by Edie Claire
Leigh slid onto the top bag with ease, but then looked from her father to Gil uncertainly. She wasn't sure where to begin. Her father was always a rock in a crisis, but the subject matter here was delicate, to say the least. She thought a moment, then reminded herself that with Randall, the direct approach was best rewarded.
"There's no easy way to ask this, Dad," she began. "Mason Dublin—and quite possibly someone else—is trying to blackmail Gil. They're threatening to expose something damaging about Lydie's past, and we don't know what it is. We were hoping you might."
Randall's pale eyes didn't blink. Gil jumped in. "I've been working with a private investigator," he explained. "He hasn't been able to find anything incriminating about Lydie, but he hasn't interviewed the principals yet, either. I can't imagine that Lydie would have any dark secrets in her past, but if she does, I'm afraid they are in danger of resurfacing. I can't reach her or her sisters, and I have to make a decision by tonight whether to meet Mason Dublin's demands—or call his bluff."
Randall looked from Gil back to his daughter and began to drum his fingers on his knee. His expression had barely changed, which as always, Leigh found comforting. For the thousandth time, she wished she had inherited more of his cool and less of her mother's hysteria.
"Have you consulted the police?" he asked quietly.
Leigh threw a glance at Gil, who looked slightly defensive. "No," he answered. "I couldn't see any way to enlist their help without involving Cara." His voice turned serious. "This would kill her."
Randall studied Gil's face, then nodded solemnly. "I imagine that it would, yes."
An Akita in the oversized runs around the corner let loose with a long, undulating yowl. It was a mournful sound, and it frazzled Leigh's already frayed nerves. "Dad," she said impatiently, "you don't look all that surprised. Does this sound like something Mason would do? Is there anything to it?"
He took a deep breath, removed his glasses, and breathed on the lenses. Leigh prepared herself. Randall's cleaning of imaginary spots with the hem of his lab coat was one of his few distress signals.
"The only dark secret I know of in Lydie's past is her refusal to let anyone tell Cara the truth about Mason," he said quietly. "But it sounds like that's not what you're looking for."
Gil studied him for a moment, then shook his head. "I got the distinct impression that this secret would put Lydie in some kind of trouble with the law."
Randall nodded. "Then I'm afraid I can't help you, except to say I think it's probably a bluff."
Leigh watched the exchange with confusion. She was definitely missing something. "What do you mean, 'the truth about Mason?'" she asked her father. "We already know he's a two-timing, child-abandoning louse, and now we know he's a blackmailer. How much worse can he be?"
Randall replaced his glasses and faced his daughter squarely. "Lydie had a lot of hard decisions to make when she had Cara," he began. "She picked the course she thought was best for the child."
Leigh's stomach knotted uncomfortably, but she tried not to look as panicked as she felt, or her father might not go on. Surely it couldn't be possible. Had everyone in the family been lying—both to her and Cara—all these years? About what?
The shrill yaps of a Maltese burst out suddenly from the kennel room, and Leigh jumped nervously. Randall appeared not to notice. "I suppose there's no point in keeping the secrets anymore," he explained soberly, "at least not from the two of you. But I think you should let Lydie decide when and how to tell Cara—if it comes to that."
Gil nodded, and Randall went on. Leigh held her breath.
"Lydie hated the thought of Cara growing up thinking she'd been abandoned—but she was even more concerned about the damage Mason could cause by staying in his daughter's life. So she kicked him out. Then she concocted a story about his leaving her for another woman while she was still pregnant."
Randall cleared his throat and rubbed his eyes before continuing. "She thought it would be easier on Cara to believe that her father had never laid eyes on her—so she wouldn't feel like she had been personally rejected. But she didn't want Cara to fabricate unrealistic ideas about Mason's character, either. If the child could imagine her father as decent, she might try to look for him someday. Lydie wanted to avoid that at all costs."
The words sunk into Leigh's soul with a dull ache. What she had believed her whole life was all wrong. She tried to squelch the feelings of betrayal that brewed up inside her, but it was hard. And it would be a lot harder for Cara. "But Dad," she said determinedly, "if there was no other woman, why did Lydie kick Mason out? What did he do?"
