Read 04 Lowcountry Bordello for Free Online

was hiding something. Something else. “Why didn’t you tell your aunt?”
    She looked at Robert, then Nate, then me. I could feel the heat from how fast the wheels were spinning in her head. Finally, she said, “Because I wasn’t sure she wasn’t a party to whatever was going on.”
    My eyes locked on hers. “Come again?”
    “Now we’re getting somewhere,” said Colleen.
    “She was upstairs with me, yes,” Olivia said. “But I’ve heard things…from a few of the residents I’ve spent time with since Aunt Mary passed. Aunt Dean insisted I get to know them. At first I flat refused. But then I thought maybe I’d find out something I could use against Seth. And I guess I did, but I’ve been too afraid to do anything about it. I’m told occasionally a ‘suitor’ gets out of hand. Over the years other…situations have come up. Aunt Dean relies on Seth to deal with any problems.”
    “And by dealing with these problems, you mean Seth has what…” Nate spread his hands, “bounced someone out of there? Or are we talking about something more serious here?”
    “I’m not certain,” Olivia said.
    “Are you afraid of your Aunt Dean?” I asked.
    “No, of course not,” Olivia said. “But if she let on to Seth I’d seen something I wasn’t supposed to…”
    “Let’s back up a minute,” Nate said. “So you saw the body. You felt for a pulse. Then you went outside to your car and called Liz?”
    “That’s right,” said Olivia.
    “That was at seven forty-five,” I said. “Olivia, think. How long did you stay in the parlor? More than five minutes?”
    She shook her head.
    “No. I was scared out of my mind. After I checked for a pulse, I got out of there quick.”
    “So you came back downstairs at seven forty, which explains how Robert missed you. He left ten minutes earlier.”
    Robert said, “Again, I did not see a body. And the parlor—the entire downstairs was dark the whole time I was there. If something happened, it happened within that ten minutes.”
    “It took me an hour to get there,” I said. “But when I went inside with Olivia, there was no body in the parlor, and no sign that one ever had been. No blood, no signs of a struggle. The room was immaculate.”
    “A lot can happen in an hour,” Nate said. “That’s plenty of time for someone to move a body and clean up the mess.”
    Skepticism painted Robert’s face.
    Nate looked at Robert. “Bottom line. If you believe anything is going on here other than your wife being under a great deal of strain that maybe caused a momentary…vision, something along those lines, then we should call the authorities in Charleston and let them sort this out.”
    “No,” said Colleen. “Not just yet.”
    “ No ,” Olivia said. “I will not have all this dirty laundry aired. I have nothing to do with any of it, but that’s not the way it will look.”
    “Liz…” Robert’s eyes traded on years of friendship.
    “What exactly do you want us to do?” I asked.
    “Just look into it. The house, the aunts, this Seth character. See what you come up with.”
    “Is there anything else you haven’t told me?” I asked.
    “No,” he said with a firm shake of his head. “I give you my word. And I apologize. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
    I looked at Nate.
    He looked at Robert. “Have you forgotten that Liz and I are getting married Saturday? The morning after, we leave for two weeks in St. John. We already have one case to finish, in addition to all the wedding preparations. Our hands are full right now.”
    “Just give it a day,” Robert said. “One day. You can spare that, right, Liz?”
    I had already said I’d help my friends. But Nate was clearly not happy with the situation.
    Colleen said, “I don’t have a good feeling about this. I don’t know what happened there tonight, but that house has a long history of trouble. On the other hand, if Robert’s no longer vulnerable—because Olivia’s no longer being