The Carriage House by Carla Neggers

Author:Carla Neggers [Neggers, Carla]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Fiction, Suspense
Publisher: MIRA
Published: 2013-02-10T05:00:00+00:00

Fifteen

In daylight, Lauren was even more impressed with what she’d done last night. It was a miracle she hadn’t been caught. She breathed in the scent of lilacs, now, forever, mingled with the stench of death. Of Ike. Her brother. Dear God, if only he’d let Joanna Thorne find her own way out of her restlessness and depression. If only he’d left Beacon-by-the-Sea after her death instead of hanging around, cheerful, dreaming big dreams, on the prowl for someone else to idolize him.

For a while, Lauren had been sure it was Tess Haviland her brother had chosen as his new project. Yet, as the young graphic designer walked up the carriage house driveway, Andrew Thorne beside her, the hem of her jeans damp and sandy, her short blond curls whipped by the wind and her cheeks decidedly pale, Lauren knew it couldn’t be so. Ike went for the vulnerable, the depressed, the ones who wouldn’t act on their own dreams without him. That wasn’t this woman. It might not have been Joanna, if he’d left well enough alone.

Andrew couldn’t have meant to kill him.

Lauren smiled at him, but he didn’t smile back, not out of rudeness but obliviousness, she decided. If he’d killed Ike in a premeditated fashion, she’d never have tried to protect him. As it was, she wondered what he must be feeling now, knowing the police hadn’t found Ike’s remains. Fear? Relief? Anger? He was impossible to predict.

“Hello, Tess,” she said graciously. “I hope I haven’t come at a bad time. I heard about last night. How absolutely horrible for you.”

“Well, it looks as if there never was any skeleton. Luckily.”

Lauren nodded. “Indeed. Better this turned out to be a false alarm than an actual dead body.”

“Have you talked to the police?”

“Paul Alvarez called. My husband had already heard.” She moved away from the lilacs, the sun warm on her face. “Paul wants me to get in touch with my brother, but it’s not that easy. Seven years ago, Ike took off for nine months without telling me where he was, without even so much as sending me a Christmas card. It’s just the way he is.”

Andrew leaned against Tess’s rusted car, but Lauren wasn’t fooled. She knew he was taking in everything, wondered if he’d guessed what she’d done for him. But it wasn’t just for him. It was the right thing to do. Her brother had taken his wife, left his daughter motherless. If Andrew had lost his temper, reverted to his waterfront brawling days, who could blame him? A jury, perhaps, the way they’d blamed Jedidiah Thorne over a century ago, no matter how much Benjamin Morse had deserved his fate. Truth and justice could be so complicated, she thought.

Tess was frowning. “Are the police going to track him down?”

“Why should they go to such trouble?”

“Ms. Montague—”

“Lauren,” she corrected with a smile.

“Lauren, Ike was one of my clients, and I want to know he’s okay.”

“Then find him. Be my guest. I stopped spinning to Ike’s tune a long, long time ago.

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