FIFTEEN
Sari glanced at Paul with wide eyes. “I get a salary, and it’s a good one, but I can’t really afford designer clothes on my paycheck,” she laughed.
Paul scowled. “Your father was filthy rich,” he began.
“Well, yes, but Merrie and I never had much to wear. He took us shopping in stores where he had credit, and he told us exactly what to buy. We had a very limited number of things we were allowed for school.” She bit her lower lip. “When I was invited to join the chorus, I had to refuse, because Daddy wouldn’t buy me a blazer. It was part of the uniform we were required to wear for performances. Merrie couldn’t do theater, and she really wanted to. Because Daddy wouldn’t let her have costumes. He also said he didn’t want her exposed to people who cursed and had loose morals. But I think that was just an excuse not to have the expense.”
Paul was lost for words. Now that he thought about it, when Isabel came and jumped on his bed at night to chat, she was always wearing one of two types of pajamas. He’d never connected the dots before. Her high school and college clothes were also mostly the same style and color. It had never dawned on him that she didn’t wear designer clothes.
“It didn’t matter,” Sari said softly, when she realized how unsettled he was. “We never noticed. In fact, it helped, because we didn’t stand out from the other kids. The girls knew about fashion, you see.” She grimaced. “We got teased a lot because we were rich but we looked like we were dressed from yard sales.”
“What a piece of work your father was,” Paul gritted out. “You didn’t have cars, either. He wouldn’t even let you learn to drive. I thought he was just being overprotective.” He shook his head. “I looked but I didn’t see.”
Sari’s attention went back to the baby in her arms. She smiled down at him, playing with his tiny hands. “You lucky people. You actually have two of these. A matched set!”
“Pretty much,” Cash agreed. He shook his head. “And I thought I had a bad childhood.”
“Plenty of people have it way worse,” Sari replied. She lifted the little boy in her arms and made faces at him. “Life has a way of evening things out, though. We have sad times. Then we have happy ones,” she added, her heart in her eyes as she looked at Paul. He looked back, his eyes dropping to the child and back up to her radiant face.
“We do, indeed,” he said huskily.
Cash took the child from her with a grin. “We’re going to eat ice cream,” he said. “None for you, yet,” he added to the baby, and wrinkled his nose at the little boy.
“He’s going to have dark eyes, I think,” Sari said, watching him. “But I don’t know about his hair. It has red highlights, and your daughter has hair like yours,” she added to Tippy. “It’s so beautiful.”
“So is yours,” Tippy said with a smile. “Red hair is the rarest color. Someone in your family must have had the recessive gene for red hair,” she added to her husband.
“There are no recessive Genes in my family,” Cash said haughtily. “We had a recessive Charles, though. And I think one of my uncles was a recessive Harry. Quit that, you’ll give our son ideas!” he added haughtily when Tippy punched him in the arm.
“You and your recessives,” Tippy teased, her eyes brimming with love when she looked at him.
He bent and brushed a kiss on her forehead. “Let’s go. They have work to do.”
“He’s free today,” Tippy explained.
“I am not!” Cash said emphatically. Then his dark eyes twinkled. “But I’m reasonable,” he added.
Tippy laughed as they said their goodbyes and went out the door.
“Back to work, everybody,” Blake mused. “You, too,” he told Paul. “San Antonio is that way!” He pointed north. “You can malinger with my ADA when your boss gives you a day off.”
“Malinger? I never malinger. That’s something criminals do in dark corners,” he added haughtily. Then he grinned at Sari. “I might vegetate in her direction, though. I do a great imitation of a potted plant. I could hold leaves and stand by her desk.”
She laughed uproariously. “I’d really love to see that, but I have cases to write notes on,” she told him.
“And I have crooks to catch. See you Friday night. Dinner and whatever’s playing at the movies.”
“I think it’s a love story,” Glory teased.
“It’s a murder mystery,” Sari corrected. “But it’s a funny one, so it’s okay. See you later, Special Agent Fiore,” she added with a pert smile.
He winked at her and left.
* * *
The next day, it all went to pot. The family attorney in San Antonio called and asked Sari and Merrie to drive up to see him about the will.
