Tempting Fate

Dani squinted up at her. “I won’t talk about my mother.”

“Oh, I assumed that. You never have—and it’s old news.” She blushed. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to sound callous.”

“It’s okay. What’s your name?”

“Heather. Heather Carey.”

“You could use a break?”

“I sure could. My boss says I’m not aggressive enough.”

She wasn’t, but sometimes aggression wasn’t what got the story.

Dani knew she wasn’t dressed for an interview. And she wasn’t prepared. She hadn’t gone over possible questions and answers with her staff. She hadn’t gotten their advice, their consent.

Heather Carey had climbed down to the flat rock. She was small, thin, no more than twenty-five. “That’s an interesting necklace.”

Dani glanced down at the two keys. They were heavy for a necklace, and it had been stupid to wear them rock climbing. But how could she resist? “Have a seat.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding.”

Clearly Heather Carey didn’t believe her luck.

Ninety minutes later Dani arrived back at her cottage with no regrets. Before she showered—before she called her PR people and confessed what she’d done—she dug out a pen and a sheet of Pembroke Springs stationery.

Whistling, she jotted a quick note.

It may or may not have gotten Emily Post’s stamp of approval, but it did graciously—even cheerfully—indicate her acceptance of the invitation to the annual Chandler lawn party.

Two

As he eased into the pilot’s chair on the flybridge of his restored 1955 Richardson all-wood cabin cruiser, Zeke Cutler felt the fatigue and tension of the past three weeks subside. He was home again. Or as close to home as he expected he’d ever get.

Crescent-shaped San Diego Bay glistened in the late-day sun, and he had just enough left in his fifth of George Dickel to fill his glass. Which he did. Slowly. Savoring the sound of splashing Tennessee bourbon and the feel of the wind and the peace of being back on his boat. He had two weeks. Two weeks of fishing and sleeping and watching the waves and the sunset before he had to tackle his next job.

His last job he’d just have to put out of his mind. He’d spent two torturous weeks teaching a group of self-centered, greedy, unscrupulous executives how to stay out of trouble and, should reasonable means of prevention fail, how to get out of trouble. “Trouble” meaning anything from a simple street mugging to international terrorism. These particular individuals, however, reminded Zeke a bit too much of the last group of white-collar thugs he’d handed over to the police. He really did like being able to tell the good guys from the bad guys without looking too hard.

But life wasn’t that simple.

Security consulting didn’t used to be so complicated. Like everything else, it had gone high-tech, which had its points, except the bad guys had gone high-tech, too. They had high-tech security systems and high-tech communications systems and—his favorite—high-tech weaponry. Too much high-tech weaponry for Zeke’s tastes.

He swirled the George Dickel around in his mouth and swallowed. He’d eaten green chili at a distinctly low-tech Mexican restaurant, and his stomach still burned. The bourbon and Southern California sun didn’t help. He closed his eyes. For half a cent he’d dive into the bay.

“If I was a bad guy and wanted to kill you,” Sam Lincoln Jones said nearby, “you’d be dead.”

“Not unless you had a grenade launcher and fired off down on the dock.” Zeke opened his eyes and grinned. “I saw you coming, Sam.”

Sam grinned back at him. “Guess I’m not easy to miss.”

That he wasn’t. Sam was four inches shorter than Zeke’s six-one, but, at two-twenty, thirty pounds heavier. They were both solid; seldom was either accused of being handsome. Many shades darker than Zeke, Sam had had his nose broken at least three times too many, but he liked to say Zeke had come into the world with a grim face. They’d both entered their profession through the back door, Sam with a doctorate in criminology and a yearning to get out of the ivory tower he’d worked so hard to get into, Zeke with a host of dead dreams and a yearning never to get caught up in a dream again. They’d met ten years ago over the corpse of a mutual friend. Together they’d found his killer.

“Don’t know why this old tug hasn’t sunk into the bay by now,” Sam said.

