Judy Duarte – The Parks Empire: Secrets, Lies and Loves: Romancing the Enemy (страница 13)

“How the family business is prospering? The old man has been doing a lot of buying lately. There’s been a large payment to a foreign diamond dealer of dubious reputation through an overseas bank. There’s also been a couple of mysterious deliveries to his store of late. Uninsured deliveries by courier.”

“So?”

Her brother shrugged. “So, I don’t know. Too bad the company is family-owned. Their records are private, so it’s more difficult to check on their business dealings. But not impossible,” he added. “Twenty-five years ago, the Parks empire seemed to take off. Where did the money come from?”

“The Carlton diamond business that apparently somehow disappeared into thin air without a trace just as Father did during that ill-fated yachting party?”

“That’s what I think,” her brother confirmed her guess.

Sara sipped the latte while she thought. “You and Nick and Mark Banning have the inside track on the investigation. I feel rather useless in the grand scheme of things. What do you want me to do?”

“Feed me when I drop by?” Tyler suggested with a grin, then became serious again. “The son knows the business. Can you get him to talk about the family’s fortunes? See if he knows how much was inherited from his mother’s side of the family. Walter Parks didn’t have much but ambition and a sharp mind before he married. As soon as his father-in-law died, two years after the marriage, Walter changed the name of the company from Lindsay Mining to Parks Mining and Exploration.”

Sara glanced at her brother in surprise at this news. “You have been busy. There’s something that occurs to me as sort of suspicious. Remember Mark told us that shortly after the party on the yacht, Walter sent his wife to a Swiss sanitarium?”

“Swiss, huh? I don’t think Mark knows that. I’ll have him start checking—”

“Sorry, that was just a manner of speaking. In novels, people always get sent to reclusive Swiss hospitals high in the mountains when their kin want to get rid of them. Anyway, Anna Parks was sent overseas somewhere when Cade was a child. He said the children never saw her, that his father said she wouldn’t care about them.”

“So?”

Sara frowned intently into the middle distance while she marshaled her thoughts. “Don’t you think that’s rather convenient and coincidental? According to Mother, Anna was present at the celebration aboard the yacht. What if she saw her husband have a quarrel with his partner? Maybe they got into a fight and our father, sorry, my father—”

“It’s okay. I still think of Jeremy Carlton as my father, too,” Tyler assured her.

“So maybe Jeremy fell and broke his neck or something. Then Walter panicked and threw the body overboard and Anna witnessed the whole thing. If she insisted her husband go to the police with the truth, then he might have needed to shut her up. What better way than to get her committed to an asylum for the insane in a foreign country?”

“Good point,” Tyler murmured.

“Also,” Sara continued. “When did he go into the retail business? It seems to me it would take a lot of money to open a jewelry store, and now he owns two of the most prestigious ones in California. Was that after our family somehow lost everything?”

Tyler ground the heels of his hands into his eye sockets as if he could erase the weariness. He covered a huge yawn before answering. “He has a way of taking over any enterprise he’s involved in while his partners—I use that term loosely—have a way of losing out.”

“Or disappearing,” Sara reminded him. “Tyler, be careful. I feel threatened. I don’t know if that’s the right word, but I have this odd feeling, like a noose tightening around us. Both of us.”

He patted her arm as he rose. “I always pay attention to hunches and odd feelings. I think we’re making someone nervous—”

“Walter Parks,” she said grimly, also standing and walking toward the front to see him out.

“Yeah. Are you going to back out?”

“No. Why would you think that?”

“Just a feeling.” He gave her an insouciant grin, then nodded his head toward the other town house. “He was pretty interested to see who rode up front with me and who rode in the back with Nick when we went to dinner Saturday night. Anything going on between you two that I should know about?”

Sara sighed and wrinkled her nose at her smart-mouthed sibling. “He’s very attractive,” she finally admitted.

“Aha,” Tyler said softly as they arrived at the front door and paused there.

“It’s confusing. He doesn’t seem ruthless. In fact, he’s a wonderful father.”

