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MEG NEVER KNEW how she made it to the top of the stairs, only that she found herself there on her hands and knees, groping in the dark, muttering a string of nonsensical oaths under her breath. And with only one thought in her head.
Jack.
She had to get to Jack. Jack would know what to do. He’d hold her and ground her and make the horror go away.
Her icy fingers encountered the smooth wood of a newel post and she pulled herself up, leaning on the banister lest her quaking legs give out. She inched down the stairway in the pitch blackness, her ragged breathing sounding like a freight train in her ears. She oriented herself with the help of the faint glow of coals in the hearth. She couldn’t see the sofa, but she knew where it was in relation to the fireplace.
Blindly she stumbled across the room, knocking into an end table and righting a lamp in the nick of time. She fumbled around and found the sofa’s leather upholstery.
“Jack!”
Her mouth formed the word, but no sound emerged. Or perhaps the slamming of her pulse simply drowned it out. She felt her way to the front of the sofa and sank to her knees, relieved beyond measure when her trembling hands located his warm, sheet-draped back, when her nostrils filled with the familiar, comforting scent of him.
“Jack... Jack...” she whispered, shaking his shoulder. “Jack, wake up!”
He groaned and rolled over, his deep voice raspy with sleep. “Tanya... good God, woman, you’re insatiable.”
Meg jerked as if scalded. Suddenly her mind was clear—too clear—all panic and dread forgotten. She slapped his shoulder hard, the resounding thwack! loud as a gunshot. In the same instant she gained her feet. “Get up!” she demanded.
He bolted to a sitting position, his voice incredulous. “Meg?”
“So sorry to disappoint you,” she hissed.
After an instant’s hesitation he muttered, “Damn...”
“I should’ve known. You and that floozy.”
“Meg—”
“I just thought you had more taste. How could you?”
“Meg, calm down. I didn’t—”
“Save it,” she snapped. “I don’t care, remember? I don’t care what you do with your life. It doesn’t concern me anymore.”
“Yeah,” he said dryly, “I can tell.”
She sensed movement and realized he was rubbing his shoulder where she’d whacked him. Shame crowded out all else for a moment. Neither of them had ever raised a hand to the other in anger, not even during the worst of their arguments. What had come over her?
“I—I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have... I didn’t think, I just...”
“Forget it. What’s wrong?”
It struck her with sickening force what was wrong. She looked helplessly toward the doorway to the attic, though she could make out nothing in the gloom.
“Meg?”
Shakily she sat next to him on the sofa. “Something’s ha— There’s been a—” She squeezed her eyes closed and concentrated on making her mouth work. “We have an emergency.”
She felt him stiffen, felt him turn toward her. “One of the kids?”
“No, not the girls. They’re fine. It’s Pete. He’s...” She forced the words out. “He’s dead.”
Jack was utterly still for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and even. “What was it? His heart?”
“I don’t know. It—It might’ve been.”
“How’s Tanya taking it?”
“Tanya? I haven’t seen Tanya. I came right here.”
Only then did she realize she’d run to Jack, and not Winston, in her moment of need. The idea of seeking out her fiancé had never occurred to her.
Habit, she told herself. It meant nothing.
Jack said, “I just assumed she woke you up. Pete’s not in his bed, then?”
“No. He’s in the hallway at the bottom of the attic stairs. I found him.”
“Oh, honey.” His warm hand settled on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “I’m sorry. That must’ve been rough.” He rose and fumbled for something on the end table. “You stay here.”
“No. I’m coming with you.”
He lit a candle. “It’s not neces—”
“I don’t want to be alone.”
The admission escaped before she could restrain it. In the wavering candlelight she read gentle compassion in his eyes, and she relaxed. He’d always been able to do that—offer his strength and support without making her feel weak for needing it. She swallowed a knot of unwelcome emotion.
He raised a hand and trailed his knuckles down her cheek, never taking his eyes from hers. “It’s all right,” he whispered. “I’ll take care of it. The worst is over.”
She exhaled sharply, tears of relief burning her eyes. During the past two years she’d forgotten how much she’d once relied on this man, in big and little ways. He was steady, levelheaded. He could take any crisis and turn it around, make it right. This wasn’t the kind of crisis that could be made right, of course—no one could perform that particular miracle—but she knew in her gut that Jack would take charge of this horror and absorb the worst of it. He took her hand and led her back to the stairway. Their surroundings took on an otherworldly feel as they silently climbed the steps and made their way down the hallway, Jack leading with his candle.