Randall exhaled, long and hard. "There's no easy way to say this, honey. Cara's father was a wanted criminal."
Chapter 5
"Wanted?" Gil said suddenly, rising from his stool. The Maltese yapped on mercilessly, driving virtual nails into Leigh's throbbing temples. "You mean he committed a crime before Cara was born? But the PI didn't find any convictions until 1974!"
Randall paused a moment, then nodded. "He wasn't wanted in the sense that the police were looking for him by name, no. He took off without ever having been fingered as a suspect—at least as far as we knew. But he was guilty all right."
Leigh looked helplessly from her father to Gil. "Guilty of what?"
Randall faced her squarely. "Armed robbery."
She slid back farther on the dog-food bags, her composure deflating. Cara's father—brandishing a gun. It couldn't be true.
Randall watched her reaction with concern. "I can't claim I knew Mason all that well, but if it helps, my impression was that he did not have a violent nature. I always believed the robbery was more a matter of his getting in over his head with a bad actor."
"I didn't know of any violent crimes," Gil responded, his voice troubled. "The PI found only white-collar stuff on his record: bookmaking, counterfeiting, fraud. He was in and out of prison all through the seventies and eighties, but the last ten years or so he seemed to have mellowed."
Randall absorbed the information, the wrinkles on his brow deepening. "Mason had smarts of a sort, but he was headstrong, greedy, and just plain foolish. The crimes don't surprise me."
A silence descended over the dim office, and Leigh realized that her head was continuing to pound even though the Maltese was no longer barking. Cara's father was a criminal. And everyone in the family had known—from the very beginning.
Irrational anger began to replace shock, and she rose quickly. "Would you give me a ride back home now, Gil?" she asked, already starting out. "I need to do some things."
It was obvious from the looks on Gil and Randall's faces that they knew she had nothing in particular to do. But both seemed sympathetic. "We'll talk again when your mother gets home. All right, Leigh?" Randall said firmly. It wasn’t really a question.
Leigh nodded and sprinted up the stairs toward daylight. The air in the basement of the Koslow Animal Clinic had never smelled great, but she couldn't remember when it had felt more oppressive.
***
Gil dropped her off in front of her apartment building, and she walked slowly inside and up the stairs. Her mind was in a complete muddle, and she wished desperately that she could talk to Warren, but he was out and would be out all day. She should have been surprised, therefore, to open her door and find someone sitting on the couch. But she wasn't.
"Leigh!" Cara said eagerly, jumping up and rushing to meet her cousin. "I thought you'd never get back! Where on earth have you been? I've been going nuts trying to reach you. I can't get Gil, either—he didn't even take his cell phone. Just left some stupid note saying he'd be back 'later.' You have to tell me what happened!"
Leigh hadn't progressed more than a foot inside the door, and it didn't look like she was going to without using force. Needing at least three seconds to gather her thoughts, she pushed past Cara into the kitchen and extracted a diet cola from the refrigerator.
"Leigh!" Cara began again, her voice tinged with desperation. "Talk to me
!" A high-pitched sound echoed suddenly from behind the couch, and Cara turned toward it immediately. "Mathias? Are you okay?"
A chubby, strawberry-blond toddler rounded the corner of the couch, grinning broadly. He pointed at the top shelf of the entertainment center and squealed with delight. "Kitty up!"
Both women turned to look at the black Persian cat that had taken refuge between a pewter fox and a portrait of Warren's parents. She looked tired.
"You mustn't chase the kitty, Mathias," Cara said gently, handing him a toy from a bag by the couch. She turned back to Leigh. "I'm sorry. Warren told us we could wait here for you. You don't mind?"
Leigh shook her head and took a long swig of her drink. So Warren had been here, at least for a little while. It figured that she would miss him. She went to say hello to her honorary nephew, then sank down onto the couch. Her cousin dogged her every move like a shadow, and she was glad that she and Gil had had the foresight to get their stories straight on the way over.
