The Parks Empire: Secrets, Lies and Loves: Romancing the Enemy. Marie Ferrarella

snagging the waiter and placing his order.

      “We need your advice,” Tyler admitted, lowering his voice. “It’s about a paternity case, for one thing, and about murder, for another.”

      “An interesting combination,” the assistant D.A. murmured. “Murder I can help you with. Paternity is a civil suit ordinarily. Unless it’s directly involved in the murder.”

      While the trio ate, Sara and Tyler put forth all the information they had gleaned from their mother and added in the details of their research since moving to San Francisco.

      “Mark and Nick Banning are helping us find this long-lost uncle,” Sara told the assistant D.A.

      “Derek Ross, or Moss or whatever he calls himself, witnessed the crime,” Tyler finished the tale.

      “You have to locate him, or else there’s no case,” Robert said, echoing their conclusions. “You need some kind of evidence to show a motive. Usually greed is a good one. What would Walter have gained by eliminating Jeremy?”

      “The rare diamonds Jeremy had already invested most of his assets in?” Tyler suggested. “They were never recovered that we know of.”

      “You have any kind of proof that these diamonds actually existed and that your father bought them?”

      “No. We think Walter kept them and used them to start his jewelry stores,” Sara told the attorney. “That was why Jeremy’s business was in serious debt and went under when he died. Everything had to be sold to pay for merchandise that apparently never existed or was never found, at any rate.”

      “A bum deal,” Robert said sympathetically.

      “That’s what we think, too,” Tyler said, his expression grim and much older than his years.

      Sara forced back the anger that threatened to erupt as she gazed at her brother. It had been a long time since she’d seen him carefree and happy as a young man his age should be. He should be thinking of falling in love and getting married and having a family, but because of Walter Parks, that life had been denied all of them.

      She and Tyler had established themselves in San Francisco while riding high on a wave of righteous indignation, but life was so much more complex than one emotion, she’d discovered. She suspected her brother had found out the same thing.

      While he’d had a rather serious relationship with one woman, they had broken up because of his vow never to marry and have children. Their mother’s unhappiness had touched all the Carlton children in various ways, none of them leading to a trusting relationship with another human.

      She sighed quietly and gazed out the window while Tyler and the attorney discussed how to handle a paternity suit and whether to go ahead with it before finishing the murder investigation. Suddenly, down the street, she recognized a tall, lithe masculine form.

      Cade and his companion were deep in serious discussion as they hurried along the sun-filled avenue.

      Her heart lurched so hard, she put a hand to her chest to hold back the pain. Not for the first time, she was sorry she’d ever moved to this city. And sorry that she’d met Cade Parks and discovered the man of her dreams.

      Yes. She regretted that most of all.

      Later that afternoon, Sara sat at a computer in the local library. Noting the date that came up on the screen, she realized that tomorrow she would have been in San Francisco for three weeks.

      Three weeks. So short, yet she felt she’d compressed a lifetime into those twenty-one days.

      Forcing her attention to the job at hand, she typed in the names she wanted to review. The computer searched the archives of the local newspaper and came up with a surprisingly large list of selections.

      She read of Walter Parks’s marriage to Anna Lindsay, daughter of a gem-mining, trade and exploration tycoon. Walter had been thirty, the bride, beautiful and glowing with happiness, only twenty.

      Staring at the picture of Walter in his wedding tux, Sara’s heart tightened into a painful ball. Cade looked very much like his father.

      That didn’t mean he was like his father in personality, some part of her argued.

      She shut out the quarreling halves of her heart and concentrated on the articles. Arthur Lindsay had died two years after the marriage. By then the twins, Cade and Emily, had been born. Next had come Rowan, then Jessica, in quick succession. After the final birth announcement and a few charity functions, Anna Lindsay Parks apparently disappeared from the face of the earth.

      Sara closed her eyes and replayed her mother’s dying accusations and agitated murmuring. Yes, Anna had been at the celebration party Walter had thrown aboard his yacht. Walter, Anna, Marla and Jeremy were present, along with Marla’s younger brother, Derek Ross, and a few other staff people involved in the diamond-trading business with Walter and Jeremy. Before the joint enterprise, Carlton’s company had been the biggest rival of Parks Mining and Exploration.

      That was one way to get rid of the competition, Sara mused. Join forces, then make sure the other man faded from the scene. The ink had hardly dried on the contract of the joint endeavor when Jeremy conveniently drowned, leaving Walter in charge of everything.

      The newspaper article stated that after the celebration party was over, Walter and Jeremy had stayed on board to drink a final toast to the success of their joint effort. Someone from a neighboring berth in the marina saw the yacht leave its moorings and head out for another cruise.

      Later, in a statement to the police, Walter reported that he’d had too much to drink and had fallen asleep. When he awoke, the boat was drifting aimlessly at sea near the dangerous currents by the Golden Gate Bridge. Perplexed, he brought the yacht back into the harbor.

      When he later discovered his new partner was missing, Walter could only surmise that Jeremy, equally intoxicated over their potential success, had taken the boat out, then fell overboard at some point during the night. There had been no one to dispute Walter’s word, so the tragedy had been marked up as an unfortunate accident.

      Sara shook her head in anger and frustration. Derek had also been aboard the yacht when it went out the second time, according to her mother’s story. He’d gone to sleep in a cabin and was awakened by the quarrel between the two men. He heard Walter admit he was smuggling diamonds into the country. Opening the door to the main salon a crack, he saw Jeremy apparently pass out, then Walter had started up the yacht and headed out to sea.

      Not sure what was going on, Derek had stayed in the dark cabin. When the engine slowed to an idle, he had witnessed Walter drag Jeremy onto the deck, then had heard a splash. Walter had returned to the salon, washed the used highball glasses, then returned to the wheel.

      After they’d arrived at the marina and Derek was sure Walter had left, he sneaked out and went home. Later he told Marla what he’d seen. Marla had told him to keep his mouth shut if he didn’t want the same thing to happen to him.

      Sara rested her forehead on her clasped hands as the bitterness surged and burned in her. Greed begat violence. Maybe her family had been better off without wealth.

      “Are you all right?” a soft voice asked.

      Raising her head, Sara stared at the young woman seated at the next computer. She managed a smile and nodded. “Just thinking,” she said.

      “Well, that can be difficult,” the other woman admitted in a rueful tone.

      Sara laughed with her, then quickly read all the other articles on Walter Parks and his family up to the present day. There wasn’t much information. The family had maintained a low profile with the press, it seemed, since that fatal incident. The yacht, according to Mark Banning, had been sold once the investigation had closed.

      Interesting.

      Sara closed the files and signed off. Any doubts that had lingered over her mother’s story were now laid to rest. Walter’s story didn’t hold water, one might say.

      An