Low Pressure

Chapter 26

Howard had specified that the visitation at the funeral home be kept private, limited to his company’s executives and close personal friends.

His funeral was more public. Bellamy didn’t realize just how public until the family limousine approached the church, where motorcycle policemen were needed to funnel the traffic into surrounding parking lots that were already overflowing. While the turnout was a moving and well-deserved tribute to her father, Bellamy dreaded having to endure the rite and all that it entailed.

She, Olivia, Steven, and William were ushered into the church through a side entrance and escorted into a parlor, where they waited until the church bell chimed two o’clock, then they filed into the sanctuary and took their seats in the front pew.

During the service, Bellamy tried to concentrate on the hymns being sung, the scriptures being read, and what was being said about her father and the notable life he’d led, but it all became a jumble. Superseding everything were the facts that her father was gone and that she had failed him.

And if she had killed Susan, she had committed a cardinal sin.

The four of them were led from the sanctuary ahead of everyone else. As they were climbing into the limousine, Steven remarked on the news cameras and reporters being contained behind a barrier across the street. “I see that Van Durbin is among the horde.”

Bellamy spotted him and his trusty photographer. “As long as he keeps his distance.”

“I suppose wild horses couldn’t have kept him away.”

At first Bellamy thought Olivia was also referring to Van Durbin, but then she saw that her stepmother was looking toward the main entrance of the church, where people were filing out and making their way down the steps.

He would be a standout in any crowd, but he looked particularly attractive in a dark suit and cream-colored shirt. Of course he would never bend to convention entirely, and he hadn’t. His necktie was loosely knotted beneath his open collar, and his hair had been left to do what it did naturally, which was to be as unruly as he. He sported a day’s scruff.

The sight of him caused Bellamy’s heart to flutter.

His mouth was set in a grim line as he descended the church steps. When he reached the bottom one, he stopped and just stood there, staring hard at the back window of the limo, although she knew he couldn’t possibly see her through the darkly tinted windows.

She turned away and looked out the opposite window. But several minutes later when the limo finally pulled away from the curb, she couldn’t resist glancing back. Dent was still there staring after them.

Upward of five hundred people came to the reception at the country club that followed the graveside service. Howard had stipulated that anyone who wanted to come was welcome, because he didn’t want to risk someone being overlooked when a guest list was compiled.

None of his surviving family members was happy about it, but they formed a stoic receiving line in the club’s foyer and welcomed people as they arrived. Steven and William withdrew to the bar as soon as etiquette permitted. Bellamy remained at Olivia’s side a while longer, but when she was drawn away by members of her bridge club, Bellamy gave up her post as well.

She made her way to the bar, where she joined Steven and William at a corner table. William stood as she approached and held a chair for her.

“We couldn’t stand the banalities any longer,” Steven said. “If I hear one more, ‘Darlin’, I’m so sorry, bless your heart,’ I’m going to hang myself.”

“They mean well, Steven.”

“What will you have to drink?” William asked her.

“White wine.”

“Not nearly strong enough for this occasion.” Steven raised his glass of vodka.

“You’re probably right, but I’ll stick to white wine.”

“I’ll get it,” William said, and left them to order the drink at the bar.

“I like him,” she said as she watched William walk away. “He’s very attentive and kind. Attuned to everyone’s needs. He’s been fantastic to Olivia.”

“I tried to talk him out of coming. He insisted.”

“He’s your family, and I’m glad he’s here for you. I know it was very difficult for you to come back.” Steven had been nervously toying with his plastic stir stick. She reached across the table and covered his hand to still it. “If you can hold out for just a little while longer, you—” She broke off when she saw his expression change dramatically. Whipping her head around, she saw the cause of his alarm.

Dale Moody had just entered the bar from an outside terrace. They made eye contact. He acknowledged her by raising his chin.

Steven, noticing the gesture, looked at her with dismay. “You two are friendly now?”

“Not friendly. But I’ve met with him since I saw you in Atlanta.”

“Jesus, Bellamy,” he said under his breath. “What the hell for?”

“Answers.” She couldn’t address her stepbrother’s disapproval now. Moody had stepped back though the doorway and out of sight. “Excuse me.”

She rushed across the room and out onto the terrace. Moody was standing in the shade of a post that was wrapped in leafy wisteria, lighting a cigarette in defiance of the restrictions against smoking.

