Tempting Fate

Nine

Breakfast at the track was an August Saratoga tradition that Zeke might have found quaint if he’d been more awake. For a modest amount of money, one could enjoy a champagne breakfast in the clubhouse and watch expensive thoroughbreds work out on the picturesque track, said to be the most beautiful in the country. Up and at it before he was ready to be up and at it, Zeke had walked down from the Pembroke. He’d avoided the front desk, lest Dani had spoken to her staff about having given him the boot.

Sara Chandler Stone was on the upper level, at a white-covered table overlooking the track. The atmosphere was relaxed and cordial, with a touch of elegance that was part of the upstate resort’s appeal. Zeke was underdressed as usual. Most everyone seemed finished with their breakfast.

“Am I late?” Zeke asked, sitting across from Sara.

“It’s no problem.” She was as poised and still as a mannequin, her porcelain face hidden under the wide brim of her straw hat. She wore an attractive, feminine dress, silky and expensive, an easy way to remind people who was a Chandler here and who wasn’t. “I try to come to breakfast at the track once a season. My family has benefited a great deal from our connection with Saratoga racing. I enjoy giving something back.”

“It’s a dirty job,” Zeke said, “but somebody’s got to do it.”

Her smile didn’t falter. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

He smiled back. “Touché, Mrs. Stone.”

“Would you care for a glass of champagne?”

She already had a glass, and she didn’t appear to have drunk anything else or eaten anything at all. Zeke shook his head and flagged a waiter, who promptly filled his coffee cup and took his order for eggs.

Sara stared down at onlookers gathered along the white fence to watch the horses warm up on the track. “Will you be at the Chandler Stakes this afternoon?”

“Probably.”

“It’s a large field of horses this year. The weather’s beautiful. It’ll be a grand day.” Her smile was gone now, her porcelain skin without color. “Father’s looking forward to today.”

“Well, it’s the hundredth running of the Chandler.”

“And if it’s as thrilling as everyone seems to think it will be, it could help put the seventy-fifth out of his mind.” She sipped her champagne; it couldn’t have been her first glass, Zeke thought. “None of us attended. We were all out looking for Lilli.”

Zeke willed away his fatigue, the old, dead dreams that had haunted him through his few hours of sleep. “It must have been horrible. I’m sorry, Sara.”

She waved a hand. “Oh, it was a long time ago. Wounds heal.”

“Not all wounds. Not knowing what happened to your sister has to be hard.”

“Yes.” Her voice had dropped to a near whisper. “To be honest, Zeke, I’ve come to hate the entire Chandler Stakes weekend. I only keep up with the traditions because of Father and Roger. If it were up to me, I doubt I’d ever come back to Saratoga. But Roger loves racing season, and it seems to be a solace for Father.” She swallowed more champagne, her eyes turned back down to the track. “When I’m here, all I can do is think of Lilli.”

Downing his coffee, Zeke hoped Sara hadn’t asked to see him just to cry on his sleeve. That occasionally happened in his business. He hated to be hard-hearted, but he had to maintain objectivity. Professionalism. Strict neutrality. But this, he reminded himself, wasn’t business.

His breakfast arrived, and Sara motioned for the waiter-it was a slight, delicate gesture-to bring her more champagne. Then she turned back to Zeke, and he saw the fear slip into her eyes as she asked in a quiet, slightly hoarse voice, “Why are you here?”

“I’m on vacation.”

Her reaction-her sudden, sweet, angry smile-caught him off guard. “You’re a closemouthed son of a bitch, Zeke Cutler, just like your brother was.”

“Even worse.”

The anger and sweetness vanished, and so did her smile. She tilted her head back so that the shadows moved onto her face and he no longer could see her eyes under the brim of her hat. “Did he hate me?”

“No.”

“But he wanted to,” she said.

Zeke didn’t answer. It wasn’t his place-now, no one’s-to speak for his brother.

“I’m sorry.” But she didn’t sound sorry, only wrapped in self-pity. “It can’t be easy for you to talk about him. Zeke, I know this is probably hard for you to believe, but I really did care about your brother. Joe and I together…” She licked her lips. “It never would have worked. You must know that.”

Maybe he did. But he wasn’t sure Joe had. He’d been eighteen and still believed love could conquer anything, even the differences between Sara Chandler and himself.

She worked at a sapphire ring on her left hand, hesitant, way out of her rich woman’s league. “You’re staying at the Pembroke?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think of our Danielle?”

“That she’d hate to be called your or anyone else’s Danielle.”

