Loveknot

“I suppose you have,” he said more to himself, it seemed, than to Alyssa. “Margaret Ingalls was a very beautiful woman. She had charm and sex appeal, what they call charisma today. I was twenty-three years old. Looking back, I realize she couldn’t have been more than five years older, but to me she seemed a real woman of the world. She could certainly turn a man’s head.”

“I remember very little of her,” Alyssa heard herself say. Perhaps this garrulous, harmless old man was someone she could talk to. He had known her mother, but he was a complete stranger, an outsider without an ax to grind. Could she use him as a conduit to the past? He wasn’t involved. Surely he couldn’t share Tyler’s prejudice against her mother.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, frowning. “She was a remarkable woman.”

“I—I’d like to know—”

“Mother? Is that you?” Liza called from somewhere down the path.

Alyssa left her thought, and her request for more information about Margaret, unspoken. “Yes, Liza. I was just coming down for a short visit.”

“I can’t believe you’re AWOL from the plant in the middle of the day.” Liza was laughing and a little breathless as she came into view. “You’re turning into a real company man.”

“It’s been nice meeting you.” Alyssa smiled at Robert Grover before turning away to greet Liza, though he made no move to leave. “Hello, Liza,” she said. “Hello, Margaret Alyssa.” Her granddaughter was riding in a denim carrier, snuggled warmly against her mother’s chest, a soft, woolly blanket covering all but her face.

“Hi, Mom. We’re just on our way in to Tyler to do some shopping at Gates.” Liza abruptly stopped speaking when she saw the man standing at Alyssa’s side. “Hello,” she said, studying him with a bright, assessing gaze.

“Liza, this is Robert Grover. He’s a guest at Timberlake and got confused about which path to take back. Mr. Grover, this is my daughter, Liza Forrester, and my granddaughter, Margaret Alyssa.”

“How do you do, young lady?” Robert Grover said to Liza with another big smile that revealed his expensive bridgework. “That’s a fine baby you’ve got there.” He nodded approvingly at Margaret Alyssa, but made no attempt to touch her.

“We think so,” Liza said, giving the top of her daughter’s head a quick kiss.

“I won’t keep you if you have errands to run in town.” Alyssa hoped her disappointment didn’t show. She’d seen so little of her granddaughter during the weeks of Judson’s trial, and missed her terribly. Little ones changed so quickly. She was afraid she might miss something new and remarkable in Margaret Alyssa’s development if she stayed away too long.

“It’s nothing important. I’d much rather go back to the boathouse and have a cup of tea with you,” Liza said, apparently reading her thoughts.

“That would be nice.” One of Margaret Alyssa’s little hands wiggled out from under her blanket. Alyssa reached out a finger and let the pink baby fingers curl around it.

“Well, I’d best be moving on or it’ll get dark on me before I get back to the lodge,” Robert Grover announced. “It’s been nice meeting you, Liza.”

“You, too,” Liza replied in her usual breezy style.

“Thanks for the directions, Mrs. Baron,” he said with a courtly nod. “I’d like to buy you a drink or a cup of tea someday if you have time, to show my appreciation.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Alyssa began automatically.

“We could talk about old times,” he said.

“I—I’d like that.”

“Good.” He didn’t elaborate on the invitation, however. Alyssa felt a quick stab of disappointment. “Until we meet again.” He shifted the fishing pole back to his other hand and started up the path.

“What a funny old man,” Liza said in her clear, carrying voice.

“Shh.” Alyssa glanced over her shoulder. “He’ll hear you.”

“He looks a little like Santa Claus.” Liza sucked her lower lip between her teeth. “No, not Santa,” she amended. “More like Alfred Hitchcock with a little more hair.”

“He knew my mother,” Alyssa said as they started toward the boathouse, just visible through the trees.

“He did?” Liza kept walking. “That’s interesting. I wonder why Amanda or that damned Ethan Trask never tracked him down. And I wonder if he might know anything that would help Granddad get out of the blue funk he’s been in since the trial ended.”

