Tempting Fate (10 page)

And Dani idolized her grandmother, trusted her and believed in her as she couldn't believe in anyone else, including her own father.

“Do you have a plane ticket?” Nick asked.

“I'll get one.”

“If you need money, I can try and peel some off Dani.”

“I don't need money.” His daughter wasn't nearly as generous with her father as her grandfather, on the grounds, she claimed, that Nick was unreformable and too old to leave to the streets.

“John…”

He swallowed. “I'll do my best.”

“That's all I've ever asked of you.”

If only, John thought, either of them had asked as much of himself.

In his one-bedroom apartment on the ground floor of a pink stucco building on one of Beverly Hills's less exclusive streets, Nicholas Pembroke settled into the leather chair he'd had sent to him in California from his grandfather's peculiar estate—it seemed like a lifetime ago. Over sixty years. He'd left New York for good after his mother's death. His father had died when Nick was five. Barely remembered him. He was named Ulysses Jr., but he'd tried hard not to be like his own father—that was a sentiment Nick understood. His own son, likewise, had never wanted to be like him.

“I have only one request to make of you,” his mother said to him on her deathbed. “Promise me you won't make the same mistakes your grandfather did. Don't let your good intentions be responsible for trapping anyone else, for inflicting pain on anyone else, especially those you love.”

He'd promised. He'd adored his mother, had been shattered by her illness and premature death. And he'd always been very good at making promises. He just wasn't very good at keeping them.

He'd leave the chair to Dani in his will.

He couldn't be thinking about death now. He had to concentrate on the present.

And decide whether he should try to get hold of John at the Tucson airport and tell him the rest.

All of it.

He laid his head back and closed his eyes. His chair had seemed larger in recent years, but he'd finally admitted it was the same size: he had shrunk. He was ancient, for the love of God. He might yet live to a hundred. And what did he have to show for his long life? An unforgiving ex-wife. A son he'd failed. A granddaughter who treated him like a charity case. Hell, he was a charity case. And a few well-regarded movies—
The Gamblers
,
Tiger's Eye
,
Casino.
He'd lived too long and had too many forgettable movies, too many dry years and too much bad press to be admired the way people admired Mattie Witt.

Yeah, well, what was a reputation? Glorified gossip. Not the sort of thing in which one took great comfort a month before one's ninetieth birthday.

And he had his mistakes to show, too.

Using his cane, he rose slowly. Twenty years ago the cane had been a dapper affectation, but now it was an unfortunate necessity. He was thin and stooped, and sometimes when he looked in the mirror, he wondered who the hell that scrawny old fart was looking back at him. His black hair had turned completely white, and what was left of it was so thin he seldom had to comb it. His eyes, veined and weak, had a tendency to bulge. He hadn't asked the doctors why. Didn't want to know. His crepey skin sagged on his brittle bones. He supposed he ought to be grateful he still had all his faculties: he could recall every asinine thing he'd done and said in the past century.

And yet there were times, especially on quiet, warm nights, when he yearned to be, if only for a moment, the irresistible cocky young man he'd been decades ago, when he'd stumbled upon Mattie on the banks of the Cumberland River.

“God willing, you'll live a long life,” she'd told him many times, and she'd never meant it kindly.

He crept into the kitchen, pulled open his refrigerator and found a bottle of Pembroke Springs Mineral Water. Dani sent him a case every couple of months. With a shaking hand, he unscrewed the cap and drank straight from the bottle, the cold, effervescent water dribbling down the sides of his chin. It tasted as it always had, from the first day he'd tried it as a boy almost a century ago: clean and crystal clear, slightly earthy, as if he were taking in a little of the Adirondack Mountains with every sip. Maybe he could blame his longevity on a boyhood spent drinking this stuff.

He set the empty bottle on the counter and belched.

Consequences, he thought. He'd always hated facing consequences.

If you make a promise to your dying mother you break time and time again, you stand to endure a lifetime of guilt. If you screw another woman while you're married to someone else—someone who's a part of your soul—you stand to lose her. If you spirit a sad, tortured young woman away from her abusive father and husband for a summer of freedom, you stand to set into motion a series of events over which you and she have no control.

