DANGEROUS, Collection #1

by Patricia Rosemoor

  “But we’ve got to put up with noise we don’t want. And not only will people be parking illegally along Water’s Edge Drive, their kids will be swarming all over our shoreline.”

  The damned beach again. “We’ll do our best to see that doesn’t happen. Why don’t you do your best to remember it’s for a good cause.”

  Bram surprised himself. He was talking as if he had a personal stake in the fundraiser. Maybe it was just that he didn’t like the adult Travis Ferguson any more than he had the boy. He definitely was taking pleasure in thwarting him.

  “Any damages and I’m holding you responsible,” the sandy-haired man threatened.

  “I wouldn’t have expected any better from you.”

  With a growl of frustration, Travis whipped around and stalked away from Bram, who waited until his aunt’s neighbor was back on his own property. Still on the other porch, Norbert was muttering something to him in a low tone, and Travis barked an answer, but Bram couldn’t make out more than the discontent both men must be feeling at having been foiled.

  Shaking his head at the unexpected and unpleasant invasion, he was about to enter the house when he noticed car lights sweeping across the grounds.

  “Now who?”

  Wondering if Echo might have forgotten something and was therefore returning put him in a better frame of mind. The woman certainly was growing on him. But it wasn’t her hatchback that pulled up in the drive. Recognizing the silver BMW with mixed emotions, Bram stepped off the veranda to greet the driver who exited the car reluctantly, then stood staring up the house as if in shock at its condition.

  Moonlight made her pale hair artfully pinned into a French twist glow silver. Whatever the light, she still looked closer to his own age than fifty-seven. Holding out his hands in welcome, he approached her.

  “Hello, Mother.”

  “Bram, darling.”

  They kissed cheeks. No messy hugs. He might wrinkle her perfectly tailored suit that showed off her well-kept, youthful figure.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I might ask the same of you,” she said, sounding wounded. “When I got back from London and heard what you were about, I couldn’t allow you to go through it alone.”

  A smile slid through Bram’s defenses. “Go through it?”

  “The trauma you must be experiencing coming back here after all these years.”

  “I hadn’t thought of my returning in quite that way.” Leave it to his mother to dramatize the situation. While his visit might spark unpleasant memories, he certainly wouldn’t be traumatized by them. In fact, he welcomed the truth he couldn’t remember. “Did you bring bags?”

  “In the trunk.” She held out her keys. “You didn’t even hint at your plans before Joel swept me away from Chicago on business,” she said of her fourth and youngest husband, who was only a dozen years older than Bram. “Has something untoward happened? What are you up to exactly? And how long do you plan on staying in this... place?”

  He grinned at the rapid-fire questions. “I’m here to see to the well-being of both the property and Aunt Addy. However long that takes,” he said firmly, removing the three suitcases she’d packed.

  It looked as if she, too, was planning to stay indefinitely, undoubtedly as long as he. But why?

  “You could have let the local lawyers handle it.”

  “No, Mother, it was time.” Time to face the past.

  “You’re not thinking of moving here?”

  The second person to ask him that. He hadn’t come with that intention, but...

  “I don’t know,” he finally answered. “Anything is possible.”

  He led the way up the stairs. His mother’s heels clacked after him in a way that let him know she was annoyed. Katherine Anderson Vanmatre Bodreaux Whitney Quinlan took charge whenever the whim suited her and she was clearly displeased that she had no control over this particular situation. Knowing her efforts would be useless from experience, she hadn’t bothered trying to take charge of him in years. And it had been even longer since she’d acted truly “motherly,” not since he was a kid.

  So why now? What scheme was fomenting in that beautiful head of hers?

  Why would she choose to install herself indefinitely in a former residence that she’d never liked and had wasted no time leaving after his father’s death?

  “My goodness, Adrienne has let this place rot,” she murmured as she followed him inside. “Your father must be spinning in his grave.”

  Bram set the bags down in the foyer and with a straight face, said, “Perhaps you’ll have the opportunity to ask him yourself.”

