Sullivan's Last Stand, page 20
“We’ve never been close, Bailey,” he said somberly. “That’s probably more my fault than yours, and maybe you’re right to lay the blame for the breakdown of my marriage at my feet, too. But I did adore Angelica once. She was the most exquisite thing I’d ever seen, and during the first few weeks of our whirlwind courtship I was totally enchanted with her. I was thinking of those days only last night, in fact. The restaurant where Tracy and I dined used to be Angelica’s favorite when we were dating.”
He gave a small, helpless shrug. “I was feeling a little melancholy anyway, knowing that it was probably over between us, and the place brought back memories of happier times. I even got the piano player to sing ‘Moon River.”’ His gaze, usually so wintry, softened. “That used to be our song,” he added quietly.
Watching him, Bailey found herself wondering if she’d misjudged the man. Was it possible there was a streak of sentimentality in him after all?
“That’s touching, Plowright.” Sullivan’s voice was harsh. “Too bad your maudlin impulses didn’t extend to offering the woman a fair divorce settlement. She might not have been driven to do what she did. But I guess there’s a world of difference between that and slipping a piano player five bucks so you can indulge in a few moments of auld lang syne, right?”
The pensiveness that had shadowed Aaron’s expression was gone so completely that Bailey wondered if she’d only imagined it, and in its place was an oddly assessing look, as if he was taking a moment to size up Sullivan’s strengths and weaknesses. Grieving widower or not, the man was still a ruthless tycoon who had made his fortune knowing just how to disable his opponents, she thought uneasily. It was reckless of Sullivan to antagonize him this way.
But she kept forgetting that reckless was Sullivan’s trademark, she reminded herself starkly.
“Your insults seem to have an unusually personal edge to them today,” he said, meeting Sullivan’s hard gaze thoughtfully. “Does your jaundiced view of my character have anything to do with your realization of your own shortcomings? After all, we must have something in common—if things had turned out differently for both of us, we might even have been brothers-in-law.” He glanced at his watch again and smiled thinly. “But even if my wife hadn’t just tragically died, that possibility would likely never have become reality, I suppose. Some men just aren’t the type to settle down, are they?”
Bailey was close enough to Sullivan to hear his harshly indrawn breath as Aaron’s shot found its mark, but a sideways glance at him showed nothing more revealing than the tense set of his jaw. When he spoke his tone was even.
“Some men aren’t, Plowright. But facing that fact to avoid destroying anyone else might be a better way of handling it than to keep losing wives, don’t you think?” He turned to her, his voice softening. “Fitz says he’ll get a written statement from you later, honey. Let’s get out of this place before I do something I might regret.”
His choice of words couldn’t have been less fortunate, she thought, sharp pain lancing through her. “I don’t see that happening, Sully,” she said dully. She turned back to the man watching them. “You’ll inform me about the funeral arrangements, won’t you, Aaron?”
“Of course,” he agreed. He pressed one of her hands between both of his. “I’ll be holding an informal wake at the house this evening. Drop by and we’ll talk of happier times, Bailey.”
“Happier times?” Sullivan ground out as they drove from the parking lot a few minutes later. “He couldn’t be any happier. A divorce might have dragged on for months, but this way he’s become a free man overnight.”
“That’s still not a motive for murder, even if he didn’t have an alibi,” Bailey said listlessly. “I’m sure he wouldn’t have risked mentioning that prenup to Fitz if it didn’t exist. Aaron said it himself, Sullivan—a divorce would have cost him nothing. I don’t much like the man, but I don’t think he’s a murderer.”
“You think she killed herself, don’t you?” He looked over at her searchingly, and slowly she nodded.
“I think she must have. I’ll admit I suspected Tracy, but Aaron wouldn’t give her an alibi just because she’s his daughter. That’s not the way the man operates.” She shrugged. “And if Angel killed herself, then it must have been for the reason Fitz suggested.”
“Guilt over murdering Hank?” Sullivan looked unconvinced. “But what about the bottle of rye? What about everything she told you last night, for God’s sake?”
