“You should learn to relax.”
She whirled around at the sound of her father’s voice. He walked through the gate, looking as devil-may-care as ever. “Pop,” she said. “How can I relax with—”
But she stopped midsentence when Zeke followed her father into the garden.
Her father walked past her to the kitchen door. “Sit down before you run out of gas, Dani. I’m going to get something to eat. Then you can skewer me, okay?”
He disappeared into the kitchen, and Zeke came onto the stone terrace, moving with that surprising grace and economy. “We walked up together from the track,” he said. “Your father’s an interesting man. He told me he used to play spy in the rose garden when he was a kid.”
“I don’t understand him.”
“Oh, I think you do. Maybe too well.”
“Are you packed yet?”
“Haven’t even seen the damage. Think I should sue the Pembroke?”
The humor danced at the back of his eyes and played at the corners of his mouth. He had a way of making her think things and notice things—about him, about herself—that she’d prefer not to think or notice.
When she got rid of him and her father, she’d call Mattie and insist they have a heart-to-heart talk about the Cutler brothers of Cedar Springs, Tennessee.
Her father emerged from the kitchen with a peach, a paring knife and a paper towel. “You know, you don’t have much over me in lifestyle. I scoured the entire kitchen for a napkin and had to settle for a paper towel.”
“I only have cloth napkins.”
“La-di-da.” He plopped down at her umbrella table and ate a slice of peach off the end of the paring knife. He’d lost weight in the months since Dani had last seen him. He had a gaunt look that made her wonder if he shared her affliction of insomnia. His clothes seemed even more threadbare than usual. “Place looks good. First time your mother and I took you up here after you could talk, you said you’d paint the cottage purple. You were just a little tot. How the hell old are you now?”
“Thirty-four.”
He shuddered. “I must be getting old. Well, kid, it’s good to see you. Going to have a seat, or are you planning to give me the third degree standing up?”
Zeke appeared to be observing the proceedings between father and daughter with great amusement. He’d already taken a seat at the table.
Still keyed up, Dani brushed crumbs off the table.
“You’ll give yourself ulcers,” John said.
She shot him a look. “Why are you here?”
“In Saratoga?” He lifted his bony shoulders in a shrug that was not convincingly innocent. He’d always been a notoriously rotten bluffer, in life and in poker. “It’s blistering hot this time of year in Arizona.”
Weak, Dani thought. Very weak. “You could afford a plane ticket?”
“I’m here.”
“It was hot in Arizona last summer and the summer before.”
“The truth is,” her father said, “the thought of coming here used to scare me to death. I had enough reminders of your mother in my life. Lately, though…” He leaned back and stared up at the clear, beautiful blue sky. “I don’t know. Reporters have been pestering me for a quote about Lilli, the Chandler Stakes, even that gold key you found. I suppose it’s all been working on me. I woke up the other morning and thought, my God, it really has been twenty-five years.” He set his paring knife down on the table. “So I booked a flight and here I am.”
“Nice try, Pop,” Dani said.
He ignored her. “This place—” Squinting, he looked around the transformed garden, then waved one hand, as if to take in all of his great-grandfather’s property. “It isn’t what it used to be. It’s changed. Everything around here’s changed. I don’t feel as if I’m stepping back into my past.”
He was lying. Dani knew it, and so, she felt, did Zeke. It wouldn’t have surprised her if her father had already told Zeke the real reason why he was in Saratoga. He had always found it easier to talk to anyone but his own daughter. They were so different. For years she’d struggled to embrace the past—to remember her mother in every detail, to relive every moment of their too-short time together. All her father wanted was to run as far as he could from the past. Yet now here he was in Saratoga, immersed in it.
But Dani didn’t press the point. “Did Mattie send you?”
“I haven’t talked to her in a couple of weeks.”
“Then she called Nick about the burglary, and he sent you.”
