Family Skeletons Read online

  “I can help. But I don’t want to, er...”

  “Butt in? Give me the impression you don’t trust me?” She pulled the door closed. “Don’t worry about it. I’m not thin-skinned.”

  “All right. Quick to react, but not thin-skinned.”

  She darted a look at him. He’d managed to be straight and direct in getting that aspect of her personality out there, and she found herself wondering just how stuffy that stuffed-shirt persona was.

  With a casual nod, she led the way back into the kitchen. “Roberta also thought Franklin might have done some doodling and left some sketches, drawings, whatever, and she didn’t want them overlooked.”

  “I understand. Some Franklin Corday originals might amount to another small fortune.”

  “I guess so. But as an artist, he’d fizzled out a long time ago.” As a man, he’d also fizzled out, but she kept that opinion to herself. “He didn’t live here anyway. Just used the place as a getaway. He liked noise and people and bright lights.”

  “Gorgeous getaway.”

  “Uh-huh. Can’t be beat for location. The house was designed and built by his grandfather.” She squinted into space. “Who would’ve been your great-great uncle—three times great? Four?” She shook her head; pinpointing relationship was mind-boggling. “Anyway, that Corday had a head on his shoulders. Franklin inherited wealth as well as talent that he turned into big bucks, but he frittered it away. All he had left was this house and acreage, only because he wasn’t allowed to fritter that away.”

  They ended their tour on the screened back porch. At the rear of the house, it allowed a view of the road leading in from the highway as well as the beach on the other side. The fog had lifted, and the Pacific’s blue expanse was visible, but not the white-capped waves.

  They slanted looks at each other. Possibly he was also wondering where to go from here. She’d bought two folding lawn chairs during her last visit to Castleton, in order to accommodate Ryan once he got up here, and they leaned next to the wall. She opened a chair, sat down, and Jonathan followed suit.

  “You know a lot of Corday history,” he said. “How well do you, uh...”

  “Know the Corday women?” she finished for him.

  Okay, Sunny, you’re on.

  “At times they were as much in the news as Franklin.” She decided to start with her mother and then introduce herself. “So you’ve probably heard that Roberta is a veritable recluse. But she’s sharp as a tack. She lives her life as she wants to and makes no apology for it.”

  “Like mother, like daughter,” he murmured, disapproval in his tone, and then his expression tightened, as if he hadn’t meant to speak aloud.

  She looked at her hands in her lap. “And on what do you base that opinion?” she asked softly.

  He didn’t answer for a long moment. She continued to examine her fingernails.

  “I apologize,” he said. “That opinion is based on nothing but hearsay, and there is no excuse for gossip. I’m not proud of that remark.”

  “Well, let’s be honest here. Laurel’s made a lot of mistakes. An annulled marriage before her sixteenth birthday, drug rehab before she was twenty, and then a real bona fide divorce. And she’d really earned that one. She’d almost killed the guy.”

  “Actually, I wasn’t referring to any of that.” He still appeared uncomfortable, but once he’d opened his mouth, it appeared he wanted to clarify his comment. “I was thinking of her relationship with her father—or lack of one, I should say. When he disappeared, she couldn’t have been more callous. The sweet little teenager told a reporter to f-blank off because she didn’t f-blank care. She waited the required seven years, then got busy initiating procedures to have him declared legally dead. A warm, loving daughter, she wasn’t.”

  Sunny felt years of bitterness rising like acid. “You have a good relationship with your father?”

  He looked surprised at the question, and wary. “Yes. I do.”

  “Were you aware that Franklin had denied parentage? Laurel was in primary school when her father publicly labeled her illegitimate—or tried to. Roberta proved to have more mettle than Franklin gave her credit for. She forced a paternity test, which proved he was indeed the child’s father, and then she won the judgment concerning this place.”

