Secrets, Lies & Loves

by Judy Duarte

  “When we find some solid evidence, we’ll let you know,” Tyler said.

  “In the arrest warrant, I presume?” Cade hadn’t really expected the group to confide all to him, but he had hoped for some cooperation. “My father has gotten wind of questions being asked about him and his business. He knows you two are in town.” Cade gave Sara and Tyler a pointed glance. “I think he’s prepared for trouble.”

  His eyes were drawn to Sara, sitting so silent and looking so remote. Whatever happened, there wasn’t a future for them. So what else was new?

  Sara listened to the men’s conversation and observed the interactions between them. Her brother wasn’t about to confide in Cade. Tyler stopped just short of being openly hostile about the other man’s motives.

  Nick and Mark Banning were noncommittal. Mark shared the information he’d found on the case. It was gleaned from the same newspaper reports that she’d read in the library and contained nothing new. The detective didn’t mention the missing uncle to Cade, she noted.

  At ten o’clock, Cade left, going out the back door as usual.

  Tyler studied her as he filled his plate with second helpings of everything. “Do you trust him?”

  She thought it over before answering. “In the dealings I’ve had with him since moving here, and in watching him with Stacy, he seems to be honest and sincere.”

  “But it’s his father we’re talking about putting behind bars,” Mark said, voicing everyone’s concern.

  “I don’t think they’re close.” She pressed her fingertips to her temples, where a dull headache had formed. “I can’t say I was close to my father, either. He worked long hours, so we rarely saw him, other than brief periods on the weekend. But I loved him.”

  She looked at Tyler. Her brother had never known a father’s love and never would. No matter what DNA tests showed, Walter Parks wouldn’t want his unknown sons.

  “Don’t feel sorry for me,” Tyler told her, correctly reading her thoughts. “With Walter Parks for a father, I haven’t missed anything. I don’t think Cade has, either.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I suspect Walter is only interested in his children as a means to his own ends. From what I’ve learned about the man, no one gets in his way, not even his own flesh and blood.”

  “He must be a horrible person,” Sara murmured, thinking of Cade and his relationship to the elder Parks. “I want to see him locked up so he can’t hurt anyone else.”

  “Well, until we find your uncle, we don’t have anything to go on,” Mark reminded them. “I’ve widened the search for him, but with all the separate towns, each with its own records, surrounding the San Francisco area, it’s going to take time to get through all the deeds and tax records.”

  “I can help,” Sara volunteered. “I need something to fill my time since I’m no longer gainfully employed.”

  “Tyler and I can adjust our work schedules and pitch in, too,” Nick spoke up. “With four of us searching for Derek Ross, we’ll find him if he’s anywhere in the city or the outlying areas.”

  “Right,” Tyler said grimly. “It’s only a matter of time.”

  Sara joined the men in plotting the search. Each of them agreed to inspect the records of the various suburbs around the city, looking first at the owners of bookstores for clues to the missing relative.

  “I wonder what he’s like,” Sara said when the men were leaving. “He was twenty-two when it happened, according to Mother. That would make him around forty-seven now. I wonder if he ever married and had a family.” She looked at Tyler. “His children would be our first cousins. We may never meet them.”

  “We will,” Tyler vowed, looking stubborn. “We’ll find Derek. This time he won’t slip away before we can question him. We’ll make him tell us the truth.”

  The Thursday-afternoon traffic was heavy when Cade and Stacy started for home after taking care of their shopping. He took the coast road, a much more pleasant drive than going directly through the city.

  Even here, the street was more congested than usual. However, maintaining an even thirty-five miles an hour, he got through the traffic lights without having to stop after passing the Cliff House.

  At the duplex, he parked in the driveway and noted that Sara’s car was in the other one. A tightness invaded his chest, while hunger and a yearning he couldn’t name clamored inside him. He hadn’t expected a lot from the meeting with her brother and friends last night, and he hadn’t gotten a lot. Given the circumstances, he could hardly blame them.

