Killer Curves

  Elise blinked, and a tear fell down her face and plopped onto a folded paper napkin. “You’d be amazed at what that kind of love can do to a person.”

  Celeste leaned back, all color gone from her cheeks. “Why did you stay with Dad all these years?”

  A fair question. “He’s the father of my children—of the boys, and yes, he’s been a father to you. And he’s done some noble things in his life.”

  “And some not-so-noble things.” When Elise didn’t respond, Celeste leaned forward. “Mother, even thirty years ago you could have had a child out of wedlock, even in your circles. You could have given me up for adoption or even raised me yourself.”

  “I couldn’t have raised an illegitimate child in my world, and adoption was out of the question. I wanted you too much.”

  “But why stay?” Celeste insisted. “Why put up with it for so long?”

  Elise shifted uncomfortably. “I stayed because I owed it to your father. He saved my life.”

  “Mother.” Elise could hear the rising tone of frustration in Celeste’s voice. “He gave you a last name and a nice home. Then he cheated for twenty-some years and scoffed at you and used you as a cardboard ‘perfect’ wife. He didn’t save your life. He ruined it.”

  “You’re wrong,” Elise said softly.

  “How?”

  Elise felt perspiration beads at her neck. “When you were three years old, I tried…to kill myself.” Elise looked down.

  She heard Celeste’s gasp but couldn’t look at her.

  “I went out to the Connecticut River Bridge in the middle of the night. I wanted to end my miserable life.” She lifted her gaze to meet Celeste’s stunned expression. “I wanted to be with Chas so bad, and you looked so much like him. It was a constant reminder. I…I hated Gavin and the things he made me do. I wanted to undo the mistakes I’d made, but I couldn’t.” Elise swallowed, but nothing would go down her closed windpipe. “Gavin…found me. He had you with him. He pulled you out of the car and held you up in the air.” Elise could still feel the bitter winter chill that bit her to the bones as the trusting toddler held out her fat little arms to her mother. Gusts of icy wind had nearly whipped them both off the bridge and frozen her tears.

  Horror flashed in Celeste’s eyes. “Was he…going to…?”

  “He threatened, using you to manipulate me. He wanted to keep me from killing myself, from wrecking his world and reputation. And he knew I wouldn’t do it in front of you.”

  Celeste stared at her, silent and pale.

  “He needed me enough to come and find me that night and stop me, regardless of his methods and motives. So I’ve always felt I owed him loyalty, if not love. I’ve never forgotten that night.” Tears blurred her vision as she looked at Celeste. “Do you remember it?”

  “No, I don’t,” Celeste said softly. “But it does explain some of my hang-ups.”

  Elise put her hand on top of Celeste’s and squeezed. “Do you forgive me?”

  Celeste sighed. “I’m in no position to judge you, Mother. But I do know loyalty’s not Dad’s strong suit. And I think you’ve paid your debt back to him.”

  “Yes, I agree.” Elise swallowed hard. “I’m in the mood for paying back debts, my dear.” Her voice started to quake with emotion. “Do you think Chas is going to die?”

  Celeste looked up, an odd light in her eyes and a little smile tugging at her lips. “No, Mother. He is not going to die.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  Celeste’s face glowed, emanating an inner joy and something indefinably beautiful.

  “He isn’t going to die because I’m giving him the kidney that he needs to live.”

  Chapter

  Twenty-six

  Since Travis’s surgery would take hours, Beau decided to put the time to good use. As he entered Chastaine Motorsports, he could hear Kaylene ranting from her office around the corner.

  “Well, you can tell that vice president to shove it up his—” Kaylene froze at the sight of Beau in her doorway. “You haven’t heard the last of me.” She banged the phone down and vaulted out of her seat. “Beau! Do you know what happened?”

  “Let me at your files,” he said, moving around her desk. “I need the password to your computer and every single budget report we have for the sponsor money. I need to see everything.”

  “Help yourself, sweetie, but it’s a complete waste of time.” She started clicking with impressive speed, moving her cursor over colored boxes and opening up a spreadsheet while he updated her on Travis’s situation.

