The Invisible Heiress

by Kathleen O'Donnell

  Reply: Odd is right. Hmmm. Now you’ve got me thinking. And remembering.

  Norma B.

  I’ve got a crazy idea. Why don’t you ask the Queen about the Chica? Or Jester? He acts like he’s dying to talk. Let him. See for yourself what’s what. You’re avoiding the inevitable.

  Reply: As always you are wise, Norma. I believe I’ll take another stroll down Beverley Lane.

  Part III

  Beverley

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Preston

  Just like old times I scrambled up the wall of Beverley using an ancient trellis for a foothold. Up, over my old balcony, I got in. No one fixed, or knew about, the broken latch on my bedroom window, as I suspected.

  I maneuvered around my old bedroom, which offered a vignette of time stood still. Dark wood floors covered with hip yet classic hand-woven rugs, which complemented the top-of-the-line furnishings, fixtures, and deceptively casual artwork worth more than a lot of people’s houses. My mother had exasperated me with luxury at every turn. No wonder I couldn’t stand her.

  I tiptoed through the children’s wing of Beverley to the grand stairway landing. The bottom floor, as far as I could tell, stood empty. I crawled toward the top stair. The centuries-old house moaned like a bored hooker. Voices stopped me.

  I recognized my mother’s but not the man she was talking to.

  Man? What man?

  I listened, for what seemed like hours, to Mother go on and on about the history of Beverley. Maybe Architectural Digest was finally getting its story about the plantation. The editor had asked before. Mother always said no.

  Her roughed-up voice sounded like it always should’ve—lush, hidden, loaded with secrets. Hearing her here, in my childhood home, made me wish I were brave enough to really see her.

  I think I’d started to nod off a little when I heard this gem.

  “I knew what sort Todd was when we married. Yet his betrayal slapped me straight on,” my mother said.

  That sat me straight.

  “Betrayal? You mean the power of attorney?” the man said.

  I almost fell over. Luckily, I caught myself before that could happen, which would’ve ruined my whole mission.

  Who was this guy?

  “No, that power of attorney has existed for years,” Mother said. “Money’s mine, but if I were ever incapacitated, bills would need to be paid. At the time, like everyone, I never thought Todd would need it. At any rate, the power of attorney was limited, not unlimited. Only to take care of both our living expenses, the house upkeep and any medical bills. But he went beyond that.”

  I inched, still on all fours, close as I could to the stairs without tumbling down them. I realized they both spoke louder than normal. I shouldn’t have been able to hear them as well as I did from my vantage point.

  Mother went on, “For the first time in our married life, Todd felt like a man. Got to call the shots. While I lay comatose, he got brave. First, the inch, then the mile. Preston almost killing me was the best thing that ever happened to Todd. Carte blanche with the checkbook.”

  Preston almost killing me—hearing that from her felt like a gut shot. Why in hellfire was my mother suddenly a spewing fountain of information? She’d undergone a personality transplant of some sort. Mystery Man mumbled something, which refocused my attention.

  “My setback really gave him courage. All the drugs I’d started taking for everything from pain to anxiety to depression zonked me, plus he convinced Alicia’s daughter, Marcella, the ethically challenged nurse, to up the dosages and thought I didn’t know. Too bad for Todd that even drugged my wits are more intact than his. Plus, I quit taking them, unbeknownst to him.” Her laugh sounded like midnight and cigarettes. “He carried on like I was still comatose. You’d be surprised what people will do in front of you when they think you’re blind.”

  I knew she’d faked it.

  “Like?” Mystery Man prodded.

  “Like paying for a new wing at Haven House and selling my sister James’s estate,” Mom continued. “When I found out he’d sold my sister’s house I figured he was trying to get up the nerve to leave me, use the proceeds as startup funds for his new life.”

  “Ah. Tricky,” Mystery Man said.

  “No. Purposely dumb. Todd’s an experienced attorney. He knows the difference between limited and unlimited. But no one questioned him. Not to mention, he might’ve forged the document he needed. A lot of people in this town would do his bidding without a blink.”

