“Wait,” he said calmly.
She looked at him, expectant.
“There’s something I’ve always wondered. Did you just use Joe to get Roger to notice you?”
It wasn’t what she’d wanted Zeke to ask. She hesitated, then said quietly, “I hope you go straight to hell when you die, Zeke Cutler.”
Then she was gone, stiffing him with the bill.
Zeke flagged the waiter for more coffee, noticing he didn’t jump as fast as when Sara had been there, but he did come, and the coffee was hot, the weather was nice. Zeke sat back, watching the horses and thinking.
After about thirty seconds he realized he didn’t have a whole hell of a lot to think about besides Dani’s black eyes. He’d been in town almost two days and so far didn’t know anything. Time to throw a stick of dynamite into the mix and stir things up.
But first, another cup of coffee.
The telephone woke her.
Fumbling for the receiver, Dani almost fell on the floor before she realized she wasn’t upstairs in her bedroom. She’d crashed on the couch in the living room after her kite flying. She stumbled to her feet. Her eyelids felt swollen, and her bruises and scrapes hurt, but the damn phone was still ringing. She headed to the kitchen, shuddering when she remembered she hadn’t locked the back door when she’d come in. But there were no robbers in the kitchen, no dark-eyed men on white horses. Just a bucket of peach skins and peach pits for the compost pile.
She grabbed the wall phone, but before she could grunt a hello, Ira Bernstein said, “You’d better get up here.”
His words—his serious tone—instantly woke her up. “What’s wrong?”
“One of the guest rooms has been ransacked. Totally tossed to hell and back.”
“Was anyone hurt?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Have you called the police?”
“Not yet. I, um, thought we should talk first.”
Cutler, she thought. He had to be involved somehow. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
She ran into the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face and brushed her teeth, raked her fingers through her hair, grimaced at her reflection in the mirror. What a mess. She hadn’t gotten off all of Magda’s makeup; mascara was smudged under her eyes. And she looked as though she’d spent the night peeling peaches and flying kites.
She decided against fresh clothes and instead put on her sneakers and headed out in her jeans. She tore through her garden and out the back gate, moving fast over the familiar ground.
Ira was waiting for her in room 304. It was one of her favorites. She’d found the crazy quilt in a dusty antique shop in Vermont and had repaired it herself.
“Housekeeping came in to make up the bed,” Ira said, “and found it like this. Efficient bastard.”
Indeed. A duffel had been dumped out, its contents scattered. Dani noticed jeans, canvas pants, dark shirts. White-knight clothes. “This is Zeke Cutler’s room, isn’t it?”
Ira nodded. “Dani—” He sighed, running one hand through his corkscrew curls. “Look, I didn’t call the police because I don’t know what’s going on around here. This guy shows up. Your cottage is broken into. He drives you to the Chandler party last night. He comes in this morning at the crack of dawn. Leaves. Now we find his room tossed.”
“That about sums it up.” Dani balled her hands into fists, trying to maintain some semblance of calm even as she fought to get a decent breath. The small room suddenly seemed oppressive and airless. “I don’t know what’s going on, either, Ira.”
“If you want me to, I can handle this. I’ll leave you out altogether. But if this is personal—if I’m going to tread somewhere you don’t want me to tread…” He paused, his cockiness and irreverence nowhere in evidence. “You just tell me what you want me to do.”
Any residual sleepiness or fatigue vanished as Dani straightened, looking around the ransacked room. The mattress was off the bed, drawers dumped, linens heaped, bath crystals and salts and powders emptied. What had Zeke brought down on her head?
“You’ve called our own security people?”
“On their way.”
“Good. Let them deal with the police. I’ll deal with Zeke myself.”
Ira looked dubious. “You’re sure?”
“No.” She forced herself to meet Ira’s eye, to smile. “But it’ll be okay. Thanks, Ira.”
