The Seductive Impostor Page 3

“He seduced our mother,” Willow countered, breaking free and taking a step back. She balled her hands into fists at her sides, her face red and her eyes hard. “He seduced his best friend’s wife.”

  “Yes. Thadd was wrong. But so was Mom. And so was Dad, for killing them and then killing himself.” Rachel took a step closer to Willow, trying to drive home her point, which had been an ongoing bone of contention between the two of them for the last three years. “They’re all to blame, and not one of them deserved what happened. It was a tragedy, Willow.”

  Willow covered her face with her hands and shook her head. Rachel reached up and tucked a strand of Willow’s rich brown hair behind her ear—but stopped suddenly at the sight of the emerald earring.

  “Ah…why are you wearing Mom’s earrings today?” she asked, looking at Willow’s throat for the necklace, but not seeing it. “They’re supposed to be for special occasions.”

  Willow wiped her face with the palms of her hands and took a deep breath. “I’m meeting my new staff this afternoon,” she said, grabbing a paper towel and dabbing at her eyes. “I want to look good. And the emeralds give me confidence.”

  Rachel rubbed her suddenly sweating palms on her thighs. Damn. Now what? She had to get those emeralds away from her sister. She sure as heck couldn’t let her take them to Augusta.

  “They’re a little dressy, don’t you think?” she asked, shaking her head disapprovingly. “A bit pretentious, maybe, for a new assistant attorney general?”

  Willow reached up and fingered one of the earrings. “You think so?”

  Rachel nodded. “Definitely overkill. Why not wear your pearls?” she suggested instead. The pearls had also belonged to their mother, but had been safely passed down for three generations. “They’d be much more professional-looking. More sedate and established.”

  Willow shot her a weak grin as she reached up to take off the earrings. “This from one who thinks barrettes are jewelry. But you’re right. Thanks for saving me from looking like an idiot. Hey,” she said, her gaze going to Rachel’s hand in search of the only piece of real jewelry Rachel wore. “Where’s the ring Dad gave you?”

  Rachel touched her thumb to her empty middle finger. Hell, this was getting more complicated than the maze of tunnels spidering through Sub Rosa. What was she supposed to say to Willow when half their cherished possessions suddenly turned up missing?

  “I took it to the jeweler to have it cleaned and checked,” she quickly prevaricated.

  “Oh. Then here,” Willow said, handing her the earrings. “Why don’t you take these in when you pick up your ring. And take the necklace, too. The prongs should probably be looked at. I’d hate to lose one of the emeralds.”

  Rachel inwardly cringed as she accepted the earrings. No, she wouldn’t want that, either. Not at several hundred thousand dollars a stone.

  Willow gave Rachel a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’ve got to get going if I want to be in Augusta by noon. You’ll be okay here alone for a few days? I mean, with Keenan Oakes on the way and everything?”

  Rachel stuffed the emerald earrings in her pocket and picked up her cane from the towel rack at the end of the counter. She headed for the door, leading her sister out of the house. “I’ll be fine,” she said over her shoulder. “And the article said he won’t arrive for several more days. You’ll be back by then, if only to pack everything for your move.”

  She didn’t stop until she was standing on the porch. Willow, suitcase in hand as she followed her out, still looked worried.

  “I’ll be too busy to even think about Sub Rosa,” Rachel assured her. “I’m going through every room in this house and finding you some furnishings for that new apartment.”

  “No lifting.”

  “I promise,” she agreed, holding her hand up in a scout’s salute. “I’ll get a few of the local boys to move the furniture down to the porch.”

  “Are you sure you’re feeling okay, Rachel? Your leg is healing okay?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  Willow nodded toward the kitchen. “The house looked a bit messy to me when I got in last night. And you went to bed unusually early.”

  Not that she’d slept, Rachel thought. She’d been awake almost all night pondering the letter, the hidden room somewhere upstairs, and her father’s startling confession.

