“Life brings complications with it, and the way I see it, you and Dillon taking this next step together? It’s a damn good way to give that ugliness the finger.”
On a laugh, Cate looked down at their joined hands. “I hadn’t thought of it that way, but now that I do? Yeah. Yeah, it is.”
She drove back to Sullivan’s Rest smiling at the thought. The hell with it, the hell with all that greedy, grasping, sensationalized bullshit. She’d take the next step, and the step after that, live her life, build a life with Dillon.
They’d build that life in a place that meant home to both of them, close to family that mattered so much. She’d have work that fulfilled and challenged her.
And if she wanted to milk a cow or make cheese now and again, well, she could do that, too.
Sky’s the limit, she thought. And the limit was what you made it.
She parked, headed toward the main house, then spotted her father and grandparents at a table by the pool. Shifting directions, she started toward them.
Her father raised a hand in greeting, called out, “We weren’t sure when you’d get here, but we got an extra cup in case.”
“Excellent.” She skirted the pool, took a seat at the table. “I’m ready for coffee. But I don’t see bathing suits.”
Hugh tipped his sunglasses down, peered over them. “We decided this was a day off.”
“Yesterday was a day off.” She added cream to the coffee her father poured for her. “But I’ll tell you what, we’ll change the schedule, have water aerobics late this afternoon. Say four-thirty. Followed by Bellinis. It feels like a Bellini kind of day.”
“It’s hard to say no to Bellinis,” Lily began, then—as Cate hoped—spotted the ring. “Oh!” Her hand flew to her heart. “My baby!” And she was up, weeping and laughing, to wrap herself around Cate.
“That’s a very enthusiastic response to Bellinis,” Hugh commented. “What do I get if I add caviar to that?” He glanced at Aidan. “She loves the stuff, God knows why.”
“Men.” Straightening, Lily brushed at her wet cheeks. “They notice nothing that doesn’t jump out naked and dance.” She grabbed Cate’s hand, thrust it out. “Our baby’s engaged!”
Aidan simply stared. “He moves fast,” he murmured. “I only gave him my blessing yesterday.”
“Your blessing?”
He looked at his girl, his treasure, the true love of his life. “He asked for it, sort of.”
“Shows respect.” Hugh wiped at tears of his own, then laid a hand over his son’s. “He’s a good man, and he’s the right man. I’d beat him off with a bat otherwise. Come around here and kiss your grandfather.”
When she did, Cate added a hard hug. “I wouldn’t have said yes if he wasn’t a good man. He had a couple of high marks to reach, as I was raised by good men.”
She turned to Aidan. “Daddy?”
“Part of me wishes I didn’t know he was a good man, and the right one, then I could borrow your grandfather’s bat.” He rose. “But as it is . . .” Then took his daughter’s hands, kissed them. “He loves you, and love’s what I want for you.”
“The hell with coffee,” Lily said as Aidan held Cate, swayed with her. “We’re having mimosas. I’m texting Consuela right now. Oh! Maggie, Julia, and I are going to have the best time planning a wedding!”
They certainly seemed to. Over the next few days, they held meetings, texted, sent emails—sent Cate texts and emails, with links to wedding dresses, flowers, themes.
She decided to embrace it, to ignore the ugliness still swirling—and embrace the whirlwind.
When she walked with Dillon on the little beach, watching the dogs chase the surf, bark at the gulls, she filled him in.
“I now have a big white binder.” She spread her hands to demonstrate. “Courtesy of Lily, divided into categories, as I stood firm on no outside wedding planner. That might have been a mistake.”
“I know eloping’s not on the table, but . . .”
“I’m not breaking their hearts. And I’m kind of getting into it. I’d really like to get married here at Sullivan’s Rest, and outside.”
“That works for me.”
“Good. Really good, because that’s a big one. Or a big two. The place, and time of year. Does May work for you? I know it’s busy season.”
“Ranching’s always busy. I can wait until May. It’ll give us time to build your ranch studio.” He scooped up the ball he’d brought down, gave it a toss so the dogs could chase it, wrestle over it.
“Friends and family? Considering the Sullivans that’s already a horde. So we keep it to real friends and family?”
“That really works for me. I’d get through a Hollywood production considering the prize, but I like this better.”
“There’ll probably—likely,” she corrected, “be press pushing at it.”
“Don’t care.” He gave the ball another toss. “Do you?”
“Not anymore. So here, in May, friends and family. I can pass that to our ladies. I do want a fabulous, gorgeous, all-mine white wedding dress.”
“I’ll look forward to seeing you in it.” He took her hand, gave it a swing. Stopped. “Wait. Does that mean I have to wear a tux?”
“It does. You’ll look amazing in a tux.”
“I haven’t worn a tux since my senior prom.”
“You told me you and Dave were best men at Leo’s wedding.”
“Suits, not tuxes.”
“Suck it up. I’m going to hand you over to my men on that one. You, Leo, and Dave, since they’ll be your best men. Darlie will stand up for me, and I’m stopping it there. If I start bringing cousins in, I’d end up with dozens of attendants. Do you care about flowers or colors?”
