You Can Run...

by Carlene Thompson

  Diana raised her eyebrows at Lenore, both of them swallowing laughter. “You’ve really thought this through, Willow,” Lenore said. “That’s good. But remember what your mommy told you—you have plenty of time.”

  Diana cleared her throat and looked beyond Lenore and Willow. “I see a nice spot near the park entrance. No Frisbee players or sunbathers anywhere near it. We can just enjoy the day.”

  “Yeah, that’s a good place,” Willow agreed, running ahead of them.

  “Well, she certainly doesn’t seem afraid of me,” Lenore said, pleasure in her voice.

  “I guess she isn’t. She let you in on her plans for the next twenty years of her life. Even the site of her wedding. I hope you like rock music in case she doesn’t meet a suitable prince or movie star.”

  “I’m afraid my taste in rock froze when I was in my early twenties. I don’t like most of the modern stuff. Heaven knows what it will sound like by the time Willow gets married.”

  When they reached the spot, they set down the picnic basket and the blanket. “I’m afraid the picnic was a last-minute idea, Lenore, and we don’t have any fancy food.”

  “No chocolate-covered strawberries? No caviar? Well! I’m going back to the hotel,” Lenore laughed.

  “Who eats chocolate-covered strawberries?” Willow asked.

  “People who want to get fat,” Lenore answered, helping Diana spread the blanket on the grass. “I like simple food.”

  Lenore seemed to doubt her own claim when she saw the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, the bag of chips, and the Thermos of lemonade. She stared at the sandwiches with disdain before she remembered to smile. “I haven’t had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich since . . . I can’t remember!”

  “We have turkey cold cuts, too. And sugar cookies!” Diana said grandly, amused by Lenore’s attempt to look enthusiastic. “I just love sugar cookies!”

  “I’m watching my weight. I wish I were statuesque like you, but I’m only five-four and usually carry twenty pounds too many. I exercise like mad and even do weight training. I get stronger but not thinner. Blake says I look perfect, though,” she emphasized. “I lost five pounds staying at my mother’s, and I don’t want them back, so I think I’ll just have a turkey sandwich.”

  “I’m five-six. I’d hardly call that statuesque.” Diana laughed, handing Lenore a plastic-wrapped turkey sandwich then pouring her a plastic cup full of lemonade.

  During the picnic, the earlier chatty Willow ate silently and steadily, occasionally casting half-shy, half-reflective glances at Lenore. Finally she asked, “Lenore, do you go to a place like this called Central Park?”

  “Central Park! You remember!” Lenore cried out, laying down her sandwich. “Central Park is in New York City and it’s even bigger than this park. Your mother took you there at least three times a week when you lived in New York. Sometimes I would come with the two of you.”

  “Oh.” Willow regarded Lenore with a pensive gaze. “But other people came sometimes, too.”

  “That’s right! Your uncle Blake came with us a couple of times. Then your daddy started sending a man to go along with you to protect you.”

  “To protect me from what?”

  “Sometimes bad people loiter in the park—muggers, homeless people who are crazy and dangerous. Not that all homeless people are crazy and dangerous—just some.”

  Clearly, Willow didn’t understand “loiter,” “muggers,” or “homeless people,” but she didn’t ask for any explanations. Instead she asked, “Did my daddy ever go with us?”

  “No. He was always busy, but he loved you very much.” Willow frowned. “Honey, you remember him. You saw him last night.”

  Willow went still and said distinctly, “The man you said was my daddy last night wasn’t my daddy. He was the Bad Man.”

  “Honey, he is your daddy. He’s a good man. What makes you think he’s bad?”

  “He just is. You can’t fool me because I’m a kid,” Willow maintained stubbornly. “He is the Bad Man.”

  “Willow, he isn’t bad. He loves you. He wants you to be with him always.”

  Willow drew back. “I don’t want to be with that man! I’m scared of him! Diana, don’t let her take me to him!”

  “Lenore is not going to take you,” Diana said in her most authoritative voice, hoping to pierce through the armor of Willow’s fear. “She didn’t come here to take you or to talk about your daddy. She came for our afternoon in the park. Didn’t you, Lenore?”

