Scarlet Nights

by Jude Deveraux

  Sara looked at him in astonishment. “Aunt Lissie’s husband? Rape?!”

  “That’s the story Grans told. And, yes, it was that Alex McDowell.”

  “He wasn’t prosecuted or I’d have heard about it. But then, the Oldies love to keep secrets.”

  “Oldies?” Mike asked. “From the way you talk of retirement and me, I think I’m one of them.”

  “All four times we made love this morning I thought, Mike sure is an old man.”

  He grinned. “Yeah?”

  “I heard a lot of complaints about Uncle Alex’s grumpiness, but I never heard of any violence against women.”

  “I don’t think it existed. After Tess moved there and got to know some townspeople, she started asking questions.”

  Sara waited for more, but Mike was silent. It wasn’t easy hearing that all this time Tess had known the full story. “Tell it to me from the beginning,” Sara said.

  Mike hesitated for a moment. “My grandmother told us that one afternoon in 1941, she was riding on her bicycle down the old road by Merlin’s Farm. Someone threw something at her wheels and she fell, hit her head on a rock, and was knocked out. When she woke up, Alex McDowell was raping her. She lost consciousness again, and when she came to, she made her way to the farm, and Brewster Lang called the police.”

  “And she identified Uncle Alex as her rapist?”

  “Yes, but Edi Harcourt swore that Alex was at her house that day, so the charges were dropped.”

  “That must have been hard on your grandmother. To have reported a rape but nothing was done about it must have been awful. Do you think Miss Edi lied?”

  “Probably, but then my grandmother never had a firm grip on honesty.”

  “Are you saying she wasn’t attacked?”

  “I don’t know. But I do think it was wishful thinking on her part that Alex McDowell was the culprit.”

  “She liked him?”

  “When Tess and I were kids, we were told that Alex adored her, sent her flowers, wrote her poems. It made sense that when she turned him down he got angry enough to commit a crime of violence against her. But when Tess came here, she was told it was the other way around. Grans pursued Alex. Wherever the poor guy went, there she was. She used to tell people she was meeting him when he was actually trying to get away from her. She told us that even though back then he was really poor, she saw potential in him.”

  “She was right; Uncle Alex made millions,” Sara said. “So when she was … had sex that night, she wanted it to be Alex?”

  “That’s what Tess and I think. But whatever the truth is, every year we were all subjected to a period of deathly mourning centered around the fourteenth of November.”

  “The fourteenth of November?” Sara asked in surprise.

  “Is that date important to you?”

  “Oh, dear. I forgot to tell you something.”

  “Sara, if Vandlo—”

  “No, not him. Did … Was there any chance that her molester was wearing a kilt?”

  Mike turned his head so abruptly, the car swerved. “Yes! That’s how she identified him. She said that only the McDowells wore that blue and gray plaid, but how do you know that?”

  “Brewster Lang did it.”

  “What?”

  “He was the one with your grandmother.”

  “Tell me what you know.” There was a muscle working in his jaw.

  “Don’t you dare get angry at me! If you’d told me this story a week ago I could have told you about Mr. Lang.”

  “Sara …” he said in warning.

  “When Luke and Ramsey were teenagers, one night they sneaked onto Merlin’s Farm. They said it was because they saw a fire, but I happen to know that they often sneaked around there.”

  “What did they see?” Mike asked.

  “Mr. Lang was wearing an old kilt and a big white shirt, and he and his dogs were dancing around a huge bonfire. Luke and Rams said it was all wild and primitive-looking. It was the fourteenth of November.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Yes. That’s my father’s birthday.”

  “Lang didn’t see them?”

  “No, but the next day he must have seen the weeds knocked down because after that he was worse about trespassers.”

  “It could have been a coincidence,” Mike said. “That was a long time after 1941, and—”

  “He does it every year on the same day.”

  Mike glanced at her.

  “The next year on my father’s birthday, Luke and Rams went back, and they could see the firelight. They tried to get near, but the dogs were guarding the area. Mike,” she said softly, “you don’t think Mr. Lang celebrates raping a woman, do you? He couldn’t be that … that horrible.”

