Sailing to Capri (36 page)

“So, my little lass, this is
your
second chance at life. These will not be the final words you hear from me. Remember, there’s another letter still waiting to be read when you return to Sneadley.

“Think of me then, Daisy, because you can bet I’ll be thinking of you. And I’ll be blessing the day I found you at that awful party, trying to pretend you were a gossip columnist, with that half-starved look in
your eyes. Always remember I was the man who saved you from those awful canapé’s. It’s not a bad memory to go out on. Know I love you. Always.”

Everyone was looking at me, waiting for what I was going to say after suddenly inheriting billions. I met Montana’s eyes. He smiled and said softly, so only I could hear, “It’s what Bob wanted. Don’t worry about a thing.”

He understood I was already feeling the weight of Bob’s inheritance, but more than that, I was missing him. I didn’t want the money, I just wanted Bob back.

I got to my feet and looked around at the faces, reading their different reactions: astonishment, anger, delight, envy. But even blindfolded I could have guessed which emotion belonged to which person.

“I loved Bob,” I said. “And some of you here loved him as well. I was near the bottom, emotionally and financially, when I met him. He picked me up off the floor and gave me a job. Now he’s given me a second chance, he’s given me a home, Sneadley Hall, and this lovely villa. I’ll do my best to keep them exactly the way he would have wanted. And I’ll love and cherish Rats for him, just the way he would have himself.”

I sat down abruptly, near to tears and a thin spatter of applause rippled around the room.

But all was not over yet. Now it was Montana’s turn.

Montana stood behind the graceful ebony desk where Vassily Belkiss had penned his memoirs, spilling secrets the way the suspects had spilled theirs. He looked very cool and very much in command of the situation. The doors were closed and the two guards stood, arms folded, ever alert, watching, listening. The room crackled with tension and outside the black clouds pressed so close they almost rested on the house. A sudden spatter of raindrops, large as silver dollars, bounced off the terrace and a zigzag of lightning cleaved the sky, burying itself in the blackness of the sea. Daisy counted off the seconds … one, two, three, four, five … then the peal of thunder shook the house as though the God of Thunder was using his magical hammer to beat the sky.

Montana said, “And now I want to tell you exactly how Bob Hardwick died.” There was another shocked murmur and the suspects sat up straight, watching him.

“Bob was on his way to a mountain resort for a conference. It had been arranged some months before and he was driving there alone because Daisy had the flu. Of course he couldn’t know that an explosive device had been affixed to the car’s engine and that a cell phone, set on ‘tremble’ so it couldn’t be inadvertently activated by someone dialing Bob’s own number, was planted under the driver’s seat. The killer didn’t even have to be on the scene. All he had to do was dial a certain number and the vehicle would explode.”

The silence was almost tangible. Magdalena took her mother’s hand again and held it tightly. Diane leaned back in her chair, eyes closed, her face pale. Filomena put a shocked hand over her mouth and tears rolled down her cheeks and dripped off her chin. Dopplemann stared blankly ahead like a man looking into space. Davis, arms folded tight across his chest, eyes half-shut, looked at the floor, and Reg and Ginny glanced worriedly at each other.

Montana said, “Of course, the question is not just
how
Bob died, but
why.
Bob came to me a few days before his death and told me he was worried about crank e-mail messages he was receiving. To me they sounded like the beginning of a blackmail plot, but as far as I knew Bob had led an exemplary life and there was nothing to blackmail him for. Of course no man is perfect and I could have been wrong, but I had a gut feeling about this. There was more to it than met the eye.

“At the same time, Bob gave me a list of the six people he reckoned had grievances against him, bad enough, he said, for any one of them to want to kill him.

“And all it took to kill Bob was one phone call.” He turned and looked at Rosalia. “That call was made from Andalusia.”

The color drained from Rosalia’s face and she suddenly looked years older and a lifetime sadder. After a moment, she got slowly to her feet.

Her voice had lost all its soft charm, all its life, as she said, “I killed Bob Hardwick.” She turned to look at Hector. “And the man I called my friend asked me to do it. Hector was in New York that day; he asked me to call him at a certain time, at a certain number. I made that call. He had me kill the man I loved, the father of my child—”

Hector was already on his feet. “She’s lying,” he shouted over the crackling thunder. “I happened to be in New York on business. Rosalia’s always had it in for Hardwick, she told me so herself, told me how she hated him because he’d deserted her, left her pregnant and with no money. She said she would get even with him one day. She killed him and now she’s using me to try to escape the consequences.”

