Shadows At Sunset (3 page)

And she'd let that goddamned man rile her. He was everything Dean said he was—smooth, gorgeous, so damned sure of himself she wanted to smack him. And Coltrane was dead wrong—part of the problem was that he was
exactly
Dean's type. Unfortunately he didn't seem to share Dean's sexual orientation, which would have made things a lot easier. Then he wouldn't have been coming on to her like she was Julia Roberts. He'd already be involved in a bitch-fest with Dean, and she could have just stayed out of the entire mess.

She leaned forward, resting her head on the leather-covered steering wheel. She didn't want to deal with this. She was so tired of taking care of everyone, taking care of this house that was falling down around her. The house that she loved with complete abandon.

It was late. Everything was still and silent around the legendary La Casa de Sombras—even the supposed ghosts were quiet. Dean was either off somewhere or lost in the glow of his computer screen, and God only knew what Rachel-Ann might be doing. She'd been back from treatment for three months, and it was usually around that benchmark she began to slip. She'd been out almost every night, coming back early and sober and silent. If she was home tonight there was a good chance she'd want someone to pick on, and Dean had a talent for making himself unavailable.

Jilly climbed out of the car, suppressing a sigh. She could handle this. She was the one who was mercifully free of addictions and needs and runaway emotions. She was strong, a survivor, and she could hold the others together when they needed holding.

She yanked down the heavy wooden door on the garage bay, wondering why she bothered when the locks were too rusted to work and the keys were long gone. If the house itself hadn't kept demanding so much money she would have invested in an automatic garage door opener. Dean had two cars, neither of which ran terribly well, and Rachel-Ann had her BMW, not to mention the rusting hulk of the Dusenberg that had once belonged to Brenda de Lorillard's doomed lover, and the cost of equipping the entire building with automatic openers was prohibitive, especially considering that the wood framing was in a state of rot.

Jilly started up the gravel pathway to the house, letting the blessed stillness wash over her. There was something to be said for lack of money. The estate was so overgrown that the palm trees provided soundproofing from the city that surrounded them, making it an oasis of peace and safety—a perfect sanctuary. At least, until Rachel-Ann went off the wagon.

There were only a few lights burning in the house as Jilly climbed up the wide, flagstoned terrace, and she breathed a sigh of relief. She'd have the place to herself, at least for a few hours. That was all she needed, a little time to think through what had happened, to devise a new plan to help Dean.

In the meantime she was starving. She headed straight back to the huge old kitchen. She sat down at the twelve-foot-long wooden table and ate two containers of yogurt with a silver serrated grapefruit spoon from Tiffany's, then followed it with a peanut butter sandwich on a cracked Limoges dessert plate. She'd have to go food shopping tomorrow—there wasn't much left. Rachel-Ann seemed to subsist on sweets when she was clean and sober, and Dean was always on some strange diet or other. Which didn't keep the two of them from suddenly emptying the refrigerator and cupboards of anything remotely interesting when the mood struck them.

Jilly set her plate in the old iron sink, then headed toward the back of the house where her brother kept his separate apartments.

She knocked, but there was no answer. Pushing the door open, she was, as always, assaulted by the room. Dean had claimed the servants' wing because it was relatively unadorned with the Mediterranean kitsch that flowed through the rest of the house. He'd had the walls knocked down, everything painted white and then buffed into a glaring, glossy sheen. The furniture was sparse and modern, and Dean lay facedown on the bed. The only light in the room came from the computer monitors—Dean always had at least two going at a time.

She moved quietly to his side, looking down at him tenderly. Dean had his air-conditioning unit on high, but she didn't make the mistake of turning it down, nor would she be fool enough to touch the computers. She simply covered him with a blanket, wishing things were different, even if she wasn't quite sure what she'd change.

She left him in his sterile, frozen cocoon, moving back into the dark, decaying warmth of La Casa de Sombras. The House of Shadows. Except that it sometimes seemed as if Dean's stark, white room held the most shadows of all.

Z
achariah Redemption Coltrane was a child of the sixties, born in the middle of that turbulent decade. His name had been an albatross around his neck until he was thirteen, and yet it had been the least of the various crosses he'd had to bear. At age thirteen and a half he'd been almost six feet tall, everyone he cared about was dead, and he'd taken off into the world he'd already learned was cruel and hostile, changing his name to Zack. That is, when he bothered to use his real name at all.

Odd, how some family histories were straightforward and others seemed like the stuff of legends. From his great-aunt Esther's bitter-toned stories to his father's whiskey-soaked reminiscences, he could never tell what was truth and what was fantasy. How his mother had died, or what her real name was. He only knew her as Ananda, and his memories were of light and laughter and the sweet, acrid scent of marijuana floating in the air. They'd lived in a castle, he thought, and there had been dragons and danger and his mother was a lost princess.

But that was before she'd been murdered.

He couldn't really remember a time when he hadn't lived in that dreary little house in Indiana with his drunken, defeated father and his tart-tongued great-aunt. Couldn't really remember the magical place, or the princess who'd been his laughing mother. And no one would ever tell him about her.

