Tempting Fate by Carla Neggers Page B

been. When he got to Saratoga—he knew he’d go—some jackass would take his picture and put it in the paper. Dani wouldn’t be mortified. She’d say, “Yeah, that’s my father, the crook.”
    She’d always been one to embrace reality.
    After tossing a few things into a battered overnight bag, John headed out into the dry, blistering heat to the convenience store on the corner. He didn’t have a car, either. He used the pay phone to call his father collect. Nick accepted the charges. He always did. Dani paid his phone bill.
    â€œYou packed?” Nick asked in his famous gravelly voice.
    â€œYeah. You?”
    â€œI’d drop dead before the plane got halfway to Chicago. No great loss to you and my charming ex-wife, of course, but I’m uninsured. You’d have to bury me. Think of the expense.”
    John ignored his father’s morbid humor. “Tell me what’s going on.”
    â€œMattie called.”
    John was more amazed than surprised that his parents continued to tell each other most everything after fifty years apart. Their fights—which they preferred to call “quarrels”—had become the stuff of legend. But each knew exactly what the other was.
    â€œDani called her after being robbed?” John speculated.
    â€œNaturally. Apparently the son of a bitch was still in the house when she got there. Pushed her around a little, but she’s not seriously hurt.”
    â€œThank God.”
    â€œYeah. Happened yesterday afternoon. With all the publicity she’s had lately, people think she’s rolling in money. Probably some bastard finally decided to have a look-see.”
    â€œBut you don’t think so,” John said.
    â€œHell, I don’t know. Mattie’s got a bee in her bonnet over the whole thing. You know that gold key Dani found? It was stolen along with some other stuff.”
    â€œSo?”
    His father didn’t answer immediately, and John waited. He knew better than to interrupt one of Nick’s dramatic pauses. He’d come to the point only after he’d built the tension to a suitable climax or John yelled at him to get on with it. Nicholas Pembroke’s success as a filmmaker, John had come to believe, stemmed not from any particular artistic or technical genius, but from an innate talent for zeroing in on the essence of drama. He simply knew how to wring every drop of emotion out of a scene.
    â€œSo if Mattie’s right, Lilli was wearing the key the night she disappeared.”
    John shut his eyes and felt the perspiration sticking his shirt to his back and the tightness in his eyes from the low humidity and insufficient sleep. He could see the Pembroke cliffs on a bright, clear Saratoga August afternoon.
    Lilli.
    â€œThere’s another little gem,” Nick said.
    John was losing patience. “This call’s costing you money—”
    â€œIt’s costing Dani. The little shark will demand a written explanation, I’m sure.” Nick inhaled and coughed, suddenly sounding old. “Zeke Cutler is in Saratoga, John.”
    Exhaling slowly, John retained his self-control. He knew what his father was talking about. Zeke and Joe Cutler had been in Saratoga twenty-five years ago to tell Mattie her father was dying. They’d left the night Lilli disappeared. As far as John knew, the police had never questioned them. There had seemed to be no reason to. But John had read the book on Joe Cutler. The man who’d died in Beirut and the boy who’d come to Saratoga earlier had seemed like two different people, but who knew?
    â€œWhy?” he asked his father.
    â€œMattie doesn’t know. Apparently Dani found him in her garden after the burglary—she only mentioned him in passing when she talked to Mattie. John, Mattie’s never told her about the Cutler boys. You know she hates talking about Cedar Springs.”
    And Dani idolized her grandmother,