by Meg O'Brien
She didn’t answer, and the deputy looked at Paul.
“This is Lacey Allison,” Paul said heavily. “Otherwise known as Angela Bradley. She was once my daughter.”
“Yeah? Well, the way I hear it, she’s the one who took a nick out of the side of Al Duarte’s head.”
He turned to her. “Al says to tell you that Lazybones is still sleeping off whatever drug you gave her, but when she wakes up she’ll love that red-feather toy.”
He squinted as if trying to remember the rest of the message. “He said something about a pet-shop bag in your apartment, and you not having a pet. Then he remembered that Mr. Bradley, here, was supposed to get Lazybones something red and flashy. He figured you must have done the shopping for him. But when he saw the toy in his closet, he realized it was you who shot him and left that feather as a calling card.”
The deputy shook his head. “Funny thing, though. You couldn’t have left a more obvious clue. Unless, of course, you didn’t expect anyone to be left alive after tonight to point a finger at you. Is that it? You were going to make sure Duarte, and everyone here tonight, was dead?”
“Aren’t you the smart little boy,” Angela said scornfully. “Or, maybe I wanted to be caught. Isn’t that what some idiot shrink might say?”
“I don’t know about shrinks,” the deputy said. “But if getting caught is what you wanted, we’re more than happy to oblige.”
While one of the deputies kept an eye on Angela, the other talked to Paul, Gina and Rachel. Paul filled him in on what had happened earlier, and why they were there in the Albrights’ house.
When Paul was finished the deputy said, “We’ll need all of you to come into the office and make a statement about what happened here tonight. We’re right down the road, so if you could stop by on your way home to Seattle, that would help.”
Paul realized they were being unusually accommodating, probably at Al’s request.
“Of course,” he said. “I know where it is. Could you give us a little while?”
“No problem,” the deputy said, standing.
He and the other deputy began to lead Angela out of the room, pushing her slightly ahead of them when she shook their hands off her arms. “Don’t touch me!” she said angrily. “Get your filthy hands off me.” There was an edge to her voice that sounded like tears.
“Wait,” Paul said. “Wait, just a minute. Please.”
They paused, and Paul said to Angela, “I still don’t understand why you did it. Why did you have to set me up that way? Why—” He broke off, his voice so heavy with confusion and grief, he couldn’t get the words out: Why an affair? “These past few months,” he said. “Couldn’t you have gotten your revenge some other way?”
“Sure,” Angela said. “I could have done just about anything. But this way, Paul…this way was especially sweet. You want to know why?”
Paul didn’t answer.
“Well, I’ll tell you anyway,” she said with a smile as brittle as ice. “This way, Paul? I got to have you in a way Rachel never could.”
Paul, Gina and Rachel were alone in the room for the first time.
“I don’t think I can get in the car and just drive home right now,” Paul said. He was shaking all over, and he could barely look at Gina. “You think the Albrights would mind if I made some coffee?”
She shook her head and said in a monotone, “No. They won’t mind.”
Paul’s heart ached in a way he had never thought possible. From this night on, it was over. Nothing would ever be the same between him and Gina again.
“Why don’t we all go to the kitchen?” he suggested tiredly. “We can talk, try to get our energy back before we leave.”
“I’ll make the coffee,” Gina said, her voice cold and distant. “I definitely do not want to talk.”
Paul looked at Rachel, who was sitting on one of the two sofas and hadn’t moved since the moment Angela was taken out. She sat with her head and shoulders bowed.
“They should have arrested me,” she said softly. “It’s just like before. I was the one.”
Paul sat beside her and took her hands. “You didn’t do anything, sweetheart. You just tried to stop her from using the gun.”
“I mean…for killing Dr. Chase,” she said, crying. “They took her away, and it should have been me.”
Gina came to sit at her other side, putting an arm around her shoulders. “Don’t say that, honey. That’s just something Angela said to hurt you. It can’t be true.”
