by Nora Roberts
Impatience shimmered like heat waves. “Maybe one of them manufactured an alibi. It fits, Frank.”
“This isn’t one of your books. Real murder’s messier, the pieces don’t fit so neat.”
“They always make the same picture. Haffner said she came out of the house, that Morrison changed direction and went straight for the guest house. He didn’t stop by the garage, which though I’d love to nail the little slime, probably eliminates Lyle. And I think we’re looking for someone close to her. Someone who knew Julia’s pattern, so the notes could get through.”
“Haffner might have passed the notes,” Julia mused.
“Why would he bother to deny it? He told us everything else. I want to know who followed you to London—and to Sausalito.”
“I went over the manifests for the London flights, Paul. I already told you I couldn’t find a connection.”
“Have you got a list of the names?”
“In the file.”
“Be a pal, Frank, have them faxed here.”
“Christ.” Then he looked at Julia’s face, at the television screen that was filled with Eve. “Sure, sure, why not? I’m tired of carrying around a badge anyway.”
It was worse somehow, Julia thought. Waiting. Waiting while Frank made the phone call, while Paul smoked and paced. Waiting for technology to kick in and send them another slim hope. She watched the sheets click out, hundreds of names. There was only one that would matter.
They developed a routine. She would study one sheet, hand it to Paul. He would pore over another, pass it to Frank. She felt an odd jolt seeing her own name, mixed among so many strangers. And there was Paul’s, on the Concorde. He’d been impatient to get to her, she thought with a small smile. He’d been angry, pushy, demanding. By the time they’d flown back together, he’d been everything.
Rubbing her tired eyes, she took another sheet. In her methodical way she tried to study and absorb each name, put a face, a personality with it.
Alan Breezewater. Middle-aged, balding, a successful broker.
Marjorie Breezewater. His pleasant wife who enjoyed a ripping game of bridge.
Carmine Delinka. A boxing promoter with delusions of grandeur.
Helene Fitzhugh-Pryce. A London divorcee returning from a shopping spree on Rodeo Drive.
Donald Frances. A young, upwardly mobile ad executive.
Susan Frances. Donald’s attractive, British-born wife who’s working her way up in television production.
Matthew John Frances. Their five-year-old son, excited about visiting his grandparents.
Charlene Gray. Julia yawned, shook her brain clear and tried to concentrate. Charlene Gray.
“Oh, God.”
“What is it?” Paul was already at her shoulder, fighting back the urge to snatch the sheet from her hand. “Charlie Gray.”
Scowling, Frank looked up from his own sheet. The whites of his eyes were streaked with red. “I thought he was dead.”
“He is. He committed suicide in the late forties. But he had a child, a baby. Eve told me she didn’t know what had happened to it.”
Paul had already homed in on the name. “Charlene Gray. I think it’s a little late to think of coincidence. How do we find her?”
“Give me a couple of hours.” Frank took the sheet and two slices of cold bacon with him and headed for the door. “I’ll call you.”
“Charlie Gray,” Julia murmured. “Eve cared very deeply for him, but he cared more. Too much more. She broke his heart when she married Michael Torrent. He gave her rubies, and her first screen test. He was her first lover.” The chill shivered down her arms. “Oh, God, Paul, could his child have killed Eve?”
“If he’d had a daughter, how old would she be now?”
Julia circled her fingers over her temples. “Early to mid-fifties.” Her motion stopped. “Paul, you don’t seriously believe—”
“Do you have a picture of him?”
Her hands were beginning to shake. And it was excitement. “Yes, Eve gave me hundreds of snapshots and studio stills. Lincoln has everything.”
Paul started to pick up the phone, then let out an oath. “Wait.” He turned to the shelf along the wall, running his fingers along the titles of video cassettes. “Desperate Lives,” he murmured. “Eve’s first picture—starring Michael Torrent and Charles Gray.” He gave Julia’s hand a quick squeeze. “Let’s watch a movie, baby.”
“Yeah.” She managed to smile. “But hold the popcorn.”
