See How She Dies

by Lisa Jackson

  “How?”

  “First, you’ve got to follow her—”

  “You’ve got to be kidding!”

  “I’m not.”

  Zach’s jaw was so tight it ached. He didn’t like being manipulated, and for as long as he could remember, someone in his family—Witt, or Kat, or Jason—was trying to pull his strings.

  “My guess is that she’s working with an accomplice.”

  “Come on—”

  “Why not? We’re talking a lot of money here. A lot. People would do just about anything to get their hands on it—even impersonate a dead girl. Think about it, Zach—our biggest worry has been that someone would show up now, after Witt and Kat are both dead, claiming to be an heir, and there’s no way to take DNA tests or anything of the sort.”

  “I’m not worried about it.”

  “You should be—whether you like it or not, you’re a member of this family and…hang on a minute.” His voice was muffled for a second, then clear again. “Look, Logan’s checking with the cab companies. I’ll call you when we hear something.”

  “Don’t bother.” Zach slammed the phone back in its cradle. He was tired of Portland, tired of his family, tired of all the mess. He stripped out of his tuxedo—a rental—stuffed it back in its bag, and left it hanging in the closet. By the time he’d changed into jeans and a sweater, the phone was ringing insistently. He wanted to ignore it, but snapped up the receiver again. He didn’t have to guess who was calling.

  “She’s at the Riverview Inn on Eighty-second, somewhere near Flavel,” Jason said, pleased with himself. “Seems our little gold digger isn’t so well off, is she?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course it does. She can’t afford the best lawyers if she can’t even pay for a decent room. Why don’t you go out there, Zach, check out what the situation is? If she’s working alone, take her to the ranch with you.”

  “No way.”

  “She’d be safe there. Isolated.”

  “The lady won’t want to come.”

  “Convince her.”

  “How? Tell her that maybe she’ll get a piece of the estate? Forget it.”

  “Come on, Zach. Do it. Who knows? She might even be London.”

  “Not in a million years,” he said and ignored the funny feeling in his stomach when he remembered her clear blue eyes and her low, seductive voice. I remember you, Zach. As clearly as if it were yesterday, I remember a sullen, dark-haired boy whom I adored. His palms began to sweat around the receiver.

  “I hope you’re right, but I sure would like to find out.”

  “Drive over there yourself.”

  “As I said, she trusts you.”

  “She doesn’t even know me.” He tapped a foot in frustration and thought of Adria. She was beautiful and seductive and he was attracted to her. That fascination, in and of itself, was dangerous. He didn’t want or need a woman in his life, especially one who had her eye on the family fortune. He’d already learned that lesson.

  “This’ll blow over soon. But we need to get a handle on her. All you have to do is convince her to come to the ranch with you for a couple of days.”

  “No way.”

  “Well, at least go talk to her. Ask her to stay at the Hotel Danvers, compliments of the family.”

  Zach barked out a laugh. “As if she’d believe you. She went to a lot of trouble to hide herself. I don’t think shell want to stay in a hotel where she could be watched day and night.”

  “My guess is she’ll like the higher-rent district. She’s after money, remember, and it must gall her to stay in some dump of a motel.”

  “Maybe she likes her privacy.”

  “Then she should never have started this, because before it’s over she won’t know what the word means.” He paused for a second and Zachary imagined Jason running a nervous hand around his neck. “Hell, Zach, we have to keep our eye on her.”

  “Then invite her to stay at the damned hotel.”

  “She trusts you.”

  Zach snorted. “If she’s smart, she won’t trust anyone in the family.” He thought about the way she’d gazed at the picture of Witt and Katherine and London. As if she really cared. She either believed her far-fetched story herself or was the best damned actress he’d ever met.

  “Talk to her,” Jason insisted.

  “Oh, hell.” He hung up, not agreeing and not disagreeing. Grabbing his bag, he mentally kicked himself all the way to the parking garage. Adria Nash was trouble. Big-time trouble. Trouble he didn’t need or want.

