After Caroline

by Kay Hooper

  Caroline’s necklace. Joanna opened up the case to fish it out, then stared at the delicate piece of jewelry dangling from her fingers. “Damn. I forgot to give this to Regan,” she muttered.

  She wrapped the fragile chain around her fingers, turning the heart this way and that to catch the light. What lover had Caroline met in the old barn the day she had lost this? Had it been Cain? Had he managed to juggle two women in a small town without either of them finding out about the other?

  And if he had been her last lover, what could he have been involved in that had frightened her? Or was Joanna all wrong, and Caroline’s fear had had nothing to do with her lover?

  “Dammit.”

  Still holding the necklace, Joanna went to her balcony and opened the doors, stepping out into the cool, damp air. She looked off toward the south, toward Scott and Caroline’s house, wondering. Wondering.

  The dream had brought her here. Led her to many of the places and people she had needed to encounter. And virtually everything in the dream existed in reality. Ocean waves crashing and a big house overlooking the sea—literally existing, and the house might have also represented Dylan and the affair Caroline had conducted with a man in her own house. A painting with lots of color on an easel—literal, and it had led her to meet Cain, to talk to him. But perhaps she hadn’t paid enough attention to the fact that Cain had painted it, or that it was the painting of a little girl?

  Had she missed the importance of the painting?

  “Damn,” Joanna said again, frowning. And what about the other things? The roses, definitely real, had led her to Adam Harrison; surely they had no meaning other than that? And the carousel horse existed in Caroline’s favorite place. The paper airplane she’d never been able to figure out; there hadn’t been a sign of a paper airplane anywhere here in Cliffside.

  So—symbolic, maybe?

  “Paper. Paper flying. Paper moving,” she said. “What the hell does it mean?”

  Nothing, to her. The clock ticking obviously meant time passing. The child crying had to be Regan. She was Caroline’s daughter, and besides, there wasn’t another child involved in all this.

  And the emotions Joanna felt? The fear that clawed at her throat and woke her with her heart pounding and a sense of overpowering urgency—what about that? A warning from Caroline? A desperate plea that her child be helped and protected? Or simply the tangled emotions of a woman in the instant of her violent death?

  No. No, it had to be more than that. Joanna was here for a reason, she was certain of it. Trouble was here. Danger was here. Or else why had someone tried to kill her?

  Sighing, she let her gaze idly roam from the big house in the distance over the woods between here and there that hid Caroline’s gazebo from view. She could take the necklace to the gazebo and leave it for Regan, she supposed. It was Caroline’s favorite place, after all ….

  Abruptly, in her mind’s eye, Joanna saw the paper airplane again, swooping and soaring all about before coming to rest—in a different place. That was it. That was what was different about the dream in the last days. Before, the plane had landed on the grass; she vividly remembered green. But the last few times, it had landed somewhere else. Somewhere … on boards.

  Like the flooring of the gazebo.

  “I suppose you thought that wouldn’t matter to me,” Holly said tightly.

  “I knew it would matter. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”

  “Damn you.”

  “Holly, listen to me.” He didn’t attempt to touch her or to come closer, and his voice was quiet, steady. “It was before I knew you, years ago. The first summer I came to Cliffside. And it only lasted that summer.”

  “But you came back the next summer.”

  “Not because of Caroline. Because I liked the town. Because it was a good place to paint. I didn’t come back because of her.”

  “You expect me to believe that?” Holly heard herself laugh harshly. “You were so upset by her death, you left for a week. And what about that?” She jerked her head toward the portrait. “You were working on that when she was killed, I know because I saw it in your cottage.”

  “It was a commission, Holly. Caroline asked me to paint her back in the spring. She wanted the painting for Regan, and she sat for all the sketches. Then we both got busy—and it wasn’t finished when she died. Since then, I finished it, and I’ve about decided to give it to Regan on her next birthday. It’s what Caroline would have wanted.”

  “By all means, let’s do what Caroline would have wanted.”

