Courting Danger

My friend snickered. “Get this. I heard that he’s planning to do hair implants.”

I suppressed a shudder. “I don’t even want to think about where the hair will come from. He’s too cheap to spring for anything on the high end.”

As I wound the scarf around my neck, Carling sprang up and rushed around the desk. “My God, Kate. Your throat!”

Granted, it hurt to swallow, but her look of horror sent me scrambling for a mirror. Gingerly I peeled away the collar. The vivid bruise ran from red to purple in a solid band across the base of my throat. Carling’s fingers were gentle as she touched the skin, but I still winced at the stab of pain.

“That bastard had you by the throat, didn’t he!” she demanded.

“Yes.” I buttoned the top of my blouse. The material was silk and wouldn’t scratch the abused skin too much. I then looped the scarf one more time around my neck for extra coverage.

“You should see a doctor. What’s your schedule for the rest of the day? I’ll cover. You leave now and seek medical attention.” She snapped out the series of orders like a general going to battle.

“You’ll even cover the summons from Aunt Hilary?”

The look of abject horror on her face tickled me. I gave her a quick hug. “I didn’t think so.”

She swallowed, hard. “I can call and tell her you’re indisposed.”

I opened the door to the small closet, took out a black blazer and put it on, remembering to transfer the antacid roll into the pocket. Although it covered only part of the damage, this jacket would have to do. No time to go home and change. Aunt Hilary needed to make her club luncheon.

I pivoted. “Well, how do I look?”

Carling folded her arms and took her sweet time surveying me from head to toe. “Like someone who has been through the ringer and is trying to cover up.”

My arms dropped. “Thanks a lot.”

My friend’s lips curved in a big smile. “You’ll do, Katherine.” Her emphasis on my name didn’t go unnoticed. In the world I had once inhabited, my formal name was always used. Carling had been the first daring enough to shorten it. And it was into that former environment I was now heading.

Carling gave me a thumbs-up. “Good luck.”

“I’m going to need it,” I said under my breath as I crossed the room.

“If you don’t return in an hour, we’ll send out a search party to the cemetery of dead debutantes.”

“Ha-ha.” I opened the door and reached into my pocket.

“Kate.” I looked back. Carling would make a great mother. “You’re stronger than you think.”

I slid my hand clear and displayed my empty palm. “This advice from a woman who would rather cut a vein than confront my great-aunt.” I winked and left before she could recover. Getting the last dig in was always a challenge with her.

Outside I blinked against the glare of the sunshine and crossed the postage-stamp parking lot in a few strides. As I drove out of the lot I thumbed another antacid tablet from the roll.

For once traffic wasn’t snarled along Flagler Drive. While oil tycoon Henry Flagler may have started West Palm Beach as a bedroom community for the servants and workers of Palm Beach, to keep them out of sight from his rich cronies he brought in on his railroad, today West Palm Beach was its own city. Technology, banking, tourism, and even the entertainment industry had prospered here. True, it had a tawdry underbelly, but it had a personality of its own.

I loved it.

I drove across the bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway and on the other side entered the preening world that was Palm Beach. Regal royal palm trees lining the pristine road swayed in the breeze. Chic shops and restaurants thrived with customers. Valets in jaunty white jackets or crisp white shirts ran back and forth, parking a succession of Mercedes, Rolls-Royces and Jaguars.

I turned onto Ocean Boulevard and drove past one stunning mansion after another. Only light waves ruffled the Atlantic Ocean while the late March sky was crystal blue, not a cloud in sight. A picture-perfect tourist day in paradise. So why couldn’t I relax and enjoy it?

Because I no longer belonged here.

Turning onto a driveway of hexagonal pavestones, I punched in a security code and waited for the massive wrought-iron gates to open. I passed immaculately cultivated gardens, lush with fronds of palmetto, areca and foxtail palms and vivid blossoms of verbena, hibiscus and bougainvillea. I parked in the semicircle at the front of the palatial house, took a deep breath, and with the practiced grace of the debutante, swept from my car.

I needed to be at the top of my game. This morning had been a cakewalk when compared to the judge, jury and executioner waiting inside.

Chapter 2

“Good morning, Edwin.”

