The Night In Question Page 9

  The nylon rope was tough, but it wouldn’t be strong enough to bear the weight of both of them. And the root was already dangerously close to giving way.

  The now-scuffed moccasins were toed into deep fissures in the clay soil. Julia held her breath as Babs gouged out a risky handhold at the side of a jagged rock and brought her free hand to the knots at her waist.

  It was the supreme sacrifice. She had to know that by releasing the rope from herself and tying it around Willa she was giving her life for her niece’s, but she didn’t hesitate. Julia choked back a sob as she saw the woman she’d once thought of as weak and ineffectual work desperately at the nylon cord.

  “I did almost everything wrong, Babs,” she whispered through her tears. “But I did one thing right when I agreed to make you her guardian. You love her too, don’t you? You love her so much you’ll give your life to keep her from harm.”

  Just at that moment, a second rope snaked over the cliff. Barbara’s gaze flew upward at the same time as Julia’s, to take in the shirt-sleeved father standing by the shattered fence. The hemp rope he was holding was knotted every few feet, and behind him at each knot was a mother, ready to start pulling.

  Already Barbara had taken in the situation and was securing the new rope around Willa. Looping it like an impromptu seat between the dangling legs and then feeding it through the straps of the overalls before tying it one last time around her waist, she worked quickly and efficiently. Giving one final tug to a knot, she darted a glance up at the man above her and raised her thumb shakily before moving out of the way.

  The man shouted a terse command that Julia couldn’t hear. Then he and the line of women behind him began slowly walking backward, pulling the rope carefully up and over the edge of the cliff.

  The root slipped free from Willa’s overalls. Her small body swaying back and forth, she was drawn closer and closer to safety. When she was only a foot away from the edge, the man at the front of the line released his hold on the rope, stretched out full-length on his belly and grabbed her. He swung her up and onto solid ground at the same time as Barbara, her hands bleeding and swollen, hoisted herself over the cliff-face, took a few stumbling steps, and fell bonelessly into a faint.

  “You did it, Babs. You did it—you saved her!”

  Julia found herself laughing and sobbing in the same breath. She watched as one of the mothers cradled a now-conscious and wide-eyed Willa against her shoulder, watched as Barbara was gently picked up in a fireman’s lift by the unknown man, watched as the whole group, adults and children and puppy alike, left the clearing and headed back the way they’d come only half an hour before. She took the binoculars away from her eyes, slipped the strap over her head and placed them carefully on the ground.

  Then she whirled swiftly away, bent over abruptly, and threw up behind the nearest tree.

  The funny thing was, she did know semaphore, she thought shakily a few minutes later. She’d actually belonged to the Girl Scouts once, when Sylvia had been seeing a Minneapolis businessman and had attempted to play the part of an all-American mom to impress him. Julia saw Max come out of the woods far below, saw him drag his forearm across his brow as he paused, saw him look up to where she stood.

  She swung her right arm down and a little in front of her body, at the same time extending her left arm up at a forty-five-degree angle. She held the position for a heartbeat, and then swung her right arm straight across her breasts until it too was on her left side. Again she paused before going on.

  He had to have been a Boy Scout, she thought. Even if he’d never been a straight arrow, he would have always done what he had to do to give that impression. She kept moving her arms stiffly, spelling out her message.

  Even without the binoculars, she thought she could see the slow grin that spread across his features before she was finished. She continued anyway, signalling her joy and relief across the distance that separated them, her face wet with tears.

  C-O-M-E B-A-C-K M-A-X S-H-E I-S S-A-F-E W-I-L-L-A I-S S-A-F-E M-Y B-A-B-Y I-S S-A-F-E.

  “…WHICH WAS WHY the chemicals found there and all the evidence stemming from them were inadmissible—because the authorities assumed the Cape Ann house was Kenneth’s too, and never bothered to get a search warrant for it.” Julia finished the last of her apple crumble. “How many of these He-Man dinners do you have in your freezer, anyway?”

