by Nora Roberts
“You’re right.” It hurt, but Cunningham put aside his greed. “Better not take the chance. I’m going to syndicate her, get the bitch pregnant next spring.” He smiled a little. “I might even make a deal with your boy, Rich, to breed her with his Derby colt in a few years.”
“Now you’re talking.” He leaned forward and slapped a hand on Cunningham’s knee. “I’ve worked out a little bonus, Billy.”
“Bonus?” Instantly wary, Cunningham drew back. “We had a deal, Rich. I kept my part.”
“No argument there. Not a one. But look here, Billy, you raked in a bundle at that race, between the purse and the betting window. I’ve got to figure your take at three, maybe four hundred grand.” His smile widened as Cunningham began to sweat again. “And with the syndication deal, the foals she’s going to drop in oh, say, the next ten years, you’ll be sitting real pretty. Couldn’t’ve done it without me, could you?”
“I paid you—”
“You did indeed, but let’s tally up the cost here. I had to pay Lipsky.”
“That was your idea. I had nothing to do with it.”
“I’m like a subcontractor, Billy,” Rich explained patiently. “What I do all leads back to you. You don’t want to forget that. Now, Lipsky took out that old groom, and I took out Lipsky. Now, we won’t get into details about the others on my payroll, but they’re necessary expenses, and I have to pass them on. We’ve got ourselves two dead men and a dead horse, and what’s standing between them and you is me.” He beamed, ticking off murder on his fingers. “So, keeping me happy’s got to be pretty important to you. It ought to be worth another hundred thousand.”
“A hundred—That’s bullshit, Rich! Just plain bullshit. I’ve got all the expenses. Do you know what it costs to keep a Thoroughbred? Even just one fucking horse? Plus the entry fees.”
“You don’t want to nickel-and-dime me, Billy boy. You really don’t.” Rich’s smile was as friendly as a death’s-head. He kept his hand on Cunningham’s knee, squeezing. As Rich intended to squeeze his wallet for some time to come. “A hundred thousand’s a bargain. Take my word. I’ll give you another week to figure out how to cook your books. You bring it on by here the day before the Preakness. In cash.” He sat back, delighted with himself. “I’ve got a hankering to lay down a bet on my boy’s colt. Family ties, you know.”
He was laughing as he dumped more bourbon into his glass.
* * *
Her own family ties had given Kelsey a splitting headache. She’d expected the trip to Potomac to be difficult, but it had been much more than that. Her father had been furious, as angry as Kelsey had ever seen him. It had hardly mattered that his temper hadn’t been directed at her. As Candace had coolly pointed out, she was the cause of the problem.
Milicent had made good on her threat. She hadn’t been able to break the terms of Kelsey’s grandfather’s will, but she had altered her own. In Victorian and melodramatic terms, Milicent no longer had a granddaughter.
With her car still idling in the drive at Three Willows, Kelsey rested her aching head on the steering wheel. It had been a horrible, horrible scene. Milicent’s cold fury as she made the announcement, her father’s shock, then his outrage. And Candace, already prepared, aiming little darts of blame toward Kelsey’s heart.
On a quiet moan of pain, Kelsey straightened and turned off the ignition. She hadn’t realized it would hurt so much. She and Milicent had been at odds for so long, it would have made more sense to be relieved.
But she wasn’t relieved. She was wounded.
Wearily, she got out of the car, thinking aspirin at least would take care of her throbbing head.
She heard the music, the hard, driving beat of vintage Stones. Mick and the boys were grinding out their sympathy for the devil. Kelsey followed them around the side of the house.
There was a splattered drop cloth over the stones of the patio. A boom box belched out rock and roll from the glass-topped table. At an easel, her hair pulled back in a stubby ponytail, an oversize man’s shirt hanging to her knees, Naomi fenced with a crimson-tipped brush.
She might have been wielding a sword, Kelsey thought. Dueling with the canvas that had already exploded with color and shape. Her face, turned in profile, was set in stone, her eyes spewing smoke.