Before he could stop her, she left, heading back across the grounds to her cottage, where she showered and changed. Fifteen minutes later, she was on her way into Saratoga. She found a parking space in a public lot and walked over to the library, where, after some digging, she checked out a copy of Joe Cutler: One Soldier’s Rise and Fall.
Then she walked to Kate Murtagh’s small yellow Victorian house, on a pretty street off—well off—Union Avenue. Dani went around back and knocked on the door, because it was August in Saratoga and if Kate wasn’t catering some event, she was in her kitchen. She yelled that the door was open, and Dani went in.
The kitchen was bright, airy, functional and spotless, with open shelves, pots hanging from cast-iron hooks, stacks of pure white cotton towels and aprons, white cabinets and miles of countertop. Kate was decorating petits fours at her butcher-block table.
“Egad, Dani,” Kate said, putting down her frosting bowl, “you look like the whirling dervish. What’s up?”
“I need to know if you’ve found anything else out about Zeke Cutler.”
“Aha.” She wiped her hands on her apron and gestured to a chair across from her, but Dani didn’t sit down. “Well, for starters, you didn’t tell me the man’s a stud. I saw him with my own two eyes, and he—Hey, are you blushing?”
“It’s hot in here. Where did you see him?”
“Outside your grampy’s place last night. Told him not to pester you or he’d have me to deal with. Didn’t seem to bother him much. But as you can imagine, I’ve plumbed my sources for any information I can on the man.”
“And?”
“And I’ve come up with precious little beyond what I’ve already told you.”
“But you have something,” Dani said.
Kate sighed. “Yeah, but what about you? Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“I will, Kate—you know that. But right now I just don’t have time to go into all the boring details.”
“I can’t imagine that any details about you and our white hat would be boring. But before you whirl out of here, I will tell you what remarkably little I know.” She frowned at Dani. “Will you please eat a petit four or something and calm down?”
Realizing she’d been pacing, Dani did grab an unfrosted petit four and pop it in her mouth, but she didn’t even begin to calm down. She needed to find Zeke and get some answers. Maybe she’d wring his neck while she was at it. She wouldn’t think about his dark eyes and strong thighs. She’d just kick his sneaky butt out of her life. He had invaded her territory, her life, and she’d bet everything she owned he hadn’t begun to tell her what he was doing in Saratoga. And it wasn’t the kind of risky gamble three generations of Pembrokes had lost their shirts on. It was a sure bet.
“Have you talked to Mattie?” Kate asked quietly.
Dani shook her head. “Not yet.”
“Are you going to?”
She felt the weight of the book on Joe Cutler in her bag. She already suspected that Mattie—her own grandmother, the one person she’d always trusted and believed in without question—hadn’t told her the truth when she’d given no indication she knew Zeke. Maybe she hadn’t lied outright. But she’d held back, and that Dani found disturbing.
“As soon as I know more,” she said. “Zeke could just be using me to get to Mattie—for what reason I can’t imagine, except that she’s a reclusive, world-famous movie star.” She tried to control her impatience. “Look, Kate, I know I owe you an explanation, but—”
“But you’re going to start spitting blood if I don’t talk.”
�
�I’ll tell you everything, I promise.”
“Yeah, yeah. Meanwhile, would you like to know where our white hat’s sitting at the Chandler this afternoon?”
The weather at the Saratoga Course was dry, clear and warm, perfect for watching skinny-legged racehorses run around in circles. Zeke had borrowed a private box on the clubhouse balcony. By the sixth race of the afternoon, he’d drunk one large, lukewarm beer, watched all the people he cared to watch and decided that horse racing had to be more exciting if you knew what was going on. He didn’t. The people around him, however, clearly did. They seemed to be having a grand time for themselves.
The track’s shaded grounds were jam-packed, the fifty thousand or so who’d come to see the Chandler Stakes running the gamut from shabby pickpockets to the superrich in their straw hats and panamas. Zeke had already checked out the Chandler box. Sara and Roger were there with old Eugene and a few guests. He was quite sure none of them had seen him. He was good at not being seen when he didn’t want to be seen.