  “A month’s supply at a time.” Max removed the aluminum tray from in front of her. “No dishes, and I don’t have to think about what groceries to buy. Yeah, the cops got sloppy there, all right. And without that evidence, the case against you was almost pure circumstance, except for Barbara’s testimony.”

  Julia had been petting Boomer. She looked up sharply. “If the cops hadn’t gotten sloppy, as you put it, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now, Max. You might remember that when you get all misty-eyed over how the case you built against me was botched.”

  His expression lightened momentarily. “Sorry. But my point stands—it wasn’t simple bad luck that you took the fall for the bombing, you were deliberately framed. That evidence was planted in the one location that wasn’t part of the Tennant holdings, to ensure that no one else in the family fell under suspicion.”

  “The other members of the Tennant family being Olivia and Noel,” she said flatly. “My mother-in-law or my brother-in-law. You’re right—I didn’t marry into the Waltons, I married into the Borgias.”

  “Olivia, Noel and Barbara,” Max corrected her. “And Barbara was the one who testified about seeing you hand the package with the bomb in it to Kenneth just before takeoff.”

  “She testified to that because it was true,” Julia retorted. “But as I said at my trial, I didn’t know there was a bomb in it, I thought I was handing him Willa’s birthday present. Even the wrapping paper and the ribbon were identical to the package I’d had sitting in my closet for the past month.”

  Her expression softened. “Besides, after today even you can’t suspect Babs of having been part of a scheme that involved Willa. You should have seen her, Max.” She bit her lip and looked down at Boomer beside her. “She—she saved my daughter’s life. She could have been killed herself.”

  “But you were the one who sensed Willa was in danger even before the accident happened. I still don’t know how you could have known,” he said quietly.

  She looked up at him. “I’m her mother. Going to prison didn’t change that. Babs getting custody of her didn’t change that. Willa’s part of me, and, for better or worse, I’m part of her too. I realized that today.”

  She let her hand drop once more to the dog’s satiny ears, averting her eyes from the man standing in front of her. “Sylvia wasn’t big on church-going, unless it was Christmas or Easter or one of her weddings.” She shrugged, still looking down. “So that wasn’t something I was brought up on. But I believe there’s a God, and I have to believe He knows what He’s doing. I didn’t expect her and I didn’t deserve her…but He gave her to me. Me, Max. There’s got to be a reason for that, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, Jules.” There was a slight huskiness in his voice and she glanced up at him, her eyes suspiciously bright. “I think there must have been a reason she got you as a mom.”

  She kept her gaze on him, sensing that for once the barriers between them seemed to have dropped. “Do you believe in God, Max?” she asked tentatively.

  His eyes met hers. Then he turned away to the sink, bracing his hands against the steel rim and staring out of the window into the night through the ruffled curtains. “I believe in God,” he said after a moment. “I’m just not so sure He believes in Max Ross. Hell, sometimes I don’t know if I believe in me.”

  This conversation had strayed far from its original course, she told herself, suddenly uneasy. She had the feeling that any further probing from her would take them both into uncharted waters, with all the danger that could entail. But some part of her was unwilling to scurry back to safety yet.

  “How—how d
id you lose them, Max?” she said softly. “How did it happen? You know almost everything there is to know about me, but all I know about you is that years ago you had a wife and a child, and they died tragically. What happened?”

  “You got your information wrong.” His back was still to her, but under his T-shirt she could see his shoulders tense. “My wife died in a car accident ten years ago. I never had a child.”

  She frowned. “But I heard—”

  He turned from the window, his movements brisk. “Like I said, you heard wrong. Anne was killed before we’d even been married a year.” He snapped his fingers, and the black Labrador beside her obligingly got to his feet. “Time to give you your meds, buddy,” he said, his attention focused on the dog.

  Terra incognita indeed, Julia thought, nonplussed. And from his attitude, she’d just been firmly barred from exploring any further. She remained silent while Boomer got his nightly tablet and his treat, her mind working.

