Carla Neggers - Tempting Fate

“Sara, we need to talk.”

“Of course. You know I’m always here for you.”

“Grandfather stopped by today. He showed me the passage in Beatrix Chandler’s diary about the gold key and her friendship with Louisa Pembroke.”

“Yes, I know. He told me.” The corners of her pink-stained mouth twitched in a small smile. “The more you abuse him, the more he seems to appreciate you.”

Dani tried to keep her thoughts focused, on course. “Did you show Joe Cutler that passage when he was here?”

“Now, how would I remember something like that?” She faltered, pulling in her lower lip. “Danielle, exactly what are you trying to get at?”

“Is Roger home?”

“No.”

“Grandfather?”

“He’s not here. Danielle-”

“You know,” she said, “I’ve been looking at this thing all wrong, trying to blame everything on Joe Cutler and Quint Skinner. The blackmail-”

“What blackmail?” Sara seemed genuinely shocked. She shoved the cat off her lap but didn’t get up. “You’ve been under tremendous strain lately, Danielle. Perhaps you’ve-”

“Gone off the deep end? Started to self-destruct like Nick and my father? Right now I almost wish I had. Sara, Mother and Nick both were being blackmailed over her role in Casino. Someone knew she’d have done just about anything to keep it a secret.”

“Well, it certainly wasn’t me. Lilli never told me a thing about her acting.”

The undertone of jealousy and bitterness was hard to miss. But Dani didn’t let it deter her. “Joe knew about the blackmail.”

“Knew about it,” Sara said, her incisive eyes on Dani, “or committed it?”

“For a while I believed he might have committed it.” She kept her voice steady and calm, despite the raging inside her. “But it doesn’t make any sense. Nick says the blackmailer never asked for much money, a hundred here and there. Joe could have made more than that by selling off the gold key he found. Instead he gave it to Mother.”

“She trusted him. Joe certainly had us all fooled. Look what he did in combat.” Sara rose gracefully, ladylike. But her skin was a little pale, and she teetered on her high heels. “I don’t believe I care to continue this conversation. You understand. It’s just too painful.”

Dani didn’t move from the porch railing. “Joe had a copy of one of the blackmail letters. If he wasn’t the blackmailer, how did he get it?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Why did he see Nick a few years later when he was on leave and then come here to Saratoga?”

Sara walked all the way to the ornate front door but stopped there, her back to Dani.

“Did he see you then?” she asked softly.

“Danielle, please don’t.”

“I’m not trying to upset you, Sara. But I need to know.”

“Why?” She spun around at Dani, tears shining in her vivid blue eyes. “Why do you need to know?”

“Too much has been happening. It needs to stop. We need to know the truth about the past.”

“Joe is dead. Lilli’s never coming back. What possible good can come of knowing who was blackmailing whom twenty-five years ago?”

Dani persisted. “Did Joe come to see you, Sara?”

Sara sank against the door, slipping her hands behind her and holding on to the polished brass handle. She nodded. “I-I’d caught him blackmailing Lilli. He wanted money to send his brother to Vanderbilt University. I…I made him give Lilli the gold key or I’d tell on him. I saw him that evening-”

“The night Mother disappeared?”

“Yes, but earlier. It’s why I was late to help you get dressed. You remember?”

Dani remembered. She’d hated the white chiffon dress and especially the new patent-leather shoes, and Sara had been in such a state she’d almost let Dani wear her shorts.

“I broke off our…relationship. I hadn’t been sure how I felt about him-I suppose I was attracted to him for all the wrong reasons. When I caught him at blackmail, I told him to leave Saratoga or I’d report him to the police.”

A squirrel ran up a maple in the front yard and out to the end of a branch near the porch and chattered at them. “What made you think Joe was the blackmailer?” Dani asked.

“Oh, that wasn’t difficult to figure out,” Sara said vaguely.

“Did Mother know?”

“I’m not sure. I never saw her again to ask. Of course, she’d have wanted to save Joe from himself. You remember how she was, especially that summer after our mother died.”

The tears glistened on Sara’s pale cheeks now, although she wasn’t sobbing. Dani made herself press on. “Why did Joe come back four years later?”

She pulled away from the door and sniffled, regaining some composure. The bodice on her dress was cut low, and her breasts heaved with her rapid, shallow breathing. But she tilted up her chin, looking regal. “I wouldn’t know. I refused to see him.”

Dani didn’t believe her, but she decided not to push the point, not yet. She jumped down from the porch railing. “I think he was trying to figure out what happened to Mother.”

“What business was Lilli of his?” she demanded, combative.

“She was his friend.”

Sara’s eyes flashed. “She was my sister!”

As if that gave her prerogatives. Dani moved in closer to her aunt. “Sara, what happened that night?”

She pushed back her hair, maintaining her composure.

“You and Roger went out to look for Mother after the lawn party. Did you find her?”

Even as she stood as still and sleek as a mannequin, tears spilled once more down her porcelain cheeks. Dani felt her own composure starting to give way. She made herself go to her aunt. “Sara,” she said, touching her rounded shoulder. “What happened?”

“I killed her,” Sara whispered.

Dani shut her eyes, and her aunt fell onto her shoulder, sobbing, quaking with guilt and relief, and Dani had to hold her, had to stand firm, or they both would have collapsed.

“God help me,” Sara said over and over. “I killed my own sister.”

Zeke got to the little yellow house with the welcome goose on the front door too late.

Quint was sprawled on the living-room floor, dying. Forcing back any emotion, Zeke called the police and found a towel in the downstairs bathroom. He pressed the towel to Quint’s abdomen. The wound was bad. Quint’s face was gray from the loss of blood.

“Hang on,” Zeke said.

“It’s too late.”

Zeke knew it was. “We’ll just sit here together and wait for help.”

“Whole thing was a setup. I thought Joe’d found out what I’d been a part of. Thought he’d turn me in. Hell, we were just kids. I…” He swallowed, panting, still fighting. “I was stupid.”

“Save it.”

“For what? Think the devil doesn’t know what I’ve done? You gotta know, Zeke. Your brother never broke. He did his job.” Quint licked his lips, shuddering with pain. “He was the best.”

Your brother never broke…

The land mines of his past, Zeke thought, his arm-his entire body-shaking as he held the towel to Quint’s wound.

“I watched the terrorists take him out. He was a hero, Zeke.” Quint sobbed hoarsely, without tears or energy. “I lied. I made a name for myself on his back. Him-his men-everybody was dead but me.”

Because this man was dying, and Joe was already dead, and he didn’t know what else to do, Zeke said, “What’s done is done, Quint.”

He raised himself up off the floor and gripped Zeke’s arm with what must have been all his remaining strength. “Joe was my friend!”

“Let it go,” Zeke said gently.

“I only wanted justice.”

Zeke could hear the sirens not too far away. “Quint, who did this to you? Who shot you?”