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She didn’t deserve that after all she’d been through. But Mason was probably the last person in the world who should be trusted with responsibility for her.
A cold hand seemed to squeeze his heart. What did he know about being a father? His own father hadn’t set much of an example.
He glanced at his watch. He was about to meet the daughter he’d never known existed—for the first time. And his life would change irrevocably. But it already had, hadn’t it? It had started to change months ago, at the class reunion. He just hadn’t recognized it at the time.
REUNION REVELATIONS: Secrets surface when old friends—and foes—get together.
Hidden in the Wall—Valerie Hansen (LIS#84) January 2008
Missing Persons—Shirlee McCoy (LIS#88) February 2008
Don’t Look Back—Margaret Daley (LIS#92) March 2008
In His Sights—Carol Steward (LIS#96) April 2008
A Face in the Shadows—Lenora Worth (LIS#100) May 2008
Final Justice—Marta Perry (LIS#104) June 2008
MILLS & BOON
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MARTA PERRY
has written everything from Sunday school curriculum to travel articles to magazine stories in twenty years of writing, but she feels she’s found her home in the stories she writes for the Love Inspired line. Marta lives in rural Pennsylvania, but she and her husband spend part of each year at their second home in South Carolina. When she’s not writing, she’s probably visiting her children and her five beautiful grandchildren, traveling or relaxing with a good book. Marta loves hearing from readers, and she’ll write back with a signed bookplate or bookmark. Write to her c/o Steeple Hill Books, 233 Broadway, Suite 1001, New York, NY 10279, e-mail her at marta@martaperry.com or visit her on the Web at www.martaperry.com.
Final Justice
Marta Perry
Published by Steeple Hill Books™
If you search for good, you will find favor, but if you search for evil, it will find you.
—Proverbs 11:27
This story is dedicated to my own dear college
friends, including Cynthia, Liz, Ginny, Phyllis,
Babs, Barbara and any others whose names I’ve
missed. And, as always, to Brian, with much love.
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Marta Perry for her contribution to the REUNION REVELATIONS miniseries.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
EPILOGUE
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
PROLOGUE
He was about to meet the daughter he’d never known existed. He sat alone on a park bench, watching the spring sunshine filter through veils of Spanish moss and trying to make sense of the changes that had turned his life upside down.
Across the park, a father pushed his child on the rustic swing set. The little girl—four or five, maybe—laughed, her light voice floating toward him on the sultry air.
“Higher, Daddy. Higher.”
A cold hand seemed to squeeze his heart. What did he know about being a father? His own father certainly hadn’t set much of an example. In fact, if his father were alive today, he’d be quick to point out that this was just another opportunity for him to fail someone.
He couldn’t fail this child. She didn’t deserve that after all she’d been through. But he was probably the last person in the world who should be trusted with the responsibility for her.
He glanced at his watch. They’d come soon, and his life would change irrevocably.
But it already had, hadn’t it? It had started to change months ago. He just hadn’t recognized it at the time.
ONE
Magnolia College’s ten-year reunion was in full swing on a warm southern evening. Jennifer Pappas stood alone near the French doors that opened to the terrace, wondering what on earth had made her agree to come.
The Mossy Oak Inn on the edge of the college campus prided itself on elegant service, and the staff had outdone itself tonight. Discreet waiters circulated with trays of hors d’oeuvres, while a string combo played a delicate counterpoint to the reliving of college memories. The scent of roses mingled with that of expensive perfume, almost dizzying in its impact.
She took an automatic step back from the exuberant greetings going on between two women who’d just, apparently, found each other after ten years and were determined to catch up on everything that had happened since.
That was what she feared the most tonight—that seemingly innocuous question: What have you been doing since graduation?
How do I answer that, Father? She sought refuge in prayer, as she always did, focusing inward and shutting out the clamor of insistent voices rising above the chamber music. How could I talk about the day-care center I ran in Syracuse without mentioning how it ended?
A shudder touched her heart, and she steeled herself against the memories, locking them away. She wouldn’t dwell on the past. She’d started a new life. That was what this was all about, wasn’t it?
But she’d been back in Magnolia Falls for over a month now, and she still hadn’t found her balance. She was beginning to wonder if she ever would.
Her gaze fell upon Steff Kessler, a fellow class member who was now the alumni director for Magnolia College. Steff had seemed eager to renew their college friendship, but even with Steff, she’d held back. How did you explain to anyone, let alone a friend, what it was like being arrested, charged, fingerprinted?
No one here knew the truth except for Pastor Rogers and her father. Dad kept insisting her life would be easier once she’d confided in a few friends, but she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t bear the possibility that they’d look at her with contempt.
