Adrian closed his cell phone and gazed thoughtfully at Sam and me. 'I called the sheriff, not the state police, to give us a little more time, though we don't have much. You need to make some choices quickly.'
'The facts don't leave us any choices,' Sam replied.
'Oh, everyone has choices,' Adrian said. 'Joseph here, chose to break in. His reason? One can only conjecture, but he cased the place last Monday with Kate-several people witnessed that. Perhaps, in the course of settling his mother's affairs, he became interested in the antique business. Perhaps he spotted a few valuable pieces he wanted but didn't wish to pay for. Too bad he forgot about the guard dogs.
'As for Kate, what choices does she have to make? Not only was she seen with Joseph on Monday, guests and employees at the hotel noticed her and Joseph' together just before the break-in today. One has to wonder why a teenager would get involved in this kind of business — for a percentage of the profits? But wait, she was recently fired by the owner of the auction house.'
He was framing me, blackmailing me.
'Don't look so grim, Kate,' Adrian said, sitting down on a Victorian settee, running his hand over the torn silk upholstery. 'I was painting the worst scenario for you. In fact, you can choose to be quite well off for a seventeen- year-old. Your father must have left you a respectable sum. I would give you something rather more outrageous, with my guarantee that I will swear you had no part of this and with your guarantee that you will go along with my story to the police.'
'But I won't.'
I saw the perspiration on his brow, the first sign that he was less than sure things would work out his way.
'I don't think you understand the precarious nature of your situation,' he said, 'the little bits of information the police might be given that aren't very flattering to you, such as the poisoning of Patrick when he was in your care, the so-called accident at the pond, his distrust of you, not to mention the power of my testimony coupled with Sam's.'
Sam turned to me. 'Let's go, Kate.'
'I would think twice before saying no to full tuition, Sam, tuition and board at an Ivy League college. I'd be delighted to give a decent education to a boy as bright as you. Did I mention I'm on Harvard's board of trustees? They have a fine hockey team.'
'Over my father's dead body.'
I heard a car engine. I wondered how two teens could convince a sheriff that they were innocent.
'I admire the honesty of both of you,' Adrian said, his voice as reasonable as ever, though he was breathing fast, 'but think it through. Ashley's murderer is dead. I have little time left — I'll be dead before a trial could begin. If death is the ultimate justice, justice will be attained. No one is in danger now from me-I'm not a common criminal. Most important, Patrick will be spared. Kate, you love the boy. Do you want him growing up knowing what his father has done?'
I didn't answer right away. I would have done anything to protect Patrick from more pain. I knew what it was like to grow up without a parent you loved deeply, to believe terrible things about that parent and try to hate her, hurting only yourself each time you did. If Sam and I covered for Adrian, we could give Patrick a few more precious months with his father and some happy memories. At seven years old, he had suffered enough.
'It's not what I want, but it's what is going to be,' I replied. 'I won't keep any more of your horrid secrets. In the end, secrets come back to haunt. I don't know how it will happen, or when, but someday Patrick will stumble on something that doesn't quite make sense. He'll start asking questions and realize that people lied to him in significant ways. Then he'll begin to doubt everything else he knows and experienced. He'll doubt even the good things that have happened to him. He'll mistrust people who try to get close, and become more and more alone.'
Adrian rose to his feet, his face bathed in perspiration. At the same moment the front door of the auction house opened. The person who entered stopped just inside the door and gazed about. At first I didn't recognize Robyn. Her hair hung loose and untidy, as if she had yanked it out of its clip. Her shirttail, usually tucked in neatly, billowed out from beneath her* short jacket. She strode toward us, her bam boots thumping against the concrete, then stopped midway down an aisle of furniture.
'This is a pretty mess,' she said, turning her face away from the sight of Joseph lying on the floor.
From a distance, with her skin pale and her hair wild, her eyes glistening as if wet from riding in the wind, she looked younger, like a schoolgirl who had just ridden the newest horse in her daddy's stable. But as she grew closer, the shine in her eyes and the pallor of her skin looked unnatural. Her hands shook and her gait became unsteady.
'Hoppy was right about you being here,' she said to her father. 'There is nothing Hoppy doesn't hear or know.'
'Robyn, you don't look well,' Adrian observed.
'I feel wonderful,' she replied. 'I feel… liberated.'
Adrian's brow creased, a look of apprehension spreading over his face. 'Come, sit down for a moment.' He patted the place next to him on the silk settee. 'You see that Sam Koscinski and Kate are here.'
He's warning her not to say too much in front of us, I thought.
'I see,' she said, her voice flat. 'I see that all my hard work has come to nothing.'
Her words were uneven, as if she couldn't catch her breath.
'And why is that?' Adrian asked quietly, soothingly. He patted the seat next to him again, but she didn't sit down.
'Because I'm a fool! A total fool!' she cried angrily. 'I have spent my life caring for you, pleasing you, protecting you when you were too cocksure to protect yourself. I knew she'd blow the whole thing apart,' Robyn said, with a jerk of her head toward me. 'Hoppy knew it too,' she went on, 'but you weren't going to be cowed by anyone.' She shook her head. 'All I've done for you, Daddy, all I've done for you. I tried to get rid of Kate, pushing her from the top of the stairs, getting Brook to break the window, as Ashley had, poisoning the cat, hoping to scare her into leaving.
'It didn't work. Hoppy had said it wouldn't. I was getting desperate, knowing it wouldn't be long before Kate figured out what I had guessed long ago about Ashley's death. So Hoppy laced the pie.
When the plan went bad, I added the open bottle of cough syrup, and finally you fired Kate. Once again I had helped you. I thought it was all over.'
'Then Patrick was abducted,' I said.
She acted as if she didn't hear me.
'It was Trent who took him,' Adrian told his daughter.
'I wish the devil himself had and he had carried Patrick all the way to hell! But you, you would have gone there to get him back. You would do anything for him, and yet you never notice what I do for you. You didn't notice with Ashley around, and you don't with Patrick, either.'
She ran her hands through her hair, her fingers separating the strands, then bunching into fists, tangling them up. 'All you could think about was your missing son. I saw that Emily was going to be as useless as ever, worrying about Patrick, not you, not even considering the effect of this on your health.
So I phoned your doctor.
That's right,' she said, responding to the sudden lift of Adrian's head.. 'I spoke to your doctor about my fears for you.' Robyn laughed out loud. 'You know what she told me, don't you. You haven't been getting experimental treatment. Your cancer was cured.'
I blinked.
'You've got the health of a man fifteen years younger-that's what your doctor said. You were manipulating us, Daddy! All of us, even your wife! You were dangling your money in front of us, seeing which dog you could make jump the highest!'
Robyn circled the settee, then sat next to him. 'But once again I fixed things for you. I'm keeping you to the plan. There was poison in the cup of coffee I brought you today, the one you drank just before you left.'
Adrian stared at her with disbelief.