  Cain’s mouth tightened, but his voice remained quiet. “I see we have to get past Caroline before we can settle anything else. Yes, I left after she was killed—but I was getting ready for a showing, you know that. I had to concentrate on work, that’s why I came up here then. You were busy holding Scott’s hand, and the whole town was practically draped in black—and I had to get away. But it was never because of her. Holly, I was never in love with Caroline. Not even during the affair.”

  “I wish I could believe that,” she whispered. “But I saw the way men treated her. All you men. Watching over her. Taking care of her. Looking at her like she was the most amazing thing. That isn’t love?”

  “No.” Cain drew a breath. “Not from me, anyway, and probably not from many of the others. Shocked? Don’t be. Oh, yeah, she had a few lovers over the years, Holly—not just Griff, assuming they had an affair. She told me about them, but she never mentioned sex with him, so I don’t know for sure.”

  It took Holly a moment to ask the question. “She told you about them? About her other lovers?”

  He smiled faintly. “Shocked again? That was Caroline, Holly—and one of the reasons I found her so fascinating. She looked ultrafeminine and usually acted so sweet and uncertain that men found her charming, but she took and discarded lovers with no more feeling than a female cat in heat. I don’t believe she ever understood love, at least not any man’s love, and I’m not so sure she ever felt it, even for Griff.”

  Holly didn’t know what she was feeling right then, except relief because his voice was utterly detached and his expression thoughtful.

  “I don’t know if she was born that way,” he went on. “Maybe. Or maybe if she’d had a wider range of choices in her life, maybe if she hadn’t married practically out of high school, she might have turned out differently. Then again, maybe it was just her nature. She liked sex. But she didn’t like emotion. She was devoted to Regan, I believe that—but there’s nothing particularly human about a mother cat’s devotion to her kittens, is there? Once the kittens are grown, the mother sees them only as other cats, not related to her; I think once Regan had gotten older, Caroline would have seen her as just another woman—and a rival.”

  Any idea Holly had entertained that Cain had been in love with Caroline had vanished. “Cain, how could you have an affair with a woman if you felt that way about her?”

  “I didn’t know her when the affair began—though I learned a lot during the course of it.” He shook his head. “And I won’t deny I was fairly well obsessed with her that summer. But I was never in love with her, Holly, and when I came back the next year all I felt for her was pity.”

  Holly couldn’t imagine anyone pitying Caroline. “Really?”

  He nodded, grave. “She was never happy. Briefly satisfied, but never happy. Not even with Regan.”

  After a moment, Holly nodded as well. “I’m sorry. I guess I sounded…”

  “Jealous,” he supplied. But he was smiling, the green eyes bright. “Which I’m taking as a good sign, by the way.”

  “A good sign?”

  “Umm. Before we talk about that, can we deal with this lie I told Griff?”

  “I hope so,” she said somewhat meekly.

  Cain came to her, finally, and took her hand. “I didn’t tell Griff the truth about where I went that night because you were sitting right there, and I didn’t want you to know,” he said. “I probably should have told Griff later, but to be
honest, it never occurred to me that it would matter.”

  That made sense to Holly. Whenever he was absorbed in his work, Cain was incapable of noticing much of anything else, and he concentrated fully on the project at hand.

  He led her to one of the easels, which was draped with a protective cover. “I’ve been working on this, off and on, for weeks. I didn’t want you to know about it until I was sure I could … do justice to the subject.” He flipped back the cover with his free hand.

  Holly found herself staring at her own portrait. Un-posed, it showed her looking out to sea, the wind whipping her dark hair back. As in all his work, the colors were vivid and dynamic, and his “subject” was so alive Holly half expected those lips to move and her own voice to come out of that mouth.

  “Cain, it’s … wonderful,” she whispered. “But you said you didn’t know enough about me.”