  She hadn’t got her information wrong. At the time he’d been assigned to investigate her case, Max had been working with another agent, an older man who was only a year or two from retirement. Max had been partnered with Carl Stein since he’d joined the Agency, and even to an outsider it was obvious that the two men complemented each other’s styles—Max’s unemotional and precise questioning counterpointed by his less-formal partner’s deceptively avuncular personality. Before she’d become a prime suspect, Stein had reassuringly informed Julia that Max wouldn’t rest until he’d caught the killer who’d planted the bomb on her husband’s plane—the bomb that had come so frighteningly close to claiming the life of her little girl.

  “Anytime there’s a child involved, it’s not just a job to him, Mrs. Tennant,” the older man had said firmly. “Maybe I’m telling tales out of school, but I want you to know that Agent Ross takes this case very personally. He lost his own wife and son, and your case really hits home with him. He’ll find the killer, don’t worry.”

  Shortly after that conversation she’d been arrested and charged, and from then onward Stein had treated her with the same chilly courtesy that Max had always shown. But even if he’d eventually regretted his impulsive confidence, the fact remained that, as Max’s partner, he would have known the man he worked with better than anyone else. He certainly wouldn’t have made a mistake about something as important as whether the man had ever been a father or not.

  Which meant that Max had lied to her just now, Julia thought, confused.

  “Why the hell did Kenneth have Willa with him that day in the first place?” Pulling out a chair and sitting down at the table across from her, he picked up the thread of their earlier topic as smoothly as if they’d never strayed from it. “Your late husband wasn’t the kind of doting father who usually took his daughter on business trips with him, was he?”

  She was beginning to understand the ground rules, Julia told herself with a spark of anger. Whatever he’d said to her earlier today, in every way that mattered Agent Ross had no intention of opening himself up to her. He might want her physically, and occasionally he might even forget himself so far as to share a moment or two of closeness with her, but that was as far as it went.

  Which suited her just fine, she thought, meeting his eyes unwaveringly. Willa’s safety was her first and only concern.

  “Taking her with him was his way of reminding me that he held the reins in our relationship, even where my daughter was concerned.” Even after all this time the memories were painful, Julia thought. She forced herself to continue. “He knew how much it would hurt me to be away from her on her birthday.”

  “It probably wasn’t what she wanted either,” Max commented. “That could be why she was ill—ill enough to be taken off the plane before it started down the runway.”

  “Maybe, but Babs said she’d had an upset stomach all day. We’d been at some political dinner dance the evening before, and she’d kept her overnight.” She shook her head. “Babs was just as upset as I was that Kenneth was taking her. We’d planned to give Willa her first real birthday party, with a clown and a pony and everything, and Barbara had bought her the most gorgeous doll. That must have been on the plane when it exploded too,” she added.

  Max’s gaze sharpened. “What about your present?” he asked slowly. “Did you ever find it and give it to Willa?”

  “I’d found a woman who made old-fashioned teddy bears.” She smiled faintly. “The one I got for Willa was wearing a little coat.”

  “But did she ever get it?” He leaned forward across the table. “You thought the bear was in the package you handed Kenneth, but it wasn’t. You didn’t know it, but you were giving him a gift-wrapped explosive device, so identical to the present you’d wrapped that even you couldn’t tell the difference. That means that the killer either switched packages completely or made up a duplicate one, but either way, he or she had to have gotten rid of Willa’s present somehow.”

  “I never thought of that.” She drew her brows together. “I didn’t come across the thing afterwards. Is it important?”

  “Probably not.” He sat back. “But what is important is who saw that present after you’d wrapped it. You said you’d hidden it from Willa on the top shelf of your clothes closet, so if we—” He stopped as she shook her head.

  “We’re not going to eliminate any suspects that way, Max.” Her shoulders slumped despondently. “The whole Tennant clan saw me wrapping it a few weeks before. Barbara and Robert had just returned from their honeymoon in Bermuda, and we had a family dinner at our place to welcome them home. Olivia was there, naturally, and even Noel made a rare appearance—more for Barbara’s sake than because he enjoyed being in the same room as Kenneth, I’m sure. After dinner I showed Babs what I’d gotten Willa, and while Kenneth and Robert and Olivia talked Tenn-Chem business I pulled out some paper and ribbon and wrapped the present in the living room. I even remember Noel putting his finger on the bow while I tied it.”

