Red Dawn Rising (Red Returning Trilogy)

by Duffy, Sue

  Jordan described the brief encounter as he cranked the engine and turned in his seat, waiting for an opening in the traffic.

  “Were they rude?” Cass asked.

  “No, but suspicious. It’s New York. Who isn’t?” He pulled from the curb and merged with the traffic, heading toward the apartment building he’d just left. “Guy had an accent,” he added. “Sort of Russian sounding. Woman didn’t speak, just glared at … oh, I think that’s her by the door!”

  Cass turned slightly to see the woman, but the side window was too fogged for a good look.

  “She is really giving us the once over,” Jordan said as they passed by. He glanced in his rearview mirror. “And still looking. What’s that all about?”

  Cass was at a loss to understand. She recalled her mother’s frightened face the morning she’d asked Cass to trail her stepfather. The cover-shot face had lost its poise and sagged into despair. But how could Cass help when all she knew was a world of make-believe?

  Jordan lightly patted her knee. “You know what this is? It’s just Hans paying a house call on one of his investment clients. Don’t they do that with the high rollers?”

  Cass looked appreciatively at his effort to allay her fears. “Maybe.” It was possible, she considered, and much preferable to infidelity. Cass had witnessed enough of that growing up in the household of an imperial alpha male who set no boundaries to his lusts for money, power, and other women. By her teenage years, Cass had lost hope that her mother would ever extract herself from such devastation, she alone clinging to her vows.

  “I don’t believe there’s anything to this, Cass, so let’s drop it into a tall cappuccino and get rid of it. Ready?” They were approaching their neighborhood.

  But Cass could only see her mother’s desperate eyes, pleading for her daughter’s help.

  “Jordan, I need to see my mom. It’s time you met her and Hans anyway, now that you’re an accomplice. Will you go with me?”

  He slowed the car and considered it. After a moment, he nodded. “I’d like that. Where to?”

  It wasn’t far from SoHo to the Tribeca apartment of Jillian and Hans Kluen, who were now expecting them. Jordan had insisted that Cass alert them to their—particularly his—coming. “I don’t want to take anybody else by surprise tonight,” he’d said.

  After wedging the Honda into the only curb space they could find, Jordan and Cass walked the two blocks to a converted textile warehouse. Jordan looked up at the ochre-hued building that rose about five floors. Like other industrial buildings in the Tribeca district, this one had been repurposed and renovated for residential space, some of the priciest in New York.

  Jordan opened a gleaming oak door inset with elaborately etched glass, and they entered a lobby floored in black marble. In the center of the space was a slender, stainless-steel sculpture of something abstract and wholly unidentifiable to Jordan, he admitted to Cass.

  “It’s a woman with a child in her womb,” she told him.

  “Oh, well, thank you. Foolish of me not to see that such a cold, stark piece of steel represents motherhood.”

  Cass grinned at him and urged him toward the elevator. “Now behave yourself,” she chided.

  The elevator deposited them into a long hallway also in shining black marble, floors and walls. Cass led him to the Kluen apartment and rang a doorbell that resounded in a three-note chime. The door opened immediately and a courtly gentleman wrapped in a soft gray cardigan opened his arms to her. “Cass, sweetheart, we’re so happy to see you … and your friend, uh …”

  “Jordan Winslow,” she supplied while stiffly accepting her stepfather’s embrace.

  Then the man’s hand reached for Jordan’s and gripped it quite fraternally. “I’m Hans Kluen, Jordan. So pleased to meet you. And this”—he turned, extending his arm and motioning behind him—“is my wife, Jillian.”

  Cass’s mother glided toward the door, her mint green caftan sweeping across a frothy white carpet, her eyes momentarily flaring conspiratorially at Cass. She extended a delicate hand toward Jordan, her forefinger mounted with a dazzling emerald cocktail ring. “I’ve been wanting to meet you, young man,” she said in a neutral tone.

  Jordan slid a questioning glance at Cass.

  “She means she wants to make sure that the man who lives next door to me probably doesn’t keep sharp axes and formaldehyde in his apartment.”

  “Cass!” her mother protested.