“My condolences,” he said as he clicked off his lighter. He used it to motion toward the bar. “Looks like your stepbrother’s done okay for himself. He has that air of prosperity about him.”

“He has a strong aversion to you.”

“Oh, that breaks my heart.”

“When you were interrogating him, did you know he was gay?”

He shrugged. “Figured.”

“Did you harass him about it?”

He flicked an ash off the end of his cigarette. “I was only doing my job.”

“No you weren’t. You were tormenting an underage boy.”

His eyes narrowed angrily. “Don’t make me sorry I came here to see you. Are you still looking for answers or not?”

She tamped down her resentment. “Most definitely.”

“Then listen up. I left the case file with Haymaker. Go see him. He’ll enlighten you.”

He tried to turn away, but she reached out and grabbed the sleeve of his jacket. “That’s it?”

“That’s all you need. Everything’s in there, including a statement from me, owning up to my machinations, as well as Rupe’s.”

“A signed confession?”

“Yep. And to eliminate any doubt or dispute that it’s legit, I put my thumbprint on it. You won’t have any trouble with Haymaker. I told him you’d be coming.” He tried to pull away, but again she detained him.

“Two things,” she said. “Please.”

“Make it snappy.”

“Dent and I went back to your cabin to warn you of Ray Strickland.” She described the attack on Gall inside his hangar. “Strickland meant to kill him.”

“Looks like he’s going for broke.”

“So it would seem.”

“Warning noted,” Moody said. “What’s the second thing?”

She wet her lips. “Since I last talked to you, I’ve remembered something else about that day.”

His attention sharpened. “Well?”

“I overheard Susan say something about me. Something nasty.” She swallowed with difficulty, and her heart was beating so hard it filled her ears with its pounding. “During your investigation, did you find anything to indicate that possibly I had killed her?”

“No.”

“But you would have dismissed me because of my age, my size. Did I ever cross your mind as a possible suspect? You know now that I saw her lying dead before the storm.”

Moody studied her for a second or two, then pitched her his lighter. Reflexively she caught it against her chest. “What are you doing?”

“You’re a lefty.” He motioned down to the hand clutching his lighter. “After you described the crime scene the other day, I checked, just to make sure. You might have seen your sister dead, but you didn’t kill her. Whoever struck the blow to the back of her head was right-handed.”

The tension inside her chest began to lessen. She was virtually breathless with relief. “You’re positive?”

He dropped his cigarette to the terrace and ground it out. “I still don’t know who killed your sister, but I know who didn’t.”

He took his lighter from her, abruptly turned, and walked away. Bellamy struck out after him, but had taken only a few steps when one of her father’s oldest friends stepped out of the bar and addressed her. She had no choice but to speak to him.

While the man was expressing his sympathy, Dale Moody once again disappeared.

Dent didn’t go through the receiving line. He entered the club through another door and then blended into the crowd as well as he could. He didn’t eat, didn’t drink, didn’t talk to anyone, and maintained his distance from the family, although he kept Bellamy within sight when at all possible. If she noticed him, she gave no indication of it.

She looked tired, beleaguered, bereaved. And gorgeous in a tragic heroine sort of way. Black suited her. Even the shadows beneath her eyes had a certain delicate appeal.

When the receiving line disbanded, he followed her as far as the double-door entrance into the bar. He didn’t go in, but saw her sitting at a table with Steven. He loitered in the hallway, and the next time he drifted past, he saw her leaving the bar by way of a terrace door.

Seeing his opportunity to talk to her alone, Dent ducked out the nearest exit, circled the swimming pool, and rounded the corner of the building, which brought him to a shaded terrace where she was in conversation with an elderly man, who was pressing her hand between his.

As soon as he left her, and before she could reenter the bar, Dent spoke her name. He feared she might hightail it when she saw him. She didn’t. She waited for him to come to her.

Up close, he could see that her eyes looked weepy. She could have stood a good meal or two. Always slender, she now looked fragile. After several moments of simply staring, he asked the question that had been torturing him for days.

“Why didn’t you call me?”

Her father, the person she’d said she loved most in the world, had died. But she hadn’t even called to tell him. He was surprised by how much that had hurt. She hadn’t responded to his dozens of voice-mail messages, either. He would have thought… Hell, he didn’t know what he thought. Or what to think now, because she still hadn’t said anything.

