The President's Daughter

by Mariah Stewart

  "Hi, Dina, sorry to disturb whatever it is that you're doing—hope it's something good, by the way, something involving a gorgeous man and lots of sunshine, but I promised myself I wouldn't pry. Anyway, I just thought you should know that we've had three customers asking about landscaping. One McMansion—a neighbor of the Pattersons whose property you did last fall—and two other potential garden jobs. The one garden is a Mrs. Fields—she and her husband just bought that house with the red siding on the left as you go out of town. And the other is a customer who stopped by to see about getting an estimate for a renovation on an old farm a few miles from here, forgot to ask which one. Anyway, she and her husband are trying to decide whether or not to make an offer on this property and wanted your input on what it would take to bring the grounds back. Their last name is Dillon. I'll give you the numbers...."

  At Wild Springs, the three women had fallen into a guarded routine, the company sometimes more uneasy than at others. Betsy may have been in a wheelchair, but she was anything but sedentary. The hours not spent in the riding barn—where, with the aid of another instructor, Betsy gave lessons three afternoons each week as well as Saturday mornings—there was tennis. Or ambling along the fields and woods around Wild Springs. And for Dina, there was the garden.

  Dina had spent several hours during the first two days at Wild Springs inspecting the beds, absently pulling a weed here or there, mentally dividing this clump of overgrown daylilies or that clump of iris— acts that were, for Dina, as natural as breathing. Dina had told Betsy that dividing overgrown perennials was something akin to using the Heimlich maneuver on a choking man in a restaurant. And to Dina, it wasn't work. It was therapy of the purest kind. If nothing else, it was familiar and soothing, so necessary in this time of turmoil, when her life had been turned inside out. It offered her time to be alone, to reflect on all that had happened and all she had learned. It was the one constant in her life, and she welcomed every chance she could get to dig her hands into the dirt.

  "Your Siberian iris should be divided," she'd announced at breakfast on the morning that Simon had left to visit Stinson.

  "I'll put it on the list for the gardener. I'm not sure when he'll be able to get to that. He's had some problems with his hip, you know. Arthritis," Betsy had told her as she spooned scrambled eggs onto her plate.

  "Have you thought of possibly hiring someone else to come in?" Dina offered.

  "Shhhhh," Betsy shushed her. "It's Mrs. Brady's husband, and he's been working here for years. I'd hate to have him think that the minute he can't work like he used to he will be replaced. Not good for his morale. He worked with my dad and my granddad. I simply couldn't just replace him."

  "Would you mind if I just tidied things up a bit, then?" Dina asked.

  "Now, I don't want you to feel obligated, Dina."

  "Actually, I'd feel better if I was doing something. I'm not used to sitting around. I hate the feeling that I'm hiding out and wasting time that could be spent doing something useful. I'm getting a bit stir-crazy."

  "I understand completely, my dear. After breakfast, I'll show you where the garden shed is and where the tools are kept. Feel free to do as much or as little as you like."

  "Maybe it will make me feel less guilty about the time I'm spending away from my business. We're just gearing up for our busy season, and I know I need to be there."

  "You did say you had reliable help, though—"

  "The best. But still..."

  "Well, you have been on the phone with Polly about twenty times since yesterday, Dina," Jude reminded her. "And wasn't that Mrs. Fisher you were speaking with this morning? It's not as if you've been neglecting things altogether."

  "I know, but it's not the same."

  "Of course it isn't the same, but it's going to have to do until Simon comes back with a suspect."

  "Having a suspect won't mean a thing without a game plan," Betsy noted. "Unless, of course, someone confesses to having killed Blythe. I for one am not holding out any hopes for that happening."

  "Well, obviously, but we can't formulate a game plan without knowing who—"

  Dina shook her head and walked outside, leaving the two women to bicker to their hearts' content.

  She'd only thought to separate a few choice plants that were overgrown, but before the morning had ended she'd weeded out three beds and made room for the new plants she'd divided from the old. Besides keeping her physically busy and giving her a respite from focusing on something other than all the changes in her life, she found in the gardens at Wild Springs an unexpected connection to the grandfather and great-grandfather she had never known.

