“One’s unlucky …”
“What’s that?” Ellen asked, turning her head to look at Adrienne, who hadn’t realized she was speaking aloud. Adrienne’s mind rushed on. One crow was unlucky. But six was death. Could five more be lurking around?
“Ellen, let’s go!” Adrienne said shrilly with sudden, irrational panic. “There’s nothing here.”
“That’s what most people think.” Showing far more stamina than Adrienne would have believed, Ellen began vigorously tugging at a thick tangle of honeysuckle vines.
“Please, Ellen, we should go!”
“Nonsense.” Ellen continued tearing at the vines. “What’s wrong with you? You sound like a scared little girl.”
Adrienne rushed forward, meaning to stop Ellen, but she was too late. Ellen had torn away the vines with surprising ease to reveal the weathered wood of a rectangular lid. With a considerable strength that astounded Adrienne, Ellen lifted the heavy wooden lid and let it drop back onto the ground with a thud. Then she leaned down and yelled into the hole, “Lottie, it’s Ellen. Don’t be afraid. Adrienne and I have come to see if you’re all right.”
“You think she’s down there?” Adrienne asked incredulously.
“Maybe.” Adrienne watched as Ellen kneeled down and began speaking sweetly into the unknown depths. “Lottie, dear? You don’t have to hide anymore. I’m here.”
Adrienne couldn’t believe anyone would take much comfort from the presence of frail Ellen. But then Ellen had proved she wasn’t as frail as she appeared to be. Or pretended to be.
But what Adrienne really found hard to accept was that Lottie could be living in this vine-blanketed underground shelter. The silence following Ellen’s comforting, echoing words seemed to prove her right.
Ellen lowered herself farther and landed on the floor. “Be careful,” Adrienne said. “It’s dark. There might be snakes or rats.”
“I’m watching my step,” Ellen returned absently, her gaze darting everywhere except the floor. “Do you have a flashlight?”
“Just a penlight.”
“Then bring it down here.”
Adrienne reluctantly followed Ellen inside. Cold, dank air wrapped around her like a shroud and she stopped. “What is this place, Ellen?”
“One of the early head caretakers of la Belle was a bit odd.” Naturally he was, Adrienne thought wryly. “He believed la Belle was his own little kingdom. When he got too old to work, my grandfather replaced him, but he refused to leave. So, Grandfather allowed him to build an unobtrusive place on the grounds. That was the stipulation. The man was a veteran of World War One and he built a bunker—you can’t be much more unobtrusive than that—and he lived here pretending he was still overseeing the care of la Belle while the war raged on around him. He died in here in the 1930s. My father didn’t find him for several days. That must have been disagreeable.”
“No doubt,” Adrienne echoed hollowly, appalled.
“Lottie and I found the bunker nearly forty years ago. She actually tripped and fell right onto the lid, where the vines were thinnest, and we investigated. We didn’t tell anyone we’d found it. We cleaned it up inside but left the vines as camouflage and christened it the Hideaway. We made a vow to always keep the place a secret. I never even told Kit about it. She would think it was strange and always be nagging me to destroy it.”
“That might not be a bad idea, Ellen,” Adrienne said carefully. “It could be a danger if a child found it, crawled in, and couldn’t get out.”
Ellen ignored her, peering around in the semidarkness. Finally she kneeled and picked up a blanket. “Lottie’s quilt She made this last year. I recognize the pattern. And here’s a pillow.”
As Adrienne moved forward for a closer look, she kicked over a glass jar. She picked it up and sniffed. “A candle. Jasmine scent”
“And another one here.” Ellen dropped the quilt. In the dim light seeping through the open door into the gloom of the building, Adrienne saw Ellen place her hands on her hips. “The poor thing has been staying here.”
Something squeaked in the corner. Adrienne jumped, hoping it was a mouse, not a rat. “Ellen, this place is awful!”
Ellen shrugged. “When you fear for your life, I guess you can put up with a lot to feel safe.”
“Are you certain Lottie thinks someone will try to kill her?”
