She was going to throw up.
She barely made it to the ladies room in time. Thin Mints, sweet and sour shrimp, everything came up, leaving her trembling and shivering from shock. After a while, she managed to look at herself in the mirror as she wiped her mouth and couldn’t even find the energy to recoil at her pasty complexion.
Of course Richard was right. He had cut right through to the heart of Francie’s plot.
He was waiting for her in the hall when she emerged, his eyes worried, and she forestalled his immediate concern, holding up her hand in warning.
“When Di told me about this,” she said, “she said something offhand that didn’t seem important, and she didn’t say it again when I made her repeat the story. She said Laura had intimated that you might be involved.” She stopped for breath. “Laura didn’t just think this eleven years ago, Richard. As late as last Friday afternoon – one week ago – she thought you had intended to kill Di.”
“But that night—” He broke off.
That night, according to Julie, he had spent away from home. “The next morning, you and Laura went off for the weekend, I presume as a couple. So what happened, Richard? What changed between Friday afternoon and – I’m not going to pry, but I assume Friday night?”
He was staring off into the distance, thinking. Wondering why a woman would go to bed with a man she believed guilty of plotting to kill his wife.
“Up to that time, Laura seemed hostile to you, and – to be honest, if she thought that, no wonder. She said that to you, and she said it to Di, because she believed it. Yet by that night—” She stopped in response to his quick shake of the head, warning her not to go any further. “What changed her mind?”
“I have,” said Richard evenly, “no idea. I clearly don’t understand Laura at all.”
He left her then and walked off into the darkness of his office. She stepped out into the reception area and saw his shadow moving at his desk, pulling something out of a drawer, slamming it shut. When he came out, she followed him silently back into the conference room and saw that he had his checkbook.
“Sit down, Luce. Rest.”
He wrote a check. Nothing wrong with his writing arm now. His pen practically tore a hole in the check as he signed it.
He slid it across the table. “There,” he said, and his voice was flat, decisive, not welcoming any questioning. “You’re my attorney, and I have a job for you that’s right up your alley. You’re a good detective, Luce, you proved that tonight. Here’s a case for you.”
She gingerly took the check, and saw that he had written it for ten thousand dollars. She looked up at him in consternation. “You’ve already paid us for the divorce—”
He leaned forward, and his eyes were flinty. “Tom’s handling the divorce. From this moment on, you are not to have anything to do with it. You don’t need the stress of being between me and Diana.”
Lucy moistened her lips. “I don’t want to be between you and Laura, either.”
“You aren’t.” His voice said that what was between him and Laura did not concern her. “I want you to find Francie. St. Bride may have dropped her in the ocean, or he may have taken her back to Texas and murdered her there, but I doubt it. I think she’s out there somewhere. No way in hell could St. Bride make her disappear without leaving tracks in the sand. I’ve got a good idea how that bastard thought, and I don’t think he covered up completely. He had some peculiar blind spots, and Laura was one of them. I don’t think he ever planned that she might someday come back here making accusations.”
“Do you think that’s why she keeps bringing this up – she wants someone to refute her?”
“I don’t know. That’s not your concern. However, this,” he tapped the envelope with Laura’s documents, “is another of St. Bride’s blind spots. People can’t exist in modern America without leaving a paper trail. Did you find Francie’s passport?”
She shook her head.
“Just so,” said Richard. “I am not surprised. You didn’t find Francie’s documents because she has them. Someone lying at the bottom of the Atlantic doesn’t need her birth certificate and passport. She’s out there somewhere. So go find her, Lucy. Go find that lying little bitch.”
Lucy whispered, “And if I find her?”
“I’ll deal with her.” He threw the pen down on the table and looked hard at her. “You find her, and then you leave her to me.”
~•~
In Seattle, the banker wrapped up for the day. She’d put in her time, and she intended to get the Friday after Thanksgiving off to make up for it. She signed a couple of letters, finished a presentation, and checked her email. Then she performed her usual Friday afternoon ritual – always in the privacy of her office, never at home where she and David shared a computer. She signed on to her secret email account and waited for her inbox to come up.
