A Coral Kiss Part 33

Yeah, that was her. Vivien. I don't think I ever heard her last name."

"Finish the story, Hank." Jed cradled his gla.s.s between his palms and stretched his feet out in front of him.

"Not much more to tell. The night Wyman died, Doug came to me and told me what had happened. We decided to contact the agents who were supposed to have handled the Hawaiian setup. There weren't many private phones on Orleana in those days. I had one of the few on the island. Doug called the number he'd been given by one of the agents who originally asked for his cooperation. The government men gave instructions that we were to sit tight and not say a word until they arrived."

"That must have been a little easier said than done," Jed observed wryly. "What the h.e.l.l did you do with Wyman's body? I can imagine how unpleasant things would have gotten in this heat and humidity."

Amy winced, thinking about it. "How awful. What did you do?"

Hank took a sip of his Scotch. "Packed it in ice from your mother's freezer. Christ, what a night that was.

Fortunately the government men arrived early the next morning. They told your dad they wanted the whole thing hushed up completely. It would be better, they said, if Wyman just disappeared. Your father agreed."

"Because he didn't want the press getting hold of the story," Amy said with sudden insight. "Not only would it have been bad for the firm, which was going to have a tough enough time surviving as it was, but he probably feared that whatever Wyman was using to blackmail him might come out into the open."

She remembered the letters from her mother that were in the box. And the photos. Which of those two d.a.m.ning bits of evidence had Wyman used? Amy had a hunch it must have been the letters. She didn't want Hank knowing about them. "Once the reporters started investigating, there was no telling what kind of scandal might have developed."

"Exactly," Jed put in blandly. "The simplest thing to do was have Wyman disappear under normal circ.u.mstances. Lost at sea. But dumping a body at sea is always a risk. Bodies sometimes wash ash.o.r.e, and in this case there would be the bullet hole to explain. If Wyman's body ever surfaced that would be the end of the lost at sea story. So Slater took the body down into the caves."

"Right. And I took care of the boat," Hank admitted. He looked at Amy. "Your dad figured he could keep people out of the caves for as long as it mattered. After all, he owned them. The government agents hushed up the whole thing, swore Doug and me to secrecy and left the island."

"What about the emeralds?" Amy asked.

"n.o.body was too worried about them," Hank a.s.sured her.

"Why not? They were worth a fortune."

"Not unless the price of green gla.s.s has skyrocketed in the past twenty-five years," Hank said with a small grin.

"Gla.s.s!"

Hank nodded. "Afraid so. Remember I told you the government had an inside man working on the deal?"

"Yes?" Amy prompted.

"Well, he told his contacts that the Russians had been planning to cheat Wyman all along and had the gla.s.s cut into cla.s.sic emerald shapes. Wyman left Hawaii with six perfectly cut pieces of green gla.s.s.

Even if the agents had known he'd hidden them in that box, I doubt they would have bothered trying to find them."

"I think it's time we took a look in that box," Jed announced. He rose lithely from the chair and headed for the table before Amy could think of any logical excuse not to open the box.

"Jed," she tried, thinking of the letters, "I don't think we should open it. Let's just throw it away and be done with it."

"Remember what I told you, honey. No loose ends." He examined the locked box. "Where's the key Renner had on him?"

Amy got to her feet, accepting the inevitable. "I'll get it."

Ten minutes later Jed raised the metal lid. Amy glanced around his arm, trying to see inside. Hank hadn't moved from his chair across the room. He was placidly sipping his Scotch, watching them.

The letters were still tightly sealed in the waterproof pouch. Jed didn't lift them out of the box. But he did pull out the packet of stones and the photos. Amy watched anxiously as he fanned the photos out on the table. Her father as he'd looked years ago was as recognizable as he had been back in October when she'd first opened the box.

"Jed, please," Amy begged in a tight voice. "We've got to destroy these."

Jed scooped them up and studied them. "There's no need to worry about these, Amy. They're fakes.

Bad ones at that. Wyman must have been in a hurry when he made them. Look, you can still see the lines where he tried to put them together."

She stared at them. "Wyman doctored these photos of my father talking to that man?"

"And did such a bad job of it, most people wouldn't be fooled for a minute."

"Unless," Amy suggested weakly, recalling her hurried examination of them in October, "someone was viewing them in the middle of the night with only a flashlight."

