TailSpin - Catherine Coulter [141]
Jack said slowly, “Okay, if the guy who broke into the house wasn’t there to kill her, then why was he there?”
Savich said, “Money.”
Jack said, his eyes locked on the highway ahead, at the blur of cars, “All right, something to do with money. But what?”
“I have a feeling we’re going to find out right now.”
The Porsche’s sexy female GPS voice told them the Hailstone exit was in 3.2 miles. “Good, good,” Savich said like a mantra. “Almost there. We’ll make it in a couple of minutes.”
Savich took the exit in a tight, controlled turn. After another right turn onto Nimere Avenue into the town of Hailstone, he said, “Rachael said her father left her a third of his estate, including the company stock and the house.” He smacked his palm on the steering wheel. “Why is that worth so much to them?”
“Maybe it’s about control of the Abbott empire,” Jack said.
The Porsche took a left on Clapton Road as smooth as spreading butter, doing sixty.
Jack said, “Wait, the Kostas mansion is back to the right. Where are we going?”
The GPS announced the location was 0.5 miles ahead.
“I don’t know,” Savich said.
An old gray Chrysler pulled onto the road directly in front of the Porsche.
SIXTY-ONE
Laurel said, “Just a moment, Stef.” She looked down at Rachael. “Tell me why you didn’t make the senator’s grand confession for him last night when you had the perfect chance.”
Quincy said, “That’s clear enough, Laurel. She finally realized she’d be considered a traitor to her father, and her idea for that damned foundation she wants to run would be trashed.”
Keep them talking, keep them talking. Rachael saw it in Sherlock’s eyes, and so she said, “No, none of that. Fact is, Aunt Laurel, I decided that only Jimmy could make public a revelation with such far-reaching consequences. His decision, no one else’s.”
“Are you telling the truth?” Quincy asked her.
“I’m lying here at your feet. Why would I lie?”
Suddenly tears appeared in Laurel’s eyes. The stone-cold prison matron was suddenly remorseful about murdering her brother? Tears? Rachael stared at her. What was going on here?
Laurel said, “It means I didn’t fail. And do you know, I’d already accepted that I had? I despised you so much, Rachael. Daddy would never have forgiven me if you had spoken out. Never. He believed there was never any excuse for failure.”
Daddy? Her father? That profane old man who took my father from my mother? But he was dead, months and months dead, dead before they murdered Jimmy. Daddy?
“That old bastard,” Quincy said. “How did he even find out what Jimmy did? I didn’t have a clue until Jimmy told us.” Quincy banged his fist against his palm.
“Dammit, he should have told me, too. I was his loyal son. I stayed, didn’t go haring off to the damned Senate. I was the son who did whatever he asked. Damned old bastard.”
Rachael and Sherlock barely breathed.
“Calm yourself, Quincy. Daddy never told me how he found out about it,” Laurel said. “I do know he had Jimmy followed now and again, had detectives check on him. He liked to know where all the pieces were on the chessboard—you know that was always his way. Plus, he was very angry that Jimmy ignored all his ideas for new legislation.”
“Stop your whining, Quincy,” Stefanos said. “It is really unattractive, doesn’t go well at all with your patrician image.”
“Shut your trap, you suck-up—”
Stefanos laughed. “Is that envy I hear?”
Quincy shouted, “Envy of what? That the old man invented your image to suit himself and his own purposes, and you let him?”
Stefanos said, “I always thought it was one of your father’s better ideas.”
Sherlock was working the knots at her wrists. Please, let them keep talking, let them thrash it all out, go for each other’s throats, for all I care. Three more minutes, that should do