Dead on the Delta

Twenty-five



Oh no. Oh hell, no. I curse myself and my crappy poker face. Libby must have smelled my suspicions and decided against letting me share them.

Her hand shakes as she tosses the broken phone onto the table. “Percy told me she talked to Deedee and that all three of you knew about Grace being in the barn … ”

Okay. So maybe it wasn’t my crappy poker face that tipped her off.

“I didn’t think I had any other choice.” She sucks in a breath and coughs it back up with a sob. “I remembered what you said about the shrimp. So I ground some up. They were … They were in the muffin. I’m so sorry.”

Holy. Southern-fried. Shit. She did this on purpose. She’s trying to kill me with a shrimp muffin. It’s positively diabolical, Martha Stewart School of Murder with a side of Extra Craftiness.

I dive for my purse, hoping to get to my gun. If I can’t call for help, I can at least make enough noise to attract attention. Or shoot Libby and take my killer out with me.

Libby and I wrestle for the purse for a few seconds—skinny fingers digging into skinnier fingers and knobby knees bumping under the table—but I’m not fit for a struggle. My wheezing becomes choking, choking becomes gasping, and I slide to the floor in a dizzy fog, all focus devoted to the momentous task of sipping in my next breath.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Libby repeats, her voice rising into hysterical territory. “I’m so—”

“Libby? What’s wrong? I heard you all the way in the—” James breaks off with a swift intake of breath. I can just barely see his shiny black shoes through the clawed feet of the table, but I suppose he can see me just fine. “Oh my God. What happened?”

“She, um … she-she,” Libby stutters. “She-she-she—”

“She what? Spit it out, Libs.” James hurries to my side, gently rolling me onto my back and probing at the swollen skin at my neck. I bulge my eyes and jab a finger at Libby, but my words come out as a sickly groan.

“It’s okay. Just relax,” he says, mistaking my freak-out for antics of the normal “I’m about to die” variety.

“She ate some shellfish by accident,” Libby finally spits out. “She said she’s allergic.”

“Shellfish. That makes sense.” James nods, but keeps his eyes on me, continuing to evaluate his patient. “We’re going to get you some help. You might be going into anaphylactic shock, but your airways aren’t closed. You’re going to be fine as long as we get moving.” He turns over his shoulder, directing his next words to Libby. “Get the van keys. We’ll take her to the ER. It’ll be faster than calling the ambulance.”

“But I—”

“But nothing. We’ve got to move. Let’s go.” James slips his arms under my knees and shoulders and hoists me into the air. I never expected this guy would be my savior, but I’ll take a savior in any form I can get.

“No.” Libby punctuates her refusal by raising the gun she must have rummaged from my purse while James and I were playing doctor. She takes aim at her brother’s chest, clicking off the safety with the air of a woman who knows her way around a firearm.

“Libby? What are you doing?” James asks, as stunned as any innocent man would be. “Where did you get that gun? We—”

“I can’t let you take her to the hospital,” Libby says with a ragged sob. Fresh tears spill down her cheeks and her nose starts to run. She swipes at it with the back of one hand, reminding me of Deedee and the trail on her tiny arm. God, where is Deedee? If she told Percy what she confided in me, she must have done it recently. Like in the sliver of time it took for me to get dressed and get to Camellia Grove. She must be here … somewhere, hopefully someplace far from this kitchen.

“Libby, please, she needs immediate treatment.” James starts forward, but Libby—and her gun—step into his path.

“She knows.” Libby sniffs. “She knows I put the shrimp in her muffin on purpose.”

“You what? You—”

“I had to do it.” Her bottom lip trembles. “Deedee saw Grace in the barn before I moved her. I don’t know when, but she could have seen me put the rag on her face. She could have seen me moving her. She could have seen anything!”

“Well, if you’d just carried her farther from the gate, then this wouldn’t—”

“I couldn’t.”

“You wouldn’t, because you’re too—”

“She was heavy! And I was crying!” Libby screams, then hiccups, then sobs some more.

“Okay, calm down,” James says. “We’ll figure this out.”

Oh. Shit. Again. Brother’s in on it too. I would punch him in the face if I weren’t working so hard to stay alive. As long as I remain limp and relaxed in James’ arms, it’s possible to pull in shallow breaths, but it might not be for long. I can feel the swelling getting worse, puffing up my cheeks until I can’t close my mouth without catching flesh between my teeth.

