in the voluminous body bag, her breast implants were obvious, jutting up, pushing the plastic taut.
“It freaks me out a little because she was so young,” Wesley said.
“Unfortunately, you’d better get used to that.”
“But she’s, like, my sister’s age.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So you don’t think her drowning was an accident?”
Coop pursed his mouth and resumed pushing the gurney. “As a matter of fact, it probably was an accident. I have a tendency to look for a devious angle even where there is none.” He smiled. “I can be rather morose, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“I guess this job will do it to you.”
“Yep.”
They reached the stainless-steel doors marked Crypt. Coop knocked and handed some paperwork to the young orderly who came to the door and said, “We’ll take it from here.”
Wesley handed off the gurney and turned to go. Coop took a little longer and cast a lingering glance over Angela Ashford’s body as it disappeared through the doors. Then he turned to Wesley and clapped him on the back. “Louis Strong at the Sonic Car Wash on Monroe Avenue.”
Wesley frowned. “Who’s that?”
“The man who can get you a decent handgun without a lot of questions. He’s not cheap, but he has a good reputation. Tell him I sent you, and don’t shoot your damn foot off, okay?”
Wesley grinned. “Okay.”
“Wipe that grin off your face. I’m doing this because I don’t want to see anything happen to your sister, capisce?”
Wesley’s grin widened. “Capisce.”
16
By the time Carlotta parked the Monte Carlo in her garage, she was shaking uncontrollably. A hot shower did little to dispel the chill that had seeped into her skin, a reminder that Angela Ashford would never again be warm. Sleep was out of the question. Instead, she huddled against her headboard wrapped in the fuzzy chenille robe, watching the Style Network through a haze of tears that wouldn’t fall and aching all over from a misery that she couldn’t define. Hovering along the edges of guilt over how many times she’d wished terrible things upon Angela was a profound fear that she’d never felt before—her own mortality.
She and Angela were the same age, and Angela had been surrounded by everything that Carlotta had once thought would be hers someday, including Peter. In Carlotta’s eyes, Angela had been the luckiest woman in Atlanta, yet it all had been snatched from her in the time it took to fall into a quarter-of-a-million-dollar swimming-pool addition and drown.
How long did it take for a person to drown? Carlotta wondered. One minute? Three? Five?
All that time, Angela would have been thrashing in the water in those boots that Carlotta had coveted, trying to hold her breath until at last giving in and drawing chlorinated water into her burning lungs.
Had Angela’s last thoughts been of Peter, of the man she’d married? Had she died thinking that her husband was having an affair with his former fiancée? Had she mourned that her life hadn’t turned out the way she’d hoped?
If so, Carlotta thought sadly, then she and Angela actually had a lot in common.
With her bedroom lights blazing, Carlotta listened to the comforting hum of voices from the television as the pretty people on the entertainment news show floated through their glamorous lives, smiling wide and lifting one-hundred-dollar glasses of Clarendon Hills syrah, climbing in and out of their European sports cars, wearing couture clothing from Milan. Their lives seemed so perfect…the life she’d always aspired to have.
She picked up the Cartier ring box from her nightstand and fingered the marquis-cut engagement ring that Peter had given her when she was seventeen. She’d been much too young to be thinking about marriage, she knew that now, but her love for Peter had obliterated any other goal she might have had for herself. The fact that the ring he’d given her surpassed what most adult women received spoke of the incredible wealth that Peter had at his disposal. Too young, too clueless and too wealthy…completely unprepared to deal with reality.
She sighed. After ten years of hard knocks, sometimes she still felt unprepared to deal with reality. Her mind churned, consumed with the quandary she’d put herself in by kissing Peter Ashford the night of the cocktail party. After ten years, she had run into him and fallen into his arms, and only a couple of days later, his wife was dead.
Life was nothing if not uncanny.
But as she dwelled on the horrific coincidence, the terrible thought that she had managed to keep at bay stubbornly worked its way through the nooks and crannies of her brain and presented itself: What if Peter had killed Angela?
As soon as the notion materialized, she dismissed it as absurd. Why would Peter kill Angela?
Because of you.
Angela’s accusations rang in her head like a gong. My husband is still in love with you. You’re fooling around with him behind my back, aren’t you?
Carlotta shook her head, refusing to believe any of her own foolish conjectures. How conceited would she be if she thought that Peter would murder his wife just so he could be free? The idea was positively ludicrous.
The blaring ring of the phone on her nightstand startled her so badly, she cried out. The clock radio displayed the time as just after midnight. She set down the ring box and answered, thinking it was Wesley because she hadn’t heard him return yet. “Hello?”
“Carly, hi. It’s me…Peter. Did I wake you?”
Her chest constricted painfully at the rasp of his voice. He sounded as if he’d been drinking again. “No, I was awake. How…how are you?”
“Not good,” he admitted. “I just finished calling everyone in the family. Angela’s parents are on a cruise, so it took me a while to track them down.”
“I’m so sorry, Peter.”
“I know,” he said. “I just called to thank you for…staying this evening. You didn’t have to.”
“It’s okay,” she murmured, struck by an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. How many times had she lain curled up in bed talking to Peter on the phone? Hundreds? Thousands? “I only wish that I could help you.”
“You did, simply by being there. I’m just sorry that you had to hear all the hateful things that Neanderthal detective said.”
She twisted a hank of hair that had fallen next to her ear, a nervous habit she’d given up years ago after her hair-dresser had chastised her. “I’m sure he was only doing his job.”
“Still, he tried to make it sound as if…as if I had something to do with her death.”
Carlotta’s heart pounded and moisture gathered around her hairline, but she remained silent.
Peter