Jed glanced down at her as he tossed the photos to Hank. "Under such bad light, I guess they might look real," he said gently. "Especially if someone had other things on her mind at the time." He closed the lid of the box, leaving the packet of letters still inside. "What do you think, Hank?"

Hank was examining the photos. "You're right. They're bad. But this explains what Wyman tried to use to blackmail Doug." He shook his head again. "So what the h.e.l.l are we going to tell Kelso?"

"I think," Jed said thoughtfully, "that since the government created this mess, we ought to let those nice folks in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. clean it up. I'll call my boss, Cutter."

Hank looked confused. "Cutter? Your boss? But I thought Amy made up that story about you working for someone named Cutter."

Jed grinned. "Truth," he declared, "is sometimes a lot simpler and more straightforward than fiction." He reached for the phone.

Chapter Nineteen.

A couple of hours after Renner, Vaden and Guthrie had been delivered to the tiny cell that served as Orleana's jail, Amy sat down in front of the metal box, reached inside and pulled out her mother's letters.

Hank Halliday had gone home to Rosie to be severely scolded by her for his unexpected disappearance.

Kelso and any other interested townspeople who bothered to inquire were given the story Cutter had advised Jed to use. Renner, Vaden and Guthrie were three off-islanders who had gotten together to rob the Slaters' home. Several locals shook their heads and declared gloomily that the incident was one of the many problems Orleana was going to face as the island became more popular. The price of being discovered, as it were. Things had been different in the past.

"I'm not so sure just how different they were," Amy said quietly as she sat looking at the small pile of envelopes in her hand. "There seems to have been plenty going on here twenty-five years ago."

Jed watched as she tapped the envelopes against the table. He was sitting in a chair near an open window, making no effort to view the contents of Gloria Slater's letters to Michael Wyman. "What are you going to do with those, Amy?"

"Burn them. I should have done it that night in October, but I wasn't thinking clearly."

Jed shrugged. "I'm not so sure about that. You had to work fast that night and not leave any evidence of what had really happened. A fire, even a small one, might have raised some awkward questions if it had been discovered. Where would you have built it? In your dad's barbeque grill? I can just see your father finding charred remains of envelopes in the grill the next time he lit the coals. No, on the whole, you probably did the best thing by hiding the box in the caves again."

"But the best thing wasn't good enough. It left loose ends."

"Sometimes that's the case," Jed said gently.

Amy rose from the chair. "Let's go build a fire."

Jed didn't argue. He got to his feet and followed her out onto the veranda where he started a small blaze in the pit of the barbeque. When he had it going he stood back and waited for Amy to toss the letters into the flames.

She did so, burning the letters steadily until only one remained in her hand. She hesitated, clutching the final letter to Michael Wyman. "I only read one of the letters that night, Jed. Just enough to know for certain my mother had written them and that she thought she had fallen in love with Wyman. I have no right to read any of the rest, but I wonder about this last one..."

"Why?"

"I don't know. Maybe because it's so short. Only a single page." She held up the envelope. "Do you think it might have been a good-bye letter to Wyman?"

"You're hoping she broke off the relations.h.i.+p of her own accord? Amy, I know she's your mother, but she's human. Don't get your hopes up."

"There's something different about this letter. I can feel it."

"Don't ask me for permission to read it, Amy. It's not my business," Jed said.

Amy set her teeth and pulled the single page out of the envelope. She had to know. She had gone through so much for the sake of these d.a.m.n letters, she had to know the truth about this last one. She scanned the single paragraph and grateful relief washed over her.

Jed watched her changing expression and smiled faintly. "Good news, I take it?"

Amy nodded vigorously, stuffing the last letter back into its envelope and tossing it into the fire. "I had a hunch it would be. My mother is a strong woman. I knew that in the end she would have done the right thing. She told Wyman she'd been a silly, discontented idiot. She said that even though she was having problems with Doug, deep down she loved him and would never leave him or the children. She asked Wyman to understand and forget her foolishness. It wouldn't happen again."

"Feel better knowing that?"

"Much. I'm not sure why, but I do. It's nice to know she didn't intend to run off with him. He was such a b.a.s.t.a.r.d. I wonder if my father ever knew?"

