Stonebrook Cottage (14 page)

Billie groaned at the mention of Ethel's name. "I ran into her in town this afternoon, and she was muttering about how long a juvenile bluebird with a broken leg could last in chlorinated water. She was miffed at the very idea of chlorinated water."

"She was my first-grade teacher," Pete said.

"God, she must be a hundred years old."

"She took up birds when she retired. People are going to keep talking about bluebirds until they accept the fact that Big Mike drowned because he couldn't swim."

Billie sighed, shaking her head, her blue eyes filling with tears. "I saw him the night before he died, you know. He had that cocktail party for a few of his political friends—"

"Yeah, I heard about it."

"He was so full of life."

Pete sipped his beer. "That was Big Mike."

She nodded. "I didn't know him that well, but that's what everyone tells me. Well." She smiled, stifling another yawn and looking as if she couldn't stay up another minute. "What're you up to?"

"I'm finishing this beer and hitting the sack."

Something flashed in her shining blue eyes—desire, yearning—but it was gone again in an instant, and Pete wondered if he wasn't seeing what he wanted to see. A few hours in bed with Billie Corrigan might purge him of Allyson. But he felt disloyal even thinking it, as if he'd dirtied himself, her, their love. He knew Allyson loved him. She was just caught between a rock and a hard place now that Big Mike was dead and she was governor. She had things she needed to figure out.

When Billie eased off her stool, her breast brushed against his arm. He could feel the soft weight of it, the nipple straining against her too-small shirt. She must have noticed their contact but smiled at him as if she didn't. "I'm not starting work until nine tomorrow. I guess that's lunchtime for you."

He turned on his stool and watched the swing of her hips as she headed out. He still could feel the touch of her breast. Billie wasn't forbidden. She wasn't a Stock-well, a wannabe Stockwell or a governor. She was a working stiff like he was, and she wouldn't lose a sec-ond's sleep if she fell for a man with a minor criminal record. Everything about the way she moved, laughed, dressed said she was available. Why the hell not?

Pete spun back around and finished his beer. Just as well Allyson was in Hartford. If she were here, nothing would have stopped him from sneaking through the woods to her bedroom in the converted barn on Stockwell Farm. He didn't care if she had round-the-clock bodyguards now that she was governor. She'd have to sic them on him.

He couldn't remember wanting her as much as he did right now.

And wasn't that just his tough damn luck? Allyson had dumped him. He was just too stubborn—too in love with her—to admit the obvious.

It took two bowls of Ben & Jerry's Nutty Waffle Cone for Henry to actually admit the letter from his mother was a forgery. Kara hadn't waited for his confession before calling Allyson and explaining at least some of what had transpired in the past twenty-four hours.

When she'd decided to let Henry and Lillian call the shots and operate under the premise that she was taking them at their word, Kara understood she'd have to leave her friend in the dark about the exact whereabouts of her children longer than was necessary. But that was the risk she had to take, because Henry and Lillian were her priority, not Allyson, and something was terribly wrong with them.

The admonition not to call, not to talk to anyone, had been artful on Henry and Lillian's part, Kara had to admit. It bought them time and got them back to Connecticut.

"I had no choice," Henry said. "I had to do it."

"He didn't do it.
I
did." Lillian spoke in a small voice; she was shrunk down in her seat at the wooden table, painted a summery green, in the middle of the kitchen. "His cursive isn't as good as mine."

"It was my idea."

"Let's not argue about who did what." Kara shook her head in amazement. She'd had a spoonful of the rich ice cream, leaving the rest to the kids. "In all my years as a defense attorney, I've never even heard of a couple of middle-schoolers conning their godmother with a forged letter from their mother."

Lillian protested. "Kids at school forge their moms' names all the time!"

"Because they don't want their moms to know about a detention, not because they want their godmother to believe they're in danger." Kara couldn't muster any real anger at them. The reasons for what they did were still not clear to her. Why such drama? How had they feigned such real, palpable fear last night? She sighed. "What if I'd been arrested for kidnapping you?"

Lillian's eyes widened, but her brother scoffed. "You wouldn't have been arrested, Aunt Kara. We'd have said something."

