A FEW MINUTES LATER I CALLED GOODBYE TO LAVINIA and hurried out the door. I couldn’t handle an interrogation about my conversation with the Judge. He’d asked me to keep it confidential, and I knew I’d be hard pressed to lie to Lavinia. Not that he’d told me all that much. It had been like cross-examining a hostile witness.
I gunned the engine and threw gravel into the rose beds as I spun out onto the dirt road. I forced myself to slow down, but my mind was racing at a hundred miles an hour. I had spent more than half my life under the same roof with a man I had never really known. It amazed me that in a few short minutes my entire world had been turned completely upside down, that what I thought I knew—about my parents, my family, my life—had been, in many respects, a lie. A fantasy. A fairy tale, complete with an evil witch and a villain. The princess in the tower had been completely oblivious to the dark waters swirling around the castle.
“Oh, knock it off,” I said aloud. “Quit dramatizing.”
To distract myself, I switched on the radio, but even the soft strings on the classical station couldn’t soothe the waves of anger and indignation that swelled and ebbed in my chest. It was a sordid story, common, my mother would have said. An affair. There was a child. My father’s efforts to provide had been rebuffed. He had no idea of the whereabouts of either mother or daughter.
He wanted me to find them.
I wondered briefly how much my mother had known.
I drove on autopilot, braking and accelerating when I needed to, without conscious thought or intent. I managed to negotiate the swing bridge and downtown Beaufort all in one piece. As I made the turn at Gardens Corner, I mentally shook myself. The details he’d given me had been scant, and I’d had to drag even those out of him. How could he expect me to conduct a search with so little to go on? Still, he grudgingly agreed that we’d talk later, when the specter of Kimmie Eastman’s imminent death didn’t rightly occupy my every waking moment. He knew that my primary mission had to be to help save her life. There was time, he assured me. He didn’t plan on dying anytime soon.
Unless I strangled him myself, I thought.
I glanced at the clock on the dashboard. I would be late for my meeting with Elizabeth Shelly, but I expected she’d be there whenever I arrived. I had no idea what she wanted of me, and I might have taken Red’s advice and blown her off if she hadn’t lived next door to Patience Brawley. A quick visit to satisfy my nagging curiosity, and I’d be back on the trail of Joline Eastman’s sisters. The doctor had taken his stepdaughter home to die. But not if I could help it.
The prepaid cell phone rang, and it took me a moment to grope it out of my bag. I prayed it wasn’t Lavinia demanding an explanation for my abrupt departure.
“Hey,” Red said when I picked up. “Where are you?”
I tried to keep my voice level. “On my way to see Miss Lizzie. I’m running a little late.”
“How come?”
I swallowed the unexpected tears that caught in my throat. “I stopped off to see the Judge and had some lunch. How did you make out?”
“So far it looks like no one’s making anything of the fact that Joline called you at the time of the wreck. And there’s no preliminary evidence any other vehicle was involved. They found a mangled ’possum right near the site, so that was probably what spooked her. I assured Charlie Carter, who’s lead on the accident investigation, that she never spoke to you. When did Erik say he’d have the copy of the voice mail for me?”
I was pleased we were off the subject of the goings-on at Presqu’isle. I still hadn’t made up my mind if my father’s admonition to keep his secrets extended to Red. It would be my decision, whether the Judge liked it or not.
“He didn’t say. Why don’t you swing by the store?”
“I’m on my way there now. I’ll collect the disk, and we can discuss it over dinner. Why don’t I meet you at Jump & Phil’s? Think you’ll be back by seven?”
“I hope so. I want to get whatever information I can bully or pry out of Patience and get it to Erik right away.” Again I felt a sob hovering in my chest. “The doctor discharged Kimmie. The nurse I talked to said he’s taken her home.”
There was a long silence while Red worked his way to the same conclusion I’d drawn. “So he’s given up? He’s just going to let her die?”
“That’s my take on it, especially after what Joline told us last night. Kimmie must have a nurse with her or more likely the housekeeper. I assume Jerry is spending time in Savannah with his wife. I’m going to try to see her as soon as possible.”
“Kimmie or Joline?”
“Both, but definitely Kimmie first.”
“One thing at a time, honey,” he said, and I felt myself relax a little. He was right.
“ ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,’ ” I said, quoting St. Matthew.
