Ransomed Dreams (13 page)

Had released.

No longer. At the moment he felt like he might crawl right out of his skin.

She was fine? He didn’t think so. The thought of Sheridan in a big city, something she had been so fearful of since the shooting, was driving him crazy. And facing her sister and father, the ones responsible for such hurt throughout her life? No, she couldn’t be
fine
. And what if light was shed on Harrison’s despicable behavior during those years when Sheridan was too young to remember . . . ?

“Padre, I must talk to her.”

The man clapped his hands together once, crashing cymbals to announce something. “Let’s go.”

“What?”

“Finish your soup and then we’ll go.”

Eliot stared at him, not comprehending.

“Señor, we get in your car and we drive thirty minutes to Mesa Aguamiel and use Maria’s phone, and you call señora’s number. Simple.”

Simple.

Eliot took in a long, slow breath. It felt like a gust of hope in his chest. “We could do that.”

Padre Miguel grinned.

Chapter 24

Wilmette

Calissa was going to destroy whatever respect and honor surrounded the name of the honorable Congressman Cole. She was going to lay herself wide open to ridicule, first from her sister and then from the congressional district. Then perhaps even from the state. Maybe the entire country.

It was not a responsibility she chose.

Seated in an upright fetal position, she huddled in a corner of the love seat, her legs folded beneath her. She was wound up tighter than a jack-in-the-box. If the lid did not pop open soon, if she did not speak the truth soon, something inside of her would snap, and she would never move again. They’d have to stick her in the bed next to her dad’s.

Rain slashed against the windows. Occasional thunder boomed. Her nerves were not soothed.

Across the coffee table from her, near the marble fireplace with its crackling and hissing fire, Luke stood beside one of the wingback chairs. Like her, he watched Sheridan and Bram.

They stood in the doorway and shared a lengthy, silent bear hug. Moments before, when Sheridan walked down the stairs, Calissa had noted her hair—damp and in desperate need of styling. She noted her knit pants and oversize shirt—eggplant in color and loose fitting but not enough to hide her excess weight. Still, her sister appeared somewhat refreshed, better than she had earlier.

Perhaps she was ready to hear the surprising news?

The hug finally ended. Bram said, “You never write; you never call; you never visit. What am I? Chopped liver?”

An honest-to-goodness grin creased Sheridan’s face. “Hello, Abram. If I’d known you were cooking brunch, I’d have come sooner. Please tell me you’re fixing dinner too?”

He laughed.

As they teased each other, Calissa twisted one stiff, spiky lock of hair after another. At least she’d had the foresight to assemble exactly the right team for this momentous occasion. What better men to have on hand than Luke and Bram?

When she had introduced them, they immediately sized each other up like a couple of little boys. They’d stopped short of describing how tough their dads were, but she had begun to question her choice.
Men.
When their tone had finally shifted into adult mode, she breathed a sigh of relief.

She knew Luke was an obvious necessity for the meeting. The mysterious figure had proven twice over now that he cared for Sheridan. Now, as he watched her converse with Bram, his face remained inscrutable. His mind probably recorded every word and nuance. What an odd duck. Any other guy would have been fiddling with the fire.

Bram was holding Sher’s hands. “How is Eliot?”

The grin faded.

Calissa tuned them out again, grateful that Bram had agreed to be there. Ages ago, when Sheridan was a senior in high school and butting heads on a daily basis with Calissa and their father, Bram had eased into the role of a steady big brother figure as if he’d always been in it. While Calissa’s relationship with him remained convoluted—he was married for years—his and Sheridan’s was always straightforward.

Calissa suspected that if her sister had had a traditional wedding rather than a private ceremony, Sheridan would have asked Bram and not their father to walk her down the aisle. She had even toyed with the idea that it was Bram who forwarded Sher’s mail from Chicago to wherever in the world it was she lived. When she asked him, though, he only smiled and shook his head.

Now Bram said to Sheridan, “We have some difficult news to tell you, honey.”

Sheridan nodded. What little color had tinted her cheeks now drained away. How had Luke described her on the phone? She was like a porcelain vase on the edge of a shelf. That wasn’t quite it. She looked more like a fragile antique doll, not teetering on the edge but already tumbled from it and badly cracked.

“Shall we sit?” Bram said.

