Night Whispers

by Judith McNaught

  He thought of the way he’d held her hand and confessed that he was crazy about her, and the way he’d told her he felt like a teenager in love for the first time. “Bitch!” he said aloud.

  The newsclip ended, and he turned back to his desk and went into action; he told Mrs. Snowden to get four people on the phone for him. Two of them were attorneys, one was a retired federal judge, and the other was a Supreme Court justice. When he finished rapping out those instructions, he told Jack what he wanted done. “Got it?” he snapped.

  “Consider it done,” Jack replied.

  “When I’m finished with that son of a bitch,” Noah said in a murderous voice, “he won’t be able to get a job as a crossing guard!”

  44

  Paul made certain Maitland’s ships were secured for the night and under guard; then he wearily walked over to his rented car. The ten P.M. news came on as he pulled out of the marina. “It’s been a bleak day for two of Palm Beach’s most respected families,” the newscaster said. “This afternoon, Sloan Reynolds, daughter of financier Carter Reynolds, was arrested for the murder of her great-grandmother, Edith Reynolds.”

  Swearing under his breath, Paul made a U-turn in the street, slammed down on the accelerator, and headed for the police station.

  In her cell at the police department, Sloan was listening to the same broadcast, but it was the second half of it that brought her to her feet in an agony of disbelief:

  “A short while later, the FBI, in collaboration with the Coast Guard and a team from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, seized and boarded two yachts belonging to billionaire Noah Maitland. Sources close to the investigation report that the FBI has reason to believe Maitland has been using the yachts to transport illegal weapons.”

  The exterior of the police station looked modern and manicured; the interior was well-lit, but the officers standing around and working on reports looked as if they were having a quiet night. “Who’s in charge?” Paul snapped at a cop who’d been getting a drink from a water fountain.

  “Sergeant Babcock; he’s over there talking to the dispatcher.”

  “Are you Babcock?” Paul said, interrupting a chat the two were having about the seizure of Maitland’s yachts.

  Babcock straightened. “Yeah, who are—” Before he could ask the question, an open case with FBI credentials was in front of his face.

  “What can we do for you, Mr. Richardson?”

  “You’re holding one of my people. I want her released to me. Now.”

  The lockup was empty except for one drunken teenager, who was waiting to be picked up by his father, and Sloan Reynolds, whose arrest had made Captain Hocklin famous and euphoric that day. “Who are you talking about?”

  “Sloan Reynolds.”

  The sergeant paled, the dispatcher gaped, and officers stopped writing reports and turned around, openly eavesdropping. “Are you telling me Sloan Reynolds is working for the FBI?”

  “That’s what I said. Are you holding her here or not?”

  “Well, yeah, but I can’t—I don’t have the authority—”

  “Who does?”

  “That would have to come from Captain Hocklin himself. But he goes to bed early, and he was up late last—”

  Paul picked up the telephone on the dispatcher’s desk and thrust it at him. “Wake him up,” he snapped.

  Babcock hesitated, studied the look on the FBI agent’s face, and did as he was told.

  Sloan signed for her belongings, which constituted her purse and watch, and walked in stiff silence to Paul’s car in the parking lot. “We’ll check in to a motel for the night,” he said. “I’m sorry, Sloan. I had no idea they’d busted you until I heard it on the ten o’clock news.”

  In an odd, soft voice, she said, “I’m sure you were very busy or you’d have come sooner.”

  Paul glanced uncertainly at her and decided to wait until she’d settled into a room before he told her exactly what had kept him.

  He stopped at a decent-looking motel, got two rooms next door to each other, and left her outside hers. “I need to make a phone call; then we’ll talk.”

  She said nothing, but put the key in the lock of her room and walked inside, leaving the door a few inches ajar.

  Inside the room, Sloan walked over to the television set and turned on CNN. They were having a field day showing films of federal agents swarming over Noah’s boats. They were making him sound like a criminal who made his money transporting and selling illegal weapons. She saw Paul at the edge of one quick shot.