It seemed a very intimate battle, and Kelsey started to back away. But Naomi’s head whipped around, and those angry eyes pinned her.
“I’m sorry,” Kelsey began, drowned out by the music. Naomi reached over and turned it down to a pulsing throb. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“It’s all right.” The passion was fading quickly from her eyes, as if when not facing the canvas she was calm again. “I’m just having a private tantrum.” She set down her brush, then picked up a cloth to wipe her hands. “I haven’t painted in a while.”
“It’s wonderful.” Kelsey stepped closer, studying the streaks of violent color, the still glistening brushstrokes. “So primal.”
“Exactly. You’re upset.”
“Dammit.” Kelsey shoved her hands into her pockets. “I’m beginning to think I have a sign on my forehead that broadcasts my feelings.”
“You have an expressive face.” So had she, Naomi remembered. Once. “I take it the family meeting didn’t go well.”
“It went down the toilet. I’ve caused a rift between my father and my grandmother. A big one. And, I think, a smaller but no less difficult one between him and Candace.”
“By staying here.”
“By being who I am.” She picked up the neglected glass of iced tea Naomi had brought out with her, and drank. “Milicent has not only cut me out of her will, but out of her mind and heart. As far as she’s concerned, I no longer exist.”
“Oh, Kelsey.” Naomi laid a hand on her arm. “I’m sure she doesn’t mean it.”
Glass clinked against glass as Kelsey set the tea down. “Are you?”
Sympathy and concern hardened into fury. “Of course she means it. It’s just like her. I’m sorry I’ve caused you this kind of trouble.”
“I caused,” Kelsey exploded. “This is mine. It’s time everyone started to understand that I can think and act and feel for myself. If I didn’t want to be here, I wouldn’t be. I’m not here to spite them or to placate you. I’m here for me.”
Naomi took a deep breath. “You’re right. Absolutely right.”
“If I wanted to be somewhere else, I’d be somewhere else. But I won’t be threatened or bribed or guilted into giving up something that’s important to me. My family is important to me. Three Willows is important to me. And so are you.”
“Well.” Naomi reached for the glass herself, and her hand was unsteady. “Thank you.”
Kelsey resisted, barely, the urge to kick a pot of geraniums. “It’s hardly a matter for gratitude. You’re my mother. I care about you. I admire what you’ve been able to do with your life. Maybe I’m not satisfied about all the years between, but I like who you are. I’m certainly not going to go scrambling back and pretend you don’t exist because Milicent would prefer it.”
To keep herself from buckling into a chair, Naomi braced a hand on the table. “You can’t imagine, can’t possibly imagine what it’s like to hear from a grown daughter that she likes who you are. I love you so much, Kelsey.”
Her anger skidded to a halt. “I know.”
“I didn’t know who you would be when I saw you again. All the love I had was for that little girl I’d lost. Then you came here, and you gave me a chance. I’m so dazzled by the woman you are. So proud of you. If you left tomorrow and never came back, you’d still have given me more than I ever thought I’d have again.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Leading with her heart, Kelsey stepped forward and opened her arms. “I’m exactly where I want to be.”
With her eyes tightly closed, Naomi absorbed the feel, the scent of her daughter. “I want to say I’ll make it up to you. That I’ll find a way to soften her heart.”
“Do
n’t. It’s not for you to worry about.” Steadier, she eased back. “You can be mad with me. I’m so goddamned mad.” Riding on the mood swings, she whirled away to pace. “And hurt. I can’t believe how much it hurt. For her to think I cared about her money. For her to use it, and my feelings, against me. To try to control me with them.”
“Control is essential to Milicent. It always has been.”
“She couldn’t break my grandfather’s trust. I bet that burned her. Not having the power to change that. And Dad was so upset. He shouted at her. He’s never raised his voice to her.”
“Yes, he has.” There was a grim satisfaction in Naomi’s smile. “It’s probably been some time. I’m glad he stood up for you.”
“I wish I could say I was. It was horrible to see them fight that way. And to see the distance all this has put between him and Candace. To know, right or wrong, that I’m responsible. Grandmother’s so unbending, so unwilling to see someone else’s side.” And hadn’t the same been said about her? Kelsey remembered. And shuddered.