The French door moved behind her, and someone stepped through. She turned, startled, and found herself face-to-face with Mason Grant.
“Mason.” Her heart twisted. Once she’d considered Mason one of her closest friends. Then, quite suddenly in the middle of their senior year, he’d shut her out, along with everyone else he’d been close to.
According to Steff, that was still the case. Steff hadn’t expected him to show up tonight, even though he still lived in Magnolia Falls.
“Jennifer Pappas.” He looked as startled as she felt. “I haven’t seen you since—well, since graduation.”
“Ten years.” She managed a smile. “How many times do you suppose those words have been said tonight?”
That brought an answering smile to his face. “Too many, I suppose. And they’re still at it.” He glanced at the noisy crowd, seeming to search for familiar faces, giving her a moment to take a quick look at him.
Her first thought was that he hadn’t changed. Tall, lean, he still had the sinewy build of a basketball player, evident even in the perfectly tailored tux he wore. He had regular features, dark blond hair that was always a little tousled despite his best efforts, hazel eyes—
And there she saw the difference.
Guarded. Once they’d been dancing eyes, but now they hid secrets. Maybe others would be fooled by the cheerful facade, but she recognized the expression. It was one she saw daily in her mirror.
What is it, Mason? What’s changed you? What’s put those lines around your eyes and given that wary set to your mouth?
That was not a question she could ask, since it was one she wouldn’t answer herself.
He brought his attention back to her, his lips easing in a smile. “Actually, I heard that you were back in town.”
“Probably at church.” Mason’s family had been long-time members of Magnolia Christian Church, although she hadn’t seen him at services there since she’d been back. “Pastor Rogers has hired me to run the church nursery school. I’ll also be doing the after-school program starting in September.”
His gaze evaded hers. “I must have heard somewhere else. I haven’t been at church lately. The stores keep me too busy for much of anything but work.”
That would be the chain of sporting-goods stores Mason had inherited when his father died during their senior year. Anyone might use that as an excuse. But Mason looked lost and alone somehow, just for an instant, before he veiled the emotion with a bland, cool mask.
Jennifer’s heart twisted. She wanted to reach out to him, to soothe the hurt she sensed in him just as she’d automatically run to comfort a crying child.
“Too busy for your faith? For your friends? What happened, Mason?” The words were out before she could censor them.
He looked startled, as well he might. “What do you mean? Nothing’s happened.”
She touched his sleeve, feeling hard muscle tense at her touch beneath the fine fabric of his tux, knowing it was a mistake to push but unable to resist her engrained need to help.
“We were good friends, before you walked away from all of us. Why did you do that?” She still remembered the pain, even though it had been ten years—the grief she felt at losing her friend and not knowing why.
Mason’s smile seemed frozen on his face. “Things happened, senior year, things none of us could control. Maybe you’ve forgotten I was the college pariah after losing the championship game for the team.”
She made a small sound of distress. “None of your friends blamed you for that, and anyone who did was an idiot. We wanted to help you then, but you shut us out. Can’t you let us make up for it now?”
“There’s no changing what’s done.” He jerked a nod toward the chattering crowd. “You think any of them would really go back, even if they could? No matter how many fond memories they dredge up tonight, at some level they all know the reality. It’s far better for all of us to leave the past alone.”
She was too shocked by the bitterness in his voice to respond. Maybe he read that in her face, because for a moment she saw the old Mason.
He clasped her hand in his, squeezing it gently. “Your heart always was too tender for your own good, Jennifer. But I’m glad you’re back, all the same.” He let her hand go slowly, almost reluctantly. “We both ought to circulate. I’m sure plenty of old friends are eager to greet you.”
And then he turned and slipped away into the crowd.
TWO
“I’m telling you the truth. We found Penny Brighton Kessler. She admitted she killed Josie, and the picture she had of the child she claims is her daughter looked exactly like Josie Skerritt.”
Mason stared at Kate Brooks across the red-and-white checked tablecloth at Burt’s Pizzeria, the food turning to ashes in his mouth. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t.
In the months since the reunion, he’d broken his habit of isolation to meet with a few old classmates occasionally—Kate, Parker Buchanan, Steff Kessler and Trevor Whittaker. And Jennifer Pappas, of course, always Jennifer.
Despite their rocky beginning at the reunion, despite the fact that Jennifer’s desire to reach out to him threatened the secrets that burdened him, he couldn’t seem to stay away from her. It was friendship, he told himself. That was all he felt.
And he’d needed friendship, as long-hidden secrets began to emerge over the past few months. First came the discovery of the body, hidden near the library, when Trevor’s construction company broke ground for the new library wing. Initially, he hadn’t imagined that had anything to do with his class, his friends.
