My Sister, Myself

by Alice Sharpe

  TESS STARED OUT her window but saw very little as her racing thoughts blurred the outside world. Why did Madeline Lingford want to see her?

  Obviously, Katie had arranged this meeting before her “accident.” She must have been onto something. She sent a message winging to her sister’s subconscious: Katie, wake up, I need answers.

  She resolutely put Katie out of her mind. Turning her gaze to Irene Woodall, she said, “Tabitha is a doll.”

  “How sweet of you to say. I had her rather late in life. Unfortunately, my husband died when she was only seven. Due to the physical problems Tabitha faces, as well as the developmental ones, she’s had to live away from home for several years now. She’s prone to temper tantrums, but you know that. I can’t tell you how difficult it is to have a child you know will never grow up, never grow old.”

  “Never grow old?”

  “Her heart,” Irene said, her voice heavy. “I’ll be lucky to have her another five years.”

  “I’m so sorry. I imagine you’ve told me most of this before.”

  Irene nodded. “Most of it.”

  “It’s this blasted concussion. Not bad enough to keep me down, just bad enough to scramble my short-term memory. Or did we know each other from long ago—”

  “Oh, no. I just met you a few weeks ago when you played at Bluebird House for the first time. Tabitha liked you immediately.”

  “And how did I come to meet the Lingfords?”

  “I introduced you. Nelson Lingford had just bought a piano and wanted someone with experience to give his stepmother a couple of lessons. I’ve known Madeline Lingford for years. We became widows about the same time. I don’t personally think she gives a fig about piano lessons, but as you know, what Nelson wants, Nelson usually gets. Anyway, Madeline tries to indulge him. You and Nelson hit it off and there you go, here we are.”

  “And you?”

  “I own an art gallery. I used to help Madeline’s late husband acquire art from around the world. He had a wonderful collection.”

  “I vaguely remember that the man accused of setting the fire died in the fire, right?”

  Irene nodded. “Yes, he was the same man who played the piano before you! But I don’t think he was really involved. I think he’s been used as a scapegoat. I believe I mentioned this to you before—”

  “So many blurred details,” Tess mumbled. Did this woman have proof of their father’s innocence? Was that why Katie had tried to call Ryan? “Tell me what we talked about last Tuesday,” she said.

  The art dealer spared Tess a longer glance. “You don’t recall anything?”

  “Not a word.”

  “Well, mostly it was a party for Tabitha so we didn’t talk much. I do know the last thing you asked from me was that I ask Madeline’s maid for the names of any employees Nelson let go near the time of the fire.”

  “I wonder why I wanted them,” Tess mused.

  “Well, you told me you’d heard the rumors about Nelson and the fire. Frankly, I had the impression you wanted to make sure Nelson’s not an out-and-out crook before things went any further between you.”

  “Between us?”

  Irene spared her another glance. “Don’t be embarrassed. I understand how a wealthy man like Nelson Lingford could turn a woman’s head. I was young once, too. But I’ll tell you now what I told you before. Be careful. You never know what Nelson is really thinking.”

  Was it possible Katie’s investigation had nothing to do with clearing their father and everything to do with catching a rich husband?

  Using an assumed identity? No. Of course not.

  Tess said, “I’m remembering a name now. Desota. A friend of Nelson’s?”

  This earned her a sharp look. “Vince and Nelson are hardly friends anymore,” Irene said, pulling up to a locked gate.

  As her window glided down, she gave her name to an intercom and the gate swung open. The road ended in a circular drive in front of a mammoth two-story house.

  “Mrs. Lingford’s new house is beautiful,” Tess said.

  “No, no, this is Nelson’s house. After the fire gutted Madeline’s place, he moved her in with him to keep an eye on her.”

  “That…that was kind of him,” Tess stammered. She hadn’t realized she was going to Nelson’s house. She had to fight the impulse to turn in her seat to make sure Ryan was back there somewhere.

  Irene stopped beside a shabby car that looked totally out of place. Ignoring it, she turned in her seat to stare into Tess’s eyes. “You’re way too trusting, Caroline. Please, watch your step with Nelson. He’s hiding something, I can feel it in my bones.”

