by Jacie Floyd
Arthur flipped through a National Geographic. “Should I know that name?”
“Probably not, but you might know his uncle, Sal Eversol.” Dylan watched Arthur’s reaction carefully.
Arthur tossed the magazine onto the coffee table. “I know him by reputation, of course. He has the money to support the causes that interest him, but his circles are too shady to mix with mine.” He looked at Dylan and crooked his eyebrow. “Any ideas on what the connection between the three of you might be?”
“Nothing concrete.”
Arthur resumed his roaming, gravitating toward a shelf of pictures. “Have you met all these people?” He gestured to the photographs. “They were always a stalwart bunch. Some of them look familiar. Tell me who’s who in this one.”
Dylan clicked off the TV and joined him. He picked up the picture Arthur indicated. “This is David.” He pointed to the doctor. “With a young Clayton and Gracie, her grandparents, and her mother.”
“What’s he like?” Arthur moved on to another photo, one with Clayton and David flanking Gracie in a cap and gown.
Dylan considered the mixed feelings he had about the old man. “Everyone here loves him, including Gracie. Unfortunately, he’s about as hard to talk to as those fish over there in that tank.”
Arthur lifted his eyebrows. “I thought you’d spent some time with him.”
“I had dinner with him once, but he didn’t say more than five words to me and not many more than that when I went to his office the next day.” Dylan frowned, remembering the odd conversation. “He volunteered the information that Lana owned her house before she died, but I don’t know why. It seemed uncharacteristically chatty of him.”
“But if he’s trying to convince you he’s a member of the family, I thought that would involve more contact.”
Dylan rubbed his temple. “Well, he’s Gracie’s stepfather, so she thinks of him as family.”
“I meant the younger doctor,” Arthur corrected. “Clayton.”
“Oh, him.” Dylan grunted and fingered the swelling around his eye. “I’ve gotten to know him better than I’d like.”
“So that’s the story behind the black eye.” Arthur chuckled. “You and Clayton Harris have been mixing it up, hmmm? Interesting. It’s been years since you resorted to physical violence to get your way, but I assume the other guy looks at least as bad.”
“Definitely,” Dylan said with satisfaction.
Arthur picked up a more recent photo where Clayton stood tall and stiff-shouldered next to a glowing Gracie. But then, Gracie carried a constant glow around with her.
“How well do those two get along?” Arthur asked.
“Gracie and Clayton?”
“Clayton and David Collier.”
“David is very protective of him. And Clayton worships David. He followed him into the medical profession, and then came back here to help when David became ill. Before that, according to Gracie, he was all set to join a big practice in Hartford. Did you know David from the factory?”
Arthur tugged on his earlobe. “We met a few times. As the doctor of record, he reported to Matt and they became friendly. They went fishing once or twice, if I recall correctly.”
Dylan hadn’t known that. David certainly hadn’t mentioned it. “He’s the one who found Dad the day he died.”
“That’s right, he did. I’d forgotten. This place sure brings back the memories, doesn’t it?” Arthur pulled on his cuff and adjusted one of his cuff links. He was wearing the Bradford set, accounting for both of his.
That should make it easy to cross him off Dylan’s mental list of suspects, but it didn’t.
“Do you know what happened to Uncle Tommy’s cuff links?” Dylan asked.
Arthur tore his gaze from the pictures and turned to face Dylan. “Why?”
He shrugged, reluctant even now to mention his father and Lana’s death in the same breath. He took an end run instead. “I noticed a couple of weeks ago that one of Dad’s is missing. I wondered where some of the other sets are.”
“We gave Tommy’s to Gerard.” He paused with an awkward hesitation, as frequently happened when Arthur mentioned his brother’s partner. “Tommy left him some money, but Gerard asked for a few personal mementos as well. You have your own pair, don’t you? Did you need your father’s for some reason?”
News about the cuff link uncovered this morning would soon become common knowledge, but some niggling caution kept Dylan from mentioning it. “Just curious.”
“You’re curious about a lot of things these days, aren’t you?”