Puzzled, Sari asked for time off from work, and had the driver—a new but trustworthy man—take them up to San Antonio.
The attorney, a droll, quiet man named Jack Daniels, ushered them into his expensive office and pulled up chairs for them. Then he sat down behind the desk, with a computer and a stack of files.
“Your father’s estate—well, his liquefiable assets, at least—have been frozen by the federal government, as you know,” he told them, looking over his glasses at both girls. “However, he had documents in his possession that pertained to monies your late mother had accrued in two Swiss bank accounts, which he was not permitted to touch due to a clause in her will. She left the savings accounts to her daughters, one account each, of the same amount of money.”
“Savings accounts?” Sari said, reeling.
“Yes.” He presented the records of the savings accounts to the girls.
Sari looked at hers and almost passed out.
Merrie had an equal reaction.
“Daddy never told us about these,” Sari exclaimed, going pale. “I was with Mama when she died, and she said that Merrie and I would be taken care of. I thought she meant Daddy would take care of us.”
“She knew your father quite well, which is why she left the money in such a way that it was impossible for him to touch it.”
“And he never told us.” Merrie sighed.
“He didn’t want us to have money, because we could have gotten away from him,” Sari added in a low, sad tone. She smiled at the attorney. “We never had many clothes, or any freedom at all. He had men watching us night and day. We can’t drive, we don’t own cars, we couldn’t even buy clothes. All Merrie and I have…had…is my salary as an assistant district attorney. I gave our housekeeper some of that, too, for groceries.” She sighed. “Our father was using drugs and dealing them, and we didn’t even know.” She drew in a breath. “I suppose we’re pretty naive for women in our twenties.”
“You’ll catch up,” the attorney assured them. “Now, let’s go through some of the details. I’ll need your signature on some documents, Miss Grayling,” he added, speaking to Sari. “You realize, I’m sure, that probate in an estate this size could take from several months to a year, especially since the federal government must decide which percentage of your inheritance was garnered in illegal activities. In the meantime, I’m appointing you executrix and I’m readying papers to be filed in court which will notify the public of impending probate and solicit any unpaid or due bills.” He smiled gently. “Your career in law will have already covered these subjects, of course.”
“Of course.”
* * *
They were in the car, riding back home. Sari was silent. Her dreams of the future were going to go up in flames the minute Paul knew how much money was in those savings accounts.
“Maybe we could keep it a secret,” Merrie said worriedly.
“And maybe whales will fly,” Sari said philosophically.
“It was just a thought.”
Sari looked out the window and tried not to think about what was ahead. Paul cared for her, she knew he did. But it would be the same old story. He wouldn’t want a future with her because she was rich again. It would be too much of a blow to his pride.
She stared at her hands and wondered why she didn’t just chuck it all and go to Australia, or New Guinea, or Africa or…
“It’s Paul, isn’t it?” Merrie asked softly. “You’re worried about what he’ll do.”
“I know what he’ll do,” Sari returned. “He’ll do exactly what he did before.” She looked out the window again. “He’ll leave, because I’m rich and he works for a living.” A stray tear rolled down one pale cheek. She swiped at it angrily.
“Give him a chance,” Merrie suggested softly. “He’s a proud man, Sari, and he’s had a hard life just being honest in a family of criminals. Remember his cousin Mikey?”
Sari had to swallow twice before she could answer without crying. “Yes. Mikey is more than just a small-time crook, you know. He was actually arrested in connection with a mob hit in Trenton, New Jersey. They couldn’t prove he did it, but the witnesses swore it was him they saw with the deceased.”
“Oh, my gosh!”
“Imagine having a hit man in your family and trying to work as an honest lawman,” she added. “Surely there were times when they looked at Paul suspiciously just because of who he was related to. His father was one of the biggest mob bosses in town before he died violently.”
Merrie’s intake of breath was audible. “How do you know all this?”
Sari glanced at her. “You can’t say.”
“I won’t. Who?”
“One of our bodyguards. The tall one, Rogers. He’s related to somebody in the US Marshal’s office in Trenton.”
