Betrayal (15 page)

“Oh, no,” Penelope muttered.

She was looking at Arianna Marino, in a dark blue dress with a white collar and a black belt and shabby black leather ballet flats. She exuded all the authority of a bulldozer. That was to say… a lot of authority. She wielded the broom like a lance, and when she beckoned to Penelope, Penelope went, marching up toward the office as if on official business. She fingered her room key, though, hoping to insinuate that she needed to leave soon on some important matter.

If Arianna Marino was impressed by Penelope’s air of efficiency, she hid it well. Instead, she held open the door to the motel office, commanding Penelope to enter. “Number fourteen. Penelope Alonso.”

Crap
. Had she recognized Penelope? Or did everyone in this town know everything?

“I’m Penelope Caldwell now.” Penelope walked into the chilly office, where it smelled musty and damp.

“You’re widowed,” Mrs. Marino said. “Your husband was killed in a car wreck.”

“True.” The phone call had been wrenching, a life-changing moment of horror and grief all too soon supplanted by other horrors, greater griefs. “How do you know?”

Mrs. Marino gave the expected answer. “The Internet.”

“Why do you care?”

Mrs. Marino went to the tiny, old, chipped refrigerator that hummed in the corner behind the counter. “I liked your mother.”

That was an answer of a sort. “So did I.”

“Glad to hear it. I had hoped to see her again one day.” Mrs. Marino sighed with a gust that made a mockery of that feeble window air conditioner.

“She would have liked that.” Penelope knew that was true; her mother admired Arianna Marino, said she was a power to be reckoned with.

Mrs. Marino pulled out two beers, popped the tops, and presented one to Penelope. “Sit,” she said, and pointed at the black metal-and-vinyl straight-backed dining chair behind the counter.

Interestingly enough, the presentation of the beer and the directive to sit made Penelope realize how far she’d come in Mrs. Marino’s estimation. When she was here with her mom, Mrs. Marino had barely noted her existence, and never had she been allowed behind the counter.

She walked around, and she sat.

“When she came here, when you were a kid,” Mrs. Marino said, “your mother wasn’t well.”

Penelope, who didn’t much care for beer, rubbed the icy bottle on her forehead. “I didn’t know that then. I wish I had. I would have done things differently.” But she’d been so selfish, so self-involved, she hadn’t seen what was right before her face. That her mother had suffered from breast cancer. That she was still recovering from chemo and radiation.

“She didn’t want you to know.” Mrs. Marino patted Penelope’s shoulder with a heavy hand. “She wanted you to be young and carefree.”

With a bitter smile, Penelope remembered Noah. “Oh, I was that.”

“She was a worker, your mother was, cleaning rooms for me, tending bar when she had to.” Mrs. Marino seated herself in the chair at the check-in desk. It creaked beneath her weight, but didn’t dare collapse. “The customers liked her. She was smart, didn’t put up with any shit, yet she was friendly and she listened when they talked. A lot of them were illegals, from Mexico and beyond, here without their families, and they liked showing her pictures of their kids. Not that they didn’t like it when we had a bimbo in the bar. But they liked your mother for different reasons.”

“She was a great mother.” Except for that one big matter that had made Penelope stand before her mother’s gravestone and sob out accusations.

That had not been one of her stellar moments.

She tipped up the bottle and took a long, cold drink. “What a hell of a day,” she muttered.

“That’s what happens when you come back poking your nose in stuff that’s none of your business.”

Penelope lowered the bottle with a bang onto the counter. “What do you mean? What do you know?”

“I know you met Brooke Di Luca in the Rhodes Café today and went off with her to her new house.” Mrs. Marino’s chair swung back and forth, back and forth, creaking and begging for lubricant. “Gossip says you’re her new interior decorator.”

“Interior designer,” Penelope corrected automatically. “Did you have someone spying on me?”

“That’s not necessary. I have connections.” The twist of Mrs. Marino’s mouth looked like wisdom. “People tell me things.”

Penelope believed her. The iron gray that mixed with her dark hair seemed indicative of her character, and those black eyes ruthlessly surveyed her world.

“But your connections aren’t right this time.” Penelope felt almost gleeful at correcting her. “I’m not staying.”

“Not staying?” Looking thoughtful, Mrs. Marino sipped her beer and examined Penelope like a bug under a microscope. “You’re not taking the job for the Di Lucas?”