“Good morning, Miss Katherine.” Edwin greeted me from the Palladium-styled doorway. Although he had been my great-aunt and uncle’s butler for only a few months, he was cut from the same mode as the long line of Rochelle butlers before him. Always there before you knew you needed him.

Of course the household staff was so large that there were many unseen eyes and ears to note the arrival of a car. Still, it was decidedly spooky how Edwin would appear at the door before the bell sounded.

“Madam requests your presence on the rear loggia.” In keeping with his training, Edwin’s only reaction to my less than stellar appearance was a micro-fractional disdainful lift of his brow. Otherwise, his face remained expressionless as he stepped back to let me inside. “She’s finishing her laps.”

But of course she was. If there was one constant in Hilary Rochelle Wilkes’s life, other than duty, it was her swimming.

“Thank you, Edwin.”

I moved across the spacious foyer, skirting the center dominated by the overhead Baccarat chandelier. Suspended from the thirty-two-foot domed ceiling, the dazzling gilt bronze fixture dripped with opulent crystals. Once as a kid, I had watched as a hurricane-force gust of wind caught the chandelier and tossed it up in the air like a tennis ball before letting it drop. A falling shard of glass had speared my upper arm. Even the top plastic surgeon called to the emergency room by my aunt and uncle hadn’t prevented the half-moon scar that was a permanent reminder.

As I reached the hallway leading to the ocean side, I cast one regretful glance toward the twin stairways that curved and twisted to the upper levels. A cautious person would’ve kept a change of clothes in her former bedroom. Only a rash person would burn all bridges by removing all her possessions in a desperate bid for identity.

I straightened the edge of my jacket and walked down the sweep of marbled corridor. For a moment I paused in the double French doors framed by amber silk brocade curtains to collect myself.

The view was primo Palm Beach: bands of green, gold and blue. Every rainy season the beach, like a worn wedding ring, would be tarnished, narrowing to a slip under the onslaught of storm-driven waves. Every year the inhabitants would lobby to have the beach restored. Mustn’t mess with property value. The rich and famous had seasonal homes on the beach, so that the beach must be perfect.

I used to believe the city council sent workers onto the beach every day before dawn to arrange shells so that the temporary residents would have the thrill of finding one. Once I crept down in a quest to catch the shell scatterers at work, but I only managed to step on a Portuguese man-of-war left by the tide. That ill-advised outing had catapulted me to a finishing school in Switzerland.

I crossed the patio and then went down the steps to the pool deck. With a smooth flip that barely rippled the water, my aunt made her turn at the deep end of the pool. In her youth Hilary’s prowess as a swimmer had earned her a spot on the Olympic team. Her bronze medallion held a place of honor over the fireplace in her sitting room. Although her years of competition were long behind her, she maintained a rigorous swimming regimen. I would match her stamina against today’s generation of women anytime.

“Are you going to stand there all day dreaming?” Wearing a peach tank swimming suit that showed off both her athletic form and golden tan to their best advantage, she stood in the shallow end. Ignoring the steps, she placed her hands on the side and pushed clear of the pool.

“No, Aunt Hilary.” I walked to the stack of towels and handed one to her. Although her actual date of birth was a secret as safeguarded as the gold in Fort Knox, Hilary had to be in her late sixties, early seventies, but she radiated the health of a forty-year-old. Her strict swimming regimen kept her thighs firm, her body lithe. Although her wet hair was sleeked back, I knew a superb hairstylist kept the trademark Rochelle hair a gleaming blond and arranged in a style contemporary in fashion but not inappropriately youthful.

After she dried off, I handed her a terry-cloth robe. Only then did she present her cheek for my air-kiss. She crossed to the wrought-iron-and-glass-top table and sat down. I followed, taking a chair that faced the sun and the inquisition I knew was coming.

“You look like something that dreadful cat of yours dragged in.”

“Gee, thanks, Aunt Hilary. You look fabulous as always.”

“Don’t get cheeky with me, young lady. Not after all I’ve done for you.” Hilary could look down her regal nose and make a person squirm at twenty paces. I resisted the fidget but issued the expected apology.

“Sorry.”

