The Final Victim Read online
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It isn't that she turned her back on her old friend- just that they moved in different circles. Especially in high school.
Especially when Mimi fell hard for Gilbert Xavier Remington IV.
Now, when Gib persists in asking what time she gets off, it's almost impossible to emit a casual laugh and say, "You're kidding, right?"
But she does manage to say it, and is rewarded by a moment's silence from below.
Then, his voice laced with incredulity, Gib responds, "You're still not over it."
"It" being the most traumatic event of her teenaged life, Mimi ignores the comment and watches a young mother in the water. Pale-skinned, obviously a tourist, the woman is wading knee-deep, stooped over and clutching both of her wriggling toddler's hands tightly as an incoming wave washes over them.
"You know, I said you were all grown up and gorgeous," Gib comments, "but I guess I was only half-right. You're just gorgeous."
Mimi thrusts her silver whistle between her lips to keep from responding, unsure, even as she does so, what she would say.
Part of her-the giddy, girly part-is flattered that Gib is still attracted to her. That part longs to take him up on his offer to get together later.
But another part of her-the mature adult part-is so dismayed she's still attracted to him that she wants to lash out, tell him to get lost.
Then a huge wave breaks. She cups her whistle and blasts it abruptly, standing to motion the clueless tourist mom to bring her toddler closer to shore. The tide is coming in and the water is too rough; the child could easily be swept from her hands.
The woman obliges and begins to move toward the beach.
Mimi removes the whistle from her mouth and sits again to resume her vigil while pondering whether she might accept Gib's invitation after all.
Maybe she should. Just to show him that she's over "It." Over him. Just to prove she's both grown up and gorgeous.
Yes. She should. She should see him. For closure, if nothing else.
Again, she shifts her gaze from the water to the sand…
And finds that the spot where Gib once stood has been taken over by a lone seagull.
Her heart sinking, Mimi spots him sauntering toward the grassy dunes.
Why are you surprised? He never was the type to stay by your side for very long.
She shakes her head, remembering the bad times.
And, reluctantly, the good.
Forget it. Forget him. You don't need that jerk in your life.
Then, above the crashing surf and distant buzz of a seaplane, she hears a frantic shout in the distance.
"Help! Please, help!"
A man is running down the beach, waving his arms at her.
"My son!" he screams, and gestures at the water. "Theo! I can't find him! Oh, God, please, help me!"
All thoughts of Gib are obliterated as Mimi hurtles herself from the lifeguard stand, frantically blowing her whistle to summon the other lifeguards for rescue.
Long after sunset, sheriffs boats bob in the increasingly rough water off the beach, the surf eerily lit by dozens of floating spotlights.
Divers plunge again and again into the murky, sandy, churned-up depths in their grisly search for the victim of today's tragic drowning accident.
Be careful. Don't smile, not even to yourself. Not even out here in the dark, when you think nobody is looking at you.
You just never know.
From this point on, it will be crucial to keep up the facade at all costs, treading carefully every step of the way.
A sudden splash and shout heralds the possible discovery of the child's waterlogged body.
No. Another false alarm.
The boy has yet to be found.
The tide is coming in. Soon, they'll call off the search for tonight, with the waves and undertows ripping dangerously due to that storm in the Caribbean.
But they'll resume tomorrow if they can. They'll probably search for days, just like the last time, with the Remington boy.
Will it make a difference that he was the scion of a powerful local family, while today's victim was an outsider?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
In the end, who cares?
In the end, all that matters is that after many months of planning, it has begun at last.
PARTI
THE FIRST VICTIM
CHAPTER 1
Three summers later
"You look pale. Why don't I ask Nydia to bring you a fresh glass of sweet tea?"
Startled by her husband's voice, Charlotte Remington Maitland looks up from the novel she's been pretending to read.
Royce is standing in the broad archway that separates this large front parlor from its twin just beyond. She didn't even hear him open the French doors.