“Poor Paul,” Merrie replied quietly. She looked at Sari worriedly. She didn’t want to put into words what she was thinking.
Sari did it for her, wiping away a tear. “He’s had to prove himself over and over again. He wouldn’t want to be accused of marrying a woman for her fortune, but that’s what it would look like to outsiders.” She turned and saw the truth of the statement reflected in her sister’s sympathetic face. “It would look like he was taking the easy way to big money, just like most of the members of his family have.”
Merrie nodded. “I’m so sorry.”
Sari drew in a long breath. “Well, I’ll tell him and let him decide.” She laughed. It had a hollow ring. “As if there’s going to be any mystery about his choice.”
“You never know. He might surprise you,” Merrie said hopefully.
Sari raised both eyebrows over red, swollen eyelids. “And whales might fly,” she repeated.
* * *
Sari was waiting at the front door when Paul called for her that night, but she wasn’t dressed for dinner and a movie.
“What’s up?” he asked, because he could read the turmoil in her pretty face.
She took him by the hand and led him out to the glass room, with its easy chair and love seat. But this time she didn’t sit in his lap. She sat on the edge of the love seat with her hands tightly clasped in her lap.
“Our family attorney had Merrie and me drive up to San Antonio to talk to him today.”
“And?” His face was grim.
“And our mother left us money in two savings accounts in Switzerland. This is in addition to the house and furniture and a small trust that we get when we turn thirty,” she began. “And pending any money that we inherit from our father after the government settles on what he got illegally. That will take months. But we get the savings accounts right now, because they were covered in our mother’s will and already allocated at the time of her death.”
“What sort of savings account?” he wanted to know.
She drew in a long breath. “Two hundred million. Each.” She actually winced with each word.
Paul didn’t say anything. He sat like a statue with his olive tan suddenly paler than it had ever been. His big hands were clasped together between his spread knees. He looked down and felt the agony all the way to his toes. It wasn’t as bad as he’d expected. It was far worse. Two hundred million. And he worked for a living.
Sari didn’t have to ask what he felt, or what he was going to do. His body language was very explicit.
“I could give it all to charity.” She laughed bitterly.
He looked up. His face was resigned, his eyes dead in a drawn, taut face. “Honey, every member of my entire family took the easy way to wealth. They robbed, they intimidated, they broke the law coming and going to get big money. I’m the only one who went the honest route. Now you tell me what people are going to think if I…”
She stood up. Tears were threatening. Her heart was breaking. “I know what they’d think, Paul,” she said in a husky, defeated tone. “I knew what you’d say before we got home this afternoon. You don’t even need to put it into words.”
He bit down hard on what he wanted to say. If she’d been poor, if he’d been rich, if, if, if…
She was weighing his reaction. It didn’t take a mind reader to know that he wasn’t that upset by the revelation. He seemed as calm as he did at her office when he came to talk to her boss. She couldn’t know that it was training, half a lifetime in training in law enforcement, that produced that cool demeanor he showed when he was upset. Suck it up, in other words.
“You can marry some rich guy and have rich kids,” he said, trying to make a joke of it.
“I won’t marry anyone. And there will never be kids,” she returned.
He scowled. “Why not?”
She lifted her face. “My father was a cold-blooded killer. I won’t pass those genes along to a child.” She moved toward the door.
“For God’s sake, there are generations of people descended from killers who never break the law!”
She turned. “It doesn’t matter. I like my job. I’ll put away criminals and help keep the streets clean.” She smiled sadly. “It’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it.”
He grimaced. “Isabel,” he said softly.
The tone of his voice was almost physically painful. “You don’t want me because I’m rich,” she said, and laughed helplessly. “I thought if you lo…if you cared about someone, nothing mattered.”
He didn’t let a glimmer of emotion show. “So they say.”
She managed a jerky smile. He’d just admitted in a roundabout way that he didn’t care for her. Certainly, he didn’t love her. She had to accept that and learn to live with it. “I’ll pass on the movie tonight, if you don’t mind. I brought home a dozen case files that need looking through.”
He only nodded. “I’ll see you around, kid,” he said, and forced a smile.
