Lost and Found (21 page)

Mack thought about the events at the Vandyke cabin. “Yes, it is. We got lucky, though.”

Sylvia gave Cady a troubled look. “I’ve heard some horrifying stories about people assuming false identities on-line to stalk unsuspecting people. Mack could have been a serial killer, for all you knew.”

“Fortunately, he turned out to be a consultant instead.” Cady took a quick swallow of wine and then licked a tiny drop off her finger.

Sylvia’s expression tightened. Mack realized that he was starting to feel a little sorry for her.

“It wasn’t a chat-room meeting,” he said gently. “It started out as a business connection. I needed an expert in European decorative arts and came across Cady’s web page.”

That was close enough to the truth, he thought. So what if he had done a thorough background check on her before contacting her? No point going into the gritty details.

“I see.”

The uneasiness in Sylvia’s gaze diminished fractionally. But it was clear that she was not yet convinced that he was not a serial killer. Or at the very least, a modern-day fortune hunter.

“Why did you need an art consultant?” Gardner asked with genuine curiosity. “Do you collect?”

“I was interested in a Spanish piece at the time,” Mack said. “For an acquaintance.”

Cady apparently decided that the interrogation had gone far enough. “Any idea why Aunt Vesta started seeing a psychic?”

As a diversion strategy, it worked brilliantly. Sylvia flinched and cast a quick glance around the lightly crowded lounge.

“Not so loud, Cady. As far as we know, no one is aware of the visits. For the sake of Chatelaine’s image, I’d like to keep it that way.”

“We think she only saw him a couple of times,” Gardner offered helpfully.

“But why?” Cady asked again in a lower tone. “I mean, you’ve got to admit that it was completely out of character for her. She scoffed at that kind of stuff.”

“No offense,” Gardner said dryly, “but your aunt was always a little on the weird side. I wouldn’t put it past her to have suddenly developed an interest in the paranormal.”

Sylvia turned back to Cady. “We don’t know what was
going on between Aunt Vesta and Jonathan Arden. She refused to discuss it. We can only assume that some form of dementia or mental illness was setting in. No one outside the family knows about this.” She paused to give Mack a meaningful nod. “Except for your Mr. Easton, of course.”

“It’s okay.” Mack put an olive pit into the tiny dish on the table. “Her Mr. Easton is starting to feel like a real member of the family.”

Sylvia’s hand tightened around her glass. “We would appreciate it if you would refrain from discussing Vesta’s eccentricities outside the family circle.”

“Mack wouldn’t think of mentioning the subject to outsiders,” Cady remarked. “Isn’t that right, Mack?”

“Right,” Mack said.

Suddenly his attention was drawn to two men who were approaching their table. One appeared to be in his early sixties, polished and genial. He paused here and there to greet other polished people scattered about the lounge. Wherever he stopped, there was friendly chatter and good cheer. A natural salesman, Mack thought.

The man with him was much younger; early thirties maybe, athletically built and well dressed in tailored trousers and a linen jacket. He, too, seemed quite at ease, but Mack noticed that his congenial expression did not quite reach his eyes.

Gardner followed Mack’s gaze. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t good old Uncle Randall.”

Something told Mack his luck had run out for the evening. The ex-husband had arrived.

Sylvia turned quickly, smiled warmly at the newcomer and gave him her cheek to kiss. “Hello, Randall. This is a pleasant surprise.”

It was the barely veiled irritation in Gardner’s eyes that interested Mack. Sylvia’s mild-mannered husband had not liked that friendly little peck on the cheek, he thought.

“Cady, honey.” Randall put a hand on Cady’s shoulder in a too-familiar manner and bent down to kiss her. “Good to see you again. I heard you were in Phantom Point.”

Mack felt something inside him clench. Hard. He suddenly understood exactly how Gardner felt. It was clear that Randall Post was one hell of a close friend of the family.

The older man arrived in a small cloud of sophisticated bonhomie. Somewhere along the line he had collected a martini from the bar.

“Evening, everyone. Cady, heard you were in town. Nice to see you.”

“Hello, Stanford,” she said.

