You Can Run... (30 page)

“Yes, sir?”

“Number one, you must call me Simon, not ‘sir.’ Number two, you look like you could use a drink. What’s your poison?”

“Vodka.”

“A double Grey Goose vodka it is. And I’ll leave the bottle on the counter in the kitchen if you care for more. Number three, I would like to thank you with all of my
heart for saving Diana’s and Willow’s lives. The world would not be the same without them.”

Tyler looked into Diana’s teary eyes, smiling tenderly. “I’ll certainly drink to that, Simon.”

Diana sat curled on the couch, wearing Clarice’s long-sleeved heavy fleece winter robe that she had insisted Diana put on before the police arrived. In spite of the warm night, Diana felt cold to her core and the robe was comfortable.

“How did you happen to be here when Willow and I needed you?” Diana asked.

“I’ve been your shadow since Friday night. I thought you knew that by now.”

“I think I did.” Diana dutifully took her pills, held an ice pack against the lump on her head, and drank a third of her milk. “Tell me more about Penny
and
you.”

“Penny never talked to me about the years before she became my foster sister. I’d be boring you with a story mostly about me.”

“I’d like to hear it if you don’t mind telling it.”

Tyler leaned forward, picked up his glass of vodka from a coffee table, and took a sip. “I’ve only told a few people about my childhood. Because finally you seem to be putting your trust in me, though, I guess it would be best if you know everything.” He leaned back and grinned at her, his dimples deepening. “Everything suitable for a lady to hear.”

“I’m not easily shocked, Tyler. I promise not to flounce off to bed if I find out you weren’t a choir boy.”

“Well, that’s comforting because I certainly wasn’t.” He drew a deep breath and looked straight ahead, as if reluctant to meet her gaze. “My parents both wanted to make it big on Broadway. They were from small southern towns and very young. They met at an audition and married
shortly afterward. I don’t think they were really in love—they shored each other up in a city they couldn’t handle, but they refused to go home. They just turned to drugs.

“I was born two years after they married. My mother’s parents had turned their backs on her. My dad’s father was a widower but he kept taking me in, and so did my dad’s big brother, Don. He was the cop. Don was seven years older than my father and I thought he was a god. He still lived down South in the same town as Grandpa and I spent a lot of time there with them.”

“Hence your Southern accent,” Diana said.

Tyler nodded. “My parents never lost theirs, and the happiest times of my life were spent in the South, so I hung onto that accent for dear life. Silly, but true. Grandpa and Don wanted to keep me, but my parents would get clean and demand they give me back to them. They never stayed clean, though. When I was twelve, they were hooked on crack, scraping out a living. They were ready to let me go to Uncle Don’s or my grandfather’s when Don was killed in the line of duty. Three months later, my grandfather had a fatal heart attack. By the time I was thirteen, all of my parents’ efforts were concentrated on raking up enough money to support their habit.”

Tyler paused and swallowed hard. When he began again, his voice had roughened. “I came home from school one day and they were gone. The apartment we lived in was a rattrap, but I managed to hang on in it for a month until the rent was due. Then I hit the streets. For nearly a year I begged, I slept in boxes in the summer and abandoned buildings in the winter. Finally I got a job cleaning up at a diner. The owner’s wife turned me in to Child Protective Services. I hated her then, but it was the best thing that could have happened to me.

“Lots of times when I was with my grandfather we used to visit Al Meeks, and he became like a second grandfather. After Grandpa died, I’d write to him. When he hadn’t heard from me for nearly two years, he tracked me down. By then I was in the care of the CPS. He wanted to
take me, but he wasn’t a relative, he was divorced and they prefer two-parent homes, and he wasn’t approved to take in foster children, so I ended up in a home in New York. Lucky for me, it was a good home.” He stopped, looked at Diana and smiled. “About a year later, along came Penny. Al visited me at the foster home a couple of times a year . He took to Penny right away. Twice my foster parents brought Penny and me to Huntington to visit Al. One year we went to a football game at Marshall. We even came to Ritter Park. Penny
loved
Huntington.”

“Which is why she came here when she left Jeffrey,” Diana said quietly.

