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“I’ll take care of it. I’ll call right now.”
Liam made sure he’d cut the intercom connection before speaking again. He didn’t want Jenny to have any idea where Chloe was actually staying so that his receptionist would neither be required to stonewall or to lie if anyone happened to ask her.
“It’s better if you don’t return to your sister’s house tonight,” he said to Chloe. “The police don’t have enough manpower to stake out dozens of places, even in pursuit of the mayor’s murderer. But since they already know Sophie is staying with your sister, they’ve almost certainly spared at least one cop to watch her front door. I’ll bet they’re hoping to snag you for questioning when you come to pick up your daughter. In the circumstances, it would be best if you simply left Sophie at your sister’s.”
“I can’t do that.” Chloe was quiet but adamant. “I’m not going to leave her all night with Alexia. You’re forgetting it’s Sophie’s father who just died. She’s scared, she’s sad and I’ve already left her for much too long.”
“I’m not asking you to abandon your daughter, but you have to consider the big picture. She isn’t going to be reassured if you’re arrested when you go to pick her up.”
Chloe paled. “Maybe my sister could drive her to a hotel?”
Liam shook his head. “The police will follow your sister. Same result, except at a hotel with plenty of witnesses instead of at your sister’s house.” He thought for a moment. “I’ll have to pick up Sophie myself.”
“But how will you avoid the police? What’s the difference between you driving her to a hotel and my sister making the same drive?”
“I’ve had some practice in evading both the cops and the media. Above all, nobody will be looking for me. At this point, the police and the media have no idea there’s any connection between the two of us.” He held out his cell phone. “Use my phone to call your sister. Did you say her name is Alexia?”
“Yes.”
“Tell Alexia I have your permission to pick up your daughter. If she asks where I’m taking Sophie, or where you plan to spend the night, explain that you can’t tell her. That way, Alexia can’t be tricked into revealing your destination.”
“If the police ask her where I’ve gone, what should she say to them?”
“She should tell them the truth—that she has no idea if you’re even still in town. If they press her, she should insist that she’ll say nothing further unless she has a lawyer present. If the police decide she’s hiding relevant information, they could be persistent enough to be unpleasant. Having a lawyer present will prevent that.”
Chloe fiddled with the cell phone, looking troubled. “I had no idea I’d be dragging my sister into the middle of such a mess when I asked her to look after Sophie. Isn’t there some less complicated way to do this?”
“Trust me, this is a lot less complicated than having you spend the night in jail.”
“In jail?” She stared at him, eyes wide. “Surely they wouldn’t put me in jail!”
“Why not?” He was deliberately brutal. “Because you’re pretty? Because you won an Olympic medal? Because you married an important man?”
“I didn’t mean that. I wasn’t implying I deserved special treatment. But I assumed I could post bail even if they arrested me…”
“You can. As soon as a judge sets bail. If the cops arrest you tonight, you’d be required to stay in jail until court is in session tomorrow.”
He’d managed to scare her to the point that her cheeks were now dead-white. “You really think I’m going to be arrested, don’t you?”
He shrugged. “It’s a high-profile case. That works for you and against you. The cops will be more careful building their case, and they’ll make sure it’s strong before they seek any warrants. On the other hand, they can’t possibly let the murder of the mayor go unsolved, so there’s going to be a lot of pressure on them to make an arrest.”
“But how in the world can I prove that I didn’t kill Jason?”
“I don’t know that yet. If I’m going to help you, I need to find out everything that happened last night in painstaking detail. That’s why I need you and Sophie to stay with me at my apartment so that you and I can take as long as we need to discuss the case. I can only work out a strategy once I know everything you know about what happened last night.”
“I understand.” Chloe straightened her spine, almost visibly girding herself for battle. Liam saw the return of some of the fire and strength of mind which he knew must be an integral part of her character. Any woman capable of achieving gold medal status in an Olympic event as challenging as downhill skiing must have courage to spare.
“I appreciate the offer of safe haven in your home, Liam. That’s far more generous of you than I could expect.”
“You’re welcome.” That was more true than he would have liked.