"About his wife's temporary aberration? Probably." Jed poked the coals, making sure the last of the letters went up in smoke. "I'd sure as h.e.l.l know if you were falling for someone else."

Amy blinked in amazement. "You would? How?"

"I don't know how exactly. I'd just know. We've gotten too close to each other, Amy. Secrets like that would be impossible to keep for long."

Amy was afraid to comment on that. Did Jed realize just what he was saying? she wondered. What he was admitting? Probably not. Some psychologists said men seldom a.n.a.lyzed their own emotions or reactions the way women did; men were inclined to accept their feelings, even act on them, but not dissect them.

Amy coughed delicately. "Do you think Wyman used the doctored photos or the letters that night to try to blackmail my father?"

"My guess is he used both. He probably wasn't sure if the letters would work. There was always the chance Slater would simply dump his wife and say the h.e.l.l with her. Wyman had the photos as double insurance. A man might walk away from a woman, he'd figure, but he wouldn't walk away from his career."

"Oh."

Jed went on, as if he hadn't heard her dismay. "But Wyman was judging Slater by his own standards.

Your father was different. I've had to make a lot of snap judgments about what motivates people under pressure in the last eight years, Amy. I've got a fairly good track record."

"How do you know you've got a good record?" Amy couldn't resist the question.

"Because I'm still alive."

Amy swallowed at the unarguable truth of that statement. It said so much about the kind of life he led.

"I see. So what do you deduce about how my father might have acted under the pressure of blackmail?"

"Do you really want to know?"

Amy hesitated and then said in a small rush, "Yes, I really want to know."

Jed put down the barbeque tool he had been using to stir the flames. "He would have told Wyman to go to h.e.l.l and find his own way off the island if Wyman had threatened him with the photos. But if Wyman used the letters, your dad would have been furious. He would have done whatever was required to stop Wyman."

"And that's what the struggle was about that night?"

Jed looked down into the last of the flames. "I imagine so."

"You seem very sure of your reconstruction of the scene," Amy said a bit tartly.

Jed glanced up, his eyes gleaming in the faint light that shone through the windows of the house. "Maybe I'm sure of it because I know that's what I would have done under the same circ.u.mstances. I wouldn't have let any man walk away with letters like those if the letters had been written by you, Amy."

He didn't have to spell it out, Amy thought. She got the point. Without a word she moved into the circle of his arm and together they watched the fire die.

"I'll empty the ashes tomorrow," Jed told her. "There won't be anything left in the barbeque pit when your father gets home."

Amy nodded. "Do you think it was Vaden or Guthrie who searched your things the other day?"

Jed shrugged. "Vaden, probably. He seemed to be handling that kind of thing for Renner. It didn't do him any good. There was nothing to find."

"Maybe finding nothing at all made him even more nervous," Amy speculated.

Jed grinned. "Now you're thinking like a pro. That's probably exactly what happened. And that's probably why he decided to get rid of me in that alley."

"Thank you, Jed. For everything." Amy leaned her head on his shoulder, reveling in his strength.

He smiled into her hair. "I'm the one who should be thanking you. You saved my hide tonight. Renner had worked himself up into a full-blown case of hysteria. He was going to pull that trigger. And then there was the little matter of digging me out of that rock fall in the cave. Did I ever thank you properly for that?"

"You wouldn't have been in either one of those situations if I hadn't been in a much bigger mess."

"We'll call it even, since I more or less invited myself into your mess."

"Speaking of messes, do you really think your Mr. Cutter can clean this one up?"

"No sweat. It's the sort of thing Cutter's good at. When I called him back an hour ago to find out how things were going he told me he's already got most of the pieces in place. Faxon has turned up enough on Guthrie and Vaden to put them away on other charges. Seems like they're both wanted for gunrunning."

"What about Daniel Renner?"

"Renner, it appears, is going to have his hands full trying to explain a few matters to the Securities Exchange Commission. His wheeling and dealing has come a little too close to the, line in too many cases, according to Faxon's data. There are also rumors of some past drug dealing. On top of everything else, he's going to have to explain to the government what he was doing consorting with known gunrunners. Renner may or may not be able to stay out of jail, but it's a cinch he's going to be busy for quite a while."

"You don't think he'll mention the emeralds?"

"The fake emeralds," Jed emphasized. "No, I don't think he will. It would only complicate his life more.