OVER HER DEAD BODY: The Bliss Legacy - Book 2 (31 page)

Christiana smiled. “I think you’ve already forgotten the ‘she hates me’ part.”

“She’ll get over it.”

Christiana eyed her. “Will you get over it, Keeley? The blackmail? The killing of Jimmy Stark? What it all might mean to you and Mayday House?”

“I honestly don’t know. They say there’s always some good to be found in the worst situations”—she thought of Gus—“but for now I think I’ll let the universe, and Dinah Marsden, unfold as it will. Take it from there.” She stopped, her hand on the old metal knob. “Erica’s not the only one who’s on shifting ground. Mary’s forgiveness calls have made the earth heave under all of us. I can’t help wondering if she’d have made the calls if she’d known the trouble they’d cause.”

“It was her way, her time, to set things right. She can’t be blamed for that.”

“I know.” Keeley studied her new friend, one she was certain she would value forever. “So tell me, what made you so darn smart, Miss Fordham?” Christiana’s answering smile held a touch of irony, or maybe sadness. “Considering the mistakes I’ve made in my life,” she replied, “I have no answer for that.”

“You don’t have to answer. I know all about the cost of mistakes.” She peered through the window in the door. “I see Gus, Erica and Paul.” She took a deep breath. “I think the show is about to begin.”

Keeley and Christiana stepped into the kitchen at the same instant Dinah Marsden entered from the hall.

She was exactly how Keeley had pictured her, cool, beautiful, and with a model’s air of self-possession. Her jeans fit as if they were tailored, and she wore a soft, dark green sweater and one immense diamond that glittered sharply under the overhead light.

So this was Gus’s … What?

Keeley settled on the word
ex
.
She pictured them together, these two, both of them so charmed, blessed with physical perfection and the deep inner assurance that came with it. They must have been a match for one another, she thought—except for their one disconnect—the secrets and pain they held from one another, their fear of sharing their souls.

Keeley’s stomach did a low roll, and she flattened her hand against it, took a seat, and went back to taking a good look. Dinah’s wide-set eyes and stature were much like Christiana’s, she decided, but it was there the resemblance ended. Both women were beautiful but in different ways. One warm. One cool.

“You’re Keeley Farrell.” Dinah eyed her speculatively. “Mary’s goddaughter.”

“Yes.” Keeley’s courtesy reflex prodded her to add the usual nice-to-meet-you phrase, but it wouldn’t come out.

Without another word, Dinah took a seat at the head of the long kitchen table, putting her between Keeley and Christiana. She gave Christiana a quick nod but said nothing.

Gus strolled in. Keeley expected he’d stand by her, but he walked past her without a glance and took up his usual post—as far away from everyone else in the room as he could get—and leaned against the counter.

Dinah’s eyes followed his every movement. Hungry eyes. Carnal eyes. Possessive eyes.

The whole scenario was uncomfortable odd and constrained. Keeley looked up at Gus and frowned, and he acknowledged her with the barest shake of his head, his expression remote, his face impassive.

When Dinah stopped staring at Gus, she turned to Erica and Paul Stark, both of whom were now sitting, Erica tensely, Paul somberly, at the opposite end of the table from her. Her gaze skipped over Erica. “You’re Paul Stark.”

He nodded.

“You look like your father.”

From what Keeley could see, her remark didn’t make either of them happy.

She looked around the kitchen then. “This place hasn’t changed a bit. Except for the color.”

“We’re not here to critique Mayday’s decor, Dinah. Just start,” Gus said.

She shot Gus an irritated glance, and rubbed her throat—the massive diamond on her hand glittering in the cool kitchen light. Finally she stared down the table at the Starks. “Where is the master?” she demanded.

“Seattle. In a safe place,” Paul said. His expression, flat since he’d arrived in the kitchen, seemed to go flatter.

“You’ll give me all the copies.”

“Yes.”

She looked up at Gus and raised a questioning brow.

“You’ll get them,” Gus said, not moving a muscle. “I’ll make sure of it.”

At his cold, assured tone, Keeley’s stomach rolled again. There was a dark power in Gus, and it frightened her at the same time as it drew her to him. She knew enough about his life to understand where the darkness and determination came from. He’d needed both to survive.

Keeley watched Dinah nod her head, spread her hands on the table in front of her, and breathe deeply. “Okay,” she finally said, to everyone and no one. “Here goes. What Mary Weaver told you was true. She did kill Jimmy Stark … your father”—she glanced at the Starks and Christiana—“but it was an accident. She would have admitted to it then, but I wouldn’t let her, because I didn’t see the point.”