“Do I lose points if I say no?”
“In this case, you gain them. Big decisions made, which will please our ladies. With that done, what do you say we take the dogs back up, sit outside with a nice bottle of wine before we see how my attempt at making pizza dough and sauce work out?”
“Have you got frozen if it doesn’t?”
“Always have a backup.”
As they started up, the dogs raced ahead, barking.
“You must have a visitor,” Dillon commented.
When they topped the rise, she saw Michaela, still in uniform, crouched down, petting the dogs.
The lift wedding talk brought plummeted.
“They’re wet,” Dillon called out as he gave Cate’s hand a reassuring squeeze.
“That doesn’t bother us, does it?” After giving a couple more rubs, Michaela straightened. “I’m sorry to cut in on your evening.”
“Don’t be.” Cate stiffened her spine so she could mean it. “We were just about to sit out here and have some wine. Can you join us?”
“For the sit, not the wine.”
“I’ll get the wine. Coke?” Dillon asked Michaela.
“That’d be great, thanks.” She took a seat. “How about showing off the ring?”
Obliging, Cate held out her hand. “It was Dillon’s mother’s engagement ring.”
“I know—word gets around. That makes a nice circle. The ring, and you and Dillon. It’s a nice bright ending.”
“Is it ending?”
Letting out a sigh, Michaela sat back. “I wish I could tell you it was, and I am sorry to bring this in. But I feel I should keep you informed.”
“I want you to. I appreciate that you do.”
Dillon brought out the drinks, then pulled a couple of dog biscuits out of his pocket, doled them out. “That’ll keep them busy.”
“First, congratulations, best wishes, and all of that. Meant very sincerely.” Michaela made a quick toast, then set down her glass. “So far, the investigation hasn’t turned up any solid or substantial evidence against Charlotte Dupont. They’re still looking, but the fact is, the motive’s dicey there. She’d waited this long, and the man was ninety, his health deteriorating. There’s no evidence—at all—she had affairs, money issues, no
evidence they argued. Why kill him—and take that kind of public risk—when she could just keep riding the train, and wait him out?”
“Someone did,” Dillon pointed out.
“Yes, someone did. At this point, they haven’t been able to tie the other murders or attacks to this one, or Dupont to any of them. They’re looking, believe me. You’ve got L.A. cops, San Francisco cops, our own department looking into all of it.”
Michaela hesitated. “I want to say I don’t think she’s very smart. Cagey, yeah, but smart?”
“You don’t think she could have pulled all this off?”
Michaela shook her head at Cate. “The more I look, the less I see her holding all these threads together. Because I do believe it’s all connected. There are a couple other angles. They’ve questioned this guy who bullshitted his way into the gala. He’s got a record—fraud, investment scams—but nothing violent. Do you know anyone named William Brocker?”
“No.”
“It’s not panning out, so far. The other is Millicent Rosebury. A ticket was bought in that name, on a credit card that turned out to be bogus. The address doesn’t match. Same with the driver’s license. They’re running facial recognition there, but haven’t hit. The server remembers—vaguely—a woman near the table asking for directions—she thinks to another table, but maybe to the restroom.
“They were busy,” Michaela added. “The server hasn’t been able to describe her more than middle-aged, blond, glasses, white. The security cameras caught a woman with that basic description walking out with another woman. She had cigarettes and a lighter in her hand. What they don’t have is any view of her coming back.”
Michaela sighed again. “It’s thin. You should know Dupont’s making a lot of noise about hiring her own investigators. I wish I had something more solid for you.”
“First, I think you’re right. She’s not smart enough. And more, this isn’t the kind of key light she’d want. She was having a big moment—why step on it? She’ll play it up now, but she’d have ridden that big moment.
“Tell me honestly. Do you think it’s Sparks?”
“I absolutely do. One hundred percent. But thinking it and proving it? Whole different thing. What I will say, and I hope this helps, is every death and attack links to Dupont. If we look at pattern, that’s what this says. It’s about Dupont, not you. Even the calls you’ve gotten for years now. Every one of them has your mother’s voice on them at least once in the recording. It’s about payback, about making us shine that—was it key light?—on her.”
“It does make me feel better.”
“If I get more, hear more, I’ll let you know. Meanwhile, I’ll get out of your hair.” She rose. “I’m really happy for both of you.”
As the dogs escorted her back to her car, Cate took Dillon’s hand. “She’s on the real friends list.”
“Definitely.”
At her weekly meeting with Sparks, Jessica dealt with the war of feelings churning inside her. As always, she knew the thrill of seeing him, hearing his voice, touching his hand. But gone was the excitement and anticipation of planning to do something vital and important to help him.
In its place lived fury and frustration.
“It’s been over three weeks.” Her hand balled into a fist, unballed, balled again. “She’s making fools out of the cops, Grant. She’s doing interviews, planning a big, elaborate memorial, making noise about hiring private investigators.”
“Let her.” Sparks shrugged it off.
“She’s going to get away with it! They can’t put two and two together and arrest her. Who else would want him dead, for God’s sake? They need to arrest her.”