Sara smiled, smug and cool. “Oh, yes, you’re right about that. This August is especially difficult, I think, for all of us. We’re all in the limelight even more than usual-with the Chandler centennial. Danielle’s little projects, the twenty-fifth anniversary of Lilli’s having left.” She caught herself, biting down on her lower lip; Zeke lost her eyes again under the brim of her hat. “I almost always say she left. It’s just a habit with me. Not knowing what happened to her is a terrible burden-I’m not sure anyone really understands. I like to think my sister made a deliberate choice about her life. I used to think it would be easier if she’d died rather than abandoned all of us, but now…” She lifted her shoulders and tucked a stray strand of hair somewhere up under her hat. Her nails were pale pink, short, perfectly manicured. “It seems to me just up and leaving would have been an act of tremendous courage for a woman like her.”

“How so?” Zeke asked as he sat forward, wanting to get Sara’s perspective on her older sister’s state of mind before she disappeared. It was so easy to discount Sara as having much perspective on anything. But even if she was wrong about Lilli, hearing what she had to say could be instructive. Twenty-five years ago, she seemed to have nothing in common with her older sister. Now Sara had become everything people had always thought Lilli had always been.

“Lilli felt more trapped by her circumstances than I ever did. She married fairly young. By the time Nick cast her in Casino, she had a husband, a child, unbelievable expectations placed on her. Perhaps she decided the only way she could change her life was to chuck it all and leave. Become someone else.”

“Is that what you believe happened?”

Sara’s shoulders sagged. She’d changed more than Zeke had anticipated. At twenty-two, she’d been dynamic and restless, grieving for a mother she’d lost too young and anxious to set the world on fire. Only she hadn’t. That wasn’t necessarily a failure in Zeke’s view, unless she thought it was. Either way, he’d left behind enough plans and dreams of his own not to judge.

“I only wish I knew,” she whispered, then blushed. “I’m sorry, Zeke-I realize I keep saying that, but I didn’t mean for you to have to listen to me whine. I just wanted to say hello. I don’t know, I thought you might have come to Saratoga because of Lilli, Joe, me, its being twenty-five years.” But when he didn’t respond, irritation flashed in her very blue eyes, undermining her gracious, sweet heiress act. She pulled a napkin from her lap and set it neatly beside her champagne glass. “You’re not going to tell me anything, are you?”

“Sara, there’s nothing to tell you.”

That wasn’t true, of course.

She gave him a cool smile. “Well, then. I hope you have a wonderful stay in Saratoga. It’s been good seeing you, Zeke. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a great deal to do before the Chandler this afternoon.”

She was on her feet. Zeke watched as she quickly-automatically-took stock of who was around her, who was paying attention.

“Wait,” he said calmly.

She looked at him, expectant.

“There’s something I’ve always wondered. Did you just use Joe to get Roger to notice you?”

It wasn’t what she’d wanted Zeke to ask. She hesitated, then said quietly, “I hope you go straight to hell when you die, Zeke Cutler.”

Then she was gone, stiffing him with the bill.

Zeke flagged the waiter for more coffee, noticing he didn’t jump as fast as when Sara had been there, but he did come, and the coffee was hot, the weather was nice. Zeke sat back, watching the horses and thinking.

After about thirty seconds he realized he didn’t have a whole hell of a lot to think about besides Dani’s black eyes. He’d been in town almost two days and so far didn’t know anything. Time to throw a stick of dynamite into the mix and stir things up.

But first, another cup of coffee.

The telephone woke her.

Fumbling for the receiver, Dani almost fell on the floor before she realized she wasn’t upstairs in her bedroom. She’d crashed on the couch in the living room after her kite flying. She stumbled to her feet. Her eyelids felt swollen, and her bruises and scrapes hurt, but the damn phone was still ringing. She headed to the kitchen, shuddering when she remembered she hadn’t locked the back door when she’d come in. But there were no robbers in the kitchen, no dark-eyed men on white horses. Just a bucket of peach skins and peach pits for the compost pile.

She grabbed the wall phone, but before she could grunt a hello, Ira Bernstein said, “You’d better get up here.”

His words-his serious tone-instantly woke her up. “What’s wrong?”

“One of the guest rooms has been ransacked. Totally tossed to hell and back.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Have you called the police?”

“Not yet. I, um, thought we should talk first.”

Cutler, she thought. He had to be involved somehow. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

She ran into the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face and brushed her teeth, raked her fingers through her hair, grimaced at her reflection in the mirror. What a mess. She hadn’t gotten off all of Magda’s makeup; mascara was smudged under her eyes. And she looked as though she’d spent the night peeling peaches and flying kites.

She decided against fresh clothes and instead put on her sneakers and headed out in her jeans. She tore through her garden and out the back gate, moving fast over the familiar ground.

Ira was waiting for her in room 304. It was one of her favorites. She’d found the crazy quilt in a dusty antique shop in Vermont and had repaired it herself.

“Housekeeping came in to make up the bed,” Ira said, “and found it like this. Efficient bastard.”

