Rachael stared at the big tough federal agent who looked like he ate nails for breakfast. All his attention was focused on her, and it was formidable. Then he leaned over, patted her hand. “Stop worrying. Everything will be all right.” It broke her. She leaned against the wall, looked at each of them in turn, pausing a moment longer on Jack’s face. He looked too pale, she thought. She said, “Needless to say, my mom was afraid of Carter Blaine Abbott. When he found out his eldest son—his ticket to immortality—was dating my mother, a small-town girl with no pedigree, no money, a backwoods hick, in his mind, he wasn’t happy. He was big into bloodlines.”
“What was your father doing here anyway?” Sherlock asked.
“My mom told me the local mill owner’s son was one of Jimmy’s good friends. That’s when there was a mill here. Mr. Abbott swooped into town and took them both off to vacation in Spain. As you would expect, the mill owner’s family didn’t object to that.”
Jack nodded. “All right. So your mom was pregnant. She never told your father?”
“No, she didn’t tell anyone. Well, she had to tell Uncle Gillette, her brother. By this time, her folks, my grandparents, were both dead. She told me she was bitter, for a very long time, bitter and very angry. And scared. She was shocked when she got a letter from Carter Blaine Abbott some five months later, telling her he’d heard she was pregnant and there was no way he was going to let her blame it on his son, no way he was going to let her drag his family into it. If he ever heard a word out of her, if she ever tried to contact his son, he’d see that both she and her brat were taken care of. What did he mean by that?” Rachael shrugged. “Mom was sure he meant he would kill her and her baby. He enclosed a check for five thousand dollars.” Rachael added, “Mom tore the check up, gave birth to me, and, as it turned out, I didn’t look like either of them until I was a teenager. By the time I was eighteen, though, I was the spitting image of Senator John James Abbott, although no one ever seemed to notice the resemblance. I guess you wouldn’t, if you didn’t know the history. But I think that until two months after old man Abbott died, she was still afraid of him.
“So Jimmy never knew about me until I showed up on his office doorstep at the Capitol, a couple of weeks after my mom finally told me about him.
“I’ll tell you, at first I didn’t want to go. I guess I was angry at him, too, even though Mom swore he never knew about me. I remember way back when I was maybe five or so, I asked her about my father, if he died, if he ran out on us. She wouldn’t tell me anything, but I saw her crying in her room, and so I never brought it up again.
“She convinced me to give him a chance. She didn’t know, she said, what kind of reception I was going to get from him, but wasn’t it worth a try?
“I agreed with her. It was time I met the man who sired me. I didn’t have a clue where he lived and neither did she, so like I said, I went to his Senate office. He was coming back from lunch with his aide, Greg Nichols. He saw me standing there, staring at him. He did a classic double take, then he broke into this huge grin, called out my mom’s name, Angela. He didn’t wait for an answer, just rushed me into his office, past all his staff, past people waiting to see him.
“I can still see that smile of his, it was radiant. He grabbed my hands and began dancing me around his office. Then he hugged me until I thought my ribs would crack.” Her voice shook and she ducked her head down. “He never voiced a single doubt that I was his daughter. Believe me, I never expected anything like that even though the resemblance between us is strong. It... it was wonderful.”
Jack asked after a moment, “Senator Abbott has other kids, doesn’t he?”
“Yep, I got two instant half sisters. Jimmy and his wife divorced about ten years ago. His ex-wife lives in Vail, Colorado, and both his daughters are married. I got the impression there wasn’t much love lost between Jimmy and Jacqueline—that’s his ex-wife. He never remarried, never wanted to, he told me. He said he sees his daughters twice a year, usually skiing somewhere, and spends Thanksgiving with his brother, Quincy, his sister, Laurel, and her husband, Stefanos Kostas, and their two boys at Kostas’s house—ha, it’s really a mansion—outside Hailstone, Maryland. There’s a gatehouse, extensive grounds all enclosed behind a high stone wall, and a night guard. Jimmy said Thanksgiving is always very cordial but really pretty sad.
“I told him all about Slipper Hollow and Uncle Gillette and how we’d all lived there together, except for his stint in the first Gulf War, until I was twelve and we moved to Richmond.
