Evil Secrets Trilogy Boxed Set

by Vickie McKeehan

  Baylee didn’t have to be told twice. She’d been saved again. When Baylee scooted out the back door, Tanya calmly touched William’s sleeve, placed her other hand on his chest, and stared into his glassy eyes. “You can’t keep doing this. You need to get some counseling, and stop the drinking, stop hitting her.”

  “I don’t want her around that Stevens woman. She’s the very devil. I don’t want Baylee hanging around Kit, either. I don’t care how long they’ve known each other. You let her go down there behind my back. I know you do; don’t even try to deny it. And I won’t have it; do you hear me? You work for me, something you seem to forget often enough around here. You see to it Baylee doesn’t leave this house tonight. And stop Kit from coming down here so much. Let me run my own damn house for once.”

  “William, the girl comes down here most of the time just to get out of the house. Don’t begrudge Kit a place to come to when that woman gets mean, which is almost all the time. You have no idea what that woman is capable of.” Tanya knew only because Baylee had confided a secret in her, but she wouldn’t break that confidence, especially with William. “And you know Alana doesn’t allow Kit’s friends in the house that often. That means Baylee doesn’t go down there as much as you think she does. You’re being unreasonable.”

  He grumbled and sauntered out of the kitchen, wobbling his way out of the room, and holding on to the wall for support. Tanya heard rather than watched him stagger down the hallway to his study, where she knew he’d be passed out in five minutes time and would probably never remember this conversation when he sobered up.

  But despite that, Tanya sighed in relief. It tore her up inside how that man treated his only daughter, his only child. Tanya looked around and saw Baylee standing in the doorway, her aquamarine eyes darting around the kitchen in fear before she set foot inside the room, as if scouting it out.

  “Coast is clear, honey. He’s probably already asleep. Lord, that man is a piece of work. If I’d known he’d picked up the bottle I never would’ve gone to the store when I did.”

  “I hope he passes out and never wakes up,” Baylee said hatefully, touching the cheek where she’d been smacked.

  “You hush up talk like that. I know you have every right to feel the way you do, but you don’t go saying things like that about your father.” Tanya gently touched the girl’s cheek. “That needs ice.” She reached into a kitchen drawer, pulled out an ice bag, walked to the freezer, and began filling it up. After tightening the cap, she held it out to Baylee’s face.

  Baylee responded by wrapping her arms around the petite black woman, a woman she thought of like a mother. “Thanks, Tanya. What would I do without you?”

  “I’m not going to let you find out, child. I’ve been taking care of you since you were born. You’re like my own daughter. And I’m always going to be here for you. You might want to stay clear of Kit’s house for a while though. Who knows, when he wakes up he may not even remember this rant, but to be on the safe side better not go down there, especially today. Is Kit doing okay these days?”

  Baylee shuddered, remembering that just a month earlier Kit had gone through a horrible ordeal. Baylee snuggled further into Tanya’s embrace. At least she didn’t have a mother like Kit had, a woman that would shoot her own daughter. Kit had sworn Baylee and Quinn to secrecy. But it had been too heavy a burden for Baylee, and she’d been so scared for Kit that one night last week, after hiding from another one of her father’s rages, in a vulnerable frame of mind, she’d confessed to Tanya the secret of what Alana had done.

  Alana had shot her own daughter with a .22 caliber pistol. Thank God the bullet had hit Kit’s shoulder and nothing vital. She had a bad scar on her shoulder, but at least she was alive. Baylee hated to think of Kit dying. Even though Alana hadn’t even seen the need to take Kit to a hospital for treatment, she had found a doctor who came to the house to remove the bullet.

  Money, it seemed, could buy silence, even when it involved the shooting of a child.

  Baylee slowly came awake, disoriented, sweating. At least it wasn’t the other dream, the one where she saw her mother pushed down the stairs. She got up to wash her face. As soon as she opened the door to her room, she noticed a light on at the end of the hall.

