Her father polished off his second drink. “Along with a lot of other people. Anyone who was anyone.”
“Like who?”
He shrugged, glancing around for the waitress. “All the Kingsleys, of course. The mayor. A senator, a couple of congressmen, all the party leaders. Even Cotton Weathers made an appearance, although we never could figure out how that son of a bitch got past the guards. He sure as hell didn’t have an invitation.”
“Who was Cotton Weathers?”
Her father spotted the waitress and beckoned her over. “What’s your name, honey?”
She glanced at Bradlee, who could do little more than give her a sympathetic smile. “Amber.”
“Amber.” He held up his empty glass. “Do you know what this is?”
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir—”
“I thought I made myself clear. There’s not much that annoys me worse than having an empty glass sitting in front of me.”
The woman’s face flushed a bright red. Bradlee said, “Come on, Dad.”
He ignored her. “Now I suggest you run along and bring me another drink. And when you see the glass about halfway empty, start making plans to fetch me another. Capisce?”
Amber looked as if she couldn’t decide whether to burst into tears or dump the remainder of his lunch on his head. Bradlee was rooting for the latter. But instead, Amber managed to smile sweetly and this time, it was she who shot Bradlee a sympathetic glance. “I’ll be right back with your drink, sir.”
“Dad, for God’s sake,” Bradlee said in exasperation. “Did you have to make a federal case out of it?”
Her father’s eyes narrowed on her. “How many times have I told you, Bradlee, you have to know how to treat these people. They’ll walk all over you if you let them.”
The waitress brought his drink, paused only long enough to ask if they needed anything else, then hurried away. Bradlee couldn’t blame her. She wished she could leave, too.
“Now then,” her father said, resuming his meal as though nothing had happened. “Where were we?”
“You were telling me about Cotton Weathers.”
“Right. He was the lieutenant governor back then, and he fully expected to be governor when Conners retired. That is, until Edward announced his intention. Cotton hated Edward. There was bad blood between him and all the Kingsleys. Never knew why exactly, except that it went back generations. Cotton swore that night he would do anything to stop Edward from becoming governor. He gloated that he’d been the one to leak the story to the tabloids about Edward’s affair with Pamela while his wife was on her deathbed. That very nearly did Edward in. Then Adam was kidnapped and everything changed.”
Bradlee studied her napkin for a moment. “You say Cotton hated Edward Kingsley. Do you think he might have had something to do with Adam’s kidnapping? Maybe he thought Edward would pull out of the race if one of his sons was kidnapped.”
“I don’t think even Cotton was that dumb. Besides, Raymond Colter kidnapped Adam. The man admitted it. He’s serving a life sentence in prison.”
“I know that,” Bradlee said. “But he might have had an accomplice.”
Her father stared at her accusingly, pointing at her with his fork. “I know where all this is coming from. I heard about the accusations David Powers made at breakfast yesterday morning.”
Bradlee looked up in surprise. “From who?”
He shrugged. “From Jeremy Willows.”
She should have known. Jeremy Willows was a partner in her father’s law firm.
“I didn’t think you two were on speaking terms,” she said. “Not after Iris gave you the Kingsley account instead of him.”
Her father grinned—a charming, boyish grin that made him seem far younger than his sixty-plus years. “He sulked around the office for a few days, but he got over it. Besides, he knows I’ll be retiring in another few years. He’d be a fool to leave the firm now.”
“What all did he tell you?” Bradlee asked, not wanting to stray too far from the subject.
“Just what I said, that Powers accused someone connected to the family of having orchestrated his kidnapping. Which is ridiculous. That woman who disappeared with him—what was her name?—she obviously had a screw loose somewhere. How could anyone believe anything she said?”
“I used to think I saw someone come into the nursery that night,” Bradlee reminded him.
“That was nothing more than a nightmare. Your mother didn’t help matters by carting you off to that psychiatrist. If you ask me, she made things worse.”
