smiled at her. “This is just like Charlie’s Angels with Charlie handling all the background cover stuff.”
Pepper’s brows shot up. “Except that Rossi Investigations is much better than Charlie Townsend any day.”
“Of course, they are. That’s why I hired your firm to help me find out who I was.”
Pepper frowned at me. “And it took us five weeks to do the job?” Then she grinned. “Just kidding. Let them think we’re some kind of hick agency. Plus, your mugging took place in San Francisco, and Cameron’s disappearance didn’t even make the papers around here.” Her grin faded. “A definite sign of the power of the family to keep a lid on the story. You’re going to have to be very careful.”
“I will. Thanks for understanding.”
Pepper leaned closer. “I know what it’s like to find family that you didn’t know existed. But once you get to the ranch, I want you to keep in daily contact with me. Cole has a plane. We can be there in less than an hour.”
She set her pen down, and took a sip of her wine. “Once you get to the ranch, what’s the rest of your plan?”
“You always ask the tough questions.”
Pepper’s eyes narrowed. “That’s what friends are for.”
I shrugged and took a good gulp of wine myself. “Once I get inside the hacienda, I’m going to play it by ear. I’m sure something will come to me. My best plots always come to me on the fly.”
2
“WE’RE ALMOST THERE,” Cole Buchanan said as he turned his sporty red convertible onto the winding road that led to the McKenzie ranch. He and Pepper had decided that Cole should bring me to the ranch, get the lay of the land, and test the atmosphere before he left. He would explain about my memory loss, the investigative work that Rossi Investigations had done to help me find out my true identity, and that way everyone at the ranch would know that there was someone on the outside that I could turn to for help—just in case.
Cole was my driver instead of Pepper because the Rossis had decided he had a bigger intimidation quotient than Pepper did. It was really no contest. At over six feet, with a rangy body that was pretty much all muscle, Cole was not someone you would want to go up against. I’d also learned that he’d done sniper work for the CIA.
The idea that he and Pepper had met, fallen in love and were making a match of it, would never have occurred to me—not even as a remote possibility. But I’d seen them together and they suited each other perfectly. I’d already been thinking of how I could adapt their story for Secrets. While looking for her long lost twin, Mallory Carstairs meets and hires an ex-sniper to help her out.
“You can always change your mind.”
I jerked my thoughts back to the present.
“You don’t have to stay at the ranch,” Cole continued. “We can just say that you’ve hired me to make some inquiries and that you don’t feel comfortable staying there until you find out why you ran away.”
“No. I’ll be fine.” The whole idea of my coming to the ranch was to investigate Cameron’s disappearance from the inside. “I’m just having a little attack of stage fright.”
Truth told, I was having a major attack. Now that I was about to step out on stage, I was suddenly realizing that acting out story lines was a lot different than sitting on the sidelines and writing them. One of the things that I’d discovered in the past few days as I’d been poring over everything I could find about my sister was that we were different in one aspect. She would never have suffered from an attack of cold feet. Cameron had always been in a sort of limelight. Plus, she was confident, outgoing and probably very assertive. I, on the other hand, was a writer. While I experienced life vicariously through the characters I created, she went out there and boldly lived. I envied her that.
“We could also go to plan B and I could stay on as your bodyguard,” Cole said.
That, too, was something we’d discussed during the three days I’d spent in the offices of Rossi Investigations while Pepper and Cole established my cover story and drilled into me every fact they’d dug up on the cast of characters at the ranch.
At the end of three days, I knew each one of the players as well as I knew the characters on Secrets, maybe even better. But I’d rejected plan B. How was I supposed to find out anything with Rossi Investigation’s biggest intimidation factor dogging my every step?
I turned to Cole and put on my most confident smile. “I’m going to be able to do this.”
He pulled to a stop in front of an opened wrought iron gate that bore the name McKenzie Ranch. Then he turned to me. “I don’t doubt that. Pepper has told me a lot about you. But if you want help, Pepper and I are a phone call away.”
I felt tears prick behind my eyes. “Thanks. But I think I have a better chance of learning something if I do this alone. My sister would be able to do this. If I’m anything at all like her, I can, too.”
Cole gave me a brief nod, then guided his car through the gate and up the winding driveway. When we rounded the last curve and the hacienda came into view, I gave a little gasp.
The Hacienda Montega was listed in every book that chronicled historic homes in California. In addition to being an excellent example of Spanish architecture, the house had a mysterious and colorful history. I’d done some research on it that went beyond Pepper’s report. What I’d discovered was that the mistresses of the hacienda had a tendency to die young. Not even Cameron’s father’s wives had escaped. James McKenzie’s first wife, Sarah, hadn’t died, but she’d still been young when she’d run away with Sloan Campbell’s father. Of course, I’d tucked that little piece of information away for a possible story line. Then James’s second wife, Elizabeth, had passed away shortly after they’d adopted Cameron.
But there was a lighter and even more colorful side to the history, too. Originally built by Don Roberto Montega on the occasion of his marriage to the Spanish Countess Maria Francesca in the eighteenth century, the hacienda had eventually fallen into the hands of a silent film producer who’d only owned it a year before he’d lost both the hacienda and the land to a professional gambler named Silas McKenzie.
And the rest was history, as they say. Silas had married, mended his gambling ways and turned to his first love, raising Thoroughbred horses. From the looks of the hacienda, the stables and the other outbuildings, he must have had a knack for it. James, the current owner of the estate, was his grandson.
All of the pictures I’d seen paled in comparison to what I was looking at now. The main part of the house rose three stories with a bell tower at its center that thrust up another two. The colors were so intense—those golden stones, the reddish-orange tiles on the roof against a bright blue sky. My gaze swept along the arches and stone pillars that framed the courtyard, then rose to the lacy ironwork that fanned each one of the windows on the second and third floors. Flowers bloomed everywhere, crowding the paths bordering the walks, and spilling out of terra-cotta urns.
Beatrice McKenzie Caulfield, the sister of James McKenzie, the aging patriarch, was responsible for the flowers. I ran through the information I knew about her. She was renowned for her gardening skills and was a frequent participant and speaker at garden shows. In addition to that, she’d run the Hacienda Montega for the past twenty-five years since the untimely death of
