Inheritance

by Judith Michael

  It's dangerous to get close to anyone who makes me want to talk.

  "You were saying?" Paul prompted.

  I'll be careful. I won't say too much. "I like to listen. People love to talk about themselves; all they need is somebody who's interested and they'll go on for hours. And I guess I'm interested in just about everybody."

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  He smiled. "You'd be good in the hotel business."

  'That's what Owen says."

  "Does he? He doesn't say it to many people. Has he offered you a job at the Boston Sahnger?"

  "Yes," she said, adding almost defiantly, "and I'm going to take it."

  He looked at her thoughtfully. "Doing what?"

  "Assistant to Jules LeClair. The concierge." When he made no response, she said, "You don't know him?"

  "I don't pay much attention to the hotels. When do you start?"

  "On Monday. Full-time for the summer and then part-time when I go back to school."

  'To study hotel management. Why don't you major in theater since you like acting so much?"

  "Owen wants me to leam the hotel business."

  "In case you don't make it as an actress?"

  "He calls acting a hobby." She smiled, almost to herself. "And he says anyone who manages his hotels has to be good at acting and have dozens of other skills."

  Paul's eyebrows rose. "His hotels?"

  "I could do it," Laura declared.

  "I'm sure you could. But Felix and Asa handle the management of the chain."

  "Yes, but Owen was talking about his own hotels—the four oldest ones that aren't part of the family coqx)ration. He has some plans for them. He says Felix and Asa aren't interested in them."

  "Don't fool yourself; they're interested in every dust ball in every Salinger hotel. And Owen knows it. Vhat kind of plans?"

  "I don't know much about them; they aren't put together yet. What do you photograph when you travel?"

  Skittish and secretive, Paul thought. What the hell did she have to hide? And what were she and his uncle up to? "Animals and people and sunsets. Have you convinced Owen to start a new hotel chain?"

  "I haven't convinced him of anything! I'm learning from him, not telling him what to do!"

  "Hold on," he said sofdy. "I wasn't accusing you of any-

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  thing. I just thought an active, discerning man might think up a new project with an attractive young woman as a clever ploy to keep her close to him for a long time."

  Laura's anger disappeared; her eyes danced. "You mean you think Owen behaves the way you would."

  Paul laughed aloud. In some ways she was like a child, he thought, feeling her way around a strange house, pretending she knew what she was doing, quick to anger when she thought she was being suspected of something. But in other ways she was a woman of beauty and spirit, and a cache of secrets. A challenge, Paul reflected; it had been a long time since anyone had seemed so interesting to him.

  "What do you do besides photograph when you travel to all those countries?" she asked.

  "Read a lot, hike, ski, bicycle cross-country, and wonder what's over the next border."

  "Don't you ever want to stay where you are?"

  "No. Do you want to stay where you are?"

  "Yes." Safe with Owen, forever. "If I could, I'd stay here and do all the things I want ..."

  "You can't want many things if you can do them all in one place."

  "I do! I want so many things! And I suppose I can't do them all here . . . everything I need to do to be special and secure—" She bit off her words. "I'm sure that sounds foohsh to you but I never had a trust fund—^I never even had a bank account when I was younger—and I have to make my own safe place. It's what I most want in the world." She stood up. "I'd better get back to my party."

  "Stay a httle longer," he said. "Your party can roll along for hours on its own steam." He stood up with her. He was surprised at the feelings of tenderness she had aroused in him. She had sounded so ingenuous about being special and secure —whatever that meant—that he wanted to comfort and reassure her. "Listen to me," he said and put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her to him like a child. "You're already special. You're a lovely young woman with nothing to stop you from doing whatever you want or being anything you want." He felt the slender bones of her shoulders beneath the satin dress, her silken chestnut hair brushed his cheek, and

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  desire surged through him. He tightened his ami and turned her toward him. "I'll help you; we all will. There's nothing to stop you. It's not as if you're alone, or have some dark past to live down, or— What is it?"

  She had pulled away, her eyes wide, her face pale. "I have to get back," she stammered. "I'm supposed to— "

  "What the hell are you afraid of? Me? Because I held you? For God's sake, Laura— "

  "No, no, it's not that; it's not you; it wouldn't ever be—I'm sorry, I really am. I'm not being very smart about this—"

  "What does being smart have to do with it? Come here, sit down, just for a minute. I'd like to understand. . . ." He looked about for some way to change the subject. "Tell me about your room. I like what you've done with it."

  Giving her time to calm down from whatever was bothering her, he studied the country French furniture he remembered from Iris's rooms, newly reupholstered in ivory and apricot silk, and the ceiling moldings and carved fireplace surround, all painted in soft ivory against the palest of mint green walls. "Dawn," he murmured, almost to himself. "Clear, cool, and warm, all at once. Depth and intimacy. My God, what wonderful light." He smiled at Laura. "You've given this place life. It's been in the doldrums ever since I can remember. Perfect colors—you have a good eye."

  'Thank you." She was looking at him in surprise, seeing a different Paul Janssen. No longer the careless playboy with no ambition or direction, he was absorbed, intense, an artist who cared deeply about color and light, whose praise was generous, whose smile was warm and intimate. And at that moment Laura knew she would be with him as much as he wanted her to. It might be risky to be close to him, but she was drawn to his intensity, and she wanted more of his praise—and his smile.

