The door to the executive suite swung open, and Andy and Kenneth stepped out. The young man stalked down the hallway without a word, disappearing down the stairs.
Jeremey turned to me and nodded. “Thank you for the ear, Laura.” Then he followed Kenneth.
Chapter Nine
Andy gave me the camera and had me upload the files to Danielle’s desktop for safe keeping. It wasn’t that we didn’t trust the Jepsens—a family that could afford to travel to England in the winter and Paraiso in the late spring could more than afford a high-end digital camera—but the pictures seemed too important to leave to chance.
They were the only evidence of what had happened to Harold Jepsen.
When I was finished transferring the photos, I stowed the camera in the drawer and went back downstairs. Danielle and Granny were in the kitchen putting the finished touches on dinner, which apparently included elaborate toppings and a fair amount of cilantro.
“Burrito bowls?’ I asked.
“Mako shark tacos with cilantro lime rice and individual servings of black bean soup,” Danielle said. “None of them really ate their breakfast, and nobody wanted lunch. By the time dinner rolls around, they’ll be ready to eat each other.”
“Speaking of, is there lunch for us? I haven’t eaten since this morning. Actually… I’m not even sure I ate then.”
Danielle pointed toward the back porch. “Out there with Ashley. After you eat, I’ll need both of you to move some stuff up to the main house. We need everybody to stay under one roof to ease the strain on the generator.”
“Gotcha.” I wasn’t looking forward to spending the night in a house full of strangers, but Danielle was right. Running the air conditioner at full blast in the executive suite was going to burn through our gasoline supply.
It would be a disaster if we ran out before the storm let up. A very expensive disaster.
Ash was lounging on the back porch sofa. There were a plate of quesadillas, a pitcher of sweet tea, and two glasses in front of her. Judging by the stiff texture of the former and the lack of ice in the latter, I figured she had been out there a while.
“That bad, huh?” I sat down in the old easy chair across from her and grabbed the empty glass. Man, gathering evidence was thirstier work than I remembered.
“Danielle chewed me out pretty good for giving off bad vibes.” Ashley shrugged and tossed her quesadilla quarter onto the platter. “It didn’t seem to bother them that much last night.”
“She’s just tense,” I said. “Once the storm lets up and the Jepsens are on their way, Danielle will calm back down.”
“Yeah… I’m sure you’re right,” Ashley said. Even so, she was quiet for the rest of lunch.
After I’d eaten my fill of half-melted cheese wrapped in cold tortillas, we ran back to the garden cottage, grabbed Coral, and packed enough clothes to last a few days plus a change to replace the ones we’d just soaked. By the time we’d put Coral and our things in the office, freshened up, and changed, it was dinner time.
Ashley was assigned to plating duty in the kitchen with Danielle. Granny was on baby duty in the apartment above the garage. That left me and Andrew to serve Kenneth and the Jepsens in the dining room.
One by one the guests filed in. Emily Jepsen had changed into a chambray shirtdress for dinner. The rest of the family still wore the same clothes they had when I saw them earlier, but Tabitha had pulled her curly hair back into a ponytail. They took their seats at the dinner table. An LED lantern at the center of the table cast a golden glow over the diners.
Andy and I moved around the table serving first the food, then white wine for the adults, a high-end sparkling grape juice for the minors, and glasses of lemon water and sweet tea all around.
“Danielle is amazing!” Emily leaned over her plate of tacos, inhaled deeply, and rolled her eyes in pure delight. “How can she make a meal that smells this amazing with barely any power?”
A wave of zesty lime marinade wafted to my nose when I set Melody’s plate down on the table. Emily wasn’t joking. It smelled like Dani had outdone herself. I couldn’t wait for dinner service and cleanup to end so I could dig into my own portion.
“My darling is a whiz in the kitchen,” Andy said as he poured Catherine Jepsen a glass of wine. “Cooking is her favorite hobby next to interior decorating.”