  Lenore looked at Diana’s stern expression and seemed to pull away slightly. “Yes, Diana is right.” She sounded disappointed but she clearly knew that Diana thought she was pushing the child and wouldn’t allow any more talk of “daddy.” “I’m just here for a visit today, Willow. That’s all.”

  The child gave Lenore a penetrating look for a moment then began to relax slightly. She made a few bland comments about the people jogging by them, and threw some pieces of bread to the small, almost tame, gray squirrels. A little girl about Willow’s age carrying a disposable camera ventured over and asked if Willow would take her picture. Diana nodded and Willow jumped up delightedly. She often said that when she grew up, she wanted to be a “picture taker” like Diana. The two girls ambled away, talking as if they’d known each other for years and looking for the perfect background for the photo.

  “I didn’t want to mention this in front of Willow,” Lenore said, lowering her voice although no one was near, “but I saw the morning newspaper. The police claim a bomb caused the explosion at Penny’s house!”

  “I saw the paper, too,” Diana replied carefully.

  “My God, do you believe it?”

  “According to the newspaper, the fire marshal has no doubt and neither does the ATF.”

  “But it’s incredible! A bomb?” Who could have built a bomb?”

  Diana watched Willow showing the other little girl how to pose in front of a tree. “I didn’t get the impression from the newspaper that it was a sophisticated bomb. Dynamite, a fuse, and a timer. Anyone could learn to build a simple bomb like that from the Internet.”

  “But why? Did Penny have enemies?”

  “Not that I knew of, but she must have had at least one.”

  “You knew her so well, though,” Lenore persisted. “You must have known about her other friends and people she knew, so you must have some idea of who could want to harm her.”

  A warning bell had begun to chime loudly in Diana’s mind. Lenore was trying to sound innocently shocked and curious, but her almost childlike persistence about the matter struck Diana as insincere. She decided to let Lenore know that pumping her for information was useless.

  “Lenore, the only person I know who might want to harm Penny is your brother.”

  Lenore looked as if she’d been slapped. Then astonishment turned to anger. “You think Jeff might have done this to Penny? My God, Diana, he didn’t even know where she was!”

  “He was still searching for her and he had a lot of people searching, too,” Diana said calmly. “Are you absolutely certain Jeffrey didn’t find out where Penny was living before the authorities called him to say his wife had been in an explosion?”

  “Of course I’m certain!” Lenore’s voice lifted, and someone jogging by turned to look at her. “I can’t believe you’re even insinuating that Jeff had something to do with Penny’s mishap!”

  “Mishap? Is that what you call Penny suffering what are probably fatal burns? A mishap?”

  “I misspoke. A . . . catastrophe. A tragedy.”

  The little girls laughed and traded places. Willow began striking poses while the other child snapped photos. “Yes. I would say both of those words apply to what happened to Penny.”

  “And almost happened to Willow. Are you forgetting that if she’d been in the house, the explosion would have killed her? Do you think Jeff would kill his own daughter?”

  “I don’t know what Jeffrey Cavanaugh might do,” Diana said enigmatically, this time turning
the tables on Lenore, getting her flustered so she might reveal all that she knew about Penny and Jeffrey.

  “If you think Jeff would harm Cor—Willow, then you don’t know one thing about him!”

  “That’s been my point all along,” Diana said, reaching for the camera that lay beside her. “I don’t know one thing about him, and I certainly don’t know why Penny had to run away from him and live in hiding instead of getting a divorce. There had to be a reason, Lenore. I don’t know what it was, but no one can convince me Penny wanted to live that way.”

  “There wasn’t a reason!” Lenore said loudly. “Jeff was finally happy and she nearly destroyed him and no one knows why the hell she would do such a thing! Of course we want answers and you were her friend.”

  “I was a friend who thought Penny was a widow from Pennsylvania. I had no idea she was the runaway wife of Jeffrey Cavanaugh. I know none of you believe me, but it’s the truth and no matter how hard you try to draw out information about Penny, that’s all you’ll get because that’s all I know. Now, please lower your voice, Lenore. People are beginning to look at us. If you want to fight with me more over what you think I know, I’ll be glad to oblige you but not now. If you love your niece as much as you say you do, you won’t ruin this day for her.”