  Her fake lashes fluttered alarmingly. “Pardon me?”

  “Aunt Addy talks to him, though she says he’s not exactly chatty himself. Maybe you’ll have better luck.”

  “Don’t be ghoulish.”

  As if on cue, Lena appeared at the head of the stairs and gasped, “Miss Katherine?”

  The housekeeper looked as if she’d seen a ghost. Undoubtedly the former Katherine Vanmatre was the last person she’d expected. Bram remembered the day his mother had taken him away to Chicago and her parents’ home— she had vowed never to set foot in Dunescape Cottage again.

  “Lena,” he said, snapping the tension that hung between them all, “do we have a suitable room available for my mother’s use?”

  “Bram, darling, don’t be ridiculous.” His mother’s voice was unnaturally tight. “This used to be a resort. There must be a dozen available rooms.”

  He quirked a brow at her. “If you don’t mind sharing them with a monster or two.”

  He quickly caught her up on the fundraiser activities. While her features pulled into a frown, she didn’t voice disapproval as he expected.

  Still at the head of the stairs, Lena volunteered, “Miss Adrienne did not give the townspeople permission to use your old quarters, Miss Katherine. And they are cleaned once a week as is the rest of the main house.”

  Bram would swear his mother blanched.

  “Adrienne might object to my using them, as well.”

  “Nonsense,” he said. “Aunt Addy put me right back into my old rooms.” Although he had insisted on having a larger bed moved in from the guest wing. “I’m sure she would be fine with your staying there. Unless you object.”

  “No. No. Why should I?”

  Though he had the distinct feeling his mother was lying, he wasn’t about to say so. Instead, he played the dutiful son and carried her bags upstairs. His parents’ suite— sitting room, bedroom and bath— was exactly as he’d remembered. Only now the papered walls and furnishings seemed shabby, even though no one had used the suite in thirty years. As she paced the sitting room, his mother wasn’t exactly relaxed, but Bram knew his challenging her wouldn’t change her mind.

  Lena pulled the heavy drapes closed over the windows. “Quite a coincidence. First the button turns up... then you arrive... and both in the same night.”

  “What button?” his mother asked.

  Bram explained. “One torn from a fancy-dress costume.”

  “Miss Adrienne believes someone lost it the night Mr. Donahue died.” Lena stared right through his widow. “I shall tell Miss Adrienne you have arrived.” And left without looking back.

  Bram hadn’t a clue as to why the housekeeper thought his mother would be interested in a lost button, but he realized his mother seemed even more agitated than she had a few minutes ago. Her fingers were plucking at the stray hairs around her neck.

  “Mother, are you all right?”

  “It’s this house. It feels... odd,” was all she would say. She just missed meeting his eyes. “Give me time to unpack and freshen up. I’ll meet you downstairs.”

  “All right. You’ll find me in the library. I have some work to finish up that I need to FAX to Chicago tomorrow, but it won’t take long. Then we can have tea in front of the fire and you can tell me all about London and Joel.”

  “That sounds marvelous.”

  Bram
rushed back downstairs, but upon reentering the library, his mind wasn’t on his work. The talk of the button reminded him he hadn’t yet secured the valuable object, which he’d left in full view on his desk.

  First thing, he found it. Sinking into his chair, he held the gem-studded gold disk to one of the lamps. Odd that the button had been secreted on the lower level. Now that he thought back, he realized guests at the fancy-dress balls had normally been confined to the main floor. The ballroom and parlors. He couldn’t imagine what one of the guests had been doing wandering around below, or how the button could have gotten torn from its costume.

  A log popped and Bram started. As usual, the library felt alive. Filled with another presence. Ghosts? A nonbeliever in specters, Bram grimaced. His own ghosts, perhaps, the kind that lived inside a man, were getting to him. He was trying to make a connection with the past, with his father’s death, and this had been Donahue Vanmatre’s favorite room.