Nick sagged against the refrigerator, trying not to remember Joe Cutler. If Joe hadn't come north to fetch Mattie back to Cedar Springs to see her dying father…if he'd understood that Mattie could never go back…

Unlike her younger sister, Naomi Witt Hazen, whom Nick, too, had loved. “I'll go back home and do what I have to do,” she'd told him after the heat of their long-ago summer affair had expired and they'd known they'd gone as far as they ever would together. “But my father and husband will never have the same hold over me as they once did. I'm free.”

Nick banged his cane against the refrigerator and wished the memories—a century of them—would just go away. Sometimes he'd rather be a drooling old man in a nursing home.

He should have known twenty-five years ago one was never finished with a blackmailer.

If Saint Mattie hadn't told Dani about the Cutler boys' trip to Saratoga the summer her mother went missing, Nick hadn't told anyone about the nasty, pathetic blackmail letters he'd received while filming
Casino.
Someone—he'd never known who—had found out about his secret deal with Lilli to let her play the minor role of the singer. He'd never expected that one scene, his daughter-in-law's one performance, would take over the movie the way it had, to set its tone, deepen its meaning, make itself not just accessible to its audience, but a part of them. But he'd promised her he would keep her identity a secret. If she wanted the world—her family—to know, she could be the one to tell them. It was one promise he'd kept, until it became moot when
Casino
was previewed and a critic recognized Lilli Chandler Pembroke. Nick admitted everything.

But he'd never mentioned the blackmail.

The scheme had been pitiful, inept. A few hundred dollars here, a thousand there. He'd received a letter threatening to expose Lilli's role if he didn't pay up. So he'd paid up. He hadn't told Lilli what was going on; she'd had enough on her mind. And a couple of days before her disappearance, the blackmail had stopped.

He supposed he should have gone to the police, at least after Lilli disappeared. But he'd wanted to protect her, wanted to keep the notoriety and nastiness, the cheapness, of blackmail from being tied to her. The blackmailer had never threatened her—the letters had never even hinted that any harm would come to her—and had been directed to Nick, not to Lilli. As far as he knew, she had no idea he was being blackmailed over her role in
Casino.

As far as he knew.

What if she had known? What if she had been blackmailed herself? She'd had a hell of a lot more money than Nick ever did.

And what if the blackmailer had been Joe Cutler? Or his then thirteen-year-old brother, Zeke? Or both of them?

The doorbell was ringing. Nick couldn't have said for how long. As he shuffled back to the front room, he considered that the one thing—the only thing—he could reliably do these days was to die. Just drop dead like an old dog. And yet his death would accomplish nothing.

He would still have sent his son to Saratoga without all the facts.

When he opened the door, a strongly built black man nodded to him. “Mr. Pembroke? Sorry to bother you. My name's Sam Lincoln Jones. I'm an independent security consultant.”

“You work with Zeke Cutler,” Nick said. Over the years he'd kept track of Joe Cutler's little brother.

Jones hid any surprise. “I'd like to talk with you, if I may.”

“About what?”

“About what you've been up to lately.”

Nick grinned. “Nice try, my friend. Zeke Cutler sent you to find out what I know about a certain gold key my daughter-in-law was wearing the night she disappeared.”

“Which is?”

“Not a damn thing.”

John hitched a ride to the Tucson airport from a skinny kid who'd stopped in the convenience store and mentioned he was headed in that direction and paid for his ticket to Albany, New York, with the emergency traveler's checks he kept on hand. With elderly parents, he felt compelled to have airfare available at all times—something that would only disgust Nick and Mattie, who apparently thought they'd never die. Or didn't give a damn if they did. John had given up on ever truly understanding his famous mother and father.

In Albany he'd rent a car or get a cab for the thirty-mile drive to Saratoga Springs. After that, he didn't know what he'd do.

He had no trouble getting a flight east and, slinging his beat-up old bag onto his shoulder, he boarded the plane.

Saratoga, he thought. It had been so long.