He stopped near the open attic door, shielding her from the sight with his body. She saw everything vividly anyway in her mind’s eye. Uncle Pete lying on the attic steps, his head and shoulders spilling into the hall, his neck twisted at an unnatural angle. His eyes just barely open.
Jack knelt and set the candleholder on the carpet. He placed his fingers on Pete’s fleshy throat, going through the motions of feeling for a pulse, something she hadn’t had the presence of mind to do. She didn’t imagine he expected to find one. Slowly he took his hand away and shook his head.
Pete wore a voluminous Chinese silk robe over his black satin pajamas, belted below his huge gut. The robe was emerald-green, richly embroidered, with a thick stuffing of silk between the quilted layers. He’d had it custom-made in Hong Kong the year before and had bragged to Meg about the great bargain he’d struck. He’d brought her back a string of cultured pearls from the same trip.
“Pete...” She pressed a hand to her mouth and tears spilled over it.
And then Jack was there, pulling her into his arms, pressing her face against his bare chest. He held her tightly while she sobbed out her shock and sorrow. Pete had been no angel. He was crude and belligerent more often than not, but he was family. Her mother’s half brother.
“We can’t leave him here,” she rasped, lifting her head from Jack’s chest. “The kids’ll be up in a couple of hours.”
“The police won’t be here by then—we have no way of contacting them at the moment. I don’t think you’re supposed to move a body, but under the circumstances I don’t see that we have a choice.”
His gaze took in her uncle’s lifeless form before swinging up the darkened attic steps. His expression gave away nothing, but she knew this man too well, could almost hear the gears turning in his head. Examining the possibilities.
She shivered. “He—He must’ve had a heart attack or something and fallen.” When Jack didn’t respond, she added, “Right?”
“Did you notice the head wound?”
She felt her throat start to close up. “No,” she croaked. Jack had examined Pete more carefully than she had.
“Well, it’s bad. I suppose it could’ve happened in the fall.”
“You suppose?”
“I mean it must’ve.”
She suspected he didn’t mean any such thing. She glanced at her uncle’s still form once more and turned away, took a deep breath. “We ought to wake up Tanya. She—” She stopped abruptly. And turned slowly to look once more. Her heart kicked into high gear.
“What?” Jack was watching her closely. “Meg, what is it?”
“His ring.” She made herself approach the body. She looked closely at Pete’s right hand, lying on his broad middle. The fingers were bare, as were those of his other hand, thrown up over his head. The extravagant diamond ring was nowhere to be seen.
Jack murmured, “That’s strange. Pete’s worn that thing for years.”
“Five years. It was his gift to himself when Murder Won brought in its first million. He’s never taken it off, Jack. Never. He told me he sleeps with it on, showers with it on. It’s some kind of good-luck thing with him.”
Their gazes locked. She didn’t like what she read in his eyes.
He said, “What was he doing up there in the first place? In the middle of the night.”
She shook her head, at a loss.
“What’s going on?”
They turned to see Tanya standing a short distance down the hall near the doorway to the master bedroom she’d shared with her husband. In the flickering candlelight she looked like Marilyn Monroe’s ghost, her voluptuous curves enhanced by a filmy belted robe that hugged her generous breasts and swirled around her ankles in a froth of pale green silk.
Meg fought the mental picture that bubbled up from some corrupt corner of her imagination. Tanya and Jack writhing on the living room sofa in sheer animal lust. Jack touching her, kissing her, driving himself into her.
The knowledge that her ex-husband had chosen to share himself with this shallow, selfish woman was too painful to contemplate. Somehow it tainted all that Meg herself had shared with him, the purity and beauty of the act that had sealed their love and conceived their children.
Meg forcibly squelched her own irrational jealousy—petty in the extreme considering the grief in store for Pete’s wife. Tanya’s view of her husband was obscured by the dark, and by Jack and Meg, who closed ranks for that very purpose. Meg found herself trembling as she anticipated the other woman’s reaction. She didn’t like or respect Tanya, but no one deserved this kind of shock.
Jack said, “Tanya, there’s been an accident.”
Tanya frowned. “What do you mean?” Her eyes widened. “Where’s Pete? He’s not in bed.”
Meg approached her. Her impulse was to take her hands, but her own were so cold and clammy, she didn’t dare. “Pete went up to the attic. We don’t know why. He... He fell down the stairs, Tanya. I’m sorry.” Her voice caught and she felt the reassuring weight of Jack’s hand on her shoulder.
He said gently, “He’s dead. I’m so sorry, Tanya.”
She appeared stunned, taking it in. Then she abruptly shoved between the two of them and stared at her husband’s body.