He resisted reminding her he himself had wanted the old man dead, and that Jessica had killed him. The best cons, he knew, played out when you believed them.
“It’s all that money, Jess. The fame. You did the best you could to make her pay. And she did pay. A little.”
“Not enough, Grant. Not enough after what she did to you. I know I was close to getting you early release. I know it. And now they’re questioning you. I know that’s why you won’t walk out with me today. It’s not right.”
“It won’t be much longer.” If he could stand the sight of her for that long. “The best we can do now is just wait it out. You did your best. Now we wait it out.”
“You must be so disappointed in me.”
“Oh, no, darling.” She really was making him sick, but he took her hands. “What you’ve done for me, I can never repay.”
His faith in her, his abiding love for her all but destroyed her. And obsessed her. She had to give him more. Had to show him there was nothing she wouldn’t do for him.
Nothing she wouldn’t do to see that Charlotte Dupont paid.
She thought of killing the bitch. Dreamed of it. She could get a job as a maid, gain access. Or impersonate a reporter.
There had to be a way to get close enough. A knife through the heart, a bullet in the brain.
But no, as much as the idea excited her, wouldn’t the police continue to dig at Grant?
She needed to find a way to point the idiot police right at Dupont. And to keep Grant out of it entirely.
The way to do that? Go back to the beginning. Go back to Caitlyn Sullivan.
It took her weeks to work out all the logistics, and only great love kept her from telling Grant. She’d surprise him.
He’d be so proud of her!
She had tested telling him, just bringing up the idea of sending Cate another recording. But he’d been firmly against it. Wait it out, he’d said again, and had looked so tired and sad.
Once she’d done what needed to be done, once they locked Dupont in a cell, where she belonged, she’d tell him everything.
And she’d double her efforts for that early release. She’d demand one.
She knew the Sullivan estate well enough. How foolish of the rich and famous to allow photographers into their homes, or stories to be written about them.
And she could study aerial views on the internet to her heart’s content.
She knew enough to understand the security—gates, cameras—the positioning of the guest cottage, and its famed wall of glass facing the sea.
Despite the cameras, she’d considered getting a boat, trying to get to the peninsula under the cover of night.
But she didn’t know how to handle a boat, and she’d certainly set off alarms.
She didn’t have enough time to learn how to bypass alarms like they did in the movies.
She considered killing one of the staff, and going in their place. But the cameras would spot her, and she didn’t have the code for the gate security.
She could force one of the staff to take her through. But the cameras would see two people. Unless she hid in the back seat, with her gun pressed to the back of the seat.
But then what would she do with the driver? Couldn’t kill him or her right there, couldn’t let the person go.
Then, after reading an article in the Monterey County Weekly highlighting staff of prominent residents of Big Sur, she saw the way. One Lynn Arlow—part-time maid at Sullivan’s Rest—had several quotes in the airy, soft news piece. Buried in the fluffy, Jessica found a few key pieces of information.
To help put herself through college (online courses), Arlow worked three and a half days a week at the estate. The article helpfully added Arlow rented a house with three other women in Monterey.
A little more research, and Jessica had Arlow’s address. Risky, of course, it would be risky, but Grant was worth any risk.
She practiced, researched, studied, timed, traveled for on-site surveillance. She ran through every aspect she could think of, then ran through it again. As the first hints of fall freshened the air, she drove from San Francisco to Monterey, timing her arrival to the early hours of the morning.
She parked in a public lot and in the dark, walked the seven blocks to the little house Lynn Arlow shared with her sister, a cousin, and a friend.<
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Picking the trunk lock on the old Volvo posed no real challenge, since she’d practiced religiously. Armed with a penlight and a .32 Smith & Wesson, she climbed into the trunk.
To hold off quick panic, she concentrated on the glow of the internal trunk release. Before researching she hadn’t known that safety feature existed—standard for nearly two decades.
For comfort, she put her hand on it, but resisted the urge to yank it. She couldn’t smother, she reminded herself. Plenty of air. She had that glow, and her penlight.
True, she didn’t like small, dark places, but she could stand it. She would stand it thinking about all the years Grant had survived in prison because of Charlotte Dupont.
Closing her eyes, she concentrated on slowing down her rapid breathing. She imagined walking on a beach in Hawaii with Grant, imagined him taking her into his arms under the moonlight with palm trees swaying. Imagined them making love, at last, for the first time.
With a smile on her face, she drifted off.
She woke with a jolt when the car bumped over a pothole. Panicking in the dark, she forgot where she was, what she meant to do, and for one horrible moment thought herself trapped in some sort of moving coffin.
When she remembered, her shaking hand dug for her penlight. In that little beam, she gasped for air, and calm. All at once, it fell over her, the insanity of what she meant to do. The average, ordinary rule follower she’d been reared up inside her and wanted to scream.
She had to get out, get out and run, go back to her quiet, solitary life.
The idea of being alone again, being nothing again, having no one again, stopped her as she started to yank the release.
She could never go back now, never go back to the quiet and solitary. She’d already killed, and knew how it felt—thrilling—to take a life. For love, but for justice, too. And still Charlotte Dupont, the true villain, hadn’t paid the price.
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