"No, thank you," she murmurs, setting the book on the doily-decked piecrust table that once belonged to her great-great-great-grandmother, the first mistress of Oakgate. There, on an embroidered coaster, sits the full glass of now-lukewarm tea me housekeeper had brought her a little while ago.
Or maybe it's been longer than that.
Sunlight, spilling through the filmy lace curtains that cover the narrow, twelve-foot floor-to-ceiling windows, falls at a different angle now: more blue than golden, casting long shadows across the patterned Aubusson rug-Charlotte glances at the clock on the marble mantel, studiously avoiding her grandfather's vintage portable electric radio that still sits beside it.
"Is that the right time?" she asks, startled to see that the hands indicate nearly seven o'clock. Maybe Nydia forgot her clock-winding ritual this morning, with all that's gone on.
But Royce assures her, 'That's the right time." Unbelievable. Charlotte had sat down at half-past four, promising herself a few quiet moments with her own ritual: afternoon sweet tea and a book.
"You must be hungry," she tells her husband as he crosses the room and sits beside her on the antique yellow-silk sofa.
She notices that his black hair is damp from a recent shower and his handsome face, prone to five o'clock shadow, is clean-shaven. He's changed out of his black suit and into clothes that are, for Royce, casual. Pressed chinos, white linen, long sleeved, button down shirt, leather loafers. With socks.
She loves that about him; loves the way he always manages to look as though he just stepped out of the pages of a catalogue, even when he rolls out of bed in the morning. Not a day goes by that she isn't thankful for him in her life; the proverbial sunshine after the darkest of storms.
"I'm not that hungry." He rests a warm hand on her shoulder. "I could eat anyway, though. I had two sandwiches at the luncheon after the service, but you didn't touch a thing. You must be famished."
She shakes her head. She hasn't been hungry in a few days now, her usual voracious appetite having given way to the dull pain of grief.
She didn't expect her grandfather's death to hit her th
is hard. After all, Gilbert Xavier Remington II was an old man, closing in on ninety. He wasn't going to live forever.
But he always said he'd be around to escort Lianna down the aisle when the time came, even if he had to roll by her side in a wheelchair. Until a few days ago, the idea of the formidable Remington patriarch in a wheelchair was far more outlandish than the presumption that he'd be at his adolescent granddaughter's wedding one day.
And the way he died…
Maybe if he'd been sick, Charlotte would have been prepared for the inevitable. But he wasn't. She can't recall her grandfather ever being sick, even with a cold. He was indestructible.
In fact, the closest thing to vulnerability she had ever seen in the man was his reaction to the death last year of his stalwart lifelong friend old Doc Neville. Gran-daddy, who in his lifetime had stoically buried his parents, wife, two sons, and young grandchild in the family plot, had seemed haggard and prone to uncharacteristic emotion for a long time after that loss.
"It was a beautiful service, wasn't it?" Royce is asking Charlotte, dragging her thoughts back to the present. 'You did your Grandaddy proud."
She swallows hard. "I wonder if he was up there somewhere, watching."
"And counting heads."
Charlotte laughs despite the grief welling in her throat. If there was ever any doubt that Gilbert Xavier Remington II maintained a prominent place in Low Country society after all these years, today's turnout at the little Baptist church overlooking the sea put it to rest.
“I’ll bet there were three hundred people at the service. And probably almost as many at the reception," she adds, remembering the crowd that gathered in the shade of the plantation's oversized portico for an elegant luncheon.
"And at least one who skipped the church but showed up for the free food after."
Yes. Vincent Champlain.
Royce is immediately contrite. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to get in a dig at your ex today, of all days."
"Feel free to dig him any day, Royce. He sure doesn't hesitate to do it to you every chance he gets."
She finds it ironic that although her ex-husband chose to walk away from her and Lianna, he resents another man stepping in to fill his shoes. Especially a man like Royce, who has everything Vince has striven desperately to achieve-and, when all else fails, does his best to fake.