His head reeled thinking about all of it. “Life has taken some unusual turns lately.”
Arthur set down the picture he’d been holding, placed his hand on Dylan’s shoulder, and led him back to the sofa. “What about your young lady? She’s very striking. How serious is it between you?”
“More serious than anything I’ve ever felt before.” Dylan surprised himself with the admission.
“Well, that doesn’t say much.” Arthur chuckled. “I’ve always wondered why no one has held your interest for long.”
“It was never the right time before, or the right person. Although, why it seems like this might be the right time and Gracie might be the right person, I don’t know.”
“Love doesn’t strike according to anybody’s schedule or preconceived notions. I thought you knew that.”
“Lo—lo—love!” Dylan choked, coughed, and sputtered over the single-syllable word. “I didn’t say anything about love.”
He tried out the picture of Gracie as a permanent fixture in his life and it just wouldn’t compute. Not that he couldn’t picture Gracie as a wife and mother. He couldn’t picture her as his wife or his children’s mother. He tried to remember his vision of that mythical woman.
Cool, calm, capable. Yep, Gracie had all that. With style, sophistication, and good taste. Someone who would fit seamlessly into his life. Cater to his whims. Not exactly Gracie’s style. That sounded more like Linc’s cousin. What was her name again? Valerie? Veronica?
Arthur resumed the ear-pulling thing and studied Dylan long enough to make him squirm. “If you aren’t thinking of her in terms of love or marriage, what are we talking about?”
All of his affectionate, protective, admiring, passionate, amorous, and amorphous feelings for Gracie welled up inside him and nearly gushed out. They would have if he could have defined them with a single word and assigned them to a permanent, convenient place, but he couldn’t. Not yet. He’d only known her—what? All of four days? “I don’t know. This is all happening so fast. I want to be a husband and father eventually, but I’m not sure I’m ready.”
“What part frightens you?”
He hadn’t expected to have a man-to-man conversation with his uncle tonight, but maybe Arthur was the perfect person to share his doubts with. “I’m freaking terrified that I’m incapable of the f-word.”
Shock crossed his uncle’s features, and he shifted uncomfortably. “Why, Dylan, I’m sorry. I had no idea. If it’s a physical problem or you need counseling, there are doctors...”
“Not the four-letter f-word.” Dylan laughed. “I meant the big one. The long one. The hard one. Fidelity. There are a lot of gorgeous women out there, and contrary to tabloid opinion, I haven’t slept with all of them. I like variety, and I can’t imagine waking up with the same person for the rest of my life. Never having the freedom to have sex with anyone else.” Although making love with Gracie every day for the rest of life sounded more than just doable. Satisfying and exhilarating, too. Still... “I always wanted the kind of marriage Dad and Mom had, but Gracie’s nothing like Mom, and I may be too much like Dad. Lately, I’ve wondered if they really had it as good as it seemed.”
“Marriage is about a lot more than monogamy. Sex is one part of it, but not even the most important part. Don’t let worries like that keep you from forming a relationship with a woman you can’t live without.” Arthur rested his elbows on his knees and
contemplated the weave of the carpet before he lifted his head and looked Dylan in the eye. “Whatever the whole truth was behind your parents’ marriage, they shared a deep love and respect for one another. They were as happy together as any two people I’ve ever known.”
“You and Aunt Delia have that kind of marriage, too.”
His uncle mused a moment, rubbed a hand over his jaw, then shrugged. “We’ve been lucky.”
A grandfather clock bonged the hour from the foyer. They’d been waiting for Gracie for almost an hour. He would’ve expected her to report on David’s condition by now.
“Is it really ten o’clock?” Arthur said. “I called in a favor, and I’m staying at Drew Johnston’s guest house over in Wallingford. I guess I should be heading over there. Are you going to be here much longer?”
“Gracie said she’d stay until Clay came home. Do you want to say good-bye to her?”
“I don’t want to intrude. Perhaps she can leave the patient for a moment?”
