“You never guessed he’d put her in Casino?”
“I had no idea. None. He said he did it because she was good, but I think he understood her need to go beyond what her mother had done with her life, to take a risk.”
“Nick thinks everyone has a capacity for risk. Pop, we can’t blame her for her choices or her desires. She had a variety of pressures on her. She did her best.” Dani’s voice cracked, but she pressed on. “So did we.”
John looked at his daughter. “Do you believe that?”
“It’s been a long time coming, but, yes, I believe it.”
“I wish I knew what happened to her.”
“I know, Pop.”
He nodded, patting her hand. “I know you do, kid. I like to think an answer—any answer—would be better than not knowing. But it’s been so long. Eugene hasn’t hired one of his private detectives in years. And we’ve carried on, you and I.” He swung his legs over the edge of the bed. “For a while after the embezzlement and my first experiments with gambling and globe-trotting, I wondered if she might come back. I thought I was becoming more of the kind of man she wanted. A rakehell, a real Pembroke.”
“But she didn’t come back,” Dani said, aware of the twittering of birds in the meadow outside and the sudden chill in the air.
Her father shook his head. “No.”
She squeezed his hand, remembering how they used to walk everywhere together in New York, before Eugene Chandler caught him stealing money from him. There was no getting around it; her father had let her grow up without him. And, if she were somehow, miraculously, still alive, so had her mother.
“Pop,” she said hoarsely, “I need to show you something.”
She handed him the picture Zeke had given her and watched his hand tremble as hers had a short time ago.
“You knew about the key, didn’t you?” she asked.
“Dani…”
“It’s the same one I found on the rocks—it matches the key to the pavilion at the springs. I think whoever robbed me was after those keys.”
Her father’s face had paled, grayed, aged; she felt guilty. “Dani, don’t do this to yourself.”
“And this morning Zeke’s room at the inn was tossed—searched, I think, for this photograph. It’s why he’s here. Pop, his brother had this picture. How? And how did the key end up on the rocks?” She was talking rapidly now, firing off questions, not stopping even to breathe. “How did Mother get it? Who took the picture? How did Joe Cutler get his hands on it?”
He caught her by the wrists and held up her arms so that she had to breathe, and she felt like a little kid in the middle of a tantrum. She tried not to cry. She tried so hard, but still felt the tears hot on her cheeks.
“It’s okay, kid.”
She fell against her father’s chest, bonier than she remembered, smelling of smoke and stale sweat, and he stroked her hair, telling her to shush.
It was too much.
She pulled herself away. “I’m going to find out.”
A pained expression crossed his face. “I know.”
“Mattie recognized the key?”
He nodded.
“Did she say—”
“I didn’t talk to her.”
“But Nick did,” Dani said, knowing how the three of them—no, she thought, the four of them—operated. Mattie and Nick, their only son, their only granddaughter.
“He didn’t tell me anything. Or, I should say, he didn’t tell me everything he knows.”
She straightened. “I’ll call Mattie first, then Nick.”
“It won’t do any good,” her father said, “unless they feel like talking.”
“I don’t care—”
“Get some rest, Dani. Call them in the morning.”
“Pop, the other day when I was robbed, I called Mattie, and she acted strange. She must have remembered the key, but she didn’t tell me. And Joe Cutler and Zeke…” Dani ran a hand through her hair, trying to keep the threads of her scattering thoughts together. “They’re both from Mattie’s hometown.”
“Cedar Springs,” John said.
Dani stared at him. “You knew?”
“They came north that summer.” He wasn’t looking at her. “They stopped at my office in New York to find out where Mattie was, and I told them. But I thought Saratoga was too far for them to bother to go, and she never mentioned them to me—for years I assumed they didn’t connect.”
“You never asked her?”
He shook his head, tapping out another cigarette from a crumpled pack. “Mattie doesn’t like to be reminded of Cedar Springs. And Lilli was gone by then. I just didn’t think about it.”