“Jesus,” Erica said, shaking her head and looking away.

“Go on,” Paul said, his tone clipped.

Dinah glanced at them both, unperturbed. “Look, if I could sugarcoat this story, I would. But I can’t. I met your dad in a bar, we hit it off. He offered me a decent amount of money to make the film, I was broke, so I agreed. Figured there wasn’t much difference between doing it behind closed doors, or in front of a camera.”

She rubbed her forehead, looking as if she’d discovered there was a difference after all. “It happened fast. All of it. I was on the set the next day. I worked for maybe a week making something called … can’t remember the name of it—”

“Bedtime Blonde,” Erica offered. “Cute, huh?”

Dinah ignored her. “I was twenty-one, maybe twenty-two. Jimmy was quite a bit older. He had some charm then—and money. When he came on to me, I thought that was okay. And, yes, I knew he had a wife somewhere.” She shrugged. “When he didn’t want me to make any more films, that was okay, too. We had a thing for a few months, then I—like a zillion stupid women before me—got pregnant.”

Erica shifted in her chair, her face tight as timber.

Dinah got up from the table and went to stand beside Gus at the counter, shoulder to shoulder. “Frankly, I was too damn scared to abort, and just about then is when things between Jimmy and me got ugly. Which made me even more sure I didn’t want any kind of long-term relationship with him—pregnant or not.” She glanced at the Starks. “Your daddy was a mean bastard, kiddies. But I’m guessing you already know that.”

Neither of the Starks leaped to their father’s defense. Paul’s jaw was locked so hard it looked paralyzed; Erica’s gaze dropped to the table.

“Funny how things go.” Dinah went on. “When the whole thing started between us, he couldn’t keep his hands off me—then he couldn’t keep his fists off me. It got worse when he found out I was pregnant. After a bad bout, I called Mary. When I told her about Jimmy, and my pregnancy, she told me to come here. Home she called it. Just get on the first bus to Erinville, she said.”

“Erinville is your home?” Keeley said. This was news to her.

“I grew up a few miles from this house. When I left, I never intended to come back, but there I was broke, pregnant, with a couple of puce-colored eyes, and nowhere to go. Mary saved my life,” she said. “I haven’t forgotten that.”

Christiana spoke up. “He found you, didn’t he? And he came here to get you.”

Dinah’s gaze, which for a time had seemed hazy and unfocused, zeroed in on Christiana. “Yes. He showed up at Mayday a few days before I was due—close to midnight.” She stood, wrapped her arms around herself as her daughter had done a few minutes earlier while on the back porch with Keeley. “Mary tried to head him off at the door, but he pushed her aside and found me in the room next to hers.”

The one Gus is in now, Keeley thought.

“He didn’t waste any time, went on about me leaving him, taking his kid. After he’d called me every name in the book, he said he wanted me back. I told him to”—she looked at Keeley, shrugged—“I told him to fuck off. After that, it got ugly fast. He hit me, and I hit him back—with a book, cut his lip.” She looked annoyed. “It didn’t hurt him, of course, but it sure as hell enraged him. He lost it, came at me with both fists, yelling about how no ‘fucking porn slut’ was going to raise a kid of his.” She stopped. “He hit me in the belly.” She put a hand on her stomach and glanced at Christiana. “That’s when Mary and Aileen showed up.”

Keeley’s blood backed up in her veins, and words she might have said turned to sharp stones in her mouth.

Her mother had been involved…

The idea wouldn’t gel in her mind. She knew Gus was looking at her, but she fixed dry eyes on Dinah, desperate to hear the complete story—not to think until she had all the facts.

“They both came at him from behind, screaming, pulling, shoving … Whatever they could do, they did. They managed to get him off me—or at least distract him—but then he turned on them. First, he hit Aileen, who was only slightly less pregnant than I was. She went down hard, hit her forehead on a table, and was out cold in seconds. From that point, it got even crazier. He got hold of me again, started choking …”

When her words trailed off, the only sounds left in the room were the rain splattering against the kitchen window and the humph, humph of the old furnace in the cellar below.

Dinah twisted her lips, and glanced away, then back again to look at them all. “That’s when Mary hit him with the lamp.”

“A lamp?” Gus echoed. They were the first words he’d spoken since Dinah started speaking.

