Murder at the Breakers

by Alyssa Maxwell

“Shut up, Jack!”

  Jack ignored Reggie and went on. “The trick is to get everyone betting heavily on the favorite, and then for said favorite to encounter a problem that prevents them from finishing the race. A snapped rigging, a broken rudder.”

  This wasn’t exactly a new concept for me. I was Brady’s sister, after all. Newport in the summer was all about wagering—on anything and everything. Our wealthy vacationers thought up all sorts of imaginative means of making—and losing—great sums of money. This wouldn’t be the first time someone had tampered with the outcome.

  “And you were in on this with him?” I asked in a calm voice that belied my rising anger.

  “I pretended to be. Reggie came to me asking for a loan, a big one, and when I questioned him as to why, he let drop enough information for me to realize he was getting himself eyeballs deep in a huge mess.”

  “You were all for it a few weeks ago,” Reggie said with a hiss. “You helped plan the thing.”

  Jack shook his head. “Only to put myself in a position where I could stop you and stop the illegal betting. My advice to you, Reggie, is to step back, stay home, and pretend you know nothing.”

  “Can you?” I asked my cousin. My stomach clenched. “Or are you in too deep?”

  He shrugged, staring at the floor. “Don’t tell Father. It won’t help anything.” With that, Reggie sprang to his feet. “Without your money, Jack, I’m out of it whether I want to be or not. So go ahead and stop the tournament or whatever the hell you feel like doing. I’m going home.”

  He strode out of the parlor. Jack and I stood as well, and I held out my hand to him. “Thank you for not letting him do this thing. For looking out for him. He’s . . .” I shook my head.

  “As a family friend it was the least I could do.” Jack smiled his brilliant smile, showing nearly all of his even, white teeth. “It’s what your father would have done if he were here.”

  “I don’t know about that. Do you realize neither Mother nor Dad is coming home to support Brady? They’re staying in Paris, Jack.”

  His smile faded. “I’m sorry to hear that, Emma. I’m sure they’d come if they could. You know how the art world is . . . there’s never enough money for necessities, much less trips across the ocean.”

  I nodded, swallowing against a growing lump in my throat. Brady, Reggie, Neily . . . I felt myself up against far more than I could handle, and for the first time I questioned my ability to go on fighting for my brother’s life. Nothing I’d done so far seemed to have helped, had brought me no closer to discovering who murdered Alvin Goddard. I was tired and frustrated and . . .

  I wanted my parents. There, I said it. I wanted them here to help shoulder the burden. To talk to. To tell me everything would be all right . . .

  Bitterness rose up so suddenly I nearly choked on it. How dared Mother and Dad leave this to me? Did they believe me to be strong enough for this? And even if I was, how could they possibly believe I should have to be?

  If it had been me in Europe, I’d have sold my last belonging in order to book passage home to help my brother. That my parents hadn’t done so only reinforced what I’d known for a long time, since childhood, though I couldn’t have verbalized it then: On some deep, yet indecipherable level they simply didn’t grasp what it meant to be parents. And they never would. Life to them was a series of artistic adventures, an intellectual fairy world that might or might not include Brady and me at any particular time.

  “I’m here, Emma.” Had Jack read my mind? Or did he simply understand my situation? After all, he’d been my father’s friend since their university days. He knew Arthur Cross better than anyone, and knew my mother, too. His arms went around me and he pressed my cheek to his shoulder. “Whenever you need anything, Emma, I’m here.”

  “Thank you.” I stepped away to give myself a shake and gather my composure. My falling apart due to unfulfilled parental obligations wouldn’t help Brady. I needed to remain levelheaded and focused.

  A new thought prompted me to ask, “Is Reggie walking home?”

  Jack seemed a little taken aback at my abrupt shift. “I presume so.”

  “Then I need to go. Thanks for everything, Jack.”

  Outside, I climbed into my buggy and steered Barney toward The Breakers. Sure enough, within a minute or two I came upon my cousin trudging along, his head down and his hands shoved into his coat pockets. I pulled alongside him. “Get in.”

  He looked up at me but continued walking.

