Never Too Late (16 page)

Andrea's father
stepped forward. "Then I'll take my daughter off the island right
away," he said. "We'll leave at once."

"I'm
afraid that's not an option," the inspector said. "Your daughter was
the last person seen with Alessandro Cavallaro before he disappeared. We need her
as a material witness."

"What do
you mean Cavallaro disappeared?" Carter said. "I thought you were
tracking him."

"He
managed to elude us, with help. Alessandro Cavallaro knows whoever he needs to
know, wherever he goes. In fact, we've known for some time he has a base of
operations here on the island."

Jerry looked at
the man in disbelief. "Then why don't you pick him up for
questioning?" he asked, his tone carrying an edge of condescension, which
didn't surprise Andrea. Jerry wasn't a man to stand by when a job needed to get
done, and sending a few armed men into an unsophisticated base camp on a small
tropical island to pick up one man wouldn't seem to terribly challenging to
him.

"We've
never been able to find the place," the inspector replied. "The interior
of Andros Island is one of the largest unexplored tracts of land in the western
hemisphere. It's dominated by hardwood forests with almost impenetrable bush
and mangrove swamps."

"Why do
you believe Cavallaro's still here?" Jerry asked. "Couldn't he have
left on one of the fishing boats, maybe in disguise?"

"Not this
time," the inspector said. "We've checked all fishing and pleasure
vessels in the area and he never returned to the cruise ship. We were searching
for him when we found the body of his contact, another reason we know he's
here. The stamp didn't make the transfer so he knows whoever hired the assassin
to kill the contact is undermining the organization, and has to be stopped.
Make no
mistake,
Alessandro Cavallaro is a very
dangerous man. He'll stop at nothing to protect the interests of the
cartel."

The inspector's
gaze moved from one face to the next, then settling on Andrea, he said,
"Until we learn where Cavallaro is, you should not go off alone or your
life could be in danger. In a couple of days we should have all the information
we need, and you and Mr. Porter will be free to leave the island. In the
meantime, we need to learn who had access to your handbag so we can find the
stamp."

"How much
is the stamp worth?" Andrea asked, wondering just how much money, in the
form of a stamp, she'd unknowingly been carrying around in her handbag.

"Several
million dollars," the inspector said. "The stamp is believed to be a
Treskilling Yellow. If genuine, it will be one of only two in existence, another
reason someone would want the stamp, not for its value as a collectible, but to
have the option of destroying it if he wants
,
in order
to preserve the value of the only other one in existence." He turned to
Jerry. "So it's vital we learn who had access to the handbag before you
returned it to your wife."

"I told
you all I know, inspector," Jerry said. "I got the handbag from the
owner of the Pirate's Cove. When my wife was being carried out of the restroom,
he had her handbag in his hands. I suggest you start with him."

"We
will," the inspector assured Jerry. "We'll also be questioning
everyone who was at the Pirate's Cove last night, along with the staff at the
medical clinic. Any one of them could be involved. This is an extremely
sophisticated operation with a wide net of contacts, all of whom are tight
lipped because their cut of the action is so lucrative."

"Well,
I've told you all I know," Jerry assured him.

"Then I
suppose we're through for now." The inspector's eyes shifted between
Andrea and Jerry, as he said, "If I have further questions, I'll get back
to you. In the meantime, Mr. Porter, I suggest you make an effort to stay with
your wife. We don't have the workforce on the island to give her one-on-one
protection."

Jerry slipped
his arm around Andrea's waist, dragging her to him, and said, "I assure
you, inspector, I'll be with my wife day and night until we leave the
island."

The inspector
nodded before turning to leave, but the look on his face clearly showed his
puzzlement over the very strange marriage of Andrea and Jerry Porter. Just as
Andrea's father's face did... And he would be the person Andrea would be facing
next.

After the two
men left, Andrea's father pinned Andrea with eyes as sharp as a hawk's and
said, "You'd better start explaining. That bastard of a husband standing
behind you has you mucking around in the same gutter you were in when he
dragged you out of college to marry him. I hope to hell you're finally ready to
crawl out."

