Patricia Potter (38 page)

Meara paced the house. Her existence, grown peaceful over the last few years, had been turned upside down a month ago. Now she felt her life was like a juggler’s ball, twirled first one way, then another, always in danger of tumbling.

Where was Lisa? Surely she would be safe since Weimer was escorting her openly and publicly. But what did Weimer have in mind, if he was what Michael said he was? What if Michael wasn’t what he said he was?

Christopher, he’d said, Chris Chandler. A respectable northwest lumber baron. She felt her whole body shaking.

Sanders. Help me, Sanders, she cried silently. She remembered the funeral, and Sanders’s partner, John Malcomb, saying Sanders had asked him to look out for her. Had Sanders had a premonition? John. John Malcomb. Perhaps she could call him.

Then she remembered Michael’s words. The whole affair could be opened. Like Pandora’s box. Could the terrible secrets be contained once the lid was lifted, if only a small bit. She was bitterly afraid not.

Could she trust Michael? She had once. How could she even think of doing it again? Should she risk her daughter’s life to hide a secret that might be every bit as destructive to her as a bullet?

Meara went into the master bedroom, the room that she’d shared with Sanders. She was barely aware of Andy padding behind her and grateful for his company now, useless as it was. Some guard dog; Andy had been known to tremble at the sight of his own shadow. She looked around the room slowly. She had avoided using the room, sleeping in the guest room instead. Illogically, she had thought she could escape the finality of his death that way.

Now she slowly headed for the closet. Her hands went to a box on a shelf above, and she carefully took it down and opened the top, staring at the small Colt pistol inside. Sanders had insisted that she have one at both houses since she and Lisa were alone so much. He had seen that both of them had lessons in its care and use, taking them to the FBI practice range.

Lisa, who had always wanted a law enforcement career, had been particularly adept, but Meara had still remembered the night when she’d killed a man, and every moment had been torture. But Sanders, who had seen every kind of mayhem, had quietly insisted. Thank God. Again, she wondered if he’d had some kind of foreboding.

Her hand curved around the butt of the pistol. She’d hoped she would never have to touch the weapon, a feeling reinforced by the killing of Sanders. He’d been killed by a bullet. Just like the German. Guns were malignant things, their use usually limited to destruction. Yet she forced herself to handle it, to check to see whether it was loaded. It was.

Meara looked about the room. Sanders was everywhere. In the rocking chair where he frequently read, in the photos of the family on the dressing table, in the painting of the Pennsylvania farm country she had commissioned for his birthday. It was a warm room, and in her loss she suddenly realized how much she had loved him. Quietly, undemonstratively, but undeniably. She hoped he knew that.

Her hands still locked on the gun, she wondered what he would do. What he would wish her to do.

After her questioning by the FBI, he had never again mentioned David Michael Fielding. But she’d been aware, through the fog of grief and anger and hate during those intense sessions, that he had been remarkably charitable to the man who had betrayed him as well as Meara. His questions had, at times, been curious indeed, as if he were puzzled at certain details. But he’d never said exactly why.

Did you sense something I didn’t, she asked silently. She wanted to believe in Michael Fielding/Chris Chandler.

But if she believed him, she also had to believe Lisa was in desperate trouble.

She went through the living room to the small study where she and Sanders had shared a desk. She found his address book and flipped through it until she found John Malcomb’s number. She would ask him to check on Kurt Weimer.

He answered on the second ring, just as she’d almost decided to hang up, and he sounded pleased to hear from her.

“Could you do be a favor, John?”

“Anything,” he answered quickly.

“Have you heard of the Economic Conference being held at Sea Island?”

There was a pause. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Well, apparently a number of economists and government officials are here for it. One of them, a German economist, has shown interest in Lisa. Could you please check him out?”

There was another slight pause. “Do you have a specific reason why?”

“It’s just that, well, he’s a great deal older than Lisa and there’s something about him that frightens me a little. Perhaps it’s just…because Sanders isn’t here. But would you mind?”

“Of course not. What’s his name?”

“Kurt Weimer.”

“I’ll do it in the morning,” he promised. “Anything else I can do?”

She thought about asking him to check on a Christopher Chandler, but dismissed the idea. What if it led them to Michael’s true background?

If it did? He deserved prison. One word. That was all it would take, he’d said. But she couldn’t.

Just as she hung up, she heard a car pull into the drive. She went to the window and looked out. Kurt Weimer had gotten out of the car and gone around to the other side, opening that door for Lisa. He offered a hand, Lisa accepted it, and stepped lightly from the car. Her movements were easier and lighter than they had been in weeks, and Meara saw her look up at the German and smile. He said something, and Lisa laughed, her hand still entwined with his. They walked slowly to the house, their heads bent toward each other, and Meara froze. Was that the way she had once looked at Michael? The thought was devastating. They were at the door now, and Meara quickly put the pistol in a drawer of the desk and retreated to the kitchen where she started to heat some milk for hot chocolate. She didn’t want Lisa to think she was spying on her.

The door opened, and Meara jumped. She didn’t know what she would say, how she’d react, if Kurt Weimer came in the house. But he didn’t. Lisa appeared alone in the doorway of the kitchen, her face glowing.

“He’s wonderful, mother,” Lisa said. “He was so kind…and…”

Meara felt her face stiffen. She remembered that feeling of euphoria. Only too well. Don’t say anything, she told herself. Don’t chase her away.

“Would you like some chocolate?” she said, forcing the words.

“No, I don’t think so. I’m deliciously full. Do you know Kurt’s an adviser to the West German chancellor? He’s even met President Kennedy.”