  The things he felt in here had to come from his own imagination. His own sense of frustration. His own sense of loss.

  His own growing belief that, even if Aunt Addy were deluded in her fantasies about his father’s ghost roaming the house, she might have been correct about his death.

  For years he’d put his inner life on hold. He had a brilliant law career, escorted beautiful, smart women to exclusive social events. But it was all surface, and he was sick of it. Something kept him from making the life for himself that he really wanted. A sense of community. Friends. Family. People he deeply cared about. Things he didn’t even know how to go about getting.

  Things his father had before he’d died.

  Or had been murdered.

  He stared at the button. Unbidden, the sound of a struggle echoed through his mind.

  Heavy breathing...

  ...muffled curses...

  ...knuckles against flesh.

  Startled by the sudden shift to the past, Bram tried concentrating. Nothing more would come but a throbbing at his temple. He focused on the bauble in his hand. Fingered an emerald that was loose in its setting. The tiny gems glowed back at him like a half-dozen miniature eyes.

  He waited in vain.

  Finally setting the button in the top right hand drawer of the desk and securing the lock, he couldn’t stop wondering...

  What might those lifeless eyes have seen that fateful night thirty years before?

  FOR THIRTY YEARS, dark secrets and lies had smothered all the life out of Dunescape Cottage.

  Staring out into the darkness, perhaps for the first time, he considered that things could be different. He had been trapped in a timeless warp of the everlasting present. One day had followed the other, all the same. No past. No future. No reason to feel. No reason to hope.

  The lake was restless tonight, and so was he.

  The urge to roam was strong. The house had been upended by all the activity. He had been upended, too.

  Suddenly the past was catching up to the present. And with the realization had come anger. Outrage.

  And a belated need for justice.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I KNOW HER as well as I know myself!

  The familiar declaration invaded Bram’s sleep. He was aware of this being a dream... and yet not. A memory was surfacing.

  ...even that she’s my mistress?

  Mistress? Whose mistress?

  She wouldn’t do that, not take up with someone like you!

  He fought to tarry in the early morning world of half-sleep where imaginings based on reality danced through the mind...

  Shall I tell you the details?

  ...but as always, he was unsuccessful.

  Fully awake whether he would or no, Bram sat straight up in bed, skin damp with sweat. The words in his dream had been as clear as any he might have heard. He had heard them, long ago. He rubbed the throbbing scar at his temple to still the pain.

  His mother’s arrival had sparked the dream.

  His mother. Here. Why had she come after vowing never to set foot in Dunescape Cottage again, after a lifetime of discouraging him from confronting his heritage?

  Bram struggled out of bed and into the bathroom, where he jumped into the shower and considered the voices’ implications.

  His mother was on her fourth marriage. There had been other men between. Maybe during. He was an adult. He could deal with the reality of a woman being unfaithful to her husband.

  If that’s all it was.

  For years, his mother had tried to convince him the voices hadn’t been real, and believing he’d had a nightmare had been safe for a seven year old to accept. But part of him had always known the voices had been real and they had come from somewhere. The old mansion was studded with hidden crannies and tunnels and even a few secret rooms dating back to its days as an alcohol distribution point during prohibition.

  Out of the shower, Bram toweled off, threw on black trousers and shirt, and scraped at his hair with his fingers.

  Grabbing a flashlight, he made a foray into the lower level using a remembered hidden interior staircases, this one accessed through a second floor linen closet. Someone else had been there before him. Dust on the bannister had been disturbed, and traces of black shaped into footsteps exited into the coal bin.

  Echo had been in the coal bin, he mused.

  Once on the lower level, he looked for the hidden rooms, but the maze of a basement confused him after so many years. Aunt Addy had to know every inch of the place. Thinking of her strong reaction to the button, Bram shot up the main stairs and headed for the library to fetch the bauble.

  Wood burning in the fireplace surprised him, and he wondered who had set the logs so early. Perhaps thinking he wanted to get to work first thing, Lena had decided to take the chill off the room for him.

