Deception Cove

Chapter 23

“DRAKE SEBASTIAN MARRIED HER.” OUTRAGE SHIVERED in Ethel Whitcomb’s refined, private-school voice. “I can’t believe it. The woman is a witch, I tell you. Alice North is nothing but a cheap little gold digger with nothing to recommend her. No family, no social connections, not a dime to her name. She’s not even beautiful. Just an ordinary-looking woman who one wouldn’t glance at twice on the street. How does she manage to attract the attention of men like my son and Drake Sebastian?”

“You said the marriage is only an MC, according to the investigator.” Aldwin Hampstead struggled to keep his tone calm and soothing. It wasn’t easy. He was seething inside with something akin to panic. But his task now was to keep Ethel under control. “We both know that a Marriage of Convenience is nothing more than an affair that’s been given a sham of respectability. It won’t last long.”

He had to be careful, he reminded himself. Judging by the last message he had received from Rainshadow, the situation on the island was shaping up to be a disaster. He knew now that would be the best possible outcome for him. He wanted nothing more than to cut his losses.

It had all seemed so brilliant at the start. Zara Tucker had dazzled him with the promise of riches and power beyond his wildest imaginings. But in the past few days the scales had fallen from his eyes. He had awakened that morning with the sure and certain knowledge that he had been a fool. The best thing that could happen would be for the whole damn island to explode in flames and take the bitch with it.

But the immediate crisis was Ethel Whitcomb. She was obsessed with the death of her son, but obsession did not equate with stupidity. He must not forget that, not for an instant. Everything depended on Ethel. She was the matriarch of the Whitcomb family. She controlled a fortune, and now that things were falling apart on Rainshadow, he needed access to the money more than ever.

They were sitting in the living room of Ethel’s home in an exclusive gated community on Emerald Sunset Drive. The front windows had a panoramic view of the Old Quarter of Resonance City. The ethereal green towers of the Alien ruins were clearly visible, sparkling in the sunlight. But the interior of the Whitcomb mansion was shrouded in gloom.

When he had arrived a short time ago, he had been shown into Ethel’s study. The room was decorated in an elegantly neutral mix of off-white and cream with discreet touches of rich, dark amber for counterpoint. The space had been designed to showcase a few pieces from Ethel’s rare collection of Old World antiquities and First Generation art.

Ethel was a formidable woman, straight-shouldered, tall, arrogant, and regal. She wore her graying hair in a refined chignon. Her black silk trousers and pale blue silk blouse had been hand-tailored. She’d had a little work done on her patrician face, very good work. She could afford a fortune in jewels but she always kept her jewelry to a tasteful minimum. Today that amounted to a pair of gold and amber studs in her ears and a gold necklace.

She had been widowed for several years but she still wore her wedding band. Ethel had never remarried. Aldwin was quite sure that was because she enjoyed having full control of the Whitcomb money. And she handled it brilliantly. In the years since her husband’s death, she had become something of a legend in the business world. While Whitcomb Industries could not match the Sebastian, Inc. empire in size, scope, and power, it was certainly a force to be reckoned with here in Resonance City.

Aldwin had been a little unnerved at first by Ethel’s obsession with the murder of her son. It was not as if she didn’t have four other offspring, he thought. The Whitcombs were a prolific family. In any event, it was a known fact that Fulton Whitcomb had been the Whitcomb family screwup. That was, of course, what had made it so easy to manipulate him. Fulton’s obsession in life had been to prove to himself and his mother that he could be a smashing success.

Ethel’s fixation on Fulton’s death and her unwavering conviction that he had been murdered in spite of the lack of evidence struck Aldwin as over the top. But then, he did not really get the whole heavy-duty family-bond thing. Hell, his own mother probably wouldn’t have noticed if he’d gone missing. She had spent most of her time lost in an alcohol-and-drug-induced haze until the crap had finally killed her.

Family, he thought. Gotta love ’em. It was that attitude, of course, that had helped cement the bond between Zara Tucker and himself at the start of their association. They both saw family ties as sentimental weaknesses to be exploited. They had done exactly that, first with Fulton and then with Alice North.

It was not that he did not have his own passions, Aldwin thought. He was only human, after all. But those passions were centered on one objective—making a place for himself in the rarefied social circles in which Ethel and her family moved. He had a right to enter that world. His father had come from that world—a realm where money and connections could buy a reckless young man out of any problem, including those that resulted from a one-night stand with a cheap, drug-addicted whore.