“The main reason, but not the only one. She thought it was a city big enough to get lost in, but not overwhelmingly big. After all, she’d never been a single mother. She knew she could handle herself in a large place, but she wasn’t as sure of herself with a child in her care. And she’d never told Jeffrey about her trips here because she was afraid she’d slip and mention Al or me.”

While Tyler talked, Diana had forced down the rest of her warm milk and she now set the glass aside and put her hand on his tanned arm. “I called Al Meeks.”

“I know. He told me.”

“You know, I didn’t trust you. I knew you were lying about not knowing Penny and Willow. I thought you might be lying about knowing Al. Anyway, he tried to give away as little information as possible, but he did say your grandfather’s heart would have been broken if he’d known what happened to you when you were younger. He meant the last years with your parents and you ending up on the streets fending for yourself when you were only thirteen.” Diana tightened her clasp on his arm. “Do you know what happened to your parents?”

“I know my mother died from an overdose when I was sixteen. I found out about that many years later. I don’t know what happened to my father. He simply became one of the people lost on the streets—the kind I see so often in my job.”

“I’m sorry, Tyler. Truly sorry.”

Tyler took another sip of his drink. “Enough of my sad tale. Now tell me about Diana Sheridan.”

“Diana Sheridan isn’t nearly so interesting.”

“I doubt that. Spill.”

“My father was from a family with money. He and my mother married young, almost immediately had me, and were baffled by what to do with a child. So they left me in the care of my grandmother and they traveled a lot. And spent money. Too much money. By the time I was twelve, most of it was gone. They stopped traveling, stopped having parties, stopped enjoying life.

“When I was fourteen, my father had too much to drink at the first party he and my mother had attended in months, and on the way home, he missed a curve in the road and the car tumbled down into a ravine. They both died instantly. Grandmother was devastated—my mother was her only child and just thirty-four. I loved my parents and I missed them, but I wasn’t as lost as most fourteen-year-olds would have been if their parents died. They’d been gone so much of my life, I’d learned to depend on Grandmother and myself. And Simon, of course. Also, I knew how unhappy they were with the life they had ahead.”

“So you went to live with your grandmother,” Tyler said. “And the two of you spent even more time with Simon, and when you were eighteen, he took you on an Egyptian expedition. Penny thought that was the most fabulous thing she’d ever heard.”

Diana smiled. “It
was
fabulous. It was hard, but it was also wonderful.” She sighed. “Penny and I used to talk about going on an expedition some day and taking Willow, of course. I always knew it would never happen, but we were like young girls planning what they were going to do when they grew up. It was fun.”

Tyler grinned. “I know. She told me. You were her first real girlfriend, you know. She always sounded about sixteen when she talked of all the fun things the two of you talked about and did together.”

“I had no idea, but I’m glad Penny enjoyed our friendship. It was the best one of my life, too.”

A tear ran down Diana’s face, and Tyler’s eyes suddenly shone in the lamplight with his own unshed tears. He quickly glanced at his empty glass. “I think I’ll take advantage of that fine bottle of Grey Goose vodka Simon left out in the kitchen and fix another drink. May I get you anything?”

“You may get me a glass of wine.”

While Tyler was gone, Diana rid herself of the ridiculous ice pack and rested her head on the back of the couch. She didn’t know how it was possible, but she was happy. In spite of everything, she was happy. “You must be crazy, Diana Sheridan,” she said aloud, softly. “Only
you
would be happy two hours after someone tried to shoot you to death.”

“Were you talking to me?” the object of her happiness asked as he strode back into the room. His face looked more relaxed, and his eyes no longer seemed to be probing every corner, searching for possible danger. He handed her a wineglass and walked to the front bay window, parting the draperies. “Good. Surveillance still in place, although I wish they were closer to the house. I looked out the kitchen window. They’re still searching the woods, too.”

Diana took a sip of her wine. “Ugh! Tyler, this is Willow’s
apple
juice!”

“Yes indeed. Your uncle said no alcohol on top of a pain pill and a tranquilizer.”

“An extremely mild tranquilizer.”

“Be that as it may,” he said, sitting down so close to her she could feel the heat of his body, “I’ve just won over Simon. I’m not going to lose his good will because of a glass of wine.”