  She shot to her feet. With jerky movements she collapsed her chair and leaned it against the porch wall. Forcing herself not to bolt into the house as if she were still the rebellious teenager he’d just described, she gave him a long, level look and decided it wasn’t necessary to tell him her given name was Laurel. Another week, maybe two, and she’d be out of here forever. Until then, she was a friend of the family.

  He stared back, expression impassive.

  “They got a raw deal,” she said, hearing both defense and defiance in her voice. The defense part bothered her because there was no reason for it. “Both of them. If you want to look for a villain in this piece, look at him. That was a man without a heart or conscience.”

  “His body was never found.”

  She narrowed her eyes. He didn’t seem insensitive, nor was he challenging her, but neither was he backing down. Then, suddenly, she felt tension easing out of her, and she even managed what was probably a weak smile. “I don’t scare you, do I?”

  Though he smiled back, his expression clearly was an uncomfortable one. “I’m not simply curious, Sunny. When my name showed up in that will, I became a part of this.”

  “Okay,” she said grudgingly after a short moment. “I guess I can see that. But I can’t tell you anything more. His body was never found. Period. The consensus was, and still is, that the ocean got him. He’d been seen here, or at least in town, then just not seen again. Anywhere. End of story, beginning of...what? The seven-year mystery?”

  His head turned away. She watched his profile as he stared at the million-dollar view, and then she followed his gaze. She disliked looking at the sea through netting. It protected them from bugs but distorted the view.

  “I’ve got one more question,” he said, and her chin wanted to drag on the floor.

  “Where’s the nearest beach access? I’ve been here two days, it’s my first trip to the coast, and I have yet to walk the beach.”

  Feeling as if a weight had lifted from her, she broke into a laugh. “Well, that’s easily remedied. There is a trail down the cliff, and I’m just the person to introduce you to the art of wading.”

  “Waiting?” His brow was wrinkling. “For what would we be waiting?”

  “Wading,” she enunciated carefully. “That’s what you do when you take your shoes and socks off and get your feet wet.”

  His self-conscious laugh made him look five years younger than she’d previously guessed he was. She hadn’t noted his birth date when she’d looked at his driver’s license, but she doubted he’d hit thirty yet, either.

  Then she added a frown to the look she gave him. “But you look more like a night on the town than a day at the beach. Do you have jeans? Shorts? Tennies?”

  “I’ll find something.”

  In her old jeans and gray sweatshirt she was already dressed for the beach, so she waited on the front porch for him. When he joined her, his new attire of khaki shorts, deck shoes and a sporty brown polo shirt was less formal, but just as stylish as his previous garb. Apparently the man didn’t know how to be sloppy.

  Sunny led the way to the cliff. At the bluff’s edge she stopped, hugged her arms against the chill, rubbed her hands up and down the sleeves of her sweatshirt, and let the breeze tug at her hair. She could watch the surf break and swirl all day and not tire of it. One of the mysteries of nature was how the ocean’s constant motion carried such a distinct calming effect. Waves built, rolled, crashed, and spilled lazily. The wind carried drops of spray that spattered her face. The color of the water ranged from white to blue to green to sandy brown, depending on where and when the wave struck and how the sun hit it.

  “There’s more sand here today than yesterday,” J
onathan said.

  She looked up with a smile. “That’s one way of putting it. Tide’s out.”

  He grimaced, then gave her a sheepish grin. “I don’t believe I said that.” His gaze traveled from right to left. “So where is this path?”

  “There.” She pointed. They’d passed the slightly marked trail to view the ocean from the bluff’s edge, and they stood on the south corner of the horseshoe-shaped cove. “But I wouldn’t exactly call it a path.”

  His eyebrows drew together. “I wouldn’t either. I still can’t see it.”

  As she walked back to the scant path, she realized that to him it probably looked more like an indentation in the cliff than a trail. But it was a way to get down. She stopped at the top of it.

  “Here,” she said.

  “Oh.” He came to stand beside her, and he looked down at the sandy cove with a disappointed expression. “You were kidding. I thought there really was a way down.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake. It is a way down, and it’s not that bad. Here, I’ll show you.”