“I’m not so sure it was just a nightmare,” Bradlee said.
Her father pushed his plate aside and stared at her. “I don’t know what it was about that boy, but you always did have some kind of fixation about him. Like you had to take care of him or something. That’s what you’re doing now, darlin’, and if you don’t mind my saying so, I’m not sure it’s all that healthy.”
“I’m just trying to help him,” Bradlee defended. “Why is that so difficult for you to understand?”
He leaned toward her, lowering his voice. “I understand this. The moment Iris Kingsley dies, Adam Kingsley will be one of the wealthiest men in this country. A man with that kind of money is bound to have enemies. If you ask me, what happened to him in the past is the least of his worries now.”
* * *
WHILE BRADLEE WAS having lunch with her father, David had already made the drive up to the state penitentiary. As he sat in the visitors’ room behind a bulletproof screen, he had no idea whether Raymond Colter would agree to talk to him or not. He’d almost convinced himself this was a bad idea to begin with when the door on the other side of the screen opened, and a guard led one of the prisoners through.
In his mind, David had created an image of Raymond Colter from his mother’s description. He’d pictured a cop, mid-thirties, tall, muscular, good-looking. What he hadn’t taken into account were the thirty-two intervening years. Raymond Colter was an old man now, thin and wiry, with grizzled hair and faded eyes. Those eyes narrowed on David as he shuffled over and sat in the chair behind the Plexiglas.
For a long moment, neither of them said anything, just sat staring at each other. David wasn’t sure what it was he felt. This man had taken him from his home, kept him from his family, let the world think he was dead.
I should hate you, he thought. I should despise you for what you did to me.
But for some reason he didn’t. For some reason, David didn’t feel much of anything.
Raymond Colter leaned toward the speaker in the Plexiglas. “So you’re the Kingsley boy, eh? I wouldn’t have recognized you. You’ve changed.” He grinned, and suddenly the emotions that had eluded David earlier came rushing over him. Anger, like he had never known before, shot through him, and he knew exactly why the bulletproof shield was necessary—not always for the protection of the visitor, but in some cases, in this case, for the prisoner’s well-being.
He leaned toward the speaker. “You’re lucky you’re in prison, old man.”
Something shifted in Colter’s eyes. Remorse? David doubted it. “I’m spending the rest of my life behind bars, and my only son is dead. Don’t tell me I’m lucky, boy.”
David had read about Colter’s son, how he had somehow learned his father was guilty of the kidnapping and had died trying to keep the truth from coming out. Trying to keep an innocent man in prison. At that moment, David couldn’t feel much sympathy for father or son.
“Besides,” Colter said, studying him through the glass screen. “What are you complaining about? Looks like Sally did all right by you.”
“Sally?”
“I guess you know her by another name. The woman who took off with you. How is she?”
“She’s dead,” David told him. “But I didn’t come here to make small talk with you. I want to ask you a question, and you damn well better give me a straight answer. You owe me that much.”
Colter gave a short bark of a laugh. “I’m paying
my debt. Right here in this stinking hellhole. I don’t owe you anything.”
“Who helped you?” David asked, watching Colter’s face, noticing the tic at the corner of his left eye. “Who paid you to kidnap me?”
Colter laughed. “No one paid me to do anything. I came up with the idea all by my lonesome. I nabbed you from the nursery and had the ransom money all to myself.”
He was lying. David had defended too many sleazes like Colter not to recognize it. It was clients like him who sometimes made sleep hard to come by. “The security at the mansion was tight that night—an alarm system, guards patrolling the grounds. The whole bit. There was no way you could have pulled it off alone.”
“You’re forgetting something.” Colter sat back in his chair and smiled. “The guards were all off-duty police officers. I worked there myself every chance I got. I knew that place like the back of my hand. I knew the alarm would be turned off that night because of all the guests. I knew exactly when and where the guards would patrol. It was a simple matter to hide on the grounds and wait for the light in the nursery to go out. Then all I had to do was scale the wall to the balcony, carry the boy out of the nursery, and lower him to the ground with a rope.” He seemed to have forgotten that David was that boy.
