The Iroguois Indians called the river “the Ohio,” which was translated by the French as “the Beautiful”—la Belle Riviére. Later, linguists argued that the name really meant “the Sparkling,” “the Great,” or “the White.” Perhaps other translations were more accurate, but to most people who lived along the Ohio, the river remained “the Beautiful,” an apt name that would follow it throughout history.
Adrienne Reynolds stood on a low rise overlooking the river. Behind her loomed the long, white, Georgian lines of a hundred-year-old resort hotel named la Belle Riviére, more commonly referred to by the locals of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, as The Belle. She removed sunglasses protecting her sea-green eyes from the bright morning sun and looked downward at the hotel’s best-known attraction, its majestic view of the wide Ohio River.
Adrienne loved the river. As an artist, she was always intrigued by its colors. They varied from a muted emerald when the waters were low and tall grasses could be seen swaying beneath the surface, to the café au lait or “milky” tone achieved during light rains that gently eddied sediment, to dark chocolate when storms roiled the murky mud of the riverbed. She especially liked the Ohio on cool summer mornings like this one when fog gracefully rose from the river, parting now and then to let glittering sunbeams spear the glassy surface of the water. She looked behind her and saw that already sunlight sparkled off the glass cupolas atop the four-story hotel overlooking its namesake, La Belle Rivière.
Adrienne had been born and reared in the West Virginia town of Point Pleasant set in a lush rural landscape and only two miles away from the Belle. She’d never dreamed of leaving the area for places known to have more excitement, but right after college, she’d followed her young husband, Trey Reynolds, to Nevada where he’d created a lounge act and managed to hang on to it for almost five years in a minor Las Vegas casino. Although Adrienne loved her husband, she hated her new home. Every day she looked with desolation at the flat expanse of hot sand, the prickly cacti, the parch-skinned lizards scurrying around her front yard, and the endless sky. Local people described that sky as vibrant turquoise. To her it looked like a piece of bleached denim with a burning white hole that passed for the sun. Her husband never knew how often he’d just cleared the driveway on his way to the casino for rehearsal before Adrienne had burst into a storm of homesick tears for the wide Ohio River and the lush blue-green hills of Appalachia.
When Adrienne had become pregnant, she began supplementing their scanty, irregular income with her sketches and paintings. Their daughter Skye was five by the time Adrienne was getting a small start in the local art world when, in an unexpected and crushing blow, Trey had been demoted to an even less popular club farther away from the hallowed “Strip” where everyone wanted to be. “I don’t think there’s anyone in the audience under eighty,” he’d complained to her in a lost, hopeless voice. “Half of them sleep through the songs. Snore though the songs! It’s humiliating. And I’m not making enough money to keep three of us going.” He’d sighed and stared into the distance. “I won’t put my family through this. We’re going home. I’ll join Dad’s business.”
So Trey Reynolds had abandoned his limping, ego-crushing casino career and they’d moved back to West Virginia. Adrienne had known what a blow his failed entertainment career had inflicted on Trey, although she’d been amazed he’d managed to hang on to his lounge act for as long as he had. For her part, though, she’d been overjoyed to return to her and Trey’s hometown of Point Pleasant. Within a year she’d begun selling her work at a nearby Ohio gallery called the French Art Colony and teaching art at the local branch of Marshall University. Her happiness had increased tenfold. And even now, her enchantment with the area remained, particularly on a beautiful morning like this one at the old hotel she loved, although Trey was no longer here to share the beauty.
Soon the temperature would rise, probably to the low eighties according to the forecasters, but now the dampness from early morning fog turned Adrienne’s long, honey-brown hair wavy and sent a ripple of chill bumps along her arms beneath her denim jacket.
“I’m opening the thermos of coffee,” her fourteen-year-old daughter Skye called. “You want a cup? I’m freezing!”
“You didn’t have to come out here with me so early.”
“I love it out here just past dawn with all the mist,” Skye claimed enthusiastically. “It looks like Camelot, or some of the places in my old fairy-tale books. What about the coffee?”
“Yes, please.” Adrienne stood on the bank for a few more moments, savoring the atmosphere, before the smell of strong coffee reached out and lured her like the Greek sirens calling to the sailors. Skye held out a cup, Adrienne took a sip, and smiled. “You used the good stuff.”