  She stopped talking. I thought for a second she’d quit all together until she said, “So he did as he pleased. I’m sure he thought I’d die and he’d never need to pay the piper. He opened a separate account with proceeds from the sale, plus some cash he pilfered from our joint account, which always has a lot of money in it. He didn’t need any power of attorney to move money from there.”

  “You’d said the bulk of the Blair fortune goes to the boys and skips the girls. There’re no boys. So, if you’d died, wouldn’t Preston get everything?”

  “Right. But Preston wasn’t sober or responsible in any way. Todd could manipulate and take advantage of her no end. Or so he figured. She’d have been a lot easier to bamboozle than me. I’m sure he figured she’d go right back to her old ways.”

  I latched on to the top stair’s edge to stop myself from falling over. Brendan had been right. Dad sold James’s house for pocket money.

  “So I divorced him,” Mother said.

  Nearly convulsed with shock by that humdinger, I decided to go for broke. Took off my shoes, crept down the stairs. I felt a dire need to see what I couldn’t believe I heard. The drawing room beckoned me forward. I hugged the baseboard like a seasoned burglar. A giant, antique mirror still hung over the hearth, which allowed for all-points access from my vantage point. I used to sneak downstairs in my jammies to spy on my parents’ parties using the mirror’s reflection.

  Like everything else under Beverley’s roof, Mother’s beauty remained reliable. She held court like always, from a damask-covered chaise, faced in the direction of a camera.

  A camera?

  What dimension did I enter? Did my mother consent to do an interview on film? She really wasn’t the same since—hell’s bells. That’s why they sounded so clear, for the microphone. As if all that TMI wasn’t enough to make Jesus weep, she said, “Todd never could keep his pecker stowed.”

  First divorce. Now pecker. Death by a thousand cuts.

  I reminded myself to breathe.

  Mom droned on about the many grievances visited on her by Dad’s pecker, freed from stowing, while I tried to block her out and wondered who, in the name of Martin Scorsese, was the young, broad-shouldered guy behind the camera? Information, like fire ants, crawled hot all over my brain. Harrison Blair and Todd Fitzgerald divorced? When? How did that dish not hit the news?

  As if the camera guy and I were on the same wavelength he said, “Preston doesn’t know about the divorce?”

  “I don’t think so, she hasn’t mentioned it. It’s recently finalized but private,” Mom said. “We do that in the South. We’re discreet when it comes to those things, if at all possible.”

  Wait. What? She hasn’t mentioned it? When would she have heard me mention it or anything at all?

  “There’s a lot Preston doesn’t know,” Mom said.

  “Like?” Camera guy said again.

  My ears felt like they actually flapped. The silence expanded, heavy as a grudge. Camera guy fidgeted in his silk-covered, club chair.

  “I don’t think she knows about Todd’s girlfriend,” Mom said. “Or that they used Preston’s house as some kind of lair.”

  I almost yelled “What?” out loud. Wasn’t Dad the sly fox and a smooth half-truth teller? Marcella, the slutty Spaniard, did use my house, with my father, of all the—.

  “I found out about her and James’s house sale all in the same week. I’d planned to confront Todd, throw him out. Stormed to the DA’s office. By dumb luck, I did
n’t get the chance.”

  Rosie and I’d seen her on TV that day. The disheveled Lilly Pulitzer, the horrible look on her face. I could tell something else bad happened. No way could Dad flip Aunt James’s manse, or cavort with a sizzling senorita in my house and Beverley, with Mom none the wiser.

  “So, I came home,” Mom said. “Thought over my options.”

  “If you’ve already divorced him, what options are left?”

  Mom draped a Givenchy’d arm across the back of the settee.

  “Oh, there’re lots. For one, I’m suing him for fraud or threatened to. I don’t think I’ll have to go that far. He’ll see the error of his ways pretty quick. His power of attorney was limited, not an ATM machine. The snake enriched himself. A real legal faux pas, if you will. Todd forgets I know my way around the law too. But even so, that’s easy, run of the mill.”

  “So what else?” younger-than-me camera guy said.