No doubt about it, his unknown father was his true, if unwitting, inspiration, Aldwin thought. He wanted nothing more than to follow in the footsteps of dear old dad. His talent had already brought him a long way. He had started out as a low-rent drug dealer from the Old Quarter slums and today he was the curator of the most exclusive private museum in the city.

But he had allowed himself to get suckered into the doomed project on Rainshadow, and now he was engaged in some serious damage control. He could not afford to lose Ethel Whitcomb’s patronage, not now that his own fantasy of a brilliant future was about to crash and burn.

He had to maintain his connection with Ethel, and that meant he had to nurture her obsession with avenging her son’s death. Ethel had vowed to make Alice North’s life a living hell and she had spent a great deal of money to do that.

Ethel was the ultimate stalker, Aldwin thought—a head full of obsessive revenge fantasies and all the money in the world to make those fantasies come true.

He suppressed a sigh. Just because you were rich, connected, and powerful didn’t mean you weren’t a whacko.

“When I discovered that Fulton was in an MC contract with Alice North, I told myself it wasn’t important,” Ethel said. She rose from her chair and went to stand at the window. “He certainly was not the first man of his class to use an MC to placate a mistress. When I confronted him, he assured me that it was just a short-term fling. He said she had insisted on the arrangement and he saw no harm in it. The MC was supposed to be a trinket, like a nice piece of jewelry, to satisfy her. But she wanted more.”

“I understand,” Aldwin said. Surreptitiously he checked his watch. He had heard the story many times.

Ethel clenched one hand into a fist. “Alice North wanted a full Covenant Marriage. As if a Whitcomb would marry a woman of her sort. When she realized that she was not going to become Fulton’s CM wife, she murdered him. Why couldn’t the police see that she killed him?”

Because there was no evidence, Aldwin thought. Thanks to a useful item of Alien technology that killed without a trace. But he didn’t say it out loud. He and Ethel had been over this territory a thousand times in the past year. Ethel had run up against one thing her money had been unable to buy—the criminal justice system. Which was actually rather astonishing, in Aldwin’s opinion. A year ago he would have bet good money that with Ethel Whitcomb pushing for an arrest, the system would have obliged. It had come as a bit of a shock when Alice North had walked free. Evidently not everything was for sale down there at the Resonance City PD. He would have to keep that in mind.

“I just cannot comprehend Drake Sebastian entering into an MC with that woman,” Ethel said. “Everyone knows the Sebastian men don’t do MCs with their mistresses.”

Aldwin cleared his throat. “The family standards may be slipping. There was that divorce a while back. The Sebastians tried to keep it hushed up, but everyone in their circle knew about it.”

“Yes, I know,” Ethel said. “But this tacky MC coming on the heels of that dreadful scandal just makes it all so much worse. Drake’s mother, Samantha, must be furious. I can’t even imagine what Drake’s grandfather is thinking. And as for Drake, it’s no secret he is set to take over the business next year. Why would he embarrass his family like this?”

Aldwin was quite certain he knew the answer to Ethel’s questions. There was only one logical reason why Drake Sebastian would have gotten himself involved in an MC with Alice North. It was the same reason that Fulton had married the woman. The Sebastians had concluded that they needed Alice’s assistance to find the crystals. The fact that Drake had whisked her off to Rainshadow immediately after the ceremony said it all. Not like the island is any woman’s dream of a honeymoon paradise, he thought.

He did not want to contemplate what would happen if Drake was successful. If the Sebastians found the two crystals, they would also find the Dream Chamber and the bitch, Zara Tucker. That could not be allowed to happen. Aldwin knew that Zara would take him down with her in a heartbeat.

It was all falling apart. Aldwin was now in survival mode. He hoped that Rainshadow blew sky-high and soon, taking Zara Tucker with it. The biggest mystery in this whole mess was why he had allowed Tucker to drag him into the project in the first place.

The panicky feeling was getting worse. He was not claustrophobic, but Ethel’s study seemed to be closing in around him. It was getting hard to breathe.

“You’ve got other things on your mind, Mrs. Whitcomb,” he said gently. “We can discuss the plans for the new wing of the museum some other time.”

“Yes,” she said, bleak and bitter. “Some other time.”

“I’ll see myself out,” he said.

Ethel did not respond. Aldwin left her standing at the window as she gazed out at the spectacular view.