Whispers

by Lisa Jackson

  “Kane Moran,” he told the petite woman with short red hair and matching lips. Wearing a phone headset, she looked up at him through oversize lashes. “I’ve got a meeting with Mr. Taggert.”

  Scanning the appointment book, she found his name, punched a button on the telephone to announce him, and within seconds he was seated in a huge corner office with floor-to-ceiling windows. Live trees in enormous clay pots were spaced upon a bronze-colored carpet. A bar was situated against one wall, two couches were tucked into another corner, and in front of the wall of glass stood a massive rosewood desk where Weston was waiting for him.

  Wearing a thousand-dollar-plus suit, he was leaning back in his chair, fingers tented under his chin, eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Aside from a few lines around the corners of his eyes, he hadn’t aged at all. His jaw was still hard, his body trim, his hair showing no sign of thinning or turning gray. He’d called Kane for a meeting rather than the other way around.

  “Moran.” He rose and shook Kane’s hand over the desk. “Have a seat.” Motioning toward the chairs positioned in front of his desk, he asked, “Can I get you something? Coffee or a drink?”

  “Don’t bother.” Kane lowered himself into one of the matching oxblood leather club chairs and waited. This was, after all, Weston’s idea.

  The CEO of Taggert Industries got straight to the point. “I’ve heard that you’re writing a book about my brother’s death.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why?”

  Kane shifted in the chair and smiled inwardly. So Weston couldn’t wait to find out what was going on. Good. What secrets did Harley’s older brother know? “Too many unanswered questions.”

  “It’s been sixteen years.”

  Kane felt one side of his mouth twist upward. “Well, I’ve been busy. Just got back to it.”

  “You seem to think that writing the book now will serve some purpose,” Weston said, leading him by the nose. Kane didn’t like the feeling, but played along.

  “I think Dutch Holland knows more about your brother’s death than he’s saying and I suspect that he—or maybe your father—bought off the local authorities to hush the whole thing up.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “An interesting question. Why don’t you take a stab at it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Think, Weston.”

  “You mean if someone had something to hide. A cover-up?” Weston sounded incredulous. Kane didn’t buy the act.

  “Just a theory, but one worth checking out.”

  “Why stir up the muck? This thing’s been laid to rest for a long time. Everyone’s gotten over it.” He smiled widely, a grin that was meant to encourage camaraderie yet was as cool as the darkest depths of the sea.

  “I haven’t. And I think that since Dutch Holland has decided to run for governor, all his dirty little secrets should come to light.”

  “What’s it to you, Moran? You didn’t give a damn about my brother.”

  “It’s personal,” Kane said, countering Weston’s icy grin with one of his own. “Between Dutch and me.” He settled onto the small of his back. “Besides, I’m not just interested in Harley’s death, but the events leading up to it,” Kane admitted, willing to give out a little information in order to retrieve some.

  “Such as?”

  “What really happened to Jack Songbird.”

  Weston shifted, then reached into the inside pocket of his suit coat for a pack of Marlboros. “Jack got drunk and fell off the cliffs.” With a flick of a gold lighter, he lit up, drawing hard on the cigarette and sending a plume of smoke to the ceiling.

  “Maybe. Some people think he jumped. Others suspect he was murdered.”

  “Let me guess—Crystal Songbird, her folks, and some of the elders from the tribe are pushing the murder theory. Hell, they’ve been whining about it for years, but the fact of the matter was Jack was just another screwed-up Indian who drank too much firewater and paid the price.”

  The muscles of Kane’s back tightened, and it was all he could do not to clench his fists and pound Weston’s perfect face. But there was no reason to let Weston know what he was thinking.

  Weston studied the tip of his cigarette. “You know, Moran, if you write anything that libels my family, I’ll sue your ass up one side and down the other.”

  “I’d think you’d want the truth to come out and have a chance to get a little back at Dutch Holland at the same time.”

  “The truth doesn’t interest me. As I said, it’s water under the bridge—ancient history. As for Dutch; he’ll get his. One way or another. He doesn’t need any help from you.”

