Paradise County (8 page)

But she remembered how excited her father had been that summer as he’d walked her around showing off the place, and her heart ached anew.

I wish you were here with me now, she said silently to her father, and as her throat closed up she sent the thought winging skyward like a prayer.

Something cold and wet touched her face as though in response. For a moment she was startled. Glancing up, she realized that it was starting to rain. As another droplet hit her, she turned away from her memories and walked inside the house.

It was warm, she noticed thankfully as she closed the door, and the interior smelled faintly of lemon furniture polish. The red-based Oriental rug on the gleaming hardwood floor lent a cheerful note to the vast entry hall with its cream damask wallpaper and fifteen-foot ceiling. The huge
Waterford-crystal chandelier overhead provided a wash of needed light. The formal living room, cool in shades of cream and beige with only bowls of silk roses for punch, opened off the entry hall to her right, and to her left was the enormous dining room with its heavy antique furniture. Both rooms were framed by gleaming mahogany pocket doors. Before her, a wide curving staircase beckoned the way to the second floor. Behind the staircase was a swinging door that led into the kitchen.

“Well, you find Joe?” Inez bustled into the front hall from somewhere in the back of the house, her face wreathed in smiles. A onetime migrant worker who had married a local, Inez was around fifty, plump, with a round, unlined face. Today she wore red polyester slacks, a pink and red floral blouse, and flat black bedroom slippers. Alex wondered absently if that was her usual working attire. If so, it was a far cry from the black-garbed maids she had grown up with.

“Oh, yes, I found Joe,” Alex said dryly, unzipping her jacket and handing it to the housekeeper.

“He is so handsome, that one.” Inez accepted the jacket with a sigh. “It is such a shame he has no wife. Poor man. Poor children.”

“What happened to his wife?” It was clear from Inez’s tone that there was more to the story than a simple divorce.

“Ah, she was no good. She ran away, just ran away and left him with those little children. Years ago. She ran away and never came back. He is raising those three
pequeños
all alone, which is a hard thing for a man.”

“Is he?” Alex felt a twinge of conscience about firing the man, impossible as he was, in the face of that news, but, she reminded herself, there was nothing she could do about it, so there was no point in feeling bad about what she could not help. There was something else she needed to talk to the housekeeper about. Although Inez came in only once a week when the house was empty, she worked as needed when any of the family was in residence. It was very possible that she had been here on that night… .

“Inez.” Alex paused. It was hard for her to put the question into words. The images the words carried with them hurt too much. She tried again. “You were here working during my father’s last visit, weren’t you? Did he seem any different than usual? Sad, or—or depressed?”

Inez looked at her sorrowfully. “I have already been asked this by many people. The answer is, no ma’am. He was just as he always was, a very nice gentleman.”

A very nice gentleman.
Alex swallowed hard. “That last day—you were here?” Inez nodded. “There was nothing out of the ordinary? Nothing at all?”

“No, ma’am.” Inez’s dark eyes were distressed. “The last time I saw him, he was happy, laughing, playing cards with his guests. When I came the next morning, and heard that Joe had found him
so …
It was a thing that I just could not believe.”

Alex focused on the one bit of new information. “Joe—Joe
Welch
found him? Found my father’s body?”

“Yes. You did not know? I thought that maybe it was the reason you wished to speak to Joe.”

“No.” Alex shook her head. Inez knew nothing as yet about any dismissals, including her own imminent one, and Alex couldn’t face telling her right at the moment. It was all just too much. Maybe she would let the lawyers handle it after all. “I didn’t know. I …”

The phone rang, interrupting. Its summons was faint but demanding.

“You want me to get it?” Inez asked, and when Alex nodded she hurried toward the kitchen, leaving the swinging door wide open behind her. Alex could hear the murmur of her voice as she answered the phone, but paid no real attention to what was said. If Joe Welch had found her father’s body, she would have to talk to him again, much as it went against the grain for her to approach him with questions. She had to know as much as she could. Knowledge provided the only consolation available to her.

“It is for you.” Inez appeared in the kitchen doorway. “A Mr. Paul O’Neil.”