Did the gold key mean Lilli had been on the rocks on the Pembroke estate the night she disappeared? Was it stolen to keep that from coming out?

John suddenly felt colder than he'd felt in weeks.

Don't jump ahead. One step at a time.

Settling back in his seat, he shut his eyes and tried not to think about how different he was from the corporate executive he'd once been, from the optimistic boy determined not to repeat the mistakes the Pembroke men always seemed to make. Who'd wanted desperately to be something other than Nicholas Pembroke and Mattie Witt's son. He'd loved being the cog in the wheel at Chandler Hotels his wife had accused him of being. He'd loved that anonymity.

Oh, Lilli…

He hadn't made the same mistakes as the Pembroke scoundrels who'd come before him. He'd made his own mistakes, more egregious, more unforgivable.

Dani, however, was different.

She had to be.

And this time John was determined not to fail her.

D
ani spent most of Friday with her nose to the grindstone. Work helped keep her mind off her ransacked bedroom, her stolen things, her scrapes and bruises. She was more upset than she'd first realized over losing her two gate keys. Ulysses's gold keys—made famous in
The Gamblers
—had always seemed just another of the legends surrounding him. Now one had surfaced, and it was gone.

Losing it was preferable to being killed, Dani thought, but she still wished she had it.

And work kept her mind off what day it was. That tonight was the annual Chandler lawn party.

She'd had her dress cleaned, and carted it and the ostrich plume and her red shoes up to the Pembroke salon, located in the estate's former bathhouse, for some pampering and advice. It was getting close to seven. Time to put herself together.

She passed Zeke Cutler sitting on a stone bench in the shade of a sugar maple. He had his arms hooked on the back of the bench and his legs stretched out, his ankles crossed. He looked relaxed, confident.

“Afternoon, Ms. Pembroke,” he said in an exaggerated southern drawl, designed, no doubt, to undermine her sense of professionalism.

She didn't let it, although she'd changed from her business clothes into shorts and a Saratoga T-shirt and had Mattie's dress hanging over her arm in its plastic cleaner's bag. She nodded briskly. “Mr. Cutler.”

“Nice day.”

That it was. Dry, clear, warm. But, of course, it would be. In its hundred-year history, the Chandler lawn party had enjoyed remarkably good weather. Someone had once figured out that it would have rained on the historic party the few Augusts that the Saratoga racing season had been canceled, in the early 1900s and during World War II.

“Have you been keeping busy?” she asked, trying to treat him as she would any other guest, regardless of his profession or how they'd met. What questions she still had about him. How physically attractive she found him.

“More or less. Right now I'm debating between tubing down the Batten Kill and weeding tomatoes. Which do you think?”

His sarcasm—or humor—was nearly, but not quite, undetectable. Dani said coolly, “It doesn't seem to me you're seriously considering either one.”

He almost smiled. “Maybe I should take a mud bath?”

“You'd find it refreshing, I'm sure.”

Dropping one hand, he picked up a bottle of Pembroke Springs Mineral Water he had beside him on the bench. “Nice package. I tried your orange soda—haven't worked up the nerve to try this stuff yet.” He unscrewed the top. “I usually get my water from the tap.”

“It's not the same.”

“That's what scares me.” He took a sip and paused a moment, seeming to contemplate the taste. “I suppose it could grow on you.”

For some reason, Dani wasn't offended. “It's milder than a lot of the mineral waters around here. My grandmother—”

“Mattie Witt.”

She nodded but noticed the slight darkening of Zeke Cutler's already dark eyes. “She knows—or used to know—the properties of a hundred different springs in the region, which ones would bind you up, which ones would unbind you, which were more suited to bathing. She claims there's a spring that'll cure virtually any intestinal ailment. She's not as rabid as she used to be—I understand she used to pump my father full of various waters when he was a boy.”

“That was after she retired from Hollywood?”

“Oh, yes.”

Zeke Cutler drank more of his water, and this time Dani felt he was contemplating her. His eyes darkened even more, and she couldn't tell what he was thinking. The effect on her was more unnerving than she would ever want to admit. “Tell me,” he said, “do you take such a personal interest in all your guests or only the ones you've assaulted with iron skillets?”