“Royal Vintner, your favorite.”
“Have you misbehaved in some way you’re about to confess?”
Skye looked reproachful. “Of course not, and besides, I’m too old to misbehave. You make me sound like I’m seven.”
Adrienne raised an eyebrow. “Pardon my demeaning language. Have you raised hell in some way you’re about to confess?”
Skye burst into laughter, her adolescent face beautiful in the gentle sunlight. “No. I’m not you, Mom. I’m not already raising hell at age fourteen.”
“Neither did I.”
“That’s not how Aunt Vicky tells it.”
“My big sister was Miss Manners all her life. I don’t think she ever did one thing wrong.”
“But you were your parents’ favorite.”
“Only according to Vicky. If they were alive, they’d tell you a different story.” Adrienne looked around, squinting slightly against the sun on the mist. “Lights are still flashing down on the road. I think that wreck is a really bad one.”
“Maybe someone was trying to pass in the fog.”
“You’re not supposed to pass at all on that strip of highway, fog or no fog. Too many curves.”
“I hope no one got killed. But you’ll get the scoop later today. Dating the local sheriff has its perks, Mom.” Skye gave her a mischievous look. “Just how serious are you two?”
“This coffee is great but you still look cold, Skye,” Adrienne said briskly. “Why don’t you get your sweater from the car?”
“No sharing of secrets about Sheriff Lucas Flynn this morning even when I made a pot of your favorite coffee?” Skye’s hyacinth-blue eyes, so like her father’s, danced beneath long lashes. “He’s awfully nice, Mom, and Daddy would want you to be happy.”
Trey would also want me to be in love, Adrienne thought sadly. He would want me to feel joyful and passionate, not just safe and comfortable like I do with Lucas. But she said none of this to her daughter. “Oh well, I’ll try to pump more information about the romance later,” Skye relented cheerfully. “Now I need to find Brandon. I hear him barking in the woods.”
“He probably had a mad urge to pursue a squirrel that would scare him to death if it turned on him. Honestly, I’ve never seen such a cowardly one-hundred-pound dog.”
“Mom, Brandon is a lover, not a fighter.”
“Whatever you say. You go save Brandon before he’s attacked by a chipmunk, and I’ll get my camera and sketchpad out of the car. I only have three weeks to get a painting done of this place before it comes tumbling down.”
“Before Ellen Kirkwood has it knocked down,” Skye said bitterly. “What a waste. Are you sure Kit can’t do anything about it?”
Kitrina “Kit” Kirkwood, Ellen’s daughter, had been one of Adrienne’s two best friends most of her life. Kit—smart, fast-talking, opinionated—was violently opposed to the destruction of the Belle, but the hotel belonged to Ellen, who was adamant. Kit told Adrienne she’d lost the fight to preserve the place she loved and had thought one day she would inherit. So she wanted Adrienne to do a painting of the hotel, something Kit could hang in her elegant downtown restaurant, The Iron Gate.
“I don’t see why Mrs. Kirkwood is so amped about pulling down the hotel,” Skye continued to grouse, reaching for the sweater she’d earlier said she didn’t need.
“Ellen’s convinced it’s cursed. Her mother harped about it to Ellen all her life. And to be fair, there have been a lot of strange accidents and deaths here. But Jamie’s drowning in the pool last year was the end for Ellen.” Adrienne thought of the beautiful four-year-boy Ellen Kirkwood had adopted when he was a baby. “She couldn’t bear to look at the place anymore.”
“Her husband doesn’t want her to tear it down.”
“Gavin doesn’t own it, and I don’t think he has much influence with Ellen, either. Or Kit, even though she and Gavin are on the same side for once.”
“Why doesn’t Mrs. Kirkwood just sell the Belle?”
Adrienne raised an eyebrow. “Honey, it wouldn’t be sporting to sell a cursed hotel.”
Skye grinned. “Yeah, real unethical.”
“We shouldn’t make fun of Ellen,” Adrienne added guiltily. She’d always liked the woman in spite of her peculiarities.
“Making fun just a little bit won’t hurt,” Skye said. “It kind of takes the sting out of knowing this great old place will be sticks and stones in a few weeks.”
“You’re right.” Adrienne sighed. “I hear Brandon. He’s in the woods off to the left.”