  He was standing before a shelf of books near the fireplace, running his fingers along the spines. "Where did you get these?"

  "A friend named Cal Hendy gave them to me. Left them to me, really: he owned a bookstore and when he died he left me the ones he knew I loved the most."

  "A good friend." He took one down and leafed through it. "Do you have any idea what they're worth?"

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  "No, why should I? I'm not going to sell them."

  "You might want to someday, and this one could be worth a good bit: there can't be many first editions around of Washington living's Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Would you mind if I had it appraised?"

  "If you'd like. It's really not important, though; they were a gift from Cal and I loved him and I'd never sell them, no matter what."

  "'Never' is a long time. Anyway, you ought to know what you have. I'll bring it back in a week or so." He put the book on the coffee table, then moved a few steps to gaze at a large framed black-and-white photograph Laura had hung over the mantel. "Where did you find this?"

  "In Owen's library. I was admiring it one day and he said I could hang it here. You don't mind?"

  "Photographers never mind seeing their work displayed." He studied the three children in the photograph as if he had not spent hours watching them one day on the beach at Well-fleet, photographing them again and again. And then he had spent a week in his darkroom to get a set of prints that satisfied him. That had been five years ago, when he was twenty-three, and it was because of those prints that he had decided that if he ever took anything seriously, it would be photography.

  Owen had bought four of the prints after Paul gave him the first as a Christmas present. The one Laura had chosen showed the little girl and her two brothers quarreling over a sand castle they had just bu
ilt: the girl had made a flag from her hair ribbon and wanted to fly it from the highest tower; her brothers had insisted on flying their own skull and crossbones. Paul had printed the photograph with high contrast to intensify the emotions; the children's eyes flashed, in the background dark waves broke in a stark white froth onto the sand, a white gull was brilliantly outlined against a deep, cloudless sky, the sand castle was scored with long, angular shadows.

  "Why did you choose this one?" he asked Laura. "Most people prefer softer prints. More fantasy, more like a dream."

  "This is the dream," she said without hesitation.

  He looked at her curiously. "Why?"

  "Because the castle is finished."

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  His eyes moved back to the picture. No one else had ever said that about it. "And you have a castle somewhere, waiting to be finished?"

  "Everybody does, don't you think? Or do you have everything you want?"

  There was a small silence. "I have everything I want," he said reflectively. "But sometimes I wish I wanted more."

  She shook her head. "I don't understand that."

  "Well, neither do I," he said carelessly. "At least not most of the time." He moved to Laura's side and took her hand. "But I do want to see more of you. Will you have dinner with me tomorrow night? Better yet, we'll start early, with one of Rosa's lavish teas, and then go out for a late dinner. Can you arrange that?"

  "Yes," she said. She did not hesitate or wonder about it after she agreed. He might be dangerous, but he was someone she could love.

  The bracelet found in a New York pawnshop had been bought in Austria by Leni Salinger's grandmother as a gift for her thirteen-year-old daughter, to ease her sadness at leaving home to make a new life in America. It was solid gold, with a monogrammed locket that sprang open to reveal a picture of Leni's grandfather. When the police returned it, and Leni held it in her hand, looking at the tiny picture of her smiling, curly-haired grandfather, she began to cry. "I know it's silly; so many terrible things could have happened, far worse than losing a bracelet, but it seems so important to have it back and not in some stranger's hands ..."

  "It is important," Felix said. He fastened his cummerbund and reached for the cuff links he wore only with his tuxedo. "But mainly because it will help us find the son of a bitch who took it."

  Leni was sitting at her dressing table in a long satin slip, waiting for her maid to arrive and help her into the intricately draped gown she had chosen for the opera ball, the last of the season before everyone left town for the sunmier. "I'm not sure anymore," she said. "I did want to punish him, whoever he is, but now ... do you know, Felix, the only thing I really care about is getting everything back so it can all go to Allison

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  and then, someday, to her daughter. That's why I want the necklace most of 2dl; my father got it from his grandparents in Denmark and gave it to my mother, and she gave it to me . . . and Allison knew it would be hers one of these days. That's what means something to me. I don't like jewelry that's just stones and gold or silver; I want it to have meaning and a history so we don't lose touch with our past, and how else can that happen except by being passed down from one generation to the next?"

  "Yes, that is a pleasant romantic view," Felix said, struggling with his cuff links. "Can you help me with these? But romance is irrelevant in this case; I would hardly indulge in it when it comes to punishing a criminal—"

  "You never indulge in romance," Leni murmured.

  "—and when he's found I'll see to it that he suffers. The bastard invaded my home and took my property, and no one does that to me and goes unpunished."

  "He did it to all of us," Leni said quietly. "And after all, he is unpunished, isn't he? It's been three years and this is the first clue we've had."

  "There will be more; I guarantee it. That's fine, thank you. I don't know why I still have trouble with cuff links after all these years. Will you be ready soon? We'll be late."