  “Shit!” He threw his single piece of luggage into the back of the Jeep and drove away from the hotel, heading east, through the drizzle and across the murky Willamette River and along the grid of streets on the east side. Traffic was light and he pushed the speed limit, suddenly anxious to find her. He was as bad as the rest of the family. He’d never heard of the Riverview Inn, but found it easily, a low-rent cinder block building painted stark white. The flickering lighted sign advertised free cable television. All the units were connected in a “U” shape. The panoramic view from the windows of the units was a pockmarked asphalt lot and an all-night bar across the street. Riverview stretched the imagination. No river. No view. But cheap daily rates.

  Zach studied the cars in the lot and spied a battered Chevy Nova with Montana plates parked in front of unit eight. “So you are here,” he said, backing the Jeep into an unmarked spot near a solitary oak tree. He turned off the ignition and stared at the bank of rooms facing each other.

  The manager’s unit was dark and he hoped no one peeked out the window and wondered what he was doing. He slid lower in the seat, glanced at his watch and frowned. It was nearly four in the morning and traffic still whizzed by, throwing up rainwater and creating a low, constant hum. He wondered if Adria was an early riser and told himself he’d soon find out.

  Jason ran a nervous hand around the back of his neck. He had to think. He was the brains of the family, the only person who knew how to run his father’s vast holdings. Trisha dabbled with her art and decorating, Nelson practiced some archaic form of law as a public defender, Zach had earned his trade as a builder and now owned a construction firm in Bend while he managed the ranch in central Oregon, but Jason was the one who held the whole fraying fabric of the family business together.

  He stripped off his tuxedo, threw it over the back of a chair for the maid to deal with in the morning, and frowned when he looked at his bed. Ever since Adria Nash had crashed the grand opening of the hotel, Jason’s plans for the night had been thrown into a tailspin. Right now, if things had progressed as he’d hoped, he would be in bed with Kim, rolling in the sheets, arms and legs entwined, mouths pressed to body parts, groans and moans of pleasure filling the room. Instead he was standing here half dressed, wishing he had another drink and worried that somehow a woman—a cunning and gorgeous woman he’d never seen before tonight—might find a way to steal the family’s fortune.

  After Zach and Adria had left, he’d been forced to deal with his neurotic younger brother and sister, both of whom, in Jason’s opinion, needed to spend a few more hours a week on psychiatrists’ couches.

  Zach was a pain, but at least he didn’t have any hangups, not like Trisha and Nelson. Trisha, though she’d been through a dozen lovers and one marriage, had never been happy and Jason suspected that she’d never really gotten over Mario Polidori. As for Nelson, different demons attacked that boy. Working for the public defender’s office was bad enough, but there was more about the youngest Danvers son to worry Jason. Nelson had a high set of moral standards, which he expounded for endless hours, and yet, there was a darker side to Nelson, a secretive side that only surfaced when he was angry or worried.

  He poured himself another drink and kicked off his Jockey shorts, so that he was completely naked. From his bedroom he stood at the sliding glass door, backlit by the light from the hall, as he stared over the tops of trees and across the lights of the city. He was a man of action, a
man who made quick decisions and lived with them, a person who got things done.

  Without a qualm he reached for the phone and dialed a number he’d memorized and used years before. An answering machine clicked on and Jason sighed. His message was brief. “Yeah, it’s me. Danvers. It’s time to call in all my markers and you owe me one. A big one. I’ve got a job for you. I’ll call back tomorrow.”

  His conscience twinged a bit, but he took a long swallow and felt the familiar warmth of Scotch as it burned down his throat, curled in his stomach, and warmed his bloodstream.

  A few hours of rest and he’d be ready to face anything. And that included exposing Adria Nash as a fraud.

  Adria’s head was pounding as she turned out the light. The room smelled musty and stale with the lingering odors of old cigarettes and years of filth. But the motel was cheap and anonymous. At least for now.

  She fell back on the bed and closed her eyes. Images of Zachary went through her mind. She couldn’t be distracted by him. She had to stay focused. She’d spent too much time on her mission. In the past few years she’d written letters, met with lawyers, people from government agencies, and kept a diary, trying vainly to find Virginia Watson. Only now, after her father’s death, did she have an inkling as to who she was.