“And I’m off to the rescue. Be back pronto.”
Actually, Adrienne was glad for the temporary solitude. She needed to concentrate on finding the right perspective from which to do her preliminary sketches. It would take several tries, some of which would be interrupted when her daughter and dog returned. She’d have been happier to leave Skye and Brandon at home for the morning, but Skye had insisted on accompanying her, and when Adrienne had balked at bringing Brandon, Skye had put up a guilt-inducing argument about how he hardly ever got to run as much as he should. He was, after all, at least ten pounds overweight. A romp in the woods would do him good, Skye had said convincingly. Unfortunately, his “romp” had turned into an all-out rampage.
Adrienne reached inside her car for the Olympus Epic Zoom 170 Deluxe camera she’d just bought last week. She’d done practice shots, but these would be her first serious photographs with it and she was looking forward to seeing how the hotel looked caught by a 170 mm 4.5X high-performance zoom lens. It seemed powerful to be so light and convenient to carry.
She took random shots around the hotel, catching the long porches stretching the length of all four floors that had allowed guests to stand outside their rooms and view the river. She photographed the tall glass cupolas, the red shingled roof, the big clock tower with its Roman numerals, the iron weather vanes topped by black roosters. The vanes sat motionless. A brisk breeze would have quickly chased away the fog, Adrienne thought, but for now she liked these shots with the mist shrouding the hotel like a veil, even if the pictures probably wouldn’t be much help when she worked on the actual painting.
Finally, the fog began to clear a bit in spite of the still air of the morning and Adrienne decided to get started. She’d selected a sketchpad of rough paper and a 3B graphite pencil for her preliminary sketch. She went to the east side of the hotel, where the morning sun shone brightest, sat down on a piece of wrought-iron lawn furniture, and stared up at the hotel, drawing pencil poised.
Sunlight shimmered through the remaining mist, giving the hotel a magical look. Skye was right, Adrienne thought La Belle Rivière possessed a fairy-tale air, evoking the beautiful women who’d once walked in graceful gowns down the wide first-floor porch steps onto the lush green grounds. Their handsome companions, men in excellent suits with exquisite manners and equally exquisite bank accounts, would have accompanied them. Adrienne sighed at her vision of the hotel as it must have looked in the early twentieth century.
But just a few years ago, the place had still retained its grandeur as well as its reputation as one of the most beautiful resort spots in the country. The hotel had drawn everyone from statesmen, to movie stars, to foreign royalty. Ten years ago, it had been the site of a high-fashion shoot featuring local girl turned haute couture model Julianna Brent. How beautiful Adrienne’s girlhood friend Julianna had looked in sumptuous evening gowns as she posed at the hotel, a landmark Ellen Kirkwood had maintained with all the diligence its builder, her great-grandfather, could have desired.
Adrienne’s reverie snapped when a sharp caw broke the morning silence. She looked away from the cloud to a telephone line, on which sat three shining black crows. One cawed again, its sound strident and irritating. The lookout crow, she thought, signaling to the other members of its group. A murder. That’s what a group of crows was called. Not a flock. Not a gaggle. A murder of crows.
Another bird landed on the telephone line. He looked bigger than the usual crow, more like twenty-five inches long rather than the average nineteen or twenty. Two more arrived. They sat close together on the telephone line, all seeming to glare at her with their hard little eyes.
An old riddle about crows she’d learned in childhood came to Adrienne’s mind, and she caught herself saying it aloud:
One’s unlucky,
Two’s lucky.
Three is health,
Four is wealthy;
Five is sickness,
And six is death.
The last word pulled her up sharp. A murder of six crows sat on the telephone line, and six meant death. Abruptly she felt colder and reached for the cup of coffee sitting next to her on the bench. But it too had turned cold. She set it down and grimaced. Then she shook her head, annoyed with herself for being fanciful enough to let a few birds spook her. She’d never liked crows, but they were hardly a danger like the ones in Hitchcock’s movie The Birds.
“Get lost,” she called to them. One cocked its head and threw her an especially sharp caw. “You’re not scaring me, you know,” she went on. “You’re just getting on my nerves.”
“Caw. Caw. Caw!” all six returned loudly as if understanding her and indignant at her attitude.
