Secret Sisters (4 page)

CHAPTER SIX

The following afternoon she was standing at the window of the Cove View B&B, watching rain fall on the small community of Cooper Cove, when Jack knocked on the door. Just two short, imperative raps. It had to be Jack, she thought. His tough, brusque, no-nonsense style came through in even the smallest actions. There were few wasted motions. It was as if at some point in his life a fierce desert wind had scoured away any veneer of polite polish that he might have once possessed, leaving only the hard rock behind.

She hurried across the room and opened the door. She was startled by the wave of intense relief that cascaded through her when she saw Jack standing in the hall. His dark hair was damp with rain. Water dripped off his scarred leather jacket. He gripped a battered black duffel bag in one big hand.

“What's the problem?” he asked.

That was Jack for you, Madeline thought. Mr. Cordial-and-Charming he was not. The man didn't believe in wasting time with the customary social greetings. That was probably a good thing because it was doubtful that he would be any good at the cheery platitudes and
courtesies that smoothed conversations and connections between people. She doubted that he had ever uttered the words
Have a good day
in his entire life. Even if he got the right words out, the chill in his hazel eyes would completely nullify the warmth of the sentiment. In his opinion, your failure to have a good day was your problem, not his.

On the positive side, Jack was not a whiner. She had phoned him late last night after a great deal of thinking. She knew that he had flown out of Phoenix at the crack of dawn and had been traveling ever since—planes, cars, and a couple of ferry rides. It wasn't easy getting to Cooper Island. But she had called and he was here. That was Jack.

She reminded herself that he wasn't exactly doing her a favor by coming to Cooper Island. She was a client, after all. He was here because there was money in it for him and for his fledgling security business.

Even though she had been expecting him—pacing the floor, if the truth be told—she was not only reassured but oddly rattled by the sight of him looming in the doorway. It was always like this when she was near him. He had a weird effect on her senses, she thought.

Yet on some deep level she felt like she understood Jack in some ways. There were shadows around him and the
No Trespassing
signs were glaringly bright, but she understood shadows and warning signs. She possessed a few herself.

People like William Fleming interpreted the signs as an indication of commitment and intimacy issues. In past generations there had been more respect for personal secrets, she thought; even an expectation that everyone had a few and had a right to keep them private. But in the modern era, when people impulsively posted every thought and emotion on social media sites, keeping a secret was generally regarded as a mental health issue.

But if you had kept secrets yourself, you understood why others might choose to do the same.

“Come in,” she said.

He moved through the doorway, quartering the suite with a quick, sweeping glance as though assessing potential security risks. She was suddenly very conscious of the king-sized bed.

“I booked the room next door to this one for you,” she said. “If you'd like to settle in first—”

“Later.” He dropped the duffel bag on the floor near the door. “Right now I could use a cup of coffee.”

“Let me take your coat,” she said. She nodded toward the in-room coffeemaker. “Help yourself to the coffee.”

“Thanks.”

He stripped off his jacket, handed it to her, and then headed straight for the coffeemaker.

That was another thing about Jack, she thought as she hurried into the bathroom with his jacket. If he said
thanks
, you could be pretty sure he meant it.

The inside lining of the jacket was still warm with his body heat. She caught a trace of his scent when she hung the garment on a hook.

She stood there for a beat, watching the rainwater drip onto the white tiles, and composed her thoughts. Jack would demand answers. Supplying them would mean giving up secrets that she had kept for eighteen years, but she no longer had a choice.

She took a deep breath and went out into the other room. “Thank you for making the trip here today on such short notice. I couldn't think of anyone else to call.”

“No need to thank me.” He hit the switch on the coffee machine and looked at her. “This is what I do. It's why you keep my company on retainer.”

She cleared her throat. “Right.”

“Here's what I know based on what little you told me on the phone. You came here to meet with the man who had been looking after the Aurora Point property.”

“Tom Lomax, yes.”

“You found him badly injured.”

“He was dying.” She folded her arms very tightly beneath her breasts. “I called nine-one-one and I tried to stop the bleeding, but there was no hope.”

“Head injury, you said?”

“Someone struck him from behind with a length of broken staircase railing. I found him at the foot of the lobby stairs. There was . . . a lot of blood. The police believe that Tom surprised an intruder who had broken into the hotel to search for anything that might be worth stealing.”

“I'm assuming there is more to the story or you wouldn't have called me.”

This was quintessential Jack, she thought. He pretended that he worked for you, but somehow he always seemed to be in charge. Jack might not be the warm and fuzzy type, but he had the vibe of a man who could handle just about any crisis. And she had a crisis on her hands.