  When Paul walked into her room, Sloan was standing at the foot of the bed, still watching the news footage of his raid on Maitland’s boats. “I know how you must feel,” he began soothingly.

  Her arms dropped to her sides, and she turned fully toward him, her face a study of emotions that he didn’t quite recognize. “Did you find anything?” she asked in an odd voice.

  “No, not yet,” Paul admitted. With a resigned sigh, he said, “Look, I know you must want to tear into me for all this. If it will make you feel better, do it.”

  “That won’t make me feel better, but this will—” Her right fist slammed into his jaw, snapped his head back, and sent him reeling backward.

  Grabbing for the wall to steady himself with one hand, Paul lifted his other hand to his jaw. For someone as small and slender as she was, she packed a hell of a wallop. She took another step forward. Caught somewhere between pain, admiration, and annoyance, he held up his hand and said ominously, “Enough! That’s enough. I’ll let that one pass, but there isn’t going to be another.”

  Deprived of an outlet for her anger, she seemed to wither before his eyes. She slumped down on the foot of the bed, wrapped her arms around her stomach, and rocked slowly, as if she were trying to physically hold herself together. Her hair fell forward, hiding the sides of her face, and her shoulders began to shake.

  Her silent, anguished weeping was even harder on Paul than her right hook. “I’ll try to make things right somehow.”

  She stopped rocking and lifted her tear-streaked face to him. “With whom?” she said, her voice choked with tears. “With Noah? Before he knew what you were doing today, he was moving heaven and earth to try to protect me from being arrested. An hour later, he hated me so much, he hung up on me and left me in jail.”

  “I can’t help that.”

  Fiercely, she cried, “What can you help? Can you help Paris forget that I’ve smeared her family’s name all over the world news? Can you help her forget that I was hauled out of her home in handcuffs? She was screaming when they took me away. Do you hear me?” Sloan finished hysterically. “She was screaming!”

  Paris was an Academy Award caliber actress, in Paul’s opinion, but he knew there was no point in saying that, or in trying to make Sloan believe that the only thing Paris could possibly have felt was relief because her sister was being arrested for her own crime. He didn’t know whether Paris would now play the role of sweet, naïve, supportive sister while Sloan was under suspicion of murder, or if she’d decide she didn’t have to bother. He hoped, for Sloan’s sake, Paris might decide to do the former. It would make things a little easier on Sloan if she was allowed to come back there. He nodded to the telephone beside the bed. “Call her,” he said. “If she was that upset over what was happening to you, she may want you to come straight home.”

  The hope that flared in Sloan’s eyes, the hesitant way she reached for the phone and then picked it up, made Paul feel as sick as he’d felt when he realized Paris had to be the murderer.

  The phone call was extremely short, and when Sloan hung up, there was no more hope in her eyes. She looked up at Paul, her voice dead. “Gary Dishler said that Paris told him to tell me she and Carter never wanted to see or talk to me again. He’s putting our luggage on the porch right now. If we don’t pick it up within a half hour, it will be sent off with the trash in the morning.”

  “I’ll go get it,” Paul said, feeling a sudden urge to put his hands
around Paris’s slender, “fragile” throat and choke the life out of her.

  Sloan nodded and tiredly reached for the phone. “I’ll call my mother and Sara. They must be out of their minds with worry if they’ve heard about this.”

  • • •

  The police department was apparently providing security while the crime scene team still had work to do, because two police cruisers were parked in the driveway, but the team had obviously knocked off for the night. So had the media, Paul noticed with relief as Gary Dishler answered his call at the gates.

  Paul took the luggage from the porch and put it in his car; then he walked up to the front door and rang the doorbell.

  Dishler answered, his face like stone. “As I told Sloan Reynolds a few minutes ago, she is not welcome here. Neither are you.”

