Enright Family Collection (46 page)

“But how do we know that?”

India’s eyes narrowed and she studied him from across the room.

“We have only his word, this story that he told you, and copies of some phony papers that he gave you. How do we know that that isn’t part of the scam?”

“You mean that Maris never sold him anything? What would he hope to gain from that?”

“Maybe some type of settlement from the Devlins.”

“He didn’t look like a man who was hurting for money, Nick. He was well dressed, carried one of those really good leather briefcases. Drove an expensive car.”

“You know that none of that means anything,” he reminded her, adding, “I’m surprised that you would take that attitude, knowing how many crooks you’ve sent up.”

“You’re right.” She nodded. “I should know better than to assume. But I had no reason to suspect this man. And every reason to believe that Maris would have pulled something sneaky like that. Did your mother’s investigator find out anything about Byers at all?”

“He is the head of Byers World. The company does exist. That much we know. Mother said she told him to look a little deeper and call her back. We’ll see if anything develops over the next few days.”

India rested her head against his chest and sighed. “I don’t like all this. I don’t like being on this side of the bad guys.”

“No one does.”

“Prosecuting is one thing. Being the victim puts a whole new spin on things. When it’s your family that’s involved, suddenly it isn’t all so routine.”

“We’ll work it out, I promise.” He kissed the top of her head and she stirred against him. “One way or another, we will get to the bottom of this. Hopefully before someone else gets hurt.”

“Whoever it is, they’ve taken all they’re getting from my family,” she told him. “It’s my turn now.”

Chapter 28

The front door slammed and India could not get there quickly enough.

“Indy, we’re home!” Corri shouted.

“I see that you are.” India held out her arms and the child bounced into them. “I missed you, Corri. I missed you every day.”

“I missed you too. Wait till you see what Delia gave me!”

“Delia?”

“She said I could call her that ‘cause ‘Mrs. Enright’ was too formal. Aunt August said just plain old ‘Delia’ was too familiar, but Delia said ‘poppycock to that.’” Corri paused—barely—to take a breath. “Look! Look at what I got!”

Corri opened a box and held it up for India to peek inside. A small turtle scratched tiny claws onto the cardboard bottom.

“Ry used to have a turtle like that,” India told her.

“That’s what Aunt August said.”

“Where did you find it?” Nick leaned against the doorway, eating an apple.

“The pond behind the barn.”

“I used to find turtles there. Tadpoles in the spring, frogs and salamanders in the summer. Unusual to find a turtle out of hibernation this time of the year.”

“One of the dogs dug it up, Mr. Emmons said,” Corri explained. “Mr. Emmons had it in an aquarium, but he said he thought the turtle liked me better so I could take him home.”

“Where is Aunt August?” India asked.

“She’s outside talking to Mrs. Peterson.” Corri pointed out to the sidewalk, where August was trying to extricate herself from a conversation.

“And Amber had fun too. Delia has a big old cat named Gracie who let Amber nap on the window ledge with her.” Corri bent down to open the travel crate that served as a temporary home for her kitten.

“Well, that just shows how special Amber is.” Nick laughed. “Gracie has never suffered other pets graciously.”

“We told her that Amber wasn’t staying.” Corri explained, “so it was probably all right.”

“I’m sure that must have had something to do with it.” Nick nodded.

“Corri, why don’t you take the turtle and the kitten into the kitchen. Later, we’ll get an aquarium for him.”

“Mr. Emmons gave me one. It’s in the back of the car. See, Randall is getting it out.” Corri pointed out the window.

“Hmm. Maybe I’ll go out and give him a hand with the bags,” Nick said.

“And I’ll see if I can help Aunt August.” India followed Nick through the front door.

“How was everything?” August hugged India after Janelle Peterson had satisfied herself that she had all the gossip she was going to get out of August Devlin that day and gone on about her business. “How is Darla?”

“Everything was quiet.” India took the shopping bags from her aunt’s hands. “And Darla is coming around. She opened her eyes on Wednesday. Kenny has taken some vacation time from his job and is spending the days at the hospital and has the kids at night. It’s been hard on all of them.”

