See How She Dies (32 page)

“Who else?”

She folded the notes and put them in her purse. She didn't like pushing so hard, but she had no choice. Someone in the family had decided it was time to play hard ball. Was it Nelson? She didn't think so, but she didn't know much about him. If Nelson were really her half-brother, she'd feel sorry for him, wearing his expensive suits during the day, and his new black leather jacket at night, while holding on to a job he didn't want just because he was a part of the political game started long ago by his father. She suspected that even though good old Witt was in the grave, Nelson was still trying to prove to his father—or to himself—that he was truly worth something after all.

“Is there anything else you wanted to know?” she asked.

“Why don't you just leave us alone?”

“I can't.”

“This is your mission, right?”

“You got it, Nelson.” Since the conversation wasn't going anywhere, she stood. “Look, this doesn't have to be a battle,” she said.

“Of course it does.” He stared up at her and his eyes seemed suddenly lifeless. She wanted to wiggle away from his dead gaze, but she didn't. “If you know anything about our family, you know it does.”

“As long as we understand each other.” She motioned toward the bar. “Don't worry about the bill. I charged it to my room.”

Nelson watched as she walked briskly out the double glass doors. He'd made a mess of things. He'd hoped to befriend her and weasel a little information from her, but she'd turned the conversation around and he'd been nearly tongue-tied. He was usually calm around women, immune to them for the most part, but occasionally he found one who could rattle him and Adria Nash, whoever the hell she was, had done more than her share of rattling.

He had the horrible premonition that she was London. Not only her looks, but her manner spoke of arrogance and power. He'd expected a shy little hick from Montana, a girl interested in scamming a few bucks and beating a hasty retreat, but there was more to her than met the eye and that scared him shitless.

Straightening his collar, he caught his reflection in the beveled mirror over the bar. Another murky gaze met his and locked and Nelson felt the back of his throat turn to cotton. There was passion in that stare—unreined, raw sexual energy that hit him with an intensity that knocked the breath from his lungs. He felt the same dark stirrings he'd tried to deny for years, held the stranger's gaze for just an instant, and turned quickly on his heel. He didn't have time for any one-night stands. Besides, they were much too dangerous. He had his career to think about and he couldn't, for the sake of one wet tongue sliding down his spine, give in to the dark desire that had been his curse for as long as he'd been interested in sex. One night could put his entire future in jeopardy. Especially now.

Ignoring the heat that crept into his loins and brought a sheen of perspiration to his upper lip, he left the bar and hunched his shoulders against the cool October breeze. Briskly, before he gave in to the sexual demons still burning through his mind and he turned around to meet with the sensual stranger, he walked the few blocks to the Hotel Danvers where his car was parked. Without a second's hesitation, he called Jason from the cellular phone in his Cadillac. “I just met with Adria,” he said, looking over his shoulder as if he expected someone—the potential one-night stand, perhaps—to be staring through the windows. “I'm on my way to your house.”

 

“Great!” Jason slammed the phone down and rotated the kinks from his neck. It had been one hell of a day. He'd been in meetings all day, but his mind hadn't been on business. No. He hadn't been able to stop thinking of Adria Nash—the proverbial fly in the fucking ointment.

How could the family get rid of her? There was something about her that got his blood up and he imagined himself either knocking her senseless or making love to her or both. He got hard just thinking of shoving her onto the bed and giving her the fuck of her life. “Get a grip,” he muttered. Even thinking about a sexual involvement with her was a ridiculous, treacherous notion and had probably started because she reminded him of Kat. Guilt, ever his companion, ate at him.

He was waiting for a call from Sweeny and he'd already had a run-in with Kim, who was making demands upon him, begging him to get the divorce he'd so foolishly promised her. He didn't need the added aggravation and now Nelson was losing it. The kid was about to go around the bend with this Adria/London thing. Usually even-tempered, Nelson was coming damned close to becoming unhinged. Jason checked his watch and frowned. “Come on, Sweeny,” he said before pouring himself another drink and tossing it back.

Ten minutes later the phone rang. Jason picked up the receiver on the second ring and heard Sweeny's nasal drawl. “I've done as much checkin' in this shit hole as I can,” Oswald announced without so much as a greeting. “Our friend Ms. Nash has been a busy woman. After discovering the tape from her father, she checked out every library book in the county on the timber business and the hotel business as well as shipping and real estate.”

Every muscle in Jason's body tightened.
Danvers International.
“So she's done her homework.”

“Hell, yes, she's done her homework, even got herself some goddamned extra credit, if you ask me. She ordered books from other libraries all across the Northwest—Seattle, Portland, Spokane, Oregon City, and newspapers, too. Contacted all the majors in three or four states. As I said, the lady's been busy.”

Jason's insides seemed to congeal. He'd hoped she was a bimbo, a low-class gold digger out for a quick buck.

Sweeny was still saturating him with the bad news. “Now you have to remember that she graduated with honors from the college she attended. Summa cum laude.”

“Christ!”

“This gal isn't another one of your look-alike airheads. She's got brains and it appears as if she wanted to know everything she could about you, the family, and how you go about making your money.”

Jason sagged against the wall and stared out at the night. He felt as if the floorboards were shifting beneath his feet.

“If you look through your list of stockholders, you might find that she owns some stock in Danvers International—not much, mind you, just a hundred shares, enough to get all the information you send to your investors.”

Jesus!
Jason resisted the urge to clear his throat. “Anything else?” he asked, his jaw clenched so tight it began to throb.