“Then she has two choices,” Naomi put in. “She’ll bend, or she’ll die lonely.”
“I have to believe they’ll make up,” Kelsey murmured. “I have to. I’m not sure Grandmother and I will ever come to terms again. Not after today. She actually used Pride against me. She said that you’d probably gotten one of your hoodlum friends—her exact words, by the way—to drug the horse. After all, if you’d killed a man . . .” Appalled, Kelsey trailed off.
“Why would I stop at the idea of killing a horse?” Naomi finished. “Why indeed?”
“I’m sorry.” Disgusted with herself, she rubbed at her still aching temples. “I’m wound up.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m sure she’s not the only one who’s had the thought. One of the reasons I’m out here, venting,” she said, gesturing toward the canvas, “is that a rumor’s circulating that I might have arranged for Pride’s death to collect the insurance.”
Kelsey dropped her hands, then balled them into fists. “That’s hideous! No one who knows you would believe that.”
“It’s not an unheard-of practice, unfortunately. There’s a lot of ugliness in this world, too, Kelsey. The rumor will pass.” She picked up her brush again, contemplating. “Simple arithmetic will scotch it eventually. Even though he was heavily insured, Pride was worth a good deal more alive, at the track and at stud, than he is dead. But it stirs memories. Mine. Others.”
Calmer, she began to paint again. “This was my therapy in prison. More, it was a way to survive, a way to channel emotions. You don’t want to bring attention to yourself inside. With anger, grief, with fear. Especially not with fear.”
“Can you tell me about it?” Kelsey asked quietly. “What it was like?”
For a moment Naomi continued to paint in silence. She’d wondered when Kelsey would ask. Not if. The need to know the answers, to find the solutions were as much a part of her daughter’s makeup as the color of her eyes.
So she would paint another picture, with words rather than with her brush.
“They strip you.” She said it quietly, reminding herself it was done, over. “Not just your clothes, though that’s one of the first humiliations. They take everything away from you. Your clothes, your freedom, your rights, your hope. You have only what they give you. The tedious routine of it. You’re told when to get up in the morning, when to eat, when to go to bed at night. It doesn’t matter what you feel, or what you want.”
Kelsey stepped up beside her. The birds were singing now, celebrating spring. The air was ripe with flowers and paint.
“You eat what they give you,” Naomi continued, “and after a while, you get used to it. You forget what it’s like to go out to a restaurant, or just to wake up at night and go down to the kitchen.” She let out a little sigh without realizing it. “It’s easier if you forget. If you keep too much of the outside with you, it’ll drive you crazy. Because you know it’s not yours anymore. You can see the mountains, flowers, trees, the seasons changing. But they’re all outside, and really have nothing to do with you. You can’t be who you were anymore. And even if you ache for companionship, you don’t get too close to anyone. Because people come and go.”
She changed brushes and began to paint with the energy that was boiling up inside. “Some of the women kept calendars, but I didn’t. I wasn’t going to think about the days passing into weeks, the weeks into months, the months into years. How could I? Some had pictures of their family, their children, and liked to talk about them. Or what they would do when they got out. I didn’t do that. I couldn’t do that. It was simpler for me to focus on the routine.”
“But you were lonely,” Kelsey murmured. “You must have been so lonely.”
“That’s the deepest punishment. The loneliness, and the conflicting lack of privacy. It’s not the bars. You think it’s going to be the bars, closing you in. But it’s not.”
She took a deep breath, and made herself continue. “If you had free time, you read, or you watched TV. Fashion magazines were big, but I stopped looking at them after the first couple of years. It was too hard to watch the way things were changing, even something as frivolous as hemlines.”
“Did you have visitors?”
“My father. Moses. Nothing I could say would stop either one of them from coming. God knows I wanted to see them, no matter how I suffered after they were gone. I watched my father grow old. I suppose that was the hardest part, watching the years pass on his face. That was my calendar. My father’s face.