“And I take it we’re no closer to knowing who …”

“Not a clue, Aunt August.” India paused at the top of the steps. “Chief Carpenter had a man here at the house twenty-four
hours a day for the past week and says he’s not heard or seen a thing.”

“We could just have well stayed here then.” August dropped a suitcase near the foot of the steps while she removed her heavy coat.

“Oh, but then you wouldn’t have spent a week at Delia’s.” India’s eyes danced. “So tell me, what was it like?”

“Great fun. And you’re right, I wouldn’t have missed it.” August laughed. “I haven’t been away in ages, and Delia has her own little resort right there in her home. Exercise room, indoor pool, an indoor track if you want to run, India! A spa. She had a masseur come in three times last week so that we could have a massage after we worked out with her trainer.”

“Delia has her own trainer?”

“Oh my, yes. Every other day. She says it helps her stay in shape because she sits at her computer so much.”

“Well, it sounds as if you had quite a week.”

“We did, India, but I worried about you.”

“You didn’t have to.” India draped an arm around her aunt’s shoulders. “Nick took care of me, and the police were watching the cabin as well as the house.”

“Well, I just wish we could get to the bottom of this.” August slammed the closet door. “We’ve had enough, India. First Ry, then this attack on Darla that was probably meant for you. What is at the bottom of it all?”

“I wish I knew.” India took August’s arm and led her into the kitchen. “Has Delia’s private investigator come up with anything new on the phony land sale?”

“I don’t know.” Grateful to be back in her own kitchen, August went on automatic pilot and ran water for the coffee maker.

“Did she happen to mention why she has a private investigator on call?” Nick sat down at the table and folded his hands in front of him.

“What?” August asked.

“My mother. Did she say why she just happens to have a private investigator who seems to be at her beck and call?” Nick frowned.

August shrugged. “Your mother is very well known, Nick. She probably gets a lot of crank mail. I guess in her position,
it would be a good idea to have someone you can trust checking into such things.”

“Hmmm.” He rubbed his chin. “I think she was getting some pretty funky mail there for a while.”

“Then she would want to have someone available to check people out, if she had to. It makes sense.”

“I guess so.” Nick leaned back into the old wooden seat.

“Indy, can you help me carry the aquarium upstairs?” Corri called from the hallway.

“I’ll get it,” Nick told India, rising from his chair. “It’ll give me a chance to check out this turtle.”

“It’s so good to be home.” August sighed. “As merry a time as we had, there really is no place like Devlin’s Light.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Do you, now?” August’s eyebrows raised.

“Yes, I do,” India told her pointedly.

“Well. It’s about time.” August unceremoniously poured the water into the top of the coffee maker, a small smile of satisfaction on her lips. Maybe, she thought to herself, things might just work out after all. “Now then, bring me up to date on everything that happened in town while I was away.”

“I’ll miss you tonight.” Nick stood in front of India, running his hands up and down her arms. “I was just starting to get used to having you at the cabin all the time. I’m not ready for you to go back to Darien Road.”

“Ummm. Me too.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed his mouth. “But I think I need to be with Corri tonight, and I think I need to stay close to Aunt August till this is over.”

“I feel better knowing that the chief is keeping a man on watch here,” Nick told her. “But if anything doesn’t seem right, I want you to call me, hear?”

“I hear. And I will,” India promised him.

“India,” August called from inside, “Corri is ready to be tucked in.”

“I’m coming,” India told her.

“Lock up,” Nick reminded her.

“I will.” She kissed him again before sending him on his way back to the cabin alone.

“And call me in the morning.” Nick lingered for a second.

“I will.”

“And don’t open the door for anyone.”

“Don’t worry so much. We have a police guard. He has a gun. We’ll be fine.” She blew him a kiss.

She watched him as he walked to his car, then waved as he pulled away from the front of the house. Crossing her arms, she went to the end of the porch and studied the night sky, searching in the dark for a wishing star. She found one, blinking high behind the choppy clouds.
I wish that Darla
would be all right. I wish that we could find whoever it was who hurt her.

A rustle in the leaves to her right caught her attention. She stepped back toward the house, instinctively moving into the shadows.

