Colton Christmas Protector

“Penelope.”

“—and throw more mud on his good name—”

“Penelope!” Reid stood and moved around the coffee table toward her.

“—then you can get the hell out of my house, right now! I only asked your opinion because—”

“Pen!” He had to raise his volume to match hers, but he kept his tone nonconfrontational.

Taking her by the shoulders, he gave her a quick, interrupting shake. Beneath his hands, Pen felt fragile. Her willowy limbs were surprisingly thin under his large hands, and he felt the tremor that raced through her. “Time out!”

She blinked at him, her expression wounded, offended, then shrugged roughly from his grasp. “That’s what you said. ‘If these records are real, not fabricated.’ As if you think Andrew was trying to frame my father for something!”

“Yes. If. I said all that about fabrication as a qualifier of my assessment, not as an accusation against Andrew.” He stepped back and wiped his hands on the seat of his jeans. “The fact of the matter is, I believe Andrew was onto something. I think...” He hesitated, not wanting to set her off again and not finding any way to soften the blow for her. He respected Pen too much to sugarcoat what he suspected. “Pen, it looks like your father was stealing from his clients. Is stealing from his clients. He’s hiding income from the government. Falsifying records. God knows what else, but...”

He stopped as she sank slowly back onto her chair, her eyes wide and her mouth slack with shock. “You really think my father is doing all this? What I mean is, you think he knows about it? Couldn’t it be someone who works for him? Or...” She let her voice trail off, as if she knew the truth without him answering.

He said nothing, taking his seat again and giving her a moment to process the stunning bomb he’d dropped. He knew well enough that Pen had never had a good relationship with her father, but learning Hugh was likely guilty of criminal activity was another matter.

“So...now what?” She sounded as stunned as she looked, her voice an almost breathless whisper. “What do I do...” she motioned weakly toward the papers in his lap “...with those files? What do you think Andrew planned to do with them?”

“Andrew was a good cop. He wouldn’t have sat on incriminating evidence like this long. Chances are he was waiting for the case to come together to spare you the strain of a drawn-out investigation.” Noticing her befuddled look, he asked, “What?”

“So now you think Andrew is a good cop?”

He clenched his teeth, measuring his words. “Pen, I’ve always thought he was good at his job.”

Her mouth pinched, and one thin eyebrow lifted in skepticism. “That didn’t stop you from trying to sully his name before he died.”

He exhaled slowly, struggling to keep his frustration in check. “I wasn’t trying to sully his name. I was trying to intervene, bring him to his senses, before he sullied it!”

“Fine way of showing—”

“Pen, stop!” He raised both hands, palms toward her. His voice was louder than he’d intended. “This is a conversation for later. I will explain to you everything that happened eighteen months ago, if you’re willing to listen.”

She firmed her mouth and folded her arms over her chest. Classic body language saying she was closing herself off to what he was saying. He knew better than to press on with the topic if she wasn’t ready to hear him out.

“Later...” He tapped his finger on the files. “We need to address this, right now.”

He didn’t tell her this insight into Barrington cast a new light on issues involving his father’s disappearance. Hugh Barrington had been very vocal of late, claiming to have seen Eldridge being kidnapped, claiming a burned body must be the missing Colton patriarch—which it wasn’t. And, not the least of which, pushing forward a reading of Eldridge’s will, in which Hugh Barrington was named the heir of a controlling interest in Colton Inc. As a detective with the Dallas PD, Reid had learned not to believe in coincidence. If it looked like a dirty rat, smelled like a dirty rat and squeaked like a dirty rat, he didn’t need an exterminator to tell him he was dealing with a dirty rat.

If Hugh Barrington was as corrupt as Andrew’s files seemed to indicate, Reid had to wonder what role the family’s lawyer may have played in his father’s disappearance. Had Eldridge gotten wind of his lawyer’s disloyalty and theft? Had the senior Colton threatened to expose Hugh?

Or, Reid thought with a twist of dread in his gut, had Eldridge been mixed up in his lawyer’s illegal practices and crossed the wrong person?

She glared at him silently, stubbornly, for several moments, and he used the time to formulate a plan.

