Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Kate barely had time to slip her clothes back on, her hair in disarray and her shirt inside out. Jake had to support her down the rickety stairs so she didn’t lose her balance on shaky thighs, as other concerned wedding guests popped their heads out of their rooms. The alarm blared on, jangling her nerves.
“I didn’t even realize this place had an alarm!” Kate cried over the sound. At first it had seemed to be coming from everywhere, but now she realized that was because it was coming from the head of the stairs, down on the first floor. It was simply echoing up, spreading through the house like a virus and drawing out the various weekend guests.
“The question is, what’s it for?” Jake called out as they pushed their way through the crowd down to the third floor and headed for the second. “It sounds like a Klaxon from a sci-fi movie in the seventies. Which fits this place, I guess, only I haven’t seen any—”
Jake stopped abruptly as they reached the second-floor landing. The first floor was too crowded to go any farther. They could see over the railing to the main entryway and the source of the alarm. Abraham stood on the black-and-white tiles, phone in his hand, the alarm blaring from the tinny speakers. Kate was shocked it had reached the fourth floor, until Abraham lifted what looked like some kind of megaphone and played the alarm through the mouthpiece. The sound amplified tenfold, slightly screechy, and she winced and covered her ears.
“Aw, what the hell?” griped Spencer’s brother, Eric, in half a tux and basketball shorts. “I was mid-poop!”
Abraham gave a professional, apologetic grimace as he turned off the alarm on his phone and lifted the megaphone to his mouth. “Apologies for the alarming measures, but we have a few small problems. Well, not so small. Our fuel supply on the generator is running just a smidge lower than we anticipated. The new storm cell has apparently decided to change course and come directly over the island within the next hour, and we’ll most likely lose power again. For good this time. And the place might flood. Historic houses, folks, am I right? So! The wedding ceremony originally planned for two o’clock is being moved up to now. As in, right now. As in, you all have twenty minutes to get dressed and make it down to the sunroom, which you’ll find marked on your estate maps. So… hurry!”
His voice cracked on the last word, and the megaphone caught the beginnings of a lengthy and imaginative curse before he shut the power off, shooing guests back to their rooms to prepare for the ceremony. Several of the guests were loudly protesting a variety of issues—including Eric’s aforementioned bathroom woes—but Kate spotted one guest in particular who was putting up such a fuss that Abraham and two of the burlier men on the waitstaff had corralled him off to a corner. Kate headed down the stairs for a closer look.
“You can’t keep us here like this!” bellowed Marcus Sheffield, eyes bloodshot and cheeks puffed out and red. He was putting on a good show of it, shoving against the waitstaff, calling out for civil rights attorneys, swearing vengeance on anyone and everyone who came near him.
“Sir, please,” Abraham said, his professional veneer as thin as black ice as Kate and Jake approached. “For your own safety—”
“I’m not staying one more minute in this hell house!” Marcus shouted, the wave of whisky breath rolling out of him so potent that Kate was impressed the man still stood. “You’ve got no right to hold me here, and I want off this damn island!”
“What’s the problem?” Kate whispered to Jean-Pierre.
“A shorter list would be to ask what isn’t the problem,” the Frenchman said in a clipped tone. He glanced at her, doing a hasty double take. “The ceremony is in eighteen minutes.”
“I meant with him,” Kate asked, pointing at Marcus as he threatened to wrestle the two servers. “What’s got him so rattled?”
“He claims to be the victim of some sort of conspiracy, and he’s already threatened to sue both Ms. Hempsteads, Abraham, and the American Civil Liberties Union. I’m not sure what the last one is or how it factors in, but this is why I always advocate no alcohol before the ceremony. There’s always a drunk uncle.”
“Why is he threatening to sue Rebecca and Kennedy?” Kate asked. “What kind of conspiracy is he talking about?”
Jean-Pierre gave her the longest of long-suffering looks. “We have no water, no power, the catering company could not deliver the wedding day dinner so we are scraping together meals from what exists in the kitchen now, my décor is ruined, and there is no DJ or officiant. Please. I beg of you. Plague me no more.”
