Bart poured for everyone. “It won’t take long. Just wanted Ben to know a couple of things. One: Earl was in there on Monday, trying to get Orrin’s assistant to let him access the laptop and files. She told him to come back when he had a legal right. Two: I ran into Orrin’s personal lawyer, who was dropping off some paperwork. He asked about the search effort, and then I asked him what we talked about the other night, about how things stand if neither Ty nor Orrin come back.”
“And?”
“It’s what we thought. Despite all that yelling at Sloane’s birthday last spring, Orrin hasn’t changed his will since right after Ty was born. The company’s a sixway share split: twenty percent each for us four boys and ten each for Sloane and Debbie. That’s our half sister,” he explained to Lacey. “The Mount Royal house and the ranch go to Sloane for her lifetime if she’s still married to him, and to Ty otherwise. The Coachella place and the one on Antigua stay in the family trust for all our use. Here’s the kicker, though. Earl gets to vote Ty’s shares, as well as Debbie’s and Sloane’s, to keep them from being subject to outside influence. No surprise Orrin doesn’t trust mere women to put the company first.”
“So I never was disinherited?” Ben rubbed his neck. “That’s news, anyway. But if Ty’s gone, do his shares get split to the rest of us or go to his mother?”
“Neither.” Bart put down his mug. “Whether Ty’s dead or alive, until the date of his twenty-first birthday Earl controls his shares. Only then do they go to Sloane.”
“Well, fuck,” said Ben.
Bart nodded gloomily. “Even though we don’t want to run the company, we don’t want Earl to have complete control, either.”
“He’ll drill this whole ranch in Year One,” Ben told Lacey. “And everywhere else he can get a permit.”
“This place is great the way it is,” she said. “Why would he ruin it?”
“He spent too much time in the U.S. operations,” said Bart. “Down there, cattle come second after oil, and the environment doesn’t even get on the list. Anyway, I’d better get to my email. If I don’t keep my finger on the office grapevine, Earl could bully some secretary into letting him into Orrin’s private files.” He pushed back his stool and took his mug to the sink. “Have a good climb, Lacey. Going to try the living rock this time?”
“No,” said Ben. “She’s not ready. Tomorrow, maybe.”
Lacey watched Bart leave the room, hoping to spot whether there was any hitch in his gait. If only he’d been wearing shorts, she’d have been absolutely certain he wasn’t her attacker, either. For now she could only go with her gut.
As she looked up, Ben gave a wry smile. “If you’re finished checking out my brother’s assets, can we talk about Andy?”
“You obviously spoke to her after I went to bed.”
“Yep. She said you guessed our three-way secret.” He looked at her with new suspicion. “You’re some detective, aren’t you? What else are you detecting around here?”
Yikes! Time to distract him from that line of questioning. “I fluked into that secret,” she told him, eyes fixed on his to radiate absolute honestly. “She’d said at our first meeting that she wanted to get pregnant, and your father gave Bart a hard time about not having any children yet. When I found out Bart had a male lover, I assumed he was bi.” She paused, but Ben didn’t comment. “Then I was messing with the cameras and caught a glimpse of her in a clinch with you in the workout room. I thought you were Bart until I ran into him two minutes later. When she told me last night that she’s ovulating this week, my first thought was that she was risking a lot by fooling around with you. And then it hit me. No detecting required.”
“Jeez,” he said, staring at her. “If you could put all that together so fast, who else might have guessed?”
“Probably nobody who didn’t realize you had shifted the camera in the workout room and rigged that door so it wouldn’t lock.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, that was me. I originally did it for Earl’s girls so they could sneak out to drink with the hands. I wish I’d realized sooner that you changed the camera angle, though. Pretty sneaky.”
“It’s my job to get those things done without disturbing the residents,” she said. “Honestly, what you three do is your business. If there is a child, it will be Orrin’s grandchild just as much as if Bart fathered it. But won’t a DNA test give it away? I mean, your father is about as paranoid as they come, going by all the spying he does around here. He wouldn’t pay without certification.”