Indeed. A duffel had been dumped out, its contents scattered. Dani noticed jeans, canvas pants, dark shirts. White-knight clothes. “This is Zeke Cutler’s room, isn’t it?”

Ira nodded. “Dani-” He sighed, running one hand through his corkscrew curls. “Look, I didn’t call the police because I don’t know what’s going on around here. This guy shows up. Your cottage is broken into. He drives you to the Chandler party last night. He comes in this morning at the crack of dawn. Leaves. Now we find his room tossed.”

“That about sums it up.” Dani balled her hands into fists, trying to maintain some semblance of calm even as she fought to get a decent breath. The small room suddenly seemed oppressive and airless. “I don’t know what’s going on, either, Ira.”

“If you want me to, I can handle this. I’ll leave you out altogether. But if this is personal-if I’m going to tread somewhere you don’t want me to tread…” He paused, his cockiness and irreverence nowhere in evidence. “You just tell me what you want me to do.”

Any residual sleepiness or fatigue vanished as Dani straightened, looking around the ransacked room. The mattress was off the bed, drawers dumped, linens heaped, bath crystals and salts and powders emptied. What had Zeke brought down on her head?

“You’ve called our own security people?”

“On their way.”

“Good. Let them deal with the police. I’ll deal with Zeke myself.”

Ira looked dubious. “You’re sure?”

“No.” She forced herself to meet Ira’s eye, to smile. “But it’ll be okay. Thanks, Ira.”

Before he could stop her, she left, heading back across the grounds to her cottage, where she showered and changed. Fifteen minutes later, she was on her way into Saratoga. She found a parking space in a public lot and walked over to the library, where, after some digging, she checked out a copy of Joe Cutler: One Soldier’s Rise and Fall.

Then she walked to Kate Murtagh’s small yellow Victorian house, on a pretty street off-well off-Union Avenue. Dani went around back and knocked on the door, because it was August in Saratoga and if Kate wasn’t catering some event, she was in her kitchen. She yelled that the door was open, and Dani went in.

The kitchen was bright, airy, functional and spotless, with open shelves, pots hanging from cast-iron hooks, stacks of pure white cotton towels and aprons, white cabinets and miles of countertop. Kate was decorating petits fours at her butcher-block table.

“Egad, Dani,” Kate said, putting down her frosting bowl, “you look like the whirling dervish. What’s up?”

“I need to know if you’ve found anything else out about Zeke Cutler.”

“Aha.” She wiped her hands on her apron and gestured to a chair across from her, but Dani didn’t sit down. “Well, for starters, you didn’t tell me the man’s a stud. I saw him with my own two eyes, and he-Hey, are you blushing?”

“It’s hot in here. Where did you see him?”

“Outside your grampy’s place last night. Told him not to pester you or he’d have me to deal with. Didn’t seem to bother him much. But as you can imagine, I’ve plumbed my sources for any information I can on the man.”

“And?”

“And I’ve come up with precious little beyond what I’ve already told you.”

“But you have something,” Dani said.

Kate sighed. “Yeah, but what about you? Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

“I will, Kate-you know that. But right now I just don’t have time to go into all the boring details.”

“I can’t imagine that any details about you and our white hat would be boring. But before you whirl out of here, I will tell you what remarkably little I know.” She frowned at Dani. “Will you please eat a petit four or something and calm down?”

Realizing she’d been pacing, Dani did grab an unfrosted petit four and pop it in her mouth, but she didn’t even begin to calm down. She needed to find Zeke and get some answers. Maybe she’d wring his neck while she was at it. She wouldn’t think about his dark eyes and strong thighs. She’d just kick his sneaky butt out of her life. He had invaded her territory, her life, and she’d bet everything she owned he hadn’t begun to tell her what he was doing in Saratoga. And it wasn’t the kind of risky gamble three generations of Pembrokes had lost their shirts on. It was a sure bet.

“Have you talked to Mattie?” Kate asked quietly.

Dani shook her head. “Not yet.”

“Are you going to?”

She felt the weight of the book on Joe Cutler in her bag. She already suspected that Mattie-her own grandmother, the one person she’d always trusted and believed in without question-hadn’t told her the truth when she’d given no indication she knew Zeke. Maybe she hadn’t lied outright. But she’d held back, and that Dani found disturbing.

“As soon as I know more,” she said. “Zeke could just be using me to get to Mattie-for what reason I can’t imagine, except that she’s a reclusive, world-famous movie star.” She tried to control her impatience. “Look, Kate, I know I owe you an explanation, but-”

“But you’re going to start spitting blood if I don’t talk.”

“I’ll tell you everything, I promise.”

“Yeah, yeah. Meanwhile, would you like to know where our white hat’s sitting at the Chandler this afternoon?”

