The Secrets She Kept

by Brenda Novak

  Hoping to remind her who “Uncle Keith” was, he put her hands to his face to let her feel what he looked like instead of forcing a hug on her. “You’re going to be a real beauty one day,” he said as her fingertips moved gently and quickly over his features. “Every bit as striking as your Grandma Josephine.”

  Apparently satisfied, she dropped her hands. “My mom tells me you’re not bad yourself.”

  He grinned at her comeback. “Your mom and I are related, which makes anything she tells you about me less than reliable.”

  Laney lifted her chin. “I’ve heard how the women here on the island talk about you.”

  “And that has some significance?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “Besides, Grandma told me.”

  “Told you what?”

  “She said you were ‘exceptionally’ handsome.” Her smile disappeared. “I wish she hadn’t died. Did you know she used to have me over for tea every Sunday?”

  Keith met Maisey’s eyes. “Tea? Really? For an eleven-year-old? That was Mom’s idea of showing her a good time?”

  Maisey smoothed Laney’s hair as she spoke. “Yes. And believe it or not, that was the highlight of Laney’s week. She’d always come home with some new piece of jewelry or her hair done up. Mom taught her manners and posture and...basically put Laney through her own brand of finishing school. She even taught her how to crochet. Laney makes all kinds of things now, and she’s getting good at it.”

  Tears filled Laney’s eyes, but she made no sound. She just wiped them away when they fell and pulled Bryson, who was threatening to toddle off in the other direction—although Keith had to wonder how she knew that—around to face him. “Did you see my little brother?” she asked. “Isn’t he chubby?”

  Bryson had a full head of dark hair and big blue eyes, and he was huge for his age. “This kid’s a beast,” Keith said to Maisey and Rafe. “What’re you feeding him? Steroids?”

  Rafe shook his head as if he was just as mystified by his son’s size. “Not unless there are steroids in breast milk and baby food. He was nursing until a few months ago.”

  “He must be breaking into the pantry late at night,” Keith said as he rubbed the toddler’s round cheek.

  Laney hauled Bryson into her willowy arms. The baby had backed away, wasn’t quite ready to let Keith touch him. Keith had seen him only once before—a year ago—so Bryson had no idea who Keith was. “He can go potty in the toilet now,” she announced.

  “That’s got to be good news to all involved,” Keith said. “It’ll certainly make it easier to talk me into babysitting.”

  Laney laughed as if that was the funniest joke she’d ever heard. “I could help you.”

  “Perfect. Until he’s completely potty trained, you can change him for me.”

  Her grin spread from ear to ear. “You don’t want a blind girl changing a messy diaper, or you might have even more to clean up after.”

  He loved that she could joke with him. “I bet your keen sense of smell would keep you out of trouble.”

  “Sometimes, but not always,” she admitted.

  Maisey seemed so pleased with her daughter that Keith couldn’t help winking at her. “She’s special.”

  “I agree,” Maisey said and slid her arm around Laney as Keith led them into the dining room.

  “I hope you’re hungry,” he said to Laney.

  She let her little brother wiggle down. Then she paused to sniff the air. He expected her to identify what they were having for dinner. But he could tell she wasn’t thinking about food. She suddenly looked too sad for that.

  “What is it?” he asked. “You don’t like salmon?”

  “I can still smell her perfume,” she said softly.

  Keith shot Maisey a look that asked her to let him take over and guided Laney to her seat. “We’ll get you a nice keepsake of Grandma’s you can take home to remember her by, okay?” He didn’t dare promise her the ring Chief Underwood had mentioned. He hoped he could pay off his mother’s debts, but he had no way of knowing how extensive they were. With an estate of that size, she could be millions of dollars in debt, and he definitely didn’t keep that much on hand. Even if he could come up with the money, he couldn’t risk everything he’d built by trying to save his mother’s holdings.

  Careful to avoid his grandfather’s eyes, which were staring down at him from that huge canvas on the wall, he told himself he’d look into it and do what he could.

  “Can I have her robe?” Laney asked. “I just want to be able to feel it.”

  “Absolutely,” he told her.

  Once Laney took her place at the table, she fingered her silverware as if she was checking to make sure everything was where it should be now that her grandmother was gone. “I really wish she’d come back.”

  “We all do,” Keith said, and felt a measure of surprise that he meant it.

  Because he and Maisey had agreed they would not discuss the manner of their mother’s death in front of Laney, the conversation over dinner revolved around Rafe’s work, Maisey’s books, Bry’s first words and Laney’s school. Rafe took the ferry to the mainland and dropped her off four days a week and Maisey picked her up at two o’clock. Keith enjoyed spending time with his family, especially since he’d been without them for the past several years. But no matter how far the conversation drifted from the reason he’d come to Fairham, he couldn’t forget what he’d seen at the morgue. The image of his mother lying lifeless on that gurney haunted him, troubled him. And Pippa’s silence made him tense. She did everything she normally did, even smiled as she delivered each course, but a sense of pervasive concern hung heavy in the air.