Great-Aunt Esther had died first, eaten up by cancer. His father had followed, breaking his neck in a drunken fall. And Coltrane had taken off before Social Services could get their hands on his rebellious, thirteen-year-old hide, bumming his way around the country as he grew into manhood.

He'd ended up with an education despite himself, more a fluke than a plan. Lawyers made money, lawyers manipulated the system, lawyers were the scum of the earth. It seemed a perfect career for him, once he got tired of living life on the edge.

He'd been in New Orleans, working as an assistant district attorney prosecuting the lowest of the low and doing a piss poor job of it, with no knowledge of his real past and no interest. He'd put it behind him, including the vague memories of his long-lost mother. He didn't know what prompted him to pick up the magazine the first place—he had no interest in Southern California or haunted mansions or the excesses of the young and beautiful.

But for some reason he'd picked up
L.A. Life,
thumbing through the pictorial on scandal sites of the century, and he'd stopped at an old, grainy newspaper photo, staring at his mother's face. Back in the 1960s, a ragtag band of Hollywood street people had been arrested for trespassing on the deserted grounds of La Casa de Sombras, and his mother had been one of them. He couldn't tell if his father was in the photo or remember if he'd ever been in L.A.—it was his mother who'd stood out, young and luminous even in black and white.

No one had bothered to prosecute and the interlopers had simply gone back to make their home in the ruined mansion in true sixties communal brotherhood, thereby hastening the decline of the historic property and sending the wealthy neighbors into apoplexy. And the Ivy League dropout, whose family owned La Casa, joined them.

That was how he'd found Jackson Dean Meyer, the first name he'd come across from that turbulent time that had ended in the loss of his mother. He'd learned early on not to ask questions of his family—his father would start to weep and drink even more heavily, and his Great-Aunt Esther would tell him to shut his mouth, accompanying the admonition with a crack across the face. She had mean, hard hands for such an old lady, and she'd died before he got bigger than she was and could stop her. Before he could find the answers to his questions.

But once he had a name, it had been easy enough to track down the black sheep. Jackson Dean Meyer had mended his ways, gone back to Harvard, acquired a graduate degree, three wives in reasonable succession, three grown children from his first marriage, one of whom was adopted, and two young ones from his third.

And control of a billion-dollar investment and development firm. He'd done well by himself, but then, he'd started off with several advantages, including a wealthy family. The house where he'd once dabbled in communal living now belonged to the children from his first marriage, and the old man lived in modern luxury in an estate in Bel Air.

Coltrane knew he was the man who would hold the answers to his past, to what happened to his mother, and Coltrane had every intention of asking politely.

His father used to tell him that his half-Irish mother had “the sight,” a curse Coltrane wondered if he'd inherited. He'd looked at his father one day and known he was going to die. Unfortunately he hadn't known how soon it would happen.

That sight had reasserted itself the day he'd bluffed his way into Jackson Dean Meyer's office, no mean feat given the layers of protection that surrounded the old man. He'd taken one look into his clear, calm eyes and known that this man had murdered his mother.

Of course Meyer had no earthly idea who Coltrane was. Nor did he care. But Coltrane was gifted at giving people what they wanted and getting them to trust him. It had been easy enough to work his way into the inner sanctum of Meyer Enterprises, into a position of power. The old man was a ruthless snake, and he detected a soul mate in Coltrane.

What hadn't been easy was learning patience over the long years, the great gift of biding his time. He'd been in place for almost a year now, working his way into Jackson Meyer's confidence to the point where he had total control of the legal department at Meyer Enterprises. Zack Coltrane, with the phony Ivy League degree, the charming smile and the California laid-back ease was poised and ready to take Jackson Dean Meyer down.

But he couldn't make his move until he had all the answers. It wasn't going to be enough to destroy Meyer financially. Killing him would be too easy. Coltrane had never killed anyone in his life, though he'd come close a few times. He suspected in the case of Jackson Meyer it wouldn't require much effort. He hated him that much.

But death ended things. And he wanted an everlasting torment for the man who murdered his mother. Once he had proof. He wanted Meyer to know who destroyed him, and why.

Destroying his business and reputation would be merely a start, and he'd been working on that since he'd come to L.A. Destroying his family would be even better, an eye for an eye. Coltrane had grown up in the grinding, soulless poverty of the icy Midwest, with a father too drunk to even notice him since they'd lost the one thing that mattered to either of them. The least Coltrane could do was return the favor, no matter what that made him.

The problem was, finding someone Jackson Meyer cared about other than his own sleek, artificially tanned, fitness-center-buffed hide was no easy task. He treated his trophy wife like an impatient parent, his two young children like puppies who hadn't been housebroken. As far as Coltrane could tell he didn't even remember their names. And his daughter Jilly might as well not exist for all the mention that had been made of her.

But Rachel-Ann was different. Rachel-Ann was Meyer's one weak spot, and that was who Coltrane intended to work on. He'd already managed to put enough pressure on Dean to get him out of the way—Meyer's only son had conceded the battle without firing a single shot, retiring to his computers and an impressive case of the sulks. As for Jilly, she was simply a casualty of war—if he had time he'd take her, but she was merely a sideline.

