Not that she needed to. Being unforgettable only led to tragedy. Noelle had enough problems.
“How can I ever repay you?” In the small hallway beside Amanda, Noelle surveyed the ring on her finger the way a child might admire a new toy.
Time to be brutal. “You can start by never doing anything like this again.”
Noelle looked up with stricken eyes. “But, Manda, I didn’t mean to bet my ring. I just got caught up when I went to that casino with Em and Stef. They said if I let
him
loan me his chips for it, I could always buy it back. And I tried. I went to the ATM right away, but he was so horrible. He wouldn’t even talk about giving it back. He wanted it for his jewelry collection. And I didn’t know what to do.” Her face clouded. “Em and Stef weren’t very good friends, I guess.”
“No, honey, they weren’t. I keep telling you, be picky about your friends. You’ve got to choose people you can count on.”
“I thought I could count on them.”
“Well, this proves you can’t. You need to stop hanging out with them. And you mustn’t ever bet that ring again.”
“Oh, I won’t, believe me. Cal McIntyre was so... You should have been there. He wasn’t nice. Not at all.” Noelle’s bottom lip poked out, trembling. “He's a hateful person.”
As always, Amanda soothed her. “It’s over, honey, but you can’t keep doing this kind of stuff. You’re going to have to think. And what about Edward and Teddy? You shouldn’t go off all the time and leave them. You could end up losing both of them.”
The blue eyes widened. “Losing them? I know I shouldn’t have gambled but... You think because I go away with my friends for a few days, it makes Edward mad?”
“I think Edward gets lonely without you.”
Noelle chewed on her lip. “I'm sorry, Manda, I won’t do it again. Not if you think I shouldn’t.”
“Good.” Amanda stroked her sister’s hair. Noelle would never understand what she’d done wrong.
Dear God, she was tired of looking out for Noelle. Until this moment, she hadn't realized how tired she was. “Go on home, honey,” she went on. “It's time for me to stop babying you and for you to start being a mother. You have to settle down and stop doing things like this.”
Tears glistened. “I’m sorry I’m so stupid, Manda.”
Amanda took her sister's hands. “You’re not stupid. You’re not. You just don’t think. It didn’t matter before, but now you have a husband and an adorable baby. You're going to have to quit doing stuff like using your engagement ring for collateral.”
Noelle mumbled, “I know. But nobody thought Cal McIntyre would be mean enough not to give me the ring back. I got the money to pay him back with, didn't I?”
Why couldn't Noelle understand? Amanda wanted to shake her. “You shouldn't have been gambling to begin with. Then you wouldn't have had to borrow money on the ring.”
“I wasn't going to. But Em and Stef invited me. They’ve been so good, getting me in the junior league and the country club and everything. I thought it was okay.”
“Just because people are nice to you doesn’t mean they’re doing the right things for you,” Amanda said. “We’ve talked about this before.
You
have to be the one to decide what’s right for you, not let other people talk you into doing things you know are wrong.”
Like she followed her own advice.
Noelle hung her head. “I’ll try, Manda. Really. I’ll do better.” She dragged into the bedroom and came out with her overnight case. “I guess I'll go on. Edward's expecting me back today. I don't want him to think I've left him.” Her mouth twitched, wanting to smile at such an absurd notion.
Amanda, thinking about Callaway McIntyre, tried to smile back.
I’m drained. Worrying about Noelle takes so much time and effort that there’s nothing left for me. If I’d gone out to a dinner or movie with some of the men who’ve been interested, Callaway McIntyre’s body wouldn’t have turned me on the way it did.
“No, you don't want Edward to worry about you,” she said. “Kiss little Teddy for me.”
Noelle paused on the threshold. “I will. And thank you again. I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”
Amanda went over and hugged her. “You did fine, honey,” she said. “I’m still amazed you thought of such a complicated plan to get your ring back.”
Noelle glowed at the questionable praise. “I just thought you could charm him out of the ring. The boys always used to fall all over themselves to please you.”
And a pair of trusting brown eyes would plague her forever.
“But then you got those pills from Edward.” Amanda frowned. “And remembered the safe code. After meeting Callaway McIntyre, I’m surprised he boasted about the combination.”
Noelle looked uneasy. “Yeah, well, anyway, it worked. I can go home now.” She kissed her sister and left.
What was that about? Noelle got that same uncomfortable expression when she was hiding something. For the umpteenth time, Amanda wished Noelle were normal.
As if wishing does any good. Noelle can’t help it. We were lucky she didn’t have a baby when she was fifteen or get hooked on meth or run away. The only real problem was her anorexia, and we resolved that.
Noelle’s condition was nobody’s fault. It was simply how things were.
The apartment seemed unnaturally hushed.
Chapter Four
“To sum it up, Mr. McIntyre, I'm no closer to discovering who she is now than I was when I started.”
In a borrowed office at the McIntyre Grand Tartan, Cal lounged behind a gleaming cherry desk and listened to the conclusion of the recital given by the man across from him. He stared at his outstretched ankles and shiny wingtips, but didn't see the shoes at all. He had flown into Houston that morning, hopeful of better tidings.
In the lengthening silence, the clean-shaven man who looked more like a college professor than a private investigator slid some photographs of the opening night party across the desk. “We got these pictures from the media shots of the opening, but they aren't enough to go on. She was smart in covering her tracks.”
The redhead was indistinct in most of the prints, appearing to have deliberately shunned the photographers. In the best one, a profile shot taken unawares, her nose was too long and the short upper lip not nearly so charming.
Why had he lost his head over such an ordinary woman?
