by Janet Dailey
“I’m careful.” He moved toward her, his voice as smooth as honey. “I promise you I am very careful. You can count on Evan to handle things just like you always have. Don’t you know that? How do you think this place has been showing a profit these last few years? Not from the sale of that church wine, that’s for sure. No, I’ve been making sure you received your share of the profits.”
“You have to stop this. The risk is too great.” She started to take another step back and came up against the solidness of the wine kegs.
“You’re worried about me. I like that.” He braced his hands against the oak barrel, trapping her inside his spread arms. “I like a lot of things about you.”
Katherine flattened her hands against his chest to keep him at a distance. “I’m not worried about you,” she said, angry again. “I’m worried about me!”
“Your eyes, they look like hot blue flames. I always knew there was a fire under all that ice.” He cupped a hand to the side of her face.
She tried to turn her head away from it, without success. “Stop it. Leave me alone.” She tried to push him back, out of her way, and get distance between them again. But he simply slid his other arm behind her back.
“You don’t really want me to leave you alone, do you?” he murmured confidently.
“Yes!” She threw her head back to glare at him, and realized her mistake instantly as his hand imprisoned her head and his mouth came down.
She struggled, closing her lips tightly, but he ate away at them, nibbling in little bites and taking them whole, all the while ignoring the push of her hands and the strain of her body to arch free. When she started hitting at him, he just laughed in his throat.
“A little wildcat, aren’t you? They always purr the loudest. Let me hear you.” Effortlessly, he pinned her hands between them and nuzzled at her neck, licking at the pulse he found pounding there.
Moaning at her own helplessness, Katherine closed her eyes, hating him, despising him, loathing him – for reminding her of all the times she and Clayton had made love, all the times Clayton’s mouth had roamed her face and neck, exciting her, arousing her, all the times his hands had molded her to him, showing her the perfect way a man and woman could fit together. She longed to know it all again, the fever and the greed, the pain that could become unreasonable pleasure.
Lost in the memory, she wasn’t aware of her fingers digging into his shirt to cling tightly. She wasn’t aware of her body straining to seek a greater closeness. She was aware of nothing until she felt the cold rush of air against her breast an instant before his rough hand closed over it.
“No!” She struck out, hitting and kicking, trying to claw free. “Let me go. Do you hear? Let me go!”
“You heard Madam.” It was the voice of a boy trying to sound like a man.
“Claude.” Katherine almost cried with relief when she saw him standing there, a tall, strapping boy, big for his age and wearing his sternest expression.
Evan looked over his shoulder. “Your puppy dog followed you again, I see. Better send him home, don’t you think?” Turning back, he grinned at her. “He’s too young to understand how it is.” He pushed his hips against her, making sure she felt the hard ridge in his pants. “Go on, boy,” he said, keeping his eyes on her. “The lady doesn’t want your help.”
Katherine frowned in stunned surprise at his total indifference to Claude. Recovering, she shot back, “Nor do I want you.” Again she tried to wrench free of his hold, only to hear him laugh at her attempts.
Suddenly Claude was there, launching himself between them and trying to tear Evan from her. Evan turned and, with one shove, pushed him backward, sending him sprawling to the cellar’s hard floor. Then he caught Katherine’s wrist before she could escape.
“Get out of here,” he told Claude. “Before I send you home with your tail between your legs.” He laughed as Claude scrambled to his feet, his face dark and angry. “Now we’ve got some privacy.” He yanked Katherine back against him, smiling. “A little panic is natural. It’s been a long time for you. I’ll take it slow.”
“No.” It was more a sound than a word as she tried to use her arms as a wedge.
There was a dull, cracking noise, and he went still, a look of shock on his face. Katherine stared as his eyes rolled back in his head and he sagged to the floor. Claude looked at her, panic in his young eyes.
“Claude had struck him,” Katherine explained. “In defense of me, and Evan was dead. Claude had never meant to kill him. It was a horrible accident and I knew I had to make it look like one.”
“Why?” Sam leaned forward, trying to understand. “Why couldn’t you have called the police?”
“And endure the scandal of an investigation?” Katherine shook her head. “How could I explain why I had gone to the cellars so late? How could I say I had gone to speak with Evan Dougherty at that hour of the night? We both knew what people would think. It is that way yet today, and it was worse then. And how could I risk the police discovering he was bootlegging? It would have meant losing everything. And Claude...Claude was only sixteen years old. It would have ruined his life.”
“So you rolled a barrel off the rack to make it look like an accident,” Kelly guessed and thought of her father, wondering if Katherine had given any thought to other lives that had been forever changed by her actions. Evan Dougherty’s death meant he had been raised without a father, and she had been deprived of a grandfather.
“Yes, I did that. I had to make his death appear accidental,” Katherine said, giving a slow nod, appearing somehow shrunken by exhaustion. “Afterward, I turned and saw Gil, staring at me with such cold, accusing eyes.” She rubbed her arms as if chilled by the memory. “I never learned how he got there. He had liked to stalk people, sneak up on them. Perhaps it was a game he played that night. He would never talk of it.” She looked across the table at Kelly, her expression humble and her eyes begging for understanding. “Evan’s death was an accident.”