Without a word a maid appeared with a tray of frosted Waterford glasses of iced teas, and after serving us, just as silently disappeared. While Hilary sipped the sweetened brew with a twist of key lime, I studied her over the rim of my glass.

I had to hand it to her. No matter what the situation, my great-aunt always radiated strength, power and composure. Too bad Hilary was as cold as the Hubbard Glacier inside.

Whoa, watch the poor-little-rich-girl routine. After all, where would you have been without Hilary when Mom so lovingly dumped you on the doorstep?

Presented with a wailing baby, Hilary with her code of family duty had more than risen to the occasion. She had given me a home, such as it was. She had given all that she could.

It was not her fault that the burden of being a Rochelle had long ago burned out any softer emotions in her. And not my fault that I could never measure up to her level of perfection.

I placed the glass on the table without the slightest clink, as I had been taught. I folded my napkin, and along with it a child’s desperate need for love, and tucked it beside the glass.

“Aunt Hilary, you know I’ll always be grateful for what you did for me.”

The faint lines of displeasure framing her mouth eased. She nodded and leaned back in her chair.

“Your new office is doing well?”

I couldn’t resist a quick grin. “The Law Firm of Debt, Default and Miscarriage is doing great.”

Her fine brows knitted. “I beg your pardon?”

“An insider’s joke. When Carling, Nicole and I were in law school, we used to joke about opening a practice with that name.”

Remembering those days in the local bar frequented by the law students, and my friends’ discussions late into the night, satisfaction once more surged in me. By God, we had done it. After all the pain, setbacks and disappointments the three of us had experienced in our careers, we had joined forces to open our own firm. We would make it on our own, defying the all-old-boys’ network that still prevailed in this neck of the legal world.

“Oh, I see.” My aunt cleared her throat. “I would imagine you’ll be handling only civil matters given what happened to you at the U.S. Attorney’s office.”

Ah, here we go. She finally was getting to the reason she had summoned me. She was going to make a last-ditch effort to convince me to take a “title only” position with one of the family’s businesses. Hilary always manipulated a person until she had you trapped in a corner with no escape.

I kept my voice cool and level; she must not hear any uncertainty or vulnerability in my tone.

“No, we’re a criminal defense firm, which means I’ll be helping people charged with anything from misdemeanors to felonies.” That is, as soon as I could get my own clients rather than taking files over from Carling and Nicole. Their former positions with the Public Defender and State Attorney offices had given them a decided advantage in referrals. My past wasn’t so kind. It was not every day a CEO caught with his hand in the employee pension cookie jar—the kind I used to prosecute—walked off the street into a small law firm.

Maybe, just maybe, my victory this morning would help to rebuild my damaged reputation. Using my trust-fund monies for the start-up costs of the firm only made me a financial partner. For my self-respect I had to pull my own weight with client referrals.

“I have a…favor to ask of you.”

Although I maintained a relaxed pose, my Hilary antenna quivered. What was she up to? She demanded, ordered and, in short, expected people to snap to do her bidding. The word “ask” was not in her vocabulary. Certainly, her imperious summons this morning hadn’t suggested this new approach.

“A favor? From me?”

“On a professional basis.”

I couldn’t help myself, I gaped. “You want legal advice?”

Anger sparked in her crystalline blue eyes. “You still call yourself a lawyer, don’t you?”

Ah, her infamous disdain. With one efficient slash she could cut you off at the knees.

My own temper flickered. “Not call. Am.”

“Have you heard the latest about Grace Roberts’s death?”

Disbelief once more swelled inside me. Grace, the vivacious and efficient young woman who had maneuvered her way into becoming my aunt’s assistant, was dead. Violent death to people I knew was becoming a constant in my life, and that nasty realization had caused more than one sleepless night this past week.

“Nothing more than the brief coverage in the morning paper.”

“You’re aware she was killed in the old courthouse.” Hilary kept her eyes on my face. If she was waiting for a reaction she was going to be sorely disappointed.

“Yes.” Then, damned if my hand, on its own volition, didn’t stray toward the tube of tablets concealed in my pocket. My aunt’s eagle-sharp gaze tracked my movement. I brought my hand forward, empty.

