“Hence your Southern accent,” Diana said.
Tyler nodded. “My parents never lost theirs, and the happiest times of my life were spent in the South, so I hung onto that accent for dear life. Silly, but true. Grandpa and Don wanted to keep me, but my parents would get clean and demand they give me back to them. They never stayed clean, though. When I was twelve, they were hooked on crack, scraping out a living. They were ready to let me go to Uncle Don’s or my grandfather’s when Don was killed in the line of duty. Three months later, my grandfather had a fatal heart attack. By the time I was thirteen, all of my parents’ efforts were concentrated on raking up enough money to support their habit.”
Tyler paused and swallowed hard. When he began again, his voice had roughened. “I came home from school one day and they were gone. The apartment we lived in was a rattrap, but I managed to hang on in it for a month until the rent was due. Then I hit the streets. For nearly a year I begged, I slept in boxes in the summer and abandoned buildings in the winter. Finally I got a job cleaning up at a diner. The owner’s wife turned me in to Child Protective Services. I hated her then, but it was the best thing that could have happened to me.
“Lots of times when I was with my grandfather we used to visit Al Meeks, and he became like a second grandfather. After Grandpa died, I’d write to him. When he hadn’t heard from me for nearly two years, he tracked me down. By then I was in the care of the CPS. He wanted to take me, but he wasn’t a relative, he was divorced and they prefer two-parent homes, and he wasn’t approved to take in foster children, so I ended up in a home in New York. Lucky for me, it was a good home.” He stopped, looked at Diana and smiled. “About a year later, along came Penny. Al visited me at the foster home a couple of times a year . He took to Penny right away. Twice my foster parents brought Penny and me to Huntington to visit Al. One year we went to a football game at Marshall. We even came to Ritter Park. Penny loved Huntington.”
“Which is why she came here when she left Jeffrey,” Diana said quietly.
“The main reason, but not the only one. She thought it was a city big enough to get lost in, but not overwhelmingly big. After all, she’d never been a single mother. She knew she could handle herself in a large place, but she wasn’t as sure of herself with a child in her care. And she’d never told Jeffrey about her trips here because she was afraid she’d slip and mention Al or me.”
While Tyler talked, Diana had forced down the rest of her warm milk and she now set the glass aside and put her hand on his tanned arm. “I called Al Meeks.”
“I know. He told me.”
“You know, I didn’t trust you. I knew you were lying about not knowing Penny and Willow. I thought you might be lying about knowing Al. Anyway, he tried to give away as little information as possible, but he did say your grandfather’s heart would have been broken if he’d known what happened to you when you were younger. He meant the last years with your parents and you ending up on the streets fending for yourself when you were only thirteen.” Diana tightened her clasp on his arm. “Do you know what happened to your parents?”
“I know my mother died from an overdose when I was sixteen. I found out about that many years later. I don’t know what happened to my father. He simply became one of the people lost on the streets—the kind I see so often in my job.”
“I’m sorry, Tyler. Truly sorry.”
Tyler took another sip of his drink. “Enough of my sad tale. Now tell me about Diana Sheridan.”
“Diana Sheridan isn’t nearly so interesting.”
“I doubt that. Spill.”
“My father was from a family with money. He and my mother married young, almost immediately had me, and were baffled by what to do with a child. So they left me in the care of my grandmother and they traveled a lot. And spent money. Too much money. By the time I was twelve, most of it was gone. They stopped traveling, stopped having parties, stopped enjoying life.
“When I was fourteen, my father had too much to drink at the first party he and my mother had attended in months, and on the way home, he missed a curve in the road and the car tumbled down into a ravine. They both died instantly. Grandmother was devastated—my mother was her only child and just thirty-four. I loved my parents and I missed them, but I wasn’t as lost as most fourteen-year-olds would have been if their parents died. They’d been gone so much of my life, I’d learned to depend on Grandmother and myself. And Simon, of course. Also, I knew how unhappy they were with the life they had ahead.”