“I think my sister spun me a fairy tale last night, Sully.” Bailey gave him an uncompromisingly direct look. “As you know yourself, I’m gullible enough to swallow that kind of story.” She turned away from him and fixed a stony gaze on the passing traffic, willing herself not to cry.
“I didn’t spin you a story, Bails.” His voice was quiet. “You knew I was going back.”
“I knew,” she agreed leadenly, still not looking at him. “What I didn’t know was that your arrangements were already in place.”
“I wasn’t expecting that call so soon, either.” The light at the intersection they were approaching turned amber, and he swore under his breath as he braked for it. “But you said you understood why I was doing this, Bailey. You said you accepted—”
“Then I lied, too!” Whirling around to face him, she heard the thickness in her own voice and felt the tears that she’d vowed not to shed spill over, but suddenly she couldn’t hold them back any longer. “Everyone else lies, Sully, so why not me? I thought I had more time, dammit! I thought I could persuade you not to go. I thought I could convince you to stay, to build a future instead of throwing your life away on the past!”
“You might have done, at that.” There was raw pain in his voice. “But you wouldn’t have liked the man I eventually became, Bailey, and in the end I wouldn’t have been able to stand him, either.”
Behind them a car honked impatiently. Sullivan’s mouth tightened, and he put the Jaguar in gear. Bailey looked down at her hands and saw the salty sheen of teardrops on her clasped fingers.
“What will it take for the debt to be paid?” she said in a low tone. “Last night you said you wouldn’t go looking for death, but that’s the price, isn’t it? Nothing less will do.”
He didn’t answer her, and after a moment she wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand and looked up. “I’m going to have to learn to live without you, and I might as well start now,” she said distantly. “Drop me anywhere downtown, Sully.”
“I’ll take you to your apartment.” They were only a few blocks away, and already he’d started to edge over into the turn lane. Bailey shook her head.
“I’m not going home. I’m going to work.” She saw the brief confusion that crossed his features and shrugged impatiently. “I don’t know about your agency, but at Triple-A Acme a case isn’t closed until every last loose end’s tied up. I’m going to Le Lapin D’Or.”
“The restaurant where Aaron says he had dinner with Tracy last night?” He frowned. “But I thought you accepted his story.”
“I do.”
Her voice was completely steady again, Bailey noted, and her tears had dried. This wasn’t so hard. If she took it one day at a time, and there were three hundred and sixty-five days in a year, sooner or later hiding the pain would become second nature. She could do this.
She looked at him and felt her heart turn over in anguish. She laced her fingers together even tighter.
“I do believe him. But Angelica was my sister, and I owe it to her to check this one last detail.”
“Then I’m going with you, Flowers.” Sullivan’s tone brooked no argument. “We’re partners on this case, and I don’t like loose ends, either.”
Trying to dissuade him when he’d set his mind to something was impossible, she thought in frustration half an hour later. Despite her protests, he’d simply walked into the restaurant with her and within minutes had struck up a conversation with their waitress as if he’d known the woman for years.
“Oh, I know Mr. Plowright well.” Setting their drinks down on the table, the petite redhead smiled. “A very distinguished-looking man. He used to come here quite often with his wife, but we haven’t seen him much lately.”
“Was he here last night?” Bailey knew her question sounded too abrupt as soon as she’d said it, and she wasn’t surprised when the woman hesitated.
“I told you, honey, it’s next week.” Sullivan grinned ruefully at the redhead. “My wife here is certain I fouled up a telephone message. I’m sure we weren’t supposed to have dinner with him last night, but it might be a little embarrassing to tell the great man we can’t remember exactly what the arrangement was.”
The woman smiled, her manner once again relaxed. “I got off early yesterday, but I could ask Pamela. She’s the hostess. Let me check with her.”
“Thanks, I fumbled that one,” Bailey muttered ungraciously. She took a sip of the white wine she’d ordered and set the glass down again, knowing it would only bring on the headache she could feel threatening.