Dani picked up the photograph from the bed where her father had dropped it. “So Joe Cutler could have taken this himself. He could have—”
But she stopped, unwilling—terrified—of speculating further.
She knew why Zeke was in Saratoga now, today.
He was there to find out if his brother had had anything to do with her mother’s disappearance.
“Take a hot bath,” her father said. “Let all this settle a bit before you get too far ahead of yourself.”
“Pop, if you find out anything,” she said, “if you know anything—”
“I’ll tell you.”
“You promise?”
He tucked his cigarette in his mouth and struck a match, lighting it, polluting the air. Exhaling smoke, he said, “I promise.”
She wondered—and expected he did, too—if that promise was as empty as all the others he’d made to her over the years. Or maybe it didn’t even matter anymore. Maybe it was just enough that he wanted to keep his promises.
Smoke or no smoke, she kissed him good-night.
“This Cutler character—you’re all right with him?”
She smiled. “You bet.”
By the time she settled into her hot tub, scented water swirling around her, Dani realized she had no intention of kicking Zeke out of the inn. It wasn’t a question of surrendering, although he clearly wasn’t going to leave unless he wanted to leave. He’d vacate his room, perhaps, but he wouldn’t necessarily vacate the premises. Dani preferred knowing where he was.
She opened Quint Skinner’s book to page one and began to read.
Zeke sat on the porch swing of the small Cape Cod house Quint had rented in a middle-class neighborhood about two miles from the center of Saratoga Springs. It was painted sunny yellow and had an herb wreath on the front door and a painted wooden goose tacked up under the porch light. Charming. It was dark out, and the swing creaked. Zeke had been there almost an hour, trying not to think about Dani, thinking about her anyway. She was a woman who could make a man dream again.
He heard a car door shut.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“I like the herb wreath,” Zeke said. “The goose is a nice touch, too.”
The Pulitzer Prize–winning ex-soldier climbed the steps and didn’t put his gun away until he’d made sure Zeke saw it. It was a Smith & Wesson .38 that fit nicely into the shoulder holster under Skinner’s silk jacket.
Zeke gave the swing another little push with his feet. “You have that thing when you robbed Dani Pembroke?”
“Go home, Zeke.”
“It amazes me how a man of your limited mental capacity could win a Pulitzer Prize. Of course, that’s the only thing you’ve ever done, isn’t it? Tell me, were you tempted to blow Dani away when she came after you with her red high heel?”
Quint leaned against the railing and bent one knee, deliberately casual. There was enough light from the street and nearby houses that Zeke could make out his squinted eyes and blunt, shrapnel-scarred face, and he felt a wave of strong, mixed emotions—anger, envy, compassion. Quint had been with Joe when he died. He’d seen men die because of Joe. He’d served with Joe, had admired him. And he’d watched him transform from a kid from a small southern town who knew right from wrong into, in the end, a man who had betrayed his comrades and hi
mself. In a way, it wasn’t Quint Skinner who’d made Joe Cutler, but Joe Cutler who’d made Quint Skinner. The passion and pain of Quint’s writing seemed incongruous with the big, red-faced man before Zeke now, a man who’d push a hundred-ten-pound woman across her own bedroom. But that was part of the power and the appeal of Joe Cutler: One Soldier’s Rise and Fall. It captured the emotions of men too many thought weren’t supposed to have any emotions at all.
“What do you want?” Skinner asked.
Windows were opened up and down the street for the summer’s night, and Zeke could hear televisions, dogs barking, the cry of a baby. “You stole the two gate keys, didn’t you?”
Quint crossed his arms on his massive chest. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“And you tossed my room this morning. Find anything interesting?”
But he knew Quint wouldn’t answer, so he got up from the swing, stretching. He needed sleep. With Pembroke security no doubt on the alert and John Pembroke staying at the little purple cottage, Zeke figured he could skip keeping watch on Dani tonight.
