Tempting Fate (32 page)

She lunged for the gate. Her father tried to stop her. But he was too weak, too shocked himself, and she pushed past him.

She saw the twisted, crumpled mess that was still recognizable as the straw hat her mother had had with her the night she disappeared twenty-five years ago.

T
he cream-colored Chandler house on North Broadway stood silent in the bright afternoon sun. With the watchman's gun heavy in her hand, Dani stopped on the wide sidewalk and looked up at the sky, almost as if there should be a hot-air balloon floating overhead, carrying her smiling mother back to her, just like in
The Wizard of Oz
.

“Oh, Mama,” she whispered, fighting back tears.

She'd dragged her father from the pavilion back to the bottling plant, where Russ was holding his bandanna to his wounded head. By then, the police sirens were close. Russ had promised to see to her father and let her borrow his car. She'd driven straight to Millionaires' Row.

Her aunt was in a wicker chair on the front porch, stroking a long-haired white cat in her lap. A pile of crumpled pink petunia blossoms lay scattered on the floor beside her. She wore one of her feminine, flowery dresses and smiled as Dani climbed the steps onto the wide, curving porch. “Hello, Danielle. What a pleasant surprise. Won't you sit down.”

“Sure.”

But she sat not on a wicker chair next to her aunt, but on the railing, under a hanging basket of petunias.

“Is something wrong, Danielle? You look—My goodness, is that blood on your shirt?”

Russ's blood. And maybe her father's. She hadn't noticed it until that moment. Zeke, too, had had bloodstains on his shirt. That hadn't penetrated until he'd vanished into the woods.

“Sara, we need to talk.”

“Of course. You know I'm always here for you.”

“Grandfather stopped by today. He showed me the passage in Beatrix Chandler's diary about the gold key and her friendship with Louisa Pembroke.”

“Yes, I know. He told me.” The corners of her pink-stained mouth twitched in a small smile. “The more you abuse him, the more he seems to appreciate you.”

Dani tried to keep her thoughts focused, on course. “Did you show Joe Cutler that passage when he was here?”

“Now, how would I remember something like that?” She faltered, pulling in her lower lip. “Danielle, exactly what are you trying to get at?”

“Is Roger home?”

“No.”

“Grandfather?”

“He's not here. Danielle—”

“You know,” she said, “I've been looking at this thing all wrong, trying to blame everything on Joe Cutler and Quint Skinner. The blackmail—”

“What blackmail?” Sara seemed genuinely shocked. She shoved the cat off her lap but didn't get up. “You've been under tremendous strain lately, Danielle. Perhaps you've—”

“Gone off the deep end? Started to self-destruct like Nick and my father? Right now I almost wish I had. Sara, Mother and Nick both were being blackmailed over her role in
Casino.
Someone knew she'd have done just about anything to keep it a secret.”

“Well, it certainly wasn't me. Lilli never told me a thing about her acting.”

The undertone of jealousy and bitterness was hard to miss. But Dani didn't let it deter her. “Joe knew about the blackmail.”

“Knew about it,” Sara said, her incisive eyes on Dani, “or committed it?”

“For a while I believed he might have committed it.” She kept her voice steady and calm, despite the raging inside her. “But it doesn't make any sense. Nick says the blackmailer never asked for much money, a hundred here and there. Joe could have made more than that by selling off the gold key he found. Instead he gave it to Mother.”

“She trusted him. Joe certainly had us all fooled. Look what he did in combat.” Sara rose gracefully, ladylike. But her skin was a little pale, and she teetered on her high heels. “I don't believe I care to continue this conversation. You understand. It's just too painful.”

Dani didn't move from the porch railing. “Joe had a copy of one of the blackmail letters. If he wasn't the blackmailer, how did he get it?”

“I wouldn't know.”

“Why did he see Nick a few years later when he was on leave and then come here to Saratoga?”

Sara walked all the way to the ornate front door but stopped there, her back to Dani.

“Did he see you then?” she asked softly.

“Danielle, please don't.”

“I'm not trying to upset you, Sara. But I need to know.”

“Why?” She spun around at Dani, tears shining in her vivid blue eyes. “Why do you need to know?”

“Too much has been happening. It needs to stop. We need to know the truth about the past.”

“Joe is dead. Lilli's never coming back. What possible good can come of knowing who was blackmailing whom twenty-five years ago?”

Dani persisted. “Did Joe come to see you, Sara?”

Sara sank against the door, slipping her hands behind her and holding on to the polished brass handle. She nodded. “I—I'd caught him blackmailing Lilli. He wanted money to send his brother to Vanderbilt University. I…I made him give Lilli the gold key or I'd tell on him. I saw him that evening—”

“The night Mother disappeared?”

“Yes, but earlier. It's why I was late to help you get dressed. You remember?”

Dani remembered. She'd hated the white chiffon dress and especially the new patent-leather shoes, and Sara had been in such a state she'd almost let Dani wear her shorts.

“I broke off our…relationship. I hadn't been sure how I felt about him—I suppose I was attracted to him for all the wrong reasons. When I caught him at blackmail, I told him to leave Saratoga or I'd report him to the police.”

A squirrel ran up a maple in the front yard and out to the end of a branch near the porch and chattered at them. “What made you think Joe was the blackmailer?” Dani asked.

“Oh, that wasn't difficult to figure out,” Sara said vaguely.

“Did Mother know?”

“I'm not sure. I never saw her again to ask. Of course, she'd have wanted to save Joe from himself. You remember how she was, especially that summer after our mother died.”

The tears glistened on Sara's pale cheeks now, although she wasn't sobbing. Dani made herself press on. “Why did Joe come back four years later?”

