The Temptation of Savannah O'Neill (6 page)

Cheryl nodded and Matt glanced between them. “Cover for what?”

“I think it’s the middle boy, Tyler,” Doug said. “I don’t know how, but I think they’re hiding the money he wins in Vegas so he doesn’t have to pay taxes.”

Cheryl shook her head. “I think it’s the mother, what’s her name—”

“Vanessa?” Matt asked, perhaps a bit too eagerly, but Cheryl didn’t seem to notice. “But where is she?” he asked. “They never talk about her.”

“Oh, God, no.” Doug laughed. “No one talks about Vanessa. Ever. Savannah about slapped my head off a few years ago when I asked her.”

Matt paused a moment, grateful that Savannah had ignored him rather than slapped his head off.

“I told you that was no way to get her to go out with you.” Cheryl tsked her tongue and Matt got a little insight into that slut comment. A beautiful woman like Savannah who wouldn’t date the riffraff—what else would the riffraff do but call her names?

Something detonated in his chest, sympathy and anger that there was no one around to defend these women against people bent on believing the worst of them.

You,
he thought,
you could do it.

But he wasn’t here to defend them, not any more than
he had. He was here for answers and so far, Cheryl and Doug had been more help than all three O’Neill women combined.

“So where is Vanessa?” Matt asked, even though he knew. Or had known.

“No one’s seen her in years,” Doug said.

“Oh,” Cheryl laughed. “Just because she ain’t been seen doesn’t mean she’s not around. Trouble, that one. Worse than all the others put together. Her and that husband of hers.”

Matt’s head spun. “Husband?”

“Richard someone or other. He and Vanessa got divorced long before the kids ended up in Bonne Terre.”

There was a thump behind them, the old man in the red shirt reappeared and Cheryl vanished like a ghost.

“That will be two hundred twelve dollars and thirty-two cents,” Doug said. Matt blinked, stunned to see all of his stuff in bags and Doug smiling at him as if he hadn’t been saying the foulest things about Savannah moments ago.

“Hold on there, Doug. Add two bags of ready-mix,” the old man said, then turned to Matt. “You’ll have to go around back to get them.”

“Ah…no problem,” Matt said and took out his wallet.

“I got it from here, Doug, thanks,” the man said and Doug walked off. He said he was going to check on fishing rods, but the safe bet was Doug finding mommy and doing what they did best.

Matt put his money on the counter but the old guy ignored it, looking hard into Matt’s eyes.

“Don’t listen to my family,” he said. “Those O’Neill women are good people. Don’t deserve what’s been done to them.”

Don’t hurt us. Don’t hurt us more than we’ve been hurt.

“What’s been done to them?”

“They been left, boy. Time and time again, they been left and that will make a person do some crazy things.”

T
HE NIGHT HAD A TEXTURE TO IT
, a lush throbbing weight that reminded Matt that there were a lot of living things out in all that blackness. Living things like snakes. Alligators. Big bugs that he wasn’t real fond of. And the only thing between him and them was the thin metal screen of the sleeping porch.

It hadn’t seemed quite as bad the past few nights, but he’d been falling asleep so hard and so deep it was as if he’d died.

Tonight, his head was spinning, trying to separate malicious gossip and rumor from what might possibly be the truth.

The gems, here?

Christ, it would make his life a whole lot easier. And, frankly, it explained why the kids were always breaking into the back courtyard. Why the greenhouse was destroyed and why suddenly someone was bold enough to try to get into the house.

Why they wanted a security camera in their garden.

Gems, thousands of dollars in a wall safe.

People did worse for less.

Like you,
he thought, guilt eating at the edges of his mind.

He should have said something to Doug, a little something to keep his mouth shut about Savannah. But he hadn’t. He’d walked away and now he was going to use Doug’s gossip against them.

I’m no better than Doug. I’m worse.

He turned on the small camping lantern that Margot had given him because the porch wasn’t wired with electricity. The white sheets on the narrow cot glowed, and other than some gardening pots in the corner of the room where he’d hidden the surveillance photos and files, the porch was empty.

No wall safes. No gems.

Bugs were attracted to the light and buzzed against the screens, beating giant wings against the metal.

Freaked out, he turned off the light, opting for the ghostly half-light of the moon.

Room 3 at Bonne Terre Inn was getting more appealing by the minute.