“Identical twins, it’s a lot more specialized testing to determine paternity. Search it online if you don’t believe me.” He grinned ruefully. “We’d never have chanced it at the ranch normally, but with Orrin and Ty missing, we couldn’t exactly stay in the city, and it would be too noticeable if both Andy and I kept finding reasons to leave at the same time. So it was either skip this ovulation cycle entirely or improvise. As long as Orrin has no suspicion, he’ll get the basic test and be happy, and the baby will get a trust fund that will free it to pursue its own dreams.”
“Sounds like you believe your father will be back.”
“He’s indestructible.” He set down his mug and leaned toward her, his eyes hard. “But if you’re here as Orrin’s spy, and you screw this up for Andy and her child, it’s only fair to warn you that both Bart and I will become your worst enemies.”
Coming on top of last night’s attack, the threat should have triggered Lacey to an insane degree, but her pulse gave only a slight flutter. Her subconscious had apparently slotted Ben into the category of not-Dan men, those who didn’t attack women. Slightly dizzy from the realization that her guard could drop so far, so fast, she yanked it back up. Her subconscious was biased as shit. Just last year she’d almost gotten Dee killed by trusting the wrong person and not trusting someone who wasn’t a threat at all.
She met Ben’s eyes with her old calm police face firmly fixed.
“Andy’s baby has nothing to fear from me.” But you might.
“Call me Davey, darling,” the art director reminded Jan gently as he paused her video again. “‘Mister’ makes me feel terribly old. Now, this second bedroom. Which way does that window face? Is there a usable view, or would we have to sleeve that, too?”
Jan oriented herself on her sketch-map of the Harder house’s layout. “Um, northeast, approximately. There’s a paved parking area and a utility pole just outside the gate. Some screening trees, but sound-wise you’d be at the mercy of intermittent cars going along the road. The hill across the way sends all the noise back to the house.”
“Nothing irks dear Mylo quite like reshoots due to traffic noise.” Davey’s theatrical sigh wafted from Jan’s computer speakers. “I’m afraid we’re back on the hunt, darling. If Location sends you another couple of houses next week, can you cope?”
Next week meant she had several days to rest up. “Sure. With the previous caveat about stairs. Mylo knew my limits when he suggested the job, but …”
Davey finished the sentence for her. “But what that means in practical terms didn’t register with our cherished director. Oh, yes, dearie, you can count on me to remind them.” The video box vanished, and his sharp-angled face appeared on her monitor again. “If you don’t mind me asking, how did you get dragged into this infernal operation?”
“Over supper. I’m an old friend of Kitrin’s and was invited up to where they’re staying. Were staying. Mylo’s still there but … well …”
“Sweet little Kitrin.” Davey dabbed at the corner of his eye. “She was a humanizing influence, poor child. Is it true, this whisper that she was conked on the head, or simply a diversion from the even more awful truth that her anorexia and Mylo’s neglect killed her at last?”
“Did everyone know how fragile she was?”
“Dear me, yes.” Davey shook his head sadly. “She and the boy prince trailed after Mylo year after year, shoot after shoot, and still he managed to ignore them both for his new flavour of the month. He o
nly took them along this time because he wanted young Georgie.”
“Everyone knows about that, too? Poor Kitrin.”
“Hollywood, darling. Under California law, she could have taken him for half any day she chose. But Mylo’s lawyers would surely bring up the old scandal about the boy prince and —”
“What old scandal?”
Davey drew back physically from his end of the connection. “I shouldn’t have said. It was such a long time ago and not at all the boy’s fault.”
All Jan’s defender instincts flared up. “What wasn’t Michael’s fault?”
“If you will have it,” Davey said sternly, “on your head be it. The boy couldn’t have been more than five, and you know how they blurt things out.”
“What did he blurt?”