“Who else knows?” James asks.

“Deedee told Annabelle and Percy,” Libby says. “And I think she told Annabelle about the rabbits and my missing ring. I think that’s all, but I can’t be sure.”

“Where are Percy and Deedee now?” James turns first one way and then the other, uncertain what to do with me now that he’s decided I’m a necessary casualty.

“Percy’s in the cellar. I hit her over the head with the cast-iron skillet and she fell down the stairs. I couldn’t find a pulse. I’m pretty sure she’s dead.” Libby whimpers, as if horrified by her own words. Holy Moses. This woman is on her way to being a mass murderer.

“And where’s Deedee?” James asks, fear in his voice.

“I don’t know, but she’ll probably be back soon.”

Thank God. Deedee’s okay. For now.

“I don’t think she’ll go to the police,” Libby says, “but we have to decide what to—”

“Dammit, Libby.” James curses as he heads across the kitchen. Libby follows, gun floating to her side. “Why did you do this? These people didn’t have to die.”

“What was I supposed to do?” She eases in front of him, opening a door and flipping a switch on the wall inside. Seconds later, James hustles down a set of stairs into a musty-smelling place I’m betting is the cellar. Where Percy’s body lies at the bottom of the stairs, where my body will lie if I don’t figure some way out of this mess. “If anyone told the police about Grace’s body being in the barn, then they would guess it was someone in the house. We’re the only ones who have the keys to the barn. And when they find out Grace isn’t my adopted sister, they—”

“They won’t find out.”

“The FBI agent asked for some of my hair. The man came by this morning after the woman left.” Libby stops on the stairs, watching James carry me the rest of the way down.

Hitch. He was here and suspicious of Libby. Maybe he’ll come back. I cling to the thread of hope as I suck in another desperate breath. I loathe the damsel in distress role as much as any intimacy-and-relationship-avoiding, self-sufficient, modern woman, but at this point, having someone save my ass is my only chance.

“What?” James stumbles off the last step and edges around a large obstacle. From my position in his arms, I can’t see anything but the planks of the ceiling and a single yellowed bulb lighting the darkness, and I’m glad of it. I don’t want to see the body of a woman I talked to less than an hour ago, a woman I stupidly thought was a murderer.

“Agent Rideau came by while you were on the way to Baton Rouge,” Libby says. “He said he needed a sample of my hair.”

“And you just gave it to him?”

“I had to. If I refused, it would have looked suspicious.” Libby stays on the stairs, watching as James moves a bag of potting soil and puts me down on a table in the center of the room. My blood pressure spikes as I imagine being stabbed in the heart with a garden trowel and buried in the rose garden to fertilize Barbara’s award-winning Pink Promises.

He won’t stab you. All he has to do is wait for you to suffocate and then throw your body in the swamp. Much less mess.

“God, Libby.” James stares down at me with a concerned expression. “Now they’re going to find out that Grace wasn’t adopted. They’ll be able to pull DNA from the hair and—”

“I know that, James. I’m not stupid. That’s why we have to leave.”

“We can’t leave. It’ll kill Mama if we leave right after—”

“It’s going to kill Mama anyway, when she learns what we did. We can’t wait. The police are going to find out.”

“They’ll find out that Grace was your daughter,” he says. “But they didn’t have to. Mama got the birth certificate out of the safety deposit box and hid it somewhere no one will ever find it.”

Not what I’d thought Barbara was doing in Baton Rouge, but it makes sense. She must have known the investigation would lead to questions about Grace and wanted to make sure there was no paper trail connecting Grace and Libby.

“And I was taking care of the rest of it,” James says. “I was making sure someone else was going to be blamed for everything.”

“I know what you did.” Libby takes another step into the cellar, but still seems reluctant to join James by my side. “You put the refrigerator we found in the swamp in that man’s house, with some of Grace’s hair.”

So James had planted the evidence. I knew the drugs and the murder were connected. It’s good to know that Fernando is as innocent as I thought. My detective instincts aren’t completely off base, just off base enough to get me killed.

