Now, who hated you enough to try to kill you ten years ago, and stay mad this long?"

"Damn if I know," Webb said softly. For years he'd thought Jessie's secret lover must have killed her, but with these new developments that didn't make sense. It would have made sense for the murderer to try to kill him, but not for him to kill Jessie. It would even have been reasonable, if he wanted to think of murder as reasonable, for the two of them to plot to kill him. That would get him out of the way, and Jessie would have inherited more of the Davenport fortune. If she had simply divorced him, her inheritance wouldn't have been as much, because despite Jessie's threats she had to have known that Lucinda wouldn't have disinherited him just because they'd divorced. To her credit, he didn't think Jessie had been involved in a plot to murder him. Like Roanna, she had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but for Jessie the bad timing had been fatal.

Carl took a length of string from his pocket and tied one end of it around a pen.

"Come hold this windshield up as straight as you can," he said, and Webb complied. Carl passed the free end of the string through the first bullet hole, threading it through until the pen caught on the outside and held. Then he tied the other end around another pen, this time securing the string under the pen's clip, and passed that pen through the holes in the back of the headrest.

He looked at the trajectory and whistled softly again.

"At the distance he was shooting from, if he'd adjusted his sights just a teeny bit to the right, that bullet would have caught you smack between the eyes."

"I noticed it was a fine shot," Webb said sarcastically. Carl grinned.

"Thought you might be a man who appreciated good marksmanship. How about the second bullet?"

"It went on through the trunk."

"Well, any good deer rifle would shoot a bullet with that much power over that distance. No way of tracing it, even if we could have found one of the slugs." He eyed Webb.

"You took a chance, stopping here like this."

"I was mad."

"Yeah, well, if there's a next time, cool off before you decide to go after someone who's armed. I'll have the car towed in, and my boys will go over it, but I don't think we'll find anything that will help us."

"In that case, I'd just as soon no one else knows about this. I'll take care of the car."

"Mind telling me why you want to keep it quiet?"

"Number one, I don't want him on guard. If he's relaxed, maybe he'll make a mistake. Number two, you can't do a whole hell of a lot anyway. You can't give me an escort everywhere I go, and you can't keep a twenty-four-hour watch on Davencourt. Number three, if Lucinda finds out, it just might kill her."

Carl grunted.

"Webb, your folks need to know to be careful."

"They do. The so-called burglar spooked them. We have new deadbolt locks now, more secure windows, and we're wired to an alarm that, if it goes off, will set every dog inside a thirty-mile radius to howling. it's not any secret in Tuscumbia that we've done this, either."

"So you think he knows, and isn't likely to try getting into the house again?"

"He's gotten in twice before without any trouble. Instead of trying it again, this time he tried to shoot me off the road. Sounds as if he heard the news."

Carl crossed his arms and stared at him.

"Miss Lucinda's big party is tonight."

"You think he could be among the guests," Webb said. He'd already thought of that himself.

"I'd say there's a good chance. You might want to take a look at the guest list and see if you recognize the name of someone you didn't get along with, somebody who came out on the short end of some business deal. Hell, he wouldn't even have to be invited; from what I hear, so many people will be there that he could waltz right in and no one would notice."

"You were invited, Carl. Are you coming?"

"Couldn't keep me away. Booley will be there, too. Is it okay if I ran all of this by him? That old dog is still pretty sly, and if he knows to be watching, he might see something."

"Sure, tell Booley. But no one else, you hear?"

"All right, all right," Carl grumbled. He looked at Webb's car again.

"You want me to give you a ride up to the house?"

"No, everyone would ask questions. Take me back to town. I have to get something else to drive anyway, and I'll arrange to have this one taken care of. As far as anyone is concerned, I had car trouble." He looked at his watch.

"I'll be pushing it to get home in time for the party."

The guests were due to arrive in only half an hour, and Webb was nowhere around. All of the family was already there, including his mother and Aunt Sandra. Yvonne was beginning to pace, because it wasn't like Webb to be late to anything, and Lucinda was growing increasingly fretful.

Roanna sat very still, holding her own worry inside. She didn't let herself think about car accidents, because she couldn't bear it. Her own parents had died that way, and since then she shrank from the very idea of an automobile accident. If she passed one on the highway, she never rubbernecked but carefully kept her gaze averted and got past the accident site as soon as she could. Webb couldn't have been in an accident, he simply couldn't Then they heard the front door open, and Yvonne rushed to the door.

"Where have you been?" Roanna heard her demand with a mother's asperity.

"I had car trouble," Webb replied as he took the stairs two at a time. He was back downstairs in fifteen minutes, freshly shaved and wearing the black-tie apparel on which Lucinda had insisted.

"Sorry I'm late," he said to everyone as he crossed to the liquor cabinet and opened the doors. He poured himself a shot of tequila and tossed it back, then set the glass down and gave them a reckless grin.

"Let the games begin."