  “Mr. Taggert?” The receptionist’s voice broke into the room. “It’s your wife on line one. I told her you were busy but—”

  Irritation yanked Weston’s brows together as he punched a button for the intercom. “I’ll take the call.” Then, to Kane, “If you’ll excuse me.”

  Kane didn’t need an excuse to leave. He’d gotten what he’d come for—a little insight into the Taggert family and Weston in particular. He would have thought the entire clan would have been jumping for joy at the thought of an exposé written about the family’s old nemesis, but no, Weston had an aversion to his project. As if he were guilty. But of what?

  As he jaywalked across the street to his car, Kane felt a little thrill of victory. Already he was stepping on toes, important toes. Surely something would break.

  He jumped into his Jeep and threw it into gear. He was feeling better by the minute. Yep, old Wes was jumpy, but why? Kane had a couple of more interviews this afternoon. He wanted to talk with reporters who had covered Harley Taggert’s and Jack Songbird’s deaths. He’d read their articles, of course, had most of them memorized, but he hoped that picking the reporters’ brains would give him more clues. Next, he wanted to talk to the first people on the scene of Miranda Holland’s accident—the Good Samaritans who had seen firsthand how the girls had reacted. Maybe they could give him a little insight, a new angle on the tragedy. Only then would he visit Claire again.

  “I want you to find out everything you can about a guy named Denver Styles.” Miranda faced Frank Petrillo across the scarred Formica table of Francone’s, the only Italian restaurant in town that Petrillo thought was worth the price of a slice of pizza.

  “He givin’ you a rough time?” Frank asked, wadding a stick of gum into his mouth despite the fact that he’d just ordered a pint of beer. “He the guy who’s been hangin’ around?”

  “Not a rough time. He’s on my dad’s payroll.”

  One graying eyebrow lifted as a buxom waitress left their drinks on the table. Petrillo took a sip and squinted over the top of the glass. “What’s the problem?”

  “Dutch hired him to snoop into our—my sisters’ and my—lives, and I don’t trust him.” She gave Frank an abbreviated version of her meeting with Styles, careful not to mention too much about the night Harley Taggert died. “He’s supposed to be a private investigator, some guy from out of town, I think, but I get the feeling I’ve met him before.” She took a sip of her chardonnay and turned the wineglass in her fingers. “I’d just like to know who he really is.”

  Petrillo rubbed his jaw and the stubble scraped as he thought. “Styles, eh?”

  “Denver Styles. Other than his name, I don’t know anything about him.”

  “You will.” Petrillo snapped his Juicy Fruit and took another long swallow of beer. His dark eyes twinkled at the prospect of a new challenge, and Miranda felt a little better. Frank would dig until his fingers bled, but he’d find out what there was to know about Dutch’s newest employee.

  She only hoped it was in time. Before Denver Styles or Kane Moran found out the truth. She sipped her wine as the pizza, some concoction of shrimp, green pepper, and olives that Petrillo favored, was deposited on the table.

  Frank joked with her as he pulled out a stringy slice and tried to put her at ease, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was
being backed into a corner, a dank, black corner that had been always one step away and was now looming closer.

  She sensed that she was being watched, but a quick glance around the restaurant convinced her that her imagination was running away with her. Denver Styles wasn’t lurking near the video machines or seated in a smoky corner of the bar. No, it was just her mind toying with her again, her guilt rising from the watery grave in which she’d buried it years before. Hold on, she silently told herself as she reached for a slice of pizza that she didn’t want. Forcing a smile, she took a bite.

  “Relax, kid,” Petrillo said. “Everything’s gonna be all right.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Petrillo’s brown eyes twinkled. “Abso-fucking-lutely.”

  Miranda smiled and wished to heaven that she could believe him. But, damn it, she couldn’t. Even in this cozy little pizza parlor with people laughing and talking, the bartender wiping down the brass on the bar, and Frank Petrillo winking at her from across the table, she felt the cold breath of doom against the back of her neck. And she was scared. More scared than she’d been in sixteen years.