“Cram it!” she yelled, then glanced sheepishly around, hoping Skye hadn’t been near enough to hear her. She sounded crazy out here bellowing at birds. Adrienne looked back at the hotel, determined to ignore the noisy, glistening little creeps on the telephone line and get back to the business of capturing the hotel’s essence on paper.
But she felt peculiar, as if she were being watched. Well, she was, she thought. The birds had her in their sights like prey. But as much as she disliked crows, she knew it wasn’t their beady gaze making her uneasy. She glanced toward the woods and caught a flicker of movement. It must be Skye or Brandon, she reasoned. But neither of them would dart from tree to tree, lingering for a moment behind each.
“Who’s there?” she called. No answer. Brandon was too exuberant for hiding. Besides, he wasn’t over five feet tall as the flickering figure seemed to have been. And Skye would have answered her. So would the caretaker Claude Duncan. Perhaps it was a teenager lurking around, although it seemed too early for that kind of nonsense. Still, there had been the car wreck close by. Maybe someone had been drawn to the scene, then wandered up around the hotel, which was off limits without permission from Kit or Ellen Kirkwood.
Adrienne caught a flicker of movement again. Uneasiness flowed through her and impulsively she picked up her camera, taking several shots. If they discovered that someone had broken into the hotel and stolen or damaged furnishings, she might have caught an image of the thief or vandal.
She sat still for a few more minutes, camera poised. Then the idea that whoever was lurking in the woods might do her or Skye harm abruptly popped into her mind. Her nerves erupted to life. Something was wrong.
“Skye, come back right now!” Adrienne yelled shrilly at the exact moment a nearby Skye shouted, “Brandon, come here!”
“Skye, let the dog go and come sit with me! I think someone is in the woods.”
“Yeah. Me and Brandon.” Adrienne could hear the exasperation in Skye’s voice. “I’ll be back as soon as I get him.”
Adrienne was annoyed that the girl wouldn’t do as told, but at least she was safe and she was close by. It probably had been Skye she’d seen darting through the thinning mist, Adrienne reasoned. The fog and the loneliness of the abandoned La Belle Rivière had unnerved her. Besides, all of her life she’d experienced dark premonitions and not one of them had come true. It was always the unexpected disaster that jumped up and slapped her in the face.
Assured that charging into the woods after Skye would be foolish, Adrienne forced down her uneasiness. Tucking the camera into a slit pocket in the flannel lining of her jacket so she wouldn’t lose it, she shifted her gaze far to the right where a six-foot-high white lattice fence enclosed an Olympic-sized pool. It had been drained over a year ago, when Ellen Kirkwood closed the hotel, but Adrienne could still almost feel the tingle of its cold water on a blazing summer afternoon.
She and Kit and their friend Julianna Brent had spent endless hours poolside, Julianna always earning the most attention with her astonishing body clad in one of her many skimpy bikinis. Adrienne smiled at the thought of the venomous looks Julianna had drawn from so many females, while the males gazed at her with expressions varying from shyness to pure lust. Not in the least reserved, Julianna had loved every moment of the fascination she caused. If either Adrienne or Kit had been jealous of her, the feeling was overwhelmed by their pride at having a gorgeous friend everyone knew was destined to someday smile from the covers of national glamour magazines.
On the warm summer evenings after an afternoon of swimming and sunbathing, the three of them had ridden around town in Kit’s red convertible. They’d flaunted their tans in cutoffs and halter tops, flirted with boys congregated on street corners, and endlessly listened to Julianna’s favorite song, “Sweet Dreams” by the Eurythmics, which she played at ear-shattering volume, singing along with Annie Lennox. Those were the summers when Kit, Julianna, and Adrienne were sixteen and seventeen. They were great summers, Adrienne thought. Probably the best, most carefree times of the
Okay, now you’re being morbid, Adrienne thought as she felt depression descend. It’s stupid for me to get so devastated over a building scheduled for demolition when everything else is so good in my world.
A crow cocked its head and looked down at the mumbling woman with unmistakable ridicule. At least it seemed unmistakable to Adrienne. She glowered back. She’d talk to herself if she liked. Then all six birds flapped up from the telephone wire when an explosion of barking ripped through the quiet morning.
“Brandon!” Skye shouted. “Don’t you dare go in that hotel!”
