“The press release will go out with the announcement of the air date for ‘Haas on the Run,’” Mac replied. “The screening this morning made it clear beyond a shadow of a doubt. Cassie, you’re going to be the new host of Breaking News.”
“But…” She searched Magnus’s gaze but could not get beyond his neutral, pleased expression.
“No buts, my dear,” he said, holding out his hand again. “It’s yours. No strings—or anything else—attached.”
A week later Cassie rented a car at a midtown garage. “Just for one day,” she said, filling out the rental form. “I’ll have it back this time tomorrow.”
“Aren’t you what’s her name? Miranda Darin’s sister?”
“Yes,” Cassie said, smiling. It was not unusual for people to stop her on the street these days, asking the same question. The press release of her new appointment as host of Breaking News had made a local splash; she’d been on two talk shows and done numerous press interviews. All the attention had been exciting—and diverting. It had taken her several days to face the fact that it was probably all in vain. One or more of the three most important men in her life had been instrumental in ending Miranda’s. And once the truth was known about how Miranda died, it was not at all unlikely, as far as Cassie was concerned, that Cassie’s career would end with it.
“But that’s absurd,” Sheila had responded when Cassie told her how she felt. “Whomever we nail, it’s going to be big news. Front page stuff. A truly to-die-for trial. It’s going to put you over the top. Not that you need any more pushing.”
“I don’t think I’ll have the stomach for it,” she replied, turning away.
“That’s ridiculous. We’ve gotten this far. We’re almost there. Friday night, when Magnus is at the ballet, I’ll check out his apartment. You’ll do the Hamptons and pick up the rest of the evidence. Like we discussed, Monday morning we visit the D.A.’s office and show them what we’ve got. We’re so close.”
Now, as the traffic began to thin out along the Long Island Expressway, Cassie faced what was really bothering her. It wasn’t that they would soon have enough evidence to take to the authorities; it was whom the material seemed to indict. The more she puzzled through what she knew of the circumstances surrounding Miranda’s death, the more positive she became. Haas, just a social friend, had no motive. Magnus, Miranda’s lover and boss, only lost by her death. That left Jason. Bitter and angry Jason who had admitted openly to her that the marriage had been in trouble. And it was easy enough now to guess what had pushed him over the edge.
Miranda had discovered, just as Cassie and Sheila had done after her, the link that bound Magnus, Jason, and Haas: the death of a girl more than twenty years before in a midtown hotel owned by Darin Associates. The death had quickly melted out of the news, followed by all talk of “Magnus for Mayor.” A month later the hotel had been sold. Though the murder was never solved, it had lost none of its meaning for the three men most closely involved. Haas had kept the original death certificate in order to blackmail both Jason and Magnus. A thoroughly ugly business, one the guilty parties tried hard to keep buried in the past. But one that Miranda had forced back into the harsh light of the present.
“Why are you doing this?” Jason had demanded the last night Cassie saw Miranda alive. “The girl meant nothing. Why do you want to ruin me?”
Jason. As always when Cassie had a moment to herself, she thought of him. He’d been so obviously pleased for her when he heard about her promotion at Magnus that her heart had leapt with secret joy.
“I’m proud of you, Cassie,” he’d said the morning after the screening when she told him her news. He was heading out to the office when she’d stopped him in the foyer, and he put his overstuffed briefcase on the floor as though he meant to free up his arms for something. Her, perhaps? she wondered as they stood a few feet apart. But so much more divided them than the short stretch of carpet and marble that Cassie suddenly felt the essential shallowness of her new position. She felt the need—one she’d promised herself to resist—to break down the barriers that kept her from Jason. To demand the truth.
“For someone who’s doing so well,” Jason said with his down-turning smile, “I must say you don’t look very happy.”
“Jason…” She tried to stop herself, but he took a step toward her and said with real concern, “What is it, Cassie? What’s wrong?”
“Just a funny thing Sheila—you know, my producer on the Haas piece—came upon recently,” she replied, taking the plunge. “Involving you.”
“Yes?”