  He grabbed her arm. “Sunny, you can’t be serious. You’ll break your neck.”

  “Okay,” she said, and caught her bottom lip between her teeth while she surveyed the meager trail with an exacting eye. “I admit you’ve kind of got to slide down on your rump in a couple places.” She pointed. “Like right there, and then again there, just before you reach the bottom. And that last little run there is exactly that. A run. You take a step, and then another, and then you start running, and when it flattens out at the bottom you’ll be able to stop.”

  He squinted at her as if she were speaking a foreign language.

  “Jonathan, it’s not that bad. Last week I went down with a blanket over my shoulder and a bag lunch.” She paused. “Well, I used one of those tie things on the bag to keep it closed and threw it down, but I managed the blanket okay.”

  “And how do you get back up?” He’d lost some color and his eyes had glazed over.

  “That’s not as hard as it looks. You see that last slope,” she paused and pointed again. “On your way up you have to grab a little root that’s there and kind of pull yourself up, finding footholds where you can. Then the rest of it isn’t too bad.”

  He continued to watch her, saying nothing. Then he looked away, rolled his eyes and said something under his breath.

  She felt her eyes widen. That had sounded suspiciously like an oath. Did he know how to swear?

  “No way,” he said flatly. “There is no way I am going to do that. I am not going down there.”

  “Well, I am. That’s why I walked down here, and then I’m going to go play tag with the waves. But you can stay up here and just watch if you want to. Then I’ll climb back up and we can walk back and I’ll make lunch. Do you like grilled cheese sandwiches?”

  When his level gaze met hers, it told her that this man made his own decisions and did not accept dares. “I should have brought the cell phone,” he said. “If you’re serious about going down there, we should alert the paramedics.”

  As soon as Sunny started her descent, she regretted it. Knowing Doubting Thomas was up there watching her made her nervous, throwing her off just enough that she might take a bad fall. Then she got to the slope, took off running and was home free. She looked up and waved, but then wished even harder she hadn’t come down. If he followed, he might be the one to fall.

  Okay, get back up there. You can go play in the water another time.

  She walked back toward the incline, then stopped.

  “Oh, no,” she said without moving her lips.

  He was on his way down.

  He was slow, cautious, awkward, long and lanky, but he made it all the way to the final slope without breaking his neck. She took the first easy breath she’d taken since he’d begun his descent.

  After the second sliding part he remained on his rump for a short moment before carefully getting to his feet. He took one step and then another, then his eyes opened wide in disbelief as he careened down the rest of the way, unable to control his speed.

  As they each tried to avoid the other, naturally they both guessed wrong and moved directly into the other’s path.

  She heard a loud crack like a gunshot at the same moment he bowled into her. She felt a burning sensation at her right temple as they collided and then they both went down.

  Chapter Four

  “Are you okay?” Jonathan sounded winded and looked scared.

  Sunny was sprawled on her back under him, and the right side of her head felt like a strip of skin had been seared off. “Wha...what happened?”

  His gaze moved a fraction away from her eyes as he examined her forehead where it felt burned. “I think you got grazed by a bullet.” His head jerked up and he scanned the beach.

  The stinging sensation was graduating into a dull throb. “Bullet?” That didn’t make sense. She tried to move. “Uh, Jonathan.”

  “What?” Quickly his attention returned to her.

  “You’re crushing me.”

  “Oh.” Once he became aware of their positions, he clearly couldn’t get off of her fast enough. Then as he knelt at her side his gaze again explored the inside of the horseshoe, the sandy floor to the cliff above, the beach on both sides.

  After working herself into a sitting position, she also looked around but saw nothing. She reached to touch her sore forehead.

  “No,” he said sharply, and pushed her hand away. “Yours fingers are dirty. You may infect it.”

  He got to his feet and then gave her his hand to pull her up. Her knees felt so shaky, she was grateful for his help.

  “We need to get you back to the house so we can clean that up,” he said.