Screw the points and my father’s stupid game.
“Call me when you start back, okay? And be careful.”
“See you,” I said and hung up.
I turned left at the big intersection, then right onto Holly Hill Road. A few minutes later I passed the Brawleys’. Patience’s small car was not in the driveway, and I kept moving. A hundred yards farther on I swung the Jaguar between two tilted fence posts and slowed to a crawl down the potholed lane that reminded me so much of the Avenue of Oaks leading to Presqu’isle. I passed the warning signs and marveled at how little time had passed since I’d stumbled onto this strange property in my initial search for Maeline Mitchell. Much as I struggled against believing in coincidences, sometimes fate—or an alignment of the stars or whatever—led us down paths where the universe conspired to—
I slammed on the brakes as I came out of a sharp turn and a pack of dogs surrounded the car, their shrill barks and growls sending my heart into my stomach. Without thought, I gripped my injured thigh and felt sweat begin to trickle down between my breasts.
“Alexander! Hoy, you, Rasputin! Nicholas! Heel!”
Miss Lizzie appeared suddenly in front of the car, and the dogs fell away. My fear had magnified their number in my head. Three sturdy, mixed-breed bodies trotted over to sit obediently at her feet. With a snap of her fingers, she sent them slinking off toward an outbuilding that sat beside the road. I rolled down my window as she approached.
“You’re late. I had them penned in before, but you can’t keep dogs from roaming forever. Pull ahead to the house. I’ll put them up.”
I felt as if I should salute, so terse had been her command. She strode off, her booted feet kicking up dust from the road, the dogs once again circling around her, jumping and vying for her attention. I moved farther into the property and a moment later spied the weathered plantation house through the inevitable stand of live oaks. I followed the drive to an open area in front of the sagging verandah and shut off the engine.
Covenant Hall had never been grand, although in the period before the War of Northern Aggression it would have been large by most standards. Simple clapboard, once white, covered the outside and was in desperate need of paint. The verandah curved around at least one side of the house, and the short foundation was of tabby, that mixture of oyster shell and lime that had been such an important part of construction a century or more ago in the Lowcountry. The second-story windows stared blankly down, unopened to the breezes swirling around the yard, and I wondered if Covenant’s occupants used only the ground floor.
It had been a working rice plantation, if the young woman at the Stop ’n Save was to be believed, and its owners had been more interested in function than form. I tried to imagine the drive and front lawn filled with carriages that had transported the important men of the day to clandestine meetings. Had secession really been discussed and voted on here, had a covenant to support the breakup of the Union taken root inside these unprepossessing walls? I knew there were many such homes scattered throughout South Carolina—Beaufort boasted one—where gentleman planters and politicians had met and plotted their own ultimate destruction.
I shut off the engine and stepped out into a pleasant afternoon. The sun had banished most of the clouds. I gathered my bag and closed the door. It was unearthly quiet. Not even a snippet of birdsong broke the silence. The dogs had calmed down, and I leaned against the fender and waited for Miss Lizzie. A shaft of sunlight pierced the canopy of trees, and I felt its warmth on the back of my head.
“Now that I know, the resemblance is really quite remarkable.”
I whirled at the voice that came from off to my right. Elizabeth Shelly stood hidden in shadow, the light on her silvery hair the only hint that she was there.
“It’s nice to meet you—formally, that is, Miss Shelly. Or is it Mrs.? I’m Bay Tanner,” I added when she didn’t reply.
“I know who you are. You’re late,” she said again.
“I apologize. Family matters.”
Her bark of laughter held no amusement. “No doubt,” she said. “I’m always being told that family is of vast importance in this part of the world.”
For the first time I registered the accent. There’d been a hint of it in our few brief exchanges—at the end of the lane and the night before when she’d stuck a pistol in my face—but now it was more pronounced. British, clipped and formal-sounding, like Helen Mirren, the actress who always seemed to be playing one or the other of the Queen Elizabeths. It made Miss Lizzie sound aristocratic and snobbish.
I waited beside the car. Finally, she pushed away from the huge oak under which she’d been sheltering and walked slowly in my direction. We studied each other without any attempt to disguise the fact. When she was within a couple of yards, I said, “What is it that you find so remarkable? Who is it you think I resemble?”
She stopped in front of me and held me riveted with her intense gaze.
“Your mother, of course,” she said.