Dark Paradise (60 page)

Samantha Rafferty slid down into the seat Lucas had vacated and pulled

the oversize man's shirt she wore close around her. Her dark eyes were

wide with uncertainty now that Bryce had left her side. Sharon sat

stiffly in the chair across from Marilee, an ice sculpture in St. Tropez

swimwear. Across the way, the bimbob rolled over on his chaise and

flexed his buttocks.

"MacDonald Townsend," Uma said as she picked up half a dozen slices of

star fruit off her plate and crammed them all into her mouth at once.

Her face pinched into a knot as she chewed, an expression that might

have been concentration or a commentary on the tartness of the fruit.

She wiped the juice from her overinflated lower lip with the back of her

hand. "Did he used to be on Days of Our Lives?"

Sharon rolled her eyes. The bimbob made no comment.

"Do you think she knows about the phone call?"

Bryce swiveled his chair behind his massive teak desk, elbows on the

armrests. "It doesn't make any difference. The call will be a matter

of record. All anyone has to do is check Townsend's phone bill to see

that call was made. On the other hand, no one can prove I ever received

the message."

He plucked up a microcassette from the desktop and tossed it to Lucas.

"Damned answering machines. Always on the blink."

Lucas walked the cassette between his fingers. "No one would expect you

to answer a call in the middle of the night. There's no staff on at that

hour to take it for you."

"Just that damned machine," Bryce said, practicing his frown. "I've been

meaning to get a new one. Maybe if I had . . . well, I suppose I would

have been too late in any case."

"Right," Lucas nodded. "A small show of conscience and regret. Very

believable."

"I could have been an actor," Bryce conceded, "but it wouldn't have been

nearly so exciting."

There was no question he would have been too late to save Townsend even

if he had made the effort. He had listened to the tape first thing that

morning. After a tearful, rambling monologue of confession and

accusation had come the sound of a small explosion. Townsend had left

his suicide note on the answering machine and recorded his own death.

Self-destruction in the age of technology.

"He never had any nerve," Bryce said without compassion. "I detest a man

with no nerve. It's just as well he's dead. I couldn't have stood

watching him grovel and whine much longer."

Lucas tossed the cassette up and caught it with the same hand. "As long

as he didn't leave behind anything that might be incriminating to the

rest of us."

"He didn't have anything on anyone. He wanted to be a player, but he had

no leverage in the game."

"He might have left behind a signed affidavit for all we know," Lucas

said, a small line of worry digging in between his brows It was the same

look he used in court to put doubt in the minds of jurors. He tossed the

tape up again.

Bryce rose from his chair and snagged the cassette in one fluid move.

He gave the attorney a steady look. "He didn't."

With a flick of the wrist he pulled the tape out of the cassette, set it

ablaze with a twenty-four-carat-gold lighter, and dropped it into the

Baccarat ashtray on his desk.

Bryce persuaded Marilee to stay. He was the only one who made any effort

to do so. She declined the offer of a swimsuit. It didn't seem wise to

get half naked with this crowd. For one thing, she didn't consider

herself to be in the bikini league, bodywise. Her self-esteem was

already reeling from Rafferty's rejection. She really didn't need to

compare belly buttons with the likes of Uma Kimball or Sharon Russell.

Especially Sharon, whose figure belonged in a Frederick's of Hollywood

window display.

Besides, with the possible exception of Samantha, she trusted none of

them. Lucas tracked her every move with his shark eyes. Sharon's gaze

was clinically cool, like that of a scientist watching a mouse in a

maze. The bimbob was on another planet and Uma was from another planet.

Marilee felt as if she'd fallen into an alternate reality, one that was

littered with corpses and shadowed with menace.

Bryce played host with a subdued air. He chose to sit with her in the

shade, Samantha to his right side and an untouched glass of scotch in

front of him.

"He was distraught over Lucy's accident," he said, tracing patterns in

the condensation on the glass. "I suppose that was part of it."

"They were that close?" Marilee asked, her eyes on his bony hands as he

fondled the tumbler. The action seemed borne of impatience rather than a

need to soothe some inner restlessness.

Bryce's eyes cut to her sharply, though he didn't move a muscle. His

voice was perfectly calm. "He gave Lucy the money to buy the ranch. She

didn't tell you?"

"I suppose I didn't really want to know. I'm not a big advocate of

illicit affairs."

Samantha shifted uncomfortably in her chair, ducking her head as if she

wanted to make herself very small and disappear. She had gone in and

dressed with obvious attention to detail, like a little girl playing

dress-up in her mother's closet. It somehow made her seem just as

vulnerable as she had looked in the bathing suit. Marilee thought of

Will and bit her tongue for punishment.

"That's the irony, you know," Bryce said on a sigh as he rattled the ice

in his scotch. "Townsend wasn't either. He was obsessed with Lucy, but

he carried around a lot of guilt because of it. He wouldn't leave his wife

for her, even though he and Irene haven't had much of a marriage in recent years."

He took a sip of the drink, just enough to taste the smoky quality of the liquor,

and stared off across the pool. "Foolish, hanging on to something meaningless when

he could have started fresh."