But there were no chances to study the lovely, wounded and Notorious O’Neill women in room three.

Don’t hurt us any more than we’ve been hurt.

Why did she have to say that?

Why did he have to feel guilty for doing what was right for his dad? His father, who had been hung out to dry by Vanessa and Richard.

He checked his watch. Dad called him every Wednesday at this time. Jail was a lonely place and these weekly calls were important. To both of them. Joel Woods may not have been the best father, but he’d done the best he could.

Matt grabbed his cell phone, depressed the power button under his thumb and the annoying chime of an activated phone sounded loud in the quiet night.

“Hello, Matt,” his phone said. “You have twenty voice mail messages.”

He groaned and looked down at the display. Erica. Twenty voice mail messages from Erica, trying to get him back to work. Trying to get him to care.

He erased all of them with one push of his finger.

But then the screen illuminated with a text message.

Twenty messages, you jerk. You’ve lost two clients. I’ve paid all the bills I can. Consider this my two weeks notice. Erica.

H
E STARED HARD AT
the words, trying to make sense of them. Erica was leaving. He searched himself for any emotional reaction, but felt nothing. It was as if it were someone else’s incredibly prized personal assistant leaving.

That whole life, the office and the buildings, the door with his name on it, all of it seemed so far away. So removed from him.

The fact that he didn’t care, not about losing Erica or his clients, actually terrified him.

Who am I becoming?
he wondered.

His throat tight, he deleted the message only to have another one pop up that had been sent three hours after the previous one.

Okay. I’ve had a glass of wine and expensed a nice dinner on you. I realize leaving now would be a disaster. For you. You need help, Matt. Lots of help. Charlotte came by the office yesterday. She quit her job and is moving down to Houston with the kids to be with Jack. She says stop sending them money. She says they are fine. I believe her. I’m not quitting. Thanks for the steak.

Fine?
He wondered. He tipped his head back and stared through the screen at a filmy white cloud passing over the moon. How is that possible? Charlotte had been an editor
at the
Post-Gazette
—a job she’d loved, had worked so hard for. Jack used to brag about his wife, the mudraker.

Oh, God,
he thought, struggling for breath.
Another life changed. Another life diminished by what I’ve done.

With a shaking finger, he turned off his phone.

He rose, bathed in a pool of moonlight, the dark around its edges so black it seemed like the floor might end. Stepping out of the pool would mean a certain fall and he felt as though he’d been held in this spot for too long.

He was here, at the Manor, with these women day in and day out, waiting, but what the hell was he really doing for his father? Nothing. Being a handyman wasn’t bringing justice to anyone. It was only giving him blisters.

The floor creaked over his head as they got ready for bed. He could talk to them about Vanessa, right now. Tell them about what people in town said about her, ask if it was true.

Don’t hurt us.

He was reluctant down to his feet to hurt them, but he needed to do something, anything. Standing here in the dark, tallying the bloody mistakes he’d made would drive him out of his mind. Maybe he was halfway there—half mad with all of it already. It was the only explanation for what he was doing.

What he’d come to.

He forced himself to remember his father in his prison cell, sitting on the thin bunk owning it, holding court, like it was the high stakes room at the Bellagio. Just thinking about it was a gut punch. Seven years for a crime he hadn’t committed alone.

Other people needed to be punished.

Unbidden, he remembered the girlfriend’s graveyard eyes. The splotches of blood like ugly rust-colored flowers on her sequined gown.

The way she screamed and screamed and screamed when the ambulance took her boyfriend’s body away.

He was here for justice.

And justice didn’t care who got hurt.

With a cool head, he decided to look for a safe. Talking about Vanessa had gotten him exactly nowhere and bringing the town gossip into it wouldn’t help.

The sounds of Katie’s and Savannah’s voices filtered down through the old floors and he knew he had to wait until the house was asleep before starting his hunt.

He turned on the camping light and picked up his sketchbook. He flipped past his sketches of the repairs and quickly went to work on a sketch of the interior of the house, which was basically two squares built on top of each other around a central courtyard.

On the first floor, he knew there was a living room and a kitchen and, considering the age of the house, he took a reasonable guess about plumbing and put a bathroom on the second floor above the kitchen.

An hour and a half later the house was silent, dark and heavy with the dreams of sleeping women. When he was sure he couldn’t be caught, he began his search.

