Keepsake (2 page)
Authors: Linda Barlow
“I’ll be with you in a moment, gentlemen.” Rina’s voice was calm but her eyes were very bright. “I just wish you’d given me
more notice.”
“We didn’t expect him, ma’am.”
“Not on his schedule, you see, ma’am,” the slim man said. He was rubbing his hand and glaring at April.
“Well, I’d hardly be listed on his official appointment calendar, would I?” Rina said with a laugh.
“No, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am. I just meant—”
“We don’t like it any better than you do, Mrs. Flaherty. The security arrangements are problematic when the notice is so short.”
“Rina,” April interrupted. “Who are these guys?”
“Come inside, April.”
April squeezed past the Mob enforcers, or whatever they were. “You look funny in that suit,” she said to her mother. “You
look like you’re going to Mass.”
Rina laughed. She closed the door and led her daughter into the kitchenette area. “I’m going out for a few hours. Stay in
and do your homework.”
“It’s summer. I don’t have homework.”
“Then clean up this cottage. It’s a pigsty.”
“You’ve been scrubbing it all week!”
“April—”
“I know you’re going to meet your lover. He must be rich and important. But I still say those men are gangsters. They’ve got
guns, Mom, huge ones. And that limo—that’s disgusting. What is he, a Mafia chieftain?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact,” Rina said. “He’s the regional capo and a very powerful man. He hates ill-natured children and
has methods of disciplining them that would make your blood run cold, so he’d better not receive any
bad reports about you from his men. Understand?” Casting a quick look in the mirror that was pasted onto the front of the
refrigerator, she adjusted a strand of golden hair and pursed her lips to check the line of her lipstick. Then she nodded.
“Well, I’m off. Behave yourself.”
April watched through the new curtains as Rina walked serenely between the two gunmen to the black limousine. God! Her mother
had really done it this time.
She ran out the back door and swung herself onto her bike. She knew a shortcut to the main road. She couldn’t hope to keep
up, but maybe she’d be able to see which direction they were headed.
But the limo never reached the main road. Doubling back, April found its tire tracks in the sandy dirt leading down to the
private drive that wound along the ocean. The fresh trail was easy to follow. It ran for just over a mile to an isolated house
set on a low bluff overlooking Cape Cod Bay.
April abandoned her bike and crept closer on foot. She hadn’t really believed what Rina had said about the gangster’s methods
of discipline, but she didn’t want to take any chances.
Not one, but three black limousines were parked outside the house. Around the perimeter were several guards wearing suits
and cradling high-powered rifles. “Mary, Joseph, and Baby J,” April whispered. “It’s an armed camp.”
Also present was a Hyannis patrol car. Crouched in the tall dune grasses, April clearly saw the big man in the suit who had
come for her mother—now equipped with a walkie-talkie—shaking hands with a smiling local policeman.
God! This must be a super-powerful criminal. He’d corrupted the Hyannis police.
“Mommy, they’re going to kill you,” she whispered. “They’ll have to. You know too much.”
The door to the cottage opened and out came her mother with a pitcher of lemonade and a tray of glasses. There was no sign
of her crime-boss lover. Rina was still dressed exactly as she had been before.
What was she doing here? Waitressing?
The men gathered around, drinking the lemonade and glancing at their watches. Then they all looked skyward as they heard the
familiar whop-whop-whop of a helicopter. April craned her neck. Over a curve in the coastline came a small military chopper.
Military?
It set down on the dry shingled beach to the right of the cottage. Three hard-jawed suits emerged first and fanned out, securing
the location with swift, professional movements.
April’s heart was thundering. It was all coming together in her head. She’d seen men like these before. They weren’t gangsters.
She knew them from TV. They all looked the same, tough, professional, nondescript. She’d even seen this helicopter, or one
very like it, over on the other side of the Cape at Hyannisport late one Friday afternoon.
“Holy Mother,” she muttered. “I don’t believe this.”
Escorted by two of the security men, Rina walked toward the chopper. She looked sensational. She had shed the jacket of her
suit, and April could see that in the bright sunlight, the pale blue blouse was almost transparent. Her skirt was demure,
but fit her small waist and rounded hips snugly. Her slender legs gleamed in her silken hose, and the wind had loosened her
blonde hair just slightly from its French braid.
A tall man with a full head of hair and a blindingly familiar face stepped down from the helicopter. When he
saw Rina, his face lit up with his famous smile. He opened his arms, and she ran into them, raising her angelic face for his
kiss.
April toppled to her knees in the dirt. Always mate with the top dog. Her mother’s lover was the president of the United States.
Contents
Her Mother’s Legacy— A Secrel to Destroy Her…Or Bring Her Love
Chapter One
Anaheim, California
“You’re kidding me,” Maggie said. “Your mother had an affair with JFK?”
“That’s right,” said April. She stood, flushed, and unlatched her stall in the ladies room of the Anaheim convention center
bathroom. She collected her sack of pamphlets, flyers, advance-reading copies, and one thick-bound galley and moved to the
mirror to brush her shoulder-length auburn hair. It was still thick, and mercifully, no gray had yet appeared, but she should
have had the ragged ends trimmed before coming out to California. She pulled it taut and knotted it atop her head.
Rina’s blonde hair had always been perfect.
“Wow,” said Maggie from one of the other stalls. At least two others were occupied and a tense-looking woman with a severe
chignon was washing her hands at one of the sinks, but Maggie made no attempt to lower her voice. “How’d she meet him? Was
this when he was president? Did you meet him, too?”