“Good night, Paul.”
He watched her go, her back arrow straight, nothing of her internal agony on view. Well, she probably hadn’t cared that much, anyway, he told himself. She was naive, for a woman her age. Maybe she’d only wanted him because he was familiar to her, because he’d been around so long.
There were plenty of rich guys in the world. She’d find one someday.
He wasn’t going to care. He didn’t dare care. His pride wouldn’t let him marry her. He tamped down the anguish inside him. It was as hard as losing Lucy and little Marie. It was like losing them, all over again.
He went back to his apartment and finished off half a bottle of whiskey before bedtime, and hoped that he wouldn’t get a call on his cell phone before it wore off. It didn’t make him feel much better, but it numbed the hurt long enough to let him get some sleep. He was never going to get over Isabel, no matter how much alcohol he drank.
* * *
Sari went to the kitchen to get a sandwich. Mandy had a nice spread laid out on the table, roast beef and herbed potatoes and homemade rolls, but suddenly Sari had no appetite.
Merrie exchanged glances with her. She knew without a word being spoken what had happened when Paul came to take Sari out.
“I feel absolutely wicked,” Merrie said, trying to cheer up her sister. “We can buy clothes that don’t fall apart after three washings. We can get new shoes that actually fit. We can take driving lessons and buy a real car!”
“I wouldn’t mind learning to drive, I guess,” Sari said blankly. “What will we do with the limo?”
“Give it and the driver to Mandy,” Merrie said gleefully. “We can buy her designer clothes and when she goes shopping at Sav-A-Lot, she can wow all the customers.”
“Too late, Tippy Grier already did that,” Mandy teased. “But thanks for the thought, sweetie.” She looked at Sari. “You need more than a peanut butter sandwich if you’re going to stay up all night going through case files.”
Sari made a face. “Sorry. I’m not hungry.”
Mandy hugged her close. “You can’t fool us. We love you. Paul walked away, didn’t he?”
Sari broke down. Mandy held her closer while a sad Merrie looked on.
“There, there,” Mandy said softly. “Some things take time. But it will all come right. You’ll see.”
* * *
It didn’t come right. Sari went through the motions of living while people searched for Morris. She was guarded like Fort Knox. But she didn’t care about being watched anymore. She didn’t care about anything. The love of her life didn’t want her because she was wealthy. She didn’t know how she was going to live without Paul, now that she knew what it was like to be held in his arms and have him cherish her. It had been bad enough three years earlier, when he’d just walked away without a word. At least he’d had the courtesy to say goodbye this time.
A week later, Blake Kemp called her into his office and closed the door.
“I know, I’m backsliding,” Sari said before he could open his mouth. “I’m…sort of going through a bad patch right now. I’ll get through it.”
“You need a week off. I’ve called in favors and borrowed an ADA from San Antonio. He’ll be here first thing Monday morning. You go somewhere and deal with this. You’re too valuable an asset to wither away.”
She sat down and folded her hands in her lap. “I’m so sorry…”
“We’ve all been there,” he said. “I know how it hurts to lose somebody you love.” Shadows flowed through his eyes briefly. He’d been in love with a local girl who died, years before he married his wife, Violet, and had a child. Everybody knew about it.
Sari sighed. “Thanks, Mr. Kemp.”
“They say your friend Paul is setting new records for sleepless nights up in San Antonio,” he replied, watching her jump as she reacted to the words. “He’s volunteered for every stakeout they’ve got. He says he can’t sleep.”
“He lost his family in a horrible way.”
“Years ago,” Blake returned. “He lost you this week. That’s what’s killing him.”
Her pretty face contorted. “He doesn’t want me because I’m worth two hundred million dollars,” she bit off. “I only have value to him if I’m poor and people wouldn’t accuse him of trying to get rich quick.”
“You know why he’s that way, don’t you?”
“Yes.” She sounded defeated. “I don’t blame him. I really don’t. But trying to get over him again is killing me. He just walked away last time. He didn’t even say goodbye. I never knew why until he came back into my life.” She looked up. “And now he’s gone again.” She drew in a long, slow breath. “I think I’ll go down to the Bahamas and live on the beach for a few days. Heaven knows I can afford it now.”
