The Best Man to Trust

CHAPTER Twelve



Tom barely had time to process the horrific sight before the first shocked gasp behind him jolted him back to awareness.

“Jess! No!” Rachel screamed.

Tom quickly turned around and held out his arms, both to block their view and shepherd them from the room. “All right. Everybody out.”

“Are you sure she’s dead?” Alex asked hesitantly. “Maybe there’s some way...”

From what he’d seen Tom didn’t think there was any way Jessica was alive, but this wasn’t the time to destroy even the slightest bit of hope for any of them. “I will check to confirm, but in the meantime, everybody needs to go downstairs and wait. Maybe go back to the dining room.”

“You can’t really expect us to eat at a time like this,” Greg objected in disbelief.

“I don’t care what you do, but you need to go. This is a crime scene. Unlike with Haley, there’s no need to move her, so I’m sure the police would like the room as undisturbed as possible.”

“Who put you in charge?” Alex griped.

Tom opened his mouth to respond. Before he could, Meredith did.

“No one,” she said behind him. “So I’ll say it. Please go downstairs.”

At the back of the group, Rick and Ellen needed no encouragement, quickly turning to go.

“It’s a good idea,” Scott said gently, placing his hands lightly on Rachel’s shoulders. “Come on, Rach.”

Staring dazedly at Jess, Rachel didn’t respond at first. Tears streamed down her cheeks, her mouth hanging open as though in a silent scream. Finally she nodded slightly, allowing him to turn her away from the scene and out of the doorway.

Greg quickly lowered his head and moved away. With one last look into the room, Alex did the same.

Tom closed the door, then turned back toward Meredith.

And Jess.

“Thank you,” Meredith said softly without looking at him. “I should have thought of that first.”

“No problem,” he said. “I guess I should check...”

As he moved closer to the body, he could immediately tell without a doubt that Jess was dead. Her eyes were open, staring blankly above, her mouth agape.

He carefully pressed his fingers to the side of her neck, nearly wincing at the sensation. Her skin was already cool to the touch. Still he waited long enough to confirm there was no pulse before pulling his hand away.

Leaning back, he studied her face. She looked terrified, he thought, a lump rising in his throat. She’d known what was happening, known she was dying. If she’d been stabbed in the chest and stomach as it appeared, then she must have faced her killer. Part of him wondered if the horror on her face was from the knowledge of what was happening to her—or from knowing who her killer was.

Reaching out, he gently closed her eyes. Maybe the police wouldn’t have wanted him to, something he’d belatedly realized with Haley yesterday, but it didn’t seem right leaving her like that, any more than it had with Haley. If the police wanted to make an issue of it, he’d just have to deal with it.

He turned to find Meredith standing with her arms wrapped around herself, still staring at the body. She looked so shattered it was all he could do not to reach out and pull her close.

It seemed to take her a few seconds to realize he was facing her. She finally lifted haunted eyes to meet his. “My God, why is this happening?”

“I don’t know,” he had to say, no matter how much he hated doing so. “But we’re going to figure this out,” he continued, needing to hear the words, needing to believe them as much as she did.

She nodded slowly. He couldn’t tell if she believed him or was just responding automatically.

“We don’t have to move her or touch anything,” Meredith murmured. “But we should at least cover her with a sheet. I don’t think the police would mind that.”

Tom could hear the guilt and anguish that were heavy in her voice, and suspected she was looking for something—anything—she could do for this woman who’d been murdered in her house. It did seem wrong to just walk away and leave her like this for the next several days, as much as it had to leave her with her eyes open. “Sure. Good idea.”

“Let me get a fresh sheet.” Pulling the door open, she slipped out into the hall.

Leaving him alone with Jess.

She lay in the center of the bed, still dressed in the clothes she’d been wearing earlier. He studied the knife. It looked slightly different from the one used on Haley, but also different from the ones in the house, so likely it was still one the killer had brought here. Evidently the killer didn’t have a matched set, he thought darkly, wondering if it meant anything.

In spite of her behavior over the past few days, a wave of guilt washed over him as he remembered some of the things he’d thought of her. No matter how she’d acted or the kind of person she’d been, she didn’t deserve this. No one did.

Glancing down, he noticed blood on the floor. There was another trail, the reverse of the one they’d discovered in Haley’s room, this time bigger near the door. She must have been stabbed there, then forced back into the room. Had she answered the door to her attacker, or had the killer managed to catch her when she’d been entering the room, maybe on her way back from the bathroom?

A few seconds later, he felt Meredith return. “Got it,” she said, holding up the folded sheet she held in one hand.

“Let me help you.”

Together they draped the sheet over the body, letting it softly drift over her until she was completely covered.

When it was done, Tom looked at Meredith over the width of the bed. “Should we go downstairs?”

She didn’t respond for a moment, studying the covered sheet on the bed. Then she seemed to gather herself, squaring her shoulders, carefully wiping away every trace of vulnerability like a mask falling into place over her face. Meredith Sutton was a tough one, he thought with no small sense of admiration. Maybe that wasn’t a surprise given what she’d been through with her ex, although it did make him wonder, not for the first time, why she would have let anyone hurt her.

