by Nora Roberts
“Will you marry me?”
“Yes,” she said. “Absolutely.”
Gauging her, he let out some of the breath he hadn’t been aware he’d been holding. “That’s it?”
“That’s it,” she agreed. “So, who gets to rake in the chips?”
His lips curved slowly. “This seems like a good time to start splitting the pot.” He stepped toward her, combing his hands through her hair, taking a firm hold. “I love you, Kelsey.”
“You must, or you’d never have flubbed that so badly.”
“Flubbed, hell.” He kissed her, hard. “I’ve got you, don’t I?”
“Yeah.” With a laugh, she threw her arms around him. “Yeah, you do.”
He scooped her off her feet. “About that trip to Vegas.”
“No.”
“You’re not considering the possibilities.” With only one goal in mind now, he headed for the stairs. “It’s quick, convenient, colorful. We could spend our wedding night in a big heart-shaped bed under a full-length mirror.”
“As appealing as that sounds, I’m going to pass. Why don’t we—”
The crash at the back of the house had Gabe dropping her to her feet. “Stay here,” he ordered, and he shoved her toward the stairs. Before he could get halfway toward the sound, one of his grooms stumbled in, white-faced and wide-eyed.
“Mr. Slater. Jesus, Mr. Slater, you’ve got to come. It’s Reno. Oh, my God, I think he’s dead.”
There was no doubt of that. Though someone had had the courage and compassion to cut him down from where he had swung from a rope tied to a beam, there was no mistaking the sight of death.
Kelsey couldn’t take her eyes from it, the limp body decked out in riding silks, the horrible angle of the head with its livid bruises around the neck.
“Call the police,” Gabe ordered. He turned Kelsey around roughly. “Get out of here. Go home.”
“No. I’m staying. I’m all right. I’m staying with you.”
He didn’t have time to argue. “Wait outside, goddammit!” he exploded when she remained stubbornly beside him. “Wait outside!”
She only shook her head. She did look away from Reno and found her eyes locked on Jamison’s. His were glazed, with devastation or shock, she couldn’t be sure. But she walked to him, gently leading him to a chair.
“Sit down now, Jamie.”
“I found him. Somebody told me he was around and looking for me. I don’t know why I came in here, I don’t know why, except I did. And I found him. Just like last time. I found him.”
“Last time?”
“Benny. Just like Benny. Oh, God.” He buried his face in his hands. “Oh, God, when will it stop?”
“There’s a note, Mr. Slater.” A young stableboy crept closer. He whispered, as though death had ears. “There’s a note on the bench there. I didn’t touch it,” he added. “They always say you’re not supposed to touch anything.”
“That’s right. Go wait outside for the police, will you?”
“Sure, Mr. Slater.” He hesitated. “We cut him down,” he blurted out. “Maybe we weren’t supposed to, but we couldn’t just leave him like that. We had to get him down.”
“You did the right thing.” Gabe put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Wait outside now.” Already dreading what he would find, Gabe walked over to the bench, to the single sheet of paper, handwritten.
I’m sorry. It’s the coward’s way, but the only way I know. I’ll never ride a horse again. I killed the best horse I ever had under me. As God is my witness, I didn’t know it was a lethal dose. It was supposed to disqualify him, that’s all. And settle a score. I never believed my father was guilty. Until now. What he did, I did. What he did, I’ll do. Bad blood. There’s no fighting bad blood.
Gabe turned from the note and looked at his trainer. “Did you know, Jamie?”
Tears dripped onto Jamison’s hands as he nodded. “I knew. I knew Reno was Benny Morales’s son. God help him.”
The pieces fit perfectly once they were turned to the light. Benny Morales, disgraced, despairing, had hanged himself, leaving behind a young, pregnant widow. She’d fled Virginia and had settled in Kansas, secluding herself and the infant son she bore from the scandal.
When Reno was five, she married again. Reno took his stepfather’s name, but he never stopped dreaming of his real father. From Benny he inherited his small stature, his quick hands, and his love of horses. So he followed in his father’s footsteps, working his way up from hot-walker to exercise boy and to apprentice jockey.