“The last year was the hardest. I was coming up for parole, and it looked as though I’d get it. Knowing freedom was almost within reach—and yet being afraid to be cut off from the world you’d lived in for so long, that was hard. How would you know what to do now, and when to do it? The days dragged, giving you too much time to think, to hope again, to sweat out those last months. Then they let you put on civilian clothes. My father brought me a new suit. Gray pinstripes, very lawyerish. My hands shook so badly I couldn’t button the blouse. The sun hurt my eyes when I walked out. It wasn’t as if they’d kept us in a hole. It was a decent prison, with decent people in charge, at least for the most part. But the sun was different that day, stronger, brighter. I couldn’t see anything through it. And then I saw too much.”
She exchanged brushes again, her eyes focused on her work. “Do you really want to hear the rest of this?”
“Go on,” Kelsey murmured. “Finish.”
“I saw my father, how frail and old he was. The new Cadillac, blindingly white, he drove me home in. I know he spoke to me, and I to him, but I can’t remember any of it. Only that everything seemed to move too fast, and the roads were so crowded. And I was afraid, afraid they would take me back. Afraid they wouldn’t. We stopped and ate at a restaurant. Linen napkins, wine, flowers on the table. He had to order for me, as if I were a child. I couldn’t remember what I liked. And I started to cry. And he cried. So we sat and wept on the white linen cloth because I couldn’t remember what it was like to sit in a restaurant and order a meal.
“I slept most of the rest of the drive, exhausted from freedom. Then I woke up and he was turning through the gates. I could see that the trees had grown. The dogwoods that had been saplings, the ones I’d planted myself, were adult trees that had bloomed year after year without me. New paint in the living room, a vase that hadn’t been there before. Every little change terrified me.
“I didn’t go down to the barn, not for days, until Moses came to the house and bullied me into it. There was a foal I’d helped birth. Now he was sixteen hands high and at stud. New equipment, new men. New everything. I stayed in the house for a week after that. Slept with the light on and my door open. At first I couldn’t stand for a door to be closed. But after a while it got better. I had to learn to drive again. I was terrified, but I did it. The first time I went out alone, I drove to your school. I watched the baby I’d left behind as a young girl, learning to flirt with boys. I made myself accept th
at you’d learned to live without me. And I tried to start over.”
Naomi set her brush down, and stepped back. “It’s done.”
Kelsey wasn’t certain of that. The painting might have been finished, but not the emotion behind it. Nor, as far as she was concerned, was the story done. It wasn’t a matter of clearing Naomi’s name. A man had been killed, and a woman had paid the price. But she wanted to see that the pieces fit.
Still it was a shock to find Charles Rooney’s name in the phone book. The private investigator whose evidence had weighed most heavily in Naomi’s trial still had an office in Virginia. Alexandria, now. The discreet ad in the yellow pages declared Rooney Investigative Services handled criminal, domestic, and custody. Licensed and bonded and confidential. The first consultation was free.
Perhaps, she thought, she’d take advantage of that.
“Miss Kelsey.” When Gertie hurried into the kitchen, Kelsey quickly slapped the phone book closed.
“You startled me.”
“Sorry. That policeman’s here again.” Her homely face expressed simple and loyal annoyance. “Says he’s got some more questions.”
“I’ll see him. Naomi’s down at the barn. No need to bother her.”
“You want me to make coffee?”
Kelsey hesitated only a moment. “No, Gertie. Let’s get him in and out.”
“Sooner the better,” Gertie muttered under her breath.
Rossi stood when Kelsey entered the sitting room. He had to admire the way she wore jeans, though he’d been equally impressed with the clip from the press conference, and the way she and her mother had looked, trim and blond in their silk suits.
“Ms. Byden, I appreciate the time.”
“I don’t have much of it, Lieutenant, but I’m willing to stretch it if you have news for us.”
“I wish I did.” He had nothing but frustration. No unaccounted-for prints in Lipsky’s motel room, no witnesses, no trail. “I’d like to offer my sympathies for your loss at the Derby. I’m not much of a horse lover, but even cops watch that race. It was a terrible thing.”