“Lucky she married an innkeeper then.” Jeremy pushed the plate of tacos toward the center of the table, opting instead to focus on his soup and lemon water.
“Actually, Andrew is a lawyer,” I said.
Jeremy blinked in surprise. “Oh… I see why you were so adamant about the pictures then.”
“Pictures?” Catherine Jepsen’s shoulders tensed. She looked at Jeremy then Andy before finally settling on me.
“Maybe it’s best we talk about something else,” Jeremy said tightly. “Until after dinner.”
She turned to her brother-in-law, mercifully taking me out of the hot seat. “What pictures, Jeremy?”
“Catie… we’ll discuss it after dinner.”
The siblings-in-law stared at each other across the table. For a few seconds, it didn’t look like either of them would back down. Then Catherine sighed and took a deep sip from her glass of wine.
“I’m going to need another glass of this soon, Andy,” she said. “My compliments on the selection again.”
“I’ll be sure to pass them on to her,” I said. “If you’d like, I can have her write down the name. I think she said it was a Spanish wine.”
“That would be nice,” she said. “Another bottle would be even better.”
The dinner continued in tense silence for a while. Emily and the Jepsen girls devoured their meals just like Danielle predicted.
Jeremy alternated between small sips of water and tiny half-spoonfuls of his soup with shaking fingers. When his bowl was finally empty, he set his spoon down and looked around the table. The other guests had their eyes firmly glued to their plates, as if they might turn into salt or stone if they looked up.
Suddenly, Jeremy slammed his hand on the table. The dishes and glasses rattled from the impact. The LED lantern shook. Everyone looked up.
“Melody, Alexis, would you girls please excuse us?”
The younger Jepsen girls slid out of their chairs, exchanging a look as they slunk toward the door.
“This storm isn’t going to end in the next few minutes,” he said. “And thanks to the luck of most of us being in the same family, we’ll be stuck with each other for a lot longer than that. Too long to be looking over our shoulders when we’re together.”
Kenneth leaned back. “Jeremy, may I speak freely?”
“Of course. I’m not Harold.”
The younger man blinked in surprise. “With all due respect, I’m not family. I was just here to be a fun chaperone for the kids.”
“You were Harold's most trusted assistant. Believe me, for a man like him, that’s as good as family. You know more about where the bodies are buried than any of us.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Catherine mumbled into her glass.
“My point is I spent just as many years building this family and the business that supports it as Harold,” Jeremy continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “As long as I’m breathing, it will never go down without a fight. What I can’t do is keep this thing afloat on my own. We have to start trusting each other. For the sake of the family.”
The table fell silent again. Then Catherine Jepsen lifted her glass.
“To family.” A bitter smile came to her lips. She soothed it by draining the last of the wine from her glass.
Alarm bells started going off in my head. The dinner was in danger of turning into a disaster, and I had no idea how to stop it.
Andy and I exchanged looks. He shrugged and shook his head.
It was Emily Jepsen who broke the tension.
“Well, since we’re talking about family… I have some news.” She reached for her husband's hand. “I’m pregnant!�
�
I waited for the frowns at the table to shift to smiles and laughter. Instead, I saw four stunned faces.
Chapter Ten
Emily Jepsen looked around the table at her silent family members. If their disbelief bothered her, it didn’t show on her face. She brought her husband’s hand up to her lips and pressed a kiss to his swollen fingers.
Jeremy Jepsen swallowed so hard I could see his Adam's apple bob up and down from across the room. “A-are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure!” Emily giggled. “I found out for sure just before we left, and I was going to wait until we got home to say anything. But like I said, I think we can use some good news.”
Jeremy’s brows drew together. Then a smile erupted on his lips, growing until it took up his entire face. He pulled his wife into a tight hug.
I’d never been pregnant myself, and I was in Seattle when Danielle told Andrew she was expecting, but it seemed odd to me that a husband would react to news that his wife was pregnant like that.
Then again, the Jepsen family hadn’t reacted to anything the way I expected them too. Maybe the emotional shock had been too sudden for all of them.
