Whispers

by Lisa Jackson

  Styles didn’t say a word.

  “It’s not a mystery, Mr. Styles—”

  “Denver. You’ll be seeing a lot of me. No reason to keep tripping over names.” A half smile, a false grin meant to disarm and encourage her to keep talking tugged at his lips, but those gray eyes never warmed to her, never so much as flickered with a touch of understanding. “I suppose your sisters would repeat, nearly word for word, the same story.”

  “It’s not a story,” Tessa interjected with a toss of her head.

  “No one saw you at the drive-in.” His dark eyebrows drew together, as if he were deep in thought. “Isn’t that strange considering that you three are pretty high-profile, what with being from one of the wealthiest families in the area?”

  “We didn’t talk to anyone.”

  “No? Not even in the snack bar?”

  “There wasn’t a lot of people there. It was right before the drive-in theater closed for good.”

  “We took our own sodas,” Claire said, her voice thin.

  He rubbed his chin. “And you didn’t get out of the car for what? Three or four hours? Not even to use the ladies’ room?”

  “I don’t think so,” Miranda replied before Claire could say anything else and get them all into bigger trouble.

  “That’s pretty unbelievable, don’t you think?”

  Her voice was calm, smooth as glass. “That’s the way it was. Obviously there were a lot of other cars there, families and teenagers, but none around us that I recognized. As I told the sheriff’s department a long time ago, there was a white station wagon with wood on the side—I don’t know the make—with a family of kids, parked next to us. The space on the other side of my car was empty. In front of us was a pickup—dark-colored with a bank of spotlights stretched across the cab, and other than that I don’t remember any other vehicle.”

  “And you were driving a black Camaro.”

  “That’s right. It was totaled later that night. Just because no one the police spoke with that night had seen us doesn’t mean there wasn’t someone there who had. They just didn’t look hard enough.”

  “The guy who sold tickets didn’t remember your car.”

  “He was probably stoned. His memory wasn’t all that great. If you read his deposition you’ll see that he hardly knew the names of the movies that were playing.” Her fists clenched and she had to force her fingers to straighten. If she’d learned anything in her years as a lawyer, it was how to hide emotion when necessary, how to bring it to the surface when needed. Right now the less knowledge Denver Styles scraped up about her and that hellish night, the better.

  Dutch winced as he stood, then rubbed his knee. “The reason the police didn’t find out much that night is because I bought ’em off.”

  “Dad, don’t,” she warned, incredulous even though he had already alluded to tampering with the investigation. To what lengths would her father go to get his way?

  Claire let out a tiny, disbelieving gasp, and Tessa, always the cynic, rolled her eyes. “You never stop, do you?” Tessa demanded. “Jesus, Dad, you bribed the police?”

  “I did what I had to do,” he snapped as he walked across the room, his pace evening out as he reached the French doors and opened them, letting in a warm breeze. “I figured this was probably the single most important moment of all our lives and I thought—hell, I hoped I was saving you girls, your mother, yes, and me, a pile of grief.”

  “You didn’t believe us.” Miranda felt empty inside. Drained. The truth was sure to come out, every last painful and ugly detail.

  “I couldn’t and I wasn’t about to take the risk that one of you would be exposed as that Taggert boy’s killer.”

  Miranda’s insides shook.

  “His name was Harley,” Claire said, lifting her chin. “It’s been sixteen years, Dad. You don’t have to refer to him as ‘that boy’ anymore.” Standing proudly, she stared at her father, then her gaze moved past him, through the open door to the lake, and focused on whatever she saw in the distance, on the opposite shore.

  “All I wanted to do was save your skins.”

  “And your reputation,” Tessa said. “That’s about the time Stone Illahee was opening the second phase, wasn’t it? You couldn’t risk that your new resort would be tainted with some sort of scandal. New golf course, indoor tennis courts, Olympic-size pool, gorgeous views, and major debt. What would happen if the word got out that Benedict Holland’s, the owner’s, daughters were involved in—”

  “In an accident,” Miranda said quickly. “You had so little faith that you bought off the investigation.”

