Sandra Brown - Low Pressure

Dale Moody had just entered the bar from an outside terrace. They made eye contact. He acknowledged her by raising his chin.

Steven, noticing the gesture, looked at her with dismay. “You two are friendly now?”

“Not friendly. But I’ve met with him since I saw you in Atlanta.”

“Jesus, Bellamy,” he said under his breath. “What the hell for?”

“Answers.” She couldn’t address her stepbrother’s disapproval now. Moody had stepped back though the doorway and out of sight. “Excuse me.”

She rushed across the room and out onto the terrace. Moody was standing in the shade of a post that was wrapped in leafy wisteria, lighting a cigarette in defiance of the restrictions against smoking.

“My condolences,” he said as he clicked off his lighter. He used it to motion toward the bar. “Looks like your stepbrother’s done okay for himself. He has that air of prosperity about him.”

“He has a strong aversion to you.”

“Oh, that breaks my heart.”

“When you were interrogating him, did you know he was gay?”

He shrugged. “Figured.”

“Did you harass him about it?”

He flicked an ash off the end of his cigarette. “I was only doing my job.”

“No you weren’t. You were tormenting an underage boy.”

His eyes narrowed angrily. “Don’t make me sorry I came here to see you. Are you still looking for answers or not?”

She tamped down her resentment. “Most definitely.”

“Then listen up. I left the case file with Haymaker. Go see him. He’ll enlighten you.”

He tried to turn away, but she reached out and grabbed the sleeve of his jacket. “That’s it?”

“That’s all you need. Everything’s in there, including a statement from me, owning up to my machinations, as well as Rupe’s.”

“A signed confession?”

“Yep. And to eliminate any doubt or dispute that it’s legit, I put my thumbprint on it. You won’t have any trouble with Haymaker. I told him you’d be coming.” He tried to pull away, but again she detained him.

“Two things,” she said. “Please.”

“Make it snappy.”

“Dent and I went back to your cabin to warn you of Ray Strickland.” She described the attack on Gall inside his hangar. “Strickland meant to kill him.”

“Looks like he’s going for broke.”

“So it would seem.”

“Warning noted,” Moody said. “What’s the second thing?”

She wet her lips. “Since I last talked to you, I’ve remembered something else about that day.”

His attention sharpened. “Well?”

“I overheard Susan say something about me. Something nasty.” She swallowed with difficulty, and her heart was beating so hard it filled her ears with its pounding. “During your investigation, did you find anything to indicate that possibly I had killed her?”

“No.”

“But you would have dismissed me because of my age, my size. Did I ever cross your mind as a possible suspect? You know now that I saw her lying dead before the storm.”

Moody studied her for a second or two, then pitched her his lighter. Reflexively she caught it against her chest. “What are you doing?”

“You’re a lefty.” He motioned down to the hand clutching his lighter. “After you described the crime scene the other day, I checked, just to make sure. You might have seen your sister dead, but you didn’t kill her. Whoever struck the blow to the back of her head was right-handed.”

The tension inside her chest began to lessen. She was virtually breathless with relief. “You’re positive?”

He dropped his cigarette to the terrace and ground it out. “I still don’t know who killed your sister, but I know who didn’t .”

He took his lighter from her, abruptly turned, and walked away. Bellamy struck out after him, but had taken only a few steps when one of her father’s oldest friends stepped out of the bar and addressed her. She had no choice but to speak to him.

While the man was expressing his sympathy, Dale Moody once again disappeared.

Dent didn’t go through the receiving line. He entered the club through another door and then blended into the crowd as well as he could. He didn’t eat, didn’t drink, didn’t talk to anyone, and maintained his distance from the family, although he kept Bellamy within sight when at all possible. If she noticed him, she gave no indication of it.

She looked tired, beleaguered, bereaved. And gorgeous in a tragic heroine sort of way. Black suited her. Even the shadows beneath her eyes had a certain delicate appeal.

When the receiving line disbanded, he followed her as far as the double-door entrance into the bar. He didn’t go in, but saw her sitting at a table with Steven. He loitered in the hallway, and the next time he drifted past, he saw her leaving the bar by way of a terrace door.

Seeing his opportunity to talk to her alone, Dent ducked out the nearest exit, circled the swimming pool, and rounded the corner of the building, which brought him to a shaded terrace where she was in conversation with an elderly man, who was pressing her hand between his.

As soon as he left her, and before she could reenter the bar, Dent spoke her name. He feared she might hightail it when she saw him. She didn’t. She waited for him to come to her.

Up close, he could see that her eyes looked weepy. She could have stood a good meal or two. Always slender, she now looked fragile. After several moments of simply staring, he asked the question that had been torturing him for days.

“Why didn’t you call me?”

Her father, the person she’d said she loved most in the world, had died. But she hadn’t even called to tell him. He was surprised by how much that had hurt. She hadn’t responded to his dozens of voice-mail messages, either. He would have thought… Hell, he didn’t know what he thought. Or what to think now, because she still hadn’t said anything.

“I had to hear it from Gall,” he said, “who’d caught it on the news. Why didn’t you call to tell me as soon as you got word?”

“We hadn’t parted on the best of terms.”

“But your dad died.” He stated it like the settling point of an argument, as if nothing else need be said.

“Why would I bother you with that?”

“ Bother me?” He stared at her with bewilderment for several moments, then turned his head away and looked out across the panorama of the golf course. “Wow. That speaks volumes, doesn’t it? It says a lot about your opinion of me. Turns out you’re even more like the Lystons than they are.”

After a time, he turned his head back to her and looked into her eyes. Then he sniffed with disdain, brushed past her, and entered the bar through the terrace door. He shot a glance toward the table where Steven was sitting with William. They were absorbed in conversation.

Olivia was standing with a group of well-dressed men and women of her ilk. She appeared to be listening to what one of the silver-haired gentlemen was saying, but there was an absent look in her eyes.

Dent thought about staying and ordering a drink for himself. His presence would spoil their party, make the situation awkward, and he was feeling just ornery enough to do it. He even checked to see if there were any vacant stools at the bar. And that was when he saw him.

Jerry.

He was seated at the bar, hunched over a beer. But his gaze was fixed on Bellamy as she entered through the terrace door, looking upset, blotting her eyes with a tissue.

Jerry quickly reached for something beneath the bar.

All this registered with Dent in a nanosecond. He processed the potentially dangerous situation and reacted with immediacy, only one thought in mind: Protect Bellamy.

“Hey!” he shouted.