Betrayals

by Carla Neggers

  Jean-Paul leaned forward, his face very close to hers. “I’ll be there, Annette, but I warn you—if you do anything stupid, I’ll kill you, as I should have thirty years ago.”

  “You don’t believe me—”

  “What I believe makes no difference. Give me back the Jupiter Stones, and we’ll be finished.” He brushed a curl off her forehead. “Sleep well, ma belle.”

  Thirty-One

  Mai didn’t relax until she was sitting on the subway into Boston, with Logan Airport and the long, long transcontinental flight behind her. She had hoped to be able to take a cab, but she had only twenty dollars left after buying her plane ticket—and she was lucky to have that much. Because she was over twelve she could buy a ticket without an adult. However, she had to pay full fare, and since she was flying on short notice, a one-way ticket was more expensive than she’d anticipated. But if she waited and took the 12:30 a.m. flight, she could get a cheaper fare. It meant hanging around the airport awhile, risking that her grandfather might figure out what she’d done and come after her, and staying up all night.

  The other choices, however, were to go back to Tiberon and face the music or steal her way onto an earlier flight. What did airlines do to stowaways?

  She’d bought the ticket for the red-eye.

  She wasn’t too worried about getting around Boston. Given her longtime desire to go there, she’d bought a dozen different guidebooks and had practically memorized them all. She knew that the subway would take her downtown and she could walk to Winston & Reed, the Winston house on Mt. Vernon Street, the Eliza Blackburn House, even Rebecca Blackburn’s studio. Surely her father would be at one of those places. But where to begin?

  It was just eight or so California time, after eleven in New England. Mai exulted in how much Boston met her expectations and in her adeptness at getting around in a new city. Her grandfather would just be getting up now and discovering her note. She hoped he’d understand. Her dad wouldn’t—no question about that. He’d probably send her to reform school.

  But she was worried about him, and if he couldn’t understand that, then maybe she belonged in reform school. He’d always told her everything, always included her—but not this time. She didn’t know who the white-haired man was or why her father had reacted to him like that, with a gun and that mean, mean-looking face. She didn’t have any brothers or sisters, no cousins yet, and she’d never known her mother. She adored her grandparents but most of the time it was just her and her dad. She couldn’t stand the idea that something would happen to him. What would she do without him?

  She wiped tears off her cheeks with the backs of her hands and blamed them on the stiff wind as she walked across the wide plaza of Government Center, up toward Beacon Hill. She would try her great-aunt’s house or the Eliza Blackburn House first. Her grandmother, who’d grown up on Mt. Vernon Street, had shown Mai pictures of the Winston house when she had visited Nova Scotia last summer. She thought she’d recognize it when she saw it. And the address of the Eliza Blackburn House was listed in one of her guidebooks, with an acidic comment about its current state of disrepair.

  Her dad would be okay, she told herself.

  And so would she.

  Jared cursed and fumed and tried to hold back his terror as he drove Rebecca’s car out to Logan Airport. She had offered a choice of the car or her truck. Thomas had muttered something about how many vehicles one person needed. A recording of a heart-stopping bestselling thriller had come on when he’d started the engine. Only R.J. The cornered innocent was about to bloodily uncorner himself when Jared popped the thing out. He settled for silence.

  And speed.

  And his relentless anxiety.

  Mai.

  “The little devil stole a few hundred dollars from me and made her escape like this was some kind of prison,” Wesley Sloan, more worried than annoyed, had told him. “She must have slipped into the car with George when he went to the airport. She left a note saying we shouldn’t worry, she was joining you in Boston and would be fine.”

  Mai the optimist.

  “I’m sorry, Jared. She’d pleaded illness yesterday afternoon, and we just left her alone for the night. I didn’t check on her until this morning.”

  “Dad, it’s all right. I don’t blame you.”

  “It’s not as if she’s been kidnapped. Jared, she’s a resourceful girl. She’ll manage. I’m on my way out to the airport now to find out what I can, but if I were you, I’d get out to Logan as soon as possible and check every incoming West Coast flight.”

