The vase, for reasons unknown, had suffered Ricky’s sudden displeasure. He would have gone on a rampage except that Harold had grabbed him.
Rebecca Lynn took immediate possession of their son, giving her husband a dark, censoring look. When that faded, it was replaced by a disdainful expression that took up residence on her perfectly made-up face.
Everything about the woman screamed “fake,” Natalie couldn’t help thinking. Rebecca Lynn’s hair was currently a riotous cloud of red that could not be found anywhere in nature.
Silver, Anna’s daughter, was sitting over in a corner, her expression barring anyone from attempting to approach her.
Ever the outsider. Although, from what she’d heard, in the last few years, Silver and Candace had actually gotten closer. However, the relationship had come about for all the wrong reasons, at least when it came to Candace, who had orchestrated the “friendship.” Her twin had been extremely jealous of their stepsister. Silver, who was the same age as they were, had been born beautiful. With her mother’s support, she had become a singing sensation by the time she turned sixteen. This after bringing the modeling world to its knees.
Silver, Natalie had always felt, could have become anything she wanted to be.
Looking around the room at the various members of her extended—or was that distended?—family, Natalie viewed them all with a disparaging eye and now just shook her head.
Talk about dysfunctional families. Hers would probably be up for some kind of prize—if there were prizes given for something like this.
His temper on edge because Rebecca Lynn had usurped his authority to discipline their son—again—Harold Rothchild looked at the latecomer with no attempt to hide his displeasure.
“So you’ve finally decided to grace us with your presence.”
“Yup, finally,” Natalie echoed in the same tone her father had just used.
So far, it’d been one hell of a day, and the rest of it wasn’t shaping up to be any better. Making her way over to a chair that was near Silver, Natalie sat down. Her stepsister slanted a glance in her direction and nodded a silent greeting.
“All right,” Natalie said, bracing herself for anything. “Let’s get on with it.”
Chapter 9
After Natalie took her seat, Harold didn’t begin speaking immediately. Instead, he moved restlessly about the wide, cathedral-ceilinged living room like a caged man desperately searching for the way out and only coming up against dead ends.
Finally, his back to the baby grand piano his wife insisted on getting for their son, he said, “By now, you’ve all heard the news. Candace is dead.”
“Is that why you called us here, to make sure we all knew?” Silver asked incredulously, raising her voice to be heard over her stepbrother’s high-pitched whining. “There’s been nothing else all over the news all morning,” she pointed out.
“No, I called you together because we need to make funeral arrangements.” His intense blue eyes shifted toward his wife.
Rebecca Lynn took immediate offense. “Hey, don’t look at me. I’ve never handled things like that.” A disdainful expression crossed her face. “Funerals give me the creeps.”
Anything that required work gave the woman the creeps, Natalie thought. “Eloquently put,” she murmured under her breath.
The general tone, since the words were not audible, earned her a dirty look from her stepmother. Bored and frustrated, Ricky’s whining went up a notch. It was a little like walking into an insane asylum, Natalie realized.
Her father shifted his attention to her. “Natalie, exactly when can we expect to have your sister’s body released?”
Her father was a reasonably intelligent man. He should have known the answer to that. And then it occurred to her that he expected her to have some kind of special pull at the coroner’s office. The system didn’t work like that.
“As soon as the ME finishes the autopsy and determines the cause of death,” she replied patiently.
Horror registered on Silver’s face. “You mean they’re gutting her like some kind of fish?” she asked, not bothering to stifle a shiver.
“We know the cause of death,” Jenna insisted. When Natalie looked at her, waiting, her younger sister declared, “Someone killed her.”
Was everyone being deliberately obtuse, or had the fuse on her temper been shortened by Matt’s sudden reappearance into her life?
“That’s not the cause, that’s the effect,” Natalie explained, trying to at least sound patient. “If we know how, we might know who.”
“What good is that going to do us?” Jenna asked sullenly. “She’ll still be dead.”
