No Way to Kill a Lady (24 page)

“I know. I'm sorry.” It broke my heart to say so.

“I was as honest as I could be with her without risking an indictment. She doesn't see the whole picture yet, but she will. If I had a couple more years to clean things up, I might come across looking okay. But right now? Just out of jail? With all the family stuff going down, I make your average terrorist look like a clown at a birthday party.”

“That's not true,” I said gently. “You're exaggerating.”

He turned the water on in the sink and set about washing grease off his hands. But I knew he was mostly right. If Carrie's promotion depended on her having an upstanding citizen at the top of her family tree, she was headed for disappointment. The kind of disappointment that would jeopardize any future between father and daughter.

Michael reached for a towel. “Most people start with a puppy, you know? Work up to the parent thing gradually. Me, I'm barely housebroken myself.”

He tossed the towel onto the counter, and I eased myself into his arms. I stroked a ragged tuft of his hair off his forehead. “Did you eat any dinner? I could make you some peanut butter toast.”

He shook his head. “Not hungry.”

“Or I could pour you a beer?”

“I had a beer. It didn't help.”

“Well, then,” I murmured, “how about if we go upstairs—­all by ourselves for once—­and you can help me off with my dress?”

His smile flickered at last. “What about the new underwear you promised me?”

At that moment, I almost told him about what Simon Groatley had done.

But I knew how Michael would react. At best, he'd go into a rage. At worst, he'd order a hit on Groatley's life.

Neither option appealed to me just then. All I wanted was to feel cherished and valued and desired.

So I said, “I think we can skip the underwear and go straight to something else.”

I coaxed him with a soft kiss, then a few more.

A minute later Michael chased me up the staircase.

It was after midnight when we heard a noise downstairs.

I lifted my head from Michael's shoulder where I'd been comfortably listening to him talk in circles about Carrie. A world away from a ballroom filled with people whose minds I understood but whose hearts were a mystery to me, here I had listened and heard the truth in the heart of a man both gentle and lawlessly passionate. I felt my love for him as an ache inside myself. More important was knowing I was the one to whom he could say the things he would never speak to anyone else.

But at the rattle and clunk from downstairs, I stilled him with my hand on his chest.

“Did you hear that?”

He lay quiet, listening. “Yeah. You think Emma's come back?”

“If she really went to a hotel with Hart, she won't be back for days.”

“Then who—­?”

Again, something bumped far away in the great house, and we both sat up in the dark. I clutched the bedclothes around me.

Michael rolled easily out of his side of the bed and made a grab for his jeans. “Oh, boy,” he said. “I hope it's some idiot breaking in. I've been looking for a way to burn off some frustration since I got out.”

“I thought that's what we just did.”

He leaned across the bed and kissed me hard. “Sweetheart, sometimes a man just needs to pop somebody in the teeth.”

I scrambled out of the bed. “Let me find my bathrobe. I'll call 911. I don't want you to risk—­Michael?”

He was already out on the landing and heading downstairs—­a hungry animal hunting prey. I might try to tame the beast, I thought fleetingly, but there was something in Michael that nobody was ever going to control.

Hurtling barefoot down the stairs after him, I called his name again. But by the time I made it down to the first floor, I heard a tremendous crash and somebody yelped like a kicked puppy.

I skidded into the dining room and flicked the light on in time to see Michael jamming someone up against the door to the butler's pantry. It was a man, dressed entirely in black, but limp as a rag doll. His head snapped back and bounced hard off the door.

The man in black wore a ski mask over his face. Gasping for air, he squirmed against Michael's grip. One of the dining chairs lay in splinters on the rug.

Michael kicked a heavy object, and it skittered across the floor in my direction. A gun. I recoiled as if it might go off at my feet.

Then Michael ripped the mask off, and the threatening man turned into my cousin.

“Sutherland!” I cried. “Michael, stop! Don't hurt him!”

“Help,” Sutherland squeaked at me, his eyes bugging out.

Cursing, Michael didn't release him. Not until I tugged on his arm.

My cousin slithered to the floor, his legs turned to jelly. He sprawled on the carpet. For an instant, I thought he had fainted.