She held her breath as well as he took Eve’s tape out of the machine, slipped in the copy of the old movie. Muttering to himself, he fast-forwarded through the FBI warning, the opening titles.
Eve was in the first scene, strutting her way down a sidewalk that was supposed to be New York. A flirty hat was perched over one eye. The camera zoomed in, caught that young, vibrant face, then panned down as Eve bent, swiveled, then ran a finger slowly up the seam of her stocking.
“She was a star from the first reel,” Julia said. “And she knew it.”
“Tell you what. We’ll watch this all the way through on our honeymoon.”
“On our—”
“We’ll get into that later.” While Julia was trying to decide if she’d just received a proposal, Paul zipped through the film. “I want a close-up. Come on, Charlie. There.” On the single triumphant word he hit the freeze. Charlie Gray, his hair slicked back, his mouth quirked in a self-deprecating grin, looked back at them.
“Oh, my God, Paul.” Julia’s fingers dug into his shoulder like wires. “She has his eyes.”
Mouth grim, Paul flicked off the set. “Let’s go talk to Travers.”
Dorothy Travers shuffled from room to room in the empty house, chasing dust, polishing glass, building hate.
Anthony Kincade had killed any chance she might have had for believing in a healthy relationship with a man. So she had focused all her love on two people. Her poor son who still called her Mommy, and Eve.
There hadn’t been anything sexual in her love for Eve. She’d been done with sex before Kincade had been done with her. Eve had been sister, mother, daughter to her. Though Travers was fond of her own family, having Eve cut out of her life left her with such pain she could tolerate it only by coating it with bitterness.
When she saw Julia walk into the house, she lurched forward, hands extended and curled like claws. “Murdering bitch. I’ll kill you for showing your face here.”
Paul caught her, struggled her beefy arms back. “Stop it. Dammit, Travers. Julia owns this house.”
“I’ll see her in hell before she steps foot in it.” Tears gushed out of her eyes as she fought to free herself. “She broke her heart, and when that wasn’t enough, she killed her.”
“Listen to me. Drake’s been murdered.”
Travers stopped struggling long enough to catch her breath. “Drake. Dead?”
“He was shot. We found him late last night. We have a witness who saw him, here, on the estate the day Eve was killed. Travers, the security had been shut off. Drake climbed over the wall.”
“You’re trying to tell me that Drake killed Eve?”
He had her attention now, but loosened his hold only slightly. “No, but he saw who did. That’s why he’s dead.”
Travers’s gaze scraped back to Julia. “If she could kill her own mother, she could kill her cousin.”
“She didn’t kill Drake. She was with me. She was with me all night.”
The lines around Travers’s face only deepened. “She’s blinded you. Blinded you with sex.”
“I want you to listen to me.”
“Not while she’s in this house.”
“I’ll wait outside.” Julia shook her head before Paul could protest. “It’s all right. It’ll be better that way.”
When Julia had closed the door behind her, Travers relaxed. “How could you sleep with that whore?” The minute Paul released her she groped in her pocket for a tissue. “I thought Eve meant something to you.”
&n
bsp; “You know she did. Come in here and sit down, we need to talk.” Once he had settled her in the parlor, he crouched at her feet. “I need you to tell me about Charlie Gray’s daughter.”
Something flashed in Travers’s eyes before she lowered them. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Eve knew. She trusted you more than anyone. She would have told you.”
“If she trusted me, why didn’t she tell me she was sick?” Overwhelmed with grief, she buried her face in her hands. “That she was dying.”
“Because she loved you. And because she didn’t want what time she had left to be marred with pity or regrets.”
“Even that was taken from her. That little bit of time.”
“That’s right. I want whoever took that from her to pay every bit as much as you. It wasn’t Julia.” He gripped her hands before she could push him away. “But it was someone she loved, someone she’d taken into her life. She found Charlie’s daughter, didn’t she, Travers?”
“Yes.”
The sun was bouncing off the deep blue water of the pool. The ripples caused by the fountain that still fed it widened, and spread and vanished. Julia wondered who would swim there again. If anyone would shuck off their suit, stand under that rush of water, and laugh.
