Man of Fortune

by Rochelle Alers

  * * *

  Tamara stared at her sister, stunned by her weight loss. She doubted whether Renata weighed a hundred pounds. Renata Wolcott-Powell’s teenage daughter wore a larger dress size than her mother.

  Pulling her gaze away from Renata, who sat zombie-like, her hands cradling a tumbler of vodka as if it were a priceless relic, Tamara glanced around the room where her sister either received visitors or hosted intimate get-togethers. Every piece of furniture and objet d’art was strategically positioned for optimum viewing. The room always reminded Tamara of an art gallery.

  “Drinking that isn’t going to solve your problem, Renata.”

  Renata glared at Tamara. “It helps me to forget.”

  “Forget what?”

  Setting down the crystal tumbler on a matching coaster, Renata dabbed her eyes with a crumpled tissue. “I can’t talk about it.”

  Tamara successfully reined in her temper. “I didn’t disrupt my vacation and get on the train to come here for you to tell me that you can’t talk about it.”

  Renata peered at Tamara through puffy eyes. She was drowning in her own self-pity. Tamara had always been prettier and smarter than she and Tiffany, but they’d double-teamed against their youngest sister in an attempt to break her spirit. It had worked for a while, until Tamara brought home her report card. Renata and Tiffany were relegated to the background and Tamara became the center of attention. The praise and compliments usually lasted a week, then she and Tiff resumed their childish reign of terror.

  “I thought I could talk about it, Tami, but I’m too ashamed.”

  Tamara wanted to hear what had upset Renata. She’d come to offer emotional support to a sister who’d methodically and systematically done all she could to humiliate her every chance she got, a sister who’d goaded their middle sister into becoming her willing accomplice. Moselle Wolcott wasn’t without blame because whenever Renata or Tiffany overheard their mother mention Tamara’s weight it added another tool to their taunting arsenal.

  Tamara clenched her teeth in frustration. “I plan to sit here for an hour and then I’m going to call for a taxi to take me back to the station. I’m going to ask you again. How much money do you need?”

  Reaching for the tumbler, Renata took a sip of the clear liquid, grimacing as it slid down the back of her throat and warmed her chest; she knew her youngest sister hadn’t issued an idle threat.

  “It’s no longer about money, Tami.”

  “Then what is it about?” There was a pregnant pause as the sisters stared at each other. “You call me at least once a month asking for money, then a week or two later you repay me. What’s up with that, Renata?”

  “I needed the money to pay a private investigator.”

  Tamara sat up straighter. “What are you talking about?”

  “I asked for the money to pay someone to follow Robert.”

  “Why on earth would you want someone to follow your husband?”

  Renata took another sip. “I had to know for certain if my husband was having an affair! I cashed the checks you sent me and gave the P.I. cash. I waited until I got paid, then sent you a check. I suppose I could’ve paid him out of my household account, but I realized that after the fact.”

  “You’re talking in circles, Renata. What made you suspect Robert was or is having an affair?”

  “It’s no longer a suspicion, Tami. I now have proof that he’s sleeping with another woman.”

  Tamara didn’t want to believe that her soft-spoken, nerdy brother-in-law was sleeping around. Duncan thought of himself as a nerd, but he was a sexy nerd. Robert Powell put the N in nerd. The forty-year-old pharmaceutical executive had always reminded her of a boy wearing his father’s clothes.

  “Where’s the proof, Renata?”

  “You’re sitting on it.”

  It took several seconds for Tamara to stand and lift up the silk-covered chair cushion to find an envelope. She didn’t want the photos to be real, but when she glanced at the black-and-white photographs of her brother-in-law and a woman in bed together Tamara felt as if someone had punched her in her face.

  She slipped the half dozen photos back into the envelope, handing it to Renata. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to divorce him.”

  Tamara sat down next to Renata, easing the glass from her hand. Her sister’s fingers were ice-cold. “Does he know that you know?” Renata shook her head. “Where is he?”

