Beyond Eden (41 page)

She nodded. “It's a relief to me too. Do I look really gruesome?”

“Yes, but I'm somewhat nearsighted so it doesn't bother me all that much.”

“Do you know something, Taylor?”

He was nuzzling her neck. “What?”

“I haven't been bored since I met you. On the other hand, I don't know if my body can keep mending itself in time for you to come up with new diversions.”

He suddenly became very quiet in mid-kiss.

“Taylor?”

He raised himself on his elbow and looked down at her. He said very slowly, “I think that you've just hit on something.”

She just looked up at him, saying nothing. Her arm burned, but it wasn't important. She scarcely even noticed it.

“I can't believe I didn't think of this before. Maybe we've been looking at this from the wrong end. You just said I'm the one coming up with new diversions. What if these attacks on you aren't directed at you but at me?”

She stared at him. “Is that possible?”

“I've made enemies. I was a cop for a good
number of years. Yeah, maybe we've been staring in the wrong end of the kaleidoscope. Let me get Barry over here fast.”

Barry would be over after he'd finished his dinner. Didn't the two of them ever think about food?

“Now,” Taylor said, easing down on the bed beside her again, “I want to ask you a question.”

“Shoot.”

“Not that, Lindsay. Tell me why your father hates you.”

She gave him a clear, honest look. “I don't know, I truly don't. I've wondered and wondered and tried to figure it out over the years. I asked my mother, my grandmother, but they always told me it was my imagination or that my father was just under a great deal of stress. Finally my grandmother did admit that he loved Sydney more than he loved anyone else in the world. He was, she said, a man who couldn't seem to love more than one person. It's like he's almost obsessed with her.”

“Did he always treat you badly?”

She shook her head. “No, it started sometime before Sydney's wedding, before I was sixteen, I think. He simply drew back from me. Everything went to Sydney and she wasn't even there most of the time. Now that I think about it, that's when the troubles started between him and my mom too. She gained lots of weight and started drinking too much, just like Holly is now.”

“Sydney is nine years older than you.”

“Yes. So she would have been in law school when it began. Not even in San Francisco all that much. She was at Harvard.”

“You can't remember anything that could have precipitated this behavior of his? This viciousness?”

“No. What are you thinking, Taylor?”

He kissed her. “I'm thinking that we're going to have some answers, finally. Another thing, sweetheart, old Oswald is going to sing like a yellow canary once he's out of surgery. Not to worry.”

“Why worry?” she said, and smiled up at him. “I've got another good arm to donate.”

Barry Kinsley stood beside Taylor, hands shoved into his pants pockets. Both of them were staring at the swinging doors, waiting for the surgeon to come through.

“I found a gray hair this morning,” Taylor said, never taking his eyes off those doors.

“Yeah, well, I got a good dose of indigestion from all these shenanigans you and your bride have put me through. My wife said if I didn't get the guy responsible today, she wouldn't sleep with me for five months.”

“Why five months?”

“That's when our kid goes off to college and she figures she'll be so horny by then she won't care what I've done.”

“I didn't know you had a kid. More than one?”

“Four. This is the last one off to college—a real pistol.”

The swinging doors were pushed open.

Two nurses came through, talking. No surgeon.

Three more minutes passed. They paced, silent now.

The surgeon came out then, an older man with tired pale eyes. He was still wearing his greens, only they were stained with blood now. He pulled the cap off his head even as he said, “He didn't
make it. I'm sorry. It was problematic when I went in. The bullet did a lot more damage than I'd first thought. If he had lived, he would have been a vegetable in any case. I am sorry.”

“Well, heigh ho,” Barry said, and sighed. “Thanks, Doc.”

Taylor headed back toward the elevators, feeling lower than a slug.

He pounded the elevator button with frustration. “Doesn't the guy have any relatives? Maybe someone we can contact who would know who hired him?”

Barry shook his head and stabbed at the elevator button, outdoing Taylor. “Not a single merry soul, more's the pity. I checked on that right away. Jesus, Taylor, back to square one.”

“I'm getting slow in my retirement. What are we going to do now, Barry?”

“Well, there's nothing we can do about him croaking, not a bloody thing. Now, you said you had some other ideas. Let's get back to Lindsay.”

When they reached Lindsay's hospital-room door, there was Sydney, arguing with Officer Dempsey. He was refusing to let her in. Taylor could tell by the set of her shoulders that she was about ready to take his head off. He could tell by the set of Officer Dempsey's shoulders that he wanted to let her do whatever she pleased, but he was holding firm.

“No, ma'am,” Dempsey repeated, looking more miserable by the word. “I'm sorry, but no one gets in here. Not God, not any of his angels. Sorry, ma'am, really I am, but those are my orders. Taylor would have my guts pulled out and stuffed up my nose if I let anyone in.”