  “I’m fine.” She stepped forward and hugged Willow, then gently pushed her on her way. “Now go. Have fun, call me the instant you sit at your new desk, and find a nice apartment with good neighbors. And make sure it has a spare bedroom,” she said more loudly as Willow set her suitcase in the backseat of her car. “I’m not sleeping on the couch when I come visit.”

  Willow stopped and turned from opening the driver’s door, shading her eyes from the morning sun as she looked back at the porch.

  “I’m proud of you, Willow,” Rachel said, her voice husky with emotion. “You know what you want and you’ve gone after it like a whirlwind. And now you’re going to be Maine’s youngest, brightest, hardest-working assistant attorney general.”

  “And do you know what you want?” Willow asked back, just as gruffly.

  Rachel nodded. “Yes. And I’ll go after it, too. Soon.”

  Willow still hesitated, then suddenly her expression lifted and she shot Rachel a grin and pointed at her. “I want to put Puffy in the town square this weekend. The townspeople are going to go nuts this time, Rachel, trying to figure out where he came from.”

  “It’s good for what ails them,” Rachel said, returning the grin. “And every town square needs a statue.”

  “But an eight-foot puffin?” Willow asked with a chuckle. “Replacing beat-up old mailboxes is one thing, but putting a big colorful bird in the middle of town is a bit more risky. What if we get caught?”

  “We won’t. I promise. Now get out of here, unless you want to get fired before you even see your new office.”

  With a final wave, Willow climbed into her car and drove away. Rachel continued to wave back, waiting until her sister was out of sight before she dropped her hand and expelled a loud sigh of relief.

  That was one problem out of the way for the next few days. She pulled the emerald earrings out of her pocket and stared at the expensive green stones. Now all she had to do was gather up all the other problems and get rid of them as well.

  She looked up at Sub Rosa. “You might want to put on the tea kettle, Rosa,” she softly told the house. “Because it looks like I’ll be paying you a visit tonight.”

  Rachel took a deep breath through a count of four, held it through a count of six, then slowly released it through a count of eight. Determined not to give in to the overwhelming urge to flee to the safety her cozy kitchen, she repeated the process three more times.

  It still wasn’t working. Instead of calming her, the breathing exercise only made her dizzy. Her heart continued to race as memories flooded her senses: the smell of granite dust mingled with sea mist, the warm brush of stone touching her shoulders, the heaviness of Sub Rosa’s brooding weight pushing her deeper into its cocoon.

  Rachel leaned her cane against the granite wall of the tunnel and reached down and massaged the neoprene brace covering her right knee. Her entire leg was complaining about the trek up the overgrown path through the woods, complaining even more about her having carried nearly forty pounds of stolen art the entire way.

  The pack on her back shifted to one side when she bent over. Rachel shrugged her shoulders and let the pack carefully finish falling to the ground. She followed it, sitting on the warm granite floor of the tunnel, stretching her legs out in front of her, massaging her knee again.

  This hadn’t been one of her brightest ideas, sneaking in through the cliff tunnel tonight and beginning to right her father’s wrong. But it had been the only plan she’d been able to come up with on such short notice.

  She wanted this settled before Keenan Oakes arrived.

  And it had to be settled in such a way that Willow would never discover their father’s si
n. Rachel knew her sister well enough to realize that Willow’s personal ethics would not allow her to simply ignore the fact that they’d unwittingly inherited a small fortune in stolen art. Willow would tear Sub Rosa apart stone by stone, trying to root out all of Thaddeus Lakeman’s secrets. And in doing so, she would ultimately ruin her own political career.

  Rachel shone the beam of her flashlight farther into the passageway. She was almost to the secret door that opened into the second-floor hall. Rachel’s vision blurred with tears as she remembered the horrific images of her last moments at Sub Rosa three years earlier.

  The bedroom.

  The blood.

  The realization, and disbelief, of what she was seeing.

  She had seen her mother first, lying across the foot of the bed, fully clothed, blood seeping from her body and running down the rumpled blankets, pooling in a dark puddle so thick the pattern on the carpet was unrecognizable.