  “Nothing.”

  “Huh? Nothing?”

  Her expression ignited the mirror, ferocious enough to crack a crab. “Todd wants a new life with his young girlfriend. Let him have it. He can have that and everything else that’s going to come with it.”

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Isabel

  “Guess your new husband and that,” Jonathan pointed at my burgeoning belly, “takes all your time. You haven’t put in an appearance here at the office in weeks and weeks. Not that I’ve missed you. Although I have to say I’m surprised you never brought the poor bastard by. Show off your new toy.”

  “Well, it’s been a whirlwind. Aren’t you delighted to be on a need-to-know basis?”

  “Delighted doesn’t come close.” Jonathan doodled on his ever-present pad for several moments. I’d about decided to walk out of his office when he said, “By the way, I’ve replaced you.”

  “With who?” I hadn’t worked since who knew when. Didn’t plan to work again. But I didn’t like the sound of replaced.

  “Not that you should care but with an ethical, experienced gentleman from Atlanta, who isn’t a felon.”

  “‘Sounds like a dullard.”

  “He starts next week. Can you get your stuff out?”

  “Jesus. You jump in my grave that fast?”

  “No point dragging things out. Let’s both start fresh,” Jonathan said from the catbird seat.

  “Depends how you define fresh.”

  “Haven’t read a thing about your pals, the Blair Fitzgeralds, or their dead son-in-law in ages. Guess that’s settled?”

  “Far as I know. Last I heard one of Brendan Finney’s stoner pals did the deed. They found some nurse chick that backs up the story. Something about her gangland cousin. I put the whole clan behind me, right along with that wiseacre detective who got all up in my face about following Preston. Twit saw me, I guess. I denied it, of course. No law against tailgating is what I told him. That seemed forever ago.

  “Guess that’s it then,” Jonathan said.

  “Far as I’m concerned the whole incident never happened.”

  I sashayed (or so I imagined) toward Jonathan’s office door. “Gotta fly. I’ll send someone to get my things.” I had someones now.

  “Yes, well, you look good, considering you’re obviously about to pop. Get a makeover?” Jonathan’s confidence that I’d matrimonied myself right out of his life made him magnanimous.

  “Backhanded compliments get you nowhere.”

  Jonathan leaned back in his chair. “For a minute there I forgot you and that kid aren’t my problem.” Asshat stood, held a hand out to shake on it. “Good luck to you. Your new husband can finance you now.”

  “Yeah, well, about that.”

  ****

  “If you think you can blackmail me forever, you’ve got another thing coming, you leeching bitch.”

  Jonathan’s parting words, like the wind beneath my wings, ushered me out the door to my waiting sedan. I hoped he heard me snickering at his empty threats. As scared as the nutless wonder was of me—the wife got him shaking in his Tevas like nobody’s business. Sure, I didn’t need the money anymore, but not everything’s about need, is it? It’s about winning. I’d celebrate my continued winner’s streak with a quick run at the roulette wheel.

  Sherman isn’t a fan of my visits to the club. Not like I’m angling for a man since I bagged the elusive perfect catch. What else could I want? I’ll tell you what—a quick now-I-can-afford-to-lose-here-and-there friendly game of poker.

  I’ve given up drinking for the baby.

  The thudding beats of “Another One Bites the Dust” boomed out of my purse. My new ringtone. Took one hand off the wheel to grope for my cell. Unknown number. Shit. When I got married, I got a new number, new phone. The calls stopped until this second. Creditors can find you. I’d changed my number plenty over the years, and still they find me. Bloodhounds.

  I’d hoped to temporarily flummox Visa, American Express, and every other place with my name change after I married Sherman. But still they homed in. Or maybe whoever called wasn’t a creditor. Maybe someone wanted to sell me something because I’d just married rich. Couldn’t get that lucky. At any rate, no way I’d waste money paying creditors, but I didn’t want my new husband to know all my secrets. I let whatever scumbag collector it was go to voicemail. Speak to the hand, jackwad.