“Are you with me on this, Pen? For Andrew’s sake? Because I’m going to need your help if we’re going to get the proof we need to either finish building this case or disprove it.”

She blinked slowly, turning her gaze away. “How?”

Gathering together the papers he’d spread out on the floor to review, he tapped the stack into order and stood. “We need to look at your father’s personal files. We need to see what’s saved on his computer, what’s locked in his safe.”

Penelope scowled her disagreement. “He’s hardly going to just stand aside and let us search his office—especially if he has something to hide.”

“So we don’t ask.” He jammed a hand in his pocket and shifted his weight uncomfortably. He was crossing a line, and he knew it. They’d have to tread carefully.

Her expression was incredulous. “You want to break into his office and steal his files?”

“I doubt he’d keep the incriminating stuff at his office where his staff could come across it. We’ll start at his house. Your old home.” She opened her mouth as if to argue, and he added quickly, “If we are freely admitted to the house, then it’s not breaking and entering. If we only snoop around and don’t take anything, it’s not stealing.”

“I don’t know.” She bit her bottom lip and rubbed her hands on her pants. “You’re playing rather fast and loose with the definition of legal, Colton.”

He flashed her a wry grin. “Hey, that’s what my family does best.”

* * *

They’d laid out a plan and were in Reid’s truck ten minutes later.

“You’ve been to my father’s house before, right?” she asked in a tone that said she knew he had.

Reid dipped his head once in reply.

“Then you don’t need my directions?”

He lifted a corner of his mouth. “No. But thanks.” He pulled away from the curb and drove toward the highway that would take them out of the Dallas city limits and toward the affluent area where Hugh Barrington lived.

A stilted silence filled the cab of his truck, but Reid resisted the urge to turn on the radio. If Pen decided she did want to talk, he didn’t want anything to interfere with an open communication between them.

In fact, he really ought to be the one to broach the topic of what happened to Andrew. She should know why he’d started his investigation of his partner and his theories about what really happened that fateful date last year. He might not get another chance like this one to explain his side of events to her.

Penelope’s body language didn’t invite conversation, however. She sat as far away from him as her seat belt would allow, and with her body stiff, she kept her head turned toward the passenger window.

He cleared his throat and started, “Pen, about what hap—”

“We need to be through with this junket by three p.m.” She cut him off so deliberately and sent him such a quelling glare, her intention was obvious. “That’s when I have to pick up Nicholas at the church.”

He held her stare for a moment, waffling between pushing his agenda and letting her have her way. Since they still had the task of searching her father’s home office and anywhere else in the house she thought might prove worthy of attention, he backed off. For now.

“Three p.m. Got it.” He glanced at the digits glowing from the dashboard. 11:14. That left plenty of time to conduct a search, keep Pen with him long enough to have the conversation he wanted to have and still get her to the church to pick up her kid.

His heart drubbed a slow, heavy beat. He rather hoped he had an excuse to go with her to pick up Nicholas. He was curious to see how big Andrew’s son was now and reconnect with the boy. Not that he expected the kid to remember him. Nicholas was still a baby last time Reid had seen him.

“Nicholas must be talking pretty well by now. Does he—”

“Why are you turning here?” Another quick change of subject and determined look. “The turnoff to my dad’s street isn’t for another mile.”

“Fewer traffic lights this way.”

She shrugged and turned back to the window.

“So, Nicholas...” This time he let his words trail off, allowing her to fill in the blank. Or not.

“Is none of your business.”

He frowned and scoffed a laugh. “Ouch.”

She drew a breath and faced him with narrowed eyes and a dented brow. “This is not a social outing. You lost the right to personal information and any relationship with my son when you killed my husband.” He opened his mouth to defend himself, but she raised a silencing hand. “Correction. You lost that right when you accused Andrew of being corrupt. Of stealing drugs from the evidence room or whatever cockamamy bull you dreamed up!”

“It wasn’t bull. At least I had good reason to believe what I said at the time.” Reid braked for a stop sign at a busy intersection and had to give his attention to traffic. Once he’d pulled onto the crossroad, he shook his head and gave Pen a pleading look. “Listen, this is a conversation we need to have. But we’re almost to your father’s place. Can we put a pin in it and—”

“It’s the next turn on the right. Where the brick entry gate is,” she said unnecessarily, but again effectively cutting him off.