“I met him, sure,” April said. She adjusted her skirt, tucking her blouse in more smoothly, and straightened the name tag
that was pinned to the lapel of her suit jacket. April Harrington, it read. Bookseller,
Poison Pen Bookshop,
Boston, MA. “I was never very nice to him, though. One day I told him that both he and my mother were going to hell.” She
smiled. “I was a judgmental kid.”
Maggie came out of her stall, smoothing her red dress down around her generous hips. “What was he like?” she asked, joining
April at the mirror. The name tag on Maggie McKay’s chest identified her as a bookseller from Somerville, MA, where she specialized
in romance novels. She and April had met at a New England Booksellers Association conference four years before and become
close friends. “Was he as sexy as everyone says?”
“God, Maggie, I was only nine years old. Besides, I was very angry with him. He had been my hero—as he was to so many of us
in those days. I’d looked up to him, respected him, adored him. I watched the Kennedys on television and yearned for a family
just like theirs. Then I found out he was sleeping with my mother, and I hated him for that. It wasn’t common knowledge in
those days that he was a philanderer. I’d believed, like everybody else, in the Camelot myth of the perfect marriage to Jackie,
the darling children, the American dream. When that was shattered, well… I just didn’t understand.”
“So it was a relationship? Your mother saw him more than once or twice?”
“Oh, yes. My mother was quite a woman and this was quite a coup. She wasn’t one to let go of such a golden opportunity.”
“This is an incredible story, April!” Maggie said. “I can’t believe you never told me this before.”
With a flick of her wrist April replaced her lipstick. She
pursed her lips to even the color, trying to concentrate on the mundane task she was performing. But her stomach was churning
and her palms were sweaty. There were a lot of things she had never told Maggie, not only about her mother, but also about
herself.
“We moved to Washington.” She took a tube of mascara from her purse to touch up her lashes. She opened it, then changed her
mind and put the tube away. She always made a mess with mascara. “She saw him off and on for the next several months. She
was good. ‘Always sleep with the top dog’ was my mother’s motto. Once she got him, a man didn’t want out on Rina, even if
he was president of the United States.”
“Wow,” Maggie said again. “In all the time I’ve known you, you’ve never even mentioned your mother.”
April caught her eye in the mirror. “I haven’t mentioned her because she abandoned me when I was twelve years old to follow
her newest lover—a Frenchman whom she met through her association with Kennedy—back home to Paris. She promised to send for
me. She never did.”
Maggie nodded, her dark eyes sympathetic. The woman with the severe chignon nodded, too. She had been taking an inordinately
long time to wash and dry her perfectly manicured hands. Now, picking up her own pile of convention material, which was topped
by the latest celebrity biography, she turned to April and said, “Pardon me, but I couldn’t help overhearing.” She considered
the name tag on April’s lapel, then said, “You’re the mystery expert, aren’t you? April Harrington? I saw the piece about
you in
Publishers Weekly
a couple of months ago.”
“Well, it’s our readers who are the real experts,” April said. “All we do is try to cater to their tastes with a broad selection
of new and classic mystery novels.”
“Is your mother still alive?” the woman asked. She obyiously
wasn’t interested in the mystery bookselling business. “If so, she should do a book.” She reached into her purse and pulled
out a card, which she extended to April. Sandra Lestring, Literary Agent, the engraving read, followed by an address and telephone
number in New York.
April nodded as she recognized the name. Sandra Lestring represented several well-known clients, including a couple of movie
stars, politicians, and even a novelist or two.
“A lot of people are still interested in anything to do with JFK,” the agent added.
April smiled. “Thanks, but you’re too late. She’s already got an agent.”
Sandra Lestring shrugged. “Nevertheless, I’d appreciate it if you’d keep me in mind. You never know. Sometimes these things
don’t work out.”
“I’ll do that,” April said politely as the woman turned to leave the ladies room.
Maggie was watching April in the mirror. Her huge brown eyes were round with speculation. “April? What do you mean, your mother’s
got an agent? Who exactly is your mother? Is she in publishing? Jeez, April, is she here at the convention?”
April met her eyes and nodded. This, after all, was why she had come all the way out to California for this year’s American
Booksellers Association convention, leaving Brian, her business partner, to run the bookstore and deal with the customers,
which was his special talent, anyhow. Brian could spend hours discussing the plot, characters, and every red herring of a
fictional murder case with a happy group of middle-aged women who gathered around to listen to him lecture. He remembered
whodunit in every Agatha Christie novel. He could recite Adam Dalgleish’s poetry. He seemed to possess intimate knowledge
of James Lee Burke’s New Orleans, and he loved to tell the customers that he’d once ridden in a taxi driven by Carlotta Carlyle.
Brian knew the genre, and the customers adored him. It was good to know that she could leave the business in the capable hands
of somebody she trusted.
She glanced at her watch. In fifteen minutes, Rina, her mother, whom April hadn’t seen in nearly thirty years, would be making
one of her rare public appearances.
She was planning to confront her.
Rob Blackthorn was staring at Jessie’s photograph again.
Shouldn’t do this, he told himself.
Pointless.
Waste of time.
Unhealthy.
He should be beyond this now. Everybody said so. It had been nearly two years.
He glanced over at the minibar, which was tastefully disguised as a cabinet in the luxurious Four Seasons Hotel in Newport
Beach. It had been tempting him ever since he’d checked in the previous evening. The minibar key was on top of the chest of
drawers, right next to the ice bucket and the wine glasses.