Low Pressure

Chapter 11

When Bellamy stepped off the elevator and into the hotel lobby a few minutes before the appointed time, she saw Dent seated in an easy chair reading the sports section of the newspaper. He stood up as she approached. “Braves lost last night.”

“I don’t follow baseball until the World Series.”

“And then there’s this.” He passed her the day’s edition of EyeSpy. “The headline speaks for itself. In the article, I’m the ‘ruggedly handsome stranger later identified as Denton Carter,’ boyfriend of your slain sister.”

With a sinking stomach, Bellamy scanned the front page, which was dominated by Van Durbin’s column. The text was accompanied by a snapshot of her and Dent. She realized the shot had been taken yesterday outside Lyston Electronics. “His photographer was hiding and used a telephoto lens.”

“Not my best side,” Dent said, scrutinizing the grainy photograph. “Pretty good of you, though.”

She stuffed the newspaper into her shoulder bag. “I can’t read this now or I’ll throw up.”

Traffic along Peachtree Street was at a crawl due to construction. They got stuck at an intersection where they sat through three cycles of the traffic light. Dent swore under his breath and played an impatient tattoo on the steering wheel with his fingertips. Yesterday’s chambray shirt had been replaced by an oxford cloth, the color of it close to the mossy green of his eyes. It was tucked in. His jeans were belted.

“Where did you get the shirt and belt?” she asked.

“Ralph Lauren store in the mall across the street from the hotel. I was there when it opened. Dammit! If that moron would pull forward into the intersection to make his left turn…” He finished on a string of oaths, then once again the light turned red before they could get through the intersection.

“You’re not mad at the traffic or other drivers. You’re mad at me.”

He looked over at her.

“This visit with Steven could be awkward. It won’t help if you’re pouting over what happened, or didn’t happen, last night. There. It’s out. Let’s not make it an unsightly wart that’s there but no one acknowledges.”

“Don’t sweat it, A.k.a. I asked, you—”

“Funny. I don’t recall you asking.”

“Maybe not in so many words, but, just FYI, in a crotch-grinding embrace, when a man’s got his tongue in your mouth and his hand on your ass, it’s a pretty safe bet on what he has in mind. I asked, you said no.” He shrugged with supreme indifference and returned his attention to the traffic. He lifted his foot off the brake. The car rolled forward only a few yards before he had to brake again.

“You should have known better than to try,” she said. “You’re the one who remarked on my TFR. Except that it’s not temporary. I don’t relate well to men in that way. I never have.”

“Well, that creates a communication problem for us.”

“Why should it?”

“Because ‘that way’ is the only way I relate to women.”

They sat through another cycle of the traffic light in teeming silence. Then he said in a low voice, “One thing, though. About your kid, your baby… it being a shame that you lost it?”

She turned to look at him.

“I meant that. I don’t want you thinking that I said it just to soften you up.” He shot her a one-second glance. “I can be a bastard, but not that much of one.”

Maxey’s was already bustling when they arrived. The hostess, dressed in a short black dress and four-inch heels, was a rail-thin, platinum-blond beauty. Bellamy could have been invisible, because the young woman’s baby blues homed in on Dent. In a drawl practically dripping honey, she asked if he had a reservation.

“We’re just having drinks,” he told her.

Once they were seated on stools that looked too insubstantial to support an adult, they ordered glasses of mint-sprigged iced tea. When they were served, Dent said, “Sip slow. That’s an eight-dollar glass of tea. God knows what they charge for a cheeseburger.” Then he looked around the dining room, with its cloth-draped tables and creamy pale orchids in the center of each, and added, “If they even make a cheeseburger.”

“There he is.”

Bellamy had spotted her stepbrother, who was leaning across a table to shake hands with two diners. Steven had been a sullen but good-looking boy. He’d grown into an incredibly attractive man. His dark hair was swept back from his high forehead and left to fall in soft waves almost to his shoulders in a fashion that was distinctly continental. He wore a black suit with a white silk T-shirt that seemed color-coordinated with the smile he flashed as he moved from table to table to greet his patrons.

