Until You (4 page)

Conor cleared his throat. "Mr. Winthrop." He stuck out his hand, pasted a smile on his lips and hoped he didn't look anywhere near as foolish as he felt. "It's good to meet you, sir."

"My pleasure." Winthrop gestured towards a doorway. "Let's go into the library, shall we?"

Conor nodded, smiled, did all the things a sane man was supposed to do before stealing one last glance at the portrait. And that was all it was, he saw with relief, just a portrait and definitely not a very good one.

Maybe he should have accepted Mary Alice's offer of coffee before he'd headed uptown after all.

The library was enormous, big enough to accommodate both a grand piano draped with a silk shawl and a fieldstone fireplace with a hearth that could have easily held a spitted ox. Windows heavily draped in crimson velvet gave out onto the street.

Hoyt Winthrop waved to a grouping of leather chairs and sofas.

"Sit down, Mr. O'Neil, please. May I offer you something? I was just about to have a second cup of coffee."

"Coffee would be fine. Thank you."

"Of course. Charles?" The butler materialized at once, all but clicking his heels. "Coffee, please." Winthrop sat down on the sofa opposite Conor, waited until the door had swung shut and then leaned forward, his hands flat on his knees. "Well," he said, "it's certainly very kind of you to make time to see me, Mr. O'Neil."

Conor nodded politely. What harm was there in a little white lie?

"It's my pleasure, sir."

"How is my old friend Harry? We haven't seen each other in years."

"He's fine. He said to send you his congratulations." Conor paused as the butler entered the room carrying a silver coffee service. He waited until the coffee was poured and the door was shut before continuing. "The investigation's been completed and you passed with flying colors."

Winthrop beamed with delight. Conor had seen this same reaction before. It never failed to amuse him that men and women should look so much like little children on Christmas morning when they found out they'd passed a background check and were about to be rewarded by being appointed to jobs in which they'd almost invariably end up with ulcers or worse.

"That's wonderful news. Wonderful." Winthrop's smile dimmed just a little. "But we seem to have run into a minor glitch."

"The note, you mean?"

Winthrop nodded. "Yes."

"May I see it, please?"

"Of course. I'm quite sure it means nothing, but still—"

The door opened, interrupting him in midsentence. Winthrop rose to his feet and Conor did, too, as a woman entered the room. For one heart-stopping second, he thought it was the girl in the portrait—but it wasn't. This woman was considerably older and not half as beautiful. Still, the resemblance was strong, even uncanny.

"Hoyt, darling," she said, and came towards them. She smiled but her eyes—not the extraordinary green of the painting but a light hazel—homed in on Conor with the intensity of a laser-guided missile.

Winthrop put his arm lightly around the woman's shoulders and she offered her cheek for his kiss.

"Mr. O'Neil, this is my wife, Eva. Eva, dearest, this is Conor O'Neil. Harry Thurston asked him to stop by."

Eva Winthrop smiled politely as Conor took her outstretched hand. Her fingers were cool but she surprised him with a firm, steady handshake.

"How do you do, Mr. O'Neil? Please, sit down."

Her voice held the faintest trace of an accent. French? Spanish? Conor tried to remember what the papers had said about Eva Winthrop but he drew a blank.

"Mr. O'Neil's come to tell us the Bureau's finished its background check, darling," Winthrop said to his wife as she arranged herself on the sofa beside him.

"And?" she said, pouring herself a cup of coffee.

"And, everything's fine."

"Well, that's good news." She sipped her coffee, then put the cup down in its saucer. "Has my husband shown you the note we received, Mr. O'Neil?"

"I was just about to, when you joined us." Winthrop slipped his hand into his inside breast pocket, took out a small white envelope and handed it to Conor. "We received it yesterday morning."

Conor turned the envelope over. Eva Winthrop's name was printed in block letters on the front. There was no postmark or return address.

"Someone slipped it under the door," she said, when he looked at her.

The young man from the government nodded politely. Eva watched as he slid the note from the envelope. Had she managed to sound unconcerned? Did she look the same way?
Dios,
she hoped so. She'd practiced saying those simple words in front of her dressing room mirror for the past half hour.

If only Hoyt's friend, Harry Thurston, hadn't insisted on having the note picked up. If only they could have sent it to Washington by messenger.

If only it had never arrived.

But it had, and now she watched as a stranger named Conor O'Neil read the thing. It was taking him forever, although she couldn't imagine why. The note was only one line long. She knew it by heart.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

That was it, nothing more. And yet, if those words meant what she could only hope and pray they did not mean, the note could signal the end of everything, of the life she'd worked so hard to build.

The horror of the thought made her shudder. Hoyt turned and looked at her.

"Are you all right, darling?"

Eva smiled reassuringly. "Yes. Yes, I'm fine."

She wasn't fine. She was close to hysteria, but what else could she say? She'd said as much as she'd dared yesterday morning, when Hoyt had walked in on her just as she'd opened the note.

Of all days for him to have forgotten his briefcase. Of all days for him to have decided to come back and fetch it himself! If only he'd sent his chauffeur, or a boy from the office.

"But, what does it mean?" he'd asked, after he'd read the note.

"I've no idea," Eva had said brightly.

She'd crumpled the slip of paper as if she'd truly meant it and tossed it aside but Hoyt had reacted with all the fervor of his Puritan ancestors, retrieving the damnable thing, smoothing it out, then tucking it back into its envelope.

"I'd best report it."

"Hoyt, whatever for? It's nothing."

"I'm sure you're right, my dear, but considering the importance of this appointment, one can't be too careful. I'll phone Harry Thurston. We went to Choate together, you know."