“Let’s go,” she said. “I need to make sure everyone else is all right.”

* * *

WHEN THEY REACHED the bottom of the main staircase, they heard voices coming from the living room. The doors were open. Meredith recognized Alex’s and Greg’s voices, and figured the others must be in there with them.

Sure enough, the remaining members of the wedding party were clustered together on the couches in the center of the room.

“We thought we’d find you in the dining room,” Meredith said.

“Like I said, no one was really in the mood to eat,” Greg said. In his right hand, he clutched his flask.

“But you were in the mood to drink?” Rachel sniped.

Greg raised the flask and tipped it toward her. “I’m amazed the rest of you aren’t.”

“That won’t help us get to the bottom of this,” Alex said flatly.

“Where are Rick and Ellen?” Meredith asked.

“I think they said they were going back to the kitchen,” Rachel said.

Probably not wanting to spend any more time with this group, Meredith thought. Considering everything that had happened, she couldn’t blame them.

“I’m still trying to figure out how the killer got to her,” Scott said. “We all know how scared Jess was. There’s no way she would have left her door unlocked. So how did the killer get to her?”

“She could have opened the door to him, or her, if it was someone she trusted,” Alex suggested. As he trailed off, he turned and looked rather pointedly at Rachel.

If she noticed the implication, she didn’t show it. “There’s another explanation,” Rachel said. “Aren’t there secret passages in this place? Jess mentioned something about that to me yesterday, something she read about the previous murder here.”

She aimed the question directly at Meredith, and there was no missing the accusation in it. Meredith felt every eye in the room turn toward her.

Meredith studied her closely. “Is that what the two of you were talking about so intently this morning after breakfast when I saw you in the hall?”

Rachel slammed her mouth shut. “No,” she said tightly. “She was still mad at me for bringing us here.”

“Are there secret passages, Meredith?” Greg asked.

“Yes,” Meredith admitted. “But they’ve all been sealed,” she quickly added, to stave off the instantaneous panic and outrage she could see rising on their faces. “After what happened before, every single entrance to the passages was closed off. There’s no way to access any of them.”

“You’re sure about that?” Scott said.

“Yes. I oversaw the work myself and checked all of them before you arrived.”

“So it’s most likely she let the killer in,” Alex said.

No one seemed to have an obvious comeback to refute that, the implications lying heavily over the room.

“I don’t understand why anybody could be doing this,” Scott murmured.

“I’m just going to say it,” Alex said sharply. “We should be asking Rachel.”

Rachel’s eyes flared in alarm. “What are you talking about?”

His face flush with anger, he jabbed a finger in her direction. “You have to know why this is happening. They were your friends. You brought them here. They wouldn’t be dead if it wasn’t for you!”

“We don’t know that,” Rachel insisted, a note of desperate hope in her voice.

“What about Kim? Is it just a coincidence she’s dead, too?”

Rachel blinked in shock. “Kim overdosed and drowned in her bathtub at home.”

“Yes,” Greg said, jumping in. “So now your three closest friends from college are all dead. He’s right—it’s hard to believe that’s a coincidence.”

“Kim and I weren’t close anymore. We haven’t spoken in years.”

“So she’s the one friend you wouldn’t have been able to lure here to be a bridesmaid,” Alex noted.

“I did not lure anyone here!”

“Didn’t you? You’re the reason all of us are here. Why did you bring us here?”

“For a wedding! That’s all!”

“Why here? Why this of all places? Why somewhere that was already connected with murder and death?”

“Because it was so beautiful! A real-life castle, like something out of a fairy tale. That’s what I wanted, the fairy-tale wedding! I had no idea any of this would happen!”

“Didn’t you?” Alex immediately shot back. “Tell us the truth! Why is this happening?”

Rachel gave her head a desperate shake. “I really don’t know!”

For what it was worth, Meredith believed her. The woman’s denials rang true, her paleness and anguish in the face of the accusations stark and painful. If she was acting, it was the performance of a lifetime.

Scott took a step in front of her. “Come on, guys,” he said, his voice hard. “Back off. She doesn’t know anything.”

“Are you sure about that?” Alex asked. “You guys were broken up for a long time, and you really haven’t been back together all that long. How well do you really know her? Hell, how do you know getting back together wasn’t part of some plan on her part?”

“You can’t really believe that!” Rachel said.

Alex hesitated, a flicker of uncertainty passing across his face. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But all of our lives are on the line here. The questions have to be asked. Nobody else should die because we were all too polite to ask them.”

“Well, I don’t believe it,” Scott said. “And I don’t have to ask.”

“Then maybe it’s a good thing somebody is,” Greg mumbled against his flask.

“Where were you this afternoon, Rachel?” Alex asked.

“She was with me,” Scott said firmly, a touch of anger climbing into his tone.

“You said the two of you were taking a nap,” Alex noted.

