Dead Right (24 page)

“Those first few months were a lot of fun. But I was naïve and made some real y stupid mistakes.”

“Like getting involved with a stripper?”

“Antoinette was…” He frowned and shook his head.

“Have you ever seen
Risky Business?
”

“Several times.”

“What we had was like Tom Cruise and Rebecca DeMornay’s relationship in that movie. She was the first girl I’d ever slept with, but she was five years older and a
lot
more experienced.”

“Was she going to school, too?” Madeline asked in surprise.

“She said she was taking a few classes at the community col ege, but I soon found out it wasn’t true. She just gravitated toward the preppy crowd, liked the attention and the money she made dancing.”

“And you liked her.”

His eyes took on a faraway look. “Yes. I was so crazy about her I was actual y stupid enough to bring her home to meet my folks.”

The waitress came around with the coffeepot. She col ected the empty plates, but Madeline put up her hand to indicate she’d had plenty of coffee and Hunter did the same. “How did they like her?” Madeline asked.

A bitter smile curved his lips. “About as much as you’d expect.”

“They weren’t impressed.”

“No. They told me she was trash. That I needed to get rid of her.”

“Seems like a harsh judgment for your parents to make after just one meeting. Maybe she didn’t have a good family and had resorted to stripping because it was the only way she could earn a living.”

“They didn’t know she was stripping. I wasn’t about to tel them
that.
They didn’t like her because…” He tapped a finger against the rim of his cup as if he hadn’t decided whether or not to go on.

“What?” she prompted. “Lord knows you’re already familiar with al my dirty secrets.”

“That you waited until you were thirty-two to make love isn’t exactly a dirty secret,” he said.

She felt her cheeks warm. “And now there’s that…

incident behind the trees.”

His smile was crooked. “I realize you don’t real y want to face what happened. But can I say one thing?”

She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear it. “What?” she said tentatively.

“
That
was amazing.
You’re
amazing.”

“Stop it.” She laughed for the first time that day. “We were talking about
you
for a change.”

“I was there, too.”

She wasn’t likely to forget. She could hardly breathe just remembering. But remembering wasn’t going to make it any easier to leave him at the motel tonight.

“Why didn’t your parents like Antoinette if they didn’t even know she was a stripper?” she asked.

He sobered reluctantly. “She stole a piece of my mother’s jewelry. My mother cal ed me once I returned to school, terribly upset and ful of accusations. I got angry that she could even
think
Antoinette would do such a thing. I was sure my mother was looking for any excuse to split us up, and I said so.” His smile revealed more chagrin than anything else. “But in the end, my folks were right. I found my mother’s diamond necklace in Antoinette’s lingerie drawer three months later.”

Madeline tucked her hair behind her ears. “That’s horrible. You must’ve felt awful.”

“I did.”

“And yet you married her. Didn’t the fact that she’d stolen from your mother make you doubt her character?”

“By the time the truth came out, I’d grown up enough to understand that sex isn’t the same as love.”

With Kirk she’d had the opposite experience. They had friendship and respect, but no sexual chemistry. Not like she’d experienced with Hunter. “So did you break up for a while?”

“I was going to break up for good. But it was the week of finals when I final y decided I was through, and I didn’t want to say anything to Antoinette until my exams were over.”

“Because you needed to focus on studying?”

“No, we were living together and I wanted to finish the semester before she went crazy on me. When I tried to break up one other time, she flipped out—threatened to harm herself.”

“I bet your parents were relieved you’d soon be rid of her.”

“I didn’t tel them. My relationship with my parents had grown worse and worse, mostly because I was stil with Antoinette. But I was stubborn enough to insist that I was an adult and should be able to see whoever I wanted.”

“Typical male.”

“Thanks for your support,” he said sarcastical y.

“No problem.” She smiled. “So how did you wind up marrying her? You were about to break up.”

He cradled his cup in his hands. “I was, that very next weekend. But—” his own smile disappeared “—that was when she told me she was pregnant.”

What a blow that must’ve been. “And marriage was your solution?” she breathed.

“I thought it was the right thing to do.”

“Because of your folks?”

