by Carly Bishop
This time, Angelo woke her. She was crying. Tears ran down her cheeks. She darted from the bed to go check on the baby, and found him owl-eyed, just waking, waiting for her, breaking into an all-over smile for her. She dashed the tears from her cheeks and changed his diaper and lifted him up to take him back to bed with her.
Feeding the babe, she described the dreams to Angelo. A sense of what her dreams portended came to her as she talked. He listened carefully. Respectfully. He knew, as all angels know, that mortal dreams are a reflection of understanding beyond the pale of normal human awareness. “What do you think they mean, Iso?”
She looked at him, searching his eyes. “I think there is more that we don’t know of Gina’s murder, Angelo. Your brother betrayed you. I think that’s the important part, that there must be betrayals here that we haven’t uncovered.”
He agreed with her interpretation, though neither of them could guess in what way there were other betrayals in play around the murder of Gina Sellers. “What about Seth? The part about you being the wrong mother, or the wrong father?”
Isobel shook her head. “Angelo, I think the dream meant that Ian Candless is not Seth’s father.”
Angelo prayed to God she was right, and feared to the depths of his soul that she was wrong.
THE SAN JOSE INSTTTUTE of Reproductive Technologies was housed on the tenth, eleventh and twelfth floors of a typical office building in the city. The reception area was fashionably done in mauve, ivory and teal blue, and the artwork didn’t come from any half-baked gallery. Steeped in money, the institute’s reputation for quality control, accuracy and the highest rate of success in any reproductive endeavor made it a world-class facility.
Angelo reassured Isobel as they entered the building and took the elevator to the tenth floor. “The Institute personnel will be cooperative, Iso. Their reputation is at stake in high-profile cases like this.”
They had left the estate to answer a request to meet with the district attorney’s investigators. Candless had been told, in a phone call made by Angelo in the guise of the D.A., that it was essential to verify Seth’s identity by a match to the HLA markers performed with the paternity testing.
The excuse had worked well enough. Candless didn’t like it, but there could be no reason to refuse to have his infant son positively identified. Now, having only Isobel’s gut feeling to go on, they were about to take on this world-class facility and its employees, questioning them as to the integrity of the paternity report on Ian James Candless.
They had discussed various ruses, beginning with some other function of the lab than paternity testing. In vitro fertilization records were the obvious choice. But the ruse would be time-consuming and ultimately pointless—the lab personnel would ultimately know, or at least have strong reason to suspect, that the Candless files had been the original target of the investigation.
They would, instead, count on the intimidation factor of Candless himself having called into question the results.
The receptionist glanced up, saw Isobel holding Seth and assumed they were former clients whose name she couldn’t quite place. Isobel took the initiative to get over her butterflies.
“Thank you, but we are not former patients. My name is Isobel Avedon—”
“I knew I’d seen you before!” the receptionist cried. “You’re the woman who they thought kidnapped the Candless baby. And this must be him!”
Angelo nodded. “Yes. And I am Angelo de Medici, representing Ian Candless. We’re here to examine the test results that concluded Mr. Candless was in fact the baby’s father.”
“Is there some problem?”
Angelo let his expression speak for itself. “I’d like to see the lab director.”
“Oh.” The slight, sandy-blond woman laughed nervously. “I’m afraid our director, Dr. Gilbraithe, is out this week, and that is who—”
“We don’t need to see Dr. Gilbraithe today,” Angelo interrupted, oozing Latin charm. “If you’d like, introduce us to whoever is in charge at the moment.”
“If you’ll just take a seat,” the receptionist stalled,
“I’ll see who I can find.”
Angelo leaned in instead, resting one forearm on the counter. “Karen Jelniker. Page her for us, now.” He smiled. His attentive gaze, as if he were looking at the only other human being left on earth, made a woman go buttery inside. Isobel knew from long experience. “Please,” he added.