  For himself, while he knew his father was ambitious and competitive, those traits were far from the calculated ruthlessness it would take to murder someone.

  On the other hand, the circumstances surrounding Jeremy Carlton’s death were too strange to be ignored. He, too, felt a need to delve into the past and sort truth from fiction and supposition.

  If they did prove Walter had murmured his partner, then what? Cade saw only a black hole where the future should be.

  “Sara’s home,” Stacy announced. “I’ve got to show her my kitten. She can help me name her.”

  Cade started to tell his daughter to leave their neighbor alone, but thought better of it. Stacy considered Sara her friend. There was no sense in expecting a child to understand adult complications. He would let the girls work it out between them.

  Stacy carried the basket that contained the eight-week-old black-and-white kitten while he opened doors for her. She rushed through the town house to the deck.

  “Sara, look what I have,” Stacy called as she exited and left the door open behind her. “A kitten. What shall we name her?”

  “Let me see her, then maybe we can think of something really good,” Sara said. “Oh, how pretty. Look at those blue eyes, Stace. What’s something that goes with them?”

  Cade left the kitten’s food in the kitchen and set up a litter box in the guest powder room. Wheelie had assured him the kitten knew how to use it. He and Stacy had bought kitty supplies, including the basket to sleep in, and toys at a pet store after the housekeeper had called and said the kitten was ready to come home with them.

  “I don’t know,” he heard his daughter say. “What’s something blue?”

  “Violets are blue-purple. Periwinkles are blue,” Sara told the child. “So are blue-eyed marys.”

  Stacy giggled. “Mary Blue-eyes. That’s what I’m going to call her. Daddy, we named the kitten Mary Blue-eyes.”

  Cade went to the door. “An excellent name.”

  His heart went into overdrive. Sara was dressed in red shorts and a red-and-white top that left about six inches of her midriff bare. She had a little mole next to her navel. He remembered kissing it tenderly that weekend at the ranch.

  Her eyes met his and the smile disappeared.

  “I ordered a pizza,” he said, pulling his tie off and freeing the upper button on his white shirt. “Would you like to join us while we get acquainted with Mary Blue-eyes?”

  She shook her head. “Thanks, but I had a very late lunch.”

  “What did you do today?” he asked, not sure he would like the answer.

  “Researched records in Marin County.”

  She stopped as if she’d said more than she meant to. He nodded and refrained from cross-examining her about the search. He knew it involved his father in some way, although he didn’t know the details.

  “Ah,” he said, making a connection. “The mysterious witness, perhaps?”

  Her hands, holding the kitten securely in her lap, visibly jerked. The kitten gave a little meow. Stacy lifted it into her arms and nuzzled her face against its fur.

  “I think Mary is hungry, Daddy,” Stacy told him. “Can I feed her now?”

  “Yes. I left her stuff in the kitchen.” After Stacy went inside with her new pet, Cade slung the tie over his shoulder and sat on the railing. “What were you looking for in Marin County?” he asked Sara.

  “A bookstore.”

  Her steady stare was
defiant, which reminded him of his sister Jessica. If the two women joined forces, they would be a formidable pair.

  “A bookstore.” He mulled that over, but no clue about her reasons came to mind. “I can help.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not busy.”

  “You don’t want my help?” he goaded her a bit. “I’m hurt. You and your fellow conspirators may not find what you’re looking for.”

  “We will.” She lifted her chin and dared him to deny it.

  Instead of becoming angry, he found himself staring at her lips and thinking of more intimate things.

  “Don’t,” she said in a low voice.

  “Don’t think of kissing you? Or last weekend? Sorry, but I can’t stop. You fill my head with the wildest images,” he admitted. “I touch a flower and I’m reminded of your skin. Its softness. The silky smoothness of it.”

  “Shh,” she hissed at him and glanced toward the door where Stacy had gone as if wishing the youngster would appear and save her from him.