  He told himself she was lost without Josephine, but he knew it was more than that. Whatever she’d wanted to speak to him about earlier seemed to be bothering her. He would’ve approached her about that, given her an opportunity to talk, but by the time he’d returned from Charleston, she’d been in the last stages of making dinner and he’d had several phone calls he needed to make. He had reliable employees, but he couldn’t abandon them completely. He’d also been reluctant to have a conversation that might upset one or both of them right before Maisey arrived with the children.

  He’d figured waiting until after dinner would be soon enough. But once everyone left, and she finally told him what was worrying her, he wished he’d taken the time to listen sooner.

  9

  KEITH THOUGHT HE’D be in for another long, wakeful night. He had so much on his mind. But almost as soon as he stretched out on his bed, without even turning off the light or undressing, he fell asleep for a solid four hours.

  Then he jolted awake.

  Something had disturbed him. A noise.

  Lying very still, he listened to see if he could figure out what it was, but all he could hear was the settling noises of the house and the soft patter of rain hitting the roof. Rain had been falling in fits and starts ever since he’d returned to the island, and it didn’t show any sign of clearing up.

  A moment later, lightning flashed outside. He assumed the weather had to be what woke him. He hadn’t closed the shutters, so it was his own fault. But if he got up to close them now, he probably wouldn’t get back to sleep.

  Squeezing his eyes shut, he tried not to think about the fact that his mother’s lover was married and whether or not she knew she was seeing a man who already had a wife. He tried not to think of his grandfather, and the fact that everything Henry had built could soon be gone, including Coldiron House. Most of all, he tried to block out what he’d learned from Pippa. But it was impossible to drift off a second time. Merely opening his eyes seemed to have brought an avalanche of worries down on his head. And the light he’d left on was bothering him.

  Still, he was determined not to give up on sleep too soon. Rolling onto his side, he pulled his pill
ow over his face—and that was when he heard a strange thump followed by a creak.

  Pippa had gone home after they’d had their little talk. He was supposed to be alone. And yet...there was movement.

  His eyes sought the alarm clock. Nearly one. Who would be in the house in the middle of the night? Had his mother’s murderer come back to remove some piece of evidence? Was the perpetrator checking the scene, making sure he hadn’t overlooked anything important? Perhaps he was leaving something behind, planting evidence that would further mislead police...

  Suddenly glad that he hadn’t taken the time to undress, Keith jumped out of bed. He wished he had a weapon in case he needed one, but he had nothing, not even a baseball bat. His mother had insisted that all sporting equipment be kept in the garage. That wasn’t a huge imposition, since they had an extra stall with racks and hooks for that sort of thing. But it made dealing with an intruder damned inconvenient.

  How did this person get in, anyway?

  Keith’s mind raced as he struggled to remember if he’d returned the spare key to its rightful place behind the light.

  No. He’d put it on the ring with the key to his rental car and had been using it as he came and went.

  He wasn’t positive he’d locked the front door after Maisey and her family left tonight, however. He’d never felt he was in danger—not from anything other than his own demons—so locking up when he was here on Fairham wasn’t a strict habit for him.

  Even if he had locked the house, there were ways someone could’ve gotten in without breaking a window. Pippa had a key. So did Tyrone. There were probably other house help who’d had access at one time or another. His mother would’ve demanded they return their keys when they left her employment, but she felt so safe, so untouchable in her gated mansion that he doubted she’d ever go so far as to have the locks changed.

  A disgruntled employee could easily have made a copy. Most if not all former staff could have the code to the gate and could’ve shared it among themselves—or whoever it was could’ve just scaled the fence. That wasn’t impossible.

  Basically, just about anyone could be in the house.

  After cracking open his bedroom door, Keith peered out into the hallway. He saw nothing but blackness, and didn’t turn on another light. He did the opposite. He turned off his bedroom light so he wouldn’t reveal his presence.

  He could no longer hear movement, but he was sure he’d heard someone, despite the rain. Problem was, there were thirty rooms in Coldiron House, many of them closed off since they were so rarely used. That created a lot of places to hide.

  Anxiety drew his nerves taut as he crept down the hallway, calling on his knowledge of the house since he couldn’t see.

  Lightning flashed at the windows as his feet sank into the plush carpet, giving him a momentary glimpse of the marble foyer below. A long shadow, which looked like that of a man, startled him—until he realized it was his mother’s giant flower arrangement and the pedestal that supported it. He saw nothing else. The front door wasn’t broken or ajar and, as far as he could tell, no one was creeping around with a bag of the family silver.

  Instead of going downstairs, he veered off toward his mother’s suite. He wished the noise he’d heard could be her, coming home from a lengthy vacation abroad, as she’d done so many times when he was younger. But he’d seen her corpse in the morgue.

  The doors to her room stood open, which made the hair rise on the back of his neck. He’d purposely closed those doors; he hadn’t liked the sense of expectation he felt if he left them open.

  So why weren’t they still closed?

  Someone had come inside...