“So you went to live with your grandmother,” Tyler said. “And the two of you spent even more time with Simon, and when you were eighteen, he took you on an Egyptian expedition. Penny thought that was the most fabulous thing she’d ever heard.”
Diana smiled. “It was fabulous. It was hard, but it was also wonderful.” She sighed. “Penny and I used to talk about going on an expedition some day and taking Willow, of course. I always knew it would never happen, but we were like young girls planning what they were going to do when they grew up. It was fun.”
Tyler grinned. “I know. She told me. You were her first real girlfriend, you know. She always sounded about sixteen when she talked of all the fun things the two of you talked about and did together.”
“I had no idea, but I’m glad Penny enjoyed our friendship. It was the best one of my life, too.”
A tear ran down Diana’s face, and Tyler’s eyes suddenly shone in the lamplight with his own unshed tears. He quickly glanced at his empty glass. “I think I’ll take advantage of that fine bottle of Grey Goose vodka Simon left out in the kitchen and fix another drink. May I get you anything?”
“You may get me a glass of wine.”
While Tyler was gone, Diana rid herself of the ridiculous ice pack and rested her head on the back of the couch. She didn’t know how it was possible, but she was happy. In spite of everything, she was happy. “You must be crazy, Diana Sheridan,” she said aloud, softly. “Only you would be happy two hours after someone tried to shoot you to death.”
“Were you talking to me?” the object of her happiness asked as he strode back into the room. His face looked more relaxed, and his eyes no longer seemed to be probing every corner, searching for possible danger. He handed her a wineglass and walked to the front bay window, parting the draperies. “Good. Surveillance still in place, although I wish they were closer to the house. I looked out the kitchen window. They’re still searching the woods, too.”
Diana took a sip of her wine. “Ugh! Tyler, this is Willow’s apple juice!”
“Yes indeed. Your uncle said no alcohol on top of a pain pill and a tranquilizer.”
“An extremely mild tranquilizer.”
“Be that as it may,” he said, sitting down so close to her she could feel the heat of his body, “I’ve just won over Simon. I’m not going to lose his good will because of a glass of wine.”
“You won over Simon the night you met him.” Diana grinned. “You know that. He loaned you one of his cars. And I think Clarice fell in love with you.”
“Well, I think Clarice is one hell of a gal, but she’s not the one I’d like to have fall for me.”
Diana had always felt disdain for women who acted coy, but she couldn’t help herself. “What kind of girl do you have in mind?”
“One who’s ambitious and wants to make her own good fortune, not have it handed to her. One who isn’t consumed by her considerable beauty.” He paused. “And most important, one who would risk anything to protect the people she loves. You risked your life to protect Willow.”
“Yes, I did a wonderful job tonight, didn’t I?”
“You woke up. You went after her. You shielded her with your own body. I’d certainly call those the actions of a protector.”
“I woke up because of the cats. People who say cats aren’t capable of heroic acts haven’t read much about how many cats have saved their owners by alerting them of danger. And naturally I went after Willow and tried to cover her body with mine. Who wouldn�
��t have?”
“A lot of people. I see it all the time.”
“Well, the person who tried to kill Willow and me must have been the same one who tried to kill Penny. We can’t have two potential murderers after this family.”
Tyler smiled and took her hand. “I like it that you think of Penny and Willow as being part of ‘this family.’ ”
“We felt as if she and Willow were family. We loved them.” Diana looked into Tyler’s eyes. “That’s why I feel you should tell me the reason Penny ran away from Jeffrey instead of divorcing him. Why did she choose a life of hiding?”
Tyler glanced down, and Diana could almost feel him marshalling his forces to tell something he’d probably sworn never to tell. She didn’t believe he broke promises easily. Then he began to speak in a low, hesitant voice.
“I hated what Penny was doing before her marriage. She was a stripper, plain and simple. Not a prostitute like some people said later, but a stripper. Then she met Jeffrey Cavanaugh. She’d been seeing him for over a month before she told me. She was in love, and I was horrified.