But gradually the circle tightened. The body had been there since the December after their graduation, making a tenuous link to his class. People had been drawn into the mystery, trying to locate any missing class members.
Then the body had been identified as that of Josie Skerritt, one of their close circle of friends from Campus Christian Fellowship. No one could remember having seen her since graduation. His nightmares had started then. It had grown worse with the revelation that Josie had had a baby.
Everyone from their small group of college friends had been questioned. Everyone had, he supposed, been suspected in some way. Each time they were together, no matter how they tried to ignore it, the conversation would go back to Josie. How did she die? Why? What happened to the child she’d apparently had not long before her death?
Jennifer moved slightly, her hands seeming to push something away. Her velvety brown eyes were troubled. “I don’t understand. Are you saying that Penny stole Josie’s child?”
The words echoed in his mind, mocking him, reminding him. Josie’s child. Josie had a child. If Kate’s suspicions were right, a daughter.
Whose child? His stomach churned. Not mine. It couldn’t be mine.
Parker Buchanan, sitting next to Kate at the round table, put his hand over hers in a possessive movement. “You do remember that the police told us to keep quiet about this, don’t you?”
Kate wrinkled her nose at him. “Listen, Jennifer’s the one who figured out where Penny was. The police know she has to be warned about Penny. Anyway, she’s one of my best friends.”
A faint flush touched Jennifer’s smooth olive skin, as if it pleased her to be called that. She looked cool and put together, even in jeans and a simple knit shirt, but he knew that outward appearance masked a sensitive spirit.
“We shouldn’t ask,” she said to Kate. “But if you want to tell us—”
Kate leaned forward, pushing aside the remains of her mushroom pizza. The eager sparkle in her eyes said she was about to be indiscreet.
“Penny admitted she was trying to frame Parker for Josie’s murder.” Indignation filled Kate’s voice. “She’s off her rocker if you ask me. She showed me the photograph, and when I said the little girl looked like Josie, she flew into a rage. She was going to kill me and frame Parker.” She touched the sling in which her arm rested. “If Parker hadn’t gotten there in time, she’d have succeeded.”
“I’m a real hero, I am.” Parker, as always, was faintly self-mocking. “I let her get away.”
“You were taking care of me.” Kate gave him a look that would have shown a blind man how she felt about him.
Well, good for them. They both deserved a little happiness. Unlike him.
He shook his head, trying to get a grip on the situation. “Did Penny admit the child was Josie’s?” Even articulating the words shook him.
“Not exactly.” Kate frowned. “But honestly, if you’d seen the photo, you couldn’t help but notice. Same heart-shaped face, same brown hair and brown eyes—”
“Lots of people have brown hair and brown eyes.” Steff Kessler’s voice was sharp, a reminder to everyone that Penny had been married briefly to her brother, Adam.
“Same wistful expression,” Kate finished. “You know how Josie would look sometimes. Like a little girl lost. That’s how this child looks.”
That shook him. He remembered that look all too well.
“Penny claimed her daughter was Adam’s child.” Steff’s voice tightened. Though it had been ten years, she still felt the loss of her brother, dead in an apparent boating accident soon after his elopement with Penny. “But she wouldn’t agree to a DNA test, and my parents never believed it.”
“You see?” Kate’s voice was triumphant. “She could hardly agree to a DNA test on the child if the baby was really Josie’s.”
“That poor child.” Jennifer’s thoughts went straight to the child, of course. “If this is true, I can’t imagine what it must be like for her. Where is she? Not with Penny, I hope.”
“In a private boarding school in Charleston,” Parker said. “I managed to hear one of the police officers say that, but then they clammed up. Anyway, officially the cops are after Penny for the attack on Kate, but I imagine they’re looking hard at her for Josie’s death.”
Penny, suspected of murder. She’d been wild enough, bragging about having been kicked out of more schools than she could count, driving her elderly Charleston parents to declare Magnolia College her last chance. But murder—
It seemed impossible, but hardly less so than any of the other things that had rocked Magnolia Falls and the college since the body was discovered.
Mason’s cell phone vibrated. He was tempted to ignore it, but he didn’t do that, ever. It could be some crisis at one of the branch stores. Worse, it could be his mother’s assisted-living facility.
He checked the number, found it was one he didn’t recognize and answered, turning slightly away from the table.
“Mason Grant.” He kept his voice low.
For a moment there was nothing. Then a voice, whispering. A child’s, he thought at first. Some kid making prank calls, happening upon his number by accident.
“You think no one knows, don’t you? You think no one knows what you did.”
“Who is this?” He snapped the words, more sharply than he intended, and realized the faces around the table were turning toward him.
He shrugged, mouthing the words. Wrong number.