“That’s right,” Scott said.

“So if you were asleep, you have no way of knowing if she was with you in the room the whole time.”

The argument seemed to draw Scott up short for a second. An instant later, his expression hardened with certainty. “I know.”

Alex simply raised his eyebrows, saying nothing, the look answer enough. He was right, Meredith thought. If Scott had been asleep, he couldn’t vouch for Rachel’s whereabouts the whole time. Of course, the reverse was also true. If Rachel had been asleep, Scott could have slipped out of their room, as well.

“Maybe you do,” Alex said, not unkindly. “But there’s no way the rest of us can.”

“I brought you here to be my friends, not accuse the woman I love of being a killer.”

“Well, I didn’t come here to die,” Alex retorted. “And you might be lovesick enough to trust her after the way she treated you, but the rest of us aren’t.”

“What are you talking about?” Rachel demanded.

Alex shot a scornful look her way. “Come on, Rach, we all remember what happened in college. The way you dumped him out of nowhere. Or maybe you don’t because you weren’t around anymore. We’re the ones who had to pick up the pieces when he was moping around because you ripped his guts out.” He looked at Scott. “When you proposed, I warned you, didn’t I? About trusting her again? The warning still stands.”

Rachel looked at Scott in shock. “If he didn’t approve of you marrying me, why did you ask him to perform the ceremony?”

“He didn’t disapprove, he just raised the issue. It’s what he does, he asks questions. And you wanted us to get married in the middle of nowhere! I didn’t want someone we didn’t even know doing it, so it made the most sense.”

“That doesn’t make sense at all,” Rachel snapped.

“Everyone calm down,” Tom said. “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“Isn’t it?” Alex asked. “What do you suggest, Tom? We need to figure out who’s doing this before someone else gets hurt.”

“I agree,” Tom said. “But turning on each other and blindly throwing around a bunch of accusations isn’t going to get us anywhere.”

“Look where it got Jess,” Greg mused darkly.

Everyone looked at him in horror. “Will you shut up!” Rachel screamed at him.

He eyed her coolly. “Or what? You have a knife handy?”

The response seemed to shock everyone into silence. Rachel’s jaw moved up and down, but no sound came out. Finally, she clamped her lips together and turned away from him with barely concealed fury. “I knew we shouldn’t have invited you.”

Greg frowned in mock outrage. “Hey, he’s the one giving you the inquisition, and I’m the one you regret inviting? What kind of sense does that make?”

“Fine,” Rachel spat. “I regret inviting both of you.”

“I think it’s safe to say we regret that you did, too,” Greg returned.

“Greg, please,” Scott said with thinly concealed impatience. “This isn’t helping.”

Greg shrugged. “I wasn’t trying to.”

Meredith had already been growing tired of the man’s antics, and she’d finally reached the end of her tolerance. “Why not?” she challenged. “Don’t you want to figure out who’s responsible for this?”

“Sure, but it looks like Alex has that covered.”

“You seem awfully calm given the circumstances,” Meredith noted.

He raised his flask. “A little liquid courage goes a long way.”

Fully out of patience, she automatically reached out and grabbed the flask from him. His reflexes likely impaired, he moved too slowly to retain his hold on it, his fingers closing around empty air a moment later.

His eyes narrowed, glittering with suppressed fury. He slowly held out his hand. “I’m going to ask you to give that back,” he said with deadly calm.

“I think you’ve had enough courage for now. It would be helpful if you did without for a while.”

“You know you have a house full of alcohol. Taking one little flask isn’t going to stop me from getting a drink if I want one.”

“Well, this is one less drink for you to have, and right now that sounds good to me.”

He glared up at her, the look in his stare sending a shiver of warning through her. Then he pointedly looked away. “Suit yourself.”

“Good,” Meredith said. Shoving the flask into her pants pocket, she glanced around the room. “Now I still need to check on Rick and Ellen and try the phone lines again. Can everyone please stay calm while I do that?”

It took a few moments, but she eventually received a few nods in response.

“Thank you,” she said, meaning it. “I’ll be right back.”

Meredith quickly turned and stepped out into the hall. She felt Tom fall into line beside her. She didn’t question his impulse to come with her. Given the current situation and how tense things that gotten, it felt good not to be alone.

They’d crossed the main hall and were entering the side corridor leading to the kitchen, safely out of earshot of everyone in the living room, when she finally spoke. “We have to figure out who’s behind this. If we don’t, the killer might not have to bother taking anyone else out. They’ll all kill each other.”

“This might be what the killer wants,” Tom noted gravely. “Haley’s body was left out to be found and create fear. Even if Jess’s wasn’t, that still might be what he or she wants. To keep everybody on edge and turning on one another.”

His words sent a tremor of unease rumbling through her. “But why?” she asked automatically, even though she knew he didn’t have the answer. It was more a groan of frustration than an actual question.

As expected, he didn’t respond, the tension and frustration emanating from him palpable in the close confines of the hallway.

Two people were dead, and they still were no closer to understanding why.