“I already knew all about Cavanaugh. His father, Morgan, was a rough customer with more criminal associations than the authorities probably knew about, but he was so devious, nothing could ever be pinned on him. He was also smart—enough to know if he wanted to start a legitimate business, he needed a partner with prestige. That’s why he needed Charles Wentworth, Blake’s father. People thought Wentworth had lost most of his money in bad investments or he would never have teemed up with someone like Cavanaugh. Anyway, together they formed Cavanaugh and Wentworth.”
Tyler took another sip of his drink. “The business took off like a rocket. Morgan Cavanaugh actually began to earn some respect in the business world if not the personal one. He had a wife and two kids, but he was always involved with at least one other woman, and he had nothing but contempt for his son. I’ve heard some terrible stories about how he treated Jeffrey. That kind of treatment would leave scars on anyone.”
“So you feel sorry for him.”
“So I think his childhood might have warped him. That’s too bad, but it doesn’t mean I don’t think the guy has some serious problems.”
“I understand. You’re not talking about causes. You’re concerned about the result.”
“Exactly, especially when that result affected Penny,” Tyler said. “About ten years after they founded the business, Wentworth killed himself. Supposedly, he’d been caught embezzling and couldn’t face the shame. A lot of people didn’t believe the whole scenario. Wentworth had a spotless reputation, the business made so much money he didn’t need to embezzle, and he was devoted to his wife and son. The police couldn’t prove anything, though.
“Morgan now had control of the entire business. He provided well for Wentworth’s wife and son, but the wife had a complete breakdown about six months after her husband’s suicide and she never recovered. She’s still in a sanitarium. Meanwhile, Morgan took Blake in, treated him like the son he thought he should have had instead of Jeffrey, paid for Blake’s Harvard education, just like Jeffrey’s, and approved Blake’s marriage to his daughter. Everyone thought Jeffrey must resent the hell out of Blake, but apparently he didn’t.” Tyler shrugged. “From what I’ve heard, they weren’t close before Charles Wentworth’s death, but afterward they became good friends in spite of the six-year age difference.”
“That speaks well of Jeffrey,” Diana said. “As long as it wasn’t an act.”
“With Jeffrey, you never know. The man is an enigma. Brilliant, reclusive, and strange.”
“How strange?”
“That depends on who’s talking about him. I’ve heard dozens of people talk about Jeffrey Cavanaugh and no one has given the same description of him. Some say he has a few minor eccentricities. Others say he’s crazy. No one says he’s just a friendly, normal guy.”
“Well, that’s comforting,” Diana muttered.
“Isn’t it? Just after Jeffrey turned thirty, his father was murdered—one shot at close range to the head. It looked like a Mafia hit, but people speculated that maybe Jeffrey had gotten rid of his father. Jeffrey hated Morgan, and with Morgan gone, the business fell to Jeffrey. He made a success of it and later brought in Blake as chief operating officer. In the meantime, he married a socialite named Yvette DuPrés. She was beautiful and definitely crazy—no one quibbles about her mental state.
“The marriage was a complete mess from the beginning. She started having affairs almost immediately. By the third year, she seemed to be doing everything in her power to humiliate Jeffrey. After one particularly bad evening in San Francisco, she left a hotel dinner party with Jeffrey and a bunch of bigwigs he hoped to reel in. She went up to her hotel room and half an hour later took a dive from her eighth-floor window.”
“Lenore told me about Yvette’s death,” Diana said with a shudder. “She said the police didn’t believe she committed suicide.”
“That’s because of the necklace.” Tyler shook his head. “You’d never believe the trouble that cursed necklace has caused Jeffrey. Even he doesn’t know all of it.”
“What’s so special about a necklace?”
“It’s a coincidence, but Yvette was fascinated by ancient Egypt—the way people lived, their beliefs, you name it. I can imagine how she would have loved to meet Simon. She even had Simon’s first book.”
