Just Before Sunrise (36 page)

But if he did get there in time, he ran the risk of playing into the real killer's hands.

The killer wanted Vic Denardo there, Annie thought. That was why he'd deliberately left Sarah's keys on the table. He wanted Vic Denardo to come to him at the Linwood house. He wanted to kill him and finally close the Linwood murder case.

Linwood murderer killed in self-defense after he returns to the scene of the crime.

But the real murderer hadn't counted on Annie recognizing the distinctive key too, remembering it from that afternoon when Sarah had come back from her visit to the house where she'd lived most of her life.

Even as she'd raced down the steps and found a cab, Annie had known she was taking a huge chance. But she couldn't not act. Denardo had a head start on her. By the time she explained everything to the police, convinced them that a simple missing key might mean murder, an innocent man could be killed.

When she arrived at the Linwood house, however, there was no sign of Vic Denardo, Otto, or her car.

"This is nuts," she muttered under her breath.

What if, in the rush of adrenaline, she'd gotten it all wrong? The missing key meant nothing, the missing painting had nothing to do with the murders of Thomas Linwood and Haley Linwood MacCrae.

Chastened, she headed up the front walk and mounted the front steps, glancing back at the street. Still no Denardo, no Otto, no car. No Garvin. No sign of any killer.

Even from the outside, the enormous house felt empty. Annie peered into a panel window. Nobody was there, she thought. She'd just gotten caught up in Sarah's drama. Finding her semiconscious had rattled her.

The front door opened, and Annie jumped back, so startled she almost fell down the steps.

Ethan Conninger gazed out at her from the shadow of the heavy door. "Well. Annie Payne. I wasn't expecting you. I suppose that was naive on my part, given your activities this past week." The easy manner was there, but the handsome dark eyes behind the glasses had a wild look to them. He smiled, opened the door wider. "Do come in."

Annie tried to smile back. "Oh, it's you, Ethan. I thought—I'm looking for Vic Denardo. He stole my car. I think he just assaulted Sarah Linwood."

"Really? Now why would he come here?"

She thought fast and decided to lie, pretend she believed Vic Denardo was the real killer. "He stole Sarah's key—"

"Annie. Don't lie to me. People always think they can lie to me. That I won't notice. That I don't notice anything. Well, sweet cheeks, I do. I notice everything." He opened the door wider. He had on jeans today, a red cashmere sweater, boat shoes. He sniffed. "It's been a hellishly long five years."

"Ethan—"

"Come inside, Annie. We'll wait for Vic Denardo together."

Her stomach churned, and she thought she might be sick.

Ethan Conninger studied her a moment and said matter-of-factly, "Annie, let me be perfectly clear here. I'm at the end of my rope. I've been playing the carefree yuppie for five years while waiting for Vic Denardo and Sarah Linwood to show up, compare notes, and realize what really happened. All week I've done all I could to keep them apart."

"Including breaking into my apartment and beating up my dog."

"Including that, yes. Don't doubt me, Annie Payne, and don't give me any trouble. If I must, I'll shoot you right here on the doorstep and drag your corpse inside."

Annie's nausea worsened, but she struggled to remain coherent. "Ethan, Sarah is telling the police everything. They'll be here any minute—"

"So the bitch lived, did she? Well, it doesn't matter. She didn't see me. I suppose I should have made sure she was dead, but I knew you and my friend Garvin would ride in on your white horses at any moment." He sniffled, sudden tears in his eyes. "Christ, what a mess. If only people had listened to reason."

"I'm willing to listen—"

"It doesn't matter now," he said, rallying. He squared his shoulders and produced a small, lethal-looking black gun. "Thomas, Haley—they left me no choice. It was them or me. I chose me. There's no turning back the clock. Now, Annie. Do come in."

She could sense his strain, just how close he was to slipping off the edge. She had no reason to doubt him. He would kill her on the Linwood doorstep, and he'd drag her body inside.

In trying to keep Vic Denardo from falling into a trap, she realized, she'd fallen into one herself.

Feeling steadier than she would have ever imagined, she entered the huge house. Her footsteps echoed on the hardwood floor. There was none of the festiveness of last Saturday, no hum of excited buyers, no guards, no discreet auctioneers.

No Garvin MacCrae, she thought.

