Scarlet Nights

by Jude Deveraux

  “What did they do?” Mike asked.

  “Talked. Pru’s door was kept closed, but we heard them chattering away endlessly. I know they read all the letters from your sister because we had to get the box out of storage.”

  “Did Hazel say what they were talking about?”

  “No, not really. Oh! Yes, I remember. One time at lunch she said that she found some little town fascinating. It had an unusual name.”

  “Edilean, Virginia.”

  “Yes! That’s it,” the nurse said.

  Mike figured that Hazel/Mitzi had read the letters to learn about Sara who, through her aunt’s will, owned the lost paintings. At the time the will was written, there’d only been the small watercolor of the purple ducks that hung on Sara’s wall. Mike wanted to kick himself for not paying attention when Sara told him that Stefan wanted that painting. At the time, Mike had been so enamored of Sara that he’d overlooked a clue that was right in front of him.

  “And my grandmother died a few days after the incident with the TV?”

  “Yes,” the nurse said. “She died in her sleep, and the next day a tearful Hazel quit. She said she couldn’t bear seeing the people she loved die.”

  Mike wasn’t sure—not yet anyway—but he thought Mitzi had probably murdered his grandmother. After Mitzi had obtained all the information she needed from Prudence, she got rid of her so she couldn’t tell anyone what had gone on between them.

  “Would you e-mail me a copy of Hazel’s employee photo?” Mike asked. “I’d like to see it.”

  “Certainly, Mr. Newland,” the nurse said. “And please keep me informed of what happens.”

  He told her he would, gave her his e-mail address, then hung up.

  Next, Mike called Tess and asked her to start the paperwork of exhuming their grandmother’s body. They needed physical proof that she’d been murdered. “And do you have any of the letters Grans sent you?”

  “All of them. I thought that someday you might want to see them.”

  “Not me, but if the letters mention a nurse named Hazel, the AG will be very interested.”

  If it could be proven that Hazel Smith was Mitzi Vandlo, and if the body showed evidence of foul play, it meant that she could be tried for murder. At last, Mizelli Vandlo would be charged with something more onerous than fraud.

  Minutes later, the nursing home e-mailed Hazel’s security photo to Mike’s phone. Curious, he studied the picture, noting the big nose and the small, lipless mouth. Mitzi wasn’t any better-looking now than she had been back in 1973 when she’d conned Marko Vandlo into making her his third wife. While it was interesting to see an older photo of the woman, he didn’t remember ever having seen her in Edilean. As he stared at the picture, he wondered what she’d look like if she finally had a nose job.

  He called Captain Erickson and quickly told him what he’d discovered and asked that the IT guys work on Mitzi’s photo. “I want to see what she’d look like if she had about half of that nose cut off. Maybe we’re seeing her every day and don’t realize it.”

  “We’ll get right on it, and, Mike, good work.”

  “Think it’s good enough to get me a desk job? My wife wants me to stay home.”

  Mike could almost see the captain smiling. “Yeah, I think we can arrange that. Along with a promotion and a pay raise.”

  Mike groaned. “Just don’t put me in charge of the rookies.”

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking of doing. I’ll send the photo as soon as the guys get it done.” He hung up.

  Mike got in his car and drove straight to the fairgrounds without bothering to shower and change. He’d been gone too long, so he knew Sara would start asking questions—and she’d see too much.

  “Poker face, Newland,” he said as he checked his mirrors, but no one was following him.

  It was hours after Mike left the apartment that Sara made her way through the crowded fairgrounds and walked into her mother’s tent. In front were long tables covered with produce and food the people who made up Armstrong’s Organic Foods had spent weeks preparing. This year Sara hadn’t helped, but next year she would. Maybe by the next fair she’d be expecting or would have a newborn in her arms. She and Mike hadn’t talked about children, but then, they hadn’t talked about much of anything serious—except the case.