Obsessed with his father’s memory, he moved to Virginia. He trusted only Jamison, his father’s closest friend, with his secret. And Jamison kept it.
“He had scrapbooks on his father.” Two days after the suicide, Rossi shared some of the details with Gabe. “Almost a library of them. Several of them were dedicated to the accusations made against his father, the investigation, and the suicide. His mother and stepfather are coming out today from Kansas to claim the body. I can tell you from my talk with her that she supports the fact that he had an unhealthy obsession with his father. Reno saw him as a hero and a scapegoat, and he was determined to right the old wrong.”
“By drugging the Chadwick colt,” Gabe said softly. “Disqualifying it from the Derby.”
“Morales was riding for the Chadwicks when he took the fall that kept him out of racing for more than a year.” Rossi didn’t need his notes, but he flipped through his book out of habit. “Then, when the horse, Sun Spot, had to be put down at Keeneland, Matthew Chadwick was one of the most outspoken against Benny Morales. He had, after all, lost a valuable investment due to the tampering.”
“Bad blood.” Gabe set his teeth. “There’s still a matter of where Reno got the drug. I think we can figure he injected the horse sometime after weigh-in and before they were loaded in the gate. Most probably while they were in the tunnel. But how did he get it, and from whom?”
“It doesn’t seem it would be that difficult for a man in his position, Mr. Slater. Reno’d been around tracks since he was a teenager. He’d have known the right people. And the wrong ones.”
“If he’d gotten the drug himself, he wouldn’t have mistaken the dose. He didn’t intend to kill the horse, Lieutenant. That’s clear to me.”
“He made a mistake.”
“Or he was duped. Have you looked up my father?”
“This is a real family affair, isn’t it? No,” he said when Gabe remained silent. “He’s moved out of his rooms, no forwarding address. The only reason I have to pursue that particular thread is your instinct. I’m trusting that, Mr. Slater. If he shows up around the track, anywhere in the area, we’ll bring him in for questioning.”
“He’ll show. He’s too vain to know when to cut his losses.”
He hadn’t believed in his father’s guilt. Kelsey stood at her bedroom window, fresh from a late-afternoon shower, and stared out over the hills. Reno hadn’t believed in his father’s guilt and so had spent most of his life pursuing that ghost. Wanting to vindicate it, to avenge it. In the end, he had discovered something about the man whose blood ran through him, and about himself, that he had not been able to live with.
It was always a risk to pry open doors to the past. She was encouraging Gabe to shrug off his own yoke of inheritance and be who he was. Yet she couldn’t.
Wasn’t she risking everything she’d built with Naomi over the past months by probing, poking, prodding at that door? And when she opened it, when she found what was lurking in the dust behind it, would she be able to live with it?
Let it go, she ordered herself. Why pick at something everyone wants locked? She had her whole life ahead of her. A life with Gabe. Fresh new beginnings everywhere. All she had to do was turn away from the shadows and accept what was.
“Miss Kelsey?”
Kelsey answered without looking around. “Yes, Gertie?”
“Mr. Lingstrom’s office is on the phone. He wanted to speak with Miss Naomi, but since she�
��s out, he’ll talk to you.”
“All right, Gertie. I’ll take it downstairs.”
She took the call in her mother’s office, on the business line. She listened, managed to make the appropriate comments. When the call was complete, Kelsey replaced the receiver carefully. She was still sitting at the desk when Naomi walked in.
“God save me from those foolish, time-wasting luncheons. I don’t know what makes me think I’m obliged to go. The only bright spot was that I happened to go into this little boutique near the restaurant when it was over. There was the most incredible dress, absolutely perfect for a simple, garden wedding. They’ll hold it for twenty-four hours if you . . .”
She trailed off, the impetus that had carried her straight through the house to her daughter fading. Kelsey was staring at her, her hands locked together tightly on the desk.
“What is it?” Naomi asked. “Is it about Reno? Is there something else?”
