Promise Not To Tell(13)

“You have no idea.”

“I’ll look forward to meeting with you soon,” Burleigh said. “Meanwhile, keep in mind that there is twenty-five thousand dollars at stake.”

“I’ll do that.” Cabot ended the call and sat looking at the phone for a moment. After a while he got to his feet, rounded the desk and opened the door of his office.

Anson looked up from his computer.

“Well?” he said.

Cabot propped one shoulder against the doorframe and hooked his thumb in his leather belt. “According to the lawyer for the Whittaker Kennington estate, the old man evidently had a change of heart and left me twenty-five grand.”

Anson snorted. “From most people that would be a nice little bequest. But considering that this is Whittaker Kennington’s estate, I’d say it was a token gift.”

“It is. Still, twenty-five thousand is twenty-five thousand.”

“Can’t argue with that.”

“But here’s where it gets interesting,” Cabot said. “According to Burleigh, I have to sign some paperwork before I can cash the check. What’s more, he’s willing to fly to Seattle and meet with me here in my office to make it easy for me to sign the papers.”

Anson’s brows rose. “Huh.”

“Furthermore, there appears to be some urgency about signing said papers. If I don’t give him my signature fairly soon, I’ll lose the money.”

Anson lounged back in his chair. “I don’t know a lot about wills and trusts. I’m sure your grandfather’s estate is very complicated. Still, that does sound a little strange.”

“That’s how it struck me. Makes me think of the old saying, ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch.’”

“Yeah, but there is such a thing as a grandfather having some serious regrets about never having had a relationship with his grandson.”

“He didn’t need me,” Cabot said. “Thanks to three marriages, he wound up with plenty of offspring and a number of grandchildren.”

“Which may explain why your bequest isn’t exactly breathtaking,” Anson said. “All those exes and their offspring are probably fighting over their shares of the estate.”

“Can’t say I blame them. It’s the paperwork angle that makes me think this offer from Burleigh isn’t quite as simple and straightforward as it sounds. I told him to send me copies of the documents he wants me to sign so that I could look them over.”

Anson looked thoughtful. “Couldn’t hurt to have your own lawyer take a look at them, too. Legalese is always hard to translate. Give Reed Stephens a call. We’ve done some work for him, and a while back he helped Max with a problem related to some family issues. You can trust him.”

“Good idea. I’ll contact him.”

Cabot pried himself away from the doorframe, turned and went back into his office.

The twenty-five thousand would definitely come in handy, but right now the only thing he wanted to concentrate on was the trip to Lost Island with Virginia Troy.

CHAPTER 6

“One thing has been bothering me,” Virginia said.

She was sitting behind the wheel of her car, watching the two-man ferry crew prepare to lower the ramp at the small island dock. It had been a long trip from Seattle, involving a lot of driving, two ferries, and a great deal of waiting-around time in between the crossings.

She and Cabot had been in close proximity since she had found him in the lobby of her condo building at seven twenty-five that morning. It was now going on two o’clock in the afternoon. She could not remember the last time she had spent so much one-on-one time with a man. And it had been forever since she’d experienced this edgy whisper of excitement. She told herself it was the prospect of finally discovering the truth about Hannah Brewster’s death that was responsible for the sense of anticipation. But she had a feeling that Cabot was the real source of the little thrills.

This was dangerous territory. When it came to relationships she was a modern-day Cinderella. It was best for everyone concerned if she was home by midnight. Some men, of course, considered her quirk a real draw, at least initially. But eventually they came to see it as a form of rejection – which it was. True, she could buy a little extra time with her meds or a couple of extra glasses of wine, but that usually guaranteed a full-blown anxiety attack later.

She and Cabot had both been careful to keep things cool and businesslike during the trip. Theirs was an odd association, she reflected. They were, in some weird sense, intimate strangers. They had a history.

Cabot took his attention off the ramp-lowering process and looked at her.

“Just one thing bothering you?” he asked.

“Okay, a lot of things,” she admitted. “But the question I keep circling back to is, why, assuming he is alive, would Zane take the risk of murdering a woman who couldn’t possibly have done him any harm?”

“You’re working from a false premise. Trust me, if Quinton Zane did come here to murder Hannah Brewster, it’s because he believed that she was in a position to create problems for him.”

“If he thought she was a threat, he could have gotten rid of her a long time ago.”

“I can think of three possible explanations for the delay. The first is that Brewster was always a threat of some kind but Zane only recently discovered where she was hiding.”