Ghost Walk

by Laurel Pace

Dani swallowed, forcing herself to meet Stephen Lawes's disquieting stare. She had seen him only once without stage makeup, and then only from a distance. In contrast to the sinister countenance created by his role in the , however, his rounded features and fair coloring gave his natural face a mild, even timid appearance. Here was the man who had become the focal point of her suspicion, a person she had believed capable of the most heinous sort of murder. Yet now that they were face-to-face in the inhospitable police station lobby, all she could see was a hurting human being, utterly alone in the world.

  Extricating herself from Ken's arm, Dani approached the corner bench on which Lawes sat. "I'm sorry," she said quietly.

  The young man blinked as if he were in a daze.

  "I'm Dani Blake," she went on in an effort to penetrate his shock.

  "I know who you are. You were one of Whyte's friends." Lawes's dulled voice carried an accusing undercurrent. He glanced at Ken, who had joined Dani, and then gazed down at his hands tightly gripping his knees.

  "I just can't believe what's happened. I had seen her just tonight. We had dinner at Booth's—that was always her favorite place. She was starting to laugh a little again, said we ought to do this kind of thing more often." Lawes spoke haltingly, half to himself, as if he were trying to fit together the ill-fitted pieces of a sinister puzzle. "She said she was a little tired, wanted to go home and get to bed early. If I'd had any idea what she was planning to do, I—I wouldn't have let her go."

  Dani sank onto the bench next to Lawes."What was she planning?" she asked as gently as possible.

  "She didn't tell me, of course, because she knew what I'd say. I've warned her time and again that it wasn't safe, a woman being out alone at all hours of the night. But she never would listen. That's where they found her tonight, parked across the street from his house." Lawes's expression shifted so abruptly, Dani almost started. An angry white shadow outlined his lips that were now quivering with hostility. "She was so dedicated, such a perfectionist. And what did all that slaving in his office get her? Murdered by some mugger!" In his fury, he spat the words. Lawes's suffering was so palpable, Dani hated assaulting him with any further questions. "But your mother didn't mention having to go to Richardson's office tonight?"

  Lawes's lip curled in contempt. "She knew how I felt about him. I know what you're thinking." His puffy, reddened eyes fastened themselves on Dani. "You all thought he was so wonderful, so generous, such a gentleman. You've all been wringing your hands over him, turning the city upside down to find out who killed him. Well, do you want to know what I think, Miss Blake?" The swollen eyes were defiant. "I don't care if they ever find the murderer, ever! Richardson Whyte robbed my mother of the best years of her life, fed her on lies that poisoned her whole life. She loved him, and he exploited that love. She always held out the hope he would return her love someday if she were patient and loyal enough." Lawes's face contorted in pain. "She lived for his praise, believed him when he said he would take care of us. I remember my mother always saying, 'Richardson will look out for you, Steve. He'll see you through college, even medical school, if that's what you still want later on.'" Lawes's bitter laugh cut to the quick. "I'm not a doctor now, thanks to Richardson Whyte. Sometime over the years, he conveniently forgot his promises to Mom—even while he was asking her to write the checks for the other tuition he was paying while he was in Brazil." He looked at her a little uncomfortably, as if he feared her reaction.

  Richardson was only human, and Dani realized that at least some of Stephen Lawes's resentment could be justified. Still, she felt obligated to defend her old family friend. "I think Richardson held himself responsible for seeing Rebecca Pope through college after her own father died. She is his niece, you know."

  For a moment, Lawes only gaped at her in disbelief. Then a look of unfolding comprehension spread over his ravaged face. "Whyte didn't pay Rebecca Pope's tuitibn. He paid yours!"

  Chapter Thirteen

  "I had no idea. Mother, Richardson, no one ever said a word about his paying my college tuition." Dani frowned pensively at the mug of hot cocoa Ken had just placed in her hands. She pulled her knees up, clasping them to her chest with one arm as she edged deeper into the corner of the sofa.

  Ken seated himself on the edge of the sofa. As he sipped the hot drink, he opened one of the home-decorating magazines on the coffee table, aimlessly flipping through the colorful pages. "Maybe they thought you would have felt self-conscious about it," he suggested after a lengthy silence.