Rachel turned agonized eyes on Gina, who felt a shaft through her heart. “How do you know that? I don’t even know it! All I remember is pulling out that steak knife and screaming at him. But Mom, I wouldn’t have blocked out whatever happened next if I hadn’t done it! I mean, why would I?”
“I can’t answer that,” a male voice said from the doorway. “But you didn’t kill him, Rachel.”
Paul whirled around. “Daniel?”
His manager from Soleil stepped into the room, his expression that of one who carried far too heavy a load for someone so young.
“I’m so sorry, Paul. I knew Angela was coming here tonight, and I should have warned you. I tried…but then I wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do.”
The young man turned to Rachel. “You told Angela you remembered a boy from that night in Dr. Chase’s room. That was me, Rachel. I’m the one who killed him.”
22
Rain pounded on the roof and slapped against the windows. Gina turned the heat on, and Paul made coffee, scrounging in the Albrights’ cupboards for sugar and cups. Neither he nor Gina touched in the kitchen, or spoke to each other. It was as if Angela was still here in their midst, mocking them both and laughing that terrible spiteful laugh.
When the coffee was ready, they carried it into the dining room, where Rachel and Daniel were sitting at the table. Daniel was pale and shivering. He had witnessed the whole scene with Angela, he told them, and he’d waited on the terrace for the deputies to leave.
“Angela called me earlier today, and told me she was finally going to meet her parents,” he said. “I didn’t know what was going on, Paul. I hoped she was just coming here to see you for the first time after all these years. That’s what she said. But the past few days, especially with Rachel disappearing…” He shook his head. “She swore she didn’t have anything to do with that, but I was worried about the way she was acting. Not really crazy, but like she was right on the edge. I thought I should come up here and make sure you were okay.”
He lifted the hot mug of coffee to his lips with shaking hands, then put it down without drinking it. “I got here just before Angela arrived. When I heard her say all those things to you, I was shocked. I had no idea you knew her…” He looked briefly at Gina, and flushed. “That you knew her now, I mean. At first it seemed like a family thing that I shouldn’t interrupt. Then she pulled that gun, and you all went after her, and suddenly the sheriffs were here…”
Paul set his own coffee down with a thud and said shortly, “Back up. You said you were the boy Rachel remembered at Saint Sympatica’s. And you say you killed Dr. Chase? What are you doing with Angela now? And why did you come to work for me? Daniel—who the hell are you?”
Daniel flinched, but then squared his shoulders and answered Paul’s questions. “In the orphanage,” he said, “I was Billy Rix, but I changed my name to Daniel Britt when I left Saint Sympatica’s five years ago. The police had cleared all of us of Dr. Chase’s murder, so it wasn’t that I was trying to hide—except from myself, I guess. I was truly horrified by what I’d done. At the same time, I couldn’t help telling myself I’d done the other kids at Saint Sympatica’s a favor by getting rid of that…” He looked at Paul as if asking for understanding. “He really was a monster, you know. This isn’t a justification. I’m just trying to tell you the way it was. When I left there a few months later, I wanted to forget everything that happened there, so I started by giving myself a new name.”
Paul stared at th
e young man he had thought was oddly secretive about his past. Now he knew why. So many lies these past few months. Daniel, Gina, Angela…me. Even Rachel. Who of us, he wondered, is blameless?
“How did you come to kill Dr. Chase?” Paul asked.
“I’d been more worried than usual about Angela,” Daniel said. “She turned sixteen that night, and Chase had promised her a ‘special celebration.’ That was the way he put it—the nights she spent with him. As if it was something special that she’d look forward to—”
He broke off, his voice failing, then began again. “I knew Angela had reached a point where she couldn’t take it much longer. To be honest, I couldn’t either.”
He sighed and rubbed his hands over his face in a way that reminded Paul of himself. “I was sitting outside on the steps when Rachel came walking up the drive that night. I was older than most of the other kids, and sitting out there at night, looking at the stars, was the only kind of peace I ever got from the little kids playing and all the noise. I asked Rachel—who I didn’t know then, of course—what she was doing there. She said she was looking for her sister, Angela. There was only one Angela at Saint Sympatica’s, and I knew Chase had her in his room. I’d actually been sitting on those steps praying for some kind of sign, some way to help her, when Rachel appeared.”