The receptionist sank into her chair and paged Karen Jelniker. Her internal line rang almost immediately. She grabbed it up and told Jelniker that there were representatives of a former client to see her.
Angelo thanked the receptionist. Karen Jelniker appeared. Introductions were made. Isobel felt her stomach tighten. Unlike Angelo, she had no experience at fishing expeditions.
“What a sweet baby! How old is he?”
“Five months.”
Jelniker led them to her office. Seated behind the desk, she asked, “How may I help you?”
Angelo waited for Isobel to select her chair, then took the other one opposite the supervisor’s desk. “I’ll come straight to the point, Ms. Jelniker. Ian Candless believes the results you reported as to his paternity of this child are in error.”
“Well, you are absolutely welcome to examine the test results. I’ll just call in—”
She was interrupted by a phone call. She answered, listened a moment, then put the caller on hold. “I’m afraid I have to take this call, but let me direct you to the technologist who performed the testing. It was Cassidy Roper. You’ll find her down the hall, the third door on your left. I’ll let her know you’re coming.”
The technologist was just hanging up her phone when Isobel and Angelo arrived at her door. The space was cramped. She greeted them coolly and suggested a conference room. She smiled. “I’m afraid the slave labor around here doesn’t rate corner offices.”
Isobel felt there was something very off about the technologist’s tone of voice, or what she said, or how she was acting. She exchanged glances with Angelo as Cassidy Roper ushered them into a small conference room. “If you’ll wait here, I’ll get the records you want to see.”
Angelo stopped her. “We may just need to talk to you for a moment, Ms. Roper. We are not qualified to interpret your tests in any case.”
She gave a bright nod. “Is this the baby in question?”
Angelo nodded, but his lack of a smile in return was enough to frost the air. “If we took a sample of the baby’s blood today, say, would they match the results you got before?”
“Of course. We wouldn’t have the reputation we do if we couldn’t guarantee the integrity and reproducibility of our results.”
“Would you be willing to do that for us? Take the baby’s blood and retest?”
She seemed inexplicably to relax, becoming somehow more genuine and less obsequious.
Angelo thanked her. Isobel didn’t have a clue what he was up to. They hadn’t talked about testing Seth again, or forcing the lab to duplicate its work. She knew he had something in mind, though.
“Would you retest the father’s blood as well?”
The technologist agreed. “Certainly. Just have Mr. Candless come in and give us another sample—”
“That won’t be necessary.”
She looked at Angelo in surprise. “I’m sorry, but it is necessary if you want—”
“You don’t understand, Ms. Roper. You see, I am the father, and no one has yet tested my blood.”
Chapter Fourteen
Stunned by Angelo’s strategy and the bald-faced lie, Isobel almost laughed out loud. It didn’t matter who the baby’s father was, only that they knew, or that she felt, that Candless was not.
The technologist blanched. “That’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because—”
“Because why, Ms. Roper? Because you falsified the report? Because you thought no one knew who the baby’s father was? How did you do it?”
Flushing angrily, the tech scraped a hand through her hair. She started several times to deny Angelo’s allegation, but his silence, his penetrating, accusing stare forbade her instinctive impulse to lie.
Her head bobbed nervously. She bit her lip and then defiantly shook her head. “All right. Fine. I falsified the report. Is that what you want me to say?”
“We want the truth, Ms. Roper.”
Isobel began to shake. The relief inside her came in a torrent. She wouldn’t have to fight Candless for Seth, wouldn’t have to go up against all that money and the legal wrangling it could buy. She lowered her head and kissed the top of Seth’s, holding him tighter than she should have, then looked at the technologist. “Why?”
“Why? Because I needed the money. Because I was offered fifty thousand dollars. Trust me,” she said, her lips shaping into a sneer, “that family could afford it. And the baby got a silver spoon in his mouth. Who was hurt?”
“His mother was murdered because of it,” Angelo answered.
“That’s not my fault. They have so damned much money they can wipe somebody out and get away with it. How is that my fault?”