“Yes,” Kelly agreed softly, regretting that she had ever wanted to know the truth about the legend of Katherine Rutledge.
“If you will excuse me,” Katherine murmured as she reached for her cane. “I am very tired. I think I will lie down for a while.”
Sam was there, drawing her chair back and tucking a hand under her arm, assisting Katherine to her feet. A gesture of solicitous concern; Kelly hadn’t seen it from him before. “Will you be all right?” he asked quietly.
Her white head came up, a ghost of its former confident tilt. “Of course.”
All this, Kelly thought, and she had gained nothing that would prove her father’s guilt or innocence. “Katherine.” She waited until the woman turned. “I never asked you – the night of the party, did you see anyone else at the winery?”
“Anyone else?” Pain flickered in her eyes. Or was it alarm? “You did, didn’t you?”
Dullness clouded her eyes. “When I checked to see if Emile was still alive, I looked up and saw only a ghost. A little boy with cold accusing eyes. He vanished even as I looked at him.”
Kelly felt Sam’s hard stare as Katherine moved slowly to the terrace doors. “Did you have to ask?” He came back to the table.
The vague lift of her shoulders was a non-answer. “Do you think she saw Gil that night?”
“I think she saw exactly what she said she saw. A ghost.”
He sounded very certain. The trouble was that Kelly didn’t believe in ghosts, unless they were living ones.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The library’s paneled walls gleamed in the morning sunlight that flooded through the windows. Kelly prowled the room, trailing a finger over a collection of leather-bound classics and touching a brass magnifying glass on the desk. The soft burr of the telephone intruded on the silence. She ignored it; Mrs. Vargas or Katherine would answer it. Restless and hating this feeling of being at loose en
ds, she wandered over to a window.
A dispirited sigh slipped from her. Yesterday had accomplished nothing. With a rueful pull of her mouth, Kelly recognized that wasn’t quite true. She had gained possession of family secrets and she didn’t like the burden of them.
“You have a telephone call, Miss Douglas.” The soft-footed housekeeper stood in the doorway.
“Thank you, Mrs. Vargas.” Kelly crossed to the desk and picked up the extension. “Kelly Douglas speaking.”
“Kelly. This is Hugh.”
“Hugh.” A thousand things Kelly hadn’t let herself think about rushed through her mind. “How’s everything going? What about DeeDee’s interview with John Travis? How did it go?”
“It went fine. The reason I called....”
“Yes?”
“You need to contact your agent, Kelly. There are discussions that have to take place now, and I understand he feels reluctant to talk until he has spoken with you.”
“What kind of discussions?” Unconsciously Kelly tilted her chin a little higher, certain she already knew the answer.
“Kelly.” Hugh sighed her name in a voice thick with reproval, and regret. “Surely you don’t need me to spell this out for you.”
“But I do.”
A long pause was followed by another heavy sigh. “Dear God. ‘Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.”’ Hugh muttered the quote.
“Forget clever, Hugh, and try the truth.”
“I thought it would be obvious to you, Kelly.”
“It is. As they say back in Iowa, it’s as obvious as a brass tack in a hog’s ear,” Kelly replied curtly. “They want to replace me on the show, isn’t that right?” She didn’t wait for Hugh to confirm it. “You can tell them for me that I will fight them, loud and strong, every inch of the way. My father has caused me enough grief in my life. I am not going to let him cost me my job – or my career.”
“Kelly, this isn’t personal.”
“You are wrong, Hugh. This is very personal.”
“Try to understand. Your image, your credibility, has been badly damaged by all this.”
“I am well aware of that. I am also aware that it can be repaired.”
“How?” Skepticism riddled his voice.
She didn’t have a pat answer for that. “Maybe if less time was spent trying to figure out who to get to replace me, and more on trying to correct the problem, a way would be found. I am far from the only person who has endured the physical and emotional abuse of an alcoholic parent. Maybe I could interview some well-known personality with a similar background who has succeeded in living down the notoriety of a parent. That way the public perception of me may be influenced by the story of that individual. There has to be something that can be done, Hugh.”
“Perhaps,” he murmured, his tone less skeptical and more thoughtful.
“In any case, Hugh, I will call my agent – to hire a PR firm to start doing some damage control and repair. If the powers that be want to discuss that with me, I will. But nothing else.”
“I understand.”
“I hope so, Hugh. I hope so.” She hung up, and felt an instant, urgent need for fresh air.
In the entry hall, Kelly flung the terrace doors wide and walked out. Seeking the warmth of the sunlight, she moved out of the building’s shade. The screaming wail of a siren pierced the morning quiet. Kelly refused to think it had anything to do with her father.
She left the hard fieldstones of the terrace and walked onto the lawn, the thick grass cushioning each step she took. Halfway to the concrete balustrade that guarded the land’s steep slope, Kelly heard voices coming from the rose garden. She pulled up when she saw Natalie Fougere in the arms of Clay Rutledge.