  “I mean it, Reggie. Get in. I have more questions for you and if you won’t answer them now, I’ll be forced to follow you home and interrogate you there.”

  He plowed to a halt. “When did you become such a tyrant?”

  “I’m a Vanderbilt. Now climb up.” Once he had, I turned to face him rather than set Barney to a walk again. “You went to Jack for money.”

  He frowned at me like I’d gone daft. “Didn’t we just establish that a few minutes ago? And it didn’t happen exactly the way he tells it, Emma. He was hot for the deal.”

  “Yes, all right, but before you thought of asking Jack, did you maybe think of another way of getting the money?”

  “Like what?”

  I pursed my lips, then said, “You tell me.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  I leaned closer and lowered my voice. “Reggie, did you steal the items that went missing from the house? The ones Mason was accused of taking? The ones he was fired for?”

  “What?” His mouth dropped open and he fell back against the squabs as if I’d shoved him. “You’d accuse me of . . . No! Absolutely not. I like Mason. I wouldn’t . . . I can’t believe you’d even suggest such a thing.”

  “Someone stole from the house, Reggie. Someone who obviously needed money.” I raised my eyebrows at him.

  “Look. I wanted money, sure. I still do. I want my own money so I don’t have to rely on the paltry allowance Father gives me. But I didn’t need it enough to ruin Mason’s life.”

  Anger fueled his protest, but it was the hurt gleam hovering behind the ire that won me over. “I believe you.”

  He blew out a deep breath. His fingers trembled where they lay spread on his knees. “Thanks. I think.”

  “Sorry.” I patted his shoulder. “But can I ask you one more question?”

  “Can I stop you?”

  I suppressed a smile, but it faded quickly enough anyway when I turned my thoughts to another serious matter. “It’s about Katie. Reggie, I need to know . . . did you . . . were you . . . um . . .” This turned out to be much harder to say than I’d realized.

  “Are you talking about her being . . . in the family way?”

  I expected him to protest as hotly as he’d done moments ago, and I braced myself to watch him closely, to detect whether he’d tell the truth or not. His quiet reply surprised me—shocked me. “No, it wasn’t me, Em. It maybe could have been, but it wasn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He met my gaze. “Will you swear to secrecy?”

  “Reggie . . .”

  “Swear, Em, or I won’t tell you a thing.”

  I didn’t like the terms, didn’t like promising to something before I knew what it entailed. Even so, I held up my hand. “I swear.”

  He nodded. “You remember when we all came up in the spring to view the finished house? I brought Justin Reynolds with me—he was my roommate at school last term. Justin and I . . . well, Katie’s pretty, you know, and outgoing and all, and we . . . we thought she wanted . . .”

  It didn’t take a genius to comprehend what two teenaged, youthfully arrogant boys believed Katie wanted, and the notion made me queasy. Reggie’s gaze darted away. He sucked his lips between his teeth, cracked a couple of knuckles. “You can’t tell anyone, Em. You swore.”

  Part of me dearly wished I hadn’t. But I’d met Justin, the son of yet another powerful industrialist. The realistic part of me guessed that even if I went to the authorities and persu
aded Katie to testify against him, Justin Reynolds wouldn’t receive more than a slap on the wrist. It would change nothing. Maybe if Katie’s baby had lived . . .

  “What happened between them, Reggie?”

  “Well, one night Justin arranged to meet Katie in the playhouse.” His eyes went fierce and his chin jerked to a defensive angle. “She went of her own free will, I swear it, Em.”

  “She might have gone of her own free will, but that doesn’t mean she wanted what happened to her when she arrived.” My stomach threatened to turn over; bile rose in my throat. “You knew at the time this was happening?”

  He offered me that shrug of his and said, “Didn’t think it was any of my business. She never looked at me, only Justin. I was in my room at the time.”

  “Poor Katie . . .”

  “Look, Em.” Reggie’s sharpened tone cut through my thoughts. “You’ve been asking a lot of questions lately, and not just of me.”