"You don't know my brother. He's a mean-assed Texas Ranger. Be glad we got out of Texas a step ahead of him." And a step ahead of Ranger Temple, Kara thought. "Are you two going to tell me what all this is really about? Sneaking off to see me is a big step. Why didn't you just call me and say you needed me? You know I'd have come in a heartbeat."

"We didn't want to risk it," Henry said.

Lillian sputtered into tears. "We miss you. We miss Big Mike—"

"And we
are
in danger," Henry said, fighting back tears of his own. "It's just that Mom doesn't know. We don't want to worry her."

"Oh, so scare the living daylights out of the godmother instead." Kara leaned back in her sturdy wooden chair, listened a moment to crickets outside in the warm night. What was she doing? These kids needed a kind of help she couldn't offer. She'd moved away on them, and Big Mike had died on them. Two losses in a year. They were reeling. She leaned forward, touching Henry's hand, surprised at how cold it was. "Henry, what kind of danger are you in?"

His clear blue eyes leveled on her, his Stockwell jaw set, as if he was trying to look older than twelve. He didn't. He was a kid. A troubled kid. "What we told you about the man who followed us is true."

"Did you see him at my house last night or did you make that up?"

Lillian's spoon clattered into her empty ice cream dish. "I saw him. I
did.
"

"All right." Kara didn't want to upset them further by arguing. "So you've got some creep on your tail. We'll look into it."

Henry shot up out of his chair. "
No!
Aunt Kara! You can't tell anyone! You promised!"

She held up a hand, careful this time not to get sucked into his emotion. "Okay,
I'll
look into it. You guys were pretty tired last night. Maybe you just think you saw this man. Maybe he's just a regular guy who works at the ranch, and you two got spooked—"

"No." Lillian solemnly shook her head. "He doesn't work at camp."

"And he's not a pedophile," Henry added.

Kara nearly choked. "Pedophile? Jeez, Henry."

He shrugged, matter-of-fact now. "Mom says it's better to know people like that exist than to pretend they don't."

"Forewarned is forearmed," Lillian said, obviously quoting their mother.

Kara shook her head. "I'd never even heard the word
pedophile
until I was in law school."

The kids seemed pleased by her admission of ignorance, even if it was somewhat exaggerated. She'd known a few things before leaving her father's house and heading north—how to fly planes, shoot a gun, run a half-marathon, deal with an older brother and a father who wanted nothing more than to remove the image of her dead mother from her memory. They didn't take that failure, the impossibility of it, well.

What had Henry and Lillian seen? What did they have imprinted on
their
memories forever? Something. She was sure of it.

"I know you two are grieving for Big Mike."

Kara got to her feet, her muscles aching, her stomach rolling over. She felt a little dizzy but hung on to a corner of the table, steadying herself. The kitchen, with its white cabinets and brightly colored dishes, was unchanged from her first visit here in law school. Everything was gleaming, spotless, the country decor deceptively casual and easy. Texas suddenly seemed very far away.

"And it can't be easy having your mother suddenly faced with all the responsibilities of being governor," she went on. "I don't know, I might feel a little swept aside—"

Henry rolled his eyes. "That's not
it.
We're in
danger.
"

"Why? You're kids."

"We saw Big Mike drown."

Henry spit out the words as if he was challenging her to doubt him. He had his hands clenched in fists, his lips smacked tightly shut. His face turned red, and he blinked back tears even as he continued to stare at his godmother in defiance. Kara had no idea whether to believe him.

Lillian stared at her empty dish.

Their fear was real. Kara hadn't gotten it wrong last night—it had been real then, too. Whether or not they were spinning another tale, something serious was going on with these children.

She forced herself to stay calm. "Can you tell me what happened?"

"We were up in our tree house, and we saw him through our binoculars. It was an accident." Henry pushed back his hair, spiked with sweat, his breathing rapid, excited. "I saw him first. I yelled, then Lillian looked, and she saw him."

Jesus.
Kara fell back on her experience as an attorney. Ask sensible questions, don't react to answers. "Where is this tree house of yours?"

