“Cover? That’s all it was? A cover? All that guff you handed my mother about Shiloh and Civil War battlefields was lies? You’re spending a quarter of a million dollars on a cover story?”
“Much more than that. I planned to throw the house—throw myself—into their faces. I wanted to destroy the Delaneys. I wanted the world to know that David Delaney was a bigamist and a murderer. I wanted them to admit that Trey was illegitimate. I wanted them to acknowledge me as David Delaney’s firstborn legitimate son. I even considered contesting the disposal of my father’s estate, but I decided against it. I could have, you know. I checked. The will leaves nearly everything to Paul David Delaney’s first legitimate male heir. That’s me, not Trey Delaney.”
Ann gaped at him.
He looked at her grimly. “Most of all, I wanted to find where your dear uncle David hid my mother’s body after he killed her. I wanted to give her a proper burial with a tombstone that reads, ‘Here Lies Michelle Bouvet Delaney, wife of Paul David Delaney, mother of Paul Antoine Bouvet Delaney.’”
“What did you plan to do with the house after you accomplished what you wanted to do? Burn it down and dance on the ashes?”
“I planned to sell it right out from under them.”
“You’re crazy, you know that? I’ve been sleeping with a crazy man.”
He dropped into the chair opposite. “Yeah. I’m beginning to think you’re right.” He dropped his head into his hands. I’m beginning to think I was wrong.”
“Uncle David really wasn’t your father?”
“Oh, he was my father all right. I’m just not sure he killed my mother.”
“How do you know he was your father, just tell me that. You said yourself it’s been over thirty years, and all of a sudden new evidence pops up? Give me a break.”
“Not new. Giselle and I simply didn’t know it existed.”
“This I gotta hear.”
“To understand, you had to have known Tante Helaine. She looked tough and she ran that family with an iron hand, but she was a French immigrant married to an American without money or connections. She had the French hatred of authority, bureaucracy and most of all the police. She’d lived through the war. She had plenty of reason to be afraid of the police.”
“Not American police.”
“Any police. She believed the only way to survive was to stay below the radar. She was terrified that she’d commit some infraction that would get her sent back to France and away from Uncle Charlie and us.
“My mother and I were living with Tante Helaine and Uncle Charlie, and my mother was working in Tante Helaine’s bakery. But Maman spent every free minute she had at the library, poring over old telephone books, newspapers—anything she thought might help her find my father. I was too young to know all this at the time, of course. Tante Helaine told me later. All Maman knew about this Paul David Delaney was that he was from a small town somewhere in the mid-South and that his people had money.”
“She wanted him to support you.”
“She wanted him back. She believed that his family was preventing him from returning to her and that he still loved her. Once he knew he had a son…”
“Lord.”
“She wasn’t quite twenty-five years old.”
“My God. In that photograph she looks forty at least.”
“She was worn-out. I can’t remember ever seeing her smile. She was tired all the time. But she never stopped loving him. Times were different.”
“They certainly were.”
“One day she left a note for Tante Helaine saying that she thought she knew where my father was and that she was taking what money she had and going to him. She said she’d let Tante Helaine know more when she was certain, but that she had to catch a bus. She took one small suitcase and walked out the door.”
“Where were you?”
“All three of us, Giselle and her sister, Gabrielle, and I, were at the bakery with Tante Helaine. It was Maman’s day off—the day she usually spent in the library.” He raised his eyes. “That’s the last we ever heard from her.”
“Did you go to the police?”
“Uncle Charlie filed a missing-persons report over Tante Helaine’s objections. She said they’d ignore him. She was right. The police said Maman was over eighteen and had probably just deserted me and run away with a lover. They filed the report, but that was all.”
“But surely she would have written or called?”
“She’d have written. She wouldn’t pay for long-distance charges.” He sighed and stretched his legs out in front of him. “Anyway, Uncle Charlie petitioned for custody. Tante Helaine pitched a fit. Not that she didn’t want to keep me. She was afraid that if the authorities knew I existed, they’d drag me off to some foster home. At that point Child Services were so backed up they’d probably have given custody to a dealer in international prostitution. Seven years later Uncle Charlie forced her to have Maman declared dead. They adopted me.”
“They loved you.”
“Tante Helaine couldn’t show love, but I think she did love me. They handled me in different ways. Uncle Charlie told me to get on with my life, forget about Maman because we’d never know. He said the best way to thumb my nose at my father was to be something really special so he’d be sorry he’d deserted me.”
“Good advice.”
“Tante Helaine drummed it into my head that my father was a monster, that he’d run away from Maman and hidden from her, and that when she did find him, he killed her. She was sure of it. As time went by, so was I. Until six months ago all I could do about it was swear revenge. Then Tante Helaine died, and I offered to help Giselle clean her things out of the apartment so that it could be sold. Uncle Charlie had died years earlier of lung cancer.
“In the very back of Tante Helaine’s closet, hidden behind a hundred pairs of old shoes, was my mother’s suitcase. It had been held for a year after she disappeared in the ‘left luggage’ area of the bus station in Memphis, then opened and sent to the person whose name they found inside—Helaine.”
