Good Sister, The

by Diana Diamond

  The lights came up on tearstained faces and a long moment of silence.

  “Wow!” Jennifer said, finally breaking the spell, and then the gathering applauded as if they might call the actors back for an encore.

  Padraig turned from his front-row seat, obviously touched by what he had just seen. Peter leaned forward and said to him, “I’m glad you stayed on.” Then he said to Catherine, “It looks as if we have a hit on our hands.”

  “What do you think?” Padraig asked the film editor, who answered, “Too long. We’ve got to trim at least ten minutes. Maybe more.” Padraig nodded.

  “We have to do better with timing the breaks for television,” another voice offered. “We want commercial breaks coming during suspense to bring people back.”

  Another nod from Padraig.

  “But, overall,” the editor rejoined, “a nice story beautifully told. It’s going to be one hell of a premiere.”

  They saw it again an hour later. Peter thought he saw much more the second time and enjoyed the experience more. Catherine was thrilled and accepted congratulations from all corners as if she were responsible for the artistry. “We’re going to get our money back,” she said to Peter in an I-told-you-so cadence. “This is going to turn into a major profit center.”

  “You may be right,” he conceded. And he admitted to himself that he may have misjudged O’Connell. The man was still a bastard, but his artistry was genuine.

  Jennifer remained behind when the others left for the airport. Then she joined Padraig and his entourage for a modest celebration at a club frequented by studio executives. The party was intentionally understated but still loud enough to announce their success. The studios, Padraig reasoned, would front some of the costs of satellite distribution just to buy into the new era.

  “Stay for a few days,” he begged her when they were finally alone. “Move into the beach house. I’ll move out. Or stay at your hotel if that suits you. The important thing is that we have a lot to talk about. We have much more between us than the success of the picture.”

  Jennifer was tempted, and she hesitated. “Maybe for a day,” she finally conceded, pleading that she had left too many tasks unfinished back in New York. Padraig promised to drop everything so they could have a full day together. He took her for a drive up the coastal highway to Santa Barbara and a small inn that looked out over the straits toward Santa Cruz Island. They sat on a porch under an umbrella, sipped lemonade, and chatted idly about the movie until Padraig moved the conversation to the important issues.

  “Can we try again, Jennifer? Do you think we’d have a chance?”

  “I don’t know,” she said as if she hadn’t given the possibility a thought. But in fact she had been thinking of little else. She knew she would enjoy being back in his company. But there were two issues that she had to work through.

  The most important question was why he had married her in the first place. Had he truly found her attractive? He had said apologetically that his initial intention was nothing more than a one-night stand in Cannes. But she liked the idea that of all the bedroom bunnies who had been available, he had been drawn to her. And then he had said he found her real, a delightful departure from the perpetual sales pitch that he lived in. She wanted to believe that.

  He had never mentioned an interest in her wealth, but Jennifer knew it must have been a factor. He was trying to launch a new career in an expensive sector of the industry without any financial backing. It would be poetic if he had fallen in love with a peasant girl, but that was unrealistic. He wouldn’t even have been looking in places where there wasn’t any money.

  But what had been the deciding factor: Had he truly been taken by her? Or, as Catherine and Peter suspected, was her wealth the only thing he could find attractive? Was she really the ugly duckling who needed to fend off any compliment as obviously insincere; or had she grown into the swan, elegant and beautiful in her own way, who could be perfectly confident of suitors’ intentions.

  The next question was why had he traded her for Catherine. Was it a simple matter of easier access to more money? Or was it the more attractive sister, at home in his world and a much greater asset on his arm? If it had been his idea, then his betrayal had been total. He had come for money and found it in a more attractive package. But if it had been Catherine’s idea, then Padraig wouldn’t be nearly as guilty. Catherine could have made it very plain that Pegasus would never tolerate him as Jennifer’s husband. The tampered brakes were clear proof of how far she and Peter were willing to go. She could have persuaded him that a business relationship was his only source of capital, and that she would be the overseeing partner. Under that weight, he might crumble even if he did truly love her.

  His question still hung in the air? Could they possibly get back together? Would she even consider trying a fresh start?

  “I really don’t know,” Jennifer said again. “I don’t understand why you wanted me in the first place. I’m not sure why you abandoned me. And I have no idea why you want me back. I’m not sure whether I blame you or Catherine. She’s easier to hate than you are. But you’re harder to believe.”

  He managed a smile. “I suppose I am a habitual liar,” he admitted cheerfully. “There’s no reason why you should believe me.” But then he launched into his own version of events, taking on her questions one at a time. It was her freshness and her honesty that had attracted him. And when he had learned that the trade-show hostess was actually one of the richest women in the world, he had found her even more exciting. “Even I couldn’t get away with pretending that your wealth wasn’t attractive, but with you it was an added inducement, not the first feature.”

