Confused, Jenna looked from her father to her sister. “Just the beginning of what?”
“Nothing,” Harold dismissed Jenna’s question much too quickly. The look he shot Natalie said that he’d told her what he had in confidence.
If she’d felt that this only involved Rebecca Lynn, she wouldn’t have said a word in front of Silver and Jenna. But her father had given her the impression that this thing went beyond her grasping stepmother and her unruly half brother.
Natalie looked pointedly at her father, passionately wishing he had a backbone. “They have a right to know, Dad.”
Jenna’s eyes nervously shifted from her to their father. “Know what?”
Since her father still wasn’t saying anything, Natalie took the matter into her own hands. “Dad thinks that the ring is cursed.”
It still didn’t make any sense. Jenna exchanged looks with Silver, who looked no more enlightened than she felt. “What ring?” Jenna wanted to know.
Again, Natalie waited for her father to say something. He didn’t. So she did. “The Tears of the Quetzal.”
The mention of the priceless diamond dissipated the fog Silver seemed to be encased in. They all knew that the gem was rumored to be theirs. Half the time, she thought it was all a myth, made up by her stepfather to court publicity.
“What does that have to do with Candace’s—?” Silver stopped abruptly as the realization suddenly occurred to her. “Was Candace wearing the ring when she was killed last night?”
“Either the ring, or a damn good paste imitation,” Natalie answered. But they all knew Candace. Her late twin couldn’t abide fakes. She took great satisfaction in flaunting the real thing. The stone had certainly looked real enough on the casino tapes she’d viewed. “When they interviewed her on camera last night, just before she walked into The Janus, Candace was waving her hand around for all the world to see.”
“Then anyone could have broken into her condo and killed her for it,” Jenna speculated.
“Yes,” Natalie agreed. “Except for one thing.” The two women and her father looked at her, waiting. “Candace knew her killer.”
“What makes you say that?” Jenna demanded, sounding almost hostile about the suggestion.
“There was no sign of forced entry,” Natalie told them. “The room where they found her was a mess, as if she was trying to fight off whoever she’d chosen to bring home with her. But it was obvious that she was the one who had opened the door in the first place.”
Harold sighed and sat down in the winged armchair that his wife had vacated. He closed his eyes wearily. “I always knew this was going to happen.”
The nature of Natalie’s job forced her to look beyond the obvious and delve deeper. She gave her father’s words a different interpretation. He wasn’t talking about her twin’s lifestyle.
“You’re talking about the curse, aren’t you?” Harold seemed almost beaten down, and he made no answer. He merely lifted his shoulders in a half shrug before letting them fall again. The ring was part of family lore, but to her recollection, her father had never elaborated on it. “Just why is this ring supposed to be cursed?”
“There’s no such thing as curses,” Jenna snapped. She ran her hands up and down her arms even though the day had been unseasonably warm. “I wish you’d all just stop talking about it.”
“It doesn’t matter why,” Harold told Natalie, his voice weary but firm. As far as he was concerned, the subject was closed. “It just is, Natalie. Let’s leave it at that.”
But she had no intention of tiptoeing around the subject because it seemed to upset her father and, for different reasons, Jenna. She didn’t like unanswered questions.
Natalie tried to make him understand. “Sure it matters. Say, if it was originally stolen from someone, then we’re looking at a revenge motive. If this is nothing more than some kind of ‘curse’ handed down through the ages, then we’re looking for some kind of wraith or ghoul, and we’re going to need to get ourselves a ghost buster.”
It took Harold a moment to realize that she wasn’t serious about the second half of her reasoning. He scowled at her. “This isn’t funny, Natalie.”
“No,” she agreed. “Death never is.” She studied his face. “Now, is there something more you want to tell us about this ring, Dad?”
There was no hesitation on his part as he barked, “No.”
There was something else going on here, she could swear to it.
“Then why do you look like you’ve got something to hide?” she asked, trying her best to keep her voice neutral.
“Stop badgering my husband,” Rebecca Lynn ordered as she walked back into the room. Ricky, mercifully, was nowhere in sight.
Natalie really hated the woman’s high-handed manner. “He was our father before he was your husband, Rebecca Lynn,” she informed her stepmother. Glancing at her father, she felt sorry for him. He suddenly looked a great deal older than his sixty years. “But, for now, I’ll back off.”
Harold attempted to flash a smile of thanks toward her, but the corners of his mouth hardly rose.
“We still haven’t talked about Candace’s funeral arrangements,” he pointed out heavily, uttering each word as if it weighed a ton.
“Oh God,” Rebecca Lynn moaned, rolling her brown eyes heavenward. “Just put her into the ground and be done with it.”
Natalie instantly took offense for her late twin. Granted Candace had a myriad of faults, but she was dead and deserved respect. She threw up her hands in exasperation. “I’ll take care of it, Dad,” she told him.
Harold looked as if a huge boulder had been lifted off his shoulders. “You really will?”
“Yes, I really will.” What choice did she have? She could see this “family meeting” degenerating into name-calling and buck passing. She didn’t need to be part of that. “As soon as her body is released, I’ll have Candace cremated and place her urn in the family crypt—beside Grandpa.”
Silver suddenly spoke up. “What about a service?” she wanted to know.
That was easy enough to address. “We’ll have a memorial service,” Natalie told her. “Just for the family.”
But even that drew an objection from Rebecca Lynn. Hostility entered her voice. “You’re not planning to include that woman, are you?”
They all knew that “that woman” was Rebecca Lynn’s way of referring to Anna Worth Rothchild, the ex-wife Harold had unceremoniously dumped in order to wed his current trophy wife.
“I most certainly am,” Natalie informed her. She would have invited her former stepmother even if it hadn’t irritated her present one. That it did was just icing on the cake. “Anna was like a mother to Candace.”
Fuming, Rebecca Lynn spun around on her heel and looked at her