“You
sent those e-mails, Hector,” Montana said coldly.
“You
found out where Bob parked his car. It was a matter of seconds to affix the device and plant the phone.
You
called Rosalia, told her the time, gave her the number …”

Hector made a run for the door but the guards moved to block him. He spun around and headed for the French doors with the guards after him. Everyone was on their feet, and as he ran past Daisy grabbed his jacket. Snagged, he swung around, got her neck in a headlock and held her in front of him. Choking, unable to move, she stood in his stranglehold.

Everyone stopped in their tracks. Bordelaise screamed Daisy’s name and the other women stared, hands to their mouths, terrified. The men moved in front of them. Reg’s face was mottled with fury as he crouched ready to tackle, but Montana held him back.

“Let her go.” His voice fell icily into the new silence.

But Hector edged backward toward the closed French doors. Suddenly, with a great whoosh of wind, they burst open and the storm was in the room. The wind swirled with a banshee wail, lightning zigzagged outside, thunder roared, the windows shook, and the women screamed. Dragging Daisy in front of him, Hector edged out onto the terrace.

Rain stung Daisy’s face, sharp as spears. In seconds she was soaked to the skin. Her hair hung in wet strings in front of her eyes and she was unable to see. Fear paralyzed her and she went limp in his grip. She knew she was about to die, Hector would kill her rather than be caught. “Help me, Bob.
Please
help me,” she begged silently.

The mini-tornado came out of nowhere, circling and swirling, shafting between them like a sword. Hector was knocked to the ground. Montana grabbed Daisy and shoved her out of harm’s way. He lunged for Hector but the Spaniard was already up and running, making for the little blue door that led from the garden onto the cliffs. He wrenched it open and disappeared into the storm.

Montana held up a hand to stop anyone from following him. The door banged back and forth in the wind. “It’s too dangerous in this storm,” he said as lightning forked down
again. “Besides, there’s nowhere for him to run. We’re on a small island, and the police are waiting for him.”

Daisy was sitting on a lounger, weeping. He went and sat next to her. “I’ll never forgive myself for this,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

She nodded it was all right. Rubbing her bruised throat, she said hoarsely, “You’d better speak to Rosalia. She’s the one who’s never going to forgive herself.”

He took her arm and led her back inside. Everyone was standing around, windblown and wet and looking shocked and angry. Montana apologized to Rosalia and to everyone else. “I’d have preferred to do this another way,” he said, “but it was Bob’s last wish that it be played out like this. I know you’re all wondering why Hector killed Bob when he didn’t even know him. It was money, of course.

“I’m sorry to tell you this, Rosalia, but Hector is an expert con man. He has prison records on three continents. He latched on to you at your peaceful hotel, tucked away from the police and from his past, and convinced you he could run the place better than you did. He said he could make life easier for all of you, and I’m sure at first he did just that. He became your trusted friend, a man you knew would do anything for you. Eventually, you turned the management of your business affairs over to him.

“You trusted him,” he said. “When he brought you documents to sign, you signed them without question, and Hector became expert at forging your signature. He also borrowed against your property and pocketed the money. When the
banks threatened to foreclose, he knew he would have to leave, which is what con men like him always do. Just disappear. Then he remembered you’d told him Bob Hardwick was Magdalena’s father. At first he thought of blackmail, hence the threatening e-mails. He was just working up to it when he saw it was a fool’s game and it was too easy to get caught. He realized that when Bob died, his only child, Magdalena, would be the legal heir to his fortune. Bob had no other family, there was no one else to contest it.

“It was a plot for murder made in Hector’s kind of heaven. And the beauty of it was he could never be accused of it, because you, Rosalia, would be the one who had, so to speak, ‘pulled the trigger.’ Magdalena would still inherit and once again Hector, as the family’s trusted friend, would take over. He couldn’t lose.”

“I’ll never get over that I killed Bob,” Rosalia wept. “I always loved him, I’m sure he knew that. That’s why he never came to me about Magdalena. He knew she was his and he let me have her. He was a good man, you all know that.” She looked around at the frightened group, shivering and soaked.

“Hector won’t get away,” Montana assured her. “The police are down the road, waiting. Don’t worry, they’ll get him, or the storm will.”

Looking at the lightning and at the wind swirling like a tornado, Daisy bet on the storm. She had no doubt that Bob had come back to save her and no doubt that he would get Hector. Only then would Bob rest in peace.