Some weeks yielded no results to her standing web searches. The week before, for example, the email had shown Search Results: 0; the web crawler had found nothing new on Cat Courtney or Laura St. Bride or Laura Abbott.
This week, it showed three new entries.
She clicked the first link. A press release for a benefit concert in – she could hardly believe her eyes – Hampton, Virginia. Lucy Maitland and Diana Ashmore, contacts. She clicked the printer link, and found her hand shaking.
So Laura had gone home. After all these years, she’d gone home.
The next link – a family bulletin board. A party the day before at Ashmore Park. An impromptu concert. Cat Courtney, looking bedraggled in the humidity of a Tidewater afternoon, sitting at a table, signing autographs, someone handing her a drink. She looked hot, tired, and stressed out.
But she looked like Laurie.
The third link. A blog written by some kid, with another picture of Cat Courtney, dressed in khaki pedal pushers and navy polo shirt, with her hair half up, half down. Standing next to – no – Richard Ashmore, his hand on her arm, her body half turned away from him. Lucy and a man close by, the man’s apprehensive gaze directly on that hand on that arm.
Unlike Angie and her boyfriend Jake, the banker had no trouble deciphering the web of initials.
She felt sick to her stomach.
Mr. A and how he’s getting a divorce and high time… And was it ever… Mr. A’s new girlfriend looked ready to faint… Mr. A’s girlfriend is a famous singer! Cat Courtney. And she’s D’s sister – bet that’s one happy family!… Oh, the happiest, you wouldn’t believe… Bet she wanted to pull CC’s hair out. I would, if my sister stole my guy… Or knock her into a tree, or smash her face in… Saw her losing it all over the roses in the side yard. Maybe D poisoned her. Maybe she’s pg!… Meg wasn’t enough for you, Laurie?… If he has any sense he’ll leap at the chance, he needs the money… Richard, you wouldn’t… what happens when D finds out about CC….
She sent the web page to the printer, and buried her face in her hands.
After a time – after a long time – she stirred herself and shut down her computer. She had promised her family fried chicken tonight, and she didn’t like to break a promise. So what if she wanted only to crawl into bed and never come out again? She’d pledged to David on their wedding day that she’d only look forward. The past was the past and it was gone forever.
But it wasn’t. Laura had gone home.
She closed her office door and stopped by the printer in the hall to pick up her printouts and throw them in her briefcase. On the way out, she passed the trust department reception desk where the only other person who’d drawn the short straw to work was shutting down her computer.
“Have a good weekend, Ms. Dane,” the girl said.
“You too,” said Francesca Dane. “See you Monday.”
Chapter 17: Nothing Ever Dies
AS QUICKLY AS IT HAD APPEARED, Sara McIntire’s blog disappeared. Just another Internet ghost, online one minute and gone the next. As her entire audience had consisted of ten readers, nine of whom clicked on it by accide
nt, it died mostly unnoticed.
Except by Sara. She had made the monumental mistake of starting to respond to the only comment anyone had left – Hi! Who is Mr. A? Posted by Jake – when her father, waiting to check his own email, happened to glance over her shoulder. His first concern, that his daughter was writing to a strange adult male, paled the moment he scrolled up and recognized the picture of his partner putting his hand on Cat Courtney’s arm.
Scott McIntire had been in partnership with Richard Ashmore for over five years, and what he knew about his partner’s love life he could write on the head of a pin. By the time they’d met as newly minted architects, the Ashmore marriage had been as good as over, so his only reaction to hearing about the impending divorce was the same as his wife’s: high time and so what? For all Scott cared, his notoriously close-mouthed partner could go clubbing with Vegas showgirls every night, as long as he continued to bring in the business and show his genius in solving nearly unsolvable structural problems. Oh, and lose tennis games with good humor.