She sank down onto one of the two reading chairs near the window and looked out at the obsidian-dark waters of the cove. For the past few hours she had pondered various ways to explain her situation. But now that Jack was there she was not sure where to begin. It wasn't easy to start talking about a secret that had been kept for eighteen years.

“Here's what I didn't tell you on the phone,” she said. “Tom spoke to me before he died. He said he was sorry, that he had failed. He mentioned a briefcase and reminded me that I had always liked his sunrises. I assume he was talking about his photographs. He is—was—a very avid photographer. I think he was hallucinating there at the very end. That was when I heard the footsteps overhead.”

Jack went as still as a sniper waiting to take the shot. “What?”

Okay, this was not going well. She took a breath and prepared to race through the rest of the explanation.

“I heard the intruder go down the outside staircase at the back of the lobby. At first I thought the person was running away. Instead—” She paused to take a breath. “Instead I heard footsteps on the lower veranda. I was afraid that whoever it was intended to intercept me if I tried to get to my car. So I ran upstairs and locked myself in one of the rooms until the cops arrived. The intruder tried to follow me but gave up and ran off. I think the emergency vehicle sirens scared him away.”

Jack watched her with an unblinking gaze. “Him?”

“Or her. I honestly couldn't tell. Whoever it was went out the rear of the hotel and drove off in a car. The cops conducted a search but they couldn't find anyone. I've been assured that an officer will monitor outgoing ferry traffic for a while, but there are a lot of ways you can bring a boat ashore on the island without being spotted.”

There was a short, ominous silence. Jack did not take his eyes off her.

“When you called last night you never mentioned that there was anyone else in the hotel when you arrived on the scene,” he said in a voice that was much too neutral.

“I was afraid that it would only alarm you, and it wasn't like there was anything you could do from Arizona. And besides, I was safe here at the B-and-B.”

She hated being put on the defensive. She reminded herself that Jack worked for her, not vice versa.

“Shit,” Jack finally said very softly. “I knew it was a mistake to let you come here alone.”

That stopped her cold for a beat. She had never heard him use rough language. It was probably not a good omen.

“Look,” she said, “maybe this was not such a great idea. I've got a problem on my hands and I need your professional assistance. If you don't feel that you're in a position to provide it, I'll find someone else.”

“No,” he said. “You won't find anyone else. We've got a contract. You told the police about the intruder?”

“Yes, of course. But I wasn't able to give them a description. Like I said, they think poor Tom surprised a burglar. And that might be true. But I've got my doubts.”

“Because of what Tom told you before he died?”

“It's possible that he hallucinated everything there at the end—got the past and present mixed up. But he knew who I was. What concerns me were his comments about the briefcase and his belief that he had failed.”

She got the feeling that Jack was fortifying himself for what he anticipated would be a difficult conversation.

“All right,” he said finally. “Let's start with the briefcase.”

She took a breath and let it out slowly. “Give me a minute. I haven't talked about the briefcase in eighteen years. Family secret.”

“I'm listening.”

She forced herself to focus. “The briefcase Tom mentioned belonged to a man who checked into Aurora Point Hotel eighteen years ago. He used the name Porter but that was probably not his real name.”

“What happened to this Porter?”

She gripped the arms of the chair.

“My grandmother and Tom killed him with a couple of heavy-duty gardening tools. They buried the body in the woods behind the hotel. Tom poured a concrete slab over the grave and built a nice little gazebo on top.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

She watched Jack very closely but as far as she could tell, he took the news of Porter's death the same way he took everything else—as just another fact. He did not appear shocked or even mildly surprised; merely thoughtful.

It occurred to her that after what he must have seen in the course of his FBI profiling work, death by garden tools was probably a fairly tame scenario. Still, they were talking about her grandmother, a very nice woman who had never killed anyone else in her entire life.

After a moment Jack poured two cups of coffee and handed one to her without a word. She got a little spark when their fingers brushed against each other. The jolt caused her to flinch. The coffee threatened to splash over the edge of the rim. But she managed to regain her control.

Jack moved to stand in front of the window. He contemplated the view, evidently unfazed by their brief physical contact. She wondered what it would take to shake him.

“And the briefcase belonged to Porter?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Walk me through everything that happened at the hotel the day Porter died.”

“Aurora Point was my grandmother's first hotel. She and my grandfather picked it up for a song. They were determined to renovate it. But my grandfather died in the same car accident that killed my parents. I came here to live with Grandma. She worked hard to reopen Aurora Point. She was just starting to turn a profit when Porter checked in. There was a big wedding event going on in the main building. Grandmother and the rest of the staff were all very busy. My friend Daphne and I spent the evening together playing games and watching TV in the cottage where Daphne and her mother lived.”

“Daphne?”

