The Bourbon Kings #1 (23 page)

Miss Aurora entered his field of vision. “Lands, what is wrong with you, boy.”

There was some conversation at that point, none of which he tracked. Followed by a bandaging of his hand which he didn’t pay attention to. Then more talk.

He didn’t come back online properly until he was sitting in the staff break room, at the table, with a plate of scrambled eggs, six slices of bacon, and four pieces of toast in front of him.

Lane blinked as his stomach roared: Even as his brain remained a mess, his hand picked up the fork and started shoveling.

Lizzie sat down across from him, her chair squeaking on the bald wooden floor. “Are you okay?”

He glanced past her to Miss Aurora, who was standing by the door as if she were about to leave. “My father is an evil man.”

“He’s got his own set of values.”

Which was the closest she would get to ever condemning anyone.

“He’s trying to sell my sister.” Cue the gasps. “It’s like … out of a bad novel.”

He was in the middle of sharing the details when his phone went off—and the second he saw who it was, he answered. “Samuel, where are we?”

Samuel T. had to raise his voice over the chatter in the background. “Seventy-five thousand for the bail, it’s the best we could do. As soon as you bring a certified check, you can pick her up.”

“I’m on it. Are you leaving?”

“Not until she gets out of here. She has the right to consult with her attorney, so as long as I’m around, she won’t have to be in some cell alone—or God forbid, with someone else.”

“Thanks.”

As he cut the connection, Miss Aurora ducked out to keep an eye on her chefs, and he turned to Lizzie. “I’m going to go get the bail money now. After that … I don’t know what.”

She reached out and put her hand on his forearm. “As I said before, is there anything I can do?”

It was like a strike of lightning. One minute, he was as normal as any male could be in the situation … the next? Lust pumped through his veins, hardening him, rechanneling the crazy in his head into something truly insane.

Lowering his lids, he muttered, “You sure you want me to answer that.”

Lizzie swallowed hard and looked down at where she was touching him. When she didn’t say anything, but she also didn’t pull away, he leaned in and lifted her chin with his forefinger. Locking eyes on her lips, he kissed her in his mind, picturing himself dipping down and putting his mouth on hers. Pushing her back into that hard chair. Getting under her clothes as he knelt down between her legs with—

“Oh … God,” she whispered, her eyes avoiding his.

But still, she didn’t turn away.

Lane licked his lips. Then he dropped his hand and eased out of
range. “You need to go. Now. Or I’m going to do something you’ll regret.”

“What about you?” she whispered. “Would you regret it?”

“Kissing you? Never.” He shook his head, recognizing that his emotions were all over the place … as well as completely out of control. “But I won’t touch until you ask me to. That much I can promise.”

After a moment, she got up with none of her usual grace, the chair she’d been in skipping over the floor, her feet tripping. He gave her enough time to get out of the break room and go some distance down the hall before he went to leave himself.

Any closer and he was liable to grab her, put her up on the table and give them both the release they needed.

Because she did want him. He had seen it for himself just now.

Not that he could dwell on that.

He had to go get his father to pay the bail—it wasn’t that Lane didn’t have the money. He had plenty of poker winnings, and unlike his sister, he was thirty-six, so he had that first level of access to his trusts. But William Baldwine had created this mess, and the fact that the man was out of town on business was going to make cutting the check and having it certified at the bank all the easier.

A minute later, Lane was at the controller’s office and he didn’t bother knocking, just went for the doorknob.

Locked.

Just as he’d done on his father’s glass, he pounded on the stout oak—with his uninjured hand.

“Is she not in?” Mr. Harris inquired from the doorway of his own suite.

“Where’s the key to this door?”

“I’m not permitted to open—”

Lane wheeled around. “You get the fucking key or I’m going to break the goddamn thing down.”

What do you know. A split second later, the butler came over with a heavy hunk of old brass. “Allow me, Mr. Baldwine.”

Except the key didn’t get them anywhere. It went into the mechanism just fine, but there was no turning it.

“I’m terribly sorry,” the butler said as he jimmied things around. “It appears to have jammed.”

“Are you sure that’s the right key?”

“It is marked here.” The man flashed the little tag that hung off the ornate end. “Perhaps she will be in shortly.”

“Let me try.”

Lane moved the penguin suit out of the way, but got nowhere with the key, either. Losing his patience, he put his shoulder to the panels, and–

The crack of splintering wood drowned out his shout of rage, and he had to catch the panels as they bounced back at him—

“What the hell!” he barked as he pulled a Dracula and recoiled from the stench.

As Mr. Harris started to cough and had to tuck his face into the lapel of his jacket, someone else said, “Oh, dear Lord, what is that—”

“Get everyone out of the hall,” Lane ordered the butler. “And make sure they stay away.”

“Yes, yes, of course, Mr. Baldwine.”

Lane put his forearm back up and breathed into his shirt sleeve as he leaned inside. The office was impossibly dark, the heavy curtains having been pulled shut against the bright sunlight, the air-conditioning unit in one of the windows likewise turned off. Patting around the doorjamb with his free hand, he had a feeling about what he was going to find and couldn’t believe it.

Click.

Rosalinda Freeland was sitting in the stuffed chair in the farthest corner, her face frozen in a gruesome smile, her gray fingers dug into the padded, chintz-covered cushions, her unblinking eyes staring straight ahead at whatever version of the afterlife had come upon her.

“Jesus …” Lane breathed.

Her professional suit and skirt were perfectly arranged, her reading glasses hanging from a gold chain on her silk blouse, her sensible salt-and-pepper
bob mostly arranged well. The shoes didn’t make sense. No somber black leather flats, as she had always worn, but a pair of Nikes, as if she were about to go on a power walk.