"It's on the hill above the gravel pit," Henry said. "We can see everything from up there. Mostly we watch the big trucks and sifters and things. They're so cool."

"I think they're loud," Lillian said.

"Does your mother know about the tree house?" Kara asked.

"No one knows. It's in a tree real close to the edge of the pit—Mom'd make us take it down. Charlie Jericho almost caught us once. He'd
kill
us."

Kara didn't doubt it. Charlie was a hard-bitten old grouch most people liked in spite of his irascibility, but she supposed he wouldn't want to see the kids get hurt. "You can see the house Big Mike rented from up there?"

Henry nodded. "Only with our binoculars."

Lillian continued to stare at her ice-cream dish. "We saw the deep end of his swimming pool," she said without looking up. "He was floating on his stomach. I thought he looked funny. I didn't know he was in trouble. Henry did."

"What did you do?" Kara asked, not wanting to picture what they must have seen through their binoculars.

"We jumped out of the tree house. We ran and ran and ran." Lillian looked up, breathless now, the words tumbling out on top of each other. "I dropped my pair of binoculars—they have a pink ribbon tied to them. But Henry said never mind, leave them, and I just ran so hard—we wanted to save him."

"But you couldn't," Kara said gently. "You had too far to go."

"He was already dead." Henry's tone was clipped, as if none of this really mattered to him. Denial, Kara suspected. Bravado. A child's uncertain grasp of death. "We couldn't do anything to help him. I told Lil."

Kara leaned against the sink, feeling more than queasy now. She was sick to her stomach at the thought of what these kids had witnessed, the helplessness and terror they must have felt. The awful grief.

"How far did you get before you turned around?" she asked.

"Almost to the fence around the pool." Henry continued in that flat, matter-of-fact voice. "The fence by the deep end is a few feet in the woods. We saw the state troopers yelling into radios—one of the troopers jumped in the pool."

"I was scared," Lillian said. "I threw up."

Kara could see it now, two children charging through the woods to help their friend, then realizing he was dead, a
governor
was dead, and the situation was way over their heads. "So you left," she said. "You didn't say anything to the bodyguards."

Henry nodded. "We went back to our tree house."

Lillian sniffed, suddenly indignant. "My binoculars were
gone
. Somebody stole them! Henry says they're probably under the leaves and I looked in the wrong place, but I know somebody took them. Don't you think so, Aunt Kara?"

She dodged Lillian's question. "Do you each have your own pair of binoculars?"

"They're old ones Grandma gave to us," Henry said dismissively. "I left mine in the tree house."

"Did you go back up into the tree house after you got back?"

"No. We ran all the way back to Grandma's house. We were going to tell her and Mom what we saw, but the police were there, taking Mom to be sworn in. So we didn't say anything." He shoved the heels of his hands into his eyes and rubbed, yawning as if he couldn't stand up another second. He dropped his hands, lifting his shoulders and letting them fall in a world-weary shrug. "We couldn't do anything that'd bring Big Mike back."

Kara rubbed his bony shoulder. "You heard he couldn't swim, right?"

Henry nodded without looking at her, and Lillian said, "We know it wasn't our fault, Aunt Kara, but if we could have saved him…" She trailed off, rising unsteadily. "Will we have to tell the police what we saw?"

"You should," Kara said. "It might not seem like it to you, but you could have information they don't have right now, something that could help them understand what happened to Big Mike."

"Do they still believe it was an accident?" Henry asked.

Something in his voice—indefinable but unmistak-able—gave her goose bumps. "As far as I know, yes. Henry, do you have any reason to believe what happened to Big Mike
wasn't
an accident?"

He yawned, his tonsils showing. "I'm tired." He turned to his sister. "Flip you for the big room."

"No, I want it!"

They scrambled out of the kitchen, pounding upstairs to see who could claim the big room first, yelling at each other as if they'd just been discussing Ben & Jerry's flavors instead of the horror of witnessing Big Mike's death.

Kara dismissed the twinge in her stomach as nerves. She had a right.

Henry and Lillian had left her with the dirty dishes. She cleared the table, laying the dishes in the sink, squirting in detergent. A refreshing breeze floated through the open window. She could smell the clean, cool night air.