Fear Familiar Bundle (122 page)

Well, enough semantics. Here comes Dolly with my cream and egg. I prefer my egg slightly poached with a side of salmon, but she'll learn. Humans are slow, but they always learn.

"P
OOR KITTY
. Can you drink this?" Sarah eased the bowl to the floor and helped a feeble Familiar to stand. He wobbled pathetically before he took several laps of the milk.

With amazing speed, he began to recover. His balance grew steady, and he started looking around the room.

"That must be a miracle cure," Sarah said. "Now what am I going to do with you?"

"Meow." Familiar rubbed against her leg and then hopped in the middle of her bed. With great care, he walked a circle and finally curled up, tucking his nose over his front paws, his great green eyes closed shut.

"You need some rest, and I have an errand to run." She went to the bed and sat down, taking a moment to stroke his fur. "Maybe you should go to the vet."

Familiar rolled over and displayed his stomach in a most inviting manner. When Sarah gently rubbed it, he purred outrageously.

"I don't think you were injured at all," she said, suddenly suspicious. "I think you're a con man in a cat suit."

"Meow." Familiar's green eyes opened, and then he gave her a solemn wink.

"Why, you are a con man!" Sarah couldn't help but laugh at the cat. He acted as if he understood every word she said. "You can stay tonight, but you can't stay any longer," she warned him— and herself. "I'm not the type of person who can own a cat. I have to be gone for several days at a time." She heard her own voice running out of steam. How nice it would be to have a kitty to come home to. How long had it been since she'd been greeted at the door by someone who was really glad to see her?

"Now you behave while I'm gone." She had to get over to the Bingingtons' before it got any later. Shaking her head, she hurried down the stairs and out the front door.

It took her thirty minutes to drive to the Bingingtons', and although the house was well lighted, she still felt awkward about going into someone else's home. She slid the key into the lock and walked in.

Switching on lights as she moved through the rooms, she was immediately absorbed in checking the arrangement of tables, flowers, and decor. As a caterer she sometimes worked with florists and other accessorizers to create a complete theme. This one was her baby. She was responsible for everything, from the magnolia blossoms to the bales of cotton she was having brought in. The house was perfect, though. The dining room would easily seat fifty, and double parlors fed off the west end of the dining room. It would be easy to set up the hors d'oeuvre tables and a second wet bar. She nodded with satisfaction as she snapped off the lights and moved on to the kitchen.

Sarah was halfway across the room, searching for the light switch, when a noise outside the back door made her freeze. It was the chink of something against the glass, followed by a scraping sound.

Her mind went blank at the possibility of what the noise could be, but her brain registered that it was a sound that should not have been there. Moving as swiftly and silently as possible, she found a doorknob in the dark and pulled it open. Stepping inside, she pulled the door closed and felt for a lock. There wasn't one.

Fumbling backward she stepped on an object and grabbed into the darkness, catching it before it could fall. A broom. Careful now, she reached into the darkness. Mops, pails, brooms, the vacuum cleaner. She'd stumbled into the cleaning supply pantry. Taking care not to make a sound, she burrowed into the pitch blackness and prayed that whoever was outside would not open the door.

"We're in."

She heard the voice and knew she was in terrible danger. Someone was robbing the Bingington house. If they found her in the pantry, they would more than likely kill her.

"Yeah, we're in. What a joint. It seems a pity to break in and break out without taking anything."

The second voice was just as unpolished as the first. Both were male and both young. Sarah could determine nothing else— her heart was pounding so hard she thought she might burst.

"Keep your paws off everything. We're here for the pepper. That's it."

Sarah swallowed. "Pepper?" Surely she'd misunderstood. Unless— ! She felt a surge of adrenaline that mingled the fear. What if she'd stepped on someone's toes with her White House catering business? If someone else had been pushed aside to make room for her, they might well resort to putting something in her food. Not enough to injure anyone. But a few dinners where guests mysteriously got sick— no one wanted to risk that kind of fiasco at a political event. It would ruin a chef forever in this town.