Be careful, Meara warned herself. “He’s probably going to be very busy now.”

“Of course, but he asked me to attend a formal dinner next Saturday, and whether I could show him Savannah Sunday.”

What little hope Meara had died at the words. “Lisa, don’t you think he might be a little…old…for you.”

The light went out of Lisa’s eyes and the old resentment took its place. “No,” she said. “Daddy was that much older than you.”

So was Michael, and look what happened, Meara thought.

She tried again. “But he’s so much more—”

“So much more what?” Lisa was hurt. Meara knew from the tone of her voice. Part challenging, part wounded.

Meara hunted for the safest word. “Experienced,” she finally said.

The stubborn look was more and more pronounced on Lisa’s face. “You think I’m still a child,” she accused.

“Oh, darling, I know you’re not a child. But I just don’t want to see you hurt.”

Lisa’s face softened. “I won’t. He’s very nice.”

Meara wanted to forbid her daughter to see the man, but there was no way to do that. She was twenty, already a college graduate who would enter law school next fall. Any command would be ignored, any warning would fall on deaf years.

“Just be very careful, Lisa,” she tried anyway. “Please.”

“I will, Mother,” Lisa said, but her glowing eyes said otherwise. She turned and went to her bedroom.

Meara eyed the scorched milk in disgust, and poured it out.

You have to know the SS…they understood the pain was worst when inflicted on a loved one rather than the person directly responsible.

Was her daughter going to pay for her mistakes of twenty years ago?

She turned out the light in the kitchen and then returned to the living room and to Sanders’s desk. She took out the pistol and walked slowly down the hall to the master bedroom. She would sleep there tonight.

Meara placed the pistol in the drawer of the bedside table and huddled alone in the large bed.

Chapter Twenty

L
ISA WISHED WITH
all her heart that her father were still alive. She would like to have shared this evening with him.

He would have understood. He always did.

Kurt. Even the name was continental and exotic. She had never met anyone like him, who made her feel like a Cinderella.

He had been warm and fun, and full of charm, asking everything about her, as if he were very interested. He had wanted to know about her life, her ambitions, her family.

He had been sympathetic when tears welled up in her eyes when she told him about her father. She had been embarrassed. She should have more control by now, but she’d always been very emotional, crying at movies, or a sad book, or even news of a distant tragedy. It was a trait she abhorred, and one she knew she would have to discipline if she were to go into any area of law enforcement or even law.

Her father had tried gently to dissuade her from the former, but when she insisted, he was her staunch supporter although her mother was opposed to the idea. She wasn’t opposed to a career, she’d said. Any career but law enforcement. But that was what Lisa wanted.

She knew her mother had once wanted a career of her own, that she’d given it up for Lisa and her father. Her father had told her as much once when Lisa thought her mother had been overly strict again. Lisa also knew that he’d had another child and wife, and that both had been killed. Lisa sensed that the loss had made him protective of his own. But she had never quite understood the occasional tension between her parents, the traded glances that seemed to hold secrets. She had fiercely resented those looks, as if she were being left out of something important, and the blame invariably fell to her mother because Lisa could never see anything wrong in her father, who had been the dearest person in her life.

After her outburst several days ago, she’d been immensely ashamed of herself, and she knew her father would have been ashamed for her. Her mother, too, had always been there for her, but not in the same unqualified way as her father. Or so it had seemed to her.

She was so confused, so lost, and she hated herself for it. She was twenty years old, almost twenty-one, old enough to cope with a tragedy that she’d always known was possible. Perhaps that’s why Kurt so appealed to her. He made her feel older, more able to cope, while Kelly’s warm, sympathetic presence seemed merely to elicit more tears.

Lisa thought of the light touch of Kurt’s lips this evening when he brought her home. Almost more of a courtesy than the barely restrained passion she always felt in Kelly. But it had excited her in a new, adventurous way, and her heart had jumped when he’d asked her to dinner and to spend Sunday with him.

She only wished her father could meet him.

Kurt Weimer nursed a drink in his room, a smile of satisfaction on his lips.

He had not known, until he had arrived, exactly what he intended to do. Now he knew. Everything had fallen into his lap, as if certain events were preordained.

The conference would be a nuisance. Ordinarily, he would have sent a subordinate to attend, since it was principally an information-exchange event. But when he had heard its location, pieces started falling together. At long last, he would see where his father died and have the opportunity to pay a long overdue debt.

There was another factor now. The South, in upheaval from the civil rights movement, was a bitter, seething region of hate and violence. School integration, demands for voting rights and political power, restaurant sit-ins, had rocked this usually easy-going conservative part of America, giving rise to numerous white supremacist groups. Those in Odessa had never forgotten the part America paid in Germany’s defeat, and they had sworn it would never happen again. Long-range plans to neutralize possible enemies had been formed years ago, and the time was ripe now to plant seeds, and nurture them.

Kurt planned to kill two birds with this one trip: to bring the strongest of the white supremacist groups under the control of Odessa and to even the score with Meara Evans. But Kurt knew he had to be careful. There had been too much time and money invested in him to throw everything away on a personal matter. He had emerged as one of the leaders of Odessa and the neo-Nazi movement, although they were careful not to call it that. Their people would return to leadership, to control, and unite West and East Germany and make it strong again. Just as Adolf Hitler had after World War I.

It was not impossible that he would one day become chancellor. But not if he acted unwisely.

When he had learned of Sanders Evans’s death, he knew that fate was with him. Evans had worried him. He had not wanted to tangle with the FBI and all its resources, and that possibility, no, probability, had stayed his hand for years. But it was no longer a factor.