  “It’s okay, Mrs. Kluen,” Jordan said. “I don’t use axes anymore.”

  Both Kluens fell mute, their unblinking eyes fixed on Jordan.

  “Oh, brother,” Cass moaned and took off toward the kitchen. “Mom, have you got anything to snack on?” she called over her shoulder. But that wasn’t her intent in leaving the room. She glanced back long enough to catch Jordan’s eye and issue a signal for him to stay put.

  When her mother followed her into the kitchen, Cass ushered her quickly into the pantry and delivered her report. “There was no one but an older man and a not-so-attractive older woman there, Mom. It’s got to be the same man I saw at the window last night. Nothing going on there. I guarantee it.”

  Jillian looked away, her freshly powdered brow wrinkling into even folds. “But why—”

  “Jordan believes he’s just visiting clients like he said.” Cass second-guessed her mother’s question. “It makes sense, Mom.”

  “At that hour? Why not during the business day?”

  Cass shrugged. “Maybe that’s the only time he can meet with some of them. Anyway, please don’t work yourself up over nothing. Hans told you it was business, and I believe it is.”

  The thin, emerald-clad hand wavered near her mouth, painted delicately in frosty pink. Jillian Kluen never failed to mystify her daughter. In the hour of dread over the fate of her marriage, there was still lipstick and powder. And that familiar pretense so practiced and critical to survival. Cass wanted to mourn for this woman who’d given life to her child, then somehow misplaced her own. When did that happen?

  “Jilly, why don’t you bring an hors d’oeuvre tray for us, dear?” Hans called from the living room.

  “I’ll be right there,” Jillian answered, her voice lilting on the final syllable. Cass knew the singsong habit her mother sometimes affected to mask her distress.

  “Mom, let this go,” she implored. “Hans adores you and always has. Anybody can see that. Why can’t you?”

  The pink lips quivered, releasing a tremulous sigh. “I know he does.” She smoothed the flowing skirt of the caftan. “I guess after … after all the years with your father, it’s just hard to believe in adoration.” She extended a cupped hand and held it to her daughter’s chin. “Except the kind I feel for my Cassandra.” She smiled sweetly, then dropped her hand, though her clear blue eyes lingered on Cass just a moment longer. The air shifted, the mood brightened. Now scurrying to retrieve an assortment of small dishes from the refrigerator, Jillian chirped over her shoulder, “Jordan is an eyeful, don’t you think?”

  Cass scrunched her face. “As in large?” She settled onto a bar stool and playfully popped an olive into her mouth.

  “As in you make a handsome couple.” Grabbing a paring knife, Jillian began to slice a small round of brie, her eyes darting inquisitively at her daughter.

  “We’re not a couple, Mom. Just friends.” Cass picked up another olive.

  “Well, isn’t he the NYU guy you used to gush over before you dropped out and—” Jillian suddenly clipped her words and put down the knife. She looked anxiously at Cass, who slowly returned the olive to the tray and didn’t look up. “Oh, honey, I didn’t mean to—”

  “I know you didn’t. It’s okay.” Cass stood up and grabbed one of the trays. “I’ll take this out.”

  The men sat in matching club chairs, a glass of wine and a can of soda on a small table between them. Cass imagined Hans—an avid collector and consumer of fine wines—all but grieving over her friend’s allergy to alcohol.

  “I w
as just telling Jordan that my mother used to shop in his store when his grandfather was still there.” He sipped his wine as if toasting a fond memory. “We’d take the train from the Bronx into the city on a Saturday morning and head straight to Winslow’s. As a little boy, I didn’t understand the fascination women had with shoes.”

  “You still don’t, dear,” Jillian offered lightly as she breezed into the room with a silver-handled serving tray, setting it on a zebra-print ottoman.

  Cass looked down at her own scuffed sneakers. No fascination there.

  “But of course,” Jillian reasoned, “it had to be all those German winters sloshing around in thin-soled shoes while those awful Russian soldiers—”

  “Yes, we all know what the Russians did after the war, Jilly,” Hans interrupted curtly.