“No.”

“They’re good people. A little snooty, but good people. We’re related, of course.”

That figured. “Of course.”

“Sarah Di Luca was born a Marino.”

“Really?” Penelope had never suspected that. “I am going to see her before I leave.”

“So why aren’t you staying?”

“A person could get killed in this town.”

Mrs. Marino nodded, lips pursed. “Especially when a person—like you—has connections with Joseph Bianchin.”

The woman took Penelope’s breath away. “What do you know about me and Joseph Bianchin?”

“I know you went to his house this morning.”

“How do you know that?” Penelope could not believe this depth of knowledge. “How do you know these things?”

“Look.” Mrs. Marino sounded practical and brisk. “We Marinos have lived here for a long time. We work all over the county. Did you see a gardener at Bianchin’s? That was my husband, Daichi.”

“The Asian guy? That skinny little…?”
Penelope abruptly shut her mouth. She could not say with any amount of political correctness that broad Italian Arianna Marino and the tall, thin, Asian gardener were an odd match.

But they were.

Mrs. Marino seemed to understand and, for all intents and purposes, she didn’t give a damn about political correctness. “Daichi is my second husband. The first one was a good Italian Catholic boy. He got me pregnant when I was sixteen, married me, and made sure I knew he was doing me a favor, beat me when he was sober. Luckily for me, that wasn’t often. I beat
him
when he slapped our daughter and knocked her into the wall. Three kids and he was out the door. Died in an accidental gas explosion in his home while he was sleeping. Good riddance.” She smiled, a square smile that scared the hell out of Penelope and made her wonder whether that gas explosion was really an accident. “After that, Daichi worked hard to convince me to live with him. After about twenty years I finally gave in and married him. Glad I did. Contrary to most of the evidence, not all men are bums.”

“I know. Keith was such a good guy. We would have been married… forever.” Penelope’s voice sounded wistful, even to her.

“Anyway, Daichi is how I knew you visited Bianchin’s estate and didn’t get in.”

“I couldn’t get in. Joseph Bianchin is not home.”

“He is,” Mrs. Marino said flatly.

Penelope took a long breath. She didn’t doubt her. Only a fool would doubt Arianna Marino. So that flash of light at the house… Penelope hadn’t been imagining it. Someone had been watching her. “Then why didn’t he let me through the gate?”

“I don’t know. A few days ago, Daichi saw him drive up in a limo with a bunch of guests. Possibly Bianchin was busy entertaining them. Probably he didn’t think you looked important enough to bother with. That’s the kind of man he is.” Mrs. Marino scratched her chin. “You want to see him?”

“I do.”

“My cleaning crew goes in every week and cleans that old pile of rock Bianchin loves so much, dusts and washes the toilets and the floors. You could go in with them. I’m not going to say he’ll welcome you. I’ll almost guarantee he won’t be pleasant.” Mrs. Marino stood, threw her beer bottle into the trash can hard enough to make the white plastic smack against the wall. Turning, she looked Penelope in the eyes. “But at least you’ll get your chance to tell him he’s your father.”

Chapter 21

P
enelope froze. Her heart stopped.

This wasn’t possible. Someone knew the truth? “What do you mean, m-my father? What do you know about my father?”

Mrs. Marino smiled that scary square smile again. “I know what your mother told me.”

“My mother told you stuff?” She thought the whole truth had died with her mother, but here was someone alive today who knew the story about her birth? “My God. I know nothing about what happened. I don’t know why my mother wouldn’t tell me who he was. And you… know.…” Penelope couldn’t quite say it. “Did Mom tell you how it happened and… why she never told me the truth?”

“She worked for me. Remember? We had a lot in common. Crappy life choices. Sacrificed for our children. Had to make our own ways.” Mrs. Marino stood tall. “We
talked
.”

Penelope could hardly breathe. She didn’t know how to proceed.

That Joseph Bianchin was her father… that was her deepest, darkest secret. For good or evil, this was the truth her mother had hidden from her all these years. She had barely discovered her father’s identity, and now… now this woman she hardly knew, this woman whom she suspected of every kind of ruthlessness, could perhaps fill in the details.

How to proceed? How to convince Mrs. Marino to break her mother’s confidence?

