by Kay Hooper
Then Sammy’s hand dropped away, a rattling sigh left his mouth, and his sightless eyes gazed into eternity.
“Well?” Adam watched as Nicholas straightened. “Did you get it?”
Nicholas looked at him with an expression that defied description, and said slowly, “Yeah. I got it.”
EIGHTEEN
t took Rachel some time to read all the letters. She didn’t want to read them. They hurt more than she would have thought possible. But she forced herself to because she wanted no more secrets in this house.
Why didn’t you burn them, Mom?
Love letters. Love letters from her uncle to her mother. And from what had been written, it was clear they’d had an affair during the summer he had been home from college, just scant months after Rachel’s birth. It didn’t seem to have lasted long, only a couple of months, but it was obviously intense while it was going on.
The only relief Rachel got from reading the letters was in knowing that the affair had begun after her birth and not before. That was clear in what Cameron wrote; though he claimed to have been in love with Irene for years, he had not dared to speak until that summer.
No reason for either his silence before or his change of mind that summer was offered.
It was also clear from the letters that Cameron had been the supplicant, wildly begging Irene Grant to leave her husband and infant daughter, promising that he could give her a better life. She had been unhappy, married to a man who had not, apparently, needed her as she’d wanted him to.
Rachel, remembering her pretty, serene mother, also recalled arguments during her childhood when Irene had wanted Duncan to get involved in the society events she had so enjoyed—and he had despised. Rachel had not thought much about the arguments, because they had seemed low-key, with her father’s refusals and her mother’s frustration expressed calmly, almost more like debates than arguments. Neither had seemed particularly upset either during or afterward, and there had always been other escorts available to Rachel’s mother, friends or otherwise “safe” men who could escort a married woman without causing talk.
Rachel wondered now if there had been lovers as well.
Which was a hell of a thing to wonder about your mother.
Her parents had had separate bedrooms as long as she could remember, and though she had memories of affection between them, especially during her sporadic visits home in the last ten years, she could not remember anything even remotely romantic.
Was that it? Had Irene craved the sort of romance that the plain-speaking, practical Scotsman she’d married was incapable of giving her?
Two brothers, one blunt and unromantic, the other artistic and somewhat dramatic—and handsome, in his younger years.
Two brothers, raised by a father who had pitted them against each other, pushed them to compete on every level, rewarding success and ridiculing them when they failed, setting them up to feel that what one had the other had to better.
Two brothers. And a woman who might have loved them both.
“I wish you’d kept a diary, Mom.” Then again, Rachel thought as she slowly retied the blue ribbon around the letters, maybe she didn’t wish that at all. It was profoundly disconcerting for her to face this window into her parents’ troubled relationship, and even more so to learn that her mother had very nearly run off with her uncle.
Because it looked as though that had nearly happened.
That Irene Grant had not left her husband appeared to be, at least according to Cameron’s bitter words, almost solely due to her love of social position. Duncan, as the elder son and likely heir to his father, had far greater potential than Cameron, the younger son and a struggling artist to boot.
She had apparently ended the affair shortly after her father-in-law had died, and did not change her mind when her husband deeded half his inheritance to his brother.
With only Cameron’s letters to tell the story, Rachel had no idea how accurate his assessment of the situation was. He had been clearly bitter and unhappy, hugely resentful of his brother, and had accepted Irene’s decision with the declaration that he would never love anyone else.
Rachel didn’t know what she felt about this. She had no idea if her father had known of the affair. She had no real idea of what her mother’s emotions and motivations had been.
And it had been nearly thirty years ago.
But Rachel did wonder, now, if her mother’s serenity had been natural to her personality before the affair with Cameron. Or had that tranquility, like her daughter’s twenty years later, stemmed from an agonizing loss she had been unable to completely recover from?
There was, of course, no way for Rachel to know now. But wondering made her feel the loss of her mother more bitterly than she ever had before, because it seemed possible that they’d had far more in common than Rachel had ever guessed.
“I thought there’d be time,” Rachel murmured to herself, gazing down at the evidence of her mother’s secret soul. “I thought I’d come home one day, when it didn’t hurt anymore, and we’d have time to fix all the broken things between us and be close.”
But there hadn’t been enough time, that plane crash stealing forever any chance Rachel might have had to repair the damaged relationships with her parents. While she had remained in New York, working long hours so she didn’t have to think or feel, keeping herself in limbo because that had been less painful, they had been snatched from her life, her future.
Rachel faced that for the first time.
She had thought loss was the most painful thing of all, but now she knew there was something more painful. Regret.
When she finally got hold of herself once again, Rachel discovered that she was lying across her mother’s bed, the letters thrown aside. Instinctively, she reached under the pillows for the lavender-scented handkerchief that had always been there, and not finding it made a fresh wave of grief sweep over her with a force she couldn’t fight.
It was a long time before Rachel finally pulled herself off the bed. She went into her mother’s bathroom and splashed cold water on her face, avoiding any glance in the mirror. She undoubtedly looked awful, though she certainly felt better. Drained, but more at peace somehow.