“I had to hear it from Gall,” he said, “who’d caught it on the news. Why didn’t you call to tell me as soon as you got word?”

“We hadn’t parted on the best of terms.”

“But your dad died.” He stated it like the settling point of an argument, as if nothing else need be said.

“Why would I bother you with that?”

“Bother me?” He stared at her with bewilderment for several moments, then turned his head away and looked out across the panorama of the golf course. “Wow. That speaks volumes, doesn’t it? It says a lot about your opinion of me. Turns out you’re even more like the Lystons than they are.”

After a time, he turned his head back to her and looked into her eyes. Then he sniffed with disdain, brushed past her, and entered the bar through the terrace door. He shot a glance toward the table where Steven was sitting with William. They were absorbed in conversation.

Olivia was standing with a group of well-dressed men and women of her ilk. She appeared to be listening to what one of the silver-haired gentlemen was saying, but there was an absent look in her eyes.

Dent thought about staying and ordering a drink for himself. His presence would spoil their party, make the situation awkward, and he was feeling just ornery enough to do it. He even checked to see if there were any vacant stools at the bar. And that was when he saw him.

Jerry.

He was seated at the bar, hunched over a beer. But his gaze was fixed on Bellamy as she entered through the terrace door, looking upset, blotting her eyes with a tissue.

Jerry quickly reached for something beneath the bar.

All this registered with Dent in a nanosecond. He processed the potentially dangerous situation and reacted with immediacy, only one thought in mind: Protect Bellamy.

“Hey!” he shouted.

Jerry did as everyone in the bar did. His surprised gaze swung to Dent and, seeing that he was the person being addressed, he froze. But for less than a heartbeat. Then he bolted.

Dent charged after him. Jerry ran like the devil was after him. In his haste, he didn’t see his way completely clear of the double doorway. He crashed into one panel of it, breaking several panes of glass and splintering the wood frame.

Women screamed. Men scurried aside.

Jerry, in a stumbling run, tried to get away, but Dent caught him by the collar, dragged him back into the bar, and slammed him face first against the wall. The man cried out in fear and pain as Dent crowded in behind him.

“What’s your story, Jerry?”

“Let him go!”

Dent paid no heed to the shout coming from someone in the room. He wanted an explanation from the man who’d tracked Bellamy from New York to Texas. “What were you reaching for under the bar?”

“A b-b-book,” Jerry stuttered.

“Dent.” Bellamy was at his elbow, trying to pull him off the man. “It’s nothing. He did have a book. See, it’s right here. It was under his barstool.”

Dent blinked the copy of Low Pressure into focus. Gradually, he backed away from the man. Jerry turned in the narrow space. He was bleeding from several cuts from the broken door panes. His nose was also dripping blood from being smashed into the wall.

Dent placed the heel of his hand over Jerry’s sternum, keeping him pinned to the wall by stiff-arming. “Why have you been following her?”

Jerry’s eyes bulged with fear. His lips were moving but he couldn’t articulate a word.

“Let him go.”

Dent recognized the voice as the one who’d spoken before. He turned his head in the direction from which it had come, and there stood Steven.

He motioned for Dent to remove his hand from the man’s chest. “He’s been following Bellamy because I paid him to.”

Dent looked at Steven with disbelief. Then he turned to Bellamy, who stood there beside her stepmother, both of them frozen and mute and staring at him with horror.

He dropped his hand, and Jerry slumped to the floor. Dent made a gesture of supreme disgust that encompassed everyone in the room. “You people suck.”

Then he stepped over Jerry and stalked out, crunching shards of glass beneath his boots.

The ten-minute drive in the limousine was made in absolute silence.

Bellamy was first inside the house. Helena approached, but Bellamy shook her head, and the housekeeper tactfully withdrew. Bellamy went into the living room, slung her handbag onto an ottoman, and turned to confront the other three as they filed in behind her.

“His name is Simon Dowd,” Steven said even before she could demand an explanation. “He’s a private investigator.”

“Oh my God,” Olivia groaned. “Steven, what in the world—”

Bellamy sliced the air, cutting off anything else her stepmother might say. She wanted only to hear what Steven had to say in his defense. “Why, in the name of God, did you hire a private investigator to follow me? I thought he was a stalker!”