“Excuse me? Aren’t you Bellamy, Steven’s stepsister?”

She turned toward the man who had addressed her from behind the bar. He had salt-and-pepper hair and a pleasant smile.

“I thought it was you,” he said. “I recognize you from television.” He extended his hand. “I’m William Stroud, co-owner of the restaurant.”

“Pleased to meet you.” She introduced Dent. The two men shook hands.

“Does Steven know you’re here?” he asked.

“I wanted it to be a surprise.”

His smile remained in place, but she noted a flicker of misgiving in his eyes. “He’d want you to have the best table. Leave your drinks. I’ll bring them over.”

He rounded the end of the bar and escorted them to a corner booth on the far side of the dining room. “Steven sometimes sits here because you can see the whole room. I’ll get him.”

She watched as William Stroud wended his way through the tables and sidled up to Steven. He spoke only a few words to him before Steven quickly looked their way. His gaze lit momentarily on Dent, then focused on Bellamy and maintained eye contact with her as he said something to William, who nodded and returned to the bar. Steven started walking toward the booth.

“He doesn’t seem all that surprised to see us,” Dent murmured. “Or happy about it.”

Bellamy, by contrast, was overjoyed to see Steven. She slipped out of the booth and was waiting to embrace him when he reached her. She hugged him tightly and held on even as she felt him easing away.

She had loved him from the day Olivia had introduced him to his soon-to-be stepsisters. She and Steven had bonded instantly and had remained close friends until the event that had shattered all their lives. Their friendship, as strong as it had been prior to Susan’s death, couldn’t withstand the strain of the tragedy. The pall cast over the family, and over each of them singly, had remained through Allen Strickland’s trial and beyond.

By then, Steven was making plans to go away as soon as he graduated.

When he left for university, Bellamy had been disconsolate, sensing that his leaving would be permanent and that their separation would entail more than geography. Sadly, her foreboding had come about.

She clasped both his hands. “It’s so good to see you. I’ve missed you.”

“Howard…?”

“No, no, that’s not why we’re here,” she said, quickly alleviating his concern. “His prognosis isn’t good, but he’s still with us.”

“He’s defied the odds by living this long.”

“He doesn’t want to leave Olivia,” she said, and Steven nodded solemnly in agreement. She motioned toward Dent. “You remember Denton Carter.”

“Of course.”

With apparent reluctance on both parts, the two men shook hands. “Swanky place,” Dent said.

“Thank you.”

Bellamy tugged on Steven’s sleeve. “Can you sit with us for a while?”

He glanced over his shoulder as though searching for a valid reason to excuse himself, or perhaps for rescue, but when he came back around, he said, “I can spare a few minutes.”

He slid into the booth next to Bellamy and across from Dent, placed his clasped hands on the table, and divided a look between them. “Let me guess. You’re here because of today’s column in that gossip rag. I thought—hoped—we were old news by now.”

“I’d hoped so, too,” she said. Steven had gone straight to the heart of the matter, no chitchat, no catching up, which saddened her immeasurably, but she had to address his consternation. “I tried to hide behind the pen name, Steven. I wanted to remain anonymous and never wanted anyone to know that the book was based on Susan’s murder.”

“For days after you were exposed, I had to dodge the press. Van Durbin sent a stringer here to interview me. I refused, of course. Things calmed down when you returned to Texas. Then this morning…”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Well,” he said, smoothing out his frown, “all that aside, I congratulate you on your success. I’m happy for you on that score. Truly.”

“You just wish I hadn’t become successful at your expense.”

“I won’t deny it, Bellamy. I’d rather not have been a character in your story or had our connection revealed.”

She looked out over the busy dining room. “It doesn’t seem to have hurt your business.”

“No, I must say that hasn’t suffered.”

“Your success is to be congratulated, too. Three restaurants now, and all of them sweethearts of every food critic.”

