Danger in a Red Dress Read Online Free Page B

about keeping her own piddling little investigation quiet.
    “Really?” He smiled at her, his tan perfect, his straight teeth dazzling and white.
    Decision made, she said, “Perhaps we can make it work. Why don’t we sit down and you can give me the details of your mother ’s situation?”

FOUR
    “There it is.” Carrick pulled into a viewpoint on the rugged Maine coast highway and stopped the car. He gripped the steering wheel with one hand, and pointed across the rocky inlet. “Balfour House.”
    Hannah stared at the classic nineteenth-century mansion perched on the cliff. It was massive, two stories of white stone and fanciful turrets, broad balconies, and wide windows defiantly facing off with the Atlantic. “Balfour House?” she repeated. “Shouldn’t it be Manly House?”
    “My mother was Melinda Balfour. She is the last of the Balfours. Since New Englanders do not lightly change their ways, it always will be Balfour House.” Savagely, he opened the door, got out, and leaned one arm against the roof of the Porsche Carrera.
    Hannah got out, too, and looked at the mansion, and looked at him.
    The breeze frisked with the perfect fall of his brown hair, while the sun kissed the blond highlights, giving him a golden aura. But his expression, as he stared at the house, was pensive, still, almost . . . sour. She would have thought he would at least show the enthusiasm he’d shown about the car—and the car wasn’t even his. He told her he was repairing the family fortunes. He told her he couldn’t afford a car like this. He told her one of his friends had insisted he borrow it for the drive up here, and he’d waxed enthusiastic about its handling and speed. Maybe if the house could do zero to sixty in less than thirty seconds . . .
    “Do you not like the house?” she asked.
    “Of course I like it. If it weren’t for Balfour House and its history, I would be a nobody.”
    A nobody. Is that what he thought of people without an exalted ancestry?
    No. He must not realize how condescending that sounded. On the drive up from New Hampshire, he’d been amiable and not at all snobbish, showing off his knowledge of the towns along I-95, then, as they turned southeast toward Ellsworth, regaling her with tales of his mother’s family and how their destiny had been so intimately entwined with the state of Maine. She’d been content to listen, and laugh, and marvel at the luck that placed her in this luxurious car with this wondrous man.
    Now he trained those green eyes at her and said, “You have to understand what a love-hate relationship I have with Balfour House. Mother has quite a decent income in trust from her mother—not a large fortune, but it’s adequate—and every dime of it goes to pay the taxes and do the minimum of upkeep on that pile of sacred stone. Mother could live well in Bangor or Ellsworth, in an apartment with people her own age, but she won’t leave. Balfour House holds her prisoner as surely as any jail. My God, it even boasts a basement with rooms cut so deep into the rock they could be used as dungeons, and there are rumors of secret passages, although when I was a boy I searched and never found a single sign of them.” Ruefulness tinged his smile.
    Gently Hannah told him, “Most elderly patients don’t want to leave their own homes, no matter what the advantage to them.”
    “Mother is not like most elderly patients. She is a difficult woman. I feel almost guilty thrusting you into this situation.”
    “Don’t feel guilty. I always win over my patients in the end.”
    “I can see that it would help,” he said, “if your patient was male.”
    She whipped around to face him. “What do you mean by that?”
    “Nothing.” He looked startled at the blaze of her temper.
    Slowly, she relaxed. He’d made an innocuous comment, and she’d flashed back to the Dresser family’s accusations. Carrick didn’t deserve to be associated with them, not even in her mind. “I will do