Tell No Lies (15 page)

“Savannah?” she called, as she made her way back into the upstairs hall.

Savannah didn’t respond, but Augusta knew she must be around because she didn’t have anywhere else to go—nor would she have simply taken the car without waking Augusta to ask for the keys. They were sharing it right now, but it was understood that Augusta needed to be mobile if she was going to get the house restored, while it was Savannah’s job to plant her ass in the office chair and write. Although neither of them had done much to those ends, Augusta had been busy with plans for the fund-raiser—something she still wanted to get done, though it didn’t seem appropriate now to have some huge community gathering when women were being murdered and kids were disappearing.

The thought gave her a shiver as she walked down the corridor, stopping at Caroline’s room on the way to Savannah’s. She found the door shut. She opened it, throwing it wide. Empty, of course. Caroline would be at work right now.

Augusta’s room was the farthest down the hall, away from the stairs. Caroline’s was closest, with Savannah’s on the other end of the corridor past the stairs. The closer she got to the stairs, the louder the music played.

“Savannah!”

With the music blaring downstairs, shouting was pointless, she realized. Clearly, Savannah was not in her room, unless she had cranked the stereo so she could hear it upstairs. But that wasn’t like her at all. A peek into her bedroom revealed that it, too, was empty. The door was open. Unlike Augusta’s room, it was neat and orderly, not a shred of clothing out of place. That was probably the only character trait Savannah had inherited from their mother, though physically Savannah was the spitting image of Flo, with her willowy frame and deep gray eyes.

Expecting to find Savannah downstairs, Augusta made her way down, belatedly wondering where Tango was. He wasn’t at the bottom of the stairs where he seemed to plant himself all day long waiting for Caroline to come home, so she called his name, too.

Neither Tango nor Savannah answered, and Augusta wandered toward the sound of music, her nerves a little on edge. The music was coming from the den, the string accompaniment sounding a little like the
Psycho
danger music in its percussive intensity. “Blanket for a Sail.” Nilsson was talking about a tiny little skipper keeping the boat afloat. The song immediately reminded her of Sammy. He’d loved that little inflatable raft of his, and would run around with his little pirate flag, waving it like a banner, yelling, “Yo, ho, yo ho, it’s a pirate’s life for me!” The memory would have made her smile, except that she began to feel a little creeped out when the song came to its orchestral conclusion, paused, then started over again.

In the den, she found her mother’s vintage turntable on, the receiver blaring. Savannah was nowhere in sight. Harry Nilsson’s voice was crooning the refrain, “Way out on the ocean . . .”

Augusta yanked up the arm, dropping the needle on the vinyl. It scratched briefly before she caught it and placed it back on its perch, shutting off the turntable. “Jesus,” she said, and called out again, “Savannah!” She turned to assess the room and cursed softly to herself.

The house appeared empty. At the moment, it felt a little like one of those eerie mansions in a horror flick, where ghosts were tormenting the home owners, but Augusta didn’t believe in ghosts. As unlikely as it seemed, her sister must have left the stereo on. Maybe she’d taken Tango for a walk?

Augusta poked her head into the kitchen and called for Tango again. She heard a whine coming from the pantry and went straight to it, opening the door. Tango stood there, panting heavily, looking at her with gratitude. The pantry was hot.

“How the hell did you get in there?” she asked him.

He came out, wagging his tail sheepishly, drooling on the kitchen floor, as though he thought he’d done something wrong, and Augusta decided someone must have accidentally locked him in the pantry and left the house in a hurry. But if Tango was in the pantry, obviously Savannah wasn’t walking him, so she continued looking for her sister, walking through the house, not once, but three times, before wandering outside and heading out toward the dock. The car was in the driveway, exactly where Augusta had left it, so Savannah must be somewhere on the premises.

Tango followed her around, and she was grateful for the company as she made her way toward the dock, half-expecting Savannah to be out in the boathouse for some reason. She wasn’t there. Back inside the house, the attic stairs were up, not down, so there was no way she was up in the attic again, rummaging through boxes for the fund-raiser.

Tango followed at her heels, panting heavily as she made her way back to her room. She glanced at the clock and, seeing that it was nearly twelve-thirty, snagged her cell phone out of her purse. In the process, she spotted the photograph of Sammy in the side pocket.

A tiny chill ran down her spine.

It was eerily coincidental that she would find that photograph last night and then wake up this morning to that music, but it was entirely possible Savannah had found the picture, and then, feeling sentimental, had woken up with a desire to hear that song.