Her tone was polite, Mack noticed, but there were no pecks on the cheek between Stanford Felgrove and Cady. It was the same with Sylvia and Stanford. Friendly but not intimate.

“Won’t you join us for a drink?” Sylvia waved a gracious hand at two vacant chairs. “We were just chatting with Cady and her
friend
, Mack Easton. Have you met him?”

“Don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure.” Stanford stuck out a hand. “Stanford Felgrove. I run Austrey-Post.”

Mack got to his feet and went through the handshaking ritual with Stanford. He turned to Randall. As long as he was up, he might as well get this over and done, he decided.

Randall extended a firm hand. “Easton, was it? So you’re Cady’s new friend?”

“Yes. And it will soon be fiancé, not friend. Cady and I are planning to announce our engagement in the near future.”

Cady stiffened.

“Heard about the upcoming engagement.” Randall’s grin was ice cold. “Congratulations. You’re getting yourself a terrific wife.”

“Randall ought to know.” Stanford chuckled and tossed back a lot of the martini. “He was married to her himself for a while. I’m sure you’ve heard all about that nine-day wonder, eh, Easton?”

Cady tensed. They all looked uncomfortable.

Mack took note of the cooling temperature in the vicinity, but it didn’t affect him. He was too busy dealing with the white-hot wave of possessiveness that was crashing through him. It had been so long since he had experienced this sense of primitive male territoriality that it took him a few seconds to recognize and catalog it. He wondered if Cady would fire him on the spot if he succumbed to the almost overpowering urge to smash his fist into Stanford Felgrove’s face.

“I heard about her marriage,” he said. He looked at Randall. “Everyone makes mistakes.”

A
long time later Cady came to a halt and leaned on the steel railing that guarded the waterfront path. She looked out over the moonlit surface of the bay to where the lights of the city glittered in the night. She was exhausted and keyed up at the same time. It had not been a comfortable evening.

She turned toward Mack. “All right, go ahead and say it.”

He came to a halt beside her and leaned back against the railing, looking at the homes that marched up the hillside. “Okay, I’ll say it. You and Randall Post seem pretty friendly for a couple that was divorced three years go.”

“It was a friendly divorce.”

He nodded. “I’ve heard about those. Never actually seen one, though.”

“Well, now you have.”

“Why’d you two get married in the first place?”

“You don’t think he’s my type?”

“No.”

“You think you know what my type is?”

“I’m not going there.” He sounded slightly amused. “I just know that Randall Post wasn’t for you.”

“How do you know that?”

“Male intuition.”

“So, there is such a thing?”

“Sure. Real men don’t talk about it much, that’s all.”

“I can see where it might be a little awkward to discuss in mixed company.”

“Sort of like telling off-color jokes.” He contemplated the hillside lights for a moment. “So, why’d you marry him?”

“For a long time I assumed the experience of falling in love would be a lot like looking at a really fine work of art. I’d know the real thing when I saw it.”

“Sometimes it is like that.”

“Maybe. But I have a hunch that most cases of falling in love at first sight are actually cases of falling in
lust
. Sometimes you get lucky and the relationship works on other levels. But you can’t count on that happening. The thing is, if you’re one of the lucky ones, you don’t go back and question your good fortune. You just assume your intuition was right on target.”

“And if you’re one of the unlucky ones?”

“You obsess on what went wrong and you ask yourself how you could have been so dumb.”

“I take it you obsessed for a while?”

“Sure. I’m good at that.” She hesitated. “What was it like for you when you decided to get married?”

“I was one of the lucky ones. Love at first sight. Rachel and I met during our sophomore year at college. I took one look at her and never looked twice at anyone else. We got pregnant in our junior year. Ran off to Vegas to get married. Everyone in both families had a fit. Dewey and Notch were the only ones who sent gifts.”

“Your families were probably afraid that you wouldn’t finish college.”

“Marriage did delay things for us. I joined the army and we went into debt and in the end we managed to work things out. When Gabriella came along the following year, all was forgiven.”

“How did you lose your wife?”

“Drunk driver.”

“Dear heaven.”

“Yeah. You feel so much rage for a time and there’s nowhere to go with it. You want to talk obsession? I can tell you all about obsession.”

She shivered. “I can imagine.”

