“I just wish it was over, is all,” Reynard said loudly.
“You’ve said that half a dozen times,” Chalk retorted. “You want me to do it? Her being your kin and all?”
Reynard went surly. “I’ll do it because I just wish it was over. It’s not that she means anything to me. I had her for a plant in the Fairchild house, that’s all. But she should have stayed away from Preston. Can’t say she wasn’t warned. She should’ve listened.”
He sighed tiredly. “She’s no real kin to me. But she’s a game little spunk. I’ll be quick with her. I think you might enjoy it too much—and take too long.”
“Cut her a bit for more bloodstains,” Chalk said sullenly. “Then strangle her. Use gloves. Feeney knows what to do to get his man elected. El Presidente Jacko. Viva!”
Reynard spotted the leather thong around her neck and pulled the charm from under the neckline of her blouse. “Well, here’s irony. The best incriminatin’ evidence we got—Preston’s famous charm. Marie, dear,” he said, “roll over a bit. I’ve got to get this charm off and slide it under you. Like Preston dropped it. Very nice of him to let you have it.”
He thrust the charm under her and released her. She glared at him.
He smiled down at her almost tenderly. “I wish it was over, but I’ll try to make it painless as I can.”
Surreally, Marie realized that Reynard would soon kill her. Why? It could only be to frame Andrew. She began to weep with anger and the pain of Reynard’s treachery.
Reynard stooped over her. “I’ll try to hurt you little as I can, love. There’s nothin’ personal here. Business is business.” He winked at her again. “Just a little cut on the ankle, deary. And then one or two about the arms. Then I cut off your air. It’ll be fast, my sweet. You want it over, and I wish it was over, too.”
He barely pricked her ankle. He seemed to be trying to listen for something, something he could not hear. Dazed, she realized he’d cut the rope binding her feet.
He cut the ropes tying her wrists. “And a goodbye kiss from your Uncle Reynard, my chook.” He put his face close to hers until their lips nearly touched. “If Chalk comes near you, kick him in the family jewels and keep kicking. Remember you’re your mother’s girl.”
He put his gloved hands gently on her neck. “Oh, my poor dear,” he said. “If only you’d listened…”
“What’s takin’ so long?” Chalk demanded. “I’m gonna do it meself. I thought you wanted it done fast.”
“I do,” Reynard admitted. “I want it over right now!”
“You crazy git,” Chalk snarled. “Stop yelling!”
“I’m near deaf,” Reynard shouted. “I can’t always tell how loud I am. Don’t pick on the disabled!”
“It’s your head, not your ears what’s disabled,” sneered Chalk. “Gimme that. Why Feeney let you come along is beyond me.” He shouldered Reynard aside and stooped over Marie as he pulled on his stretch vinyl gloves.
As he tugged at the right wrist, Marie kicked him in the groin with all the force she had. He doubled up in pain and she elbowed him in the face, then his throat, and kicked like a hellion.
Chalk staggered backward, reaching for the gun in his holster, but Reynard stabbed Chalk’s hand clear through. He seized the gun and pistol-whipped him until the bigger man crumpled to the floor, unconscious.
“Land now!” he screamed in anger. “Will you bloody land, you bastards?”
Marie stared at him in incomprehension. He dropped to his knees and cradled her in his arms. He kept repeating “I’m sorry…I’m sorry…so sorry…”
His voice shaking, he tried to explain how he got trapped in this scenario.
In an almost dream state, Marie could not bring herself to hug him, but she found strange comfort in his sinewy arms, his apologetic endearments. Vaguely she realized that he was crying.
He cried, but strange sounds started to drown out his muffled voice. From overhead came an increasing clatter, and the distant sound of sirens. “Well,” said Reynard, “New South Wales’s finest is finally here. I’m an informer, dear. I been wearing a wire the whole time. They was supposed to close in as soon as I said I just wanted it over. How many times did I have to tell the stunned mullets? A hundred? Crikey!”
When the first of the NSW police burst in, Reynard chided them. “Where were you, you dipsticks? You know what you put this little girl through?”