When she finally took a breath as if to speak, Cara tensed visibly. She halted and started again. Please let this work. "There isn't any other woman, Cara. I think you know that. Gil loves you very much. But you were right, he has been hiding something."
The tension in Cara's face relaxed only slightly. "Hiding what?"
Leigh took another breath. "He's been trying to protect you from an ugly situation. He's being blackmailed."
Cara's eyes widened. "Blackmailed? By who? Over what?"
"We don't know who," Leigh lied, hoping for dispensation on the grounds that she was serving a greater good. "But someone claims they know something about your mother. Something that could get her into trouble with the law. And they want Gil to pay to keep it quiet."
For several seconds, Cara said nothing. Then she exploded with a semi-hysterical laugh. "My mother?" she said incredulously, rising. "My mother in trouble with the law? That's the craziest thing I ever heard of! How could Gil ever believe something like that were true? He should have just told the moron to shove it!" She shook her head and plopped back down on the couch. "I can't believe this. Of all the—" she turned suddenly, her questioning eyes fixed on her cousin. "He called the police, didn't he?"
Leigh swallowed. This part would be tricky. "Well, no. He thought it would be better, under the circumstances, if he had a private detective handle it. That's where he was Wednesday night, and last night too."
"A private detective?" Cara repeated, her voice carrying a thin note of sarcasm. "That's ridiculous. He didn't need to hide all this from me. If he'd just told me, I could have assured him it was a hoax." She gave her cousin a shrewd stare. "He was determined to keep this from me, wasn't he? That's why he was afraid to involve the police—he couldn't guarantee they'd keep me out of it."
Leigh said nothing. They both expected Cara would be upset with Gil. The secrecy thing was, after all, a little more difficult to explain with Mason Dublin omitted from the picture. But she appeared to be buying it. So far, so good.
"He was guarding the PO box because he didn't know how the blackmailer was going to make his next contact," Leigh explained carefully. "The PI's job was to see if there could possibly be anything to the threat. Gil figured there wasn't, but he was just being careful. And with your mother out of town—"
"My mother's being out of town only gave him more reason to ask me about it," Cara insisted angrily. "All this running around, wasting money, over something so stupid!" She paused a moment and stewed.
Leigh was glad that steam didn't actually flow from a person's ears, or her apartment would be filling with it. "Don't go postal on me, Cara," she chastised, attempting playfulness. "You don't have a cheating husband. You have a knight in shining armor who's gone to great lengths to keep his lady from distress. He's a man—he doesn't know any better. Give the guy a break, okay?" A part of her couldn't believe she was pleading her cousin-in-law's case, but there it was.
Cara sat stiffly as her son toddled up to her with a cat toy. She took the plastic mouse into her lap on Mommy autopilot, and a grinning Mathias took off immediately for more treasure. "I suppose you're right," she said finally, her voice calmer. "But I still don't understand why he hired a detective. Not unless he really did think my mother was an outlaw."
Leigh grinned. She knew her cousin well enough to know that the PI thing rankled as much as Gil's overprotectiveness. Not that Cara had anything against private detectives—she just fancied she could do a better job herself.
"And how did you find all this out?" Cara asked suddenly. "Did you confront him?"
"Um, no," Leigh said honestly. "It was the other way around. I followed him all the way from the farm back to here. He was coming to look for me."
"For you?"
Leigh wasn't surprised at the touch of annoyance in her cousin's voice. Gil had wanted info on his mother in law, and he had gone to everyone in the world but his wife. Ouch. Best to leave Randall out of the equation as well, obviously. "He just wanted to make sure I didn’t know any family secrets," she explained. "And he never did figure out that I was following him this morning, so if it's all the same to you, we can just forget that ever happened."
Cara came close to smiling, but not quite. "Fine. But I'm giving him hell about the rest of it." She rose and began to collect the toys Mathias had scattered. Cat toys on the coffee table, child toys in her bag. "Where is Gil now, anyway?" she asked pointedly. "And where did you go after you talked to him? Why didn't you call me?"
