by Ava Miles
“You deserved it,” Sadie said. “Please don’t be mad, Susannah. I would hate that most of all.”
“Well, I am,” Susannah said, biting her lip. “And hurt too. This whole thing hurts me. Dredging up the past. Hearing you’ve gone along with them, J.P.”
Their brother raised his brow. “They were brave to come and talk to me about it. They could have done it behind my back after speaking with you, but they didn’t. Their hearts are in the right place, Susannah. In the end, that’s why I’ve given them my support.” He paused for a long moment. “Our daddy might have up and left us,” he finally continued, “but we stuck together and kept close. I’m not going to let this tear us apart. Are you?”
Tears popped into Shelby’s eyes, and she noticed both of her sisters seemed choked up as well.
“You know I love y’all,” Susannah said. “I just wish…y’all could have let this be. It’s going to stir up so much hurt.”
J.P. herded them all into a group hug. “All the more reason we face it head on so we can heal the rest of the way.”
“I don’t want to be wondering about Daddy on my wedding day,” Sadie said.
“I’m sick of leaving a big blank whenever I have to fill out my father’s medical history at the doctor’s office,” Shelby added.
“When Tammy and I have children of our own,” J.P. said, squeezing them tight, “I don’t want to get all upset whenever they ask where their original grandpa ran off to and why he’s not around.”
They all squeezed one another and pretty much sniffled, causing J.P. to pull out a few tissues from his pocket, the ones he kept for his women and the children.
“All right,” Susannah finally said in a quiet voice as they eased back, their arms still wrapped around each other. “Tell me what you’ve learned.”
As Shelby explained everything they’d talked about with Vander, both in the meeting and afterward, she could feel the muscles in her sister’s back bunch up beneath her hand. Saying the words out loud somehow made it all worse, and Shelby felt like she was coming apart again. Where in the world could Daddy be? How could a person disappear without leaving a footprint in an age when everything was traceable by Social Security numbers or driver’s licenses?
“So you’re going to have this Vander keep looking?” Susannah asked after a spell.
“Yes,” Sadie said. “I don’t know what more he can find out, but there are other ways for him to search. He’s going to meet with us again on Monday.”
“What time?” Susannah asked.
“Why?” Shelby asked, shocked by the thought that her sister might join them.
“I want to pray, is all,” Susannah said. “We’re all going to need a lot of prayers to get through this.”
“Amen,” J.P. said.
The breeze blew through the trees, and Shelby shivered. Sometimes she felt something spiritual in these woods, and right now that sensation was stronger than ever.
“What do we tell Mama?” Susannah asked. “If I noticed something was up, so will she.”
That was the God’s honest truth. “I keep praying and asking if we’re right to keep it from her, and I just don’t know,” Shelby said.
“What do you think, J.P.?” Susannah asked.
Their brother stayed silent for a long time, like he was prone to do when he was gathering his thoughts. “If she asks, we tell her. I have this feeling, though…”
“What?” Sadie asked anxiously.
He lifted his shoulder. “I don’t think she’s going to ask.”
“That makes it easier, then,” Shelby said. From a ways down the path, Rye shouted at them to come back to the house.
As they all looked in that direction, Sadie heaved out a sigh and said, “Does it? I’ll still feel guilty as all get out.”
“Me too,” Susannah agreed.
“Let’s see where things go,” J.P. said. “We need to keep talking. If and when we learn anything more, we’ll discuss it and come to a decision. Is that all right, Shelby? Sadie?”
Her younger sister nodded immediately, but Shelby took her time to think it through. When you gave your word to J.P., it was binding. What would happen if they didn’t all agree about the best course to take with Mama? She suddenly had greater appreciation for why Vander had insisted that both she and Sadie sign his service agreement.
J.P. was looking at her with that patient gaze of his, and she finally nodded. “I promise.”
“Let’s head on back to the house to eat then,” J.P. said. “The others will be wondering where we’ve gone off to.”