  “You want the truth? I’m not sure she was assaulted. Her facts changed constantly, and that Lang wears a McDowell kilt makes me doubt her even more. And he was in the vicinity and Grans always said he was her friend. Maybe …”

  “What?”

  “I wonder if she and Lang had sex that night and she used it as a chance to blame your uncle Alex?”

  “Wow! Not very PC of her, was it?” Sara was silent for a moment. “And now Mr. Lang celebrates that night every year.”

  Mike shrugged. “People do a lot of strange things in the privacy of their own homes. And even if it happened the way my grandmother said, I doubt if Lang sees it as a rape. Remember that my grandmother was only semiconscious, and the kilt made her think it was the man she believed she loved. I doubt that she made much of a protest.”

  “If she welcomed him, Mr. Lang might not have realized she thought he was someone else.”

  For a while, Mike was silent as he thought about all the hatred and anger that had emanated from his grandmother—but it had been directed toward the wrong people. “You know what Grans tried to get the police to do? Make Alex McDowell marry her. She even told the pastor and the church members what had happened and tried to get them to force the marriage.”

  “Poor Uncle Alex. No wonder he was so bad tempered. No one could understand why sweet Aunt Lissie married him.”

  “Miss Edi did it,” Mike said. “That’s why Grans hated her so much. Lissie’s family was about to marry her off to some aspiring young politician, but then Miss Edi stepped in and arranged an elopement.”

  “I can’t imagine anyone less suited for the campaign trail than my aunt Lissie.”

  “She was like you,” Mike said. “You’d hate dealing with strangers.”

  “I wouldn’t. I like to meet people. I—” She saw Mike’s look. “Okay, so I like family better. So Miss Edi saved Alex from going to jail and gave him the beautiful Lissie for a wife? I guess that’s why he was so grateful to Miss Edi after she retired.”

  “I would imagine so. It took Tess years of digging to ferret out all the information. But from what I heard, Alex and Lissie were a good match. Alex was a poor man from a good family, while Lissie’s family was newly wealthy and from redneck stock.”

  “That explains a lot,” Sara said. “I always wondered about them because Aunt Lissie was careful to be very proper, while Uncle Alex belched at the table.”

  “The right of kings,” Mike said.

  Sara was thinking about all he’d told her. “Your grandmother was filled with hatred because she believed she’d been raped by Uncle Alex, but he wasn’t punished in any way.”

  “Grans hated the people of Edilean because they wouldn’t help her in her attempt to force him to marry her.”

  “Do you think people knew that Miss Edi lied when she gave Alex an alibi?” Sara asked.

  “You grew up here, so what do you think?”

  “They knew,” Sara said. “But they must have also known that Alex wouldn’t attack a woman. And Miss Edi certainly believed in him.” She was marveling at how many secrets the people of Edilean had held on to.

  “She did,” Mike said. “But the elopement she set up made a lot of people angry. Lissie’s family disinherite
d her, but the joke turned out to be on them. After Alex made himself rich, he supported Lissie’s parents in their old age.” Mike looked at Sara. “And until today no one knew who raped Grans.” He patted Sara’s shoulder. “Good detective work.”

  “I’m so good at this that I think you should let me handle Greg while you spend next week in a cabin in Montana.”

  Mike chuckled. “You know, don’t you, that all this, as interesting as it is, has nothing to do with the Vandlo case?”

  “I wonder if that was the only sex Mr. Lang had in his whole life? I never heard even a rumor that he’d ever had a girlfriend.” She gave Mike a sharp look. “If they used no protection …” Her eyes widened. “Is Mr. Lang your grandfather?”

  “No! My mother was born five years after that night.” He shook his head. “Grans used to tell us how she staggered to the farm after the attack. Lang called the police and made her tea and served her little cookies.”

  Sara looked at the road in front of them and thought about what Mike had told her. When she got back, she’d have to tell Joce so she could put this in her biography of her grandmother, Edilean “Miss Edi” Harcourt.