Leigh cursed her cousin's ability to spot fallacies. She probably would make a good PI. "You weren't home yet the first time I called," she lied again. "And I had some errands to run. Sorry it took so long. As for Gil, I believe he went to meet with the private detective again. I'm sure he'll be home soon."
The last part, at least, was true. Gil had wanted to show the detective the second blackmail letter, and they had to decide what to do about the drop-off tonight. Whether he leveled with Cara about that was up to him. She'd done her part of the lying.
Cara bundled up Mathias and his things, thanked Leigh for her efforts, and took off hastily. When the door had closed behind them, Leigh stretched out on the couch and was immediately pounced upon by a ball of black fur. The cat then jumped across onto the coffee table, sniffing the disturbed toys with what little nose she had. She threw her master an indignant glare and meowed in protest. "Don't be so territorial, Mao Tse," Leigh answered, pulling the imperial beast back onto her stomach. "All nice children share. At least he stayed out of your litter box this time, didn't he?"
Unappeased, the cat jumped away, and Leigh sat reluctantly back up. She was tired, but this was no time for a nap, willing cat or no. Her father's words kept floating back into her mind, and try as she might, she couldn't shelve them.
Cara's father was a wanted criminal.
She tried to picture Mason Dublin in her mind, as she had done so many times as a child. He was Cara's father, not hers, but in a way they had shared him—just as they had always shared Randall's attention. They had imagined him as a secret agent, or an international spy. Anything to explain why he had to leave and why he had to stay away. Any reason other than that he didn't care.
There were no pictures of him—not one. Lydie claimed she had had only a few, and had thrown those away. So Leigh and Cara had pictured him as they chose—one day tall and dashing, the next sweet and dimpled. It was Cara's dream that he would come back for her some day, that he would settle the little misunderstanding with Lydie, and that they would all live happily ever after. It had been Leigh's dream, too.
Foolishness.
Moisture welled up unexpectedly in the corners of her eyes, and she blinked it away, embarrassed. Who was Mason Dublin? Was he really nothing but a no-account, low-life criminal? A part of her refused to believe it, even with reality staring her in the face. She was a big believer in genetics, after all, and Lydie plus slimeball did not equal Cara. There must be more to the story.
She took a deep breath, which cam
e in with a shudder. This was all affecting her a good deal more than she'd like. It wasn't about her, after all. And she needed to keep a straight head for Cara.
She paced about the apartment for a few minutes, looking for a mundane chore to take her mind off the obvious. But distraction didn't work. She had too many questions about Mason Dublin. Questions that couldn't be answered until her mother got home. Unless…
Suddenly inspired, she grabbed her coat and keys and headed for the door. She did have a degree in journalism, even if she'd only worked in advertising. Surely she could find out a few things on her own. Starting with an objective account of a thirty-year-old armed robbery.
Maybe things weren't as bad as they seemed. Either way, she had to know.
***
Leigh was in no mood to talk to her father again, but desperate situations called for desperate measures. She had been naïve to assume she could find out anything about the crime Mason had committed when she wasn't even sure of the date, much less the other details. So after fifteen fruitless minutes of searching superficially through microfiche of the Pittsburgh Post, she found a payphone and swallowed her pride.
"I'm at the Carnegie Library in Oakland, Dad," she began tonelessly. "I want to look up the newspaper account of that armed robbery. Do you remember when it was? What bank?"
Randall Koslow paused only a moment before giving his typical calm, no-nonsense manner of reply. "It was in 1970, around Christmas. A bank in Butler—I'm not sure what it was called then. Bank names change." He cleared his throat. "Are you sure you want to pursue this? I'm sure your mother can answer all of your questions tomorrow."
"I'm sure," Leigh said simply, knowing her father wouldn't press the issue. He hadn't raised her from an infant without knowing that once she got a mission in her head, tomorrow was never soon enough. "I'll be over as soon as Mom gets home," she continued. "Thanks, Dad."