Again, Samantha's chair rattled against the flagstones as she shifted

positions. "Maybe he still loved his wife," she said quietly. "Maybe he

just couldn't help himself."

Bryce gave her a long, level look. "We can always help ourselves,

sweetheart."

The girl's eyes filled. Marilee wanted to hug her and tell her Will

still loved her, that he was worth hanging on to, worth fighting for,

but she didn't know that. Not really.

It was just a feeling, and feelings had already gotten her in trouble

with the Rafferty brothers. Still, she couldn't just sit there and watch

Bryce try to lure an innocent into his fold. It would have been like

standing by with her hands in her pockets while satanists made off with

the village virgin. She was here and she was accountable. In her heart

she had made her commitment to this land, a commitment that had nothing

to do with ownership and everything to do with personal integrity.

"If people could always help themselves," she said, "then Betty Ford

wouldn't have a clinic. There's a lot more to people's problems than

weakness."

Bryce's small mouth tightened. Marilee ignored him and Samantha's

pain-filled gaze, trying her best to communicate the personal

applications of her statement through mental telepathy.

"That's a very romantic notion: to think that everyone is redeemable or

worth redeeming," Lucas said. Apparently feeling near nudity was an

affront to the memory of the dead, he had changed out of his Speedos

into a pair of loose black lounging pants and a wood-block print shirt

worn open like Bryce. "Rates of recidivism in our prisons dispel your

theory, Marilee."

"We're not talking about hardened criminals. We're talking about a good

man who made some bad choices."

Ostensibly Townsend, though Bryce knew the conversation had passed

beyond the judge. He couldn't call her on it without making another

strong attack on Will Rafferty, and clearly Samantha was not ready to

hear it. He sighed and tipped his head, conceding the point to Marilee,

and reevaluating her status as a threat.

"You have a very naive view of humanity," Sharon said, raising a

Margarita to her lips. She sat between the two men, still in her bathing

suit with a sheer black cover-up falling back off her angular shoulders,

not covering much of anything.

"I prefer to think of it as optimistic," Marilee countered with a

brittle smile.

"Stupid," she pronounced bluntly. Her attention had shifted to Bryce,

who was captivated by Samantha, who was staring down through the

glass-topped table at her toenails. "Everyone is out for their own

selfish interest. The smart ones climb over anyone they need to to get

what they want. The ruthless ones wear cleats. The fools are trampled

and left for dead. It's every man for himself."

Marilee raised her brows. "Well, you'd know more about that than me,"

she said pleasantly. "I've led a very sheltered life," she added as

Bryce's cousin began to redden around the gills.

"Stick around," Sharon said, rising. "You'll learn fast enough."

"Fun girl," Marilee murmured, rolling her eyes as the statuesque blonde

dropped her cover up on the tile apron and dove into the pool. Her long

body sliced into the water like a knife. "I'll bet the film-crowd thinks

she's a million laughs."

"Sharon learned the hard way that life can be exceedingly cruel," Bryce

said. "She's had to develop a survivalist's perspective."

"Hmm." Marilee pictured Bryce's cousin in eye black, a chic camouflage

jump suit with an M-16 in her hands. It really didn't seem much of a

stretch.

From the front side of the mansion came the sound of a truck engine with

no muffler, a loud roaring that even managed to rouse Fabian from his

concentrated sunbathing. Everyone looked toward the side gate

expectantly.

"Delivery truck," Bryce grumbled, rising. "For what they charge to come

out here, they should be able to afford gold-plated exhaust systems."

He let himself out the gate and came flying backward through it a moment

later. The tall, weathered wood gate slapped against the stone wall with

a resounding crack, and Bryce landed on his ass on the terrace. Everyone

at the table came to attention as one, like a herd of wildebeest ready

to bolt and run.

"Will!" Samantha shouted, vaulting to her feet.

Will came through the open gate, fists doubled before him, and went

straight for Bryce. "You sonofabitch! Leave my wife alone, you goddamn

sonofabitch!"

His words were slurred and he swayed a little on his feet, but he zeroed

in on Bryce, who was scrambling to get up on the wet tile at the pool's

edge. Will took a big roundhouse swing with his left, landing a glancing

blow on Bryce's small knob of a chin. Bryce went down, spitting blood,

and rolled out of range.

"Will, stop it!" Samantha cried, running at him. A part of her was

mortified at his behavior, shocked at his appearance - he had stitches in

his forehead and a black eye. Another part of her was elated that he

cared enough to come here and make a scene. A million things flashed

through her head: he loved her, he'd come to take her home, they would

live happily ever after, Bryce would hate her, her opportunities for

better things would vanish.

His brain down-shifting slowly and awkwardly, Will turned toward his

wife. The young woman he saw was a stranger to him. Her hair hung loose

in a shimmering curtain of black silk. She wore makeup and jewelry. The

faded jeans and T-shirt had been traded for something chic and silk in a

copper shade that enhanced her natural coloring. She looked like a

model, like some snooty bitch from the pages of fucking Vogue. Not his

Sam. Too good for him. Slipping out of his reach. Wanting more than he

could give her. His ex-wife . . . ex-wife . . . ex-wife . . .

"What's the matter, Sam?" he asked, dredging up anger to mask the fear.