“Right, yep,” Kate said, nodding in sympathy. She glanced again at Marcus Sheffield. “You know what? Why don’t we help you guys out and take him off your hands?”
Jean-Pierre eyed Kate’s frame. “And how could you possibly do that?”
Kate smiled broadly. “By giving him what he wants. Mr. Sheffield? Mr. Sheffield!”
“What? Who’s that? Whaddya want?” Sheffield turned his bleary gaze toward Kate, huffing like a dragon that had run out of fire.
“Mr. Sheffield, why don’t you come with me and we can let these guys get back to the ceremony?” Kate offered. She stepped past the burly waitstaff, leaning in conspiratorially. “I know where Rebecca keeps the good whisky.”
“That right?” Marcus said, straightening up and suddenly playing the good citizen. “Sorry I had to get up on my hind legs with you boys, but a man can only take so much.”
“We’ll be going now,” Kate said, leading him past Abraham and Jean-Pierre with a wink. She gestured to Jake to follow after her, leading Marcus toward the storage room Marla had shown her the night before, when everything had felt like it might actually proceed reasonably. “You know, Mr. Sheffield, I know how you feel about this place. The whole island must be cursed. I mean, think of it. No power, no water, a storm that wants to wipe us off the map. It’s like something is drawing the bad energy here. Or some one , if you know what I mean. We need to get the hell out of here before it takes us down with her.”
“Damn right,” Marcus barked, punching a fist in the air for emphasis. “The Bitch Bull is going to get what she deserves, one way or another.”
Kate gave Jake a meaningful look as they slipped into the storage room. The place looked like it had been raided once already, but she found a bottle of the awful wine and unscrewed the cap, handing it over to Marcus. She figured he wasn’t in a state to complain about the palate.
“Rebecca Hempstead, huh?” Jake said, leaning casually against a crate. “She’s a real piece of work. That speech she gave last night—yikes.”
Marcus snorted, a fleck of red wine speckling his shirt. “That’s nothing compared to what she did to me twenty years ago. Destroyed my family’s legacy, put good people out of work, and all over some big stupid misunderstanding from when we were kids.”
“You were going to get married, right?” Kate said as he took another swig. “Really dodged that bullet, didn’t you?”
“You don’t know the half of it! She thinks I took some kind of lousy payout from her dad, the devil take his soul. But I didn’t even want the money! Not back then. I loved her, if you can believe it. When we met, Rebecca was like… well, she was like a wild filly. Always thumbing her nose at the old man, staging protests at his manufacturing mill over environmental concerns. You know she had a motorcycle? Yeah, rode around town on a Kawasaki. She had long hair, all the way down to that peach of an ass. Man, could she ride.”
He sighed into the wine, making a low, forlorn whistling sound down in the bottle.
“What happened to her?” Kate asked, genuinely curious. That description wasn’t remotely like the woman she met yesterday, and certainly not the Bitch Bull’s reputation.
“What always happens? Money.” Marcus scoffed. “Money changes people, you mark my words. Takes a hot piece of ass like Rebecca and turns her into the bitter old crone she is now. She went from caring about things that mattered to caring about the share price on a stock. IPOs and mergers and whatever other crap gets her off now. That’s why I broke off the engagement. The sad truth of it was, I just didn’t like her no more. Didn’t recognize her. It’ll happen to little Kennedy, too, you quote me on that. There’s no saving somebody from the poison of inheriting a pile like that. She’s already turning into a crone, just like her aunt.”
“What did Kennedy do?” Jake asked.
“She tricked me into coming here!” Marcus burst out, throwing his arms wide and splashing wine on the floor. “That’s what. Told me it would mean the world to her if I was here. She promised to talk her aunt into giving my company back. Letting me buy it over time, soon as I could get the works up and running. You know that bitch gutted all our holdings as soon as she took over? She’s not even running the damn company, but she won’t release the name. That’s my family’s name, and she’d rather keep it to spit on than let me have it back and build it into something worthwhile again.”
