Bellamy stirred. “I must ask. Did Daddy know? Or have so much as an inkling?”
Olivia’s face crumpled. “No, no.” Then in a mournful tone, she added, “Sometimes I would catch him watching me. Thoughtfully. Frowning. And it caused me to wonder…”
“He never asked?”
“No.”
Bellamy wondered if perhaps he hadn’t asked because he didn’t want to know. Maybe he had commissioned her to get to the truth in order to vindicate not Allen Strickland, but Olivia. He hadn’t wanted to die with even a smidgen of suspicion that his beloved wife had taken his daughter’s life.
They would never know his mind, and Bellamy was actually relieved that they wouldn’t.
“Does Steven know?” she asked quietly. “He told me himself that he was glad Susan was dead.”
“No. But I let it slip today that I knew what she was doing to him. That’s why he left.”
Bellamy’s heart sank as Olivia described the scene. “I begged his forgiveness, but he refused to listen. He locked me out of their room and when he opened the door, their bags were packed, and a taxi was waiting to take them to the airport. I pleaded with him to stay and talk it out, but he wouldn’t even look at me. Which is the worst possible punishment for what I did.”
She took a moment as though collecting her thoughts, then said, “I deceived myself into thinking that Allen Strickland’s conviction was a sign from God that he was granting me a second chance.
“Steven suffered, and so did you to some extent, but Howard and I had almost two decades of happiness. I made myself believe that killing Susan was justified, and that’s why I’d gotten away with it.” She sighed. “But things don’t work that way, do they?”
“No they don’t,” Bellamy said softly. “Because you have to tell the authorities, Olivia. Allen Strickland deserves to be exonerated. So does Dent, Steven, anyone who came under suspicion. You must clear them.”
Olivia nodded. “I’m not afraid anymore. I’ve lost Howard. Now Steven. Nothing worse can happen to me.”
Bellamy suddenly realized that, except for her head, Olivia hadn’t moved. Her face was wet with tears, yet she hadn’t pulled a tissue from the box on the bedside table.
“Olivia?”
Her eyes had closed, and she didn’t respond.
“Olivia!”
Bellamy whipped back the covers, and, although she’d never been a screamer, she screamed now. Olivia was drenched in blood. Both wrists had been slashed.
Bellamy frantically slapped her cheeks, but her only responses were faint murmurs of protest.
Bellamy snatched the cordless phone from its charger on the nightstand, punched in 911, and began babbling as soon as the operator answered. She shouted the address. “She’s bleeding to death! Send an ambulance. Hurry, hurry!”
The operator launched into a series of questions, but when Bellamy saw headlights cut an arc across the ceiling she dropped the phone, rushed to the window, and flung back the curtains.
Despite the downpour, she recognized the Vette’s low profile as it came speeding through the open gate. She cried out in relief.
She returned to the bed, touched Olivia’s cheek, and was startled by how cool it was. “Don’t die,” she whispered fiercely, then left the room at a run.
The hall was darker than before, but she didn’t slow down even when she reached the stairs. She practically flew down them, tripping on the last tread and barely catching herself on the newel post before she fell.
She reached the front door just as the Corvette rolled to a stop. “Dent! Help me!”
Heedless of the downpour and the lightning that filled the sky with a blue-white glare, she ran across the porch and down the steps. She rounded the hood of the car just as he was alighting.
She launched herself at him. “Dent, thank God! It’s Olivia. She’s—”
Strong arms went around her, but they weren’t Dent’s.
“ ’Bout time we met.”
She looked up through the rain into Ray Strickland’s leering face.
Chapter 30
When Dent reached the parking space where he’d left his Corvette and found it empty, he made a three-sixty turn, thinking that the cloudburst had thrown him off and that he’d gone to the wrong space. And then for several seconds more he stood there, confounded, while rain beat down on him.
The possibility that his car had been stolen from the parking lot made him gnash his teeth. But then his heart stuttered when it occurred to him who the thief might be. Could it be a coincidence that his car had been stolen while Ray Strickland was at large? Strickland was a mechanic. He would know how to break in, hot-wire, and do anything else necessary to steal any vehicle.
All this ran through Dent’s mind in a millisecond, and he acted on his fear instantly. Ducking beneath the narrow overhang of the building, he pulled out his phone to call Bellamy and warn her. He punched in her number before remembering that Nagle and Abbott had confiscated her phone to hold as evidence in Moody’s murder. No one answered it.
Dent burst into the Starbucks looking like a man deranged, startling the customers and staff. Heedless of the fact that he was soaked to the skin, that his hair was plastered flat to his head, and that his eyes looked feral, he shouted, “Gall, your truck. Where’s it parked?”
Gall, who was still in conversation with the senator, gaped at Dent. “Where’s your car?”
“Not where I left it. Give me the keys to your truck. Call nine-one-one and tell them to send police to the Lystons’ house. The cops at the gate need to be alerted that Ray Strickland may try to get onto the property by driving my car. Bellamy hasn’t got her phone, so I can’t call her directly, and I don’t know the land line number. Now for godsake, pitch me your keys.”
Gall did as told, and Dent snatched them from the air. “West side of the building,” Gall yelled at Dent’s back as he plunged back into the thunderstorm.
He ran to the parking lot and spotted Gall’s relic of a pickup. He climbed into the cab and cranked it on, then, pushing it as fast as it would go, jumped a curb and bounced into the street.
As he drove with one hand, he dialed 911 with his other. By now Gall would have called the emergency number, but it wouldn’t hurt to put in a second call.
He gave the answering operator his name and the address of the Lystons’ house. “Bellamy Lyston Price is in danger of her life.”
“What’s the nature of the problem, sir?”
“Too long to tell. But there are a pair of cops stationed at her front gate. They should be notified to be on the lookout for a red Corvette. They shouldn’t open the gate because Ray Strickland might be driving it. And call Nagle and Abbott. They’re homicide detectives. They’ll know what this is about.” He was out of breath by the time he finished.
“Your name again, sir?”
“What?”
“Your name again?”
“Are you fucking kidding?”
With infuriating calm, she began again with the question about his name. Cursing, he tossed his phone onto the seat of the pickup so he could use both hands to steer around a slow-moving minivan. He blasted through a red light, blaring the pickup’s horn.
Ray’s luck had changed, and it was on account of him killing Moody.
There had to be a correlation, because that was when things had started going good for him.
First, he’d escaped the two cops who’d showed up at his place. One’s blood was still on his clothes, along with the splotches Moody had sprayed on him. He didn’t think he’d killed the cop, but he hadn’t hung around to find out.
Dodging the second cop’s bullet—another stroke of luck—he’d barreled his way through his duplex and out the back even as other squad cars were squealing to a halt in front.