  “He’s at a conference in Vegas.”

  Renata’s husband was probably in Vegas with his mistress, while their teenage daughters were vacationing in Europe with their maternal grandparents. “When is he expected back?”

  “Thursday.”

  “Are you going to divorce him without hearing his side?”

  “Side, Tamara? There is no side. The pictures tell the whole story. My husband is screwing another woman. I knew something was wrong when he wouldn’t touch me. A woman shouldn’t have to beg her husband to make love to her. At first I thought it was because we’ve been married so long that we’d lost the spark. But from those photos you can see that Robert doesn’t have a problem lighting up that ho.”

  Here we go, Tamara mused. Renata was already primed to go into her name-calling repertoire. She felt her sister’s pain because she knew firsthand about a duplicitous husband. He’d left her financially destitute, homeless and without her only companion.

  “Have you contacted a lawyer?” she asked Renata.

  “Not yet.”

  “That’s the first thing you need to do, so you know what your options are.”

  “I only have one option—get rid of the bastard.”

  “You also need to protect yourself and your children, Renata. You have to get a lawyer who will look after your interests or you’ll end up like me.”

  Renata sniffled. “I suppose I can call Barry.”

  “Who’s Barry?”

  “He’s a friend.”

  Tamara lifted her eyebrows. “Whose friend?”

  “He’s a friend of the family.”

  “That’s your first mistake, Renata. You cannot get someone who knows you and Robert to represent you. Can’t you think of anyone else?”

  Renata pressed the back of her hand to her forehead. “I can’t think right now.”

  “That’s because you’re drunk and starved. I want you to go take a shower and change your clothes.”

  “Why?”

  Rising to her feet, Tamara pulled Renata gently up from the loveseat. “I’m taking you out so you can get something to eat.” There were three eggs, a stick of butter and a container of yogurt in Renata’s refrigerator. “And if you don’t put on some weight, you won’t have to worry about a divorce, because instead of being a divorced man your husband will become a widower. And that means he’ll probably move his ho into your home to play stepmother to your children. Is that what you want, Renata?”

  “I’d kill him.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. You’d be dead. Now go and clean yourself up.”

  Renata sniffled again. “Can you hang out with me for a couple of days? I really don’t want to be alone.”

  “I will, but you have to promise me something.”

  “What, Tami?”

  “I want you to begin eating. I’m not talking to you as your sister, but as a doctor. I’m certain that if I had to order a complete blood workup on you the results would be frightening. And if you’re serious about divorcing Robert, and if you decide you want to start dating again then you’d better take a good look in the mirror. What you’ll see staring back at you isn’t cute, Renata.”

  “How much weight do you want me to gain?”

  “Enough so that your clavicle isn’t so prominent. Right now you have an old woman’s neck.”

  Renata placed a hand over her throat. “But I’m only thirty-eight.”

  “I know how old you are, Renata. Right now you don’t look thirty-eight.”

  “Are you…you saying I look older?�
��

  Tamara managed a tight smile. “What you look is a hot mess.”

  “That’s not right, Tamara.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Tamara said glibly. “I’m going to call Je Vous Aime and make appointments for a day of beauty. I know someone who may be able to help with your legal problems. I’ll call and ask him for the name of an attorney.”

  Tears began welling up in Renata’s eyes and then they overflowed. “Why are you helping me when I’ve been so mean to you, Tami?”

  Tamara waved a hand. “Please, Renata. You give yourself too much credit. You and Tiffany were nothing more than annoyances.” Most times she’d ignored her sisters, but it was their mother’s critical attitude that had been much more emotionally damaging because Tamara had always wanted her mother’s approval.

  Renata touched her fingertips to her moist cheeks. “Where are we going to eat?”

  “What do you feel like eating?”

  “Fish.”

  Tamara searched her memory for a good Long Island seafood restaurant. “I know an excellent one, but it’s in Nassau County.”