  “Hungry?” Mike asked. “I think we should stop, get something to eat, then you and I should talk about your life.”

  Sara groaned. “This is why you wanted me to ride with you, isn’t it?”

  “Sara, you hurt me to the core,” he said with so much feeling that for a moment she believed him. She hit him on the shoulder.

  “Ow! I put too much muscle on you this morning.”

  “I think you should tell me more about your life.”

  “No one is trying to marry me to get whatever it is I have that I don’t know belongs to me.”

  Sara smiled. “That is so convoluted it almost makes sense.”

  “So start talking.”

  “Food first.”

  “What kind and where do you want it served?” he asked with the leer of a dirty old man, and Sara laughed.

  Later, at a little after seven, while Mike was driving, Sara sent a text to Joce to tell her they’d be home late. She didn’t want the noise to disturb them.

  Joce sent back a message that Sara had to read twice to understand. She looked at Mike with wide eyes.

  “What is it?”

  “You didn’t tell me your grandmother had a younger sister.”

  “First I’ve heard of it.”

  “She never mentioned her?” Sara asked.

  “I was never told of a … what would she be? A great-aunt? Or is it a grandaunt?”

  Sara called Joce and asked questions. “Joce says that with aunts and uncles the ‘great’ or ‘grand’ depends on where you’re from, but they mean the same thing.”

  As Sara listened to Joce, she looked at Mike and shook her head. After she hung up, she said, “You’re not going to believe this. Joce found out that after your grandmother left Edilean, her younger sister stayed behind and got married.”

  “I’m afraid to ask who she married. You and I aren’t first cousins, are we?”

  “Noooo,” Sara said, drawing out her news. “She married—get ready—a Frazier.”

  “You mean those giants are my relatives?”

  “Second cousins.”

  Mike groaned. “Now I’m related to Edilean.”

  “You are now one of us.” Her voice was gleeful. “Your great-aunt had a baby boy who grew up to be Ariel’s father. Right after she gave birth, she ran off to LA to try to become a movie star. Her husband divorced her and remarried six months later. The second wife is the woman the Fraziers know as their grandmother.”

  “What happened to my great-aunt?”

  “Joce said she died in LA, but she doesn’t know where or when.”

  Mike was having difficulty taking the information in, but he knew Sara was watching him. He was thinking that Tess probably had known about this but had chosen not to tell him. No doubt she thought that the idea of having relatives would keep Mike away forever. “I guess this means Ariel and I can’t get married.”

  “You’re already married.” There wasn’t the slightest humor in Sara’s voice.

  “That’s right,” he said, smiling. “Are you sure you and I aren’t related? Seventh cousins, maybe?”

  “Joce says no. Luke and I are vaguely related to the Fraziers through the male line. You’re attached by the females.”

  “Ah, yes, females. That reminds me. Get my jacket from the backseat and look in the pocket.”

  Sara reached back, got his jacket, and felt inside. When she came to a hard little square, she stopped. Every woman knew what that was. Slowly, she removed the package, put the jacket back, then sat there holding it. She didn’t open the little blue velvet ring box.

  “You don’t want to see what’s inside?”

  Sara shook her head no. An engagement ring almost made their marriage seem real. But she knew it was all make-believe. She and Mike had married under false pretenses, and they’d never talked about the future. Once the Vandlos were caught—or even if they escaped capture—Mike would return to Fort Lauderdale and his pretty apartment. In a few years when he left the police force, he’d possibly return to Edilean, but for now…

  “Hey!” Mike said gently. “Are you okay? I thought a ring would make you happy. A diamond will make Vandlo more sure you and I are actually married.”

  “Yeah, sure,” she said listlessly. “That makes sense.”

  “You want to tell me what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. It’s all very logical.” She opened the box—and gasped. It wasn’t just a ring from a jewelry store. It was one of Kim’s designs, a one-of-a-kind ring, the only one like it in the world.

  “You don’t like it?”