“No, it’s not about Reno.” She watched the relief flutter over Naomi’s face. “Your lawyer just phoned.”
“Oh?” Fresh nerves had Naomi lifting a hand to toy with the star-shaped pin at her lapel.
“He wanted you to know that the documents you requested he draft are ready for your signature.” She paused. “The ones transferring half of Three Willows into my name.”
“Well, then. That’s fine.”
“Why would you do something like that?”
“It’s something your grandfather and I discussed before he died. It was always my intention, Kelsey, and his. I’m just making it legal.”
“Without telling me.”
“I didn’t want it to have the tone of an obligation,” Naomi said carefully. “On either my part or yours. There hasn’t been a lot I’ve been able to give you. This is something I can. My father left the when and how up to me, but basically this comes down to you through him. I felt this was the right time and the right way. This isn’t a rope to tie you here, Kelsey. Or to tie you to me.”
“You must know I’m already tied here, and to you. You gambled that I would be when you asked me to come.”
“Yes, I did. I couldn’t guess, or even hope that you’d feel anything for me. But I was sure you’d feel it for Three Willows.”
“One’s very much the same as the other.”
A ghost of a smile moved over Naomi’s lips. “So I’ve been told.”
“It’s very difficult to love and respect one without loving and respecting the other.” She rose, holding out her hands across the desk. “I haven’t been able to do that. I don’t see why I should.”
“Not everyone would have given me the chance.” Naomi took Kelsey’s hands, and gripped hard.
Not everyone had, Kelsey thought. But she would take the risk, and try to change that.
It was nearly five when she pulled up in Tipton’s driveway behind his dusty late-model pickup. The neighbor’s dog sent up a din, racing back and forth along the chain-link fence that separated the lawns as if to warn her his ground was sacrosanct. A woman leaned out of an upstairs window and shouted the dog down before eyeing Kelsey.
“Looking for Jim?”
“Yes, I am. Is he home?”
“In the shop.” She pointed, shook her head. “Can’t you hear the racket?”
Indeed she could, now that the dog had quieted to low, throaty snarls. She followed the high-pitched whine of a power saw into the backyard. There was a small shed, one that could be put together from a kit bought at most lumberyards.
Kelsey knocked on a door that hung crookedly on its jamb. At the slight tap it swung wide and banged against the inner wall.
Tipton stood at a bench, safety glasses and ear protectors in place, his Orioles cap turned into the catcher’s position. Sawdust flew as he sheared off a two-by-four. Kelsey decided it was safer for both of them if she waited for the blade to stop whirling.
“Gotcha, you son of a bitch,” Tipton muttered as a chunk of wood hit the ground.
“Captain Tipton?”
He whirled around, looking very much like something out of a B horror movie, his eyes shaded by amber-toned plastic, his ear protectors bulging and gray, and red splotches dotting his shirt.
“Oh, God, you’ve cut yourself.”
“Where? What?” Alarmed, Tipton checked to make sure all his fingers were in place as Kelsey dashed across the shed. “Oh, this.” Grinning, he patted his chest. “Cranberry juice. The wife doesn’t like me to work in good clothes.”
Kelsey leaned weakly against the bench and swore.
“Scared you, huh?” Still chuckling, he pulled off his ear guards and pushed up his goggles. “Want to sit down?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“I’m building some shelves.” He picked up a wide, flat board, sighted down it for warping. “The wife and I have this little game. I build shelves and she fills them up with doodads. Keeps us both happy.”
“That’s nice. I wonder if you could spare a few minutes.”
“I might be able to squeeze you in. Lemonade?” Without waiting for her assent, he hefted a big plastic jug and poured two paper cups. “You had some more trouble out your way, I hear.”
“Yes. It’s an odd coincidence, isn’t it? That Reno should so completely mirror his father’s life. And death.”
“The world’s full of odd coincidences, Ms. Byden.” But he wasn’t happy about this one. He’d completed his background check on Benny Morales, and had gathered all the details only hours before Reno’s suicide. Another twenty-four hours, he thought, and events might have taken a different turn. “It solves one of your problems, though. You know who did your horse.”