Ethan made her go in front of him, his gun leveled at her back. He nudged her down the main hall toward the ballroom, having her veer off into an elegant, rectangular room with ornate woodworking, built-in shelves, and an enormous marble fireplace. It was bare except for Sarah Linwood's portrait of her niece at sixteen. It was leaned up against a wall, Haley smiling out at them as if she had nothing to fear.

"She was even more beautiful as she got older," Ethan said.

Annie looked around at him. "I've no doubt she was."

He had tears in his eyes. "She left me no choice. Christ. I couldn't do what she asked. She thought—" He cleared his throat, blinked back tears. "She thought if she was the one who asked me to do the right thing, I would do it. She knew I admired her, respected her. She was the one Linwood I never wanted to hurt."

"She knew you'd killed her grandfather," Annie said.

"Oh, yes. She knew. She'd decided to look into Sarah's finances in order to help her with her gambling problem. She discovered a mistake I'd made."

"How big a mistake?"

"Huge. I lost millions in a scheme I invested in without her grandfather's knowledge. It wasn't easy to do. I suppose in my own way I was as addicted to gambling as Sarah was. I compounded the first mistake by trying to cover it up, but with time, I knew I could make up for it. A few more years and no one would have been the wiser."

"You couldn't just 'fess up?" Annie asked, hoping to keep him talking and give the police, Garvin, Vic Denardo—anyone—a chance to get there.

He smiled thinly. "To Thomas Linwood? Not a chance. He wasn't a man to tolerate incompetence in anyone, from the kitchen maid to his own children, and hardly from a trusted financial adviser."

"But Haley—"

"She managed to unravel everything. She was always smarter than Garvin gave her credit for. And so damned sincere. She insisted on telling her grandfather. She wouldn't believe he'd fire me."

"Did he?"

"Of course. There was no reasoning with the man. That's why I didn't tell him about the mistake in the first place. I knew I'd be out the door, discredited." He gave Annie a thin smile. "I like my life."

"So he fired you," Annie said, "and you..." She trailed off, not wanting to complete the thought.

He glanced at the gun in his hand. "I knew what was up the moment he asked me to meet him here. I brought my gun in case he didn't listen to reason and insisted on ruining my reputation, making it impossible for me to work again, as well as throwing me out of a cushy job. But Thomas Linwood—well, he didn't believe a mere bullet could harm him. He certainly didn't believe I, an underling, would shoot him."

"And Haley believed it was an accident?"

Ethan narrowed his eyes on her. "It was an accident."

"He was shot through the heart—"

"Coincidence," he said, as if he believed it.

Annie swallowed, her throat dry and tight.

"Haley had me meet her here, in this room." He looked around, as if picturing that night five years ago. "She never believed I would hurt her. She appealed to my sense of honor. She said she believed me that I'd killed her grandfather in the heat of the moment. She said she knew I couldn't let an innocent man take the blame for something I'd done. She didn't understand that I'd
planned
it that way, in case Thomas met my lowest expectations—which he did. I knew Vic was there that night. Why the hell do you think I brought along a silencer?"

"You're a smart man," Annie said carefully.

"That's right. I am. One
fucking
mistake shouldn't have ruined me, but Thomas would have seen to it that it did. He was that big a bastard." He took a breath, as if making an effort to calm himself. "Haley wanted me to come forward and tell the authorities everything. If I didn't, she said, she would. Jesus! I tried to reason with her. I gave her a chance." The tears, Annie noted, were gone. "Then I did what I had to do."

Annie shuddered and looked around the opulent library, imagining the horror Haley Linwood must have felt when she'd realized that Ethan Conninger would commit cold-blooded murder to keep the life he had.

"She saw everything," he said quietly, almost eerily.

Annie frowned, then saw that he'd turned his attention to Sarah's portrait of Haley.

"I thought she'd been destroyed." He stared at the strawberry-haired girl whose soul Sarah Linwood had seemed to capture on the canvas. "I remember that night afterwards, thinking I should take her with me. But I didn't dare. Then when she turned up at the auction—" He shifted back to Annie. "I knew it was her way of trying to get the truth about me out."

"Ethan, it's a painting—"

"You didn't know Haley."

Annie licked her lips. "No, I didn't."