He had a decent view from his seat, but the backstretch was still a blur, and everything happened so fast that by the time he figured out which horse was which, the race was over. Most of the people around him had come prepared with binoculars and well-marked programs. Strategically placed monitors and an announcer helped make up for what Zeke couldn’t see or understand, but the truth was, he didn’t care which horse won any particular race. He was there for the atmosphere, for a sense of what drew people here year after year. It wasn’t just the racing, which was supposedly impressive. It was more—in his opinion, at least—the history of the place, its continuity, its sense of its own past. The graceful iron fences, wooden grandstand and clubhouse, the red-and-white awnings, the flowers and trees and fountains and ultragreen grass, the well-dressed crowd—they all provided a tangible link with a bit of America’s colorful past. Television couldn’t capture that feeling. Neither, Zeke had to admit, could it fully capture the breathtaking beauty, the awesome power and speed, of a dozen thoroughbreds thundering around one of the world’s great tracks.
He sipped his second beer. Since the average race lasted less than two minutes, most of the afternoon, technically, was between races. In his next life, Zeke thought, he’d run a racetrack concession stand.
Then he spotted Dani threading her way up the aisle, and the afternoon suddenly got a lot more interesting.
She had on a simple short white dress and no hat, and a pair of binoculars hung from her neck.
She looked even sexier than she had last night in Mattie’s sleek dress.
As she moved closer, Zeke saw that she was also on a tear, hanging by her fingernails. Irritated about something and getting more irritated the more she thought about it.
She dropped into the seat beside him, a jumble of nerves, determination and energy. He could smell the clean fresh scent of the same soap in his room at the Pembroke. The bruise on her wrist had turned to a splotch of red, purple, blue and yellow. Her shins still looked sore. She sat for a few seconds without saying a word.
Finally Zeke said, “Afternoon, Ms. Pembroke.”
She cut her black eyes at him. “Mr. Cutler.”
Her tone was frigid, and she inhaled through her nose, one angry woman. Zeke took another sip of beer. “I’m just one among tens of thousands here. How’d you find me?”
“I looked for your shining armor.”
For a no-nonsense entrepreneur, she was good at sarcasm. “Well, it couldn’t have been that difficult—the guy I borrowed this little box from is fairly high profile.”
“Someone you rescued from the jaws of death.”
“You don’t sound impressed.”
Those eyes were on him again, telling him she’d just as soon go for his throat as sit there and talk. But there was fear there, too. She’d had her world turned upside down before, and now it must have seemed to her it was happening again. And maybe it was. He suddenly wished he’d told Sam to take the first eastbound plane he could get. With his ability to zero in on a person’s insecurities, fears, strengths, the sources of his or her anger and frustrations, Sam would know what to say to a scared, angry, hotheaded ex-heiress. Zeke sure as hell didn’t. Likely enough, whatever he said would only irritate her more, or, worse, suck her deeper into whatever was going on.
She stared down at the empty track. It was, of course, between races. “Who’s your pick for the Chandler?”
“Dani,” Zeke said carefully, “you didn’t come here to talk horses.”
“I’d stay away from the favorite. The Chandler’s done its fair share over the past hundred years in helping Saratoga earn its reputation as the ‘graveyard of favorites.’”
But underneath her rigidity and distance, Zeke sensed just how upset and vulnerable Dani was. He could see her twenty-five years ago, a nine-year-old waiting for her mother to come home, trying to make sense of what was going on around her.
Zeke became very still, blotting out the sounds and commotion of the milling crowd. He didn’t take his eyes off her. “Tell me why you’re here,” he said.
“The Chandler and the Kentucky Derby are both one-and-a-quarter-mile races for three-year-olds. Since the Chandler’s run in the summer instead of the spring, the horses are a few months older, more experienced. Many experts think that added maturity makes the Chandler a better race.”
Zeke decided to go along with her, play her game, for now. “What do you think?”
“I don’t care about the Chandler.” She turned to him, her face white and her eyes huge and aching. It wasn’t easy for her to be there. “I never have.”