  He started to close the door, but Paul stopped it with his right hand and removed his credentials case with his left. He knew damned well Dishler knew he was FBI by now, but the showing of credentials was a necessary formality before Paul pressed his authority. He held the open case at eye level in front of the assistant. “Now that the formalities are over,” Paul snapped wearily, “get Paris Reynolds down here.”

  “The FBI has no authority here.”

  “A crime was committed here that involves someone working for the FBI. Now, do you want to get Paris down here, or do you want me to walk out to that car, pick up my telephone, and have this place crawling with agents in an hour?”

  “Wait here,” Dishler snapped, and closed the door with a bang. When it opened again, Paris was standing on the threshold in a pale brocade dressing robe, her face a cold, beautiful mask. “Haven’t you done enough damage to everyone?” she demanded.

  Unperturbed, Paul handed her a card with his cell phone number written on the back. “Call me at that number if you decide you want to talk.”

  She looked down her patrician nose at him. “About what?”

  “About why you killed your great-grandmother.”

  For the second time that night, Paul was caught off guard by a woman. Her open hand crashed against the side of his face; then the door slammed in it.

  45

  “Are you going to try to see Maitland before you go back to Bell Harbor?” Paul asked Sloan the next morning. She looked as pale and haunted as she had last night, and he felt even guiltier because she didn’t seem to have the strength left to be angry with him.

  She put a case containing her toiletries into her suitcase and zipped it closed. “Yes, but it won’t do any good,” she said without looking at him. She hadn’t looked at him at all, except when she opened the door to let him in.

  “Would it make you feel better to know that I feel lousy about this?”

  “I don’t care how you feel about anything.”

  Paul couldn’t believe how bad that made him feel. She had trusted him and done her job, and he liked her tremendously. “Okay, would it make you feel better to know why I’m after Carter and what brought me here?”

  “Why tell me now when it was ‘classified’ before?”

  “I want you to know now.”

  She glanced at him for the first time; then she looked away and shrugged.

  Paul took her arm and forced her to sit on the bed; then he sat down in a chair across from her. “I know Carter is laundering money for a South American drug cartel that deposits cash at Reynolds Bank and Trust. The cash is accepted, credited to bogus accounts, and the IRS forms are bypassed. The money is wire-transferred by Reynolds Bank into the cartel’s offshore bank accounts, where it becomes nice, clean money. Ready for spending.”

  She looked him right in the eye, and what she said was painfully astute. “You don’t know Carter is involved in any of that; you think he is; that’s all. If you had any proof, you’d have wiretaps and search warrants.”

  “Our informant met with a strange accident the day he was going to hand us some proof. The cartel we’re dealing with is a pack of animals, but they’re more cunning than most of their competition. They’ve hired prestigious law firms to represent their legitimate business interests here, and they’re slowly acquiring political clout. Senator Meade is a particular friend of theirs. I want to take Carter down, but even more, I want to find his contact with the cartel.”

  “What does any of that have to do with Noah?”

  “Maitland is Reynolds Bank’s biggest depositor; he has an astonishing number of bank accounts there. He also has nice big boats that periodically go to Central and South America—”

  “So does the Holland America cruise line,” Sloan mocked bitterly.

  Paul ignored the sarcasm. “Maitland has some questionable ‘business associates’ in those ports.”

  “Known criminals?” Sloan countered.

  “No, but let’s not argue about that. Let’s stick to the issue: Someone has to smuggle the cartel’s cash into the States and into Reynolds Bank and Trust. I think Maitland is the one. I also think he brings in drugs with the cash from time to time.”

  She nodded slightly and got up; then she picked up her suitcase and purse.

  “You don’t believe any of that, do you?” Paul said.

  “About Noah, no. About Carter—I don’t know.”

  She turned at the door. “I’ve been released under your authority, but I haven’t been cleared of the murder charge yet. I’d appreciate it if you’d handle that.”

