The President's Daughter (26 page)

And careless prey, as everyone knows, is so much easier to catch. . . .

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

On her way into breakfast early the next morning, Dina found her cell phone where she’d left it the previous day, atop the table in the front hall. “ONE MISSED CALL,” the readout announced. She scrolled down for the number as she came into the dining room. She listened to Polly’s message with a smile on her face.

“You look pleased,” Betsy noted as she joined Dina in the dining room.

“I
am
pleased.” Dina grinned. “I just got a message from Polly. I have three potential customers waiting to hear from me. One new property and two renovations. My favorite kind of work.”

“I noticed how much happier you are after you’ve been out puttering around in the gardens.” Betsy poured a cup of coffee for Dina, then one for herself. “Though frankly, with things so out of hand and overgrown, it’s hard to imagine anyone enjoying the work.”

“Oh, this is nothing.” Dina waved a hand toward the back of the house and the garden area beyond. “These beds have been tended over the years. Some of the places I’ve worked on haven’t been weeded in fifty, seventy years, or better.”

“How do you know what to do first?”

“Well, first you get down on your hands and knees and try to see what’s lurking beneath the overgrowth.” Dina grinned. “Some plants can survive forever with the smallest amount of maintenance. Peonies can last for decades, as can roses, and some of the self-seeders, hollyhocks and such, can just keep on regenerating. On several occasions, I’ve found wonderful old varieties of plants in gardens I’ve restored, plants that I couldn’t even buy seeds for because they’re so rare. You never know when that will happen, and it certainly makes the work more interesting for me. I’m going to call these people as soon as breakfast is over.”

“Call what people?” Jude asked as she entered the room.

“Polly left a voice mail message for me that a couple of potential customers called or stopped in over the past few days. Two are possible renovations on old properties.”

“Oh, what properties? Someplace we know?” Jude helped herself to scrambled eggs from a covered dish that Mrs. Brady had placed on the sideboard earlier.

“One is that red house on the way out of town. Polly didn’t know where the other was. But there are several places around Henderson that are for sale right now. It could be any one of them. There’s the Otis place, and the Franklin farm. . . .” Dina paused to think. “Then there’s that place out on Keansey Road. . . .”

“Well, hopefully, the prospective owners won’t mind waiting until you can meet with them,” Jude said.

“Wait for what?” Dina frowned.

“Until we know it’s safe for you to go back to Henderson.”

“I won’t go into town. I’ll just take care of my business and come back here.”

“Maybe you should run this past Simon,” Betsy suggested.

“Simon has his own agenda right now. If these people are serious about this property, making them wait is unfair. They could end up losing it to another buyer. Besides, I can’t afford to pass up prospective clients.”

“I don’t see the harm in it, Jude,” Betsy said from her seat at the head of the table.

“There probably isn’t any,” Jude conceded. “As long as no one knows that you’re going.”

“No one will know. I won’t even tell Polly,” Dina promised, feeling energized. “I’ll call the numbers she gave me after breakfast and see what their schedules are.”

“If you can put it off till next week, it might be better. Maybe all this will be over by then.”

“Or the customers might have found another landscaper by then. It’s been a while since I had a total renovation job. It’s not only fun; it’s a great money-maker. Garden Gates needs a few jobs like this to keep solidly in the black. And frankly, it will be wonderful to have just a little touch of normalcy back in my life again.”

“Well, Jude, the morning’s slipping away. If we’re going to make that trip to the farmers market, I think we need to get going.” Betsy smiled at Dina and added, “We have a little cabin fever ourselves. I’m thinking that a drive down into Wayne might do us both some good. Want to come along?”

“No, I think I want to try to get in touch with Mrs. Fields and with the Dillons. Maybe the property they’re looking at is one that I already know. But you two have fun. . . .”

“I just need to run upstairs and get my jacket,” Jude said.

“Take mine,” Dina offered. “It’s right there on the chair by the back door.”

Dina smiled at both women, who seemed to be slightly more cordial toward each other this morning.

Thank God for small favors,
Dina mused fifteen minutes later as she watched Betsy’s van disappear down the lane.
I’ve had about all of their picking at each other
that I can take.

Dina had had to leave voice mail for Mrs. Fields, but Mrs. Dillon answered the phone on its third ring. After the most perfunctory conversation, she gave Dina the address of the property that she and her husband were looking at.

“Is eleven this morning a good time?” Mrs. Dillon had asked.

Dina looked at the clock. It was ten past nine. “I think I can be there by then.”

“Great. We’ll see you there.”

Next Dina called Simon, but she had to leave a message for him as well: “I have a hot job prospect lined up—a garden restoration down around Henderson. Right now, it’s just a look-see, but it’s just the kind of work I love best. Anyway, I’ll be meeting my would-be client—pray that dear Mrs. Dillon loves whatever plan I come up with—and will be going right back to Betsy’s, I promise. Hope to see you soon.” She paused, then added, “I think I miss you, Simon.”

It wasn’t until Dina had gathered her purse and her sunglasses and was telling Mrs. Brady where she was going that she realized that her car keys were in her jacket pocket and her jacket had left the house with Jude.

“. . . but I should be back by . . .
damn
! I have no wheels.”

“Miss?”

“My car keys are in the pocket of the jacket my mother is wearing.”

“Perhaps you might take one of Miss Pierce’s cars,” Mrs. Brady suggested. “I drive them when I need to run errands, and she lets the grooms drive them all the time. I seriously doubt that she’d mind. She has the BMW—of course, that’s specially equipped for her, though she doesn’t really care to drive it—a pickup truck, and two Jeeps. Look there; there’s one of the grooms. Looks like Eric. Ask him to get you the keys for one of the Jeeps.”