  Jared hadn’t wasted any time.

  He got stuck in tunnel traffic and made a wrong turn in the airport and had to fight traffic to come back around and try again. Then he had to wander around forever to find a place to park. He cursed and fumed some more.

  It was nearly noon and had been a bad morning from start to finish. Sleeping too late, getting up to the cold, raw reality of what had gone on between him and R.J. in the night. Loving her. Wanting her again. Not wanting to mess up her life again. Quentin was his cousin and that wasn’t one of those things anyone could change.

  Thomas and Rebecca had already been up grumbling at each other in the kitchen when Jared had stumbled in shortly after nine. They’d fixed coffee, juice, toast and wild blueberry jam, and ate breakfast in the garden, where the sun was shining between dark, threatening clouds. Jared had already decided to pay Quentin another visit. Perhaps he knew something about Gerard; perhaps Jared had misjudged him. In any case, they needed to talk. Thomas, however, suggested he exercise caution and not plunge ahead until he could assess the possible consequences of action versus inaction. Jared, however, had had fourteen years too many of inaction.

  Munching on a piece of toast slathered with jam, Rebecca had explained to Thomas the theory that she, Jared and Sweatshirt had discussed just before dawn.

  Thomas refused even to hear her out. “Rebecca, enough. The best thing you and Jared can do is go to San Francisco and let Jean-Paul, Annette and Quentin sort things out for themselves. Gerard has no bone to pick with you two or Mai. He came to San Francisco to see for himself whether or not Quentin’s being Mai’s biological father was common knowledge—something he could use. He doesn’t need to touch her to get what he wants.”

  They’d just started to argue the point when Wesley Sloan had called.

  Jared finally parked and raced into the airport. Every major airline flew into Boston. There were scores of connections Mai could have made to get herself to the east coast—scores of places she could have missed a flight, gotten on the wrong flight. Chicago, Denver, St. Louis, Dallas. Jared pushed back his panic. There were computers, checks and balances, security people. He’d find his daughter.

  As he passed a bank of pay phones he decided to stop and call Tiberon for an update.

  Maureen Sloan answered on the first ring. “Jared, I’m so glad it’s you. Wesley just called. Mai was on a 12:30 a.m. flight out of San Francisco.”

  “Has it arrived?”

  He heard his father’s wife inhale sharply. “Over an hour ago.”

  Thirty-Two

  The last person Annette needed drifting into her house was her son, Quentin, but there he was, looking even worse than she felt. A long, cold shower had revived her. She’d dressed in slacks, a simple cotton shirt and her tennis shoes, as if ready for an ordinary Saturday morning. Already she’d called Thomas and he’d agreed to bring the Jupiter Stones to Marblehead at one o’clock. I can’t believe he’s had them all these years—or is he just bluffing? It didn’t matter. All she required was his solitary presence on the North Shore in a little more than an hour. The solitary part had been relatively easy; she’d exacted his promise he’d come alone. She knew he wouldn’t go back on his word.

  She’d already dispatched an eager Nguyen Kim to Marblehead. The years of idleness had been wearing on him, and he yearned for action. Well, now was his chance. She would leave Jean-Paul and Thomas to him.

  In the meantime, she
would tend to her son. She had made a late breakfast for herself and Quentin for the first time since he was a little boy and she had grudgingly slapped together peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches for him. They’d had servants, of course, but she’d considered waiting on her son part of a mother’s responsibility. Quentin would hate her if she didn’t make him the occasional sandwich. Thomas had been unimpressed with that kind of thinking. Motherhood, he’d told her, was a role, not a job. He’d sensed her deep dissatisfaction with traditional definitions of that role and had warned her to seek additional positive outlets for her energy and interests before she ruined herself and Quentin. Too late now, she supposed he’d say. What of it? She no longer cared what Thomas thought and hadn’t asked his advice in the first place.