  And in the afternoon, after she'd cleaned up from the garden and Betsy had cleaned up from the barn, the three women gathered in the sitting room for tea as they had every afternoon since Jude and Dina had arrived and went through the photo albums that lined the bookshelves. It was during those times that Dina got her first glimpse of what it meant to be a Pierce and just how much underlying hostility had yet to be resolved between Jude and Betsy.

  "Now, these pictures were all taken when my father was Ambassador to Belgium. Lovely photos of Mother there, this was right before she took ill...." Betsy's face grew wistful. "We lived in Brussels for a time. It was lovely. Blythe and I attended a tiny school for the children of diplomats where only French was spoken. I had to learn the language very quickly. Blythe already had taken French, of course, at school here, but I couldn't speak a word. We only stayed there for a year. After Mother became ill, we came home. Father, of course, stayed on. . . ."

  "And then she went to the Shipley School?" Dina held up her right hand, where Blythe's school ring sat on the middle finger.

  "1 noticed that you were wearing that." Betsy smiled. She hadn't wanted to comment on the ring, thinking that if Dina wanted to ask, she would. "Yes, we both enrolled at Shipley when we returned home. It's a bit of a drive—it's in Bryn Mawr, some miles from here, you see—and it could be most unpleasant traveling in the winter. The school is still there, still thriving, though I understand it's co-ed now. Unimaginable back in my day, though I suppose it represents progress of a sort. . . ." Betsy sipped at her tea, which Mrs. Brady had served from the silver tea service. "Over the years, 1 sometimes wondered what you thought, when you looked at that ring. Assuming, that is, that you kept it."

  "I never knew who 'BDP' was, but for a long time something told me not to show the ring to you." Dina glanced up at Jude. "When 1 finally got up the nerve to ask about it, you said it belonged to a cousin of yours."

  "Is that what you told her, Jude?" A frown creased Betsy's forehead.

  "Well, you could have told me that you'd given it to her; it caught me completely off guard when she came downstairs one night with that ring on her hand and asked me who it had belonged to." Jude's voice rose in remembered anger. "It was the first thing that came out of my mouth. What did you expect me to say?"

  "You could have tried the truth."

  "It didn't seem like the appropriate time."

  "It obviously never was the appropriate time," Betsy grumbled.

  "I didn't care for the fact that you went behind my back."

  "Well, I didn't see where you were doing anything to keep her mother's memory alive."

  "I was her mother," Jude said emphatically. "I still am."

  "Mom, Betsy, please. Could we please not do this?" Dina pleaded, the color draining from her face.

  "Dina's right. Now's not the time for us to be arguing," Betsy said.

  "You started this years ago when you insisted on slipping Dina little things that had belonged to Blythe and not telling me you were doing it," Jude snapped.

  "I wanted her to know where she came from. I suspected—rightly so—that you would do whatever you could to keep her from us."

  "I did what I felt was best for Dina___"

  "Which obviously wasn't or we wouldn't all be here now, would we?"

  "Let me know when you've finished beating each other up
." Dina rose. "I'm not going to sit and listen to this again. You have issues to resolve, resolve them. You're adults. Please start acting like it. I'll be outside. ..."

  For the second time that day, Dina retreated back outside, leaving the two women to air their grievances— sometimes loudly, as their voices drifted through an open window.

  Jude, mild-mannered, soft-spoken Jude, could really rip when she wanted to, Dina thought as she pruned a shrub. And maybe it's good for her, maybe it's good for both of them, to finally get out so many years of words unspoken. It must have been so hard for Mom, harder still in some ways for Betsy, this silence between them all this time. Maybe it's time for them to deal with each other, once and for all and however loudly they choose; then maybe they can move on.

  Maybe they could even be friends. ...

  And maybe, Dina thought wryly, the deaf would hear and the blind would, see....

  This was all wrong. All wrong.

  Where was Jude McDermott? Where was the girl?