  While Lenore seemed to be fighting for self-control, Diana peered through her camera lens. The girls looked delighted, laughing, long little-girl hair shining in the bright sun, the giant tree trunk behind them, and the creek beside them, one of its banks formed by a rock-covered, light-dappled hill. They were only about seventy feet away, so the depth of field was not extreme. The camera had automatically preset for medium depth of field, so all Diana had to do was set the aperture. She immediately shot five frames in one second. Diana lowered the camera, smiling.

  Lenore said nothing while the girls changed poses and Diana shot two more frames. When Diana put down the camera, she noticed that Lenore’s breathing had slowed down. Finally Lenore said, “I’m sorry we’ve badgered you if you truly didn’t know more about Penny. It’s just that everyone says you were her closest friend, and she was hiding a very big secret. I knew Penny, and I find it hard to believe she was capable of such confidentiality.”

  “Then apparently neither one of us knew her as well as we thought we did,” Diana said evenly. “We’ve both learned she was very good at keeping a secret.”

  “Yes . . . Yes, I guess we have.” Lenore took a couple of deep breaths then said, “I’m sorry I flew off the handle, Diana. It’s just that my brother’s life has been hell since Penny left and took the baby. Sometimes he holes up in the apartment for a week—he doesn’t even go in to work. He can carry on business fine from home, but he won’t even let anyone come see him. He simply withdraws from the world and it frightens me. I’m always afraid one day he’ll go inside and never come out again.”

  “It sounds as if he needs some serious psychological help.”

  “I know he does, but I think he believes his troubles started too long ago to ever be fixed. My brother hasn’t had an easy life, Diana. Our father was a cold, hard man—a self-made man who didn’t really admire anything in another person besides strength. He thought Jeff was a weakling because under that stony facade, my brother is kind and principled. Dad thought those qualities were signs of fragility and he tormented Jeff unmercifully when he was growing up.”

  “That’s too bad,” Diana said, never taking her gaze off the little girls who’d come together for a quick conference and now began to walk slowly toward Diana and Lenore, their arms around each other.

  “Yes, it was very bad,” Lenore said bitterly. “Then my father was murdered when Jeff was thirty. And guess who the police’s number one suspect was? Jeff. In spite of all my father’s shady connections, even his links to the Mafia, the cops seemed to think Jeff killed Dad so he could take his place at Cavanaugh and Wentworth.”

  “That’s awful,” Diana said faintly, shocked. She also grew a fraction more afraid of Jeffrey Cavanaugh. “Why did they jump to the conclusion that Jeff wanted to replace your father at such a young age? The board of the company couldn’t have believed Jeffrey was ready for so much power.”

  “Jeff certainly didn’t. But apparently, Dad had made some remarks to people about his son, I quote, ‘wanting to take over the throne.’ I’m sure my father, Morgan, thought he was being funny. He would have found the idea of Jeff replacing him ridiculous. Morgan Cavanaugh thought no one could replace him!

  “The police dogged Jeff for over a year, but they could never find evidence to link Jeff with Dad’s murder,” Lenore went on. “Meanwhile, although a few of the board members grumbled, Jeff did replace Dad, which was lucky for the company. Jeff is a genius, Diana, and I’m not saying that lightly. He has quirks—everyone does, but especially people with genius-level IQ’s. He’d nearly doubled the company’s business and taken it public by the time he was thirty-five. But he never recovered from the stigma of being his father’s possible murderer. And then there was Yvette.”

  The little girls had almost reached them before they stopped to take a few shots of two squirrels darting in circles holding acorns. “Who is Yvette?”

  “Who was Yvette, you mean. Yvette DuPrés. She was Jeff’s first wife. He married her when he was thirty-three. Three years later, she plummeted out of the eighth-floor window of a hotel in San Francisco. She was as unstable as she was beautiful. Their marriage was a mistake to begin with and only got worse over those three years. She committed suicide, but . . .”