“I’m not certain, but I know Lottie and it’s the only answer that makes sense.” Ellen paused. “Adrienne, I said that I’d never told Kit about this place. I would appreciate your not telling her about it, either.”
Adrienne felt a jolt of surprise. “If you don’t want your own daughter to know about it, why did you allow me to see it?”
Ellen started slowly for the door and said over her shoulder, “Because I know you would never hurt Lottie.”
Adrienne stared after her. What was she implying? That Kit would hurt Lottie? Why?
There would be no sensible reason unless Ellen believed Kit had killed Julianna and Lottie knew about it.
TEN
1
“I’m sorry, Lottie. So sorry. My fault. All my fault.”
Gavin Kirkwood lay beside his wife in bed, his head propped on his hand as he looked down at her troubled, dreaming face. She’d greased her skin with a cream he knew cost over a hundred dollars a jar—cream that promised a decrease in wrinkles and an increase in firmness. The cream was a rip-off. In spite of faithful use for six months, Ellen’s complexion still bore the inevitable traces of age and gravity. Gavin knew that within a year, she would resort to plastic surgery.
He really didn’t care if she looked thirty. The sexual attraction he’d felt for her when they first met had vanished long ago, and he was frankly relieved that not much was expected of him in the lovemaking department anymore. Ellen was too depressed since the death of young Jamie last year to care about sex. That was the only good thing that had come from Jamie’s death. Gavin had loved him too, and although Ellen had sucked up all the sympathy offered by friends and relatives, Gavin had often wished he’d drowned instead of the intelligent, charming little boy. For a long time, Gavin’s world had turned gray and cold without the child. But no one seemed to notice his pain, or to care.
Ellen had arrived home at five o’clock today claiming she’d been out looking for Lottie. She was sweating, shaking, scratched by thorns, and so weak she could barely stand. Gavin wasn’t sure some of her maladies weren’t just attention-seeking acts, but to be safe he had promptly called her doctor, who’d given Ellen a mild lecture on overexertion, then to Gavin delivered a downright harsh lecture on his lapse in looking after Ellen. As if anyone could ever make Ellen cooperate, Gavin had thought in fury. He’d felt like punching the guy, but that would have brought on a fit of hysterics from Ellen and probably a lawsuit from the doctor. So, as he did so often, Gavin had seethed in silence while Ellen’s emotional state took dominion over his life, and he endured being belittled by yet another person contemptuous of a man they believed had married only for money.
Now, five hours after the doctor had given Ellen a tranquilizer and sent her to bed, Gavin lay miserably beside her, suffering through her slurred rambling and maddening restless leg movements. He had a brief but almost overwhelming desire to lay a pillow over her perspiring face and hold it in place until the woman finally stopped talking. And breathing. The urge became so strong, Gavin was frightened and promptly threw back the covers, abandoning the bedroom without even bothering to put on a robe. The pretentious silk pajamas Ellen made him wear covered enough of his well-toned body so the maid wouldn’t be shocked if she happened to hear him rattling around the house and emerged from her room to investigate.
He ambled into the room Ellen had decorated and called his study, a room he found dark and depressing and inconvenient. But as much as he hated the study, one of his pleasures lay buried under a pile of folders in a desk drawer—sour mash Kentucky bourbon. Sour mash, he thought fondly, considered the finest of whiskies, requiring ninety
-six hours of fermentation and at least four years of aging before it is thought fit to drink. Ellen thought the drink was crass and protested having it even brought into the house. But sometimes Gavin felt as though he couldn’t get enough of it. Tonight was one of those times.
He poured a couple of shots into the simple drinking glass he also kept hidden beneath the folders in the drawer. Then he turned on the dim, green-shaded desk light and sat down on his heavily padded desk chair, leaning back and staring up at the beamed ceiling. He was so tired. Exhausted. But sleep wouldn’t come. In fact, it had been eluding him since the death of Julianna. With her, for the first time in many years, he’d felt like a man. And now the feeling was gone, probably forever.
