A Fatal Romance Page 4

  “Let’s check the windows,” I said.

  Eve followed to the left. A picture window in front of the house may have led to a den, but the drapes remained tight. Other windows with closed curtains would probably lead to bathrooms and bedrooms.

  “Maybe we should go home,” Eve said. “We really shouldn’t intrude.”

  Was she thinking this recently-widowed woman might really be in a sexual situation?

  “But she might have killed him.”

  Eve wrinkled reddish-brown eyebrows and shook her head. Still, she didn’t look certain. We’d both always enjoyed adventure with a little anxiety added to the mix.

  A thicket of wild swamp vines and hackberry and cypress trees hemmed in the backyard, enclosing the large pond twenty feet behind the house that took Zane Snelling’s life. I felt a tug at my heart while I stared at the brown water where two geese decoys floated, knowing a man died in its depths. If Zane and his wife lived here almost three years, why would he fall into the pond this week, when no one was near? She supposedly shopped at the mall forty miles away, returned, and found him floating face down.

  “Nice job with the pavers.” I nodded to the left of the pond. “Sorry I couldn’t finish them with you.”

  “When you had achy joints and high fever?”

  I shrugged. We’d dug the grass from that space and laid sand and crushed stone. I’d been using a pipe to screed the sand when chills and a hundred-and-two-degree fever struck. She sent me home. Eve returned the next morning while I shivered in bed, waiting for pain relievers to make my body feel half normal. My flu lasted six days.

  “Those red-charcoal pavers were a good choice.”

  “I think it came out all right. Except he fell right there.” The skin outside Eve’s eyes crinkled, and her eyes misted. She looked ready to cry, which I never ever would do again. She stared at the hard knees of the cypress trees that grew beside the seating area we created. Smooth ground around it sloped to the water.

  I gripped her hand. “You told him a clearer spot would be better. He wanted it right there. It wasn’t your fault. Or mine.”

  She turned her head away as though unable to stand seeing where he died any longer. “Look, a light’s on in the house.”

  I moved close and peeked in a window. The refrigerator and square table with four chairs sat inside a brightly-lit kitchen.

  “She could have gone out and left a light on,” Eve said, a sad touch of guilt remaining in her eye.

  “You want an excuse to leave.” Seeing the site where he died surely made her uncomfortable, as it did me. “The woman might have killed her husband, who was your friend. Let’s just check,” I whispered.

  “But suppose she did kill him. She could kill us.”

  “She wouldn’t have a reason to. We won’t say anything that would let her know we considered she might be a killer. The police can check that. I just want to give her what’s rightfully hers.” I tapped my pocket. “The final remains of her husband.”

  Eve shook her head. “But what if she had the urn buried? What’s she supposed to do with those other parts of him? Sprinkle them around his grave?”

  “That will be up to her.” I rushed to the backdoor and rang the bell. We waited and looked at each other. Nobody answered. A small stack of leftover pavers stood near the door. I rang the bell again, knocked, and tried the knob. The door opened.

  “Bells Will Be Ringing” ripped up my throat.

  “What’s wrong?” Eve rushed behind.

  The mistress of the house was right inside, blood covering her floor and head.

  Chapter 4

  Daria’s open eyes stared. She didn’t flinch or do a thing but lie still.

  “Get away from here.” Eve held her phone to her ear and shoved against my arm. “The 9-1-1 woman can’t hear me with you singing so loud.”

  Sucking in breaths, I stomped from the door and slunk around the water, struggling to squelch my violent trembles. The bloody body of the woman lying inside the doorway tried to jerk me back to the most horrible day when my life violently changed. Shaky, soft lyrics spewed from my throat.

  I tried to stop thinking of death and blocked out approaching sirens. I stepped across the pavers Eve had laid near the pond, lowered myself to the oak bench Zane had probably bought from a craftsman, and submerged myself in right now.