“Jimmy had never heard of the hollow. I guess my mom had been too embarrassed to tell him, thought Slipper Hollow was too hick for the likes of his fancy rich self. He’d always known, he told me, that she lived in or around Parlow, but she’d never offered to take him to her house.
“He wanted to know everything about Angela—my mom. But he didn’t want to call her, didn’t want to disrupt her life. I agreed with that. My stepfather’s a great guy, but having a wealthy senator suddenly stick his nose in wouldn’t be pleasant for him. And my mom realized this, of course, and told me she was fine seeing us reunite without her involved. Jimmy would have enjoyed Ben, my half brother, but there was never the chance.”
Sherlock said, “So you think the people who tried to kill you are Quincy Abbott and Laurel Abbott Kostas?”
“That’s right. I wouldn’t be surprised if Laurel’s husband Stefanos was involved, too.”
Jack said, “Your father died in a car accident three weeks ago, right?”
“Yes,” Rachael said, “he did.”
Jack said, “Wasn’t there drinking involved?”
Rachael’s voice turned hard. “That’s what everyone believes. The police said he’d been drinking and driving, alone, and he lost control of his car, but I know that isn’t true. There’s no way it was an accident.
“He was murdered. I knew that immediately. I remember standing in the huge foyer after all the police, the federal investigators, and the people from the state department left, and I thought about how I’d never really believed in evil, in something cold to the soul. I knew they’d killed Jimmy—there was no doubt about it in my mind. But I didn’t have any proof, and that’s why I ran after they tried to drown me, why I didn’t go to the police. I guess after Jimmy died so violently, I was in shock, as well. I was trying to figure things out, but I didn’t have time.”
“So you’re saying that Laurel Kostas and Quincy Abbott killed your father and are now trying to kill you,” said Sheriff Hollyfield. “Truth is, Rachael, I’d want to get your head examined for a tale like that, but hey, look what’s happened right here in Parlow. I’d have to agree, that sounds pretty evil. I’ll bet you everyone in this room has close-up and personal experience with evil.”
No one disagreed.
Sherlock said, “Dillon and I met your father at a charity benefit at the Bentley Gallery in Georgetown not too long ago. You weren’t there. Neither of us even knew about you.”
“I don’t remem— Wait, yes, it was a last-minute deal. One of Jimmy’s lady friends took me to New York to shop because he was throwing a party for me; he was going to introduce me to everyone, including handsome young men who would trample each other trying to get to me.” She smiled, shrugged. “There was never any party. He was dead the next week.”
Sherlock said, “Did you know your father was a friend of Dillon’s boss, Jimmy Maitland? He was one of the pallbearers at his funeral. Mr. Maitland always called him John, as I recall, never Jimmy. Given they’re both Jimmys, I suppose Mr. Maitland didn’t want to deal with the name confusion.”
“I didn’t know that. I mean, I stood in a receiving line with all the other Abbotts, including my two half sisters, to greet all the people who came to his funeral. I don’t remember a Mr. Maitland. But that day was such a blur.”
“After his funeral,” Savich said, “you simply dropped out of sight. The funeral was nearly three weeks ago. Why would they leave you alone for three weeks, then try to kill you? Why not kill you right away, in another accident? How do you explain that, Rachael?”
“Well, in truth, there wasn’t time for me to be on the radar. Jimmy and I only had about six weeks together before his death.” She paused, head down. Jack saw her twisting her fingers in her lap. Then she raised her face and said, voice composed, “They didn’t have a chance to kill me because I left Washington the day after Jimmy’s funeral. I just knew I’d be next. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going, not even my mom. I got back to Jimmy’s house last Tuesday. Well, now it’s my house, since Jimmy left it to me. It only took them three days to act.”
“Where did you go?” Jack asked.
“To Sicily, to a little town on the coast, not yet discovered by tourists. I hunkered down, I guess you’d say. I had a lot of thinking to do, but I knew I had to come back to Washington, I had to deal with his estate and his family—and his murder—and so I came back nearly two weeks to the day after his funeral. I wasn’t even back a week before they threw me into the lake.”
