Page 48 of Point of Mercy

“And would you… I’m getting married in a few weeks. Jackson and I would love it if you came.”

Heather held her breath. This might be too much of a commitment for Turner. Just because he was going to help Adam didn’t mean he wanted to be entangled with Heather any further—at least not publicly. Their lovemaking was another matter—it had nothing to do with their future.

“The wedding will be held in Gold Creek, up at Whitefire Lake,” Rachelle said. “And we’re inviting some old friends…” She glanced back at her sister. “Even Carlie’s coming. From Alaska. She wrote me that she’s moving back to Gold Creek. Can you believe that?”

Carlie had been Rachelle’s best friend in high school, the one person in Gold Creek who had believed in Rachelle during the horrid period in Rachelle’s life when Jackson had been accused of murder. After high school, Carlie, with her striking black hair and blue-green eyes, had sought her fame and fortune modeling in New York. But something had happened, something no one in Carlie’s family would discuss, and the last Heather had heard was that Carlie was in Alaska, working on the other side of the lens as a photographer.

“I’ll be glad to see her again,” Heather said, still waiting for Turner’s response.

“So will I.” Rachelle looked directly at Turner. “Please…we’d love to have you.”

Turner rubbed the back of his neck. “All depends, I guess, on what we find out today.” He looked at Heather and cocked his head to the stairs leading to the garage.“We’d better git.”

Heather’s stomach twisted. Her eyes locked with Rachelle’s for just an instant and the fear they both felt congealed in their intermingled gaze. Turner placed an arm over Heather’s shoulders. “Don’t worry,” he advised, though his own expression was anxious.

Heather swallowed a lump in her throat, kissed Adam’s cheek and with Turner’s arm still securely around her, started for the stairs leading down to the garage. She closed her eyes and sent up a silent prayer—for the thousandth time that day.

* * *

Thomas Fitzpatrick wasa fastidious man who took care of himself. His body was honed by exercise—tennis, golf and regular workouts at a health club. He prided himself on his patrician good looks, his thick head of hair and his practiced smile. Therefore, he wasn’t impressed with the private investigator Brian had hired.

Mr. Robert “Bobby” Sands was seated in one of the living room chairs, his dusty boots propped on one of June’s white ottomans, his thick fingers webbed over a belly that was paunchy for a man not yet forty. His hair was greasy black and pulled into a ponytail and an earring winked from his right ear.

“… That’s right,” he was saying, as if he felt right at home. Thomas poured them each a drink. “Turner’s clean. A few barroom brawls when he was younger, but mainly those were caused by his old man. No major scrapes with the law. Kept his nose clean on the rodeo circuit—no booze or drugs or doped-up livestock.”

Thomas, disgusted, glanced in the mirrored bar. At least June wasn’t here to see their visitor.She’d decided to take Toni, their daughter, and spend some time in San Francisco with Thomas’s sister, Sylvia Monroe. Hopefully Sylvia could talk some sense into her. When she came back, they’d discuss their marriage or their divorce.

He’d never really loved June, but, damn it, this house seemed cold without her. A few years ago, the house was teeming with life and now, without the kids and his wife… Quickly he snapped to attention and pulled himself together. He would not,would notshow any signs of weakness to this scum bag of an investigator!

In the reflection he noticed Sands pick up a lighter from the glass-topped table, eye the gold piece, flick the flint and watch the flame snap up. Quickly he set the lighter back. For a second Thomas was sure the man was going to pocket it.

“You’re telling me Turner Brooks has no secrets.” He crossed the room and handed Sands a drink. His skin crawled as he noticed the man’s chipped and dirty fingernails.

“Nope. I’m saying he looks clean. But he’s had his problems and they all started surfacing just recently. He’s started spending a lot of time with a woman….” Sands’s reptilian eyes slitted a fraction, as if he was enjoying stretching out this moment.

“What woman?”

“Heather Leonetti.” Sands took a swallow from his bourbon and smiled as the liquor hit the back of his throat. “You know who I mean—Heather Tremont Leonetti, the girl who married that rich banker six years ago.”

Tremont. The name sent a jolt through him. Jackson’s fiancée was a Tremont. She had a younger sister…a pretty girl who had married well, above her station….

“It seems as if Turner and Mrs. Leonetti knew each other a few years ago. Before she was married. Met up on a ranch owned by Turner’s uncle, Zeke Kilkenny. Now, Kilkenny won’t say much, won’t even return my calls, and his housekeeper, Mazie, usually a gossip, wouldn’t breathe a word about what went on between Brooks and Heather Tremont, who, by the way, was in an on-again, off-again engagement with Leonetti, but I did some digging. Came up with a few names. One of the ranch hands who used to work for Kilkenny, Billy Adams—he said Heather and this cowboy were damned thick, and another girl who worked up there during the summers—” He set down his drink, reached into the front pocket of his jacket—a shiny pinstripe—and pulled out a small notepad. Licking his fingers, he flipped through the pages. “Here it is. Yost. Sheryl Yost. Seems she had a thing for our boy Turner, as well. Anyway, she was more than happy to tell me anything I wanted to know. According to her, Brooks and the Tremont girl had an affair, kind of a summer fling. Eventually he rode off into the sunset and left her—this seems to have been his M.O. at the time—and she ended up marrying Leonetti.”

Thomas, who had been interested, wasn’t impressed. “Lots of people have one last fling before they get married.”

The fat man’s lip curled outward and he moved his head from side to side. “Maybe. The thing of it is Mrs.Leonetti had a baby. Not eight months later. And the kid don’t look all that Italian, if you get my drift.”

Thomas held his glass halfway to his lips. “Brooks’s?”

“Again, your guess is as good as mine,” Sands replied in his oily voice. “But I found out that Dennis Leonetti had some tests done a few years back and he can’t father children. His sperm count is near zero.” Sands picked up his drink and finished it in one long swallow, then snapped open his ratty leather briefcase and fumbled through some papers. “Now, all of a sudden, Heather Leonetti, who’s managed to ditch Leonetti and strip him of some of his money—she’s shown up on Brooks’s doorstep, at the very ranch you want to buy, and he practically does back flips. He’s in San Francisco now—has a friend of his, Fred McDonald, run the ranch while he’s gone.” Finding his report, he slid it across the glass expanse of the tabletop.

Thomas picked up the typewritten pages. “In San Francisco…to meet the child?” he asked, reaching into his pocket for his reading glasses.

Sands leaned closer. He grinned in pleasure. “He’s there for tests. Been to a hospital. The staff is pretty mum, but my guess is it has something to do with the kid as the boy’s got leukemia. Heather’s kept it a secret, but she and Leonetti split up after the kid was diagnosed. My guess is Leonetti found out he wasn’t the boy’s dad and gave Heather the old heave-ho.”

Thomas set his unfinished drink on the table. He didn’t like this. Not when children, sick children, were involved. “The boy?”

“Is in remission, from what I get out of it. I don’t know why she told Turner about the kid now,but she did…or at least it looks that way. Maybe she wants to take up with him again now that Leonetti’s out of the picture. Again, your guess is as good as mine.”

---