Diana nearly gasped. “You’re kidding! Tyler, that’s just . . . just—”
“Creepy, in layman’s terms.”
“Exactly.”
“Nevertheless, it’s true. So, Yvette had a passion for Egyptian culture and she especially loved some myth about the Egyptian lotus. Lotus or lily? Does that sound familiar?”
For a moment Diana was speechless. He could have been spinning one of Willow’s fabulous bedtime stories, but he wasn’t. “Are you serious?” she finally asked. Tyler nodded. “Go look at the center pane of the rear bay window.”
“I already have,” he said, smiling but going back to the window anyway. He drew aside the draperies and tilted his head, then said, “Just as Penny described it.”
“You should see it when the sun shines through the glass. It’s beautiful. And Penny told you about it?”
“You bet she did. But I don’t remember the myth. You tell it.”
As Tyler stood, looking at the glass as if mesmerized, Diana said, “It’s known as the myth of the blue lotus, although depictions in temples show that they were really referring to a water lily. According to the myth, when the world began, dark waters of turmoil covered everything. Then the Primeval Water Lily surfaced from the waters. It opened its blue petals, and inside sat a child-god on the golden center of the flower. Light streamed from the child-god’s body and banished the darkness. He was considered the source of all life.”
Tyler turned and looked at her. “Did Simon write about the myth in his first book?”
“He wrote about it in one of them. It could have been the first one.”
“The one Yvette owned.” He let out a low whistle and said, “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“Okay, you’re damned, hopeless, a lost soul. Now get over here and tell me about Yvette’s necklace.”
“I’m glad you’re so unconcerned about the state of my soul.”
“I’m not at all worried about the state of your soul because you have one of the best souls I have ever encountered.”
“Oh, I’ll bet you say that to all the guys.” Tyler grinned, but Diana thought he looked moved.
Diana patted the seat beside her and Tyler returned to the couch, once more sitting close to her, this time throwing his arm around her shoulders. “Cretin that I am, I only knew the necklace was a blue and canary diamond concoction Jeffrey designed for Yvette because of some myth that obsessed her. I think someone told me it was a Chinese myth. Anyway, what interested the cops the most was that it cost a fortune and that Yvette always wore it but it wasn’t on her body after the fall. It also wasn’t in the hotel
room.”
“What did the San Francisco police believe happened to it?”
“They thought someone had helped Yvette out that window and had kept the necklace.”
“I take it Jeffrey wasn’t with her when she went out the window.”
“That’s open to debate. Jeffrey, Yvette, Lenore, and Blake had gone to San Francisco to attend an anniversary party in the hotel ballroom for one of Cavanaugh and Went-worth’s biggest clients. At the party, Yvette made one of many public scenes, but this was probably the worst. She screamed that Jeffrey had killed his father, that he was a thief, a sexual deviant, you name it. Then she threw champagne in his face and stalked out of room.
“Everyone at the party said Jeffrey just stood there. He didn’t answer her, he didn’t try to shut her up, he didn’t even wipe the champagne off his face. He didn’t show any emotion whatsoever. I guess Lenore ran up to him and tried to dry his face, but he brushed her away. Lenore left the ballroom looking upset, then people started trying to act like nothing had happened—as if that was possible. Finally Jeffrey dried off his own face, downed another glass of champagne, talked to a couple of people, or rather talked as much as he ever does, and after about half an hour, he left the party. Everyone thought his behavior was almost as bizarre as Yvette’s.”
“Lenore says Jeffrey’s odd behavior is the result of his father always tormenting him,” Diana said.
“I wouldn’t doubt it. I told you Morgan was a mean old cuss and he supposedly couldn’t stand his son because Jeffrey wasn’t at all like him.” Tyler smiled pityingly. “The ironic thing is that Jeffrey’s mother doesn’t care much for him either because she thinks he’s exactly like his father.”
“That would have to badly affect him, Tyler. He couldn’t win.”
“Well, don’t feel too sorry for him. We don’t know which parent was right.”
You Can Run... Page 24