“You’ve got a personal interest in this,” Sullivan said mildly. “It’s understandable that you’re eager to get some answers.”
At the far end of the room a tuxedo-clad man strolled over to the white baby grand piano and lifted the instrument’s lid. He pulled out a bench and sat down and after a moment began warming up with a few snatches of show tunes.
“Who’s the Dutchman?” That made two questions in a row that she’d blurted out, Bailey thought, annoyed at herself. But Sullivan, although he hesitated, finally answered her.
“He’s a broker,” he said briefly. “Of men,” he added, seeing her blank look. “Over the years he’s built up a list of contacts, and when someone needs mercenaries, they get in touch with him and he calls men like me. I was off his list for a few years, but a few weeks ago I told him I was available again.”
“And he has a habit of losing men,” she said flatly, recalling the mysterious caller’s words. Sullivan’s expression didn’t change.
“He brokers high-risk assignments,” he said neutrally.
Before she could question him further, their waitress returned, smiling apologetically. “Pamela thinks she remembers seeing Mr. Plowright last night,” she said dubiously. “But she says she can’t be certain. We had several large parties in here, and things were pretty hectic for a while. I’m sorry we couldn’t help you more.”
“Not to worry.” Sullivan’s tone was easy and untroubled. “I’ll see if I can finesse the information out of his dragon of a social secretary without giving myself away.”
As the woman was called over to another table, Bailey reached for her shoulder bag and pushed back her chair. “That’s that, then,” she said. “It’s not as conclusive as I’d have liked, but I guess there’s not much more we can do. No, don’t get up, Sully.”
She stood. Their eyes met, and for a long moment they simply looked at each other, saying nothing.
He was such a handsome man and his eyes were so very, very blue, she thought, a rush of love filling her and the tears rising painfully in her throat. She’d thought a few days ago that he hadn’t looked any different from the day she’d first met him, and now he never would. In her heart he would never grow old, never lose that charmed luster, and would always be looking at her with that wry, sexy grin that never failed to disarm her completely.
She never wanted to know, she thought anguishedly. If she ever saw Ainslie walking down the street, she would turn and go the other way as fast as she could. She didn’t want to hear the news when it came. She wanted to remember him this way and never, never know.
She put her hand out and touched his cheek lightly. Swiftly he caught it and held it there, his gaze locked on hers.
“We already said goodbye, Sully,” she whispered. “We just never said we loved each other.” She bent over quickly and pressed her lips to the corner of his mouth, and then, just as quickly, she straightened and turned on her heel.
She had taken only half a dozen steps when she heard him call her name, and she paused, looking back over her shoulder at him. He hadn’t moved. His eyes were still fixed on her.
“We never said it, Bails,” he said softly. A corner of his mouth rose unevenly. “But we always knew, didn’t we?”
Her throat had completely closed up and her vision was obscured by a sheen of tears. Bailey nodded blindly. “Yes,” she managed. “Yes, baby. We knew.”
And then she was walking away, and she didn’t look back again.
Chapter Fifteen
Aaron Plowright closed the door on the last of the somber crowd of friends and associates who had come to support him in his fresh bereavement. They hadn’t been there because of Angelica, Bailey thought, glancing up at the full-length portrait of her sister that had been hung over the enormous spray of roses and white lilac on the heavy carved mantel. They would have known from the first that she wasn’t a permanent fixture in their world.
“She was lovely, wasn’t she?” Tracy drifted to her side, a small glass of Armagnac held delicately in her hand. She was wearing black, as behooved her status as unofficial hostess at her father’s late wife’s wake, and the color made her skin seem almost milky-white. “I know Aaron’s told you how devastated I was to hear of her suicide. I hold myself responsible, in part.”
“I do, too,” Bailey said coolly. “But you acted as you thought best at the time.”