“You won over Simon the night you met him.” Diana grinned. “You know that. He loaned you one of his cars. And I think Clarice fell in love with you.”

“Well, I think Clarice is one hell of a gal, but she’s not the one I’d like to have fall for me.”

Diana had always felt disdain for women who acted coy, but she couldn’t help herself. “What kind of girl
do
you have in mind?”

“One who’s ambitious and wants to make her own good fortune, not have it handed to her. One who isn’t consumed by her considerable beauty.” He paused. “And most important, one who would risk anything to protect the people she loves. You risked your life to protect Willow.”

“Yes, I did a wonderful job tonight, didn’t I?”

“You woke up. You went after her. You shielded her with your own body. I’d certainly call those the actions of a protector.”

“I woke up because of the cats. People who say cats aren’t capable of heroic acts haven’t read much about how many cats have saved their owners by alerting them of danger. And naturally I went after Willow and tried to cover her body with mine. Who wouldn’t have?”

“A lot of people. I see it all the time.”

“Well, the person who tried to kill Willow and me must have been the same one who tried to kill Penny. We can’t have two potential murderers after this family.”

Tyler smiled and took her hand. “I like it that you think of Penny and Willow as being part of ‘this family.’ ”

“We felt as if she and Willow
were
family. We loved them.” Diana looked into Tyler’s eyes. “That’s why I feel you should tell me the reason Penny ran away from Jeffrey instead of divorcing him. Why did she choose a life of hiding?”

Tyler glanced down, and Diana could almost feel him marshalling his forces to tell something he’d probably sworn
never
to tell. She didn’t believe he broke promises easily. Then he began to speak in a low, hesitant voice.

“I hated what Penny was doing before her marriage. She was a stripper, plain and simple. Not a prostitute like some people said later, but a stripper. Then she met Jeffrey Cavanaugh. She’d been seeing him for over a month before she told me. She was in love, and I was horrified.

“I already knew all about Cavanaugh. His father, Morgan,
was a rough customer with more criminal associations than the authorities probably knew about, but he was so devious, nothing could ever be pinned on him. He was also smart—enough to know if he wanted to start a legitimate business, he needed a partner with prestige. That’s why he needed Charles Wentworth, Blake’s father. People thought Wentworth had lost most of his money in bad investments or he would never have teemed up with someone like Cavanaugh. Anyway, together they formed Cavanaugh and Wentworth.”

Tyler took another sip of his drink. “The business took off like a rocket. Morgan Cavanaugh actually began to earn some respect in the business world if not the personal one. He had a wife and two kids, but he was always involved with at least one other woman, and he had nothing but contempt for his son. I’ve heard some terrible stories about how he treated Jeffrey. That kind of treatment would leave scars on anyone.”

“So you feel sorry for him.”

“So I think his childhood might have warped him. That’s too bad, but it doesn’t mean I don’t think the guy has some serious problems.”

“I understand. You’re not talking about causes. You’re concerned about the result.”

“Exactly, especially when that result affected Penny,” Tyler said. “About ten years after they founded the business, Wentworth killed himself. Supposedly, he’d been caught embezzling and couldn’t face the shame. A lot of people didn’t believe the whole scenario. Wentworth had a spotless reputation, the business made so much money he didn’t need to embezzle, and he was devoted to his wife and son. The police couldn’t prove anything, though.

“Morgan now had control of the entire business. He provided well for Wentworth’s wife and son, but the wife had a complete breakdown about six months after her husband’s suicide and she never recovered. She’s still in a sanitarium. Meanwhile, Morgan took Blake in, treated him like the son he thought he
should
have had instead of Jeffrey, paid for
Blake’s Harvard education, just like Jeffrey’s, and approved Blake’s marriage to his daughter. Everyone thought Jeffrey must resent the hell out of Blake, but apparently he didn’t.” Tyler shrugged. “From what I’ve heard, they weren’t close before Charles Wentworth’s death, but afterward they became good friends in spite of the six-year age difference.”

“That speaks well of Jeffrey,” Diana said. “As long as it wasn’t an act.”

“With Jeffrey, you never know. The man is an enigma. Brilliant, reclusive, and strange.”