“Is that why you were arguing with her last night?” Kate gently asked. “Her nephew, Richie Hempstead, heard you fighting about something outside the pool room last night.”
“She just wouldn’t see reason!” Marcus said. “And Kennedy, that little two-faced bitch. I get here and find out she hadn’t even spoken to Rebecca! I fly all the way to Seattle, take that crummy skiff out here, and spend the weekend simping around Rebecca’s hell house, for what? For Kennedy to tell me ‘now is not a good time, Uncle Marcus. The situation has changed, and I need to focus on my family.’ Like, what the hell does that even mean? So, I figured I’d handle things with Rebecca myself last night. For all the damn good it did me.”
Kate frowned, speaking more to Jake than Marcus. “What situation could have changed? Do you suppose she meant Rebecca’s announcement about donating the island and the trust to the historical society?”
“Who gives a shit?” Marcus hiccupped, swigging more wine. “I tried to find her after the rehearsal dinner, maybe join forces against her aunt. But she was nowhere to be found when I needed her last night. Well, she can bet I’ll be nowhere to be found when she needs me .”
Kate didn’t figure it was worth mentioning she had been poisoned at the time. “That must have been so… enraging. Rebecca still punishing you after forty years. I don’t know what I’d do if somebody treated me like that. I’d just want to, I don’t know. Throttle them. Hold them under water until they drowned.”
Jake gave her a look, as if she were being a bit too on the nose, but considering the state of Marcus Sheffield’s nose, she figured subtlety wouldn’t get her very far.
“Exactly!” Marcus exclaimed, before shaking his head. “Damn, I wish somebody would. Put the rest of us out of our misery. But you can’t drown a vampire. Gotta stake ’em through the heart. Expose her to sunlight.”
It wasn’t the slam-dunk confession Kate was hoping for, but it wasn’t an alibi, either. Marcus Sheffield seemed exactly like the type of person to drown somebody in a rage, but he also didn’t seem like the kind of careful planner who would carry Rebecca’s body upstairs to use her fingerprint to access her computer. Whoever did that needed knowledge of Rebecca’s office, and her computer system. Which pointed once again in the heir’s direction. Still, Marcus could have killed Rebecca, left her in the pool room, and someone else could have taken advantage of the opportunity for their own gain.
“Where did you go last night, after you fought with Rebecca?” Kate asked. “You must have been pretty steamed. I know I would have been.”
“Oh, you believe your ass I was,” Marcus said. “I was ready to punch some walls, throw some priceless family heirlooms. But a good steam was exactly what I needed, I guess, since that’s what I did.”
“What do you mean?” Kate asked.
Marcus shrugged. “That kid, what did you say his name was? Ronald? Ricardo?”
“Richie,” Jake supplied.
“Yeah, the surly one. He let me in the pool room, said any enemy of his aunt was a friend of his. They got a real swank sauna down there. I nearly fell asleep in that steam room. They were doing some kind of crazy party, but I’m too old for that crap. All I need these days is a good glass of whisky and a nice schvitz and I’m in heaven.”
If Marcus had been in the pool room during the party last night, there was a good chance Richie had caught him in the background of his photos. Kate could confirm the time and location on his phone. Plus, she didn’t figure Marcus Sheffield could have rage-drowned someone like Rebecca without a whole pool room full of witnesses. Not unless Richie and Steven were covering for him. But he’d said something that had triggered Kate’s interest, and if she’d had time to put her sleuthing sweater on, she was sure it would be itching right now. In fact, her arms were still red from scratching. Maybe Jake had a point about the wool.
“Marcus, it’s been a real… well, it’s been real,” Kate said, tugging Jake’s arm. “But we’ve got to get ready for the ceremony.”
“Ceremony, ha,” Marcus snorted, blinking at her blearily. “Good luck to that poor bastard. That’s one bullet you can’t dodge. Shoulda taken the old man’s payout, then at least I’d have had the money to pick myself up after the Bitch Bull wrecked my life. This fucking family.”
The Bitch Bull had certainly paid with her own life, Kate thought. And it was looking more and more like it had been at the hands of this fucking family of hers.