  Too clever to return to Henderson in the van, the driver had borrowed wheels that were newer—and, most important, unrecognizable, should Jude arrive home and notice a strange car in the parking lot. Though that might be difficult, parked as it was, for the second night in a row, behind a veil of shrubs. The car was too low to the ground to give a clear overview of the surroundings, that sense of omnipresence one got from driving a vehicle that sat so high up over the road, but at the same time it was low enough to conceal behind foliage, and there was something to be said for that. And after all, tonight was merely surveillance of sorts. The next move could not be plotted without knowing where the quarry was.

  Church bells from a tower somewhere close to town rang ten times, their solid clanging punctuating the quiet night like exclamation points.

  The driver sighed. Where was this woman?

  Perhaps she'd been scared away.

  If that was the case, where might she go?

  Impatient ringers tapped a nervous tune on the steering wheel. Where might a woman like Jude McDermott go to hide if she thought there was danger?

  And surely she must know that there is; she has to know that the near miss was no accident....

  Ten-twenty P.M., but still no sign of life.

  Perhaps she was with the girl. Jude had been intended to be the original target—after all, she was the one with the information—but the girl had given an opportunity not to be missed.

  The point was to eliminate anyone who knew.

  Simon Keller knew, but perhaps he could still be of some limited use.

  Jude definitely knew. The tape had revealed this, along with Jude's name.

  Perhaps through targeting the daughter the mother would be made careless.

  And careless prey, as everyone knows, is so much easier to catch....

  Chapter Twenty-one

  On her way into breakfast early the next morning, Dina found her cell phone where she'd left it the previous day, atop the table in the front hall. "ONE MISSED CALL," the readout announced. She scrolled down for the number as she came into the dining room. She listened to Polly's message with a smile on her face.

  "You look pleased," Betsy noted as she joined Dina in the dining room.

  "I am pleased." Dina grinned. "I just got a message from Polly. I have three potential customers waiting to hear from me. One new property and two renovations. My favorite kind of work."

  "I noticed how much happier you are after you've been out puttering around in the gardens." Betsy poured a cup of coffee for Dina, then one for herself. "Though frankly, with things so out of hand and overgrown, it's hard to imagine anyone enjoying the work."

  "Oh, this is nothing." Dina waved a hand toward the back of the house and the garden area beyond. "These beds have been tended over the years. Some of the places I've worked on haven't been weeded in fifty, seventy years, or better."

  "How do you know what to do first?"

  "Well, first you get down on your hands and knees and try to see what's lurking beneath the overgrowth." Dina grinned. "Some plants can survive forever with the smallest amount of maintenance. Peonies can last for decades, as can roses, and some of the self-seeders, hollyhocks and such, can just keep on regenerating. On several occasions, I've found wonderful old varieties of plants in gardens I've restored, plants that I couldn't even buy seeds for because they're so rare. You never know when that will happen, and it certainly makes the work more interesting for me. I'm going to call these people as soon as breakfast is over."

  "Call what people?" Jude asked as she entered the room.

  "Polly left a voice mail message for me that a couple of potential customers called or stopped in over the past few days. Two are possible renovations on old properties."

  "Oh, what properties? Someplace we know?" Jude helped herself to scrambled eggs from a covered dish that Mrs. Brady had placed on the sideboard earlier.

  "One is that red house on the way out of town. Polly didn't know where the other was. But there are several places around Henderson that are for sale right now. It could be any one of them. There's the Otis place, and the Franklin farm...." Dina paused to think. "Then there's that place out on Keansey Road...."

  "Well, hopefully, the prospective owners won't mind waiting until you can meet with them," Jude said.

  "Wait for what?" Dina frowned.

  "Until we know it's safe for you to go back to Henderson."

  "I won't go into town. I'll just take care of my business and come back here."

  "Maybe you should run this past Simon," Betsy suggested.

  "Simon has his own agenda right now. If these people are serious about this property, making them wait is unfair. They could end up losing it to another buyer. Besides, I can't afford to pass up prospective clients."