She returned to her mother’s desk and gazed down at the letters for some time, thinking, before she finally made her decision. This was not her story. It had not affected her life while her parents had been alive, and it did not seriously change her feelings, in any negative way, for either of them now that they were gone.
It wasn’t her business, all things considered. And the only surviving member of that triangle deserved his privacy.
Cameron’s urgent search, undoubtedly for these letters, was clear evidence of his feelings on the matter; she had no doubt he would have destroyed them—or kept her from knowing about them, had he discovered them himself.
Rachel’s first impulse was to leave them on his pillow to find when he returned from the trip he had taken today into D.C. to check out various galleries. But when she thought of both of them being painfully aware of her knowledge of the affair, it was simply not something she wanted to have to deal with.
She would never be close to Cameron, but she did not want old secrets and regrets to shadow her relationship with her uncle. There were some things a niece just didn’t need to know.
With that decision made, Rachel picked up the phone and called Darby.
“Hey, pal,” she said when Darby answered. “I need a favor.”
“You’ve got it,” Darby replied without hesitation.
• • •
If Nicholas had not wielded considerable influence over numerous, officials within the Richmond police force because of his background and connections in law enforcement, and commanded enormous respect among its various politicians because of all the successful business ventures he had backed, he and Adam would have no doubt been forced to spend the entire day with the police answering questions about Sammy’s murder. Even so, it still required a couple of
hours for them to tell their story —the one they had decided to tell, at any rate—and be granted leave to be on their way.
As long as they didn’t leave the city, of course.
“It’s a good thing you routinely use informants to gather information for the bank,” Adam commented as they finally left the warehouse and the crowd of police officers and technicians behind. “How long do you think it’ll be before somebody starts to get very curious about exactly what information you wanted that would have gotten Sammy killed?”
“A few days, if we’re lucky.” Nicholas shrugged. “Not that it’ll matter if we get our hands on that disk and it holds even a fraction of what Sammy claimed it does. We’ll just go public holding a hand full of aces, and all will be forgiven.”
“If we get our hands on that disk.”
“You always tell me to think positive. Now it’s your turn.”
Adam looked at him curiously. “You really think the disk is where Sammy told you it would be. Why?”
“Because,” Nicholas said, “the irony is just wonderful. And I’ve always believed the universe had a wicked sense of humor.”
Adam was puzzled, especially since Nick had not yet told him where the disk was supposed to be. But, moments later, when the big black car turned into the parking lot beside the bank, puzzlement turned to surprise.
“You’re kidding,” Adam said.
“Like I said.” Nick turned off the engine and smiled. “The irony is wonderful.”
Rachel was just closing the basement door behind her when Fiona appeared.
“Miss Rachel, I’m going to the market now. Is there anything special you want me to get?”
“Nothing I can think of, thanks, Fiona.”
The housekeeper frowned at her, but did not comment directly about swollen eyelids. “There’s cold chicken and salad in the refrigerator. You need to eat, Miss Rachel.”
“I will—if I get hungry.” She smiled. “Don’t worry about me, Fiona. I’ll be fine.”
Fiona sniffed. “If you say so. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
“Take your time.”
Alone once again, Rachel slowly went back upstairs. She turned toward her father’s room, intending to try once more to figure out where he might have hidden a key for her to find. But she stopped dead in the middle of the hallway just past her own room, staring.
A yellow rose lay on the rug at her feet.
She bent slowly and picked up the flower, turning it in her fingers as she straightened. She had glanced in her room as she passed, and the rose had been in the vase on her nightstand, as always. Now this one …
“If this is some kind of joke,” she murmured in a shaky voice, “I’m not amused.”
She hadn’t expected an answer, but a glimpse of movement made her look quickly at the far end of the hallway. The door that led up to the smallest of the three attics was there. And it was slowly opening.
If she had behaved rationally, Rachel realized a long time later, she would have turned around and gotten out of there, especially when the distant doorway remained empty. Instead, she found herself walking slowly toward it, the rose still gripped between her fingers, her heart thudding.
Just a stray breeze, probably. Darby or one of her guys had undoubtedly left the door ajar, and some stray breeze had blown it open.
That was all.
Rachel stopped in the doorway, gazing at the stairs leading upward. Then she took a step back. Ridiculous. This was ridiculous—
“Rachel …”
It was only a whisper of sound, so faint she could almost convince herself she had not heard it at all. Almost. Except that the hair on the back of her neck was stirring, and she knew this was not her imagination.
Drawing a deep breath, she flipped up the switch on the wall at the foot of the stairs, then slowly climbed upward. At the top of the lighted stairs, she paused, looking slowly around. This space, like the other attics and the basement, was stuffed with furniture and other cast-off items, and since nothing had yet been tagged or sorted, it was clear Darby had not yet begun her work here.