  Someone was in the living room. Before she rounded the corner, she saw the flicker of light like that of a computer, heard the typing of keys. From the doorway she saw Dylan, who looked deep in concentration, hard at work.

  “I always heard Internet porn was addictive, but it’s two-thirty in the morning; shouldn’t you give it a rest?”

  Dylan jumped out of his skin. “God. Scare me next time, why don’t you. It’s not porn.” He narrowed his eyes, staring. “What are you doing awake? You look upset.”

  “Just a dream. It’s nothing.”

  He suddenly looked uncomfortable. “You want to talk about?”

  “Childhood memories. I’ve had it before. Really, it’s nothing.” Baylee noticed that now he looked distressed. “What’s wrong, Dylan?”

  “I’m not sure how you’ll take this. But…I did some research. I was planning to tell you in the morning.”

  “Tell me what.”

  “Were you aware your father never got a divorce from your mother?”

  “What? Of course they were divorced. She left him when I was about three. They were divorced the following year.”

  “Was that your father’s official story?”

  “I guess. No. Wait. Tanya told me. I think. If they weren’t divorced that year, it was definitely the next.”

  “Not according to public records.” He hit the computer keys in rapid-fire succession and pointed to the screen. “Here, take a look.”

  Her eyes locked on the screen as she read the information from a public records database he’d managed to find. The website confirmed there was a marriage between William Scott and Sarah Moreland, but an additional search found no divorce. Even staring at the screen, she was adamant. “Well, the records are wrong.”

  “I don’t think so.” When she started to object, he explained, “Hear me out. If your mother disappeared like he said, why wouldn’t he get a divorce? Have you ever considered…” This part was a lot tougher.

  “Considered what?”

  “What if your mother didn’t run off with anyone? What if something happened to her?”

  Baylee went white.

  “I know she was a local girl; I looked up her bio. Does she still have family living in L.A.?”

  Baylee’s hand went to her mouth. “Who asked you to do this?”

  “No one. But something isn’t right about the story. Haven’t you ever wondered why your mother never got in touch with you over the years? Twenty-two years is a long time to go without ever trying to communicate with your only daughter.”

  Baylee shrugged, trying to look bored with the entire conversation. “She probably had a dozen kids with the tennis pro. They’re probably living in a French villa somewhere growing grapes, getting fat off the land. I got the impression from Dad she was quite selfish. She didn’t want me. Why can’t you accept that, Dylan? I have, years ago.”

  But her bravado came out weak.

  For the first time since he’d known her Dylan realized she wasn’t being honest. Her performance didn’t ring true but rather came off more like a defense mechanism that kicked in to hide the hurt.

  “I thought you might want to know where she is, find her. If she’s alive wouldn’t you want a chance to question her about why she left? Find out her reasons for staying away all this time? Or, maybe she couldn’t for some reason contact you. If it were me, I’d want to know. Either way, don’t you want to know the truth?” He turned back to the computer. “By the way, who was the tennis pro? They don’t mention his name on the website I found.”

  The question caught her off guard. She looked even more annoyed. When she’d moved out of her father’s house at sixteen, she’d tried to find out where her mother had gone, wanting to give her a second c
hance if she could locate her. She’d always been curious, more curious than her father that was for sure. But even though she’d tried, she’d found nothing on her own, not a trace of Sarah Moreland.

  But did she have to go down that road again now, visit every time she’d been fragile to the point of breaking? She didn’t like to think about those times and especially not with this man. He seemed to always see her at her very worst, her most vulnerable. She took a seat on the sofa and drew her legs up to her chest, so she could rest her chin on her knees.

  But Dylan seemed to understand. “You’ve looked before, haven’t you?”

  “When I was sixteen, I found out she had a sister living in Glendale. Karen Nash. One Saturday morning I talked Kit and Quinn into jumping in the car, going over there with me to play Nancy Drew, maybe see if this woman, who was also my aunt, had any idea where her sister had disappeared to. I hoped she might know where my mother was living and with whom, maybe give me a last known address, a phone number, something, anything.”

