Payback Page 5

  “No, or at least it’s only indirectly about Kate.” It dawned on Luke with sudden, piercing clarity that it was precisely because Ron had deceived his family for almost three decades that he owed Avery the truth. She was an intelligent, mature woman who didn’t deserve to be lied to, even if the lies were supposedly for her own good.

  He spoke quickly, before he could lose his resolve. “There’s no easy way to break this news, Avery, so here it is. Earlier this month I was having dinner with my sister at a restaurant in suburban Washington, D.C. While we were there, I’m fairly sure…scratch that. I’m confident I saw Ron in the restaurant. He was with a woman about my sister’s age, mid-to late thirties. Ron and this woman were eating dinner, but when Ron realized I’d seen him, he quickly got up and left. To be frank, it seemed to me that he ran away.”

  Avery’s body stilled, all movement so controlled that even her breathing was invisible. When she finally spoke, after several seconds of utter silence, her voice sounded husky. “Did Ron look ill? Injured?”

  “No, he looked well.” Luke realized she was the first person to ask him about Ron’s well-being, as opposed to launching into an instant denial of the possibility that he might be alive. “He was thinner than when I last saw him, which was at the birthday dinner he threw for you in early March. He looked fitter and more tanned, but unmistakably Ron.”

  “You say he ran away when you tried to speak to him?”

  “Yes, he did. I’m quite sure he wanted to avoid me.” Luke once again decided against cushioning the truth with a comforting lie. There had been more than enough lies already, most of them perpetrated by Ron himself.

  Avery looked up and her eyes were no longer tranquil; they were now a tormented, storm-tossed gray. “Are you telling me Ron ran away because he recognized you and didn’t want to be confronted?”

  Luke winced inwardly. “I’m sorry, Avery, but that’s exactly what I think happened.”

  She made a distressed sound, hastily suppressed. She stared for several long moments at her hands. Then she turned to him, her ghost-pale face a silent plea for help. “I’m embarrassed to admit I have no idea what I should do next. Tell me, Luke. What must I do? Should I go to the police?” She gripped the edge of his desk, the white-knuckled intensity of her grip all the more devastating because she was trying so hard to hide the signs of her inner turmoil.

  “I wish I knew how to advise you, Avery. I’ve already tried to inform the cops, here and in Miami, but they didn’t believe a word I told them and they had zero interest in reopening the investigation into Ron’s disappearance. I’d be amazed if you get any help from them. In fact, if you want to ignore what I’ve just told you, nobody will care. Not the cops, that’s for sure.”

  “How can I ignore something so important just because the authorities aren’t interested? Ron might be in trouble….”

  Luke resisted the urge to say Ron hadn’t looked troubled to him. In fact, the bastard had looked as if he was thoroughly enjoying his meal—and the company of the woman eating dinner with him—at least until Luke brought their cozy night to a swift end.

  “Most people will advise you to pay no attention to my story, you can be sure of that,” Luke said flatly. “It’s definitely what the police would tell you.”

  “Perhaps, but I’m not really interested in the opinion of the police.” Avery’s voice picked up a healthy note of anger. “The Miami detective in charge of the investigation formed his theory of the case the moment they identified one of the blood stains in the hotel room as coming from that Julio Castellano person. Castellano was an illegal immigrant and a convicted murderer, so the police essentially ended their inquiries at that point. Radio talk show hosts raged about illegal immigrants committing crimes for a few days. Then the media attention moved on, and so did the attention of the police. I don’t think the Miami cops even looked very hard for Castellano, despite the fact that he was their chosen suspect. They assumed he was in Mexico and left it at that.”

  “You sound as if you’ve never accepted the cops’ theory about what happened to Ron.”

  “I did at first.” Avery hesitated for a moment. “Later, I changed my mind.”

  “Any special reason for the change?”

  She hesitated again and Luke got the strong impression that she was choosing her words with care. “Did you know that Adam, my youngest brother, has met Julio Castellano?”