He stood close enough to Quint to see the bulge of his shoulder holster even in the dark. “Did Joe show you the picture of Lilli and Mattie in the hot-air balloon before he died?” His voice was just over a whisper.
Quint’s eyes disappeared in the thick, scarred flesh around them. “Joe didn’t show me anything.”
“Here’s what I think,” Zeke said. “I think you’re in Saratoga to find out what happened to Lilli and pin it on my brother so you can revive your career.”
“My career doesn’t need reviving. But you go ahead and think what you want to think.”
“I’ll do that.”
He started off the porch, got halfway down when Quint grabbed his arm and pulled him around. His fingers dug in deep, in a grip that probably would have broken Dani’s arm. Zeke didn’t flinch. He met Quint’s gaze dead-on.
“You think you’re tough,” Quint said in a low voice. “You think you’ve seen action doing the work you do, but you haven’t seen anything. Nothing like what your brother saw.” He hissed his words, saliva spraying from his mouth. “You can’t make up for Joe. You can’t go through what he went through and prove you wouldn’t become what he became.”
He released Zeke and spun around and made the front door in two long steps. The herb wreath wobbled when he slammed the door shut behind him.
Zeke shook his arm where Quint had had it in his iron grip. He walked out to the sidewalk and headed up the street to where he’d parked his car. The air was cool; he could smell freshly cut grass. Some kid had left his bike in the middle of the sidewalk. He climbed into his car and sat a minute behind the wheel, not moving. He’d underestimated Quint. Not physically. He’d have held his own on that score. But he’d let himself forget Quint’s incisiveness.
“You can’t make up for Joe.”
He stuck the key in the ignition, turned it and pulled out into the neighborhood street, trying not to notice that his hands were shaking.
John Pembroke pushed his way through brush and low-hanging branches on the narrow path from the Pembroke Springs bottling plant through the woods to the steep rock outcropping where Dani had found the gold key.
It was almost dawn, and he’d had to get out of that cottage.
The memories.
The questions.
Lilli.
The estate his great-grandfather had built had changed and yet stayed the same. His daughter obviously had a peculiar talent, a knack for embracing the past without letting it dominate the present or determine her future. But John had half hoped—had told Dani himself—that everything would be so different, so changed, that being there would be easy.
Such was not the case.
“Oh, Lilli,” he whispered. “Lilli, Lilli.”
He didn’t know if Dani had been asleep or not. Didn’t stop in her room to tell her where he was going or leave a note. He just went. His sneakers were soaked with dew and mud, and his face was scratched where switches and branches had slapped him. As a boy, he’d known every inch of these woods.
The path ended. He saw clouds rolling in from the west, encircling the moon. His breath came in ragged gasps. He was too damn old for this nonsense. Pounding through the woods at the crack of dawn. What did he think he was doing?
He hung his toes over the edge of a massive boulder and stared twenty, thirty, fifty hundred feet—whatever it was—down to the trees and rocks below.
His throat caught. Lilli…
Compared to Tucson, it was cold out, and damp.
He didn’t know how long he stood there. When he finally turned back, he was shivering and crying and the sky had lightened, a light drizzle falling.
Walking along the path, he could feel the wind of forty years ago in his face as he’d played Zorro in these same woods. He loved to check out Ulysses’s long-abandoned bottling plant. The old goat had sold mineral water throughout the country, then had tried to capitalize on the new soda market by drawing off and selling the carbonic acid that gave the water its natural sparkling quality. But he’d tired of the enterprise, and the plant fell into bankruptcy, which, given his tendency to overdo everything, had probably saved his springs from extinction. Had saved them for Dani.
John could feel his strength and exuberance, and all the optimism of being a kid and having his life ahead of him, believing still that he could make his dreams come true.
He’d been so confident. A true Pembroke.
