Hidden Talents (19 page)

“Calm down, Franklin.”

“The man threatened to send these pictures to the
Ventress Valley News
. Just like last time. So I paid him. I had to do it for the sake of the family.”

“Calm down, Franklin.”

“The family will be humiliated if this gets out. It's all your fault, damn you. In spite of everything Roland did for you, you've shamed him the same way your father did. You've followed in Gordon's footsteps. You've been seduced by a cheap tramp, and now we're all going to pay the price.”

S
ERENITY SURVEYED HER FEATURES IN THE STEAM
-clouded mirror as she twisted her hair up into a knot on top of her head. She didn't look any different, she thought, astonished and amused. She anchored the curling mass of her hair with a large clip. Several tendrils escaped, but she paid no attention. She leaned over the sink and took a closer look at herself.

Nothing. Nada. Zip. Same old Serenity.

But she knew that she was not the same old Serenity. A glorious satisfaction bubbled up inside her. She had not been wrong about Caleb, after all. No man could have made love the way Caleb had made love last night unless he cared deeply.

She'd seen the truth in his eyes when she opened her door and found him on her front steps. At least she thought she had seen the truth. She had certainly seen something significant in his expression. He had the look of a man who'd had a revelation. The savage need in him had been coupled with another raw emotion so fierce and strong that it could only have been love.

That was why she'd taken the risk of letting him see the photographs. This morning she woke up with the certainty that now Caleb would understand. Now he could look at the pictures with an unbiased eye.

Serenity grinned as she turned away from the mirror. She felt as if she could fly or run a marathon or dance on top of one of the vision pools. No stunning feat seemed beyond her reach today.

She tugged on her robe, slid her feet into slippers, and opened the bathroom door. The sound of Caleb's voice coming from the living room startled her.

“I said I'll take care of it, Franklin.”

It was the old Caleb speaking, the one Serenity had met in his Seattle office. Expressionless, detached, all emotion other than an icy, remote calm carefully hidden beneath a layer of steel.

“Don't do anything. Is that clear? Just sit tight. I'll handle this.”

A cold wind blew away the warm mists of Serenity's euphoria. She listened as Caleb hung up the phone with far too much care. Her heart sank at the realization that something was terribly wrong. She thought of the photos she had left on the quilt and wondered if she had made a mistake.

Taking a deep breath, she tightened the sash of her robe and made herself go slowly down the hall. She walked into the living room and saw Caleb standing barefoot beside the phone. He had on only his trousers. His face was an emotionless mask.

“Caleb?”

“We've got a problem.”

“What kind of problem?”

“I think it's safe to say that Ambrose Asterley was not the one who tried to blackmail you.”

Whatever she'd been expecting to hear, that wasn't it. Serenity didn't know whether to be relieved or alarmed. “What are you talking about?”

“Yesterday afternoon, after we left Ventress Valley, Franklin got a call telling him there was a certain set of photos for sale. The caller wanted five thousand dollars for them.”

Serenity's stomach plummeted down a very deep mine shaft. “I don't understand.”

“No? It's pretty damn obvious to me. Someone you know has those negatives and has decided to use them. Not to get you to stop doing business with me this time, but to extort money out of my family.”

“Oh, God.” Serenity lowered herself slowly into the overstuffed armchair. She wrapped her arms around her midsection and hugged herself tightly “I'm sorry. I'm so very sorry.”

“Damn it, Serenity, what the hell is going on?” Caleb's voice was dangerously soft.

“I don't know. I wish I did.” She looked up in desperate appeal. This was probably not the moment to ask him what he had really thought about those photos, but she couldn't stop herself. She had to know that she'd been right to risk showing them to him this morning. “You've seen those pictures. You don't think they're so very terrible, do you?”

“That's got nothing to do with this. Don't you understand? It doesn't matter what I think.” He shoved his fingers through his hair and scowled. His mind was clearly on the latest disaster, not on reassuring her. “What matters is that someone contacted a member of my family knowing full well what would happen. Someone other than Asterley. It couldn't have been him this time because he's dead.”

“I don't know what's going on,” Serenity whispered. “I can only assume that someone here in Witt's End is violently opposed to my mail order project. Whoever it is must believe that if he can get you to quit as my consultant, my plans will be squelched.”

