Carla Neggers - Betrayals

“I’m going wherever you’re going,” she said, “even if I have to steal a car and follow you-”

“All right. We’re wasting time.” He put out a hand. “Come on.”

Not trusting him, she ignored his offered hand and climbed down on the other side of the truck. Her arm ached, her side ached, she’d banged her knee leaping onto the tailgate-but Annette had Mai, and Rebecca didn’t know where her grandfather was. She jumped into the passenger seat before Jean-Paul could get back behind the wheel and speed off without her.

“Why do you care so much about me?” she asked him as he thrust the old truck into gear and clattered onto Charles Street, heading toward Storrow Drive.

He looked at her and grunted. “Don’t push your luck.”

“No, I’m serious. You could have knocked me out or run me over. There’s something going on between you and me that goes beyond a macho Frenchman’s idea of protecting a helpless woman.”

His white eyebrows arched, and for a moment she could see vestiges of the dashing race-car driver he’d been. “You’re no one’s idea of helpless.”

“So why do you care about me?”

“Because,” he said, “I’m too stupid to know any better.”

Jared did everything short of taking on a half-dozen security guards and breaking in to Quentin’s condominium in the elegantly subdued five-star hotel on the Public Garden. Chords of Mozart floated down the hall from the tearoom where a pianist in black tie was entertaining the sparse crowd gathered on love seats and wingbacked chairs, being civilized and very correct. The man at the front desk had suggested several times that Jared have a seat in there and await his cousin’s return. A pot of tea and Mozart. Just what he needed.

Where’s Mai?

“I don’t have any change,” he told the man at the front desk he’d been harassing. “I need to make a call-”

He pushed a telephone toward Jared. “Please,” he said, “go right ahead.”

His stomach burning, he dialed the Eliza Blackburn House.

“Put on a tape if you like,” Annette told the nervous girl sitting beside her. They were already winding through the familiar streets of the picturesque seaside town of Marblehead. “It’ll only be a few more minutes.”

Mai hunched over toward the passenger door. “That’s okay.”

“You’re still worried about that man, aren’t you?”

Nodding slowly, Mai decided not to mention that she was also worried about her great-aunt. Going off with her to Marblehead had suddenly not seemed such a good idea when the Frenchman had pounced on the Reed car. Why had he told her to run? Why had he looked so scared?

“Do you know who he is?” Mai asked.

“I have no idea. Mai, I don’t want to worry you needlessly, but…well, dear, I believe he’s the man who killed your mother. Any proof we could get would be in Saigon-Ho Chi Minh City now. We’ll talk to your father about him after we get to Marblehead, all right?”

Mai shut her eyes tight, trying to squeeze back the tears. She wanted to talk to her dad now. She didn’t trust Annette Reed. No wonder her dad hadn’t let her come visit Boston. His aunt was weird.

“Calm down,” Annette said. “Everything will be fine.”

The minute the car slowed down, Mai thought, she was going to jump out and run and call the police to bring her father to her.

Annette, however, gave no indication she’d be slowing down anytime soon.

Jean-Paul had Rebecca’s truck cranked up to seventy as he negotiated the intricacies of 1A and corrected his passenger on the mistakes in detail she’d made in her rendition of the events of the past thirty years. The general scope of Annette’s wrongdoing-and his own-she had exactly right.

“So in 1959,” she said, “you and Annette had an affair and she framed you for a series of jewel robberies you didn’t commit. Why didn’t you stand up for yourself?”

“The evidence was against me-Annette had planted one of her own bracelets in my house and said I’d stolen it from her. And, Rebecca, who do you think would have believed me? I was a daring Grand Prix driver. She was a proper Boston housewife-”

“Who got her kicks stealing jewels from her wealthy friends and acquaintances.” Rebecca winced. “I guess you were caught between a rock and a hard place.”

“She warned me I was about to be arrested and paid me to get out of the country-to avoid the embarrassment of our affair coming out.”

“Did she realize you knew she was Le Chat?”

“No, she still doesn’t.” Jean-Paul gripped the steering wheel, remembering her attempt last night to get him to believe Thomas was Le Chat. A clever way, he now saw, to get them both out to the relative isolation and privacy of the Winston house on Marblehead Neck. He added, “She’s convinced it’s her secret.”

“And that’s what started everything else?”

“That and my own greed, my own inability to let the past be.”

“You wanted the Jupiter Stones?”

“Yes.”

Rebecca turned and stared out her window. “I have them, you know.”

Jean-Paul stopped breathing. “What do you mean?”

And she told him…about Tam at six and herself at four in Annette’s room…about infant Mai screaming on the helicopter and Rebecca scooping out the fortune in gems…about hanging on to them for the past fourteen years thinking Tam must have been planning to smuggle the jewels into the U.S., and that the Vietnamese who’d killed her had been after them.

When she finished, Jean-Paul was unable to speak.

Rebecca looked at him. “You’ve always thought Annette had the Jupiter Stones, haven’t you?”

He nodded, the slow, dull, agonizing ache of regret working its way through him.

“That night in Saigon,” Rebecca said. “You had no idea Tam had the stones?”

“No,” he whispered. It was nearly impossible to utter a word. “She must have figured out everything and threatened Annette…” He broke off, choking back tears. “If only I’d left well enough alone.”

“You risked your own life in an attempt to save Tam’s-and you did save mine, Mai’s, Jared’s. You shot Jared to keep the Vietnamese from killing him outright, didn’t you?”

“Yes…”

Tam, he thought. Beautiful, stubborn, determined Tam. All these years she’d had the Empress Elisabeth’s gems. Had she realized their monetary value? With the Jupiter Stones, she could have bought herself a new life in any country in the world. But not Tam, Jean-Paul remembered. At twenty-two she had wanted love and happiness…a life with Quentin Reed. So she had used the valuable gems-the stones that could damn Annette as a liar, a jewel thief, and even a murderer-as a means to get what she wanted.

Help me, Madame Reed, Jean-Paul could hear her saying, and I’ll return the Jupiter Stones to you. Let me have Quentin…let me have a life.

It was all so clear to him now.

Aah, Maman, I’ve failed you again.

Beside him, Rebecca asked, “What happened to you after that night?”

Annette, he explained, had slipped into Saigon to make certain Tam and her baby didn’t get out. As South Vietnam had collapsed, her network had scattered, and, in any case, she was unwilling to delegate this particular nettling problem. Not until he had spotted her hired assassin going into Jared Sloan’s apartment had Jean-Paul realized she was even in the city. Knowing he was probably too late, he had raced after the Vietnamese, but already Tam was dead. Jean-Paul told him Annette had sent him as backup.

Afterward, Jean-Paul had gone after her.

“I didn’t know where she was,” he said, in a neutral tone that surprised him. “That gave her an advantage.”

She had shot him in the face and left him for dead in an alley.