Finding Laura (41 page)

“Surely you don’t even imagine that I could have pushed her,” Amelia snapped.

“I doubt you would have had the strength,” Brent agreed, unmoved. “On the other hand, Anne was thin and light, and it wouldn’t have taken much to push her backward, especially if she was off balance at the time.”

“I never left my room,” Amelia said, spacing every word for emphasis.

Alex said, “We all had alibis for Saturday night, Brent.” Sitting between Josie and Kerry on the sofa nearest the door, he appeared relaxed, but his greenish eyes were sharp.

Brent looked at him. “There was plenty of opportunity for any one of you to slip out at various times during the evening, and you know it. You weren’t all together after dinner. And even when several of you were together, there could have been an opportunity to slip outside.”

“None of us did,” Alex said flatly.

“The medical examiner puts the time of death between eight
P.M
. and one
A.M.,”
Brent said. “You said yourself that the group down here broke up around ten and scattered.”

“Well, some of us paired up,” Alex reminded him, glancing at Josie and then looking across the coffee table at the other sofa, where Daniel and Laura sat. Madeline had not yet returned from visiting her friend.

Brent shook his head slightly. “As I’m sure they taught you in law school, when lovers alibi each other, there’s always room for doubt.”

“Maybe,” Alex returned in an even tone. “But in the absence of evidence to the contrary, they are alibis you have to accept.”

“For the moment.” Brent turned his gaze to Kerry and, for the first time, appeared visibly affected by the interview. His face tightened, and when he spoke, his voice was less impersonal than it had been. “Since the ME has widened the window for the time of death, I have to ask you if you saw or spoke to Anne in the gardens on Saturday night when you went out.”

“No.” Kerry looked up at him, her expression serene as usual. Gently she added, “I would have remembered. Anne hated the gardens. I would have been surprised to see her out there.”

Whatever Brent might have replied to that was lost as the front door slammed and Madeline hurried into the room. She didn’t appear as flawless as usual; her sweater was slipping off one shoulder and her hair was a bit mussed. Her pale eyes were bright and clear, and she was
carrying an armful that included a long, fat plastic tube closed off at both ends, two videotapes, a small black notebook, and a large manila envelope.

Dropping everything onto the big, square coffee table in front of Daniel, she said breathlessly, “There. I told you I knew all of Peter’s secrets.”

In the startled silence of the room, Daniel leaned forward and picked up the plastic tube. He unscrewed the cap on one end and reached in with his fingers, drawing out a rolled-up bundle of blueprints.

They might as well have been in an alien language to Laura, so technically complex that no layman would have had a clue, but she heard a little sigh escape Daniel as he looked at them, and she felt his relief when he began rolling them back up to restore them to the protective tube.

From the other sofa, Alex asked quietly, “Is it—?”

Daniel nodded, then looked at Madeline. “Mother, where did you get all this?”

She smiled at him. “Why, from one of Peter’s secret places, of course. I know about all of them.”

Daniel gestured slightly with the tube still in his hand. “Do you know about this? Do you know what this is?”

Nodding, she said matter-of-factly, “Those are the plans Amelia got him to steal for her.”

The silence in the room was complete. Conscious of her own numb shock, Laura glanced from face to face, seeing that her incredulity was shared. Even Brent Landry, who had been very much in command of the room before Madeline’s entrance, stared at her now with a frown and perplexed eyes. But he didn’t say anything. No one said anything, not for a long moment.

Then Amelia stirred and let out a short laugh. “Don’t be absurd, Madeline. Why would I have done such a thing?”

Her daughter-in-law looked at her with a pleasant half
smile, obviously still pleased to be able to prove that she alone had been privy to all her beloved Peter’s secrets. “Why, because you wanted to ruin Daniel, of course.”

Laura thought she heard Landry murmur, “Jesus,” but he was the only one to voice the sick dismay visible on several faces.

Not Amelia’s face, of course. She merely looked at Madeline with scorn. “We’ll have to get your doctor back over here, Madeline. Clearly he needs to monitor your medications more closely. Or commit you.”