“Your bodyguards will have to go along,” he reminded her. “Remember, Morris is still on the loose.”
“I’m not taking them along,” she replied. “Merrie and Mandy are far more vulnerable than I am. I can take the corporate jet to Nassau. Nobody will even know I’m gone. I’ll get Mandy to drive me to San Antonio, so even the chauffeur won’t know that I left.”
He tried to think of a way to stop her, but he couldn’t. “It’s hurricane season,” he said finally. “Be careful you don’t get blown out into the ocean.”
She smiled. “Will do, boss.”
He chuckled. “Life goes on, you know,” he added when she was on her way out of the room. “It has to.”
“I’ll get my act together before I come back.” She lowered her eyes. “Thanks. For the time off, I mean. I know I haven’t been here that long…”
“You really are an asset,” he interrupted. “I’m not losing you. Go have a holiday.”
“Yes, sir. I will.”
He smiled. “Have a safe trip.”
“Thanks.”
* * *
Merrie and Mandy argued. So did the bodyguards. It did no good. After a brief shopping spree in San Antonio with some of her newly acquired wealth, Sari packed and had Mandy drive her to San Antonio, where the corporate jet picked her up. Her heart was breaking. She didn’t know how she was going to go on. But she had to find a way to live without Paul. Maybe a holiday was just the thing to start the healing process.
She checked in to one of the biggest hotels in Nassau, right on the beach. A gentleman in the lobby was hawking tours to some of the outer islands. It sounded like just the sort of thing she needed to get her mind off her problems. So she signed up.
She unpacked and hung her new wardrobe up in the closet. It had been fun to go shopping in San Antonio and buy clothes that actually fit and looked good. She’d enjoyed watching Merrie marvel over new styles with affectionate amusement. Neither of the women had ever had anything that wasn’t cheap. Most of what their father insisted on buying for them was the same dull colors and styles year after year.
While they’d shopped, Sari had been looking around her, unconsciously hoping for a glimpse of Paul on the streets, in the restaurant where they had lunch with their two bodyguards. But he wasn’t there. She hadn’t really expected him to be. In a way, she wished he’d never gone back to the FBI, never been sent to San Antonio. Losing him for a second time in one lifetime was almost physically painful.
She had the television in her room turned on, but she wasn’t really paying much attention to it. They were reporting on some unusual weather pattern developing in the Atlantic Ocean, a late-season tropical depression that might have the potential to become a hurricane very soon. They warned viewers to take precautions.
Sari didn’t even watch it. She went out onto the patio and filled her eyes with the delight of the ocean beyond the bay, the tall, limber casuarina trees dancing in the growing fever of the wind. She closed her eyes and drew in the warm, moist, fragrant air through her nostrils. She smiled. It brought back memories of the only other time she’d been to the Bahamas, as a small child, with her mother and sister. It had been the sweetest vacation of her life. She remembered playing in the sand on the beach, with her laughing mother spread nearby on a colorful towel, amusing little Merrie with plastic toys. It was one of the only times they had, away from her father, before their mother died. It had been a happy time. There were so few of those that Sari treasured each memory.
It was typical of their father that he’d hidden anything their mother had left them. There had been jewelry handed down in their family for over a hundred years that Darwin Grayling had just sold. He told the girls that possessions were only important if they could be spent or traded for gold. He had no sentiment and he raised them not to have any. It backfired, of course. Out of his sight, they were their mother’s daughters.
Their mother had been a gentle, sweet, kind woman who loved to cook and do handiwork and listen to classical music. Too soon, they’d lost her. Left with a maniac who yelled and hit them if they dared to mix colors of towels in their own bathrooms, if the towels weren’t straight on their racks. Sari thought, not for the first time, that there had been something seriously wrong with her father, even before he started using drugs.
She was amazed that none of the women in the household had ever noticed that the man had a drug habit at all. Not that they saw much of him. When he wasn’t away on business, he was traveling with that Leeds woman.