“It’s a good partnership. William manages the kitchen and bar. I handle the business and service training.”

“A division of labor that’s working well.” Bellamy smiled at William as he approached the booth with a tray of drinks.

He set a glass of tea in front of each of them. “I can bring you something else if you’d like. Bloody Mary? Wine? An appetizer?”

“This is fine, thank you,” Bellamy replied. “Thank you also for loaning us Steven for a while.”

“You’re welcome.”

He placed his hand on Steven’s shoulder and spoke directly to him. “If you need anything, I’ll be at the bar.” He gave the shoulder a squeeze before moving away.

Steven watched Bellamy watch William as he withdrew and made his way back to the bar. When her enlightened gaze came back to him, he said, “Yes, in answer to the question you’re either too polite or too offended to ask. William and I are more than business partners.”

“How long have you been together?”

“Last New Year’s Eve we celebrated our tenth anniversary.”

“Ten years?” She was incredulous. “I’m not offended by anything except being excluded from knowing. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What would it matter?”

His harshness wounded her deeply. Had all the times they’d laughed and talked together, all the times he’d taken her side against Susan’s and vice versa—had all those shared experiences meant nothing to him?

When she was on the brink of flunking an algebra exam, it was Steven who’d convinced her that the test wouldn’t define the rest of her life, but then had coached her to a passing grade. It was he who had insisted that her braces were barely noticeable and that her pimples would eventually go away. Whenever her self-esteem was at a low ebb, he’d forecasted that one day she would be beautiful and that her future would be bright. Brighter even than Susan’s.

She had considered him more brother than stepbrother, and she had thought he felt the same about her. Yet he had shut her out of his life effectively and entirely. She had been dispensable to him, and realizing that was acutely painful.

“You mattered, Steven,” she said, her voice husky with emotion. “You, your life, your loves mattered to me.”

He looked somewhat chastened. “Try to understand. When I left Austin, I had to abandon everything. That was the only way I could survive. I had to make a life for myself that was free of that one. If I’d taken any aspect of it with me, even you, I would have stayed shackled to it all. I had to make a clean break. No attachments. Except for Mother, and I keep her at a distance that’s safe to my well-being.”

“That’s why you made an excuse anytime I tried to get together with you in New York.”

“You were a reminder of the worst years of my life. You still are.”

“And you’re still a shit.”

Steven looked sharply at Dent, who’d spoken for the first time since their lukewarm handshake.

“You were a sniveling, selfish kid, and so far I’ve seen no improvement.”

“Dent!” Bellamy exclaimed in a whisper.

But he wasn’t finished. “She went to a lot of trouble to come here. You could at least pretend to be glad to see her.”

When she was about to speak again, Steven held up his hand. “It’s okay, Bellamy. He’s right. I am a shit. It’s a survival tactic. Not meant to hurt you.” He smiled ruefully as he reached out and stroked her smooth cheek, and, as though reading her thoughts of several moments earlier, murmured, “Just as I predicted. The duckling has turned into a swan.”

Then he lowered his hand, and the glimmer of affection she’d seen in his eyes flickered out. “It took time, therapy, and diligence, but I reinvented myself. I was content with the life I’d made. But now your book and the ballyhoo it’s created has brought back everything I ran from. Once again, I’m that skinny, frightened kid being grilled by the police.”

“Dale Moody?” she asked.

“Big guy. Barrel chest. Gravelly voice. He questioned me several times. The interrogations didn’t come to anything, but being a suspect, even for a short time, scarred me for life.”

“Dent said as much.”

Steven looked over at him, taking him in fully. “Pardon my curiosity. There was no love lost between you and our family, but here you are in Atlanta with Bellamy. Why?”

Bellamy spoke before he could. “I chartered a flight with Dent in the hope of mending fences.”

“It didn’t work. In fact, Mother was terribly upset over seeing him.”

“Yes, I know.”

“So why is he here with you now?”

After a lengthy hesitation, she said, “Someone has been menacing me for weeks. I need to know who and why.”