  She finally reached the right screen. “It don’t matter a lick what was in them accounts, because all of that money is gone. Gone, I tell ya. Vaporized overnight. We are flat broke.”

  “Just get me the files and access to all the budgets and financial data.”

  She stood and cleared a path for him, pointing toward the screen. “There. The history of our spending.” She left him to study the files.

  At first, everything seemed in order. But once he knew what he was looking for, it didn’t take Beau long to find the money trail. Accounts that held thousands had been emptied in small increments to Dash budget items that had no corresponding entries. Hundreds of thousands of dollars had vanished, plus the five million that had just been blatantly stolen. Harlan Ambrose was helping himself to a mighty big pot of money.

  And Olivia had known it. That’s what she had tried to tell him when she came to his motor coach that afternoon.

  “Kay, do you have Creighton Johnston’s phone number?” he called out.

  “Sure do. I’ll get it for ya.”

  This wasn’t proof that Harlan killed his wife and set fire to the motor coach to destroy the evidence, but it sure provided the strongest motive anyone had. He hit the print command, then picked up the phone to call Tony and see if he’d made any progress with the detectives. He’d take these spreadsheets to them himself, on the way back to the hospital.

  “Kaylene, how ’bout Tony’s cell phone number too?”

  She didn’t respond, so he looked around her desk and found a pile of phone bills. Sifting through them for Tony’s number, his gaze fell on his own cell phone bill—and the list of numbers called before his phone got broiled along with Olivia.

  There were three separate calls to Connecticut numbers. He picked up the bill and studied the dates and times.

  Holy hell. The calls were made at one, two, and two-thirty in the morning. Long after Olivia’s body had been recovered. Long after her murderer got away. Whoever killed Olivia had taken his cell phone and called…who?

  He dialed the first number. A female answered. “Bennett residence, Maureen speaking. May I help you?”

  “Uh, sorry, wrong number.” He hung up and dialed the next one. On the fourth ring, a breathless voice hummed into the phone.

  “Hello. This is Noelle.”

  He clicked off without a word. Noelle?

  He dialed the last one, which jumped immediately to voice mail. “You’ve reached the cell phone of Gavin Bennett. Leave a message. And vote Bennett for Senate.”

  He dialed one more number. This one from memory.

  “Hello?” Celeste’s voice warmed him immediately.

  “Hey, babe. Any news?”

  “No. He’s still in surgery. Where are you?”

  “Just leaving the shop. I gotta ask you a question. Is there any chance that Harlan Ambrose knew your father? Maybe through Creighton Johnston?”

  She hesitated for a minute. “I don’t think so, but I can’t be sure. Why?”

  “Just curious. Listen, I’m going downtown to see the detectives we met. I’m going to have to tell them the truth, Celeste.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “I have a hunch about our buddy Harlan and I want them to see things my way. But I’ll need to be up front with them about everything. Including your real identity.”

  “Of course. Oh—hold on a moment.” Her voice muffled as she spoke to someone else. “Beau, Tr
avis is being taken into recovery. They want us to go in. They want, um, family there.”

  “How is he?”

  “They said he came through really well. He’s waking up.”

  Relief mixed with concern for Celeste. “Go on in. You don’t have to tell him anything until I get there.”

  “Yes, I will. Mother’s already walking in there.”

  “What are you going to tell him?” He held his breath.

  “Oh, you know. Just that I’m his long-lost daughter who’s come to donate a kidney to him.”

  Relief gave way to pure joy, and an utterly foreign emotion that just about flattened his heart. He whispered, “Thank you, baby. I’ll be there real soon.”

  “Come on, now, Travis, honey, wake up. It’s all over.”

  He couldn’t wake up. He couldn’t open his eyes. Hell, he couldn’t breathe.

  “You did real good, Travis. Wake up, your family’s waitin’ on you.”

  What family? They had the wrong guy. They’d probably made one of them classic hospital mistakes and took his spleen out instead of his kidneys. He tried to open his eyes, but they wouldn’t budge. He tried to moan for help. Yeow. It felt like someone had stuck a knife in his throat.

