He liked her. His first contact with the Fortune family had been to investigate Kate’s death—her plane had gone down in the jungle when a hijacker tried to take over. A body had been found and everyone had assumed it was Kate’s, but she had been thrown from the wreckage and rescued by a South American tribe. When she’d recovered she’d slowly made her way back to Minneapolis—just in time for the reading of her will. She’d been afraid the attacker would try to kill her again or use her family against her if she revealed herself to them so she had only contacted Sterling Foster, the family lawyer and an old friend. She’d spent the next few years watching her family from afar and doing a little matchmaking. But there was no way she’d let her eldest son be accused of murder without being there to support him.
From their first meeting, she’d won both Gabe’s admiration and his respect. And despite certain similar personality traits in her daughter, Kate Fortune was a reasonable, rational straight shooter of a woman, easy to be around, because a man knew just where he stood with her.
Surprising him not at all, Kate was running on a full head of steam even at 7:00 a.m., and had coffee poured before he even sat down. Considering that she was the owner of a cosmetics empire, her new office—she hadn’t made everyone rearrange themselves upon her return—was distinctly all business and no froufrou. The walls were teak and the carpet was a luxurious Oriental, but the desk and furniture were no-nonsense, and Kate was wearing a practical lab coat.
“How long have you been up and working?” he asked her.
She chuckled. “What I do is play, not work, Gabe…and I’ve been here since five. I love the early-morning hours. No phones, no interruptions. You can’t get anything good done during normal business hours.” She propped a pair of gold-rimmed glasses on her nose. Typically, she wasted no time. “So what do you have for me?”
He filled her in on every lead he’d tried—both the blind alleys and the successes. When he handed her the copy of Monica’s letter to Tammy Diller, he saw her forehead pinch in a perplexed frown. It didn’t take her long to read the short letter, but it was long enough for him to study her.
Rebecca looked amazingly like her mama. To a point. Kate had had her youngest late in life, but had to be in her late sixties now. They were both built lithe and slim, with the same elegant bone structure. Both had the same unforgettable eyes and the same lustrous, luxuriant auburn hair—but Kate’s had streaks of steel, matching all the gutsy steel in her personality, and she wore it neatly pinned up, like the no-nonsense businesswoman she was.
Kate surely used some of the cosmetics her company had made famous, but there was nothing painted about her. Even in morning sunlight, her face had few lines—and those she didn’t hide. Kate was unsentimental, strong. She had a hell of a cocky, authoritarian air, but that was precisely why Gabe had taken to her from the first. She was a shrewd, sharp woman of principle. She backed down for nobody. As far as Gabe was concerned, she’d earned the right to be bossy, and she had the devil’s own dry sense of humor, which tickled his own.
Gabe couldn’t look at the mama—the bones, the elegance, the sassy humor, the never-back-down-on-a-principle temperament—and fail to think of Rebecca. But a man could talk to Kate. The mama took her realism straight, no chaser. Gabe wasn’t sure the daughter could recognize the word in a big-print dictionary with a magnifying glass.
Kate finished reading the letter, and handed it back to him. “This sure isn’t much to clear my son of a murder charge. I’d hoped for more, Gabe.”
“I’d hoped to have more for you—but there has to be dirt in order to find it.” He’d never tried to soft-soap Kate. He’d never had to.
“I know.” She leaned against the desk, facing his eyes squarely. “I can’t swear that my son is innocent. I told you that at the start. But I want the truth—every ounce of evidence leading to the truth—no matter what it is. And with the trial imminent, the frightening problem is time. We need answers now. Every day that passes puts my son’s case in even more jeopardy.” She hesitated, staring out the window for a long minute before turning back to him. “That Tammy Diller’s name really bothers me.”
“Yeah. I saw you frown when you read the letter. I was hoping you might have recognized the name.”