Barry raised an eyebrow at that.

Before Sydney could blast him, Barry called out, “We'll keep an eye on her, lad.” He smiled at Sydney and pushed open the door. “Good lad,” he added to the officer as he passed him. Taylor said nothing until they were inside.

Lindsay was asleep, the bruised, swelled side of her face up. She looked like she'd been in a war, which she had been.

He immediately lowered his voice to a whisper, asking Sydney, “The judge is gone?”

“Yes, I waited until I actually saw him onto the plane. I even waited until the plane took off.” Sydney looked toward her half-sister. “God, she looks like bloody hell. She'll be all right this time?”

“Yes. She tells me she wants combat pay.”

“I'm here to cut a deal.” She looked toward Sergeant Kinsley. “I don't want him around. This is just between us, Taylor. Once you hear what I've got to say, I don't think you'll want Lindsay involved.”

“Okay, I'll bite. What kind of deal?” Before she answered, she looked pointedly at Barry. Taylor said, “Can you wait outside for a bit, Barry? This really shouldn't take long.”

“No, it shouldn't,” Sydney said.

She said nothing more until the door closed.

She moved away from him, a good twelve feet away, he saw. “Well?”

“It's about my father. I imagine you've been wondering why he hates her so much. Well, I'm here to tell you why.”

Taylor made certain Lindsay was asleep, then said, “All right, but keep your voice down.”

“Mind you, I didn't know any of this until after Grandmother's death, after the reading of the will,
after Lindsay had already left to come back to New York.

“Grayson Delmartin, Grandmother's lawyer, came back to the mansion after he'd dropped Lindsay off at the airport. My father started in on him immediately, telling him he was going to sue, yelling that Lindsay would never get away with it, and he'd tell every newspaper in the state, he didn't care, and the world be damned. The Foxe name would go down the tubes, no doubt about that. He was going to tell, he was going to make a press announcement the following morning, and he was going to get all the money.

“I didn't know what he was talking about. Neither did Holly.”

“Dammit, Sydney, get to the point.”

“He said that Lindsay wasn't his daughter. He said that he'd found out the truth some eleven years ago and told his mother. She already knew, he said. She knew, and she wasn't displeased. She told him to keep his mouth shut, that she wouldn't tolerate him telling anyone about it. He agreed, oh yes, he said he'd keep quiet, but only if she promised to leave him all the Foxe money.”

“The judge isn't her father—” Taylor shook his head. “That's crazy. I've seen both of them. She's got his eyes—they're identical—that dark blue, mysterious, so deep it's scary. And the shape, completely the same. Identical. Is the man blind? Or are we talking about a long-lost twin brother?”

“He screamed at Delmartin that his first cousin, Robert, was Lindsay's father and he could prove it.”

“Cousin?” Taylor said blankly. “Lindsay never said anything about a cousin who looks like her, she's never said a word about other relatives.”

“She never met him, never even knew he existed, as far as I know. Why should she? Her mother, the poor bitch, wouldn't tell her, you can bank on that. This cousin was evidently there only a short time and then he was gone, and he never came back. He's dead. He died in the late eighties, in a skiing accident in the Alps. Mind you, this all came from my father while he was screaming at Delmartin.”

“Weren't there any photos of this Robert character? Didn't your grandmother ever say a word?”

“Not a photo, not a clue.”

“What the hell kind of family is this? Oh, I forgot, you're a big part of it. Go on, Sydney, finish this. I've already got an inkling about your punch line.”

“My price goes up every time you're a shit, Taylor. This Robert was the son of my grandmother's younger brother, and evidently the spitting image of him. The eyes, I found out, are hereditary. Of course, I never went sorting through any of my grandmother's things either before or after she died. I remember wondering why Father couldn't stand Lindsay. Of course, I never paid her any attention at all, although I remember thinking that something had changed, but I can't be sure of the time because I was always in and out, usually out of the state. He started cutting her down whenever she came anywhere near him. Of course, he's always adored me—a large part of that was because of my mother. I look like her, he says. He loved my mother more than anything in this world. So, through her, he gave me all his love, all his attention.”

“And you followed in his footsteps and became a real bitch to your half-sister.”

Sydney shrugged. “She was a pain, always in the way, and besides, she's barely related to me.”

“All right, Sydney. I'll bite. You've dropped one shoe. Where's the other? How are you planning on keeping your father from screaming the truth to the media?”

Sydney smiled then. “I phoned Mr. Delmartin before coming back here to the hospital and told him what father had said and threatened. He laughed, said that Grandmother had foreseen his threats and had taken steps to see that he'd be disappointed—her word.”

“What are the steps?”

“I don't know.”

Taylor said, “Probably some kind of legal adoption, I'd imagine, done between Lindsay's mother and grandmother.”