  Cass was startled by the sharp retort. She’d never heard Hans speak to her mother that way. But he hastily changed his tone. “Now, where were you both off to on such a bitter night?”

  Cass’s heart leapt, and she dared not look Jordan’s way. Methodically placing a gooey mound of brie on a cracker, she focused only on her task. “Visiting friends, that’s all.” She leaned back in her chair and forced the morsel into her dry mouth.

  Jordan cleared his throat. “Mr. Kluen, tell me more about your firm.”

  What’s he doing? Cass fretted.

  “Oh, we peddle the usual financial products. Stocks and bonds, annuities, commodity futures, those sorts of things.”

  “Do all your clients come to you?”

  Hans hesitated.

  “I mean, do you ever make house calls to your fat-cat clients?” Jordan bludgeoned affably.

  Oh, no. Cass didn’t like where this was headed.

  But Hans answered politely. Cass had no reason to think he wouldn’t. In the four years she’d known him, he’d never shown her anything but kindness and courtesy. To her mother also. That’s why his behavior just now had raised a flag.

  Shifting his gaze between his wife and Jordan, Hans answered, “I’m afraid there are the occasional nights when I must tend to … a skittish investor or perhaps a valued client in town for just the evening. The fat cat, as you say.” He chuckled and took a too-long swig of his wine. Dabbing the corners of his mouth with a linen napkin, he added, “Jilly hates for me to leave her at night. But it’s not often.” Cass watched something toxic simmer between the two and regretted having any part in it.

  Jordan promptly defused the tense moment he’d created. Cass watched him turn to take in the room’s sweeping view of the Hudson River. He stood and walked toward the broad window, stopping to study a collection of framed photographs on a table behind the sofa. “Mrs. Kluen,” he said, raising one of the pictures for closer inspection, “this has to be your mother. You look so much like her.”

  Jillian rose, her caftan rustling as she walked toward him. “You’re right. But she’s long gone now.” She took the photograph and smiled down at it. Then she picked up another and passed it to Jordan. “Twelve-year-old Cass,” she informed him, “sawing wood in the back yard of our beach house. She built the most incredible playhouse all by herself.” Jillian turned and beamed at her daughter, who allowed a self-conscious grin and wished to be somewhere else just then. But they were the inescapable cast of her personal drama. The proud, delusional mother. The tragically flawed daughter. And the clueless stepfather whose innocent life she’d so shamelessly meddled in. What Broadway producer would resist such a scenario?

  As if receiving her subliminal prompt, Jordan finally turned from a quick scan of the view and asked, “Think we’d better be going?”

  “Oh, so soon?” Jillian moaned.

  “How about dinner next weekend?” Hans offered brightly. “Our treat.” He smiled graciously at them. “We’ve discovered a new French bistro I think you’d like.”

  “Thanks, Hans,” said Cass. “But we’re going with some friends to Washington and staying over until Monday. We’ve got tickets for the inauguration.”

  It was almost imperceptible, but Cass didn’t miss the shadow that flickered across her stepfather’s face.

  Chapter 8

  Cass spent the following afternoon repairing a staircase to nowhere at the Gershwin Theatre. She welcomed the mindless task that allowed her thoughts to stray. As she sawed and nailed, distressing new boards to appear old and rickety, she caught a mental glimpse of herself in her workshop behind the beach house. It was a prefab structure her father begrudgingly purchased for her twelfth birthday, the only thing she’d asked for.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he’d scolded. “Why can’t you be like other girls and play dress-up instead of acting like a boy? Get out of those overalls and go find some girlfriends.”

  But inside the metal workshop, she’d started building her own world, free of her parents’ fractious marriage and her father’s relentless disapproval of most everything she did. Her mother had created her own escape—Broadway. She never missed a show and nearly always took her young daughter with her. Together, they’d sit in the dark of one theater or another and slip around the jagged edge of reality into merciful illusion. By the stage lights, Cass would watch her mother’s face glow as it rarely did at home. It was the same face Cass was used to seeing on glossy pages and on the occasional billboard, though its luster was paper thin and pasted on. It was her mother’s job to coax a convincing glow from cosmetic bottles and jars, from plastic posing. But the face next to Cass in the theater radiated from unspoiled depths.