  “That’s right, Travis. We need you to wake up now, honey.”

  He groaned again. Christ alive, his throat hurt.

  “Open your eyes, Travis, so you can see your family when they come in.”

  “I don’t have a…,” he croaked a feeble denial.

  “Oh yeah, your throat’s gonna be sore, dear. The anesthesia tube did that. Come on, now. Someone just went to get your wife.”

  His wife? Son of a bitch, they did screw up. He’d heard about the guy who had the wrong leg chopped off. Sheer terror forced him to unseal his lids and try to focus. But then he squeezed them shut as a wave of puke went rollin’ around and lookin’ for a way out. He tried to take a breath. It hurt, but he managed.

  “You might feel a little nauseated. That’s normal. Just try and wake up, Travis.”

  He opened his eyes again, determined to bark at her and tell him he had no wife, no family, and probably no goddamn spleen now.

  In the blinding hospital light he saw a woman coming toward him, but it was impossible to see her face. It wasn’t the nurse; this lady was all pinky peach with blond hair. She got closer and he could see her face. He blinked again. He could smell something sweet and delicate. Hell, this was some hallucination. He forced his eyes open again and this time he saw her smile. A Mona Lisa smile.

  Oh, shitballs. He was dead. Goddamn flat-ass dead. But then he must have gone to heaven, impossible as that was to believe. Because he could have sworn he was looking at Elise Hamilton.

  “Hello, Chas.”

  He tried to sit up, but an ax sliced through his belly. How could there be pain in heaven?

  He felt her hand on his arm. With every ounce of strength he could muster, he looked down at her fingers against his blue and white hospital gown. They felt very real. Very, very real. She squeezed, and he could feel the pressure. The fog started to lift.

  “Are you his wife?” he heard the nurse ask.

  “I’m an old friend.” That voice, like feathers on satin. She must be an angel—that was it. Elise was dead too, and they were finally meeting again, destined to spend eternity together.

  Another hand was on his back. The nurse again. “Okay, Travis. This will hurt, honey, but we need you to sit up. You can’t go to your room until you can sit just a little. Then you gotta pee, buddy. That’s the rules in recovery.”

  You had to pee when you’re dead? They pushed at his back, and he tried to sit up, but pain sliced through him. It was worth the pain just to see Elise. Even if she was just a figment of his imagination, it was a mighty nice figment. She was older, a little softer, but not a bit less beautiful than he remembered.

  Someone wiped drool from his chin.

  Someone put a warm blanket over his feet.

  Guess he was a little older and softer too. Slowly, he turned his head toward the angel in peach. “Elise?”

  She nodded. “It’s me, Chas.”

  Oh, God, it was just too much. The drugs made him dizzy, and he was wickedly nauseated. “Then I’m dead, huh?”

  She laughed a little. Holy saints, he remembered that laugh. It sounded like a bell. “No, you’re not dead.” He wanted to reach out and touch her, to see if she was real, but the IV pulled at his arm. “You are minus two kidneys, but the doctor said you did very well.”

  He closed his eyes, drifting into a sleep he didn’t want. He wasn’t dead. That was a relief. He’d lost his kidneys, but he was alive. And…his Lisie…was standing next to him. He lifted his eyelids slowly.

  “If I’m not dead, then why are you here?”

  She laughed again. She thought he was so damn amusing, he remembered. “I came to see my daughter.”

  She had a daughter. “Where is she?”

  “I’m right here.”

  He recognized that voice. He moved his gaze toward the sound. Beau’s girlfriend. She stood in the doorway, a tentative smile on her face. Cece Benson was Elise’s daughter? What an unbelievable coincidence.

  Shitballs of thunder—he didn’t believe in coincidence.

  The realization hit him as hard as a concrete wall, and crushed the air out of him.

  Elise’s daughter. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be. This girl was…

  Searing pain filled his whole body. He looked from one to the other. Why hadn’t he seen it before? Why? Why?