"She's
not," Jerry said, while stepping around Andrea to stand facing the man
who'd been his nemesis for twenty-five years. But no more. This day was long
overdue. "Andrea, take your mother and go outside," he said in a
sharp voice. "Your father and I have some things to say to each
other." For once, Andrea didn't argue with him.

After the door
closed behind the women, Jerry squared off with his father-in-law. Looking
directly into the eyes of a man who stood as tall as he, a man a
quarter-century his senior, with eyes that held the glint of honed steel, and
said, "Andrea doesn't owe you an explanation and neither do I. You can't
intimidate me, Ellison. You could wreck me financially—buy out my company with
petty cash and destroy it—but you can't destroy me because I'd be right back
building another company. I know your kind. Men with old money and the power it
wields hire my company's services to clean up their messes. But that gutter I
grew up in taught me how to not take crap from men like you who get what they
want by using their name to intimidate people. But you don't intimidate me, and
I'll always have an edge over you because you don't know what I'm capable of
doing and it scares the hell out of you."

Ellison
withdrew an aluminum tube from his lapel pocket and removed the cap.
"You're about to lose your wife, Porter," he said, slipping a cigar
from the tube, "and that scares the hell out of you. For years my daughter
lived in a two-bit apartment pumping out babies when she could have lived in a
house I wanted to give her but you wouldn't take because you're so damn
self-righteous. She resented you for that then and still does. Now she's had
enough of your crap and she's coming home to roost." He clipped off the
end of the cigar with a gold cigar guillotine and tossed the tip into an ashtray.

Jerry eyed the
cigar tip, then fixed his gaze on Ellison, and said, "Let me give you a
little heads up, Ellison. When I took your daughter away from you, you didn't
have the power to stop me because I was offering her the one thing she didn't
have. A way out. She didn't run off to marry me, she ran off to get out from
under your control. That took guts. And she married me when I had nothing. Can
you say the same for your wife? Can you ask yourself if Barbara would have
married you if you'd had nothing? She's a decent woman. Maybe she would have.
But you'll never know, will you?"

Ellison tucked
the cigar in the corner of his mouth. "I still have my wife, Porter,"
he said, eyeing Jerry with venomous delight, "and she doesn't screw around
with other men. Can you say the same about yours?"

 
Deciding not to let this become an issue over
wives, Jerry ignored his comment, and said, "You try to run the lives of
everyone around you, but I refuse to dance to your tune, and you hate it that
Andrea's more like me than you in that respect. In fact, that's what I admired
most about her when we met. She was one of the few people who'd stand up to
Carter Ellison III. Sure, there's nothing I can give her that you can't one up
me on. But I wouldn't give a plug nickel to live in your ivory tower with your
staff of servants, because that's all you have. Take it away from you and you'd
be out on the streets peeing in your pants, wondering what to do next."

Ellison let out
a short guffaw. "I wouldn't be peeing in my pants,
Porter,
I'd be pissing on gutter scum like you."

"I may be
gutter scum in your book," Jerry said, "but at least I know how to
find my way out. If you lost everything you had and ended up there, and some
benefactor felt sorry for you and gave you a hundred thousand bucks to get
started again, you wouldn't know shit what to do with it. But I'd start a new
business, maybe even better than cleaning up other people's messes, and I'd be
right back out there racking in the money from men like you who got it for
nothing."

"You
really are full of crap," Ellison said, the unlit cigar bobbing up and
down in his mouth as he talked, "the kind you get from living in the
gutter."

"I picked
up more than just crap living there," Jerry quipped, eyes on the cigar.
"I learned how to shove it down the throats of pretentious, self-important
jackasses like you. The problem with you is you haven't got your mother's tit
to suck on anymore so you suck on a big fat cigar whenever someone with guts
stands up to you or refuses to jump through your hoops. Well, I have three
daughters who wouldn't jump through your hoops, and they each married men who
are self-starters, who don't need to suck on their mother's tits to be
somebody." He held the man's caustic gaze, certain he'd hit at the core of
the man.