She had an urge to do it herself, quickly, while she was alone, to pay homage to someone she had loved very briefly.
Instead, she watched a hummingbird, a small bright missile, flash above the water, then hover and drink from a vivid red petunia. “Julia.”
The smile that had started to curve her lips froze. She felt her heart leap and lodge in her throat. Very slowly, very carefully, she relaxed the fingers that had tensed into fists, and calling on whatever skill had passed from Eve’s blood to hers, turned to face Charlie Gray’s daughter.
“Nina. I didn’t realize you were here. I thought you’d moved out.”
“Almost. I just had a few more things to pack up. It’s amazing how much you accumulate in fifteen years. You’ve heard about Drake.”
“Yes. Why don’t we go inside? Paul’s here.”
“I know.” Nina let out a quick breath that caught like a sob. “I heard him and Travers. She didn’t realize I’d come in earlier and gone upstairs. None of this should have happened. None of it.” She reached into her buff-colored envelope bag and pulled out a .32. Sun hit chrome and dazzled. “I wish I could have found another way, Julia. I really do.”
Finding herself facing a gun brought on more anger than fear. She didn’t consider herself invincible. A part of her mind acknowledged that the bullet could rip through her, cut off her life. But the way the threat was offered, the incredible politeness of it, buried any thought of caution.
“You can stand there and apologize to me as if you’d forgotten a luncheon date. Sweet Jesus, Nina, you killed her.”
“It wasn’t something I planned.” Her tone was only mildly irritated as she pressed a hand between her breasts. “God knows I did everything I could to reason with her. I asked, I pleaded, I sent the notes to try to scare her. When I saw that wasn’t going to work, I sent more notes to you. I even hired someone to tamper with the plane.”
Somewhere in the garden, a bird began to sing. “You tried to kill me.”
“No, no. I know what a good pilot Jack is, and my instructions were very specific. It was meant to scare you, to make you see how important it was that the book research stopped.”
“Because of your father.”
“Partly.” Her lashes lowered, but Julia could still see the glint of her eyes through them. “Eve ruined his life, ended his life. I hated her for that for a long time. But it became impossible to keep hating her when she did so much to help me. I cared very, very deeply for Eve, Julia. I tried to forgive her. You have to believe me.”
“Believe you? You murdered her, then were willing to stand back and watch me hang for it.”
Nina’s mouth firmed. “One of the first things Eve taught me was survival. Whatever the price, I’m going to get through this.”
“Paul knows, and Travers. The police are already checking on Charlene Gray.”
“I’ll be gone long before they link her to Nina Soloman.” She glanced back at the house, satisfied that Paul and Travers were still talking. “I haven’t had much time to work this out, but there seems to be only one way.”
“Killing me.”
“It has to look like suicide. We’ll take a walk down to the guest house. Returning to the scene—the police ought to like that. You’ll write a note confessing to killing Eve, and Drake. This is the gun I used. It isn’t registered or traceable to me. I can promise to make it quick. I was trained by the best.” She gestured with the gun. “Hurry along, Julia. If Paul comes out, I’ll have to kill him too. Then Travers. You’ll have a regular bloodbath laid at your door.”
The hummingbird streaked from the blossom, bulleted over the water. It was that vibrant flash of red, and the unexpected rage leaping at her that had Nina stumbling back a pace, had her first shot going wide. Thrust forward by a blind, titanic fury, Julia rammed into her, striking out with a force that threw them both off balance and into the pool.
Tangled together, they plunged to the bottom. Buoyancy had them surfacing as they kicked and clawed and gagged on water. Julia didn’t hear her own howl of rage as her hair was viciously pulled. The pain dimmed her vision, sharpened her fury. For an instant she saw Nina’s face, diamond glints of water sprinkled over it. Then her hands clamped around Nina’s throat and squeezed. Her lungs gulped in air automatically before she was dragged under again.
