Читать книгу Colton Christmas Protector - Beth Cornelison - Страница 13

Chapter 4

“Seen?” Pen jerked up her head, sending him a look of dismay, then shot a glance around the backyard. “By who—”

Reid put a hand on her shoulder and moved to block her view. “No, don’t look. You’ll only look more suspicious. Carry yourself in a manner that says you have every right to be here, that you don’t care who sees you.”

She straightened her back. “I do have a right to be here. It’s my childhood home. I—” She stopped, pitching her voice lower, and twisted her mouth as if rethinking her assessment. “Well, if I’m not welcome to come as I please, he could take away my key. But he hasn’t, so...”

Before she could unlock the back door, the knob rattled, and the door swung open. A woman in her late fifties with graying brown hair and a black maid’s uniform gave them a curious look. “May I help...? Oh, Miss Penelope! I thought I heard someone back here.”

“Helen.” Pen sounded breathless and nervous, but squared her shoulders. “Hello. I didn’t want to bother you, but I just needed...”

Reid tensed when Pen hesitated. It seemed they were about to test Penelope’s welcome at her father’s estate.

“Um...to look for something from my old room. Something of my mother’s.”

Reid hid his relief over Pen’s smooth lie. He hoped Helen hadn’t heard the same flutter of nerves in her voice that he had.

“Of course. Is it something I can help with?” Helen waved a hand down the back hall as she stood aside to admit them.

Reid mentally scratched B and E off the list of crimes they were flirting with.

“No. No, I don’t want to bother you. Reid can help me look.” Pen smiled at the maid and waited for Helen to return to whatever she’d been doing before heading down the long dark hall. He followed her as she moved quietly through the house, bypassing the kitchen where the clank of dishes and a woman’s humming could be heard. She led him up a back staircase not nearly as grand as the wide marble one with polished wood banisters he remembered from past visits to the house. Their footsteps were muted on the thick white carpet, and he could imagine Penelope as a teenager, sneaking up these quiet and more hidden stairs after her curfew.

Pen led him down the upstairs hall, past numerous closed doors, and she paused, casting a surveying glance around before crossing the landing at the top of the grand staircase in the foyer. Reid looked over the balustrade to the cold marble entryway he remembered from previous trips to his family lawyer’s house. A sparkling crystal chandelier hung over the foyer and replicas of Greek statutes in white stone and Italian urns in hues of gray and black were positioned around the walls. For all its opulence, the foyer lacked color and gave visitors no sense of warmth or welcome. Much like the other rooms Reid had visited. Much like the man who owned the home. In Reid’s opinion, Hugh Barrington loved the idea of being respected, admired, even envied for his position and wealth, but did little to earn it on a personal level.

The man might have been one of Eldridge’s closest advisers and confidants, he might have come to Reid’s defense when suspicion was thrown at him following Andrew’s death, but Hugh Barrington was a hard person to feel any affection or warmth for. Appreciation, maybe. Polite friendliness out of respect for his alliance with and assistance concerning Eldridge, but hardly the sort of Hallmark greeting-card feelings that engendered real esteem. Hugh’s priorities simply seemed oddly skewed. Case in point, his disregard for Penelope, while he fawned—rather obsequiously, in Reid’s opinion—over the Colton family.

“Is there a problem?” Penelope asked in a hushed tone.

He shook himself from his thoughts and caught up to her. “No. Why?”

“You seemed preoccupied and so...serious.” She waved a dismissive hand and gave her head a brisk shake. “Never mind. Come on. That’s his home office.” She aimed her finger down the hall to a door that stood ajar. “The second room on the left.”

He nodded. “After you.”

She balked, and he lifted a corner of his mouth in a wry grin.

“Are you scared to go in there?”

Penelope scowled. “No.” Then after a beat, “Not...really.” But she still made no move to enter Hugh’s study.

“You said you had a right to be here,” he teased.

“I do!” She squared her shoulders, then glared at him. “It was your idea to come here and search!”