“Actually, I never heard of a Tammy Diller. It just startled me how similar the initials and name were to Tracey Ducet’s.” Kate lifted her hand in a helpless gesture. “Probably the similarity is just incidental, or coincidence. Heaven knows, I’m so worried about my son that I’m inclined to grasp at any straw. But the name popped so quickly into my mind because Ms. Ducet stirred a kettleful of problems for the family, then conveniently disappeared before we could nail her with any specifics. Do you know the story?”
“Yeah. I ran some background checks on Tracey Ducet when she first arrived and claimed to be the missing Fortune heir. But since Tracey didn’t hang around for all that long and had no real proof of her claims, I had no reason to pay much attention and never really got the full story. Why don’t you just tell me the whole thing?”
As restless as her daughter, Kate prowled and paced around her office with far too much energy to sit still. “As you know, I’ve built an empire here—and there are always leeches and parasites hoping to prey on big money. Anyone who walks in these shoes has to expect those kinds of problems. Tracey Ducet was just one of the gnats. She was a hustler, a con artist…” She hesitated again. “I hate to waste your time with this. I really have no logical reason to think there could be a connection between that Tammy Diller woman and Tracey…”
“And maybe there isn’t. But how about if you just spill out the story, and between the two of us, we can decide if it could possibly be relevant or not?”
Kate sighed. “You already know that I had twins years ago, and that one of those babies was kidnapped. The press had such a field day with the kidnapping story that even years later, we occasionally got people claiming to be the missing heir. And that’s how Tracey came into the picture—she got the idea she could pass herself off as the missing Fortune. Undoubtedly the reason she believed she could pull it off was because of her looks. She amazingly resembles my daughter Lindsay—I mean, take out the gum and put her in decent clothes, and she could be Lindsay’s mirror image.”
“But you knew that wasn’t possible?” Gabe asked.
“Unquestionably. The thing was, the FBI guarded information during the kidnapping investigation, in the hopes that we would catch the kidnapper. One of the details the media never exposed was that the missing twin was a boy, Brandon. There was just no way she could have pulled off this scam. Not on me. The rest of the family might have believed her—we tried to keep it quiet for them, and they knew that I had brought home Lindsay, but even they didn’t know about the boy. I just couldn’t face talking about it.
“But then Tracey disappeared before anything happened—it never came to pressing charges, nothing. She never actually broke any laws. I mean—she could have been an innocent miss who saw a picture of Lindsay and really thought she might be the missing heir.”
“From how you’re describing her, it doesn’t sound as if there’s anything ‘innocent’ about Ms. Ducet,” Gabe said dryly.
“I think she’s a born tramp,” Kate said, just as bluntly.
“And I’ll put her in the computer, Kate, but I don’t want you to get your hopes up. Offhand, it doesn’t sound real likely that both women could somehow have a connection to Monica Malone’s murder.”
“No, I don’t see how they could, either.”
Gabe scratched his chin. “Well, obviously she knew something, if the two were communicating. And if she found out Monica was involved in that kidnapping, Ms. Ducet might have smelled some easy money another way. Blackmail money.”
Kate looked heartened, but only for a moment. “This is all hopeful supposition, but I don’t know how you could possibly prove it. And I’d like to believe it makes a difference, but I’m not so sure, Gabe. Even if the little tram
p was involved in a blackmail scheme, unless we can come up with evidence that she had opportunity and a motive for murder, it won’t help clear my son of this murder charge. You know, I thought there was something suspicious about her disappearance last year—remember when I ‘appeared’ at that seance last year? And I know the police had a witness who saw someone looking like Lindsay, but in the excitement of getting my life back and without proof or knowledge of her whereabouts it got pushed to the side.”
Gabe took a long look at her face. “Listen, please. I know you’re worried, but keep in mind that we don’t have to prove who killed Monica. We only have to prove that there’s another viable suspect in the picture to win reasonable doubt for your son. And this Tammy Diller still looks like a winning bet to me. She’s covered her past history damn well, but we’ve still got the letter, that connection to Monica, and we know where she is right now. In fact, I’m headed to Las Vegas after I leave here. And if there’s anything to find on her, I’ll find it.” He hesitated. “There’s a separate problem that I need to discuss with you.”