“Daphne Knight. She was my best friend at the time. Her mother was a single mom who worked on the hotel's housekeeping staff. She was busy in the main building that night, along with everyone else.”

“Go on.”

“It grew late. Daphne and I fell asleep in front of the television. I woke up and went into the kitchen to get a glass of water. There was a man waiting there. He grabbed me. Slapped a hand across my mouth and said he'd kill me if I struggled. But I struggled anyway. It didn't do any good. He was big. And so much stronger. I couldn't breathe. I think I passed out for a moment. Not long, though, because the next thing I remember he was carrying me into the maintenance building. By then I was literally frozen with terror. I thought I was in a nightmare. None of it seemed real.”

The cup trembled ever so slightly in her hand. She set it down with great care. She had spent eighteen years trying not to think about the events of that terrible night. It was unnerving to talk about them now after the years of keeping the secret; years of nightmares in which she was trapped under the weight of a man's big, sweating body. Years
of coming awake gasping for air. Years of intimacy issues that inevitably spelled doom for all of her relationships.

She fell silent for a moment and tried to order her thoughts. Jack did not urge her to continue. He stood at the window, drinking coffee and watching the storm clouds roll over Cooper Island as if he had all the time in the world.

The fact that he wasn't pushing told her in some mysterious way that he understood something of what she had experienced. That made it easier to go on with the story.

“As it turned out, Daphne awakened just as Porter carried me out the kitchen door. She didn't know what to do. She was terrified but she was incredibly brave. She followed us and saw Porter take me into the maintenance building. She ran to Tom's cottage and pounded on his door. He headed for the maintenance building but he told her to find Grandma, who happened to be in the kitchen checking on something involving the buffet. Daphne dragged her outside and tried to explain that something terrible was happening in the maintenance building.”

Madeline stopped again. Again Jack waited.

“The next thing I knew, first Tom and then Grandma came through the door like a couple of avenging angels. They each grabbed a garden tool and went after Porter. He had me pinned down on a sack of garden loam, trying to get me out of my jeans. In the end I think Grandma and Tom went a little mad. There was . . . a lot of blood.”

“They killed Porter.”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Jack nodded, satisfied. “Were you . . . hurt?”

“He didn't succeed in raping me, if that's what you mean.”

“But you were traumatized.”

She shuddered. “I think all four of us were traumatized. Daphne witnessed the whole thing.”

Jack turned his head to look at her. “And Porter's briefcase? Was it buried with Porter?”

“No. The Aurora Point was undergoing renovations at the time. Tom and Grandma walled it up in room two-oh-nine.”

“Why didn't Edith and Tom call the police?”

“Because of what was in the briefcase,” Madeline said. “And before you ask, no, I don't know what was inside. I just know that after Grandma and Tom opened the briefcase, they decided not to call the police. They told Daphne's mother what had happened but they didn't tell her what was in the briefcase—just that it was very dangerous. Maybe they thought she would feel safer if she didn't know exactly what was inside. Who knows? But that was when the three of them—Grandma, Tom, and Daphne's mother—decided to bury the body and make every bit of evidence disappear.”

“They wanted to make it all vanish, but they didn't bury the briefcase or burn the contents?”

She hesitated. “For what it's worth, I overheard Grandma tell Tom and Daphne's mother that the contents of the briefcase were an insurance policy. With luck they would never have to use it.”

Jack's eyes tightened at the corners. “Edith used that phrase?
Insurance policy
?”

“Yes. Grandma told us that the stuff inside the briefcase was very dangerous because it could get some powerful people in trouble. She said if that happened, we would all be in mortal danger. We all promised each other that we would never tell anyone about Porter and his briefcase.”

“How many people, in all, knew about Porter's death and the briefcase?”

“Just the five of us—Grandma and me. Tom Lomax. Daphne and her mother, Clara Knight.”

Jack shook his head. “That's four people too many to keep a dangerous secret.”

Anger splashed through her. “Well, we did manage to keep it for all these years.”

“As far as you know.”

“We each had a very good reason to keep it.”

“Let's do a head count. How many people who knew the secret are still alive?”

The question chilled her. “Grandma and Tom are both gone. I haven't been in touch with Daphne or her mother for eighteen years.” Tears burned in her eyes. “I don't know what happened to them. Daphne was my best friend. She saved me that night. But I don't even know if she's alive. How is that possible?”

The tears got hotter and started to trickle down her cheeks. She lurched to her feet, intending to go into the bathroom to find a tissue, but Jack handed her a small napkin from the coffee service tray. She sank back down into the chair and blotted her eyes.

Jack watched her pull herself together. He was giving her some space, but she knew that whatever he was about to say, he was not going to try to soften the blow. Jack probably didn't know how to soften bad news.