The weather at the Saratoga Course was dry, clear and warm, perfect for watching skinny-legged racehorses run around in circles. Zeke had borrowed a private box on the clubhouse balcony. By the sixth race of the afternoon, he’d drunk one large, lukewarm beer, watched all the people he cared to watch and decided that horse racing had to be more exciting if you knew what was going on. He didn’t. The people around him, however, clearly did. They seemed to be having a grand time for themselves.

The track’s shaded grounds were jam-packed, the fifty thousand or so who’d come to see the Chandler Stakes running the gamut from shabby pickpockets to the superrich in their straw hats and panamas. Zeke had already checked out the Chandler box. Sara and Roger were there with old Eugene and a few guests. He was quite sure none of them had seen him. He was good at not being seen when he didn’t want to be seen.

He had a decent view from his seat, but the backstretch was still a blur, and everything happened so fast that by the time he figured out which horse was which, the race was over. Most of the people around him had come prepared with binoculars and well-marked programs. Strategically placed monitors and an announcer helped make up for what Zeke couldn’t see or understand, but the truth was, he didn’t care which horse won any particular race. He was there for the atmosphere, for a sense of what drew people here year after year. It wasn’t just the racing, which was supposedly impressive. It was more-in his opinion, at least-the history of the place, its continuity, its sense of its own past. The graceful iron fences, wooden grandstand and clubhouse, the red-and-white awnings, the flowers and trees and fountains and ultragreen grass, the well-dressed crowd-they all provided a tangible link with a bit of America’s colorful past. Television couldn’t capture that feeling. Neither, Zeke had to admit, could it fully capture the breathtaking beauty, the awesome power and speed, of a dozen thoroughbreds thundering around one of the world’s great tracks.

He sipped his second beer. Since the average race lasted less than two minutes, most of the afternoon, technically, was between races. In his next life, Zeke thought, he’d run a racetrack concession stand.

Then he spotted Dani threading her way up the aisle, and the afternoon suddenly got a lot more interesting.

She had on a simple short white dress and no hat, and a pair of binoculars hung from her neck.

She looked even sexier than she had last night in Mattie’s sleek dress.

As she moved closer, Zeke saw that she was also on a tear, hanging by her fingernails. Irritated about something and getting more irritated the more she thought about it.

She dropped into the seat beside him, a jumble of nerves, determination and energy. He could smell the clean fresh scent of the same soap in his room at the Pembroke. The bruise on her wrist had turned to a splotch of red, purple, blue and yellow. Her shins still looked sore. She sat for a few seconds without saying a word.

Finally Zeke said, “Afternoon, Ms. Pembroke.”

She cut her black eyes at him. “Mr. Cutler.”

Her tone was frigid, and she inhaled through her nose, one angry woman. Zeke took another sip of beer. “I’m just one among tens of thousands here. How’d you find me?”

“I looked for your shining armor.”

For a no-nonsense entrepreneur, she was good at sarcasm. “Well, it couldn’t have been that difficult-the guy I borrowed this little box from is fairly high profile.”

“Someone you rescued from the jaws of death.”

“You don’t sound impressed.”

Those eyes were on him again, telling him she’d just as soon go for his throat as sit there and talk. But there was fear there, too. She’d had her world turned upside down before, and now it must have seemed to her it was happening again. And maybe it was. He suddenly wished he’d told Sam to take the first eastbound plane he could get. With his ability to zero in on a person’s insecurities, fears, strengths, the sources of his or her anger and frustrations, Sam would know what to say to a scared, angry, hotheaded ex-heiress. Zeke sure as hell didn’t. Likely enough, whatever he said would only irritate her more, or, worse, suck her deeper into whatever was going on.

She stared down at the empty track. It was, of course, between races. “Who’s your pick for the Chandler?”

“Dani,” Zeke said carefully, “you didn’t come here to talk horses.”

“I’d stay away from the favorite. The Chandler’s done its fair share over the past hundred years in helping Saratoga earn its reputation as the ‘graveyard of favorites.’”

But underneath her rigidity and distance, Zeke sensed just how upset and vulnerable Dani was. He could see her twenty-five years ago, a nine-year-old waiting for her mother to come home, trying to make sense of what was going on around her.

Zeke became very still, blotting out the sounds and commotion of the milling crowd. He didn’t take his eyes off her. “Tell me why you’re here,” he said.

“The Chandler and the Kentucky Derby are both one-and-a-quarter-mile races for three-year-olds. Since the Chandler’s run in the summer instead of the spring, the horses are a few months older, more experienced. Many experts think that added maturity makes the Chandler a better race.”

Zeke decided to go along with her, play her game, for now. “What do you think?”

“I don’t care about the Chandler.” She turned to him, her face white and her eyes huge and aching. It wasn’t easy for her to be there. “I never have.”

“I’m not much on racing myself. The horses are just names and numbers to me. I haven’t placed a single bet. Still, it makes for a pleasant afternoon.”