Through the veil of water she could see Nina’s eyes, the wild panic in them. She had the satisfaction of watching them snap closed as her fist made a slow sweep through the water to plow into Nina’s stomach. Her own head rapped hard against the bottom, forcing her to clamp her teeth on the need to cry out. Lights danced behind her eyes as she twisted and shot her leg out to kick vulnerable flesh. Scratches and bruises were ignored, but the ringing in her ears, the burning in her chest, had her fighting her way back to the surface for more air.
Shouts and screams echoed in her head as she dived forward, catching hold of Nina’s blouse as Nina tried to thrash her way to the side. Water dripped from Julia’s cheeks, ran from her eyes. She didn’t know when the sobs had begun. “Bitch,” she said between her teeth. Swinging back, she rammed fist into face, then yanked her up by the hair to hit her again.
“Stop. Come on, baby, stop.” Struggling to tread water and hold on to her, Paul grabbed at her arm. “She’s out cold.” He hooked an arm under Nina’s chin to keep her from sinking under. “She scratched you. Your face.”
Julia sniffed and wiped at the mix of water and blood. “She fights like a girl.”
He wanted to laugh at the chilly derisiveness in her voice. “Travers is calling the cops. Can you get to the side on your own?”
“Yeah.” The moment she had, she began to retch.
Without a backward glance, Paul left Nina unconscious on the pool apron and went to Julia.
“Get rid of it,” he said quietly, holding her head in his trembling hands. “You swallowed more than your share. That’s a girl.” He stroked and soothed as her choking turned to labored breathing. “That’s the first time I’ve seen you in action, champ.” He pulled her up against him and just held on. “Bloody amazon. Remind me not to tick you off.”
Julia sucked in air and felt it burn her ravaged throat. “She had a gun.”
“It’s okay.” His hold on her tightened spasmodically. “I’ve got it now. Let’s get you inside.”
“I’ll take her.” Grim-faced, Travers swooped down on Julia with a huge bath towel. “You watch that one. You come with me now.” She wrapped her big arm around Julia’s waist. “I’m going to get you some dry clothes and fix you a nice cup of tea.”
Paul wiped the water from his face and watched Travers lead Eve’s daughter into the house. Then he rose to see to Charlie’s.
&n
bsp; • • •
Swathed in one of Eve’s flowing silk robes, bolstered by tea spiked with brandy, Julia rested against the pile of pillows Travers had plumped around her.
“I haven’t felt so pampered since I was twelve and broke my wrist roller skating.”
“It helps Travers deal with the guilt.” Paul stopped pacing to light a cigar.
“She doesn’t have anything to feel guilty about. She believed I’d done it. Christ, there were moments I almost believed it myself.” She shifted, winced.
“You should let me call the doctor, Jules.”
“The paramedics already cleared me,” she reminded him. “Scratches and bruises.”
“And a gunshot wound.”
She glanced down at her arm where it was bandaged just above the elbow. “Gosh, Rocky, it’s just a scratch.” When he didn’t smile, she reached out her hand. “Really, Paul, it’s a graze, just like in the movies. The little bite she landed on my shoulder hurts worse.” Grimacing, she touched it gingerly. “I just want to stay right here, with you.”
“Shove up,” he ordered, sitting by her hip when she made room. He took her hand between both of his, then brought it to his lips. “You sure know how to scare the life out of a man, Jules. When I heard that gunshot, I lost five years.”
“If you kiss me, I’ll do my best to give them back to you.”
He bent down to her, intending to keep the kiss light. But she wrapped her arms around him, drew him in. With a low sound of desperation he hauled her against him and poured all of his needs, his gratitude, his promises into that one meeting of lips.
“Hate to interrupt,” Frank said from the doorway.
Paul didn’t glance around, but brushed his mouth over the scratches on Julia’s cheeks. “Then don’t.”
“Sorry, pal, it’s official. Miss Summers, I’m here to inform you that all charges against you have been dropped.”
Paul felt her shudder. Her hand had fisted against his shirt as he looked up at Frank. “Sure, after she collared the killer for you.”
“Shut up, Winthrop. And to offer an official apology for the ordeal you’ve experienced. Can I have one of those sandwiches? I’m starved.”