“If you’re sure Betsy won’t mind . . .”

“Honey, she lets everyone else drive them; she won’t mind if you borrow one.”

“Eric!” Dina called out the back door as the groom crossed the drive toward the barn. “I wanted to use one of the Jeeps for a few hours. Mrs. Brady said you knew where the keys are.”

“Sure.” He waved her to the garage, and Dina met him there at the door, which he opened for her.

“You know how to drive stick?” he asked.

“I used to.” Dina nodded.

“Take the tan one, then,” Eric suggested as he removed a key from the rack inside the door. “It’s the newest.”

“Thanks.”

“Owners and insurance cards are in the glove box. Want me to back ’er out for you?”

“No, I’m fine, thanks.”

Dina hopped into the Jeep and took a moment to familiarize herself with the gears and the placement of the instruments. She’d never driven a Wrangler before, but they always looked like they’d be a fun drive.

And it was. Even on I-95 with the canvas sides open, the Jeep held the road pretty well. It was a quick and easy drive to Maryland.

The property she was looking for was off Good Hope Road and was actually a good eight miles from Henderson, but Dina knew the area well. There was a realtor’s
FOR SALE
sign near the road, Mrs. Dillon had told her, but the property could only be reached by driving past the sign to a duck pond a quarter mile farther down the road. Once she reached the pond, there would be a dirt road. From there, she would drive about fifteen hundred feet, taking a right onto yet another dirt road. Once past a wooded area, she would see the old farmhouse and several outbuildings.

And it had all been exactly as her prospective customer had detailed, right down to the ducks on the pond. Dina drove the Jeep carefully over the deeply rutted road, thinking that the first thing the potential buyers should look into might be the cost of some macadam. There was dense brush and much undergrowth lining the lane, and she wondered just how long the property had been vacant.

“Yow!” she said aloud as the house came into view. “Talk about your handyman’s special. . . .”

The weathered farmhouse with its boarded-up windows on the first floor sported a front porch that suffered from serious sag on one side. The top course of brick was missing from the chimney, and a cluster of lilac reached clear up to the second-story windows. Behind the house several outbuildings stood—though only barely—and pastures outlined with rusted barbed wire ran along the far side of the lane. A black convertible was parked near the barn, and Dina drove the Jeep around the house to park next to it.

At the edge of an overgrown field, two black-and-white kittens played tag in an abandoned truck tire. They ducked inside it to hide when Dina got out of the car.

“Hello?” she called as she pocketed the key.

Her voice drifted over the fallow fields.

“Hello?” she called again. “Mrs. Dillon?”

No answer.

Maybe they’re up at the house,
Dina thought, but both the front and the back doors were locked.
Perhaps in the
barn . . . ?
But a look inside proved that it, too, was empty.

A large black cat with white markings crouched behind an ancient combine just outside the barn door.

“Here, kitty-kitty!” Dina called to it. The cat swished its tail but did not approach.

“Come here, kitty; I won’t hurt you.”

The cat rubbed up against the combine’s broken wheel.

“You’re not a very wild cat, are you?” Dina reached a hand out to the animal. “Are you a runaway? Or maybe did someone drop you off here?”

The cat sashayed out from behind the wheel and permitted Dina to scratch behind its ears.

“Are those your babies out there by the road?” Dina crooned. “Pretty babies. And you’re a pretty baby, too, aren’t you?”

The cat purred deeply and wound itself around Dina’s knees.

The sound of a door creaking on one of the smaller of the outbuildings caught Dina’s attention.

“Come on, kitty. Let’s take a look.”

Dina walked to the shed and pushed the door open.

“Mrs. Dillon . . . ?”

Dina stepped inside but only heard the
whoosh
seconds before the two-by-four crashed into her skull and sent the blackness to claim her.

Dina awoke facedown on a dirt floor, her arms secured behind her, her wrists bound by tightly knotted rope, and her head pounding unmercifully. It took several long moments before she could remember where she was and what had happened. She struggled to roll over and then lay looking around the small space in which she was confined. There was one dirty window with a broken pane of glass on the top, evidence that someone had used it for target practice with a BB gun. From somewhere outside a long light flashed against the wall. Headlights, she suspected.

Shelves lining the two longest sides of the room gave evidence that at one time the small shed had been used as a chicken coop. Thin layers of straw, ravaged over the years by rodents, lined the shelves, and a few forgotten kernels of corn lay nearby. The shed smelled of damp earth and rotted wood. From somewhere near the window something buzzed loudly, and under the far shelf something rustled in the straw.

Dina grimaced. She had absolutely no desire to know what that something might be.

She forced herself into a seated position and leaned back against the wall, considering her options.

“Shit,” she muttered as she realized she had no options.

“Are you comfortable?” a voice whispered through the darkness.

Dina sat tensely. The headlights had flashed briefly through the window, but the footsteps had been so soft that she’d not heard them, even though she’d strained her ears, waiting. “Not especially.”

“Good.” The voice was deep and hoarse, raspy, low, as it had been on the phone.

“Let’s see. Mrs. Dillon, right?”

“The name isn’t Dillon.”

“Well, I know I’m surprised.”

“Are you getting acclimated to your accommodations?”

“Oh, sure.” Dina glanced around at the dark, dusty room that contained her and fought back the panic.

“Of course, you don’t have to stay here, you know.”

“And you’re just about to tell me what I have to do to get out, right?”

“All you have to do is tell me where to find Jude.”

“Oh, of course. I tell you where to find Jude, and you untie me and unlock the door. Right after you slit my throat.” Dina paused, willing her voice not to quiver with fear. “Or will you take me outside and lay me on the road so that you can drive over me a couple of times, since that seems to be your favorite MO.”