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

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      “Things seem to be getting serious,” Tyler muttered to Sara while dipping sushi in hot wasabi sauce.

      She nodded in agreement. He’d called last night and asked her to meet him for lunch today after she’d told him about her dismissal and her accusation toward Cade and/or his father for it.

      “Have you decided when you’re going to confront Walter Parks about yours and Conrad’s paternity?”

      “Not yet. I want to find out more on his dealings with Jeremy. Ah, there’s Robert.”

      Sara followed her brother’s line of sight and saw a man in a conservative suit speak to the hostess, then head their way. “Who is he?” she asked.

      “Robert Jackson, from the D.A.’s office. He prosecuted the murder case I investigated back during the spring. I thought we should ask his advice and invited him to lunch if he had time.”

      Before she could voice any opinion about this, the man arrived at their table. Tyler made the introductions and invited the attorney to be seated.

      “Glad you could join us,” Tyler said. “Anything new on the Shrimpton case?”

      The assistant D.A. shook his head. “The trial has been delayed for the third time while the defense is searching for a witness. They’ve hired Mark Banning to help. I think you know him, don’t you?”

      “Sure, he’s my partner’s brother.”

      While the men talked, Sara estimated the new-comer’s age to be in the mid-to-late thirties. He had a permanent crease across his forehead and a few strands of gray in his black hair. His manner was intensely serious. She found that reassuring, as if he meant business and would let nothing stand in his way while getting at the truth of a situation.

      “What’s happening with you?” Robert asked after 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 СКАЧАТЬ