by Lisa Jackson
Except that she needed him. If she were ever going to get to the truth.
Refusing to dwell on Zachary, she twisted the doorknob and turned, but the bolt was drawn and she couldn’t peek inside. Not that it would help. The room had probably been redecorated three times over since the night Zach was beaten to a pulp. How much of this story was true? How much fabrication? How much exaggerated by the old man in the lobby?
Zach seemed to hold the key to what happened that night, but he’d been evasive with her, suspicious of her motives. Somehow she had to gain his trust. Not an easy task, she thought, as she stepped into the Orion’s mirrored elevator car and slapped the button for the door to close.
As agreed, Jack Logan sat in the darkened booth of the Red Eye Café, a small dive near the airport. It was a smoky bar that he’d used before when he didn’t want to be recognized. He spied Jason Danvers and swore under his breath. The man was dressed in a double-breasted suit, for crying out loud, and he’d pulled up in his Jag.
“Why didn’t you just put a neon sign on your back?” Logan growled, nursing his glass of McNaughton’s.
“What?”
“You stick out like a fucking sore thumb.”
Danvers frowned. “I don’t intend to be here very long.”
“Neither do I.”
Jason ordered a whiskey on the rocks and waited until the waitress left the drink and picked up the bills. Ignoring the drink, he reached into his jacket and pulled out the tape, which he slid across the table to Logan.
“What’s this?”
“I hope nothing.” Jason filled Logan in on all the details.
“How many copies of this are floating around?”
“God only knows. She gave me one, and I gave a copy to Sweeny.”
“None to the police?”
“Not yet. I thought you could check it out.”
“Should go to the station.”
“Too many leaks. I turn it in and it’ll be on the six o’clock news.”
Logan grunted. He couldn’t argue with that logic. “I’ll see what I can do, but she’s been nosing around.”
Jason froze. “What do you mean?”
“She’s called my house a dozen times and even came up the front walk.”
“You talked to her?”
“Not yet.”
“Shit!” He ran a hand through his hair. “This is worse than I thought.”
“You worried about her?”
Jason’s gaze darted around the bar. “Hell, yes, I’m worried.”
“Think she’s London?”
“No!”
“But you’re not sure.”
“Nothing’s sure, Logan.”
“Looks just like your stepmother.” The two men glared at each other for a second, sharing a secret neither wanted revealed, then Jason finished his drink.
“Just don’t talk to her and find out what you can. If she goes public, we’ll give the tape to the police.”
“But not before.”
“Nope.”
“You say Sweeny’s in on this?”
“In Montana right now. Checking out her story. He called yesterday.”
“He’s an asshole.”
“Work with him on this, okay? Keep your ear to the ground and your mouth shut. If the police get wind of the story, let me know.” Jason left a twenty on the table and swaggered outside.
“Bastard,” Logan muttered under his breath as he quickly exchanged the twenty for a five.
Manny was right. The ranch could run itself. Zach didn’t need to be here. Once again he wasn’t needed. The story of his life. He smiled grimly to himself as he walked across the dusting of new-fallen snow to the shed where Manny was repairing a tractor. Tools lined the walls, a stained workbench stretched along a far wall, and the smell of oil and dust hung in the air.
Light flickered from fluorescent tubes and Manny, cursing to himself, was half lying under the tractor’s engine. “Damned fool think,” he muttered, working on the fuel line.
“How’s it going?” Zach asked.
“Like hell.” He gave the wrench another tug, then grunted. Satisfied with his work, he crawled out from under the tractor and pulled himself upright.
A full-blooded Paiute, Manny was a tall man with smooth, burnished skin, long braids beginning to gray, and a face usually devoid of expression. He found his black cowboy hat on the seat of the tractor and plopped it onto his head. “I thought I told you to stay in the city where you belong.” Manny wiped a rag over his greasy hands.
“Couldn’t stand it.”
Manny flashed a grin that showed teeth rimmed in gold. “Don’t blame you. The only reasons to go into town are women and whiskey. You can get those here.”
He thought of Adria. Right now women were dangerous. Especially a woman claiming to be his half-sister. Whiskey was definitely safer.
Together they walked out of the shed. The sky was a gray shade of blue, the air crisp, and dark-bellied clouds collected to the west, hanging along the rigid skyline of the Cascades.
“Family business all taken care of?” Manny asked.
Somewhere in the distance a horse neighed.
“It’ll never be,” Zach said. If not Adria, then another imposter would show up. For the rest of his life Zach would meet women pretending to be London Danvers. He just hoped they didn’t get to him the way this one did. He knew that one of the reasons he’d driven like a madman over the mountains was to put some distance between him and her, to run back here where he could clear his head.
“Got a buyer for the two-year-old steers.”
“All of them?” Zach asked, trying to forget about the woman who claimed to be his half-sister.
“Couple hundred head.”
“A good start.”
“Mmm.”
“Come on inside—I’ll buy you breakfast and you can bring me up-to-date.”
