Flash and Fire (6 page)

But Whitney needed her.

It was no contest.

“Of course I’ll come.” There was a crash from the kitchen, followed by a string of colorful Spanish oaths. When Christopher began talking in earnest, those would probably be his first words. “You really want me over right away?”

She heard the barely suppressed relief. “Yes. As soon as possible.”

“I’m on my way.” She forced herself to sound upbeat.

Was it something to do with his health? Had he discovered his wife with another man? Adultery would have been a stupid move on Alicia’s part, but then, Amanda had never thought of the woman as particularly intelligent, just very, very lucky.

She harnessed her imagination before it got completely away from her. “Are you still at the same address?” She remembered filing it away in her address book.

“For now.”

For now.

What did that mean? He had transferred his business holdings here. Dallas had become the heart of all his operations. He wouldn’t leave unless ...

Unless what?

“I’ll send Saunders around to get you.”

“Fine, I’ll—“ She was already on her feet when there was an embarrassed cough from Whitney on the other end of the telephone line, as though he’d just remembered something.

“No, sorry, I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Whitney said, voice rough. “The truth is, Saunders doesn’t work for me anymore.” She heard him struggling to compose himself. “Amanda, I hate asking, but would you mind driving over yourself?”

“No problem. I’ll be there in half an hour,” she promised.

Even if I have to break every speed limit from here to your house.

Saunders was, or had been, Whitney’s chauffeur for as long as Amanda could remember. The older man had relocated with Whitney, first to L.A., then to Dallas. Had the man died? She knew for a fact that the man would never retire. He had nothing else in his life except for his work. He was too devoted to Whitney, too proud of his position to ever quit.

Unless, of course, Alicia had forced him to. Alicia had
steadily grown more and more critical of every facet of Whitney’s life, constantly nagging him that he could do better, be better. Even her father had thought that Whitney’s marriage to Alicia had been a mistake. Had the woman fired Saunders for some reason?

Impatience clawed at her as she went to tell Carla that she was leaving. What the hell was going on?

Chapter Five

The speedometer rose steadily until it hit seventy and hovered there as Amanda pressed down on the gas pedal. Curiosity and impatience shared the car with her like phantom passengers, spinning question after question in her mind.

Why had Whitney sounded so mysterious on the phone, so forlorn? Why had he called her now, after so much time had lapsed? What was happening? And why couldn’t Whitney tell her, or at least give her some sort of hint, over the telephone?

Something was in the wind, and it wasn’t good. She didn’t need a degree in journalism to know that.

But if it was bad, what did it have to do with Whitney? Whitney Granger lived under a lucky star, he always had. Everything he had ever put his hand to had been successful. He was a modern-day equivalent of Midas, except that whatever he touched yielded cars, not gold.

She glanced at the highway sign. Her exit was only a quarter of a mile away. Quickly, she signaled and worked her way over to the right-hand lane. She reached it just in time to exit.

Her mind kept wandering. She didn’t notice that she was coming to the turnoff that led to Whitney’s estate until she had almost passed it. Twisting the wheel, she made a sharp turn to the right. Tires squealed in protest as she gained access to the private road.

Five minutes later, Amanda was pulling into Whitney’s driveway. The security guard at the front gate had waved her on after she’d shown him her ID. Whitney’s gleaming silver stretch limousine was baking in the hot sun like a beached whale. It looked more like a funeral hearse than a luxury vehicle.

Amanda parked and got out of her car. The surrounding grounds had a strangely empty feel to them. It was almost, she thought, as if everyone had disappeared in the dead of night for some reason. Any minute now, Rod Serling was going to appear and tell her that she had entered the Twilight Zone. If she listened intently, she could almost hear the theme song. Her imagination had gone into overdrive.

That’s what you get for standing out in the hot sun, playing ball for four hours.

She picked up the brass knocker on the ornate front door and tapped lightly.

The door sprang open almost instantly. Amanda had the impression that Whitney had been standing by the door, waiting for her arrival. It was a silly thought, but it hung on.