A helicopter pilot eyed him malevolently. “Had to roadblock the local gendarmes before they came rip roaring down the road. Sorry. Bureaucratic screw-up.”
“Imagine that,” Reynard said sarcastically. He took the tape from Marie’s mouth as gently as he could. To her he said, “I usually do drug cases. The cops sent me down here after somebody started threatening Tyler Preston. Because they had a tip somebody might try to sabotage Andrew Preston’s campaign. And somebody did. My job? To ingratiate myself with any unsavory types. I overdid it. Come on, duck, let’s get you outside into some fresh air.”
He helped Marie to limp outside, and she leaned against the stone wall, her knees weak.
He looked into her eyes. “I suspected Sandy Sanford, but he wouldn’t warm up to me. But another cove did. A plant straight from Jacko’s connections. Chalk. We knew each other a bit from before. He let me know there’d be dirty business. I told him I was up for anything that paid a good price.
“Your Andrew was too smart, love. He’d figured it out. Bullock saw a way to get all that land if Sam and Tyler and Louisa were out of the way. With those three spreads, and the presidency of the Federation, he’d be the most powerful man in Australian racing. And he planned to bring Andrew down, even if murder was what it took. He used Feeney to arrange things, to keep his own hands clean.”
She looked at him accusingly. “But why’d you help kidnap me?”
“It was the last thing I wanted,” he said with intensity. “But conspiracy to murder should put Jacko away for life. Chalk trusted me from the old days, but he started getting suspicious because of you. He said I was to help do away with you. I knew it was a loyalty test. If I didn’t seem to sell you out, he’d have killed me, then you. I had to say yes, if I was going to help you.”
She shook her head wearily. “I still don’t understand.”
“It was Andrew’s cell phone. It couldn’t be tapped, but Ollie put a bug in Andrew’s computer case. It was strong enough to transmit his calls to Feeney. All of them. Feeney knew Andrew was falling for you. He knew you’d be together last night as soon as you arranged it—I warned you not to talk to Preston, not to see him. I wanted you out of here for your own safety.”
He paused and looked at her sadly. “You didn’t listen. You agreed to meet him. And Feeney said it was the perfect time— Jacko wanted it to happen fast. It was only three weeks before the election. And you two were so careful. Who knew when there’d be another chance?”
She felt her face grow hot. He had warned her, repeatedly. Headstrong, she’d defied him. And put his life, as well as her own in danger.
“Yes, you tried,” she said. “But—but who sent you the letter? Who warned you?”
He put his hands on her arms, gripping her tightly. “Nobody sent it. I wrote it myself. To convince you to leave.”
She blinked hard. “You said I was being investigated. That there was untrue information about me.”
“It’s truth. Feeney has people in Darwin. He had them bribe some blokes to swear they’d had their way with you, and that you tried to blackmail ’em. One of ’em had even worked with you. A busboy. So that was the scenario. That you’d try the same blackmail stunt on Andrew, and he’d do you in.”
“And your bringing me to Louisa’s in the first place?” she challenged.
“That truly was for you, love. I never dreamed you’d get mixed up with Preston. I only wanted you to get what was rightfully yours. If I’d known this would happen, I never would have let you come. I’m sorry, love. I am everlastingly sorry.”
From a distance, sh
e heard her name being called. The man’s voice was raw with emotion. She looked and saw Andrew pounding down the road toward her. Right behind him was a Pepper Flats policeman. She turned and started toward Andrew.
“Just a minute, miss,” cautioned an NSW officer stepping outside the building. “You’re bruised and bleeding. We better take a look at you.”
“Look while I’m running,” she retorted and sprinted off with astonishing speed even though her gait was uneven.
“Is she always that stubborn?” asked the officer.
Reynard smiled ironically. “She gets it from her granny.”
Andrew and Marie met with such force that they collided and fell, embracing and laughing and crying and kissing in the dusty road.
“Jacko Bullock had me kidnapped,” she said in a rush. “He wanted me strangled and you framed. Look. They were even going to use this to help make it seem like you.” She waggled the charm to show him.
Stunned, he stared at it. “They would have used that—good God.”