  “That’s right.” Dutch was defensive, his bushy gray eyebrows pulling together. “Paid the sheriff’s department to downplay the whole incident.”

  “Not smart,” Styles observed.

  “Hey, look, I wasn’t planning on running for office then.”

  “But now you are and you want to dredge all this up again.” Claire rubbed one temple with her fingers as she tried and failed to stave off a headache. “Why?”

  “To beat Moran to the punch and divert him if I have to.” He walked to the bar and motioned to the full bottles. “How about a drink?”

  “Another time.” Denver eyed Tessa. “You want to elaborate?”

  “How?”

  “See anyone you know at the movies?” His tone wasn’t the least bit imperious, and yet Miranda felt an underlying challenge in his words.

  “While you’re pouring, Dad,” Tessa said, as if sensing trouble, “I’ll have a drink. Vodka straight up.”

  “I already told you,” Miranda said, standing and crossing the room so that she could meet Styles’s gaze more evenly. “You don’t have to try and trip us up by pitting one of us against the other.”

  “Is that what I was doing?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I just thought I should hear your sisters’ sides of the story even though you’ve already primed them.”

  Claire, too, was on her feet. “Look, I don’t really have time for this. I’ve got kids waiting for me. Miranda told you the truth, I don’t have anything else to add.”

  “Oh, hell, Claire,” Dutch growled. “Tell the man about Taggert. You ran around here mooning over the guy and had just announced that you were going to marry him. You’ve got a helluva lot more to say.” He handed a drink to Tessa, who, a stubborn set to her jaw, walked to the window and rested her head against the glass.

  Claire’s stomach clenched. “It’s true. I had hoped to marry Harley, though . . . it . . . it wasn’t working out.” She rubbed the back of one of her hands with the thumb of the other. “Everyone was against it because of a feud that existed between our families.”

  “He knows about the damned feud.” Frowning darkly, Dutch fell into his chair again, raised the leg support, and took a sip from his glass.

  Claire felt a chill even though it was still warm. Through the open door she noticed the sun was beginning to set, fiery pink-and-orange beams fractured against the underbelly of a few high clouds. She knew that Miranda had spoken first to remind her younger sisters of the lie they’d concocted, the altering of the facts to protect them all, but suddenly it seemed that their secret, woven tightly by each woman’s determination to put that dark, ugly night behind them, was beginning to unravel and fray. “When I first met Harley, I mean, I’d known him all my life, but when I realized I was attracted to him, it was at the lake. He was going with another girl, Kendall Forsythe, at the time.”

  “The bitch,” Tessa interjected, and received a harsh, warning glare from Miranda.

  “Kendall—as in Weston Taggert’s wife.”

  “Yes.” Claire nodded. She wasn’t going to let anyone, either her father or her older sister, dictate how she felt or what she said. Things had changed over the last decade and a half, and if she’d learned anything, it was that she had to speak up for herself and rely on her own judgment. For too many years she’d trusted other people—first her mother, then Harley, eventu
ally Miranda, and finally Paul. “Dad might have told you that he thought the Taggerts had moved here with the express purpose of running him out of business, but that wasn’t true.”

  Her father snorted. “Neal should have stuck to shipping up in Seattle.”

  “They moved down here in the fifties, I think,” Claire continued, glancing from Miranda to Styles.

  “Nineteen fifty-six.” Dutch opened a glass humidor and fingered a cigar.

  “Anyway, Dad took it as a personal insult that he’d have some competition.”

  “I knew it, that Harley brainwashed you!”

  “Jesus, Dad,” Tessa said, as Dutch bit off the end of his cigar and spit it into the fireplace. “You called us all up, insisted that we show up here and spill our guts, then when Claire tries, you start insulting her. I’m outta here.” She tossed back her drink, snagged her purse, and headed for the door.