  Quentin only picked at the miniature muffins she’d scrounged out of the refrigerator and reheated, adding a pot of coffee and a pitcher of orange juice and serving the whole mess in the sunroom that jutted out into the garden. Quentin had been complaining about Jared Sloan and Jean-Paul Gerard since he’d wandered in.

  “I do wish you would relax,” Annette told him impatiently.

  “You should have seen Jared yesterday—”

  “I did see him. Just ignore him. He’s always enjoyed making you feel small and imbecilic.” She rested back in her chair, her own breakfast barely touched, but she wouldn’t eat until she’d accomplished everything she’d set out to accomplish for the day. It was a tall order, but she was up to it. Forcing herself to focus on her son’s problems, she added, “Jared’s hardly in any position to judge you.”

  Quentin sighed, shaking his head sadly. “But the way he talked about Tam. Mother, it was as if he blamed me for what happened to her.”

  “That’s his own guilty conscience at work.” Noticing the snappishness of her tone, Annette admonished herself to be more patient: her son deserved that much from her. “Quentin—listen to me, all right? Tam is dead….”

  He shut his eyes, wincing as if it were news to him.

  Annette could have throttled the weakling. Tam had been dead for fourteen years! Gritting her teeth, she continued. “What Jared has to say about her is, frankly, no concern of yours or mine. You’ve a perfectly fine wife in Jane. I suggest you remember that and stop fretting. I’m sorry to be so brutal, but it’s obvious to me what Tam was.”

  Quentin lowered his eyes. “And what was she, Mother?”

  “A Vietnamese tramp who used you.” But Annette groaned, slumping down in her chair and feeling awful. “Quentin, Quentin. Why do all our conversations have to be this way? Every time we talk you maneuver me into berating you. Do you think I enjoy it?”

  “No, Mother….”

  “Then why do you do it? Why ask me about Tam when you know what I think? Here I am, trying to be understanding, and you won’t let me.”

  He broke a muffin in half and proceeded to tear it apart, crumb by crumb. “I know—I’m sorry. Maybe I just don’t feel I deserve your understanding.”

  “Oh, Quentin.”

  She sighed, feeling so damned sorry for him—and furious at the same time. He reminded her so much of Benjamin. I’m not good enough for you, he’d told her a thousand times. What the hell kind of man was that? How was she supposed to respect him—to want him?

  Walking behind Quentin, she put her arm around his shoulder and hugged him fiercely. “You’re my son. Quentin…don’t you understand? You’re all I’ve got. That’s what makes me so hard on you, I suppose, but never, never think you don’t deserve my sympathy. Now.” She straightened up, patted him on the shoulder, and returned to her chair across from him. “What are your plans for the weekend?”

  “I don’t know—helping to sort out this business with Jared and Gerard, I guess.”

  “What’s there to sort out?”

  Quentin cleared his throat, looking at his mother as if she were the tough military-school teacher who always found fault with his answers. If only, Annette thought, he realized what an attractive, powerful, tough-minded man he could be. Even sitting there all worried and stricken, he was as handsome as any man she knew with his tawny hair, square chin, roguish smile and trim weekend clothes. She wished he wouldn’t be so damned tentative all the time. Stand up to me, she wanted to say—but another time. Right now she just wanted him to get moving.

  “Have you heard anything more from the Frenchman?” he asked.

  “Jean-Paul Gerard knows I’ll do whatever’s necessary to protect you.”

  Quentin looked pained. “Mother, I’m so sorry….”

  “Apologies don’t help the situation, and feeling sorry for yourself or me will only incapacitate you. You should seize upon adversity as an opportunity to make yourself a better, stronger person.”

  “I suppose so,” he replied, not knowing what else to say. He had risen before dawn and walked out on the rocks at the Winston house on the North Shore, unable to get Tam out of his mind. He couldn’t think about her without the burning pain of regret in his stomach. Yet to attempt to explain his feelings to his mother would be futile. Not only would she not hear him out, even if she did, she’d never understand how, after all Tam had done to him, he still felt anguish over what he had done to her. Only after he had abandoned her had she turned to Jared Sloan. That Quentin had had little choice, that he had intended to go back for her, meant nothing. Only actions counted.