“And your mother had left all the information she’d gathered inside?”
He shook his head. “It wasn’t that easy. All Maman’s papers were there—my birth certificate, her marriage certificate, immigration papers, certificates of dual citizenship for the son of one Paul David Delaney, American citizen, address unknown.
“But that wasn’t all. Giselle and I didn’t know it until we opened that suitcase, but after Maman disappeared Uncle Charlie had hired a private detective to find her. Apparently Tante Helaine made him fire the guy when he’d barely gotten started. As far as she was concerned, it was stirring the waters and might bring unwanted attention from the authorities. She’d seen children taken away in the war. When I talked to the detective—”
“You found him?”
“He’s retired, but his son is running the business. He said Tante Helaine was certain from the beginning that my mother was dead and that my father had killed her. She refused to entertain the idea that she might have run off because she wanted to get away, or that she’d been murdered in some random incident on the road. He was investigating only six months after Maman disappeared, so he didn’t have that suitcase to work from.”
“Did he find her?”
“He managed to trace her as far as Memphis. He made a list of seventeen Paul Delaneys within a hundred miles of the city, because Maman’s Paul had said he was from a small town. That’s where he quit when Tante Helaine fired him.”
“But you went on?”
“Tracing people is much easier now with the Internet. Within two days I had narrowed it down to two Delaneys in this area. One was dead. The other was alive. I flew down and met him. He was a small, dark man. Nothing like my father in the only picture I have of him. He also didn’t have an artistic bone in his body and had never been to France.”
“So you came to Rossiter?”
“That was where the other Delaney lived—the one who’d died. I k
new this was it the minute I drove into town and saw the house. My father had told my mother stories about the wonderful house he grew up in.” Paul paused. “I didn’t get angry until after I went through it with the real-estate agent.”
“You felt shortchanged because you hadn’t grown up rich and privileged?”
He turned a cold eye on her. “I got angry when I discovered he’d married another woman two months after he came home and had another son less than a year after that. A child raised with wealth and privilege and, most of all, two parents. I got angry because I knew what a difference child support would have made to my family. Tante Helaine and Uncle Charlie took a boy with no assets and no prospects into a family where both of them worked sixty to seventy hours a week and sweated every bill.”
“Uncle David didn’t know about you.”
“Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. My mother planned to tell him when she met him.”
“No wonder Trey tried to kill you.”
Paul shook his head. “Couldn’t have been Trey. He doesn’t know who I am.”
“Well, somebody sure did, and Trey’s the logical candidate. You said it yourself—you could take everything he has, everything he’s worked for. If Aunt Karen told him…”
“She doesn’t know, either. Nobody down here did until now.”
“Want to bet she knows what you ate for breakfast a year ago?” Ann said. “When Uncle David got killed, Trey was a child. Aunt Karen and Aunt Maribelle ran the business. Trey’s been under the thumb of some woman or another his entire life. Now Sue-sue’s taking over. He loves his family more than anything in the world. He’d kill you or anybody else if he thought they were threatened.”
“Please believe I wanted to tell you all this before.”
Ann laughed, but there was no amusement in the sound. “If you’d wanted to, you would have found a time and a place to do it. You would have trusted me if I’d mattered to you. What was I, a small-town diversion to keep you relaxed until you dropped the bomb on the Delaneys?”
He started to speak, but again she held up her hands. “Not one word. I don’t want to hear it. Not now, not ever. Now you listen to me, because this is what is going to happen. I will finish my part of your restoration. I don’t have much left to do, anyway. I’ve been putting off a job on a prairie house in Des Moines. I’m going to accept it. It should last at least three months. When I get back, you will have had your mudslinging fest with the Delaneys and have gotten your pound of flesh. After that, I suggest you sell the house. If you don’t get an offer right away, give the listing to Mrs. Hoddle—she’d love to sell it for you. Then you go on back to New Jersey and leave us country folk alone.”
“I won’t let you just walk away like this.”
She surged to her feet, snapped her fingers at Dante and started toward her truck. “I swore I’d never let another man use me. Travis used me for money, you used me for information. Same thing. I hope you find your mother’s body, but I can tell you this right now. Paul David Delaney never killed a fly, much less the woman he drew in those sketches. A woman he obviously adored. You better go back to the drawing board before someone really does kill you.”
She ran for her car. He could have stopped her, but he made no move to go after her. He sank into his chair and put his face in his hands. The worst thing about it all was that she was right. He’d wanted revenge. And all he’d done was alienate the first woman he’d ever truly loved—the woman he wanted to spend his life with.
Hack slunk around the edge of the building. “Bad, huh?”
“The worst.”
“Give her time to cool off, then send her some flowers.”
“Flowers won’t cut it this time.”
“The woman is in love with you, son.”
“And I’m in love with her.”
“Then what’s the problem? Nobody’s bleeding, nobody’s dead. Anything else you can fix.”
