The Daughter-in-Law (41 page)

They drove along quiet streets, with the driver naming each intersection into his microphone. They turned onto Ocean Drive and after a few minutes the gate came into sight.

“We’re there,” the police officer intoned. “The gate is wide open. We’re going in.” They rolled through the open gate and started down the driveway. Within seconds, they saw Nicole’s car, parked in the driveway and pointed straight at them. “Someone’s here,” the officer reported to his commander. Then he asked, “Anybody recognize the car?” No one did.

They stopped in front of Nicole’s car. Jack and Greg got out. The policeman slid from behind the wheel and stood between the two cars, the shotgun hanging at his side. Lambert climbed the porch steps and went around to the window. The room inside was dark. He moved slowly around the side of the house, pausing at each ground-floor window. The furniture was draped in dust covers. There wasn’t a light on anywhere. He went to the front door and tried the handle. Then he used the key from his collection of keys to all the Donner properties.

Inside, he moved cautiously. He circled the ground floor and then went up the stairs and tried all the doors. There was no one in the house, and no sign that anyone had been there recently.

Jack was waiting at the front door. “They must be out on that boat,” he said, pointing out to the yacht that was beginning to disappear as daylight failed. He and Lambert started down to the dock. The police officer followed at a distance, hiding the shotgun along his leg. Stealth wasn’t really necessary. No one on the boat would be able to make out the men much less the policeman’s weapon.

There was no launch at the dock. They stood helplessly staring out at the outline of the yacht that showed no lights.

“Whoever came in that car has to be out there,” Greg said.

“Yeah,” the officer agreed. “A woman named Nicole Pierce.
That’s the name on the rental agreement.”

“Nicole,” Jack said, sounding surprised. But then he remembered that she had gotten a good head start on them. “It could be her,” he agreed.

“Then they’re all out there. Pam, Nicole, and whoever took Pam,” Greg concluded.

“Did . . . Nicole bring ransom money?” the officer asked. “Did she bring something that the kidnappers wanted?”

“They wanted her,” Jack told him.

They stood silently, watching the night envelop the yacht. Greg and the officer made eye contact. They both knew something had to be done quickly. Greg took on the task of telling Jack.

“They’ve got Pam and now Nicole, Jack. If they have what they want, it may be time for them to get rid of the witnesses.”

Jack understood clearly. “Then we can’t just wait them out, can we?” He focused on the policeman. “What do you have in mind?”

SEVENTY-SEVEN

“B
EN?
” HE was the last person Nicole expected to find. “Where’s Pam?”

“Behind you. The last cabin.” He pointed down the passageway.

“How did you get here?” she asked.

Ben took her shoulders and turned her around. “The last cabin,” he repeated.

She walked ahead of him. “Is she all right?”

“See for yourself.” He reached around her and pushed open a cabin door.

Nicole stepped in and found Pam seated on the edge of a bunk. Instinctively she rushed to her and threw her arms around her. “Are you okay? Did they hurt you?” She heard Pam stifle a laugh. Then Pam’s hands were on her shoulders, pushing her away.

Nicole turned to Ben who filled the cabin doorway. “Is she all right? What did they do to her?”

Ben looked past Nicole to Pam who was still seated on the bunk. “She still hasn’t figured it out,” he said with a satisfied grin.

“Not a clue,” Pam answered. “Ben was worried that you’d just keep running. But I told him you’d come back. Isn’t that what big sisters do?”

Nicole stared at Pam. “You were never kidnapped ...” She was finding it hard to believe what she was beginning to understand. “You faked it, to get me to come back.”

“Very good!” Pam complimented. “You got it on your first try. I’ve been living aboard, working my way through the pâté and the champagne.”

“And you, Ben. You’ve been helping her. So this must be about the money I was given.”

“The money you extorted,” Pam snapped, jumping to her feet. “The money Jonathan was going to invest in my gallery until you came along and played him for a fool.”

“I loved your brother ...”

“Save the sob story, Nicole. Mother had you figured right from the start. You found a mark with a billion dollars and you screwed it away from him. An easy mark, because Jonathan couldn’t resist a great piece of ass. He was a made-to-order chump. Well who’s the chump now, Nicole?”