Shit, he thought.

Jamming his hand into his pocket, he took out his phone and dialed the only person he could think to call. And as the sound of electronic ringing purred in his ear, he looked around the office. There was no clutter anywhere, which was what he could recall of the woman who had been working at Easterly for thirty years: The desk with its computer and its green-shaded lamp had nothing else on it, and the bookshelves that discreetly hid the other office equipment and files were tidy as a library’s.

“—llo?” came the voice on his cell phone.

“Mitch,” Lane said.

“You coming down with a check for her bail?”

“I got a problem.”

“What can I do?”

Lane closed his eyes and wondered how in the hell he’d lucked out to have the guy on his side. “I’m staring at the dead body of my family’s controller.”

Instantly, the deputy’s voice dropped an octave. “Where.”

“In her office at Easterly. I think she may have killed herself—I just busted through the door.”

“Have you called nine-one-one?”

“Not yet.”

“I want you to call it in now while I head your way—so it’s in the log properly and Metro Police can come. They’ll have jurisdiction.”

“Thanks, man.”

“Do
not
touch anything.”

“Only the light switch as I came in.”

“And do not let anyone enter the room. I’ll be there in five.”

As Lane ended the connection and dialed emergency services, his eyes traced those shelves and he thought of all the work that had been done by the woman in this little office.

“Yes, my name is Lane Baldwine. I’m calling from Easterly.” The mansion didn’t have a street number. “There’s been a death in the house … yes, I’m very sure she is no longer living.”

He paced around as he answered a couple of questions, confirmed his phone number, and then hung up again.

Glancing over at the desk, he respected Mitch’s orders, but he had to get the household checkbook. Dead body or no dead body, he still needed to free Gin from jail.

Taking out his handkerchief, he walked across the Oriental carpet. He was about to pull open the flat drawer in the center when he frowned. Sitting in the middle of the leather blotter, perfectly aligned as if set there with a ruler … was a USB drive.

“Mr. Baldwine? Shall I do aught?” Mr. Harris called to him.

Lane glanced over at the corpse. “The police are on their way. They don’t want anything disturbed in here so I’m coming out now.”

He picked up what Rosalinda had so obviously left for whoever found her. Then he opened that drawer and snagged the eight-and-a-half-by-eleven leather-bound checkbook, tucking it into the small of his back and covering the thing with his shirt.

He turned back to the controller. That expression on her face was like the Joker’s, a horrible grimace that was going to show up in his nightmares for a long time.

“What has my father done now,” he whispered into the death-stained air.

L
izzie was in the glass-walled conservatory, on the phone with the rental company, when she caught sight of a Washington County Sheriff’s SUV coming up Easterly’s front drive.

Were they serving Chantal divorce papers already? Jeez—

“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking herself back to attention. “What was that?”

“The account is past due,” the sales rep repeated. “So no, we can’t fill any more of the order.”

“Past due?” That was as inconceivable as the White House not covering its light bill. “No, no, we paid for the tent in full yesterday. So we can’t be—”

“Listen, y’all are one of our best customers, we want to work with y’all. I didn’t know the account was still past due until the owner told me. I shipped as much as I could, but he’s shut it off until the balance is paid.”

“How much is owed?”

“Five thousand, seven hundred and eighty-five, fifty-two.”

“That won’t be a problem. If I bring a check over now, can you—”

“Everything’s been cleaned out. We got nothing left to rent, what with all the parties across the city this weekend. I called Rosalinda last week and left her three messages about the balance. She never called me back. I held the rest of the order as long as I was able ’cuz I was wanting y’all to be taken care of. But I didn’t hear anything and other orders had to be filled.”

Lizzie took a deep breath. “Listen, thank you. I don’t know what’s going on, but we’ll make it work—and I’ll make sure you get paid.”

“I’m really sorry.”

As she ended the call, she leaned in to the glass and tried to see the sheriff’s vehicle.

“—rental company say?”

She turned back to Greta, who was spraying the finished bouquets with floral preservative. “I’m sorry, what—oh, it’s a billing issue.”

“So we’re going to get the extra five hundred champagne flutes?”

“No.” She headed over to the door into the house. “I’m going to go talk to Rosalinda and then break the bad news to Mr. Harris. He’s going to be pissed—but at least we got the tents and the tables and chairs. Glasses we can wash as they come in, and the family’s got to have a hundred or so of their own.”

Greta looked up through those tortoiseshell glasses of hers. “There are close to seven hundred people coming. You really think we can keep up with that demand? With only five hundred flutes?”

“You are not helping.”

Stepping out of the conservatory, she cut through the dining room and headed for the staff hallway. As she pushed her way inside, she stopped dead. Three maids in their gray and white uniforms were clustered together, talking with a great deal of animation but little volume—as if they were a TV show that had had its sound turned down. Miss Aurora was beside them, arms crossed over her chest, and Beatrix Mollie, the head of housekeeping, was next to her. Mr. Harris was standing in the center of the corridor, his diminutive body blocking the way to the kitchen.

Lizzie frowned and approached the butler—and that was when she got a whiff of a smell that, as a farm owner, she had some familiarity with.

An African-American man in a sheriff’s uniform came out of Rosalinda’s office, along with Lane.

“What’s going on?” Lizzie asked, a cold chill shooting through her chest.

Dear Lord, was Rosalinda …

Was that why the hall had smelled so badly this morning? she thought with a pounding heart.

“There’s been a difficulty,” Mr. Harris said. “And it is being handled appropriately.”

Lane met her eyes as he spoke with the deputy and he nodded to her. When she motioned over her shoulder toward the conservatory, he nodded again.