“Even an animal looks after its own.”

“I know. He’s my enemy and yet…” She shrugged.

Tyler studied her for a few seconds, then rubbed his brow as if his head hurt. “Sometimes lightning strikes, and there you are, burned to the core.”

The words were so startling, so much like a confession, that Sara was startled. “Tyler, have you met someone? Are you in love?”

His brief laughter was tinged with bitterness. “Hardly. It was nothing. A one-night stand.”

Sara was confused. “But if there’re feelings—”

“Forget it,” he said. “The lady obviously did.”

With very mixed emotions, Sara studied him. Tyler—who’d vowed he would never marry or have kids and “all that stuff” as he used to scornfully mutter—in love?

Well, maybe not in love, but certainly a chord had been struck in him by someone. Unfortunately, it appeared the same thing hadn’t struck her.

“Wait,” she requested when he opened the door. “Cade has invited me out to his ranch with him and Stacy this weekend. I told him I might be busy.”

“Go,” Tyler said at once. “This could be a chance to pry some info out of him. See if you can find out how the Parks empire is faring money-wise. Maybe he knows of some new deals his father is putting together. Or what was in those packages the courier dropped off.”

“Right, like he’s going to tell me they’re smuggling diamonds or something.”

Her brother gave her a sardonic glance. “Men have been known to disclose a lot during a weak moment.”

Her face flushed hotly in a sudden surge of guilt and remembered passion. Tyler touched her cheek. “Perhaps you and he have already had that moment?”

She shook her head. “There is an attraction. That’s what worries me. I want to believe that Cade is decent and honorable, then I think of his father and what Mother told us. It gets me confused and angry and frustrated.”

Tyler nodded. “I know the feeling. Maybe you’d better stay out of it, let me and Nick and Mark handle everything.”

Sara shook her head. “I came here to help. I’ll stick it out. And do my part.”

“No matter what it takes?” he asked.

“No matter what it takes.”

They agreed to meet Monday and discuss the weekend, then said goodnight. Sara locked the door and returned to the den. She cleaned up the dishes and went to bed, but not to sleep. Too many restless thoughts filled her head.

“Miss Carlton, guess what?” Stacy demanded Friday morning when Sara stopped at the adjoining town house to pick up the youngster for the short walk to school.

“What?”

“Dad and I are going to the ranch tonight and you’re invited!”

“Yes, your father kindly included me,” Sara admitted. She’d been over and over all the arguments about why she should go, but her conscience had bothered her all week. It seemed underhanded to take advantage of Cade’s and Stacy’s trust in her. “I don’t think I should intrude on your private time.”

“Please, you have to come. You haven’t seen my pony. She’s so beautiful. She can do tricks, too.”

“I think you’ve taken Miss Carlton by surprise,” Cade said, opening the door wider and handing his daughter a bright red lunchbox. “The invitation is still open. Can you join us?”

Sara tried to think of a plausible excuse to refuse, but some willful part of her urged her to accept. “You’re spending the night?”

“Yes. We’ll leave early Sunday afternoon. Stace and I have a family dinner at my father’s Sunday night.”

Stacy wrinkled her nose. “Do we hafta?”

“Yes,” her father said firmly.

Stacy went back to the original question. “Can you come to the ranch? We got cows and everything. We can help milk.”

“You have milk cows?” Sara asked, surprised.

“Actually I lease the operation. The farmer also takes care of our five horses and two dogs. The ranch is a two-hour drive north of the city. We would really like for you to join us, if you haven’t made plans for the weekend.”

“Uh, no—”

“Please come,” Stacy urged.

“Yes, do,” the father chimed in. “I would consider it a slight repayment for the help you’ve given me and Stace while Tai is unavailable.”

This really was a chance to find out more about his family, she decided, then wondered if she was rationalizing her desire to go. “Okay. It sounds like fun.”

“Yay, she’s going. I told you she would.” Stacy twirled around in delight. “We’re leaving right after school.”

“You’re quitting work early?” Sara asked.