If Looks Could Kill. BEVERLY BARTON

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СКАЧАТЬ looked hand-painted, then gave Jazzy a cup. “Well, I’m going to come right out and say it. I had a vision this morning.”

      Reve sighed. Here we go, she thought.

      “Was it about us? About Reve and me?” Jazzy asked.

      “Part of it was. The good part. The happy part.”

      “Tell us,” Jazzy all but begged.

      “I sensed laughter,” Genny said. “And wonderful happiness. A oneness as if the two of you were a single entity. You are separate and yet together. Individuals, but linked from birth.”

      “Then you sensed that we’re twins, didn’t you?” Jazzy asked.

      Genny smiled at her friend, but Reve picked up on something not quite right about the smile. She sensed a sadness in Genny. Stop doing that! Reve scolded herself. You’re playing right into Genny’s hands by letting your imagination play tricks on you.

      “Yes, I believe you and Reve are twin sisters,” Genny said. “I have no doubt about it.”

      “That’s good enough for me.” Jazzy looked at Reve as if she expected her to respond by grabbing her, proclaiming them sisters and hugging her. Instead Reve stiffened her spine and sat up straighter in her chair.

      “I believe I prefer to wait for the DNA test results.” Reve hated that she’d been unable to mask the coolness in her voice, but she simply could not accept some hillbilly psychic’s sixth sense.

      Jazzy glared at Reve, then fixed her gaze on Genny. “You said that was the good part of your vision. What was the bad part?”

      Genny hesitated, as if she didn’t want to tell them more. Was her hesitancy real or was it a way to dramatize the moment? Reve wondered. She could not—would not—take Genny’s psychic abilities at face value.

      “I sensed evil.” Genny’s voice barely rose above a whisper. “And danger.”

      “Danger for Reve and me?”

      “I’m not sure. But . . . y’all must be very careful.”

      “This is nonsense!” Reve shot out of her chair.

      “Why must you be such an uptight, unfeeling, unhappy bitch?” Jazzy stood and faced her. “Believe me, I’m having as much trouble accepting our being sisters as you are. For all your millions and hoity-toity ways, you’re no grand prize yourself, you know.”

      Reve felt as if she’d been slapped. Taken back by Jazzy’s outburst, she stared at her look-alike, then smiled. “You’re quite right. I’m not a grand prize, am I? I’m sure you’d never have chosen me to be your sister. I’m rich, well- educated, socially prominent and yet I don’t have one single close friend. And not one man has ever cared about me just for me, whereas men seem to fall at your feet.”

      “Well, well, well.” Jazzy laughed. “You are human after all.”

      “Oh, yes, only too human.” Reve turned her gaze on Genny. “I don’t believe in hocus-pocus stuff. But I apologize if I’ve been rude. And if letting you do a reading, as Jazzy calls it, will make her happy, then by all means—”

      “You are not what you seem,” Genny said, her dark eyes pinning Reve with their intensity. “You and Jazzy are two halves of a whole, and very soon both of you will begin sensing your oneness.”

      Reve wasn’t sure how to react. Genny wasn’t telling her anything that couldn’t be true about any set of identical twins. But the way Genny stared at her, as if she could see beyond her body and into her spirit, unnerved Reve.

      “You’re very lonely,” Genny said. “That loneliness will soon end. I see you surrounded by family. You will never be lonely again.”

      Chapter 5

      The Cherokee Country Club was just barely within the city limits of Cherokee Pointe. The two-story frame Federal- style house had once been home to a wealthy banker who’d lost a fortune in the Crash of 1929 and shot himself in one of the upstairs bedrooms. His widow had taken her children and returned home to Mississippi several years later, letting the house go for back taxes. Farlan MacKinnon’s father had purchased the house and surrounding twenty acres for a song. He’d been a young husband with a wife growing increasingly unhappy living with her in-laws, so he’d packed up his wife and two young sons and moved into the old Watley house in 1936. Farlan supposed that was the reason he felt so at home here, because he’d lived in this house as a boy, before he’d been shipped off to military school in Chattanooga.

      When, over forty years ago, the most prominent citizens m the county had decided they needed a country club, Farlan had offered this house, which by then had been empty for a good many years, except for a few odds and ends of furniture his mother had left when she’d run off. Farlan had been eighteen at the time of his mother’s great escape and had been preparing to enter college that fall. Moonshiners used to run rampant in the hills making illegal whisky, and that summer the federal agents had swarmed the county in search of stills. He remembered Agent Rogers—a robust, devil-may-care bachelor who’d set local feminine hearts aflutter. But never had he imagined that the woman who could capture Agent Rogers’s heart would be Farlan’s forty-year-old mother. Helene MacKinnon had run away with her lover, leaving behind her two sons and their heartbroken father. Farlan never saw his mother again, although he did attend her funeral in Baltimore many years later, where he’d met his young half-sister.

      Water under the bridge. The past should stay in the past, he’d told himself countless times. He could no more change anything that happened in the past than he could stem the tide of the Tennessee River, although the Tennessee Valley Authority had done their best to control the raging river with their numerous dams.

      A man shouldn’t look back, Farlan reminded himself. But it was hard not to think about what might have been, especially when a man’s present life was less than satisfactory. He supposed there were others worse off and knew he should count his blessings. The only problem was, his blessings were few. Being filthy rich was, he supposed, a blessing. But when had it ever brought him happiness? In their youths, he and Jim Upton had both offered sweet Melva Mae everything money could buy and she’d turned them both down flat. She’d married a penniless quarter-breed and lived happily ever after. He supposed he’d come out of that ill- fated love triangle far better than old Jim Upton because Jimmy had been madly in love with Melva Mae and never did quite get over losing her.

      Farlan, on the other hand, had fallen deeply in love again—with the prettiest little Atlanta debutante who’d ever come out. Veda Parnell had taken his breath away the first moment he laid eyes on her. They dated less than six months before he proposed, but at first she’d been reluctant to accept and leave the social whirl of Atlanta behind. Eventually he’d won her over and they married, but she never seemed really happy. Having her younger half-brother move to Cherokee Pointe when he finished law school had helped her finally adjust to life in the small mountain town. But the young, vibrant girl he’d married soon disappeared and was replaced by a melancholy woman he’d never been able to please.

      He wasn’t sure when he’d come to realize that something wasn’t quite right about Veda. Looking back, he supposed he could have figured it out sooner if he hadn’t been so besotted with her.

      Cyrus, the waiter who had worked at the country club since it opened and had before that been a groom at the MacKinnon stables, entered the library. His appearance СКАЧАТЬ