“There’s one thing we have to get clear, though.” Chloe’s mouth firmed into a straight, determined line. “You do understand there’s no way I can allow you to tell Sophie you’re her biological father—”
“Not tonight. Of course not.”
“Not tonight, and perhaps not ever.”
There was no way in hell he’d allow a child of his to grow up not knowing the truth about her parentage. He’d seen what happened to families built on a foundation of well-meaning lies and it wasn’t pretty. But that was a battle for another night, and he completely agreed with Chloe that a few hours after Jason’s death was no time to be burdening a three and a half year old with the knowledge that the man she loved hadn’t been her biological father.
“I agree that we need to protect Sophie,” he said. “Tonight we’re going to do that by developing a strategy for keeping you out of jail. Telling Sophie that I’m her father—”
“Jason was her father.”
He dipped his head in acknowledgment. “Telling Sophie that I’m her biological father is a discussion for another night. We need to take this one logical step at a time. Right now, that means we need to get Sophie back to my apartment without alerting the cops. Go ahead, Chloe. Call your sister. Let her know I’ll be leaving to pick up Sophie within the next ten minutes.”
Four
Chicago, the Same Morning
Paul Fairfax climbed onto the stationary bike in his custom-designed exercise room and grunted in annoyance when he saw that his wife had altered the settings. This was his favorite piece of equipment and Julia knew it. He wished she’d stick to the treadmill, for Christ’s sake, since she was the one who’d insisted on spending thousands on the fanciest damn treadmill manufactured in the entire United States. Probably the fanciest treadmill in the entire goddamn world, Paul reflected morosely, since Julia’s ability to spend money reached a level that came close to high art.
God forbid that she should change her spending and shopping habits now, he thought sarcastically. He’d warned her repeatedly since Ron Raven died that things were tough and the business was going through a little rough patch. He might as well have been telling the wind blowing over Lake Michigan to stop ruffling the surface of the water.
Not that he expected his financial problems to last for long, Paul reassured himself. He was twice as shrewd as Ron had ever been, and the fact that he’d been unable to raise any new investment capital since Ron’s disappearance didn’t mean that the Chicago business community thought that Ron had been blessed with better instincts for turning a profit. How could anyone think that? Paul would never accept that good ole boy Ron, dragged up by a ranching family in the wilds of Wyoming, had been smarter than him—the eldest son and heir to a fine Southern family with roots growing three hundred years deep in the rich Georgia soil.
Changing the bike settings back to his liking, Paul flicked the switch and started pedaling. The challenging routine he’d designed for himself was so ingrained by now that he would have to put in at least fifteen minutes of intensive effort before he felt the rewarding tug of muscles that meant his workout was paying off. It was a never-ending struggle to keep his fifty-three-year-old body looking and behaving ten years younger than his calendar age, but it was a struggle Paul was determined to win.
God forbid that he should ever get a paunch of the sort Ron Raven had developed over the past couple of years. Paul despised people who didn’t have sufficient discipline and willpower to keep their bodies in shape. Ron had no real willpower where his physique was concerned. He’d constantly bemoaned his weight problems, but he’d loved gourmet food and vintage wines far too much to stick to a diet.
Paul had always been mystified by the way Avery had fallen instantly in love with a man as crude as Ron Raven. He was even more mystified by the fact that his sister had apparently remained in love, right up until the day a Chicago cop came and informed her that Ron Raven was not only missing from his Miami hotel room, but that he had another wife and family living in the godforsaken hick town of Thatch, Wyoming. As a crowning insult, the woman in Thatch was actually Ron’s legal wife. Avery, a flower of Southern womanhood, had been nothing more than Ron Raven’s long-term mistress.
Ron had been downright rough around the edges when he first came into Avery’s life but for some mysterious reason, she’d been captivated by Ron’s self-confidence and aura of bravado. When Avery announced her engagement, Paul pointed out to her that Ron was as brash as he was bullheaded. Avery had laughed and replied that her fiancé’s brashness was one of the things she liked best about him. She’d claimed it was refreshing after too many years of being surrounded by men whose energy had been sapped by generations of keeping up appearances under the merciless Georgia sun.