  Her elbows on the table, Annette held her coffee mug in two hands and drank slowly, hoping the caffeine would revive her. She wished Quentin had the courage to meet her eye. What a hellish mess they were in. Thomas, Rebecca, Jared, Jean-Paul. Maybe she should have shot Jean-Paul while she’d had the chance—or let Kim have him. A dead man in her study wouldn’t have been the worst thing she’d ever had to explain.

  “I’ve decided to leave for France this afternoon,” she said. “I hadn’t planned to leave until next weekend at the earliest, but I was up most of the night thinking about this dilemma we’re in. Frankly, I think the wisest course of action right now is for me to get out of the country. I usually don’t like to confront problems by running, but I can’t justify standing up to Jean-Paul when he might jeopardize the safety of others—you, Jared, even Rebecca. Whatever my personal opinion is of those two, I don’t want to be responsible in any way for anything Jean-Paul might do to them to twist my arm. It’s best I just leave. If Jean-Paul wants to deal with me, he’ll have to come to the Riviera.”

  “Mother, are you sure? You could be leaving yourself open.”

  She smiled at his boyish concern for his old mother’s safety; how sweet. What would he think of her if he knew how deliberate her actions were? “Quentin,” she said philosophically, “it’s my guess Jean-Paul Gerard won’t dare step foot in France to follow me. I’m hoping—call it a calculated risk, if you will—that he’ll just give up.” She inhaled, then sipped her coffee, debating whether she should bother to go on. Finally, she said, “There’s another side to this problem I haven’t told you.”

  Quentin abandoned any pretense of eating breakfast. His mother’s seriousness—her very blue eyes riveted on him, her lined face strangely pale—further upset his stomach and made him wonder if he should have come to her. He could have explained his fears to Jane, told her everything about Tam, Saigon, the Frenchman. He could have tracked down Jared and talked to him, tried to clear the air between them. Why had he come to his mother? Not for sympathy and understanding certainly; they were in short supply with Annette Reed. For advice? For hope? For strength and courage?

  No, he thought, he’d come to her simply because that’s what he’d always done.

  “What’s that?” he asked in a neutral tone.

  “Thirty years ago,” she said, “I brought it to the French police’s attention that Jean-Paul Gerard was their much-sought jewel thief Le Chat.”

  Not wasting a word, she told Quentin about the Riviera in 1959, the jewel thief Le Chat, the popular race-car driver Jean-Paul Gerard, Gerard’s flight from the country.

  “I thou
ght I’d never hear from him again,” she explained, “but obviously I was wrong. He used you to get to me in 1974 with that blackmail scheme. Now he’s trying again.”

  Quentin had listened quietly, horrified. “Mother, I had no idea. What you must be going through…to do the honorable thing and then suffer for it. And obviously I let you down. I gave him a way of getting to you—” Quentin paused and shook his head in sorrow. “I should have been more careful.”

  “All water over the dam now,” Annette said briskly. “You committed a relatively minor transgression, Quentin. You were twenty-two years old, and you allowed yourself to be duped. If you’d done something I considered really wrong—really inexcusable—I would have let you take your lumps.”

  “But I was just stupid.”

  She made no response.

  “Why did Gerard wait all these years to come after you again? There must have been something in that article in The Score—”

  “No, I doubt there was anything specific. The Score simply stirred up his old feelings of resentment, and he thought he might as well have another go at me.” She pushed aside her virtually untouched plate of muffins. “The point is, Quentin, that he’s after me, not you or Jared or Rebecca or anyone else. But if I were Jean-Paul Gerard, I’d think very seriously before I stepped foot into a country I’d left thirty years ago as a fugitive from justice.”

  Quentin nodded, admiring his mother’s courage. He would have complimented her again and again, except she’d had enough of him.

  “Go away for the weekend,” she told him. “Let Gerard realize he’s failed again and go sulk. Everything will be fine.” And thinking of Thomas, Annette smiled and added, “I promise.”