  Cece took a step into the room, her eyes shining. Her eyes. Oh Lord, her eyes. It was like looking in a mirror.

  “Mother, you shouldn’t have told him yet,” she insisted in a hushed tone. “Let the poor man come out of anesthesia first. He’ll need to get used to the idea.”

  Used to the idea of having a daughter? He’d wondered for thirty goddamn years who walked this earth with his blood in their veins, and she’d been standing in front of him for weeks! He didn’t need to get used to nothin’.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he managed, staring at the beautiful girl and seeing her in a completely new light. She was mostly Elise but had a little Chastaine in her. She knew her racin’, and hell, look at that hair—it was just like his mother’s. Good Lord, wasn’t she just perfect? Perfect.

  “I was just trying to get to know you, Travis.”

  Remorse squeezed his heart. He’d treated her like an intruder, an unwanted hanger-on. His own daughter.

  “Aw, hell, missy.” He struggled to breathe through his battered esophagus. “I’da been nicer to ya if I’da known.”

  She smiled and looked at Elise. “He was fine to me,” she said a little defensively. God love her, she was coverin’ up for him.

  The fog started to disappear. She laid her hand over his, and time stopped. The whole world froze, and he couldn’t see or think, and barely heard the beep-beep-beep of some monitor hittin’ top speed. His heart, no doubt, racin’ like a fool. He put his other hand on top of hers and closed his eyes against the tears that formed under his lids.

  If only he wasn’t bound and tied to the stupid IV. Then he could stand up and holler to the world: I have a daughter! I have a daughter!

  He couldn’t help it. The sob escaped just as he thought his chest would explode. “Why now?” he finally managed. “What are you doing here?”

  “I have something you need, Travis.” Tears streaked her cheeks. Something he needed?

  Suddenly, she dropped her head on his chest, and he could feel her sob with him. What the hell, he’d cried lots of times. When he won the championship. When Beau won it. When he lost Lisie.

  Over her silky hair, he looked up and saw Elise. She was cryin’ too, of course. She always did melt so easy. After a moment, Cece lifted her head and looked into his eyes. What did she have that he needed?

  And then he knew. It all made sense as the drugs wore off, he saw it so clearly. “You givin’ me a carburetor, missy?
”

  She smiled and wiped her tears, her face all lit up with emotion. “I have two,” she said softly. “And, believe it or not, we’re compatible.”

  An explosion of true joy erupted in his heart. “I believe it,” he said huskily, stroking her hair and looking past her at the only woman he’d ever loved. “Right now, I’d believe just about anything.”

  The child he’d lost had found him, and she was going to save his life. “How…how did you find out that I was sick?” But he knew the answer before she said it.

  “Beau found me.”

  He wiped a tear and looked up at the heart monitor just to be sure he hadn’t really checked out and dropped into heaven after all.

  Not that it could be any better than this.

  Chapter

  Twenty-seven

  At the police station, things moved with a maddening lack of urgency. Nearly insane with irritation, Beau paced as he waited for the detective from Long Pond to talk to him. Finally, after he’d repeated his theory and explained Celeste’s true identity to Tom McMathers, the balding Detective Alexander arrived.

  The detective made no apology. He said they’d been questioning people and waiting for the results of the blood test. Then McMathers wouldn’t even let Beau talk, launching into his own version of Beau’s story about Celeste’s identity.

  “Look, it’s irrelevant who she is,” Beau insisted, his finger tapping on the pile of papers he’d brought with him. “This is hard-core proof that Harlan Ambrose has been embezzling, and that’s motive enough to kill the wife who was about to blow the whistle on him. And these phone records prove the murderer had my cell phone—”

  Detective Alexander picked up the records and let them flutter back onto the table after a quick glance. “Maybe, maybe not, Mr. Lansing. Frankly, it’s your cell phone and you know these people in Connecticut.”

  “I do not—”

  “But your fiancée does.”

  “She’s not my fiancée,” he said, trying to keep the denial out of his voice. He was only digging himself deeper. He took a breath. “Have you questioned Harlan Ambrose? Really grilled him?”