Jasmine Cresswell - Payback

Kate hesitated for a moment, but the question needed to be asked. “Okay, given that the police aren’t likely to do much, if anything, do you want to reopen the case, Mom?”

“I don’t know. I think so. I’m not sure.” Avery tried to smile at her own hopeless indecision. She couldn’t hold the smile. “What if Ron has lost his memory? What if he desperately wants to come home and doesn’t know how to find us?” She leaned against the damp bookshelves, her face whiter than the shelves behind her. The pallor was less shocking to Kate than the fact that Avery still hadn’t found a tissue and wiped the dust and dried tears from her cheeks. Even in the immediate aftermath of Ron’s disappearance, when Avery had been battered by the news that her husband was a bigamist and their twenty-eight-year marriage didn’t legally exist, she had never lost her composure this completely.

Her heart aching on her mother’s behalf, Kate forced herself to speak gently. “Didn’t you tell me the man in the restaurant ran away as soon as he saw Luke?”

Avery nodded. “Luke chased Ron…the man…into the parking lot, but he drove off before Luke could speak to him.” Her voice became wistful. “I wish Luke had managed to catch up with…whoever it was.”

From Kate’s perspective, it was hard to imagine any way that her mother’s happiness would be increased by tracking down the man who’d already seduced her, gotten her pregnant, deceived her through twenty-eight years of bigamous marriage, and now might be perpetrating the ultimate deception by pretending to be dead. A fresh surge of anger swept over her. Dammit, Luke shouldn’t have gone to her mother and presented her with this terrible news! Kate recognized that she was angry with Luke because that was a whole lot easier than being angry with her maybe-not-dead father, but that didn’t alter the facts. Luke should have come to her with his stupid theories instead of destroying her mother’s hard-won peace of mind.

Unfortunately, the genie was out of the bottle and there was no point trying to stuff him—or Ron—back inside again. She and her mother needed to decide what to do next. She saw only two viable choices: she could talk to Luke in the hope that he had sufficient information to enable a private detective to track down the man in the restaurant. Or they could ignore what they’d heard and carry on as if they’d never learned there was a possibility Ron Raven might be alive.

It wasn’t in the least difficult to decide which option she preferred. If her father was alive and hiding from his families, as far as Kate was concerned he could stay lost forever. And that was before she contemplated the horror of having to meet with Luke Savarini again, an activity that ranked right up there with the joys of having a limb amputated without benefit of anesthesia.

Sadly, Avery’s attitude made it clear that her choice would be to look for Ron and attempt to confirm whether her bigamous husband was alive or dead. It was a measure of just how much she loved her mother that Kate made the offer.

“Would you like me to talk to Luke and find out if there’s any information he has that might help us to track down the man he saw in the restaurant?”

“Would you?” Avery’s face lit up. “You wouldn’t mind?”

“Not at all.” She hoped her smile didn’t look as sickly as it felt.

“Thank you so much, Katie.” Avery sighed with visible relief. “I was so overwhelmed this morning that I really didn’t ask many sensible questions at all. It might be impossible to trace the man Luke saw, but it would be nice to know that for certain, wouldn’t it?”

“I guess so.”

This might be a time of emotional confusion for Avery, but she was a sensitive woman and she wasn’t self-absorbed enough to ignore Kate’s lack of enthusiasm. “I’m being silly,” she said quickly. “There’s no reason in the world for you to question Luke if meeting him again makes you uncomfortable. Good heavens, I’m more than capable of asking him if he has any other snippets of information that he didn’t share with me this morning.”

Avery sounded determinedly brave and cheerful and Kate castigated herself for being a mean, selfish daughter. She knew how excruciatingly hard her mother found it to discuss Ron’s multiple deceptions and criminal acts with anyone, much less someone she knew only as her daughter’s discarded boyfriend. For goodness’ sake, how tough could it be to have a brief, businesslike meeting with Luke?

“There’s no need for you to talk with him, Mom. I’ll track him down in one of his restaurants tonight and find out what other information he has, if anything.”

“So soon?” Avery’s face lit up. “Oh, that would be great.”

“I’m grateful for the excuse to stop cleaning,” Kate lied. “You’re such a slave-driver, you’ll have me working until midnight unless I take this chance to escape.”

Avery shot her daughter a grateful glance, the only sign she gave of seeing through Kate’s cheery facade. “I’ll treat you to dinner first,” she said, stripping off her rubber gloves. “We’ve both been working long enough. You get to pick the restaurant.”

The way Kate’s stomach was churning right now, cream of wheat struck her as about as daring a meal as she should risk. “Actually, Mom, if you don’t mind, I’ll skip dinner. Given the way Luke runs between restaurants, it might take me the rest of the evening to track him down. If I do manage to reach him, I’ll get back to you tomorrow morning, okay?”

“That’s fine. I suppose there’s no real rush.” Avery’s voice became acerbic again. “Ron’s been missing for six months. I daresay I can wait a few more hours to discover whether he’s dead or moved on to greener pastures and a younger woman.” She ruined the effect of her breezy indifference by walking out of the room at high speed.

Her mother was crying again, Kate reflected grimly. Damn Luke! And double damn Ron Raven. Her confusion finally gelled into certitude. She hoped her father was alive, she realized. That way she could have the pleasure of killing him as soon as she found him. Maybe she could build a bonfire and tie her loser ex-boyfriend and her loser father to opposite stakes. The way she felt about them right now, that would make a definite two-for-one bargain.

It was late that night before Kate caught up with Luke at Luciano’s II, his restaurant in Winnetka. Walking into the once-familiar surroundings, she was impressed all over again by the subtle welcome offered by the clever layout and the classic Tuscan decor. The damp October night turned the log fire burning in the brick fireplace into a cheery focal point. The ocher of the rough plaster walls blended soothingly with the rusty-coral table linens, and an inviting aroma of herbs and simmering sauces seeped out from the kitchen. Cilantro and garlic, Kate thought, and red wine. If her stomach hadn’t been giving such an excellent imitation of a butter churn in full operation, she might actually have felt a spark of appetite.

The dining room was full, and the hum of conversation was loud enough to suggest everyone was having a good time without being intrusive. Luke had been working to upgrade the acoustics of the room at the time their relationship ended, and his investment had apparently paid off.

She hadn’t called to let Luke know she was coming. Talking to him on the phone would be difficult in any circumstances, given the way their relationship had ended. She’d decided it would be impossible with Ron Raven as the subject of their conversation. Now that she was here, though, she wondered if a phone call might not have been smarter after all. At the best of times, thinking about her father tended to provoke the urge to scream with rage or sob inconsolably, and meeting with Luke Savarini was light years away from the best of times. Kate broke into a sweat just imagining the horror of bursting into tears when she was around him.