Angelo shook his head. There were still so many mortals who could justify any act or any lie at all. “Tell me how you did it.”
She gave a scoffing sound. “It isn’t hard. I performed the tests on the baby’s and the mother’s blood. Then I determined which cell markers were needed to match the baby’s and confirm paternity. Then I added those markers to the test sample and reported them as belonging to Mr. Candless—which made his paternity a ninety-nine-point-nine percent certainty.”
ANGELO FELT in his element now. He knew what had happened, knew what had to be done. This was the moment he looked forward to as no other, the moment when he confronted the mortals who had chosen in whatever manner suited them to flout the laws of God and man.
He had relished hundreds, thousands of such moments over the half millennium he had served in the capacity of an Avenging Angel of the Lord. Each and every time he had thought, now. With this one he could feel as if he had done enough, fought enough on the side of righteousness, brought enough justice into the world, that he could let go of his single unwitting failure.
He had died, Isobel had died, because of his mortal ineptitude. Because he was so enamored he never sensed the treachery coming. So if he could just right one more wrong, maybe he would have made up for that.
It was never enough. Never. This time, it would be. This time, Isobel lived and would live on, and justice would be done, and he could put an end to his calling as an Avenging Angel. He could do something else for the rest of eternity, having done not only what he had to do, but what had to be done in the name of justice for five hundred years.
This time spelled the end, and the relief inside him was exactly as human as the relief Isobel knew when she realized Ian Candless had no claim to the babe whom she loved more than she loved her place in heaven.
Angelo took out his cell phone on the way back to the Candless estate, called the INS, confirmed that they had heard the tapes that contained the incriminating words of the Candless heirs.
The INS offered to go in and make the arrests, absolving Isobel of any obligation to return to the estate. Angelo refused. There was the matter of the falsified identification of the baby. The technologist had confessed, certainly, but she didn’t know who it was who had bribed and then paid her off after she turned out the report confirming Candless’s paternity. Angelo intended to find out, and then the INS could storm the fortress to its heart’s content.
Watching Angelo maneuver the BMW through the early afternoon traffic, Isobel felt her heart swell with happiness and pride. Seth would be hers forever after. Theirs. She knew it with a certainty that went beyond reason, just as she knew they would have their lifetime together.
And in the meanwhile, in the next few hours, she would have the privilege of watching Angelo accomplish the ends of justice in a manner befitting his role as an Avenging Angel. His attitude, which had galled her to no end, brought her nothing now save a fierce pride in who he was, and what he did in the service of mankind.
When the fear of returning to the clutches of Ian Candless raised its ugly head in her soul, Isobel refused to experience it. Angelo was more than his or any other mortal’s match. She and Seth would be safe. And in a little while, both of them would be safe in Angelo’s arms, far away from here in the beautiful Vail valley in Colorado.
FROM OUT OF NOWHERE, Angelo produced a transcript of the conversation between Sinjin, Kelley, Conrad and Harrison, and when they entered Candless’s study in the main house, he tossed it on the man’s desk.
Candless was unamused at the interruption and the impudence of a bodyguard he had employed. He rose from his cherrywood desk, his fingers planted, as if for a runner’s sprint, on its surface. “What is the meaning of this?”
Isobel’s heart thundered. Angelo merely narrowed his eyes. “I suggest you read it.”
What Angelo, the Avenging Angel of the Lord suggested, Ian Candless seemed unable to oppose. He sank back into his chair and took up the transcript.
An accomplished man, undoubtedly used to reading quickly to get to the bottom line, Candless skimmed, paled, then read more closely from beginning to end. When he had finished, he looked up. His handsome features seemed flat and uninterested, but his color was bad.
“Is this some kind of joke?”
“This, sir,” Angelo retorted, “is no joke.”