  THE OVERSIZE FRONT DOOR closed with a resounding thud as an honest-to-goodness maid took their coats and looked askance at Tess’s crutches as though afraid the rubber tips might smudge the polished cherry floors.

  “Tell Mrs. Lingford that Caroline Mays is here,” Irene said as she shed her coat and helped Tess with hers. The entry, like the rest of what Tess could see of the house, was decorated to within an inch of its life with perfectly coordinated fabrics, wall coverings, and furniture. There was even an elevator with a brass-grill overlay. It looked like the lobby of a small but swanky hotel.

  The peaceful luxury was shattered as a door to the left burst open and a short man with a ring of dark hair appeared. Dressed in a rumpled gray suit too large for him, he was sweating profusely. He wiped his high forehead with a handkerchief as his gaze swept over Tess and Irene. He didn’t seem to really see them at all.

  He was followed out of the room by another man who was probably close in age, but that’s where all comparisons ended. This man was tanned and sandy-haired with a sun-bleached mustache, dressed in dark slacks, a cashmere jacket and a white turtleneck setting off his bronze skin.

  “Don’t you ever come back here again,” the second man snarled, his focus centered on the first man.

  “You owe me and you know it!” the balding man said, stuffing his handkerchief into his jacket pocket. He had down-on-his-luck written all over him.

  “Get out of my house,” the tanned man said in a menacing tone.

  “I trusted you,” the first man said. “I mortgaged my business. You promised me—”

  “I never promised you a thing. You were greedy, Vince. You’ve always been greedy ever since high school. This time it bit you in the ass.”

  “Darla left me,” Vince said. “Took the kids and went to her mother’s. My business is in the toilet. The creditors, the bank. Hell, the police are coming around all the time asking questions…”

  Nelson’s expression went from irritated to furious. “If I ever find out you were behind that fire—”

  “Who are you trying to kid?” Vince Desota spat. “We all know—”

  “Get out!” Nelson said, and this time he accompanied his demand with advancing steps.

  Desota scooted backward, his gaze finally taking in Tess, who he stared at with puzzled eyes before yanking open the door and leaving the house.

  For a moment only the ticking of a big clock broke the silence. Nelson straightened his jacket and smoothed his lapels, though the altercation hadn’t seemed to ruffle more than his temper. Tires peeled on the driveway as he said, “I’m sorry you two ladies had to witness that.”

  Irene shook her head. “What did Vince want?”

  “Money, what else?” He looked at Tess more closely and his eyes narrowed. “Good heavens, Caroline, what happened to you?”

  “She was in an accident, but she still insisted on coming to give Madeline a piano lesson,” Irene said. It was obvious to Tess that Katie had cultivated a confidante within the Lingford household in the form of Irene Woodall. Tess had to figure out a way to get rid of Irene if she didn’t want the older woman getting in her way. “And I’m here, as usual, to help Madeline correlate the photos for her album,” Irene added.

  “I wish you’d get her to make it into a book. That at least would find a market, even if a small one. Well, at least this album is keepin
g her busy. She doesn’t seem interested in the blasted piano I spent a fortune on.” Approaching Tess he added, “Were you injured after we met last Tuesday?”

  So he and Katie had met. What had they talked about?

  “Caroline?”

  “It’s my memory,” she explained. “I don’t recall the day of the accident. The police think a teenage driver is responsible.” She liked the touch of the teenager. So easy to blame them for things. No one ever disagreed.

  “Damn thugs,” Nelson sniffed.

  The maid reappeared. “Ms. Madeline will see you in the music room,” she said.

  “I’ll just go upstairs and fetch the photos,” Irene said with a meaningful glance at Tess.

  She hoped Irene was going to get the names she’d mentioned.

  IN RYAN’S EXPERIENCE no plan ever went off without a hitch. He faced his current hitch, a giant iron gate in cluding an intercom box and a camera mounted on a post.

  The rain had begun again in earnest, and he weighed his options as the windshield wipers banged back and forth. He could climb the gate and hope the camera wasn’t turned on; skirt the perimeter and look for an opening, probably on the ocean side; punch the intercom button and announce himself, using the cousin-with-a-ride story they’d agreed on for the Bluebird House and which she’d promptly abandoned.