She recapped for Steven everything that had happened and ended by saying, “I haven’t told Olivia or Daddy. Please don’t mention it, because they don’t need another worry. But we—Dent and I—don’t think the acts of vandalism done to my house and his airplane were random or coincidental. Whoever committed them is somehow connected to that Memorial Day.”

He frowned skeptically. “That’s an awfully broad leap, isn’t it?”

“Dent and I have nothing else in common.”

Steven gave each of them a long look. “I’m connected to that day. Did you come to accuse me of painting a threat on your bedroom wall?”

“Of course not.” She reached for his hand. “I’m hoping you’ll share some of your recollections and impressions of that day.”

“To what end? You’ve already written the book on it.”

Dent snickered at the wry remark. She didn’t acknowledge it. She had decided that, for the time being, she would tell no one else about her lost frames of time. But it was important that Steven fill in some of the gaps. “Will you answer a few questions?”

He looked annoyed. “What purpose will be served by talking about it?”

“Humor me. Please.”

He considered it for a moment, then gave her a brusque nod.

She wasted no time. “Shortly before the tornado, you left the pavilion and went down to the boathouse.”

Another curt nod.

“Why? Why were you going to the boathouse?”

“For beer.”

“Beer? You hated beer. You told me that you had tried it at a party and hated the taste.”

He shrugged. “I wanted to give it another try. Word had got around that some guys had smuggled beer to the boathouse. I went to check it out, but no one was there. Only a bunch of cans. I was on my way back to the pavilion when somebody spotted the funnel and everybody started screaming. I was nearer the boathouse, so I ran back and took cover there.”

She nodded absently. “When I came after you—”

“When you came after me?”

“To warn you of the approaching storm.”

“You did?”

His reaction mystified her. “Why does that surprise you? It was in the book. If you read it—”

“I did. But I thought you were only capsulizing for narrative clarity.”

“That’s not the way you remember it?”

“After I left the pavilion, I didn’t see you again until you were rescued from the wreckage of the boathouse.”

“You didn’t see me there earlier?”

He shook his head. “I have no idea how you got there.”

Bellamy glanced over at Dent. He was looking at her, his eyebrow eloquently arched. Turning back to Steven, she said, “After the tornado, you managed to get out from under the debris.”

“It was sheer luck that I wasn’t crushed by the collapsing walls. But that section of the boathouse fell outward instead of in. I was scratched up and dazed, but nothing serious. I managed to wiggle my way out of the rubble and wandered back toward the pavilion. Howard and Mom practically smothered me with hugs. But of course they were frantic to find Susan and you.”

Steven’s recollections of the storm’s aftermath coincided with Dent’s, so Bellamy didn’t linger on them. “Why did Detective Moody question you?”

“Because of the sexual overtones of the crime. He interrogated every man past puberty, especially those close to her. The boyfriend,” he said, tipping his head toward Dent. “I was her stepbrother, but that didn’t exclude me. Even Howard was questioned.”

Bellamy was stunned. “Daddy was questioned? You can’t be serious.”

“I’m sure that Mother and Howard protected you from knowing about it because of the disturbing implication.”

“It’s not disturbing, it’s disgusting.”

Steven looked down and traced the white tablecloth’s weave pattern with the tip of his finger. “Moody wasn’t so far off base.”

His softly spoken words had the effect of falling bricks. Bellamy was shocked dumb. Dent said nothing, either, but placed his elbow on the table and cupped his mouth and chin with his hand. Steven must have felt the pressure of his solemn stare, because when he gave up his study of the tablecloth, it was Dent he addressed.

“I don’t need to tell you what she was like, do I? You know firsthand that Susan was sexually supercharged. Which must have been great for you. But for her younger stepbrother who was grappling with his sexual identity, she was a nightmare with a malicious streak.”

Bellamy swallowed with difficulty and said gruffly, “Are you telling us that you and Susan…”

“No,” he said with a firm shake of his head. “Never the grand finale. But not for her lack of trying. As it was, she got off by torturing me.”

