“You know what I mean. It wasn’t only dollar signs he was seeing when he looked at Brooke. There was some real attraction there.”
“I think the attraction was that I was vulnerable. I’ve been so isolated from family and old friends since I moved down here to St. Ann’s.” Brooke gave the women a sad smile. “Okay, maybe vulnerable and isolated is a nice way of saying I was horny. It’s been more than three years since I had a man in my life.”
“Seven years for me, unless you count the drunken one-night stand I had at a wedding two years ago,” Lizzie said. She turned to Felicia. “You?”
“Next question?” Felicia said.
Brooke stared down into her coffee. “You know what else I think? I think Gabe killed Josephine.”
67
Both the women stared at Brooke in disbelief.
“I thought the cops agreed that it was an accident,” Lizzie said. “We all saw her that night. Josephine was groggy from mixing the new pain meds with the wine. She tripped over the dogs, fell, and hit her head on the bathroom floor. Right?”
Felicia chimed in. “Josephine was ninety-nine years old, and she had end-stage cancer. I mean, she would have been dead in a matter of days anyways. Why would Gabe risk murdering her?”
“That’s what I was asking myself all night long,” Brooke said. “And then it came to me. Josephine was ready to sign a will that would have divided her estate between five people—the three of us, plus my mom and Varina. She also planned to leave pretty generous cash bequests to Shug and Louette. And she planned to deed back the property she owned at Oyster Bluff to the original landowners.”
“Which would have all gone into effect if Gabe had gotten that will witnessed,” Felicia said.
“But he didn’t get it witnessed when he easily could have. Which meant that when Josephine died, that will was invalid. She died intestate—so that meant her estate would be left to her closest blood relatives,” Brooke said.
“Meaning your mom,” Lizzie said. “And if you’re right, Gabe Wynant was the only person who knew about that connection. And I’m not disagreeing with you, Brooke, but it’s still so hard for me to think of Gabe as a murderer.”
“Why?” Felicia demanded. “Just because he was an apparently rich, classy-looking white dude?”
“Well, yeah, now that you mention it,” Lizzie said.
“I wouldn’t have believed it either, if I hadn’t seen him try to shoot C. D. at point-blank range. If you’d seen his face…” Brooke shuddered. “He meant to kill C. D. And I’m not sure he wouldn’t have killed me too…”
She left the sentence unfinished, but her friends knew she was still dwelling on the way Brooke’s would-be suitor fell to his death. They sat sipping their coffee until Lizzie spoke up.
“I get that Gabe had the perfect motive to kill Josephine, but so did C. D., if you look at it like that.”
“Huh?” Felicia said.
“We know C. D. is convinced he’s Josephine’s son, but the will she dictated didn’t include him, so he had just as much motive, maybe even more than Gabe, to kill Josephine. Like revenge. Because as far as he’s concerned, she dumped him like a cast-off shoe at an orphanage,” Lizzie said.
“Maybe you’re right,” Felicia conceded. “I mean, what does anybody really know about C. D., besides the fact that he was raised in an orphanage? Don’t you think it’s an awfully big coincidence that he showed up at Talisa, looking for a job, only six months ago?”
“Stop!” Brooke clutched her head with both hands. “I’m already dazed and disoriented. You two aren’t helping matters any.”
“You’re the one who brought up the topic of murder,” Felicia said. “What do you want to do now? Do we just keep our mouths shut about our suspicions?”
Brooke sighed. “Lizzie’s right. We don’t actually know if Josephine’s death was an accident or a homicide. I’m so mixed up right now. Gabe gave me my first job right after law school. He was my mentor and my friend. Something changed in him, and I never saw it. But I keep thinking about what my mom said. ‘The people we think we know the best are the ones with secrets we can’t even fathom.’”
“Who doesn’t have secrets?” Lizzie said. “My grandma Ruth used to say there’s a little felon in the best of us.”
68
October 1941
Millie peered into the steam-clouded bathroom mirror and gingerly touched the bruises on her neck and chest. Blackish-purple handprints bloomed on her breasts. His handprints.
She’d lain awake all night, pondering her situation. Her bruises would fade as they had in the past, but what of her future with a man like Russell Strickland?
Only one solution occurred to her. She found the packet of razor blades in the medicine cabinet, alongside the Pepsodent, the cotton balls, and the Pond’s Cold Cream, all so thoughtfully stocked by the Bettendorfs’ housekeeper in anticipation of any need a guest might encounter. With a fingernail, she slit the paper wrapper and held the shining blade up to the light. One deft swipe across her wrist would surely do the trick, wouldn’t it? But the mess. How inconsiderate. And who would find her? Josephine? Her own mother? Her grandmother? She could only imagine their horror at finding her in a pool of her own blood. She shook her head. No, it was just too ghastly.
Millie’s hand closed on the bottle of sleeping pills she’d pilfered from her mother’s pocketbook. Almost a whole bottle. These would do the job nicely. She shook them into the palm of her hand. Tiny pink tablets, as sweet and promising as a first kiss. One swallow. Not nearly as messy. She would take the pills, then climb into the bathtub for a long, lovely nap. But what if the pills didn’t work? She could barely choke down baby aspirin. What if she vomited them back up? Or worse yet, what if she woke up, still engaged, still doomed to the life with Russell Strickland that had been so neatly planned for her? She could picture the shock and disappointment on her mother’s face.
That wouldn’t do either. She frowned and dumped the pills into the sink, turning on the tap to wash them down the drain.
Millie looked back in the mirror again. She was no longer the coed who’d met and flirted and become infatuated with Russell Strickland. That girl disappeared the first night he’d forced himself on her, months ago, in the backseat of his car, taken her in the same violent way he took anything he regarded as his property.
The woman who’d emerged from that car was someone who had to stay hidden. But she was there, just beneath the innocent veneer Millie presented to the world. She turned away from the mirror quickly, having glimpsed the resolute, rage-fueled visage who came and went in the blink of a long, fluttery eyelash.
She brushed her teeth and combed her hair and returned to her bedroom, where she dressed quickly in dark slacks because there was a chill in the air this morning.
The house was eerily quiet as she tiptoed past the closed bedroom doors of her oldest, dearest friends, Josephine and Ruth. What would they think if they saw this version of Millie? She crept down the stairs and into the big kitchen. Someone had put a pot of coffee on the stove, and she was tempted to pour herself a cup to soothe the throbbing in her temples, but time was of the essence. She must act before the sleeping household awakened.
She slipped out the back door and made her way in the predawn darkness toward the garage. She would have her pick of the Bettendorfs’ vehicles. The Packard, the roadster, the truck. All the keys were kept in their ignitions, because who would steal a car on an island? She’d read about carbon monoxide poisoning. A length of garden hose inserted in a tailpipe and then wound into a nearly closed window. Just the trick. No fuss, no muss.
A male voice cut abruptly through the morning stillness. “Millie? What are you doing out here?”
Her stomach roiled at the sound of his voice. Her first instinct was to run and hide as far from here as she could get. But just how far could she get on an island?