Alyssa felt another twinge of conscience at the mention of her father. He had no idea she’d come to Timberlake to speak to Phil Wocheck about Margaret today. He’d be even more upset with her if he knew that she’d practically begged Edward for a loan to save the plant. She felt embarrassed color rise to her face and hoped Liza wouldn’t notice. Or if she did, that she’d attribute her pink cheeks to the cold.

“But I suppose if he was Margaret’s friend, he wouldn’t have been one of Granddad’s as well,” Liza continued.

“That’s right,” Alyssa said. “He mentioned he’d never met Dad. He also said he didn’t really know your grandmother very well.”

“But he did spend some time at Timberlake in those days, I take it,” Liza said thoughtfully as they arrived at the staircase leading to the second-floor apartment, where she and Cliff had been living since Timberlake Lodge was sold.

“Yes, but very briefly.”

“Then it might be worth it to take him up on his offer for a drink. He might know something useful. We can’t afford to let an opportunity like that get away.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Alyssa agreed.

“We have to do everything we can to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Granddad didn’t kill her. Having a drink with that old coot doesn’t seem like such a chore. If you don’t want to see him again, I’ll do it.”

“No,” Alyssa said, starting up the steps behind her daughter. “I’ll do it. I’ll talk to Robert Grover again.”

* * *

ABOVE THEM ON THE PATH, Robert Grover watched through a break in the trees as the two women entered the boathouse. So that woman was Margaret Ingalls’s daughter. Luck had been on his side meeting her this way, so natural and innocent. Many years had passed, and she was a grown woman now. A grandmother. There hadn’t been even a flicker of recognition in her blue eyes. But then he hadn’t expected there to be.

He’d followed the investigation and trial of Judson Ingalls as closely as he could in the regional sections of the newspapers. He had wanted to be there when Margaret’s husband was convicted. That was why he’d come to Tyler before the verdict was even in. But it hadn’t worked out that way.

Judson Ingalls had been acquitted, set free. And now people all over this backwater burg were asking the same questions his daughter was. If Judson Ingalls hadn’t killed his wife…then who had?

* * *

“HOW WAS THE TRAFFIC coming up from Chicago?” Edward asked his stepson, Devon Addison, as he handed him a Scotch and soda from the bar in the corner of the main room of their suite. The English butler his ex-wife had saddled him with should have been pouring drinks, but Edward had given him the night off. The man made Phil nervous. Edward was going to have to send him back to England, whether Nikki liked it or not.

“It was a bitch out around the airport, but once I got north of the city, it was pretty easy going.” Devon propped one hip on the back of the sofa and took a long, appreciative swallow of his drink. “Good stuff,” he said with a satisfied grin.

Edward was proud of his stepson. He’d been eight when Edward married his mother, and well on his way to becoming an incorrigible spoiled brat. But after a few monumental battles of will, they’d come to form an enduring friendship, one that had far outlasted Edward’s love for Nikki Addison. He was proud of the way Devon had grown. After college he’d worked his way up from the bottom in the Addison Hotel conglomerate, and now at the age of thirty he was Edward’s right-hand man.

“How are things going here?” Devon asked in turn.

“Good. We had three more reservations phoned in today. If the weather holds till the weekend, we’ll have a full house again.”

Devon chuckled and held up his drink in a mock toast. “You sound just as excited about a full house here, with less than fifty rooms, as you do when it’s the Addison Park Avenue, or the Ritz in San Francisco.”

Edward mimicked the salute. He gave his tall, handsome stepson a sharp glance, then returned his smile. “I do tend to get carried away by this place.”

“It’s a great old building,” Devon admitted. “The kind where the word innkeeper still means what it should. But you know it’s never going to be a money-maker.”

“I disagree. I think it’s got real potential,” Edward said, downing his own Scotch neat. “It’s a concept I’ve been interested in implementing for a long time. But you’re right. The operative word here is innkeeper. Small, European-style facilities within convenient driving distance of major cities. We’ll cater to gentlemen hunters and fishermen, baby boomers escaping for long weekends, families wanting to spend some quality time at reasonable prices. Upscale weddings, conferences—c’mon, Devon. You know the drill as well as I do.”