Carla Neggers - Tempting Fate

When she felt fresh slack in her line, Dani didn’t reel it in. Instead she slipped the jackknife she always carried kite flying out of her jeans pocket and, with one quick movement, cut the braided nylon line.

She walked away, her kite free to sail the winds.

Zeke finally left his post when Dani stumbled back to her cottage. He was tired. He’d watched her kite sail out of sight, and he’d seen her tears. They glistened on her pale cheeks, not tears of self-pity, he felt, but of loneliness and regret. The kind of tears that only came at dawn.

He needed a shower, a few hours’ sleep and breakfast at a place that didn’t remind him of his own loneliness and regret.

But first he called California. The phone rang just once before Sam Lincoln Jones picked up. “You awake?” Zeke asked.

“I am now.”

“Any luck?”

“I took a spin out to Beverly Hills and talked to Nick Pembroke. I won’t say he talked to me, but I’m not into intimidating old men. If he’d been fifty years younger, me and the old codger might have gone a few rounds.”

“What’s he like these days?”

“Same as always, I expect. For starters, he’s as pigheaded as they come.”

Zeke thought of Nick Pembroke’s granddaughter pounding into her purple cottage after she’d told him to pack up and hit the road. “Must be a strong gene.”

“Met Dani, have you? I’ll bet they’re a pair. Nick’s also arrogant, brilliant and probably the most charming old buzzard I’ve ever met.” Sam paused. “And he’s scared, Zeke.”

“Dani?”

“Yep. Heard she’d been robbed. Thinks she should have kept her mouth shut about that gold key. Most people thought Nick just made up the part in Casino about his grandmother selling off gold gate keys.”

“So he feels Dani was asking for trouble mentioning it.”

“It’s already valuable because it’s gold, but it’s even more valuable because Ulysses Pembroke had it made. A consequence of Nick turning his granddaddy into one of the great rakes of American history.”

But, Zeke wondered, could it be even more valuable-to the right person-because Lilli Chandler Pembroke had been wearing it the night she disappeared?

“Does Nick still gamble?”

“Not as much as he used to. He’s broke. Dani pays his rent, keeps him in food and heart medicine. She doesn’t strike me as the type who’d pay his gambling debts for him.”

Hardly. And Sam hadn’t even met her.

“There’s something else,” he said.

“Go on.”

“It’s just instinct, but I’d say old Nicky was holding back on me.”

“Something important?”

“I’d say so.”

Zeke sighed, imagining the possibilities.

“Like I say,” Sam went on, “fifty years younger, and me and him would have gone a few rounds. I also took the liberty of checking up on the other living Pembroke scoundrel.”

Dani’s father. Four years after his wife had disappeared, John Pembroke had put the Chandler family back on the front pages with another scandal. Eugene Chandler had refused to press charges against his son-in-law for embezzlement-wouldn’t even publicly admit John had stolen from Chandler Hotels-but had quietly tossed his daughter’s husband out on his ear. From what Zeke knew, John Pembroke had taken to gambling as even Nick never had, scrounging good games the world over, while he did the occasional cheeky travel piece. He couldn’t have been around much for his daughter.

“What’s he up to these days?” Zeke asked.

“Lives in a crummy apartment in Tucson. Word is his daughter’s hired him to write a biography of Ulysses, probably just charity by another name. Anyway, he doesn’t have a phone, but I contacted a friend out that way, and she did some checking. Seems our man left town this afternoon.”

Zeke kicked off his shoes. His pretty lace curtains billowed in the cool breeze, and his room filled with the fresh smells of early morning. “Find out where he’s headed?”

“East. Booked a flight to Albany.”

“Hell.”

“Say the word,” his partner and friend told him in a low voice, “and I’ll be there.”

“I know. Thanks. I’ve got another favor, though, if you have time.”

“I’m listening.”

Zeke shut his eyes, which burned with fatigue and too many questions, too many memories. He could see Dani cutting her kite free. What had she been thinking about? Did she know her father was en route to Saratoga-or already there?

“Check out what Quint Skinner’s into these days.”

There was a silence on the California end of the line.

“He’s in Saratoga,” Zeke said.

Sam breathed out. “Fun times.”

“Lots of work to do, Sam.”

“Yeah. I’ll be in touch.”

After he hung up, Zeke went into the cozy bathroom, where he was reminded the claw-foot tub didn’t have a showerhead. He tore open a package of bath salts and took a sniff. He wasn’t picky, so long as he didn’t come out smelling like a lingerie shop.

Instead, he thought, remembering her beside him in his car, he’d come out smelling like the woman who owned the Pembroke.

Lowering himself into the cute little tub, the scalding water swirling around him, he considered that there were probably worse fates.

Breakfast at the track was an August Saratoga tradition that Zeke might have found quaint if he’d been more awake. For a modest amount of money, one could enjoy a champagne breakfast in the clubhouse and watch expensive thoroughbreds work out on the picturesque track, said to be the most beautiful in the country. Up and at it before he was ready to be up and at it, Zeke had walked down from the Pembroke. He’d avoided the front desk, lest Dani had spoken to her staff about having given him the boot.

Sara Chandler Stone was on the upper level, at a white-covered table overlooking the track. The atmosphere was relaxed and cordial, with a touch of elegance that was part of the upstate resort’s appeal. Zeke was underdressed as usual. Most everyone seemed finished with their breakfast.

“Am I late?” Zeke asked, sitting across from Sara.

“It’s no problem.” She was as poised and still as a mannequin, her porcelain face hidden under the wide brim of her straw hat. She wore an attractive, feminine dress, silky and expensive, an easy way to remind people who was a Chandler here and who wasn’t. “I try to come to breakfast at the track once a season. My family has benefited a great deal from our connection with Saratoga racing. I enjoy giving something back.”

“It’s a dirty job,” Zeke said, “but somebody’s got to do it.”

Her smile didn’t falter. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

He smiled back. “Touché, Mrs. Stone.”

“Would you care for a glass of champagne?”

She already had a glass, and she didn’t appear to have drunk anything else or eaten anything at all. Zeke shook his head and flagged a waiter, who promptly filled his coffee cup and took his order for eggs.

Sara stared down at onlookers gathered along the white fence to watch the horses warm up on the track. “Will you be at the Chandler Stakes this afternoon?”

“Probably.”

“It’s a large field of horses this year. The weather’s beautiful. It’ll be a grand day.” Her smile was gone now, her porcelain skin without color. “Father’s looking forward to today.”

“Well, it’s the hundredth running of the Chandler.”

“And if it’s as thrilling as everyone seems to think it will be, it could help put the seventy-fifth out of his mind.” She sipped her champagne; it couldn’t have been her first glass, Zeke thought. “None of us attended. We were all out looking for Lilli.”