No… that wasn’t it.
Kids were never going to be part of the equation for me. Jeremy Jepsen had hinted at his surprise himself.
“It’s amazing news,” Jeremy said. “But… how? The doctors said… I mean, my whole life, they—”
“Doctors and their doom and gloom,” Emily said, waving a hand and at what I could only assume was an imaginary group of them standing outside the dining room. “They were wrong, and thank God for that!”
Emily leaned back and guided her husband’s hand to her still flat belly.
A dreamy look crept into his eyes. “I’m going to be a dad…”
“Our miracle baby,” Emily said. “In the middle of all this, it just has to be a blessing.”
Catherine Jepsen let out a sound somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. When I turned to look at her, she was reaching for the wine bottle in the center of the table. She emptied it into her glass, shook the bottle to make sure she had the last drop, then slammed it on the table.
“Good news is exactly what we all need. Congratulations, Jeremy, Emily.” The older Mrs. Jepsen lifted her glass then brought it to her lips. She took a deep drink—longer and deeper than her late husband would have approved of, I suspected—and grinned.
Her skin had the dry, sunken look of a middle-aged woman who had spent all day nursing cocktails. But the grin added a brightness to Catherine’s eyes that took years off her face. It was as if she hadn’t just needed the good news, she’d been desperate for it. Like a starving person needed nourishment.
Maybe she was desperate for good news. Her brother-in-law said the Jepsens were on the verge of divorce. For the Loper crew, her husband’s death had been an ugly turn in what we expected to be a routine weekend. What was it for Catherine? A twisted version of the freedom that would have cost her too much the night before?
If I were in her shoes, expensive as they were, I would crave wine and good news too.
Catherine’s approval seemed to put Tabitha and Kenneth at ease. Each of them raised their glasses in a silent toast then took a drink from their glasses.
The sound of the piano trickled in from the hallway over the wind. It was punctuated by giggles from Melody and Alexis Jepsen.
“I think a picnic is in order for the young ladies, since they’ve decided to provide their own entertainment,” Andy said. He grabbed their plates and disappeared into the hall.
“The Jepsen Sisters,” Jeremy said with a grin, stealing a quick kiss from his wife’s hand.
“We’ll have to take them back next spring.” Emily turned back to her soup. “By then, the baby will be here and ready for travel. New York in the spring would be such a lovely first trip.”
“That the baby won’t even remember, Emily,” Catherine said. “Tabitha’s going to be looking at grad schools in the spring, and she’ll have made her top picks by then. Right, Tabby?”
“Actually, I’ve already decided. My top choices are UCLA and Gould at USC.”
“Even better,” Catherine said. “We can rent a beach house, and Tabby can explore the city while you and the baby relax, Emily.”
“Hmm… that does sound tempting. Although heaven knows how much work it will be to get back into a bikini that soon after giving birth.”
Catherine shook her head. “Jeremy, I could choke you! What have you been filling her head with?”
Jeremy held his hands up defensively. “That’s not me, I promise you.”
Emily furrowed her brow. “What isn’t?”
“If Hal were here, he would say that Jepsen women are above being slaves to vulgar fashion. Since he’s not, I’ll say Jeremy is supposed to give you a lovely piece of jewelry as a reward for bearing his child and a nanny to give you some rest.”
“You mean like a push present?”
“Yes, exactly!” Catherine took another deep sip of her wine. “I suggest a diamond bracelet in your personal style. Looking at it will mute any smart comment Jeremy makes about sagging.”
“It’s not Jeremy,” Emily said. “It’s the fact that LA is the land of the eternal twenty-something starlet. The last thing I need is raging hormones and to be surrounded by surgically enhanced fetuses.”
Catherine waggled a finger. “That’s why we rent a house in Malibu with a private beach.”
