“I never joke when it comes to my brother. But Xavier is very smart and his survival instincts are well honed. If he has committed murder, you can bet he didn’t leave any evidence. I guess that’s the good news for us. It’s highly unlikely that Xavier will ever be arrested.”
Patricia’s shoulders straightened. “Something has to be done about him.”
“I know.” He turned toward the closet and selected a shirt.
“Soon.”
“Soon,” he promised. “I’ll talk to Mom and Dad. They’ve always been able to handle him in the past.”
“We can’t let him destroy your future.”
“Trust me, Mom and Dad won’t let that happen.”
His wife was damn near perfect, Travis thought, buttoning the shirt. There was just one small thing that worried him. He was pretty sure that if she decided he had too much baggage in the form of a dangerous brother, she would bail.
Women like Patricia did not hang around with losers.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Of course I remember you, Madeline.” Heather Lambrick emerged from the steamy restaurant kitchen, wiping her hands on her chef’s apron. “Welcome to the Crab Shack.” She pulled Madeline into a warm hug. “I was so sorry to hear about your grandmother. I always liked her. She gave me a job when I really needed one, you know.”
“I miss her,” Madeline said.
“We always miss the good people. That’s how it’s supposed to be.” Heather stepped back and gave Madeline a head-to-toe assessment. “My goodness, how you’ve changed. You were just a kid when you left Cooper Island.”
Heather was in her midfifties. Madeline remembered her as a hardworking single mother who had always looked exhausted and more than a little frazzled. To support her son she had held down two jobs. Days, she had been behind the counter at the Crab Shack. In the evenings, she had worked the dinner shift at the Aurora Point.
“It’s good to see you again, Heather.” Madeline smiled. “You look great.”
Heather did look great. She was flushed from the heat of the kitchen, but it was obvious she was no longer the desperate, anxious woman she had been eighteen years ago. Now she looked like a person in command of her own life.
Madeline was suddenly very conscious of the curious glances that Heather was giving Jack.
“This is Jack Rayner,” Madeline said quickly. “He’s a consultant in the hotel industry. I’ve asked him to help me decide what to do with Aurora Point.”
Heather beamed. “A pleasure, Jack.”
He nodded. “Heather.” He glanced toward the kitchen. “Whatever you’ve got going on in there sure smells good.”
Heather glowed. “It’s my own special seafood chowder. Comes with sourdough bread.”
“That’s what I’ll have,” Jack said. “At least to start.”
Heather chuckled. “Don’t you want to look at the menu first?”
“Sure, but I already know I want the chowder.”
“Sounds good to me, too,” Madeline said.
“You got it.” Heather waved Madeline and Jack toward a booth. “Have a seat. I’ll send Trisha over to take the rest of your order. We’re not very busy tonight, but the town will be filling up for the weekend starting tomorrow. Cooper Cove has changed since you left. We pull in a lot of tourists on the weekends.”
“I saw the new shops and taverns,” Madeline said.
Heather disappeared into the kitchen and reappeared on the other side of the service window.
“I suppose you heard the news that Travis Webster is getting ready to run for Congress?” she said.
Madeline sank into the red vinyl booth. “I heard.”
“There’s going to be a big event at Webster’s place out on Cooper Point later this week. The whole island is invited. You know, hometown-boy-goes-to-the-other-Washington thing.”
“Will you be doing the catering?”
“Are you kidding? No way.” Heather rolled her eyes. “They’re bringing in outsiders from Seattle. The local talent isn’t good enough to impress a lot of rich potential donors and the media. But we’ll get plenty of spillover. People gotta eat.”
The young waitress cruised over. “Get you anything from the bar?”
Jack ordered a beer.
“Whatever red you’re serving by the glass will be fine for me,” Madeline said.
“On it.”
The waitress hustled off and disappeared into the adjoining tavern.
Madeline watched Heather moving around on the other side of the service window.
“You know, Grandma always said you’d be running your own restaurant someday, Heather. She told me that you were forever asking questions and watching to see how things were done in the kitchen.”
Heather raised her graying brows. “Did she tell you that she gave me the no-interest loan I needed to buy this place after the owner died?”
“No, she never mentioned it.” Madeline’s vision suddenly got a little blurry with unshed tears. “Grandma always did have an eye for talent.”
“Thanks, but like I said, she was a good person.” Heather shook her head. “Can’t believe you got here yesterday and found Tom Lomax dead.”
“News travels fast.”
Heather snorted. “Small towns.” She paused to peer through the opening. “They say poor Tom surprised an intruder.”
“Apparently.”
“What a shame.” Heather shook her head again. “Tom was always a little weird, but harmless.”
“One of the police officers mentioned that Tom might have become more eccentric than ever.”
“Yeah?” Heather looked surprised. “If you ask me, he seemed fine the last couple of times I saw him. Better than normal, in fact.”
“How’s that?” Jack asked.
Madeline glanced at him. It was the first time he had become active in the conversation.
Heather paused, as though trying to come up with a good reason for her statement. Finally she shrugged.
