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They talked for a few more moments, with Herman reminiscing some more, and then Savvy stood up and said she had to leave.
“You made an old man happy, Detective,” he said, clasping her hand. When she was almost out the door, he said, “Oh! Did I tell you she had a son named Silas?”
“Well, you said you thought so.”
“He wasn’t Declan’s boy. He was Preston’s. Mary always hated Janet Bancroft, and she got her hooks into Janet’s husband and woo-wee. . . .” He mock shuddered. “Lucky one of ’em didn’t kill the other.”
Well, someone killed Mary, Savvy thought while driving the rest of the way to Hale’s. She wasn’t sure whether she believed Herman’s account that Preston St. Cloud had fathered another son besides Hale. He’d said himself there was no proof about the paternity of most of Mary’s children. And she sure as hell wasn’t going to lay that one on Hale without proof.
When she got to the St. Cloud house, she saw the outdoor lights had been left on for her. She glanced down at her watch and groaned. She’d told Hale she would come for dinner, and though they hadn’t set a time, it was pretty late.
As she pulled into the drive, she noticed Janet’s rental was gone, and then she looked over to see Hale coming through the front door. It gave her a warm feeling to think he’d been waiting for her, but then again, maybe he’d been worried.
Savvy stepped out of the car into the faintest of drizzles, the outdoor lights shining in her face. Hale came toward her, a smile of greeting on his face.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” she apologized.
“No set time,” he assured her easily. “Just glad you’re here. You need me to bring anything from your car?”
She patted her messenger bag, which was slung over her shoulder. “My pump’s in my messenger bag. I’m good.”
“If you want to spend the night, we have more room. Mom left about twenty minutes ago.”
Savvy was surprised. “She just got here.”
“I know. The problem is, she and Declan have a lot of issues that neither of them will let go of.”
They walked along the sidewalk to the front porch together. Being this close to Hale, with the misting rain surrounding them, feeling now more like a soft caress, Savvy tried to hold down her racing heart. She seemed to be infected with a kind of sexual madness herself.
He gazed down at her, and his lips parted, as if he were about to say something.
Savannah focused on his lips. A thrill shot through her at the thought of them crushing down on hers. Good God, but she needed to get a grip.
Victoria came out to the porch, wearing a jacket, her purse over her shoulder, heading for her blue Toyota, taking a break from nanny duty. “Your mom left? It wasn’t because of me, was it?” she asked anxiously.
“No,” Hale told her and then indicated that Savvy should enter the house ahead of him. She stepped inside, both gladdened and a little disappointed by the nanny’s appearance. She’d thought for just a moment that he was going to kiss her.
The light flashed quickly. A small jet of illumination into the black night and rain. Ravinia almost missed it, it was so brief, but she was already dressed in her darkest pair of pants and a blue shirt. Her boots and cloak were hanging in the storeroom, and she crept down the stairs and through the kitchen, banging her shin in her haste, enough that she had to bite back a cry of pain. Damn. How many times had she sneaked away with no problem at all? She had to relax. Stop hurrying.
The wind had turned into a rustle when Ravinia stepped outside, sliding a little in slippery mud that had mired onto the flagstone path that ran around the east side of the lodge. She hurried as fast as she dared toward the graveyard, then picked her way carefully through the headstones to where she could see a faint glow. Earl had turned the flashlight beam toward the ground and behind a boulder and a rhododendron toward the back of the plot where he had already been digging.
“What’s this?” she whispered when she reached him.
He pointed downward, his finger barely visible. “Mary.”
“Oh.”
When she saw the pine box that held her mother, she felt a strange guilt. Like she was betraying this woman that she didn’t even know. But then Earl needed her help to carry the box toward the lodge. Ravinia strained with all her might. She was barely up to the task and just managed to hang on to the slippery wood, her arms aching from the effort. They worked their way slowly to where her mother’s real grave lay and set the box down.
The rain had finally abated to a soft drizzle. Earl looked at the ground in front of Mary’s headstone and laid a hand on the wet earth.
“What?” Ravinia whispered.
“It was dug up recently.”
“No. It’s just messed up because of this damn rain.”
“We needed the rain to explain why the earth will be disturbed,” he muttered.
