Share No Secrets (25 page)

I hope so, Adrienne thought, because you look like you could break as easily as a dry twig. “Onward and upward, then. But let’s take it slow.” Ellen shot her a simmering look. “Maybe the climb isn’t getting to you, but it is to me. My thighs are beginning to feel the strain.” Which wasn’t true, but Ellen looked slightly mollified.

Ellen carefully shut the cabin door behind them although no locks protected the place from intruders. Adrienne tied back her shoulder-length hair with a piece of string she’d found at Lottie’s and enjoyed the touch of cool air on her neck. She glanced at Ellen, whose carefully set curls had begun to wilt. Thorns from a multiflora rose cluster had snagged her expensive silk blouse, and she was missing a clip-on earring. Still, she looked determined as she marched slightly ahead of Adrienne, physically proclaiming herself as leader of this expedition.

“I wish you would stop looking at me like I’m going to fall into a dead heap any minute,” Ellen snapped. “It’s getting on my nerves.”

“I didn’t mean to annoy you.”

“I know. You’ve always been a very polite girl, Adrienne. Far less turbulent and headstrong than Kit.” Adrienne had no intention of responding to that comment. “I don’t look like it now, but I used to be quite athletic,” Ellen stated. “And I was a first-rate dancer.”

“Really? Ballet?”

Ellen laughed. “Good heavens, no! I danced to rock and roll.
Real
rock and roll, not that nonsense you were listening to earlier.” Her smile faded. “Jamie and I danced.”

Adrienne thought of Ellen’s adopted four-year-old son who’d drowned in the pool at la Belle last summer. “Your little boy enjoyed dancing?”

Ellen looked confused for a moment, then shook her head. “My cousin Jamie. We were cousins by marriage. He was three years older than I and the love of my life. He was unbelievably handsome. He had a smile that could stop your heart and more charm than anyone has a right to.”

“No wonder you loved him.”

“He was a senior at Princeton University but he came back home to celebrate his twenty-first birthday,” Ellen went on, seeming to speak more to herself than to Adrienne. “Father had arranged an elaborate party in la Belle’s ballroom. I wore a blue satin cocktail dress that Father said was too low cut, but Jamie said I was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. I knew he was going to propose at the end of the evening. I’ve never been so happy in my life. Then, around midnight, we were dancing to “Love Me Tender” by Elvis Presley and Jamie froze. He got the strangest look in his eyes, grabbed his head with both of his hands, and fell down. People screamed and scattered. A doctor ran to us and kneeled over him. I just looked at Jamie, my darling, his body limp, his eyes empty, his smile gone forever.”

Ellen swallowed and her voice turned hard. “They later determined he had a brain aneurysm that burst. They claimed he’d been doomed from birth, but I don’t believe it La Belle destroyed him, just like it did my little boy, my second Jamie.”

Adrienne knew an I’m
sorry
would sound hollow, and Ellen seemed removed, as if she wouldn’t hear a thing Adrienne said anyway. No wonder the woman hated la Belle, Adrienne thought. She didn’t believe the hotel was responsible for Ellen’s tragedies. It was nothing more than a building. Still, the losses and the horror the woman had suffered at the hotel were staggering and certainly enough to make an impressionable nature like Ellen’s believe there
was
something evil about the place.

“I went around in a daze for a year after Jamie’s death,” Ellen continued. “Then I married Kit’s father. He was a total rotter. Father bought him off after he’d gotten drunk and given me a beating when I was pregnant with Kit.” Ellen blinked rapidly as if warding off tears. “Then Father died and I devoted myself to my child and the hotel until I met Gavin.” She sighed. “Gavin reminded me of Jamie. Sometimes he still does.”

Adrienne looked up at a hawk gliding serenely above them. Ellen had just explained so much. Her relationship with Kit, no doubt troubled because Kit was the child of a man Ellen probably hated. Why Ellen had married the seemingly aimless Gavin and allowed him to adopt Kit, thereby stripping the child of her brutal father’s name.

By the time they reached the top of the hill, Adrienne was breathing hard but Ellen seemed to have gotten her second wind. Her stride quickened as they passed two cherry trees whose trunks supported mounds of honeysuckle vines. A sweet, almost overpowering scent hung in the hot, humid air. Then Adrienne heard a familiar sound. A caw. She looked up to see a crow sitting on a tree branch staring down at her with its beady, conscienceless eyes. The old rhyme, the one she’d thought of the day she’d found Julianna’s body, came back to her:

“One’s unlucky …”

“What’s that?” Ellen asked, turning her head to look at Adrienne, who hadn’t realized she was speaking aloud. Adrienne’s mind rushed on. One crow was unlucky. But
six
was death. Could five more be lurking around?

