E Is for Evidence - Sue Grafton [82]
"That's right."
"Dirty pool, Ebony."
She shrugged, undismayed. "It's your own damn fault."
"My fault?"
"I asked you what was going on and you wouldn't say. It's my family, Kinsey. I have a right to know."
"I see. And who thought about bringing Daniel into it?"
"I did, but Bass was the one who tracked him down. He and Daniel had an affair years ago, until Bass broke it off. There was unfinished business between them. Daniel was more than happy to accommodate him in the hopes of rekindling the fires."
"Selling me out in the process," I said.
She smiled slightly, but her gaze was intent. "You didn't have to agree, you know. You must have had some unfinished business of your own or you wouldn't have been suckered in so easily."
"True," I said. "That was smart. God, he nicked right in there and gave you everything, didn't he?"
"Not quite."
"Oh? Something missing? Some little piece of the scheme incomplete?"
"We still don't know who killed Olive."
"Or Lyda Case," I said, "though the motive was proba-bly not the same. I suspect she somehow figured out what was going on. Maybe she went back through Hugh's pa-pers and came up with something significant."
"Like what?"
"Hey, if I knew that, I'd probably know who killed her, wouldn't I?"
Ebony stirred restlessly. "I have things to do. Why don't you tell me what you want."
"Well, let's see. Just in rambling around town, it occurred to me that it might help to find out who inherits Olive's stock."
"Stock?"
"Her ten voting shares. Surely, those wouldn't be left to someone outside the family. So who'd she leave 'em to?"
For the first time she was genuinely flustered and the color in her cheeks seemed real. "What difference does it make? The bomb was meant for Terry. Olive died by mis-take, didn't she?"
"I don't know. Did she?" I snapped back. "Who stands to benefit? You? Lance?"
"Ash," came the voice. "Olive left all her stock to her sister Ashley." Mrs. Wood had appeared in the upstairs hall. I looked up to see her clinging to the rail, the walker close by, her whole body trembling with exertion.
"Mother, you don't have to concern yourself with this."
"I think I do. Come to my room, Kinsey." Mrs. Wood disappeared.
I glanced at Ebony and then pushed past her and went up the stairs.
24
We sat in her room near French doors that opened onto a balcony facing the sea. Sheer curtains were pulled across the doorway, billowing lazily in a wind that smelled of salt. The bedroom suite was dark and old, a clumsy assortment of pieces she and Woody must have salvaged from their early married years: a dresser with chipped veneer, matching misshapen lamps with dark-red silk shades. I was reminded of thrift-store windows filled with other people's junk. Nothing in the room would qualify as "collectible," much less antique.
She sat in a rocker upholstered in horsehair, frayed and shiny, picking at the fabric on the arms of the chair. She looked awful. The skin on her face had been blanched by Olive's death and her cheeks were mottled with liver spots and threaded with visible capillaries. She looked as though she'd lost weight in the last few days, the flesh hanging in pleats along her upper arms, her bones rising to the surface like a living lesson in anatomy. Even her gums had shrunk away from her teeth, the aging process sud-denly as visible as in time-lapse photography. She seemed weighed down with some as yet unidentified emotion that left her eyes red-rimmed and lusterless. I didn't think she'd survive it, whatever it was.
She had clumped her way back to her room with the aid of her walker, which she kept close to her, holding on to it with one trembling hand.
I sat in a hard-backed chair near hers, my voice low. "You know what's going on, don't you?" I said.
"I think so. I should have spoken up sooner, but I so hoped my suspicions were groundless. I thought we'd bur-ied the past. I thought we'd moved on, but we haven't. There's so much shame in the world as it is. Why add to it?" Her voice quavered