Paul had to admit that Ron had been handsome enough back in those days. It was infuriating, though, that Ron’s magnetism hadn’t faded with the passing years as his waistline expanded and his hair grayed. What the hell had been the root of his appeal? True, the guy had been blessed with bedroom eyes. True, his bluff manner somehow conveyed a hint of the intellectual power and business smarts hidden behind the jovial facade. But Ron had looked every one of his fifty-seven years. What’s more, he’d developed the beginning of arthritis in his knees and he’d lost his springy stride. His hands had been stubby and gnarled with calluses. He’d looked, in fact, as if he actually worked on his damned cattle ranch.
The memory of Ron’s frequent trips to the Wyoming ranch and the rival wife he’d kept there was enough to make Paul’s heart pump fast with rage. He still couldn’t believe how Raven had fooled them all. To think that Ron had spent twenty-seven years with his legal wife tucked away at the Flying W Ranch, while Avery stayed in Chicago, living in a fool’s paradise with no legal claim to the wealth and prestige that her skills as a hostess had helped Ron secure. And all the time he, Paul Fairfax, had been adding class to Raven Enterprises—not to mention lending legitimacy to the scam of Ron’s second bigamous marriage—by acting as business partner to the cheating son of a bitch.
Even if Paul could have forgiven Ron for deceiving Avery, he could never forgive his former business partner for the fact that he’d exposed the entire Fairfax family to public humiliation. Ron’s bigamy shamed everyone it touched, leaving Paul to go through life knowing that people he met were sniggering behind their hands because his sister had never actually been married to the man she lived with for over a quarter of a century. Paul’s blood pressure had skyrocketed in the wake of that humiliating discovery and he’d never been able to bring it down since. Another injury to lay directly at Ron’s door, Paul thought angrily. Taking blood pressure pills was something only a loser should have to do and he was absolutely not a loser.
He mopped away the first welcome beads of sweat, admiring his own elegant fingers and buffed, neatly-trimmed nails as he did so. Unlike Ron, he would never be confused for a man who worked with his hands. The thought comforted him slightly. What the hell. Ron was officially dead and Paul was very much alive, which gave him the last laugh after all. Best of all, he was finally in charge of Raven Enterprises, after years suffering as Ron’s junior partner. He’d run into a couple of financial rough spots over the past couple of months, but he’d soon be raking in the big bucks. To hell with all those tight-ass bankers who wouldn’t lend him fresh investment funds. When the Arran project came on line, they’d be singing a different song.
His mood lightening as the endorphins kicked in, Paul clicked the remote fastened to the exercise bike. He muted the sound until the ads finished and the news came back on. The weather forecaster promised a day of high temperatures, low cloud and lots of humidity. Paul pulled a face. Jeez, what a miserable climate the city of Chicago had to endure. The summer was barely more tolerable than the winter. Thank God for air-conditioning.
“Let’s go now to our affiliate in Denver,” the anchor said, “where we’re following a breaking story.”
Paul frowned, irritated by the interruption. He tuned in to the local Chicago news precisely so that he wouldn’t have to be taken to Denver, or anywhere else. Who the hell cared about breaking news a thousand miles to the west? He resigned himself to watching pictures of forests burning because some idiot had thrown away a lighted cigarette.
“It was reported just before dawn that the mayor of Denver has been murdered,” a reporter for the affiliate intoned, standing in front of a large Tudor-style home on a sunny street lined with huge old trees.
“The police department is now confirming that the violent death of Jason Hamilton, one of the nation’s most popular mayors, was caused by multiple stab wounds inflicted by an unknown assailant. The mayor was struck quote several times, the blows landing in the general area of the heart and lungs. The police department isn’t saying anything more about the precise cause of death until the preliminary autopsy results are complete, which should be some time tomorrow morning. In the meantime, there are no official suspects, but the chief of police has confirmed that the mayor’s wife, Chloe Hamilton, was found by the couple’s nanny with a bloody knife in her hands, kneeling beside her husband’s body.