Before her scream could approach the higher decibels, Jack slammed a hand over her mouth and pulled her back against him, murmuring, “Okay, I know, I know, but we’ve gotta keep it down, Tanya. The kids...”
Tanya turned in his arms and buried her head in his bare shoulder, clinging to him like a barnacle. She sobbed prettily. Too prettily. Meg instantly berated herself for the catty observation. Give the woman a break, she told herself. Think what she must be going through.
Meg was thankful the girls’ room was the farthest from this spot, their heavy oak door firmly shut, and that they were sound sleepers. She suspected she could launch a mortar in their room without disturbing their slumber.
After a minute Jack peeled Tanya off himself. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth. “Not Pete. Oh my God, not my Pete,” she wailed, and propelled herself at Jack once more.
He offered Meg a sheepish glance over the platinum head, which he gave a few soothing pats before once more setting Tanya away. Firmly. “I’m going to check on the girls. Take her down to the kitchen, Meg. I’ll meet you down there.”
Meg detoured to her room, Tanya in tow, to grab her robe and slippers. In the kitchen she found a dozen candles and lit them all, hoping the light would chase away the destructive emotions that had wormed their way into her consciousness. The niggling doubts and suspicions. Not to mention that old green-eyed monster.
Outside, the storm had abated. A light rain pattered on the window glass.
Tanya stood before the reflective door of the microwave, wiping smeared mascara from under her eyes and finger-combing her hair. She adjusted the plunging neckline of her robe before turning to Meg. With a shuddering sigh, she said, “This is all just so unreal. What will I do without my Pete?”
Meg knew better than to tackle that one. “I’ll make coffee.” Thank goodness for the huge propane tank outside that fed the gas stove.
Jack entered the kitchen a minute later. He’d thrown on jeans and a black T-shirt, but he was still barefoot, his wavy hair disheveled. “Meg, did Pete have a two-way radio?”
She finished scooping the coffee grounds. “Only on his yacht.”
“Which is at some boatyard, right?”
“In Freeport.” She sighed, adjusting the flame under the percolator and leaning heavily on the counter. “It’s being refurbished over the winter.”
Tanya’s face lit up. “Wait a minute. We’re not cut off.”
Jack and Meg turned to her expectantly.
“Neal has his laptop computer,” she smugly announced. “He can send email to the police.”
“Tanya, all the lines are down,” Meg said.
Tanya rolled her eyes. “It’s a laptop. It has a battery.”
“We have no electricity, cell reception, or internet service,” Meg explained, her patience near the breaking point. At Tanya’s blank look, she added, “Which means we have no way of sending email.”
Tanya’s chin went up. “I knew that.”
Jack said, “I’m going to go wake up Neal and Winston. We have to get Pete moved before the kids get up.”
Meg suspected he was equally eager to escape Tanya’s presence before he could say something he’d regret. One thing she’d always admired about Jack was his ability to keep a rein on his temper. Now that she knew the truth about his past, she couldn’t help but wonder if that was a survival skill he’d learned in prison.
Prison. The thought of her ex-husband behind bars was, as Tanya would put it, unreal. The fact that he’d never told her about it was just as shocking. Would it have made a difference? Would she have fallen in love with him anyway? She couldn’t say. All she knew for sure was that it had been unforgivable of him to withhold this from her, whatever his reasons.
The comforting aroma of coffee began to permeate the room as the brew finished perking. Meg carried a mug to Tanya and had started to pour one for herself when an outraged bellow from upstairs made her start. She yelped as scalding coffee sloshed over her knuckles. Slamming the percolator back onto the stove, she charged out of the kitchen toward the stairs, stubbing her toe on the newel post in the dark.
The kids’ ability to sleep through anything was being put to the test this night.
A flashlight beam bounced around near the attic doorway. She made out the forms of the three men as she raced up the stairs.
Holding the flashlight like a weapon, Neal advanced on Jack, who stood his ground. “Did you think you’d get away with this?” He shook off Winston’s attempt to restrain him. “You killed my father, you son of a—”
“Neal!” Meg said. “Calm down. You know that can’t be true.”
He turned toward her and in the eerie half-light he looked wild-eyed and dangerous, the picture of stark rage. She’d never seen him like this and it frightened her.
He growled, “He killed him so he could have Tanya, the rich widow. Did you know about them, Meg? Did you know the two of them have been—”
“That’s enough!” Jack said.
While Meg knew that Neal spoke the truth, she wondered how he had the nerve to revile Jack for what he himself had done. No one bothered to point out that with his father gone, Neal had just as good a shot at snagging the rich widow.