Alex’s face softened. Paul was her fiancé, and he was returning a call she’d left on his answering machine the night before. Since the funeral, he’d been so patient with her. She’d been distraught at first, then emotionally and physically numb; certainly their sex life had suffered. Actually, it had been killed stone cold dead. She was going to have to
work on that when she got home, she told herself. And she’d been gone a lot, too. This past week she had spent shuttling between New York and L.A., taking care of details pertaining to her father’s death. Come to think of it, she hadn’t actually
seen
Paul since Thursday last. Their wedding was scheduled for the coming April 9, her twenty-eighth birthday. Of course, like everything else in her life, the plans for the ceremony were now up in the air. April seemed too soon to expect to feel the joyousness that she wanted to feel at her wedding, and the lavishness of the affair was going to have to be scaled way, way back.

“I’ll take it in the library,” Alex said, turning away, and Inez nodded, disappearing into the kitchen again.

Alex felt her spirits lift as she anticipated talking to Paul. She’d met him when she was scoping out the two-hundred-year-old, expertly renovated downtown Philadelphia office building in which he worked. A photographer by profession, she took pictures of interesting architecture and landscaping for coffee-table books; it wasn’t a very lucrative field, but then, she’d never had to live on what she made.

Paul hadn’t even known whose daughter she was until they’d dated for months. He’d asked her to marry him in September, and she had instantly said yes. A month later, her father had died and her life had fallen apart.

But in the midst of chaos, Paul had been there for her. It was good to know that he loved her, that he was someone she could count on during these dark days.

The library was a large room with an ornate vaulted ceiling. Floor-to-ceiling shelves fashioned from the wood of ash trees felled on the estate lined three walls. They were filled to overflowing with books, photographs, and other mementos. The fourth wall had been painted a soft celery green and was dominated by a large fireplace with a graceful, white-painted Adam mantel. Over the fireplace, between tall, vividly colored china parrots that graced either side of the mantel, hung a portrait of her latest stepmother, the beautiful Mercedes, her long black hair shining with blue highlights as it streamed over a pink silk Versace ball gown.

Multiple portraits of Charles Haywood’s five previous wives had been
kept in storage in a Philadelphia warehouse, as Alex had already discovered. She supposed that each time her father divorced and remarried, he replaced portraits of his previous spouse with those of the new one in every residence he owned. Which was rather humorous, if one thought about it. In years to come, when the shock of her father’s death had eased, Alex thought she might be able to remember, and laugh.

For now, though, even the twinge of amusement she felt was accompanied by pain. Suppressing a sigh, she sat down in the big leather chair behind the polished walnut desk. A yellow legal pad, mercifully free of any of her father’s handwriting, and a silver ballpoint pen lay on the desk. Instant images of her father sitting in that same chair behind that same desk talking on the phone while he scribbled notes on the legal pad crowded into her mind’s eye. She could picture him as clearly as if the scene were unfolding before her.

Ah, Daddy. Why?

But giving in to the pain did not ease it, as she had already learned. She forced thoughts of her father away, then determinedly picked up the phone.

“Paul?”

“Alex! Is that you?”

“Were you expecting somebody else?” Her voice was light, teasing. At the sound of his voice he instantly came into focus in her mind’s eye: immaculately groomed tobacco brown hair brushed straight back from an aesthete’s bony face; bright hazel eyes, long blade of a nose, thin, well-defined lips; tall, whipcord lean, handsome, intense; a well-groomed, well-educated, sophisticated man with whom she was madly in love. Even talking to him over the phone was a pleasure. Only when her body began to relax did she realize how tense her muscles had been. Smiling, she swiveled the chair around so that she could gaze out the pair of tall, silk-festooned windows at the rain that was now falling in gentle sprinkles, and leaned back. “Oh, Paul, it’s so good to hear your voice! Are you at home? I wish I was there with you!”

“Actually, I’m out of town today. Alex, um, I have something that I need to tell you.”

It struck Alex that he sounded odd. Nervous, almost. Paul, the most self-confident person she had ever met, had never in her experience of him been nervous. Her eyes widened, and her hand tightened around the receiver.