Madeline looked around the room at the others, then said defiantly, “I know what I’m saying. And it’s the truth. Peter was supposed to sell the plans to a broker representing one of those countries in the Middle East—I forget which one. Amelia set it all up. She’d done it before, you know, years ago, and still had contacts.”

“Years ago?” Daniel’s voice was wiped of all emotion, like his face.

Eagerly Madeline nodded again. “In the forties, during and just after the war. Because of the money she could make. She was always expensive, you see, and she liked the money. She had access to the company’s military designs, to all the plans. So she sold some things. Until David found out, that’s what Peter thought. Because he must have found out what she was doing; what other reason could she have had to kill David?”

“She’s out of her mind,” Amelia said very quietly. “Can’t you all see that? For God’s sake. Daniel? Can’t you see she’s sick?”

Daniel didn’t even look at her, just kept his gaze fixed on Madeline. “She sold some of this country’s military secrets to the enemies?”

“Yes, she did. David had done so well with the business, and there were lots of government contracts. Since she helped keep the books then, it was easy for her to take things. Well, not take. Copy. Peter said she told him how
she’d done it, and then she gave him her list of contacts. But most of them were dead; you see, she hadn’t had anything to sell them since just after the war and so had lost track of most of them. But one found a broker for her, so she and Peter could sell the plans.”

Daniel drew a short breath. “Why hadn’t Peter sold the plans as they’d intended? Why were they still in … his secret place?”

For the first time, Madeline’s bright satisfaction in herself faltered. “He—he was supposed to meet them that night. The night he was—was killed. He wasn’t sure he was going to the meeting, that’s what he told me that afternoon. He didn’t trust the broker. And the more he thought about it, the less he liked the idea of having everyone think you had done it. But when he—he was killed, I thought it was probably because of that. Because the broker was bad. And I thought the broker must have taken the plans, so I never thought to go to Peter’s secret place and look.”

Laura felt utterly numb and couldn’t even begin to imagine what Daniel must be feeling. His face remained completely impassive, and his tone measured.

“Mother, if you thought you knew who might have killed Peter, why the hell didn’t you say something about it?”

She looked surprised. “Because they were secrets, dear. I couldn’t betray Peter’s secrets, could I? And I was so upset besides, all I really wanted to do was sleep and forget.”

“I told you she was out of her mind.” Amelia’s voice was stronger now, clearer. And self-righteous. “Don’t you see, Daniel? Don’t you understand what Peter was trying to do? With you in jail, control of the company would have passed to him.”

“No, Amelia,” Daniel said slowly. “Legally, you’re still in charge. So Peter would have had to take you on before
he could claim control, and he didn’t know enough about the business to successfully do that.”

Her lips tightened, and those dark, dark eyes flashed. “He hated having to come to you for everything, hated having to beg.
He
wanted to ruin you, Daniel.
He
wanted to see all your pride in the dust, all your arrogance shattered.”

“I think it was you who wanted that.” Daniel’s voice was so low it was almost, but not quite, inaudible. He set the plastic tube on the coffee table and picked up the little black notebook. Slowly, seemingly unconscious of every eye in the room on him, he leafed through the pages. “Names, dates, routes of contact. I doubt Peter would have known weapons brokers born forty years before he was.”

“Don’t be a fool!” Amelia said harshly.

Daniel studied the notebook a minute longer, then looked at Amelia. “Damned by Peter’s own words, Amelia. He wrote it all down. All of it, including your instructions on how to use the keycards and get into the vault. Did you forget he always did that because his memory was so bad? Or did you simply hope it would all be over so quickly that it wouldn’t matter? That I’d come home from my business trip to find myself suspected of treason? Was that it? Or were you just so desperate to destroy me that you were willing to take any chance to do it?”

She stared at him, that aged face stripped bare of its haughty elegance and showing the bare bones of hatred beneath. Her thin mouth writhed in a snarl. “Did you think I’d spend the rest of my life kowtowing to you, Daniel? Watching you run things when it was supposed to be me?”

“You were
running things
into the ground, Amelia.” His voice was flat, his gaze locked with hers. “Was I supposed to stand by and let you bankrupt this family?”