Oh yes. Eva knew. The great brotherhood of old money and older bloodlines, that small, select fraternity that had been closed to her until she'd made her first million at Papillon, the oh-so-private club that, despite her growing wealth, would not have admitted her to its ranks had she not bedazzled and married Hoyt.

"Do you have any idea who could have sent this note, Mrs. Winthrop?"

Eva looked at Conor O'Neil. She'd expected the question and she had an answer ready.

"None," she said, putting her cup and saucer on the table.

"Mr. Winthrop?"

Hoyt shook his head, too, his handsome face puzzled. "I'm afraid not, Mr. O'Neil."

"Any thoughts about what it might mean?"

Hoyt shrugged his shoulders. "Not a one."

"Mrs. Winthrop?"

Eva's eyes met Conor's. "Yes?"

"Have you any idea what the note means?"

Her gaze was clear and steady. "No."

Conor nodded again. "Santayana," he said.

Both Winthrops looked at him as if he'd just announced that he'd had a vision.

"The quote's from Santayana. The Spanish philosopher."

"Oh. Of course."

Hoyt Winthrop smiled. He had a face like an open book, easy to read and to understand. He was puzzled, and obviously so. Eva Winthrop's face bore the same expression, but Conor thought there was something else in the way she looked at him.

What was it? Animosity? Probably, and he couldn't much blame her. Her husband had endured the rigors of a government investigation and now a man from some nameless agency was sitting in her library, holding in his hands the power to start the process all over again. When you came down to it, why shouldn't she dislike him?

Conor smiled, trying to put the Winthrops at ease. He folded the note and tucked it into its envelope.

"You don't mind if I keep it, do you?" he said, as if they really had a choice in the matter.

"Certainly not," Hoyt Winthrop said.

"If you feel you must," Eva Winthrop said. Her tone was sharp, and both men looked at her. She cleared her throat. "I just think my husband's worrying about nothing. This is New York, after all. People make threats every day."

"Is that what you think this is, Mrs. Winthrop? A threat?"

Eva's eyes narrowed a fraction of an inch. "It's what my husband thinks. That's why he called Mr. Thurston."

"But you don't agree."

"Central Park is just across the street. I walk through it often. There are homeless people there. Have you ever seen them?"

"Eva, my dear," Hoyt said, "Mr. O'Neil's just trying to help."

"I'm not sure I get your point, Mrs. Winthrop."

Eva rose to her feet and the men did, too.

"If you walk past people like that often enough, you're bound to hear them muttering things. Threatening things, one might say. But I never take any of it personally. New York is full of deranged souls, Mr. O'Neil. Do you see what I mean?"

Conor smiled. She had a point, a valid one. He told her so, and she smiled back at him.

"I'm glad we agree." Eva linked her arm through her husband's and looked past him, at an antique clock on the fireplace mantel. "My goodness, I had no idea it was getting so late. May I pour you more coffee?"

It was a very polite, very proper dismissal but a dismissal, nonetheless. Conor bit back the desire to tell Eva Winthrop that he was as eager to leave as she was to get rid of him. A glance at the same clock confirmed his worst suspicions, that Mary Alice had by now been sitting outside in a cab, waiting for him for at least twenty minutes.

"Thank you," he said, "but I have an appointment."

Eva offered her hand and he shook it. Hoyt led him from the library and into the foyer, chatting casually about this and that. Conor listened, but with only half an ear. He'd been this route before, engaging in the polite conversation that went with people trying to pretend that he might not somehow muck up their lives by uncovering secrets they'd thought were buried deep enough never to be found. He'd only spent half an hour with Hoyt Winthrop but the man seemed likeable enough. Conor wanted to tell him not to worry, that the odds were a hundred to one this note was going to end up in the shredder Monday morning.

But life, and his training, had taught him not to trust the odds. And anyway, his mind was on other things.

The portrait, for one. There it was again. There
she
was again, the girl with the smile that held a million questions and eyes that seemed to look into a man's soul.

"Mr. O'Neil?"

Conor turned around. Hoyt Winthrop was holding out his coat. Conor flushed, took the coat and shrugged it on.

"Sorry. I was—ah, I was just trying to think of some simple explanation for that note."

Hoyt gave him a hopeful smile. "And?"

"And if I were you, I wouldn't be the least bit concerned," Conor said briskly. "Your wife's right. The world's full of psychos. For all we know, the note's the first step in a solicitation by a bunch of religious fruitcakes. You know, a loose interpretation of the 'Repent, ye sinners,' kind of thing."

"Of course," Hoyt said, looking relieved. "Why didn't I think of that?" He held out his hand and Conor shook it. "Thank you again for coming by, Mr. O'Neil. And if you need anything else..."

"Actually," Conor said, "there is one thing."

"Yes?"

"That painting."

Hoyt's brows rose. "What painting?"

"That one. Of the girl." Conor paused. He felt as stupid as he was certain he sounded, and yet it would be stupider still not to know the answer, to leave here wondering about the girl's identity. "Who is she?"

Hoyt turned, his gaze following Conor's. "Oh. You mean Miranda."

Miranda? Of course. Eva's daughter, Miranda Beckman.

"It was painted when she was sixteen."

Sixteen? Conor thought, surprised. The girl in the painting looked older. Not wiser, just older than sixteen. He looked at her mouth again, at that Mona Lisa smile, and to his chagrin he felt that sudden tightening of his body.

"She doesn't live with us," Hoyt said quickly. "Miranda's been on her own for several years now. I'm sorry to say that we're not close, not close at all."

She lives a pretty wild life.

Harry Thurston's words echoed in Conor's head as his eyes met Winthrop's. The man's message was clear.
Don't judge me by my stepdaughter,
he was saying.
I don't have anything to do with her life and she has nothing to do with mine.