“Hard to explain,” she said. “Little things. I saw him coming out of Tally’s barbershop a few months ago. First decent haircut he’d had in years. Looked like he was shaving regularly again, too. I teased him a bit. Asked him if he’d found a girlfriend.”
“How did he react?” Jack asked.
“He turned red, said I should mind my own business, and then he took off in that old rattletrap pickup of his. I felt bad. I shouldn’t have teased him about the girlfriend.”
The front door opened just as the waitress delivered the beer and red wine to the table. A draft of damp night air blew into the restaurant. A handful of people garbed mostly in stylish black and carrying a lot of flashy tech gadgetry trooped into the room. Several were checking their phones for messages. The others were talking to each other in fast, urgent tones that ensured that those who overheard understood that these were Very Important People having Very Important Conversations.
“. . . Back-to-back interviews, no more than five minutes each. We make it clear that Webster is here for a family event . . .”
“. . . Working up a new set of talking points. This is all about quality time with his family . . .”
“. . . Going for the close-knit-family-and-small-town vibe . . .”
One of the men stood out from the crowd, not because of his sleek black clothes or his blond hair but because of the energy in the atmosphere around him. Madeline hadn’t seen Xavier Webster in the past eighteen years, but there was no mistaking Egan and Louisa’s younger son. In his youth, Xavier Webster had been an astonishingly beautiful boy. He was now an incredibly beautiful man with a larger-than-life rock-star vibe. She was pretty sure he had put a few highlights in his hair.
“Bar’s this way, people,” Xavier called out.
He led the crowd into the tavern. His crew followed obediently.
The original Pied Piper, Madeline thought.
“Call it a wild hunch, but I think we’re looking at the Travis Webster campaign team,” Jack said.
“I’d say that’s a very good guess.” Madeline swallowed some of her wine. “We were lucky to get rooms at the B-and-B.” She looked at Heather, who had just emerged from the kitchen with two large bowls of chowder. “Looks like you’re going to be busy tonight, after all.”
Heather winced and set the bowls on the table. “Heard he got into town a couple of days ago. I was sort of hoping he wouldn’t feel the need to eat local.”
“I haven’t seen him since Grandma and I left Cooper Island,” Madeline said.
“Count yourself fortunate.” Heather’s jaw hardened and she lowered her voice. “The only good thing anyone in this town can say about that pretty bastard is that he hasn’t been around much in recent years. Excuse me, I’d better go give Sarah a hand with that crowd. I don’t want her behind the bar on her own, not as long as Xavier is in there.”
“I understand,” Madeline said quietly.
“Let me know if you need any backup,” Jack said.
Heather glanced at him, startled. Then she gave him an approving look.
“Thanks,” she said. “With luck he’ll behave himself. After all, the Webster family has a lot riding on Travis’s campaign.”
“Which only gives a guy like Xavier all the more reason to screw things up for his brother,” Madeline said.
Heather exhaled heavily. “Yeah, there is that.” She lowered her voice all the way to a whisper. “Someday, someone is going to do something permanent about Xavier Webster. And that day can’t come too soon if you ask me.”
She hurried away.
Jack folded his arms on the table and gave the tavern doorway a thoughtful look.
“What’s the bad news about Xavier Webster?” he asked.
Madeline folded her napkin into precise origami shapes. “Who knows? When I lived on the island I remember the adults speculating about him. Some thought he was flat-out crazy. Others said he needed help. When he was good, he was very, very good.”
“And when he was bad?”
“He was damned scary. Luckily the family spent most of their time at their home in Seattle in those days, so we only saw them on occasional weekends and summer vacations. But that was more than enough, believe me. Eventually we heard that Xavier had been shipped off to some fancy boarding school. Everyone on the island breathed a sigh of relief. Unfortunately, he still showed up here from time to time.”
“He was trouble?”
“Oh, yeah. He was in his early teens when I knew him. He was very smart and very clever. There were some bad incidents, but somehow they were never his fault.”
“What kind of incidents?”
“Xavier liked to play with fire—literally. And he liked to hurt things. One day Daphne and I found the remains of some poor cat on the beach. It was obvious that . . . Never mind. I can’t even talk about it. We were pretty sure it was Xavier who had tortured the cat, but no one could prove it. Still, everyone knew to keep an eye on him. Then one day he got careless. Tom Lomax caught him trying to set fire to one of the Aurora Point cottages. There were guests inside at the time. It was late at night. They were all sound asleep. If Tom hadn’t spotted Xavier—”
“What happened?”
“Tom went to Grandma, who went straight out to Cliff House.”
“Cliff House?”
“The Webster family compound. I don’t know what she said to Egan and Louisa Webster, but whatever it was, the family packed up and returned to Seattle the next day. It was shortly after that we learned Xavier had been sent off to some exclusive school.”
“Take a deep breath. He’s coming this way.”
“And here I thought this day couldn’t get any worse.”