“Chloe Hamilton won the gold medal for downhill skiing in the 1998 Winter Olympics, as well as a silver and a bronze in the same Olympics. In addition, she won a bronze medal during the 1992 winter Olympics in Albertville, France, when she was only sixteen. Before being elected mayor of Denver, Jason Hamilton successfully developed property in Telluride and Steamboat Springs….”
Jason Hamilton was dead! Paul stared at the screen and the bike jerked to a halt as he forgot to pedal.
His stomach roiled and for a dreadful moment he was afraid he would throw up. What a fucking disaster. He had every cent he could scrape up invested in Sam DiVoli’s new building project, and with Jason Hamilton dead, they could probably whistle their chances of rezoning approval into the wind.
Paul switched off the power to the bike and listened intently to the rest of the report from Denver, where it was still only six-thirty in the morning. You didn’t have to search too hard for a subtext to realize that Chloe Hamilton was the prime suspect in the death of her husband. Paul didn’t put as much faith in the news reports as he would have three months earlier. Having lived through the media frenzy that followed Ron Raven’s disappearance, he knew better than to believe everything he heard on any news program. It was possible that Chloe Hamilton had killed her husband, but he wouldn’t put money on it. Personally, he would be more inclined to believe Edgar Showalter had ordered the hit. God knew, Edgar was ruthless enough. Not to mention furious that Sam DiVoli had bought the Arran property out from under his nose, acting on a tip that came directly from Jason Hamilton.
Slinging his towel around his neck, Paul hurried into the library, barely noticing his wife when he passed her coming out of the master bedroom.
Julia gave him a nervous smile. “Paul, do you remember that we’re having dinner with the Feldmanns tonight? It’s black tie. Eight o’clock.”
He didn’t remember because Julia had never mentioned the invitation until right now. She knew how much he disliked the Feldmanns, so she had clearly hoped to corner him into accepting an invitation he would otherwise have insisted on refusing.
“Why the hell are we having dinner with the Feldmanns? You know the only reason they ever invite us is because they want a donation for one of their damned charities.”
Julia’s thin, pointed face took on the mulish expression he so disliked. There was a price attached to keeping a forty-nine-year-old body fitting into size four designer clothes, and Julia’s face was paying it. “The Feldmanns know everyone who’s anyone in Chicago. There are going to be lots of people there with money to invest—”
There was so much else going on right now that he couldn’t be bothered to disabuse Julia of her naive notions of how capital was actually raised. “Okay, okay. I’ll be home at seven.”
Julia was shocked into silence. He shut the library door before she could find her voice. His wife speechless was a rare enough occurrence that he needed to savor the moment. He had Sam’s number on his speed-dial, and he barely waited for the door to cut off the view of Julia’s startled expression before he pressed the appropriate key.
“Hello.” Sam picked up the phone right away, but he sounded both sleepy and disgruntled.
“This is Paul Fairfax. You need to switch on your TV right now. Jason Hamilton’s dead. He’s been murdered.”
“Jason’s dead? Murdered? Christ almighty. There has to be a mistake!”
“It’s all over the news. He was killed last night. Stabbed to death in the mayoral mansion.”
“Jesus H. Christ, that’s impossible! I just had dinner with the mayor last night. I had some friends in from D.C. and we were talking about Jason running for the Senate—”
“Well, he’s dead now.” Paul wasn’t interested in hearing how close Jason and Sam had been, and even less interested in hearing about the mayor’s ambitions to hold national political office. Bottom line, Sam’s friendship with the mayor meant zilch now that the guy was dead. It could even be a negative as political factions lined up behind new players.
“I guess that means we can kiss goodbye to getting the Arran property rezoned any time in the next year or two.” Paul didn’t bother to hide his resentment that Sam DiVoli had taken so goddamn long to get the zoning variances he’d promised to deliver when Paul forked over money he goddamn couldn’t afford. “The zoning committee is stacked with Edgar Showalter’s people, and they’ll never grant us a variance.”
Sam swore with truly remarkable variety and fluency. “They’ll stonewall us at best,” he said when he finally ran out of curses. “And every day we can’t get started is costing us money. Worst case, they’ll flat out reject the rezoning, and then the project is dead.”