John sighed, but it couldn’t have been a surprise to him that she understood the peculiar dynamics between him and his parents—and where and how she fit into their jumbled worlds. “They’re worried,” he said.
“Nobody needs to worry about me.”
“But they do. We’re your family, Dani.”
Quietly, without a word, Zeke retreated to the kitchen. Dani appreciated the gesture. But she was still determined that he leave the Pembroke.
She changed the subject. “Grandfather said he spoke to you.”
They both knew she was referring to her Chandler grandfather, not to Nick. “Yes, he was cordial. Of course. He invited me to join him for dinner tonight. I refused, but he knew I would.” He grinned, his dark eyes sparkling. “Haven’t had dinner with the old fart in over twenty years. He’d slip me a batch of poisoned mushrooms and bury me in the backyard with that dead mole you found when you were six or seven.”
Dani laughed, surprising herself—and, she could see, her father. She’d carried the mole on a spatula she’d fetched from the kitchen and showed it to her grandparents at tea. They’d been apoplectic. Her mother had quietly maneuvered her out to the garden, where they’d had a proper burial. Lilli had cried. Dani, who’d adored small fuzzy animals, had wanted to find the culprit who’d killed the poor ugly little thing.
“When did you get in?” she asked, less confrontational.
“Early this morning.”
“Where did you sleep?”
“Didn’t.”
“Pop, why didn’t you knock on my door? You know I’ll always take you in—” She broke off, thinking her life—and maybe his, too—would be easier if she didn’t love him. It was that way with Pembrokes and their fathers. “Mattie’s room is free.”
“If it’s all the same to you,” John said, “I’ll just find something in town. I stayed with a trainer friend last night, but he’s having company tonight.”
“You don’t know Saratoga in August anymore. It’s me or the gutter.”
He made a face. Since her mother’s disappearance, she and her father under the same roof hadn’t been a winning combination. “Not much choice, then, is there?”
She looked at him. “Nope.”
“Well, you might not be welcoming me with open arms, but at least you haven’t told me you hope I fall into a well and drown. Not, I understand, that the thought hasn’t crossed your mind.”
She started to argue with him but realized he was just trying to jerk her string to keep her from asking questions—demanding answers—about what was really at stake. Zeke came out of the kitchen with her last beer but didn’t sit down. Dani looked from him to her father and back again. “You two know each other,” she said, and it came out an accusation.
Neither man answered right away. A squirrel ran up the crabapple tree at the edge of the garden, and a breeze cooled the suddenly very warm late-afternoon air.
Finally her father got up, threw his peach pit over the fence, stretched and yawned. “I’m beat—really, this trip’s taken everything out of me. I don’t travel the way I used to. Why don’t you two go to some nice, quiet place for dinner, and I’ll take a walk and get some sleep. We’ll have plenty of time to talk.”
“Pop—”
“Sounds fine to me,” Zeke said.
Her father planted a quick kiss on her cheek. “Good to see you, kid.”
It was two against one, and her father was adept at getting himself out of a tight spot. And he was
fast. He was out the garden gate before Dani had figured out a good counterargument and worked up the energy to make it.
She was intensely aware that she was alone in her garden, again, with Zeke.
“I’ll walk back to the inn with you and see that you check out,” she said stiffly.
“That line’s wearing thin, Dani. I think we should do as your father suggests and head to town and a nice, quiet restaurant for dinner.”
“Why should I do that?”
“Because,” he said, “we need to talk.”
Zeke turned down Dani’s offer to cook on the grounds that he’d seen her kitchen, but agreed to ride with her in her car to town. She was a good driver. Even as distracted as she was, she concentrated on what she was doing. She found a parking space on Broadway in front of an attractive downtown restaurant with sidewalk tables that were tempting on such a beautiful day. But Dani led the way to a table inside, where it was quieter, pleasantly informal. A waitress brought them a small, steaming loaf of bread and dots of herbed butter.
“Is this all right?” Dani asked.
“It’s fine.”