  Luke was astonished. “No, I had no idea. You mean your brother met Castellano before he was accused of murdering Ron? That’s an amazing coincidence. Is Adam sure it’s the same man, not just the same name?”

  Avery shook her head. “No, that isn’t what happened. My brother met Castellano this past summer. Ron had been missing for several weeks by then and Castellano was already the prime suspect in his murder.”

  Luke frowned. “But if your brother found Castellano, why in the world isn’t the guy in custody?”

  “It’s a long story. The short version is that Adam flew to Belize on the trail of some money that was missing from Ron’s estate. My brother traveled with Megan Raven, Ron’s other daughter by his Wyoming wife. Adam and Megan were married recently, so she’s my sister-in-law on top of everything else.” Avery paused after spelling out the ramifications of the relationship, as if, even now, she had trouble absorbing the reality of her supposed husband’s double life.

  She gave her head a little shake. “Anyway, it seems Adam and Megan were rescued from a life-threatening situation in Belize by Julio Castellano. Adam is anything but a soft touch, and yet he’s convinced not only that he and Megan would have died without Castellano’s help, but also that the man isn’t a murderer.”

  “But Castellano’s been accused of killing three different people,” Luke protested. “And he’s been convicted of the first two murders! I’m sure I remember reading that at the time the police in Miami named him as their only suspect.”

  “I know.” Avery’s shoulders lifted in a slight shrug. “According to Adam, Castellano claims the first death was an accident and that the police were covering up a crime by one of their own when they pinned the second murder on him.”

  “Well, yeah, Castellano would claim something like that, wouldn’t he?” Luke didn’t bother to hide his skepticism. “If you want to find a thousand innocent men all in one place, go visit your local prison.” The idea that a convicted felon implicated in three murders might be innocent of all of them struck Luke as barely this side of absurd. Then he remembered that if Ron Raven was alive, Julio Castellano was categorically innocent of at least one of the crimes he’d been accused of committing.

  “Has your brother informed the cops that their prime suspect in Ron Raven’s murder is hiding out in Belize?” He gave a wry smile. “Where the heck is Belize, anyway?”

  Avery almost managed an answering smile. “I’m glad you don’t know, either. I had to look it up myself. It’s a tiny country that shares borders with Guatemala and Mexico.”

  “Is it one of those places where criminals go to hide?” Luke asked. “Is that why Castellano is there?”

  “I don’t believe so. It’s a former British colony and the total population is around half a million, so it’s not exactly a place where you can disappear into the teeming masses.”

  “So why would Castellano be there?” Luke found the story of Adam’s encounter increasingly odd the more he heard.

  “According to my brother, Castellano was born in Belize and the police here were mistaken when they identified him as Mexican.”

  “Can that possibly be right?” Luke shook his head. “Man, I’m willing to buy a certain level of police incompetence, but your brother is basically suggesting that the cops have the entire story on three separate killings screwed up in every detail, right down to the citizenship of the guy accused of the murders!”

  “My initial reaction was the same as yours, that Castellano had every reason to lie to my brother. The police in Miami conducted a thorough investigation, so why not accep
t their conclusions? But Adam was pretty convincing. On top of that, you’re telling me now that you may have seen Ron. If you’re correct, that means Castellano can’t possibly have murdered him. Since he isn’t guilty this time around, it does give cause to wonder if the police might have been wrong on the previous occasions, as well.”

  “Even if Ron is alive, we don’t know what happened the night he disappeared,” Luke pointed out. “There’s no reason to give Castellano a free pass. Ron might have managed to trick him and escape. In which case Castellano would be guilty of attempted murder at the very least.”

  Avery was silent for a moment. Then she shook her head. “If Castellano tried to kill Ron and didn’t succeed, why is Ron still hiding? Why didn’t he come home and identify Castellano as the would-be killer? Even if Ron was injured or suffering from amnesia for a while, it seems his memory is in full working order now. You yourself said that he ran away when you saw him. That means he recognized you and didn’t want to talk to you. Why doesn’t Ron want to be discovered? Who is he hiding from?”