Either that, or they had a ghost in their house. Maybe Flo was somewhere wandering around, trying to explain why that stupid shoe of hers was out in the woods. Or maybe she was simply pestering Augusta to begin the renovations, she thought wryly.

Feeling a little anxious, she punched in Caroline’s number.

“It’s about time!” Caroline said, answering her phone on the first ring.

She mouthed the word “Augusta” and got up from the table to walk outside, hoping to spare Jack the sight of her foaming at the mouth. “Where the hell have you been, Augusta?”

“Sleeping. I just woke up.”

Caroline slid outside the door of the tiny Greek restaurant, narrowly avoiding a shoulder bump with a businessman. “Last night?”

“What do you mean,
last night?
Since when did you become my mother, Caroline?”

“Never mind! I already know where you were, no thanks to you!” Caroline countered. “Don’t even throw out that mother bit!”

“If you knew, why bother to ask?”

Caroline clutched the phone tighter. “Maybe because I wanted to hear it from your own two lips, for once.”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“How would you know? You haven’t tried me, Augusta! You don’t talk to anyone anymore. You keep to yourself and assume nobody gives a crap—well, some people do, and you had me worried out of my mind last night!”

Augusta’s tone was full of her usual sarcasm. “Right, so you’re okay with Ian and all you care about is my well-being?”

“Of course! There’s a murderer out there, in case you haven’t heard?”

“Jesus, how could I miss that, Caroline? You shouted it from the rooftops, even before you had a clue what the truth was.” Her words were defiant and angry, though she sounded deflated. Caroline’s anger wavered as she realized there was truth in Augusta’s accusation. “Are we really going to fight over this, Caroline? I’m thirty-two years old. I have a right to see whomever I want. And I don’t believe Ian is guilty. It’s that simple. It’s my money, not yours.”

“Believe it or not, I wasn’t going to bring up the bail money. There’s not a lot more I have to say about that. What’s done is done.”

“Good,” Augusta said. “Anyway, I only called to ask you where Savannah is and why she left the stereo blaring.”

“If you had gotten up this morning, instead of sleeping off a party night with Ian, or if you’d bothered to talk to anyone but Ian, you’d know I took Savannah to the airport this morning. If she left the stereo on it was an accident.”

That disclosure seemed to deflate Augusta’s anger completely. She paused for a moment, and then asked in a subdued tone, “Savannah’s gone?”

Caroline took the opportunity to encourage a cease-fire. “Yeah.”

“But she’s coming back, right?”

“Yeah, she’s just finally doing what you and I did when we first resigned ourselves to mother’s will. She’s gone back to D.C. to put her affairs in order. Though I’m pretty sure she’s getting rid of her apartment and moving back to Charleston permanently. She’s done in D.C. Besides, I think she needed time to think about this whole ordeal with Sadie. She’s pretty upset over it all.”

“How did yesterday go at the Simmonses?”

“Not great,” Caroline admitted. “Sadie pretty much had nothing to say to either of us. She’s clearly not in a forgiving mood. Josh wasn’t there.”

“Well, that sucks. But on a brighter note, I have a contractor arriving in a few minutes—oh wait,” she said suddenly. “That could be him now. I gotta go. I’ll go by and talk to Sadie after he leaves.”

Caroline didn’t even have a chance to say good-bye. Augusta simply hung up on her, and Caroline found herself shell-shocked by the fact that Augusta had actually taken steps to complete the task their mother had bequeathed to her. “Wow,” she said to herself, and made her way back into the restaurant to give Jack the details.

 

Skywalker Construction came prepared to work, Augusta noticed.

Luke—she had a hard time taking his name seriously—arrived at the house about thirty minutes ahead of his crew, and took some time to look over the problem areas Augusta had identified—most notably the peeling exterior and deteriorating siding and the loose boards at the top of the stairs. The boards themselves weren’t such a concern, but Augusta worried that somehow Flo had painted over water stains on the ceiling and that there was, in fact, damage from a past leak in the roof.

That was his first order of business once she was done showing him around; she wanted to be certain there wasn’t anything of structural importance to be corrected. The siding itself wasn’t a structural issue. But in the muggy Charleston climate, it wasn’t unusual to hang a wooden garage door and find it completely rotted away the following year. Wood had to be treated before being painted, and if it wasn’t, it was common to find moisture damage, particularly around the marshes. Replacing the siding with vinyl or composite was not an option, because Augusta thought the house should remain true to its original construction. How she’d come to that conclusion when she hated the original house, she didn’t know, but somehow it didn’t seem appropriate to alter its construction with plastics or metals. The closest she could come to comprehending her own decision was that she was a bit of a purist. In this, she knew her mother would approve.

