“I was so good to him and Wendy. But after she died he only cared about his friends who played cards. I wanted him to be with me! But he said he could never be with another woman. Then he found somebody else. I know he did. And he had that big secret about the diamonds that he kept from me. I went crazy when I found out about that. He betrayed me!”
“Daphne, put down the knife,” Regan pleaded.
“No!”
Thomas was quivering in the corner.
“Put it down.”
After a moment, Daphne dropped the knife and started to cry, this time real tears. “I lost all my chances. Nat…my acting career…”
Thomas and Janey had yet another hug-filled reunion as Regan picked the knife off the ground. “Dad, could you hold this? I’ve got a phone call to make.”
Regan pulled out her cell phone and called Edward Gold’s home number. “Any chance you can get in here tonight with that certified check?” she asked him when he answered.
“What?” Thomas cried.
Regan held out her hand. The four diamonds were resting in her palm. Now it was Thomas’s turn to cry. “They were in Dolly and Bah-Bah’s eye sockets,” Regan explained. “It’s a good thing Janey brought them back.”
Thomas turned to Janey. “Will you marry me?”
Back inside, the smoke was clearing. Regan hurried to find Jack. He was in the kitchen with Harriet, who was now in handcuffs.
“Regan,” Jack said softly and put his arms around her.
Finally it’s my turn, Regan thought.
“Our butler here was doing her best to spread the fire,” Jack informed her. “Now I’ve got to visit her boyfriend, Thorn, who is staying across the street. They’ve been working as a team to destroy any butler schools that compete with them. Because they thought no one would recognize her here in New York, she posed as a butler student.”
Harriet scowled at him.
Maldwin was in the corner of the kitchen, trying to help clean up the mess. “I should have known that Thorn would try to infiltrate my school. He never liked me,” he said. “But I’ll show him. I’m going to keep going with my school. At least three of my butlers were good people,” he said.
“Make that two,” Kyle Fleming called from the doorway. “I’d been looking for that Blaise character for a while. We got him detained out front too.”
Maldwin almost collapsed.
Across the way, Vernella and Archibald were astounded by the smoke.
“The place is on fire!” Vernella cried.
“That’s awful!” Archibald said. “I want them to close, but I don’t want people to get hurt. Not to mention the smoke damage to my building!”
In the commotion outside, they saw someone hurrying across the street. Their doorbell rang. Vernella and Archibald looked at each other.
It was Jack Reilly.
“Can I help you?” Archibald asked him.
“Is Thorn Darlington here?”
“Cousin Thorn is upstairs.”
“I’m here to place him under arrest for conspiring to commit arson.”
Archibald whirled around. Thorn was standing at the top of the stairs. “You’ve ruined our family’s good name!” he cried. “Ruined it!”
“And our chance to be the King and Queen of Gramercy Park,” Vernella snarled as she rushed to grab the champagne flute from Thorn’s hand.
An hour later, the party was back on inside the club. It was safe to say that the smoke had cleared. Edward Gold arrived with his wife, carrying a huge certified check for four million dollars made out to the Settlers’ Club. “We would have gotten here sooner, but there was a lot of traffic.”
“Sooner!” his wife exclaimed. “He drove like a madman!”
As the crowd gathered around, Thomas climbed the ladder in front of the sheep to make the toast.
Everyone raised their glass. Regan and Jack stood arm in arm by the fireplace with Clara next to them. Nora and Luke were there with the crime-convention people. Lydia was with her singles, her arms draped around two of them like a mother bear with her cubs. Burkhard had been banished from the premises, cake crumbs and icing stuck to his one good suit. Maldwin stood between his loyal butlers, Vinnie and Albert, who suddenly looked more butlerish. Janey stood adoringly at Thomas’s feet, and the club members filled out the crowd, suddenly prouder than ever to be part of such an establishment.
Stanley was ecstatic as his camera rolled. My special’s going to be unbelievable, he thought.
“I’d like to toast the memory of Nat and Ben. Thanks to them the Settlers’ Club will live on. We will all continue to be together for many years to come as we live, work, and thrive inside these smoky walls.”
Everyone laughed and took a sip of their vintage champagne as Dolly and Bah-Bah stood guard over the club.
Nora and Luke and Kyle were standing together.
“We’re going to have a lot to talk about at the brunch tomorrow,” Nora said.
“Too bad we can’t have our friend Georgette appear in person.” Kyle laughed.
“In one of her disguises,” Luke added.
Jack turned to Regan and smiled. “Now, where were we?”
Regan smiled back. “I think we were planning a trip to California.”
“I can’t wait,” he said.
“Me neither.” Their hands became entwined.
“Ya know,” Clara announced as she practically planted herself between them, “my sister and I went out to California just last year. Oh, it was lovely…”
Jack squeezed Regan’s hand.
I really can’t wait, Regan thought, as she smiled and squeezed his hand back.
“Now have you ever driven down the Coast?” Clara continued. “Gorgeous. Just gorgeous. You two should try it…”
About the Author
Carol Higgins Clark is the author of four other bestselling Regan Reilly mysteries as well as the recent national bestseller Deck the Halls, coauthored with her mother, Mary Higgins Clark. Also an actress, she has appeared in films, theater, and television series. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Carol lives in New York City.
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Document ID: fbd-3082d8-bb3d-714b-aca0-3fb2-2df5-3a8c09
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Document creation date: 08.04.2010
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