When they returned for Sunday dinner, for which Amelia Ann and Clayton had finally shown up, they discovered J.P. was right.
Mama didn’t ask them anything, but she watched them all night.
Chapter 5
Whenever Gail Hardcrew invited him to her mammoth of a mansion in Nashville’s tony Belle Meade neighborhood, Vander considered it a summons. He’d agreed to meet her, even though it was a Monday, a day he tried to stack with meetings that would start his week off right. With Gail, he never knew if a summons would cement or derail his week.
He’d done a lot of work for Gail over the years, everything from cleaning up her daddy’s unfortunate death in the arms of his very young, gold-digging girlfriend to discovering the slutty blonde her recent ex-husband—that prissy asshole Calvin Henderson—was doing on the side. Beyond that, his firm conducted background checks and such for her business.
Vander liked having permanent clients, and Gail undoubtedly had connections, but he also simply enjoyed her company. She was like a one-person Southern theatre on crack.
The grounds of her ten-thousand-square-foot home were carefully manicured and tended like usual when he arrived, and the cherubs in the over-the-top Italian stone fountain in the center of her circular driveway looked like they were frolicking. Few people could display frolicking cherubs in their home without losing respect. Gail pulled it off with aplomb.
Gail’s old-school English butler answered the door, and Vander gave him a nod of acknowledgement when he was allowed inside the mansion. Jeffries took his job seriously, to the tune of wearing old-school tails, and Vander did his best to indulge the older man.
“Ms. Hardcrew is in the informal parlor, Mr. Montgomery,” Jeffries said in his lyrical English accent. “Please follow me.”
Vander could find the informal parlor with a blindfold on—informal because it boasted a carved mahogany fireplace rather than a Carrera marble one like the formal parlor—and they both knew it. But that wasn’t the point. Gail believed in maintaining appearances—until she had to fight dirty. He liked her best when she decided to go below the belt.
Not too many Southern women would stoop to the kind of measures Gail did, but that’s what made her one of Nashville’s leading female entrepreneurs. If Vander were back in Boston, he would have put it more bluntly: Gail didn’t put up with anyone’s shit.
“Vander, dahling,” Gail said, rising in a low-cut pink dress that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a contestant for the Miss Garden Rose beauty competition.
Her black curly hair bounced as she wrapped a white boa around her. She was dripping in jewels pretty much everywhere a woman could put them, and Vander had to bite his lip to hide his smile as he stepped forward to kiss the cheek she’d turned to the side so dramatically.
“Hello, Gail, it’s good to see you,” he said.
She swatted his chest and looked him straight in the eye, waggling her painted-in eyebrows. “But not good enough to take me up on my proposition.”
She propositioned him every time they met. He told himself she was joking about them becoming lovers. Well, mostly. “Gail, you’re one hell of a woman and gorgeous to boot, but alas, you’re a client.” This had been his script for years. Her scene was up next.
Her dramatic sigh made the white feathers on her boa sway like a willow in a summer breeze. “Oh, Vander! You always disappoint me with that answer. I’ve been asking you s
ince I got rid of that bastard ex-husband of mine. Need I remind you, I’m only ten years older than you. That’s not much, is it, dahling?”
“Gail, you propositioned me after you divorced your first husband for stealing money from you for his horse gambling problem.” Gail was nothing if not persistent.
She pushed at his chest flirtatiously. “Just imagine what might have happened if you’d taken me up on it! I might never have married Calvin, rot his soul.”
Jeffries cleared his throat behind them, and Gail gave him the fish eye like she knew the butler was interrupting on purpose. Jeffries might be old-fashioned, but he was also protective—especially when it seemed like Gail was taking things too far.
“Well, fine, bring in the drinks, for heaven’s sake, if you’re going to interrupt us,” Gail said to Jeffries, waving a hand in acceptance.
The silver tray the butler set down on the glass coffee table held a tumbler likely filled with Vander’s current favorite bourbon, a green juice concoction he couldn’t imagine Gail drinking, and some canapés.