In the hotel? Adrienne thought. At this time of morning, every entrance door to the hotel should be shut and locked.
More barking from Brandon. More yelling from Skye. “No! You’re wet and dirty! We’re gonna get killed if you go in there—” A moment of silence except for the birds fluttering back to the telephone line. Then a familiar, “Morn, I need you!”
Adrienne dropped her sketchpad and pencil and headed to the west end of the hotel, from where Skye’s voice had come. She was glad she’d worn running shoes because the grass was laden with dew. “Where are you, Skye?”
The slender girl with her long pale blond hair and fashionably torn jeans appeared at the corner of the hotel. “There’s a door standing wide open on this end and Brandon ran inside. Mrs. Kirkwood will kill us if he does any damage!”
“He’s not destructive,” Adrienne said in relief when she reached her daughter to see the only problem was a runaway dog. “He won’t hurt anything.”
“But he’s acting weird.”
“He’s just acting like a high-spirited dog. Don’t get so worked up, Skye. We’ll find him.”
Good grief, Adrienne thought in irritation. Skye acted as if Brandon were a six-week-old pup. But she understood the girl’s protectiveness. At her tenth-birthday party, Skye’s father, Trey, had presented her with Brandon, already full grown and rescued from the dog pound less than twenty-four hours before he was to be “put down,” which made him even more precious to the animal-loving girl. That night, Trey had been killed in a motorcycle accident. In a way, for Skye the dog had become the last precious legacy her father had left to her.
Adrienne entered the side door behind Skye. It was dark, but Adrienne saw a panel of switches in the dim morning light coming through the open door. She flipped two, and bulbs sprang to light beneath crystal fixtures on the ceiling.
Brandon barked in the distance. “Hurry up, Mom! If he jumps in that fountain in the lobby—”
“The worst he’ll do is bump his head. The fountain is empty. You’re acting like a hysterical mother, Skye. Settle down.”
They entered the lobby in time to see one hundred pounds of shining black and white hair charging up a winding staircase to the second floor, barking for all he was worth. Odd how slowly Brandon ambled across the backyard when she wanted him to come in for the night, Adrienne mused. She’d thought he was getting arthritis, but today he moved like he’d been shot out of a cannon.
“Brandon, come back here!” Skye shouted.
“Save your breath,” Adrienne said. “He’s not coming back on his own.”
“But what about that caretaker guy?”
“If he’s upstairs, he’ll catch Brandon. Claude certainly won’t hurt him.”
Skye took the stairs two at a time. Adrienne suddenly felt every one of her thirty-six years as she tried to keep up. I need more exercise, she thought. Jogging, aerobics, yoga. Learning to use the Pilates machine she’d just bought. It all sounded exhausting.
The second-floor hall was dimmer than below. Only one light glowed beneath a crystal cover midway down the hall, and a strange, sweet scent filled the area. Skye stopped. “What’s that smell?”
Adrienne sniffed. “Flowers. Jasmine.” She sniffed again in slight alarm. “I also smell smoke. Maybe we should go back downstairs—”
Brandon let out three deafening barks. Skye darted down the hall yelling the dog’s name. He barked again.
He wouldn’t be leading us into a fire, Adrienne thought, panicked nevertheless by her daughter’s headlong rush toward the barking. “Skye, wait!”
The girl halted almost immediately, but Adrienne could tell it wasn’t in response to her command. Skye stared into one of the hotel rooms from which flickering light spilled into the dim hall. Her lips parted and she said softly, “Brandon, come here,” as she knelt and held out her hand.
Adrienne reached Skye’s side. She looked into the room and saw candles flickering on the dressers. The heavy, sweet scent of jasmine floated from the wax. Brandon sat stolidly near the foot of a bed. That was all Adrienne could see. Brandon and the foot of the bed covered by a lush bedspread of ivory brocade. What the dog stared at near the head of the bed escaped her range of vision. But she had the strange sensation that she was supposed to go into the room. Something waited for her in that room.
The feeling grew. I should pull my daughter away from the door, Adrienne thought as dread grew in her mind. I need to get Skye away from here because nothing good lies on that hotel bed Brandon is staring at. Nothing that Skye should see.