Her churning thoughts stopped cold as the first man spoke again.

"This is what they call ironic." His laugh was short and there was the sound of cabinets opening and shutting.

"What?" The second man sounded hostile, as if he knew he was the butt of a joke.

"This cook's old man was a sheriff in Mississippi. He wanted a piece of the gambling action from the big boys, then got cold feet. He went back on his word, though, and he had to die. Now his kid is cooking up her own trouble."

The other man laughed, also a sharp sound. "Yeah, that's ironic."

A cabinet shut and silence fell outside the pantry where Sarah hid.

Gripping the edge of a shelf, Sarah listened until she thought she'd gone blind and deaf in the blackness of the pantry, until she felt as if all of the oxygen was being rapidly sucked from the room.

This was no professional prank or attempt to ruin her business. This was something else, something that went back to her childhood and the father she'd idolized. What gambling action? If her father had known about any gambling ring, he would have put the people in jail. Gambling was illegal in Mississippi at the time Cal Covington was sheriff of Hancock County. Who were those men, and what were they talking about?

A long suppressed fear rose up and nearly choked her. Was her father's death not really an accident? Dizziness made her grasp the wall behind her. That was unthinkable. It was the one nightmare that she'd had to bury just to survive.

She had to see their faces. She had to know who they were and how they knew so much about her business and her past.

Pushing away from the stabilizing shelf, she eased open the door and slipped into the kitchen. Once she found the light switch with her fingers, she hesitated. What if they had guns?

She wanted the light, but she wanted to be cautious even more. Slipping along the wall of the kitchen, she made her way to the dining room and listened.

The old house was silent, as if no one had been there in a hundred years.

They were gone.

Sarah knew it, but she didn't want to believe it. While she'd been cowering in the pantry, they'd slipped out again. Now she'd never know who they were and how they'd come to know anything about her father.

She thought of calling the police, but the reference to her father held her back. All of those dirty accusations came rushing back at her— that he was dishonest; that he had abused the power of his office; that he had consorted with criminals; that he had betrayed the public trust.

Those were the charges her father had faced, and they were responsible for his death. Nothing was ever proven against the lawman, but he'd gotten careless from worry and stress. When he was shot trying to stop a robbery, plenty of folks said he deliberately stepped in front of the bullet.

Sarah switched on the kitchen light. In the pantry, she found canisters of pepper— ground pepper, peppercorns, green peppercorns, white pepper, red pepper, cayenne pepper. She found a used grocery sack and dumped them all into that, careful not to touch the flat surfaces of the cans and jars.

If there was any hanky-panky going on with the pepper in the Bingington house, she was going to find out about it. And then she was going to find those two men who'd been in the kitchen. She was going to find them and make them tell her what they'd meant about her father.

She grabbed the bag of pepper and hurried to the front door. There had been times when she'd suspected there was more to Cal's untimely death and her mother's sudden collapse— and some of the people responsible for all of the tragedy had been not five feet away from her this very evening.

It was a terrifying thought, but one Sarah was determined to prove, no matter what she learned about the past.

Daniel Dubonet watched the expression on the other man's face. There was no clue to his emotions.

"Check her out thoroughly. I have it from a very good source that this young woman could be serious trouble."

"What source?" Daniel knew he was pushing his luck to question his superior in such a manner, but the veil of secrecy that had suddenly surrounded a seemingly innocent young cook had piqued his curiosity. What gave with Sarah Covington? The first request from the Secret Service for FBI assistance was odd enough. Now the continued investigation was even more peculiar.

"That's an inappropriate question." Paul Gottard turned cold brown eyes on his employee. Daniel Dubonet was an agent with a lot of potential. But asking such stupid questions could end his career in a hurry.

"There are no inappropriate questions. Not in an investigation."

Gottard eyed the younger agent. Dubonet was impulsive and brash. Qualities that could be good or bad, depending on when and how they were used. He was also an agent who stood out— a fact that could make him a hero, or a scapegoat.