Putting her beer down, Penelope leaned forward, elbows on her knees, and looked up at Mrs. Marino. “Mom never told me. She refused. Right up until the end, she refused. But the lady she worked for all those years—she knew. Since Mom’s gone, the old lady is slipping into dementia. Mrs. Walters thought I was my mother, and she told me I needed to tell my daughter—tell Penelope—the truth. Apparently she’d told my mother that more than once, and Mom never would. Once I realized Mrs. Walters knew my father’s identity, I questioned her. It wasn’t fair, probably, to ask a lady so lost in senility to betray a confidence, but I had to know, and it was my last chance. Could you… Do you know what happened? How my mother came to be involved with him? Why she wouldn’t tell me even his name?”

“It’s the usual story. She was young. She loved him. He seduced her. She got pregnant and then…” Mrs. Marino audibly ground her teeth. “Then she discovered what a pig he was.”

“But she was only eighteen. Why would she get involved with a man in his fifties? I mean—ick.”

“Honey, you lived with your mother’s father.” Mrs.
Marino pulled another bottle of beer out of the refrigerator and popped the top. “He was an abusive, nasty jerk. Your mother wanted out, she was beautiful, she worked as a singer in L.A., and Joseph targeted her. He was charming, rich, and flattering. She saw what she wanted to see, believed what he wanted her to believe.”

“What did he want her to believe?”

“That he would rescue her from the squalor and desperation of her life.” Mrs. Marino seated herself in that squeaky desk chair again. “That he’d marry her and keep her in luxury forever.”

“God. How heartbreaking.” Penelope’s eyes filled with tears for the innocent that her mother had been.

“He kept her in his hotel suite while he did business in L.A., and when his business was concluded, he left. But before he walked out, he told her she could keep the clothes he had bought her.”

“Nice,” Penelope said sarcastically.

“He said that if she was pregnant, she should come to Bella Terra and give him the child, and
if
he
was
the father, he’d make sure the boy was raised with all the privileges he could offer.”

“Wow. What an asshole.”

“Your mother had her reasons for not wanting you to have anything to do with him.” Mrs. Marino rocked and drank. “But give her credit—the reason she got you an internship with Fiasco Designs and brought you here to Bella Terra was so she could check him out, see if he’d changed, and if he had, introduce you so that in case her cancer proved fatal you wouldn’t be alone.”

Penelope’s smile twisted with pain. “He failed the test? He wasn’t nice to her?”

“Nice to her?” Mrs. Marino brayed with laughter. “He never noticed her.”

“What? He didn’t recognize her?”

“She went in with the cleaning crew. She saw him. He saw her. But he never
looked
at her. Joseph Bianchin does not look at the people who work for him. They are below him, and therefore of no interest.”

Penelope could not imagine what it must have been like for her mother to see the man she had once loved and have him ignore her. “He never recognized her? He slept with her and he
never
recognized her?”

“No.”

“They never
spoke
?”

“On the contrary. She spoke to him every week. He would be in his office. She would ask him if he would like it cleaned. He would get up and leave.” Mrs. Marino smiled. “She knew then she would not tell him about you, or you about him. She said you were better off alone in the world than being forced to face that sour old face every day lamenting the fact you weren’t a boy, raised by him to be like him.”

“There’s probably justice in that, and I do understand why she wanted to protect me. In those days, I was a fragile flower. I’ve got some calluses now, and I know how to handle the jerks of this world.” Penelope drank another swallow from her bottle, and the beer was not as bitter as the taste in her mouth. “You should have met my mother-in-law.”

Mrs. Marino looked grim. “One of
those
, hm?”

“When Keith was killed, you would have thought she was the widow.” Penelope paused for a long breath, remembering. “So I can handle Bianchin. He didn’t get a
son, and according to the research I did, I’m his only offspring.”

“Unless some other intelligent woman did the same as your mother and refused to tell him about her baby.”

Penelope nodded jerkily. Yes. She might have a sibling or two somewhere.

So what? She had a father to meet first.

“But I think it’s doubtful.” Mrs. Marino cackled. “If there’s one thing about Joseph Bianchin that the whole town has relished, it’s the fact that he never could father a child. He tried hard enough, too. In his youth, lots of innocent girls fell to him.” Her tone changed from reminiscent to sharp. “You really want to meet him?”