  As I briefly wondered how he knew that, he went on, “You should quit playing sleuth and prying into other people’s business. Running around poking your nose into things isn’t a child’s game. It won’t help Brady, and it could get you hurt, or worse.”

  The words echoed through me, producing tremors that ran up and down my arms as I flapped Barney’s reins. Last night someone had breathed nearly those same words in my ear while pressing a knife to my throat. I glanced over at the boy at my side. Could Reggie have attacked me? Could he have run me off the road along Ocean Avenue? I’d suspected him before, true, but only because of his penchant for the same bourbon found next to Brady after the murder. Now I had a motive—Reggie’s involvement in illicit gambling, and the possibility that Alvin Goddard had found out.

  A few minutes later we drove up The Breakers’ long drive and came to a stop. Reggie swung down and stood looking up at me.

  “So are you going to tell Father?”

  “I should,” I said woodenly, staring straight ahead. Relenting, I returned his gaze. “But if you promise me you’re out of this yachting scheme, I won’t.”

  “Don’t have much choice now, do I?”

  I studied his youthful face, already showing hints of a hardened lifestyle. Were those patrician, even features those of a murderer? I couldn’t bring myself to believe it. And yet, Reggie was no innocent.

  “Don’t you know how easy it is to end up like Brady?” I asked him in a whisper. “Is that what you want? To be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and have no one believe in you because of wrongs you’ve committed in your past?”

  With a grin as brilliant as pure sunlight, he reached up and clasped my hand. “You’d believe in me, Em. I know you would.”

  I watched Reggie enter the house, but I didn’t leave The Breakers. Within all the turmoil of these past days, something tugged at me, a sentiment instilled in me long ago that connected me to this place, to the property if not the newly reconstructed house. I’d spent the larger share of my summers here as a child, playing with my cousins and feeling part of a large brood whose roots extended back well over a century. Though I often liked to pretend otherwise, a significant portion of who I am had formed on these lawns, in the shared laughter of my cousins, in the admonishments and, yes, the wisdom of their parents, and in the order and ritual of life on an estate of this magnitude.

  I liked to pretend I was independent and self-sufficient and unconventional, but the truth—yes, the truth—was that I only possessed the strength to be those things because of this place and these people; because of the Vanderbilt steel running in my veins. I needed them, and I realized I wasn’t just fighting for Brady anymore. I was fighting for all of us. For Brady and Neily and Reggie and even Mason—for the entire family. A family that suddenly seemed to be slipping away, breaking apart.

  I set off with long strides away from the house. I headed first toward the playhouse, empty now but ringing with memories. I stood on the porch for long minutes, remembering how Neily had always insisted he be in charge of our make-believe household because he was the oldest, and how Gertrude always shot him down, telling him in no uncertain terms that ridiculous notions of primogeniture had no place in our games.

  My strides brought me next across the back gardens, my gaze sweeping the lawns as I remembered picnics, ballgames, kite flying. . . . Gladys always wanted to hold the string. Reggie always ran faster than any of us. Neily always maintained a slight reserve, in keeping with his position as his father’s heir, I suppose.

  I was nearly running by the time I reached the base of the property. My hat flew off, the ribbons having pulled free, and I let it sail behind me to land somewhere in the grass. The ocean stretched out in front of and below me, an ever-moving carpet of deepest sapphire glittering with sunlight. I found the gate separating the property from the Cliff Walk unlocked, as it usually was during the day. I opened it and pushed through, considering the possibility that someone had done the reverse the night of Gertrude’s ball. Come through the gate and stolen into the house . . . someone who wasn’t Brady or Neily or Reggie or Mason.

  What about Jack? If what I’d learned today shed incriminating light on Reggie, I had to admit the same held true for Jack. He’d pled innocence in the yachting scheme, but Reggie certainly believed Jack had been a willing partner, at least at first. Did Jack need money? Was he in debt? Not for the first time, I admitted he might have given Uncle Cornelius his pocket watch as collateral, then entered into the illegal gambling plan to raise the cash to pay him back.