But Rachel’s realization of that was distant and occupied little of her attention. She knew what she was supposed to be looking at. It was a storage chest that had, for most of her life, been in her bedroom. On one of her brief visits home after Tom’s death, her mother had explained that she had moved the chest to the attic. To spare Rachel, because in it she had kept all the mementos and notes and silly little gifts from Tom.
Rachel had not been able to bring herself to sort through any of the things, not then, and not in all the years since.
Now the lid was raised invitingly, the bare lightbulb hanging directly above it seeming to spotlight the open chest, and Rachel knew without a doubt that she was being asked—commanded—to look inside.
“No.” Her voice sounded to her unnaturally loud in the close silence of the attic.
“Rachel …” Almost inaudible, like a breath of wind.
“No.” She felt her eyes sting with tears, blurring her vision, and she had to swallow hard before she could go on. “I’m sorry. But you’re … you’re gone, Tom. You’ve been gone a long time. And I love somebody else now.”
She opened her fingers and let the rose fall to the floor.
There was a moment when the lights seemed to flicker, or something else seemed to happen, and when Rachel looked down, blinking the tears away, there was no rose. When she looked at the chest, it was closed, the layer of dust atop it undisturbed.
She stood there for a long time, listening, but heard nothing. She turned around and went back down the stairs, turning off the lights at the bottom and closing the attic door carefully.
She walked on, pausing only when she reached the door of her bedroom, and looked inside. There was no yellow rose on her nightstand, no bud vase. And when she went to open her jewelry box, there was no gold identification bracelet inside. She was afraid to look in her desk drawer, but when she did, the note from Tom was there.
On white notepaper, the kind he had used ten years ago.
Rachel sat down on her bed and murmured, “I must be a lot more tired than I thought I was.”
Or perhaps she had just needed concrete things to make her face and deal with her feelings about Tom. It seemed as good an answer as any, and infinitely preferable to the notion that she was losing her mind.
After a while, Rachel got up and went downstairs. A glance at a clock surprised her; only a few minutes had passed since Fiona had left the house. Shaking her head, Rachel went into the study and looked around slowly.
Maiden in a locked castle she might be, but only she had known her father well enough to have any hope of figuring out where he might have left a key for her to find. And without that key, they might well never have all the answers they needed. She concentrated on that.
Secret things in secret places.
However secret his private loans had been, Duncan Grant would not have left even that part of his estate untended. He would have made certain that everything had been set up in such a way that when Rachel eventually and inevitably discovered what he had been doing, she would not only be unharmed financially, but would have the option of safely continuing what her father had begun so many years before.
That meant detailed records, tax information, and a clear explanation of his system.
And given his secrecy on the matter, he would have left that information where it would not be casually discovered after his death, but where Rachel specifically would know where to look for it once she found the notebooks and journal.
Of course, he had certainly not counted on his daughter being so distracted by attempts on her own life and the fact that she had fallen in love, so what might have seemed obvious to him eluded her now.
“Where?” Rachel muttered, looking around absently. “Where does X mark the spot? Come on, Dad, I need your help. Where did you leave it? Where would you hide a key?”
A key.
&nb
sp; Secret things in secret places.
Her mother’s handkerchiefs had hidden secret letters.
A woman would hide her secrets among treasured things put safely away; where would a man hide his secrets?
More important, where would he hide them if he expected his daughter to know where to look?
“You already know.”
“No, I don’t. I-”
“You know. You only have to remember.”
The dream conversation came back to her vividly, and Rachel frowned as she considered it. Her subconscious nagging at her again? Was there something she needed to remember?
Her father.
Secrets.
Secret things in secret places. Secret things in secret places.
“Of course. My God—why didn’t I remember it before now?”
“It’s our secret, Rachel. Just yours and mine.”
As a small child, she had often played in her father’s study, and she had been endlessly fascinated with the desk he had designed and had custom-built years before. She had loved the gleaming wood, the deep drawers, the leather desk set he had always used.
And the secret.
Rachel had to sit down on the floor in order to get far enough underneath the desk, and it took her several moments to remember which place in the kneehole to look, but eventually she found it. A small section of wood with no seams showing, so cunningly crafted it would have taken an inch-by-inch measurement—if not a total dismemberment of the desk—to determine hidden space.
Carefully, Rachel’s fingertip probed, and she felt the tiny indentation. And pressed firmly.
Obediently, the secret compartment popped open. And her fingers closed over a small box hidden inside.
Adam looked over Nick’s shoulder as he worked at the computer on his desk. “I still can’t believe this Alan Fuller just walked into your bank a couple of weeks ago and calmly rented a safe deposit box.” He shook his head. “We might well have had all the answers we needed right under our noses for two weeks.”
“It was a smart thing to do,” Nicholas noted absently as he began to access the information on the disk. “As long as either he or Sammy got word to me, getting the disk was easy for me, even without the renter’s key. In the meantime, Walsh didn’t have a clue where it was—and he’s been in and out of here at least twice recently.”