“Oh, Taylor!” She placed her hand over her fluttering heart as the young police officer rounded the corner. “You gave me a start. I didn’t see the patrol car. Are you early?”

“I’m sorry, India,” he said. “I didn’t mean to. My car has a flat, so I walked over from the station. And it’s already eight o’clock—that’s my shift.”

“Aren’t you going to be cold out here?” India frowned.

“Maybe, by the time we get towards midnight.” He shrugged.

“Let me get you a key,” she told him, disappearing into the house momentarily. “If you get really cold, just come in for a while. You can watch as good from inside as you can from outside, I guess.”

“I probably won’t use it, but thanks anyway. My instructions were to patrol the outside.”

He held the key out to her, but India shook her head, telling him, “Keep it, just in case.”

“Well, I should probably run it past the chief,” Taylor noted.

“Tell him I said thanks for keeping you here.”

“I’ll do that.” The officer touched the brim of his hat as he must have seen the sheriffs in old Westerns do.

India took the steps two at a time and all but skipped down the hall to Corri’s room.

“Now,” she told the child, “I want a full report on everything you did last week.”

“Oh, Indy, it was so fun.” Corri yawned. “Did you know that Delia has a swimming pool in her house?”

“No! Now, where in her house was it? In the living room?” India sat on the side of the bed and pulled her feet up, settling in for a chat.

“Of course not, silly.” Corri giggled. “It was in a room off her big sunroom. Delia has two sunrooms. One is real big and has fancy tiles and big fans in the ceiling and lots of plants and white furniture. The other is small and has a little chair with a sort of stool to put your feet on and it’s all white and green and has trellises on the wallpaper.”

India could almost picture it, a small, serene private retreat for the world’s most popular writer of mysteries.

“And the pool is very big and has lots of pretty tiles on the bottom and there are even trees in there.”

“Trees in the pool?”

“No, in the pool room.” Corri laughed, then her face grew very serious. “But guess what else she has, India.”

“I can’t.”

“Delia has ponies,” Corri confided, clearly awed.

“Ponies?”

“And horses. They all live in a big barn. They even have a big circle in the barn to ride in. And”—she held her breath—“she said I could ride any pony I wanted.”

“So, which one did you ride?”

“All of them.”

“All of them?” India fought to bury a laugh.

“I couldn’t decide, and I didn’t want any of the ponies to think I didn’t like them, so I took turns and rode all of them.” Corri nodded, sinking back onto her pillow. “But not the horses. They were all too big. I told them that someday I’d be bigger, and I’d come back and ride them too.”

India tucked the soft pale pink blanket under Corri’s chin.

“Do you think I will, Indy?” Corri’s eyes were at half mast. “Go back someday?”

“I feel certain of it, sweetie.”

“Good. I liked it there. It’s different from Devlin’s Light.
There’s no bay. But there’s a pond. It was so fun.” She sighed, and her eyes closed just a teensy bit more.

“What was the best part?” India asked, sliding her legs to the side of the bed, knowing that, within seconds, Corri would be fast asleep.

“The ghost couldn’t find me there.” Corri smiled into her pillow.

“What?” Startled, India froze at the side of the bed.

“The ghost couldn’t find me,” Corri repeated.

“Corri, honey, there’s no such thing as ghosts.”

“There is, Indy, there is.”

“Tell me what it looks like, sweetie,” India said gently, anticipating Corri’s description of a white-sheeted thing, or perhaps a vaporous specter that floated above the floor. What had this child been watching on TV? “Describe your ghost to me.”

“Mommy.” Corri yawned into her pillow.

“The ghost looks like your mommy?” India whispered to the child, who was all but fast asleep.

“Umm-hmm.”

India sat motionless for a very long moment. Maris had been such a painful thorn in the side of the Devlins that she had forgotten there was one in the house who might view her in a totally different way. Whatever she may have been as a person, she was still Corri’s mother. And Corri must have missed her so much that she had herself convinced that she still saw her.

Quietly turning off the bedroom light, India leaned back over the sleeping child to kiss her goodnight.
No matter how
much we love her
, India acknowledged,
I guess she will
always be Maris’s daughter.
How, India wondered, had one such as Maris given life to a child so loving, so good as Corri?