  And then Thadd, on the floor beside the bed, face down, barefoot but still fully clothed, his body unnaturally still, his left hand outstretched as if reaching for Marian. He had looked untouched but for the dark stain pooling beneath him.

  Rachel had run to her mother first and covered the gaping wound in her chest with her hands. She had actually attempted to gather the blood, trying to push it back into her mother’s lifeless body. Her screams had filled the room.

  She had seen her father across the room then, propped in a half-sitting position against the far wall. His eyes were open. Blood was trickling from his mouth and seeping from the corner of one eye. And higher, oozing crimson from the tiny hole just above his right ear. In the relaxed grip of his right hand was the gun.

  Frank Foster’s chest had risen on a gasp as she had stared at him, and it had taken Rachel a shocked moment to realize that her father was still alive. Panic had frozen her in place. Blind to her mother’s blood on her hands, she’d had enough wits to go to the phone and dial 911. She told the woman on the other end of the line that there had been a shooting at Sub Rosa and she needed an ambulance, and then dropped the receiver.

  She’d gone to her father then, approaching him slowly, fearfully, afraid to disturb the fragile spark of life he still held. She’d gently taken the gun from his hand and tossed it away, then looked up and found his eyes focused on her face.

  Not just alive. But conscious. Aware.

  Huddled on the floor of the silent tunnel, her arms wrapped around her bent leg, Rachel tried to remember what she had said to him. She’d called him Daddy and repeated the word why several times, almost as a litany. And while she had cradled him in her arms, wind moaned through the open panel in the wall beside them, sending warm, salt-tainted air swirling into the room to mix with the metallic smell of so much blood. More from habit than thought, Rachel had used her foot to push the panel closed, keeping the secret of the passageways safe.

  All these years later she remembered the only words her father had been able to utter in a soft, ragged whisper.

  “Ra-Rach…don’t go Vegas…see dancer…Norway night…fi-find her…killed…Marian…find her—”

  They had been the last words Frank Foster had spoken. Rachel had thought for the last three years that he’d meant not to go to Las Vegas—which hadn’t made any sense to her at all—and something about seeing a dancer, possibly a dancer in Vegas?

  But in the letter her father had left her in the strongbox, she’d learned that Vegas was actually a man named Raoul Vegas, a dealer in stolen art her father had told her to look up if she wanted to get rid of her inheritance discreetly.

  Now, though, she realized her father had changed his mind since writing the letter, and had been telling her not to go to Raoul Vegas. She still didn’t know what Norway night or seeing a dancer meant, or who it was she should find.

  The bullet lodged in his head had stayed there, unreachable by the doctors, and slowly Frank Foster’s coma had deepened, until finally, two weeks after the tragedy, she and Willow had made the difficult decision to terminate life support.

  Their parents’ ashes were floating on the ocean now, forever fluttering on the endless tides of the rock-bound coast they both had loved so much.

  Rachel lifted her head and scrubbed at her face with both hands. What had come over Thadd and Marian that they had become lovers? And why had Frank Foster acted so horrifically? Rachel had answered those questions the day she had sat in the hospital and watched the final spark of life quietly drift from her father’s body.

  And that answer had been passion.

  Passion could drive a person to unimaginable heights of greatness, but it could also be destructive.

  For her parents, it had ultimately been tragic.

  And for Rachel, passion had ceased to exist three years ago.

  History, she was determined, would not repeat itself. Every thought, every decision, every action of her life was calculated now. She obeyed society’s rules, dressed sensibly, and didn’t date seriously. She quietly came to the aid of anyone in the community who needed a hand, but she no longer attended town meetings or allowed her one-time heated opinions to find voice at planning board hearings.

  And she no longer designed homes. She did, however, build mailboxes.

  After Willow had run over old man Smith’s pathetic old mailbox and had replaced it, she had become more aware of the sad condition of most of the mailboxes everyone passed every day without notice. The two sisters had formed a conspiracy then to anonymously replace the worst of the mailboxes in their community. It didn’t matter if the owner was rich or poor, Willow and Rachel let loose their imaginations and built and installed beautiful replacements for them.