  "I don't see the harm in it, Jude," Betsy said from her seat at the head of the table.

  "There probably isn't any," Jude conceded. "As long as no one knows that you're going."

  "No one will know. I won't even tell Polly," Dina promised, feeling energized. "I'll call the numbers she gave me after breakfast and see what their schedules are."

  "If you can put it off till next week, it might be better. Maybe all this will be over by then."

  "Or the customers might have found another landscaper by then. It's been a while since I had a total renovation job. It's not only fun; it's a great moneymaker. Garden Gates needs a few jobs like this to keep solidly in the black. And frankly, it will be wonderful to have just a little touch of normalcy back in my life again."

  "Well, Jude, the morning's slipping away. If we're going to make that trip to the farmers market, I think we need to get going." Betsy smiled at Dina and added, "We have a little cabin fever ourselves. I'm thinking that a drive down into Wayne might do us both some good. Want to come along?"

  "No, I think I want to try to get in touch with Mrs. Fields and with the Dillons. Maybe the property they're looking at is one that I already know. But you two have fun...."

  "I just need to run upstairs and get my jacket," Jude said.

  "Take mine," Dina offered. "It's right there on the chair by the back door."

  Dina smiled at both women, who seemed to be slightly more cordial toward each other this morning.

  Thank God for small favors, Dina mused fifteen minutes later as she watched Betsy's van disappear down the lane. I've had about all of their picking at each other that I can take.

  Dina had had to leave voice mail for Mrs. Fields, but Mrs. Dillon answered the phone on its third ring. After the most perfunctory conversation, she gave Dina the address of the property that she and her husband were looking at.

  "Is eleven this morning a good time?" Mrs. Dillon had asked.

  Dina looked at the clock. It was ten past nine. "I think I can be there by then."

  "Great. We'll see you there."

  Next Dina called Simon, but she had to leave a message for him as well: "I have a hot job prospect lined up—a garden restoration down arou
nd Henderson. Right now, it's just a look-see, but it's just the kind of work I love best. Anyway, I'll be meeting my would-be client—pray that dear Mrs. Dillon loves whatever plan I come up with—and will be going right back to Betsy's, I promise. Hope to see you soon." She paused, then added, "I think I miss you, Simon."

  It wasn't until Dina had gathered her purse and her sunglasses and was telling Mrs. Brady where she was going that she realized that her car keys were in her jacket pocket and her jacket had left the house with Jude.

  "... but I should be back by ... damn! I have no wheels."

  "Miss?"

  "My car keys are in the pocket of the jacket my mother is wearing."

  "Perhaps you might take one of Miss Pierce's cars," Mrs. Brady suggested. "I drive them when I need to run errands, and she lets the grooms drive them all the time. I seriously doubt that she'd mind. She has the BMW—of course, that's specially equipped for her, though she doesn't really care to drive it—a pickup truck, and two Jeeps. Look there; there's one of the grooms. Looks like Eric. Ask him to get you the keys for one of the Jeeps."

  "If you're sure Betsy won't mind ..."

  "Honey, she lets everyone else drive them; she won't mind if you borrow one."

  "Eric!" Dina called out the back door as the groom crossed the drive toward the barn. "I wanted to use one of the Jeeps for a few hours. Mrs. Brady said you knew where the keys are."

  "Sure." He waved her to the garage, and Dina met him there at the door, which he opened for her.

  "You know how to drive stick?" he asked.

  "I used to." Dina nodded.

  "Take the tan one, then," Eric suggested as he removed a key from the rack inside the door. "It's the newest."

  "Thanks."

  "Owners and insurance cards are in the glove box. Want me to back 'er out for you?"

  "No, I'm fine, thanks."

  Dina hopped into the Jeep and took a moment to familiarize herself with the gears and the placement of the instruments. She'd never driven a Wrangler before, but they always looked like they'd be a fun drive.

  And it was. Even on 1-95 with the canvas sides open, the Jeep held the road pretty well. It was a quick and easy drive to Maryland.