“The whole business was distasteful, I assure you,” he said. “His office is a third-floor walk-up. His desk is a card table. The morning I went to see him, there was a partially eaten bagel—”

“I don’t give a damn about that! Why did you hire him to follow me?”

“For your protection.” His voice had taken on an angry edge that matched hers. “You wrote a book about a true crime but left the ending open to interpretation. Then you started publicizing it, making you a target for anyone involved who had a problem with that.”

“Like who?”

“Like Dent Carter. Who proved less that an hour ago that he’s a thug. Not that that comes as any surprise.”

“Scandalous behavior,” Olivia said in an undertone. “I’ll never be able to hold my head up in the club again.”

Bellamy cried out, “He thought he was protecting me.”

“Naturally you jump to his defense,” Steven said. “He’s acquired those cuts and bruises on his face since I saw you in Atlanta. Who beat him up?”

“Don’t try and change the subject. Tell me why you sicced this… this Simon Dowd on me.”

“In your book you all but came out and accused Dale Moody of being a crooked cop. An incompetent one at best. He could have wanted retribution. Even Rupe Collier. Anyway, I became worried for your safety. William will tell you.”

She glanced over at him. He nodded. “His motive was noble. He was terribly concerned about you.”

“So I retained Dowd,” Steven said, bringing her back to him. “His first love is the theater. He fancies himself an actor. He assured me that he would be perfect, that he could play the avid fan. That way, he could stay close to you when you appeared in public. And before you launch into a tirade, let me point out that my hiring him was validated when you told me about the rat, the vandalism done to your house, to Dent’s airplane.”

Olivia looked between the two of them with bewilderment. “What in heaven’s name are you talking about?”

“It doesn’t matter now.” Wearily, Bellamy sat down on the arm of a chair and rubbed her forehead. As she thought back over the last several days, she now understood why Steven hadn’t been all that surprised to see her and Dent when they appeared at Maxey’s. Jerry—Dowd, whatever—had followed them from the park in Georgetown to the Austin airport. He’d given Steven advance warning of their trip to Atlanta.

“Which brings us up to today,” he was saying. “I knew there would be a crowd at the funeral, and that made me nervous for your safety. For the safety of all of us. So I asked Dowd to be there, to watch our backs, and, again, I was justified in doing so. The funeral brought them all out. Moody. Rupe Collier.”

“He was there?” Bellamy asked, raising her head. “I didn’t see him.”

“Seated two rows behind us in the church.”

“And holding court in the country club’s dining room,” Olivia said. “Like he’s a dear friend of our family.”

“Let’s not forget Dent,” Steven said. “You and he are practically joined at the hip these days. I’m surprised you didn’t go charging after him like you were twelve again, pining over your first major crush.”

Bellamy’s cheeks burned as though he’d slapped her. She left her perch on the arm of the chair and walked toward him. “Why do you say things like that?”

“Like what?”

“Hurtful things. Hateful things.”

“Bellamy”—Olivia sighed—“please don’t start something. Not today.”

Ignoring her stepmother’s plea, she kept her gaze fixed on Steven. “What’s wrong with you? When you were younger, you were sensitive to other people’s feelings.”

“I grew up.”

“No, you grew mean. Snide and scornful and mean-spirited like the people you once despised.” She shook her head with perplexity. “I don’t understand you. I truly don’t.”

“I never asked you to.”

“But I want to.” She reached for his hand. “Steven,” she said with appeal, “I’ve always thought of you as a blood brother. I love you. I want you to love me.”

“We’re no longer children.” He pulled his hand away from hers. “It’s time you grew up, too, and realized that life rarely gives us what we want.”

She searched his eyes, saw how untouchable his heart seemed, and in that moment, she pitied him. Physically he was beautiful, but he was emotionally deformed. The effects of Susan’s abuse had taken a tragic toll on his life.

But by refusing to let it go, he had prevented himself from healing. He’d let his hatred and resentment fester until he’d become critical, cynical, and slow to forgive. He had a mother who loved him with all her heart. He was adored by a patient and devoted partner whose love was visible in every gesture, grand or small. But Steven kept a part of himself separate even from them. He refused to wholly accept their love and to give his in return.

That, Bellamy realized, was the real tragedy.