“Knowing I had to be there for Gabriella kept me hanging on by my fingernails. Sometimes it was the only thing that kept me hanging on. I managed to stay just this side of sane for the most part, but there were days when I wasn’t sure I would make it.”

“You were fortunate to have your daughter.”

“I can’t even think about what it would have been like if I hadn’t had her. We just kept moving forward through the nightmare together because we didn’t have any choice. And then one day we looked around and realized that we had gotten past the worst of it. The light at the end of the tunnel wasn’t an oncoming train after all.”

“I am so sorry for both of you.”

“It’s been six years. Gabriella and I are okay. You don’t forget nightmares, but when they’ve been exposed to enough sunlight, they fade.”

She leaned on her forearms and loosely linked her fingers. “I’ve always heard that men who were happily married generally remarry after the loss of their wives. But you didn’t.”

“No.”

“Because you never again fell in love again at first
sight?” She turned her head to look at him. “Because you never found another woman as wonderful as Rachel?”

“I’ll let you in on a little secret, Cady. You don’t fall in love at first sight unless you’re actively looking.”

“And you haven’t been looking?”

“Rachel was taken from us just as Gabriella was heading into the teenage years. She got very anxious when I started seeing women socially again. Her therapist told me that the idea of having to cope with a stepmother disturbed her deeply.”

“Not surprising.”

“We probably could have worked things out if the right woman had come along. But as I said, I wasn’t really looking. I had my hands full raising Gabriella and getting Lost and Found up and running. I didn’t have time to work on a marriage too.”

“I can understand that.”

Silence fell. Cady listened to the slap of the dark water below the path. She did not look down at it.

“You haven’t answered my question,” Mack said after a while.

“Why did I marry Randall?” She drew a breath. “Well, let’s see. I was twenty-nine years old and it had become very clear that I had been, in my mother’s words, much too picky when it came to men.”

“Picky, huh?”

“I told myself it was time to stop looking for a fantasy and get real. I decided to go for friendship and shared interests.” She paused. “Everyone knows friendship and shared interests make a really solid foundation for marriage.”

“I’ve heard that.” He folded his arms. “So you married a friend who shared your interests, is that it?”

“The pressure was on. I could hear my biological clock ticking.”

“You wanted a family.”

“Is that so wrong?”

“Hell no. Sounds perfectly normal to me.” He looked at her. “Go on.”

“It wasn’t like Randall and I didn’t have lot of strong connections. We’ve known each other all of our lives. He took me to the senior prom when my date dumped me for a cheerleader at the last minute. He gave me my first kiss.”

“First kiss. That’s a big deal, all right.”

“Well, it was actually more of an experiment. Neither of us had ever been kissed and we decided to find out what the big deal was. We were both seriously disappointed. Which, in hindsight, should have been a clue.”

“Yeah.”

“It was Randall who raised the subject of marriage. He had just ended a relationship with another woman. She married someone else. Someone much older and wealthier. Randall and I started spending time together. Somehow the idea of marrying him just seemed very sensible. Everyone, especially Aunt Vesta, thought it was a terrific idea.”

“When did you and Randall decide you’d made a mistake?”

“On our wedding night.” She paused. “When Randall started sobbing at about the time I figured he should have been inflamed with passion.”

Mack winced. “He actually cried? Are we talking real tears?”

“Yes. We spent the night sitting side by side on the edge of the bed, discussing the fact that he was deeply in love with another woman.”

“Who?”

“The woman he had been seeing before our marriage. Her name is Brooke Langworth now. She married George Langworth immediately after she broke up with Randall. They have a home here in Phantom Point.”

“Tough way to spend your wedding night.”

“Yes, but at least I finally understood why Randall had been such a gentleman during our engagement. I thought he had been holding back because he found it awkward to make the transition from friend to lover. And that was true, but not for the reasons I had assumed.”

Mack turned his head to look at her. “Do I take it that you two never, uh—”

“Consummated our marriage? Nope. We reverted to being friends. It was a lot more comfortable for both of us. We spent our honeymoon discussing how we were going to fix the mistake we had made. Unfortunately, we couldn’t stay in Hawaii forever. When we got home I filed for divorce.”