Which got Meg thinking about Tanya herself. With her husband dead, she was a, well, a rich widow. With at least two virile young lovers eager to console her.
Neal glared at Jack. “Why’d you swipe the ring? Force of habit?”
Winston said, “This is neither the time nor the place for such accusations. Jack’s right. We must move Pete before the children awaken. Neal,” he added gently, “the two of us can handle this. You needn’t be involved.”
Meg was impressed by her fiancé’s compassion and his levelheaded response to this crisis.
Neal said, “Forget it. I don’t trust him. Let’s just do it.”
Winston glanced at his companions. “Where?”
Jack said, “The boathouse. It’s dry and it’s far from the house.”
“And, too, the temperature has dropped,” Winston observed delicately. “Is that all right with you, Neal?”
“Whatever.” The young man’s malevolent gaze was still on Jack. Did he really believe Jack had killed his father? Meg decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume his words were the result of shock and the lingering effects of all that bourbon he’d guzzled.
Returning his attention to the task at hand, Neal scratched his head and said, “How are we going to get him out there? I think there’s a tarp in the toolshed.”
Jack and Winston exchanged a look, clearly reaching some silent accord. Winston said, “Meg, why don’t you go down and keep Tanya company? I don’t think she should be alone right now.”
Jack must have seen her reluctance to spend another minute alone with the widow Stanton. He added, “Go on, Meg. Keep her in the kitchen. We’ll let you know when we’re finished here.”
She opened her mouth to object, but something in their solemn expressions stopped her cold.
Oblivious, Neal studied Pete’s body from a different angle. “I think there’s a wheeled dolly out there, too. If one of us gets above him on the stairs—”
“Neal,” Winston interrupted. He sent a silent message that seemed to get through. Neal glanced at Meg and snapped his mouth shut.
Now they were all staring at her. She had the sudden and uncomfortable sensation that she didn’t belong there. They saw this as a male chore, she realized, this nasty business of transporting hefty, recently deceased uncles who’d managed to get themselves wedged into awkward spaces. The womenfolk were to be spared the unpleasant details.
For once, this liberated woman was more than happy that chivalry wasn’t quite as dead as poor Uncle Pete. “Right,” she murmured, backing toward the steps. “I’ll, uh, go see how Tanya’s doing.”
She hurried down to the kitchen.
*
IT TOOK THE men longer than Meg had anticipated to move Pete’s body to the boathouse. Or perhaps it only seemed to take forever, sequestered as she was with the widow. Every sound from beyond the door—grunts and low murmurings, the occasional heavy thud—jangled her nerves.
Stuck in the kitchen with only Tanya’s self-absorbed chatter for a diversion, Meg turned to the stove for distraction. She made a double batch of her special corn muffins, though she couldn’t imagine putting anything in her stomach except coffee.
Just before five a.m. the electricity came back on. Meg raced to the wall phone, only to find it still dead. “Damn!” She slammed it back on its cradle.
For her part, Tanya had occupied herself with the latest issue of Cosmopolitan until power was restored, at which point she began channel-surfing on the small, under-the-cabinet television set and complaining about the absence of cable stations on the island.
“There’s, like, nothing on at this hour,” she said for the umpteenth time, switching from the yoga show back to a rerun of The Brady Bunch. “I don’t think I’ve ever been up this early.”
Jack finally came in to give the all-clear, looking damp and bedraggled and heartbreakingly bleak.
For one insane moment Meg had the urge to go to him—to hold him, soothe him, kiss away the lines of strain on his face. Instead she remained rooted to the spot and said, “Is everything okay?”
“As okay as can be expected.”
“I made corn muffins.” She toyed with her hair. “My special recipe.”
The faint smile that just reached his eyes told her he hadn’t forgotten his favorite breakfast. She chose not to dwell on the silly impulse that had prompted her to bake corn muffins that morning.
“They smell good,” he said, but she could tell he was just being polite. She didn’t imagine his appetite was any keener than hers just then. “I’ll eat later. Right now I just want a shower, followed by about a gallon of hot coffee.”
“I’ll put another pot on.”
Jack turned to Tanya. “How are you holding up?”
Tanya sighed heavily and looked away, her chin trembling.
Meg had spent the past hour and a half cooped up with this woman, who’d displayed not a hint of grief until Jack stepped through the door. She had to resist the urge to roll her eyes at the theatrics. If that made her cold and cynical, so be it. Her compassion had reached its breaking point.
And if Tanya expected Jack to pull her into his arms and comfort her, she was in for a disappointment. Keeping his distance, he mumbled some worn-out platitude and disappeared through the doorway.