She pulled away from the door and sniffled, regaining some composure. The bodice on her dress was cut low, and her breasts heaved with her rapid, shallow breathing. But she tilted up her chin, looking regal. “I wouldn't know. I refused to see him.”

Dani didn't believe her, but she decided not to push the point, not yet. She jumped down from the porch railing. “I think he was trying to figure out what happened to Mother.”

“What business was Lilli of his?” she demanded, combative.

“She was his friend.”

Sara's eyes flashed. “She was my sister!”

As if that gave her prerogatives. Dani moved in closer to her aunt. “Sara, what happened that night?”

She pushed back her hair, maintaining her composure.

“You and Roger went out to look for Mother after the lawn party. Did you find her?”

Even as she stood as still and sleek as a mannequin, tears spilled once more down her porcelain cheeks. Dani felt her own composure starting to give way. She made herself go to her aunt. “Sara,” she said, touching her rounded shoulder. “What happened?”

“I killed her,” Sara whispered.

Dani shut her eyes, and her aunt fell onto her shoulder, sobbing, quaking with guilt and relief, and Dani had to hold her, had to stand firm, or they both would have collapsed.

“God help me,” Sara said over and over. “I killed my own sister.”

Zeke got to the little yellow house with the welcome goose on the front door too late.

Quint was sprawled on the living-room floor, dying. Forcing back any emotion, Zeke called the police and found a towel in the downstairs bathroom. He pressed the towel to Quint's abdomen. The wound was bad. Quint's face was gray from the loss of blood.

“Hang on,” Zeke said.

“It's too late.”

Zeke knew it was. “We'll just sit here together and wait for help.”

“Whole thing was a setup. I thought Joe'd found out what I'd been a part of. Thought he'd turn me in. Hell, we were just kids. I…” He swallowed, panting, still fighting. “I was stupid.”

“Save it.”

“For what? Think the devil doesn't know what I've done? You gotta know, Zeke. Your brother never broke. He did his job.” Quint licked his lips, shuddering with pain. “He was the best.”

Your brother never broke…

The land mines of his past, Zeke thought, his arm—his entire body—shaking as he held the towel to Quint's wound.

“I watched the terrorists take him out. He was a hero, Zeke.” Quint sobbed hoarsely, without tears or energy. “I lied. I made a name for myself on his back. Him—his men—everybody was dead but me.”

Because this man was dying, and Joe was already dead, and he didn't know what else to do, Zeke said, “What's done is done, Quint.”

He raised himself up off the floor and gripped Zeke's arm with what must have been all his remaining strength. “Joe was my friend!”

“Let it go,” Zeke said gently.

“I only wanted justice.”

Zeke could hear the sirens not too far away. “Quint, who did this to you? Who shot you?”

“Didn't mean to hurt anybody,” he said weakly, his voice barely audible. “Damn, Zeke…she was there all along.”

Quint was fading but still lucid, and Zeke felt himself go so rigid he thought he'd crack into pieces. “Do you mean Lilli?”

“In the fountain…didn't want to say anything with her husband and daughter right there.”

“Quint—who shot you?”

His eyes focused on Zeke, clear and alert and dying. “You'll fix it?”

He couldn't fix a wound like the one Quint had. He couldn't fix a mother who had died twenty-five years ago. That kind of knight in shining armor just didn't exist. But he nodded. “I'll do what I can.”

The siren was getting louder. Once the police and ambulance arrived it wouldn't be easy to get away. And he had to. There were other lives at stake, and nothing more he could do in the grape-colored dining room.

Quint Skinner was dead.

Dani was on her feet, pacing, forcing herself to concentrate, to hold herself together. There was a breeze against her back, and on North Broadway a couple of little girls walked down the sidewalk dragging a red wagon. Suddenly she wished she could be nine again, hiding from her grandfather, thinking up ways to make her mother happy.

“I ran into her on her way home,” Sara said. She'd composed herself and returned to her wicker chair; the cat had climbed back into her lap. “I told her I'd broken off with Joe. She was disappointed—I could tell. She liked him. So I told her he was the one who'd blackmailed her.”

“Did Mother believe you?”

“No, of course not. She wanted to hear it directly from Joe. So we walked up to the old bottling plant where he and his brother had pitched their tent, only they were already gone.”

To tell Mattie that her father in Cedar Springs was dying.

Dani crossed her arms over her chest, hugging herself, trying not to think about herself, her own shattered dreams. No more amnesia scenario.
Oh, Mama…

“What about Roger?” she asked.

Sara's blue, crystal, tearless eyes focused on Dani. “Roger?”

“You two left the party together.”

“Oh, yes. He was there. I mean, he walked up to the springs with us. He stayed at the pavilion while Lilli and I headed over to the cliffs so we could talk in private.” She swallowed, stroking the cat. A part of her seemed relieved finally to talk. “We argued, Lilli and I. We so seldom did. My parents discouraged open disagreement, and there was such a big age difference between us.”

“What did you argue about?”

“Everything,” Sara said.

Dani fought back her impatience, controlled her grief. “You saw her wearing the key?”

“Yes, it—she said it proved Joe didn't want money, because he'd given it to her. I was upset that he had. He'd found it for me, not her. It shouldn't have mattered that I'd just ended our relationship.” She checked her anger, her mascara smudged under her eyes, her normally perfect makeup looking garish against her pale skin. “It was just one more thing we argued about. Lilli got very frustrated with me—she just couldn't bear to hear the truth about Joe.”

“Did she say who she thought was blackmailing her and Nick?”

Sara shook her head. “She refused to. She said we should just go on back, and I should let her take care of everything.”

“Then she was trying to protect you—”