Dylan went in search of Gracie. In the hall outside a bedroom, he heard her speak in low, soothing tones while David’s deeper, agitated voice rumbled over hers. Dylan tapped on the door and opened it a crack. Gracie sat in a chair beside her stepfather’s bed, holding his hand. She glanced up and motioned for him to wait.
In just two days’ time, David’s flesh seemed to have withered on his bones. His jerky movements and listlessness proclaimed a state of agitated exhaustion.
He clutched Gracie’s hand and spoke urgently. “It wasn’t my fault. He deserved it, but I didn’t mean to kill him.”
She flicked an anxious look Dylan’s way and back to the patient. “I’m sure you could never hurt anyone.”
His eyes sharpened with a moment of clarity. “I just wanted to talk to him, get him to admit where she was.”
“But he wouldn’t tell you.” Gracie’s weary response sounded as if they’d covered this ground before.
“That’s right!” His voice slipped back into a fevered recitation. “He said he didn’t know, but he did know. He had to. He killed her.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Gracie’s hand gripped her stepfather’s shoulder. “You don’t know that, David.”
“Yes, I do.” Attempting to sit up, he clawed the covers. “I saw him.”
“Saw him what?”
With the hair standing up on his neck, Dylan became aware that he’d stumbled into a momentous disclosure. Gracie cast a pleading glance in his direction but for what he wasn’t sure. He drew nearer, determined to hear the rest.
“That night. I saw him in his car, driving from Old Maine to the cabin.”
“Was Lana with him?” Gracie asked, her voice tense, cautious.
“She must have been. Maybe she was already dead. Maybe she’d told him about the baby, and he killed her.”
“But it wasn’t his baby, David. He’d had a vasectomy several years earlier.”
“That’s what he said, but that can’t be true or why would he have killed her?” David asked the question of Gracie, but he looked deep into the shadows of the past for the answer. “It must have been his child.”
“When did you ask him about it?” The words sprang from Dylan’s mouth unplanned.
Gracie shushed him and gestured for him to stay back. But he ignored her and edged closer.
David shielded his eyes from the dim lamp, trying to see outside the circle of light. “Ask who about what?”
“The senator,” Gracie said. “When did you ask the senator about the baby?”
“The day he died, of course.” He plucked at the sheet with nervous fingers. “I asked him about Lana, but he laughed. He denied everything. Said I’d lived in a small town too long and believed too many rumors.”
Dylan had heard too much, but hadn’t heard enough. He wanted to leave, but had to stay. He could see Gracie wanted to put an end to David’s narration. But after keeping his secrets for so long, the old man couldn’t be silenced. He pressed onward like a windup toy wound too tight.
“We were down at the dock. He was going out in the boat. We quarreled. Sharp words escalated into a struggle. He fell and hit his temple.” He shook his head as if to clear the memory. “It happened so fast. I tried to save him, to pull him from the water, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t, Gracie! My arm was broken and in a cast, remember? I couldn’t save him. You know I would have if I could.” The old man’s grip tightened around her fingers as he begged for understanding.
“I know.” Her voice trembled, and when she turned to Dylan, a sheen of tears glistened in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said, but he didn’t know who deserved her sympathy the most.
Meeting Gracie’s compassion head on, he collided with the full impact of David’s confession. The revelations weren’t just the ramblings of a sick old man.
David Collier had killed Dylan’s father!
A US Senator. A husband. A man. A father.
Accidental, perhaps, but the outcome had been just as final as an assassin’s bullet.
Dylan strode forward, eager to confront him, to pummel him, to shout out the anger and pain roiling inside him. This man shriveling before his eyes was the villain who had cut his father’s life so tragically short.
This withered and pathetic old man.
His father’s killer should have horns and a tail and wear a red cape, so that Dylan could curse and rave and swear revenge. Evil and injustice shouldn’t wear the face of a kindly physician, a trusted friend, and a respected humanitarian.
Try as he might, Dylan couldn’t picture David as evil or unjust. Only old and sick and possibly confused by events that had happened a long time ago.
God damn it! A swift kick at the bedside table sent a pillbox, pen and paper, and water glass flying.