As they sat—Sheridan and Luke in the chairs, Bram beside Calissa on the love seat—Calissa chewed her thumbnail. Bram looked at her, expectant.

But she could not begin. “Sher, do you want some tea? cookies? Are you warm enough? Do you want an afghan? Bram, maybe you ought to add a log. Luke, do you—”

“Liss!” Sheridan’s tone did not fit the fragile porcelain doll image. “Can we just get on with it, please?”

“I’m sorry. It’s just . . . I’ve never wanted not to say something like I don’t want to say this. It’s going to change so many things.”

“Just talk to me. What did you mean in your note? You’re Ishmael and I’m Isaac, and you have old stories to tell me. Right? That makes you the messenger, not the responsible party.” She spread her arms wide, palms up, a clear gesture to get on with it already.

Calissa looked at Bram. “Told you she could figure it out. You didn’t think she’d get the Old Testament reference.”

“Darling, stop stalling.”

She gave a quick nod.

Luke leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Calissa, do you want me to leave?”

“No. You need to be part of this. I promised you information, and this is it. Anyway . . .” With a deep breath, she unfolded her legs, bent over, and picked up a box from the floor. It was shirt-size, white, of sturdy cardboard, the name of an Oak Street boutique in discreet blue script. She set the box on her lap and looked at Sheridan.

Some color had returned to her sister’s cheeks, a good sign that there was some fight left in her.

“I was in the attic a few weeks ago.” Calissa paused. “Wait. Let me back up. For the most part Dad is—was—still sharp as a tack. But he had decided not to run again for office in the next campaign. A wise call given that he’s seventy-four and spending more time in Florida than D.C. or here. He even agreed to sell the house and told me to get started on it.”

“But why?” Sheridan asked.

“Why what?”

“Why retire? Seventy-four isn’t all that old. Until the stroke, wasn’t he healthy as ever? And the district loves him. I should say the machine loves him, that group with the money that gets him elected year after year.”

Calissa winced.

“What? They don’t love him anymore?”

“There’s this new guy.”

Bram said, “Calissa.” A seam between his brows deepened. It was the closest he came to a glower. “Tell her.”

She bit back a sigh. “There is a new guy, young and energetic, but the reason they’re looking at him is because Dad didn’t get an appropriations bill in place, something to do with a Chicago green firm. It doesn’t matter. That’s not what this is about.”

Sheridan shook her head. “It is, Liss. You always have to describe him through rose-colored glasses.”

“Only because yours are so blasted dark. Every hint of light is blotted out.”

“Ladies,” Bram said.

“Sorry. The plain truth is, he’s on his way out anyway and it’s mostly due to his own fault. All right?”

“Apology accepted.” Sheridan exchanged a thumbs-up with Bram. “Why Florida? What’s there?”

“An old friend. Specifically, a lady friend. We haven’t met.” She shrugged. “I signed on with a realty agency and hired a service to do an estate sale. Dad said the things here aren’t important to him. I should get rid of it all. I figured you and I already took the few keepsakes we wanted.”

“Except Mamá’s watercolor of the backyard.”

“Yes.” Their mother had dabbled in painting but gave away everything she did except for that one.

“He wouldn’t let me take it. He always mocked her ‘silly hobby,’ and yet he refused to give that up.”

“I know, hon. You can take it with you this time.”

“How thoughtful.”

Calissa ignored the uppity tone and straightened her shoulders. “So I met with this woman, Edna, to do an inventory for the estate sale. We went through the whole house, basement to attic. We opened trunks and cedar chests. Grandma Cole’s ugly china is still up there.” She pointed toward the ceiling. “And our dolls and games and books. Our baby clothes. Nothing really usable or memorable. Remember how Mamá never liked to get rid of anything?”

Sheridan nodded.

“Since we were kids, it’s all been shoved into the attic and forgotten about. Dad isn’t exactly a housekeeper. Neither am I. Anyway, in one of the cedar chests, Edna and I found linens, a set of encyclopedias, and beneath it all, a locked metal box.” She paused.

“And?” Sheridan said.

“Edna told me that I should take care of it, not her. So I did. Later. Used a hacksaw.” Again she stopped talking.

“What was in it, Liss?”