"She's watching us now, you know." He spoke matter-of-factly, calmly. "I know it sounds weird, but trust me, she's watching us."

"Why would she be watching us?"

"She's waiting for me to do the right thing. That's why I came back here. It's what she would have wanted me to do."

Remaining very still, Annie could feel her knees weakening, her stomach lurching. Ethan Conninger was intelligent, brutal, and guilt-ridden, .spooked by the thought of Haley Linwood watching him, judging him, from the canvas of an amateurish painting. But in a way, Annie could understand. In his own way, Ethan was just responding to the power of Sarah's vision. Even before she'd developed her talent, it was there.

"Christ," he breathed, "you can't imagine what I've been through."

She wasn't sure if he was addressing her or the sixteen-year-old Haley in the painting. "No," she said in a low voice, "I don't think anyone can imagine."

His eyes focused on her, suddenly hard, alert, very much in the present and in control. He had the gun leveled at her. "I'm going to give the police their man. That's the right thing to do."

"But you're not it," Annie said.

"You're no dummy, Annie Payne. Trust me, Vic Denardo knows the score. He'll be here. I'll kill him, I'll kill you, and I'll take the credit for stopping a murderer, just not quite in time."

"The way I figure it," Vic Denardo was saying as he and Garvin drove up to Pacific Heights, "Haley must have tried to appeal to reason where there was no reason."

Garvin glanced over at him. "It's a scary thought, Denardo, you and me being on the same wavelength."

"Yeah. Seeing how you been after my ass for five years, it is."

Garvin pulled into an illegal space in front of the Linwood house and leaped out. Otto crawled over the front seat, over Vic, and beat him out the passenger door. Vic cursed about dog hair, dog slobber, dog asses in his face. It was his way, Garvin realized, of keeping fear at bay. "Why the hell couldn't Sarah have picked a woman with a nice little Pekingese or something? No. She goes for the one with the frigging rottweiler. Hey—
hey, come back heref

But Otto had already bounded up the walk and over the fence and was charging across the manicured lawn to the Linwood front entrance.

"Jesus," Vic breathed. "He looks like a demon straight out of hell."

Garvin felt a stab of fear. "Yes, he does."

Vic shot him a look. "Annie?"

"He must have picked up her scent. Let's go."

They ran. Halfway up the walk, Vic put a hand on Garvin's arm. "Maybe we shouldn't go in through the front. Bastard could be waiting for us."

Garvin nodded. "All right. We'll go in through the back." He glanced at the older man. "You up for this?"

"I'm an innocent man, MacCrae. All I ever did was fall for an heiress and teach her how to play poker, get her some money when she needed it. I may be five years late, but I'm willing to put it on the line to clear my name." He gave him a weak grin. "And I kinda like this Annie Payne character. You?"

"Yeah," Garvin said, his throat constricted, "me too."

They cut down the narrow yard to the back of the house.

Garvin approached the back door, Denardo on his heels. They'd lost Otto. "I don't have a key."

"I do," Vic said.

"I'm not even going to ask."

Denardo produced a set of keys, and thirty seconds later they were in. Wanting to keep noise to a minimum, Garvin deliberately left the door open. The rear entrance came in at the basement level, lower down on the hill, allowing for the panoramic view from the ballroom. He knew the way to the stairs, but Vic wriggled ahead of him, undaunted by the dark, the potential for wrong turns. Obviously, he'd been this way before. Vic Denardo and Sarah Linwood had carried on their affair right under her father's nose.

They took the stairs up to the main floor carefully, as quickly as they could without sounding like a stampede. The stairs let out in the butler's pantry. Staying close to the wall, they slipped down the hall.

Up ahead, Garvin could hear voices from the library. Neither he nor Vic had a weapon. Garvin didn't care. He would do what he had to do. And maybe he was getting ahead of himself. Maybe Annie wasn't there. Maybe it was just the new owners talking about wallpaper.

He and Vic made as little noise as possible as they stayed close to the wall and came up on the library door.

Garvin recognized Ethan Conninger's voice. His heart sank. If only Haley had come to him, told him the results of her investigation into Sarah's finances, but she'd only dropped hints. She wanted to know the depth of her gambling problem and confront her with the facts. But she'd found something she hadn't been looking for. Preoccupied and troubled, Haley had only said she needed more information before she could tell her husband everything.