“And Magnus. The year he ran for mayor. And you supported him?”
“Yes? What of it?” His voice had lost all its earlier warmth.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know what you mean. Magnus made a run for mayor. He got cold feet. Pulled out.”
“But why?”
“Ask him.”
“I did. It’s not a subject he likes any more than you do,” Cassie replied. “Why is that? I wonder.”
He looked tired, worn down by fatigue though the day had just began. “I’m late,” he told her. “I’ve got to go.”
“Was it that girl who was killed at your hotel?” Cassie demanded, her voice sounding overly loud, shrill. For the first time in months, she felt Miranda’s presence nearby, listening, smiling. She sensed Jason felt it, too. He turned abruptly, starting for the door, but she grabbed his arm.
“Tell me the truth, Jason!”
“You don’t want the truth any more than Miranda did.” Jason jerked his elbow free.
“Yes,” she tried to tell him, “yes, I do.” But he was gone, the door slamming shut behind him.
In the week since, they’d hardly spoken, greeting each other with curt nods, allowing the anger and pain to simmer. When she told him that morning that she’d be spending the night with a friend, he hadn’t even looked up from the paper.
“Fine,” he said. “Have fun.” But there was little to enjoy in the long gray drive across Long Island. By the time she reached East Hampton the sun was a fiery red glow along the horizon that melted—all at once, within seconds—behind a long stand of scruffy pines. The Indian summer warmth went with it as an ocean breeze picked up. The summer resort towns seemed deserted on that mid-October evening. Local restaurants had already closed for the off-season. Cassie stopped at a gas station to ask directions to the house.
“Darin place?” The attendant leaned into the car, studying Cassie’s face. “It’s been closed up for months now.”
“I know. Can you just tell me how to get there?”
“Sure thing, ma’am,” the boy agreed, pointing down the highway and explaining the fastest route. “But be careful now. The house is way the hell off by itself, you know.”
As Cassie took the ocean drive, the salty nostalgic smell of the sea filled the car. It was pitch-black by the time she pulled up alongside the closed double gates of the house. As she opened the door, she heard the roar of surf and a soulful, clanging sound: just the noise of a distant buoy, Cassie assured herself, though it seemed to be ringing out an urgent, unreadable warning.
Thirty-one
The gate was locked, the property walled off from the road by a tall picket fence, edged by boxwoods. Though she had keys to the main house and guest cabanas, Cassie knew the security system at the main entrance gate was wired to the police station in town, and she didn’t want to alert anyone to her visit. As she started to walk down the deserted lane looking for another way in, her heels kept sinking into the sandy shoulder. She finally took her shoes off and pulled her light linen jacket closer. When she’d dressed for work that morning, the temperature had been in the seventies, the city stifling under the unexpected humidity of a late Indian summer. But, just three hours out of Manhattan, East Hampton was already deep into the fall season. Half the tree limbs were bare; the fallen leaves crunched beneath Cassie’s feet as she walked. The fence seemed to go o
n forever, an anonymous wall of naturally bleached wood designed to keep out day-trippers from the city. Cassie had seen photographs of the house; if viewed from the street, it was the kind of modern palatial concoction that would have sightseers stopping, pointing, and taking photographs.
Two summers before, the estate had been featured in a four-page glossy spread in the New York Times Sunday magazine. Someone on the Raleigh paper had pointed the article out to Cassie, saying: “Not bad for a seaside shack. Do the guest bedrooms come with their own saunas and whirlpools? If so, feel free to invite me along next time you go.”
As usual, Cassie pretended to be a lot closer to Miranda than she really was and acted as if she already knew all about the article, though she eagerly devoured each word of the piece. The four-color photographs had shown a luncheon party in progress: a perfectly tanned Miranda, dressed all in white, mingling with elegant-looking guests on an enormous front deck. White-jacketed waiters carried trays of frosty champagne cocktails. A table, set up beneath a striped awning on the beach, was piled high with a smorgasbord of chilled shrimp, dilled potato salad, wedges of avocado and mango, thin slices of dark grainy bread, an enormous crystal bowl of fresh strawberries, melon, and local blueberries. In the interview accompanying the photographs, Miranda had spoken of her desire to live simply and entertain casually in the summer.