He sighed and let the matter drop. For now.

Because they were at Hugh Barrington’s estate, he would need to stay on his toes and not raise any red flags as to why he was there with Hugh’s estranged daughter.

Reid pulled in the long driveway to the redbrick mansion, and when he would have parked on the section that circled near the front door, she directed him to the back. At his querying look, she offered, “I’d rather not call attention to the fact that we’re here.”

From the front, everything about the Barrington estate was symmetrical, formal and unimaginative. The house was little more than a large brick box with an equal number of windows on either side of the main ground-level entrance. Boxy shrubs framed the entry, and black shutters were the only relief to the three-story brick edifice.

Reid glanced around the backyard. The swimming pool was still crystal clear and free of leaves despite the December chill. He knew the detached four-car garage contained at least one antique Rolls-Royce—a status symbol Hugh liked to show off at high-society events. But Reid was unfamiliar with the cottage sitting behind the main house. In all the years Hugh Barrington had been Eldridge’s lawyer, Reid had only been to this house a few times, and then always through the front door for dinner parties that kept him in the formal guest areas. As he studied the smaller house, deciding if it was a pool house or something else, one of the venetian blinds swayed and a shadow crossed the window.

He nodded his head toward the cottage. “What’s that building?”

“That’s where Stanley lives.”

The name rang a bell, and Reid searched his memory. “Stanley?”

“Father’s butler.”

“He lives on-site?” That shouldn’t surprise Reid. After all, Aaron Manfred, the Colton family butler, and his wife, Moira, lived in the staff wing of the mansion at Colton Valley Ranch. He’d simply not realized Barrington had any of his house staff living on the grounds.

“Of course he does. Where else would my father’s right-hand man live?”

He heard more than a little sarcasm in her tone. Maybe even some hurt. And he had to admit, he was a tad surprised by the idea behind her sentiment. “Your father is especially close to Stanley?”

She cut a startled look toward him. “I just mean he trusts Stanley like no other person in his life. If my father weren’t such a snob, he might even call Stanley his best friend. He depends on him. Heavily. And having his butler living right behind his house seemed a no-brainer to my father.”

But he could tell from the tension in her body and her tone that she wasn’t nearly as unconcerned about her father’s reliance on his butler as she pretended. Perhaps what he sensed was jealousy? Was she upset that the butler had the trust and closeness she’d never had with Hugh? Or that Hugh had never had with her mother?

Turning to the gym bag he kept in the backseat of his truck, Reid unzipped a side pocket and fished out a flash drive, a small flashlight and a screwdriver. Just in case. Jamming all three in his pockets, he followed Pen to the back door where she punched in a code on the security system, receiving a quiet beep from the door pad signaling admittance.

“You’ve been gone from this house for how many years? And your father hasn’t changed the security code?”

She gave another one-shoulder shrug. “He did change it once a few years ago. But he couldn’t remember the new code after years of the same one, and he kept setting off the alarm when he put in the wrong numbers. He gave up and went back to the old code after three months.”

“And you know this how? I thought you weren’t on good terms with your dad.”

“With my dad, no. His maid, yes. After my mother got sick, Helen and I became closer. We still talk every now and then.”

Reid glanced back out to the butler’s cottage. Had the blinds moved again? He couldn’t shake the prickling sense that they were being watched. As a detective with the Dallas PD, he’d learned to trust his gut instincts. More often than not, that sixth sense was correct. He may not be with the police department anymore, but he still had his training, his experience and the instincts from his years on the job. “You had me park in the back to avoid attention, but we’ve been seen nonetheless.”

Chapter 4

“Seen?” Pen jerked up her head, sending him a look of dismay, then shot a glance around the backyard. “By who—”

Reid put a hand on her shoulder and moved to block her view. “No, don’t look. You’ll only look more suspicious. Carry yourself in a manner that says you have every right to be here, that you don’t care who sees you.”