Like class, and good looks, and good taste, and a means of supporting himself.
"He 'accidentally' tripped me with those big feet of his when I was walking to the buffet table," Royce tells Charlotte, "then he fell all over himself apologizing. But believe me, he was about as transparent as that white blouse Phyllida put on after the funeral."
Again, Charlotte laughs. Leave it to her cousin, the would-be Hollywood actress, to go directly from mourning black to red-carpet sexiness.
Yes, and leave it to Charlotte's first husband to miss the lengthy church service and the burial beneath the blazing midday sun, arriving just in time for the catered reception. He claimed he got held up in traffic driving up from Jacksonville, but she doesn't believe him.
She learned years ago never to believe anything he said. If only their daughter would do the same.
"The irony," she tells Royce, "is that Vince couldn't stand my grandfather, and vice versa."
"Well, at least he was there today for Lianna."
"He wasn't there for her." He never has been. "He was there to rub shoulders with the Reynolds, the Chathams… people who might be able to do something for him someday."
She shakes her head, remembering how Vince finally sauntered over to extend his sympathy to her, devouring several jumbo shrimp as he spoke.
"So sorry about your grandfather, Charlotte. What a shame."
He said all the right words, but his tone was utterly indifferent.
And that, right there, was the story of their lives together.
The marriage was dying long before their firstborn drowned off Achoco Island eight years ago. Vincent blamed her for Adam's death, of course-she was there; he wasn't.
She never knew where he was that day, but she has her suspicions.
Not that any of it matters now.
Adam is gone; so is Vince, for the most part, as well as the friends she once had as a young wife and mother. They turned away from her after she lost Adam-or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe it was she who severed the ties, unable to see them with their intact families when her own was shattered.
And now Grandaddy is gone, too.
Now all she has left are Royce and Lianna.
Nothing else, nobody else, matters.
Deep in the thicket beyond Oakgate, broad stretches of marsh are broken by dense wooded clumps of maritime forest: oaks, pines, cabbage palms, and a tangle of native vines. Abundant Spanish moss threads its scaly tendrils over every living bough. Years ago, a good portion of this marshy acreage behind Oakgate must have been dry land.
Dry enough, anyway, to house the row of slave cabins that are surprisingly well preserved after decades of neglect and encroaching tidal surges.
Of course, the cabins aren't in the water-yet. Just surrounded by it, and well sheltered from human destruction by acres upon acres of wetlands and dense undergrowth.
If there remains anyone on this earth who even remembers that the cabins exist, they certainly don't care enough to go to the trouble of paying a visit.
The structures poke their sturdy crowns through the tangle of foliage, looking for all the world like something out of a nursery rhyme… except that all three are made of brick.
Pity there's no door on the nearest, and most easily accessible of the three.
Yes, otherwise I could knock and say, "Little pig, little pig… Let me come in!"
Only there's no one inside to hear… Yet.
Along with the roof, the wooden door has long since rotted away in the unforgiving, damp climate, leaving only a few scattered, spongy remains of hand-hewn timbers. But a door can easily be replaced.
A cursory examination of the interior, courtesy of a handy flashlight, shows that there are no windows here, and no other doors. Where the ceiling used to be, a jungle of moss and leaves block out the light. The only thing that breaks the expanse of brick wall within is a shallow fireplace. There doesn't seem to be even a toehold, should a future prisoner want to escape the sturdy cell by scaling a wall.
This will do. This will do quite nicely.
It's obvious that no living soul has been out here recently, though a proliferation of webbing and a rustling in the overhead foliation indicates countless living creatures have made the old slave cabin their home.
Bats, snakes, rodents, reptiles, bugs, spiders… It will be a daunti
ng job to rid just one of the three cabins of its furry and creepy-crawly twenty-first-century residents.
But one cabin is all that's needed.
One cabin that has been outfitted with everything that's needed for this… project.
The Final Victim