Nicole was beginning to assemble all the unknowns. Pam’s money was five years away, and Jonathan had had his already. But she couldn’t get her hands on Jonathan’s by killing her brother. Her brother had just taken a wife who was automatically his heir . . .

“I was the one you wanted to kill. It wasn’t supposed to be Jonathan who drowned over the wreck.”

“Very bright of you Nicole. Too bad you were so damn stupid out on the boat. I rigged his regulator and your tank was half Valium. He was supposed to retreat back up to the surface and you were going down to the bottom. Only you mixed up your tanks.”

Nicole staggered and sagged into a chair. She could remember the horror of that evening off the reef in Belize. But what was most clear to her was the expression of shock she had seen on Pam’s face when the younger woman pulled off her mask and saw who was in the boat. She had been expecting it to be her brother, and she had probably rehearsed the sympathy she was going to shower on his recently departed wife. It would have been difficult for her to act grief stricken because Nicole’s lien on Jonathan’s fortune would have vanished along with Jonathan’s interest in building a diving resort. Pam would have a hard time suppressing a smile, much less shedding a tear.

“And the explosion?” Nicole asked through her hands. “I blamed Alexandra ...”

Pam laughed. “So did everyone else. Mother made no secret of hating your guts. She knew you stole her son and she was pretty sure you had killed him. Everyone knew she wasn’t going to let you walk off with a fortune.

“And it was so easy. Just turn the gas on and wait for you to arrive. You wouldn’t know about the alarm signal, and that you had just twenty seconds to push the reset. You’d run around trying to turn off the gas, and you’d probably run up the stairs to be sure Alexandra wasn’t trapped inside. When the time was up, the alarm would send a signal to the gatehouse. The spark from the switch
would have blown you out of my life. They probably wouldn’t have even found what was left of you.”

“But I didn’t go in,” Nicole said, filling out the ending of Pam’s story. “I went down to the bluff to look out at the Sound.” She looked up, puzzled. She could tell that Ben was just as confused as she was.

“So, how did you damn near blow yourself up?” Ben asked.

“A mistake,” Pam answered. “I saw Nicole’s car and thought she had gone in without tripping the alarm. If she was in there, I wanted to be sure that the gas had gotten to her. When she wasn’t, I knew I had to call the whole thing off. I turned off the gas jets and turned off the alarm. The ‘off” switch must have caused its own spark.”

Nicole fixed on Ben. “You were part of all this.”

He raised his hands innocently. “Not me. I was just an adviser. Oh, I did show her how to foul the air regulator. But blowing up the cottage was too crude for my taste.”

“That’s why you wouldn’t transfer the money,” Nicole concluded.

“I did transfer the money, but not to your account. You would have found out when you tried to bring it over to Europe. So we couldn’t let you get away. Sooner or later you’d tell Jack, and he would find out where your money had gone. So, you see, you became the insurmountable obstacle in an otherwise perfect plan. Until we came up with the kidnapping!”

“That was Ben’s idea,” Pam said. “We kidnap me, and make it look like it was your old thug friend who wants to get his hands on you. So when you vanish, everyone goes after him. No one thinks about us. And they assume your money is in some foreign account known only to you. So, no one goes looking for the money.”

Nicole could hardly get her words out. “You did all this . . . for money? Killed your own brother?” She shook her head in disbelief and then said to Ben, “He was your best friend. How could ...” She swallowed hard and couldn’t manage to finish her thought.

Ben looked away from her. He seemed to be talking to a memory when he said, “Jonathan wasn’t very bright, and he certainly never worked very hard. But he had all that money and he loved to flash it around as if he had earned it.” He looked back at Nicole. “It was
never easy being the monkey on the end of his string. I didn’t like

being his court jester. I’m too smart for that.”

“Jesus ...” Nicole stood slowly. “I think I’m going to be sick.” “Poor dear,” Pam mocked. “You probably need some fresh air.”

She nudged Ben. “I think you ought to take her for a boat ride.”

SEVENTY-EIGHT

J
ACK CLIMBED
aboard the police launch and reached back to help Alexandra. Greg was already aboard, standing near the control console and going over plans with the captain. He came aft and sat across from Jack. “They’re not going to show the boat,” he explained. “We’ll loiter on this side of the point, as close as we can get to them without being seen. Then the police are going to put two divers into the water. The divers will get close to the yacht, ready to go aboard.”