Meg made her escape shortly afterward, ostensibly to check on the girls. They were still sound asleep, God bless them. She stood at the entrance to her room, staring at the door to the attic, now closed. Jack was still in the shower. She could hear the water running. Winston and Neal were in the kitchen with Tanya. The sounds of conversation drifted up to her.
Without letting herself think about it, she made her way along the hallway to the very end. The only clue that anything was amiss was the bare hardwood floor. The hallway was carpeted in Oriental runners, a separate carpet for each of the three segments of the horseshoe. The piece along this stretch had been removed, bringing to mind the head wound Jack had mentioned. There must have been blood.
She rubbed her tired eyes and wondered how they were supposed to get through the next couple of days without a phone.
She whispered, “What were you doing up there, Uncle Pete?” Practically of its own volition, her hand turned the doorknob. The door swung open and she flipped the light switch, illuminating the bare wooden staircase leading to the attic.
Lifting the hem of her robe, she climbed the steps and entered the dusty, unheated room. She pulled the robe closer around her to ward off the chill. Two bare bulbs hung from the rafters. The small window at the end of the room had an eastern exposure, revealing a drizzly sky struggling to go from black to gray.
Old furniture was stored here, along with original artwork amassed by four generations of residents. Meg lifted a sheet and ran her hand over a beautiful rolltop desk of bird’s-eye maple, still in perfect condition after a century and a half. This piece had occupied a corner of the master bedroom until Pete had married Tanya five years earlier. Then it and most of the other antiques had been relegated to the attic to make way for the modern furnishings she’d selected. Tanya couldn’t see the point in keeping “all this old stuff” around.
Cartons of assorted household items, books, toys, photographs, and sports equipment were stacked along one wall. Anything left by a vacationing relative or friend eventually had found its way up there.
Meg lifted the flap on a cardboard box and immediately spied the old Frisbee Pete had given her when she was eight. It was a “tournament” model, its edges marked by innumerable nicks and gouges, thanks to the Stantons’ old collie, Bozo, who’d long ago gone to doggie heaven. Her family’s infrequent holidays with her uncle and his first wife had been the highlights of Meg’s childhood, a rare break from the misery and want of her youth.
Smiling gently, she closed the box and glanced around. The smile faded when she recalled what had brought her up there. Answers. What was Uncle Pete doing in the attic in the middle of the night?
She walked the perimeter of the room past sheet-draped dining chairs and a motley assortment of tennis rackets, some of which might have been a hundred years old. The steel door of a wall safe peeked out between two stacks of cartons set against a knee wall. This safe had fascinated her as a child. Her imagination had conjured up a pirate’s hoard of treasure filling the thing to overflowing—jewels and gold coins and stacks of hundred-dollar bills.
As far as little Meg had been concerned, anything was possible. This vacation home, after all, belonged to the “rich relatives.” And that was before Pete made millions from Murder Won. Almost anyone had been rich compared to Meg’s family.
She tugged on the safe door experimentally just as she’d always done as a child. As then, it was locked. She wondered if the key still existed, whether this safe was even used anymore.
She continued her excursion around the room—and stopped cold when she spotted an object lying on the floor near the top of the stairs.
A baseball bat. An old wooden one, decades old by the looks of it. She squatted and stared at it, afraid to touch it, afraid of where her imagination was leading her.
“Get a grip, Meg,” she admonished herself, and lifted the thing to study it. She turned it in her hands, examined the hitting surface, knowing what she was looking for and hating herself for it. Aside from grime worked deep into the grain, it was clean.
If a bat like this was used as a weapon, would evidence remain? Blood? Hair? What if the surface had been wiped down afterward? If there had been fingerprints, she’d compromised the evidence by handling it herself.
She set the bat down. How could she even be thinking this way? It was all Jack’s fault. His careless words lingered in the back of her mind, nagging her.
Did you notice the head wound? I suppose it could have happened in the fall...
She started to rise and was arrested halfway by something else that caught her eye, a tiny object wedged just under the edge of a carton of photograph albums.
She plucked the black-and-white sunflower seed from under the box and examined it in her palm. Her eyes cut from it to the baseball bat. She curled her fingers around the seed and fought the memory that shoved its way into her mind. Jack confronting Uncle Pete.
You did everything in your power to break up my marriage.
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to force the ugly scene from her consciousness.
If you interfere with my family again, I will kill you.
I will kill you.
Everyone had heard him say it.
She uncurled her fingers and stared at the seed. The question she kept asking resurfaced once more, but she no longer directed it to her dead uncle, she directed it to Jack.
“What were you doing up here?”