When Aaron had phoned her a few hours ago and repeated his invitation, she’d declined with the excuse that the police were still holding her car, since it had been the last vehicle Angelica had used and had been found at the motel where she’d died. That had been a mistake. He’d immediately brushed her protest aside and had insisted on sending a driver for her. But she was glad now that she’d come. Her sister deserved to have one sincere mourner here for her, and the elegant woman standing beside her, despite the black dress she was wearing, certainly felt no real grief at Angelica’s death.
“Brandy?” Crossing the room to them, Aaron was holding a cut-crystal decanter. He poured a snifter for himself and looked up inquiringly.
“No, thank you,” she demurred. “I really should be on my way soon, Aaron. There’s no need to get Manuel out again tonight, though. I can call a cab.”
Most of the servants lived out, but she’d learned that Aaron’s driver had a spacious apartment over the massive garage not far from the main house. Still, Bailey thought, the man had probably settled down for the evening.
“He’s paid to drive for me,” Aaron said with a slight frown. “Why would I let you call a taxi?”
“When you have the kind of money my father has, the world is suddenly much simpler, Bailey,” Tracy said with a light laugh, holding out her glass.
He looked at her and then turned away, replacing the heavy stopper in the decanter and setting it on a side table. “It’s been an emotional day, my dear,” he said smoothly. “There’s coffee in the next room.”
There were undercurrents here that she didn’t understand, Bailey thought with mild distaste. She had no desire to understand them, either.
“If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just freshen up before I leave, Aaron.” Her smile not directed at either of them, she set the glass she’d been holding all evening down beside the decanter, and hesitated. Tracy interpreted her confusion.
“There’s a powder room upstairs, the fifth door on your left,” she said, her voice once again coolly controlled. “When you come back down I’ll ring Manuel to bring the car around.”
Another tiny flexing of her newly acquired power, Bailey thought tiredly, crossing the imposing hall and mounting the gleaming steps of the grand staircase that had formerly graced an English baronial manor, as Angelica had once excitedly told her. At the thought of her sister, she felt an aching sadness. It wasn’t as piercingly sharp as the anguish she’d been holding back all evening after leaving Sullivan. Nothing could equal that, she thought, her hand gripping the banister for support. These hours of interacting with strangers without betraying herself had been an ordeal that she was only too ready to end. But although what she felt for Angelica was worlds away from that wrenching pain, it was still something that would haunt her whenever she remembered the perfect child her adopted sister had once been.
This would have been the dream for Angelica. This luxurious existence would have been the summit she had striven for so single-mindedly, even as a little girl. Bailey paused by a half-open door, frowning slightly. She’d only seen Angelica’s bedroom once, but she was almost positive this was it. Aaron’s was farther down the hall, she remembered. Giving the door a light push, she looked in.
The room was decorated in pink and cream. Satin and lace festooned every upholstered surface, and on the bed was an enormous china doll, its skirts spread out over the masses of tucked and pleated pillows.
The little girl who’d been abandoned in a motel room had eventually returned to her roots, Bailey thought in sharp pity. But for a while she’d created for herself the childhood she’d never had. This room was a child’s room. Feeling as if she was intruding, she started to back out of the doorway.
Then she stopped, her gaze frozen on the corner of the photograph protruding from the stiffly ruffled skirts of the china doll on the bed.
The next moment she had tossed the doll aside. Hidden underneath it was a handful of photos, and before she’d even riffled swiftly through them she knew what they depicted.
“Mystery woman with her arms around Plowright’s neck, kissing him. Mystery woman lying on the bed while he’s sitting on a nearby chair. Mystery woman wearing a robe and nothing else…”
One by one the photos matched up with the descriptions of Tracy and her father on Hank Jackson’s list. They had been stolen from him after he’d been murdered, Bailey thought sickly. And then they’d been hastily hidden here in a dead woman’s bedroom, where no one would intrude.
Angelica had never returned to this house after Jackson’s murder. She’d left when Tracy had called her and told her to meet her at the man’s house, and from then on she’d been on the run, which meant that she hadn’t hidden these photos here.