“I don’t know where to begin.” Calissa caught sight of Bram’s nod of encouragement and cleared her throat. “The papers I found reveal that Dad made several trips to Caracas. Of course we know he met Mamá there. And that he went for committee work, for the House, through the years when we were growing up. But . . . it turns out . . . the whole time he was involved in diamond smuggling.”

“Diamond smuggling?”

Calissa nodded.

“As in carrying them across the border?”

“I’m not sure about that part exactly. He could have. ”

“Then what part are you sure of?” Sheridan wouldn’t slow down.

Calissa glanced again at Bram. “We can’t decipher it all, but it’s apparent that he influenced international trade policies.”

Sheridan sat back. “Oh, my gosh. You have got to be joking.”

Calissa nodded toward the box and whispered, “His notes from meetings are in here. Secret meetings. And there’s a ledger.”

“He took kickbacks.” Sheridan stated it as fact while Calissa kept wondering and hoping. It wouldn’t take much to convince Sheridan that their father was a crook.

“Yes, he took kickbacks. Sometimes in diamonds, which he sold. Sometimes cash. He hid the funds through money laundering.”

Sheridan’s eyes widened. “It’s how he bought this house. How he kept up—”

“He bought this house forever ago, back when it wasn’t expensive.”

“Oh, Calissa, don’t do that. Do not stick up for him. He spent his childhood in parking lots waiting for his parents to come out of a bar. They had nothing. Mamá came from nothing. This house was always out-of-sight expensive in their economy. The house in Virginia was the same. There were his cars, his yacht . . . Oh, I feel filthy. So ugly and filthy. We grew up in luxury because poor people mined diamonds that were bought and sold under the radar because our
father
made it possible.” She pressed a hand over her mouth as if to stop herself from spouting off more.

Calissa turned to Luke. “Can they arrest him?”

“I’d have to know more to figure that one out.”

Sheridan made a noise of disgust. “They should arrest him! Right there on his deathbed. What a despicable life he lived!”

“How recent are we talking about—these activities?” Luke said.

Calissa shook her head. “He’s been off the trade committee for over ten years, and he hasn’t traveled for ages.”

“It’s odd,” Bram said. “The last entry was in 1983.”

“That’s a long time ago. He may have kept other books elsewhere. Or computerized them.”

“Some trade policies really haven’t changed all that significantly over the years. It’s as if someone took over where he left off.”

“Well, he wouldn’t have accomplished such things single-handedly,” Luke said. “Others would be in on it. Maybe still are.”

Bram took the box from Calissa and stood to hand it to Luke. “This is way beyond us. We figured you’d know what to do with the information.”

“I wonder why he chose the attic for these papers?”

“There would have been less people around here than in either of his offices. Calissa said she couldn’t remember the last time she was in the attic. I think he simply forgot about it.”

“I can’t imagine that a man like him would forget something like this. Did you ask him about it, Calissa?”

She began to cry. “Yes. I confronted him. I said, ‘Did you do this? Did you lie and cheat and steal? Did you help with diamond smuggling?’ He never answered. He just collapsed.”

Sheridan stood abruptly. “That’s perfect. God can deal with him and save the government some money.”

“Sheridan! What a terrible thing to say!”

“Terrible is what he was. My question is, why did I have to come all this way to hear further proof of that? What does it matter now what he did? The man was evil personified. Has that changed in any way? I don’t think so.” Her voice rose. “Will it change my life? I don’t think so. Knowing that he cheated and hurt countless people only affirms what I already knew. What do you want from me, Calissa? Why did you bring me here?”

Hot anger gushed through Calissa. “You mean why would I want you beside me, helping figure out what to do about all this? You mean why would I want you beside me while he dies? You mean why would I ever expect you to be a sister and pull your own weight in this family? Something you’ve never, ever done?”

“Well.” Sheridan exhaled a sharp breath. “You finally said it. Good for you.” She strode out of the room.

Calissa moaned and curled back up into a ball. She leaned into Bram and waited for the most interminable moment of her life to pass.

Chapter 25

Sheridan marched through the old house, blind with anger. Her steps carried her to the back, into the solarium. It had always been her favorite room with its bright southern exposure. When she was small, lush plants and an earthy scent filled it. After her mother’s death, different housekeepers would bring in plastic greenery to replace the browning ferns, philodendrons, dieffenbachias, and others.