“Without making a sound?” he asked in disbelief. “Without waking me up?”
Colter shrugged. “Lots of ways to silence a kid.”
“Drugs?”
Colter shrugged again without answering, and David remembered something Bradlee had said under hypnosis. That the shadow had been standing beside his bed, touching his face. Could someone have used drugs—ether, maybe—on him to make sure he didn’t wake up when Colter came into the room? Would that explain the smell Bradlee hadn’t liked?
“All right, supposing you could have avoided the guards,” David said, “and somehow managed to scale the wall to the balcony without being seen. What about the French doors? The nanny swore she’d locked them before she went to bed. And the police found no sign of a forced entry.”
Colter, still smiling, said, “The police figured the nanny was either mistaken or lying because she forgot to lock up before going to bed.”
“Yes, but the problem with that theory is that you were the police back then. You made damned sure you got yourself assigned to the investigation. How much evidence did you destroy to cover your own tracks? Or someone else’s?”
Raymond Colter’s dark eyes took his measure. “You’re a smart guy, Kingsley. I can tell you’ve given this a lot of thought. But it was all a long time ago. It’s water under the bridge, as they say. Even if I answered your questions, what’s it going to change? You’ll still be Adam Kingsley and I’ll still be locked away in this rat hole. Take my advice, boy. The past is best forgotten.”
“Yes, but I don’t seem to be able to forget,” David said grimly.
Colter shrugged. “Well, maybe you’d better find a way to do just that. Maybe you’d best get on with your life and forget all about your little conspiracy theories.”
“It’s more than a theory and you know it,” David accused. “What I can’t figure out is why you’re still trying to protect your accomplice. From where I’m sitting, you don’t have much to lose by talking.”
Colter glanced around, then leaned forward. “Granted, this isn’t much of a life, but we all cling to what we’ve got left, don’t we?”
“Are you saying you’re afraid to talk?”
Colter’s features hardened. His eyes grew cold, deadly—the look of a man who’d learned the hard way how to survive. “You’re Adam Kingsley, boy. You’re one rich son of a bitch, now. People are going to be gunning for you just because of who you are and what you’ve got. If I were you, I wouldn’t go looking for trouble.”
He stood and the guard came over to take him back to his cell. At the door, Colter paused and turned back to say something. He wasn’t near the speaker now so David couldn’t hear the words. But he thought what Raymond Colter said was, “Watch your back, boy.”
David stood and headed for the door on his side of the partition. He suddenly couldn’t wait to get outside into the sunshine.
CHAPTER SEVEN
By the end of the week, the awkwardness in the Kingsley household was beginning to tell on everyone. Jeremy stayed away as much as possible, Edward had taken to drinking again, and Pamela grew even colder and angrier. Only Iris seemed to thrive under the pressure. She became stronger every day until she was both physically and mentally back to normal.
On Friday night, she announced at dinner that she planned to have a party to introduce David to their close friends and business associates.
“The news is bound to get out sooner or later,” she said. “It’s already common knowledge that you’ve been found, but they don’t yet know you’ve come back home. If we make the announcement ourselves, we can invite only those reporters who we know won’t try to sensationalize the story.”
“I hardly think a party is appropriate,” Jeremy muttered. “Considering he thinks we’re all a pack of criminals.” He glowered across the table at David.
“Not at all,” David said smoothly. “I believe Raymond Colter had only one accomplice, and since you were eight years old at the time, you’re the one person here who’s pretty much in the clear.”
Jeremy started to retort, but Iris stopped him with a look. “I’ll hear no more about it,” she said. “It’s ridiculous to think that anyone in this house or anyone connected to this family might have conspired to kidnap one of my grandsons.” Her gaze hardened as she glanced around the table. “They would not have dared.”