She straightened her back. “I do have a right to be here. It’s my childhood home. I—” She stopped, pitching her voice lower, and twisted her mouth as if rethinking her assessment. “Well, if I’m not welcome to come as I please, he could take away my key. But he hasn’t, so...”

Before she could unlock the back door, the knob rattled, and the door swung open. A woman in her late fifties with graying brown hair and a black maid’s uniform gave them a curious look. “May I help...? Oh, Miss Penelope! I thought I heard someone back here.”

“Helen.” Pen sounded breathless and nervous, but squared her shoulders. “Hello. I didn’t want to bother you, but I just needed...”

Reid tensed when Pen hesitated. It seemed they were about to test Penelope’s welcome at her father’s estate.

“Um...to look for something from my old room. Something of my mother’s.”

Reid hid his relief over Pen’s smooth lie. He hoped Helen hadn’t heard the same flutter of nerves in her voice that he had.

“Of course. Is it something I can help with?” Helen waved a hand down the back hall as she stood aside to admit them.

Reid mentally scratched B and E off the list of crimes they were flirting with.

“No. No, I don’t want to bother you. Reid can help me look.” Pen smiled at the maid and waited for Helen to return to whatever she’d been doing before heading down the long dark hall. He followed her as she moved quietly through the house, bypassing the kitchen where the clank of dishes and a woman’s humming could be heard. She led him up a back staircase not nearly as grand as the wide marble one with polished wood banisters he remembered from past visits to the house. Their footsteps were muted on the thick white carpet, and he could imagine Penelope as a teenager, sneaking up these quiet and more hidden stairs after her curfew.

Pen led him down the upstairs hall, past numerous closed doors, and she paused, casting a surveying glance around before crossing the landing at the top of the grand staircase in the foyer. Reid looked over the balustrade to the cold marble entryway he remembered from previous trips to his family lawyer’s house. A sparkling crystal chandelier hung over the foyer and replicas of Greek statutes in white stone and Italian urns in hues of gray and black were positioned around the walls. For all its opulence, the foyer lacked color and gave visitors no sense of warmth or welcome. Much like the other rooms Reid had visited. Much like the man who owned the home. In Reid’s opinion, Hugh Barrington loved the idea of being respected, admired, even envied for his position and wealth, but did little to earn it on a personal level.

The man might have been one of Eldridge’s closest advisers and confidants, he might have come to Reid’s defense when suspicion was thrown at him following Andrew’s death, but Hugh Barrington was a hard person to feel any affection or warmth for. Appreciation, maybe. Polite friendliness out of respect for his alliance with and assistance concerning Eldridge, but hardly the sort of Hallmark greeting-card feelings that engendered real esteem. Hugh’s priorities simply seemed oddly skewed. Case in point, his disregard for Penelope, while he fawned—rather obsequiously, in Reid’s opinion—over the Colton family.

“Is there a problem?” Penelope asked in a hushed tone.

He shook himself from his thoughts and caught up to her. “No. Why?”

“You seemed preoccupied and so...serious.” She waved a dismissive hand and gave her head a brisk shake. “Never mind. Come on. That’s his home office.” She aimed her finger down the hall to a door that stood ajar. “The second room on the left.”

He nodded. “After you.”

She balked, and he lifted a corner of his mouth in a wry grin.

“Are you scared to go in there?”

Penelope scowled. “No.” Then after a beat, “Not...really.” But she still made no move to enter Hugh’s study.

“You said you had a right to be here,” he teased.

“I do!” She squared her shoulders, then glared at him. “It was your idea to come here and search!”

“Hey, you called me when you found that file.” He folded his arms over his chest. “Do you really want to stand out here and waste time arguing over who is more responsible for us being here? Or do you want to get in, find the evidence we need to incriminate—”

“Or clear!”

“Or clear him,” he conceded, though he was skeptical. “We should get busy.”

She glanced guiltily at her father’s office door, but straightened her spine and, wiping her hands on her yoga pants, marched into the room.