  It was the stage sets that most captivated young Cass’s imagination. She would sketch them during a performance, trying to figure out how they were built. Later, in her sprawling bedroom atop the three-story beach house, Cass drafted intricate plans for building her own sets. She began with a playhouse that took even her father by surprise, a cottage design with lots of gables, much like the grown-up, cedar-shake house behind it.

  “Hey, Cass!” Arnie, her boss, broke into her thoughts. “It’s gonna look real funny when the curtain goes up tonight and you’re still nailing on those steps. Get a move on!”

  “If I rush this job, Arnie, you know what’s going to be even funnier? The wicked witch falling through these steps and landing on her pointy hat.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Just hurry up.”

  Pushing childhood memories aside, Cass refocused on the job at hand. She was about to open a can of quick-dry black paint when her phone rang.

  Hans? She answered with a thin hello.

  “Cass, would you be able to meet me sometime this afternoon? Maybe for coffee. There’s something I need to discuss with you.”

  He’d never made such a request before. Could he possibly know she’d tailed him? There’d been no hint of it last night. Maybe something was wrong with her mother. Jillian was all she had. Of course she’d meet him.

  Later, Cass entered an elegant little diner off Broadway. Hans waved to her from a tufted-leather booth near the back. He stood as she approached and took her jacket, hanging it with fastidious care on a nearby hook, then sat opposite her. A bitter unease rose inside her, and she tried to shake it off, affecting a casual air.

  “This is a treat,” she said. Then more hesitantly, “Or I hope it is.” She studied his face and wondered when that pallor of fatigue had crept into it.

  “What may I order for you?” he asked distractedly.

  “Just coffee, thank you.” She suddenly remembered the decaf Jordan had brought two nights ago. So you won’t lie awake in your counterfeit jungle up there, he’d said. Something about that oddly soothed her at this awkward moment.

  But the comfort didn’t last. After ordering for them both, Hans turned reproachful eyes on her. “Cass, have you been following me?”

  And there it was. No preamble. Her heart lunged against her chest and her mouth opened wordlessly. But there was no need to play the wrongly accused. She looked down at the white porcelain charger before her, its high gloss reflecting the outline of her face but not the fright in it. She look
ed back at Hans. He waited patiently, as if already certain of her guilt.

  Just get it over with. “Mom thought you were … uh … meeting another woman.”

  Now it was Hans who looked down, then squeezed his eyes shut. Cass waited for a response. What she got surprised her. When he looked up, his eyes were moist and red. He shook his head slowly. “I would never do that.” He locked hard on her. “Don’t ever doubt how much I love your mother.” He looked away, then sharply back at her. “But evidently, she does.”

  Then what were you doing? Maybe it’s none of my business, but Mom is. “So all those trips out at night were just business?” she challenged.

  He sat back in his seat, blinking away the moisture in his eyes. “Clients, that’s all.” His tone turned guarded, triggering Cass’s next question.

  “How’d you know I followed you?”

  He looked steadily at her. “Your friend Jordan is a clumsy sleuth. He, uh, frightened a couple I’ve been working with a long time. They managed to get his license plate number and run it through channels. When they called to tell me who he was … well, of course, you’d just brought the young man to my door last night. How quickly it all came together.” Now he was angry.

  But there was something he’d left out. “Hans, why would these people call you about Jordan?”

  He looked blankly at her.

  “I mean, if they thought he was just somebody casing their apartment, why wouldn’t they call the police? Why would they think there was any connection between Jordan and you?”

  Hans fidgeted with his tie before answering. “Well … I … can only assume that I must have told them about my stepdaughter at some point.”

  Cass stared at him incredulously. “And where I live?” she said too loudly. “Are you saying these clients of yours not only traced Jordan’s license plate but somehow discovered that he lives next door to Hans Kluen’s stepdaughter?” Cass was suddenly reeling with the implication. “Who are these people?” she demanded.

  “Keep your voice down, Cass,” he said gruffly, glancing quickly about the room.