  Chapter Seventy

  Preston

  I’d slept late, past noon, a fitful mercifully dreamless sleep, troubled and unmoored, by what I’d heard and witnessed at Beverley. I could conjure no reasonable explanation for the boyish cameraman who appeared to commit Mother’s every utterance to film. I got stuck on her she hasn’t mentioned it comment. As if we spoke on a regular basis.

  I wandered my house with no direction, Walter White at my heels, whining, nosing my legs. When I passed the staircase to my baby’s room I felt a burn spread through my lungs like a bird on fire unfurled its wings inside my chest. I wondered if I’d ever get used to knowing about my son.

  I could call Smiley, but I didn’t feel like telling him yet that I’d broken into Beverley again or what I’d overheard. I’d take a breather first. The library seemed as good a place as any to look for something to do. Maybe read, or look through my mail, consider next steps. Like a shark, I’d need to keep moving to live.

  The maid, vexed I’m sure, finally moved the contents of the drawer I’d dumped from Aunt James’s desk on the floor, back to its top, where it’s sat for eons. In my susceptible, depressed state, my eyes welled, knowing her desk was all the Blairs had left of James. I didn’t need to know my aunt to feel melancholy about her fate or how her last act of desperation changed the direction of my mother’s life. I nuzzled Walter, wallowed a few minutes, then dove back into my intended chore.

  I’d been so proud of how I’d organized my bills, paid them on time, created a spreadsheet of expenses, like a real grown-up. James’s desktop looked a fright. Now it was a mess—a sticky note, piles of paper, disaster. Time to shake off the darkness that plagued me and get it together.

  Brendan’s case was closed but not to anyone’s satisfaction. Both Smiley and I felt we’d missed a crucial clue. I picked through the pile determined to reorganize, throw out some crap, get back on track, curtail my confusion with busy work.

  Walter stood watch next to the desk chair as I scavenged through endless notes, postage stamps, pizza delivery menus and old invoices until I landed on a heavy ecru envelope, the sort used for wedding invitations or birth announcements. Before I could turn it over to read the front, something else caught my eye.

  Video stills.

  The same ones Smiley’d brought for me to examine months before. “Give these a good once over. Call me if anything jumps out at you,” he’d said. I’d gotten sidetracked with the whose-its and the whatnots or fuck knows. I shuffled through the ones I’d already seen—Shrinky’s office, then the one with Brendan’s car blitzing past the pink neon sign on the freak club. Same ole.

  Then one I didn’t recall seeing
before. An interior shot of what I surmised was the casino portion of the fetish club. Slot machines, gaming tables, gamblers, then something jumped out at me.

  I shoved what was left of the pile back into the drawer to make room for the spread of shots. I feasted my eyes on the lone woman wedged between several men, seated, with a few stacks of chips in front of her. I’d recognize that self-inflicted haircut anywhere.

  “What do you know, Walter White?” I said. “Shrinky got her game on.”

  ****

  “Brought a few straggler stills caught on various security cameras from the surrounding area.” Smiley held out a manila envelope. “Soon as you called I scoured the evidence room, every drawer and cabinet in the precinct. Found this in a random desk, loose, not bagged, no tag, zippo. Looked like trash, a miracle it didn’t get thrown out.”

  “What’s the deal with that?”

  We trudged through the entry to the library and our now homey spot at James’s desk. Walter White circled Smiley’s legs, stubbed tail wagging as much as a stub could. Smiley ruffled his ears, pulled another chair up to the desk with Walter at his feet.

  “I guess whatever lazy cop stored these photos figured no one would care about their existence because Marv pretty much cut the investigation off then left town.”

  “Wait’ll you see the doozy I found.” I fetched the pic of Shrinky at the poker table.

  He studied a few seconds. “Well, still weak. If Brendan was sitting next to her, or even standing out front, we’d have a little something to go on. Just driving by the place is too thin.”

  “Still. Doesn’t make any sense—Shrinky at the same place as Brendan? They’re not exactly from the same circle.” I remembered a comment made by one of the Heiress’s followers. “Maybe she bought drugs from him.”

  “Do you know if she uses drugs?