Paul’s stomach knotted with dread. He simply couldn’t allow this project to turn sour. “There’s going to be a couple of weeks of confusion in the wake of Jason’s death,” he pointed out. “We need to get to somebody powerful on the zoning committee before Showalter has them lined up and on the record as opposed to the Arran rezoning.”
“Yeah, great idea.” Sam’s voice oozed sarcasm. “Which councilman do you suggest we approach while they’re all busy issuing statements mourning the loss of the mayor.” He broke off. “Damn, Jason was a good guy. I’m sorry he’s gone. He would have made a truly fine senator.”
Paul couldn’t spare time to waste mourning the mayor. “What’s the name of the annoying little Nazi who guarded access to Jason as if he was in charge of the gateway to heaven?”
“Fred Mitchell,” Sam said. “He is…correct that. He was the mayor’s chief of staff. Jesus! I can’t believe Jason’s dead. Son of a gun, he was right here, enjoying dinner, less than twelve hours ago. He was smart and honest, too. You don’t get many politicians like that. Especially not with approval ratings like Jason was getting. Dammit, his death is a real loss to the community.”
Not to mention a real loss to the Arran project. Sam needed to get his thinking focused on what was important here, namely that there was nobody left to get their project the zoning variance it needed and that Paul’s financial future was on the line. It was a hell of a nuisance that he had to rely on Sam, Paul reflected, but he really had no choice. The man had a knowledge of the inner workings of Denver city government that was second to none. Paul sure as hell hoped the guy would be able to put that knowledge to good use and pull a rabbit out of the hat. The financial consequences of an implosion of the Arran project were more than Paul could bear to contemplate.
“I’m going to fly out to Denver right now,” Paul said. Sam might know Denver politics, but when the going got really tough, Sam backed off. He would apply pressure, but only so much. Paul, on the other hand, had discovered that if bribes didn’t work, a touch of polite blackmail could usually turn the trick. Sam was one of those naive, old-fashioned types who scorned bribes and didn’t understand blackmail—although he knew exactly where all the bodies were buried.
“I can maybe catch the ten-thirty flight.” Paul was already walking toward his bedroom. “With the time difference, I could be in Denver before noon. I’ll go straight to your offices. We need to plan our strategy.”
“What are you smokin’, Paul? Nobody in the mayor’s office is going to be meeting with developers today. For Christ’s sake, Jason Hamilton’s dead! Show the man some respect, will you?”
“I’m sure he was the best mayor in the country. But showing him respect isn’t going to get the Arran zoning sewn up before Edgar Showalter can fuck us over. We need to get somebody on the zoning committee to sign off on the paperwork. Today, if possible. I’ll see you this afternoon, Sam.” Paul hung up the phone before DiVoli could object some more. Maybe the millions at stake didn’t matter all that much to Sam, but they sure as hell mattered to Paul.
He walked through the empty bedroom and into the shower. Julia was already dressed. He could hear her down in the kitchen, grinding beans for their thousand-fucking-dollar super-deluxe espresso machine. He wouldn’t tell his wife he was going to miss the Feldmanns’ dinner, Paul decided. He’d call once he landed in Denver. That would teach her to try to manipulate him into accepting invitations from people she knew he didn’t like.
Paul turned the water on full blast and calculated how much he and Sam DiVoli might have to shell out in bribes to get the rezoning sewn up. Right now he was so strapped for cash that it might even be difficult to come up with a bribe big enough to do the trick. Maybe they should bag the idea of bribery and move straight on to blackmail. If that was the route they took, Sam would be crucial to their success. If you were important enough to have a secret, and you lived in Denver, Sam knew your secret. He was a useful business partner to have, Paul reflected, provided he didn’t get sidetracked by an annoying attack of civic responsibility. Sometimes Sam DiVoli was just too damned honest to be reliable.
Paul couldn’t afford to let this become one of those occasions on which Sam was afflicted with a conscience. The entire financial future of Raven Enterprises was riding on the success or failure of the Arran project.