  “Castellano is the logical suggestion,” Luke said. “He’s a convicted criminal and his blood was in the hotel room, so there must have been a fight.”

  “Not necessarily. The fact that Castellano’s blood was in the hotel room doesn’t provide any information about why he was there.”

  “Why else would he have gone to Ron’s hotel room if not for robbery or some other crime?”

  “He might have been there for the simple reason that he was an accomplice of Ron’s,” Avery suggested. “If Ron wanted to disappear, what could be more convincing than staging a room to look as if he’d been fighting for his life against a known killer?”

  Avery seemed as determined to believe Ron was alive as the police were determined to believe he was dead. Luke found himself in the bizarre position of trying to rein in her willing acceptance of his own story. “But if Ron isn’t hiding from Castellano, who is he hiding from?”

  “His families,” Avery said quietly. “Both of them.”

  “That can’t be the explanation.” Luke hoped he sounded convincing. “Avery, if Ron was tired of his families, why not say so? You don’t go to the huge trouble of faking your own death just to avoid the hassle of getting divorced!”

  “Most men don’t go to the huge hassle of maintaining two marriages, two homes, two completely separate lives. Most men aren’t bigamists. Ron apparently doesn’t react like most people.” With a sudden, jerky movement Avery pushed back her chair. “The more you try to dress it up and make it look pretty, the more convinced I become that Ron wanted out of his life—and so he ran.”

  “I don’t agree with you,” Luke said.

  “Then give me a better interpretation of the facts.”

  “We don’t have enough facts to speculate in any meaningful way. Right now, though, I suspect professional gamblers would say the odds are in favor of me being mistaken and Ron being dead.” Luke felt obligated to provide Avery with that out if she wanted to take it. Hell, everyone else who’d heard his story had taken the route of assuming he was an idiot, so she was entitled.

  She tilted her head back, searching his face. “You don’t think you’re mistaken, do you?”

  He debated for a second and then gave her the truth. “No. I’m sorry, Avery. I’m almost as certain as I can be that I saw Ron Raven.”

  “Then I’m grateful to you for telling me what you saw. Now all that’s left is for me to decide how to deal with this. I just finished telling you how competent and self-sufficient I am. I need to prove it.”

  “Even the strongest and most independent person sometimes needs a friendly listener. Anytime you want to discuss your options with me, Avery, I’ll be happy to listen and offer any advice I can. After all, I’m the person who opened up this can of worms.”

  “Right now, I’ve just about exhausted my capacity for rational discussion. I need some time alone to think. Thanks for the offer, though, Luke. Later on, I’ll probably take you up on it.” She got up and walked in the direction of his office door, bumping into the corner of his credenza as she passed by. For graceful, controlled Avery, the clumsy movement demonstrated a distress level that was the equivalent of a normal person tumbling flat on her face.

  Luke escorted her to the restaurant door, his hand beneath her elbow. “You’re upset. Let me call you a cab.”

  “Thanks, Luke, but I’d rather walk. Fresh air seems very appealing right now. Goodbye.”

  Luke watched Avery weave a not-quite-straight path to the corner of the block. When she turned out of view, he didn’t even attempt to return to his office and his chore of checking invoices. Instead he made his way to the kitchens and silently began preparing a port wine reduction to garnish the beef tenderloin that would be on tonight’s menu. Cooking was usually absorbing enough that he could lose himself in the process. But today, his brain remained disengaged from his hands. Despite the heavy weight in the pit of his stomach, he was fairly sure he’d done the right thing in contacting Avery. Unfortunately, doing the right thing apparently could leave you feeling like hell.

  Perhaps he should call Kate and warn her that her mother…He cut off that insidious thought before it could carry him down any of the dangerous paths that led to Kate. He’d taken that walk too many times already, and he sure as hell didn’t plan to take it again. He’d told Avery what he’d seen and his responsibilities in regard to Ron Raven’s resurrection were now ended.

  It was time to move on, leaving Kate locked safely in the past, where she belonged.