Reid paused at the threshold of Hugh’s office, taken aback by the contrast of the man’s study to the other parts of the house. As stark and colorless as the entry and living room were, Barrington’s private study was dark with deep browns, crimsons and polished brass. The room reeked of masculinity, right down to the lingering musky scent of Hugh’s overpowering aftershave. The walls were wood paneled and the matching desk, bookcases and file cabinets were made of darkly stained hardwoods. The couch and desk chair were a rich burgundy leather. A slight patina of age dimmed the brass of the grommets on the seat coverings, the furniture hardware and the lampstands. He drew two pairs of latex gloves from his pocket and held one out to her. “Here. Wear these. You may feel you have a legal right to be here, but let’s not leave fingerprints, just in case.”

She eyed the gloves he handed her, then with a furrow of worry denting her brow, she worked her fingers into the latex encasement.

“Look at all this. This could take forever,” she said pulling out a drawer of his filing cabinet.

Reid closed the office door behind him. “If there is information here somewhere that incriminates him, my guess is it won’t be anywhere obvious like a file cabinet or desk drawer.”

She gave him a dubious look. “We’re talking about a man who hasn’t changed his home security code in twenty-five years. He’s smugly overconfident about his security. Andrew tried to talk to him numerous times about safety issues, but he insisted his status quo was good enough.”

Reid nodded. “His hubris may work in our favor. Just the same, check for out-of-the-way cubbyholes. Even an overconfident old-schooler probably has hiding places for sensitive stuff.”

Pen slid closed the file drawer she’d opened and quirked a moue of agreement. “Why not? Andrew had a secret hiding place in our wall I didn’t know about. Why not my father, too?”

Reid’s first task was to boot up Hugh’s desktop computer. He plugged the flash drive into a USB port and rolled the mouse to wake the screen. The computer started up and asked for a password in order to continue. “Any guess what his computer password might be?”

“Try 12-18-46. That’s the house security code.”

Reid arched an eyebrow. “Let me guess. Also his birthday?”

She shot him a deprecating, can-you-believe-it smile.

He tried the numbers. “No dice.”

“Maybe...MavericksFan? No spaces. I think that was the password on the parental-control blocker on our television when I was in high school.” She put a finger to her lips and whispered, “Shh. Don’t tell him I knew it. That’s how I learned he had a Playboy TV subscription.”

“My lips are sealed,” he replied with a chuckle, and typed in MavericksFan. Nothing. Mavericksfan and mavericksfan also failed. So not an issue of capitalization.

“Nada.” Next, he tried Penelope and hit enter.

From behind him, she scoffed. When the error message popped up again, she strolled back to the bookshelves. “I coulda told you that wouldn’t work. Aren’t passwords usually something important to a person?”

The hurt and resentment was back in her voice. He’d never realized how deep her wounds were, how wide the gulf in her estrangement with her father.

Reid scrubbed his face and thought. “Any other suggestions? We’re losing time here.”

“Sorry. No. Not unless it’s something stupid like password or 1234ABCD.”

For good measure, Reid tried both. To Hugh’s credit, neither of those obvious codes worked, but when he tried MavericksFan1, the computer continued to start up and took him to the home screen. “I’m in.” He started opening files and sending documents, internet history and financial data to the flash drive. It was too easy. Reid shook his head and mumbled, “Jeez, and this guy is our family lawyer?”

When they found Eldridge, he’d need to have a talk with father about trusting Hugh with family business. If they found Eldridge.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. No. He couldn’t think that way. He would see to it his father was located and brought home, one way or another.

Pushing back from the desk, he turned his attention to a physical search while Hugh’s computer dumped information onto the flash drive.

He opened a file drawer and felt the underside, scanned the labels of the drawer contents. Across the room, Penelope pulled a painting down from the wall and pushed at the wood paneling behind it. When she found nothing, she rehung the picture and moved on to the next.

Reid watched her for a moment, mesmerized by the way the soft stream of sunlight from the office window made her auburn hair shine with coppery highlights. Her Dallas Cowboys sweatshirt was unflattering, too big for her—probably one of Andrew’s—but her blue yoga pants fit snugly and showed off her shapely bottom and long legs. She moved down the wall to the next painting, checking for a hidden safe, a spot of color in the otherwise darkly masculine room.

A niggling guilt bit him. What right did he have to be ogling his late partner’s wife? Especially when, intentional or not, he’d had a hand in Andrew’s death.