Tempting Fate

Eight

Zeke drove back into Saratoga too fast for his own comfort. It wasn’t the speed in and of itself that bothered him. It was how much he’d let Dani distract him. She could easily worm her way under his skin and bore a hole deep inside him before he’d ever realized he’d let down his armor.

Maybe she already had.

He slid his car to a stop across the street from the Chandler cottage on North Broadway. Kate Murtagh herself was hefting a folded table into a pickup truck, the evening’s festivities now another Saratoga memory. Zeke wasn’t sure what he was doing here. Waiting for answers to fall out of the sky?

Dani had gone after her burglar with a three-inch red high heel.

Definitely a hothead.

But she was also courageous and determined, and even now he could see her liquid black eyes shining in the darkness.

He could hear Kate speaking to her crew. “You sure we have everything? We leave so much as a gum wrapper out here, and Auntie Sara will have us back cleaning the place with a toothbrush.”

Auntie Sara.

Had Roger told his wife that Joe Cutler’s little brother was in town?

“Hell, Naomi,” he whispered to himself, “I should have just pretended I never got your letter.”

But he had never been any good at pretending, and he was here.

Kate spotted him and marched over, boldly poking her head in through the passenger window. “So you’re Zeke Cutler,” she said.

He smiled. “I know who you are, too.”

“I’m Dani’s friend is who I am. You drove her home?”

“I did. She arrived safe and sound.”

“You didn’t put that bruise on her arm?”

“I did not.”

Kate’s brow furrowed, and she looked tired. It must have been a long night for her. “I hope not, seeing how she got in your car with you. But you listen here, Mr. Cutler-I’m on the case. I may slice carrots and whip up crème fraîche for a living, but this is my town, and I’ve got friends here.” She patted the car door. “I’ll have my eye on you.”

Didn’t these women know he was licensed to carry a gun? Zeke stared out at Dani’s tall, attractive friend. “I can see why you and Ms. Pembroke are friends. You both eat nails for breakfast.”

“You hold that thought,” she said and marched back to her pickup.

In another moment, Sara Chandler Stone took her place in the passenger window. “It’s been a long time, Zeke.” Her voice was quiet and ladylike, more so than it had been twenty-five years ago.

He nodded. “Yes.”

She smiled, a cool, sad smile that didn’t reach her deep blue eyes. “Welcome to Saratoga.”

“Nice town.”

“Will you be at the Chandler Stakes tomorrow?”

“Maybe.”

Color rose in her cheeks, which looked even paler in the harsh artificial glare of the streetlights. “Even at thirteen you were laconic.” She touched a hand to her hair, still perfectly in place, and he saw the manicured nails, not too long, not too radically colored. “I’d like to talk to you-not tonight. In the morning?”

“Sara-”

“I’ll be at the track for breakfast.”

She darted away as quickly and unexpectedly as a hummingbird, and it seemed to Zeke that she had become everything she’d dreaded becoming.

Maybe she should have run off with Joe and saved them both.

Zeke turned around in the entrance to Skidmore College up the street, then went back down Broadway through town, following the same route he had with Dani. He didn’t have a plan-he was still just punting-but he knew what he had to do, at least for tonight.

He parked his car in the Pembroke’s guest lot, wondering if come morning Dani would have it towed. But he’d take that risk. There was a part of him that was looking forward to having her try to toss his ass off her property-the part, he thought, that he had to keep under a very tight lid.

He followed a brick path through the darkness. In the distance he could hear an owl’s hoot. Nearby, the purr of tree toads. The grounds were quiet, the jam makers and rock climbers gone to bed or to town to party. Leaving the walk, he found his way across gardens and lawns and down the hillside to the pink, mauve and purple cottage at the edge of the woods.

He sat under a pine tree in a small meadow of wildflowers that looked as though they’d been planted there intentionally. He had a good view of the side entrance, a reasonable view of the front and an excellent view of the side-garden entrance, but none whatsoever of its rear gate. Fortunately, it squeaked. And every window in the place was open. If somebody got in, he’d hear Dani yell. Provided she wasn’t too stubborn to yell.

One day he’d discuss her attitude with Sam Lincoln Jones. Sam liked to analyze people’s attitudes. He said it helped him think he was making use of his education.

Until then Zeke would just do some thinking and keep an eye on things, in case Quint Skinner made a return visit.

Just before dawn, her last peach safely in the freezer, Dani gave up on trying to sleep. She kept seeing her mother waving to her from the basket of Mattie’s hot-air balloon and feeling herself catapulting across her own bedroom, feeling the terror of not knowing who’d pushed her, who’d burglarized her house.

