Enright Family Collection (48 page)

“Really?” She toyed with the hair that curled over his collar. “Then I guess Aunt August and Corri are sound asleep by now.”

“Most likely.” He nodded. “Indy, there’s something we need to talk about. Something I need to tell you.”

“Later, Nicky. Right now I’m very tired from the trip, and I want to go to bed.” She stood up and took him by the hand, leading him to the back of the house. “If we were very, very quiet…” She started up the back steps.

“I can do quiet,” he assured her. “I can do
very
quiet.”

“I never showed you my collection of perfume bottles,” she whispered softly.

“Tonight would be a good night for that,” he agreed. “It would be a very good night.”

“Nick, you can’t fall asleep here,” India told him. “If Corri comes in in the morning and finds you in my bed, it would not be a good thing.”

Nick grunted a soft protest, knowing she was right but not liking it.

“The day will come when I won’t be sneaking in and out of your bed.”

“No doubt,” she said, smiling, “but since it’s not here yet, you have to get up and go on down the hall to Ry’s room.”

Reluctantly, Nick swung his legs over the side of the bed, stood up and quietly gathered his clothes. He bent down to kiss her one more time, and she asked, “Are you sure you know where Ry’s room is?”

“Ummm-hmmm,” he murmured sleepily. “We have to talk, India. Something you need to know.”

“And tomorrow you will tell me,” she said. “Nicky?”

“Hmm?” He turned in the doorway.

“I love you.”

“Thank you, sweetheart, for telling me that even as you kick me out of your bed in the middle of a very cold night. I love you too.”

“Goodnight, Nick.” India grinned and got cozy under her blankets, reluctant to see him go. She wanted his warmth, needed to sleep curled up in the circle of his arms.

From downstairs, the clock on the mantel chimed two o’clock. India turned over and smooshed her pillow under her head. An hour later, she was smooshing it in the opposite direction. There was just too much on her mind. The case that she and Roxie had discussed was one that had been of particular interest to India. She was certain it could be won. Certain that if questioned the right way, the defendant would break on the stand, in spite of his protestations of innocence. It had been hard to turn it over back in December, harder still today to walk away from it. And then there had been the meeting with her boss.

A subtle sound at the end of the hall caught her attention, and she held her breath, listening, as the faintest footsteps seemed to echo at the foot of the stairs. Had Nick gone downstairs for a snack?

Maybe she would join him, she thought, thinking back to the dinner she had only toyed with earlier. She had felt torn, as she had known she would, and it had been difficult to be the odd man out. She had sat in the crowded bar and picked at the fajitas that had been placed before her, while her former colleagues tossed the familiar and easy banter back and forth. Now, at almost three-thirty in the morning, she was starving. Maybe, if she asked very nicely, she could talk Nick into making waffles.

Swinging her feet over the side of the bed, she stood up and, with quietly measured steps, made her way down the hall. From the time she had been in high school, she had known which stairs creaked and which could be trusted to permit her to come and go without detection. The house lay still and cold around her, and she wished she’d had the sense to put on her robe over her nightshirt.

An indistinct sound caused her to freeze in midstride.

It wasn’t coming from the kitchen, and it wasn’t Nick.

India sank back into the shadows of the front hall and listened. Someone was in Ry’s study shuffling papers. It didn’t take much imagination to figure out who that someone might be. India paused to consider her options. She could try to get back upstairs and wake Nick. She could try to get to the door to find Taylor. Either way, she ran the risk of alerting Maris, who could so easily flee.

Or she could take Maris herself.

There really wasn’t a choice, as far as India was concerned. On the tips of her toes, she crept into the sitting room and, with nimble fingers, sought the fireplace poker.

Without thought of the consequences, she slid along the wall toward the study. The door moved almost imperceptibly, but she caught the motion. Still against the wall, she raised the wrought-iron poker over her head and swung as the dark figure emerged from the unlit room. One smack sent the figure to the floor.

With a
whoosh
of an exhalation, India dropped the weapon on the floor and knelt to turn the figure over.

“Oh, my God!” she cried. “Taylor! I forgot all about Taylor!”

