19. Tamsyn
19
Tamsyn
“I just don’t see why you can’t come back here and stay with me, honey,” Mrs. Hooper says in my ear the following afternoon. For roughly the fourth time since this conversation began. “You’re always welcome. Don’t forget, I promised Lucien I’d always look out for you. Although I’m not sure a promise to someone in jail for murder carries the same weight, to be honest.”
I repress a sigh, forcing myself to loosen my grip on my phone. I’m in the solarium, staring out at the driving rain as it hits the bay’s roiling waters outside. With the unseasonable chill and the crypt like gray skies above, the weather perfectly matches my mood: they’re both shit.
Honestly, I’m not sure why I don’t take Mrs. Hooper up on her offer. Today is the staff’s regular day off, which means that the house is like a library after closing. The long morning has turned into an endless afternoon while I wait for news from Lucien’s arraignment. Daniel went to pick him up from the courthouse out of an abundance of optimism. I just pray he doesn’t have to spend another night in jail, but he’s at the mercy of when the judge holds these hearings. Still, Lucien’s lawyer remains confident, so that’s a good sign. But I’ve spent the last several hours with a tight throat and chest, feeling like I won’t breathe again until Lucien comes back to Ackerley.
“Tamsyn? You still with me?” Mrs. Hooper says.
“I’m still with you.” I force myself to infuse my voice with what I hope is enough energy to allay her fears. “And there’s no point in me coming back to you when you have the paparazzi back because of Lucien’s arrest, right?”
“Well, you’ve got me there,” she says. “This would almost be a great adventure to brag about to my friends. If this weren’t so serious. Murder . I couldn’t believe it when I saw his mug shot on the news last night. I just don’t want to believe it of him, honey.”
I wince at the memory of said mug shot of Lucien glowering at the camera. Haughty. Proud. Humiliated, even if I’m the only one who can see it. As for what happened to his company’s stock once the news broke, I don’t want to think about it. I just want him back home with me. “But…?”
Mrs. Hooper hesitates. “None of this looks good for him. And I’m worried for you.”
Like I need a reminder. I suddenly find myself all out of energy to continue this conversation. “Lucien didn’t do it. And he’s got the money for the best lawyers in the world, so I have faith that he’ll be proved innocent. One way or the other. You should, too.”
“Honey, I didn’t mean —”
“Gotta go, Mrs. Hooper. Lucien should be home soon. Hopefully. I’ll stay in touch. Bye.”
She starts to sputter a protest, but I hang up before she can get it out. Then I find myself alone with my racing thoughts, gloomy weather and the echoing emptiness inside the house. If ever there was a time or reason to have a pet, this is it. I could use a dog or cat to keep me company right now. Hell, I’d even take a visit from Juniper, Mrs. Hooper’s annoying Yorkie. Anything to reassure me that I’m not the last living creature on earth.
But it’s just me here right now. Even Roman is gone today, off in the city for some urgent company meeting to reassure the panicked investors. So I’d better do something to pass the time before I crawl out of my skin. I scan through my options. A snack is out because I’m not hungry and I doubt I could keep it down anyway. But a cup of tea might be nice. Tea always cheers people up.
Great. I have a plan.
I get up and make the long trek back to the foyer on my way to the kitchen. But as soon as I hit the base of the curved staircase, all the fine hairs on the nape of my neck begin to prickle. I don’t know what it is, but the air feels chilly and something’s not right. I stop and look around, my heart now thumping hard in my chest. It thumps harder when I catch a whiff of that oriental scent lingering in the air. Not Ravenna’s scent, I remind myself, my skin crawling now. She’s not here. She’ll never be here again. If anything, I need to check for earthly human threats. Not ghostly ones. So I take a deep breath and look around. Nothing seems out of place at first glance. I ease down with a relieved sigh, telling myself that the unrelenting gloom is playing tricks on me. A smarter person would click on a few lamps and be done with it?—
Hang on. There are drops of water all over the floor in front of the front door, as though someone has crept in and brought the rain with them. And that’s when I notice it: the waft of fresh air that smells of rain, cut grass and mud. The kind of scent that doesn’t belong inside the house.
Unless someone just came in.
Oh, shit.
“Is someone there?” I call with the kind of confidence that I don’t remotely feel. “Hello?”
My voice echoes. No one answers. I stand there for a beat or two, feeling ridiculous and wondering what the hell I should do now. I’ve almost convinced myself that I’m imagining things.
Until a shadow detaches itself from the grandfather clock and materializes into a tall man—someone whose grim face I recognize.