  Odd, though, once again he felt as if he weren’t alone. As if someone were standing behind him, looking over his shoulder. His gaze swept the room. Empty. But he couldn’t shake the feeling, nor the frame of mind that left him open to speculation. He would swear he felt... emotions. A grab bag of happiness and regret... and, above all, frustration. Ridiculous. He was merely in touch with his own anxiety.

  Still, a slithering sensation disturbed the back of his neck as he pulled the key from its not-so-hidden resting place, a fancy stamp box at the edge of the desk. Unlocking the drawer, he frowned when he didn’t immediately see the button. Perhaps it had rolled between sheets of stationery. He searched through the contents and finally pulled the drawer free and dumped everything on top of the desk.

  The button was gone.

  But who would have taken it?

  Probably everyone on the estate knew about the recovered button and had access to the desk. The key wouldn’t have been difficult to find.

  Still, he’d thought a locked drawer was safe enough.

  “Donahue, there you are!”

  Startled by his aunt’s voice, Bram spun around, half-expecting to see some shadow in a corner that could be taken for his late father. But she was staring directly at him as if he were a ghost. Dressed in an old-fashioned flowing garment at least a size too big, she looked wraithlike herself.

  “Sorry to disappoint you, Aunt—”

  ”I can’t believe it worked!” Her frail body trembled with excitement. “She said it would, but I doubted her.”

  ”Doubted who?” Echo?

  “You’re speaking to me!” She swept forward, her eyes wide, her hands fluttering around her wrinkled face that was wreathed in a triumphant smile. “Say something else, Donahue, please, so that I know I’m not dreaming!”

  “Aunt Addy, it’s Bram.”

  Her happy expression puckered, communicating her sudden confusion. “Not Donahue?” A bony hand darted forward to lift the hair from his brow, and her faded eyes reflected a deep disappointment as they connected with the scar. “Bram.”

  Aware he looked much like his father— for Donahue Vanmatre had died at thirty-seven, his age now— Bram accepted that his aunt could mistake him for
her twin. What he couldn’t accept was her expecting to speak to a ghost. Not even when he couldn’t quite shake the sensations that were starting to make him edgy.

  “My father is dead, Aunt Addy.”

  “Dead but not forgotten.”

  Noting the quick tears that spilled onto hollow cheeks, he said, “No one expects you to forget.”

  “They do. They all do. But I won’t. Never. That’s why I stay here. To be with him.”

  Concerned that she was becoming over-agitated, Bram backed off. “I know the two of you had many happy times in this house.”

  “And we will again,” she insisted, moving toward the fire. “It’s only a matter of time.” She sat in one of the high-backed chairs and stared into the flames. “Once Donahue’s murderer is brought to justice, we can all be happy again.”

  Bram gave his aunt a decidedly unhappy look. Aunt Addy had always been a bit eccentric since his father’s death. He’d kept up with her via letters and telephone and the many visits she’d made to Chicago especially to see him during his youth. But now too many times she strayed past eccentric, was totally out of touch with reality. That worried him. If it were a matter of her physical health only, he would entrust her care to Sibyl Wilde indefinitely. But her mental health was another matter.

  He wasn’t certain he could turn his back on Aunt Addy by leaving her virtually alone when he returned to Chicago. Who knew what straits she might get herself into? What harm she might cause? Though he had tried his best to stop her, she had already managed to run through her considerable fortune and was nearly destitute.

  He supposed he ought to start looking into care facilities for the elderly. If one would keep her. He didn’t want to think about having her “institutionalized” as Echo St. Clair had feared.

  Remembering he’d meant to talk to his aunt about the house’s secret rooms, Bram took the vacant chair in front of the fireplace and gave her a long searching look. She seemed calm. More composed than he, certainly. Sitting here, in his father’s chair, his pulse raced, and he was aware of his own growing expectancy. Ruthlessly, he shut down what he chose not to address and got back to the task he’d meant to accomplish.