  They walked to the base of the cliff. As his gaze traveled the length of the trail to the top, a worried expression came over his face, but evidently not for himself. He turned to her. “Can you manage that?”

  “I’m fine, Jonathan.”

  “Are you dizzy at all?”

  “No.” She was more concerned with the shaky knees, but the unsteady feeling had eased once she’d started walking.

  “Lightheaded?”

  “I’m fine, I said.” To prove it, she got a good grip on the root, found her first foothold, and made what might be her best time yet on her way to the top.

  She entered the house from the front porch. He’d detoured to his SUV in the back, and he was carrying a first aid kit in a black bag when he stepped through the doorway from the back porch to meet her in the kitchen. She gave him and the kit a look that probably carried doubt. He washed his hands and pulled on a pair of gloves.

  “Sit down.” He motioned toward a chair without looking at her. She didn’t move. He soaked a cotton ball in something with a harsh odor that made her eyes water. When he looked up and found her still standing, he gave her a slow smile. “It’s okay. I’m a doctor.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes. An ophthalmologist, actually. I admit that gunshot wounds aren’t my specialty, but I think I can handle this.”

  She wet her lips, still staring at him, then pulled the chair out and sat down. She’d give him one try here. One try.

  “This is going to sting.” He applied the cotton. She yelped and jerked away.

  He put his hand on her shoulder. “As you can see, I’m an honest doctor. It really did sting. And I have to do it one more time.”

  “No way.” She made a move to rise.

  “One more time, Sunny. Trust me. It’s got to be clean.”

  She looked up, knowing he was right but not liking it. Taking a big breath, she nodded. She sat back, stared straight ahead, set her mouth in a tight line and clenched her fists in her lap.

  He laughed and turned away.

  Her head snapped back around and she glared at him. “You want to trade places here?”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Excuse me.” This time, he positioned his left hand under her chin to hold her head in place. She frowned, but it didn’t give her a
trapped feeling, and the second application wasn’t as bad as the first.

  “Done,” he told her. “You can start breathing again.”

  “Thanks. I think.”

  “You’re welcome. You may have a reminding scar, but the way you wear your hair the bangs will cover it. And in time it will fade. You were lucky. I don’t want to think about how lucky.”

  He discarded the cotton and threw the gloves away after it. “Your hair is so blond it’s almost white. At first I thought it had to come out of a bottle, but now I’m thinking it’s natural.”

  “It is.”

  Exhibiting no self-consciousness, he gave her another appraising once-over. “A perfect blue-eyed blonde, complete with pixie face and hairdo. But you’re built kind of small. You look like a good wind could knock you over.”

  “That’s some bedside manner you’ve got there, Doctor.”

  When his face quickly sobered, she wished she hadn’t chided him. She’d liked the lighter, relaxed side of himself he’d just showed her.

  He closed the first aid kit. “This incident has to be reported to the police. We can go now. I’ll drive.”

  “Ohh.” She dragged the word out. With her elbow on the table, she leaned the unhurt side of her forehead against her fist and briefly closed her eyes. “I hadn’t thought about that. Do we have to? I don’t want to.”

  “Another inch and you would’ve been dead, Sunny. And you don’t want to report it?” She heard his surprise and puzzlement. “Why?”

  Wearily, she met his eyes. “Notoriety, Jonathan. Think about it. The tabloids have left the Corday family alone for a long time now. But a gunshot at the old homestead where Franklin disappeared all those years ago is going to put everybody right back in the spotlight again.”

  She watched different emotions cross his face: surprise, concern, disapproval.

  “Perhaps,” he said slowly. Lines deepened his forehead. “But it can’t be all that bad. And, minor or not, it was a gunshot wound. As a doctor, I have to—”

  “It is that bad. Please, Jonathan, I don’t want to deal with it, or put the family through it again. And this time you’ll be part of it, too. It must’ve been an errant bullet from some target shooters somewhere. Let’s leave it at that.”