He spent the day at the ranch, reviewing the books, checking offers to buy and sell livestock as well as land, then rode through some of the fields. The water pump for the house and outbuildings was going out, the roof of one of the sheds was leaking like a sieve, there was a fight with the government over harvesting some of the ancient pine, and one of their regular customers who bought hundreds of head of cattle every year was delinquent on his payments. There had been an outbreak of a cattle virus in the next county and several ranchers in the area were concerned. Zach was supposed to attend a local meeting of the Cattlemen’s Association in Bend, and order the feed and supplies to get the ranch through the winter.
“Same old, same old,” Manny said as they drove through the fields and spotted a break in the fence where cattle could escape. It was true. Though there were problems at the ranch, they weren’t insurmountable. Manny and the hands could keep the place going should Zach have to return to Portland.
He stopped by his office in Bend and found that work was slow, as it had been ever since he’d turned his attention to refurbishing the old hotel. He made a few phone calls, met with a couple of realtors interested in starting a new resort development around a golf course, and conferred with his secretary, Terry, a petite, red-haired woman of thirty who was expecting her third child come February. Efficient to the point that she could run the office blindfolded, she knew Zach as well as anyone.
“So how’s city life?” she asked when he walked back into the office. She was seated behind the desk, a pencil tucked over her ear, a neglected cup of coffee near the typewriter. She was studying a bank statement and little lines of worry crinkled her freckled forehead.
“Not great.”
“Jason called.” She sat back in her desk chair and it protested with a groan.
“Here?”
“He tried the ranch. You weren’t in. Manny told him you’d come into town, so he tried tracking you down here. Said it was urgent that he talk to you.”
“With Jason it’s always urgent.”
“He was more insistent than usual.” She set her glasses on
the desk, grabbed her half-full cup and stood. Rubbing a kink in her back, she walked to the coffeepot warming on the hot plate and lifted the glass carafe. “Want a cup? It’s just decaf.”
Zach shook his head. “Thanks just the same.”
Pouring some of the weak coffee in to her mug, she asked, “So why does Jason think he needs you back in Portland—the hotel?”
“Yeah, that’s probably it,” Zach said, but he guessed that the problem was Adria Nash. No doubt he’d have to drive back to the city. Resentment boiled through his blood. He didn’t want to see Adria again, didn’t want to deal with all the conflicting emotions she inspired.
He grabbed the handle of the coffeepot and poured himself some of the tasteless decaf as the telephone rang and Terry answered.
With a sweet smile, she said, “He’ll be with you in a second,” and snapped the hold button. “It’s your brother dear again and he’s fit to be tied.”
“Why?”
“Something about ‘the shit hitting the fan’.” She went back to the bank statement and Zach walked into his office. Kicking the door shut, he reached for the phone and sat on a corner of the desk.
“Hello?”
“Where the hell have you been?” Jason demanded, and Zach couldn’t miss the agitation in his voice.
“What’s the problem?”
“You know what the problem is. It’s Adria! I think she’s going to run to the papers with her story.”
“She told you this?”
“In so many words.”
Zach felt his shoulder muscles pull together into hard, tight knots. “What happened?”
“I called her. Offered her a little more money.”
“And she got pissed.”
“Beyond pissed.”
“Christ, Jason, you never back down, do you?” He was on his feet without even thinking about it.
“Just get back here.”
“And clean up your mess.”
“Do whatever it takes, Zach. You’re in this as deep as the rest of us!”
Anthony Polidori didn’t like his breakfast disturbed. In his later years, he felt as if an intrusion upon his meals or his sleep was a personal affront and he left strict instructions with everyone in the household that he was not to be interrupted. Even by his son.
He sat in the bay window of the morning room overlooking the river and picked at his croissant with idle fingers as he scanned the newspaper for sports scores from the day before. The day was bright for late October, and he wore sunglasses to protect his eyes.
Mario sauntered into the room carrying a mug. His hair was disheveled and he hadn’t yet shaved. He looked like hell as he poured himself a cup of coffee from the silver carafe on the table. Mario was uncivilized—he had no manners.
Anthony didn’t bother hiding his irritation. He folded the sports section of the Oregonian and set it by his glass of juice. “What is it?” His son wasn’t usually up by noon.
“Big news.” Mario flashed his killer smile—the one that got him into all the trouble with the women. He walked to the glass wall facing west and watched a barge being pushed upriver by a tugboat.
“It must be, to get you out of bed while the sun’s still up.”
Mario snorted, then plopped into the wrought-iron chair opposite his father. “I think you want to hear this.”
“I’m waiting.”
“Looks like there’s a new lady in town.”
“This is news?”
Mario slowly poured a thin stream of cream into his coffee. “Could be. Claims she’s London Danvers.”
Behind his sunglasses, Anthony’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully “This isn’t news. It’s predictable.”
Mario’s dark eyes twinkled and he reached over and stole the fruit cup his father always saved for the last part of his meal. Annoyed, Anthony motioned to the maid, who had already anticipated his request and was scurrying off to the kitchen.