  “It’s … When …?”

  “On Sunday, when I was at your parents’ house planning the wedding, I asked your mother about Kim and her jewelry. Kim had said some nice things about you, so I thought you two were friends.”

  “We are,” Sara said softly as she held the ring up to the fading daylight. Mike flipped a switch so a map light came on. The ring was exquisite, with a large white diamond in the center and flanked by two smaller pear-shaped diamonds. The unique setting made the small ones swirl around the larger stone.

  “Your mother showed me Kim’s Web site and I chose it off there, but it had to be sized. It came to the office this morning. If you don’t like it I can return it.”

  “No!” Sara nearly shouted. “I mean, yes, I like it very, very much. Kim’s creations are wonderful, beautiful. They …” She was holding it in her hand tightly.

  Sara started to put the ring on, but then she handed it to Mike.

  Smiling, the steering wheel in one hand, he slipped the ring on Sara’s finger.

  When he saw how she couldn’t take her eyes off of it, he was pleased. He looked back out the windshield at the road. “Do you think I should change my name to Frazier?”

  “I think that you can no longer be a snob about Edilean. Ariel says the Fraziers are descended from English royalty.”

  “You know, I’ve always thought maybe I was.” When she made no comment, he looked at her. She was still gazing at the ring. “Think you should curtsey to me from now on?”

  “No, but I was thinking of kissing some of your royal body parts.”

  Mike smiled. “I like the way your mind works.”

  23

  I DON’T WANT TO go,” Mike said, sounding like a sullen child. “You take the dogs and give them to him. I’ll meet you at Nate’s Field. By the way, did Joce find out why it’s called that? You have any ancestors named Nathaniel?”

  Sara had her hands on her hips and was glaring at him. Last night they’d arrived in Edilean hours later than Mike said they would because she wouldn’t let him go as fast as he wanted to. Without consulting each other, they’d gone to Sara’s apartment, not Tess’s. But when Mike tried to open the door, it wouldn’t budge.

  “Who the hell locked this door?” he muttered.
/>   Sara showed him how to pull it forward and lift up to make it open.

  “Needs a hand plane taken to it,” he said as he carried their bags in.

  They were both so tired that they just pulled off their clothes and fell into bed. At 5 A.M. they awoke to find themselves naked, and seconds later they were making love.

  At six Mike left for the gym, but he let Sara sleep. When he returned at eight, Sara had made pancakes and cut up fruit. The sound of dogs barking had awakened her and she’d looked out the window to see a couple of very cute young dogs tied to a tree. She knew they were the ones to be given to Mr. Lang.

  She’d tried to go back to sleep, but the knowledge that she was going to have to see Mr. Lang—face-to-face, no hiding—almost made her ill.

  The only way she could overcome her dread was to remember that Mike would be there with her. Mike was afraid of nothing. He was a man who walked into hailstorms of bullets with no fear, and he would be there to protect her.

  But at the mention of going to Merlin’s Farm to give the dogs to Mr. Lang, Mike said no.

  “What does that mean?” Sara asked.

  “No, I can’t go. I’m busy. I have things for the case that must be done. You can go by yourself.”

  “Yes, you do have things to do for the case. You have to protect me. Remember? A few days ago my safety was so important that you made the ultimate sacrifice and married me.”

  “Oh, well, that’s not been so bad,” he said as he wiggled his eyebrows at her.

  “Not so bad?” she said quietly. “I’ve been waiting on you hand and foot since I said ‘I do.’ How do you think your laundry is getting done? Who cleans the blade on that machine you use to keep your hair short? Who unpacked your suitcase?”

  “Maybe we should hire—”

  “You’re going with me,” she said. “I am the one who is afraid of that odious old man and you are supposed to protect me.”

  Mike kept his head down over his pancakes. “From bullets, yeah, but not from …”

  She sat down across from him. “What’s going on that I don’t know about? You weren’t afraid of Mr. Lang the other times we talked about meeting him.”

  “Mmmm, uh, hmmm grandfather,” Mike said.