  Why had he left her? Because her Pegasus partners wanted him out. Badly enough to hire someone to kill him. Badly enough to buy his fledgling production company out from under him if he didn’t do things their way. “It wasn’t as if I had a choice. Nobody asked would I prefer to remain independent in the bosom of my wife. It was take it or leave it. Either Pegasus bought in, with Catherine as my overseer, or I could expect even more accidents.” Did she know, he wondered, that Catherine had even tried to regulate his personal spending, down to deciding how much he was allowed to spend for his office furnishings?

  And why did he want her back? Because Inheritance was going to give him a new start, and he wanted to spend his reclaimed life with Jennifer. “It’s you I love, darlin’, and I think you still have some feelings for me, too. We were happy together, and I think we can be happy again.”

  It was everything Jennifer wanted to hear. And for that reason she was suspicious. Did he really love her, or her money? Did Peter really try to kill him, or was Peter the only man whom she could actually trust? And, most important, was Catherine simply greedy for even more success, or was she a devil who had to be destroyed?

  They were back to small talk for the rest of the day. Padraig waited in his car while she checked out of her hotel, and then drove her to the airport. As they were parting, he asked, “What can I do to make you give us another chance?”

  “Give me time, Padraig, there are a lot of questions that I have to answer for myself.”

  “All the time you want,” he said. “But can we talk in the meantime? Can we spend some time together?”

  She paused to think. “I’m not moving out here, if that’s what you mean. And I’m not inviting you back into my apartment.”

  “There are other places, like the inn we were at today. Places on the East Coast as well. I need a chance to do some courting, darlin’. Otherwise, some dull money manager will make off with you.”

  He brushed a goodbye kiss softly across her cheek. “We’ll talk, Padraig,” she promised. “You’re probably the only one who can answer all my questions.”

  NINETEEN

  PADRAIG CAME up with a place where they could be together without seeming to move back in with each other. “It’s called Pennobquit. It’s an island off the Maine coast.���

  Jennifer didn’t k
now how to react. She had never heard of the place, and it sounded even more primitive than French Guiana. “Padraig, I need more time, not a change in scenery. I don’t think moving to an uninhabited island is going to help.”

  “It’s just a chance to get away from everything else,” he pleaded. “Your satellites, my film, your sister, all the things that confuse us. We can take a boat out of Camden and get lost in the Acadian islands. Nobody lives on Pennobquit. But I hear it’s a rocky beach on one end and a sheer cliff on the other.”

  “But if nobody lives there …” she objected. It seemed logical that if the place was so attractive, someone would have discovered it before Padraig.

  “There’s a cove where we can anchor. We can use the boat as our cottage and have the island as our garden. The sea … the rocky shore … it should be beautiful. And we can wander around for as long as we want with no fear of coming across a tourist or even catching a glimpse of a television news report. We can talk, Jennifer. For hours at end.”

  She found the idea appealing. Maybe, with all the distractions of their lives put aside, they could figure out whether or not they belonged together. But she also saw the danger. Once she became captive to his charms, he could probably talk her into anything. She didn’t want to find them reconciled until she was comfortable with his answers to her questions.

  “Padraig, there’s so much going on here—” she started, trying to build a foundation for her excuse.

  “What?” he demanded. “For the love of God, lass, what’s more important than the two of us? My movie will survive with the editors. And your satellites aren’t going to tumble out of orbit. The world will be the same a week from now. But you and I don’t have to be. We can decide how we ought to be living.”

  She put him off. “Out of the question,” she said finally. But in the middle of her business day, she pulled up a map of the Maine coast on her computer and kept enlarging the detail until she found Pennobquit Island.

  It was dead south of Harwood Island, in Blue Hill Bay, due west of Bass Harbor, all places she had never heard of. There was Camden to the west, and Mount Desert Island to the east, and nothing but rocks in the immediate vicinity. Jennifer couldn’t find anything appealing in the terrain or any reason to go there.

  The next day Padraig sent her a picture of the boat. It was a forty-eight-foot trawler, fitted out as a luxury yacht. There were private cabins fore and aft, each with a queen-size bed and a private head and shower. Between was a raised helm, a very complete galley, and a great room with lounges and a pop-up table. She could, he indicated, have all the privacy she wanted. But they could meet on the decks for the long talks that they needed, and go ashore to do all the exploring they could handle.

  “I won’t press it if it makes you uncomfortable,” he wrote in an attachment. “But it is kind of a middle ground between my beach house and your loft. Kind of a Vienna for signing our peace treaty.”

  Uncomfortable? She found it terrifying. Out of touch with the world and alone with a man who Peter still believed had tried to kill her. A week with no one to talk to except the man who had abandoned her and left her to suffer in silence. But still, she found it intriguing. They would never solve their problems if they met only during the intervals that their separate business affairs allowed. They needed to get away if he was ever to explain where her sister now stood in his life. She needed time to listen and quiet to think if she was ever going to be able to believe him.

  She returned an e-mail, telling him to make the arrangements and hire the boat. She couldn’t spare a week, but she could take a long weekend. An hour later, a messenger showed up at her door with a bouquet of flowers. The note said that three days wasn’t long enough, but that Padraig would take even a minute if that was all she could give him. Rumors about the flowers passed from office to office faster than if they had been broadcast by one of the company’s satellites.