It’s so important to get back to nature. Feel the sun on your face. Breathe in this wonderful, restorative salt air.” Her words had been set in italics next to a photograph of her in a filmy peach-colored swimsuit coverup holding a pair of shiny gold sandals.
The wind was picking up off the ocean by the time Cassie finally reached the end of the wooden fence; a lower barbed-wire fence joined it, threading inland along the property line. The land adjoining was undeveloped, running for several miles along the coastline, a silent stretch of rolling dunes and sea grass, crisscrossed by sandy paths. From there Cassie finally had a full view of the sea—the white flank of beach, the slow army of breakers, a new moon cocked precariously above a growing embankment of clouds.
She followed the barbed wire for several yards until she found a spot where it was low and loose enough to dig beneath the sandy bank and crawl under it. The grass on the other side was close-cropped and durable, an imported, carefully rolled natural carpet that, like the grounds themselves, Cassie knew cost thousands of dollars every year to maintain.
“You could sell it, Cassie,” Jason had told her when they were still lovers and she had first gone over the long list of properties, paintings, furniture, antiques, and clothing that she had inherited from Miranda’s estate. “Even in today’s market, I’m sure you could get a very good price.” He made no bones about despising the whole Hampton social scene and Miranda’s formidable role in it. Partly because of that—but also because it was where Miranda died—Cassie had avoided visiting.
“But she loved it out there,” Cassie had replied. “It wouldn’t feel right to get rid of it yet. I’ll just hold on to it for now … and see.” But what she’d seen in upkeep bills—the cost of the gardening services alone was more than what she had earned every month on the Raleigh News and Observer—made her aware that the “natural life” Miranda enjoyed in the summer came with a very steep price tag.
As Cassie started up the beautifully manicured lawn to the enormous darkened structure looming on the hill, she was reminded of the other reason she could not possibly sell any of Miranda’s possessions. Nothing that Miranda had left her—from the tiniest earrings to this multimillion-dollar compound—felt as if it truly belonged to Cassie.
Yes, she gladly wore Miranda’s clothes, rode in her Mercedes, and slept in her Porthault-covered bed. But despite the fact that all these things were now legally Cassie’s entitlements, in her heart she knew they were still her sister’s. In many ways she felt as though she had simply been dressing up in Miranda’s belongings the last few months. Pretending to be someone else. Someone far more glamorous and talented and desirable than Cassie Hartley would ever be. And though she had been able to fool so many people—Jason, Magnus, and Haas among them—she knew the truth. She was still Miranda Darin’s somewhat shy, not particularly ambitious, easily intimidated younger half sister. As she approached Miranda’s towering, oddly angled glass-and-bleached-wood home, Cassie told herself that she would always be what she literally was now: on the outside looking in.
The thin moonlight turned the ground-floor windows into dark mirrors, reflecting the carefully groomed shrub borders and gardens, tennis courts, and pool area. Then, seeing something moving across one of the lower windows, Cassie stopped, her heart racing. The image stopped, too, and she realized that it was herself, a hazy white figure frozen against a nearly black background of lawn and trees.
The pool itself was covered with a tarpaulin, though the surrounding garden of geraniums and ivy was still flourishing. Antique white cast-iron benches and tables ringed the perimeter. Cassie remembered the setting from the Times piece: the tables topped with pretty green-striped umbrellas, the long rectangular pool ashimmer with clear, deep aqua water, the enormous sloping lawn with its panoramic view of the sea.
“I stock a lot of the Long Island wines,” Miranda had said in the magazine article. “They’re very light and fresh-tasting, and I think it’s important to try to support the local merchants, don’t you? Though we have our share of the serious French vintages, we do try to keep it fairly simple. We’ve a little cellar in the basement of the pool house over there.”