  And she was going to go through hell and back trying to find out if, as her father insisted, she was really London Danvers.

  Zach glanced at his watch. Not long until daylight. Staring through the windshield to the motel where Adria Nash was sleeping, he wondered if she might just be his long-lost half-sister.

  Impossible.

  Crazy.

  But she looked so damned much like Kat.

  His gut tightened when he considered his hot-blooded stepmother and all the pain she’d brought his family. He didn’t want to think about her and what had happened after London’s abduction, didn’t want to consider his part in tarnishing the Danvers name. He slid lower on his back as rain began to drizzle down the windshield in earnest.

  He remember standing, bleeding in the rain, the night London had been abducted. He’d run into the policemen who had pointed their weapons at him and demanded answers…

  PART FOUR

  1974

  8

  “I asked you a question, Danvers,” Steve, the taller cop barked. “What happened to the girl?”

  “What girl?”

  “Your sister.”

  Trisha? London? “What about my sister?” he asked. “Where’s Jason?”

  The stocky one took hold of his arm and Zach nearly fell into the street. “Jesus, get your hands off me!” He sucked in his breath through loose teeth.

  “Look at this, Bill.” The officer opened the front of Zach’s jacket, shoving aside the expensive lapel with his riot stick, showing off the sticky purple stains of blood. “You okay, kid?”

  “Let’s get him up to his old man. There was a paramedic in the hotel—with the mother. And the old man’s called his personal physician. Come on, son, through the back door. We don’t want the press to get a picture of you looking like this, do we?”

  “What happened to Trisha?” Zach asked, dazed. The two thugs, Joey and Rudy, they’d found his sister. She’d been drunk and…Oh, God. Rage burned through his blood.

  “Maybe you can tell us,” Bill said as he hauled Zach in the direction of the service entrance. “My guess is you’ve got one helluva story.”

  “I don’t give a good goddamn what time it is,” Witt yelled, his patience worn thin. London was missing. His precious little girl—gone without a trace! His heart had nearly stopped at the news and he’d been foggy, but after six cups of coffee he was clearheaded and he knew who the bastard was behind the kidnapping. “I want you to send a car over to Polidori’s house. You wake up that goddamned son of a bitch and find out what he knows about this!” Witt yelled at Logan.

  “Back off, Witt. We’ll question Mr. Polidori, after the search of the hotel is complete.”

  “You bet your ass you will,” Witt said, reaching for the humidor of cigars he kept on the desk of his office on the main floor of the hotel. Katherine was sleeping, thanks to Dr. McHenry and several sleeping pills. Witt lit up and stalked around his massive desk. “You’ve checked all the rooms?”

  “Twice,” Logan snapped. He had no patience for Witt’s inference that he and his men weren’t capable of doing their jobs.

  “And the service elevator—”

  “And the boiler room, the linen closets, the conference rooms, the rest rooms, even the air shafts, elevator shafts, maintenance rooms, and freezers. We also checked out the parking lot, restaurant, bellboy’s closet, wine cellar, and every nook and cranny this old hotel has. It’s been renovated half a dozen times and my men have gone over every set of blueprints hoping to find some secret room that everyone here’s forgotten about. Take my word for it, Witt, she’s not on the premises.”

  “Then what’re you waiting for?”

  “I still haven’t heard from the men outside. We’re covering a ten-square-block area, talking to people on the street, checking other buildings nearby, and literally beating the bushes. We’ve got people at the airport, the train station, and the bus station.”

  “You’re wasting your time,” Witt growled impatiently. “Polidori’s—” He glanced up and saw two officers and Zach, bloodied and beaten, stumble into the office. Witt’s guts twisted. The boy’s face was the color of chalk and a nasty cut had ripped his skin open near his ear. He was still bleeding and his nose was a pulpy mass. On his feet in an instant, Witt rounded the desk. “Get the doctor,” he ordered a policeman, then faced his son. “What happened?”