And she kept seeing Zeke’s dark eyes and thinking about what great shoulders and thighs he had. He was the kind of man who could make a woman melt.

Could make her melt.

She’d tried listening to the tree toads. Sometimes yoga helped, or a hot bath, or hot milk. But she knew nothing would work tonight. She threw on a sweatshirt and jeans and headed outside with a simple multicolored flat kite made of nonconductive plastic, slipping quietly into her meadow. The sounds and smells of the night and the cool, damp grass on her bare feet, between her toes, eased her tension.

She estimated the wind speed at five or six miles per hour. Fine for kite flying.

With the wind at her back, she tossed the kite into the air a few times, until finally she felt it pulling and let out some line. It rose above the usual ground-air turbulence, higher, higher. Then it was soaring.

She let out more line, grinning, not thinking about her mother, her loneliness, not even hearing the tree toads.

The sun peeked over the treetops in streaks of orange and red, edged with pale pink. In its center her kite was a bold dot of color.

Staring at the dawn, she suddenly could see her mother with more clarity than she’d been able to see her in years. Her generous mouth, her blue saucer eyes, her smile. She could smell her mother’s French perfume and hear her laugh, not her delicate Chandler-lady laugh, but the throaty, exuberant laugh of the woman she’d wanted to become. It was as if she were telling her daughter not to hold back, not to let anything or anyone stand in her way, but to dare to go after what she wanted.

But I have, she thought. She had the springs, the Pembroke, her friends.

She didn’t have intimacy. There was no lover in her life. Zeke should have been the last man to remind her of the absence of romance in her life, but he had. Yet her mother had had a husband and a child, and they hadn’t been enough.

Her kite continued to gain altitude, riding the wind from Dani’s fingertips.

She could hear herself now as a little girl, promising to keep her mother’s secret. She’d never tell anyone, she’d said, sincere, frightened as her mother towered over her, so beautiful, so frightened herself.

The memory was so vivid, Dani might have been back on that cold, dreary December afternoon when she’d visited her dying grandmother-her mother’s mother. Claire Chandler had withered from an elegant society matron into a skeleton wrapped in sagging yellowed skin. Yet she retained her commanding presence, receiving her only grandchild in the cavernous living room of her New York apartment. She’d had her thinning hair fixed and wore a green silk robe, embroidered in red and gold at the sleeves, the one she wore every Christmas, not just this one, her last. It was way too big for her.

Dani remembered the strength in her grandmother’s voice when she’d called her young granddaughter to her side. Christmas carols had played softly on the stereo. “The First Noel” and “Joy to the World.” A huge Christmas tree, strung with hundreds of tiny white lights, awaited decorating. Big white boxes, brought in from storage, were filled with ornaments of handblown glass, painted toy soldiers, fragile angels, silver snowflakes. Dani was permitted only to hang the wooden ornaments. She’d eyed the nativity set carefully arranged on a polished antique table. She wanted desperately to play with the beautiful Madonna and the little baby Jesus, and the sheep and the Wise Men, but even touching the English porcelain figures was forbidden. Also off-limits was the New England village set up on another table, with its steepled white church, colonial houses and old-fashioned carolers. Ordinarily Dani would have pressed her case, but her mother had asked her to be especially nice that afternoon.

Dani had dug into the pocket of her wool blazer and produced a paper snowflake. “I made it myself-it’s origami. You can hang it on your tree if you want.”

Even now, she could remember her grandmother’s trembling, bony hand as she’d taken the origami snowflake. “Thank you, dear. It’s lovely. You’re such a thoughtful child.”

The snowflake, Dani had known, would end up in one of the scrapbooks her grandmother kept, put up on a shelf to be preserved for Dani’s own children. Her parents had stuck dozens of her origami snowflakes on windows, the refrigerator, hung them on the tree. But that was their style, not Claire Chandler’s, and Dani had made the snowflake for her because she loved her, not because she wanted praise and recognition.

“And how was school today, Danielle?” her grandmother had asked, regal even in illness.

“Good. All the kids call me Dani.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Because I asked them to,” Dani had said without fanfare. “Danielle’s such a prissy name.”

“Now, wherever did you get such a notion? Danielle’s a perfectly lovely name.”

“Mattie said it sounds kind of prissy-”

“Mattie? Danielle, where are your manners?” Claire had coughed, her skin going from yellow to red to white in the course of a couple of minutes. “Next you’ll be calling us all by our first names.”