“You’re just the opposite of Nick-my grandfather. He’d come to the track and not watch a single race, just sit in front of the monitors as close to the betting window as he could get.” Her tone was neither affectionate nor bitter, simply matter-of-fact. But her skin was still pale, and Zeke could feel her emotion like a hot, dangerous breeze. “I want you off my property by six o’clock.”

But something had changed since last night. There was more at stake now. She hadn’t just found his car in the Pembroke lot and decided to hunt him up and personally give him the boot. “That’s all?” he asked, dubious.

She said tightly, “Yes.”

“Dani, you’re not telling me everything.”

She shot him a look. “And you’ve told me everything?”

Among her very high standards, Zeke suspected, was a profound distaste for people who neglected to tell her everything she thought she had a right to know. And he hadn’t even begun.

She looked down at the track, still quiet. With her angular Pembroke features, she cut a handsome profile, but Zeke could see the fatigue, the shadows under her beautiful, dark eyes, the straight, uncompromising line of her mouth. He thought of the woman with tears on her cheeks as she cut her kite loose at dawn. How to figure Dani Pembroke?

“Your lifestyle’s caught up with you,” she said without looking at him.

Zeke felt himself tense. “What do you mean?”

“I mean-” and now she threw the full force of her black eyes on him “-that your room at the Pembroke has been turned upside down.”

Falling back on his training and experience, Zeke let his muscles relax, kept his face impassive. “Was anyone hurt?”

“Not that I know of.” In the bright sun, her eyes had narrowed to two black slits. “None of the other rooms were touched. It wasn’t a random act of violence. It was deliberate. Whoever got into room 304 was specifically looking for your room-or for you.”

“And you think that someone was maybe the same person who knocked you three ways from Sunday-”

“I think there’s a high probability of a connection.”

No doubt she was right, not that Zeke had any intention of telling her so. This wasn’t her territory. She bottled water and made people feel good for a living. She didn’t deal with the likes of Quint Skinner, who, Zeke had no doubts whatsoever, had tossed his room. It was a message. You’re not the big shot you think you are. I can reach you. Or just Skinner’s way of trying to find out what Zeke was really doing in Saratoga.

“So you think this break-in was aimed at me personally and not at you or your company?” he asked calmly.

“You’re the expert.” She gave him a look that made him realize how she’d succeeded in the competitive beverage and hotel businesses, how she’d gone on with her life after her mother’s disappearance, her father’s embezzlement, her war with the Chandler half of her family. Dani Pembroke was a survivor. She added smoothly, “After you’re off my property.”

He’d tackle that one later.

She jumped up, turned to him, her black eyes challenging. “I’m going to find out what you’re doing in Saratoga.”

Before he could decide whether or not to grab her and level with her, she was off, her small size helping her speed through the crowd. If he was to have a prayer of catching up with her, he’d have had to leap over seats and generally make a scene. He’d done that sort of thing before, gun in hand, even. But right now he wasn’t sure what good it would do.

He made himself settle back in his seat. He sipped his warm beer and listened to the people around him, the idle chatter, the laughter.

And he reminded himself of his mission in Saratoga.

He was to find out if the gold key Lilli Chandler Pembroke had worn the night she disappeared was the same gold key in the recent photograph of her daughter twenty-five years later. He was to find out if the blackmail letter Joe had given to Naomi had anything to do with Lilli’s disappearance.

If his brother had died knowing what had happened to the missing Chandler heiress. If he’d been a part of it.

That, Zeke thought, was his mission in Saratoga.

As she made her way through the packed clubhouse, Dani tried to blot out the sights and sounds and smells of the track, whose history and traditions were as personal to her as a family picnic. She remembered her mother’s blond hair shining in the bright afternoon sun and her gentle smile as she’d held her young daughter’s hand walking down the steep aisle.

Dani found a reasonably short line at a concession stand and bought herself a lemonade, then permitted herself a peek back toward Zeke’s box before she moved on. She couldn’t see him. He was a man, she thought, who defied prediction. He got under her skin more than anyone in recent memory had. He was careful and controlled, undoubtedly good at winning his clients’ trust. But she wasn’t a client, and his reasons for being in Saratoga, she was now certain, had nothing to do with business. They were personal.

Had they brought on the ransacking of her bedroom Thursday afternoon? His room that morning?

She gulped her lemonade, suddenly feeling thirsty and exhausted. Not for a second did she believe Zeke would leave the Pembroke of his own accord. He’d push her as far as he could and make her throw him out. Probably even enjoy going toe-to-toe with her. Would she toss him? Or was she bluffing? She could argue, she thought, that having him stay where she could keep an eye on him wasn’t a bad idea.

She looked around her, not having paid attention to where she was going, and found herself face-to-face with Eugene Chandler. Before she could say a word, he took her by the elbow and pulled her aside. For a man in his eighties, her grandfather’s grip was like a leghold steel trap.