  He wanted to break through the shield she’d built between them. “I get a whiff of perfume and I remember all the fragrances of you. I can’t forget the way you felt in my arms. I awake from a sound sleep because I think I’ve heard your laughter. Or your sigh. Tell me, teacher, how do I forget all that?”

  “I don’t know how we could have been so foolish,” she whispered, desperation in her eyes.

  He touched a finger to her temple. “At least you remember, too. I’m not suffering alone.”

  She turned her head to the side. “No, you’re not alone, but Cade, we can’t be lovers.”

  “Why not?” he demanded, wanting acquiescence, not arguments on what could never be. He wanted her soft and yielding in his arms, unable to resist the passion between them. He wanted the past, the future and all else to disappear so he could have her and this moment without worrying about consequences.

  “Because,” she said.

  He looked into her eyes then, really looked, and saw the regret as well as the hunger. Triumph flickered within him, then was still.

  “You’re right. As long as the shadow of your father’s death hangs over us, there’s no place for other things.”

  “You don’t think your father could have done it,” she accused. “I saw it in your eyes last night.”

  “No, I don’t. An accident, maybe, but murder, no.”

  “Before she died, my mother said he did. She said Walter had planned it and gave Jeremy something to make him pass out, then he threw him overboard.”

  Whatever the truth, Cade realized Sara believed her mother’s story with all her heart. “Did you ever think that your mother may have been speaking from years of grief and resentment?”

  “She was dying,” Sara reminded him. “She had nothing to gain by then.”

  “Except to pass on her need for revenge for whatever wrongs she thought my father had committed against her children,” he said softly. “You called him a seducer. Did you ever think it could be the other way—that your mother tried to seduce him and he rejected her?”

  Like a door slamming, Sara hid all thoughts and feelings behind a solid mask. “It wasn’t that way. One thing I can say with certainty—Walter Parks didn’t reject her.”

  Cade studied her closed face. “What do you know that I don’t?” he asked.

  “Why don’t you ask your father?” she suggested, her voice an accusing thread of sound against the traffic noises of the city.

  He didn’t tell her he already had and that Walter had denied any relationship. She went into her side of the duplex, her back stiff and forbidding, and closed the door.

  Cade wondered exactly what her mother had told Sara and her siblings about his father. It was obvious Sara thought there had been an affair. He considered the situation. If Walter had been as attracted to his partner’s wife as his son was to the daughter, then he felt damned sorry for his father. In either case, it was a no-win situation.

  Chapter Ten

  Sara noticed the Help Wanted sign in the window of the ice-cream shop when she went inside Friday afternoon. She was tired and discouraged. Since getting relieved of her job on Monday, she’d spent the week looking up business licenses in various towns and calling bookstores to see if anyone had ever heard of Derek Ross.

  So far, no luck.

  Mrs. Ling looked up from behind the counter where she was preparing an ice-cream soda. “Good afternoon,” she said, smiling and nodding in her polite fashion. “Sara, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I came in with Stacy the other day.”

  “How is she doing in school?”

  “Fine.” Sara glanced around. The usually pristine shop was messy. Tables needed busing and wiping clean. One family waited impatiently to place their order while Mrs. Ling served the couple ahead of them.

  “It looks as if you’ve been busy,” Sara commented. “Where’s your help?”

  “Yes, several people came in at once. Cyndi didn’t show up. She called and said she couldn’t work anymore. She stayed out late and her father is angry.”

  Sara made sympathetic noises, both for the teenager and the shop owner. “I’m free for the rest of the afternoon. Would you like a bit of help in getting caught up?”

  Mrs. Ling gave her a relieved smile. “If you would be so good to do so, I would be pleased.”

  Sara went behind the counter and stashed her purse. “I used to work in a restaurant after school. This will be like old times.”

  Hard times, she thought to herself. The Carlton kids had always worked hard for spending money and new clothes.

