Closer Home (6 page)

I just look at her.

She has the decency to shuffle her feet and flush, but still persists. “My new camera is ruined. That’s like a thousand-dollar investment. Maybe he’ll give me another lead.”

“My sister is dead. Are you going to find me another one?”

“I didn’t think of—”

“You need to start thinking. Like Dale said at the funeral, have a little respect. Now, I’m going to walk you out through the house. And you’re going to stop spying on people who want to be left alone.”

“His name is Dale?”

It’s hopeless. Lips tightly sealed, I lead her, shivering and dripping, across marble tile and Persian carpets, hoping that Ariel doesn’t make an appearance.

Just before I slam the front door on her woebegone self, I have an idea.

“Give me your business card. I’m sure you have one.”

“Are you going to—I mean—will you report me to the cops?”

“Just give it to me.”

Another dig through sodden pockets and she holds out another soggy piece of cardboard. Melody Smith, photographer.

“Melody, huh? Good luck with that camera.”

I slam the door. It’s a satisfying sensation to hear that sound reverberate through the marble-tiled entry area. It would be even more satisfying to smash something. Instead, I call Ricken. I’m pretty sure he’s not accustomed to being up this early, but hey. Maybe he hasn’t even gone to bed. I’d love to catch him out in a casino, the music of the pull slots jangling in the background. Tie loose, suit rumpled, despair in his eyes.

The phone goes directly to voice mail. I don’t leave a message.

I make my way back to the kitchen to find the cook already hard at work. From the looks of things, we’ll be hosting a small army with very expensive tastes. I set my mug down in the sink and talk to her back.

“Do you think you could still get me some eggs?”

She glances over her shoulder. “I can send someone to the store.”

“While they’re at it, could we get a copy of
Need to Know
?”

At that, she stops dicing onions and turns to look at me. “What do you want with a piece of trash like that? We get the newspaper delivered every morning.”

“I need to see something.”

She shakes her head and makes a clucking noise with her tongue. “You need to hold to the memories of your sister that are real. That rag is all made up. You hear?”

I want to hug her for that, but instead I shrug. “There’s a story I need to see.”

“Suit yourself,” she says. “Eggs and one junk paper, coming up.”

As it turns out, I needn’t have gone to the trouble. Ricken turns up a couple of hours later with an armful of tabloids. The only way he could look more like the cat who ate the canary would be if he actually had yellow feathers stuck to his chin.

Before I glance at the magazines, I make my first demand. “I want your house key.”

“What?”

“You wander in and out of here like you own the place. Do you live here? Were you sleeping with her?”

“I don’t understand. Did something happen?”

He rests a hand on my shoulder, lets it slide down my arm. I’m not sure if it’s meant to be a seductive gesture or a soothing one. Either way, his touch makes my skin crawl.

I jerk my arm away. “There was a reporter in the pool this morning.”

He blinks at that. “What was she doing in the pool?”

“I put her there.” I shove his business card at him. “Care to explain?”

He accepts the damp rectangle gingerly, holding it with his fingertips. “Now, Lise. Is that what’s bothering you? Of course I can explain.”

I grab one of the tabloids out of his hands. Sure enough, there’s a picture of me and Dale, his arm around me, head bent protectively over mine. I’m gazing into his face, and even I think we look like lovers.

“You’re encouraging this shit!”

“Of course I am. This will totally raise the price on the memoir. And sales of her last album are already way up. You, my dear girl, are money in the bank. Everybody wants to know about the mysterious sister who has inherited the fortune. And about your lover, of course. It couldn’t get any better.”

“I don’t understand how lies about me and my friend have anything to do with anything.”

He shakes his head and wags a finger at me. “You don’t understand show business.”

Well, he’s got that right. The pictures make my stomach turn. I should call Dale, but my hands start to sweat at the very thought. How do I even bring this up? Everybody in Colville will be talking about it. His friends, his clients.

“The cameras follow the money,” Ricken says. “Callie’s dead. You’re not. Do your job right, and there will be even more money. Now, we have a lot of work to do. Strike while the iron’s hot! The team will be over again this afternoon. You can return the contracts, and then tell us everything about Callie’s childhood. We can use that to play on emotions for a while, keep things moving. Of course, everyone’s very interested in you now, too, so we’ll need to work on your image.”

I flip through the tabloids.

Redfern Family Back from the Grave!

The Truth about Why Callie Lied!

Imposter Inherits Redfern Fortune!

Redfern Heiress Caught with Secret Lover!
This headline is accompanied by a picture of me with Dale, and followed up by our yearbook photos.

I shove the magazines aside in disgust. “Here’s another idea. How about we let Callie rest in peace? There’s already plenty of money.”

This trips him up. The concept is so foreign, it sets his jaw and brain at cross-purposes. His mouth opens and closes soundlessly before he pulls himself together. “Have you looked over the contracts yet?” he asks.

Apparently my face expresses guilt, because Ricken shakes his head and makes a clucking noise of disapproval. “You must pay attention, Lise. None of us can act without your permission. Inheriting this kind of money is not a game; it is serious business. You have a responsibility.”

That word breaks something inside me. My whole life, I’ve been responsible for everybody. For Callie, up until she got pregnant and ran away. For my mother when she was depressed and my father when he was drunk. For making sure groceries got bought and lunches made and laundry done. For arranging my father’s funeral and getting my mother into a nursing home. And now Callie’s gone and got herself killed and left me saddled with a bunch of problems I don’t know how to solve.

“I don’t give a damn about the money,” I tell Ricken. “Go ahead and have your little media party, if you must, but leave me and Dale out of it. You hear me?”