When Kit was an adolescent and he’d just married Ellen, he’d paid no attention to Kit’s friend Julianna. She was just a tall, skinny girl with a mass of auburn hair who talked too much for his taste. Of course, her talking was better than Kit’s sulking. But of the three friends, he’d preferred Adrienne. Not sexually. At that time Ellen was still good-looking and, although he knew everyone thought he’d married the woman fourteen years his elder for her money, he’d been genuinely attracted to her looks, her sophistication, her charm. He’d actually loved her. And she’d been crazy about him. Besotted was the word his mother had used. “She’s besotted with your handsome face and your smooth line,” she’d said venomously. “Just like I was with your father. But give it time, Gavin my boy. She’ll find out what a loser you are. I know from experience.”
When he was young, Gavin had had the confidence to almost ignore his mother and approach any woman. His good looks and glib tongue surprised even him, but they were assets he’d first realized he possessed when he was sixteen, when his twenty-four-year-old, uncommonly glamorous history teacher had come on to him. Between her and Ellen had come a slew of women, of all ages and all degrees of attractiveness and intelligence. But not until Ellen had a woman possessing looks, smarts, and money pursued him.
Gavin had been flattered by and truly infatuated with Ellen. He’d happily married her and blessed his lucky stars. What he hadn’t counted on was her passive-aggressive dominance, her neuroses, her knack for the finely crafted, subtle art of emasculation that was far more powerful than his mother’s clumsy, overt attempts.
Between the controlling wife, the contemptuous stepdaughter, and the drowning death of his young adopted son—a death wrongly attributed to Gavin’s negligence—Gavin Kirkwood had been almost completely demoralized when he met Julianna again at a party being held in Philip Hamilton’s house.
As far as Gavin knew, Julianna was not a particular friend of Philip’s or Vicky’s. Vicky’s younger sister Adrienne had been part of the triumvirate of best friends including Kit and Julianna. He surmised that Julianna, a former world-famous model, had been invited as a star attraction. And it had worked. People flocked to the parties and hovered around her like groupies. Including Gavin.
Over the course of the next three months, Gavin realized he was falling deeply in love for the first time in his life. He’d tried to hide his feelings from everyone except Julianna. Tried damned hard.
But he hadn’t been successful. Margaret Taylor had seen right through him and threatened to tell his wife if he didn’t pay for her silence. And to make matters worse, Julianna didn’t have romantic feelings for him, which she’d told him in an almost heart-wrenchingly kind and ego-protecting way. He’d been crushed. He’d felt cold and dry and old and hopeless.
And then one night, to his complete astonishment, Julianna had called him. She’d been upset. She said she felt she could trust him and needed to speak with him alone. She’d asked him to come to her apartment. He’d made it to Julianna’s apartment house in record time, bounded up the stairs, started to rap on the door, then froze. He’d heard voices inside. Loud voices. Angry voices. Of course, he knew Julianna’s. But he was fairly sure he recognized the other one too and something being said about an affair.
He’d tucked himself away in a chair placed in an alcove and waited. And waited. After two hours, no one had emerged from the apartment. Things had gotten quiet. But Julianna had said she needed to speak with him alone, and she most definitely wasn’t alone, so he hadn’t gone to the door.
Instead, in defeat he’d dragged himself home, trying to ward off depression by telling himself he’d talk with her tomorrow. Surely, she’d want to talk to him then as much as she had tonight.
But the next day, Kit had called and announced that Julianna was dead. She had been murdered at la Belle.
Turning the phone over to Ellen, Gavin had walked straight into the bathroom and thrown up. Then he’d had a drink and one of Ellen’s tranquilizers, driven his wife up to that damned hotel as she’d insisted he do, and stood weakly behind her, unable to look at his beautiful love lying pale and cold as stone beneath satin sheets.
He would never get over it, he thought now as he poured another double shot of bourbon. Losing Jamie had been devastating, but at least his death had been an accident. Julianna’s death was no accident. It was deliberate and obscene. It would be the end of Gavin Kirkwood.
But he wasn’t quite done in yet, he thought. Someone should pay for what they had done to Julianna, he resolved, draining the glass, his expression hardening into vicious determination.