He hadn’t seen the big romance during the lunch at Mac’s, but why not? They were both adults. She was pretty, nice, and rich, with a tragic story to boot. Hard to beat a combination like that. Added to which, she couldn’t possibly cause as much trouble as Diana.
But she was also famous, and his partner was in the middle of a contentious divorce, and there was that pesky morals clause in the Charleston contract. Not to mention that his partner would be livid at the exposure of a tense private moment.
So the blog had to go.
Scott McIntire seldom raised his voice to his children; he preferred to leave the unpleasant disciplinary duties to his wife. But now he spent ten minutes giving Sara the tongue-lashing of her life, ending with the order to delete the blog immediately.
She deleted it.
“No need to tell your mother about this,” Scott said. Sara would be grounded for life if Mel found out. “No one read it. No harm, no foul. Just don’t do it again.”
Sara nodded, relieved that Mel would remain in the dark, and Scott sat down to check his email.
Neither Scott nor Sara gave another thought to Jake and his question.
~•~
Jake, however, had no intention of letting the subject drop.
“Stop asking!” Angie finally yelled at her boyfriend. “I don’t remember, okay? I frigging don’t remember.”
He hadn’t let up all day. Why he was so interested in this Cat Courtney woman, who had nothing to do with anything except bitch at her for talking too loud on a tour, was beyond her. Allie hadn’t been any help either. Drinking really must kill off the brain cells, because Allie wasn’t even sure it was the same guy. “I dunno. Was he wearing glasses?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Angie. “Same guy. For sure.”
She hadn’t met that many men in her life who were both that tall and that good-looking, and she was pretty sure she’d remember this one even if she hadn’t been stone cold sober and suffering from a hangover when she met him. But the guy’s name wouldn’t come to her. R something, that was all she could think of, and even Jake hammering at her all day, throughout the sail on Allie’s boyfriend’s boat and the raucous evening party down on the beach, didn’t jog her memory.
“What do you care?” she finally snapped at him when they were lounging around on the porch of their rented cottage. Jake was smoking his way through his second pack that day, and she had what would have been a very agreeable buzz – if only he hadn’t proved to be a single-minded terrier in search of a bone. “This isn’t your kind of story. You don’t write show biz stuff.”
Jake leaned back and blew smoke rings. “A story’s a story,” he said. “And this one – well, hell, you find this guy, you find Cat Courtney.” He took another drag. “And then I’m the guy who uncovered Cat Courtney’s secret identity, and people know my name, and I can get a better gig.”
That made a certain dim sense to Angie, but she was too sick of the whole subject to redouble her efforts. “Yeah, and she might sue you, if she doesn’t want her name out there. I’m telling you, that woman is a bitch.”
“Can’t,” said Jake. “Sue, I mean. She’s made herself a public figure. It’s a lot harder for a public figure to claim privacy rights. Besides, she’s got a big reason in him not to sue.”
Angie had closed her eyes, because the buzz was starting to spread pleasantly through her limbs. She only mumbled, “Why?” so that he’d tell her and stop talking, and maybe they could make sure the evening didn’t completely go to waste.
“Because he’s married, that’s why.”
“Huh?” That got her attention. “No. He didn’t have a wedding ring.”
She was certain about that, because the guy’s hands had particularly caught her attention. She had taken a drawing class as an elective last semester, and she had spent a month sketching hands. She’d have loved to sketch his hands. Long, beautifully shaped, elegant – probably like the rest of him. Hands to send a shiver down a woman’s spine. She was dead sure she’d have noticed a wedding ring.
“She said she was his mistress,” Jake reminded her. “Single men don’t have mistresses.”
That seemed like an unfair rule. Mistress sounded so much more – hmmm, sinful and sexy than just girlfriend or, as Jake had called her at the barbecue, old lady. “He didn’t act married.”
Jake gave her a look that expressed his opinion of her observational powers. “Of course, he didn’t act married. He was with his girlfriend. What do you think – he’s going to wear a sign that says, hello, I’m cheating on my wife with this hot babe?”