  "We're never late. You are the only man in the world who times arrivals to the second." She slipped the stem of a diamond earring through the neat hole in her ear and fastened it. "I hear Clay Fairchild is doing very well in Philadelphia."

  Felix glanced at her, then reached for his jacket.

  "Isn't it odd," she said, "how I think of Clay and Laura every time we talk about tfie robbery? It's very wrong of me —poor things, it's not their fault they started working for us that awful summer. Thank heavens they didn't get scared off and leave. Owen adores Laura, and she's so good for him; I've never seen him happier. He got her a job, Rosa says, as one of Jules's assistants, and in their spare time he teaches her about running hotels—"

  "Why?" Felix's eyebrows had drawn together. "He's using her as his secretary—^I can't imagine why, when there are a dozen at the office he could have any time he wants—and I knew she weis working with Jules, and she's at the university. What more does she need?"

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  I

  "She wants to be more. All young women today want to be more than whatever it is they are, don't you think?" Leni's voice murmured through the bedroom like a quiet stream and Felix leaned down to hear her. "And she gives as much as she gets from us. She gave that lovely party last night for Allison; she even insisted on paying Rosa for the food. Owen stopped by and said it was very lively. Paul was there, too, he said, and very attentive to Laura. That won't go anywhere, of course—their backgrounds are impossibly different—but it does seem a good thing for her to take an interest in the hotels. She'll have to earn her living and it's good for Owen to be able to help someone ... to nurture, in a way. He hasn't had anyone, you know, for such a long time. You and Asa weren't exactly cuddly and loving, Rosa says; you kept Owen at arm's length. So he lost Iris and then he lost you, and I think it's wonderful that after all these years he's found someone like Laura who's smart enough and loving enough to let him help her. And Clay, too. I'm so glad you got him that job in Philadelphia when Owen asked you to; he'd never have gotten it without help. And maybe he'll think of some ways to make the hotel better. Poor old thing, it's gotten quite shabby—you said so yourself—and you won't put money into it. Owen says you want to sell it, but of course he never would do that. I could have told you he wouldn't: it's his, and he loves it— that one and the other three he started with—and if Clay can bring some new ideas to it and learn the business at the same time, isn't that a fine thing?"

  She fastened her other earring and picked up a matching necklace. "Felix, would you do this for me?" She closed her eyes, fighting the shock of desire that ran through her at the touch of his fingertips on the nape of her neck. It has nothing to do with Felix, she thought. It's because I don't have anyone to hold me. No lust, no love . . . and I've got to have one or the other. I'll have to find someone; it's been so long since I sent Ned away . . . "What?" she asked.

  "I said, when is your maid coming? I don't like being nervous about the time."

  "She'll be here any minute; we have plenty of time. There's no reason for you to be nervous." She watched him pace. "You're not nervous, you're excited."

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  "Nonsense."

  "No, I can tell . . . It's my bracelet, isn't it? You've been this way ever since they brought it back. You think they'll find the thief, even after all these years." She shook her head. "I don't. It seems impossible."

  "Not anymore. Not when there's a new development. They know what they're doing. They're relentless—when they're dedicated, that is. They don't give up; they don't forget. And they'll track the scum down, and his accomplices, too. Whoever they are, they don't have the brains to understand that people like us don't allow anyone to invade our lives and upset the order we've made. Sometime, sooner or later, they'll be cornered, however many there are, and if I have anything to say about it they'll be kicked into a hole, like the filth they are, and kept there until they're old or dead. Pity we have to waste money and feed them; they ought to be shot. The
only good they'll do is be an object lesson for anyone who thinks there's something glamorous about burglaries; they might change their mind when they know we'll have them rotting in jail."

  The room was very quiet. Seated at her dressing table, her tall, lean body slanting away from her husband, Leni watched him straighten his jacket, tuck a silk handkerchief in the front pocket, and stand at the pier glass to examine himself for imperfections. When he let out a long breath of approval, Leni knew he had found everything in place, everything correct. Hidden behind the impeccable Almaviva white-tie tuxedo was a caldron of hatred and rage and implacable vindictiveness— but the world would not see it. The world would see only perfection.

  Leni stood as her maid arrived with the freshly pressed gown. How amazing, she thought, that my hands are as cold as ice. I don't know why I still have trouble accepting Felix for what he is, after all these years. It's not as if I don't understand him or remember why I stay with him.

  She raised her arms and let her maid slip the silken dress over her head. There's no reason to be upset, she told herself. Whatever Felix does about the thief or tlueves who robbed us, it won't have anything to do with me. I just want my jewels back; after that, if he wants some kind of revenge, he can do

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  what he likes. It won't touch me or the rest of us; we're too far from it. We won't even know when it happens.

  Clay had been calling Laura for three hours before she answered. "I even called Rosa," he fumed. "She said you were out."

  "I went to dinner with a friend. Why are you so angry? I didn't get mad when you weren't there this morning when I called. And I left a message at the hotel, but you're just now calling back and I'm not—^"

  "I got your message. What friend?"

  "Just a friend. We had tea here and then went to a place called Julien's. You'd love it, Clay, it's very elegant—^"

  "Which friend? You sound different. Happy," he added accusingly.