Abruptly the baroness broke off the kiss and pushed at him, arching against the band of his circling arms. Clay said something and Natalie shook her head and pulled free to walk quickly toward the terrace, head down, totally unaware of Kelly. Clay spun angrily away and stalked off, cutting through the garden to circle around to the front of the house.
Only feet separated them before Natalie saw her. She gave Kelly a startled look, threw a glance at the rose garden, then swung back, pale and apprehensive.
“You saw,” Natalie murmured.
“I saw you and Clay together. I wasn’t surprised. I suspected all along the two of you were having an affair.” Kelly watched the discomfort and guilt grow in the woman’s expression as Natalie avoided her eyes.
“Please, it is not what you think. It is over. I cannot bear to have him touch me anymore.” Her small shudder of revulsion seemed genuine. “I have told him this, but he refuses to listen.”
“You weren’t in the rose garden when your husband was killed, were you?” Kelly guessed. “You slipped off to meet Clay.”
“We were together, yes.” She rubbed a hand over her forearm in an agitated motion.
“And Emile followed you, didn’t he?”
Natalie looked at her with brown, haunted eyes, not answering. Not needing to answer. “I should never have met him. It was a mistake.”
“What happened? Did your husband catch the two of you together?” Kelly kept the questions coming soft and fast. “Was there an argument? A struggle? Did Clay hit him?”
“No. No!”
“She was frightened, Sam.” Kelly sat on the wide, molded rail of the concrete balustrade that overlooked the valley floor.
The setting sun rode the rim of the western mountains, throwing an amber tint over the land. The view of vineyards, scattered valley oaks, and buildings had the look of a yellowing tintype in the light. Sam stood next to Kelly, one foot on the grass and the other propped on the railing, his arms folded across his raised knee.
“Frightened of what?” he asked because it was what she wanted.
“I don’t know.” She picked at the pieces of crumbling concrete along the lip of the railing. “Maybe she’s afraid of Clay because he killed the baron. Maybe she’s afraid because she did. Or maybe she’s just afraid people will find out she was unfaithful to her husband. Maybe it’s something she honestly regrets.” Kelly lifted her head, narrowing her eyes to look at the scarlet-turning sun. “Who knows what her reason is? But somebody’s lying, Sam. She claims she was with Clay, and Gil said the same. What if Clay wasn’t with either one of them when Baron Fougere was killed? But how do you prove that?”
“You don’t.” Sam angled his head at her. “You tell the police what you’ve learned and let them check it out. That’s their job.”
“Right, add the spice of sex and infidelity to a story that’s already sensational enough,” Kelly countered. “And what do I tell the police? That Natalie Fougere admitted to me she had been having an affair with Clay Rutledge, that she had slipped off to meet him, and Emile followed her. All she has to do is deny it and Clay already has an alibi. It’s my word against theirs. I have no proof of any of this.”
Sam let that pass. “The police think they’ve found where your father’s been camping out, in a ravine over by the old Bale mill. One of the rangers discovered the campsite after a tourist reported seeing some smoke.”
“Where did you learn that? I didn’t hear anything about it on the news.”
“I talked to one of the park rangers this afternoon. He told me. That’s some rough and wild terrain over there. They’re trying to seal it off now and box him in. In the meantime, they’ve taken the dogs there to see if they can pick up his trail from the campsite.”
“Are they sure it’s him?”
“They found a plastic garbage bag with some canned goods in it, and a shirt like the one you described. They think he left in a hurry, maybe when he heard the ranger coming. With luck, they’ll have him back in custody by tomorrow.”
Which was a polite way of saying “back in jail.” On murder charges
. Kelly looked to the north where the cone-shaped peak of Mount St. Helena crowned the skyline.
“You should be glad.” Sam kept his voice very cool, very even.
“I am.” Wasn’t she?
“You don’t sound it.”
“I’ll do my celebrating when they actually catch him. Until then” – Kelly brushed the fragments of cement from her fingers – “there’s still the question of his guilt. And who’s lying and why? I’ve got to think of some way to shake the truth out.”
“Leave it alone, Kelly.”
“And do nothing? Sam, he may be innocent.”
“And he may not.” He dragged his foot off the railing, straightening. “That isn’t for you to find out.”
“But no one else is trying. They’ve already decided he’s guilty.”
“That is no reason for you to get involved in this. It has nothing to do with you, and I don’t want to see you get dragged into the middle of it.”
“Why?” Kelly was on her feet, his words turning her cold. “Because he’s a drunk and a troublemaker?”
“You said it. I didn’t. What if he does go to prison for something he didn’t do, Kelly?” Sam challenged. “After the hell he’s put you through, he deserves whatever he gets. You’re out of it. Stay out of it.”
“I can’t. He’s my father,” she shot back.
He gave her a long, grim took. “That’s the first time you’ve ever called him that.”
“What does it matter? It doesn’t change anything.”
“It should. Kelly, you, of all people, know he’s not worth the trouble. Leave it alone.”
“I can’t. And I won’t.” She started to walk past him, but he stepped into her path.
“Why?” Sam challenged. “Do you think if you prove he’s innocent, he’ll thank you? The minute he got out of jail, he’d go get drunk. Don’t you know that? Or do you think if you do this, he’ll finally love you?”