  "But I never even had a chance to thank him!" Dani blurted out.

  Ken stared blankly at the magazine for a second before looking up at her. His face wore a curious expression, an ambiguous blend of doubt and apprehension. He had been through a trying ordeal, one that almost guaranteed unpleasant aftershocks, Dani reminded herself. By comparison, her fixation on Stephen Lawes's revelation surely seemed annoyingly trivial. When she looked at it rationally, it was just another manifestation of Richardson's generosity to her and her family, albeit an impressive one. She probably wouldn't feel so off balance if the discovery had not come in the wake of such an emotionally exhausting evening.

  Dani scooted out of the pocket she had carved between the sofa cushions and slid her mug onto the end table. "We certainly have more compelling things to think about than my tuition. Poor Stephen! I can't believe how different he looked in the police station. That was the first time I had ever seen him up close without his stage makeup. He seemed so fragile this morning, like a hurt little boy. He's not a killer, Ken."

  The sofa springs recoiled as Ken stood up abruptly. "No, I agree with you." He paced the length of the coffee table, then hesitated, as if he had forgotten where he intended to go, before walking to the dining alcove. He adjusted the blinds, admitting flushed stripes of early dawn between the narrow slats. "He doesn't look a bit like Richardson, either. I think it's safe to assume that Bea Lawes's love for Richardson went unrequited."

  Dani picked up the mug, remembered that it was empty and replaced it on the table. "Maybe it is only unfounded gossip that Richardson had an illegitimate child." She clasped her knees with both hands, waiting for Ken to say something. He was making her nervous, pacing around the room, not able to sit still for more than a few minutes.

  Ken continued to gaze out at the just-awakening street, apparently lost in thought. He seemed reluctant to relinquish that peaceful, innocuous view of the world as he turned and slowly walked back to the living room. He paused behind the sofa directly behind her, and Dani felt a sigh quiver through him.

  She twisted around to look up at him. "What's wrong?"

  Ken said nothing as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a yellowed envelope. He leaned over the back of the sofa and gently laid the envelope on her lap. A tingling sensation pulsed through her, creeping into her limbs like an insidious chill that stings and numbs at the same time. At first, she could only gape at the envelope and the elegant, feminine script ranging across the front of it. "Where did you get this?" she finally managed to choke out.

  Ken evaded her question, his voice tight with uneasiness. "Do you recognize the handwriting?"

  Dani felt a wash of heat seeping into her cheeks, a symptom of the fear and pain and anger colliding within her like dangerously volatile chemicals."Of course, I do! I know my own mother's handwriting. But I want to know how you got this!" She jumped up from the sofa, slapping the envelope with her hand as she glared at Ken.

  Ken's dark blue eyes were filled with an exquisite sadness as they met hers. "I found it in Richardson's office, in that box of letters Bea took." He sounded as if those few words were among the hardest he had ever uttered in his life.

  "No!" The cry leapt from Dani's mouth unbidden. Shaking her head, she backed away as Ken rounded the sofa. When he reached for the envelope, she was seized by the mad impulse to rip it from his grasp and shred it into a thousand indistinguishable little pieces. Instead, she only stood half dazed while he opened the envelope and held
it up for her to see.

  "I love you, my darling." The flowery handwriting curling across the inside of the envelope flap seemed to mock Dani's battered emotions.

  She felt Ken take her unresponsive hand, pulling her down on the sofa beside him. "I know it's hard to accept, Dani, but there are just too many things pointing to Richardson being..." He swallowed with difficulty, as if something had caught in his throat. "Being your father." He forced himself to finish. "The possibility had never occurred to me until we talked with Stephen this morning. I knew the handwriting on those letters wasn't Bea's, but, well, it could have been any woman's—until you confirmed what I was beginning to fear." When he squeezed her hand, it felt alien, remote, as if her whole arm were anesthetized. She watched, unfocused, as he walked to her little desk and picked up a framed photograph. Sitting down beside her, he removed a snapshot tucked into the corner of the frame. "Richardson kept this picture of you as a little girl on the Bandeira Branca for a reason. No wonder Ned remembers him being so melancholy on his visits to the summer house." He went on in a voice so gently prodding, he might have been talking to the child in the photograph. "See, before you broke your nose, it looked exactly like Richardson's."