From all reports Rachel-Ann had been hovering on the brink of destruction for most of her life. It seemed only fitting that he'd help push her over the edge, and then stand back and watch while Meyer went flailing after her. And he refused to think about what kind of man that made him.

He poured himself a Scotch, straight up, carrying it out onto the patio as he slowly sipped it. It was the best Scotch he could find, a single malt from a tiny distillery in the Hebrides, and it had become part of a ritual—a silent toast to the father who drank his life away. An arrogant daring of fate to try to do the same to him. After a decade he still hadn't learned to like the taste of it, but he drank it, anyway, a small spit in the eye of the vengeful gods.

His plan was simple. He'd use Jilly to get to her fragile older sister, then go from there. He was a patient man, but he'd waited long enough. Time to up the ante. It wasn't that he particularly wanted to harm innocents. But if Dean was anything to go by then Meyer's grown children were far from innocent.

The Los Angeles night was settling down around him, and he stared out over the city, his back to the perfectly decorated apartment that was nothing more than a stage setting. He could feel the cool tingle of anticipation in his veins, a headier drug than the whiskey. By tomorrow night he'd be in the legendary Casa de Sombras, well on his way to the answers he'd spent years of his life looking for. And if he felt even a faint twinge of regret that Jilly Meyer was going to be one of the casualties of war, he dismissed it with a stray grimace.

He answered the phone on the third ring, just before the answering service would get it, knowing who it was.

“Did you get rid of her?” Jackson Dean Meyer barked into the phone.

“For now. You didn't tell me you wanted me to do anything permanent,” he said lazily.

There was a pregnant pause on the other end of the line. “Is there something permanent you could do?”

“I suppose I could find a hit man if you think it's necessary….”

“I don't find that amusing, Coltrane,” Meyer said icily. “I'm not in the habit of murdering my children.”

No, only your lovers, he thought calmly, eyeing his drink. “Then she's going to keep after you until you give her what she wants. You know what women can be like.”

“She always was a stubborn bitch. Just like her mother,” Meyer snapped. “What is it exactly that she wants?”

“She wasn't particularly clear about that, but I imagine it's something along the lines of you loving your son and me being at the bottom of the ocean.”

Meyer's dry chuckle sounded faintly asthmatic. “Made a good impression on her, did you? I warned you she could be difficult. What are you planning to do about her?”

“Take her out to dinner tomorrow night.”

“You won't get her into bed. She's the prude in the family.”

“Why would I want to get her into bed?” Coltrane took another sip of his Scotch. The ice had melted, watering the drink down slightly, and the sharpness danced against his tongue.

“To keep her occupied. Don't tell me you haven't noticed she's a good-looking woman. Can't hold a candle to Rachel-Ann, of course, but she's still pretty enough even with that hair of hers. And last I heard you weren't involved with anyone.”

Coltrane had no doubt that Meyer knew exactly who he'd been sleeping with over the last year and how long each relationship had lasted. His employer's efforts at surveillance were laughably blatant, and Coltrane always fed him just enough to keep him satisfied.

“You want me to marry her, boss?” he drawled. “Or just shack up with her?”

“Don't push me, Coltrane,” Meyer said. “I want you to distract her. I've got too much on my plate right now. Getting the Cienaga estate shouldn't be causing these kinds of problems, and I don't need the Justice Department breathing down my neck. You were supposed to give them stuff to distract them. Send them off on another tack.”

“I took care of it.”

“Goddamned bureaucrats don't seem to have a realistic idea of how things are done out here. And where the campaign contributions come from. Get them off my back, Coltrane.”

“It's been done,” Coltrane said soothingly. Indeed, it had. The Justice Department investigations of Jackson Dean Meyer's covert business practices had gone from one investigator to an entire team. And Meyer hadn't the faintest idea how little time he had left.

“I don't want to waste my energies distracted by inconsequentials,” he said.

Inconsequentials like your children,
Coltrane thought, but didn't say it out loud. There was a limit to how much leeway Jackson Meyer would give him. The man was convinced he needed Coltrane for all his little schemes to fall into place, but he needed his sense of omnipotence even more.

Meyer was going to find out that his trust in both Coltrane and in his own invulnerability were sadly misplaced. And while it would be the icing on the cake for him to lose his children at the same time, it hadn't taken Coltrane long to realize Meyer had really lost them years ago.

“All right, boss,” he drawled. He was the only person who called Meyer “boss,” the only one who could get away with that faintly mocking tone. “I'll sleep with your daughter. Hell, I'll sleep with both your daughters, but I draw the line at your son.”

Meyer chuckled humorlessly. “He'd be too easy for you. And you keep away from Rachel-Ann. She's fragile right now, and I don't want you interfering with her. She won't be a problem—she's never been any trouble to me, unlike the other two. My fault for marrying their mother. You just keep Jilly busy until this deal is finished. Then you can dump her. You know it'll be worth your while.”