  She brought herself out of her reverie to look around. Her mother and two sisters were inside the tent, all of them wearing the medieval costumes Sara had made for them in previous years. Sara’s had a dark green velvet bodice and a plaid skirt that was said to be the old McTern tartan. Her sisters wore blue and burgundy, and her mother’s costume was in shades of brown and yellow. “The colors of the earth,” she’d told her daughter when Sara made it.

  The inside of the tent was full of boxes and baskets of fruit. Coolers of cooked food were stacked high. Her mother said that even though it was a fair she refused to serve unhealthy food.

  “She just rolls the fruit in batter, deep fries it, then coats it with sugar,” her doctor-father said. “Perfectly healthy.”

  Sara thought she needed to send her father to Joce for a tarot card reading so he could hear what sarcasm really meant.

  Sara was still standing by the tent entrance when her mother, a crate of cantaloupes in her arms, saw her. She smiled, but that expression turned to a smirk when she saw the faint redness on her daughter’s neck. Sara had covered it with foundation and powder, but the red still showed.

  Ellie instantly knew what it was. “Ah, whisker burn. That takes me back. I remember the time your father and I—”

  “Mother, please!” Sara said.

  Laughing, Ellie left the tent.

  “Wait until you have your first kid,” her sister Jennifer said. “You’ll be totally grossed out by the stories she tells you.”

  “The sex sagas are my downfall,” Sara’s other sister, Taylor, said.

  “Dad delivering you on a mountaintop didn’t do you in?” Jennifer asked.

  “No. It was the details about Mom and Dad’s Scarlet Nights in Mexico. Even Gene turned red at that one.”

  Sara was blinking at her sisters. For the first time ever, they were talking to her as though she were, well, like she was a grown-up woman.

  Jennifer had a box of fruit pies in her hands, and she seemed to understand Sara’s puzzlement. “Didn’t you realize that Mother considers you a virgin until you’re married? That’s why she’s not told you any of her sex stories.” She left the tent.

  Taylor had three boxes of cookies. “You’re lucky to have evaded her spicy little tales for this long.” She followed her sister out.

  Sara stood looking after her two sisters in shock. She was still standing there when Mike came in.

  “Your mother sent me in here to get a couple bags of potatoes. And why the hell are your relatives asking me so many questions about my beard? I meant to shave, but—” Pausing, he looked at her. “Are you okay?”

  “My sisters were nice to me.”

  “Sisters are supposed to be nice.”

  “Not mine.”

  Mike picked up a fifty-pound bag, slung it over his left shoulder, then squatted down to get a second bag. When he had one over each shoulder, he walked back to Sara. “So what did they say to you?”

  “They said my mother is going to tell me sex stories.”

  “I know I didn’t grow up here, but, Sara, isn’t that a little …”

  She came back to the present and looked at him. He looked great! He wasn’t in a kilt as she’d thought he’d be but was wearing a T-shirt and jeans. But it looked as though her mother had been working him hard, because his shirt was drenched in sweat and it clung tightly to his body. She could count his abs.

  In the next moment she realized that every other female there could also do the arithmetic. “I think I’ll get you a clean, fresh shirt.”

  Mike’s eyes told her he knew exactly what she was thinking. “A shirt that’s twice as big as this one?”

  “I wa
s thinking three times.”

  “Gimme a kiss.”

  She turned her head to maneuver through the bags, but Sara’s mother called, “Mike! Where’re those potatoes?”

  “Add a mother-in-law to the list of relatives I now have,” he mumbled as he left the tent.

  “Think of our nice, quiet apartment in Fort Lauderdale,” she called after him.

  “Yeah, there we’ll only have crooks living upstairs.”

  And a baby or two downstairs? she wondered.

  For the rest of the evening, Ellie kept her daughter so busy that Sara saw little of Mike. When she did catch a glimpse of him, he was on his phone, so they couldn’t have talked anyway. Plus, he spent so much time with Luke that Sara thought that if she were a different person she might have been jealous.