“That’s too risky,” Jack barked. But a second later, in a much less authoritative tone, he asked, “Wouldn’t that be dangerous for Pam and Nicole?”

Lambert nodded. “Yes, there are dangers. But the divers won’t be attacking. They’re just getting close, in case anything crazy starts happening. They can be aboard before we even round the point.”

“If they have Nicole, why don’t they release Pam?” Alexandra asked. “That was what they demanded, wasn’t it?”

“Nicole has already been aboard for an hour,” Lambert reminded her. “But we’ll wait. If they send Pam ashore, great. But if they head out to sea, we’ll have to stop them.”

“Why, if it’s dangerous for Pam?” she wondered.

“It’s like a hijacking,” Lambert explained. “You can’t let them take off from one airport to another. That just postpones the inevitable. Sooner or later you have to take the chance and face them down.”

Alexandra looked at her husband. “I hate to force a showdown.”

Greg answered. “The police think their best chance is right here. And under cover of darkness so they can’t see us coming.”

The deck hands took in the lines, and the police boat headed away from its dock. They could see the light tower blinking ahead of them, a half mile off the headlands. But they were staying inside it. They weren’t heading out to sea, but hugging the shoreline
instead. They were getting the divers as close as they could without exposing themselves and alarming Pam’s captors.

Alexandra shivered. The night sea air was cold and she wasn’t prepared for it. Lambert got blankets for both her and Jack.

“I don’t like this,” Jack told him. “We’re taking chances with Pam.”

“I don’t either,” the security officer answered. “But I think it’s all we have. Let’s just take it one step at a time.”

The divers were waiting at the rail, two muscular men in dark wet suits. One of them gave Jack a thumbs-up sign of encouragement. Jack returned it. The boat slowed just fifty yards off a rocky outcropping. The divers waited, watched the speed of the wake, and then dropped over the side.

SEVENTY-NINE

B
EN TOBIN
jammed the barrel of a pistol into Nicole’s side. “Let’s go!” He eased her out of the cabin and then to the foot of the steps. “Take it nice and easy. I’m right behind you.” She moved up the stairs into the saloon and hesitated at the top. Then she felt the gun in her back. “Keep going, out onto the deck, and then down the gangway.”

She moved slowly, glancing from the corners of her eyes in search of some route of escape. But the gun kept bumping against her, reminding her that if she should bolt away she would probably never live to take a second step.

“Why are you doing this?” she tried.

“Keep walking.” He wasn’t going to be deflected by conversation.

“You have a great career. Why are you throwing it all away?”

He laughed softly from the back of his throat. “Ten million dollars,” he said.

They were out on the after deck. Ben took her arm. “This way.” He aimed her around to the starboard side where the gangway led down to the boat.

“Ben, for God’s sake, don’t do this!”

He nudged her to the top step of the gangway.

“Please. You can still walk away from all this. You haven’t hurt anybody.”

“I will walk away, with my cut of the money to go wherever I want and do whatever I want. Isn’t that what you planned to do?”

They reached the bottom and stepped onto the landing where the boat was tied. “You first!” Ben ordered. “Climb in at the bow and sit next to the anchor.”

Nicole knew the plan. He would take her out a mile or so, far enough so that no one would hear the gunshot. Finish her with a single bullet in the head. Then tie her to the anchor and throw her over the side. She would probably never be found. And, if by some
accident she should wash ashore or be hauled up on a lobster line, Jimmy Farr would get all the credit.

“I’m not going Ben,” she told him. “If you’re going to kill me you’re going to have to do it now.”

He took her arm and twisted it behind her. “Get in the boat!”

Nicole fought back and let out a piercing scream.

“Damn you!” Ben cursed and he raised the gun over her head like a bludgeon. Nicole held his arm with her free hand and screamed again. Ben pushed her back and ripped the gun hand out of her grasp. He raised the weapon again and was about to crash it down on her head, when he heard a splash. Something had lunged out of the water at the edge of the platform. He wheeled just as a hand locked around his ankle. His foot was pulled out from under him and he staggered wildly trying to find his balance. Then he was falling over the edge. The gun fired harmlessly into the air and he splashed into the sea.