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“Well, don’t make up your mind tonight. We’ll talk later.”
Turning, she let her gaze sweep through the house with its warm cedar walls, massive fireplace, and winding staircase with its mutilated posts. The house was stark now, only a few basic pieces of furniture and no decor, but she’d always felt a kinship with this old building; it had weathered more storms than she. “I’ll think about it,” she promised, hating the way the words seemed to give her father the upper hand again.
Miranda watched her sister leave and felt a withering sense of despair before she turned to face Dutch. “I think you’re being a stubborn old fool.”
“Good to know some things never change.”
“Look, I agreed to come here even though I didn’t have a clue as to what you wanted. Now, I think I’ve made a big mistake. This morbid fascination you have with Harley Taggert’s death is beyond me. Let Kane Moran dig up whatever he can find and let it go.” Turning slowly to face the latest in a long string of her father’s yes-men and errand boys, she said, “Now, Mr. Styles, I have a question for you.”
“Shoot.” He didn’t so much as smile.
“Someone’s been hanging around my office, missing me but bothering my secretary and the receptionist.”
“Have they?” He crossed his arms on his chest. His leather jacket creaked softly, and there was the glimmer of something other than grim determination in his eyes, a flicker of a deeper, more frightening emotion.
“Was it you?”
“You get straight to the point. I like that.”
“You haven’t answered my question,” she reminded him, stepping closer, refusing to be intimidated. “Were you in the DA’s office today?”
“Yep.”
Disappointment burrowed deep into her heart. For some unnamed reason she didn’t want this rangy, arrogant son of a bitch to be part of anything remotely sinister.
“Why didn’t you wait or leave your name?”
“I thought it would be inappropriate.”
“But hanging around the courthouse wasn’t?”
His gray gaze, so like a winter storm brewing over the ocean, penetrated deep into hers. “What your father has me looking into is highly personal, don’t you think? Something you wouldn’t want your coworkers, subordinates, or supervisors to know about. I figured you wouldn’t meet me at home, so I dropped in at your office.”
“And grilled the receptionist.”
“Just asked a few questions.”
“Debbie talks too much,” Miranda snapped, venting her anger. She didn’t know who to start with. She’d just as soon wring Denver Styles’s neck as deal with him, and she felt an overwhelming need to tell her father to use his thick-skulled head and let sleeping dogs lie. As for Debbie . . . well, Debbie, sweet thing, couldn’t help herself. Chitchat and flirting were ingrained deep into her personality. She’d never change. But what about Kane Moran? Why had he decided to come home now to stir up all this trouble?
“Randa—” Her father’s voice, filled with a quiet reproach, caused her to second guess herself. As it always had. “I know that you’re upset, expected you to be, but it’s important that I know what I’m dealing with. A lot of people are banking on me. They’ve donated thousands of dollars to my campaign. I can’t let even the breath of a scandal touch me.”
“Then give it up, Dutch,” she suggested as she plucked her coat off the back of the couch. “Because you and
I both know there are so many skeletons rattling around in all the Holland family closets it’s impossible to keep them locked away, let alone keep track of all the keys. Sooner or later, one of those scandal-riddled secrets is going to escape.”
“Maybe, but everything else that’s happened over the years is less distasteful—a dalliance here, a bad investment there, nothing substantial,” he allowed, taking off his reading glasses and buffing them with the edge of his sleeve. “But when we’re discussing the night Harley Taggert died, the night that Kane Moran is going to scrutinize, unfortunately, we’re talking about murder.”
If nothing else, the old man was predictable, Kane thought. He strode along the shores of the lake. Bleached wood and rocks were interspersed by sand that was cast silver with the faint glow of the moon. Clouds gathered, threatening to break into a storm. He brushed aside the branches of a few fir trees that hugged the shoreline and slapped him in the face.
Not a hundred feet ahead stood the Holland lodge, several windowpanes glowing brightly in the summer night. Just as Kane had expected, Benedict, Dutch to his “good ol’ boy” friends, had rung up his daughters and dragged them back to their old lakeside home, probably to warn them of him, to tell them that whatever they did they were, at all costs, to keep their mouths shut. Kane had no idea how the old man had convinced the girls to return—probably it had to do with bribery, that was his usual M.O.—but judging from the cars that had come and gone, they were all back home, returning like the prodigal daughters they were.
Son of a bitch, his plan was working.
Five
“You really lived here when you were growing up?” Samantha eyed the old lodge as if it were a castle from a fairy tale. She ran up the stairs, explored each room, then stole up to the attic, where the servants had once lived, and clambered down the back stairs to the kitchen. “It’s . . . it’s wonderful.” She grinned from ear to ear as Claire unpacked groceries.
“Tell it to your brother.” Claire hitched her chin toward the kitchen window, where she watched Sean, who was flopped on an old porch swing, one toe touching the floorboards, his scowl dark as he squinted across the lake. Claire, too, stared across the blue water, and her heart skipped a beat as she recognized the cabin where Kane Moran had grown up. Someone had taken the trouble to reroof the cottage and give it a new coat of gray paint, and the sunlight glinted off some kind of vehicle parked haphazardly in the drive.