“Well, dearie, we were shooting on a back lot in Sacramento, and they were visiting. It was one of those overdone costume dramas where an heir’s parentage is in question. We’d just cut from a scene in which the vile accusation is hurled — with an inkwell, if I’m recalling correctly; yes, a fabulous repro Victorian affair, hideous to behold — and young Michael, as soon as the sound light went off, chirped up in his clear young voice, ‘Why doesn’t he spit in the cup like Daddy wants me to do?’ Kitrin near fainted on her feet, and Mylo smashed a repro oil painting, and oh, dearie, the language! We had to clear the set, calm the leads, and start over the next day. Minus Mylo’s beloved family.”
Jan could imagine the scene all too well: Kitrin utterly humiliated, trying to protect her son from what a DNA test would actually mean while simultaneously pacifying her furious egomaniac husband. Worse were the implications for Michael’s parentage now, and Kitrin’s death, as well. Mylo surely knew about Kitrin’s own father pressing that test, and how desperately hurt she had been, yet he’d been beating her down with the same accusation. Had Mylo taken one look at Rob that first day they met at the museum and decided he’d found the real father? Could he have managed to have his wife killed while he had an unshakable alibi?
“So did they ever get Michael’s DNA tested?”
“Now that I’m not so sure of, dearie. They never spoke of it in public again.” Davey glanced away from the monitor. “I’ve another call, dearie. If you really want to know, you could ask Tootsie Williams. She was about the only friend Kitrin had on any set.”
A chance to clear Rob or to place him squarely in the picture? “How would I find Tootsie?”
“She’ll find you if she’s willing to spill. I’ll tell her you’re an old friend of Kitrin’s and pass along your contact info. Chat to you next week, dearie. And lovely job on that video. I’d never know it was your first.”
Jan disconnected with her head buzzing. Kitrin’s preferred man was always the same type: dark haired, not too tall, and apt to take over her life and troubles. That description fit Mylo and Rob and … Chad. Was this the motive for Chad’s obsession with Michael? Had he too slept with Kitrin during that fertile week all those years ago? Something else she needed to talk over with Lacey, and probably with Rob, although knowing he had not one but two rivals for Father of the Year might be more than he could cope with right now. She’d wait until she heard from this Tootsie. Maybe the test had been done long since and shown Mylo to be the father, and all this hair-tearing over paternity was moot.
She set the laptop over on the coffee table, wiggled down the cushions until she was lying flat, and pulled her blindfold over her eyes. Time to set all this aside and rest up for the afternoon’s job.
Three hours later, Jan looked around the hallway. Did she have everything? Shoes, bag, cameras, phone, keys, water bottle. She checked her watch. Two hours until her next pill. Not perfect timing, since she’d have to eat with it. Snacks? She rummaged in her bag. Yes, the pill was there, and the snack to take with it. She’d be good. As long as she could survive daytime Calgary traffic. If only Rob could come with them, she’d feel much more confident taking Michael along. But he shouldn’t take another afternoon away from the office, not after being gone yesterday.
She was about to stand up and load up for the walk out to the van when her phone chimed. A text from Rob read: Do you remember Kitrin’s mother well? I only met her that one time, but someone who looked like my memory of her is in the museum now. If I can unobtrusively snap her, can you identify her?
Jan frowned. She wouldn’t be likely to recognize her friend’s mother after ten years of that woman’s daily wine consumption and her own intermittent brain impairments. She phoned Rob instead of texting back.
He answered at once. “Would you know her?”
“I have no idea. Is she there alone?”
“I think so. She’s been hanging around the atrium, mostly, looking out the front doors like she’s waiting for someone.” His voice shifted as he walked. “No, she’s gone now, on foot toward the bridge. Oh well, I might’ve been imagining.”
Maybe. He was under a lot of stress and, considering yesterday’s revelation — about which he still hadn’t discussed his feelings — understandably protective of Michael.
“How are you doing today?” she asked. “Have you heard from Bart yet? Will he clear you?”
“Nothing yet.”