And someone would.
2
“We’re home!”
Adrienne stood silently for a moment, holding the phone, before she realized the shrill, falsely cheerful voice she’d heard was her sister Vicky’s. “Welcome back, Vicky. How was the trip?”
“Typical campaign stuff. Smiling. Shaking hands. Me not remembering any of the damned names of possible campaign contributors. Awful meals. I’m dying to have a good meal and a drink with someone I actually likel” High, brittle giggle. “Can I treat you to lunch at The Iron Gate?”
“That sounds wonderful, Vicky, if it’s all right for Skye to join us.”
“Oh.” Vicky sounded as if she’d just thumped back to earth from a high altitude. “Well … sure.”
Skye, who’d been looking disconsolately into the open refrigerator for something interesting to eat for lunch, turned and made frantic hand motions. “Just a minute,” Adrienne said to her sister, then to Skye, “What’s wrong?”
“If Aunt Vicky wants you to go someplace with her, let me go to Sherry’s. I was invited, but you said I’d wear out my welcome. I wouldn’t, though. Patty will be there. And Joel, I think.”
“Who’s Joel?”
“Oh, he’s just Patty’s brother. Nobody important” Skye’s speech grew faster and her face turned redder. She has a crush on Joel, Adrienne thought, making a mental note to ask Sherry’s mother about him. “Anyway, I can go to Sherry’s and you can go with Aunt Vicky and we can both have fun instead of us just sitting here looking at each other.”
“And not having fun.”
“Well, it’s not that. It’s just …”
“That you’re getting tired of being watched over like an eight-year-old.” Adrienne pretended to think about the matter. “Okay. Get your bathing suit—not the two-piece sexy one I didn’t want you to buy—and you can spend the afternoon with Sherry and Joel Who’s Nobody Important. I’ll meet Vicky, and we’ll both be in better moods tonight”
An hour later, Skye had been deposited at Sherry Granger’s with reassurances from Mrs. Granger that Skye was a lovely girl who could never wear out her welcome. Adrienne noted with amusement that Skye and Sherry elaborately ignored Patty’s brother Joel, who had the confidence of a boy aware of his own good looks, not to mention the superiority of being one year older than the girls. Skye would have a challenge on her hands winning the affection of this teenage Romeo, she thought.
Adrienne drove downtown and found the last parking space in a crowded noonday lot at The Iron Gate’s lunchtime Grill. She walked in and immediately spotted Vicky, who was already sipping a drink and waving enthusiastically to catch Adrienne’s attention. As soon as Adr
ienne sat down, Vicky gushed, “You look wonderful! Did you get some sun yesterday?”
“A little more than I meant to.” Adrienne touched the bridge of her sunburned nose. “I took a long walk. I’m sure it was good for me, but my muscles are telling me I need to exercise more often.”
“A drink will fix that. I’m having a piña colada. Very festive. Want one?”
“It’s a little early, Vicky.”
“Nonsense.” Vicky motioned to a dark-haired waitress. “She’ll have a piña colada. And I’ll have another.”
“Another?” Vicky threw her a frosty look, and Adrienne knew she was asking for trouble if she commented on Vicky’s alcohol intake. Philip no doubt had chastised her about it while they’d been away. “Aren’t you worried about calories?” she amended in a light tone.
“Not today. I put on a good show on the trip. I was the perfect campaign wife. Now it’s time to enjoy myself.” Vicky looked pale and a sheen of perspiration covered her upper lip. She reached quickly for her drink, her hand trembling so much she almost ran the paper umbrella up her nose before her mouth located the straw, and she sucked up half of the piña colada.
“What’s wrong, Vicky?” Adrienne asked. “Did something happen on the trip to upset you?”
Misery glimmered in Vicky’s blue eyes. “It was just the usual. Tasteless food, endless smiling, Philip being charming in public and a bear in private. And all the while, Margaret bossing around everyone and acting as if she were Philip’s wife!”
“It seems Philip would speak to her about that kind of behavior. It can’t make a good impression on all the people they both want to vote for him.”
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