  Paul stood up and looked helplessly at her. She had so much quiet dignity and she was so disgusted with him that he felt like one of the creeps he’d been talking about.

  “Good-bye,” she said.

  He nodded silently because he couldn’t think of anything to say.

  46

  The problem with Palm Beach estates was that many of them, including Noah’s, had electric gates at the street that prevented unwelcome visitors from getting to the front door.

  As Sloan feared, she had become one of those visitors. Mrs. Snowden informed her of it as Sloan waited in her rented car outside the gates. In a tone as frigid as her last name implied, Noah’s secretary said, “I am to tell you that if you ever come near this house or anything else belonging to the Maitland family, Mr. Maitland won’t bother with the police. He will deal with you himself.” She paused, as if uncertain that a personal warning was necessary, and then obviously decided it was: “I wouldn’t put him to the test if I were you. Good-bye.”

  Unwilling to cry where Mrs. Snowden could see her on a closed-circuit monitor, Sloan started to put her car in reverse; then she saw Courtney bounding down the front steps toward her.

  Sloan got out of the car and walked over to the gates. Courtney stopped on the other side and raked Sloan with a contemptuous glance. “How could you!” she demanded with bitter fury. “How could you do this to us when we were never anything but nice to you!”

  “I know how it looks,” Sloan said achingly. “I don’t expect you to believe this, but I had no idea any of that was going to happen.” She swallowed before she could go on. “I—I loved your family, every one of you.”

  Courtney’s gray eyes were so like Noah’s that Sloan was unconsciously memorizing the color of them in the sunlight, even though they were glaring at her with cold animosity. “I’m not stupid enough to believe any of that.”

  Sloan accepted her condemnation with a nod. “I don’t blame you.” She started to turn; then she realized something so poignant that she had to blink back tears before she could turn back. “Thank you for not accusing me of being a murderer as well as a spy.”

  Courtney dismissed her gratitude with an indifferent shrug. “I’m not stupid enough to believe you killed Edith.”

  Sloan turned away because there was nothing more to say, but Courtney wasn’t quite finished. “I stayed home from school because I figured you’d come here, but you’d better never come back. Noah’s gone and you’re lucky. He isn’t just mad. He hates you.”

  Sloan nodded. “I understand. Do you think, if I waited awhile and wrote him a letter, t
hat he’d at least read it?”

  “Not a chance,” Courtney said as she turned her back on Sloan and walked away.

  Courtney waited until Sloan was pulling out of the drive; then she turned and walked backward slowly, watching her leave. She lifted her palms to her eyes and pressed hard to keep the tears back.

  47

  Sloan had been too miserable during the drive back to Bell Harbor to worry about what impact the news of her arrest would have on her life and job in Bell Harbor, but within hours of her return, she had no doubt.

  When Sloan called her mother at Lydia’s shop to tell her she was home, Kimberly ignored Lydia’s complaints and actually took the rest of the day off “for personal reasons.” Sara terminated a meeting with an important client and arrived immediately after Sloan’s mother; then they both doted on her as if she were ill, bringing her small treats and favorite foods in attempts to restore both her mood and her appetite.

  Sloan didn’t realize they were doing this because she looked ill. With her arms wrapped around a throw pillow, she sat curled tightly into a corner of the sofa and told them what she knew about the murder.

  They’d both recognized Paul aboard Noah’s boat when they saw him on the news, and Sloan saw no reason not to tell them the truth about her relationship with Paul. Rather than upset her mother, however, Sloan let them believe it was Noah Maitland that Paul had gone to Palm Beach to investigate, and she left Carter out of the picture. She told them about Paris and Carter and people she’d met and things she’d done, but she left out her brief love affair with Noah. She didn’t know how to discuss him or if she could do it without breaking down.

  When she ran out of things to talk about, Kimberly went into the kitchen to make Sloan a cup of tea while Sara made an attempt to lighten Sloan’s mood that backfired badly. “Did you see any Mr. Perfects anywhere?” she teased.