He’d already suffered the public humiliation of being identified as the business partner of a bigamist. He sure as hell wasn’t going to go bankrupt because that same damn bigamist wasn’t around to tell him where to invest his money. Whatever the business and financial communities might think, Paul Fairfax was every bit as smart an investor as Ron Raven had ever been. The Arran project would prove that to all the doubters and then Raven Enterprises could be renamed Fairfax Enterprises, which it should have been from the first.
Bottom line: the Arran project simply could not be allowed to fail. It was Paul’s ticket out of a deep financial hole and into a promising future.
Five
Conifer, near Denver, the Evening of August 7
Liam drove slowly along the twists and turns of Coyote Lane, looking for 356, the house belonging to the Mallorys, Chloe’s sister and brother-in-law. The road was narrow and gravel-surfaced, in keeping with Conifer’s past as a frontier town, but the houses still managed to project an aura of yuppie success with front yards expensively landscaped to look untamed.
In keeping with the phony rural atmosphere, there were no sidewalks, no mailboxes and the house numbering seemed expressly designed to be invisible from the road. This last feature would have been infuriating except that it provided Liam with an excuse to brake often and scope out his surroundings, all the while creating the impression that he was simply searching for his destination.
Once he had the house located, Liam checked again for any cops in the vicinity. There were only three vehicles within sight and two of them seemed harmless: an empty Mercedes parked in a driveway and a landscaping truck at the far end of the cul-de-sac. Liam could hear members of the landscaping crew calling out to each other in Spanish as they loaded equipment onto the truck in preparation for leaving. The men were working too hard and much too efficiently to be undercover cops, Liam decided.
By contrast, the phone company van parked a couple of houses down from the Mallorys struck him as highly suspicious. In his experience, phone companies no longer made service calls after six, whatever type of emergency the customer pleaded. In addition, there was no activity around this particular vehicle. The man in the driver’s seat had been staring at the same clipboard of papers ever since Liam first noticed him. Eighty-twenty the guy was a cop, Liam decided. Thank goodness there was no reason for him or his car to provoke any special interest.
Taking care not to glance back toward the cop, he parked his BMW right in the driveway and jogged up the front steps. The Mallorys’ front door was opened by a man about Liam’s own age, holding a small boy in his arms. The boy’s nose was painted blue and he had green stars stuck on his cheeks, but otherwise he seemed a pretty regular kid bordering on the cute, in fact. Not that Liam considered himself an expert on toddler cuteness. His attitude toward kids was pretty similar to his attitude toward tiger cubs: they looked adorable, were incredibly difficult to raise and could bite off chunks of your flesh if you didn’t treat them right.
“You must be Liam,” the man said, shifting the toddler to a different arm so that he could shake Liam’s hand. “I’m Tom Mallory, Chloe’s brother-in-law.”
“Hey, Tom. Good to meet you.”
“And this is Peter, our son. Chloe’s nephew.” Tom jiggled his arms, bouncing Peter, who didn’t crack a smile.
Liam told himself it was ridiculous to feel intimidated by a toddler with a blue nose. “Hi, Peter, how are you doing?”
The toddler stared at him in silence. Not hostile, exactly, but definitely assessing. Liam decided that a tiger cub would have been easier. At least nobody would have expected him to hold a conversation with a tiger.
“Come on in,” Tom said, stepping to one side, apparently not expecting his son to speak. “This is a terrible situation, isn’t it?”
Liam nodded, relieved to turn his attention back to a grown-up. “Yes. It’s bad enough that Chloe’s lost her husband, but it’s worse that she isn’t getting a moment’s peace and quiet to grieve for him.”
“Jason was a good guy and a terrific mayor. His passing is a terrible loss for a lot of people.” Tom frowned and then shook his head. “Anyway, it’s great to know you’re on Chloe’s team. Her whole family is very relieved that she’s moved quickly to get the legal help she needs instead of relying on the fact that she’s innocent to protect herself.”
Liam certainly agreed with that. “Innocence is a lousy defense if it’s all you have to bring to the table. But I’m hopeful we’ll soon find concrete evidence to point the cops in another direction.”