One of the investigators who came to the house mentioned something about a sick racehorse that had been shipped north for a race. The horse had suddenly died. Darwin had shipped it back home, by train, to be buried because it was one of his favorites, he’d told the track owner. Odd, too, because he didn’t like the horses. He liked the money they won. She recalled that he’d actually killed one of them in a violent temper, like the one he’d been in when he hit Merrie and Sari. Like the one that had resulted in Betty Leeds’s death.
She frowned thoughtfully. She’d learned through her job that drug smugglers sometimes had cocaine in condoms that they swallowed or even had children swallow, so they could get them through customs. It had turned her stomach, to think a human being would ever endanger a helpless child in such a way.
But if they didn’t hesitate to do it to small children, what about racehorses? She recalled the horse who’d gotten sick. He’d lost the last five races, and the trainer said he had a healed injury that might slow his time enough to disqualify him in future competitions. Her father didn’t keep animals that didn’t earn their keep. Had anyone bothered to look in the horse’s stomach?
She got on the phone and called Mr. Kemp at once.
“I’m sure someone checked that out,” Blake told her. But he frowned. “Bentley Rydel might have been called in to consult by the trainer. Let me call him. I’ll get back to you. Just in case, do you know where they buried the horse?”
“Yes. There’s a small hollow behind the barn, with a stand of mesquite trees and a big oak. It was somewhere in there. You could find it with ground-penetrating radar.”
“I’ll make sure they know. Thanks, Sari.” He hesitated. “How’s Nassau?”
“It’s nice here,” she said. “I’m going on a tour of the outer islands Friday. It sounds like fun.”
“You do know that there’s a tropical depression bearing down on the Bahamas?”
She laughed. “Yes, I know. But they’re not sure it will develop into a hurricane, or that it’s going to impact us here. In any case, they’ll tell us how to stay safe.” She paused. “Thanks for worrying, boss.”
“I don’t like breaking in new help,” he said, tongue in cheek. “Have a good time. See you in a week.”
“See you.”
* * *
She was about to leave on the tour when her cell phone rang. She pushed the button and listened.
It was Blake Kemp. “You were right,” he told her. “Apparently your father buried the horse with the idea of going back later to recover the stash. Hell of a way to smuggle drugs. The poor horse!”
“The trainer said that the sick horse was losing races,” she replied. “Daddy never kept anything around that didn’t pay its way.” She hesitated. “I forgot to ask Mr. Abernathy what will happen to the racehorses,” she added sadly.
“If they weren’t used as collateral for loans or confiscated in some other way from the drug trade, you’ll inherit them. You and Merrie,” he added. “Meanwhile, your ranch manager will provide for them, right?”
“Right.” She drew in a breath. “Of all the despicable ways to transport drugs. To kill a poor horse and use it like that!”
“Some people have no honor.”
“I’m starting to notice that.”
“Forget about crime and just focus on getting a suntan,” he suggested. “Thanks again for the tip, Sari. I passed it along the chain of command.”
Kindly, he wasn’t mentioning the FBI, which would mean Paul, who was working the case. Or she thought he was.
“We had another bit of news,” he added quietly. “Agent Fiore has submitted a request to try out for the FBI Hostage Rescue Team. If he’s accepted, he’ll be leaving San Antonio, I assume.” He paused. “I’m sorry, but I thought it might be easier hearing it from me.”
She fought the lump in her throat. “It is. Thanks, boss.”
“Life happens,” he said “But sometimes, unexpectedly, miracles happen. I’m qualified to know,” he added.
She knew that he meant his Violet and their child. “I’m fresh out of those,” she said sadly. “But life does go on. See you.”
“Sure.”
She hung up and cried her eyes out. It was what she’d expected, really. She didn’t think Paul was the sort to settle down, and he certainly wouldn’t want to risk running into Sari very often in the city. He knew how she felt about him. She couldn’t hide it.
She packed a small bag to carry with her on the tour of the islands, which was to culminate overnight at a private resort. It also featured dinner on a three-masted schooner, which offered a meal fit for royalty.
She turned off the television and left. It was a shame that she hadn’t left it on for just five minutes longer. A hurricane watch had just been issued for the outer islands.