“I can’t drink this,” Vander said. “It’s not even noon.”
She simply shrugged.
Without waiting to be asked, Vander sat down in the sofa chair with the pink, hibiscus-pattered cushions. He knew it was rude, but he couldn’t lollygag with Gail for the rest of the day. There were cases for him to attend to, meetings to prepare for.
“What in the world are you drinking?” he asked Gail when she held her nose and sipped at her green drink.
“It’s a kale and pineapple juice with a splash of lemon,” she told him. “The doctors want me off alcohol for a spell, and I finally conceded. Every time I drink this concoction, it feels like the end of the world. You might as well engrave my tombstone now. Tell me, Vander, how am I supposed to enjoy life if I can’t imbibe every now and again?”
Vander was hesitant to ask Gail why her doctors had her off the sauce, but since she was watching him so closely—almost daring him to give her permission to tell her sob story—he reached for his bourbon as a distraction. A few sips wouldn’t hurt him.
Her face fell.
“All right,” he said, giving in, “tell me why you’re drinking that disgusting concoction.”
Her smile was infectious as she launched into an emotional story about how the health of her heart was at risk due to a condition called hypertriglyceridemia. When she detoured into her family’s medical history, waxing on about how blueblood Southerners never spoke about their health issues and how that tendency had almost killed her, he decided to take another sip of his bourbon. Gail was on a tear.
“And that’s why I sent Shelby your way,” she finished off, earning a sharp look. “She simply has to know about her daddy, Vander. Her very health could be at risk—and that of her siblings.”
“Wait a minute,” he said, setting his drink aside. “You sent Shelby to me? Shelby McGuiness? Related to Sadie McGuiness?”
“Good Lord, Vander!” Gail uttered. “How many Shelby McGuinesses do you think there are in Nashville, anyway? I mean, I know her mama named her after that Julia Roberts character in Steel Magnolias, but seriously. Of course I did!”
“This is unexpected. How do you know Shelby?” He didn’t like being caught flat-footed—heck, he was the private investigator—but Gail was clearly loving this.
“She works for me, you fool!” she said, reaching for his bourbon. “I need a sip. To fortify me.”
He rolled his eyes. “What does she do for you? I don’t typically run a client’s history unless it’s related to the case.” He didn’t need to know what she or Sadie did for a living to find their father. Then he remembered how Charlie had run both of the McGuiness women in their databases. Dammit, she must have discovered this. Why hadn’t she told him? They were going to have a talk when he saw her.
“Oh, I love knowing something you don’t,” Gail said, pretty much finishing off his bourbon in two more healthy sips. “That must get your knickers in a wad. She’s my personal accountant.”
Shelby was an accountant? Somehow that intrigued him. She’d purposefully chosen an orderly profession, governed by legal structures like his was, even if hers was the IRS and his was the Tennessee Private Investigation and Polygraph Commission. But she also worked for Gail, the pinup girl for drama and chaos. What about Shelby had made her want to dance with both extremes on a daily basis?
“How did you two hook up?” he asked.
Gail picked up the silver bell she always carried around the mansion and rang it. “Jeffries! Excuse me a moment.” When the man appeared, she gave him a radiant smile. “Another bourbon for Mr. Montgomery.”
Vander shot her a look, which she pointedly ignored. “Thank you, Jeffries,” he said. “I find myself thirsty.”
When the butler was gone, she leaned forward, giving him a smile that could have made a Confederate general rethink his battle strategy, and whispered, “I only have a sip here and there. That won’t kill me none.”
His mouth twitched. “Nothing is going to put you in the grave unless you say so, Gail. That’s one thing I know about you.”
She slapped his knee. “That’s why I love you so much. Vander, are you sure you don’t want to knock boots with me?”
Vander shook his head. “Gail.”
“I can’t help it!” she said, fanning herself. “You’re so handsome and compelling. I barely remember you’re a Yankee when we chat.”