She ordered a glass of the house red wine, and he did the same, watching her make a show out of examining the menu. She probably knew every item on it and had already decided what she wanted, but he figured she needed something to do besides look at him. He had no problem at all looking at her.
Their wine arrived. Dani immediately took a big drink of hers, then held on to the glass. “You don’t mind having a blocked view of the entrance?”
It was an obstructed view, not blocked, but he didn’t argue the point. “No, do you?”
She shrugged. “I’m just trying to figure out what kinds of things security consultants know, what they look out for. If I were to hire you, what would you tell me?”
Oh, sweetheart, he thought, if you only knew.
But he tried his wine and decided to take her question relatively seriously, even if it was intended to distract him. “I would teach you the basics of personal safety.”
“Which are?”
“First you have to know what personal safety is. To my way of thinking, it’s providing yourself with a stable environment in which you can pursue the activities and lifestyle you enjoy with limited fear of harm.”
“Does that mean you’d make me stop rock climbing?”
He shook his head. “That’s an activity you enjoy. I’m talking about ensuring yourself the kind of environment in which you can do your rock climbing, or whatever else you do for fun, without fear of intrusion.”
“You mean like burglars and kidnappers and such?”
“I mean,” he said, not especially appreciating her cheeky tone, “that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
She drank more of her wine; he noticed that her eyes were as black as Mattie’s and maybe even more dazzling. “Give me some examples.”
“I encourage common sense and reasonable precautions—”
“For rich girls?”
“And boys. And men and women. And the poor, the middle-class, the downtrodden. I give the same basic instructions to everyone, regardless of gender, position or wealth. I encourage common sense and reasonable precautions,” he repeated.
Their waitress returned and took their order, a cold pasta salad for Dani, lasagna for Zeke. He tore off a piece of bread and buttered it, then took a bite with a swallow of wine. He wondered if she was deliberately provoking him or if she just had a knack for it.
“An egalitarian bodyguard,” she said.
He decided it was deliberate.
“What kind of precautions?” she asked.
“The usual. Make sure someone always knows your plans, change your routine periodically, don’t draw undue attention to yourself.”
“And people don’t think that’s too restrictive?”
“Some have more trouble with certain suggestions than others. One executive I worked with hated telling anyone his plans, another enjoyed flaunting his notoriety. And there are always those who are married to their routines. It’s a balancing act. I don’t encourage recklessness or paranoia.”
“I see.” She took a piece of bread but skipped the butter. “What do you advise when something bad does happen?”
Her voice had softened, lost its bantering edge, and Zeke yearned to reach across the table and take her hand, but he held back. Kept his distance. It wasn’t just necessary, it was the right thing to do. Or so he told himself.
“Again, common sense,” he said, focusing on her question, his answer. “If attacked, it’s important to remain calm and to be assertive—to find a balance between seeming too weak or too superior to an attacker, or to becoming dehumanized. I suggest my clients give up money and valuables on demand, without question. In general, it’s best not to resist unless in immediate mortal danger—but that’s in general. Every situation is particular, needs its own reading.”
“What if you do choose to fight?”
“Do so with the sole purpose of getting away. Don’t worry about apprehending or defeating an attacker. Your safety should be your only concern. If you do use violence, use it only as a last resort, with authority, and never halfheartedly.” His voice, he realized, was quiet, intense, controlled. It was the voice that often convinced people he meant business. Dani, however, didn’t look convinced or intimidated, only slightly dubious, as if he just might be pulling her leg. “Again, the purpose of any violence is to debilitate your attacker long enough to make your escape.”
“And you give your clients tips on appropriate types of violence?”
“I do.”
Their dinners arrived, Zeke’s lasagna hot and delicately flavored, a nice counter to his concession-stand fare. Before Dani could ask him how to poke a guy’s eyeballs out with her car keys, he said, “I saw the book on my brother on your kitchen counter.”
Her face paled just a little. “Kate told me about it.”
He nodded.