“Who are you?” he demanded. “Who the hell do you think you are? And you, missy, you with the ovarios—”
“Don’t,” Angelo warned him. “Don’t even think it. Ms. Avedon is not a nanny, nor am I a bodyguard in your employ. We are undercover agents, Candless, and your family is in deep-ass trouble. I suggest you call them together now. With that transcript, you have only scratched the surface of a very ugly problem.”
And again, what Angelo had suggested, Candless set into motion.
IT TOOK SEVERAL HOURS for everyone to gather at the estate. Bruce would not have come at all if Patrice, scared out of her mind by the fury in her husband’s eyes, had not gotten on the line to beg him to come.
He was probably the only one, Isobel thought, who had any idea of the danger the summons home portended. The rest were simply too self-involved and put out with the peremptory demand even to question it. But then, all of them depended in the most basic way on Ian Candless for their lives and livelihoods.
None of them could afford to refuse. It seemed to Isobel, who listened with Angelo as Candless made each call to be certain no other communications were given, that his adult children and son-in-law were not unaccustomed to command performances at the drop of a hat.
By the time the family had all gathered, in Candless’s study, sealed off from the eyes and ears of the servants, the sun prepared to set over the Pacific.
The view from this west-facing room was nothing less than spectacular. A peculiar excitement buzzed inside Isobel for the metaphor that came to her mind. When the sun had set on this day, this would be all over. Candless would know Seth was not his son. Angelo and Seth would be hers, the heinous murder of Gina Sellers would be avenged
There were places enough for everyone to sit. Only Harrison stood, looking out the floor-to-ceiling window.
Patrice sat alone, huddled in on herself, wearing a sweater, her hands buried beneath it. Having flatly refused her request that he sit next to her on the elegant antique settee, Bruce sat on a stool at the wet bar. Isobel and Angelo stood behind and to the right of Candless.
Kelsey, Sinjin and Conrad took the club chairs fanning out from the desk.
“Okay,” Bruce said, exquisitely bored by the gathering. “What’s going on?”
Candless looked at his eldest son, then seemed to dismiss him. He rose behind his desk and picked up the transcript and began to read.
St. John residence, study of Emory St. John, tape number 151. A knock.
Sinjin. “Come in
.”
Conrad “We have to talk. Now.”
Kelsey. “Mmm.”
Sinjin. “What do you want?”
Conrad. “I want to know what you’re doing about this mess, Sinjin. What the hell’s going on? What is it with the old man and the nanny?”
Sinjin. “What am I doing? I’m pedaling as fast as I bloody can trying to establish some damage control. What are you doing?”
Conrad “Look—”
Sinjin. “No, you look. Your father now suspects that you, the three of you, maybe all of us, conspired to bribe Gina Sellers, rather than Gina Sellers ever trying to extort us. Your father is all over me about this illegal alien business.
Even the freaking nanny knows you all had a motive for murder, so what do you think your father suspects?”
Candless looked up from his reading. The room was utterly silent. “Need I go on?”
Hatred glittered in Kelsey’s eyes. “You bastard! You creepy, insane, paranoid old bastard! Is this whole damned estate bugged for your edification?”
Bruce’s smile chilled the room. “Oh, this is rich.”
“Shut up, you ass!” Kelsey spat. “You with your fancy plans and your promises. What good are you? What the hell did you ever do for any of us? Nothing. Nothing!” she cried. “You left us all here with him—”
“You wouldn’t have gone anywhere there wasn’t freaking money, Kelsey,” he retorted.
“Silence.” Candless’s features hardened. He had never looked more his age, more absolutely betrayed. “I guess I may assume this transcript is an accurate reflection of the truth.” He quelled Conrad’s protest with a single vilifying look. “Whose brilliant idea was it to set up poor, ignorant, illegal immigrants to murder Gina Sellers?”
“That would be me, Dad,” Harrison said, stepping forward, claiming his deed and, Isobel thought, his freedom from the stifling paranoia his father had inflicted on him. “Glad to see that, before you knew it was me at least, you recognized an exquisite dénouement to your little affair.”