“Hey, you called me when you found that file.” He folded his arms over his chest. “Do you really want to stand out here and waste time arguing over who is more responsible for us being here? Or do you want to get in, find the evidence we need to incriminate—”

“Or clear!”

“Or clear him,” he conceded, though he was skeptical. “We should get busy.”

She glanced guiltily at her father’s office door, but straightened her spine and, wiping her hands on her yoga pants, marched into the room.

Reid paused at the threshold of Hugh’s office, taken aback by the contrast of the man’s study to the other parts of the house. As stark and colorless as the entry and living room were, Barrington’s private study was dark with deep browns, crimsons and polished brass. The room reeked of masculinity, right down to the lingering musky scent of Hugh’s overpowering aftershave. The walls were wood paneled and the matching desk, bookcases and file cabinets were made of darkly stained hardwoods. The couch and desk chair were a rich burgundy leather. A slight patina of age dimmed the brass of the grommets on the seat coverings, the furniture hardware and the lampstands. He drew two pairs of latex gloves from his pocket and held one out to her. “Here. Wear these. You may feel you have a legal right to be here, but let’s not leave fingerprints, just in case.”

She eyed the gloves he handed her, then with a furrow of worry denting her brow, she worked her fingers into the latex encasement.

“Look at all this. This could take forever,” she said pulling out a drawer of his filing cabinet.

Reid closed the office door behind him. “If there is information here somewhere that incriminates him, my guess is it won’t be anywhere obvious like a file cabinet or desk drawer.”

She gave him a dubious look. “We’re talking about a man who hasn’t changed his home security code in twenty-five years. He’s smugly overconfident about his security. Andrew tried to talk to him numerous times about safety issues, but he insisted his status quo was good enough.”

Reid nodded. “His hubris may work in our favor. Just the same, check for out-of-the-way cubbyholes. Even an overconfident old-schooler probably has hiding places for sensitive stuff.”

Pen slid closed the file drawer she’d opened and quirked a moue of agreement. “Why not? Andrew had a secret hiding place in our wall I didn’t know about. Why not my father, too?”

Reid’s first task was to boot up Hugh’s desktop computer. He plugged the flash drive into a USB port and rolled the mouse to wake the screen. The computer started up and asked for a password in order to continue. “Any guess what his computer password might be?”

“Try 12-18-46. That’s the house security code.”

Reid arched an eyebrow. “Let me guess. Also his birthday?”

She shot him a deprecating, can-you-believe-it smile.

He tried the numbers. “No dice.”

“Maybe...MavericksFan? No spaces. I think that was the password on the parental-control blocker on our television when I was in high school.” She put a finger to her lips and whispered, “Shh. Don’t tell him I knew it. That’s how I learned he had a Playboy TV subscription.”

“My lips are sealed,” he replied with a chuckle, and typed in MavericksFan. Nothing. Mavericksfan and mavericksfan also failed. So not an issue of capitalization.

“Nada.” Next, he tried Penelope and hit enter.

From behind him, she scoffed. When the error message popped up again, she strolled back to the bookshelves. “I coulda told you that wouldn’t work. Aren’t passwords usually something important to a person?”

The hurt and resentment was back in her voice. He’d never realized how deep her wounds were, how wide the gulf in her estrangement with her father.

Reid scrubbed his face and thought. “Any other suggestions? We’re losing time here.”

“Sorry. No. Not unless it’s something stupid like password or 1234ABCD.”

For good measure, Reid tried both. To Hugh’s credit, neither of those obvious codes worked, but when he tried MavericksFan1, the computer continued to start up and took him to the home screen. “I’m in.” He started opening files and sending documents, internet history and financial data to the flash drive. It was too easy. Reid shook his head and mumbled, “Jeez, and this guy is our family lawyer?”

When they found Eldridge, he’d need to have a talk with father about trusting Hugh with family business. If they found Eldridge.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. No. He couldn’t think that way. He would see to it his father was located and brought home, one way or another.

Pushing back from the desk, he turned his attention to a physical search while Hugh’s computer dumped information onto the flash drive.