“Reynard was the one who said he’d kill me. But he was a plant. He says he’s some kind of informer or something—he cut my ropes. He saved me….”
“But he let all this happen to you?” Andrew demanded.
She glanced up the road and saw Reynard making his way toward them. “Yes, but he saved me. He was wearing a wire, and they’ve got evidence on tape that’ll convict Jacko and his flunkies and probably bring down a whole bunch of people.”
“I don’t care,” Andrew replied, rising grimly to his feet and drawing her up beside him.
Reynard reached them and extended his hand toward Andrew. “Marie had a few bad hours, mate, but everything’s going to be fine. All’s well that ends well.”
“It will be shortly,” said Andrew, and punched Reynard so hard he knocked him flat on his back. Marie clutched Andrew to keep him from further violence.
Reynard sat up and rubbed his jaw. “I suppose I deserve that. I suppose I do. Well, Andrew, you must have word of the pictures by now. The whole county will see them before all this comes out. Be sure of it.” He gestured at the officers surrounding the shack and the men carrying a stretcher with Chalk strapped to it. “Hope I didn’t kill him,” he murmured almost to himself. “Gets messy, that.”
He turned and squinted up at Andrew, rubbing his chin again. “Anyway, if you know about the pictures, there’s something I’d like to know.”
Andrew knotted his fist and growled, “What?”
“They show you smooching Marie up and going into the Whoops-A-Daisy Inn. Are you going to make an honest woman of my poor, disgraced niece?”
Andrew blinked at the words, looked at Marie and seized her possessively by the shoulders. “Want to be an honest woman?” he asked.
“Convince me,” she said, winding her arms around his neck. He kissed her hungrily.
“I don’t think much would get accomplished around here without me,” sighed Reynard. “But what thanks do I get? I believe my tooth’s cracked. This is how the crime fighter is paid for putting his life on the line? I despair of justice.”
That evening, in Louisa’s library, Andrew, Marie, Reynard and Hans Gerhart explained Jacko’s plot to Louisa. She sat, queenlike, in an antique armchair. The four of them stood solemnly before her.
Shamefaced, hardly able to meet Louisa’s eyes, Marie confessed about the letter from Willadene Gates.
“I shouldn’t have come,” she said. “Or I should have come to you and been honest from the start. I’m very ashamed. But I won’t ever pursue this matter further. I ask nothing of you except your forgiveness, if you can find it in your heart. I’m going back to Darwin where I belong.”
Louisa gripped the arms of her chair more tightly. She said nothing.
Reynard spoke up. “It was me that made her do it. It took everything I had to make her give it a try. The idea was mine, not hers. But I wanted, for once in her life, for her to have a break. For she’s a good girl, she is. The finest. The best.”
“And you,” Louisa said, narrowing her eyes at him, “lie and sell information for a living. You pretend to be what you aren’t. You beguile and flatter—and betray.”
“Well, ma’am,” said Gerhart, “he does do it for the authorities. And it’s extremely dangerous work.”
“I would have given anything if it hadn’t gone as far as it did, madame. I will forever regret the deceit I inflicted on you, and the anguish I caused Marie.”
Slowly Louisa rose from her chair. She stepped up and stared into Reynard’s face. Then she drew back her arm and smashed the back of her hand as hard as she could across his mouth.
Marie gasped, Andrew put his hand on her shoulder, and Gerhart said nothing.
“That,” said Louisa, “is for putting her in danger. You’re lucky I don’t have my riding crop, you glib bastard, or I’d whip you senseless.”
“I have no doubt you would, Miss. And you would have every right. I am an insufferable knave.”
Louisa glowered at him. “You could have gotten my granddaughter killed. And yourself, too, you fool. And you didn’t deceive me. Not by a long shot.”
She turned to Marie. “I suspected you were my daughter’s daughter. I suspected from the first.”
Marie’s mouth dropped open, and Andrew blinked hard in surprise. Louisa glanced at Gerhart, and then stared at Andrew. “You’re not the only person who can hire a detective, you know.”
She paused and turned back to Marie. The strength that anger had given her suddenly drained from her. She sat down weakly in her chair and let her eyes drop to her gnarled hands.