She pictured him running his fingers through his hair, as he so often did when frustrated. He was probably not much good on the job today with all this hanging over him, but there was no way she could help except encourage him to vent whatever he was feeling, which he’d never spill while at work.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I have to head out now. I’m picking Michael up and we’re going to Calgary to look at more pictures. Orrin Caine’s house, if you can believe it. I thought that would be off the table when he went missing, but his housekeeper, or whatever she is, called me yesterday and said they would be there between about two and five today if I want to come and look over what they’ve got.”
“You’re taking Michael to Tyrone’s house? Have you told him yet that his friend is lost, maybe not coming back?”
“Not yet. I guess I have to, in case the housekeeper mentions it.”
“No shit. I don’t envy you that job. Are you sure you’re up for both driving and childcare in the same afternoon?”
“Not sure at all. But it’s got to be done if I’m going to be a good auntie to Michael plus keep on top of this work stuff. You know I can’t afford to let tasks pile up. I have to pace them out and check them off every day that I’m strong enough to do anything.”
He sighed. “If you’re really determined to do both, stop here on your way out. Unless something urgent is going on, I’ll take the rest of the afternoon off and drive you. I can call it scoping out Orrin’s collection for later loan potential.”
Relief made Jan’s hands shaky. “Gosh, would you really?”
“I know you want to prove yourself on this job, and Terry will never let you accept another if you have a big crash from it. And, well, I want to spend time with Michael while he’s here, even if I never get a clear answer about …” His voice trailed off. Not the time or place for letting those emotions run free. And absolutely not the time to tell him what she’d learned from Davey.
“I’ll collect Michael from Jake’s,” she said, “and be down at the museum in half an hour or so. And thanks. You’re my best friend for many good reasons.”
Jan hauled her stuff out to the van in better spirits. With Rob to drive her, she could afford the extra energy to really enjoy the outing instead of gritting her teeth to get through it. She drove up to Jake’s, stopped at the gates, and waited for the gate guard.
“Hi, Travis. How are you doing today? Chased off any reporters yet?”
Travis shook his head. “One helicopter buzzed us yesterday to film the pool area from above, but Mr. Wyman’s pilot told them off for infringing on his airspace or something. They cleared out fast, anyway. The RCMP does all the media briefings down at their Calgary headquarters, and Mr. Matheson went there this morning to make a public statement.” He glowere
d. “It was on the noon news. He slipped in a plug for his movie. Can you believe that? His wife’s dead four days and he’s all business. Hell, I’d be more broken up if my ex died, and we’ve been split five years. ’Course, I’m not humping the nanny three times a day to distract myself.”
“Does the whole place know about that?”
“No secret now.” He poked up the brim of his blue ball cap. “I’m supposed to ask what your business is here.”
“Picking up Michael for some art education. Do you know if he’s waiting at the house?”
Travis shook his head. “Haven’t seen him outside today. It’s really too bad, his mother drowning in the big pool. That was his favourite place.”
“Okay then, I’ll find him myself.”
Michael wasn’t waiting on the front steps as arranged. She checked her watch. Ten minutes early, despite the chat with Rob. She went indoors and settled into her wheeled armchair, stuffing down the memory of the last time she’d driven this chair around, looking for Kitrin. Michael wouldn’t be at the pool, so that was thankfully out. Would he be doing lessons with his nanny in the suite? Nobody answered her knock there. The library, games room, terrace, and workout area were empty, too. The house steward, tracked down in the laundry room off the kitchen, said Michael had mentioned the stables over lunch, and would Jan like him to phone over there or let her out the delivery entrance so she could cruise there in her chair?
She drove over there, pushing the wing-chair at full speed on the driveway, rocking a bit in the breeze. No Michael. The groom said he hadn’t been there since yesterday. She checked the helicopter pad, but the pilot, doing a preflight check, said he hadn’t been that way. She rolled on to the staff quarters and asked the cleaner, then followed the perimeter path past the tennis court and back to the big swimming pool’s gate. She paused there, trying to tell herself the waterfall didn’t sound menacing. It wasn’t a reminder of her desperate struggle to save Kitrin. It was just a waterfall. Some day she would be able to be here without that churning sense of failure and grief. But today was not that day.
Why the Rock Falls Page 21