  Even if the pavers occupied a fairly large area, two people wouldn’t fit on his bench. He’d told Eve he wanted this space to sit alone and drink beer. No shed, no barn, barbecue pit, or table back here. If he worked for an oilfield company, his job might have kept him inside. Most southerners enjoyed their yards, especially those with ponds, and stocked them with fish. No small swirl indicated bream or bass near the surface. No tiny head of a turtle poking up, either. The geese on the water turned with the strong breeze that pushed against my back as it swept in from the east. Long strings of algae snagged small branches along the water’s edge. Some tendrils may have captured Zane Snelling after he fell in.

  What surprised me were tiny green balls growing on tips of some of the cypress branches. I’d never noticed them on cypresses before. Standing, I broke the end of a small branch. I sat again and forced my mind to study it. A slight pleasant bark scent. Pale green feathery leaves. Ridged balls that could decorate a little Christmas tree.

  Sound forced itself to my mind. Sirens stopped blaring, letting a mourning dove’s coo touch the air. A car door slammed, keys jangled, and what may have been a leather holster slapped a runner’s legs. This young man in uniform flashed a badge at me. “I’m Officer Legendre. You called about a possible homicide?”

  I pointed to the door. He dashed there, looked at Eve and back at me, his face registering that we are identical. His attention riveted on Daria, lying right inside her kitchen door.

  “You found her like this?” he asked Eve.

  “We did. This is awful.” Eve stepped away to let him do his business. She came and stood next to me, clutching my hand. “You okay?”

  “No.”

  She squeezed onto the seat beside me, snaked an arm around my shoulder, and held tight.

  More sirens came. They silenced, and people with and without uniforms rushed near, glanced at us, seemed to decide we weren’t threats, and dashed toward the mistress of the house.

  An older cop with lips most women would kill for walked toward us. His tree-trunk legs stepped so firmly his shoes sank into grass, slowing him. I’d seen him in town. Read his name in the paper.

  “I’m Detective Wilet with the Landry Parish Sheriff’s Department.” He showed his I.D. and whipped out a pen and pad. “And you are?”

  “Sunny Taylor,” I said.

  “You can see that I’m her twin. Eve Vaughn.”

  “Yvonne who?”

  She shook her head. “It’s two words. My last name is Vaughn. The first is Eve. Actually, that’s short for Evening. She’s Sunny, and I’m Evening. That was our mother’s attempt at being clever, naming us after the weather and time of day we were born.”

  “Wasn’t your house just broken into?” the detective asked with a distinctly darker expression.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  The detective’s eyes shifted toward the backdoor. He focused on his paper and jotted notes. “Did you know the victim?”

  “I met her. That’s all,” Eve said.

  “I didn’t.” Having Daria yell at me did not constitute a meet and greet. I peered at the doorway. Couldn’t see her and didn’t want to. “Is she dead?”

  “It appears so. Would you tell me what happened?”

  I swallowed. Someone snuffed out this woman’s life. How awful. We told the circumstances of finding her. No, we hadn’t touched her, hadn’t gone inside, hadn’t touched the doorframe or anything near it. Didn’t see or hear anyone else.

  “Did you say she was your friend?” Wilet asked Eve.

  Was he trying to put words in her mouth?

&nb
sp; “No. I did some work back here, but her husband was the only one around. She came home, and he introduced us, and she went inside.”

  Our questioner asked more, causing us to say Daria’s husband Zane just died. He drowned back here. The detective knew of his death. The intensity of his eyes and his chin’s firmness said he knew much more than he was telling us.

  “Why did you come here today?” He aimed his question at me and then Eve.

  She faced me, the ESP we sometimes shared evident in her stony expression.

  I pressed my arms against my sides like I could hide her former friend in my pocket. If I mentioned the ashes, the detective might confiscate my jacket. I wanted to keep it. But mainly, Zane didn’t do anything wrong. I wouldn’t want part of him in some musty evidence room where he’d probably never get out.