  Or he could wait.

  He hated waiting.

  Since making detective three years before, he’d had to get used to it. Back when he was a beat cop, he could go find something to do if he got bored, but now he was duty-bound to sit and twiddle his thumbs for hours. Waiting.

  Fifteen minutes, thirty tops.

  He’d wait despite the acid churning in his stomach, despite the dread that if he waited too long, someone would die because of him. It was a specter that had haunted him his entire career, but he made himself sit and he made himself wait.

  Despite the risk.

  Despite what had happened to Peter because Ryan had waited.

  MADELINE LINGFORD sat in a wheelchair, a brown lap blanket thrown across her knees. A spare woman with regular features and white poodle curls, her eyes looked friendly behind the thick lenses of her red glasses. The smile she produced for Tess slid off her face at the sight of the crutches and bandages.

  This room, too, was beautifully decorated, though it was obviously the room Madeline had commandeered since moving in. She’d covered every surface with curios and memorabilia. It looked homey to Tess. It was also located far away from the entry. Tess thought it unlikely Madeline had heard a word of Nelson’s altercation with Vince Desota.

  After a new round of exclamations concerning Tess’s injuries, Madeline gestured at the piano and said, “Nelson bought that thing. Said I needed a hobby. Something cultivated, though he didn’t add that part. He thinks I’m a bit too ordinary to be a Lingford.”

  Tess smiled. Madeline Lingford was not the sickly invalid she’d expected to find. Nor was she snooty.

  “So the good news for me is you don’t look well enough to teach me piano, at least not today! Hallelujah. Sit down and talk to me. It gets lonely way out here in the middle of nowhere. I miss my house in the city.”

  A pang of guilt creased Tess’s brow. Would this woman want her company if she knew it was Tess’s own father who was accused of destroying her house? She sat on a sofa at a right angle to Madeline’s wheelchair, surprised to find two coal-black eyes staring at her from within the folds of the lap blanket.

  “Is that a dog?” she asked, smiling.

  “This is Muffy,” the older woman said, uncovering her pet. Muffy appeared to be fifteen pounds of terrier with coarse brown and black fur.

  “She’s adorable,” Tess said, reaching out a finger any normal dog would sniff. This dog didn’t move a corpuscle. She regarded Tess with dull brown eyes. “Is she not feeling well?”

  “It’s funny you should ask,” Madeline said as Tess casually palpated the dog’s neck and abdomen, attempting to make it appear she was only petting Muffy and not checking for swollen lymph nodes. “I was just telling Nelson this morning that Muffy hasn’t been her usual bouncy self for a day or two now.”

  “Feeling a little under the weather, sweetie?” Tess crooned to the dog. Changing her tone, she asked Madeline, “Does she have her usual appetite?” and fingered back a lip to peer at Muffy’s gums. Pale.

  “No. Cook said she isn’t eating a thing. And normally she’s a little chow hound, aren’t you, Muffy? But lately she just lies here.”

  Muffy seemed to make a slight effort to gaze up at her mistress but abandoned it in favor of resting her head back on her paws.

  Tess wished she had a thermometer. She touched Muffy’s nose, a notoriously poor indicator of a fever, but what else could she do? Dry and warm. Moreover, the animal had the look of sickness and a gut feeling gave way to certainty: something was wrong with Muffy.

  “Have you kept up her vaccinations?” Tess asked.

  “Of course. She’s been my dearest friend for years, in fact, she saved my life a couple of months ago when my house burned down. Muffy’s barking woke me up in time to call for help.”

  “Have you thought of taking her to the vet?”

  “When she wouldn’t eat, I asked Nelson, but he said she’s getting old. We have to expect this kind of thing.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Six.”

  “That’s not old for a small terrier mix like Muffy,” Tess said firmly, carving another notch next to Nelson Lingford’s name in the villain column. Was it possible he blamed the dog for his stepmother’s survival?