He turned to Rachel. “It seemed as if my prayers had been answered. I thought that if you saw what was going on, you might blow the whistle on Chase.”
“Why didn’t you do that?” Rachel asked, an edge of hostility in her voice.
“I tried, believe me. Many times. The Ewings were no help at all. They were afraid that the board might get wind of any complaints by the kids, and they’d be fired for not taking care of them properly. Mrs. Ewing even accused me of being ‘jealous’ of the time Dr. Chase spent with Angela.” His voice took on a bitter edge. “She called me a pathological liar, and I found out later that she even put that in my records there. That’s why no one wanted to adopt me.”
Rachel stared at him. “That must have been awful for you,” she said softly. “People not believing you.”
“It was,” he said, “but only because it kept me from helping Angela. I knew I was getting out of there soon, and I hated the thought of leaving her there alone with Chase.”
Looking at Paul, he said, “I took Rachel to Chase’s room, and waited outside in the hall. I guess Chase had forgotten to lock his door, because Rachel didn’t even knock, she just opened the door and walked right in. A minute or so later I heard her cry out, not too loud, but a soft, anguished kind of cry, and I ran in there. I saw Angela naked on the bed and Chase with his hand on Rachel’s throat. Rachel had a knife, and Chase’s other hand grabbed her wrist and made her drop it. I grabbed it off the floor and went after him, and…” He shook his head. “I don’t really think I knew what I was doing until it was over.”
Paul looked at Daniel as if seeing him for the first time. “He was cut, Mrs. Ewing said. Mutilated! You did that?”
“No! No, I would never—”
“Then who?”
Daniel’s look was one of misery.
“Angela,” Paul said.
He nodded. “She told me to get Rachel out of there, and I left her alone with him while I sneaked Rachel through the grounds and outside the gate.”
He turned to Rachel. “I heard you say a little while ago that you didn’t remember actually killing him. Like I said, you couldn’t have. It was me.”
Gina spoke up for the first time. “You might have saved her a lot of heartache if you’d told her that sooner!”
“I’m sorry. I really am,” Daniel said. “I only knew Rachel from what Angela told me about her, and I didn’t know that she didn’t remember. I always wondered why she didn’t tell someone about that night, though, and why the police didn’t come after me.”
“About that,” Gina said, her eyes narrowing. “Why on earth would you come to work for Paul, if you knew he was Rachel’s father and that you might run into her here? What were you going to do if she recognized you when she came home for Christmas?”
“I don’t think I knew for sure. But Soleil is a big place. I guess I hoped that she wouldn’t see me there, at least not at first.”
Rachel shook her head. “It wouldn’t have mattered. I just remember a boy. I don’t even recognize you now, Daniel.”
“You were in a state of shock that night,” he said. “Maybe it’s best you don’t remember.”
He stopped and reached for his coffee, but again he didn’t touch it. Instead, he folded his arms against his chest as if to protect himself. “There are things I wish I didn’t remember,” he said softly. “When I got back to Chase’s room, Angela was…she was there, and she was…”
He looked imploringly at Paul and Gina. “Please don’t judge her too harshly. He’d been at her so long.”
“She told us he’d been at you, too,” Paul said quietly.
Daniel’s face turned beet-red.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Paul said. “You were a victim as much as Angela.”
“Speaking of Angela,” Gina said, her tone not quite so kindly, “I notice you haven’t answered the first part of my question. Why did you come to work for Paul in the first place?”
“I went to work for Paul,” Daniel said, “because Angela asked me to. Given what’s happened, of course, I realize now how wrong that was. I wish I’d told you sooner about her, but I swear I didn’t know what she was planning, or anything she was doing.”