  “Eve wanted to show me the job she finished here,” I said. “I’d started the work with her, but got sick, and she had to finish alone. Nobody answered the doorbell out front, so we walked back here, thinking no one was home.” I looked at Eve. “You did a nice job completing the project. Just maybe you could have tapped those pavers a sixteenth of an inch farther down on that edge.” I tilted my head toward the opposite side from where we’d walked.

  Her eyes went all squinty. She wanted to tell me off.

  I told the officer about knocking on the backdoor and then kind of trying the knob in case she was inside and unable to get to the door and we would have called out her name.

  “But we didn’t need to call her.” I swallowed, trying not to mentally see what we’d discovered inside. Across the yard people gathered around the doorway and beyond, marking their spaces, inspecting Daria and her house, taking pictures, taking measurements.

  Fear tightened my chest. What happened to this attractive woman who just lost her husband? Had someone killed him—and now her? A carol sought to escape. I forced my throat tight to stifle the song and covered my mouth with a hand to further stop the words, some still erupting like a muffled cry.

  The detective stared at me, his forehead creased, while he surely waited for an explanation for my outburst. Getting none, he said, “I’ll want to speak with you two another day.” He speared me with his gaze as though daring me to open my mouth again, then tromped off toward the others.

  Eve didn’t glance at the pond before returning to her car. “I can’t believe this happened,” she said once I got in, and we were riding off.

  “I know. He died, and then we found her. That’s horrific. And it sure shoots holes in my theory about her being his killer.”

  My twin gave her head a brief turn and narrowed her eyes at me.

  “Sorry. I don’t mean to be insensitive. You looked closer at her than I did. Were there any signs of what happened? Was she shot?”

  “I didn’t look that closely. And I wouldn’t know a gunshot wound from any other wound, would you?”

  I swallowed, felt my back tremble. “No.”

  “I’m sorry.” She reached out and squeezed my hand. Her ringing phone made me grateful for anything to get my thoughts away from murder. She also needed distraction.

  “Hello,” she said, tone bland. “Oh, hi.” Her arm holding the cell phone lifted along with her attitude. “I would like that information. No, I’m not home right now. Tomorrow? Great. I’ll see you then.” She clicked off, dropped her phone in her purse, and kept gazing ahead.

  “A girlfriend?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “From your enthusiasm, I should have figured.”

  She raised her chin and aimed her face at the road, heading toward our neighborhood. “That was Dave Price.”

  “Ah, the charming Mr. Price.” I watched a grin brighten her face, then changed the subject. “You need to come and stay at my house.”

  Keeping her lips tight, she shook her head and turned down my street. “My place is being watched now more than ever. And as you heard, I have plans for tomorrow morning.” Without giving me a chance to protest, she pulled up at my house and kept her motor running.

  “You’ll call if you need me? And if you change your mind, just come over. I’ll be home.”

  Her nod and back-of-the-hand wave as though she were shooing a sand fly told me to leave.

  Sleep didn’t come easily. I was certain it didn’t for her either, although she’d put on that show of bravado. I kept my phone next to my pillow and checked it often to see if she’d texted me, or maybe she’d called and I had drifted off and hadn’t heard it.

  Morning brought me back to thoughts from the previous evening. During the last days, somebody broke into Eve’s house. A woman I’d encountered turned up dead, probably murdered. Her husband drowned. Accidental? Unlikely, although I wasn’t as certain since she’d also died. Police would surely look into Zane’s death more now that it appeared somebody killed his wife. An image of my sister Crystal slammed into my mind. I sang through my shower and while I dressed in jeans and another work T-shirt, knowing I couldn’t dwell on death.

  Shortly after I forced breakfast down my throat so I wouldn’t get weak, Eve called.

  “You’re doing okay?” I asked.

  “Yep, excellent.”

  “Wonderful. I kept wanting to call you all night and this morning or drive over there to make sure.”