  “No, wait—” Dutch shoved himself out of the recliner and wincing as he put weight on his bad knee, hurried after his youngest, bullheaded, daughter. But Tessa wasn’t about to stay and be insulted. Within seconds an engine fired to life. Tessa’s Mustang roared away.

  “Go ahead,” Styles said to Claire. His hands were forced into the pockets of his beat-up jacket, and he seemed less stiff and unbending than he had when he’d first entered. “What about the Taggerts?”

  “They’re originally from Seattle. As Dad mentioned, the family had some kind of shipping operation up there started by his great-grandfather, I think.”

  “Old Evan Taggert, Neal’s grandfather,” Dutch said, puffing on his cigar as he strode into the room again. Agitation caused a tic to quiver near his temple. “Sorry about Tessa. Sometimes she’s a hothead, but she’s staying at the resort—a suite in the north wing. You can call her later.”

  “I will,” Denver said, then nodded toward Claire, urging her to continue.

  “Anyway, Harley’s dad wanted to do something different.”

  “Making millions shipping out of Puget Sound wasn’t good enough, I guess,” Dutch grumbled. “So he started buying all the cheap land on the Oregon coast he could get his hands on. You can’t buy much beach property in Washington, it’s all owned by the Indians—reservations, so Neal decided to horn in on my territory. The bastard envisioned himself as the premier developer of this stretch of land, settled himself and his family around Chinook.”

  “And in direct competition with you.”

  “You got it.” Scowling, Dutch finished his drink and set the glass onto the table by his folded newspaper. “Scammed me out of a prime piece around Seaside. Built himself Sea Breeze right after I’d started construction of Stone Illahee.” Dutch drew on his cigar until the ash glowed red. “Bastard.”

  “So how did you feel about Claire marrying into the Taggert family?”

  “I hated it.”

  “How badly?”

  Dutch’s eyes narrowed on Denver. “Look, I didn’t hire you to insinuate that I had something to do with the kid’s death. Believe me, if I would have killed him, no one would think it was anything other than an accident.”

  “Stop it!” Miranda ordered.

  “I can’t listen to this another second.” Claire was on her feet, her insides quivering. “I don’t know what you thought you’d accomplish by hauling us all up here, but as far as I’m concerned it’s over. Past history.” She scrounged in her purse, found the keys, and started for the door.

  “We have more to discuss,” Dutch insisted, rising again from his chair.

  Claire held a hand up as she left, cutting off any further protests. “Later.”

  “But I want you to stay here, at the house. I thought we’d agreed.”

  “It was a bad idea.”

  “Your kids need a home, Claire, not some cheap apartment that has no meaning for them. Here they can have the run of the place, we can get some horses again, they can canoe and swim. There’s the lake, tennis courts, pool—”

  “I can’t be bought, Dad.” But she hesitated. Her weak spot was her kids, and Dutch knew it.

  “I’m not buying you. I’m just offering to help out. For Sean and Samantha’s sake.” She wanted to trust him, to believe that he was developing some latent grandfatherly feelings for his only grandchildren. “Your mother never liked it here, but you did. Of all the kids, you enjoyed living in this place.”

  That much was true. Still . . . she didn’t want to take any handouts. They always came with a hidden price tag. For the first time in her life she was standing on her own two feet. “I don’t think so, Dad.”

  “Well, don’t make up your mind tonight. We’ll talk later.”

  Turning, she let her gaze sweep through the house with its warm cedar walls, massive fireplace, and winding staircase with its mutilated posts. The house was stark now, only a few basic pieces of furniture and no decor, but she’d always felt a kinship with this old building; it had weathered more storms than she. “I’ll think about it,” she promised, hating the way the words seemed to give her father the upper hand again.

  Miranda watched her sister leave and felt a withering sense of despair before she turned to face Dutch. “I think you’re being a stubborn old fool.”