Paul’s tone was disbelieving. “So you were innocent in all this,” he said.
“I don’t blame you for not believing me,” Daniel said. “There’s no reason in the world that you should. But I swear to you, this is the absolute truth. Angela contacted me one day last summer. We’d kept in touch over the years, but only on the phone, and only once a year or so. I hadn’t actually seen her since we left Saint Sympatica’s five years ago. Then, when she called last summer, she asked me if I’d do her a favor. She said she wanted to get in touch with the family who’d adopted her when she was a baby, but she didn’t know what they were like now. She thought they might still hate her.”
Gina gasped. “Hate her?”
Daniel nodded. “That’s the way she put it. She always said she’d been taken back to Saint Sympatica’s because the people who adopted her hated her.”
“And you believed that?” Paul said.
“The thing is, I didn’t know you then, so I didn’t have any reason not to believe her,” Daniel said. “Especially when she swore that you and your wife knew what Dr. Chase was doing to her, and didn’t care. It sounds hard to believe, of course, but Angela had a way of making you trust her.”
Gina flicked a look at Paul, but he couldn’t meet her eyes. She turned away.
“Last summer,” Daniel continued, “I was between jobs, and Angela called and asked me to offer to work for you as an intern. She said most people won’t turn down an intern who shows a real interest in a business, because they don’t have to pay them.”
“And you just willingly agreed to this?”
“Not right away. But even though I’d always done my best to take care of Angela at the orphanage, I felt guilty that I hadn’t been able to keep Chase from her entirely. I mean, I’d sidetrack him somehow a lot of times, but it wasn’t always possible—”
He broke off, swallowed and began again, looking at Gina as he spoke. “I know Saint Sympatica’s had a reputation for being good with children. But that was before they lost funding from private donors and had to set up a board whose job it was to bring in government funding. Every t had to be crossed and every i dotted. They couldn’t afford a scandal. Outsiders might not have seen the change in the Ewings, but I was one of the few kids old enough to know what was going on. They were nervous wrecks.”
Paul agreed. “I saw some of that when I was there last week. But, to get back to you, what were you supposed to do when you came to work for me?”
“Well, in the first place, I thought I’d only be doing that for a couple of weeks, just until I could figure out what kind of people you and your wife were, and if you’d welcome Angela back. But it didn’t take even a week to know that what Angela had said about you couldn’t be true. I liked and respected you, Paul, and I love the business. I really wanted to keep working for you. So when you offered me a salary and a permanent position, I just couldn’t turn it down.”
“What did Angela think of that?” Paul asked.
“She thought it was great. In fact, she encouraged me to stay on.”
“And why wouldn’t she?” Paul said angrily. “It put you in a perfect position to—” He broke off. “My God! You let her in that night. She is the one who destroyed the Crystal Cave, and you’re the one who let her in!”
Daniel flushed. “Paul, I swear to you, I didn’t think she would do anything like that. I thought she just wanted to look at things, maybe even touch them, just to feel closer to you.” Tears formed in his eyes. “I never dreamed she was capable of anything like that. I thought she really loved you and Gina. That’s why I let her in, and when she asked me to leave her alone there, I thought it would be all right. It wasn’t until the next morning—” He wiped beneath his eyes with a thumb. “I’m sorry, Paul. I’ve been such a fool! I swear, if you let me I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you.”
Paul’s heart softened. “Well, don’t feel too bad,” he said. “You weren’t the only one she fooled.”
It was then he wondered if Daniel knew, and had known all along, about his affair with Lacey.
Daniel answered the question before he voiced it. “She never told me she had made contact with you, Paul. In fact, I thought it was odd that she’d go to the trouble of having me work for you, and then not even get in touch with you after I told her that you and your wife were good people. But then there was that business with…with the travel desk.”
“Oh?”
“She asked me to bring it to you and tell you someone had left it on the counter in the lobby. It seemed a harmless enough white lie at the time. I thought she must have put a note in it for you, as a way of getting in touch with you. A surprise.”