  “That was the glib answer,” he said quietly. “The easiest way to answer a question I wasn’t ready to explain. The truth is, I couldn’t paint you for a long time because I knew too much about you, saw too much of you. I couldn’t see you with an artist’s necessary perspective. I was too close to you, too filled with all the facets of you. And until I dealt with my own feelings about you, there was no way I could paint you.”

  She turned away from the portrait at last and looked up at him, her heart beating fast. “So you’ve … dealt with your feelings?”

  His mouth twisted slightly, and those vivid green eyes were suddenly naked. “Well, I’ve faced the fact that my life would be empty as hell without you in it. I love you, Holly.”

  Holly drew a breath and then threw her arms around his neck. Against his mouth, she murmured, “Thank God. I’ve been in love with you for months.”

  They ended up on the draped platform where his models posed, not a very comfortable bed but adequate for the purpose. And Holly didn’t notice any discomfort at all until afterward, when she commented mildly that they might have tried to make it to his bed no more than thirty feet or so away.

  Cain glanced around and chuckled. “I guess we might have at that. But it’s been days, you know, so you’ll have to forgive me for being impatient.” He kissed her, lightly first and then more deeply. “You are going to stay tonight, aren’t you, babe?”

  “It’s still the middle of the afternoon,” she said, then immediately added, “Of course I’m staying. I left Dana in charge at The Inn.”

  “Ah.” He lifted his head and smiled down at her. “A portent of things to come?”

  “Well, I did promise to make more time for us. And Dana can run the place perfectly well from time to time.” She traced his bottom Up with an index finger. “But we’d better go back to Cliffside tomorrow, or find a phone and call Griff. He’s not happy with you. You really do need to tell him why you lied to him.”

  “I must still be suspect number one,” Cain said, not as if it bothered him greatly. “I wonder who did kill that girl.”

  “I don’t know, but I hope Griff finds out before the town really does hang you for the crime,” Holly said ruefully. Then she frowned up at him. “I heard he’s looking for a connection between Caroline’s death and Amber’s. Do you know if Caroline was involved with anybody before she was killed?”

  “Unless she ended it after she sat for the painting,” Cain said, “she was having an affair with Dylan York.”

  It would take only a few minutes, Joanna decided as she hurried across the lobby toward the veranda. Griffin wasn’t quite due yet, and she could get to the gazebo and back fast if she tried. She knew she should wait for Griffin, but she was too anxious to find out if her guess was correct.

  “Hey, Joanna, what’s the hurry?”

  She paused near the veranda doors and looked with surprise at Dylan. “Just something I want to do. What are you doing here, Dylan?”

  “I live here, didn’t you know?” He shrugged, clearly no longer as upset with her as he had been when they’d parted in town. “Like Holly, I live in the hotel. Actually, I came back here because Scott told me to take the rest of the day off once I finished at the courthouse. Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

  “Thanks, but I have to be going. Rain check?”

  “You bet. And, speaking of rain, it’s about to start out there, in case you didn’t know.”

  “I won’t melt,” she told him, then waved and hurried on, across the veranda and out into the darkening afternoon.

  “You believed what you were told,” Lyssa said quietly, watching Scott pace his office.

  “I ought to be shot for believing it,” he said, his low voice harsh. “I should have demanded a paternity test instead of just accepting what she said, should have made her prove Regan wasn’t mine. But I listened to her instead. Listened and believed her. God forgive me, I let Caroline’s poison destroy my daughter’s love for me.”

  “Scott, you didn’t know it was a lie. How could you?” Lyssa went to him when he paused by the fireplace, and put a hand on his arm tentatively. This wasn’t part of the script, not any of it; he had called her less than an hour ago, asking her to come out to the house, and when she arrived he had told her what Caroline had done.

  Lyssa was still coping with her own shock. She hadn’t liked Caroline one bit, but for any woman to have done to her husband what Caroline had done to Scott was so cruel it almost defied belief.

  She didn’t quite know how to handle this. Handle him. She had never seen him vulnerable this way, hurting this way, and she wasn’t sure how much he would be willing to accept from her. She was reacting out of instinct and her feelings for him, letting them guide her and hoping to hell she wasn’t making this worse on him.