“One of those brass ones. They used to be in the bedrooms here. Heavy old things. Mary got rid of them after—”

“I get the picture,” Gus said. “Go on.”

“Jimmy dropped like a stone. Went down right on top of Aileen. I remember that, because we had to pull him off. At first we thought he was just knocked out. Unconscious.” She pushed away from the counter, went to the back door, and stared into the black, wet night. “He was dead. I guess Mary’s lamp attack landed just right, somewhere near the base of the skull. There wasn’t even a lot of blood.” She stopped. So far she’d been cool, unmoved. Now she shivered. “It all happened so fast.”

Gus said, “What happened then?”

“Aileen started moaning, trying to get up, so we did what we could for her. I remember the cut on her head was quite deep.”

Keeley remembered the pale one-inch scar on her mother’s forehead, remembered asking her about it, remembered her touching it, then looking away.
“From a fall, my dear one.”
she’d said, “a clumsy fall.”

“… So we dealt with Aileen, bandaged her head,” Dinah said, and Keeley was drawn back to that horrific night. “Anything so we didn’t have to think about the dead man lying on my bedroom floor. Then, just about the time we were trying to figure out what to do next”—she smiled grimly—“with my usual perfect timing, I went into labor.”

Christiana’s eyes, fixed intently on her mother, silvered with tears.

“Mary made me lie down,” Dinah said. “Told me to calm down and breathe. She might as well have told me to visualize a Polynesian beach while I was naked in a blizzard.” She walked back to the table and took the seat she’d vacated between Keeley and Christiana. She shot a defensive gaze at her daughter. “You were born not long after.”

Christiana brushed at her tears, nodded, but said nothing.

“With our father lying dead on the floor,” Erica said, her face a mask of disgust.

“Not the prettiest image in the world, is it?” Dinah laced her fingers together and put her joined hands on the table. She looked around the group, all trace of emotion wiped from her face. “And now I’ll take questions from the floor.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?” Keeley asked, determined to wring every bit of information she could from the untouchable woman sitting beside her.

“Good question,” she said. “And totally expected. For an hour or so, Mary and Aileen were busy delivering a baby”—another quick glance at Christiana— “and when that was done, I wouldn’t let them call anyone.”

“Did they want to?” Keeley asked.

“Oh, yeah, they wanted to, all right.”

“How did you stop them?”

“A lot of hysteria, a lot of begging—and a big dose of commonsense. Mary had killed a man, for God’s sake. The whole thing was … chaotic. The repercussions unthinkable.” Her expression turned angry, frustrated. “We were all scared out of our minds. Me, because if the police got involved, Jimmy’s dirty little film business would be exposed—and my part in it. Hell, the papers would love the porn angle. It would have been seriously ugly. I’d have been in every paper from here to Mexico.” She stopped. “And so would Mary—and her precious Mayday House. There was no point in letting a scumbag like Jimmy ruin all our lives.” Gus moved away from the counter to stand by the table and loom over Dinah’s shoulder. “And you sold that crap to Mary Weaver.”

She gave a slight shrug. “It was easier to get rid of the body. Pretend it never happened. Everyone saw that.”

“Even my mother?” Keeley asked, her stomach filled with snakes, her mind alive with warring images.

“Your mother would have jumped into a live volcano for Mary,” Dinah said. “She didn’t want to see her hurt—possibly go to jail. Plus she had her own reasons. Something about not wanting the publicity. At least that’s what she said. Actually, she was easier to convince than Mary.” She gave Keeley a direct look. “As I said, she had her reasons. She didn’t tell me what they were, and I didn’t ask.” She shrugged. “We’re talking about Mayday House, here, remember. Everybody had a past, everybody had a secret.”

“Speaking of secrets, where’s the body?” Paul interjected, the same inscrutable expression on his face at the end of Dinah’s confession as there had been at the beginning.

“I have no idea.”

Again the room went quiet, and Dinah rose from the table. She was tired, Keeley saw, and trying hard not to let it show. Probably knew it wouldn’t garner any sympathy from this room. “I’d just had a baby. I was exhausted. The last thing I remember before falling asleep was Mary telling me ‘not to worry.’ She and Aileen would take care of things, she said. When I woke up, the body was gone. She didn’t tell me what they’d done with it, and I never asked.” Dinah headed for the door, stopped when she got there, and surveyed the gathering with a frigid calm before settling her gaze on Paul. “I’ve told you everything I know, which means I’ve kept my part of the bargain. Now you keep yours. Get me that film.” She walked out.