  The possibilities made my head swim—not a good thing when one walked along a cliff-side path. Yet onward I went, needing the bracing wind in my face, my hair, fanning my skirts against my legs. I almost felt capable of taking flight. Light, airy, free. I rounded the bend at the corner of The Breakers’ property—and drew up sharp with a yelp.

  Chapter 14

  “Neily!”

  My cousin and I nearly collided. He had come around the bend from the opposite direction, his steps as determined as my own, his head down and shoulders bunched. With the crunching of my own boots on the sand and rocks, as well as the preoccupation of my thoughts, I hadn’t heard him coming. Now we both stood ramrod straight like rabbits caught nibbling carrots by the kitchen maid. My heart nearly pounded its way out of my stays, and Neily, too, pressed a hand to his chest.

  “You gave me quite a fright, Emmaline. What are you doing down here?”

  “I guess I could ask you the same. I needed a brisk walk, I guess.”

  “Same here.” He looked apologetic. “Things have been . . . hectic lately. Unsettled.” His rueful expression deepened and he quirked an eyebrow at me. “To the say the least.”

  I nodded my agreement, at the same time wondering how I might work in a question or two about last night without giving myself away.

  “You, er, look tired, Neily,” I ventured. “Is everything all right?”

  “Well, let’s see. A man I’ve known most of my life is dead, my step-cousin is in jail on murder charges, and my father is threatening to disinherit me if I don’t do as he says.”

  “Over Grace,” I said more than asked.

  He shrugged and looked miserable. “Emmaline, what am I going to do?”

  “I don’t know, Neily. Maybe in time he’ll come around. What about your mother?”

  “She’s as adamant as Father. They don’t even know Grace, yet they loathe her.”

  “Still, it’s all new to them, and you’re so young. Maybe in a year or two . . .”

  “Maybe,” he conceded, but the hard line of his jaw spoke of impatience and stubborn resolve. The wind swirled around us, and Neily thrust up a hand to shove back a shock of hair blown into his eyes.

  I swallowed a gasp. A slash of raw flesh scored Neily’s right hand across the palm and into the corner of his thumb. My throat convulsed with the biting memory of the knife pressed against it last night. Dear God . . . could it have been Neily holding that knife? My attacker and I had struggled—his hand could easily have slippe
d down onto the blade.

  Oh, God . . . Neily? The waves and the wind and a crunching echoed in my ears. I realized I’d begun to back away from him. He reached out to grasp my shoulder and I flinched.

  “Jeez, Emmaline, are you trying to fall? What’s wrong with you all of a sudden? Why are you looking at me like that?”

  He tightened his grip on my shoulder and I went utterly still, afraid to move, afraid to look away from him for even a second. And desperate to form a reply that would placate him. Was he intending to push me over the edge?

  “I . . . I’ve just got a lot on my mind.” I struggled to come up with a plausible excuse for my behavior. “Wh-when I said ‘maybe in a year or two,’ it made me think of Brady. Oh, Neily, what if he has to spend the rest of his life in prison?”

  That seemed to work, for although he raised a hand to grasp my other shoulder as well, his grip loosened as he gave me a gentle shake. Relief weakened my knees, but I fought not to show it.

  “That won’t happen, Emmaline,” he said. “I know it won’t. If you can be optimistic about Grace and me, then I can surely be as optimistic about Brady being exonerated. It’ll happen, and soon.”

  My eyes filled with tears, dangerously obscuring my vision. If Neily had wished to push me to my death, nothing could have stopped him. Were his words sincere? Or meant to soothe me into dropping my guard? A second passed, then several, and Neily only smiled down at me and patted my shoulders until he finally released me.

  “What a pair we are, huh?” He laughed weakly. “One would think we’d both come out here to jump.”

  My heart skipped a beat. “Don’t say that!”

  “Well, even if we were, at least we have each other to talk us out of it.” He shook his head. “Not sure that made sense, but you know what I mean.” He held out his hand. “What say we go up to the house for a stiff brandy?”

  I took his offered hand—the left one, without the cut—and casually gestured toward his right. “That looks painful. What happened there?”

  He didn’t miss a beat. “Oh, that. Cut it trying to open a tin of caviar.”