But Skye rose and strode into the room before Adrienne could grab her shoulder. Skye jerked to a stop about five feet away from Brandon, her eyes widening as they fixed on the bed. Brandon looked up at her and whined. The frozen look on Skye’s face and the dog’s pathetic whine drew Adrienne into the room almost against her will. She stopped at the foot of the bed, staring, unblinking, disbelieving.
Two thick pillows in creamy satin pillowcases rested against the padded headboard. A woman’s head lay against one. She was deathly pale, but her expression was peaceful, the lips shut, the eyelids closed, the long russet-colored hair smoothed like silk away from her face. The hair had been combed behind the right shoulder but spread over the neck and down over the left shoulder, partially obscuring her cheek and neck until it fanned out where the top of her left breast disappeared beneath the bedspread.
In the wavering candlelight, Adrienne caught the flicker of a barrette on the left side of the woman’s hair, near her temple. It was nearly two inches long, made in the shape of a butterfly with tiny chips of blue, green, and pink Austrian crystals sprinkled on the gossamer wings. Adrienne had seen the barrette a hundred times and she suddenly knew with sick certainty who lay pale and stone-still in that lavish bed.
Julianna Brent. The Julianna whom Adrienne had known since childhood. The beautiful Julianna who used to smile and flirt and throw back her head and sing with the pure joy of life. Later, Adrienne recalled the one inane thought that tolled through her mind during the awful moment when she felt as if she were free-falling through space …
Julianna Brent would never again sing along with her favorite song, “Sweet Dreams.”
Brandon started toward Julianna, edging toward a woman he knew well, who always petted him and lovingly rubbed his ears. But Skye grabbed the dog’s collar and held him back. “No, Brandon,” she said tonelessly. “We mustn’t disturb her.” She looked up at her mother with huge eyes. “It’s Julianna, isn’t it?”
Adrienne nodded slowly. “I think …” She swallowed. “I’m afraid it is.”
“Oh God, Mom. How? Why?” Skye took a deep breath. “You probably should check to see if she’s really dead.”
“Honey, she must be,” Adrienne said softly. To her own ears her voice sounded as if it were coming from far away. “She’s not moving and she’s so pale …”
“But you can get real pale from blood loss and shock. I learned that in my first-aid class. She might just be hurt.” Skye made a hesitant move toward the bed. “If you don’t want to touch her, I’ll check and see if her heart’s still beating.”
“No,” Adrienne said quickly. “I’ll do it. You stay back and hold on to Brandon.”
Adrienne moved in a state of blurry shock to the right side of the bed, the toe of her shoe banging against a heavy glass bottle. A wine bottle. Shards of cream-colored ceramic littered the floor. She realized it was the base of a lamp when she saw a battered shade and an electric cord on the floor.
Adrienne looked down at Julianna’s white face, marred only by a small cut and a faint bruise on her forehead. She started to touch Julianna’s neck to feel for a pulse. When she gently moved aside the hair, though, she saw a large, ragged hole just beneath her left ear. Blood saturated the back of Julianna’s auburn hair and soaked the pillow, already turning to a dull red. Adrienne shuddered and paused. She fought the hot water rolling into her mouth and concentrated.
The hundreds of murder mysteries she’d read in her life, along with having dated the local county sheriff for over a year, had taught her she shouldn’t disturb the crime scene in any way, shouldn’t touch Julianna more than she had already. But she needed to know for certain if Julianna was dead, whether or not to tell the people manning the 911 emergency number to rush an ambulance to a dying woman and to instruct her about what to do for her friend until they arrived.
She pulled back the bedspread, light cotton blanket, and satín sheet Julianna lay naked to the waist beneath the bedding. Adrienne lifted Julianna’s left arm. It was cooler than her own but felt soft, indicating the muscles beneath were still pliable. Julianna was not yet in rigor mortis. But when Adrienne pressed her fingers to the woman’s slender wrist, she felt nothing. She shifted her fingers again and again, searching for, praying for, a beat, even a flutter of a pulse. Nothing.
“Mom?”
“She’s dead,” Adrienne said flatly. “I’m almost certain she’s dead.”
‘Oh no,” the girl quavered. “How?”
“There’s a hole in her neck. She’s been stabbed with something. There’s lots of blood. You can’t see it from where you’re standing.”