Her grandfather was highly proficient at concealing his emotions, and Dani had to look closely to see the telltale signs that he was angry and upset: deep breaths through the nose, tightly clenched jaw, extra-straight back, extra-quiet voice, extra-piercing blue eyes.

She pulled her arm free, or maybe he just let her go. “Is something-”

“I wish you’d warned us that your father was in town,” he said.

She felt blood rush to her face. “He is?”

Eugene Chandler’s legendary control faltered. “Yes, I spoke to him myself a few minutes ago. Didn’t you know?”

Dani shook her head. Pop’s in Saratoga. What next?

“Danielle?”

“I’m fine.” But she wasn’t fine. She had a professional security consultant from Mattie’s hometown skulking around, and now her father, whom she hadn’t seen in months, had turned up.

“Perhaps you should sit down,” her grandfather said softly.

“I’m okay,” she said, anxious to make her exit, to find her father and grill him. “Thanks.”

“Danielle…” He sighed. “Never mind. Go find your father. It’s good to see you.”

She wished she knew if he was being sincere or if he was just saying what he thought he was supposed to say. Either way, at least she’d know for sure where she stood with him. She tossed her empty lemonade cup into a trash bin and looked back, saw her grandfather join her aunt and uncle returning to the Chandler box.

She didn’t linger. She wanted to find her reprobate of a father and make him tell her what he was doing in Saratoga.

Not for a moment did she believe it was another coincidence.

Altogether, John Pembroke was glad his trip east had cleaned him out or he might have put a few bucks on a homely bay with fifteen-to-one odds. There was no intelligent reason for his pick. A hundred years ago his great-grandfather had entered a homely bay in the first Chandler Stakes and won. So it seemed a fitting tribute, if not good betting, to wager on a similar horse at the Chandler centennial. But John hated the idea of crawling to his daughter for money.

He yawned, shaking off his jet lag and night on a lumpy cot at a trainer friend’s crummy cottage. He’d entertained the idea of trotting up to the Pembroke and asking for a room, just to see what Dani would do. Show him to a park bench? Offer him a room for twice the cost? But John knew what she’d have done. She’d have let him stay with her. He was, after all, she would say, her father.

And wasn’t that the damn thing about it?

But he hadn’t gone up to the Pembroke, not so much because of Dani, but because of the memories. Right now, just being back in Saratoga, at the track, at the Chandler Stakes, was enough torture. Everywhere he looked he saw a reminder of Lilli, of all he’d lost, of how badly he’d failed her and his daughter. It was painful having one’s shortcomings before him at every turn. He didn’t expect anyone’s sympathy, least of all his own. He’d earned his misery.

A crowd had gathered at his stretch of white fence, where a skittish chestnut was being led onto the track, its brightly clad jockey a popular favorite. He waved and smiled, knowing how to play to his audience. Then, when his gleaming thoroughbred touched the dirt, he turned his attention to his job, and the fifty thousand people watching him might not have been there. John was suitably impressed.

He stuck a cigarette in his mouth but didn’t light it.

“I thought you quit.”

Turning, he grinned at his daughter, as small and pretty as ever. “Hello, sweet pea.”

“Don’t ‘sweet pea’ me, Pop. What’re you doing here? How come you didn’t tell me you were coming?” She stopped herself, her hands balled into tight fists at her sides. “Never mind. Obviously we can’t talk here. You, me, the Chandler Stakes-reporters would fall all over themselves if they saw us together. Where are you staying?”

“Don’t trouble yourself about me.”

“I’m not. I just want to be able to find you in case you try to wriggle out of telling me what you’re up to.”

“You sound just like Mattie in the old days when she’d yell at Nick for being such a heel. He used to say he’d never met a more unforgiving woman. Still says it.”

“The Pembroke men,” Dani said with a grudging smile, “don’t make forgiving easy.”

“True.”

“You’re welcome to stay with me at the cottage.”

He grinned. “Can’t leave your old man to the elements or you just want to keep tabs on me?”

But he noticed the dark circles under her eyes and the bruises and scrapes on her arms and legs, and his heart lurched.

“Pop,” she said, “we need to talk. Meet me up at the cottage after the race.”

He nodded, wishing and regretting and wanting so much to see his daughter smile-really smile-and to hear her laugh as she had when he’d scoop her up as a tiny black-haired toddler and toss her in the air. In those days, he had always counted on himself to catch her.

“I mean it, Pop. If you try to sneak out on me, I’ll call the law on you if I have to.”

“For what?”

“I’ll make something up.”