“Dylan,” Arthur said from the threshold.
David turned his head toward the newest intruder in his bedroom, sputtered and grew pale. “You! Get out! You killed Lana! Don’t ever come here again! Get out of my house!”
Arthur reeled backward. “What!”
“He thinks you’re Dad.” Dylan moved forward to protect him from the doctor’s confusion.
“You’re dead!” David shouted. “You killed her and you died.” He rose up with a burst of strength, waving his arms. “Get out of my house. Stay out of my dreams. Leave me alone, or I’ll kill you again.”
The doctor’s face darkened from ghostly white to red. He collapsed on his pillow and rubbed his left arm with his right hand. “My med—med—” His face contorted in pain as he reached for the pillbox from the nightstand. “My medicine,” he gasped.
“Call 911!” Gracie had already snatched up the pills from the floor and spilled a tablet into her hand. David opened his mouth and lifted his tongue.
Pushing his uncle out of the room, Dylan pulled his phone out of his pocket.
She didn’t take her eyes off the old man while she took his pulse. David’s breath sawed in and out, and his chest heaved with the effort. “Relax, David. Just relax and hang on.”
After a terse conversation with the 911 operator, Dylan returned to Gracie. He placed his hands on her shoulder, letting his fingers massage the tense muscles of her neck. “What else can I do?”
She shook her head, brushing her fingertips across his hand.
Dylan wanted to stay with her, but needed to get back to his uncle before the senator required medical help, too. Slumped in the hallway, his complexion was ashen and pale. “Come on. Let’s wait outside for the ambulance.”
The senator allowed Dylan to lead him to the porch. “Uncle Arthur, I’d rather keep this quiet for now. You don’t intend to inform the authorities, do you?”
“Inform the authorities that some lunatic accused me of killing a woman?” Fear and pain flashed through his eyes. “I should say not.”
“No, not that.” Dylan shrugged. “He’s always thought Dad killed Lana. I meant the part about him being responsible for Dad’s death.”
”Is that what he wa
s raving about?” Arthur’s voice sharpened with disbelief and malice. “He claims he killed Matt, and you don’t want to inform the police?”
Put that way, Dylan couldn’t believe it himself. “What good would bringing charges against him do anyone? Least of all Dad. If David killed him, it was unintentional. Revealing the truth now would hurt a whole new group of people.”
A speeding vehicle approached, lights flashing, sirens wailing. Two EMTs rushed up the walk with a gurney. “Where is he?” one of the men asked.
Dylan showed them to David’s room but stepped away as they zoomed in on the patient.
Soon enough they rolled the doctor out of the house and lifted him into the rear of the ambulance. With a stethoscope draped around her neck, Gracie left his side to speak to Dylan. “I’m going with David.”
He reached out and stroked her arm. “Are they taking him to County General? I’ll meet you there.”
“Thanks.” Fear for her stepfather held her posture ramrod straight.
“What else can I do for you?” he asked, taking her hand.
“Would you—” She bit her bottom lip. “We need to find Clay. He’s not on call, and he never turns off his phone, but I got his voicemail. Tanya’s not picking up either. So, you know…”
“Is it that urgent?” Dylan hated like hell to be the one to track the couple down and interrupt them.
Her fingers fluttered inside his. “Yes.”
“Gracie,” one of the EMT’s called. “Come on.”
She moved toward the vehicle, and Dylan moved with her. “Please, find Clay.” She cast a pleading look over her shoulder as she climbed into the back of the ambulance. “Tanya lives on Adams.”
“I’ll find them.”
As the emergency vehicle went screaming away, Dylan noticed the groups of neighbors gathered on their lawns and porches, watching the drama.
“Will the doctor be all right?” asked a little old lady in flannel pajamas and hair curlers.
“I’m sure he will.” Dylan turned up the walk. His usually powerful and decisive uncle waited on the porch, seeming at a loss. “I have to find Clayton, and then I’m going to the hospital. Where’s your car? Can I drop you off somewhere?”