Adrienne took a step away from the bed, still looking down at her friend. Then the shock that had so far kept her calm surged from her body. Her hands turned icy as the floor seemed to shift beneath her. Her legs felt weak.
“Oh God—” Adrienne choked, then began to shake violently. In an instant, Skye stood next to her, enfolding her in her sweater-clad arms, holding her up. At five feet five, Adrienne was the exact height of her daughter, but at the moment, she felt small and shattered beside Skye’s youth and strength.
“Mom, I’m so sorry.” Skye’s voice trembled. “She’s been your friend forever.”
“Since we were six. She was so beautiful. And fun. Even then.”
“I know.” Skye patted her back, going on mechanically. “I thought she was terrific. Everybody did.”
Adrienne clung to her daughter, eyes tightly shut. Then she opened them and looked around in confusion. “What was Julianna doing here? The hotel’s empty. Why would she be sleeping in this place?”
Skye shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe she thought it was fun, or she wanted to spend the night here because the place is going to be torn down. You know how crazy she could act sometimes. Daredevil crazy. Fun crazy.”
“No, that’s not what happened. She wasn’t alone,” Adrienne stated with abrupt certainty. “She didn’t come here to spend the night alone. She could be reckless but she wasn’t a fool. She would have known a deserted hotel could be a magnet for vandals.”
Adrienne’s gaze shot frantically around the room. She noted again the wine bottle and the pale yellow wax poured into the pretty faceted glass jars Julianna’s mother used for her candle-making business.
“Julianna wouldn’t have lain here alone surrounded by candles her mother made and drunk champagne until she passed out for the rest of the night,” Adrienne went on, more to herself than Skye. “She would have known someone could break in and hurt her.”
“Maybe she felt safe because of the caretaker.”
“Claude Duncan?” Adrienne emitted a dry little laugh. “Claude’s father was the manager of the Belle and ran this place with military precision for thirty years. Claude is next to useless. Ellen Kirkwood only kept on Claude as caretaker after Mr. Duncan died because, by then, she’d closed the hotel and Claude couldn’t do much harm. But Julianna knew Claude and wouldn’t count on him for protection. He’s usually dead drunk by ten o’clock.”
“Well, then …” Skye looked at her blankly and lifted her shoulders in bafflement.
“Maybe she was here with a man,” Adrienne said with certainty. “A lover.”
Skye’s eyes widened. “A lover?”
“The candles. The wine. And she’s naked but wearing some mascara. And expensive perfume. L’ Heure Bleue by Guerlain.”
“But that’s weird, Mom. If she had a lover, why would they need to come here? She lives alone.”
“She lives in an apartment building where other people could see a man coming and going.”
“So?” Skye paused. “Oh, she was with someone she didn’t want anyone to know about.” She frowned. “But if Julianna was here with a man, then he could have—”
“Killed her.”
Skye drew a sharp breath before lowering her gaze to the floor. Adrienne suddenly realized the girl had never looked directly at the body after that first staggering glance. And her own face was almost as pale as Julianna’s was. Much of the time, Skye acted and sounded like a young woman. But she’s only a girl of fourteen, Adrienne thought, furious with herself for even momentarily forgetting. And I’m not taking care of my child in this crisis, she ranted on inwardly. Instead, I’m leaning on her.
She put her arm around Skye’s shoulders and said in what she hoped was a confidence-inspiring voice, “Come on. We’re getting out of here, going to the car, and calling the police. They’ll know what to do.”
“Should we just leave her?” Tears welled in Skye’s eyes. “I mean, it just seems like she shouldn’t be all alone and… I don’t know… defenseless.”
“Honey, there’s nothing we can do for her.” And no one can hurt her any more, Adrienne thought, but didn’t say so. The pain of those words would be too great. With her thumb, she gently wiped a tear from Skye’s cheek. “Put on Brandon’s leash.”
Skye immediately attached the leash to a docile Brandon’s collar. “Mom, he was acting so strange. He led us right to her. Do you think he sensed that she was up here?”
“No. Not on the second floor. Something else set him off.” Whoever I saw in the woods, Adrienne thought with a jolt Whoever gave me that creepy feeling they were slinking around watching. For once her premonition of danger had been right and she felt as if ice water were trickling down her back. She grabbed Skye’s hand. “Hurry. We’re not staying in this room a moment longer than we have to.”