“No. They agreed with my decision, but I’m the one who made it.”

She leaned closer. “Did they real y think that kind of marriage would work? Did
you?
”

“It was my responsibility to make it work—for the sake of my daughter.”

“For the sake of your daughter…” She toyed with her spoon. “Were you ever happy together? You and Antoinette?”

He fel silent for a few seconds. She could tel by the sudden tightness around his mouth that he wasn’t interested in talking about it anymore. But she was curious.

“Hunter?” she said when it became apparent that she’d lost him to his thoughts.

“Maria was worth any sacrifice,” he said with a shrug.

“Maria’s your daughter?”

He nodded.

“Where is she now?”

Abruptly, he stood and grabbed the check the waitress had left. “Let’s go,” he said. “Now that we know I’m staying, it’s time for me to meet Grace.”

Madeline wasn’t any happier about taking Hunter to see Grace than she’d been about going to the farm. Especial y after what he’d said at Aunt Elaine’s and at Clay’s. She was afraid he’d soon alienate her from everyone she’d always loved, and yet her feet were now set on a path from which she couldn’t deviate. There was nothing to do but march forward, and pray that her search wouldn’t cost her as much as she feared.

Since their meeting at the police station, relations between her and Grace were already a little awkward, which didn’t make this visit any easier. Madeline had cal ed Grace the day after they’d identified those panties, hoping to offer her love, support, condolences—anything Grace might need. But Grace had insisted she was fine, that the presence of her panties in that bag meant nothing to her.

Nothing…Yet she’d gone stark white at the police station.
And
she hadn’t cal ed Madeline since, although they usual y talked several times a week.

“This is quite a place,” Hunter said, gazing up at Grace and Kennedy’s historic mansion.

Madeline’s eyes moved over the sweeping lawns and immaculate gardens, which looked even more perfect beneath the glow of a ful moon. The lights shining warmly through the windows created an appealing effect, like the front of a Christmas card. Yet Madeline was afraid to approach. What more lay in store for her this day?

“It’s just as pretty inside,” she said and turned off the engine. That Grace had come from one of the poorest families in town and married into one of the richest made her and Kennedy’s love affair a sort of Cinderel a story.

This was Grace’s castle, the nicest home in Stil water.

But Madeline was beginning to wonder if Grace’s childhood had been worse than anyone, including her, had ever guessed.

“What are we waiting for?” Hunter prompted when she didn’t get out right away.

“Nothing.” Buttoning her coat against what was becoming a blustery night, she climbed out.

When she came around the car, Hunter stood at the end of the walkway. “Is Grace as tough as her brother?” he asked wryly.

“In some ways.” Grace wasn’t as intimidating as Clay or Madeline’s aunt, but she could be every bit as aloof. And because Hunter would no doubt be perceived as a threat to Clay, Grace would never trust him. “Not quite so direct.”

“But just as stubborn.” He’d obviously picked up on the cautious note in her voice.

“Grace hides her feelings behind a cool, courteous manner.”

“You mean she protects herself from others by remaining detached.”

Madeline couldn’t help appreciating his perception. But that perception, that intel ect she’d begun to respect, frightened her. Because respecting his opinions meant that if he came to her with the worst possible news, she’d have to believe him. “Yes. It’s a survival tactic she learned early on. Probably the result of al the judgment and censure she had to endure once my father disappeared.”

“Is she close to Clay?”

“She is now. Before, she wasn’t that close to any of us.”

They didn’t have time to discuss Grace further because movement in an upstairs window told Madeline they’d been spotted.

“Come on.” She stepped onto the wide veranda, where brown wicker furniture with green cushions waited for spring.

The porch light went on only seconds before Grace met them at the door, holding her seven-month-old baby girl wrapped in a fuzzy blanket. She greeted Madeline with a hug, but her body felt stiff and unnatural, and her expression held more than a hint of wariness as her eyes darted to Hunter. “I wasn’t expecting you,” she said, returning her attention to Madeline. “What a nice surprise.”

Madeline tried to bury her own apprehension—and the memory of that voice on her answering machine—in the positive feelings evoked by Isabel e. Taking the baby, she made the child laugh with a few sloppy kisses under the chin. “How’s my girl?” she asked, thinking this was as simple as life should be—for everyone. A comfortable home, a beloved sister, a laughing baby.