  “Tell me about Dad.” Samantha hopped onto the counter in the kitchen where Claire was unpacking the last of the moving cartons. They’d been in Chinook nearly a week, and yet they hadn’t completely settled in.

  “What do you want to know?” Claire asked.

  “Is he as bad as Sean says?”

  Claire gritted her teeth. The ache in her heart had ceased long ago, when she’d first learned that Paul was having an affair. It probably hadn’t been his first as he was forever attracted to younger women. Now all she felt was shame and remorse. “Your father isn’t bad,” she said, wondering if she were lying. “He’s just weak.”

  “Weak?”

  “Yes. He, uh, likes women.”

  “Girls,” Sam corrected.

  Anything in a skirt. “Yes, sometimes girls, too.”

  “Then he is bad.”

  “I don’t want you to think of him that way.”

  “But you do,” Samantha charged, her eyes showing only a little of the pain that had to be echoing through her young body. She drew her legs up, balancing the arches of her feet on the edge of the counter and resting her chin on her knees. There was dust caked on Samantha’s long legs, dirt in the cracks of her bare toes, but Claire didn’t say anything. This wasn’t the time to turn the subject to matters of cleanliness or germs.

  “I just don’t want to think about him period.” Claire decided to be honest. Kids could see through lies too easily.

  Sam wrinkled her nose. “Yeah. Me neither.” She gnawed on the corner of her lip. “Will he go to prison?”

  Shame burned up Claire’s neck. “I don’t know. Maybe—or he could get a reduced sentence and be on probation, I suppose, but we’ll just have to wait and see.”

  “Well, if he’s a jailbird, I don’t want to see him,” Samantha decided, tossing her head. “Even if he isn’t. What he did was wrong.” Her chin trembled. “Dads aren’t supposed to do anything wrong.”

  “No, honey, they’re not,” Claire said, walking to the counter and wrapping her arms around her daughter’s slim shoulders. “But they’re just human and sometimes . . . sometimes they make mistakes.”

  “He should never have done it.”

  “I know.” Claire felt Sam’s tears, hot and wet, drip onto her blouse.

  “We didn’t deserve it.”

  “No, baby, we didn’t,” she agreed, as Samantha coughed loudly. “But we have to face it. Like it or not.”

  Samantha shuddered, then lifted her tear-streaked face. “Sean says this sucks.”

  Claire nodded even though she hated the crudity of Sean’s language. “This time, he’s right. Come on, I’ll make you a cup of cocoa, and we’ll try and find a movie to watch.”

  “A happy one,” Samantha said, sliding down from her perch.

  “Yeah, a happy one.”

  Twenty-four

  It was nearly midnight when Claire, restless, threw off the thin covers of the bed. Without snapping on the lights, she slid her arms through her robe and padded barefoot down the hallway past the open doors of her sleeping children’s rooms before heading downstairs. Her mind was spinning, images of Kane and Harley and Paul all racing through her brain as if they were in a tornado, whirling ever faster, confusing her.

  She stopped in the kitchen for a book of matches, then hurried out the French doors of the dining room and down the weed-choked path to the lake. She stopped only to light the citronella torches planted every ten feet on the dock, and hoped to keep the marauding mosquitoes at bay.

  Her match sizzled in the night and soon six torches glowed, giving off their sweet-acrid scent and allowing her to sit on the last board of the pier, her bare legs swinging out over the water, her face uplifted to the heavens. Thousands of stars twinkled brightly and a slice of gleaming moon hung low in the sky, giving a silvery sheen to the dark waters. Fish jumped, splashing in the lake, crickets chirped, and, not far away, an owl hooted softly.