He found himself chuckling, knowing she was mostly teasing. It didn’t matter that he’d been born in Nashville and lived here his first ten years. He’d left—and then come back without a Southern accent. To some, that was heresy. “You were about to tell me how you happened to hire Shelby.”
“Right! She applied for the advertisement pretty much right out of college, but she had grit—something I admire in people—and she was so earnest, what with her mama being a preacher and all. I just knew she’d never steal any money from me like my first husband did.”
“How is it you haven’t mentioned her to me before?” Vander asked.
“I don’t have you investigate everyone who works for me, Vander,” she said, “and since you refuse to come to my house parties, y’all have never crossed paths until now.”
Gail’s house parties pretty much terrified him, and Vander didn’t scare easily. The engraved invitations were enough to make him queasy, partly because they reminded him of the kind of events his mother and grandparents used to hold in their Boston mansion. He’d never been allowed to attend any of the family parties because he was a reminder of his mother’s greatest mistake. He’d been kept upstairs with his nanny, the orchestra music and laughter filtering in through the windows his only link to the events going on two stories below.
This past May, though, Gail had invited him to something his old-moneyed Boston family would never have imagined in a million years: a May Day celebration, the entertainment of which had included a painted yellow horse and dancing fairies. Of course, the fairies were actors from the local theatre scene, but still. There wasn’t enough bourbon in all of Nashville to entice him to attend a party like that despite how unique the invitation had been.
“All right, I’m glad to know about the connection,” Vander said. “It’s interesting Shelby didn’t tell me you referred her.”
Gail gave Jeffries an innocent smile when he reappeared with the bourbon. “Vander, your drink.”
He took the drink and played along. “Thank you, Jeffries.”
The man bowed and left, and Vander handed Gail the glass. After taking another healthy sip, she sighed and said, “Bourbon is so delicious, don’t you think? Especially on a Monday morning.”
“It’s almost noon, Gail,” Vander said to make her feel a little better.
“It is indeed,” Gail replied, rearranging her boa. “I’m not surprised Shelby didn’t mention that she works for me. The girl is special that way. She doesn’t use her connection to me like she might. Because of that and all of the
good she has done me over these years, I’d like to pay your fee. That’s why I asked you to come in today, Vander.”
He sat back in his chair. “You want to foot the bill? She must be special to you.”
“She is,” Gail said, patting her heart. “And pretty too.”
While he agreed, he still rolled his eyes. “You’re incorrigible.”
“And you’re getting too old to still be a bachelor around these parts,” Gail said with a wink.
While he might be having a recurrent nightmare about his dad asking him what more he was going to do with his life, he wasn’t prepared to give Gail any indication he was doing a personal inventory of it.
“I don’t want to end up divorced and paying alimony to no-good exes like someone else I know,” he said, both because it was partly true and because he could be balls-to-the-wall honest with Gail. “You’re not my only client who’s gotten screwed, blued, and tattooed by an ex.”
“That’s why I like you, Vander,” she said, leaning forward and giving him an enchanting smile. “You tell it like it is. When you marry, and despite your cynicism, I expect you will—you’re too handsome and kind-hearted to remain alone forever—you’ll choose well. No mere girl would suit you. That’s why I thought you might go for me. I’m a seasoned woman.”
Hearing Gail refer to him as kind-hearted made him more than a little uncomfortable, so he tried to keep things light. He let a smile snake across his lips. “Seasoned, huh? Is that what they’re calling it these days?”
She slapped him in the face with her white boa. “I’ll ignore that unchivalrous remark. Now, tell me what you’ve found out about Shelby’s daddy so far. I know y’all met on Friday. Plenty of time for you to run him.”
“Gail,” he said, leaning on the edge of his chair. “You might want to foot the bill for this case as a kindness to Shelby, but I can’t share any information with you. It’s unethical.”
“Unethical,” Gail harrumphed. “That’s ridiculous! I’m only trying to be supportive.”