“Madeline Chase, I didn’t recognize you when we came in a few minutes ago.” Xavier swooped across the restaurant like some brilliantly plumaged bird of prey. His smile dazzled. “You sure turned out great. Good to see you again.” Without warning, the too-vivid pleasure on his face metamorphosed into an expression of sincere sympathy. “Heard about your grandmother. So sorry. A real tragedy.”
Xavier had grown up to be a shockingly good actor, Madeline thought. When he was a kid the mask had slipped from time to time. But it was clear that in the intervening years he had perfected his talent.
“Xavier,” she said.
She kept her own tone as cool as possible in an effort to end the conversation before it could get off the ground. Jack watched Xavier the way any sensible man would watch a poisonous snake.
“Hey, is that any way to greet an old friend?” Xavier reached down, grabbed Madeline around the shoulders, and hauled her up out of her seat. “Don’t I at least get a kiss?”
For a beat she was too stunned to react. Xavier’s hands were gripping her very tightly. She was caught, trapped, overwhelmed by his superior strength. Panic and rage flashed through her.
“Let me go,” she hissed through clenched teeth. “Let. Me. Go.”
He ignored the command and hauled her against his chest. She caught a glimpse of vicious triumph in his eyes. Instinctively she brought up her hands to try to push him away.
There was a blur of movement at the corner of her eye. Jack was coming up out of his seat.
In the next instant she was free, staggering backward, clutching the back of the booth to catch her balance.
She was dimly aware of a heavy thud. She looked down and saw that Xavier was sprawled on the floor. Jack had kicked his legs out from under him.
It was all over in a couple of heartbeats, but she knew from the icy fury in Xavier’s glacial blue eyes that there would be repercussions.
Other people were just starting to notice the commotion. The scattered diners turned their heads, trying to figure out what had happened. Heather appeared in the tavern doorway. She took in the scene in a single glance. She looked stricken.
“My fault,” Jack said easily. “I’m sorry about that. These booths are a tight fit, aren’t they? Lost my balance.” He reached down as though offering to help Xavier to his feet. “Didn’t mean to stumble into you like that. Name’s Jack Rayner, by the way. Tell you what, let me buy you a drink by way of apology.”
Madeline held her breath. She knew everyone else in the vicinity was doing the same. For one tense moment it looked as if Xavier might not take the face-saving way out that was being offered. Something dark and menacing flared in his eyes.
But he did not lose control.
Ignoring Jack’s extended hand, he rolled to his feet and dusted himself off. For a split second his features twisted into a mask of raw fury. But in the next instant he was suddenly smiling his neon-bright smile.
“Clumsy bastard, aren’t you?” he said in a chatty tone. “You might want to be careful in the future. There are a lot of dangerous places on Cooper Island. We usually lose a couple of tourists every year.” He turned back to Madeline. “I’ll catch up with you later, Maddie. It will be fun, hmm? I hear you recently inherited your grandmother’s hotel chain. Nice.”
He walked away without a backward glance and vanished through the tavern doorway.
Madeline realized that she was shivering with reaction. She dropped onto the vinyl seat and reached for her wine. Jack sat down, watching her intently. Everyone else in the room suddenly went back to whatever they had been doing, but the conversations were a little louder than they had been prior to the small, tense scene.
“Are you all right?” Jack asked quietly.
“Yes.” She took a deep breath. “Thank you. But I’m afraid it isn’t over.”
“No,” Jack said. “Guys like that can’t let anything go.”
Madeline gulped a little wine and put the glass down very carefully. “This is not good, J
ack. I appreciate what you did, believe me, but now you’ve made yourself a target.”
“That was pretty much the point of the exercise,” Jack said.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Madeline sat on the edge of the bed and watched Jack prowl through her room, checking the locks on the windows and the door. Satisfied, he went to the connecting door that separated his room from hers and opened it.
“You’ve had a long day,” he said. “Try to get some sleep.”
“Sure,” she said. She knew she wasn’t going to get much sleep, but there was no good reason to whine about it.
“I’ll leave this door ajar,” he said. “If I hear anything that doesn’t sound right in your room, I’ll come in and check, okay?”
“Okay.” She made a face. “No, it’s not okay. I’m worried, Jack.”
“About Xavier Webster?”
“About you. Xavier looked like he had some control tonight, but the thing is, he was always sneaky as a kid. I told you, he rarely got caught. Now that he’s an adult I’ve got a hunch that he’s probably even better at hiding in the shadows.”
Jack contemplated her for a long moment.
“This isn’t the first time I’ve dealt with a bastard like Xavier Webster,” he said finally. “Let me do my job.”
She winced. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to imply you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s just that guys like Xavier are scary.”
“And you don’t like feeling that you need someone else to protect you. It makes you feel vulnerable.”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Everyone is vulnerable to something. The trick is to recognize your own weaknesses and blind spots so that you can come up with a way to protect them. In this case you did the smart thing and brought in a professional. That’s what smart people do when they’re facing situations outside their sphere of competence.”
She smiled. “Do you have to give that lecture to every client?”
“Only the stubborn ones.”
“Good night,” she said.
“Good night.”
He went into the other room and pulled the door almost but not quite shut behind him.
Secret Sisters Page 8