The old wood floors creaked, soft spots like rotten bruises on a peach under the rugs in the hallways. With every creak he winced and waited for the sound of Savannah’s footsteps thundering down the stairs. They never came. Either she was sound asleep or the creaks weren’t that loud.

He hadn’t done any sneaking since he’d been a kid, and he felt ridiculously out of practice.

In the living room, where the cops had been that morning, he checked the walls. Running his hands under the paintings, he found nothing but plaster and spiderwebs.

He took a step into the center of the room, glancing
around for other places a safe might be concealed only to realize that all the paintings were of Margot at various ages and various stages of undress.

One, illuminated by a shaft of moonlight like a searchlight, was a young Margot, staring over her shoulder. She looked so much like Savannah it was eerie.

Forcing himself to turn away, to keep his mind on what he was here to do, he left the room.

Savannah’s office only revealed a landslide of papers and enough computer equipment to launch a spaceship.

Research, he remembered from his investigator’s reports, Savannah was a well-paid researcher.

Where does her money go?
he wondered. Certainly not into the house. Savannah drove a nothing special car, wore nothing special clothes. No jewels, very little makeup.

Granted, Margot looked like a woman who demanded a certain amount of money for upkeep.

And, he thought, taxes on a house like this might be a pretty big chunk of change.

But still, it didn’t seem to add up.

He wondered what she looked up on those computers while at the same time trying to convince himself that he truly didn’t care. That knowing her, or wanting to know her any better, was in direct opposition to finding out the truth.

The drawers to her desk were open and filled with receipts and pens and about a hundred little Halloween packages of M&M’s.

She has a sweet tooth,
he thought, finding the idea utterly intimate as he stared down at the drawer as though it was stuffed with lingerie rather than months-old chocolates.

More than a little disgusted with himself, he left the office, shutting the door quietly behind him. At the end
of the hallway were two closed doors, Margot’s room and what he thought was the library. Both rooms had slices of light shining out under the doors.

The floor creaked behind him and he turned only to come face-to-face with a steely-eyed Savannah.

His stomach fell into his shoes.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I thought I heard something,” he lied. The lie he’d planned and rehearsed. Some of the steel leached from her eyes and she licked her lips. He forced himself to be cold, to be numb to her. It was much harder than he expected.

“What?” she asked. “What did you hear?”

“Just some creaking. Old houses,” he said with a shrug, trying hard not to look lower than her eyes—she was wearing that purple robe and its gleam in the moonlight was magnetic.

“Okay,” she whispered, clearly torn, hesitant to leave him where he stood.

“You wanted me here,” he reminded her. “To check things out at night, right?”

“Right,” she agreed, and then repeated it. Stronger. “Of course. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said and left first, feeling her eyes on his back as he walked away. She was suspicious, and he had to hope he found what he was looking for before she discovered the truth about him.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, Doug from the hardware store delivered the tiller and chain saw.

Matt met him by the curb and helped him unload.

“I’ll take them around back for you,” Doug said, his bland face alight with morbid curiosity.

“I got it,” Matt said. His righteousness from last night had faded into a general unease, and bringing this guy into
the Manor would only make him feel worse. “Thanks, though.”

Doug peered over Matt’s shoulder. “God, look at her,” he said and Matt spun to see all the O’Neill women standing on the porch, glaring at him.

The only thing missing was a shotgun in Katie’s hands.

“How did someone so beautiful get to be so mean?” Doug asked.

Something inside of him leaped, snarled, wanted to tear this guy apart for even looking at Savannah with that hate and ownership in his eyes, as though he knew everything there was to know about the woman.

Not your business, Matt. Stay out of it.

But the urge to protect the women behind him wouldn’t go away.

“I swear she’s the biggest bitch I’ve ever met.”

“Well, women tend to get mean when people call them names,” he said through clenched teeth.

Doug blinked at him, as if he didn’t get it, and Matt waited for the words to sink in.

“Give it time, man, her true colors will come through.”

That was the thing—Matt feared they already had. In those soft moments. The quiet ones. As she smoothed her daughter’s hair away from her face. As she jumped over rocks. He thought of the M&M’s, of her defiant eyes last night that didn’t quite hide the worry she felt around him.

