“Sam was shot,” Zeke said, grim-faced.

Dani grabbed his wrist. “Will he be okay? What happened?”

“He’s fine, but later,” he said. “The police are on the way. Since this isn’t my show, I’d prefer not to stick around.” He pulled his wrist free and started around the pavilion. “By the way, Quint was bluffing. Your gun’s a thirty-eight. It has a kick, but it wouldn’t have knocked you on your pretty little ass. I would have. You don’t take on killers when you don’t have to.”

“I did have to.”

“Do you ever not argue back?”

She managed a smile. “Never.”

He grinned. “Good.”

Then he was gone.

“My, my,” her father said, eyeing her.

She frowned at him. “It’s not what you think.”

“Oh, I’m afraid it is.”

She would stand for no more of this. “What was Skinner after?”

“I haven’t the foggiest. He made a damn mess of your fountain, though.” He climbed unsteadily to his feet and walked to the edge of the circular brick path inside the pavilion and examined the area where Quint had been digging. “Oh, hell.”

“Pop?”

She lunged for the gate. Her father tried to stop her. But he was too weak, too shocked himself, and she pushed past him.

She saw the twisted, crumpled mess that was still recognizable as the straw hat her mother had had with her the night she disappeared twenty-five years ago.

Eighteen

The cream-colored Chandler house on North Broadway stood silent in the bright afternoon sun. With the watchman’s gun heavy in her hand, Dani stopped on the wide sidewalk and looked up at the sky, almost as if there should be a hot-air balloon floating overhead, carrying her smiling mother back to her, just like in The Wizard of Oz.

“Oh, Mama,” she whispered, fighting back tears.

She’d dragged her father from the pavilion back to the bottling plant, where Russ was holding his bandanna to his wounded head. By then, the police sirens were close. Russ had promised to see to her father and let her borrow his car. She’d driven straight to Millionaires’ Row.

Her aunt was in a wicker chair on the front porch, stroking a long-haired white cat in her lap. A pile of crumpled pink petunia blossoms lay scattered on the floor beside her. She wore one of her feminine, flowery dresses and smiled as Dani climbed the steps onto the wide, curving porch. “Hello, Danielle. What a pleasant surprise. Won’t you sit down.”

“Sure.”

But she sat not on a wicker chair next to her aunt, but on the railing, under a hanging basket of petunias.

“Is something wrong, Danielle? You look-My goodness, is that blood on your shirt?”

Russ’s blood. And maybe her father’s. She hadn’t noticed it until that moment. Zeke, too, had had bloodstains on his shirt. That hadn’t penetrated until he’d vanished into the woods.

“Sara, we need to talk.”

“Of course. You know I’m always here for you.”

“Grandfather stopped by today. He showed me the passage in Beatrix Chandler’s diary about the gold key and her friendship with Louisa Pembroke.”

“Yes, I know. He told me.” The corners of her pink-stained mouth twitched in a small smile. “The more you abuse him, the more he seems to appreciate you.”

Dani tried to keep her thoughts focused, on course. “Did you show Joe Cutler that passage when he was here?”

“Now, how would I remember something like that?” She faltered, pulling in her lower lip. “Danielle, exactly what are you trying to get at?”

“Is Roger home?”

“No.”

“Grandfather?”

“He’s not here. Danielle-”

“You know,” she said, “I’ve been looking at this thing all wrong, trying to blame everything on Joe Cutler and Quint Skinner. The blackmail-”

“What blackmail?” Sara seemed genuinely shocked. She shoved the cat off her lap but didn’t get up. “You’ve been under tremendous strain lately, Danielle. Perhaps you’ve-”

“Gone off the deep end? Started to self-destruct like Nick and my father? Right now I almost wish I had. Sara, Mother and Nick both were being blackmailed over her role in Casino. Someone knew she’d have done just about anything to keep it a secret.”

“Well, it certainly wasn’t me. Lilli never told me a thing about her acting.”

The undertone of jealousy and bitterness was hard to miss. But Dani didn’t let it deter her. “Joe knew about the blackmail.”

“Knew about it,” Sara said, her incisive eyes on Dani, “or committed it?”

“For a while I believed he might have committed it.” She kept her voice steady and calm, despite the raging inside her. “But it doesn’t make any sense. Nick says the blackmailer never asked for much money, a hundred here and there. Joe could have made more than that by selling off the gold key he found. Instead he gave it to Mother.”

“She trusted him. Joe certainly had us all fooled. Look what he did in combat.” Sara rose gracefully, ladylike. But her skin was a little pale, and she teetered on her high heels. “I don’t believe I care to continue this conversation. You understand. It’s just too painful.”

Dani didn’t move from the porch railing. “Joe had a copy of one of the blackmail letters. If he wasn’t the blackmailer, how did he get it?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Why did he see Nick a few years later when he was on leave and then come here to Saratoga?”

Sara walked all the way to the ornate front door but stopped there, her back to Dani.

“Did he see you then?” she asked softly.

“Danielle, please don’t.”

“I’m not trying to upset you, Sara. But I need to know.”

“Why?” She spun around at Dani, tears shining in her vivid blue eyes. “Why do you need to know?”

“Too much has been happening. It needs to stop. We need to know the truth about the past.”

“Joe is dead. Lilli’s never coming back. What possible good can come of knowing who was blackmailing whom twenty-five years ago?”

Dani persisted. “Did Joe come to see you, Sara?”

Sara sank against the door, slipping her hands behind her and holding on to the polished brass handle. She nodded. “I-I’d caught him blackmailing Lilli. He wanted money to send his brother to Vanderbilt University. I…I made him give Lilli the gold key or I’d tell on him. I saw him that evening-”

“The night Mother disappeared?”

“Yes, but earlier. It’s why I was late to help you get dressed. You remember?”

Dani remembered. She’d hated the white chiffon dress and especially the new patent-leather shoes, and Sara had been in such a state she’d almost let Dani wear her shorts.

“I broke off our…relationship. I hadn’t been sure how I felt about him-I suppose I was attracted to him for all the wrong reasons. When I caught him at blackmail, I told him to leave Saratoga or I’d report him to the police.”

A squirrel ran up a maple in the front yard and out to the end of a branch near the porch and chattered at them. “What made you think Joe was the blackmailer?” Dani asked.

“Oh, that wasn’t difficult to figure out,” Sara said vaguely.

“Did Mother know?”

“I’m not sure. I never saw her again to ask. Of course, she’d have wanted to save Joe from himself. You remember how she was, especially that summer after our mother died.”

The tears glistened on Sara’s pale cheeks now, although she wasn’t sobbing. Dani made herself press on. “Why did Joe come back four years later?”

She pulled away from the door and sniffled, regaining some composure. The bodice on her dress was cut low, and her breasts heaved with her rapid, shallow breathing. But she tilted up her chin, looking regal. “I wouldn’t know. I refused to see him.”

Dani didn’t believe her, but she decided not to push the point, not yet. She jumped down from the porch railing. “I think he was trying to figure out what happened to Mother.”

“What business was Lilli of his?” she demanded, combative.