For the first time, their power struggle was out in the open, the raw emotions and potent intelligence of both obvious to those around them. Nobody else said a word, nobody else dared to step in the middle of an old, deadly quiet conflict.

“That wouldn’t have happened,” Amelia snapped.

“Oh, no? It was going to happen, Amelia. One more diamond necklace, one more losing racehorse eating his head off in Kentucky, and this family would never have been able to recover from the loss. I had to step in, to stop you from throwing money away.”

“It was
my
money.” Her voice was fierce. “David left me in charge, left me to make decisions on how things were to be run—”

“Did he? I wonder, Amelia. I did some checking, you see. And David had been scheduled to see Preston Montgomery about his will—the very day he was killed. Interesting coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”

Amelia’s mouth tightened and her eyes flashed, but she remained silent.

“Maybe Peter was right to think David must have found out what you had done. Is that what happened? Did David confront you with it? Maybe outside, near the pool, so the servants wouldn’t hear? Did he tell you that he was going to change his will and the trust, to take everything away from you? Is that when you picked up something heavy and killed him, Amelia?”

“You’re as crazy as Madeline,” Amelia said coldly.

“No. But that old crime doesn’t matter much except to us, does it, Amelia? If there was no evidence against you then, there certainly won’t be now. You got away with it.” Daniel drew a breath, then said, “But I couldn’t let you get away with ruining the family. I had to do whatever was necessary to stop you.”

“Did that have to include humiliating me? Constantly challenging my authority even in this house? Oh, no,
Daniel, I think not. I think you enjoyed it, just the way you’ve enjoyed fabricating this entire—”

“I have proof.” His voice dropped, the words falling like stones. “You know that. And perhaps it’s time the others knew it too. I have proof, plenty of it, that you were criminally irresponsible at best and wantonly destructive at worst. Any judge would have been satisfied, Amelia, with what I had to show. You would have been stripped of all power, all authority, and left with no more than a small allowance and the right to live in this house until you died. Publicly humiliated. But I didn’t do that, did I? I didn’t drag you into court for all the world to see.”

Quite suddenly, in a chilling turnaround, Amelia was calm. Even smiling. And her voice was contemplative when she said, “That was where you made your mistake, Daniel. Your only one, really.”

“Oh? And what was that?” As thoughtful and conversational as she was, Daniel, with the ease of an old habit, slipped back into their polite game.

“You didn’t use your weapon, your evidence, when you should have. It gave me time, you see. And just how long did you think I would go on waiting for you to stop playing your little game and take me to court so you could do it all legally? No longer than I had to, certainly. But I couldn’t just … get rid of you. There was that little matter of the letter you’d left to be opened in case something happened to you, and your evidence against me. So there was only one thing to do. Ruin you.”

Amelia rose to her feet, erect as always, not leaning on her silver-headed cane. “I had hoped that Peter did meet with the broker that night. I assumed he was killed so as to avoid payment.” She might have been talking about the weather for all the emotion she showed. “I also knew that you had discovered the missing plans. But I was certain that, given enough time, the plans would surface—with your fingerprints all over the transaction. All I had to do in
the meantime was to keep you … reasonably distracted, so that the search for the plans wouldn’t have your full attention. So that you wouldn’t realize what I had tried to do, and take me to court before I could see you finished. Luckily, a distraction presented itself.” Her gaze flickered to Laura, and she smiled. “That was easy enough.”

“You failed, Amelia,” Daniel said quietly.

“I didn’t fail. Peter failed.” She let out a soft laugh that was like dry leaves rustling in a cold wind. “Men have always failed me.”

“Beginning with David?”

“No. Beginning with my father. But that’s a long story, and I’m feeling very tired right now.” She smiled. “I’ll tell it to you tomorrow, perhaps.”

“I’ll look forward to it.” Daniel’s voice was still low, still courteous.

And Amelia was still smiling as she went slowly, erectly, from the room.

There was a long, long silence, and then Brent Landry stirred and addressed Daniel for the first time since Madeline’s entrance. “You could press charges.”

Daniel was staring down at the notebook in his hands. “No, I couldn’t. The plans weren’t sold. My reputation will be unharmed. And there’s no evidence to connect her to the theft of the plans. She committed no crime.”