“Reno didn’t mean to kill him. I’m certain of that.” She sipped the lemonade, found it tart and swimming with pulp. His wife, she thought, must squeeze her own. “Someone used him, Captain. There’s a lot of that in the world, too. People using people.”
“Can’t argue with you there.”
“My mother was using Alec Bradley to make my father jealous, to prove her own independence, even to incite gossip. I wonder, though, how had Alec Bradley been using her?”
The girl had a nice, tidy mind, Tipton decided. He picked up a square of sandpaper and began to rub it over a curved slat of wood. “She’s a beautiful woman.”
“This isn’t about sex, Captain. Rape isn’t about sex.”
He huffed out a breath. “Maybe not. We only ever had her word about the attempted rape.”
“I believe her. So did you. Did you ever ask yourself why—if she was telling the truth—why Alec Bradley chose that particular night to attack her? They’d been seeing each other for weeks. She’s not the kind of woman who could continue to see a man who abused her. Or who threatened to abuse her.”
Tipton continued to sand the wood. It would be a rocking chair for his granddaughter on her birthday in September.
“If she was telling the truth, Ms. Byden. If. He’d been drinking. They’d had a public scene. She’d given him his walking papers and a faceful of French champagne. That kind of combination could push a certain kind of man in the wrong direction.” He blew lightly at the wood dust. “But, like I said, there was no evidence to support it.”
“Her nightgown was torn. She had bruises.” Kelsey let out an impatient sound at his shrug. “All right, as easily self-inflicted as not. But if we say not, if we believe not, how do you prove it? You checked his background, certainly. If there was another woman, someone else he’d abused or attacked, that would weigh on Naomi’s side, wouldn’t it?”
“I never found one. A lot of rapes go unreported. Especially the kind you’re talking about. The date-rape kind.”
He didn’t like that particular term. Date rape, acquaintance rape. It made the vicious act seem much too friendly.
“And back twenty years ago, people had a different attitude. Bradley had a reputation, but violence wasn’t part of it. He had some heavy debts,” Tipton continued, almost to himself. “About the time he started seeing your mot
her, he paid off some of them. About twenty thousand dollars’ worth. But he needed at least that much again to pull himself out.”
“So he needed money. My mother had money.”
“He never asked her for more than a couple of grand.” Tipton set the wood aside. “That’s her own statement. He never asked her for big money. And that’s one of the things I found odd. Because it was his pattern to sponge off women.”
“He might have been biding his time. Or . . . he might have been expecting it from another source.”
“That was a thought.” Tipton pulled a Baby Ruth bar from his back pocket, snapped it in half, and offered a share to Kelsey. “I never tracked it down, though. I always wondered where he got that twenty grand. Could’ve won it at the track. But the word there was that he lost as much as he won, and most of it was penny-ante. He talked big,” Tipton added with a mouthful of chocolate. “Let a lot of people know he had a deal in the works. Just talk, as far I could find.”
“But if he did, if it had something to do with my mother.” Kelsey began to pace the shop as she worked it out. “She was through with him, told him it was over. So he panicked, tried to force her. If she cut him loose, the deal was dead. He needed money. A lot of people knew he needed money. But who would have used him to get to my mother?”
As the answer swam into her mind, she stopped. The hand holding the paper cup tightened, crushing it into a damp blob.
“That’s the trouble when you turn over rocks,” Tipton said kindly. “You hardly ever like what you find under them. I never linked your father to Alec Bradley. And I tried. I subpoenaed your father’s bank records, went over them with a fine-tooth comb looking for that twenty-thousand-dollar payment. He was clean. Phone records, too. No calls came from or to Alec Bradley’s number from the house in Potomac or his office at the university.”
“He would never have done such a thing.” But Kelsey’s lips were stiff and cold. “My father would never have done such a thing.”
“The way it looks, you’re right. Of course that puts the heat back on your mother.”