“There’s always someone claiming to be London.”
Mario rubbed the stubble on his jaw. “But you should see this one. She’s the fuckin’ spittin’ image of her old lady. Katherine—wasn’t that her name?”
Anthony’s spine stiffened a bit. He didn’t like foul language—not at the table, and he wasn’t in the mood to be jerked around by his son. It was hard to read Mario these days. “So she resembles—”
“Not only resembles—the way I hear it, she’s a mirror image!”
Anthony set down his fork as the maid brought a second cup of fruit and a plate for Mario. He was enjoying himself, grinning as he sliced into a fat sausage, ignoring all sense of decorum as he set his elbows on the table.
“Maybe I should meet—what’s-her-name?”
“Adria Nash. Hails from some hick town in Montana. I’ve got a couple of guys working on it.”
“How’d you find out about her? I haven’t seen a word in the paper or heard anything on the news.”
“She hasn’t gone public yet, but probably will. One of our men spotted her at the grand opening of the hotel. She came in with Zach Danvers, then made the rounds meeting the ‘family.’” Mario took a sip from his cup. “Jason nearly hit the roof.”
“I’ll bet,” Anthony said dryly. “How authentic is she?”
“Could be the real thing.” Mario skewered his father with a hard look. “You know, lots of people think you kidnapped the girl.”
Anthony picked up the remainder of his croissant. “If I’d taken her, do you think she’d be walking up to the Danvers family right now and announcing that she was their long-lost sister?” He saw his son blanch and felt a glimmer of satisfaction. “What does Trisha think? Is she worried?” he asked coldly.
A small muscle worked in the side of Mario’s cheek. “How should I know?”
“Aren’t you still seeing her?”
“You took care of that a long time ago,” his son said with more than a trace of bitterness.
“Trisha Danvers is like the rest of them. She doesn’t give up. Not ever. When she wants something, she goes for it, and, my boy, she wants you. She always has, and she also used you to get back at her father. You were a pawn, son.”
Mario’s eyes sparked with a deadly rage.
Anthony snapped his newspaper open and wondered about the woman who called herself London Danvers. He’d have to find out everything there was to know about her. “Maybe we should invited Miss Nash over,” he said, flicking a gaze over the top of the paper. Mario had elbowed his plate aside and was brooding.
“Why?”
“For old time’s sake.”
“Witt’s dead. What could it mean to you?”
Anthony didn’t bother answering. How could he explain to his son that feuds never ended? No matter how many of the players died, the vengeance continued and festered. As long as there was anyone named Danvers left in Portland, Anthony wouldn’t be satisfied.
He was pleased with the news that another London Danvers had shown up.
Adria knocked on the door of the small apartment in Tigard, a suburb just over the west hills of Portland. Within minutes she saw a dark eye in the peephole and quickly the bolt was thrown. The door opened and a small Chicano woman with graying black hair twisted into a bun and incredibly white teeth stood over the threshold.
“Mrs. Santiago?”
“For the love of Mary,” the woman whispered, crossing her ample bosom. “You are the image of the missus.”
“Could I come in?” Adria asked. She’d already called the woman, Maria Santiago, who had worked for the Danvers family until her retirement shortly after Witt’s death. She’d explained her business and Maria had reluctantly agreed to see her.
“Please, please—” Maria stepped out of the way and waved her inside the tiny rooms. “Sit down.”
Adria perched on the edge of a floral couch that was worn around the edges and Maria settled into a rocker by the window and put her feet onto a stool.
Adria had already explained on the phone why she was in Portland
. She’d sketched out her story, explaining that she was adopted, that she wanted to find her roots, that all the records were destroyed, and Maria, obviously lonely, had offered to speak with her.
“I don’t mean to ask you to break confidences,” Adria said, “but there’s just so much I don’t know about the Danvers family. I thought you could help me.”
Maria rubbed her chin and stared out the window to the parking lot. “A few years ago, I would not have said a word,” she admitted, “but then, the mister, he died, and Jason, he fired me. Now—” She rubbed her hands anxiously together. “What is it you want to know?”
“Everything.”
“Ahh. That would take some time. There is so much.”
Adria couldn’t believe her good luck. She smiled at the pleasant little woman. “I’ve got the rest of my life,” she said and sat back to listen.
It was nearly ten o’clock by the time she returned to the Orion and her head, as well as her tiny tape recorder, was filled with facts about the Danvers family, secrets, and the answer to some mysteries, including the feud with the Polidoris.
She considered celebrating with a glass of wine and a hot bath in the hotel room because tomorrow she’d have to move to a cheaper, and less high-profile, place. After settling in, she had other important business to attend to. Since the Danvers family wouldn’t recognize her, it was time to go to the police and press. As soon as she found a more permanent address, she’d contact the authorities and grant an interview with someone from the local newspaper to start the ball rolling. Then, of course, she’d have to speak with the lawyers for Witt’s estate. She wasn’t looking forward to any of the interviews, but she’d get through them.