  Diana jerked around to look at Lenore. “But what?”

  “But the police believed Jeff threw her out of that window.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  1

  Tyler Raines leaned back against a tree holding a book—a battered paperback copy of Watchers by Dean Koontz. He’d read the book three times over the past ten years and he enjoyed it every time. Today, though, he wasn’t really reading. He was using the book as a prop while he kept an eye on Diana Sheridan. She sat on a blanket with another woman some distance away. The child Willow was taking pictures of a little girl of about the same age.

  Tyler’s gaze lingered on Diana. She wore jeans and a light-green blouse open over a cream-colored tank top. Her honey-brown hair shone in the sunlight, parted on the side and left free to curl halfway down her back. He couldn’t see her eyes, but he remembered their exact shade of gray-green and the long, tilting lashes. He remembered the gentle curve of her nose, the shape of her lips over the straight white teeth, and the sprinkle of light freckles across her nose and cheeks. On the night of the explosion, when she was frantic and pale and eventually smudged with soot, she’d still been beautiful, and he’d cursed himself for even noticing her looks in the presence of such tragedy.

  After they ate, the woman beside her talked animatedly, using her hands, her body leaning toward Diana, her face in constant movement, changing expressions. Diana sat motionless, never taking her gaze off the little girl Willow. Occasionally she said something to the woman, but she never relaxed her posture or looked around the park. She was no doubt listening to the woman but not for an instant dropping her alert observance or her attitude of curled intensity ready to burst forth if anything or anyone threatened the child. Tyler wondered if Willow could feel the force of Diana’s vigilance.

  The little girls had been taking pictures with what Tyler thought must have been a disposable camera. They put their heads together for a no-doubt serious chat, then they began walking back to Diana. Suddenly Willow stopped, stared into the distance, and began taking small, almost robotic steps backward. Her gaze locked onto a man stalking toward Diana—a tall, heavily built man with sandy-brown-and-gray hair, a strong-featured face suffused with blood, and big hands clenched into fists.

  Diana watched Willow as she raised her hands to cover her mouth, probably to prevent a scream. Diana followed the little girl’s gaze and leaped to her feet just as the man stopped within a few feet of her and bellowed, “You bitch!
”

  Diana stiffened and said something. At the same moment, Tyler stood up, ready to take a run at the man if he came closer toward Diana. But he didn’t. Instead he yelled, “You knew about Penny! Do not stand there and tell me you didn’t know about her and a man. Who is he? I’m her husband, dammit. I have a right to know!”

  The other woman had now stood up beside Diana and held out her arms beseechingly toward the man. She resembled the man. He paid no attention to her, though. He stood solid and implacable in front of Diana, his head lowered slightly as if he planned to charge like a bull. Diana shook her head and said something, then looked at Willow, who was still walking backward. Even her little friend had retreated, clutching her camera, looking bewildered.

  The man yelled, “You do know and you will tell me if I have to beat it out of you!”

  Tyler launched into motion, bolting away from the shelter of the tree, heading straight for the man who’d taken another step toward Diana, his fists raised. Just as Tyler reached the midpoint between the tree and Diana, a slim black-haired man appeared behind Diana’s tormenter, wrapped his right arm around the heavier man’s neck, and jerked. The big man made a slight convulsive motion then dropped to his knees. A classic chokehold, Tyler thought. The sleek, black-haired man had disabled the big, muscular lout not with swinging fists and sloppy lunges, but by calmly, expertly exerting just the right amount of force on one of the body’s pressure points.

  While the sandy-haired woman cried out and rushed to the man still on his knees in front of Diana, Tyler pulled out his cell phone and called the police. They made regular passes by the park. Tyler was not going to let this guy just catch his breath, clamber back to his feet and leave. Or worse, go after Diana again.

  He couldn’t let that happen because he knew the man was Jeffrey Cavanaugh, and he was dangerous.

  2

  Diana stood motionless while Lenore and Blake helped Jeffrey up, Blake keeping a firm hold on him while Lenore cried, “Are you all right, Jeff?” Jeffrey waved her away, trying to get his breath. She turned to her husband. “Blake, how could you?”