It’s getting harder to breathe, even when I lie still. The beams above me waver and my head feels light enough to float away and leave the mad, mad world behind.

“How did you know?” James asks.

“I told you, I’m not stupid.” Libby’s voice is soft, hurt, but tender at the same time. “I know you were trying to help, but that man is a good man. He’s innocent.”

“Innocent people go to jail all the time,” James says, turning his back on me to confront Libby directly. It’s the perfect opportunity to make a run for it, but I can’t. I’m too dizzy, spinny. “We could have gone to the police and said we remembered seeing a man matching his description hanging around the house. We could have waited until he was convicted and then moved away. We—”

“And how would we pay for that?”

“I’m going to find a way to sell the stuff in the refrigerator,” James says, answering the burning question of invisible men and Amity Coopers everywhere. Where are the f*cking drugs, you ask? Why, James has the f*cking drugs, thank you very much. “I’ve got some connections at the hospital. One of the nurses has a brother who—”

“It won’t be enough. We’re still going to lose the house. Mama only got that extension from the bank because of what happened to Grace. We’re not going to be able—”

“Nothing happened to Grace.” James voice edges towards a yell. “You killed her. If you hadn’t killed her, none of this would be happening.”

“If I hadn’t killed her, we could never be together,” Libby says, pulling my drifting mind back into my body. James and Libby? Together? Like … together together? “You know that. You know how she was once she saw us in your bedroom. She was out of her mind. She was going to tell Mama.”

“Mama knows.” James’ shoulders slump. “Don’t you think Mama knows by now? Grace … she … she looked just like me when I was a kid.”

Oh. Wow. Yeah, together together, all right, and together together for a long-ass time if James is Grace’s father. Ew. So, so … wrong. I can tolerate a lot in the name of love, but brother-sister relationships are just … ew. Not to mention genetically unsound. Grace’s heart condition and developmental problems suddenly make a lot more sense.

“She was your niece. There was a good reason for the family resemblance,” Libby says. “Mama never suspected anything. She still thinks it was that boy at symphony practice. She never would have known if Grace hadn’t—”

“Grace never would have told.” James turns back to me, disappointment that I’m still conscious etched on his face. “She didn’t even understand what she was seeing. She was only five.”

“So why did she kill all my rabbits?” Libby finally gets up the guts to come down the stairs, stepping gingerly over a bulky shadow at the bottom. I still can’t see Percy’s body in the darkness, but there’s no doubt that she’s dead. Nothing living could lie so terribly still.

“The rabbits were just … She was just seeing what she could get away with. And I think she—”

“She hated me, James.” Libby steps to James’ side, small hands smoothing up and over his shoulders. “You know she did. Why else did she make all the canning jars fall on me while I was in the pantry?”

“We can’t prove she did that,” James says, but his heart isn’t in his argument. “She wasn’t even in the room. She was standing outside.”

The magic. He’s talking about magic, Grace moving things with her mind the way Deedee said she could. The words spark something within me, a fragile thread of hope.

Can I … Maybe …

“She did it. You know that. Somehow, she did it.” Libby shivers and lays her cheek on James’ chest. “I could see it in her eyes, the second she decided to punish me. And when she didn’t kill me that way, she put that fairy in my bathroom to see if it would do the job.”

“She knew it wouldn’t kill you.”

“No, she didn’t. She didn’t know for sure. Mama never told her I was immune, only that she was, and that’s why it was okay not to tell anyone about the bites.”

I was right. Grace was immune. She must have inherited it from her mother, the woman who killed her. God. I want to live just to see this waste of a woman rot in jail for the rest of her stupid life. How can she stand here and try to justify slaughtering a little girl, no matter what Grace had done?

“She wasn’t going to stop until I was dead,” Libby says. “She wasn’t right in the head after the bites. You know that.”

James sniffs. “I know … I just … I loved her, Libs. I loved her so much.”

“I loved her, too,” Libby whispers. “But in the end it was her life or our life.” Libby’s eyes meet mine before she takes James’ arm and turns him away, making me wonder which “her” she’s talking about.

Maybe me, maybe Percy, maybe Grace, maybe all three. At this point it doesn’t matter. We’re all going to die for Libby and her secret. My skull is a helium balloon filled to bursting and my neck a thread set to snap in two. The pale blond heads a few feet away blur, and when I try for my next breath only a whisper of air makes it into my aching lungs.