“So it would seem,” said a voice from behind her in the darkened hall.

India turned to face her former sister-in-law.

“Thanks, India,” Maris said. “I was wondering how I was going to get rid of him. Guns are so noisy, and knives are so messy. You know how I detest a mess.”

“You bitch,” India hissed, every muscle tensing with the effort to remain still, to determine if her adversary was armed and, if so, with what sort of weapon.

“Now, is that any way to greet long-lost family?”

“You were never family. What trick did you use to get my brother to marry you?”

“Why India, you know that the oldest trick still works best.” Maris laughed derisively.

“You told him you were pregnant?”

“Can you believe he fell for it? ‘Ry, what will I do? Who will take care of my baby and my sweet young daughter?’ Of course, three weeks after the wedding, I had a ‘miscarriage’… but, well, Ry was such a sucker for that little brat, I could probably have gotten him to marry me anyway.”

In the dark, India could all but see Maris’s mouth twisted unpleasantly. There was no touch of Corri’s sweetness anywhere in the face that stepped into the dim light that flooded in from the streetlamp outside the front window.

“She’s not yours,” India stated flatly. “Corri’s not yours.”

“Of
course
she’s not mine. Do I strike you as the maternal type?”

“Whose, then?”

“It seems my cousin Angela had a real wide streak of bad luck a few years back. Got herself knocked up and run over by a car inside of eleven months. Corri was two months old when she died. My mother took care of the baby. Not that it matters.”

“It matters,” India said softly.

“Oh, don’t tell me. Let me guess. Now
you
want to adopt her. This whole family suffers from severe white-knight syndrome, you know that? You’re every bit as sappy as your brother was, India. And almost as annoying. I’ll tell you, it was worth ‘drowning’ to get away from him.”

“Why did you marry him, then?”

“India, have you been gone so long that you don’t know that the Devlin family owns the largest section of privately owned beach on this side of the Delaware Bay?”

“It’s not exactly the French Riviera, Maris. That stretch of beach couldn’t be worth that much.”

Maris laughed. “You are very short-sighted, India. I’m surprised you haven’t been able to figure it out.”

“Why don’t you explain it to me?”

“Well, you’re right about that stretch of beach not being the Riviera. The sand is coarse and it’s always got dead,
smelly things on it. Most notably those big, disgusting horseshoe crabs.”

Maris looked at India meaningfully.

“You still don’t get it? Let me give you another clue. India, what is the only thing that horseshoe crabs are good for? Other than covering the beach with all of those disgusting, slimy eggs.” Maris laughed derisively.

“I don’t have the faintest idea.”

“You know, Ry always bragged about how smart you are. I was so sick of hearing your name. India this and India that. I couldn’t stand you. Everyone thinks you walk on water. It’ll be such fun to watch you sink.”

India’s fists clenched tightly.

Maris sighed with studied exasperation. “I can see I have to explain this to you. India, do you know what LAL is?”

India frowned, trying to recall. “Some substance from horseshoe-crab blood. Nick mentioned it once.”

“Limulus amoebocyte lysate. LAL. It’s the standard agent used internationally to test medical drugs for contamination by bacteria. It sells for three hundred dollars an ounce. It’s also being tested as a cancer inhibitor. The government regulates how much blood can be taken from a crab—can you imagine?—but if you owned access to a steady supply of crabs, if you owned a large enough section of beach, the government would never know how many crabs were bled or how much blood was taken from each.”

“A laboratory that had an unlimited amount of blood could control the market,” India said flatly.

“Bingo.”

“You married my brother with the intention of killing him for the beach …”

“And can you imagine my horror when I found out that I would have to share it with you?” Maris rolled her eyes. “Of course, I didn’t realize that at first. My mistake—I should have investigated better.”

“Why didn’t you just kill him early on and get it over with?”

“Now, how obvious would that have been? Man marries penniless woman, three weeks later is found dead?
Duh.”
Maris rolled her eyes. “The spouse is always the most logical suspect, India, you of all people should know that.
No, I had to put some distance between me and the event, if you will.”

“So you pretended to be dead for two years? How did you plan on resurrecting yourself?”