  The results had astounded them. Not only were the recipients of the mailboxes pleasantly surprised to find themselves owners of beautiful works of art, but the entire town had a wonderful mystery that no one was in any hurry to solve.

  The mailboxes had become the subject of early morning coffee conversations as folks speculated on who was doing it, why, and when and where the next one would appear. And that speculation was going to explode thunderously the morning an eight-foot puffin appeared in the center of town.

  Rachel had found this one careful outlet in which to vent her own potentially destructive passions. It was a safety valve of sorts; Willow had her all-consuming work to pour her heart into, and Rachel had mailboxes. It was rewarding and very safe.

  In fact, far more safe than the idiotic mission she was on tonight.

  Rachel turned the flashlight beam down to her lap. She pulled the small piece of paper she’d taken from the strongbox out of her pocket and unfolded it.

  She traced her father’s handwriting, following the neat, bold black numbers that spelled out the master override for the alarms. Of course, the company babysitting Sub Rosa these last three years had changed the codes, probably several times. But these numbers would cancel out their newest sequence.

  Rachel sighed and used her cane to help herself stand up. It was time to get going and get this over with. She tucked the paper back in her pocket, then reached down and picked up the backpack.

  She should have left the bronze statue for another trip. The damn thing had to weigh fifteen pounds by itself. How many more trips she’d have to make, she didn’t know. But the letter had listed quite a few pieces that weren’t anywhere in sight, and she still hadn’t found the entrance to the secret room in her home.

  She hadn’t needed to pull out her blueprints to realize it existed, once she started examining the rooms upstairs. Her dad had stolen a foot or two out of all of them, all except her own bedroom. That he had been wise enough not to touch. She would have noticed the missing space immediately.

  Instead he’d taken the bulk out of the guest bedroom and the walk-in closet of the master suite. He’d shortened the hallway linen closet and Willow’s bedroom by a foot, eking out a good sixty square feet of space, as far as she could tell.

  Frank Foster truly was a genius of design, especially considering th
e original architect would be living in the house. And she still couldn’t find the damn door to the secret room.

  Rachel started walking deeper into the tunnel. She’d hunt for it tomorrow. Right now she had an old friend to visit, and three-year-old ghosts to face.

  Chapter Three

  Rachel sighed in relief when the last tumbler dropped into place with gentle precision. She spun the giant lock and pulled open the huge titanium door, revealing the darkness beyond. Warm, climate-controlled air rushed past her as she stepped inside and trained the beam of her flashlight around the interior.

  Nearly as large as her kitchen at home, the huge vault was organized with shelves and cubbies and smaller safes against two of the walls. On the other two walls sheet-draped artwork was hung. Every square inch of space had been utilized and was brimming with treasure.

  Rachel wasn’t impressed. She slid the heavy pack off her shoulders and set it on the floor. She opened the buckles and pulled out the bronze statue, then used her flashlight to hunt for an inconspicuous place to set it.

  It didn’t belong here with the legitimate art collection, but since she didn’t know where Thadd’s secret room was, this vault would have to do. Better the contraband eventually be discovered in Thadd’s possession instead of hers and Willow’s. It would be Keenan Oakes’s problem then. The man couldn’t very well expect to waltz into a billion-dollar estate without having a few surprises to deal with.

  That thought perversely warmed Rachel’s heart. Keenan Oakes owned Sub Rosa now, and his great-uncle’s legacy was going to rear up and bite him on his butt.

  Rachel set the statue in one of the cubbies, then pulled the small painting out of her pack and unwrapped it from the towel she’d used to protect it for the trip here. She pushed the sheets on the far wall aside until she found a space large enough to hang it. She returned to the pack and pulled out the silver tankard, wine cup, and snuffbox next, and gently set them in another cubby beside a vase that looked as old as the earth itself. She pulled the ruby and gold ring her father had given her out of her pocket, set the beam of her flashlight on it one last time, then reached up and dropped it inside the wine cup, flinching at the sound of metal falling on metal.