“Winwood?” I gasp. Sudden terror wraps me in a stranglehold, but this is no time to lose my head and act like some idiotic teenager from a horror movie. I cry out, lunging sideways for one of the heavy brass candlesticks on the console —
Unfortunately, he’s way faster than me. He crosses the distance between us, wrenches my wrist away from the candlestick and cranks my arm behind me while using his free hand to clamp me around the waist. The next thing I know, he’s hefting me off my feet, while I furiously kick at thin air.
“Don’t hit me, Tamsyn.”
“Put me down!” I shriek. “I’m going to scream!”
“Go ahead,” he says, sounding supremely unbothered. “I know it’s the staff’s day off. Stop kicking. I’m not going to hurt you.”
But this reminder that I’m here alone with him does nothing to diminish my fear. “Put me down!”
“I’m going to. But don’t try to hurt me. Or run. That will only end badly for you. Okay?”
I take a deep breath. “Okay.”
I don’t mean it, of course. My brain is already cobbling together a plan to sprint to the nearest powder room and lock myself in while calling 911. But when he sets me down on my feet, he snatches my phone out of my back pocket before letting me go, sending my brilliant plan up in smoke. I pivot to face him, my fury at being manhandled, disarmed, and de-phoned like that battling with my stark terror. I want to hit him, but I don’t dare. He’s tall and muscular, for one thing, way bigger than me and almost as big as Lucien. Plus, he’s wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes and looks like a low-key G. I. Joe with his black T-shirt, khaki cargo pants and hiking boots. And the cherry on top of this nightmare milkshake? The pistol he’s got strapped to a holster under his arm.
“I’m here to help, Lucien,” he says keeping a wary eye on me. “Where is he?”
I hesitate, not wanting to reveal that Lucien is also not here.
“One second,” he says, frowning. “He didn’t make bail?”
“He’s at the arraignment right now,” I say with all the bravado I can muster. “I expect him back any second.”
“Good. I need to talk to him. “
“How did you get on the property, anyway?” I say, beginning to recover. “Lucien has all kinds of beefed-up security.”
A flicker of amusement crosses his expression. “I designed the security system here, ma’am. I know how to create a blind spot when I need to.”
That ain’t good. And that means…wait, does that mean he’s the accomplice who let Ravenna onto the property to set fire to the guest cottage the night she tried to kill me? Of course it does. I long to hurl the accusation in his face—to try to hit him again—but I don’t dare risk escalating the situation by making him angry. My only job is to stay alive and cool headed long enough for help to come. No matter how freaking scared I am.
“Where have you been?” I demand. “The police have been looking for you.”
He hesitates. “That’s confidential information. Let’s just say that I found a nice vacation home nearby. With Wi-Fi. It was unoccupied.”
Of course he did. I remember what Lucien said about Winwood’s extensive military training. He was with some elite team or other. He probably knows how to use a shoelace and some tinfoil to make a satellite dish. “Why did you run off?”
He scowls. “Because Ravenna’s autopsy will show my DNA. But I’m not going to prison for a crime I didn’t commit.”
“Okay, but why not stay here and tell the police you didn’t do it? That’s what a normal innocent person would do.”
“That was my plan. Until I reviewed the security tapes and realized they’d been doctored.”
“ What ? Doctored?”
Yes,” he says grimly. “So I had to take matters into my own hands and borrow them —”
“Steal them, you mean,” I say like an idiot, forgetting all about the need to stay calm and nonconfrontational.
“— To recover the lost footage.”
Now he’s got my interest. “Did you find anything?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What?”
“I’ll show you.”
He heads to the study without another word, clicking on the lights and then the TV. Then he pulls out his phone and hits a few buttons. Black-and-white night vision footage of the back gate at Ackerley pops up on the screen.
“This is from the night of the fire,” he says.
“Yeah. I see the time stamp.”
We watch. Nothing happens for a minute or two. But then two cars come into view, headlights blazing. One is Ravenna’s Jaguar. The other is a dark sedan with a spoiler on the back. A Camry or an Accord. The gate swings open. Then the Jaguar zooms in and parks behind a large tree while the gate swings shut again. Ravenna gets out of the Jaguar.
Daniel gets out of the sedan.
“Oh, my God. Daniel ?” I cry.
“Daniel,” he says with grim finality.