  She released a small laugh. “I figured you might have passed by a few hundred times already.” A small hesitation. “Can you come over now?”

  “You know it.” We disconnected, and I scurried across the street and between fences to reach her house, briefly noting the dismal morning before she let me in her backdoor and gave me a hug.

  “You are so good,” she said.

  The warm body contact felt especially soothing after my gloomy thoughts. “Thanks, Sis. So are you.”

  Once we backed out of the hug, she gripped my fingers. “I’m glad you think so.” Her deep breath and glance to the side gave me pause about her purpose for wanting me here.

  “You’re really all right?” I asked. “Do you want to come to my house or just get away from this place?”

  “Actually, no.” She faced me. “That good-looking Dave Price is about to come over to discuss a possible alarm system.”

  “Good.” I grinned. He would give her a nice distraction from worry. “And you’re sure you want me here?”

  “No.” She frowned. “Yes, I do.”

  Confusion swamped my brain. I nodded, wondering where this was going. “Okay.”

  “I’m attracted to him but the tiniest pinch concerned. When he stopped by yesterday morning, he needed to hurry to get to a job, so he walked around the house fast and saw the broken sliding glass door. He asked if the glass was going to be replaced, and I told him probably. I said he should come back and find out.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “He didn’t ask what happened to the sliding door. And I’m thinking—could he be the person who broke in here?”

  “You’re kidding.” Now she really had me confused. “You believe he could be? Hadn’t you called him to come over?”

  She spread her hands. “Yes, but that was right before Stan left. He got here just minutes after Stan drove away. Dave told me he’d been in the neighborhood. Had he been scouting my house? Besides, he would have been able to tell beforehand that I didn’t have an alarm in place.”

  “Really?” None of what she suggested made total sense. “So cancel the call.”

  Her pinched expression suggested I was off kilter. “Are you kidding me? He could be the one.”

  I nodded. I’d seen her painting that suggested her intense attraction to this man. Yes, it would be wonderful if she could meet the perfect one for her. She had tried. Being settled with a man she could share equal love with had been her goal for years. I wanted her to reach that goal.

  She swept through the room, shaking her head as though mentally trying to sort things. “I saw him a couple of times since his shop opened l
ast year and wanted to meet him, but wasn’t sure about getting an alarm system. Now I can have him right here for a while.” Her pacing halted in front of me.

  “And you want me to be your backup here just in case, right?”

  She grabbed my fingers, leaned her forehead against mine, and looked me in the eye, a sure sign of trouble. “Sunny, I really like him, and I don’t really believe he’s a bad guy. But with all the strange things that’ve just happened, the thought occurred.”

  “That’s definitely not enough to call the police.”

  “Correct. And I do want to check him out, you know. See if he might care about me.” She offered a warm smile.

  “So…?” By the time she finished telling me her idea, the man might come over and leave.

  “That wouldn’t be possible if you and I are both here.”

  “Okay.”

  She squeezed my hands. “So I need you to be me.”

  Chapter 5

  “Uh-uh, no way.”

  We’d had fun tricking others when we were little. I hadn’t played the part of Eve since high school, that day she didn’t show up to take her final exam in science. Most people couldn’t tell us apart unless we were together, and then they might notice slight differences, mainly that she was slimmer. I hadn’t been great in science but understood that subject a little more than she did. She needed a passing grade on that test, or she would have flunked the course. I only took the exam because she’d begged.

  Maybe I should have let her fail so she would’ve learned a lesson. But she was my sister. My sister.

  Now that I thought about it, the reason she hadn’t studied back then was also her interest in a cute guy who found her attractive, too. Who knows where they went off to?

  “Sunny, there is no way I’d let you get hurt. I really don’t believe he’s a bad guy, but I need to be one hundred percent certain, and you can be much more objective about people, especially male ones.” She gave me her sad eyed, lower-lip-out hopeless look. “I truly believe he could be my soul mate.”