He opened a file drawer and felt the underside, scanned the labels of the drawer contents. Across the room, Penelope pulled a painting down from the wall and pushed at the wood paneling behind it. When she found nothing, she rehung the picture and moved on to the next.

Reid watched her for a moment, mesmerized by the way the soft stream of sunlight from the office window made her auburn hair shine with coppery highlights. Her Dallas Cowboys sweatshirt was unflattering, too big for her—probably one of Andrew’s—but her blue yoga pants fit snugly and showed off her shapely bottom and long legs. She moved down the wall to the next painting, checking for a hidden safe, a spot of color in the otherwise darkly masculine room.

A niggling guilt bit him. What right did he have to be ogling his late partner’s wife? Especially when, intentional or not, he’d had a hand in Andrew’s death.

She glanced his way, caught him staring and tilted her head. “What? Did you find something?”

Scrubbing a sobering hand over his face, he turned back to the file cabinet. “No. Just...thinking.”

“Anything you want to share?”

“Not at the moment.” He moved to the next file drawer, found nothing suspicious, and repeated the process, being careful to replace any file he pulled out in the exact manner he found it.

Finding nothing behind the pictures, Penelope moved on to the bookcase, pulling books from the shelves and flipping open the covers of larger books. “I heard about your father, that he’s missing, presumed dead. I’m so sorry.”

Reid paused and jerked his gaze back to her. “So you heard, huh? Guess I shouldn’t be surprised. We’ve tried to keep it out of the news but...”

“Actually, Helen mentioned it when we talked last time. She said they found a burned body in a car they think is your father. She said the house staff has been all abuzz about it and the reports that my father thought he’d seen him before the body was found.”

“Yeah, well, thanks. He is missing, but the burned body they found proved not to be him.”

“Oh!” She flashed an awkward smile. “Good. That’s... I’m glad.”

“Yeah, that was a relief.” Reid didn’t really want to talk about the disappearance of his elderly father. The five months of crazy twists and unexpected turns to his father’s case would take more time than he and Pen had and would only renew his simmering frustration. Still...if it opened a line of communication with Pen, he’d indulge her with the abridged version. “Needless to say, it’s been a stressful few months, and we don’t seem any closer to finding him.”

“The police have no leads?” Pen crossed the floor toward him, her arms folded loosely over her chest. “You’d think, as high profile as his case must be, that there’d be pressure on the cops to find him. To do more. To leave no stone unturned.”

“You’d think. There’s been no shortage of suspects, but nothing that’s been substantiated. A few clues, and numerous theories, but nothing that’s been proven helpful.”

“My father’s sighting—”

“Hasn’t panned out yet. But it’s worth further investigation.” Reid turned to Hugh’s massive desk and began sliding open drawers, searching for a key that might indicate there was a safe in the house or any other indication he’d secreted information somewhere.

She strolled to a window seat and knelt to lift the pillows and the lid of a storage space. “Well, you have my sympathies and prayers that he’ll be found soon and well.”

“Do I?” He paused to study her again, wishing he could get past the distance she’d put between them in the past year.

She sat back on her heels and sent him a puzzled look. “Of course. I may be angry with you, not trust you, feel betrayed by you, but I’m not so uncaring as to wish you or your family ill. I have no grudge against your father.” She dropped her gaze to her lap and frowned. “Not much of one, anyway.” She huffed softly, then added, “But then, my father’s preference of you Coltons over me isn’t your fault, I guess. Coltons are wealthy and powerful clients.” She gave him a bitter smile and waved a dismissive hand. “I’m just family.”

Reid sighed. “Pen—”

More hand waving as she pushed back up on her knees and dug into the window-seat storage again. “No, no. Don’t start. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. My troubles with my father aren’t for you to worry about.”

But he couldn’t write off her feelings of disappointment and jealousy so easily. When Andrew was alive, she’d managed to set aside her feelings toward Reid’s family and enjoy his company at face value. This return of her hostility toward the Coltons showed him just how high the wall she’d built had become. He didn’t want any barriers between them. Especially something he had no control over, like the family he belonged to.