“You know, in my experience, men hate a beautiful woman for only one reason,” Matt said. “What’s that?”

“The woman is too good for them and they know it.”

Doug’s eyes narrowed. “They’re trash. Whores. Every
one of them, from the grandma on down. Why don’t you ask Savannah who Katie’s father is, huh?”

Matt reached out to curl his hand in the neck of Doug’s shirt.

“There a problem here?” Margot’s voice rang out like steel on steel behind him and he dropped his hand.

“Nope,” Matt said, looking Doug square in the eye. “Doug was just leaving. Don’t worry about delivering that sod,” he said. “Give me a call and I’ll come get it.”

Doug grumbled, cast one more dark look over Matt’s shoulder, and finally got back in his truck and drove away, a plume of dust behind him.

Matt released the brake on the tiller and picked up the chain saw before turning. Margot stood there, staring daggers at him as Savannah was stepping off the porch behind her.

“Don’t say a word about Katie’s father,” Margot said, her face stony. “It’s not something that gets talked about around here. Ever.”

“Yeah,” he said, wiping his neck with his shoulder, getting sick of the secrets. “There’s a lot of that here.”

Savannah came to stand next to Margot and lifted her hand to shield her eyes from the sun. “What’s going on?” she asked.

Looking for the safe had gotten him nowhere. It was time to throw some cards on the table and see what these two had.

“According to Doug and his mother, the gossip around town is that some kid named Garrett is behind the break-in.”

Savannah and Margot shared a loaded look. “That’s what we thought,” Savannah said. “Juliette is on it.”

“He also said that Garrett is looking for a wall safe. Rumor has it you guys are hiding gems.”

There was a long silent moment and Matt held his breath.
Come on,
he thought,
just give me something. One thing.

Savannah laughed.

“Yes, termite damage and loads of gems. Makes perfect sense. Did Doug have anything else to say?”

Disheartened, frustrated, he shook his head and pushed the tiller toward the side of the house. He took a few steps before stopping.

He didn’t want to be involved, but he couldn’t help it. Doug’s malice turned Matt’s stomach, and he had to wonder how far such anger had gone.

He turned, looked Savannah in the eye. “Did Doug ever hurt you?”

Savannah’s mouth fell open slightly before she pressed her lips into a white line. She shook her head, her eyes bleeding blue. “He’s harmless.”

Matt swallowed, clamped his teeth together and left before he did anything else.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, it was barely past dawn and he was sweaty and swarmed with bugs. Frustration ate at him, driving him to swing the scythe harder, faster.

No luck.

Four days. Four. Days.

Most of the kudzu was gone. The wall was totally repaired, a work of art, actually. He’d unearthed the bench and the broken fountain, and the rosebushes were trimmed to within an inch of their lives—he was an architect after all, not a damn gardener.

But that was it.

He’d searched every room except for Savannah’s, Margot’s and the library, which were all locked. This was so
highly suspicious, he couldn’t sleep at night thinking about all they might be hiding in those rooms.

But in the rest of the house, no safes.

Or, frankly, any sign of Vanessa.

Savannah was avoiding him like the plague and none of this brought him any closer to knowing where Vanessa or the gems were or why his father had been set up to rot in a jail cell alone.

As he attacked the vines, he became all too aware he had a pair of eyes on him from the cypress tree over his shoulder.

Not Savannah’s—she watched him from the window of her office. And Margot stood sentinel at the kitchen window.

Katie watched him from the tree.

“Hi, Katie,” he said, breaking the silence, his rhythm against the kudzu never slowing. “Whatcha doing?”

There was a long, slightly stunned silence and he grinned.

“I know you’re there,” he said. “No use pretending you’re not.”

An orange peel fell on his shoulder. He smiled and shrugged it off. It landed, a brilliant orange curl, in the pile of deep green weeds.

“I’m watching you,” she finally said.

“Seems you should have better things to do.”

Leaves rustled and there was a thunk as the girl dropped onto the cobblestones behind him.

“I don’t.”

“You bored?”

“Yeah.”

“You want to help?” he asked, stopping long enough to glance over his shoulder.

She wore the top of her Asian red silk pajamas with
cutoff shorts, tennis shoes and sweat socks pulled up to her knees.

“No,” she said and wrestled around in her back pocket only to pull out a deck of cards. “Want to play cards?”