“Ellen, let’s go!” Adrienne said shrilly with sudden, irrational panic. “There’s nothing here.”

“That’s what most people think.” Showing far more stamina than Adrienne would have believed, Ellen began vigorously tugging at a thick tangle of honeysuckle vines.

“Please, Ellen, we should go!”

“Nonsense.” Ellen continued tearing at the vines. “What’s wrong with you? You sound like a scared little girl.”

Adrienne rushed forward, meaning to stop Ellen, but she was too late. Ellen had torn away the vines with surprising ease to reveal the weathered wood of a rectangular lid. With a considerable strength that astounded Adrienne, Ellen lifted the heavy wooden lid and let it drop back onto the ground with a thud. Then she leaned down and yelled into the hole, “Lottie, it’s Ellen. Don’t be afraid. Adrienne and I have come to see if you’re all right.”

“You think she’s down
there?”
Adrienne asked incredulously.

“Maybe.” Adrienne watched as Ellen kneeled down and began speaking sweetly into the unknown depths. “Lottie, dear? You don’t have to hide anymore. I’m here.”

Adrienne couldn’t believe anyone would take much comfort from the presence of frail Ellen. But then Ellen had proved she wasn’t as frail as she appeared to be. Or pretended to be.

But what Adrienne really found hard to accept was that Lottie could be living in this vine-blanketed underground shelter. The silence following Ellen’s comforting, echoing words seemed to prove her right.

Ellen lowered herself farther and landed on the floor. “Be careful,” Adrienne said. “It’s dark. There might be snakes or rats.”

“I’m watching my step,” Ellen returned absently, her gaze darting everywhere except the floor. “Do you have a flashlight?”

“Just a penlight.”

“Then bring it down here.”

Adrienne reluctantly followed Ellen inside. Cold, dank air wrapped around her like a shroud and she stopped. “What is this place, Ellen?”

“One of the early head caretakers of la Belle was a bit odd.” Naturally he was, Adrienne thought wryly. “He believed la Belle was his own little kingdom. When he got too old to work, my grandfather replaced him, but he refused to leave. So, Grandfather allowed him to build an unobtrusive place on the grounds. That was the stipulation. The man was a veteran of World War One and he built a bunker—you can’t be much more unobtrusive than that—and he lived here pretending he was still overseeing the care of la Belle while the war raged on around him. He died in here in the 1930s. My father didn’t find him for several days. That must have been disagreeable.”

“No doubt,” Adrienne echoed hollowly, appalled.

“Lottie and I found the bunker nearly forty years ago. She actually tripped and fell right onto the lid, where the vines were thinnest, and we investigated. We didn’t tell anyone we’d found it. We cleaned it up inside but left the vines as camouflage and christened it the Hideaway. We made a vow to always keep the place a secret. I never even told Kit about it. She would think it was strange and always be nagging me to destroy it.”

“That might not be a bad idea, Ellen,” Adrienne said carefully. “It could be a danger if a child found it, crawled in, and couldn’t get out.”

Ellen ignored her, peering around in the semidarkness. Finally she kneeled and picked up a blanket. “Lottie’s quilt She made this last year. I recognize the pattern. And here’s a pillow.”

As Adrienne moved forward for a closer look, she kicked over a glass jar. She picked it up and sniffed. “A candle. Jasmine scent”

“And another one here.” Ellen dropped the quilt. In the dim light seeping through the open door into the gloom of the building, Adrienne saw Ellen place her hands on her hips. “The poor thing has been staying here.”

Something squeaked in the corner. Adrienne jumped, hoping it was a mouse, not a rat. “Ellen, this place is awful!”

Ellen shrugged. “When you fear for your life, I guess you can put up with a lot to feel safe.”

“Are you certain Lottie thinks someone will try to kill her?”

“I’m not
certain,
but I know Lottie and it’s the only answer that makes sense.” Ellen paused. “Adrienne, I said that I’d never told Kit about this place. I would appreciate your not telling her about it, either.”

Adrienne felt a jolt of surprise. “If you don’t want your own daughter to know about it, why did you allow me to see it?”