  Baylee bit her lip. “It was a waste of gas. Karen swore up and down she hadn’t heard a word from Sarah in more than thirteen years. I remember I didn’t believe her. I thought she was covering up. My mother just left me, Dylan. It’s hard to understand how a mother could be so callous, but it happens.”

  As Dylan listened, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Didn’t she see that her father’s story kept getting weaker and how feeble the story sounded in the first place?

  “Does it? Think about it, Baylee. Sarah Moreland runs off after putting you to bed one night and no one, I mean no one, not even her sister, not her little girl, not her husband, ever hear from her again. Not once in twenty-two years. Honestly, and you may get mad at me for this, but I find your father’s story bordering on the unbelievable. What was the name of the tennis pro, Baylee?”

  “He was French. Luc Delaine. I got that tidbit from nosing around the tennis club one summer. And enough time had passed that people were willing to dish the dirt, so to speak, on what they remembered about their affair. It was kind of a folk story by that time, these two lovers running off so they could be together, leaving behind her movie career, a famous director-husband, and her own daughter. Exactly where are you going with this, Dylan?”

  He turned his back on her and started hitting his laptop keys. Right before her eyes, Surfer Boy turned into a genuine computer geek.

  “Let’s see what we can find out about this Luc Delaine.” After several searches, Dylan sighed. “The man seems to have disappeared right along with your mother. What little bio I found said he once had a promising tennis career and then just vanished. If the couple got to Europe, why didn’t the tennis pro pick up his career where he left off? There isn’t so much as a mention of him finishing in the top hundred tennis competitions after the rumor hits that they run off together. Looks like Luc Delaine disappeared right along with Sarah Moreland.”

  “Wasn’t that the point? Secretively run off in the middle of the night to be together, start a new life.”

  “You’re kidding, right? You mean these two were so in love they gave up their fantastic lives so they could be together? And do what? Your mother never went near another movie set in Europe. Luc Delaine stayed away from all competitions and never walked onto a tennis court again? Come on, Baylee. Think about it. Sarah deserts her acting career. Luc drops tennis like a hot potato. His bio says he was once ranked number four in the world. How is it that these two would give up everything they loved to be together? Everything. Does that make sense to you, Baylee?”

  She had to agree when he said it like that it sounded incredible. “Not a bit.”

  “Have you ever point-blank asked your father what really happened?”

  “Now who’s being unrealistic? Every time someone inadvertently mentioned my mother’s name, he always went ballistic. His attitude about it made questions impossible since he made it clear the subject was off limits. I didn’t dare bring it up.”

  “That’s convenient.”

  Her brows knitted together. “It is, isn’t it?” She gnawed on the side of her mouth. “You think he might have done something to her?”

  “Maybe. Somebody did.”

  “You know I’m not sure it’s worth mentioning, but… I’ve had this dream ever since I was little. Never mind, the idea’s crazy.”

  “Go ahead. Tell me.”

  She told him how the dream always played out and never varied. How her mother had been arguing with two women upstairs on the landing. How in the dream she’d overheard the argument take place outside her bedroom door. Then she repeated what she’d seen after she’d crept to the door and peeked out, what the two women had looked like, one blonde, the other with dark hair. “And for some reason, in the dream, the blonde always reminds me of Kit’s mother. Well, not Kit’s real mother, Gloria, but Alana. But you know what I mean we just found that out. The blonde woman in my dream always looked like Alana. I always thought the other one with dark hair as the evil, wicked witch.”

  Dylan sat there looking at her, stunned. “Did your father know Alana?” Then he answered his own question, as if he’d just worked it out in his mind. “Of course he did. They lived five houses down from each other. They were neighbors. Were they friends that you know of? And that bio I read mentioned Sarah’s role in Growing Up Dead playing Alana’s younger sister.”