The humor was back in his eyes. It softened them, made them a little less intense. Dani felt a rush of warmth and might have fled without answering, pretending she hadn't heard him. But she said, “I'm keeping my eye on you, Zeke Cutler.”

He raised his bottle to her. “Ditto.”

The rush of warmth turned hot, and she got out of there, heading along a brick walk in the sun, which was nowhere near as broiling as she was.

Magda Roskov, who presided over the salon, and who was even tinier than her boss, shook her head in despair when she saw Dani. “But you give me just an hour! I need at least a week to work on you.”

Dani had thought an hour was a lot. “Well, just help me figure out how to get this feather to stay in my hair.”

Magda inspected the red ostrich plume. “This has possibilities.”

Coming from her, that was a major vote of confidence.

She worked on Dani for her allotted hour, lecturing her on leg waxing, manicures, pedicures, the right cosmetics. She signed her up for an herbal facial next week and insisted on setting Dani's hair in pin curls. Magda examined her cuts and bruises with clinical objectivity and sighed loudly. “You want to climb rocks, you suffer the consequences.” Dani didn't tell her she'd surprised a burglar.

The results—the pin curls, the dramatic makeup, the perfectly placed feather—were, she had to admit, far superior to anything she could have accomplished on her own. If not transformed, Dani felt downright glamorous. She wondered if Zeke Cutler would have been so sarcastic and controlled if he'd caught her in the garden looking like this.

Dangerous thinking. She had to stop it.

“Well,” Magda said, appraising her handiwork, “you'll do.”

It was the best Dani would ever get from her by way of a compliment.

“You will put on your shoes?”

Dani grinned. She'd kept on her beat-up sneakers. “When I get there. Those three-inch heels are killers.”

“If you'd practice wearing them—”

“Bye, Magda. Thanks for everything.”

Watching Dani glide past him in a sexy retro dress, ratty sneakers and an ostrich feather in her shining dark hair, Zeke concluded the woman was pretty muddy on the subject of how heiresses were supposed to act.

He'd rejected tubing on the Batten Kill, weeding tomatoes and anything else the Pembroke had to offer early on a Friday evening, and he'd dumped the rest of his designer water in the grass.

Ms. Danielle Chandler Pembroke, he observed, really wasn't very big.

He didn't know why her feather didn't fall off. “Got that thing stuck on with Krazy Glue?”

She whirled around, startled, a pair of red high heels in hand. Zeke ducked. First a mineral water bottle, then an iron skillet, now shoes.

“In another life,” he said, “you'd be a knife thrower.”

“I'm sorry.” She lowered her shoes. “I'm a little on edge.”

“Heard you were going to the Chandler party tonight.”

She nodded, biting her lower lip, painted as red as her dress. Zeke suspected that she was hell on men. Ira Bernstein had told him the sure way to get shot out of the saddle with his boss was to send her a dozen roses and tell her you existed to make her happy. “She doesn't want anyone to feel responsible for her happiness—her mother's legacy.” Ira, of course, hadn't intended to tell Zeke anything; it had just happened. Besides being an expert on weaponry and such, he prided himself on his ability to eke information out of people.

“Yes, I am,” Ira's boss said.

“Alone?”

She looked annoyed. “I don't see that my personal life is any of your business.”

“I don't see that it is, either. I suppose a date would detract from the impact of your grand entrance.”

Her black eyes zeroed in on him; he could tell she was miffed. “I'm not planning a grand entrance—”

“Ha. You have Nick Pembroke's and Mattie Witt's flare for drama. That's her dress, isn't it? And the feather your mother wore in
Casino?
”

“You seem to know an awful lot about me, Mr. Cutler.”

“Honey, a lot of people know an awful lot about you, so that's no big deal.” He was on his feet. “Come on, I'll give you a ride.”

“I really don't think—”

“I'm harmless,” he said.

“So you told me yesterday afternoon. And as I said then, you don't look harmless.”