  “Until Willa reaches her majority, control of Tenn-Chem’s holdings is in Barbara’s hands.” As if he was suddenly too restless to sit, Max stood, and began pacing the floor. “But Barbara wants nothing to do with the business, so she’s given Olivia carte blanche to run the company as she sees fit.”

  Julia nodded. “Don’t forget, Olivia was Tenn-Chem’s CEO for almost twenty years before her own son forced her into retirement. From what I’ve heard, when her husband died the company was in danger of being swallowed up by the big conglomerates. Over the next couple of years Olivia made it her business to learn everything she could about the chemical industry, from what a bunsen burner was to how to lobby Washington for tax breaks, and eventually Tenn-Chem went from a minnow to a shark and did some swallowing of its own. Unfortunately for her, she brought her eldest son up to be even more ruthless than she was.”

  “I’ve met the lady,” Max said briefly. “You’re right, she’s one tough cookie. But she must be pushing sixty-five or so, and she’s already had her first bypass operation. If anything happened to her, wouldn’t Barbara be forced into a more active role, whether she wanted it or not?”

  “If anything happened to Olivia, Barbara would hand Tenn-Chem over to the person she always felt should have been running it,” Julia said dismissively. “Noel was the brother she cared for. She never agreed with his ousting from the company, but she was too intimidated by Kenneth to take a stand at the time.”

  “So when Olivia’s out of the picture, which given her age and her health isn’t too far into the future, all that’ll be left between your brother-in-law and permanent control of Tenn-Chem will be Willa.” Max stopped pacing and looked at her. “I can’t recall offhand, but maybe you do, Jules. Where exactly was Noel Tennant on the night in question?”

  Chapter Eight

  “This can’t be where he’s living now.” Julia flicked a disbelieving glance at the neighborhood they were driving through, an eclectic jumble of tiny stores and hole-in-the-wall eateries, before turning back to Max. “Noel might
go slumming in a funky area like this once in a while, but he’d never make it permanent. Even if he’s distanced himself from the family as I told you last night, he is a Tennant, after all.”

  “So were you once upon a time,” Max said dryly. Julia closed her eyes as he shoehorned the sedan into a parking space more suited to a motorcycle. “So obviously the condition’s curable,” he added.

  “For me, maybe. But he was born into that lifestyle.” Following his lead and getting out of the car, her attention was caught by a figure sitting on a wooden crate on the sidewalk. Two figures, she corrected herself with a smile. Amid the stalls of fresh fruit and unfamiliar vegetables that seemed to be the open-air extension of an Asian grocery store sat a young woman, a lazily alert German shepherd lounging at her feet. Like her dog, the woman on the crate seemed to be both aware of the flow of humanity streaming past her on the sidewalk, and uncaring of it. As she pulled something from the back pocket of her jeans it was possible to see that her wrists and forearms were delicately tattooed with what looked to be Oriental calligraphy. She tapped the harmonica she’d retrieved on a denim-clad thigh, leaned forward to brace her elbows on her knees, and the next moment the notes of an old Robert Johnson blues tune cut through the hubbub around her with a raspy growl.

  “She’s good,” Max murmured, joining Julia on the sidewalk in front of the pair as the raw chords of “Cross-roads Blues” began to draw the attention of the crowd. Oblivious to her growing audience, the young woman executed a series of melancholy riffs, her none-too-clean hands cupped protectively around the harmonica at her mouth, her eyes closed.

  “She’s been there,” Julia said softly. “No one plays the blues like that unless it comes from the gut. I wonder what she was in for?”

  Closing her own eyes, she didn’t notice the sharp glance he threw her way. Instead, she let the music flow over her, giving herself up to it and for the first time since her release allowing herself to relive the pain and despair she’d felt when she’d been locked behind bars. She’d come out toughened, she thought. But what part of her had been lost forever during that tempering process? How much of her humanity had been quenched in order to survive, and would Willa sense a difference in her when they were reunited again?