  She saw Ariel once, chomping away on a big caramel apple. When she saw Mike walk past in his clinging T-shirt, Ariel’s mouth fell open so far a sticky piece of fruit fell down the front of her gown. If she’d been wearing something Sara had made, she would have helped her clean it, but Ariel had ordered her medieval-style dress from a place in New York. Sara’d been told the sleeve seams had ripped out twice.

  When Ariel looked up again, Sara was smiling, and she hurried forward to hook her arm around Mike’s. Maybe she wouldn’t change his shirt after all.

  “What are you up to?” Mike asked.

  “Girl stuff. So where’s Greg now?”

  “He just left a filling station. Bought some Twinkies.”

  “Is that your ultimate condemnation? What state’s he in now?” she added quickly.

  “What kind of underwear do you have on under that thing?”

  “None whatever. Why don’t you point out who in this crowd is with you and who are just tourists?”

  “Did you see Lang snooping around Joce’s tent?”

  “Are you ever going to directly answer one of my questions?” she asked.

  “Not if I can get out of it.”

  “Want me to introduce you to your cousins the Fraziers?”

  “Tomorrow I’m to fight them with broadswords, so I’ll meet them then. I already know two of them. How many more are there?”

  “The big three. Colin is the oldest, then Pere, that’s for Peregrine—the same name as his father—and Lanny, which is for Lancaster.”

  “I’m glad I wasn’t named by their parents.”

  “They’re old family names. The Fraziers stick to them.”

  “Sara!” her mother called, and she groaned.

  “More work to do. See you tonight?”

  “Yeah.” He kissed her cheek. “I have some calls to make so I might be late.”

  He started to turn away but she saw a glint in his eyes that made her catch his arm. She studied his face. “What’s happened? You’re excited about something.”

  “Nothing. It’s just the anticipation of tomorrow.”

  “No. There’s something else. You look … happy.”

  “Of course I’m happy. Beautiful day, gorgeous girl, good food thanks to your mother, and—”

  “There’s something else in your eyes. And I think I saw the same look on Luke’s face. What are you two up to?”

  “Little girls who ask questions don’t get surprises.”

  “Are you trying to make me believe you and Luke are planning a surprise party for me?”

  “Sara, I need to go.”

  She kept hold of his arm. “I want to know what’s made you happy.”

  “You have! And that’s all I’m going to say. Now go! If your mother sees me she’ll make me move the porta potties.”

  “No wonder you and my father get along so well. You should get him to show you the places where he hides from my mother. Okay, go, but tonight I mean to get to the bottom of this.”

  Mike raised an eyebrow. “I mean to get right down to the bottom of everything.”

  Sara grinned. “Okay, keep your secrets … for now.”

  He kissed her cheek again, then hurried off.

  Mike didn’t get back to the apartment until midnight. Sara was sitting in the living room in the big chair, sewing on her lap, and sound asleep. He didn’t want to wake her, so he went into the bathroom and took a long shower. When he was clean, he went back to the living room and scooped up Sara, sewing and all. She snuggled against him, only half awake.

  He put her on the bed and picked up what she’d been sewing. It was a triangle-shaped piece of translucent black silk with little disks of gold-colored metal sewn along the top. “What is this?”

  Sara rolled onto her back. “A veil for Joce. She said that people, even strangers, were asking more about when the babies are due than were listening to her readings. We thought that maybe if she put a veil over her face she’d look more mysterious.”

  Mike stretched out beside her. “Like Mitzi,” he murmured.

  “I did think of her.”

  “To hide her big nose and no lips.”

  “Joce is too pretty to want to cover anything, but I think it’ll help keep her identity a secret. So are you ready to tell me what you and Luke have been up to today?”

  When he didn’t answer, she looked at him, and saw that he was asleep. She turned out the light, pulled the cover over both of them, and snuggled into his arms.