“Oh, yeah. A lot. And nothing you're going to want to hear. She's got the right kind of blood. A negative. Not all that uncommon, but since Witt was O negative and Katherine was A positive, their daughter could very well have been A negative. I never found any records where London was typed, but A negative would certainly have been in the ballpark. It's just too bad that old Witt or Katherine aren't around so that we could do a DNA test. Kind of a break for her that she had to wait until both London's natural parents were cremated, don't you think?”

“Damned convenient for her.”

“So far, it looks like she's got you by the short hairs,” Sweeny said, and Jason heard the note of satisfaction in the oily man's speech.

Jason took in a deep, calming breath. “So tell me the good news,” he said, praying there was a chink in Adria's story.

“She's broke.”

“How broke?”

“Broke as in drowning in red ink. Even though she's leased her farm, looks like she'll have to sell it and she's still got hospital bills hammered up her ass. A chunk of Danvers change would definitely keep the wolf from the door.”

That news was encouraging. In a legal fight, Ms. Nash would lose unless she came up with some egomaniac of a lawyer, some renegade who wanted a piece of the Danvers fortune himself and was willing to work on a contingency with no money up front. Jason had a lot of friends in town, attorneys who wouldn't dare go up against the Danvers family in a court of law, but there were plenty who would—on a contingency basis, just for the challenge and fame of it all. “Okay, what else?”

“That's it for now, but I plan to come up with something when I get to Memphis.”

“What's there?”

“Hopefully, Bobby Slade.”

“Virginia's husband?” Jason began to feel a little ray of hope. “You found him?”

“I think so, and a word of advice to you. You'd better get down on your knees and pray he's got A negative blood running through his veins. Would help cast a big shadow over her story. Oh, and there's one more thing you might like to know. Earlier tonight, our Ms. Nash was picked up at the Orion Hotel in a stretch limo.”

“By whom?”

Sweeny hesitated a beat and Jason had the sickening feeling that he was being strung along. “Well, that's the kicker,” Oswald Sweeny finally drawled. “Seems as if your good friend Anthony Polidori took her out to dinner.”

 

“Listen,” Nelson said, tossing his jacket over the back of a chair. “I'm telling you she's a wild card. There's just no knowing what she's going to do next. She's said she'll go to the press, do whatever it takes to get what she wants and I believe her. She wasn't just jacking me around.”

Zach stood near the fireplace, resting his hip on the Italian marble, feeling uncomfortable in the formal living room—the room he'd never been allowed to walk through as a child. Decorated in white, with touches of black and gold, it was a cold room and he would've preferred to be anywhere else in the world, rather than cornered here at the old family home with his brothers and sister.

Now, his eyes narrowed on Nelson. The youngest Danvers brother was known to exaggerate and for that reason he'd probably make a good politician.

Nelson had been pacing the length of the living room, nervously eyeing Zach ever since his middle brother had shown up.

“What do you think we should do?” Zach asked, unable to read his younger brother. Zach had never understood him, not even when Nelson was just a kid.

“Shit, I don't know what we should do! That's why I'm here.”

“You'll make a helluva mayor, Nelson,” Zach remarked before lifting his bottle of Coors to his lips.

“Governor,” Nelson clarified.

Trisha flicked a lighter to the end of her cigarette. “So what would you do, Zach?”

“Leave her alone. Let her play out her hand.”

Through a cloud of smoke, Trisha laughed. “Just because you don't give a rat's ass, doesn't mean the rest of us don't.”

“You've got a better idea?”

“Hire a hit man.” Trisha crossed her legs and settled back into the plump white pillows of the couch.

“Don't even say it!” Nelson bit out.

“Christ, don't you know when I'm joking?” Trisha rolled her eyes, but Zach noticed something darken her gaze, something she quickly disguised.

Nelson faced his sister. “No one knows when you're joking, Trisha. Not even you.”

“Clever, Nelson. Clever.”

Nelson shoved both hands through his hair. “We'd all better be careful. She's already received a couple of threatening letters and some damned package that she wouldn't say too much about.”

“How nice,” Trisha purred but Zach felt every muscle in his body grow instantly taut.

“What do you mean?”

As Nelson related his conversation with Adria, Zach's insides grew cold. Someone was threatening Adria? But who? Only the people in this room, his mother, and the Polidori family knew she was in town. No, that wasn't right; there were all the people who worked for the family, servants who could have overheard phone calls, and then there was the private investigator and anyone else Jason had put on the payroll.

Trisha, her expression unreadable, crushed her cigarette in a crystal ashtray. “Have any of you thought about the fact that Adria could just be who she claims she is? Maybe she is London and if she is, we're all up shit creek without our proverbial paddle.”

“London's dead,” Jason said, cutting off further speculation.

“How do you know? How do any of us know?” Trisha asked.

“We all know it. She obviously died years ago, or maybe there's a one-in-a-million chance that she's living somewhere, oblivious to the fact that she's a Danvers.”

“Or maybe she just found out who she is,” Zach drawled, narrowing his eyes on his family.

“It's all just a pain in the ass,” Trisha said as she climbed off the couch. “You know, I hate it when this happens, when someone comes in with all that crap about being London—Witt Danvers's little princess. That's what he called her, you know.” She turned her shadowed eyes on Zach. “You remember, don't you? She was all he cared about. The rest of us could have dropped off the face of the earth and he wouldn't have blinked an eye. But because it was London—it was a really big deal!”

“She's got to be dead,” Jason said.

Zach couldn't help rising to the bait. “Maybe one of us killed her.”