“Oh, I’d never do that. It’s just that Mattie hates to be called Grandmother.”

“Well, she is one, even if she’d rather not admit it. We all get old. We all die.”

And Dani had asked her, “Are you going to die?”

Her grandmother’s sickly blue eyes had widened for a moment, then softened. “Yes, dear, I’m going to die-sooner, I’m afraid, rather than later. Please don’t be sad. I’ve led a full, wonderful life, even in the relatively few years I’ve had on this earth. I wish only that we’d had more time together.” She’d smiled gently even as Dani’s eyes brimmed with tears. “You’re a remarkable child. I should have told you that more often. I should have told my own daughters that more often. It’s not always easy…One does one’s best.”

A maid had brought a tray of hot cider and gingerbread cookies, and Claire Chandler had permitted Dani to play with the New England village, although the nativity set was still forbidden, on the grounds that playing with religious figures was improper. Claire’s only requirement had been that Dani gather up all the pieces and play with them on the carpet next to the couch, close to her grandmother.

By the time her mother arrived to pick Dani up, Claire had fallen asleep. Dani had leaned over and kissed her grandmother’s sunken cheek, something she’d never done on her own before. “Goodbye, Dani,” her grandmother had said, and she seemed to try to smile.

On the elevator down to the lobby, Dani had noticed that her mother was crying. “Did Grandmother die?”

“No-no, not yet.”

When the elevator’s polished brass doors opened, her mother had rushed out, sobbing. “I’m not going to end up like my mother, I swear I’m not.”

Left to follow, Dani had joined her mother on the street. The temperature had dropped, and the wind had picked up; a light snow was falling. Her mother had taken Dani’s hand and began walking briskly in the opposite direction of their building.

“Where are we going?” Dani had asked, the wind stinging her cheeks.

“The subway station,” her mother said tightly.

Dani had made no response. She often rode the subway with Mattie, who would spout off about the virtues of public transportation and conserving the world’s resources, but never with her mother.

Lilli had stopped abruptly. “You look cold.” Then she’d pulled off her pale gray cashmere scarf and wrapped it around Dani’s neck for added warmth, tucking one edge up over her mouth and nose.

They’d taken the subway to Greenwich Village, her mother acting so much as if it was a grand adventure that Dani got caught up in her excitement. “Are we going to see Mattie?” she’d asked.

“No, she’s gone ballooning in New Mexico.”

That had sounded fun to Dani, but even her father didn’t like the idea of her getting into a hot-air balloon with his mother. “Can we go to New Mexico?”

“Maybe during your winter vacation, after-” Her mother’s eyes had clouded, her shoulders sagging. “One day we’ll go.”

They’d walked to a section of Greenwich Village where even Mattie, who had few rules, hadn’t permitted Dani to wander on her own. Lilli had plunged down two concrete steps to a heavy, dirty door, its black paint chipped. She’d peeled off a black leather glove and knocked. There was one window, blackened with soot and covered with iron bars, and a sign over the door that said the Flamingo.

A voice yelled for them to come inside.

Even now, so many years later, Dani could smell the smoke inside that dark bar. It had been decorated-of course-with plastic flamingos and fake palm branches. In the dim light, she’d seen her mother’s smile falter.

A black-haired man had greeted her from behind the bar. “You the lady who called?”

Lilli had nodded, looking faintly disapproving, the way she did when giving in to Dani and buying hot pretzels from a street vendor. “You’re Mr. Garcia.”

He was a Cuban exile, he explained. He had played jazz for the tourists in Havana before Castro. A picture of John F. Kennedy hung above the cash register. One of Fidel Castro hung behind the bar; it was struck with darts. Licking her lips, Lilli slid a hundred-dollar bill across the worn bar. Until that moment Dani hadn’t been sure her mother even knew how to write a check; she’d always seemed to pay for things just by nodding. Mattie had insisted Dani learn how to handle money.

“The place is all yours,” Mr. Garcia had said, a sweep of his chubby arm taking in all of the small, empty bar.

Lilli had removed her coat and hat, then helped Dani with the complicated clasps of the dress coat she’d worn for her visit with her grandmother. Her hair had crackled with static electricity as she pulled off the cashmere scarf.

“I’m going to sing some songs,” her mother had told her. “You can sit up at the table by yourself and be my audience. How’s that?”

“Can I have a Coke?”

Lilli smiled. “And pretzels.”

She’d given Mr. Garcia more money, and he’d brought a tall glass of soda and a bowl of pretzels to Dani, who’d sat alertly at a rickety round table, aware that this wasn’t like sitting on Mattie’s front stoop discussing baseball and politics with anybody who happened by. This, she’d thought at age eight, was really scary.