“A party might be a good idea,” Edward murmured, studying his drink. “God knows, there hasn’t been anything in this house worth celebrating in years.”
“And whose fault is that?” Pamela demanded. She addressed her question to Edward, but her gaze slid to Iris.
“I remember when Edward and Carolyn were married,” Iris reminisced, her words uncharacteristically wistful. “The ceremony was beautiful and the reception magnificent. It was a celebration in the Kingsley tradition. And then, of course, when the twins were born, we had even more cause to rejoice….” Her words trailed off, her expression spiteful as she glanced at her daughter-in-law. “Since then, however, one disaster after another has befallen this family.”
Her point couldn’t have been clearer. She was including Pamela’s marriage to Edward in those disasters. It took a moment to sink in for Pamela, and then she pushed back her chair and stood. Throwing down her napkin, she left the room without a word.
Iris continued to eat as though nothing were amiss. After a few minutes, Jeremy excused himself and also left the room.
“She certainly knows how to clear a table,” David said under his breath. “I’ll give her that.”
Bradlee picked up her glass and sipped her wine. When she realized Iris was now addressing her, she nearly choked. “I beg your pardon?”
Iris smiled. “I said I wonder if your mother would want to fly in for the party. I haven’t seen her in ages.”
Bradlee’s mother and father under the same roof again? If Iris was looking for another disaster, she was headed in the right direction.
“I wouldn’t count on that,” Bradlee said. “Mother hates to fly, you know.”
“It was just a thought.” Iris turned to David. “Is there anyone you’d like to invite? Any close friends or business associates?”
His gaze lifted briefly to meet Bradlee’s. “As a matter of fact, there are a number of people I’d like to be here when the announcement is made.”
“Then you must put together a list for me.” Iris dabbed her lips delicately with her napkin.
“Actually, I may need your help with the list,” David said. “I’d like to invite everyone who was here the night I was kidnapped.”
Iris froze with the napkin to her lips. Edward, who appeared to have drifted off, raised his head with a jerk, his expression one of horror. “That’s impossib
le.”
David stared back at him. “Why?”
“Because…” He looked to his mother for help.
“Because that was thirty-two years ago, my dear. Many of those people are dead.”
“Well, that would narrow the guest list somewhat,” David agreed. “But I would still like to have as many here as possible. Maybe we could go over the list together. If you can’t find your copy, I’m sure I’ll be able to come up with one from somewhere.”
Iris’s mouth thinned. Her blue eyes glinted dangerously. She was not used to being bested at her own game, and she didn’t like it. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said coolly.
“Thank you.” David stood. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, Bradlee and I are going to take a walk in the gardens.”
Bradlee looked up at him in surprise, then nodded, playing along. “It’s a beautiful night and the gardens are lovely this time of year….”
* * *
THE GARDENS WERE LOVELY. A full moon rose majestically over the treetops, lighting the deepest corners of the grounds with a soft, milky glow. The roses were still in bloom, and the sweet, heady scent drifted on the night wind. A moth fluttered past Bradlee’s cheek, and she watched it for a moment, arrowing toward the brightly-lit terrace.
But where she and David stood, the light was filtered. Shadows slanted across his face, making him seem mysterious and exciting and more than a little dangerous.
“If you were aiming for shock value, I think you got your money’s worth back there,” she said. Although she had on a pale yellow sweater set with her soft, flowing skirt, she shivered in the cool evening air. Her hair tangled in the breeze, and she absently swept it behind her ears.
David shrugged. “I guess I just wanted to shake things up a little. See how they’d react.”
“Did you really mean what you said? About having the same people who were here that night come to your party?”
“Can you think of a better way to draw out Colter’s accomplice?”
“You’re setting yourself up as bait,” Bradlee said accusingly. “I don’t think it’s such a good idea.”
Kingsley Baby Trilogy: The Hero's SonThe Brother's WifeThe Long-Lost Heir Page 48