“I’m not much on racing myself. The horses are just names and numbers to me. I haven’t placed a single bet. Still, it makes for a pleasant afternoon.”
“You’re just the opposite of Nick—my grandfather. He’d come to the track and not watch a single race, just sit in front of the monitors as close to the betting window as he could get.” Her tone was neither affectionate nor bitter, simply matter-of-fact. But her skin was still pale, and Zeke could feel her emotion like a hot, dangerous breeze. “I want you off my property by six o’clock.”
But something had changed since last night. There was more at stake now. She hadn’t just found his car in the Pembroke lot and decided to hunt him up and personally give him the boot. “That’s all?” he asked, dubious.
She said tightly, “Yes.”
“Dani, you’re not telling me everything.”
She shot him a look. “And you’ve told me everything?”
Among her very high standards, Zeke suspected, was a profound distaste for people who neglected to tell her everything she thought she had a right to know. And he hadn’t even begun.
She looked down at the track, still quiet. With her angular Pembroke features, she cut a handsome profile, but Zeke could see the fatigue, the shadows under her beautiful, dark eyes, the straight, uncompromising line of her mouth. He thought of the woman with tears on her cheeks as she cut her kite loose at dawn. How to figure Dani Pembroke?
“Your lifestyle’s caught up with you,” she said without looking at him.
Zeke felt himself tense. “What do you mean?”
“I mean—” and now she threw the full force of her black eyes on him “—that your room at the Pembroke has been turned upside down.”
Falling back on his training and experience, Zeke let his muscles relax, kept his face impassive. “Was anyone hurt?”
“Not that I know of.” In the bright sun, her eyes had narrowed to two black slits. “None of the other rooms were touched. It wasn’t a random act of violence. It was deliberate. Whoever got into room 304 was specifically looking for your room—or for you.”
“And you think that someone was maybe the same person who knocked you three ways from Sunday—”
“I think there’s a high probability of a connection.”
No doubt she was right, not that Zeke had any intention of telling her so. This wasn’t her territory. She bottled wate
r and made people feel good for a living. She didn’t deal with the likes of Quint Skinner, who, Zeke had no doubts whatsoever, had tossed his room. It was a message. You’re not the big shot you think you are. I can reach you. Or just Skinner’s way of trying to find out what Zeke was really doing in Saratoga.
“So you think this break-in was aimed at me personally and not at you or your company?” he asked calmly.
“You’re the expert.” She gave him a look that made him realize how she’d succeeded in the competitive beverage and hotel businesses, how she’d gone on with her life after her mother’s disappearance, her father’s embezzlement, her war with the Chandler half of her family. Dani Pembroke was a survivor. She added smoothly, “After you’re off my property.”
He’d tackle that one later.
She jumped up, turned to him, her black eyes challenging. “I’m going to find out what you’re doing in Saratoga.”
Before he could decide whether or not to grab her and level with her, she was off, her small size helping her speed through the crowd. If he was to have a prayer of catching up with her, he’d have had to leap over seats and generally make a scene. He’d done that sort of thing before, gun in hand, even. But right now he wasn’t sure what good it would do.
He made himself settle back in his seat. He sipped his warm beer and listened to the people around him, the idle chatter, the laughter.
And he reminded himself of his mission in Saratoga.
He was to find out if the gold key Lilli Chandler Pembroke had worn the night she disappeared was the same gold key in the recent photograph of her daughter twenty-five years later. He was to find out if the blackmail letter Joe had given to Naomi had anything to do with Lilli’s disappearance.
If his brother had died knowing what had happened to the missing Chandler heiress. If he’d been a part of it.
That, Zeke thought, was his mission in Saratoga.
As she made her way through the packed clubhouse, Dani tried to blot out the sights and sounds and smells of the track, whose history and traditions were as personal to her as a family picnic. She remembered her mother’s blond hair shining in the bright afternoon sun and her gentle smile as she’d held her young daughter’s hand walking down the steep aisle.
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