He stumbled through a muddy spot and then realized he’d veered off the path. Up ahead, he recognized one of the lamps on the bottling-plant grounds. Keeping his eyes on it, he pushed forward through ferns and undergrowth, never minding the path. If he was right, he’d come out near the pavilion in the clearing just beyond the plant. He could easily pick up the main path back to Dani’s cottage from there.
Feeling foolish, he brushed away his tears with the backs of his hands.
He heard a rustling sound behind him. A squirrel? He doubted his daughter would tolerate bears in her woods.
There it was again.
Pressing ahead, he could see the Doric columns of the pavilion. They anchored a Victorian wrought-iron fence, crawling with morning glories and roses that enclosed stone benches and an old marble fountain. Lilli’s gold key, John remembered, had been a copy of the key to its gate. He wished he could have seen both keys before they were stolen.
He pictured his wife’s exuberant smile as she stood next to his nutty mother in the basket of her balloon. He’d call Mattie in a few hours. Talk to his mother as he’d never talked to her before.
The rustling was right behind him now.
He started to turn and felt himself falling, and then felt the slicing pain.
Eleven
Someone knocked on Zeke’s door just after seven, waking him. He’d collapsed atop the crazy quilt around one. Pembroke housekeeping had unransacked his room. He wished they hadn’t. He might have been able to tell what Quint had been after. Did he know about the blackmail note as well?
“Hang on,” he called, rolling off the bed. He pulled on his jeans and shook off the last vestiges of sleep. “Who is it?”
“Ira Bernstein.”
So Dani wasn’t bluffing about kicking him out. Zeke opened up. “Look—” He stopped instantly, taking in the Pembroke manager’s pale face and shaken look. “What’s wrong?”
“Dani’s father has been found unconscious out near the bottling plant. He’s being transported to the hospital by ambulance now.”
“Does she know?”
Ira shook his head. “I thought you…”
He thought Zeke could tell her. “Do you know what happened to him?”
“He appears to have stumbled and fallen. He wasn’t on the path.”
“What’s his condition?”
“I don’t know.”
“Give me three minutes.”
“I’ll wait out here.”
Zeke nodded and shut
the door. Outside his window the clouds and dawn drizzle had vanished, leaving in their wake a beautiful blue sky. Guests were already up and at it. He could see a half-dozen doing stretches on the lawn.
He dialed Sam in San Diego. “This thing’s getting even uglier.”
It was still night on the West Coast, but Sam was clearheaded. “One thing I’ve learned, the past is never past.”
“Find out anything about our boy Quint?”
“He’s broke and out of work.”
Zeke appreciated Sam’s matter-of-fact tone. Sam had never met Quint or Joe and wasn’t one to judge people. “I need your help,” Zeke said.
“I’ll tuck a toothbrush in my backpack and be on my way.”
“Thanks.”
“What for?”
“He’s asleep,” Zeke said, as he and Dani stood next to her father’s hospital bed.
Dani shook her head, her small, trim body rigid with tension and fear, neither of which, Zeke knew, she would acknowledge. He and Ira had found her throwing things around her kitchen and holding back tears even as she’d cursed her father to the rafters for sneaking out on her. She took the news about her father—Zeke told her the basics, and Ira supplied the details, what few there were—without a word. Ira had stayed at the Pembroke. Zeke had driven her to the hospital. She’d wanted to drive herself, but he’d prevailed.
“He’s faking it,” she said. She leaned over her father. “Pop, I know you’re not asleep.”
He didn’t answer. He’d just come from the emergency room. His eyes were shut, and there was a grayish cast to his skin, except for the purple and red spots that seemed to seep from the edges of his bandaged head. He’d needed stitches on his forehead and had a bloodied nose where he’d hit a tree when he’d fallen. But Zeke was more interested in the lump at the back of his head. How had it gotten there if he’d pitched forward face-first? If the rain had continued, if he’d tripped before getting to the edge of the woods, if the night watchman hadn’t checked the grounds before going off shift…John Pembroke could have been in worse shape than he was now.
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