It was nearly morning light and Robby Cochran was pouring coffee for a dead man. A resurrected man. An old friend who should be held down, beaten, tied up and left for the cops to sort out his story while Robby cleared the gate and headed for the mountains. There were several problems controlling that scenario.
A. Robby feared he would still be a suspect in whatever transpired, no matter what he told the police about Carrington.
B. Robby’s car was off the island, so he couldn’t make a clean getaway if he tried. Plus, a hurricane evacuation was imminent.
C. Robby was desperate to figure out what happened and why. And he was caught in limbo between Cynthia and Carrington.
“Whose body is it then?” he asked Carrington, sitting across the kitchen island counter, dabbing a bloody nose and a torn lip with damp paper towel.
“I don’t know. It’s either Venable or somebody else,” he said and he tilted his head back to stop the nosebleed.
“Who else could it be?”
“Yeah,” Carrington said and snorted in the drying blood. “Who else could it be? But…this is who I suspect is involved,” he said and he eyed Robby with his head back. “Cynthia.”
“No,” Robby immediately replied.
“No?” Carrington righted his head, sniffed, and placed the bloody rag on the counter. He curled his fingers gingerly around the coffee mug and held it to gather in the warmth. “She’s gotta be behind it.”
Robby placed the coffee pot back in the brewer and held up his hand. “What about the ring? The ring on the body? How did that get there?”
Carrington sipped and furrowed his eyebrows. “What ring? Was there a ring on the body?”
“Yes,” Robby said. “NCAA championship ring. Yours.”
Carrington unhooked his fingers from the mug and turned his fingers outward, toward Robby. A gold ring. An NCAA ring. Still there.
“Still got it.”
“Then…?” Robby hesitated, confused.
“Do you know what year it was?”
Robby blanked. He didn’t know. Why didn’t he check? Why didn’t he know?
“It was maybe the ring we won when we rode the bench in ’82. Never wore it. You never did either, did you? But Cynthia knew where I kept mine.” Carrington slipped off his ring and spun in on the counter toward Robby. Robby stopped the spinning and picked up the ring, held it to his eyes. It was the championship ring from when they were seniors, not freshman. When the Miami Hurricanes won the College World Series in 1985.
Robby spun the ring back to Carrington. “Who else knew your plan?”
“Our plan?” Carrington slyly corrected. “Nobody. Nobody I know. Maybe somebody overheard us? Maybe Mateen overheard us?”
“Overheard you,” Robby mumbled. Then got to thinking. “What do you think about Mateen?”
“You tell me? He grew up around here. I didn’t.”
Robby considered that, distractedly. He considered a lot of things. “Yeah…”
“He was supposed to be working that night of the fireworks. At the pavilion. Do you think…?” Carrington reached across the counter and touched Robby’s hand. Robby drew it back. “Maybe he did something with Venable to make it look like it was me. But he wouldn’t just do it on his own. He had to have—“
“I saw you with Gail Heinrich,” Robby interrupted.
“Heinrich…?”
“Don’t be stupid. I saw you with her in your office when I first arrived.”
Carrington nodded his head softly. “Yes.”
“Is she part of this? Collecting on the insurance? Getting rid of Venable?”
“What?” Carrington recoiled, then looked away at the ceiling, nodding his head more vigorously. “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about that. But she didn’t know anything about me. About this. She was just meeting me about the Monroe lawsuit and settlement. Our liability insurance didn’t cover…”
Carrington’s voice trailed off and Robby, frustrated, shook his head and bent down over the counter.
“It couldn’t have been Cynthia,” Robby said.
Carrington countered. “How do you know that to be true?”
Robby tilted his chin and glared at Carrington. “She was attacked tonight…at Angel Oak. I saw it happen. Maybe it was?”
“Attacked?” Carrington sounded genuinely surprised. “Jesu, it wasn’t me. I made it back here through the marshes just awhile ago, right before I saw you.” Carrington’s eyes pleaded with Robby to believe. “Is she okay?”
“She’s…she’s…” Robby had to say it. Had to spell it out clearly. End all the speculation about Cynthia once and for all. “She was with me that night.”
Carrington whipsawed from one thought to another, one image to the next. “That night?”
“Yes. That night. She wasn’t part of it. I know for a fact.”
Carrington, disbelieving. “All night?”
Robby nodded.
“Are you sure?”
Robby nodded.
“Are you absolutely sure?
Then a thought occurred to Robby. He didn’t let on to Carrington. But a clear image occurred to him that confirmed he could not back up that claim.
She was gone. She was gone from his bed when he awoke.
“Ohhh, Robby. Robby. You can’t,” Carrington said soothingly. “You can’t get caught up again in your old feelings for Cynthia. She’s up to something bad, my friend.”
Robby stood tall and leaned across the counter poking a finger into Carrington’s chest. “You’re the goddamned one who’s been up to something. And it’s over now.”
“No. No, I haven’t. And no, it isn’t. You can’t say anything. Suspicions would naturally fall on you. You’re with her now, people will know that. So you had a motive.”
Robby exploded. “But I didn’t do anything! And you’re not dead—“
“I know this. But you could be easily implicated…”
“Implicated—?”
“In the body.”
Robby was about to toss the coffee cup into Carrington’s face.
“Listen, my friend—“
“Stop calling me that.”
“I’m your ace in the hole.”
Despite how furious he was, Robby nearly smiled at the sound of Carrington’s accented phrase. It sounded like he said, “I’m your ass in the hole.”
Carrington continued. “I can sneak around and sort everything out. Don’t give me up. We’ll work together.” Carrington crossed over to Robby’s side of the counter to close the distance. Or to avoid the coffee mug in his face.
“We’ll clear each other. I need you. I need you to tell the truth when the time is right. And I will do the same. But I can’t come out yet.”
“Why?”
“Can’t you see that it would cast everything on us?”
“Not on me, pal.”
Carrington held out his hands defensively and approached Robby slowly but steadily. “I’m sorry. I got you into this. I’m sorry. But you need me…we need each other…to get out of this.”
Robby struggled but began to see what he was talking about. Carrington alive was worth more to him than Carrington pretending to be dead, under the circumstances. Carrington, the mogul, was about to close another deal.
“You know you’re innocent. I know you’re innocent. All you did was hit me on the head. You haven’t killed anybody.”
Carrington smiled.
“Not lately.”
Robby was beyond fury. It was behind him. He was fully into resignation when it came to Carrington Avila.
Carrington leaned, shakily, against the counter. "Just one more night, Robby. One more day. And we'll find out everything."
(Read Chapter Thirty-Two and catch up on previous episodes of Blacksmith's Girl.)