It was a simple white one-story wooden structure with opaque glass windows topped by an antique weather vane in the shape of a sea gull. As Cassie found the keys to the double padlocked door, she thought she heard the noise of an approaching automobile. She stopped, the key still in the lock, and listened. Where would a car be going at this hour? The road dead-ended less than a quarter mile after the entrance gate to the house. But whatever Cassie might have heard, the sound now blended subtly into the other night noises—the rustle of trees, the roar of the distant surf, the overhead creak of the weather vane—and after a second or two she turned back to the door and was shortly rewarded by the lock snapping open. She grasped the cool aluminum of the door handle, turned, and pushed the door in.
It had been a long time since he had felt this way: the white heat of rage pounding at his temples. He looked down at his clenched fists on the wheel and at first hardly recognized them as his own. His knuckles were so bloodless and knobby they looked like some animal carcass, something dead and discarded. Slowly he forced his right hand, then his left, open. He shook each one, working to get the circulation going. He wished that he could do the same with the tight ball in his stomach. He felt sick, feverish. He had been so sure that it was all behind him now.
Of course, as soon as he learned what had happened, where Cassie was going, he knew he would have to follow her. Stop her. What a pity she’d gotten involved. A damn senseless shame. He’d tried to keep her out of this. Tried to make her see that it wasn’t in her best interests to pursue the matter. He should have known immediately, when the Haas business started. But he’d so wanted to believe that it was all over, finished and forgotten, that he’d allowed himself to believe what she’d told him.
Fool. His head ached. He tried not to think about the extent of her subterfuge; he tried to concentrate on the immediate situation and how he was going to resolve it. But her face kept swimming toward him: so open, so sweet, so willing to please. How could he have misread her? He should have known when she turned on him—he should have realized then—but he’d been blind. He’d allowed himself to be blinded. Once again.
When it had all happened, he told himself he’d never come out here again. He’d never liked the ocean anyway—the grit of sand between the toes, the potent marshy smell of the sea. He’d only come out for Miranda. Now, as he turned off onto the beach road to the house, the salt air filled his nostrils and he felt another wave of nausea sweep through his system. He slowed
and braked. He pulled off to the side of the road. His hands shook as he ran them through his hair; his temples were damp with sweat. He decided to leave the car there and walk the half mile or so up the beach. It would do him good to get some air. He needed to get a grip on himself before he had to face her. He couldn’t let her see how thoroughly she’d outstripped him. How completely he’d allowed himself to fall under her seemingly benevolent spell.
Something was wrong with the light. She flicked the switch back and forth several times, but nothing happened. She should have thought to bring a flashlight, of course, but she hadn’t. She had some matches in her purse, but they wouldn’t do much good, especially with the wind kicking up the way it was. Whatever light the moon had offered was lost now under a thickening cloud cover. The air carried the charge of an encroaching storm. She propped the door open with a cushionless cast-iron lawn chair and slowly edged her way into the cluttered storeroom. Besides the pool equipment—skimming nets, tubs of chlorine, hoses, and filters—there were stacks of deflated rafts and inner tubes, a floating pool chair, a wire basket filled with masks and flippers, a line of fishing rods, scattered beach balls. Cassie’s eyes adjusted to the lack of light, and she saw steps leading down to the cellar, barred by an elaborate wrought-iron door. It was locked, and it took her nearly ten minutes of trial and error with her key chain to find the right match of lock and key. The gate groaned as she pulled it open.
There was no railing. She felt her way downward, step by step, crouching and balancing against the wall. The air was musty and damp, far cooler than the floor above. Cassie fumbled in her shoulder bag, found the pack of matches, and lit one. It flared just long enough for Cassie to make out the hundreds of bottles—running in three neatly racked rows down the length of the small room—before it sputtered out. Miranda had said that the papers were hidden under the flagstones at the far end of the wine cellar. From where Cassie stood, that could mean one of two places. Moving by touch alone, she made her way over to one corner and pried open the loose floor stones. There was nothing beneath but firmly packed dirt. She crawled across the floor and began to lift up the stones in the other corner. They came up more easily and—even in the near pitch-blackness—Cassie could see the pale front of the manila envelope hidden beneath.
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