I knelt down and tapped his cheek with my fingertips. “Sutherland, darling? Are you okay?”

Above me, Michael said, “He just broke into your house with a gun, and now he's
darling
?”

“He's harmless,” I said. “He's my cousin, the one I told you about.”

Sutherland's eyes flickered to life, and he blinked at me, then up at Michael. Scrambling on his back like a turtle, he tried to make an escape, but ended up huddled against the wall. Hoarsely, he said, “What happened to the skinny kid?”

“What skinny kid?”

“The one who was here this afternoon. I thought he was your boyfriend.” He glanced past me up at Michael again and gave an involuntary flinch of terror. “Who's
he ?”

“The kid was a friend of Emma's,” I explained. “This is Michael Abruzzo. Michael, this is Sutherland Blackbird.”

“If it's all the same, I'll skip shaking his hand.” Michael loomed over us. “What the hell are you doing here in the middle of the night, moron? With a gun?”

Sutherland cleared his throat. “Would you believe me if I said I was merely dropping by to—­to—­”

“To steal the silver?” I asked tartly. I sat back on my heels.

Sutherland looked embarrassed and tried mightily to hide it. “May I get off the floor? It's a little uncomfortable.”

Michael growled, “I can show you uncomfortable, pal. Give me thirty seconds, Nora.”

“Don't be silly. Help me get him up.”

With a grunt of displeasure, Michael hauled Sutherland to his feet. My cousin tottered over to a chair and sat down heavily, gently massaging his neck where Michael had pinned him like a bug to the door.

I tightened the belt on my bathrobe and stood before him. “You have some explaining to do, mister.”

“I—­I—­”

“If you want the truth out of him,” Michael said, “there's a thing I can do to his knuckles, no problem. There's a hammer in the kitchen.”

Sutherland took him seriously, and said hastily, “I came to pick up something that's rightfully mine.”

“Yours?”

“Yes, my stepmother's address book.”

“Her—­? You mean the black leather book Madeleine kept in her office?”

“It's mine to begin with—­or, it will be after we settle the estate. I came back to retrieve it. What the book was doing here, I have no idea.” He attempted to muster some indignation. “I suppose you took it from Quintain yourself, Nora.”

“No matter how it got here,” I said, “it's gone now. We thought you stole it.”

“Stole it! It's really gone?” He blinked up at me, confused. “You're not kidding.”

“No, I'm not. We thought you took her book while we were busy with the ponies.”

“Who did take it? If not me?” Sutherland frowned. “Libby?”

“Of course not!”

From behind me, Michael said, “I can make this go a whole lot faster.”

“Why don't you make us some coffee?” I suggested.

“Yes, I could use a drink.” Sutherland continued to massage his throat. “Not coffee, though. It keeps me awake. Whiskey and soda? No ice.”

Michael scooped up the gun from the floor and checked the clip. He emptied the bullets into the palm of his hand. “While I tend the bar, I'll think about which landfill we can use.”

He slid the bullets into his pocket and went off in the direction of the kitchen.

When we were alone together, Sutherland began trembling so hard he had to trap both hands between his knees. “Good Lord, Nora. What are you doing with that—­that person in your house? Is he some kind of night watchman?”

“The night watchman is going to beat you senseless,” I said, “unless you start talking. Why on earth did you think you had to break into my house? You couldn't just knock? Ask in a civilized way?”

He peered more closely at the picture I made in my vintage satin robe—­a Victorian-­style masterpiece of lace and light boning that made me look like the BBC's idea of a woman of ill repute. In my haste to get downstairs, I hadn't quite managed to tie the belt properly, and he gave my bare leg a long glance before adding up the astonishing facts. “Good heavens, you're not sleeping with that thug, are you?”

“Sutherland,” I said, barely containing my wrath, “in a minute I'm going to clobber you myself! You brought a gun into my house! What were you thinking?”

“Okay, okay. I came for Madeleine's book. Groatley thinks it's vitally important, but he couldn't find it. He believes you took it the morning we were all at Quintain.”