“Because it’s a classic, and like all classics just gets better with age. I’d offer you a drink, but I emptied the bottle. What’s up?”

Sam withdrew a pale pink envelope from the back pocket of his tan linen pants. He had on a mango-colored polo shirt. Zeke felt underdressed in his cutoff shorts, and it was his damn boat.

Sam said, “Letter from home.”

It would have come to their shared postal box in San Diego. Given their profession and peripatetic lifestyle, such things as home and office addresses made little sense. They took turns checking the box. They were independent specialists but worked together on and off. Most of their communications were handled by telephone and computer, with the occasional need for a fax machine or courier. Neither received many letters. Zeke had never received one from home. He’d left for good twenty years ago, at age eighteen. His parents and his only brother were dead, and there was hardly anybody he knew left in Cedar Springs, Tennessee. His hometown and the kid he’d been there were just a part of his dead dreams.

Sam discreetly knelt one knee on the polished mahogany bench in the sun and looked out at the bay. Zeke tore open the delicate envelope. Inside was a folded newspaper article and a single pink page, with Naomi Witt Hazen embossed in tiny script at the top. He tried not to react. Seeing her name, his hometown, was like having the fading shreds of a dream stay with you as you woke up, making you unsure of what was real and what wasn’t.

It was like getting a letter from home when you’d almost talked yourself into believing you no longer had a home.

Like everyone else, Zeke made no claim to understand Naomi Witt Hazen. She always used all three of her names, as if she could be anything she wanted to be—a daughter, a wife, a widow, a Witt, a Hazen. An ordinary woman. Zeke only understood that he owed her. She’d helped save his soul if not his life. He was glad she was still alive, although she could have been dead for all he’d have known. There was no one in Cedar Springs who’d have thought to tell him otherwise.

Tilting back in his pilot’s chair, he read her letter first.

Dearest Zeke,

I know this letter will come as a surprise, and perhaps not altogether a pleasant one, but I don’t know where else to turn. Please come home, Zeke. I need your help. I’ll explain everything when you get here.

Yours truly,

Naomi Witt Hazen

Zeke refolded the letter and tucked it back into the envelope. “Guess I won’t be spending my time off fishing.”

“Anything I can do?” Sam asked. There was no urgency in his tone, no desire or need to help; he was just asking a question.

Zeke shook his head. He unfolded the newspaper article. The Cedar Springs Democrat had picked up a story on Pembroke Springs and the Pembroke, a new spa-inn, and their owner, Dani Pembroke. Mattie Witt’s granddaughter. Mattie was Naomi’s older sister. She hadn’t stepped foot in her hometown in sixty years. Nonetheless, people there kept track of her.

Dani Pembroke was described as an entrepreneur and “former heiress.” Apparently she’d thrown her inheritance into Eugene Chandler’s face when he’d suggested she drop the Pembroke from her name after he’d fired her father as vice president of Chandler Hotels. She’d built her mineral water and natural soda business from scratch, without one nickel of Chandler money. Zeke was unimpressed. She’d had the famous name, she’d had access to a world-famous mineral spring through family, and she’d known she could go crawling back to her rich granddaddy if worst came to worst. There was no “from scratch” about what she’d done.

Why had Naomi sent him the article? It wasn’t the first piece written about a Chandler or a Pembroke.

Then he looked more closely at Dani Pembroke’s picture, past her black eyes and resemblance to Nick Pembroke that had first caught his attention. He focused on the two keys dangling from her slender neck. The caption said one was brass and one was gold. She’d found the gold one while rock climbing near the Pembroke Springs bottling plant.

Zeke swore under his breath.

“You going home?” Sam asked.

And here he’d been thinking he’d just come home. Zeke smiled sadly, staring at Dani Pembroke. “I reckon so.”

Zeke flew to Nashville the next day, and by the time he got to Cedar Springs, Naomi Witt Hazen had a peach pie in the oven and sun tea poured in a tall clear glass.