  Dani stared at the grinning, unknowing girl in the photo. All these years, she had believed what adults had taught that innocent little girl to think, that she was Dan Blake's child, that her adventurous, much-admired father had perished in a sailing accident, that Richardson's interest in her had been for the sake of his old friend. All of it, everything, had been a lie, a deception so fundamental, it cut to the very quick of her soul. They had lied to her about who she was.

  "Why didn't he ever tell me?" she whispered, not expecting an answer, knowing there was none that could offer any solace.

  "Richardson really cared about you, Dani. I'm sure he loved you." Ken's hand on her shoulder felt as awkward and forced as his words had sounded. She knew he felt he had to say something, at least make a stab at consoling her. Decent as she realized his intentions were, however, the feeble platitudes only seemed like yet another attempt to deny the truth.

  "I need to be alone right now, Ken." Dani didn't look up from the glossy blur of the magazines arranged on the coffee table.

  The hand on her shoulder faltered. "I know you're really upset. This is so sudden and so...so difficult to accept." The hand dropped from her shoulder. "I'll call you, okay?"

  Dani nodded, her eyes still fixed on the garish magazine colors melting into one another. She sat there for a long time, long after she had heard the front door close behind Ken and his steps fade on the walk. Her body felt too heavy to move, paralyzed by an inertia so dreadful, it wouldn't respond even if she bade it to.

  When she began to cry, it was slow and noiseless, a silent mourning for the child in the picture, the woman sitting alone with herself in the empty condo. Her tears came from a deep, aching well, the secret place where she had kept all the unfulfilled longings of her life. As long as she had believed Dan Blake was her father, the pain had been bearable. A cruel act of nature had taken him from her, but who had a right to rail at fate? Certainly not the little girl in the picture.

  Yet now that she was confronted with the truth, everything she had wanted and never had suddenly loomed before her. Dani had never begrudged Rebecca Pope her beauty, her wealth or her numerous admirers, but at that moment, she felt an almost primal envy of the fifteen years Rebecca had enjoyed with her own father. How could Richardson have denied her that? Hadn't he realized how desperately she wanted to be Daddy's special little girl, have him tease her about her braces, spy on her boyfriends to see that they behaved themselves, get a suspicious fleck in his eye when she graduated from college? Even now, she would have given anything to have him take her hand, look into those hazel eyes that were so like her own, simply hear him say, "I love you, baby," and give her the chance to say, "I love you, Dad." But neither of them would ever have that opportunity.

  A profound sense of aloneness welled up inside her, the feeling of someone who has been abandoned. It was an emotion her reasonable, adult side would never allow, but sitting alone in her home, with the incongruously cheerful morning sunlight flooding the room, Dani acknowledged the full depth of her pain. The men who mattered always abandoned her. Dan Blake had been powerless to defy the sea, and he had been forced to abandon her. Richardson Whyte had been controlled by vastly different forces that had proved no less insurmountable. The somber thoughts touched a new fear hovering in the corner of her consciousness. Ken had become very important to her. Yet in caring for him so deeply, she had surely guaranteed that he, too, would one day walk out of her life, unable to resist the forces that demanded he get on with business somewhere else.

  Dani had long since exhausted her reservoir of tears when she finally roused herself from the sofa. As she walked to the desk, she felt strangely calm, for she knew there was an unavoidable step she must take if she were ever to achieve a sense of closure.

  She consulted the phone directory, steadying herself with the ordinary, methodical task, and then punched the number. As she expected, one of the servants answered.

  "I'd like to speak with Sapphira Whyte." She was startled by how unemotional her voice sounded.

  "I'm sorry, ma'am, but Miss Whyte is unavailable."

  "Is she at home?" Dani persisted.

  The maid hesitated, obviously unaccustomed to resistant callers. "Yes, ma'am. But she's at breakfast with her sister and Miss Pope. If you'd like, I could give her a message."

  "I'd like for you to tell her I'm calling. I think she'll want to speak with me now." The maid reluctantly took Dani's name and then excused herself. A long silence passed before the phone was picked up again.