“No, Natalie’s right,” Harold cut in. “If we know who, then we’ll know if killing Candace was personal—or personal.” Was his daughter killed by a jealous lover, or someone who had it in for the family, for him, and this was their way of striking out?
A loud, exasperated sound escaped from Rebecca Lynn’s lips. The other women in the room all looked in her direction. “Okay, you’ve officially gone off the deep end,” she told her husband nastily.
“Don’t go declaring him mentally incompetent just yet, Rebecca Lynn, although I’m sure that the thought is near and dear to your heart,” Natalie said, a deliberately fake smile on her lips. Turning to her father, her “smile” vanished. “Just what do you mean by that?” she wanted to know.
Before Harold could say anything, Rebecca Lynn presented herself to him, her hands fisted at her waist. “Are you going to let her talk to me like that?” she demanded.
“Why not?” Silver interjected. “You talk to him like that all the time.”
Whatever heated words Rebecca Lynn retorted to her stepdaughter were drowned out by Ricky’s screams because no one was paying any attention to him. The next moment, he was scrambling up onto the piano bench and banging on the keys, adding yet another layer of dissonance to the cacophony.
Jenna’s voice was almost shrill as she demanded, “Will someone please shut that kid up?”
Harold looked as if he was down to his very last nerve as he implored his wife, “Rebecca, please, take him out of here.”
Rebecca Lynn crossed her arms before her, a portrait of immovable stubbornness. Everyone in the room knew that there was nothing she hated more than to appear as if she was being ordered around. “Why don’t you? He’s your son, too.”
Though she wanted nothing more than to just withdraw and go home, Natalie found herself coming to her father’s rescue.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, Dad’s the one who called the meeting.” Rebecca Lynn patently ignored her and picked up her all but empty second glass of gin and tonic. She’d raised it to her lips when Natalie added, “But I’ll be happy to take my little brother out of here.”
A look of alarm descended over Rebecca Lynn’s face. Swallowing a curse, she set her glass down hard on the coffee table and quickly rose to her feet. Striding across the room, she grabbed her son by the hand and yanked him off the piano bench. The boy’s screams only swelled in volume. Glaring at Natalie, Rebecca Lynn dragged her son from the room.
Ricky was heard kicking and screaming all the way up the stairs to his room.
If she knew Rebecca Lynn, Ricky was quickly going to become the housekeeper’s problem, Natalie thought, feeling sorry for the older woman.
Harold took advantage of Rebecca Lynn’s absence. His young wife had a way of intimidating him that neither Anna, nor June—the late, lamented love of his life—ever had. “Can’t you put some pressure on this ME of yours?” he asked Natalie. “I want to get Candace buried and put this whole nasty business behind us as soon as possible.”
“He’s not my ME,” Natalie pointed out, then realized something. “You’re worried that this is just the beginning, aren’t you?”
“What do you mean, just the beginning?” Confused, Jenna looked from her father to her sister. “Just the beginning of what?”
“Nothing,” Harold dismissed Jenna’s ques
tion much too quickly. The look he shot Natalie said that he’d told her what he had in confidence.
If she’d felt that this only involved Rebecca Lynn, she wouldn’t have said a word in front of Silver and Jenna. But her father had given her the impression that this thing went beyond her grasping stepmother and her unruly half brother.
Natalie looked pointedly at her father, passionately wishing he had a backbone. “They have a right to know, Dad.”
Jenna’s eyes nervously shifted from her to their father. “Know what?”
Since her father still wasn’t saying anything, Natalie took the matter into her own hands. “Dad thinks that the ring is cursed.”
It still didn’t make any sense. Jenna exchanged looks with Silver, who looked no more enlightened than she felt. “What ring?” Jenna wanted to know.
Again, Natalie waited for her father to say something. He didn’t. So she did. “The Tears of the Quetzal.”
The mention of the priceless diamond dissipated the fog Silver seemed to be encased in. They all knew that the gem was rumored to be theirs. Half the time, she thought it was all a myth, made up by her stepfather to court publicity.