  “Hello, city girl. I do have a car,” Renata teased. She sobered quickly. “You’re going to have to drive because right now I’m under the influence.”

  “Don’t worry, Renata. I’ll drive.”

  * * *

  “Mr. Gilmore, Mrs. Hamilton has arrived.”

  Duncan pressed the intercom button on his telephone console. “Give me five minutes and then bring her in, Mia.” Pushing back from the desk, Duncan stood and reached for his suit jacket, slipping his arms into the sleeves.

  A restlessness had assailed him when he least expected it. It had been four days since he’d seen or heard from Tamara. He’d left her sleeping Sunday night, now he chided himself for not waking her up to let her know he was leaving. He waited until mid-afternoon Monday to call her apartment. He’d left a message on her voice mail for her to return the call. Monday had passed, then Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. It was now Friday and she still hadn’t called. He’d imagined dozens of scenarios: she’d cut her vacation short and returned to the hospital, she’d fallen ill or she’d decided she didn’t want to see him again.

  This was the one and only time he’d prayed for more clients so he could lose track of time as he put in twelve-hour days, shutting out everything around him. It wasn’t his busiest time of year, but days before the official end of the summer season. Kyle and his fiancée Ava were hosting a small gathering at their Strivers’ Row townhouse for friends and family on the Labor Day weekend. Ava had promised to give him the names and addresses of the guests for the soirée he was planning in their honor.

  It had been more than a decade since he’d seen Gail Hamilton. The incredibly wealthy widow had been his client when he’d worked for CEMS Investments. When he’d handed in his resignation after he’d made the decision to set up his own accounting and financial planning venture, he hadn’t contacted any of his former clients. Several of them managed to find him, but Duncan refused to take them on because they were used to aggressive trading and he’d become less of a risk-taker.

  He affected a warm smile for the platinum-haired, fifty-something widow when Mia escorted her into his office. It was as if time had stood still. The elegantly dressed woman looked exactly the same as she had a decade before.

  Gail Hamilton offered Duncan Gilmore a manicured hand, her violet eyes shimmering like polished tanzanite. A recent Botox treatment prevented her from smiling. “Duncan. How long has it been?”

  A two-pack-a-day cigarette habit had thickened her vocal cords and deepened her voice to a throaty growl. Smoking had not only affected her throat, but had also ravaged her skin until she’d undergone hypnosis to rid herself of the habit. She’d paid her plastic surgeon a small fortune to take fifteen years off her face. What she hadn’t been able to correct were the nicotine stains on her fingers. A quack dermatologist had attempted dermabrasion, laser removal and eventually a bleaching technique, but he hadn’t been able to erase them completely. Her hands weren’t perfect, but she now felt comfortable enough go out without wearing gloves.

  Duncan shook her hand, his expressive eyebrows lifting when he stared intently at her face. “Ten years.”

  “Ten years, six months and eleven days. It’s taken me that long to track you down.”

  “I didn’t realize I was that difficult to find,” he replied with a facetious smile. “Please come and sit down.” He directed her to an alcove in the spacious office, seating her in a straight-backed dark-brown-leather chair. He sat down opposite her.

  Duncan had thought it was his imagination ten years before, but he was even more certain now that Gail Hamilton wasn’t as interested in Duncan Gilmore monitoring her investments as she was in Duncan Gilmore.

  By the time he entered high school, he’d exchanged his glasses for contact lenses and replaced his adolescent awkwardness with a fluid grace that garnered the attention of the opposite sex. And whenever the telephone had rung and his aunt told him the call was for him, she’d shaken her head. After a while she sat him down for one of her talks. Viola told him women would come on to him and he was not to take advantage of them. She hadn’t informed him of the possibility that a woman could take advantage of him. It had happened, and then Kalinda Douglas had come into his life when he was emotionally wounded and vulnerable. He’d fallen in love with Kali, had asked her to share his life, their future, not knowing that six months later she would be gone.