  Zach glanced suspiciously to the police. He ran his tongue over dry, swollen lips. “What’s going on?” he asked, squinting against the light. “Did something happen to Trisha?”

  “Hell, no! What’re you talking about?”

  “They said, the police, that she was missing—”

  Witt’s guts twisted. “They were talking about London.”

  “London? But she’s only a kid—” Zach swallowed hard.

  “You weren’t with her?”

  Zach, stricken, shook his head.

  “Christ.” His entire world was collapsing and he knew where to put the blame.

  “What happened to her?” Zach asked.

  “She’s missing,” Witt said.

  “Missing? But she was at the party. I saw her. You saw her.”

  “It happened later. Ginny’s gone, too. That’s all we know.” Through his silent fear, Witt forced himself to turn his attention to the boy who was nearly beaten beyond recognition. “Are you all right?”

  Zach gritted his teeth. “I’ll live.”

  “So how’d this happen?” Witt demanded, then picked up the phone and dialed three digits. “Is McHenry still there? I sent a man for him. Well, just tell him to come down here, on the double. Yeah, my office. What? Oh, it’s Zach. He’s back and he’s been roughed up. Looks serious.” He slammed down the receiver and motioned two police officers off a green leather couch. “Come on, you’d better lie down. Looks like you’ve lost a lot of blood.”

  “I’m okay.”

  Witt felt his temper snap. “Just do it, okay? For once in your life, Zach, don’t fight me. Lie on the couch and let McHenry examine you, for crying out loud!”

  Zach looked like he was about to snarl back a hot retort, but instead he sat on the couch as Dr. McHenry walked through the door. A spry man nearing seventy, he’d been Witt’s physician for years and the best doctor money could buy. McHenry knew his stuff, but he could be trusted to keep his mouth shut, which made him invaluable.

  “I’d hate to see the other guy,” the doctor quipped, as he helped peel off Zach’s shirt. Witt’s stomach turned over at the sight of the ugly wound, red and angry, that sliced down Zach’s skin.

  “Okay, Zach, start talking,” Witt said, sitting on the corner of his desk. He reached for a fresh cigar while the old one smoldered in his overflowi
ng ashtray. Zach, sullen and wincing as the doctor attended his wounds, didn’t say a word. As usual. “Look, Zach, I don’t care what you think of me. Hell, nothing matters but London’s safety, so you’d better tell me what happened to you tonight. Your sister’s life could depend on it.”

  Zach sent him a look of pure hatred, but Witt didn’t care. He turned his gaze to Jack Logan and stared straight into the detective’s eyes. “And nothing that we hear in this room goes any further, right?”

  Logan nodded curtly, and satisfied, Witt settled back in his chair. “We’re listening, Zach.”

  Zach closed his eyes, hoping the room would stop swimming. He wanted to lie, but didn’t and told his story, with only two slight changes. He didn’t admit that his stepmother had turned him on during their dance at the party and he kept Jason’s name out of the mess. He didn’t rat on his brother and claimed to have made the arrangements with Sophia himself. Why, he wasn’t sure. Maybe he wanted to deal with Jason himself. Or maybe he held some latent brotherly affection for the older brother who had been a thorn in his side for as long as he could remember. Or maybe he was just scared shitless.

  Doc McHenry didn’t say a word as he worked over Zach. He grunted to himself as he applied ointment and something that burned like hell, then began stitching his shoulder back together and tended to the gash above his ear. Once satisfied with his stitches, he worked on Zach’s face. “You’re nose is broken again, kid, but it’ll give you character in your old age,” the doctor said, cleaning off the dried blood. Each time he touched Zach’s nose, Zach nearly passed out all over again. “This is something for the pain.” He found a hypodermic needle in his black bag, rolled down the waistband of Zach’s pants, and punched the needle into Zach’s butt. “And another tetanus booster.”

  Zach refused to be mortified that McHenry had shown his ass to his father and several of Logan’s men. He didn’t give a damn what the old man or the doctor did to him. It wasn’t any worse than dealing with the cops.