He was as tall as she remembered, but thinner. Perhaps even a little gaunt. His cheekbones seemed more prominent than she recalled. But the haunted
appearance only served to reinforce his good looks, giving
him the appearance of some brooding, troubled poet out of the Romantic era.

He still wore his hair the same way, straight and a little long, but here and there shafts of silver gray shot through the fields of pitch black. Despite the fact that he was at home, he was dressed in a suit.

Whitney, she thought, was always dressed in a suit. She couldn’t recollect ever seeing him in casual clothing, but he always looked comfortable.

Except for now. But it wasn’t his clothes that gave him that vague air of discomfort.

The smile on his face didn’t quite reach his eyes. There was something there she couldn’t fathom, couldn’t quite put her finger on.

He took her hand in his, trying to put her at ease. “Hello, Amanda. It was good of you to come.”

“It would have been inexcusable of me not to.” She crossed the threshold, her footsteps echoing on the marble floor. It sounded so empty, as if this were a mausoleum instead of a place where a family resided.

Where was the family? Where was anyone?

Amanda looked around. “What happened to Hastings?” she asked, referring to his butler.

As far back as she could recall, Whitney had always had servants. They suited him, despite the fact that he had grown up in poverty. Or perhaps because of it. There was a commanding presence about him that made others almost eager to do his bidding. She had always thought that he would have made one hell of a senator.

Whitney took her arm as he escorted her into the living room. “He’s gone.”

She turned to look at him. His profile gave nothing away.

“Hastings, too?” she quipped, though her nerves were suddenly knitting together to create a tapestry of anxiety. “Is there some sort of biblical plague around, taking old and trusted servants?”

He gestured toward the white sofa and waited until
Amanda sat down before taking a seat himself. “If there is, it’s including wives and children in its inventory as well.”

“Well, I guess I’m in no danger. I haven’t got a wife.” The joke was less than feeble, but it was all she could manage. She had a dreadful feeling that something awful was about to be said.

“Neither have I, it seems.”

Amanda could only stared, dumbfounded. “Alicia left you?”

“This morning.” Alicia’s departure had made up his mind for him; he’d decided to come forward before the situation sought him out.

Amanda looked toward the fireplace. Like a scene from Laura, there was a huge portrait of Alicia over the fireplace.
It had originally hung over the fireplace in L.A. Amanda
always thought it would have looked better in the fireplace.

She laid her hand on his shoulder. Suddenly, he had the look about him of a man whose dreams had been stolen. The hell with waiting for the proper time.

“Whitney, what’s wrong?” He didn’t reply and she sighed in embarrassed frustration. “God, I feel strange asking that. Those were usually your words to me.”

His mouth curved slightly. The sadness in his eyes grew. He’d worked so hard and so long, it wasn’t fair that a desperate misstep should cost him everything.

But it would.

“But they do fit the occasion, I’m afraid. Things are very, very wrong.”

Restless, he rose and crossed to a gold-inlaid serving cart. It was filled with decorative liquor bottles of all sizes and shapes. The late afternoon sun filtered through a crystal decanter, breaking the rays up into rainbows that splashed across the deep rust carpet.

There would be no more rainbows for him, Whitney thought. Not anymore.

He stepped into the pool they created, then looked at her over his shoulder. “Can I offer you something?”

She watched as he poured himself two fingers of scotch. She’d never known him to drink. “An explanation,” she said quietly.

He threw back the scotch, then silently contemplated the empty glass, as if he had hoped to find answers there and was disappointed that there weren’t any. He began to pour himself another measure, then stopped. Drinking himself into oblivion wasn’t the solution. He set the glass down and returned to Amanda.

Whitney sat down stiffly beside her. Amanda watched as he folded his hands in his lap, rubbing one thumb over the other without even being conscious of it.

“I called you because you’re the only person I know who can present this without any embellishments, without any editorializing.”

She watched his eyes. They were flat, as if the life had been sucked out of him. “Present what?”