  “Good to know some things never change.”

  “Look, I agreed to come here even though I didn’t have a clue as to what you wanted. Now, I think I’ve made a big mistake. This morbid fascination you have with Harley Taggert’s death is beyond me. Let Kane Moran dig up whatever he can find and let it go.” Turning slowly to face the latest in a long string of her father’s yes-men and errand boys, she said, “Now, Mr. Styles, I have a question for you.”

  “Shoot.” He didn’t so much as smile.

  “Someone’s been hanging around my office, missing me but bothering my secretary and the receptionist.”

  “Have they?” He crossed his arms on his chest. His leather jacket creaked softly, and there was the glimmer of something other than grim determination in his eyes, a flicker of a deeper, more frightening emotion.

  “Was it you?”

  “You get straight to the point. I like that.”

  “You haven’t answered my question,” she reminded him, stepping closer, refusing to be intimidated. “Were you in the DA’s office today?”

  “Yep.”

  Disappointment burrowed deep into her heart. For some unnamed reason she didn’t want this rangy, arrogant son of a bitch to be part of anything remotely sinister.

  “Why didn’t you wait or leave your name?”

  “I thought it would be inappropriate.”

  “But hanging around the courthouse wasn’t?”

  His gray gaze, so like a winter storm brewing over the ocean, penetrated deep into hers. “What your father has me looking into is highly personal, don’t you think? Something you wouldn’t want your coworkers, subordinates, or supervisors to know about. I figured you wouldn’t meet me at home, so I dropped in at your office.”

  “And grilled the receptionist.”

  “Just asked a few questions.”

  “Debbie talks too much,” Miranda snapped, venting her anger. She didn’t know who to start with. She’d just as soon wring Denver Styles’s neck as deal with him, and she felt an overwhelming need to tell her father to use his thick-skulled head and let sleeping dogs lie. As for Debbie . . . well, Debbie, sweet thing, couldn’t help herself. Chitchat and flirting were ingrained deep into her personality. She’d never change. But what about Kane Moran? Why had he decided to come home now to stir up all this trouble?

  “Randa—” Her father’s voice, filled with a quiet reproach, caused her to second guess herself. As it always had. “I know that you’re upset, expected you to be, but it’s important that I know what I’m dealing with. A lot of people are banking on me. They’ve donated thousands of dollars to my campaign. I can’t let even the breath of a scandal touch me.”

  “Then give it up, Dutch,” she suggested as she plucked her coat off the back of the couch. “Because you and
I both know there are so many skeletons rattling around in all the Holland family closets it’s impossible to keep them locked away, let alone keep track of all the keys. Sooner or later, one of those scandal-riddled secrets is going to escape.”

  “Maybe, but everything else that’s happened over the years is less distasteful—a dalliance here, a bad investment there, nothing substantial,” he allowed, taking off his reading glasses and buffing them with the edge of his sleeve. “But when we’re discussing the night Harley Taggert died, the night that Kane Moran is going to scrutinize, unfortunately, we’re talking about murder.”

  If nothing else, the old man was predictable, Kane thought. He strode along the shores of the lake. Bleached wood and rocks were interspersed by sand that was cast silver with the faint glow of the moon. Clouds gathered, threatening to break into a storm. He brushed aside the branches of a few fir trees that hugged the shoreline and slapped him in the face.

  Not a hundred feet ahead stood the Holland lodge, several windowpanes glowing brightly in the summer night. Just as Kane had expected, Benedict, Dutch to his “good ol’ boy” friends, had rung up his daughters and dragged them back to their old lakeside home, probably to warn them of him, to tell them that whatever they did they were, at all costs, to keep their mouths shut. Kane had no idea how the old man had convinced the girls to return—probably it had to do with bribery, that was his usual M.O.—but judging from the cars that had come and gone, they were all back home, returning like the prodigal daughters they were.