“She’s doing great,” Grace replied.

Isabel e seemed to agree. She cooed and jammed a chubby finger in her mouth while giving Madeline a drool-laden grin.

Madeline kissed the child’s downy head, breathing deeply, trying to reassure herself that in the end al would be wel . “No more cough?”

“Not even a sniffle.”

“That’s good.” Propping Isabel e on her hip, she steeled her nerves and jerked her head toward Hunter. “I’d like you to meet Mr. Solozano.”

He held out his hand. “Cal me Hunter.”

Grace didn’t immediately accept it. So far, no one had been al that welcoming.

“Hunter is your birth name—or a nickname you acquired because of your work?” Grace asked, final y offering him her hand.

“It’s my birth name.”

“Interesting. You don’t hear it very often.”

He backed away from her to lean against the pil ar of the porch. Madeline noticed that his actions were very casual and unthreatening, a far different Hunter than the one who’d visited the farm. “No, you don’t.”

Grace waited in silence, leaving the burden of the conversation to them. So Madeline jumped into the gap, hoping to ease the tension. “Can you believe the airline lost his luggage?”

Grace gave them a bland smile. “No.”

“It should be here tomorrow,” he said.

“I hope it arrives safely.”

Silence fel again. “Hunter’s been reading my mother’s journals,” Madeline blurted out. She wasn’t sure why she’d brought up that particular detail. She supposed it was because she felt nervous and was hoping to show Grace that she hadn’t brought him to Stil water because she doubted Clay or Irene. Hunter’s interest in the journals, something removed from them, meant that the investigation was al -inclusive—even more than Madeline had expected.

But, oddly enough, the mention of her mother’s journals didn’t seem to relax Grace. If anything, she held herself more rigidly than before. “I thought your mother had burned most of her journals,” she said.

“Not al of them.”

Grace turned her blue, enigmatic eyes on Hunter. “And what did you learn from those journals, Mr. Solozano?”

“Not much,” he said. “Madeline’s mother refers to a couple of people I’m interested in learning more about, though.”

Grace didn’t ask who. Now that Hunter had Madeline doubting everything and everyone, she wondered if that was because Grace already knew.

Stop it! I don’t want to think like that….

“Do you remember anyone by the name of Rose Lee Harper?” Hunter asked.

“Rose died before I moved to Stil water,” Grace replied.

“I know her father, but only as a slight acquaintance.”

“He stil lives in town?”

“In the Shady Glen Trailer Park off Digby Road,”

Madeline murmured. “He’s a handyman.”

The shadows deepened as clouds scuttled across the moon, obscuring the finer details of Hunter’s face. But he stil looked handsome—and a little mysterious. “Didn’t Mr.

Harper come to the farm often?”

“Not when I lived there,” Grace said.

“Ray and my father had a fal ing out before Dad remarried,” Madeline told him.

“Were you aware of that?” he asked Grace.

“Madeline might’ve mentioned it.”

Hunter shoved his hands in his pockets. “Do you know what it was over?”

Several lines appeared on Grace’s normal y smooth forehead. “No, but…like I said, I wasn’t around at the time.”

“I think my father got tired of paying Ray’s rent,”

Madeline volunteered. “I once heard them arguing about money.”

“Do you remember what was said?”

“Ray wanted more. My father refused.”

“When was that?”

“A few weeks before my mother died.”

“So it was after Katie and Rose Lee were gone.”

“Yes. I don’t think my father felt quite so sympathetic toward Ray’s financial needs when he no longer had children to support.”

“Do you have any interaction with Ray Harper now?”

“No,” Madeline said. “None. Why?”

The brief flicker of Hunter’s smile curved his lips. “Just curious.”

“That’s an interesting response, coming from an investigator,” Grace commented.

His smile widened—Madeline could tel by the glint of his teeth—but he didn’t explain himself. He proceeded to ask Grace what she knew about Katie Swanson.

“Almost nothing,” Grace said. “Again, I wasn’t around when Katie was alive.”