  “Get real, Dylan. Dad and Alana were not friends. Dad hated Alana. Now that I think about it, he really hated her. You know, every time he got drunk he’d forbid me to see Kit or play with her; he didn’t even want me around Kit because of the way he felt about Alana.”

  Dylan turned back to the computer. In less than five minutes, Baylee saw the information appear on the laptop screen. Over his shoulder, she began to read aloud from a list of William Scott’s film credits. Dylan pointed to the part he wanted her to focus on.

  “Alana made three films with my father directing. In one of them Sarah Moreland played Alana’s little sister. They all worked together once. They were neighbors. What does that prove?”

  “It proves they all knew each other rather well, and apparently your father and Alana had some sort of falling out. Baylee, what if your dream isn’t a dream at all? What if you actually heard your mother arguing with two women, one of which might have been Alana, and she pushed your mother down the stairs?”

  Baylee looked at him wide-eyed, and then shook her head. “No. In the dream Alana slaps my mother, fights with her, but it’s the woman with dark hair who actually does the shoving. I’m sure of that.”

  “Okay, but Alana was there. Think. Who was the other woman?”

  It didn’t take Baylee five seconds to pull in the image. Horrified at the revelation, her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh. My. God. The woman looked like a young Jessica Boyd with long black hair. She had dark, deep-set brown eyes. Is it possible?” She got up to pace. “This is crazy, Dylan. I feel like I’m getting caught up in a hallucination. Are we really having this conversation?”

  “We are. When did you say you started therapy?”

  “Freshman year of college. Dr. Strasburg. Santa Monica. Every Tuesday. I was seventeen. Why?”

  “Did you ever mention your dream to this Dr. Strasburg?”

  “Sure. Kit and Quinn and I talked a lot about our dreams, good dreams, bad dreams, disturbing dreams, and definitely our recurring dreams. It was all part of group.”

  “Could you go back there, get him to open up his files, maybe get a transcript of what you said back then?”

  “Sure, but why?”

  “I’m thinking when you first started talking about it, remembering the details your memory might be much clearer when you were younger, from a much younger perspective than it is now. Because, frankly, what you remember now is a little jaded. As we get older, our memories fade, lose their clarity. It might be worth it to take a look at his files.”

  Impressed, Baylee let out a sigh. “You really are good at this, you know that?”
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  He grinned. “Just part of the full service treatment here at the Burke B & B.” His eyes narrowed as he suddenly looked, really looked at what she was wearing. How had that gotten past him? His gaze fell on the thin cropped top and the pair of incredibly short shorts.

  Baylee saw him swallow as his eyes descended on her body, at same time trying to stay fixed on her mouth.

  “You can’t walk around like that and expect me not to notice.”

  “I’m…sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I saw the light in here and just…”

  “Don’t apologize. You know this is going to happen as well as I do. I called Melissa this morning after you read me the riot act. She won’t be calling here anymore, at least not to―go out.”

  “Dylan, that isn’t necessary. I didn’t mean for you to break up with her.”

  “I didn’t. Break up with her that is. We were never together. You said you remembered how the game was played, Baylee. Fuck buddies. That’s all it was.” It shamed him to admit that.

  “I got that. But if you’re expecting me to fill that role…”

  He stood up and stressed, “Don’t insult me or you. There’s something more going on here. Don’t deny it. What happened this morning was inevitable. I don’t like the fact that I’ve become a little too careless with people.”

  “You mean women.”

  “Yeah, I guess I do. If it would put your mind at ease, I’ll get tested.”

  “Tested? You’d do that?”

  “If that’s what it takes. I had an insurance exam in January. Jake insists all his key employees have one every year. They took blood, the whole package. It all came back fine. But since that was months ago, I’ll go in for another blood test first chance I get.”

  He stepped closer. “We’re attracted to each other, right?”

  “Yes.”