“They’ve arrested Lloyd Silber for her murder.”

“What?” My mouth dropped open. Lloyd, director of the courthouse restoration project, was about as debonair and dedicated as they come.

“Close your mouth, Katherine. You could catch every mosquito along the beach the way you’re gaping.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I swallowed. “Why do the police think Lloyd killed Grace?”

Hilary shrugged. “The usual. A young, pretty volunteer. A straying man who wasn’t about to divorce his wife.”

“Lloyd and Grace were an item?”

“That’s the rumor.”

No way. Grace was engaged to a drop-dead gorgeous executive of a high-tech company. More than once she had rubbed my nose in the fact after my relationship with my former boss had crashed and burned. Grace had had visions of a many-carat diamond ring and a waterfront mansion dancing in her head. She wouldn’t have wasted one flutter of her eyelashes on an older man like Lloyd who had lost everything when the limited-partnership tax laws had changed.

“I can see your mind is already at work, springing to Lloyd’s defense.”

“It’s just not possible—”

Hilary held up her hand. “This is exactly why I wanted to see you. For once in your life, I want you to leave well enough alone and say no.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“Meredith Silber, poor fool, believes her husband is innocent. She called me this morning to ask if I thought you would represent him.”

My breath hitched and excitement skittered along my nerves. The Silbers wanted me?

“I want you to refuse.”

My brief spike of adrenaline flattened. “Why? I know you’ve never wanted me to become an attorney but—”

“But would you listen to reason? Of course not. You talked grand plans about the pursuit of justice. Where has this insane need gotten you? Once more in disgrace. Do you enjoy dragging the Rochelle name in the mud?”

Indignation frosted my voice. “I had nothing to do with that mess at the U.S. Attorney’s office and you know it. Harold Lowell was accepting campaign contributions under the table from his staff and other influential people. What was I supposed to do? Just sit there and let him get away with it?”

“No, for once your moral fanaticism exonerated you. But your taste in men remains abominable.”

She had me there. I attracted every loser in the universe.

My face must have reflected some of my chagrin, for Hilary nodded with satisfaction. “Exactly. If you had done what I had advised and gone into the family business, you would’ve met some nice executive and be married by now. But no, you never would listen to me.”

I pinched my nose. “This is getting us nowhere.”

“So typical of you, Katherine. Changing the topic when I’m trying to talk reason.”

“I’ve lost track of what you’re trying to get me to do.”

“Not represent Lloyd, dear.”

“Why not? He needs a good attorney who’ll believe in his innocence.”

“What he needs is a great criminal attorney, and quite frankly, that’s not you, Katherine. What did you do at the U.S. Attorney’s? Prosecute a few executives who stole from their companies? Give them a slap on the wrist with a fine and send them to one of those white-collar prisons for a few years?”

Hilary leaned forward. “The government plans to seek the death penalty against Lloyd. This is his life at stake.”

She was right. I had dealt with only high-brow criminals in a world where the sole stake was money. First-degree murder was a different matter.

“Dear, Lloyd is going to need an attorney who can get him a good deal and you’re not up to it. How many of your so-called court victories can be attributed to the fact that you were dating the boss? That he might have given you easy cases? Even your uncle and godfather noticed that Harold sat as second chair on your trials more than was normal.”

Resentment burned in my stomach. It looked like the rumors had literally hit home. Only Carling and Nicole believed in me and my capabilities. Granted, I might not be experienced enough to try a murder case, but I certainly could plea-bargain with the best of them.

“Glad to know you think so highly of my abilities. Just for the record, I never rode on Harold’s coattails.”

“Be reasonable. You can help best by steering Lloyd’s wife toward the names of several good attorneys. A few of us on the restoration board are quietly raising money to help out. Of course, we can’t do so openly because of Grace.”

“Of course.” Mustn’t take a stand that the press could pounce on. I rose. “I have to be going.”

Unease clouded her eyes. “Katherine, you won’t do anything foolish?”

I crossed the terrace to the doors. “Now why would I start being anything but a disappointment to you?”

“Katherine!”

I paused.

“Why do you always fight me? I only want what’s best for you.”