Ellen started slowly for the door and said over her shoulder, “Because I know you would never hurt Lottie.”

Adrienne stared after her. What was she implying? That Kit
would
hurt Lottie? Why?

There would be no sensible reason unless Ellen believed Kit had killed Julianna and Lottie knew about it.

“I’m sorry,
Lottie.
So sorry. My fault. All my fault.”

Gavin Kirkwood lay beside his wife in bed, his head propped on his hand as he looked down at her troubled, dreaming face. She’d greased her skin with a cream he knew cost over a hundred dollars a jar—cream that promised a decrease in wrinkles and an increase in firmness. The cream was a rip-off. In spite of faithful use for six months, Ellen’s complexion still bore the inevitable traces of age and gravity. Gavin knew that within a year, she would resort to plastic surgery.

He really didn’t care if she looked thirty. The sexual attraction he’d felt for her when they first met had vanished long ago, and he was frankly relieved that not much was expected of him in the lovemaking department anymore. Ellen was too depressed since the death of young Jamie last year to care about sex. That was the only good thing that had come from Jamie’s death. Gavin had loved him too, and although Ellen had sucked up all the sympathy offered by friends and relatives, Gavin had often wished he’d drowned instead of the intelligent, charming little boy. For a long time, Gavin’s world had turned gray and cold without the child. But no one seemed to notice
his
pain, or to care.

Ellen had arrived home at five o’clock today claiming she’d been out looking for Lottie. She was sweating, shaking, scratched by thorns, and so weak she could barely stand. Gavin wasn’t sure some of her maladies weren’t just attention-seeking acts, but to be safe he had promptly called her doctor, who’d given Ellen a mild lecture on overexertion, then to Gavin delivered a downright harsh lecture on his lapse in looking after Ellen. As if anyone could ever make Ellen cooperate, Gavin had thought in fury. He’d felt like punching the guy, but that would have brought on a fit of hysterics from Ellen and probably a lawsuit from the doctor. So, as he did so often, Gavin had seethed in silence while Ellen’s emotional state took dominion over his life, and he endured being belittled by yet another person contemptuous of a man they believed had married only for money.

Now, five hours after the doctor had given Ellen a tranquilizer and sent her to bed, Gavin lay miserably beside her, suffering through her slurred rambling and maddening restless leg movements. He had a brief but almost overwhelming desire to lay a pillow over her perspiring face and hold it in place until the woman finally stopped talking. And breathing. The urge became so strong, Gavin was frightened and promptly threw back the covers, abandoning the bedroom without even bothering to put on a robe. The pretentious silk pajamas Ellen made him wear covered enough of his well-toned body so the maid wouldn’t be shocked if she happened to hear him rattling around the house and emerged from her room to investigate.

He ambled into the room Ellen had decorated and called
his
study, a room he found dark and depressing and inconvenient. But as much as he hated the study, one of his pleasures lay buried under a pile of folders in a desk drawer—sour mash Kentucky bourbon. Sour mash, he thought fondly, considered the finest of whiskies, requiring ninety-six hours of fermentation and at least four years of aging before it is thought fit to drink. Ellen thought the drink was crass and protested having it even brought into the house. But sometimes Gavin felt as though he couldn’t get enough of it. Tonight was one of those times.

He poured a couple of shots into the simple drinking glass he also kept hidden beneath the folders in the drawer. Then he turned on the dim, green-shaded desk light and sat down on his heavily padded desk chair, leaning back and staring up at the beamed ceiling. He was so tired. Exhausted. But sleep wouldn’t come. In fact, it had been eluding him since the death of Julianna. With her, for the first time in many years, he’d felt like a man. And now the feeling was gone, probably forever.

When Kit was an adolescent and he’d just married Ellen, he’d paid no attention to Kit’s friend Julianna. She was just a tall, skinny girl with a mass of auburn hair who talked too much for his taste. Of course, her talking was better than Kit’s sulking. But of the three friends, he’d preferred Adrienne. Not sexually. At that time Ellen was still good-looking and, although he knew everyone thought he’d married the woman fourteen years his elder for her money, he’d been genuinely attracted to her looks, her sophistication, her charm. He’d actually loved her. And she’d been crazy about him.
Besotted
was the word his mother had used. “She’s besotted with your handsome face and your smooth line,” she’d said venomously. “Just like I was with your father. But give it time, Gavin my boy. She’ll find out what a loser you are. I know from experience.”