She sniffed one last time and tossed the crumpled napkin into the trash.

“Sorry, it's been a long day,” she said. “What now?”

“Here's what we've got,” he said. “Your grandmother and Tom are dead within three months of each other and some unknown person—presumably Tom's killer—may have tried to kill you. Meanwhile, we don't know the whereabouts of the two other people who featured in the events eighteen years ago—Daphne and her mother.”

Madeline stared at him, reeling from his words. “Grandma's death was an accident, according to the authorities. Even the insurance company didn't question it, and you know how they hate to pay out.”

“A fire in the penthouse of an old hotel caused by faulty wiring.
Only one victim, your grandmother. That kind of accident is not difficult to arrange if you know what you're doing. And if you don't have the skill set, you can hire someone else to set it up.”

“It wasn't even one of her hotels,” Madeline whispered. “Grandma was the guest of an old friend in the business, someone she had known for decades.”

“I know. I've had someone on my staff looking into your grandmother's death ever since I got a copy of the insurance company's final report last month.”

“What?” She bolted up out of the chair. “You thought my grandmother might have been murdered but you didn't say anything?”

“At the time, I didn't have any reason to suspect that she had been murdered.” Jack's mouth twisted. “As you said, the insurance company signed off on an accident. There was another problem, too. The only one who might have had a possible motive was you.”

“Good grief.” She dropped back into her seat, stunned all over again. “Because I inherited the Sanctuary Creek chain.”

“I didn't see you as the type to murder your own grandmother for a business she had been slowly handing off to you anyway.”

“Gosh, thanks for that rousing vote of confidence.”

“There were other reasons I didn't tell you that I had looked into the circumstances of Edith's death. You were swamped. Not only were you dealing with the loss of someone you loved, you didn't even have a real opportunity to mourn because you had to become the face of Sanctuary Creek Inns. Your employees and your execs were looking to you for direction and stability. You had to reassure suppliers and accounts. On top of that, you were starting to get uneasy about William Fleming.”

“Fine. I was busy and grieving and I had issues with the guy I was dating. That is absolutely no excuse for not coming to me with your concerns about my grandmother's death.”

“I used my best judgment.”

“Bullshit. You weren't using good judgment. You were trying to protect me from bad news. That's not in your job description.”

“I didn't have anything solid indicating that Edith's death was anything other than an accident. For that matter, I still don't.”

“Bullshit, the sequel. I have recently been made aware of the fact that you have issues with being the messenger who brings me the bad news. But you need to understand that I am paying you for the news—good or bad. I do not pay you to protect me from bad news. If you screw up one more time I will find a new security firm—even if I can't find a way out of our contract. I'll pay for two consultants if that's what it takes to make sure I'm getting what I want. Are we clear?”

He studied her for a long moment. She got the impression he was seriously considering whether he should resign. That was the last thing she wanted. But some things were nonnegotiable.

Jack finally came to a decision. “All right. I'll make sure you know whatever I know regarding your grandmother's death. But understand up front that a lot of the information that comes in at the start of an investigation leads nowhere. It can be confusing.”

She allowed herself to breathe again. “Understood.”

He gave her a reluctant smile. “You are definitely Edith's granddaughter, all right. Sanctuary Creek Inns is in good hands.”

“Thank you. Now stop trying to placate me. Just so you know, you're not very good at soothing ruffled feathers.”

“You're not the first person to say that.”

“Tell me what you've got relating to my grandmother's death.”

“I had nothing until now,” he said patiently. “That's why I didn't talk to you about the investigation.”

She gave him a warning look.

“But now I've got something,” he said.

“Tom Lomax's death?”

“Yeah.” Jack finished his coffee and put the cup down. “Now we are starting to see the first ripples of what could be a very disturbing pattern.”

“Because you have a problem with coincidence.”

“Sure.” He raised his brows. “Don't you?”

“Yes, of course.”

“One accident involving a person who is keeping a secret that four other people know is a coincidence. The death of someone else who knew the secret is a pattern.”

She absorbed that thought. “But why is the past surfacing now?”

“I warned you that at the start of an investigation all the data points come wrapped in fog.”

She folded her arms. “What do we do?”

“We move on a couple of different fronts,” Jack said. “First, we find Daphne and her mother.”

“We need to warn them, don't we?”

“I think so, yes.” He paused, looking a little wary. “But there is another possibility.”

“That one of them had something to do with the deaths?” Madeline shook her head. “No. I admit I haven't seen or spoken to Daphne or her mother for the past eighteen years, but I can't believe either of them would kill Grandma or Tom. Setting emotions aside, there's no logic to that theory.”