  Peter was the first to raise concerns. “Meet him anywhere,” he told her. “But in a reasonably public place. How are you going to get away from him on an island?”

  She wasn’t afraid of Padraig, Jennifer answered. He had never harmed her. And then she asked if Peter still thought that the only thing Padraig found attractive about her was her money. “I’m not Daddy’s little girl anymore, Peter. I’m a grown woman, able to make my own decisions. You don’t have to watch over me anymore.”

  He nodded in acknowledgment. All he could add was “I guess I like watching over you.”

  Catherine telephoned to say how much she had come to detest O’Connell. “I showed you what he was after,” she said. “And that’s still what he’s after. He knows that Peter and I want to pull out, and he’s looking for another banker.”

  Even though she had heard it before, Jennifer still felt the sting. “Sure. What else could he possibly find in me? Particularly now that he’s been to the mountain with you.”

  “Damn you, Jennifer! Stop wallowing in your self-pity and use your head. You’re nobody’s ugly duckling. But that doesn’t mean that Padraig O’Connell isn’t the big bad wolf. He’s a liar and a con man. You shouldn’t meet him on a public street, much less on some desolate island in Maine. Why do you think he wants to get you alone?”

  “Maybe to seduce me,” Jennifer said.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Catherine answered.

  The two police detectives called ahead and arrived at Jennifer’s apartment precisely on time. She led them into her living room and made them comfortable around her coffee table, one on either side of the small director’s chair she pulled up for herself. She assumed that they had come to discuss the intruder who had tried to drill through her door. She was surprised when the first thing they brought up was her relationship with Will Ferris.

  “I thought we covered that,” she said irritably. “I told you I never met the man.”

  “Then you never called him on the telephone?” the man to her right asked.

  “Of course not.”

  “But his number was in last month’s listing of your local calls. You phoned him from this apartment.” The officer offered her a copy of her local exchange’s printout.

  She glanced at it and didn’t understand it but decided not to ask. “If his number is in there, it has to be a mistake. I never called anyone by that name. At least not knowingly.”

  The other detective set copies of restaurant receipts on the table. Jennifer looked and then showed surprise. “That’s my signature.” She looked closer. They were credit-card receipts she had signed at Peaches coffee shop.

  “You wrote in a tip for the waiter. Server eleven.” He pointed to the waiter notation on each of the slips. “Server eleven was Will Ferris.”

  Jennifer seemed bewildered.

  “This one,” the policeman went on, “was just four days before the break-in at your sister’s apartment. So Ferris was standing right in front of you while he waited on your table.”

  “Maybe he was,” she conceded. “But I couldn’t tell you right now who waited on me at lunch today. It’s just not the kind of thing I notice.”

  The detective retrieved his copies of the receipts. Before Jennifer could compose herself, his partner took over. “Your sister went into business with your husband, didn’t she?”

  She nodded but then added, “It was company business. We were both involved.”

  “But your sister was working closely with him. She was the one in day-to-day contact.”

  Jennifer agreed, but she didn’t mention just how close that contact had been.

  “How did you feel about that?” he continued.

  She looked from one to the other. “It was a business arrangement,” she snapped. But she guessed they knew exactly how she felt. Enraged, defeated, embarrassed, vengeful, and murderous. She stood abruptly. “Look, I don’t want to talk any further about this. If you have more questions, call my attorney.”

  “Do you need an attorney?” one of them asked.

  “Am I suspected of something?”
she countered.

  “You might be charged,” the other said casually.

  “Charged with what?”

  “Hindering an investigation. You haven’t been very helpful regarding your relationship with Will Ferris.”

  “Then charge me. My lawyer always knows where to reach me.” She went to her desk and found the two policemen standing when she returned. “Here’s his card. Henry Harris.”

  She began to tremble as soon as they left, and rushed to the bar for a drink that might calm her. The police, it was obvious, were nibbling at the edges of the truth. Maybe they already knew the true nature of her relationship with Catherine. There were countless witnesses to their years of simmering hatred. Catherine herself could have provided details. They probably knew Jennifer was lying when she said that her sister’s relationship with her husband was “just business.” And what if they had the pictures? That would be all the proof they would need of her motive for murder.

  What should she do? There was no place she could run to. Even Padraig’s barren rock on the Maine coast wouldn’t be far enough. And yet she couldn’t just sit around and wait to be arrested.

  She thought of calling Harris and began rehearsing what she might say. “Henry, I think I’m going to be charged with attempted murder!” But that would only begin a probe on his part and lead to more questions that she didn’t want to answer. She thought of Padraig but dismissed the idea instantly. She wasn’t yet sure that she could trust him. Would he rally to her interests, Catherine’s, or only to his own? And, of course, she thought of Peter. Except she had just told him that she no longer needed his protection and that he should stay out of her affairs.