Underneath her coat, her mother had been wearing a slinky black dress. She put on a pair of strappy black high heels that she’d had squished down in her handbag. Dani had never seen the dress or the shoes before.

Mr. Garcia had turned on the microphone and a hot, blinding stage light that at first made Lilli blink and look frightened. “Dani?” she called. “Dani, you’re still here, aren’t you, sweetheart?”

“Yep,” Dani called back.

Her mother had smiled tentatively.

“Remember,” Mr. Garcia had yelled. “If you stink, you got thirty minutes. If I can stand it, an hour.”

Munching on pretzels, Dani had watched, stupefied, as her mother had transformed herself-and the tacky Greenwich Village nightclub-with her singing and dancing. Once she got started, she’d never checked on Dani, and the only reason she’d stopped was because Mr. Garcia turned off the stage light. “I gotta open up the place,” he’d said apologetically. “Besides, you shouldn’t overdo. Wreck your voice.”

Her dress had been soaked with perspiration, and her hair had stuck to her forehead and the back of her neck. Dani had never seen her mother so hot, even after a summer tennis game. “How long?”

“Over an hour.”

“Then I-”

“You’ve got talent, lady.”

“You mean it? I wasn’t awful?”

“You weren’t awful. Come back another day. You want, you can sing for the crowd.”

“But I couldn’t.”

“Nobody’d recognize you-not my customers, anyway.”

“You don’t-”

He’d shaken his head, again reading her mind. “I don’t know your name, but I can see you’re white bread. The kid wanted avocado on her tuna fish.”

“Danielle!”

It was as if Lilli had just remembered she’d brought her daughter along. She’d rushed from the stage and found Dani merrily eating Hershey’s Kisses, a stack of crumpled silver papers piled beside her, along with a half-eaten tuna sandwich, two empty soda glasses and the empty pretzel bowl.

“Are you finished, Mama?”

“Yes, we’ll go home right away before Dad misses us. Good gracious, you’re going to have to learn self-control. Did you like my singing?”

“I liked the fast songs the best.”

“You would. We’ll have to tell Dad you already ate. He-” Lilli had tilted her head back, chewing on one corner of her mouth as she gazed down at her daughter. “Dani, you mustn’t tell anyone about this afternoon. People wouldn’t understand. One day I’ll explain, but right now I’m trusting you, sweetie. Promise me this will be our secret.”

“I promise.” It had never occurred to her not to.

That evening, Dani had thrown up her afternoon’s indulgences. Her father canceled their walk to see the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center and, unable to believe there could be so much food in one child, wanted to call the doctor. Her mother had persuaded him to wait until morning. By then, of course, Dani was fine.

On their next visit to the Flamingo, Lilli had packed a picnic for Dani and restricted her to one soda. Mr. Garcia slipped her goodies while her mother had sung and danced in her strappy high heels.

After two months, Mr. Garcia had figured out the identity of the lady in the black dress. Dani had heard him raise his fee to two hundred dollars.

“That’s as much as I’ll pay,” Lilli had said, firm. “Even if you broke your promise and told everyone, who’d believe you? Eugene Chandler’s daughter singing in a down-and-out Cuban bar? Paying to sing? It’s just too ridiculous.”

In fact, when she’d disappeared that August, Eduardo Garcia came forward with his unusual story about the missing heiress. The police had questioned him intensely, but he never changed his story: from that December afternoon a week before Claire Chandler died through the following July, Lilli Chandler Pembroke had practiced her make-believe nightclub act once a week or so at the Flamingo.

“Just ask the kid,” he’d told the police.

Finally they did.

Confused and frightened, Dani had told them she knew nothing about her mother’s singing and had never heard of a place called the Flamingo.

So long ago, she thought as she started to reel in her kite, little by little.

As slack occurred, she took in some line and let the kite re-stabilize itself. Then when more slack occurred, she took in a little more line. It was her favorite kite, and she didn’t want to lose it. And she’d promised Ira no more climbing trees. But she wasn’t about to call one of the grounds crew to rescue her kite like some little kid.

It was still high above the trees, steady against the wind.

“Why do you like to sing, Mama?”

She could see her mother’s smile. “You know how Mattie says she feels when she’s in a balloon? That’s how I feel when I’m singing. Absolutely free.”

When she felt fresh slack in her line, Dani didn’t reel it in. Instead she slipped the jackknife she always carried kite flying out of her jeans pocket and, with one quick movement, cut the braided nylon line.