  Duncan’s smile was still in place when he looped one leg over the other, the motion smooth and fluid, with a minimum waste of motion. Gail Hamilton wore an exquisite raw-silk suit in a flattering corn-flower blue and black patent-leather pumps with the same red soles as on the shoes Tamara wore the night of their dinner cruise. Enormous Tahitian pearls in her ears matched the magnificent strand around her pale throat.

  “Why is it you’ve spent the last ten years, six months and eleven days looking for me?”

  Gail Hamilton stared at the incredibly beautiful man with the movie-star looks. With the aid of a scalpel and six-figure surgical procedures she’d changed her face and body; Duncan had also changed, but it was natural maturity that made him more attractive now than when he’d first become her personal broker. She’d felt like a young girl in a candy shop back then when she told one of the vice presidents at a CEMS Investments stockholders’ meeting that she wanted that—and that had turned out to be Duncan Gilmore.

  What she’d found shocking was that he wasn’t just another pretty boy; he was also very smart, smart enough to invest the money she’d inherited from her elderly husband into funds that yielded returns that reached staggering proportions.

  Gail crossed her legs at the ankles—she actually wanted to cross them at the knees and show Duncan what he could have for the asking. “I lost an obscene amount of money with the 2008 Wall Street crash, no thanks to CEMS.”

  “Millions of people lost every penny they’d invested, including pensions.”

  “Well, I don’t want to be counted among those millions, Duncan.”

  “Then consider yourself one of the luckier ones, Mrs. Hamilton. Blue chips like Bank of America and Alcoa lost more than sixty-five percent of their value. The Wall Street Journal reported the broader Standard & Poor 500-stock index sank thirty-nine and a half percent, almost exactly matching its 1937 decline. That translates into about seven trillion dollars of shareholders’ wealth, which equals a gain of the last six years wiped out in one year of incredible market swings.”

  “What happens to Bank of America or Alcoa does not concern me, Duncan.”

  He struggled not to lose his temper. “What affects Alcoa, banks and Fortune 500 companies affects all of us, Mrs. Hamilton. The grim realty of 2008 only confirmed what investors had known for months. It was a very bad year to own stocks. And I mean any stocks. Almost no industry was spared.”

  Gail leaned forward, giving Duncan a better view of the enhanced cleavage under her suit jacket
. “What I don’t want is to lose more money.”

  “If you’ve come to me because you believe I have the magic potion to help you recoup what you’ve lost, then you’re mistaken.” His tone had lost its normally velvet quality. “The only thing I can do for you is to advise you where you can invest what’s left in something that I know is ultra-safe.”

  “Where is that?”

  “United States Treasury securities.”

  Gail sat back. “You want me to invest in the government? Aren’t they the ones who let this subprime mortgage mess get out of control?”

  “I’m certain you didn’t come to me for a lesson in economics, Mrs. Hamilton. The only thing I’m going to say on the matter is that no industry was spared as the subprime mortgage market metasta-sized like a cancer and sank our economy into what could be a long recession. Right now I’m advising my clients to buy U.S. Treasury securities. Many investors, having lost stocks and other investments, are buying them. The advantage to this is that they’re safe, and the only disadvantage is they offer little or no return. Most who invest are simply content to get their money back, not lose it.”

  “My broker at CEMS told me he was going for diversification because he felt it unwise for me to put all of my eggs in one basket. Well, diversification got me jack, because he put a lot of my money into so-called BRIC economies, or whatever the hell that is.”

  Duncan nodded. “BRIC is an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India and China. They were targeted countries for brokers when the market was booming because they have what economists deem emerging economies. The stock crisis is not only in this country but worldwide. Stocks in developed European and Asian markets also fell sharply, but less than their emerging counterparts. Many commodities like copper and oil crashed.”

  Gail’s eyes narrowed. “You’re right, Duncan. I didn’t come here for an economics lesson, but apparently I’m going to hear one.”