  "Yes?" The rasping voice did not sound quite as imperious as Sapphira Whyte no doubt hoped.

  Dani took a deep breath to steel herself for what they both surely knew was to come. "It's time we talked about my father."

  "WE'RE NOT GOING shopping?" Nestled among the papery skin that drooped around them like wrinkled crepe, Adele Whyte's bleached blue eyes were as wide and wondering as a child's.

  Rebecca Pope got a firm grip on the bony elbow, guiding her great-aunt toward the brocade wing chair facing the bedroom's bay window. "Not this morning, Auntie."

  "Why not?" Adele wanted to know.

  "Great-aunt Sapphira has business to take care of." Rebecca regarded the unblinking blue eyes looking directly into her face. By now everyone took Adele's confused state of mind for granted, but sometimes, Rebecca was not so sure. What really did go on behind those great, staring eyes? Did Adele spend her days drifting through a mist of half-forgotten memories? Or was she observing them—perhaps more clearly than any of them realized?

  "Business?" Adele repeated as if it were a foreign word she was trying for the first time. "What sort of business?"

  Rebecca pulled the old lady down into the chair, anchoring her for a moment by the shoulders. "Nothing you need worry about, Auntie." She watched the slightly trembling head, its thin, white hair tinted a pale pink by the scalp peeping through beneath it. When she was sure Adele was not going to pop up from the chair—as she often did—she released her hold on the frail shoulders.

  Nothing to worry about, indeed. Rebecca's admonition followed her as she paused in the bedroom doorway, taking a last look at the shriveled little creature gazing out into the garden, and then walked down the hall. Sapphira was the only one of them with the sense to realize there was something to worry about. Not that she could fault poor old Adele; the ancient woman had her hands full just doddering from her bedroom to the dining room and back again. Rebecca could find no such excuses for her own mother's attitude. After her brother's death, she had withdrawn to her big house, emerging from her mourning for an occasional lunch with friends or a brief golf game at the club. Unlike Sapphira, she didn't seem to realize how threatened they all were. But then, her mother had never really understood money and the things it could inspire, Rebecca thought
with a tinge of contempt. And unlike herself, Rebecca's mother had always been willing to leave the difficult tasks to Sapphira.

  At the end of the hall, Rebecca glanced over her shoulder, checking to make sure that none of the nosy servants were lurking about. She slipped into the guest bedroom and silently closed the door behind her. Although the housekeeper was certainly too lazy to bother cleaning a room that was seldom used, Rebecca took care to survey the chamber's shadowy corners. Confident that she was alone, she walked to the big four-poster. She knelt by the foot of the bed, frowning as she lifted the corner of the mattress. Her hand groped the hard coils of spring until it recognized the silky-slick feel of glossy paper. Sitting back on her heels, Rebecca pulled the magazine from beneath the mattress.

  She opened it on her knees, turning the mutilated pages carefully. An entire headline had been excised from one page, but for the most part, only snippets had been cut, a single letter from one ad, a few syllables from another. Rebecca gazed at the butchered pages and wondered what she should do next. Finally, she stood up. Rolling the magazine into a tight cylinder, she left the room and went directly downstairs. She hated the way her heart pounded as she passed the maid on the stairs, but the plodding woman seemed not to notice.

  The remains of an early-morning fire was still simmering in the dining room fireplace. Rebecca loathed handling rough things, anything that might chafe her beautifully kept hands, but for once, she was glad Thomas had left a good supply of logs in the wood basket. She piled three stout logs onto the grate and then jabbed the embers with the poker. When the flames began to curl from the dry bark, she shoved the mangled magazine beneath the grate. Rebecca held it fast with the poker inside the devouring blaze, watching until it had been reduced to a meaningless heap of ash.

  DANI HAD NOT REALLY expected Sapphira to invite her into her home. That would have been too great a concession. In a way, Dani actually preferred that their meeting take place on neutral turf, a symbolic way of putting them on equal footing. She had raised no objections when Sapphira had suggested they meet at Patriots Point, within an hour of the time of her phone call. The shipyard museum was a public place, but one where Sapphira could safely avoid running into any of her acquaintances.