“What does Simon Groatley know about the book? Why does he want it?”

“He's covering his ass, Nora. He thinks the book contains all of Madeleine's financial records. He knows you're going to sue him for the way he neglected Madeleine's estate.”

“
I'm
the one who's going to sue him? What about you? I thought you wanted Quintain for yourself.”

“I do,” he insisted. “But—­well, it seems simpler if—­if—­”

I remembered my conversation with the lawyer as we danced around the ballroom. “You cut a deal with Simon Groatley, didn't you?”

My cousin had enough conscience to blush.

I said, “In exchange for you getting Quintain instead of my sisters and me?”

“Groatley's right, Nora. If we all agree right away, there won't be a drawn-­out settlement of Madeleine's estate.” He implored, “We'll all get our money much sooner if we just cooperate and—­”

“We?” I said. “You're including me, after all? Or did you come here to gather evidence against me? Admit it, Sutherland. You teamed up with Groatley so you could shut out the rest of us.”

“That's not entirely— I mean— See here, there's no need to talk to me like a common criminal!”

“No? Because I think that's exactly what you are.”

“But—­”

“And I took a look at the marina manager's paperwork when I went to visit you on your yacht. Except the yacht isn't yours at all, is it, Sutherland? It's registered in somebody else's name.”

“I—­I—­”

“You lied, Cuz. First you tried to make me believe you're a hotshot yacht racer, but you're actually just a hitchhiker, aren't you? Hitching a ride on a boat owned by somebody who probably has no clue you're aboard. But more important—­”

“They do, too,” he shot back defensively. “Oh, hell, if you must know the truth, I'm a broker. A yacht broker, and I brought the boat here for the new owner. Except they're spending an extra week hiking mountains in some godforsaken Third World country, so they're not ready to accept delivery. I might as well skip paying for a hotel room, right? So I'm staying on the yacht.”

“You're a used-­boat dealer! No wonder you're looking to inherit Madeleine's money. You're probably as broke as I am. I can't believe how low you've sunk.” To stop myself from clanging him over the head with the nearest silver teapot, I sat down on the opposite side of the dining room table. “It was you who sent all the postcards from Madeleine, wasn't it? Don't lie this time. It had to be you. There's nobody else who traveled that part of the world.”

“All right,” he said. “Yes, it was me.”

“Why?” I cried.

“Because—­well, Madeleine was dead, wasn't she? And, okay, I went back to Quintain once or twice. When I needed extra cash.”

“You stole more things from the house?”

“Once or twice, that's all,” he assured me. “She was already dead, right? What was the harm in letting everyone keep thinking she was having a wonderful time?”

“You wanted us to stay away from the house,” I guessed, “so you could help yourself whenever your piggy bank ran low. I can't believe you're such a snake.”

Sutherland gave a pretty good impression of looking repentant. But his voice turned sulky. “It wasn't just me. The last time I went to Quintain, somebody else had cleaned the place out.”

“Who?”

“I don't know.”

“So you figured the party was over, and you might as well declare Madeleine dead and start collecting whatever you could get from the sale of the property. You took advantage of the volcano, didn't you? You figured that was the perfect way to end Madeleine's life.” Fed up, I snapped, “Honestly, Sutherland, I'm calling the police this minute.”

He seized my hand to keep me from leaping to my feet. “Please don't. It will be too embarrassing. For all of us, Nora.”

I glared at him. “Did you kill her?”

“Kill Madeleine?” He shuddered with revulsion. “Of course not! What an appalling idea.”

“All the evidence points to you.” I wrenched my hand from his grasp and stood up. “You're due more than a little embarrassment, I think.”

Michael returned with a glass of water and set it on the table in front of Sutherland. With his other hand, Michael handed me the phone. “Call 911. The cops will love this.”

“No!” Sutherland cried. And this time he truly looked pathetic. His thinning hair, his wrinkled neck, his fake wristwatch. He was an aging gigolo, all right. Too old to get by on his charm anymore. He was desperate to find a way to finance his lifestyle. From the way he had surveyed the decay of Blackbird Farm, I knew he feared he'd end up equally impoverished.