“I think there's more to it than that,” Caleb said slowly. “I think there has been all along. But I've been too involved with other things to take a good hard look at the situation.”

“What are you saying?”

“Think about it, Serenity. The plain fact is those photos of you have very limited potential as a reason for blackmail.”

“I couldn't agree more,” she muttered. “I kept telling you they were artistic pictures, not dirty pictures.”

“Yeah, well, I think it's safe to say that there are probably any number of families that would just as soon not have one of their own marry someone who had posed for nude photos of any kind.”

“I suppose you're right. There are a lot of people out there who don't appreciate fine art.”

He ignored that. “I've got a strong hunch, however, that there are relatively few families that would, to use your phrase, go completely bonkers over those photos the way the Ventress family is guaranteed to do.” He paused. “The way my uncle is doing now.”

Serenity frowned. “I think I'm beginning to see where you're going with this.”

“Whoever has those negatives knows a great deal about me and my family's past. And we now have to deal with the fact that the creep pulling this stunt is not Ambrose Asterley. So much for the theory that he got my name out of the newspapers.”

“Perhaps someone found those negatives after Ambrose's death, just as we originally feared.” Serenity shivered. “Or maybe the real reason the folder in Ambrose's files was empty except for a few prints is that someone else got there before I did.”

“It's also possible that someone else got to them a long time before you went looking for them. Perhaps even before Ambrose died. Someone who knew about my family's past history with blackmail.”

“Any way you look at it, it almost had to be someone here in Witt's End,” Serenity whispered. “But I don't see how anyone here could know all of those things about your family, let alone actually do something like this. Ambrose was the only possibility.”

“And he's dead.” Caleb started to prowl the room. “Let's take this from the top. Fact number one: Everyone here in Witt's End knew you had posed for Asterley, right?”

“Yes, I suppose so. No one cared, but I suppose they all knew. It was no secret.”

“Fact number two: Nothing happened until after you had met with me several times and had announced that you were going to sign a contract with me.”

“Good point,” Serenity said. “And don't forget that the first blackmail attempt didn't include a demand for money. The first demand was that I cancel my business arrangements with you.”

“And now we have a second demand. This time for cash. So maybe we've got two different blackmailers. The first one could have been Asterley, just as we concluded the first time we went through this exercise. In which case it looks as if his only goal was to put a halt to your plans.”

“And a second blackmailer who knew what Ambrose was doing and who decided, after Ambrose died, that the photos could be used for more profitable purposes.” Serenity winced. “Such as extorting money from your family.”

Caleb crossed the room to the wood stove, opened the door and began to stoke the embers inside. “Two blackmailers. Both of whom knew about your photos, about your business contract with me, and about my past. One blackmailer apparently wanted only to stop the business arrangements. But the second wanted something more. Money.”

“I suppose Ambrose could have told someone else about what he was doing.” Serenity chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip. “But the only person he ever really confided in was Jessie. And I
know
Jessie would never try to blackmail anyone.”

“Do you know that?” Caleb looked skeptical. “For certain?”

Serenity clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “Of course I do. I've known Jessie all of my life. She's family.”

“Serenity, we don't know anything for sure about this mess.” Caleb closed the iron door of the stove. “Including how Asterley died.”

“
What
?” Serenity was stunned. “But that's not true. Ambrose got drunk, tripped and fell down his basement stairs.”

“Did he?”

“Caleb, what are you saying? That someone might have pushed him?” Serenity was aghast. “But who would have done such a thing?”

“The second blackmailer. The one who wanted to use the photos for more lucrative purposes.”

“Oh, no.” Serenity shook her head wildly. “No, no, no. Murder? Here in Witt's End? Impossible. You've been spending too much time with Blade. This is starting to sound like one of his conspiracy theories.”

“Some people might say Blade was a likely suspect as both blackmailer and murderer.”

Serenity flinched. “Absolutely not. I refuse to believe it. Besides, he couldn't have known about your family's past.”

“Asterley might have told him. Damn it, Serenity, you're too close to this situation to think logically. You're too emotionally involved.”

“And you're not emotionally involved?” she asked, incredulous.

“No. At least not the way you are. I'm in control. I can view this situation much more objectively than you can.”