  Keith picked up an antique vase that’d likely cost several thousand dollars. A vase wasn’t the kind of weapon he would’ve preferred, but it was the only thing close at hand. He held it above his head and was about to creep inside his mother’s room when a bouncing light drew his eye back to the first floor.

  Someone was outside, moving around the perimeter of the house with a flashlight.

  Prepared to chase down whoever it was, he took the stairs two at a time. But he didn’t have the chance to dash outside. The moment he threw open the door, he came nose to nose with a wet Chief Underwood.

  She eyed the vase he carried. Then she looked down at her gun, which was pointed directly at him. “I think I’d win this fight.”

  He stared beyond her, into the rain, to make sure she was alone. “I’m just glad you didn’t fire the second I appeared.” He’d obviously startled her, which made sense, since he hadn’t turned on any lights. “What are you doing here?”

  She returned her gun to its holster. “Someone called. Said there was an intruder at Coldiron House.”

  He set the vase on a table. “Someone called?”

  “Dispatch said he wouldn’t leave his name.”

  “But you have the number. You can track where it came from.”

  “I can try in the morning when I have more time to look into it,” she said. “My mind wasn’t on tracking phone calls when dispatch woke me up. I was afraid that if your mother had been murdered, there might be some nefarious plot to take your life, too.”

  He couldn’t help grinning at her rain-streaked face. Maybe it was sexist, but he got a kick out of her rushing into the storm to protect him when she was half his size and weight...

  “What?” she said.

  He shook his head. “Nothing. Thanks for being willing to put your life on the line.” She had guts; he had to give her that. And she probably could do more than he could—as long as she had that gun.

  The way she suddenly glared at him indicated that she’d caught on to his reaction. “You’re a chauvinist pig, aren’t you? I got out of bed and drove up here to tramp around your house, which is the size of an apartment building—in the rain, I might add—and you think it’s funny.”

  He’d managed to keep a straight face until she said that. Then he had to laugh. Maybe he’d needed the release.

  “Okay. I’m leaving.” She threw up her hands in disgust. “You’re a bastard, by the way. Just in case other people haven’t told you.”

  He grabbed her shoulder before she could start down the porch steps. “I’m sorry,” he said, but he was still laughing, which didn’t work to his advantage.

  “Let go of me,” she snapped. “If someone’s here, I’m going to let him kill you.”

  He would’ve laughed harder—except those sounds had been chilling. “I did hear something,” he said, sobering. “Why do you think I was carrying a damn vase? I’m not rearranging decorations in the middle of the night.”

  She rolled her eyes. “What you heard was me.”

  “No, these sounds came from inside.”

  Clearly suspicious that he was mocking her, she hesitated. “Are you serious?”

  He rubbed his neck. “Yeah, I am. But it might be nothing.” Maybe before Pippa went home, she returned something to his mother’s room and left the doors ajar...

  Chief Underwood seemed reluctant to forgive him for making light of her efforts, but he could tell she was also a stickler about doing her job. “So now you want me to check out the house?”

  He wanted to borrow her gun so he could check out the house, but he knew better than to ask. “If you would be so kind,” he replied and gave her a sweeping bow as he pushed the door wide enough to admit her.

  Starting with his mother’s suite, she walked through every room and looked under the beds and inside the closets. She searched the attic, too. “No bogeyman,” she announced, even though he’d followed her every step of the way and could see that for himself. “I’m guessing it was a crank call, a false alarm.”

  Although something had disturbed his sleep. Was it just the storm, as he’d first thought? “If you say so, Chief.”

  “There’s no ev
idence to indicate otherwise,” she said as they walked back to the entry hall. “But I’d lock the door from now on, if I were you.”

  “It might’ve been locked.”

  “The fact that you don’t know is the problem. I’d double-check.”

  “Got it. Will do.”

  Instead of leaving, she hooked her thumbs into her utility belt and openly appraised him.

  He smoothed down his hair, which was probably standing up. He had, after all, just rolled out of bed. “What is it?” he asked when she didn’t speak.

  “I’m curious about you.”

  “Why?”

  “On the one hand, you’re everything I was expecting.”

  “And on the other?”

  “Nothing I was expecting.”

  “The fact that you’re familiar with my reputation doesn’t surprise me.”

  “You are the Coldiron Prince.” Her lopsided grin said she was teasing, making fun of his family’s lofty status.

  “In what way have I lived up to your expectations?” He’d told himself he wouldn’t ask but couldn’t resist.

  “You’re handsome as the devil. I’m sure I can’t be the first woman to tell you that.”

  He breathed a little easier. “Handsome” wasn’t the negative comment he’d anticipated, but he could tell she wasn’t finished yet. “I hope the comparison stops there.”

  She laughed. “Do you and the devil share other traits?”

  “Some would say we do. Just so you know, I’m completely reformed.”

  “We’ll see,” she said with a wink and reached for the door handle.

  “Chief?”

  She turned.

  “Any chance you’d give me Hugh Pointer’s number?”

  “You’re coming dangerously close to interfering with my investigation, Mr. Lazarow.”

  He rested his hand on the doorknob. “I’m still waiting for the file.”