“I haven’t read it yet. Should I not bother?”
“If you’re asking me if I believe what Quint Skinner wrote about my brother, all I can tell you is that his accuracy has never been challenged.”
She stabbed a twist of red pasta with her fork. “Accuracy and truth aren’t always the same thing. Anyway, I only got the book out because I wanted to know more about you.” She quickly added, “About what your appearance in Saratoga has to do with me.”
“Dani—”
“I’m sorry about your brother.”
“He’s been gone a long time.”
“Does that matter?”
He shook his head, hearing Joe’s laugh. “No, it doesn’t.”
“A lot of people think I should be over my mother’s disappearance by now,” Dani went on softly, “but you never get over something like that. You carry on, and you live your life, enjoy it, but that loss stays with you. Maybe it would be wrong if it didn’t.”
In the candlelight he saw the faint lines at the corners of her eyes and the places where her lipstick had worn off, and the slowly fading bruise on her wrist. He reached across the table and touched his thumb to her lower lip. She didn’t look at him.
“You’re not what I expected to find in Saratoga,” he said.
Her eyes reached his, and he saw her swallow, but she didn’t speak. And he knew what he had to do. Reaching into his back pocket, he withdrew the photograph of Mattie Witt and Lilli Chandler Pembroke in their red-and-white balloon twenty-five years ago.
He handed it to Dani. “My brother sent this to your grandmother’s younger sister in Tennessee before he died. It’s why I’m here.”
Dani stared at her mother’s beautiful smile and the gold gate key hanging from her neck. “Zeke…”
He rose, his meal barely touched. “I’m sorry. Take your time. Get your head around this. Talk to your family.” He gave her a hint of a smile. “You know where to find me.”
“Room 304,” she said quietly.
But she was pale
and sat frozen in her seat, and Zeke threw down some money on the table and headed out, overhearing people chatting about wine, fresh pasta and horses.
Dani found her father lying on the double bed in the second upstairs bedroom, smoking a cigarette on the soft, worn quilt. He looked wide awake. “It’s unsafe to smoke in bed, you know,” Dani told him.
“No chance of me falling asleep, I assure you.” He sat up, ashes falling down his front, and tossed the half-smoked cigarette in a nearly empty glass of water. “I’ve stunk up the place, haven’t I? If it’s any consolation, I don’t smoke nearly as much as I used to. It’s—Dani…what’s wrong?”
She knew she must look awful—pale, drawn, as if she’d been seeing ghosts, which, in a way, she had. She could have stared all night at the picture Zeke had given her. She’d tucked the picture in her handbag and paid for dinner, and she’d debated running after Zeke and asking him to have that talk now. To get him to tell her everything he knew about her mother, the key. About her grandmother.
She wanted, too, his reassuring presence.
A dangerous man on so many levels, she thought.
She’d gone instead to find her father.
“Nothing’s wrong,” she told him. “What were you thinking about just now?”
He shrugged, looking awkward. “Myself, your mother. You.”
“I guess we could have made things easier on ourselves and each other over the years.”
“I guess we could have.” He settled back against the pillows, looking older than Dani remembered. He’d always seemed so vibrant, such a devil-may-care scoundrel. “When your mother and I married, I was so thrilled at having extricated myself from the force of Mattie and Nick’s legend—even that old cretin Ulysses’s—that I never…” He exhaled, shaking his head. “I should have been more sensitive to your mother’s need to rebel, perhaps to become something of a legend herself.”
“What could you have done?”
“Listened.”
“Did she ever try to talk to you?”
He didn’t answer at once. Then slowly he shook his head. “What good would it have done? That summer she disappeared—it was just eight months after her mother had died, and I blamed her unhappiness, her restlessness, on Claire’s death. I wanted to give her time to grieve, give her space. She didn’t talk to me about her troubles, and I didn’t ask.” He stretched out his bony legs; Dani saw that he had a small hole in the toe of his sock. “So she went to Nick.”
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