Angie thought privately there had to be more exciting places to cheat than Monticello and hotter babes to cheat with than Cat Courtney, but then what did she know? What had the woman said – Jefferson himself had had a mistress? She reached for the wine bottle. Maybe enough booze would deaden the sheer boredom of Jake blabbering on and on about two people she didn’t know and didn’t care if she ever saw again as long as she lived.
“I don’t care. I’m sick of hearing about Cat Courtney. Sorry, I don’t know his name, I don’t know his address, I don’t know his Social! I just remember he was an architect, and he knew all about the place because he wrote a book—”
Jake shot upward. “What?”
“I told you. She said how he wrote a book, and then she marched off like she was just too damn good for us—”
But Jake was thinking aloud now. “Architects have to register in their states,” he said. “Probably Virginia or a surrounding state. And you say he wrote a book about Monticello?”
“Yeah.” Angie just barely remembered the architect mentioning some Italian guy.
“I don’t suppose he mentioned the title?”
She shrugged.
“Well, hell.” Jake settled back and lit another cigarette. “So we’re looking for some tall guy who looks like he’s in his thirties, and his initials are R.A., and he’s an architect, and he wrote a book about Monticello. Well, this should only take a couple of hundred years—”
Angie didn’t even know where her next words came from. “He had a V on his shirt.”
“A what?” Jake came to attention. “A logo?”
“Yeah, like this.” She held up her fingers in a victory salute and then circled the area over her left breast. “Right there. Orange. His shirt was black, and the V was orange.”
“Hot damn,” said Jake, and came over and kissed her with more enthusiasm than he’d shown her all day long. “See, you know more than you think you do.”
She said sourly, “And what do I know that I don’t know I know?”
“Your mystery architect,” said Jake, “went to the University of Virginia. How many graduates do you think have written books on Monticello?”
Plenty, as it turned out, with only a minute or two of research. A rudimentary search revealed that the University of Virginia was a veritable hotbed of Monticello-related authors. “Must be a cottage industry,” groused Jake, a
nd then found that not one of the hundreds of authors had R.A. for initials.
“Maybe,” yawned Angie, “I’m not remembering it right.” She pretended to ignore the nasty look he gave her. Well, hell, was it her fault she didn’t remember every word from a boring conversation the week before? Nice hands or not. “Coming to bed?”
“Just a second.” He tapped on his laptop. “I want to see if that kid answered the question I left for her.” And then, a few seconds later, “Oh, shit!”
She didn’t crack open an eye.
“Damn kid deleted her blog!” Jake stubbed out his cigarette. “Shit, shit, shit… I wonder if someone got to her.” He swiveled around to face her. “Open your eyes, Ange,” he said, “we’ll go through this again. Start from the beginning, and don’t leave anything out. Let’s see what else you remember.”
If she survived this weekend, Angie decided, she was going to give serious thought to breaking up with Jake.
~•~
Late that night, after Angie fell asleep, her boyfriend got out of bed and went to his laptop.
The idea had come to him earlier. When facts were few and far between, Jake had decided, the smart thing to do was to put out the known in hopes that the unknown would come crawling out of the woodwork in response.
He opened up his political blog for the Mass Observer and wrote:
Tidbit of the day. Nada important, but who doesn’t enjoy some juicy dish?
Guess what Miss Cat Courtney is up to these days? Sources say that the Great Cat, known as much for her obsessive secrecy as she is for her wrap-‘em-around-my-throat auburn curls and her sultry let’s-spend-the-night-together voice, is keeping company with a long tall architect with an unwelcome accessory: a wife! Witnesses observed Miss Cat obsessively clinging to her man last weekend at Monticello in Charlottesville, VA, and gushing to startled fellow tourists: “I’m his mistress.” Well, at least, like a true poet, she got the words right. Naughty, naughty, Cat!
All That Lies Broken (Ashmore's Folly Book 2) Page 48