Roanna couldn't take her eyes off him. He looked like a buccaneer despite the fineness of his clothes. His thick dark hair was still black with dampness and brushed into a severe style. He moved with the lithe grace of a man accustomed to formal clothes, without a trace of self-consciousness. The jacket sat perfectly on his broad shoulders, and the trousers were just snug enough to look trim without being binding. Webb had always worn his clothes well, no matter what they were. She had thought no one could took better than he did in jeans and boots and chambray work shirt, and now she thought no one looked better in black tie. Jet studs marched down the front of his snow white shirt, which had rows of tiny tucks, and matching jet cuff links gleamed darkly at his thick wrists.

She hadn't talked privately with him since the night he'd come to her room, and she had told him why she hadn't seen the burglar. Webb had forbidden her to work at all until the family doctor had checked her and given her the all clear, which he'd done just the day before. Truth to tell, for the first several days after she'd gotten home from the hospital, she hadn't felt like working or doing anything except sitting very still. The headache had been persistent, and if she had moved around much, she suffered a recurrence of that nausea that went with concussion. It was only 287

in the past two days that the headache had gone away, and the nausea with it. She didn't think she would risk dancing tonight, though.

Webb had been busy, and not just with work. He had overseen the installation of steel-reinforced doors on the main entrances, dead-bolt locks on even the French doors, and an alarm system that had made her pull a pillow over her head to buffer the sound when it was tested. If she couldn't sleep and wanted the veranda doors open so she could enjoy the fresh air, first she had to punch in a code on a small box installed by the window of every room. If she opened the doors without entering the code, the resulting blast would jolt everyone out of their beds.

Between her headache and his work, there simply hadn't been time for a private talk. In the drama of her injury, most of her embarrassment had faded away. After his midnight visit to her room, the subject hadn't come up again, as if they both wanted to avoid it.

"My, you look handsome," Lucinda said now, eyeing Webb up and down.

"Better than you did before, if you don't mind my saying so. Wrestling cows, or whatever it was you did in Arizona, certainly kept you in shape."

"Steers," he corrected, his eyes gleaming with amusement.

"And, yes, I wrestled a few of them."

"You said you had car trouble," Yvonne said.

"What's wrong with it?"

"The transmission went out," he said smoothly.

"I had to have it towed."

"What are you driving then?"

"A pickup truck." His eyes gleamed greenly as he said it, and Roanna saw the fine tension in him, a sort of heightened state of alertness, as if he were poised for some sort of crisis that only -he anticipated. At the same time there was an obvious amusement in the line of his mouth, and she saw him glance expectantly at Gloria.

"A truck," Gloria said with disdain.

"I hope it doesn't take long to get your car repaired."

The amusement became even more pronounced, though Roanna wondered if she was the only one who saw it.

"Doesn't matter," he said, and grinned in wicked relish.

"I bought the truck."

If he'd expected a tirade, Gloria didn't disappoint him. She launched into a lecture on "how it looks for one of our family to drive such a common vehicle."

When she segued into the part about the image they had to uphold, Webb's eyes gleamed even brighter. He said, "It's four-wheel drive, too. Big tires, like the kind bootleggers use so they can get into the woods." Gloria stared at him, aghast and momentarily silenced, as her face turned red.

Lucinda was hiding her smile behind her hand. Greg coughed and turned away to look out the window.

Corliss was also looking out the window. She said, "My God, it looks like that scene in Field of Dreams. " Lucinda, understanding exactly what she meant, stood up and said with evident satisfaction, "Of course it does. If I give a party, they will come."

That remark elicited laughter from everyone except Roanna, but Webb noticed that a smile briefly touched her lips. That was the third one, he thought.

Soon the house was brimming over with laughing, chattering people. Some of the men wore black tie, but most of them were in dark suits. The women were arrayed in a variety of styles ranging from above-the-knee cocktail dresses to tea length to more formal long gowns. Everyone in the Davenport and Tallant families wore long gowns, again at Lucinda's direction. She knew exactly how to make an impression and set the tone.

Lucinda looked good, better than she had in a long time. Her white hair was in a queenly twist on the back of her head, and her pale peach gown, aided by a skillful application of cosmetics, lent its delicate color to her face. She had known what she was doing by insisting on peach-colored lights.

While Lucinda held court with her friends, Roanna

quietly saw to it that everything ran smoothly. The caterer was very efficient, but disaster had been known to strike even the most rigidly organized of parties. Waiters hired for the evening moved through the crowd with trays laden with glasses of pale gold champagne or with a dazzling array of hors d'oeuvres. For those who had heartier appetites, a huge buffet had been set up. Out on the patio, the band had already begun playing old standards, luring people outside to dance under the peach fairy lights.

Roanna noticed Webb moving through the crowd, talking easily with people, stopping to tell a joke or make a few remarks about politics, then going on to another group. He seemed perfectly relaxed, as if it hadn't occurred to him that anyone might look askance at him, but still she could see his increased tension in the hard, bright glitter of his eyes. No one would say anything derogatory about him in his presence, she realized. There was a power about him that made him stand out even in this crowd of social elites, a personal assurance that not many people had. He really didn't give a damn what any of them thought. Not for his own sake, at least. He came across as both relaxed and self-assured but ready to act if necessary.