Kate nodded, as if anticipating what he was going to say. “Transportation, of course. You’ll get there faster with the company jet. I should have suggested it immediately—”
“No, it’s not that. I’ve already got the tickets. I can handle my own transportation. Rebecca’s the problem I wanted to talk with you about.”
“Rebecca?” Kate peered at him over the rim of her gold-framed glasses. “How on earth did my daughter get in this conversation?”
Gabe had never been good with tact. One of the best parts of dealing with Kate was that he didn’t have to be. “Your youngest has taken up breaking and entering, burglary, and chatting up gang members in inner-city neighborhoods—that’s how.” He frowned. “She’s a little on the loyal side, where her brother is concerned.”
Kate’s restless pacing immediately stopped. She leaned against the desk and studied Gabe’s face. Something in that thundercloud scowl and those dark eyes alerted all her maternal instincts. Right now, her oldest son was in desperate trouble, but that didn’t mean she loved her other children any less. Her heart had a lot of room. And her youngest, although no one else had ever really seen it, was just like her. “Loyalty is one of those nasty Fortune Family traits, I know. And Rebecca always did have it badly.”
“Badly doesn’t begin to cut it. She thinks she’s qualified to conduct an investigation. More to the point, she thinks she needs to be involved. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Rebecca has a reckless streak. She’s about as manageable as a volcano.” Gabe lanced out of the chair as if a bee just stung his behind. “I figure if anyone has control over her, it’s you. Call her off, Kate.”
“Oh, dear,” Kate murmured. Her shrewd eyes never left Gabe’s face. “I’m afraid I’ve never had any control over Rebecca. In fact, I don’t think anyone does.”
“Well, someone has to.” Gabe dug out his car keys. He was leaving in a minute, and the keys gave him something to clench in a fist. “I wouldn’t tell her where this Tammy Diller was staying in Las Vegas. But I’m still afraid she’ll fly there and try poking around. Not to offend you, Kate, but your daughter doesn’t have the common sense of a cotton ball.”
“I can see she’s causing you a problem.” Kate tried to sound sympathetic. It wouldn’t do to sound amused. She’d been watching Gabe from the sidelines for a number of years and had seen Gabe in a number of crisis situations before, seen his responses to danger, stress, pressure. Nothing had ever rattled him before. It was most interesting to recognize that her youngest, her sweetest, the most softhearted of the whole family, had.
“Isn’t there some nice guy in the picture? Somebody who has sway over her? Somebody who could sweet-talk her into listening?”
“Well, truthfully, there’ve been a number of very nice men. She never seems to let them any closer than first base. I’ve been worried for a long time that nice men just don’t seem to be her cuppa. She’s the only one of my brood who hasn’t married. Believe me, I’d love to see her settled, but she seems to be…”
When Kate seemed to pause for the right words, Gabe obligingly filled in some of the obvious options. “Picky? Impossible? Bullheaded? Stubborn?”
“Hmm… I can see you have spent some time with her. Gabe?” She could see him clenching and unclenching those keys, and starting to move toward the door.
“What?”
There was no smile in Kate’s voice now—or in her heart. “I don’t give a damn what you have to do. Keep her safe. Don’t let anything happen to her. I’m counting on you.”
Swell, Gabe thought as his stomach dropped on the elevator ride a minute or two later. There was, of course, every chance that Rebecca wouldn’t be so stupid and foolhardy as to head for Las Vegas. But he’d counted on her mama as an ally, and somehow ended up with another responsibility on his plate instead.
So far there was only a jumble of puzzle pieces in Monica’s murder, but nothing seemed to be coming together. Kate’s filling him in on the old Tracey Ducet history had pinned down another Fortune family enemy, but a family with that much money invariably collected enemies. The problem he needed to concentrate on was finding a direct link between Tammy Diller and Monica’s murder. The letter implied a blackmail scheme to him, had from the first, and the difficulty in tracing Tammy’s history implied the woman had something to hide. The whole thing smelled like trouble to Gabe. And where there was trouble, there was potential danger.