Adrienne’s agitation was contagious. Skye’s tears vanished, she gripped Brandon’s leash, and they made a beeline for the open hotel room door. Then Brandon balked. He sat down and growled. “Oh God, now what?” Adrienne gasped, almost breathless with nerves.
Skye leaned forward just enough to peek through the open door into the hall. Her body tensed. She drew back, shut the door quietly, and looked at her mother. Her lips had turned the same porcelain white as her face and she seemed to be all huge, terrified eyes. “Someone’s out there.” Adrienne stared at her. “Someone’s coming down the hall to this room carrying something like an ax.”
“An ax?” Adrienne gaped, quelling a wild urge to laugh. “Skye, an ax?”
“I saw it! At least it was some kind of weapon that looked like an ax.” Skye was not prone to exaggeration and she suddenly sounded like a terrified little girl. “Mommy, what should we do?”
Adrienne went blank. She’d known fear before, but it had never been imminent. The threat of injury or death had never borne down on her with the immediacy of this moment. She was totally unprepared and completely panicked.
Brandon looked up at Adrienne with his clear, amber gaze and growled softly again, almost as if he were saying, “Snap out of it!” She drew a deep breath. Then, mercifully, her emotions seemed to shut down and a strange calm came over her. “Lock the door,” she said evenly. “We’ll push this dresser in front of it. Then we have to get out of the room.”
“Get out? How?”
“Jump from the porch.”
“Jump?” Skye’s voice cracked. “We’re on the second floor!”
“We’ll make it.”
“What about Brandon?”
“There’s just dirt and grass beneath us, not concrete. He’ll make it, too.”
“Mom, he can’t. He’ll get hurt!”
Adrienne looked fiercely at her daughter. “Skye, Julianna was murdered. Don’t you understand? She’s still warm. Her killer might not have left. That could be him corning down the hall. Now help me push the dresser in front of the door to slow him down and then we’re going to jump, dammit, Brandon or no Brandon!”
The girl looked cowed but immediately turned to the long, mahogany dresser behind her. Adrienne went to the other end and they pushed it hard until they’d scooted it directly in front of the door. Before Adrienne had time to draw a deep breath, the doorknob, just visible above the dresser, turned violently.
She and Skye stared at it, frozen. Brandon let out another low, menacing growl before the knob turned again, then rattled as the person on the other side shook it. “Who’s in there?” a ravaged voice demanded. “Open the goddamn door or I’ll break it down, I swear!”
“Now we jump,” Adrienne said, heading for the French doors that opened onto the porch.
Skye hung back. “Mom, I’m afraid.”
Something hit the door hard. Perhaps a man’s shoulder. The door shuddered. “Next time it’s comin’ down,” he shouted savagely.
“Oh God,” Skye whispered.
Adrienne took her hand and pulled her toward the porch. “Don’t think. Just jump. It’s our only chance.”
Brandon lagged behind, clearly confused, growling and barking. The door shuddered in its frame again and Adrienne waited to hear wood splintering as the madman outside attacked the door. The scene was absolutely bizarre, but actually happening. She’d never been more frightened in her life.
Still holding Skye’s hand, Adrienne hoisted herself up onto the porch railing and slung her left leg over the side. “Come on, honey,” she urged, pulling on Skye. “It’s not that far down.”
Skye climbed up but her body was so rigid, Adrienne feared the fall would have an even more serious impact than it would if she were relaxed. But who could be relaxed in this situation?
“Don’t look down, sweetie,” Adrienne told her. “Just let yourself go.”
“Mom, I c-can’t,” Skye quavered. “I’ve always been afraid of heights. I just can’t.”
Brandon jumped up and placed his front paws on the railing. “Look, Brandon’s not afraid.” Another hard shudder on the door. It sounded as if the lock were giving way and it had come open enough to bang against the dresser. “Skye, you must. It’s our only chance.”
“No.” She violently shook her head. “No, no, no—”
More shouting. Then a second voice. Adrienne pulled at a resisting Skye. The pounding on the door stopped. Adrienne heard something like arguing. Then a familiar voice. “Adrienne? Is that you in there?” Adrienne went still, sitting half on, half off the railing, clutching her terrified daughter’s sweating hand. “Adrienne, open the door! It’s Lucas!”