  Five

  Later the same day

  K ate Fairfax—formerly Kate Raven—not only loved her mother, she’d always admired her. Her respect had been heartfelt, even during her teenage years when she’d been intimidated by her mother’s unfailing elegance and exquisite taste. In self-defense, Kate had indulged in a few years of grunge dressing just to prove that she didn’t give a flying flip about clothes or makeup. On her eighteenth birthday she’d reinforced her rebellion by getting a tattoo of a dragon on her butt, a gold ring threaded through her left nostril and multiple piercings in both ears.

  Her efforts provoked a satisfactory bellow of outrage from her father, but unfortunately nothing much from her mother. After complimenting Kate’s choice of earrings, Avery offered a mild comment to the effect that she’d always wanted to have a tattoo but was too much of a coward to endure the pain.

  Since her mother didn’t seem to care in the slightest about the nose ring, and it was a major pain to keep the hole disinfected, Kate had given up on it within three months. By the end of her first semester in culinary school, she’d allowed half of the ear piercings to close, and by the time she graduated, she had acquired a fair-size wardrobe of clothes that weren’t black, weren’t denim and had no rips anywhere.

  The tattoo, however, she’d never for a single moment regretted. Luke had christened the dragon Puff, and had woven several highly erotic fantasies that supposedly revealed the secret story of how Puff came to end up living on her butt. It was only after they broke up that she happened to hear the old Peter, Paul and Mary song and understand why he’d picked that name. It annoyed her every time she glimpsed the dragon in her bathroom mirror and realized that she was still mentally calling him Puff. There was also the problem of the tiny jeweled egg that she kept buried in a shoe box in her closet. This, according to Luke when he gave it to her, was the egg from which Puff had hatched several centuries earlier. The fact that she had neither given the egg away nor found the courage to display it on a shelf suggested an unhealthy level of neurosis about the ending of their relationship.

  Her memories of Luke sometimes seemed impossible to shake, and Kate was frustrated by her inability to banish him to the trash can of past mistakes. She was twenty-seven, for heaven’s sake, which ought to be old enough to recognize when a relationship had been doomed from the start. She constantly repeated the reasons why they had made a lousy couple and her brain was finally convinced
by the mantra. Unfortunately, the rest of her was having a hard time getting with the program. A succession of dates in the past couple of months had merely reinforced the forbidden judgment that Luke Savarini was the world’s most superlative kisser, bar none. Why couldn’t he have been an arrogant, uncaring lover to match the rest of his arrogant, uncaring personality? That was one of life’s more annoying puzzles.

  Kate switched her thoughts back to her mother, which was a lot more agreeable than thinking about Luke. In the six months since her father had died, her lifelong admiration for her mother had blossomed into full-blown hero worship. She had learned how much more there was to Avery than a kind heart, a pretty face and a knack for selecting attractive clothes. She watched the bravery with which her mother set about rebuilding a life that had been shattered not only emotionally and socially but also financially, and she was torn between pride and an odd sense of role-reversal protectiveness.

  Today, as she looked around the little house that her mother had just begun to restore, Kate’s admiration was tinged by a dose of worry. The house was structurally sound, but it had been owned by an elderly couple for fifty years, and routine upkeep had clearly defeated them over the past decade. Avery had acquired the house for a rock-bottom price, despite the excellent location. Still, ten days of hard work had barely made a dent in what needed to be done.

  The kitchen had the very latest in modern conveniences, circa 1973. The shag carpet looked as if it might date from approximately the same era, and the drapes seemed to be held together by twenty years of solidified grime. Last weekend they’d managed to clean the master bedroom and bathroom and get both rooms painted. On Monday, a new bed had been delivered, so Avery now had somewhere other than Kate’s small row house where she could take showers and sleep. The rest of the place, however, was still a complete disaster.

  Carrying a pail of steaming water, her mother returned from the kitchen just as Kate poked gingerly at an unidentified gray object on the decrepit living room sofa. “I think it was a cushion,” Avery said.