  Claire had always loved it here. Despite all the heartache and pain of her childhood and the tragedy of Harley Taggert’s death, she felt a great peace in the house and on the shores of Lake Arrowhead. Her gaze drifted across the glassy waters to the Moran cottage, its windows bright squares of light in the darkness, and she wondered about Kane. What was he doing? Working on that damned book? Digging deep into the past? Discovering secret truths that were better left hidden? Her heart ached a bit and she realized that years before she’d loved him with a passion that was as foolish as it was fierce. There was something about him that could turn her inside out, cause her to give up reason for desire, seduce her to sacrifice everything—even her stubborn pride—to be close to him.

  “Idiot,” she muttered under her breath. No man was worth a woman’s dignity. No man. But, oh, even now, if she had the chance to kiss Kane, to touch him, to feel his hard, naked body straining over hers . . .

  “Stop it,” she hissed, angry with the wayward turn of her thoughts. “You’re not a teenager anymore. For heaven’s sake, you’re over thirty! A mother! You’ve been hurt so many times before!” If she were only more like Miranda. Strong. Independent. Courageous.

  Instead, sometimes she felt like a frightened little girl. “For the love of God, Claire, pull yourself together.” Sighing, she ran her toes through the cool water and tightened the belt of her robe.

  Years before, Claire had buried her love for Kane deep in her heart, turned her back on the primal, raw emotions he’d stirred in her because they’d had no future together. Fate, it seemed, had intervened. After Harley’s death, Kane had gone into the army and she had left Chinook as well, running away from all the heartache and pain and meeting Paul St. John, a man she’d never really loved, but one who had promised to take care of her. She’d been seventeen when she’d met him at a local community college, where he’d taught English and she was studying for her GED. He’d found her crying on a bench in the quad and had offered her his handkerchief for her eyes and a steady shoulder to cry on. Claire wasn’t used to the kindness of strangers and wouldn’t have turned to him, but she’d just visited the local clinic and been told that she was pregnant. And alone. Miranda was already in college; Dominique, finally unable to deal with her husband’s lust for other women had threatened divorce, then taken Tessa and flown to Europe. Dutch had never been close to Claire. Harley was dead; Kane in the army. She and her baby were utterly alone in the world. Except for the kindness of Paul St. John.

  Stupidly she’d poured her heart out to him. Her meager savings were dwindling and her part-time job waitressing at a restaurant where she’d lied about her age barely paid the rent. Her only hope was to face a formidable father who would probably toss her out and call her a whore for conceiving a Taggert.

  Paul, for some unfathomable reason, had been intrigued with her and her plight. Maybe it was her utter helplessness that had appealed to him, or maybe she’d been
just the right age, not yet even eighteen, to interest him, or perhaps he thought that she might inherit some of the Holland wealth. Whatever the reason, he’d courted her, offered to marry her, and helped her finish high school and college. At thirty he’d been older and wise to the ways of the world, and she’d needed desperately to trust someone. Anyone. Even a stranger she barely knew. She had thought him to be a rock and didn’t realize for years how wrong she was about him.

  When Sean had been born, Paul had pretended to be the baby’s natural father, and Claire, in order to make everything appear normal, had lied about the date of Sean’s birth, pushing it back three months so that no one, not even her sisters, would suspect that the baby was really Harley Taggert’s son—or so she’d thought. Since no one in her family saw the baby until he was past one, there had been no questions asked. Sean had just appeared bigger, smarter, and a little more coordinated than the other children his age.

  Claire had lost her heart to the darling baby and knowing he was a living, breathing part of Harley made him all the more precious. But as he grew, it became obvious that he didn’t have a drop of Taggert blood in his veins.

  With a heart-slamming jolt, she realized that her toddler was the spitting image of Kane Moran. If possible, she loved her son all the more. Now she’d always have a part of the hellion she’d come to love and as such was more precious than ever. She would always be close to Kane and someday . . . well maybe someday she’d track him down and tell him about his wonderful, handsome son.

  Within three years the lie of Sean’s parentage rolled easily off her tongue and Claire became pregnant with Samantha. If her life wasn’t perfect, at least it was fulfilling and if Paul wasn’t as attentive as he’d once been, Claire decided it was because of the pressures of work. But she’d been wrong. Bitterly so.