“Is something wrong?” she asked. Even before he answered, she sensed that more bad news was winging her way.

“I hate breaking it to you over the phone like this. God, you’re never around anymore, are you? So I guess it’s your own fault.”

“What are you talking about?” It was a struggle to keep her voice steady.

There was a brief pause.

“Look, I got married last night,” Paul said heavily. “Ah, Alex, I’m sorry, but it just wasn’t working out between us, and you know it as well as I do. I …”

“You—got—married—last—night?” Alex interrupted disbelievingly, spacing each word as she absorbed what felt like a body blow.

“Yes, well, I, uh …”

Before he could continue, Alex cut him off. “You got
married
last night? But—you couldn’t have. We’re engaged. You and I. The wedding’s all planned for April. I’m wearing your ring.” She looked stupidly down at the huge, exquisite, marquise-cut diamond that adorned her left hand.

“You can keep the ring,” Paul said, his voice eager. “Tara wouldn’t want it, I’m sure, and anyway if she does I’ll buy her another one. The thing is, I …”

“Tara? Tara Gould?” Tara Gould was the only daughter of one of the wealthiest men in Pennsylvania. Come to think of it, Paul had been working on a commission for her father all through the autumn. And Tara had been around many times when Alex had been with Paul, looking over blueprints, appearing at cocktail parties and dinners, dropping things off at Paul’s office. Obviously she had been around many more times when Alex
hadn’t
been with Paul. A thin, brown little thing, Tara had been easy for Alex to dismiss. “You married
Tara Gould?
Last night?”

It was impossible. He couldn’t have. It had to be a joke—but even as
the thought ran through her mind, Alex knew that it
wasn’t
a joke, that he was telling the truth, that he had really done this unbelievable thing to her, to them… .

“It happened really fast.” Paul’s tone was more defensive than apologetic. “With you gone, and she was here, and one thing led to another, and, well …”

“She has lots of money, which I no longer do, and her father has lots of influence, while mine is at the center of a scandal, besides being dead,” Alex said bitterly, knowing as she said it that she had the situation summed up in a nutshell. To marry Tara Gould like this, Paul could only have been interested in money and a helping hand up the political ladder all along. At the knowledge, Alex felt as if her lungs were being squeezed so tightly that she could scarcely breathe.

“Now, Alex, that’s not fair.” Paul’s voice was soft and coaxing. In the past, she had loved it when he’d talked to her in that tone. Now it just made the sense of betrayal that much worse.

She was losing—no, had lost—Paul too. Dear Lord, how was she going to bear another loss?

“I hope you and Tara will be very happy,” Alex said, holding on to her dignity by the skin of her teeth while she fought to keep her voice from shaking. Shock had held the worst of the pain at bay, but now it was wearing off and she was starting to feel the sharp, cold agony of it like a knife twisting in her heart.

“You know I’ll always love you.” It was his coaxing voice again. “It’s just that …”

“Good-bye, Paul,” Alex said. Before he could reply, she lifted the receiver from her ear, swung around in the chair, and set it back in its cradle. For a moment she simply sat there staring at the telephone, and at her hands, both of which now held the receiver in place as if to keep it from rearing up and attacking her. She was gripping the cream-colored plastic so tightly that her knuckles showed white. Her engagement ring glowed with a life of its own as her finger moved: the huge diamond sparkled and winked as if mocking her pain.

Tara was probably with Paul right now, mocking her as brazenly as the diamond.

“You son of a bitch!” Alex said, voice low, her breathing suddenly harsh and ragged as she snatched at the ring and dragged it off her hand. “You cheater! You no-good, dirty rotten
liar!”

Gasping as she fought back a sudden rush of scalding tears, she hurled the ring away from her as hard as she could.

“Whoa, now,” a male voice said. Unbelievably, without the least warning, Joe Welch appeared in the library’s open doorway just in time to field the ring that seemed to be aimed straight at his face. With a quick movement, he dodged, grabbed it out of the air, and stood there frowning at her.

Seven