She darted into the crowd that was settling down now for the start of the Chandler. John held his position against the fence, watching his daughter. He’d heard rumors just in his short time in town that she was on the verge of self-destructing. That she’d rather end up broke and discredited like her father and paternal grandfather than rich and respected like her mother’s father. That she’d rather, in the end, be a Pembroke than a Chandler. John didn’t believe the rumors. All her life his only child had struggled simply to be herself. It was a struggle he understood, even if he’d been defeated by it, and even if she’d never believe he could know how she felt.

He turned back to the track and placed his forearms on the wide, flat top of the fence. The horses were taking their places at the starting gate. Amazingly, he hadn’t even picked up a program.

But it wouldn’t have mattered.

He wasn’t there. He was at the track of another era, not twenty-five years ago when Lilli disappeared or even thirty years ago when they’d been so happy together, but all the way back to his first summer in Saratoga when he was thirteen years old. His mother had “retired” from Hollywood by then and moved him to Greenwich Village. He’d come to love the hustle and excitement of Manhattan, even as he longed for the dry, sunny days of Beverly Hills and his father’s kidney-shaped swimming pool.

“Don’t worry about being stuck in New York forever,” Nick would counsel him during their weekly telephone calls. “Your mother will come crawling back to me soon enough.”

John had known his mother would never return to California. At first, eager New York hostesses had invited her to all their society dinners and benefits. Mattie, who preferred flying kites in Central Park or wrapping herself in a tattered afghan by the fire and reading murder mysteries, refused-politely-any and all invitations. The twisted result was that she became even more of a legend. Her unconventionality in retirement coupled with her still-extraordinary beauty and the continued popularity of the fifteen movies she’d made had ensured her place not only in film history, but in the imaginations of ordinary people. To John, the Mattie Witt of film legend was unreal to him. The Mattie Witt he knew wasn’t so glamorous and young, but spoke in a lingering southern accent, had had her hair cut off the moment she’d hit the streets of New York, seldom put on makeup or followed fashion. One of her favorite outfits was an orange flight suit, which she’d wear anywhere. John would remember seeing pictures of his mother in sequined evening gowns and gobs of makeup, her lips painted red and her hair done up and diamonds glittering at her neck, and would collapse in a fit of laughter, so different was she after she’d quit Hollywood.

For their trip to Saratoga that muggy August day, she’d collected her convertible-bright red with a cream interior-from the garage and had John drag out her old upholstered valise, which she’d stuffed full. He’d packed it in the back of the car, along with two boxes of glass bottles.

“What’re the bottles for?” he’d asked.

“I’m going to fill them with mineral water and give them to friends as gifts. Here.” She thrust a shoe box at him. “These are my labels. We’ll ink them in during the evening and on rainy days.”

It had sounded horrid to John.

His eccentric mother had put on her driving gloves and wore a lemon-yellow Chanel suit as she drove with the top down, the bottles rattling in the back. Her eyes had seemed blacker and huger than ever.

“Where will we stay?” John had asked.

“At the estate your great-grandfather built.”

That sounded exciting to John. He’d never been there, and he’d imagined all sorts of things-maids, silk sheets, fresh-cut flowers, tennis courts, an indoor swimming pool.

“Remember he was a gambler who came to a bad end,” Mattie added.

“But in The Gamblers-”

“That movie is more fiction than fact. The real Ulysses Pembroke was shot dead over a poker game and left his pregnant wife penniless. He could have done something worthwhile with his life. He was extraordinarily bright-and yes, I’m sure, quite charming.” She glanced at her son with her dark, so knowing eyes. “Very much like your father, I imagine. And you, if you’re not careful.”

When they arrived in Saratoga, John had been hugely disappointed with the Pembroke estate. It was overgrown and spooky, a testament to his great-grandfather’s wasted life. Locked and boarded up, the main house was just too daunting, and Mattie and John dusted up the gingerbread cottage and moved in for their stay. As he’d explored the grounds, he’d found countless indications of what the property must have been like in its day-leggy rosebushes, giant hedges, perennials surviving against all odds, a slate tennis court covered with brown rotting leaves, cracked marble and stone statuary and fountains, an abandoned croquet ball. He’d cleared decades of fallen leaves, twigs, moss and mud from a mineral spring near the main house, among the few original Saratoga springs not already bought up and preserved by the state, and tried its bubbling water. The taste was absolutely hideous. He’d thought he’d been poisoned.

“Mother, Mother!” He’d raced into the kitchen, where Mattie was frowning over a table full of kerosene lamps. The cottage had no electricity. Breathless, he’d told her, “Mother, we can’t give that water to people! It’s poison!”

“My dear, it’s not poison, but I intend to give only a very small quantity of water from that particular spring. It’s quite strong and really more suited to bathing. No, the water I intend to give away is from the springs on the other side of the woods. Its waters are far tastier.”

All in all, John hadn’t been impressed with Ulysses Pembroke and, gradually, had come to admit his own father wasn’t much better. Cut from the same cloth, his mother liked to say. John, however, had been determined to be different. He’d do something positive with his life.