My words slide off him like water off a duck’s back. “It’s too late for that, I’m afraid. Once the media get their teeth into a story . . . well, you’ll just have to ride it out.”

I want to kick him out of the house, but the ugly truth is, I’d be lost without him. I compromise by taking the conversation full circle.

“Give me your house key.”

“Annelise—”

“Give it!”

With a sigh, and an expression that clearly conveys his belief that I’m behaving like a capricious child, he pulls out his key ring and removes a key. I know damn well it’s not the only one in his possession. Hell, he’s probably given them out to reporters and photographers so they can sneak in and take pictures while I’m sleeping. Mentally I add
get locks changed
to a growing list of things to do.

“The team will be here at one. And the party’s at six,” he calls after me as I stalk away.

I give him a middle-finger salute and keep walking. He can have both the meeting and the party without me. Maybe I can go somewhere for a week or two. Use my credit card, book a flight, run away. If I step out of the limelight for a bit, maybe the press will forget about me and life can go back to normal.

A wonderful idea all around, except for one small detail.

Ariel.

The world settles back onto my shoulders. I need to grow up. Tell Ariel the truth about the will, sign the documents, and accept the facts.

I find her in her bedroom, folding clothes into a suitcase.

“What are you doing?”

She barely glances at me before turning to an open dresser drawer and pulling out a stack of underwear. “Obvious, isn’t it?”

“Let me rephrase. Where are you going?”

“On a trip.”

“You’re only sixteen. You can’t just take off without—”

She whirls to face me. “Where were you before, with all of the rules? Mom didn’t care. I took off last summer—it took her two days to notice I was gone. And then she had Ricken come get me.”

Her hands are clenched into fists. She looks nothing like her mother, and yet I recognize perfectly the way she stands, the defiant angle of her chin. Callie used to look at me like that when I got in the way of something she wanted. There was no point fighting with her once she got that expression on her face.

I collapse onto Ariel’s bed. “God. Ricken is reason enough to run away in the first place.”

She laughs and her body relaxes a little.

I start breathing again. I gather up all my courage and open my mouth to tell her about the will. But just then she looks up at me and asks, “What happened between you and my mom, anyway?”

My throat locks. The moment stretches as I search for words that will evade the truth without telling an outright lie. At last, I clear my throat and look away. “It wasn’t one thing, really. It was a long grocery list.”

“Don’t give me that shit about how you just drifted apart. Everybody lies to me. I thought maybe you’d be different and tell me the truth.”

“Ariel . . .”

“I remember. We used to visit you. You visited us. And then we didn’t. I want to know what really happened.”

My hands twist together, fingers laced so tight it hurts. My voice comes out small and childlike, so quiet I almost don’t hear it myself.

“She stole my song.”

“She what?”

“‘Closer Home.’ I wrote it. That last time you visited, I sang it to her.”

“Oh.” Ariel’s hands go still.

My eyes drop to my own hands, the fingernails blanching yellow white with the pressure. My chest feels so tight I wonder if I’m having a heart attack. Breathing is a problem, but I manage to keep the air going in and out. “She came home for our father’s funeral, your grandpa. I don’t know if you remember.”

“Sorta. There was the church, and the graveyard. I didn’t really know him, but I remember all the people crying. And food.”

“Lots of food.”

“I remember falling asleep while you and Mom played guitars and sang. And then we didn’t come home anymore. Even to see Grandma.”

“I called Callie once, after the song hit gold. I told her to never come back.” My voice is still small and quiet. It has to be to squeeze past the knot in my throat. “Mom missed her.”

The truth is, I missed her, too. I kept waiting for her to call, to tell me she was sorry. Maybe to offer to share something of her fame.

“Sometimes I hate her,” Ariel says.

“Ariel . . .”

Her face is set, jaw clamped. “I know. She’s dead. So now it’s supposed to be all sweetness and light and we never say anything bad about her.”

I do know. It’s easier to hate her than to let myself feel anything else. But Ariel needs to hear the good things, much as it hurts me to dredge them up.

“When you were little, before she got into the music, everything revolved around you. Everything. When you were born, the first couple of days after she brought you home from the hospital, she wouldn’t let anybody hold you. She was so tired, getting up with you nights, she was falling asleep in the chair with you in her arms. I told her to go to bed and let me take care of you, just for a couple of hours, but she wouldn’t do it.”

“Well, that certainly didn’t last. I guess I wasn’t what she wanted after all.”

“You were perfect. She was terribly young. No older than you are now when she got pregnant. I know she loved you. The fame pulled her away, but she always loved you.”

Ariel changes the subject. “So how did you find out, about the song? Did she tell you?”

I shake my head. “I got into my car one day and turned the radio on just in time to hear the DJ say, ‘And here’s a new one from Callie Redfern, burning up the charts.’ And then ‘Closer Home’ started to play . . .”

Callie could sing. No doubt about that. And she had a kick-ass band to back her. “Closer Home” never sounded so good when I sang it. But she was thoughtless and careless, and now I can’t put off telling Ariel the news.

“You didn’t come to the meeting.”

She shrugs. “Why bother? Morgan was just going to ramble on in legal speak about who inherited what. And Ricken would be moping around and trying to look all grief-stricken while lusting after Mom’s money. If I’d been there, I might have hit somebody.”

“Ricken. If you’re going to hit somebody, ever, pick Ricken.”

She grins, then turns back to her packing. “So, what do I get?”

“A cool million. When you turn twenty-one. And money for college.”

Her hands stop moving, and she gives me a level stare. “I know damn well she was worth a whole lot more than that. Who gets the rest of it? That slimeball Ricken?”