I’m done for, unless … unless …

I shift my attention to the bulb hanging overhead. It’s a small chance, but if I can plunge us all into darkness, maybe I can slip off the table and drag myself upstairs in the confusion. Maybe there’s a phone in the kitchen, maybe I can force out a cry for help, maybe I’ll live until the ambulance and police arrive.

Or not.

Maybe or not, here I come. I close my eyes and think nasty, rage-filled thoughts.

I was angry when the drawer shoved closed on its own, when I kicked Amity before my foot touched her face. Anger had worked before; it might work again. It might be the key to harnessing my new potential.

Forcing fear to the back of my mind, I reach down deep, gathering all the rage Libby and her twisted family have inspired, pooling my hatred into a big, fiery cauldron. I wait until the heat of it burns inside me before I open my eyes and direct my rage at the bulb, willing it to swing, to shatter, to break.

At first, nothing. Nothing. Lots of frustrating, agonizing nothing. But then, finally, the bulb … twitches. Once, twice, and the filaments burn brighter.

It’s happening. I’m making it happen. I really am. The wonder of it cools my anger, and the bulb dims once more.

“That’s why you’re still here.” Libby’s voice floats to my ears. I ignore her and refocus, homing in on my anger, imagining the light bursting, glass raining down on Libby and James. “That’s why you took the drugs. You want a life together as much as … ”

“Lights out, that’s a good idea,” a deep voice whispers, so soft beneath Libby’s words I can barely hear him, so close I can feel his breath warming the shell of my ear.

Focus shattered, I jerk my head in the stranger’s direction, but thick fingers on my cheek urge my attention back to the light. After a second or two, I let him move me. There isn’t anything to see, anyway. It’s the man from last night, the invisible boogeyman come to take his vengeance.

Tucker’s warning that the Big Man knows who has his “stuff” drifts through my mind. I assumed he was talking about Percy—that she was the “her” I shouldn’t be caught hanging around with—but Tucker must have seen me talking to Libby out in the swamp. Somehow, he must know that she killed Grace and helped her brother steal the drugs from the Breeze house.

When you’re an invisible person, it’s probably easy to get the inside scoop on the dastardly doo going down in a small town like Donaldsonville, but I have a feeling this goes deeper than a pair of decent drug runner types working vengeance for a murdered child into their own agenda. The way Tucker said Grace’s name … it makes me think he and the man now running a calloused finger along my swollen throat knew the girl personally.

“Lights out, girl. I know Tucker gave you what you need. Now let’s see if you’ve got what it takes,” the man whispers. “If you do, I’ll see about saving your ass. If not … ”

The way his words trail off isn’t particularly comforting, but at this point he’s my only shot at getting out of here alive. If he wants the lights out, then I’ll do my damnedest to make it happen. I just have to make the bulb explode, to plunge the room into darkness and then … and then …

God only knows “what then.” Incestuous relationships, murdered sibling-daughters, and stealing drugs from Breeze houses to finance a flight from the law I can understand. But magic and invisible people are still beyond my comprehension.

But maybe not beyond my reach …

Anger is even easier to access the second time around. My face is so swollen my eyes are slitting closed and my tongue fills my mouth to overflowing. I’m pulling air down a pathway smaller than a coffee straw. I’ll stop breathing soon; die to protect a child killer. Unless I do something. Now.

The bulb twitches again, harder than before, hard enough to make the light flicker and draw the attention of the Beauchamps. Some part of my mind acknowledges that they’ve stopped talking, but the rest of me thinks only of the light and the glass and the swing, swing, swing of the chain, the swinging that will bring the glass in contact with the wooden beam above it in just a few—

“Freeze! FBI! Put your hands where I can see them!” The woman’s voice cuts through the air seconds before the glass shatters. The cellar is plunged into darkness, but the woman remains silhouetted in the door at the top of the stairs.

Stephanie. She’s come to save the day. Or get herself killed.

If I could form words, I would call out a warning, let her know that Libby has a gun and there’s a third man in the basement. But I can’t speak, I can only flinch as one gun fires and then another, and listen in horror as Stephanie’s body tumbles down the stairs.