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His telephone conversation with Maris had thrust his mind into overdrive. It was churning a mile a minute. He wished his body, like his brain, would experience occasional energizing jump starts like this. If it did, he’d be able to bicycle back to New York and then run a marathon. Mentally, he felt that athletic and robust.
After the call, he’d tried for an hour to fall asleep. Finally surrendering to his insomnia he had come downstairs. Midnight snacks were verboten at home, especially when they added up to more fat grams than he was allotted for a week. But Maxine wasn’t guarding the refrigerator tonight, and what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. She would be here soon enough, bossing and monitoring him as if he were a child.
Thank God, he thought with a chuckle. He didn’t know what he would have done without Maxine caring for him and Maris all these years.
He polished off the sandwich. The leftover Reuben had been satisfying—to say nothing of the warmth that two fingers of brandy had spread through him. Rather than making him feel languid and sleepy, however, the alcohol had invigorated him. He was restless and ready to act.
He’d always been a man of action, seldom placing problems on the back burner and letting them simmer. He favored confronting them immediately. Standing still wasn’t his style. He preferred channeling his energy positively and productively rather than squandering it on self-doubt and hand-wringing indecision.
But this situation warranted more consideration than most. He was uncertain about the order in which to take the actions necessary to rectify it. He had his strategy in place, but it required careful orchestration and perfect timing. That’s what had his mind working double-time tonight.
This situation didn’t have a nucleus on which he could focus his problem-solving ability. It didn’t lend itself to a swift and fatal attack. It was mercurial, constantly changing. It was a multilayered and complex conundrum involving both family and business, individuals and money, power and emotions. A complicated mix. Especially when one of the persons involved was his daughter.
He was glad Maris was in Georgia, away from New York. Things were about to get ugly. Bluntly, the shit was about to hit the fan. The more distance between it and Maris, the better. Inevitably she would catch some of the media fallout, but he hoped to buffer her as much as possible, and the geography would help. Sorting through the personal aspects of this mess was going to be painful enough for her. Doing so in the public eye would be hell.
Although, he thought, smiling, she won’t be without consolation.
It had been evident to him for months that she was unhappy with her husband and their marriage. It had become equally evident that the book-in-progress alone hadn’t drawn her back to the sea island, exotic and lush as it might be.
Her duties and responsibilities at Matherly Press were enough to keep an overachiever like her stretched thin. Normally her daily grind would prevent her from becoming personally involved with one author and one book, even if she were so inclined to invest that much of herself, which she never had been before.
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to conclude that the allure wasn’t strictly the book, but the author Parker Evans, a.k.a. Mackensie Roone.
Oh, yes. He had discovered the name of Maris’s elusive author, as well as his successful pen name. Years earlier, when the Deck Cayton mystery series had started appearing routinely on the bestseller lists, he had tried to flatter, coax, blackmail, and threaten the author’s real name out of his agent, in the hope of luring the writer to Matherly Press.
She, however, would not be intimidated, even by the venerable Daniel Matherly. “If I told you, Daniel, I’d have to kill you.” She had steadfastly protected her client’s identity against disclosure, and Daniel had grudgingly admired her for it.
But he knew it now.
For several weeks, he’d had a private investigator on retainer. Hoping that his misgivings about Noah were proved wrong, he had hired the investigator to probe into his son-in-law’s past, including his life prior to the publication of The Vanquished.
The whole idea of a covert investigation had been distasteful to him. His appro
ach had always been bold and forthright, and he despised the furtiveness associated with a private investigator. He had envisioned having to consort with a sleazy B-movie type with a stained necktie and a leering yellow grin.
But when William Sutherland arrived for their discreet appointment, he contradicted the stereotype. Sutherland was the founder of an elite and expensive agency, a retired Secret Service agent wearing a well-tailored dark suit. He had a firm handshake, an authoritative bearing, and a distinguished service record.
Within five minutes of that first handshake, Daniel was outlining his requests. The last thing Daniel had expected to learn from Sutherland’s initial report was novelist Mackensie Roone’s true identity. That’s not what he’d been looking for. Unexpectedly, one of publishing’s best-kept secrets had landed in his lap in a sealed manila folder.
But the staggering revelation was yet to come: Parker Evans and Noah Reed had a history.
They had been roommates at a university in Tennessee, and then after graduation they had lived together in Key West. There, they’d had some sort of falling out, the particulars of which were still unknown. Sutherland was presently investigating further, and Daniel was certain that soon all the facts would be disclosed.
In the meantime, he had pieced together the facts he knew, and they would have made an engrossing novel. Maris was presently residing in a plantation house on a remote island belonging to Parker Evans, her estranged husband’s former friend with whom he’d parted antagonistically. The synopsis alone brimmed with the ingredients of a juicy novel—friendship, love, hate, deception, revenge. Envy? Possibly.
The only thing lacking in this scenario was a motive for the main character, Parker Evans.
He had lured Maris with his book for a specific purpose. He hadn’t selected her at random. What had motivated him to become involved with Maris, even professionally, when he must know that she was Noah’s wife?
Daniel wondered if she was aware of their connection. Considering Noah’s unfaithfulness, she would feel justified to play tit for tat with his former fraternity brother. But a childish retaliation wasn’t like her.
Daniel doubted she knew. If she knew, she would have been reluctant to fall in love with Parker Evans. And she was in love. That became clearer by the day.
Daniel wanted to celebrate her newfound happiness, but he would be wary of the budding romance until he knew why Parker Evans had engineered this chain of events. He had been tempted to confront the man, either in person or through Sutherland, and demand to know just what kind of story he was plotting. But he couldn’t do that without tipping his hand to both Maris and Noah, and he wasn’t quite prepared to do that. Close, but not quite.
So he’d been forced to bide his time while Sutherland delved deeper.
It was possible that Evans’s motivation would come to light in another form—his manuscript. Having read the latest installment that Maris had shared with him, Daniel was convinced the writer was chronicling his rocky friendship with Noah. Depending on how long it took him to commit the story to paper, it might be told through the pages of his personal record before Sutherland could wade through the official one.
