Миранда Джеймс - Dead With The Wind

“The poor child.” Dickce frowned. “Sister, do you think it’s odd that she hasn’t mentioned Mireille? She said she keeps thinking she’ll wake up and Sondra will be here. But what about her mother?”

“Yes, I noticed that,” An’gel said. “I wouldn’t reflect too much on it. She’s been hit so hard by all this I doubt she realized what she said. I’ll be back soon.”

She strode from the room and crossed the hall to the dining room. Benjy and Tippy were gone, probably upstairs so that Benjy could introduce Peanut and Endora to the child. Playing with the dog and cat ought to keep Tippy occupied for a while. She checked the coffeepot, found it cold and nearly empty. Then she noticed that nothing had been cleared from the table. She left the room and walked down the hall to the kitchen.

As she neared a large marble-top table along the wall, An’gel glanced down and spotted a small piece of something white. She stooped to retrieve it. About the size of three quarters, it was a jagged-edge piece of satin. An’gel frowned. A piece of the wedding gown that Sondra had ripped apart.

She heard the door to the powder room open, and she thrust the scrap of fabric into the sleeve of her dress. She didn’t want Jacqueline to see it and be distressed at the reminder of the incident that had brought on her mother’s collapse.

“No coffee in the dining room,” An’gel said as her goddaughter approached her. “I’ll check with Estelle and be back soon.”

Jacqueline nodded and walked past her, shoulders slumped and head at a dejected angle.

An’gel trod on to the kitchen. She found it deserted, but there was a full pot of coffee in the coffeemaker. She quickly prepared a tray and filled a carafe with coffee. She carried the tray to the front parlor. As she stepped inside the room, she heard the trill of a cell phone.

Jacqueline fumbled in her slacks pocket and extracted a phone. An’gel noticed that her goddaughter’s hands trembled as she stared at the screen. After a moment of seeming indecision, Jacqueline answered the call.

An’gel set the tray on the table in front of the sofa and began to pour coffee into the three mugs.

“I see. You’re absolutely sure?” Jacqueline said after a moment. “Yes, thank you. Don’t do anything until you hear from me.” She thanked the caller again and ended the conversation. Her hand trembled even more noticeably as she set her phone down on the table next to the tray.

“What’s the matter?” An’gel was alarmed by Jacqueline’s expression. Her goddaughter looked ill.

“That was the mechanic about Sondra’s car,” Jacqueline said, her voice shrill. “He says the brake line was deliberately cut.”

CHAPTER 21

An’gel added sugar and milk to one of the mugs while Dickce grasped Jacqueline’s hands and held them. An’gel resumed her seat beside Jacqueline and held the mug out. “Drink this, my dear.”

Jacqueline loosed her hands from Dickce’s and accepted the coffee. She took several sips, and An’gel was glad to see the color slowly returning to her goddaughter’s face.

“That’s better,” An’gel said. She judged by Dickce’s expression that her sister found the news about Sondra’s brakes every bit as disquieting as she did. The connection between that incident and Sondra’s death remained to be seen. An’gel, however, was more convinced than ever that Sondra’s death was no freak accident.

“The mechanic was sure that the brake line was deliberately cut?” An’gel asked, even though she had heard Jacqueline ask the same question. She had to be sure.

Jacqueline nodded, her hands clasped tightly around her mug. “I can’t believe it. Who would do such a dangerous thing?” She drank more coffee. Her next words stunned An’gel. “ Maman was supposed to be in the car with her.”

Dickce gasped. “Oh my lord, that’s horrible.”

“Why wasn’t she in the car?” An’gel asked. Her stomach felt queasy. What kind of evil was at work in this house?

Jacqueline stared into her mug. “Estelle said she needed Maman for something, I can’t remember what now, and Maman told Sondra to go on without her.”

An’gel exchanged a glance with her sister. Had Mireille gone with Sondra, she would have been on the side of the car that struck the tree. Of course, whoever cut the brake lines had no way of knowing Sondra would stop the car in that manner. But it didn’t really matter. Both Sondra and Mireille could have been badly injured, or killed, in an accident.

Now they were both dead.

An’gel felt chilled to the bone. She reached for her own coffee. She needed warmth, and she watched her sister drink as well.

An’gel again thought of evil. There was something—someone—sick at work in this house, evidently intent on destroying both Mireille and Sondra. He or she had succeeded, An’gel acknowledged grimly.

The question remained: Why?

She hated to do it when her goddaughter was in such a vulnerable state, but An’gel felt impelled to question Jacqueline.

“My dear,” she said gently, “I hate to but I really must ask you something.”

Jacqueline stared at her, then nodded. “Go ahead.”

“How did Mireille leave everything?” An’gel asked.

“To me,” Jacqueline said. “There are legacies for Jackson and Estelle, of course, but the house, its contents, and the bulk of Maman ’s estate all come to me.”

“What about Sondra’s estate?” Dickce asked. “Is it all controlled by the terms of Terence’s will?”

Jacqueline turned to Dickce with a frown. “Yes, Terence laid everything out. Sondra gained control of her money when she married or turned twenty-five, whichever came first.”

An’gel asked the next question as gently as she could. “And if she died before either of those events took place?”

Jacqueline shuddered. “It all comes to me.” She burst into tears and dropped the mug, now empty, into her lap. It rolled off and dropped to the floor, making a soft thud on the old carpet.

Dickce bent to retrieve the mug while An’gel attempted to calm her goddaughter.

“I’m sorry, my dear, if all this has upset you even further, but I had to ask.” An’gel looked sadly at Jacqueline.

“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Jacqueline said suddenly. “I wouldn’t harm either my mother or my daughter for money. You have to believe me.”

“Of course we believe you,” An’gel said, though a faint whisper of doubt assailed her. If Horace needed money really badly, would Jacqueline do something desperate to get it for him?

She tried to shake the doubt away. She had known this woman since she was a baby. Jacqueline would never kill anyone for gain.

“Somebody did attempt to harm them,” Dickce said in a calm tone. “And now they’re both gone. We have to know the truth about what happened.”

An’gel nodded. “We have to call the police and tell them about the damage to Sondra’s car. They need to know.”

“Sondra’s death wasn’t an accident.” Jacqueline looked suddenly calm and determined as she turned to An’gel. “She did like watching storms and sometimes she took foolish risks.” She smiled faintly. “But my daughter loved her clothes almost more than anything. There is no way she would walk out onto the gallery in the middle of a violent storm wearing the dress she planned to walk down the aisle in.”

“Sister and I have been thinking the so-called freak accident was nothing but a clumsy attempt to hide a murder,” Dickce said.

An’gel nodded, glad that one of them had the nerve to finally said the words aloud to Jacqueline.

“Would you make the call for me?” Jacqueline asked and picked her phone up from the table. “I’ll put in the number, but you do the talking. I think I’d throw up if I did it.” Once she punched in the number, she passed the phone to An’gel.