“Unfortunately somebody is dead, and I no longer know what to do about it.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ANN CAREERED around the curves on the back road barely registering the wild dogwood that had burst into bloom almost overnight. The grief she felt was too deep for tears. She drove up her grandmother’s gravel driveway, slammed on the brakes, skidded to a stop and jumped out of the car while it was still rocking.
Dante followed her. He’d sensed her misery and had refused to stay on his side of the car. She’d driven most of the way with his huge head in her lap, nearly blocking the steering wheel.
Sarah Pulliam was digging the winter weeds out of her flower beds. She rose stiffly, pulled off her cotton gloves, adjusted her wide-brimmed straw hat and came forward with a broad smile on her face. “Ann, how nice—”
She froze, and a moment later rushed to Ann and took her hands. “What’s happened? Is it Buddy?”
“No, Gram, it’s not Buddy and it’s not Mama. It’s me.”
She’d thought her grief and anger too deep for tears. When she began to sob so hard that she had to gulp to catch her breath, her grandmother’s eyes widened. “Come in. Tell me.”
“I promised him I wouldn’t tell.” She sniffed. “He lied through his teeth to me. I don’t see why I should feel obligated to keep my mouth shut.” The tears started again. “I’ve got to talk to somebody.”
Her grandmother ushered her into a bentwood rocker on the front porch and sat in another rocker opposite her. Dante sat as close to Ann’s rocker as possible. “Are you pregnant?”
“What? No. Why would you think that?”
“When two people do what you two have been doing, the result is often pregnancy.”
“You know?”
“The whole county knows. Maybe the whole state. My gracious, child, where have you lived all your life?” Sarah sniffed. “So you’re not pregnant. Then what is it? I thought he was such a nice young man. Obviously I was wrong. What kind of a rat is he?”
Between sobs and gulps, Ann blurted out the entire story.
Sarah listened without saying a word, but the longer Ann talked, the faster her rocking chair rocked.
“So that’s it,” Ann said at last. “He wanted information, and I sure supplied it. I even took him to see Aunt Karen and Miss Esther. What an idiot I am. I should have known a man like that had to have a hidden agenda. When will I ever learn?”
“You love him, I take it.”
“Yes, I do.” Ann took a deep breath. “But I got over Travis. I’ll get over him.”
“This one’s not like Travis. Travis was a dream that turned into a nightmare.”
“And this isn’t?”
“He behaved like a scoundrel, but he had a reason. Was it a good enough one? I don’t know. Did he actually tell you any bald-faced lies?”
Ann thought back. “No…I’m not sure. Right now I can’t remember which parts he actually told me and which I inferred.”
“I’ve seen the way he looks at you. He didn’t lie about that. He’s in love with you.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Listen to me. I knew Harris Pulliam was the one the minute I saw him climb down off his log skidder at the logging trials. I think he knew it, too. If Paul Bouvet—or Delaney or whoever he is—is the one for you, then work it out.”
“I can’t.”
“You can. You feel betrayed and just plain dumped on as a woman at the moment when you were finally getting your self-esteem back. Tell me, what would you have done if your mother had just up and disappeared and you felt certain she’d been murdered?”
“I wouldn’t have to do anything. Buddy would do it. And woe betide the man who killed her.”
“This young man comes from a set of circumstances that might have turned him into a bank robber or a drug dealer. Instead, he’s a hero. I finally placed his name. That plane accident he got hurt in made the newspapers at the time.”
“I never saw it.”
“When you’re in the middle of a job, Ann, the world could fall down around your ears and yo
u wouldn’t find out about it until they dug you out of the rubble. I don’t remember all the details, but he saved his plane and some lives. Does that sound like a scoundrel and a cad to you?”
“Pilots are notorious with women, Gram. Even I know that.”
“Tell that to those pilots in La Grange and their families. There are womanizers in every field. My point is, he came down here as much for closure as for revenge. And the better he got to know us—the better he got to know you—the more unsure he became about what he was doing.”
“So he’s supposed to get off scot-free?”
“Certainly not. You punished him pretty well this morning, child, and he’s going to suffer a good deal more until he decides what to do with what he knows.”
“So what do I do?”
“Far be it from me to tell you what to do.”
Ann laughed for the first time since she’d driven in the driveway. “Come on, Gram. Tell me, please. If I don’t agree, I won’t do it.”
“Help him uncover the truth, if you can. Then step back and see what he does with what he knows. My bet is, he’ll try to find some way to stay in Rossiter. Then he’ll ask you to marry him.”
“Got the old crystal ball out, have you?”
“You know I have the sight,” Gram said huffily.
“Okay, suppose I believe you. How can I possibly help him learn the truth?”
“Try to find out what actually happened to his mother. If she was killed, figure out who did it, because I will guaran-damn-tee you David Delaney didn’t. He was far too gentle a man.”
“I hope you’re right, Gram.”
“Now, would you like a ham sandwich and a slice of my Lady Baltimore cake? I suspect you could use some sugar in your blood.”
“I sure could.” Ann hugged her grandmother hard. “Keep your mouth shut, okay? Don’t tell Mom and Buddy, whatever you do.”
House of Strangers (Harlequin Super Romance) Page 20