  She grabbed a towel from a sink filled with soapy bleach water, wrung it out and picked up a tray. In a few minutes, she had the tables clear and clean. She quickly washed and rinsed the dishes and put them in the drain rack to air dry. Mrs. Ling finished serving the family of four who’d been waiting behind the couple.

  Mrs. Chong, the cat, snoozed on the windowsill in the sun. She had no worries.

  For a second, Sara envied the easy life of the pet. “I noticed the Help Wanted sign. Had any takers?”

  Mrs. Ling was obviously surprised. “Not yet. It’s part-time, from two until six. Do you know someone?”

  “Me. My class was canceled, so I’m at loose ends. A part-time job would fit my schedule just fine.” Sara smiled brightly and waited for the store owner to decide. Feeling warmth around her ankles, she leaned down and scratched the cat’s ears. “Hey, Mrs. Chong, how are you?”

  “Mrs. Chong and I would love to have you in the shop,” Mrs. Ling said. “Can you start Monday? I have a high-school girl who comes in on weekends.”

  “Great. I’ll see you then. In the meantime, I’ll take two scoops of the mint chocolate chip ice cream.”

  “An excellent choice,” the shopkeeper told her.

  At her feet, Mrs. Chong purred loudly and wove her body around Sara’s ankles. At least someone wanted her, Sara thought, trying not to feel sorry for herself.

  By the time she reached the town house, she’d finished the treat. It was early afternoon, so she sat on the deck and tried to read, but magazine articles didn’t hold her attention. They seemed superficial and falsely cheerful.

  Just the way she felt.

  She tried to smile, but her lips wouldn’t cooperate. She hadn’t been this dispirited since the cold, dark days of last winter. It was still winter in her heart, she mused.

  When Tyler called and asked her to meet him on his dinner break, she agreed at once. At six o’clock, she walked to their favorite Chinese restaurant. Her brother was waiting for her, looking very handsome in a new summer suit.

  “Why aren’t girls falling all over you?” she demanded. “Or are they and you aren’t talking?”

  He flashed her a grin. “I don’t have time to mess with girls.” He became serious once they were seated. “How did you do today?”

  She recounted her research efforts. “I called every bookstore from San Leandro to Richmond and asked if they knew Derek Ross
or something like that.”

  “No luck?”

  “None.” She sighed.

  “Mark is checking each neighborhood he goes to while on other jobs, so it isn’t costing us anything.”

  “He’s nice.”

  “Yeah. Too bad you didn’t fall for him instead of Cade Parks.”

  Sara’s insides felt like taffy being pulled slowly apart. “I didn’t fall for Cade.”

  “You can fool yourself,” Tyler said, “but don’t try to fool your big brother.”

  “You’re my little brother.”

  “I’m bigger than you are,” he reminded her. “I’m sorry, sis, that I brought you into this.”

  “I came here with my eyes open. I knew what I was doing.” She shrugged and rubbed the moisture off the side of the water glass. “Has Cade spoken to you?”

  “No, but I’m sure he’s determined to get involved. He said he wants to know the truth as much as we do. Huh,” Tyler said with a snort to express his doubts.

  She nodded. “That’s what he told me. He thinks we’re wrong, though, about his father’s guilt. He wants to be involved in order to prove Walter’s innocence.”

  Tyler shrugged. “I suppose I would, too, if it were my father—” He stopped abruptly, his gaze locking with hers. “Hell, his father is my father. It’s too awful to think about,” he ended in disgust.

  “A very tangled web,” Sara said, thinking of Cade and his daughter. “Stacy is so young, only a year older than I was when we left California.”

  Tyler’s expression softened a bit. “She’s a bright kid. Really cute.”

  “And loving,” Sara added. “She’s very trusting of those she loves.”

  “Yeah. If only it was as simple for adults,” he said with an undercurrent of bitterness in the words.

  Sara wondered if he was thinking of the woman, the “one-night stand” who had intrigued him so. She thought of the future, which seemed dismal for each of them, then murmured, “It’s ironic, isn’t it?”

  “What is?”