Tired of the Pembrokes, he’d asked if he could investigate the track.

Mattie had scrutinized him with a care and closeness that was unusual for her. Her child-rearing philosophy was laissez-faire, sometimes bordering on neglect-which she considered quite healthy. “Since you’re too young to gamble, I suppose it’s all right.”

Small for his age, John had managed to slip onto the grounds unnoticed and soon found himself at the paddocks, staring up at the shiniest, most beautiful horse he’d ever seen. A girl a couple of years younger than he came up to him. Her neatly curled blond hair was parted in the middle and held off her face with mother-of-pearl barrettes, and she wore a blue-flowered dress and navy buckled shoes.

“I don’t know you,” she’d said.

“Well, I don’t know you, either.”

She’d laughed. “Everybody knows me.”

He couldn’t tell if she meant to sound snobby or if she really thought everybody knew her. “Well, everybody knows my mother and father. My mother’s a movie star, and my father’s a famous movie director-and my great-grandfather was a train robber. I’m staying at his estate.”

“I know all the estates in Saratoga.” Her blue eyes had glistened as she took up the challenge. “You don’t have one.”

“The Pembroke-”

“Oh, that. It’s all boarded up. Father says it has rats.”

John had felt his first sting of real humiliation. “We just keep it that way so no one bothers the treasure.”

From her expression, he knew he had her interest, but her father, tall, fair and imposing, showed up and, with just a look, managed to scold her for running off by herself. “Lilli, I’ve warned you to stay away from the stable boys.”

“He’s not a stable boy. His mother’s a movie star and-”

“A movie star?” Eugene Chandler had turned and appraised John with such frank distaste he could still feel his cheeks burning decades later. He’d felt shabby in his jeans, in contrast to the rich man’s handsome gray suit. “You’re Mattie Witt and Nicholas Pembroke’s boy. Well, run along. You’ve no business here.”

Mattie had been unsympathetic to her son’s dejection. Why on earth should he care what the Chandlers thought of him? She was truly and honestly mystified. Only much, much later did John come to understand that his mother’s fierce independence hadn’t come naturally to her, that she’d had to fight and sacrifice-and suffer-for her treasured freedom.

That lonely summer, he’d only understood how much he’d wanted the Chandlers to approve of him. For the rest of that first August in Saratoga, he’d explored the Pembroke estate and Saratoga’s library and all its museums and streets, not just for a sense of the Pembroke past, of their abused energy and promise, but for a peek at his own destiny.

He knew he’d be different. He had to be.

Ten years later he and Lilli were married. Eugene grew fond of his son-in-law. “I swear, John,” he would say, “sometimes I forget you’re even a Pembroke.”

He’d lived to be reminded.

Now, so many years later, John ran his hand through his thinning gray hair and wiped the sweat from his brow, pushing aside thoughts of what might have been. He had to focus on what was. His wife had disappeared ten years into their marriage, and he’d become a bum and a wanderer and no kind of father to their only daughter.

Looking around him, he realized he’d missed the hundredth running of the Chandler Stakes. He glanced at the scoreboard. The homely bay had won. If he’d bet just fifty bucks…

“Look at yourself,” he whispered. “What’s become of you?”

He pulled himself away from the fence and almost ran straight into a brick wall of a man. He started to apologize, then the fellow said, “John Pembroke,” as if he were a ghost.

John squinted. “Who are you?”

The man smiled, not a particularly friendly smile. “I take it you don’t recognize me. I’m not surprised. It’s been a while.”

But John only needed a minute, a chance to pull himself back out of his memories and self-recrimination. He was good at faces, and he’d read the book on Joe Cutler, and had heard his younger brother had quit college and gone into security work.

“Zeke Cutler,” he said. “You and your brother came to my office looking for my mother.”

They’d refused to tell him why, and he’d sent them packing. A couple of country boys from Cedar Springs, Tennessee. Mattie didn’t need them pestering her. She’d never mentioned if the two brothers from her hometown had found her, and he’d never mentioned he’d seen them. Mattie was entitled to her discomfort with her past. John had enough with his.

He looked at the man Zeke Cutler had become. It couldn’t be easy being Joe Cutler’s little brother. “What do you want with me?”

“I thought,” Zeke said in his calm, efficient way, “you might want to walk up to the Pembroke with me.”

Given his daughter’s disposition, John decided having a security and protection consultant at his side was a pretty good idea. Besides, he wanted to talk to Zeke, find out if they were in Saratoga Springs for similar reasons.

Scratching his head, John appraised Cutler’s impressive physique and hoped to hell they were on the same side. Slaying dragons had never been his long suit.

“This way,” Zeke said.

“Yes,” John said, stupidly irritated at being treated like a stranger. “I know the way.”