“I had a child. I was told it died. I believed it. My parents told me it was for the best. That it was a mercy. I would never have to worry about its fate. Or anyone knowing the shameful thing I’d done. For in those days, it was very shameful.”
She paused, knotting her fingers together tightly. “I was only…sixteen. Sixteen. And when I came home, the boy I’d loved no longer loved me. He’d married my sister. My very own sister.”
She looked up, meeting Marie’s eyes. “I felt betrayed. I was glad that I didn’t have a baby by him. And he never knew. My parents would never speak of it, except once my mother told me that my sister Betty must never know. It was too scandalous. It would wound her.”
Louisa turned her gaze to the window as if staring back through the past. “I never felt the same about my family after that. Not for a long time. But after my parents died, I began to wonder if the hospital and my parents had told me the truth. If the child—the little girl—had lived.”
She was silent a moment, then said, “It took me many years to work up my courage. But I consulted a detective, a very discreet detective. And he found that the little girl had lived. She’d been adopted by a family in Darwin. A family named Lafayette. My daughter was grown and had a daughter of her own.
“He gave me some photos he’d taken of her without her knowledge. And of the place where she lived. And I knew she’d had a hard life. It showed. Oh, how it showed.”
She raised her eyes to meet Marie’s again. “And I was too cowardly to go to her, write to her. Until that moment, I’d never known I was a coward. But I was.”
She shook her head and stared into her lap. “One hears stories of adopted children happily reunited with a birth parent. And one hears of reunions that are disastrous, full of disillusion and recriminations and resentment.
“Would she resent me? Hate me? She was poor, and I was rich. Would she pretend to like me for the money and secretly despise me? I visualized ghastly scenarios. Me—old, helpless, in her power, and her paying me back for everything I’d caused…
“And so, I did nothing. And I decided to seek out Betty’s children instead. It was so much simpler.”
She tossed Reynard a sharp look. “Reynard Lafayette? I never made a connection between you and Colette. Until you contacted Mrs. Lipton about Marie. Reynard, I always thought you a fast-talking rascal, the wheels in your head always turni
ng. When you tried to finagle getting her into my house, I wondered if you and she had some sort of designs on me and my money. Perhaps Colette had known of me and wanted nothing to do with me. But Marie? Did she know?
“Marie, the instant Mrs. Lipton told me about you, I thought you must be Colette’s daughter. When I saw you, I was almost certain. But you didn’t tell me. I didn’t know what you were up to. All along,” she said, “we’ve played a game of cat and mouse. I sometimes wasn’t sure which of us was the cat and which the mouse.”
Louisa sat very straight again. “Marie, ten years ago I put a provision in my will for Colette and you. I could not face giving you myself. But I could give you money. I watched and provoked and tested you, trying to discover your motives. And to decide if I should write you out of the will for being a cunning little gold digger.”
Marie’s body tensed, and her heart thudded against her breastbone. “I didn’t even know if you were my grandmother. Or if I wanted you to be, to tell the truth.”
For the first time, Louisa smiled, wryly and knowingly. “Yes. That’s what I finally realized. I was trying to see if you were worth recognizing. And you were doing the same damned thing to me. Oh, you’ve got more of me in you than you know, my girl.”
Marie sucked in her breath in astonishment and could say nothing.
“You’ll get your inheritance, my girl. More than the original amount. There’s plenty for Megan and Patrick and Wesley—and my granddaughter. Come here, Marie, my kith and kin.”
Marie moved toward her, Louisa rose, and the two women embraced. Louisa held her long and tightly. “Go back to Darwin if you must,” Louisa said, her voice unsteady, “but if you do, come back here often to see an unpleasant old woman who’s grown quite fond of you.”
She looked over Marie’s shoulder at Reynard. “As for your odious yet inventive uncle,” Louisa said, “I’ll send him to the United States to see if his tinnitus can be cured. It will, of course, be a waste of money, but I owe him something, I suppose. Including giving him a good whack on the skull with my stoutest walking stick.”
The Secret Heiress Page 23