Then the whisperer spoke again. “You think no one knows about you and Josie. You think no one knows what you did. You’re wrong. I know.”
The connection was broken before he could say a word.
He glanced up. Everyone watched him. For an instant he imagined they’d all heard, that they all knew the truth about him.
Impossible. They watched him with varying degrees of interest, Jennifer with concern.
That look seemed to pierce the chill that had settled into his soul at the whispered words. The best thing that had come out of the reunion had been getting to know Jennifer again, feeling the warmth and caring that was such an integral part of her.
Don’t kid yourself. Not even Jennifer would understand if she knew the truth.
The chill gripped again, harder. The truth—he’d struggled with it since the moment he’d learned that the body was Josie’s. Struggled with what to do, how much to tell.
He’d thought the secret belonged to him alone. The voice seemed to whisper again. He’d been wrong.
Penny Brighton Kessler tossed the cell phone into the motel room’s trash can, satisfied with the impression she’d made. She’d bought several phones this morning, inexpensive models that she could use and discard. No one would trace her that easily.
She crossed the worn carpeting to the window, peering around the edge of the drapery. Nothing suspicious in the ill-lit parking lot, but then, she’d been careful.
Were the police involved already? Probably—for the attack on Kate, at least. They couldn’t have figured anything else out this soon. Unless she’d told Kate…She frowned. What had she told Kate?
Well, that didn’t matter. She could deny everything Kate said. But it had all gone wrong. She’d thought her plan to lay the blame on Parker was perfect, but it had unraveled. And then Kate had taken one look at the photograph of Alexis and known she was Josie’s child.
Anger propelled Penny back across the narrow room. Fine place this was for a Brighton—holed up in a cheap hotel room, on the run from the police, instead of living the life of luxury that was hers by right.
There were so many people to blame that she didn’t know where to start. Her parents. The child she’d thought would guarantee her proper place in the world. All those self-righteous people from school. If they’d never gotten together again at that reunion, would any of this have happened?
Still, she’d known all along that things might turn sour. She’d taken what precautions she could. There was the car no one would trace to Penny Brighton Kessler, the change in her appearance. She ruffled her fingers through short curls. She’d always wondered what she’d look like as a redhead.
Cash was the problem. The amount she’d had hidden away wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t get her out of the country, or set her up properly in the way she ought to live.
The anger burned again—sharper, more focused now. Mason Grant had money. And Mason was as responsible as anyone. Ten years ago he’d ignored her and then had an affair with Josie, as stupid as she was naive.
Well, it was time Mason repaid her for taking care of his kid all these years. And if she could arrange for that, and hurt interfering Jennifer Pappas in the process, so much the better. If Jennifer hadn’t tipped Kate and Parker off to her—
If, if, if. She forced down the fury that threatened to choke her. She couldn’t let it get the better of her. No more acting on impulse. She’d plan this carefully, and this time she’d wind up set for life.
The child was the key. Her parents had cut her off without a cent, but they loved Alexis, and would love her even when they knew she wasn’t really their grandchild. She’d never get her hands on the trust fund they’d talked of setting up for Alexis, not when she was on the run, but if dear old Momma and Daddy thought Alexis was in danger, they’d come up with the cash.
And Mason? Well, she had to admit that he was the unknown factor in all of this. Would he go straight to the police? Or would he try to keep his secret?
If so, he should be willing enough to pay for the privilege. And if not, if he had some bizarre idea of being a father to the child he’d never known about, so much the better. If she controlled Alexis, they’d all dance to her tune.
She wanted to move. Act. Drive to that expensive boarding school where her parents kept the kid and take her away.
Too dangerous. The police could be watching the school, thinking she’d do just that.
She had to be patient. She’d start laying the groundwork—show Mason just how much he had to lose if he didn’t cooperate with her.
He was vulnerable in spite of his wealth, in spite of the chain of sporting-goods stores that bore his name. The child, his precious reputation, the attachment he’d been forming with Jennifer since the reunion, these were his weaknesses.
She’d make him pay. The taste of revenge was sweet in her mouth. She’d make them all pay before she was done.
THREE
Jennifer checked the supplies in the art room for the after-school program in the church education wing, trying to focus on something other than the news about Penny and the child who might be Josie’s. And on Mason’s reaction to that news.
It was no use. She’d just counted the stacks of construction paper four times, and the amount still hadn’t registered. She may as well give in to the temptation to speculate on the news like everyone else.
They’d all been upset. After all, their little group had known Penny and Josie better than most people. Despite the police’s attempt at discretion, rumors were all over town, most of them garbled versions of what they’d heard at the pizzeria.
Everyone was upset. So why did Mason’s reaction bother her?
The classroom door opened, and Pastor Rogers poked his head in. “Am I disturbing you?”