He drew out an envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket. “I have a press release.”

She took the envelope from him as if it were alive and would bite at any moment. Carefully, she set it down on the sofa between them. This wasn’t making any sense. “Then why don’t you call a press conference?”

He passed his hand over his eyes. With a sigh, he looked at her. “I’d rather do it this way. I don’t feel up to answering questions at the moment.” He rose again and began to pace about nervously.

Nervously. It was a word that was completely incongruous when mentioned in the same breath as Whitney Granger. She had never known Whitney to have an anxious moment, not even when he quit his lucrative position with General Motors to start his own auto company, Contemporary Vehicles.

She looked down at the envelope. It had felt heavy. “Then it is about the business?”

“Yes.”

She turned in her seat, trying to read his expression. “But I thought you were doing so well.”

That was the irony of it all. A bitter smile rose. “I am.”

She drew her brows together, trying to understand. “Then—?”

“Now.” He looked toward the cart and debated having another drink. He stayed where he was. “I wasn’t before.”

Her head began to hurt. She realized that she was holding her breath. Slowly, Amanda released it. “All businesses have problems when they’re just starting out.”

He laughed shortly. “That’s a mild term for what I encountered. Detroit doesn’t look kindly on an intruder.”

He’d been blacklisted and blackballed at every turn. Materials had suddenly become unavailable, designers had quit without notice. It had been a long, lonely road, littered with his own sweat and blood.

And all for nothing.

She moved to the edge of her seat, resisting the temptation to put her arms around him. She braced herself.

“But you were one of them.”

He nodded. “Until I left them. Then I was just one of me. I faced a lot of”—he struggled for a moment, looking for the right word—“difficulties.” An enigmatic smile played on his lips. “It got to the point that I was near bankruptcy.”

Was that why Alicia had left? Alicia with her expensive tastes and her demands? And if he was having financial difficulties, why hadn’t he turned to her father?

“I had no idea—“

“No.” The smile thinned. “No one did. I was too proud to let them. Pride goeth before the fall,” he quoted. “In order to stay afloat, in order to keep my dream alive”—his voice rose a little without his realizing it—“in order not to throw all those people working for me out in the cold, I had to do a number of creative—“

He stopped. He had called her here to bear witness to the truth. “—a number of illegal things.”

Amanda stared at him, stunned. There was tarnish on his armor.

The newscaster within her fled. What remained was a
teenage girl, aching with disappointment. “You’re joking.”

“I wish I were,” he said sadly. “I wrote some checks, juggled some books, sold shares of stock in the company that didn’t, in actuality, exist. In short, I did everything I could to keep body and soul together. The bad times passed and I was just beginning to straighten everything out. In time, I would have paid all the money back.” Time, deadlines, had always been the enemy. He knew that now. “But time is something I don’t have anymore.”

“I don’t understand.”

Any of it. I don’t understand any of it. How could you, Whitney? How could you?

He thought of the hushed voice on the telephone last
week. The sweat that had trickled down his back as he lis
tened and realized that it was over, that he’d been caught.

“The proverbial chickens have come home to roost. Somebody found out. I don’t know how, I don’t know when. I suppose all that doesn’t matter. What does matter was that I was approached last week. A neat little phone call, a mild voice, asking for money.”

“Blackmail.” Her voice was hushed.

He set his mouth grimly. “Yes, that’s the word for it.” The look in his eyes hardened. This had cost him his wife, his family, and very soon it would cost him a lot more. Whitney wasn’t going to walk into the quagmire any farther than he already had.

“I won’t have it.” For the first time since she had arrived, she saw him look like his old self. “I want you to break the story for me.” He tapped the envelope that lay on the sofa. “Here’re all the details.”

“Whitney,” she said helplessly, not knowing where to begin. “I don’t want to do this story.” She didn’t even want to touch the envelope again. “My father always said don’t admit to anything without him at your elbow.” She could feel herself withdrawing and cursed herself for it. “I think that you should—"