She stared at him. “Is that possible?”
“I’ve made enemies. I was a cop for a good number of years. Yeah, maybe we’ve been staring in the wrong end of the kaleidoscope. Let me get Barry over here fast.”
Barry would be over after he’d finished his dinner. Didn’t the two of them ever think about food?
“Now,” Taylor said, easing down on the bed beside her again, “I want to ask you a question.”
“Shoot.”
“Not that, Lindsay. Tell me why your father hates you.”
She gave him a clear, honest look. “I don’t know, I truly don’t. I’ve wondered and wondered and tried to figure it out over the years. I asked my mother, my grandmother, but they always told me it was my imagination or that my father was just under a great deal of stress. Finally my grandmother did admit that he loved Sydney more than he loved anyone else in the world. He was, she said, a man who couldn’t seem to love more than one person. It’s like he’s almost obsessed with her.”
“Did he always treat you badly?”
She shook her head. “No, it started sometime before Sydney’s wedding, before I was sixteen, I think. He simply drew back from me. Everything went to Sydney and she wasn’t even there most of the time. Now that I think about it, that’s when the troubles started between him and my mom too. She gained lots of weight and started drinking too much, just like Holly is now.”
“Sydney is nine years older than you.”
“Yes. So she would have been in law school when it began. Not even in San Francisco all that much. She was at Harvard.”
“You can’t remember anything that could have precipitated this behavior of his? This viciousness?”
“No. What are you thinking, Taylor?”
He kissed her. “I’m thinking that we’re going to have some answers, finally. Another thing, sweetheart, old Oswald is going to sing like a yellow canary once he’s out of surgery. Not to worry.”
“Why worry?” she said, and smiled up at him. “I’ve got another good arm to donate.”
23
Barry Kinsley stood beside Taylor, hands shoved into his pants pockets. Both of them were staring at the swinging doors, waiting for the surgeon to come through.
“I found a gray hair this morning,” Taylor said, never taking his eyes off those doors.
“Yeah, well, I got a good dose of indigestion from all these shenanigans you and your bride have put me through. My wife said if I didn’t get the guy responsible today, she wouldn’t sleep with me for five months.”
“Why five months?”
“That’s when our kid goes off to college and she figures she’ll be so horny by then she won’t care what I’ve done.”
“I didn’t know you had a kid. More than one?”
“Four. This is the last one off to college—a real pistol.”
The swinging doors were pushed open.
Two nurses came through, talking. No surgeon.
Three more minutes passed. They paced, silent now.
The surgeon came out then, an older man with tired pale eyes. He was still wearing his greens, only they were stained with blood now. He pulled the cap off his head even as he said, “He didn’t make it. I’m sorry. It was problematic when I went in. The bullet did a lot more damage than I’d first thought. If he had lived, he would have been a vegetable in any case. I am sorry.”
“Well, heigh ho,” Barry said, and sighed. “Thanks, Doc.”
Taylor headed back toward the elevators, feeling lower than a slug.
He pounded the elevator button with frustration. “Doesn’t the guy have any relatives? Maybe someone we can contact who would know who hired him?”
Barry shook his head and stabbed at the elevator button, outdoing Taylor. “Not a single merry soul, more’s the pity. I checked on that right away. Jesus, Taylor, back to square one.”
“I’m getting slow in my retirement. What are we going to do now, Barry?”
“Well, there’s nothing we can do about him croaking, not a bloody thing. Now, you said you had some other ideas. Let’s get back to Lindsay.”
When they reached Lindsay’s hospital-room door, there was Sydney, arguing with Officer Dempsey. He was refusing to let her in. Taylor could tell by the set of her shoulders that she was about ready to take his head off. He could tell by the set of Officer Dempsey’s shoulders that he wanted to let her do whatever she pleased, but he was holding firm.
“No, ma’am,” Dempsey repeated, looking more miserable by the word. “I’m sorry, but no one gets in here. Not God, not any of his angels. Sorry, ma’am, really I am, but those are my orders. Taylor would have my guts pulled out and stuffed up my nose if I let anyone in.”
Barry raised an eyebrow at that.
Before Sydney could blast him, Barry called out, “We’ll keep an eye on her, lad.” He smiled at Sydney and pushed open the door. “Good lad,” he added to the officer as he passed him. Taylor said nothing until they were inside.
Lindsay was asleep, the bruised, swelled side of her face up. She looked like she’d been in a war, which she had been.
He immediately lowered his voice to a whisper, asking Sydney, “The judge is gone?”
“Yes, I waited until I actually saw him onto the plane. I even waited until the plane took off.” Sydney looked toward her half-sister. “God, she looks like bloody hell. She’ll be all right this time?”
“Yes. She tells me she wants combat pay.”
“I’m here to cut a deal.” She looked toward Sergeant Kinsley. “I don’t want him around. This is just between us, Taylor. Once you hear what I’ve got to say, I don’t think you’ll want Lindsay involved.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. What kind of deal?” Before she answered, she looked pointedly at Barry. Taylor said, “Can you wait outside for a bit, Barry? This really shouldn’t take long.”
“No, it shouldn’t,” Sydney said.
She said nothing more until the door closed.
She moved away from him, a good twelve feet away, he saw. “Well?”
“It’s about my father. I imagine you’ve been wondering why he hates her so much. Well, I’m here to tell you why.”
Taylor made certain Lindsay was asleep, then said, “All right, but keep your voice down.”
“Mind you, I didn’t know any of this until after Grandmother’s death, after the reading of the will, after Lindsay had already left to come back to New York.
“Grayson Delmartin, Grandmother’s lawyer, came back to the mansion after he’d dropped Lindsay off at the airport. My father started in on him immediately, telling him he was going to sue, yelling that Lindsay would never get away with it, and he’d tell every newspaper in the state, he didn’t care, and the world be damned. The Foxe name would go down the tubes, no doubt about that. He was going to tell, he was going to make a press announcement the following morning, and he was going to get all the money.
“I didn’t know what he was talking about. Neither did Holly.”
“Dammit, Sydney, get to the point.”
“He said that Lindsay wasn’t his daughter. He said that he’d found out the truth some eleven years ago and told his mother. She already knew, he said. She knew, and she wasn’t displeased. She told him to keep his mouth shut, that she wouldn’t tolerate him telling anyone about it. He agreed, oh yes, he said he’d keep quiet, but only if she promised to leave him all the Foxe money.”
“The judge isn’t her father—” Taylor shook his head. “That’s crazy. I’ve seen both of them. She’s got his eyes—they’re identical—that dark blue, mysterious, so deep it’s scary. And the shape, completely the same. Identical. Is the man blind? Or are we talking about a long-lost twin brother?”
“He screamed at Delmartin that his first cousin, Robert, was Lindsay’s father and he could prove it.”
“Cousin?” Taylor said blankly. “Lindsay never said anything about a cousin who looks like her, she’s never said