Having the name Colton was a mixed blessing. Along with the prestige, the wealth and the opened doors, his family connection carried a lot of baggage. The Coltons had made enemies in a variety of ways, unintentionally rubbed some people in the community the wrong way, while some folks disliked them simply because of what they represented. They were a part of the infamous 1 percent. The .01 percent even. Not a popular distinction with the other 99.99 percent these days.

“Thank you,” he said quietly, “for your prayers and well wishes. I still have hope he’ll be found. A man like Eldridge Colton doesn’t just disappear without someone knowing something. We just haven’t found that someone yet.” He rubbed a thumb along the beveled edge of Hugh’s desk as he pondered the circumstances surrounding his missing father. “Or we haven’t provided the right incentive to make that someone talk.” He opened a desk drawer and rifled through the files, felt the bottom of the drawer for anything suspicious.

They worked silently for another minute before Pen glanced in his direction. “Do you suspect foul play, or is it possible he left on his own terms, that maybe he doesn’t want to be found?”

Reid twitched a grin. “Yes.”

She frowned at his evasive answer, then shook her head and continued her searching.

“Anything is possible. The truth is we really don’t know.”

Reid looked on the underside of the desk for a file taped to the unfinished wood. Nothing. He gritted his teeth. Hugh Barrington didn’t strike him as the cleverest man. Devious, perhaps. Intelligent, yes. But the man had a twenty-five-year-old passcode on his house security system. Surely Reid could figure out where Hugh might have stashed incriminating information. If there was any to find.

And he believed there was. Because despite how things had gone down in the last months of his time on the police force with Andrew, he trusted his partner’s intuition and insights.

Pen climbed to her feet, abandoning the window seat, and moved down the wall to another bookcase. “But you’re a cop, Reid. Surely you have some gut feeling about what happened to your father. Haven’t you done any investigating on your own?”

He snorted. “I was a cop. I’m not privy to all the details of the case. The family knows some, but not all of what the detectives have learned. They have to keep a few tricks up their sleeve to stay a step ahead.” He moved on to a bottom drawer, big enough for hanging files. The drawer rattled but wouldn’t open. A locked drawer. Not uncommon, all things considered, but...

He felt the underside and checked the smaller top drawers for a key. Nothing. The matching file drawer on the opposite side of the desk slid open easily, and Reid walked his fingers through the contents of the drawer, scanning tab labels. “All that said, I—”

His gaze snagged on a file with the heading Penelope. He stilled, his line of thought forgotten. Furrowing his brow, he pulled out the file and flipped it open. The file was full of legal documents. A few medical records. A picture or two.

The last document was a petition for adoption. Hugh and his wife had signed as the adoptive parents and two names were scribbled on the lines for the birth parents. He blinked and reread the opening lines.

We the undersigned do permanently relinquish all claim and parental rights for our biological child, Lisa Umberton, to Hugh and Constance Barrington of Dallas, Texas...

His breath snagged in his chest, and the thump of his pulse grew in his ears. With fumbling fingers he flipped back to the front of the file to the first documents. A court order to legally change Lisa Umberton’s name to Penelope Lisa Barrington.

“You what?” Penelope prompted, dragging his attention away from the file. Her expression shifted when she glanced at him. “Reid, what’s wrong? Did you find something?”

Uncertainty and shock fisted around his lungs. He swallowed hard and scrubbed his cheek with his palm before stammering, “Uh, no. N-nothing...relevant.”

Did Pen know she was adopted? He thought back through the many meals he’d shared with Andrew and his wife through the years, game-day parties and birthday celebrations. Had she ever mentioned being adopted? She’d talked about how hard her mother’s death had been on her, how distant she felt from Hugh, how alone and out of place she’d felt in the large, sterile home growing up. She talked about her envy of Reid’s large family, how she’d hated being an only child.

But she’d never mentioned adoption.

“Reid,” Pen said, a note of excitement in her tone. “I found a safe.”