“Doing what?”

“Are you sure you want to hear this, Bellamy? It’s ugly.”

“I think I have to hear it.”

“All right.” He took a breath. “Susan made a practice of sneaking into my room at night. Two, three times a week. Sometimes more often.”

“When did it start?”

“On Mother and Howard’s wedding day.”

Bellamy gasped in disbelief.

“She would lie down beside me, rub up against me, talk dirty, describe to me all the things we could be doing if only I wasn’t so afraid of getting caught. She would take off her clothes and dare me to touch her.”

He snorted a sound of self-deprecation. “God knows, sometimes I wanted to, because I was struggling with the realization that I was gay. At that point in my life, I was desperate to disprove it. But, in truth, the harder she tried to lure me, the more repulsed I became.”

“Did she know you were gay?”

“Maybe. Probably. Which would have made the torment even more delightful to her. It got to where I couldn’t stand the sight or smell of her and made no secret of it. She only became more aggressive and daring.

“Once, she got into the shower with me and told me that Mother was just across the hall. She said that if I made a sound, and Mother caught us, she would tell her and Howard that I was forcing her to go down on me every night. I knew that she could cry on demand and was capable of convincing them of anything.”

He looked hard at Bellamy. “I’m sorry to be the one to destroy your delusions of our perfect family, but perhaps it’s time you knew the truth about our dearly departed sister.”

“You should have told me.”

“So you could have put it in your book, made it more salacious?”

She flinched as though he’d slapped her. “I don’t deserve that, Steven.”

He seemed to agree, because he exhaled deeply. “I’m sorry. Uncalled for.”

“Why didn’t you tell me at the time? I would have stood by you during the fallout.”

“I didn’t want there to be any fallout. I didn’t want anyone to know, but especially not you. You were so different from her. Innocent. Sweet. The peacemaker. And you were my pal. I was afraid that would change if you knew about me and Susan.”

“It wouldn’t have.”

“Maybe,” he said, still doubtful. “But in any case, I was ashamed.”

“You weren’t doing anything wrong.”

“There were times when my body responded to her in spite of myself, when I couldn’t control getting an erection. I didn’t desire her in the least, but I was an adolescent boy with raging hormones and no other outlet for them. She’d touch me, and I would explode, and she would mock my humiliation. Actually,” he added thoughtfully, “I’m surprised that she never gloated to you about what was going on. She was jealous of you. Did you know that?”

“Impossible.”

“It’s true. She was jealous of the special relationship you and Howard had. He favored you, and she knew it. It also miffed her that when I came into the family, you and I forged a sibling bond that I never had with her, or even wanted. Not that she craved my friendship, but she didn’t want to be second on anyone’s list.”

He looked across at Dent again. “You weren’t her one and only. She told me about all the boys she ‘did’ behind your back. She was a slut who gave away free samples. It was befitting that she was strangled with her own underpants.”

“Steven, please,” Bellamy whispered.

“You wanted to hear this; you’re going to hear all of it,” he said testily. “One Sunday at family dinner, Susan passed a pair of her panties to me under the table. Here I was, seated between her and Howard, and she reaches for my hand and presses her underwear into it. I became so hot with fear and mortification I thought I’d pass out. And all through the meal, she was smiling that sly, triumphant smile that was uniquely hers.

“That was the kind of demeaning joke she liked to pull. There were many more times when she did something similar. I could go on and on, but it would serve no purpose. She can no longer make my life hell. She’s dead. And I’m glad.”

He fell silent for several moments, then roused himself as though coming awake after a bad dream. He looked out over the dining room and said, “I need to get back to work. Besides, I’ve said everything I plan to. Except this.” Before continuing, he made certain of their full attention.

“Moody questioned me extensively, but my story never changed. Not one word of it. He didn’t have any evidence to place me where her body was discovered. Nor could he cite an opportunity for me to have killed her. But what he never asked me, what he didn’t know, was that I sure as hell had a motive.”