"Put your trainee's manual away, Dubonet. You want to know why we're so interested in Sarah Covington, I'll tell you. Miss Covington has a very interesting past."

Daniel started to make a retort, but he bit it back. He'd already pushed his luck with his boss. He could plainly see that by the lines of tension around Paul Gottard's eyes.

"Sarah is the daughter of a sheriff down in Mississippi. I should say, he was the sheriff. He's dead now. Died under suspicious circumstances. After a lengthy investigation by our agents."

Daniel was immediately alert. Corruption of local law enforcement officers was an area that particularly interested him. Lawmen, like ministers, were supposed to conduct themselves impeccably, Daniel believed. Men or women who took oaths to protect and defend citizens and then behaved illegally, were worse than other criminals.

"Tell me the background." He leaned forward in his chair.

"Cal Covington was serving his second term as sheriff of Hancock County. Seems he was doing a pretty good job, at least, according to his records. Looked like he could have been elected every four years for the rest of his life." Paul reached for a file on his desk. "Then there were rumors he was involved in an illegal gambling interest. Those coastal counties have always been wide open for gambling, prostitution and all the other vices. Been going on for years and no one seemed to mind all that much."

"So what happened?"

"That's the strange part. Covington was a real Wyatt Earp. Young girl was killed and he sent more folks up to the state pen than any other sheriff in the history of the county. Then we got a tip that he wasn't on the up-and-up. He made some enemies— " Paul dropped the file on his desk. "And then he walked into a bullet in a penny-ante robbery."

"Suicide?"

Paul shrugged. "We'd been investigating him for months. We could never find anything. Not really."

"How about the money?"

"We could never prove that he accepted it."

"Never?"

"Never." Paul tapped his fingers on the desktop. "Joshua Jenkins was in charge of the case. He was positive Covington was guilty."

"Old Man Jenkins?" Daniel couldn't help the impertinence of the question. Jenkins was a legend in the FBI, an agent more tenacious than athlete's foot. He never disappeared, and he never gave up. Not until he had the evidence necessary to bring his man to justice.

"Yeah. Jenkins." Paul's frown was the first emotion he'd shown. "Jenkins stayed after him. Month after month. He came up with
nada.
Zip. The big zero. But he always believed he could find the evidence. Then Covington was killed, and it became a moot issue."

"Jenkins thought it was gambling money?"

"That's what he thought. Lots of those syndicate big shots used to summer down along the coast. They'd come in from Chicago and New York and run all kinds of illegal games. As I said, the Mississippi Gulf Coast was not an area where people pointed the finger at high rollers."

"And Covington made it a little easier for them?"

"Not really." Paul rubbed his chin, the second display of unease. "Nothing was ever proven, but now his daughter shows up in Washington and some very powerful people get sick. It's not just coincidence that the three men who were stricken at her last dinner all have connections to Hancock County."

"You think Sarah Covington is in town for revenge?"

"Revenge, or to finish the job her father started. If Jenkins was right, Covington had sold out to the syndicate and then didn't follow through on his end of the deal. In essence, he betrayed his office
and
the criminals who paid him. And Jenkins believed they paid him handsomely. There should be a lot of money stashed away somewhere. If Covington was involved in something illegal, his girl may be trying to pick up where he left off, or she may be trying to get even with someone."

"Money, power and revenge. Three powerful motives."

"Right. We want to keep her under very close surveillance."

"I'm afraid I may have blown my chances of any type of casual observation." Daniel remembered how he'd burst in on her at midnight. He wanted to kick himself. If he'd acted with some patience and a little maturity…But he'd thought the case was a nuisance— a punishment, actually. Would he never learn?

"We had a complaint about you." The expressionless mask had dropped back over Gottard's face.

"I know. It was too late when I knocked on her door. But I'd had her staked out, and I'd wanted to get the list of ingredients and get it over with."