“It’s all so simple, India. You want to hear the story that I’m going to tell when I come back? It’s such a heartbreaker.” Maris leaned back against the wall, her left hand on her hip, the right hand still out of sight in her jacket pocket. “When the storm came up, my little boat was tossed about like a toy. The current took me miles from Devlin’s Light. Then, as the storm intensified, poor little me was tossed out of that tiny rowboat like a rag doll and into the bay, where I was struck on the head by my boat. Fortunately, a passing boat saw me fall out and rescued me. Sadly, when I awoke, I had no recollection of my name or anything else, for that matter. It’s taken two years of therapy for me to regain my memory. And here, now, I return to Devlin’s Light, only to find that, in my absence, my beloved husband has been killed.” Maris raised her left hand to her face in a motion of sheer melodrama.

“You will not get away with this. There will be an investigation.”

“And they’ll speak with the person who ‘rescued’ me, and with my ‘therapist.’” Maris waved her hand as if all were immaterial. “You’d be surprised what you can buy with enough cash, India.”

“Where would you have gotten so much cash?” India said aloud, then she knew. “From Lucien Byers. His two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

Maris laughed. “Well, of course, it was Lucien’s money.”

“I can’t believe you thought you could get away with this.”

“India, the only thing that’s keeping us from getting away with it is
you.
Don’t you see? If the land had passed to me, as Ry’s widow, none of this would be necessary now. I would just take what was legally mine and leave Devlin’s Light as a bereaved widow. After selling off all the land, of course.”

“And I suppose you had a buyer already lined up?”

“Now, was that
pun
intended?” Maris started to pull her right hand from her jacket pocket.

At that same instant, the hall light flashed on. Maris was startled, and in that split second, India’s best right hook connected neatly with Maris’s jaw with a force sufficient to lift the smaller woman off the floor and send her crashing backward against the wall, from which she slid into a quiet heap on the floor.

“Nicely done, sweetheart.” Nick nodded appreciatively from the doorway.
“Very
nicely done.”

“Thank you.” India bent over Maris to search for the gun India feared might be there. She was relieved to find empty pockets. “Did you hear?”

“I heard everything.” Nick opened the front door as Chief Carpenter’s patrol car pulled up in front of the house.

“So did I.” Taylor sat up, rubbing the back of his head.

“Oh, Taylor, I am so sorry.” India leaned down to help him up.

“I’m okay. I was only out for a minute or two. But once she started, I thought I’d let her go ahead and finish her confession.” The young officer stood up on knees that wobbled just a bit. “I knew you were in no danger, India. I had my gun, which I would have used if I had had to, but I could see Nick in the hallway behind you two. I knew you weren’t in any real danger.”

“So, look what we have here.” Chief Carpenter strolled into the front hallway, his hands on his hips.

“Did you pick up the other half of the duo?” Nick asked.

“He’s in custody. Thanks for the tip, Nick. That was pretty clever, you putting it all together like that.” Carpenter patted Nick on the back.

“Who’s in custody?” India asked.

“Lucien Byers.”

“I don’t get it.” She shook her head.

“That’s because you don’t have the benefit of the information I got this morning from my mother’s P.I. The information I waited up to tell you, but you, er”—he glanced at the chief and back at India, then dropped his voice to add—“you thought it could wait till tomorrow.”

“And what information was that?”

“That about three years ago, Lucien Byers purchased a medical laboratory that had been instrumental in developing the techniques of extracting LAL.”

“Byers was behind this?”

Nick nodded.

“Why did he come to the house with those phony documents?”

“Once they realized that the trust provided for joint ownership of the property, he knew he had to get around you to get to the beach. He figured if he had access to even a small portion of the beach, it would be as good as having the whole thing. With you in Paloma, you’d never know what was going on.”

“What would be going on?”

“He’d be raiding the beaches for horseshoe crabs.”

“And taking them to his lab to extract the LAL.”

“Right. But he was afraid that killing you would focus too much attention on the whole matter. He preferred conning you to killing you. He figured he could get you to negotiate a settlement to keep the Devlin name out of a lawsuit.”