“What does that have to do with Candace’s—?” Silver stopped abruptly as the realization suddenly occurred to her. “Was Candace wearing the ring when she was killed last night?”
“Either the ring, or a damn good paste imitation,” Natalie answered. But they all knew Candace. Her late twin couldn’t abide fakes. She took great satisfaction in flaunting the real thing. The stone had certainly looked real enough on the casino tapes she’d viewed. “When they interviewed her on camera last night, just before she walked into The Janus, Candace was waving her hand around for all the world to see.”
“Then anyone could have broken into her condo and killed her for it,” Jenna speculated.
“Yes,” Natalie agreed. “Except for one thing.” The two women and her father looked at her, waiting. “Candace knew her killer.”
“What makes you say that?” Jenna demanded, sounding almost hostile about the suggestion.
“There was no sign of forced entry,” Natalie told them. “The room where they found her was a mess, as if she was trying to fight off whoever she’d chosen to bring home with her. But it was obvious that she was the one who had opened the door in the first place.”
Harold sighed and sat down in the winged armchair that his wife had vacated. He closed his eyes wearily. “I always knew this was going to happen.”
The nature of Natalie’s job forced her to look beyond the obvious and delve deeper. She gave her father’s words a different interpretation. He wasn’t talking about her twin’s lifestyle.
“You’re talking about the curse, aren’t you?” Harold seemed almost beaten down, and he made no answer. He merely lifted his shoulders in a half shrug before letting them fall again. The ring was part of family lore, but to her recollection, her father had never elaborated on it. “Just why is this ring supposed to be cursed?”
“There’s no such thing as curses,” Jenna snapped. She ran her hands up and down her arms even though the day had been unseasonably warm. “I wish you’d all just stop talking about it.”
“It doesn’t matter why,” Harold told Natalie, his voice weary but firm. As far as he was concerned, the subject was closed. “It just is, Natalie. Let’s leave it at that.”
But she had no intention of tiptoeing around the subject because it seemed to upset her father and, for different reasons, Jenna. She didn’t like unanswered questions.
Natalie tried to make him understand. “Sure it matters. Say, if it was originally stolen from someone, then we’re looking at a revenge motive. If this is nothing more than some kind of ‘curse’ handed down through the ages, then we’re looking for some kind of wraith or ghoul, and we’re going to need to get ourselves a ghost buster.”
It took Harold a moment to realize that she wasn’t serious about the second half of her reasoning. He scowled at her. “This isn’t funny, Natalie.”
“No,” she agreed. “Death never is.” She studied his face. “Now, is there something more you want to tell us about this ring, Dad?”
There was no hesitation on his part as he barked, “No.”
There was something else going on here, she could swear to it.
“Then why do you look like you’ve got something to hide?” she asked, trying her best to keep her voice neutral.
“Stop badgering my husband,” Rebecca Lynn ordered as she walked back into the room. Ricky, mercifully, was nowhere in sight.
Natalie really hated the woman’s high-handed manner. “He was our father before he was your husband, Rebecca Lynn,” she informed her stepmother. Glancing at her father, she felt sorry for him. He suddenly looked a great deal older than his sixty years. “But, for now, I’ll back off.”
Harold attempted to flash a smile of thanks toward her, but the corners of his mouth hardly rose.
“We still haven’t talked about Candace’s funeral arrangements,” he pointed out heavily, uttering each word as if it weighed a ton.
“Oh God,” Rebecca Lynn moaned, rolling her brown eyes heavenward. “Just put her into the ground and be done with it.”
Natalie instantly took offense for her late twin. Granted Candace had a myriad of faults, but she was dead and deserved respect. She threw up her hands in exasperation. “I’ll take care of it, Dad,” she told him.
Harold looked as if a huge boulder had been lifted off his shoulders. “You really will?”