"You also
had a son," Ellison reminded him, "a chip off the old block who you
dragged into that same gutter you're so proud of. But he never came out. You
knew about the booze parties and the street racing in that fast car of his, a
car you bought him. You killed your own son, Porter. You might as well have put
a gun to his head and pulled the trigger." He stood looking at Jerry, the
cigar tucked in the corner of his mouth.

Jerry said
nothing, just held Ellison's triumphant gaze. The man had won this round
because there was nothing more to say because he was right. There had been
times when he'd felt so damn guilty about Scott's death he'd wanted to put a
gun to his own head, but didn't want to disappoint the girls. Ironic. Not
blowing out his brains because he'd let down the kids, like missing one of
their piano recitals, or showing up late for a school play.

"Gotcha
didn't I, Porter," Ellison said, a self-satisfied look on his face.
"You can't one up me on that." To make sure his victory was recognized
he flipped a flame from his butane lighter and held it to the cigar, eyes
focused on Jerry as he sucked on it several times until smoke curled up.

"Rot...
 
in... hell... Ellison," Jerry said in a
low controlled voice. Sweeping open the door, he walked out, slamming it
forcefully behind. He said nothing to the women as he past them and left. Half
way to his place he looked back and saw no one coming. It had been a strident
confrontation and there was no question the women heard it, and for some reason
he'd expected Andrea to come after him, either to rub his face in the shit her
father had thrown at him, or to add her two-bits to her father's final words.
And that was the core of a marital rift that had grown progressively wider
since the night of Scott's accident. And with good reason. Like her father,
Andrea blamed him for Scott's death, and nothing could change that because they
were right.

He hadn't been
back at his bungalow more than fifteen minutes when he heard footsteps on the
deck and turned to find Barbara Ellison standing in the doorway.

"Can I
have a word with you, Jerry?" she asked.

"Yeah
sure, why not," Jerry snapped. "Everyone else has." He
immediately regretted his sharp retort. Barbara had been nothing but decent to
him over the years. Early on she'd been resigned to their marriage, even
staying with them at the lake house on occasion when the kids were growing up.
But her bastard of a husband would be cursing him on his death bed.
"Sorry, Barbara," he said. "That was uncalled for. Come on in."
He walked over to the window and stared at the beach and the iridescent shells
sticking out of the pearly-pink sand, a heady reminder of how it had been when
he saw Andrea standing on the beach and wearing a swim suit that touched every
place he wanted to touch yet knew he shouldn't... And he didn't care because he
wanted her beyond reason... So he simply walked up behind her and dragged the
suit off her. And when she stepped out of it and turned around to face him, and
she was naked, and sleek, and all female curves, and his... He took her on the
beach.

And that's
exactly what it was. A taking. No giving. No trying to pleasure her. No rough
and tumble. He never heard her laughing, that low throaty laugh she got when
they were horsing around and things were starting to get hot and heavy before
settling into making love. Man, that husky laugh turned him on. It was the most
powerful aphrodisiac he could have. The sound was in his head now, and his body
was reacting...

Barbara placed
her hand on his shoulder, and he flinched and turned around. She removed her
hand, and said, "Carter's not a bad man but you have to understand that
after Andrea dropped out of college and ran off with you like she did, it was a
terrible blow to him. Imagine your only child, who'd been the focus of your
life for nineteen years, going against everything she'd been taught, and running
off with a man who had nothing to offer her but determination and big dreams.
But after Carter got over the shock of what Andrea had done, he did something
almost unprecedented for him. He tucked his tail between his legs and came to
you and offered to buy the two of you a house. For Carter it was a peace
offering. For you it was a line drawn in the sand. And when you turned him down
flat, it established a course of action for the next twenty-five years. Two
dominant males, neither willing to give an inch of territory. Andrea is the
territory—the line in the sand—and she's been the pawn between the two of you
ever since."