The investigator said, “A bellman here remembered her getting into a taxi. We traced her to the airport and are working the flight lists, looking for solitary women leaving. Do you have any idea how many flights leave Houston, even at that time of the morning? Not to mention she could have left the airport and gone somewhere else. Or she might have met an accomplice there.”
“She certainly had an accomplice.” Bitterness with himself made Cal snap at the other man. “She couldn't have got the ticket to the opening if she didn't have an accomplice. So after ten days and thousands of dollars, you've come up with exactly nothing.”
“You knew the rates when you hired us.” The investigator must have been used to dealing with disturbed clients because his amiable smile didn’t flag. “If you insist, I can keep a man on it, but it might be a waste of our time and your money.”
“At least you're honest. Keep on it anyway.”
“All right. You're paying. Look, I know you’re reluctant, but I think we need to tackle it from your end since we've come up against brick walls everywhere else.”
“My end?”
“Like who knew the combination you used for the safe.”
“No one who would take those studs,” Cal said shortly.
He got up and paced the room, ending up by the balcony door. Opening the blinds, he could see the enclosed swimming pool and its fountains below him, and beyond, past the ornate granite walls, the distant skyline of Houston. Inside the main building's boundaries, people filled the walkways, guests leaving and arriving. Some hurried as if late for appointments, others meandered as if they had all the time in the world.
The investigator wouldn't let him off the hook. “Look, Mr. McIntyre, someone had to be familiar enough with the invitation list for the opening to know whose invitation would be declined. That same someone had to arrange for the woman to use that particular box. You couldn't help but notice her seated right across from you. To me, that says someone inside the organization planned it. Someone who knew about your thing for redheads.”
Cal snorted. “Who doesn't know about my thing for redheads? You'd have thousands of suspects if that's your only clue.”
“That's why we've got to narrow the playing field.”
“I see your point.”
The redhead couldn't be traced from her reservation of the box in the theater because it had been booked in the name of a leading citizen of Texas who, with her husband, had embarked on a three-week tour of Japan during the opening of the Grand Tartan. What's more, that august lady swore she'd neither made nor confirmed a reservation to the charitable event.
Someone had done both in her name, however. Someone had paid for the ticket with an untraceable cash card and picked it up from the box office at the last minute, when none of the workers would remember a single face among the crush of people filing in.
“Scarlet Smith,” he said aloud, “came prepared to take me for a ride.”
“Looks like it.”
Cal rubbed the back of his neck. All the time he had thought he was the stalker, and instead he was the prey. What a fool.
He faced the detective. “Okay. Only my sister, her husband, and my stepfather know the safe combination. We all use the same sequence in case any of us need to get to papers or keys involved in the business. None of them would be involved.”
“You sure one of 'em might not have confided in someone?”
Claire wouldn't and Robert was paranoid about security. Tip had never been able to remember the numbers, even when Lila was alive. “No. None of them would have.”
“Not even for diamonds worth five million dollars? Look, Mr. McIntyre, somebody knew you would wear them and somebody knew where you'd put them. Maybe if I talk to those three people and see what they say—”
“No, I don't want you bothering any of them. They don't know anything. I've asked.” The last frigging thing he needed was this man to involve Robert, start him nosing around asking questions that might lead to the journal.
“You're the boss,” the investigator said as he rose to go. “But right now we have piss-all to go on.”
She had to be after the studs, Cal told himself as he flew home on a company jet. He closed his eyes, but the redhead in her slinky dress with her hair cascading down floated before him. Something nagged at him, something about the way she had leaned over to kiss him in bed. He wished he could remember what it was, but he couldn't.
He would, though. Give him time and it would come back. He had a pretty good memory.
The woman hadn't come for the emerald ring or the journal. Neither had been in his hands before the day of the opening, and the theft had been carefully planned beforehand. She'd come for his studs and taken the other things because they were there.
What if she read the journal? What if she figured out what those sections meant?
God, why hadn't he torn out those damned pages when he first retrieved the book? It would have been so easy to rip them out and burn them or flush them down the toilet. But Claire had wanted to read all the intimate details herself. All their mother’s hopes and plans after Tip’s wonderful offer, the hurried marriage and their refuge in Italy.
He stared out the porthole. How the hell could he go back and tell Claire there was no trace of their mother's journal or the redhead?
Taking a deep breath, he leaned back in the cushions.
Let's try it another way
. The studs were Scarlet's original target, and she probably had a buyer. Only someone willing to take stolen goods would purchase them without authenticated papers, someone who knew he couldn't show them in public.
Miles de Graffen.
No. Not Miles. Miles might covet the jewels, but he wouldn’t go so far as to steal them. Besides, Miles didn't know the safe combination.
But what if he was offered the studs? Would the acquisitive Miles ask questions about how the seller got them?
Hah. Miles would snatch up the frigging studs with no questions asked. Everyone knew Miles coveted the Antoinette diamonds and wouldn't care how he got them.
Perhaps he should call Miles, say the diamonds were of no consequence but that he wanted his mother's journal back.
He ground his teeth. He couldn't do that, much as he'd like to. A plea based on suspicion alone would do no good. Miles would never admit to being involved with anything illegal.
For the moment, Cal couldn't do anything except curse the woman, whoever she was.
* * * *
At Fair Meadows, the old plantation east of Atlanta that Lila had bought and restored, Cal stopped at his cottage on the outskirts.
He'd moved into the guest house after Claire and Robert married, using their need for more space in the mansion as an excuse to get away from his mother's critical oversight. The cottage had turned into his sanctuary, but today his guilt allowed him no respite in its quiet.