“If that’s the case—” I turned halfway “—then why don’t you ever listen to what I want?”

“Oh, I’ve listened.” My aunt’s lips thinned. “But you never seem to know what’s best for you. At times you are utterly unreasonable just like…” Her voice trailed off.

I stilled. “Like my mother?”

“No, like my brother. Always so righteous. Always so wrapped up in such an abstract concept of what justice is that you never can recognize the realities of life. Life isn’t black-and-white, Katherine, it’s filled with gray.”

“That’s a lesson you’ve taught me well.”

All too well. The defining moment had been when I was fifteen and home for summer-school break. My aunt had accused a servant of breaking a Dresden figurine, even though Uncle Colin had been the culprit because he’d had one too many. All my arguments and pleas had fallen on my aunt’s deaf ears. When it came to her husband, Colin could do no wrong. He denied the incident and that was enough for her. Not only had the servant Carmelina been fired, she had been deported back to Colombia.

Six months later Carmelina and her family had been at the wrong place when a gunfight had broken out between a drug cartel and the police. Carmelina had died instantly, the earnest eighteen-year-old girl who had only craved and worked for a better life for her family. When I had come across another Colombian servant, distraught and crying in the kitchen over a letter from home with the news, I had gone to Hilary. Her only comment had been, “Death happens,” and that I should get use to it.

As if I wasn’t already all too familiar with death and the everlasting grip of its consequences. Exhibit One, my grandparents. Exhibit Two, my mother.

It had been at the moment I stared at her in disbelief over her callousness that my desire to be a lawyer who fought for others had been born.

Hilary rolled up a cuff of her robe. “I’ve tried my best to steer you from going down the same reckless path Jonathan traveled.”

To the point of suffocation. “If you had only answered my questions about my grandparents—”

Hilary’s chair scraped as she rose. “And tell you what? That Jonathan and Marguerite vanished one night? That the ensuing investigation uncovered his dirty secret—that he took bribes as a judge? That the police closed the case after concluding my brother and his wife had probably been murdered and their bodies dumped in the ocean? I see no need to display the family’s soiled linen.”

Only the barest flush across Hilary’s cheeks betrayed her anger. “As much as you love putting them on a pedestal, Jonathan and his treasured Marguerite weren’t perfect. She wanted too much and he was too weak. If you don’t learn to control your rash ways, you’ll share the same miserable fate as my brother.”

Even as I stared at her, the abyss between us widened, a lifetime of missed opportunities. As I stood on that knife-thin edge of no turning back, in a protective reaction I wrapped my fingers around the locket at my neck. Luckily it hadn’t been damaged in the courtroom scuffle.

Oddly, the piece of jewelry containing my grandparents’ pictures had been my guiding light since I had found it in my mother’s jewelry case in her former room.

No matter what Hilary and the rest of the world said about my grandparents, I had never believed it. True, as a lonely child surrounded by self-absorbed adults, I had fantasized that they were the parents I never had. As a young girl I could only see the warmth of their smiles the camera had captured. As an adult I recognized the core-deep integrity in their expressions that the camera had captured. Maybe I didn’t know who I was, but I knew in this moment the person I didn’t want to be.

“I’m sorry that you don’t understand me, Aunt Hilary, but I have to lead my own life and make my own mistakes.”

“I give up trying to reason with you.” She gave a slight dismissive movement with her right hand and turned away to walk toward the entrance to her suite of rooms. “Try not to drag the family name through another escapade.” She disappeared into the house.

I tucked the locket under my blouse. Hilary was right on one point. While I couldn’t do anything about the old family scandal, I could undo the damage I had done to the Rochelle name by getting my own act together. Time to get started.

As I hurried down the hallway, a door opened and a man emerged. “Katherine, hold on a minute.”

So much for making a clean escape. I halted and plastered on a smile. “Hi, Uncle Colin.” I kissed his ruddy cheek and then spotted another man inside my uncle’s den.

“Paul, what a surprise! I thought you were in D.C. before the Judicial Committee.”

The tall man stepped forward to the doorway and pressed a cool kiss to my forehead. “The approval process is on hold while the senators go home to make sure their constituents know they exist.”