  He didn’t respond to her touch, but continued speaking in that low voice she hardly recognized as his, his face very still but not remote as it usually was. “She knew right where to drive the stake. I already hated him, because I knew she had fallen in love with him. It wasn’t lust, like the others, it was love—or as close to it as Caroline could ever get. So when she told me it was his child she’d given birth to, that Regan was his and not mine … I was ready to believe it.”

  Lyssa opened her mouth to say something, then turned her head swiftly when she heard a soft sound from the hall outside the office. “Did you hear… ?”

  Scott was already moving, striding across the room to the door that was not quite closed, wrenching it open.

  At first, Lyssa thought there was nothing there. But then Scott bent, and when he straightened, he was holding a Raggedy Ann doll—the only doll Lyssa had ever seen Regan carry around with her.

  “No,” Lyssa whispered.

  Scott turned his head to look at her, his face gray, just as they both heard one of the outer doors slam. “Oh God, she heard,” he said hoarsely.

  The information faxed from San Francisco was a mishmash of subjects, from Robert Butler’s college records to the public records of his various companies and some private records as well, and Griffin got a headache as he read through the stack. He couldn’t afford to overlook anything, so he had to read every word.

  The late Mr. Butler had been very wealthy, a tough businessman by all accounts. And his companies had enjoyed amazing success. Griffin read of the various successes, patiently, looking for any connection, however slight, to Cliffside or any of its citizens.

  It wasn’t until he’d almost reached the bottom of the stack that a name leaped off the page at him, and Griffin went tense in complete attention. He read slowly, carefully. Then he read it again. The facts, set down in private papers of Butler’s coaxed from his sister by one of Griffin’s deputies, were quite clear.

  A connection.

  Dylan York had worked for Butler years before. And he had stolen money from his employer. A lot of money. Dylan had vanished one breath ahead of discovery, and Butler had been left to explain a lot of creative bookkeeping. He hadn’t made a formal charge against Dylan, probably because powerful men like him were accustomed to taking care of their own problems.
/>
  Staring down at the page, Griffin speculated. Suppose—maybe during that big business deal his sister had mentioned, or maybe just through information brokers he had hired for the purpose—Butler had somehow heard that Dylan York lived in Cliffside. And suppose that Butler had come up here, intending to confront Dylan, to face the man who had stolen from him. Suppose they had met, by chance or design, behind The Inn, where Dylan lived, and suppose they had fought.

  Speculation, Griffin reminded himself. But it wasn’t speculation that Robert Butler had ended up dead on the jagged rocks of the cliffs.

  The first death? Griffin’s mind leaped ahead, tying together bits of information and speculating where he didn’t have facts. Dylan had a job with another rich man; he might well have gotten up to his old tricks. A basically greedy nature would have been sorely tempted both by Scott’s wealth and by his habit of delegating responsibility to employees. Over the years, Dylan could have stolen a lot.

  And maybe Caroline had found out about that, or about Butler’s death, probably because she’d gotten close to Dylan. Why not tell Scott? It had to be because she’d been involved with Dylan, perhaps so deeply that she hadn’t been able to believe his treachery at first.

  Later … Griffin didn’t know. Something had frightened Caroline, either Dylan or what he was doing, and she had decided she needed help. Maybe she’d been able to obtain some kind of evidence, hidden now in that little box no one had seen—and maybe Dylan knew or suspected she had evidence that would put him away for a long time.

  It wasn’t such a big leap to imagine that Dylan might have come back from Portland earlier than expected that day and discovered Caroline’s car at the old barn. Not a big leap to imagine him confronting her, angry and suspicious, and her running away from him in a panic. Not a big leap to imagine one car racing after another down a winding highway until she lost control and went over the cliffs.

  And from there, hardly any leap at all to imagine that as Joanna began asking questions about Caroline and putting the pieces together, she would become a threat to Dylan as well. A very dangerous threat.