Serenity leaped to her feet. “How can you say that after what happened between us last night?”

He glanced at her, surprised. “That has nothing to do with this.”

“Nothing to do with it? It has everything to do with it. I can't believe I'm hearing this.” She pointed toward the bedroom. “I was not alone in there last night.”

“I'm aware of that.”

“And it's your family that's being blackmailed.” Serenity folded her arms beneath her breasts and regarded him with grim triumph. “Don't try to tell me you're not emotionally involved right up to your eyebrows.”

“Damn it, I'm trying to take an intelligent, logical, pragmatic approach to this problem.”

“So take it. But don't try to tell me you're not emotionally involved. And don't try to tell me that one of my friends is a murderer or a blackmailer. Because I refuse to believe it.”

Caleb's mouth twisted derisively. “Have you ever met a blackmailer?”

“Well, no,” Serenity admitted, annoyed by his condescending tone. “But somehow I think I'd know one if I saw one.”

“Yeah? What would he look like?”

“Well, for starters, he'd be a weasely looking character with shifty eyes and very low self-esteem.”

“This isn't a joke,” Caleb said through set teeth. “Someone is deliberately trying to rake up my past, and that person is using you to do it. He or she may have killed Asterley in order to do it. I want to know what's going on here in quaint, picturesque Witt's End.”

Serenity sighed. “I know you want answers. I want them, too.”

“We're going to get them.”

“How?”

“I think the first step is to take another look through Asterley's files,” Caleb said. “Jessie hasn't moved them out of the cabin yet, has she?”

“No. She told me yesterday that she got the photo equipment out, but not the file cabinets. She doesn't have a place to store them. But what would we be looking for in those old files?”

“I'm not sure.” The sound of a car in the drive made Caleb glance toward the window. “Who the hell is that at this hour of the morning?”

“I have no idea.” Serenity turned and started for the door.

“Hold it.” Caleb glowered at her. “What do you think you're doing? You're in your bathrobe.”

Serenity glanced down at her attire. “For heaven's sake, I'm perfectly decent.”

“No, you're not.” His gaze raked her from the top of her tousled head to the toes of her slippered feet. For an instant the icy control vanished from his eyes. In its place was a searing glimpse of remembered passion. “You look like you just got out of bed.”

Serenity burned beneath his gaze. She was suddenly breathless. “Not emotionally involved, huh?”

“Go get dressed,” he growled. “I'll see who's at the door.”

Serenity threw her hands up in the air. “Okay, okay. I'll go get dressed. Are you always like this in the mornings?”

“Only on days when I wake up to discover that someone's trying to blackmail a member of my family and that the lady I'm sleeping with has a habit of answering her front door dressed in her bathrobe.”

“You know what your problem is, Caleb?”

“Yeah. I'm old-fashioned, straitlaced, boring, and conventional.”

“Wrong on one count,” Serenity said. “You're not boring. You're never boring.” She hurried down the hall to the bedroom before he could respond.

Outside in the drive a car door slammed. The visitor knocked on the front door of the cottage just as Serenity pulled on a close-fitting purple turtleneck and a pair of green leggings. Caleb's low-voiced greeting held a note of challenge.

“Can I help you?” The words were civil but his tone did not convey any great desire to be of assistance.

“Who the hell are you?” Lloyd Radburn asked, sounding startled.

Just what she needed this morning, Serenity thought as she hastily fastened a tie-dyed, jagged-hemmed skirt around her waist.

“Lloyd?” Serenity yelled down the hall. “Is that you?”

“Sure is, Serenity love,” Lloyd called back. “Just thought I'd drop by and see how things were going. Wanted to go over a few of the details of my project with you.”

Serenity groaned silently as she walked back down the hall to the living room. She took one look at Caleb's face and knew that things were going to be a bit dicey for the next few minutes. She turned to confront her uninvited guest.

“Hello, Lloyd. This is a surprise. I wasn't expecting you.”

“Hey, hey, hey. Great to see you again, Serenity love.” Lloyd smiled his engaging grin.

Serenity smiled back, albeit ruefully. Lloyd could be irritating, but it was difficult to get genuinely angry at him for long. He was self-absorbed and no doubt ambitious, but he wasn't cruel or malicious.