Luke was clearly the right man for the job because he knew exactly what needed to be done. Augusta thought he was kind of cute, in a rugged, alpha sort of way, and wished Savannah was around to meet him. Her sister could do worse, she decided. The man owned his own construction company but sounded like a professor. But since Savannah wasn’t around, and she had a renewed sense of purpose, she set him loose on the house on his own. Feeling a sense of accomplishment, she decided she had earned enough goodwill to go ask Caroline about Jennifer Williams.

Leaving Luke with instructions and a key, along with her cell phone number, she headed out the door.

 

The man was here.

Staring down at him.

Cody heard him come into the building from somewhere near the lockers. He slithered in through a hole in the floor, dripping wet, his footsteps slapping like fins against the floor. He could hear banging and the hollow
ting
of metal being abused. And then the rotting floor creaked as he neared.

It was the heat of the day, as his grandma Rose would say. Cody’s hair was plastered to his face and the inside of his face felt like it did when he stood on his head and all the blood rushed into it.

He kept his eyes closed, afraid to open them, afraid to see the man, though he could sense the light from the window being blocked by his body. Possums played dead and sometimes it worked. He waited a long time, slowing his breathing, hoping the man would leave, but he stood there so long the water he’d brought in on his shoes puddled beneath his feet and trickled down the slanted floorboards toward Cody’s face, tickling his chin.

Cody resisted the urge to open his eyes.

He was so thirsty . . . the rag in his mouth felt like a ball of fire. The water against his face felt good. The man nudged his chest with his boot and he stifled a whimper, his chest heaving. He kept his eyes closed, praying harder.

The man said nothing, and Cody hoped that if he didn’t look, the man wouldn’t kill him. In the movies, the minute you saw the killer, you were a dead man. Cody didn’t want to be a dead man. He wanted to live.

He heard the sound of knuckles cracking as the wet puddle gathered around his face, cooling the fever in his cheek. Resisting the urge to sob, he lay thinking about his mama and his grandma and the pool in their backyard.

Cody had learned to swim in that pool. He could float on his back like an otter, his mom said.

Against his will, Cody shivered as the man toed his chest again, nudging gently, as though he were inspecting him. Still he resisted the urge to open his eyes, focusing on his sister, Lila. He thought about her Barbie doll, the one he’d burned the hair off, and tried to recall how much money he had in his little piggy bank at home. His grandmother had given him the freckled pig with the sunglasses, and he’d thought it was a real dumb gift, until he’d begun to stick in the spare change he’d found lying around the house. He always made sure to ask first, and now maybe he had enough to buy Lila a new doll. She would like that, he thought. Maybe he had enough to get her two . . .

“Thank you, Cody,”
he heard her sweet voice say in his head
. “Do you want to play dolls with me?”

Next time, Cody would say yes.

He would sit with her and enjoy it and he would talk his dad into showing him how to build a dollhouse for her—like the ones some people built with wooden furniture and shingles on the roof. Lila loved her dolls, and Cody wondered if that was because he wouldn’t play with her. He would from now on, he promised himself. He would even let her come and play with him and his friends if she wanted to and he wouldn’t complain when his mom asked him to watch over her. Now he understood . . . she needed watching over and he would never, ever let anyone steal her . . . like they had stolen him.

He would keep her safe.

As soon as he got home.

He saw himself removing his handcuff and ropes, tearing the tape from his mouth and getting up and walking home. It was probably a long ways through the plough mud with the smell of the marsh caked up in his nose.

A little delirious from lack of food and water, he disappeared into his head for a while. When he came back out, he found his cheek swimming in stinky water. The puddle had worked its way down to the lower spot in the warped floor and the tape was getting wet on one side of his face. Slowly, he cracked his lid and found himself alone again, but he was uncertain how much time had passed.

The sun was softer in the sky now, like it was late afternoon, and he wriggled into a more comfortable position, scraping a piece of the tape away from his cheek into the water.

His heart kicked against his ribs in surprise.

He wriggled his cheek a little harder and the tape loosened a little more.

His heart beat even faster.

Suddenly, he was like a mindless animal, working furiously to scrape the tape away from his blistering skin. Scraping his face into the puddle he rubbed until his skin was raw and finally the tape popped away and Cody spat the cloth out of his mouth, turning his lips into the puddle and lapping it up like a dog.