She walked away, her kite free to sail the winds.

Zeke finally left his post when Dani stumbled back to her cottage. He was tired. He’d watched her kite sail out of sight, and he’d seen her tears. They glistened on her pale cheeks, not tears of self-pity, he felt, but of loneliness and regret. The kind of tears that only came at dawn.

He needed a shower, a few hours’ sleep and breakfast at a place that didn’t remind him of his own loneliness and regret.

But first he called California. The phone rang just once before Sam Lincoln Jones picked up. “You awake?” Zeke asked.

“I am now.”

“Any luck?”

“I took a spin out to Beverly Hills and talked to Nick Pembroke. I won’t say he talked to me, but I’m not into intimidating old men. If he’d been fifty years younger, me and the old codger might have gone a few rounds.”

“What’s he like these days?”

“Same as always, I expect. For starters, he’s as pigheaded as they come.”

Zeke thought of Nick Pembroke’s granddaughter pounding into her purple cottage after she’d told him to pack up and hit the road. “Must be a strong gene.”

“Met Dani, have you? I’ll bet they’re a pair. Nick’s also arrogant, brilliant and probably the most charming old buzzard I’ve ever met.” Sam paused. “And he’s scared, Zeke.”

“Dani?”

“Yep. Heard she’d been robbed. Thinks she should have kept her mouth shut about that gold key. Most people thought Nick just made up the part in Casino about his grandmother selling off gold gate keys.”

“So he feels Dani was asking for trouble mentioning it.”

“It’s already valuable because it’s gold, but it’s even more valuable because Ulysses Pembroke had it made. A consequence of Nick turning his granddaddy into one of the great rakes of American history.”

But, Zeke wondered, could it be even more valuable-to the right person-because Lilli Chandler Pembroke had been wearing it the night she disappeared?

“Does Nick still gamble?”

“Not as much as he used to. He’s broke. Dani pays his rent, keeps him in food and heart medicine. She doesn’t strike me as the type who’d pay his gambling debts for him.”

Hardly. And Sam hadn’t even met her.

“There’s something else,” he said.

“Go on.”

“It’s just instinct, but I’d say old Nicky was holding back on me.”

“Something important?”

“I’d say so.”

Zeke sighed, imagining the possibilities.

“Like I say,” Sam went on, “fifty years younger, and me and him would have gone a few rounds. I also took the liberty of checking up on the other living Pembroke scoundrel.”

Dani’s father. Four years after his wife had disappeared, John Pembroke had put the Chandler family back on the front pages with another scandal. Eugene Chandler had refused to press charges against his son-in-law for embezzlement-wouldn’t even publicly admit John had stolen from Chandler Hotels-but had quietly tossed his daughter’s husband out on his ear. From what Zeke knew, John Pembroke had taken to gambling as even Nick never had, scrounging good games the world over, while he did the occasional cheeky travel piece. He couldn’t have been around much for his daughter.

“What’s he up to these days?” Zeke asked.

“Lives in a crummy apartment in Tucson. Word is his daughter’s hired him to write a biography of Ulysses, probably just charity by another name. Anyway, he doesn’t have a phone, but I contacted a friend out that way, and she did some checking. Seems our man left town this afternoon.”

Zeke kicked off his shoes. His pretty lace curtains billowed in the cool breeze, and his room filled with the fresh smells of early morning. “Find out where he’s headed?”

“East. Booked a flight to Albany.”

“Hell.”

“Say the word,” his partner and friend told him in a low voice, “and I’ll be there.”

“I know. Thanks. I’ve got another favor, though, if you have time.”

“I’m listening.”

Zeke shut his eyes, which burned with fatigue and too many questions, too many memories. He could see Dani cutting her kite free. What had she been thinking about? Did she know her father was en route to Saratoga-or already there?

“Check out what Quint Skinner’s into these days.”

There was a silence on the California end of the line.

“He’s in Saratoga,” Zeke said.

Sam breathed out. “Fun times.”

“Lots of work to do, Sam.”

“Yeah. I’ll be in touch.”

After he hung up, Zeke went into the cozy bathroom, where he was reminded the claw-foot tub didn’t have a showerhead. He tore open a package of bath salts and took a sniff. He wasn’t picky, so long as he didn’t come out smelling like a lingerie shop.

Instead, he thought, remembering her beside him in his car, he’d come out smelling like the woman who owned the Pembroke.

Lowering himself into the cute little tub, the scalding water swirling around him, he considered that there were probably worse fates.