He shrugged. “Given my business, I suppose that's just as well. My car's in the Pembroke lot.”

“I have no intention of driving anywhere with you.”

“Sure you do.” He glanced down at her, noticing that the luscious red of her lips only made her skin seem paler and her eyes blacker. “It'll save you having to park your car and risk spoiling your entrance.”

Her mouth snapped shut. “I was planning on walking.”

“And risk getting caught by the paparazzi in holey yellow sneakers?”

“Mr. Cutler—”

“You've got to stop that mister business.”

“I'm not going to hire you.”

“Fine, but will you let me drive you to your granddaddy's mansion?”

“It's a cottage.”

“Where I come from,” he said, “it's a mansion.”

And he wondered if someday he'd tell her where he came from, or if she'd find out on her own, if Mattie would tell her, or someone else who knew about Joe and him and the ugly possibilities of their trip to Saratoga twenty-five years ago. But he couldn't think about that now. He had to concentrate on the present, on the job he'd come to do. As he'd told Roger Stone last night, Dani Pembroke wasn't his problem.

They headed together down the brick walk, and when the walk divided, one way going toward her cottage, the other toward the main house and the parking lot, she stayed with him. Zeke made no comment. When they came to his rented car, a nondescript midsize sedan, he unlocked the passenger door, opening it for her. Minding her feather, she slid in.

“Don't get any ideas,” she said, pulling the door shut herself.

Her cheeks, he noticed, had gained some color.

She played tour guide on the drive up Union Avenue and Broadway, pointing out where the gargantuan United States Hotel had once stood—“It was built in 1874 and occupied seven acres”—and the Grand Union and Congress Hall, where the wealthy and famous of that earlier time had played. The massive hotels were all gone, burned or torn down.

“The Adelphi survived,” she said, gesturing to a Victorian hotel in the middle of Broadway. “It's small by the standards of nineteenth-century Saratoga—it's been completely restored in keeping with the era. I love having wine in the courtyard with friends.”

Zeke tried to imagine having a quiet glass of wine with her, amid flowers and greenery, with no agenda. But, with practiced skill, he shoved the image aside. He wasn't a dreamer. Not anymore.

He drove straight up Broadway, through the light where the wide, busy street became North Broadway, quiet, residential, lined with Victorian mansions. He pulled up in front of the cream-colored Italianate that a Chandler had built. A couple hundred people had gathered on the side lawn. From what Zeke could see, they were dressed for a good time among their fellow rich. He could hear the soft strains of a jazz trio.

“To think,” Dani muttered, “I could be picking beetles off my rosebushes.”

The mystery and vulnerability that he'd detected in her that afternoon were there once again, playing at the edges of her eyes, at the corners of her frown. The smart comeback he had ready slid right out of his mind.

She already had her yellow sneakers off and was slipping on her red high heels. Her black eyes, liquid and maybe a little afraid, fastened on him. “Thank you for the ride.”

“Knock 'em dead, angel.”

Her smile was full of mischief and pain as she climbed out of his car, teetering a moment on her too-high heels. Then she started down the sidewalk in her saucy vintage dress and ostrich plume, a slim, fit, dark-eyed, dark-haired woman who didn't look anything at all like the tall, fair, proper, ever-gracious Chandlers.

Zeke had never seen anyone look more alone.

“Yikes,” Kate Murtagh said. “Your checkbook must be as moth-eaten as that dress.”

She planted a tray of skewered tortellini, drenched in a spicy-smelling sauce, onto a server's outstretched arms. Dani felt a touch of relief at Kate's blunt words; she was among friends again. She wished she knew what had gotten into her to accept Zeke Cutler's ride. Of course, she wished she knew what had gotten into her even to be here tonight.

“You're just mad because I didn't take your advice.”

“Aaron,” Kate said to one of her cohorts, a paunchy man arranging nasturtiums on a pasta salad, “make sure the shades are up when this crowd gets a load of this outfit. Everybody may drop dead, and we won't have to serve dinner.”

Dani laughed, trying to stay out of the way as servers flowed in and out. “Do I look that bad?”