“That sounds like the old lady,” Sydney said. “The miserable old biddy and—”

“Get on with it, Sydney.”

“All right. For five million dollars I'll keep quiet about this; Lindsay will never find out the truth.” He raised his eyebrow and she said, “All right, let me spell it out, lover boy, for five million she won't find out that her dear mother was a slut and she's a bastard.”

Taylor laughed. “What makes you think her ex-father won't be here yelling the truth at her just for revenge?”

“He can and will bargain with you himself, don't doubt it. Once he calms down and realizes the potential of what he now knows, he'll be right back here, ready to cut a deal.”

Taylor didn't say anything for a very long time. Sydney, an excellent lawyer, knew not to move, not to fidget.

“All right,” he said.

“Just like that? You'll come through with the five million just like that?”

“Oh, no, not a bloody dime.”

“Don't you realize what this would do to your precious wife? Your precious very, very rich wife?”

“She'll never know, at least from you. As to her father, he's something of a wild card. I'll just have to deal with him when and if he shows up.”

“You'll deal with me!”

“No.”

“All right, let's just wake up Lindsay and tell her!”

Taylor grabbed her arm as she tried to push by him. “Keep your voice down, Sydney. You won't wake her up. You'll listen to what I have to say to you. You see, I want to cut a deal with you.”

“You don't have anything,” she said, but she was wary now, he saw it in her eyes.

“Your wonderful mother,” he said very quietly. “The woman your father adored, the woman who died, and all the women who came after her were just dull copies of this perfect woman. You're just like her and that's why your father treats you so well, why he worships you.”

“What about my mother?”

He heard the fear in her voice, low, masked, but still there. She was good, she really was.

“Would you like to have her address, Sydney?”

She reeled away from him as if he'd struck her.

“You're lying!”

“Keep your voice down or I'll drag you into the corridor.”

He didn't have to drag her anywhere. She raced past him and was out of the room in an instant. Taylor followed. He wasn't smiling, but it had to
be done and he would be the one to do it. He would be the one to end it.

She was standing outside the room, leaning against the wall, her head back, her eyes closed. She didn't open them, just said very quietly, “You're lying.”

“Ask your precious father.”

“She's dead. She died when I was six years old. He came and got me at school and told me she was in heaven. He cried and held me. She's dead. I hated Jennifer when he brought her home. She proved what she was, didn't she? A slut, and she had Lindsay, a bastard. She wasn't married to my father for more than a year or so before she was screwing around on him. Damn you, my mother's dead!”

“No she isn't.” He wanted to tell her that most likely her mother had walked out on him for his infidelity, that she'd also walked out on her daughter, but he simply couldn't bring himself to say the words.

Then, in the space of an instant, her eyes grew as cold as her voice. “So, what deal, Taylor? What you're saying could be true, but who cares? There's no real value to it, none.”

“Your father would probably care, for one. He lied to you. I doubt he'd appreciate being confronted not only with his lie but also with the woman herself. Who knows? Since you believed he loved her so much, maybe when he sees her again he can convince her to divorce her current husband and come back to him.”

“She's dead!”

“Maybe she could even fly to New York and you could introduce her to all your hotshot friends.
Maybe she'd really like to see her granddaughter in Milan. What do you think, Sydney?”

“You're a lying bastard!”

“I wonder how many little stepbrothers and stepsisters you have now? Do you think they're all as smart, beautiful, and charming as you are?”

She struck him hard, with the palm of her hand. His head snapped back. Very calmly Taylor grabbed both her hands in his and held them in front of her.

“I must say I'm delighted you're not my sister-in-law. You probably have some good points, most folk do, maybe even the Son of Sam. However, enough of all this garbage. You won't say a bloody word to Lindsay about her mother. You'll fly home to daddy and tell him that if he opens his mouth, his dead ex-wife will be on his doorstep. If he wants scandal, he'll get it. Do you understand, Sydney?”

“I hope she leaves you.”

He laughed. “We're not even on our honeymoon yet. Do you intend to go right out and buy a voodoo doll?”

“She's so screwed up, you'll leave her!”

His laughter died, but his smile didn't. “There is something I'm very grateful to your father for. He never told you about Lindsay. I can just imagine you tormenting both Lindsay and her mother for ten years. Now, go away, Sydney. Go away and keep away.”

He released her wrists. She rubbed them. Then, very slowly, she walked away. She never turned back.

Taylor sighed. Jesus, he hoped he'd done the right thing. Actually, it didn't matter what Sydney or her father did. He would tell Lindsay about her mother and real father when the time was right. It seemed to him that taking Royce Foxe out of the
father picture should, in the long run, make her feel quite good.

He wondered if Sydney's mother was really still alive.

Thirty minutes later, Lindsay was awake and Barry and Taylor were seated by the bed.