Garrett waited.
“I’m just saying, Mr. Keating, that if those diaries would just surface, you might find something about your sister…or someone related to your sister. Something that might be the source of her problem. Because if something was going on in Eastwick, Bunny knew it.”
“But right now you don’t know where those diaries are.”
Edith shook her head. “I’m sorry. No one does.”
Once warmed up, Edith went on and on. She’d obviously deeply cared about her employer and needed to tell someone how traumatized she’d been by Bunny’s death. Apparently Bunny had been only fifty-two, healthy and full of energy. Although she’d loved gossip, she’d never been vicious.
“Never, Mr. Keating,” Edith vowed. “Yes, she dished the dirt on the well-heeled. But she never told a lie, never invented or embellished. She only told the truth. And personally I think she made a huge effort not to hurt anyone who might have been innocent.”
“I’m sure she did,” Garrett agreed, although he was starting to feel desperate that he was ever going to escape. He’d hoped he’d hear something, anything, about his sister Caroline, but Edith seemed fixed on the night her employer had died.
“I found her, I did. Still haven’t gotten over the shock, probably never will. In my head, I still see her lying there. I was right upstairs, putting away linens in the upstairs closet, when I suddenly heard this thud. As if a chair had been knocked over. That kind of thud-”
“I understand,” Garrett said swiftly.
“Well, that thud was my Bunny. Lying on the floor in the study. It just didn’t make sense.” Tears welled in Edith’s eyes.
“It sounds horrible.” Garrett tried to sound sympathetic.
“Oh, it was, it was. I can’t get it out of my mind. And I’ve stayed on in the house because Abby asked me to. Abby’s her daughter, of course, I think I told you that-”
“Yes, I knew that.”
“Well, no one knows what’s going to happen to the Baldwin mansion yet. So it still needs caretaking. And right now I don’t think anyone else would want to live here because of what happened. I hardly do myself, because everywhere I turn, I remember her lying in the study like that. She was more than an employer, you know. She was a friend. A fascinating person. It’s unbelievable that someone would kill her. Actually murder her. I keep trying to imagine what kind of secret she knew that was
He turned the key on his car engine, grateful to be free. Yet listening to Edith had put an edgy beat in his pulse. He’d never personally known Bunny Baldwin, was hard-pressed to invest interest in a woman who’d lived for gossip. But the secret business worried him, because his sister was obviously hiding some kind of secret that had caused her depression-and her feeling of guilt.
He’d checked out Edith, knowing that woman was a long shot, but he was starting to get damned desperate. No information seemed to surface about his sister. He needed to help Caroline, needed to know she was safe, before he could possibly move back to New York.
Instead he seemed to be getting more and more embroiled in Eastwick-which he swore he’d never do.
Halfway down the street, he pulled off to dial Emma again.
Still no answer. That didn’t mean she wasn’t there, of course. She could have turned off the ringer, simply because she had a busy day. He now had a good idea how busy she really was, how crowded her life was.
Still, he wanted to hear her voice. Wanted to talk to her.
Wanted to know she was okay after making love.
Wanted to know how he was going to react after hearing her voice again.
Garrett told himself he was just frustrated he hadn’t reached her, not worried. One way or another, he was determined to contact her today, though, even if he had to track her down all the way to Timbuktu.
More immediately, though, seeing his sister had to be his first priority. Caroline was getting sprung from the hospital-against his better judgment.
He found her still in her hospital room but sitting up, all dressed and chomping at the bit. “You said you’d be here by three!”
“And it’s a quarter to.”
“I know, I know. But I started to worry that you wouldn’t come. I just want to go home, Gar.” She wrapped her arms around his neck for a hug and promptly started crying. Hell and double hell. She felt skinnier than a reed, and he hated it when his sister cried. He always wanted to fix the problem. Right now. Yesterday.
“Would you quit it?” A guy could talk to his sister that way. When she didn’t immediately quit-Caroline had never listened to him-he patted her back, over and over. And over.
Finally she quit snuffling and stepped away. He handed her a tissue-she never had one. “Get me out of here,” she begged him.
“I will. But you have to do the wheelchair thing.”
“That’s stupid. I’m not sick.”
But her spirit was sick. He could see the darkness behind her eyes, in the nervous way she moved, in the exhaustion in her posture-even when he was wheeling her downstairs and bundling her-and five million flowers-into the car.
“Griff’s due home tomorrow,” she told him.
“I know. The parents told me,”
“I don’t want him to know…about the suicide attempt.”
At least she was using the word now. “Caroline, come on. You surely realize that Mom and Dad already told him. They had to give him a reason to cancel his trip and fly home.”
“But I didn’t want him to do that! And they should have asked me before calling him!”
Garrett didn’t try arguing with her. The subject was too sticky to begin with. Truthfully, their parents hadn’t asked Griff to come home for their daughter’s sake so much as they’d hoped Griff would
“The thing is, I want Griff to hear about this from
“That woman,” Garrett said, “is Gloria.” As they walked through his sister’s front door, Garrett braced for trouble as he introduced his sister to the woman he’d hired. Gloria was dressed to look like a housekeeper, but essentially Garrett had hired her as security until Caroline’s husband actually arrived home and took charge.
No matter what Caroline said or thought, there was no way he was leaving her alone. Not after a suicide attempt. Period. As far as Garrett was concerned, that was the end of the argument-but a half hour later, Caroline was still giving him grief.
By then he’d installed her on the couch in the den with the remote, a cup of tea and a frantically lonesome bichon frise with the ghastly name of Bubbles. Garrett disappeared from sight for a few minutes while Caroline and Gloria started talking, giving them a chance to get to know each other.
As he wandered around, he remembered how much he’d always loved Caro’s place. She loved rich, deep colors-burgundies and emeralds and teals. She always chose furniture a guy could sink into, made things comfortable. He never had to kick off his shoes, never had to fret if he was going to spill anything. She was flexible in so many ways, but man, when she played the stubborn card, it was damn hard to budge her.
When he had her alone in the den again, the same fight started up-but this time Garrett dug in his heels. “Look, Griff’s coming home, which means you’re out of time, kiddo. It’s got to come out, whatever the hell trouble you’re in. So out with it-and this time I mean it. I’m not leaving until you talk.”
She shook her head, the tears already welling up. Her crying made him feel lower than mud. “Caro. This is stupid. What could you possibly have done to feel so guilty?”
He racked his brain for the kind of shameful thing that was so big she couldn’t tell him. “A gambling addiction, something like that?”
“For heaven’s sake. Of course not.”
He frowned. “Could you have stolen something-?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Garrett. You know I’d never do that.” Finally he pestered her enough that she came out with it, although her tone had lowered to the most painful of whispers. “I had an affair.”