“Yes, I really will.” What choice did she have? She could see this “family meeting” degenerating into name-calling and buck passing. She didn’t need to be part of that. “As soon as her body is released, I’ll have Candace cremated and place her urn in the family crypt—beside Grandpa.”
Silver suddenly spoke up. “What about a service?” she wanted to know.
That was easy enough to address. “We’ll have a memorial service,” Natalie told her. “Just for the family.”
But even that drew an objection from Rebecca Lynn. Hostility entered her voice. “You’re not planning to include that woman, are you?”
They all knew that “that woman” was Rebecca Lynn’s way of referring to Anna Worth Rothchild, the ex-wife Harold had unceremoniously dumped in order to wed his current trophy wife.
“I most certainly am,” Natalie informed her. She would have invited her former stepmother even if it hadn’t irritated her present one. That it did was just icing on the cake. “Anna was like a mother to Candace.”
Fuming, Rebecca Lynn spun around on her heel and looked at her husband, expecting him to back up her position. “Harold!”
She was unpleasantly surprised. “She’s right,” Harold replied. He looked like a mongoose that had accidentally fallen into a snake pit.
Rebecca Lynn refused to accept defeat. “But she wasn’t her mother, was she?”
Her stepmother’s high-handed tone finally managed to arouse Silver’s ire. “If my mother wants to come, she can come,” the child-star-turned-pop-diva spat out.
Rebecca Lynn glared at her stepdaughter, barely refraining from a bevy of ripe words. She knew she was outnumbered, but refused to admit she was outmaneuvered. Turning to Harold, she delivered her ultimatum with a dramatic toss of her head. Flaming red hair undulated all around her.
“If that woman comes to the service, Harold, then I won’t.”
“And miss a chance to be photographed by the paparazzi?” Natalie asked, feigned surprise. The look on her face told her stepmother that she was as transparent as a glass of water. “I sincerely doubt that, but the choice,” she said pleasantly, “is yours.”
Furious, Rebecca Lynn stormed out of the room, cursing them all to several levels of hell, each hotter than the last.
Harold merely shook his head. Though he was still under her thumb, his new wife had lost much of her charm for him. “You really shouldn’t antagonize her like that, Natalie.”
In response,
Natalie smiled at him. “Rebecca Lynn makes it much too easy, and I have such few simple pleasures.”
Harold didn’t bother commenting. Instead, he asked, “How’s the investigation going?”
As she started to answer, Natalie noticed Jenna edging closer, as if afraid she might miss something. That was a surprise, she thought. She would have expected that from Silver, who, thanks to Candace’s deceptive machinations, thought of Candace as her friend.
With five years between them, Jenna and Candace had never known a close moment—again, thanks mainly to Candace. But then, Natalie reflected, maybe she’d misjudged her younger sister.
It wouldn’t have been the first time her judgment had failed her, Natalie reminded herself.
Her father was looking at her expectantly. Did he think she was some kind of a magician? “It’s only been a day, Dad. I’m still following leads.”
An impatient sound escaped his lips. “And you’ll tell me when you find out who?”
When, not if. He either had a lot of faith in her or was playing the guilt card. Most likely the latter, Natalie decided.
A spasmodic smile came and went from her lips. “You’ll be the first to know.”
“Do you have any, you know, suspects?” Jenna asked.
The immediate male population. Out loud, Natalie said, “Someone the camera caught Candace smiling at.”
Jenna’s eyes widened. Natalie thought she heard her stop breathing. “Who?”
“Unfortunately, the person was off camera, so we don’t know. But I’m doing my best to try to piece it all together.”
“If anyone can do it, my money’s on you, Nat,” Jenna said.
Natalie said nothing. She only wished she had half the confidence that Jenna had.
Natalie remained at the mansion another hour or so after her sister’s departure. Her father detained her with his incessant questions about the murder investigation, while stressing how crucial it was to locate the mystical ring that was all but a third party in all this. Finally disentangling herself from him, she went home to see if she could make any more headway with the copies of the tapes that Matt had given her.
The Heiress’s 2-Week Affair Page 10