Kenneth laughed. “Jeremy, maybe we should take this moment while the girls are busy to discuss Harold’s affairs. Because it sounds like Catherine and Emily don’t plan to wait to tap into the estate. A vacation like that is going to cost almost ten thousand in accommodations alone.”
I nearly choked at that number. If this family had the cash for a beach house vacation in Malibu without blinking, they must have thrown wads of cash at Danielle and Andy for exclusive use of the Paradise. No wonder Dani was so obsessed with making a good impression on them!
“There isn’t much to discuss,” Jeremy said with a shrug. “Hal had a good life insurance policy, and his shares reverted to me when he died. The girls all have a trust in their names. Everything else goes to Catherine.”
“You can just rattle all that off the top of your head?” Emily asked. “That’s ghoulish!”
A few months ago, I would have agreed with Emily. But when Charlie Porter had been found dead on the Paradise’s grounds a while back, I’d learned that his business partners had taken a life insurance policy out on him too. It was apparently quite common in business circles. The policy and planted evidence almost led to one of them being convicted of Charlie’s murder.
“It’s how families like ours protect ourselves when things like this happen,” Jeremy said.
“I don't need Daddy’s money.” Tabitha stabbed at her mostly uneaten taco. “Once I finish school and pass the bar—”
“You’re entitled to that money whether you need it or not,” Catherine said sharply.
“But Mom—”
Catherine smacked her hand on the table. “I mean it! I won’t have you turn down your birthright just to spite a dead man.”
She quickly covered her mouth with her hand as if the venom in her own words surprised her. Then Catherine slid to her feet, mumbled an “excuse me,” and disappeared into the hall in the opposite direction of where Andy had gone.
Chapter Eleven
Catherine Jepsen’s departure plunged the room back into tense silence. Tabitha Jepsen looked after her mother with concerned eyes then back down at her plate, her face flushed and her lips pursed. An expression somewhere between pity and concern crossed Kenneth’s face as he looked at Tabby, but then he too turned back to his meal. Even Jeremy, who seconds before was the picture of a man with a new lease on life, now sat with slumped shoulders.
The grief won’t leave them alone for long.
I thought maybe I should go after Catherine and check on her, but then I thought better of the ide
a. After working so hard to keep her emotions in check that morning, she wasn’t likely to thank me for barging in on a vulnerable moment.
Only Emily Jepsen was still in decent spirits. With delicately pinched fingers she crammed the last bite of mako shark taco into her mouth. She brought her cloth napkin up to her lips, hiding the working of her jaws behind it.
When she was finished, she leaned back, sighed, and patted her stomach gratefully.
“My compliments to the chef,” she said. “Danielle really is magic in the kitchen!”
“I’ll be sure to tell her you said so,” I said, forcing a smile to my face. Maybe it would take some of the sting off when I told her an argument happened at dinner and I hadn’t thought fast enough to smooth things over.
Since everyone seemed to be finished with their dinner, I started clearing plates. First Catherine then—after confirming they weren’t interested in their meals anymore—Tabitha, Kenneth, and finally Jeremy.
As I looked down to ask Emily Jepsen if she was finished too, Ashley came through the door. She was balancing a silver tray in her hands. There was a white ramekin full of frozen peaches and strawberries for each guest resting on the surface.
“Is everyone ready for dessert?” Ashley asked. “Danielle thought a cool treat would take the scorch out of the Florida heat, since we have to go easy on the air conditioning.”
I started to turn to look at Ash, but a strange shift in Emily Jepsen’s expression caught my eye. Something in her eyes shifted. It was a small thing—in fact I couldn’t put my finger on it—but all of a sudden, Emily flipped from sweet mommy-to-be to predator on the prowl.
“If anybody refuses theirs, just go right ahead and hand it to me!” Emily balanced her elbow on the table and rested her chin on her hand. “I am eating for two.”
“Congratulations! I had no idea.” Ashley smiled and moved right to Emily’s side. “Sounds to me like you just became the guest of honor, and the most important guest gets served first. If you don’t mind, Mr. Jepsen?”
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