Keeping Rebecca safe from danger would only complicate an already complicated job. With or without her mama’s mandate, though, Gabe would have done that.
Keeping that redhead safe from him was another dimension entirely. She did something, when her arms were around him, that stripped his mind bare. Hormones were just hormones, but there was something about that woman that shook his stable moorings.
On the other hand, Gabe wasn’t one to borrow or imagine problems. Rebecca might be a rabid idealist, but she surely had an ounce of common sense stashed somewhere. If she had any functioning brains, she was en route home right now, and nowhere near Las Vegas.
Rebecca had barely stepped off the plane in Las Vegas before she heard the clink and clank of slot machines. Weary travelers gushed toward them, recharged by the first sound and sight of gambling.
She was tempted to empty out the quarters in her change purse and give the slot machines a try. Gambling was certainly in her blood. The Fortunes had always played for big stakes in business. Her mom believed that every reward worth having in life took risk, and cowards never had a chance at the brass ring.
Somehow, though, when she thought of gambling, slot machines and roulette wheels seemed to pale compared to Gabe. That man was a terrible risk, Rebecca mused. A woman would have to risk one heck of an ante to even play the game, and those were unknown stakes for an uncertain reward.
The thought blurred. Her stomach was grumbling, and her head was throbbing with a headache. She hadn’t brushed her hair in hours, and she was wearing a teddy-bear sweatshirt that had to look as rumpled as she was.
Her brother needed to be on her mind, not Gabe, not anyone else. One way or another, she planned to find this Tammy Diller. But not until she’d had some real food—preferably a Big Mac and fries—and found someplace to stay. She’d been up since Gabe slipped the note under her door in the middle of the night—because she’d been too ticked off at him to sleep after that.
He’d left. In itself, that had been no surprise, and it had been reasonably polite of him to let her know he’d taken a powder. But the Neanderthal had ordered her to go home in the note. There was some indecipherable scribble about her being safe. She wouldn’t put it past that blockheaded, overprotective, macho caveman jerk to sic her mom on her.
If Gabe had worried her mother, she’d have to kill him.
Thoughts of plots involving violent revenge revived her. So did the cab ride through town. She’d been in Paris, Switzerland, traveled the country with her
family on various business trips and vacations. Vegas definitely had its own unique personality—endless neon and flashing glitter, women walking the sidewalks dressed in everything from red satin to torn jeans. Posters on street lamps advertised legal brothels. Rebecca gaped and gawked, as happy as any tourist.
“You got no reservations?” the cab driver queried her.
“No.” She hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Is that a problem?”
“You want to gamble, babe, ain’t nothing a problem in this town.” He’d already stopped for a Big Mac for her. Hey, it was the lady’s dollar; she wanted to pay to sit in a fast-food line, it was okay by him. “But it’d be nice if you’d give me some idea of a destination here. You wanna stay downtown, or someplace on the strip?”
By the time he dropped her off at Circus Circus, she knew he was divorced, two kids, the older boy in trouble; his lady friend wasn’t legal and she just might have a bun in the oven; the best mall was within walking distance; no, he’d never heard of Tammy Diller—nor were people real likely to answer questions in this town—but his cousin Harry would give her a deal at his restaurant. They’d shared so much by that time that Rebecca gave him a hug, as well as his twenty bucks.
Circus Circus, thankfully, had a room. It also seemed to be the only place in town where kids were allowed. Possibly not the best place to find Tammy Diller, but a place with children seemed the least alien of anything Rebecca had noticed so far. A nap, a shower and a change of clothes were her next priorities. The real action, the cabdriver had told her, wouldn’t start until sundown. The hustlers and serious gamblers rarely came out of the woodwork before then.
She turned the key on a rose-and-white room, dropped her luggage, sank onto the mattress to test the bed and didn’t wake up for the next four hours. The nap refreshed her. She ordered milk and a peanut butter sandwich from room service, then opened her suitcases and turned on the shower.
The Baby Chase Page 7