  26

  MIKE WAS DOING his best to stay calm, but it wasn’t easy. He’d been told that Stefan Vandlo was still three hours away, taking his time, sitting in restaurants, flirting with waitresses, and boring the men who were trailing him. “He has a couple of bodyguards with him, so watch out,” one of the agents told Mike when they stood in line for lemonade. “And one guy was his cell mate in prison, and he looks like he’s been in a lot of fights.”

  As Mike sipped his drink, he looked around to see who could help him if he needed it. He could easily spot the men who’d done some training, but their problem was that they thought that if they built up their biceps and spent thirty minutes on a treadmill they were ready for anything. He didn’t see one man who could actually move his body in a way that would be needed if there really were a fight.

  This morning at six he’d been awakened by his mother-in-law pounding on the bedroom door. Sleepily, he said, “I guess she knows the way to open your front door.”

  “Of every house in town,” Sara said tiredly. The day before had been a long one, and she’d have liked nothing more than to spend a few hours in bed with Mike.

  “You two need to get dressed,” Ellie called through the door. “Mike, you can’t run around in Levi’s for a second day in a row. You must put on your kilt.”

  “But Luke—”

  Sara knew what he was going to say. “Luke was in jeans yesterday because he was setting up a booth. You’d better do what my mother says or she’ll be in here.” She was referring to the fact that Mike hadn’t bothered to put on any clothes after last night’s shower.

  Grumbling, Mike pulled on a pair of trousers and left the room.

  “Aren’t you a sight for the morning,” Ellie said, looking at his bare chest.

  Mike closed the bedroom door and Sara snuggled back under the covers. She’d thought that she’d be nervous about meeting Greg today, but she wasn’t. She knew her confrontation with him was going to send him into a rage. In the past, she’d been afraid of his temper. She hadn’t realized that then, but she had been. In fact, she’d done a lot of things she didn’t want to just to keep him from getting angry—and to keep him from hurting her with his many little put-downs.

  Why hadn’t she stood up to him? she wondered. Why hadn’t she told him she wouldn’t be spoken to like that? But she knew that at the time it had all been so gradual, and with the huge amount of work he’d given her to do, she hadn’t had time to think about what was going on. Every time she protested what he was saying or doing, he would tell her she was the problem. “This is why you’ve never made money, Sara,” Greg used to say. “This is why you live in your cousin’s house and don’t have a place of your own.” At the t
ime, his words had made her want to try harder, but now she couldn’t understand why she didn’t tell him what he could do with his complaints.

  There was one thing she was very glad for and that was that she’d let Tess oversee her finances. She’d never told anyone, but Greg had repeatedly tried to get her to sign papers giving him power of attorney over everything she owned. “It’s for your own good,” he’d said, his tone implying she didn’t know much about anything. “You know I love you and that I want only the best for you. I’m just afraid that if anything happened to me you’d be left with nothing.” “How does my giving you all I own now leave me with nothing if you died?” Sara’d asked, as she was genuinely confused. “See what I mean?” Greg said. “You don’t understand even the most basic things about finance.” But Sara hadn’t signed anything because she knew she’d have to face Tess.

  Her mother’s voice brought her back to the present. “And you, missy,” she heard her mother say with a tap on the door, “unless you want me to come in there and dress you, I suggest you get up now.”

  “So much for being treated like an adult,” Sara murmured as she got her clothes and went to the bathroom.

  When she came out, still only partially dressed, she caught a glimpse of plaid in the living room and went to see it. Her mother had helped Mike dress in the full regalia of a Scotsman. It wasn’t the dress kilt that he’d wear on the last day, but the one he’d have on when he competed in the games. His big shirt had gathered sleeves, and the kilt reached to his knees. He had on thick Scottish brogues with woolen socks that went over his muscular calves. He was gorgeous! He looked like something out of a storybook about conflicts of honor. She could almost hear the bagpipes and smell the heather.

  “Oh, my,” Sara said.

  “Yeah,” Mike said with a grimace. “Girl’s clothes.”