I watched, stunned, as Daniel hurries over to Ravenna and swoops in for a hug that lifts her to her tippy toes. It does not look like the standard greeting of a member of staff for his former employer. Let’s just say that. Ravenna pulls back and lightly smacks his upper arms to get him to drop her. Her back is to us, and there’s no sound anyway, but whatever she says to him makes Daniel’s shoulders slump. Then she says something else and starts to walk off. He catches her arm and swings her back around before she can get very far. Whereupon she puts her hands on her hips, hikes up her chin and lets him have it for several seconds. He says something harsh back. A standoff ensues. Then she seems to reconsider her position, whatever it is, and she sidles closer. She tips up her chin again, but this time, there’s something coquettish about it, with a hair toss and silent body language that’s overtly sexual now. Daniel reaches for her again and she allows him to kiss her. There’s something desperate about him as he puts his hands on her head and pulls her closer. Something pathetic. Especially once I notice the way she strains away the whole time. Not at all the enthusiastic reception she gave Winwood when they kissed. Then she breaks the kiss and runs off toward the cottage with him staring longingly after her. That seems to be the end of the video.
“All that was missing from the original footage,” Winwood says. “I was able to recover it.”
I shake my head and start to say something about how I can’t believe that Daniel was involved with Ravenna, but my attention snags on Daniel’s car. I frown at its frozen image on the screen. “Wait. I’ve seen that car before somewhere,” I say, more to myself than to Winwood.
“You have? You’ve probably seen it on the grounds here somewhere.”
“No. I’ve never seen him in a car. Or where the staff park,” I say faintly, straining hard to remember where I have seen that car with the spoiler. And then I do. “Wait.” I glance around for Lucien’s tablet and luckily find it right on his desk. In another stroke of luck, he let me use it one night in his cabin on the cruise when I couldn’t sleep, which means I know the password. I punch it in and quickly find what I’m looking for.
“What is it?” Winwood says, coming to stand over my shoulder.
“It’s the security footage from the gas station near the beach on the night Ravenna died,” I say. “The police think it shows Lucien on his way to the beach to kill her. Lucien showed it to me the other day. Wait. Here he comes.”
We watch and wait as a Range Rover zooms into and out of view. And then… Did I imagine it all? No. Another car comes into view and there it is: a dark sedan with a sporty spoiler, also heading in the direction of the beach.
Daniel’s car, I now realize.
“Nice work, Nancy Drew,” Winwood says, brows up.
“Wait,” I say as another memory shakes itself loose from the back of my brain and demands that I pay attention to it. “There’s more. Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
With that, I dash out and hurry upstairs to Ravenna’s room, praying the whole way that Maddie didn’t finish with her project and sell all of Ravenna’s clothes already. But no. There are still plenty of items on the racks. I hurry to the red tweed dress from a charity thing here at Ackerley and look at its corresponding Polaroid to make sure I’m remembering correctly.
And there it is. A picture from three years ago, well before Ravenna’s “death.” Ravenna posing and pouting at the camera and Daniel on her left, staring at her with the kind of frustrated naked heat that I’m astonished I didn’t notice before. I grab it and hurry back downstairs, determined not to let anything happen to this valuable piece of evidence. Because here in my hot little hand, I have proof that Daniel has long-standing feelings for Ravenna.
The kind of feelings that might drive a man to help a woman fake her own death.
“I found it,” I call, waving it around as I walk back into the study. “It’s a picture of Daniel looking at Ravenna like he wants to fuck her brains out. From three years ago — oh, my God .”
I stop cold, the rest of the sentence drying up in my throat. Because the man I’m talking to in the center of the room isn’t Winwood.
It’s Daniel.
But this is an altered Daniel. One with no hint of the warmth I’ve always received from him. And when he stretches his lips in a bastardization of a smile that doesn’t come anywhere near his flat eyes, it’s a chilling sight. One that makes me realize I’m in real trouble. Not at all like the trouble I thought I was in a few minutes ago when Winwood surprised me.
“What an interesting theory, Tamsyn,” he says softly, malice in every syllable.
“Where’s Winwood?” I ask, the only thing I can think of to say.
He tips his head toward the side of the desk. “Over there. He had a little mishap.”
I don’t want to look. But I force myself, turning my head slowly so I have time to brace myself. And what do I see? Winwood stretched out on his back, eyes closed with a widening pool of red behind his head and a bloodstained paperweight nearby on the floor.
Then I hear something that terrifies me and thrills me. Lucien’s voice calling from the hallway. “Tamsyn? Is that you?”
I want to shout a warning. Tell him to run. To save himself. To call the police. Something . But there’s no time and it’s already too late. Lucien appears in the doorway, grinning at the sight of me. Until he sees the look on my face and all his pleasure dies. “What’s wrong?”
Daniel answers for me, gesturing at the floor. “You’re just in time, Lucien. Winwood had a little accident.” I watch in absolute horror as Daniel reaches behind his back and withdraws Winwood’s pistol, which he’d evidently tucked into his waistband. He clicks off the safety, then pumps a round into the chamber before casually lowering it to his side and focusing on us. “So careless of him to drop his pistol, don’t you think?”