Jasmine Cresswell - Payback

Luke quelled an irrational surge of jealousy toward Torsten Richter, who was known as one of the finest pastry chefs in Europe. Pathetic as it was, it seemed he still craved Kate’s professional approval. “Is she planning to compete in the Coupe du Monde again next year?”

“No.” Avery didn’t expand on her answer. Perhaps she thought Luke didn’t deserve any insights into Kate’s professional plans, given that she believed their relationship had foundered on the rock of their demanding and incompatible schedules.

He hesitated for a moment. “I wrote to Kate in May,” he said finally. “After Ron…after her father disappeared.”

“I know. She showed me your note.” Avery’s voice was dry. “It was a very polite letter. Emily Post would have been proud of you.”

Luke didn’t misinterpret the seeming compliment. “I realize it was a lousy letter, Avery. But Kate and I broke up a month before her father disappeared and I had no clue what to say. We’d both made it clear that we didn’t want to see each other ever again, so it seemed wrong to get too personal.” He noticed he was drawing circles all over his vendor invoices and tossed the pen aside. “In the end, platitudes seemed better…no, not better. They seemed less bad than any of the alternatives.”

Avery relented slightly. “It was a difficult situation,” she conceded. “And the consequences seem never-ending. I’m getting so tired of the constant fallout.” She stopped abruptly, visibly chagrined to have lapsed into the sort of complaining she would consider bad manners.

And he was about to make the situation more difficult by several orders of magnitude, Luke reflected. Seeing Avery in person, he wondered why he’d been so sure he was entitled to disrupt her peace. She was poised on the brink of putting her life back together in a pattern that clearly pleased her. Why force her to confront the possibility that her bigamous husband might not be dead? After all, Ron had lied and cheated for the entire twenty-nine years of their relationship. Why would she care if the son of a bitch was alive?

It would certainly be kinder to Avery to allow Ron to remain buried. Kinder in the short term, he reflected, but maybe not right?

“You have your poker face on again, Luke, and it’s still not working.” Avery’s gaze didn’t waver and it was disconcertingly perceptive. “You’re agonizing over something. Why did you ask me to come here today? Is it something to do with Kate?”

“No, or at least it’s only indirectly about Kate.” It dawned on Luke with sudden, piercing clarity that it was precisely because Ron had deceived his family for almost three decades that he owed Avery the truth. She was an intelligent, mature woman who didn’t deserve to be lied to, even if the lies were supposedly for her own good.

He spoke quickly, before he could lose his resolve. “There’s no easy way to break this news, Avery, so here it is. Earlier this month I was having dinner with my sister at a restaurant in suburban Washington, D.C. While we were there, I’m fairly sure…scratch that. I’m confident I saw Ron in the restaurant. He was with a woman about my sister’s age, mid-to late thirties. Ron and this woman were eating dinner, but when Ron realized I’d seen him, he quickly got up and left. To be frank, it seemed to me that he ran away.”

Avery’s body stilled, all movement so controlled that even her breathing was invisible. When she finally spoke, after several seconds of utter silence, her voice sounded husky. “Did Ron look ill? Injured?”

“No, he looked well.” Luke realized she was the first person to ask him about Ron’s well-being, as opposed to launching into an instant denial of the possibility that he might be alive. “He was thinner than when I last saw him, which was at the birthday dinner he threw for you in early March. He looked fitter and more tanned, but unmistakably Ron.”

“You say he ran away when you tried to speak to him?”

“Yes, he did. I’m quite sure he wanted to avoid me.” Luke once again decided against cushioning the truth with a comforting lie. There had been more than enough lies already, most of them perpetrated by Ron himself.

Avery looked up and her eyes were no longer tranquil; they were now a tormented, storm-tossed gray. “Are you telling me Ron ran away because he recognized you and didn’t want to be confronted?”

Luke winced inwardly. “I’m sorry, Avery, but that’s exactly what I think happened.”

She made a distressed sound, hastily suppressed. She stared for several long moments at her hands. Then she turned to him, her ghost-pale face a silent plea for help. “I’m embarrassed to admit I have no idea what I should do next. Tell me, Luke. What must I do? Should I go to the police?” She gripped the edge of his desk, the white-knuckled intensity of her grip all the more devastating because she was trying so hard to hide the signs of her inner turmoil.

“I wish I knew how to advise you, Avery. I’ve already tried to inform the cops, here and in Miami, but they didn’t believe a word I told them and they had zero interest in reopening the investigation into Ron’s disappearance. I’d be amazed if you get any help from them. In fact, if you want to ignore what I’ve just told you, nobody will care. Not the cops, that’s for sure.”

“How can I ignore something so important just because the authorities aren’t interested? Ron might be in trouble….”

Luke resisted the urge to say Ron hadn’t looked troubled to him. In fact, the bastard had looked as if he was thoroughly enjoying his meal—and the company of the woman eating dinner with him—at least until Luke brought their cozy night to a swift end.

“Most people will advise you to pay no attention to my story, you can be sure of that,” Luke said flatly. “It’s definitely what the police would tell you.”

“Perhaps, but I’m not really interested in the opinion of the police.” Avery’s voice picked up a healthy note of anger. “The Miami detective in charge of the investigation formed his theory of the case the moment they identified one of the blood stains in the hotel room as coming from that Julio Castellano person. Castellano was an illegal immigrant and a convicted murderer, so the police essentially ended their inquiries at that point. Radio talk show hosts raged about illegal immigrants committing crimes for a few days. Then the media attention moved on, and so did the attention of the police. I don’t think the Miami cops even looked very hard for Castellano, despite the fact that he was their chosen suspect. They assumed he was in Mexico and left it at that.”

“You sound as if you’ve never accepted the cops’ theory about what happened to Ron.”

“I did at first.” Avery hesitated for a moment. “Later, I changed my mind.”

“Any special reason for the change?”

She hesitated again and Luke got the strong impression that she was choosing her words with care. “Did you know that Adam, my youngest brother, has met Julio Castellano?”

Luke was astonished. “No, I had no idea. You mean your brother met Castellano before he was accused of murdering Ron? That’s an amazing coincidence. Is Adam sure it’s the same man, not just the same name?”

Avery shook her head. “No, that isn’t what happened. My brother met Castellano this past summer. Ron had been missing for several weeks by then and Castellano was already the prime suspect in his murder.”

Luke frowned. “But if your brother found Castellano, why in the world isn’t the guy in custody?”

“It’s a long story. The short version is that Adam flew to Belize on the trail of some money that was missing from Ron’s estate. My brother traveled with Megan Raven, Ron’s other daughter by his Wyoming wife. Adam and Megan were married recently, so she’s my sister-in-law on top of everything else.” Avery paused after spelling out the ramifications of the relationship, as if, even now, she had trouble absorbing the reality of her supposed husband’s double life.