  As Madeline rambled on, Tess reviewed the dog’s symptoms in her mind. The most obvious choice was canine distemper, but this dog had had her shots. The other candidate seemed less likely, but this was the Pacific Northwest…

  “Does she like fish?” Tess asked, again striving to sound casual.

  “I give her canned albacore sometimes,” Madeline said. “She likes that. Only, she won’t eat it now. She won’t eat any of her treats, not even the smoked steelhead Nelson started giving her last week. Oh, but she loved it at first.”

  Canned albacore, no. Smoked Steelhead? It must have been cold smoked. “Was last week the first time Muffy ate the steelhead?”

  Madeline considered. “I think so. Nelson made a point of sharing it with her.”

  The veterinarian in Tess surpassed the spy as she calculated dates. If the dog had first ingested the fish the week before, the neorickettsia organism would have had plenty of time to start wreaking havoc.

  “I think you should have Muffy checked for salmon poisoning,” Tess said gently.

  Madeline Lingford gasped audibly.

  Tess touched the older woman’s arm as she leaned forward. “Take her to the vet this afternoon. They’ll give her fluids and antibiotics and she’ll be good as new. It’s not really poison at all, it’s caused by a viruslike organism. The symptoms are exactly like Muffy’s.”

  “I’ll call right away,” Madeline said, her voice shaky, her fingers already jabbing at numbers on the phone.

  “I didn’t realize you were such an animal expert.”

  Startled, Tess looked up. Nelson Lingford leaned elegantly in the doorway, his expression perplexed as he stared at her. How much had he heard? How professional had she sounded?

  Well, as far as Tess could tell, there was no way for Nelson to know what Katie or “Caroline,” for that matter, was or wasn’t good at. She said, “I’ve had a lot of pets.”

  “Hmm—”

  “The vet said to bring her in an hour,” Madeline said, hugging her pup. “Oh, Caroline, I’m so grateful to you.”

  “I’m happy I could help,” Tess said.

  “I’ll get the driver to give you a ride,” Nelson said. “Meanwhile I came to borrow Caroline for a few moments. I need to…talk to her.”

  “Wait a second,” Madeline said. “I’ve decided to postpone piano lessons, because I have a better idea. Caroline is so clever, I jus
t know she could be a great deal of help organizing the photos of your father’s collection. I feel guilty taking so much of Irene’s time.”

  “My time?” Irene said, carrying two boxes past Nelson. They were clearly marked Photographs.

  As Irene deposited the boxes on a table, Madeline explained Muffy’s illness and her idea to hire Tess. Irene darted Tess a worried glance. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” she said. “I mean, I’m happy to help you, Madeline, we don’t need to take Caroline’s time—”

  “I can’t have your gallery failing because you’re over here all the time,” Madeline insisted. “I thought at first Georges would help me out—”

  “He’s been so busy in the shop—”

  “Exactly. And that’s where you should be too, dear. You shouldn’t leave your business in Georges’s hands no matter how capable an assistant he is.”

  “I have to agree with Madeline,” Nelson said.

  Tess glanced at Irene. The older woman’s eyes pleaded with Tess to refuse this offer. Would Katie have forged ahead or taken Irene’s counsel? Who knew? Tess squared her shoulders and said, “I’d love the job.”

  “Then it’s all settled,” Madeline said. “Oh, Caroline, I wish you could have seen the real paintings. I had such a beautiful house in which to show them, didn’t I, Nelson?”

  “Father’s mansion was exquisite. I still can’t understand how you could bear to part with his art.”

  “It was your father’s last wish,” she said firmly, as though this was an often-revisited topic. “Caroline, dear, thank you for saving Muffy.”

  Irene sidled close as Tess patted the dog’s head. When Tess straightened, Irene slipped a strip of paper into her hand and gave her a worried look. Turning to Madeline, she said, “What’s this about saving Muffy?”

  “Caroline is a whiz,” Madeline said. “I’ll tell you all about it.”

  Nelson said, “Caroline? Would you step into my office for a moment?”

  Tess stuffed the note in her pocket and followed him from the room.

  Chapter Six

  Tess paused right inside the door of Nelson’s study to admire a row of framed photos of buildings.