McQuaid's Justice

by Carly Bishop

  Arched, elegant, multipane windows gathered in the last of the daylight. His chambers were furnished with antique brass, a spittoon and coat tree, and several western bronzes. “I assume you’ve come the distance to talk. Shall we do it here, or would you rather I take you out to dinner?”

  “Both?” Amy teased.

  “Both it is.” He leaned forward to grab up his phone. “Helena, make reservations for dinner for me, will you? Three at nine. More private than less.” He hung up without waiting for any response, and turned his attention to Cy. “I understand you sign well enough to keep up with my brilliant daughter.”

  “Not that well, I’m afraid,” Cy answered, glancing at her, “but almost.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “What loss?” Amy asked.

  Cy didn’t answer her, only stared hard at her father. “You’re well-informed.”

  “Always. Amy’s uncle makes it his personal business.”

  “Makes what his personal business?” she asked. “What loss, Cy?”

  “Amy.” He turned to her and signed. “It’s a long story. I want to tell you. I will tell you, but this is not the time. Not here. Not now.”

  She felt blindsided, excluded not to know what they were talking about, and as if she were being patted on the head for asking.

  Cy must have seen the flare of resentment, the heat in her face. The tension between them over what she’d done in the parking lot the day before was only barely resolved.

  For her father’s benefit he said aloud, “Amy, all it means is that your uncle has been vetting me, and passing along what he gets to your father.”

  “Daddy.” To be perfectly clear, she took the time to spell out her question. “Did you ask Perry to do that?”

  “No, but I confess having read the material, and throw myself on your mercy.”

  “It’s not funny.”

  Her father looked down, drew a deep breath, then answered her. “No. It’s not. But it is the truth. I give your uncle credit for looking after my interests, but in this case he has overstepped himself. When he learned that you had gone to see Brent—well. He is... troubled that you would pursue this, Amy, after he went to the trouble of explaining what had happened to you. And to the FBI—Mr. McQuaid. Very troubled, I should say.”

  “He should be troubled, Daddy. Did he provide you with a file on all the investigating agents?”

  “No.” Leaning back, her father loosened his tie. A look encouraged Cy to do the same if he chose. He drew a deep breath and waited. “But perhaps we should get to the point.”

  She took a moment to compose her thoughts. Her father was a brilliant, complicated man and she knew, suddenly, watching him sit there waiting to answer her questions, that the little sidebar with Cy could not have been an accident or an unwitting slip of the tongue.

  Her father wanted her to understand what her uncle had already done to thwart her, the power he wielded, the resources he had at his fingertips—enough to invade the privacy of a federal agent and compile a report, all within twenty-four hours of her questioning Brent.

  Cy had tried to warn her that she had no idea what she was getting into. By her father’s carefully constructed charade, she finally got it.

  He had to know what was on her mind, what she had learned. He had never given her any reason to fear that he would cut her off emotionally, or in any other way, but Perry was on the warpath now, and she didn’t know what to expect. Had her father intended to warn her that he would not take her side when he threw himself, in jest, on her mercy?

  “Am I troubling you, too, Daddy?”

  “You were always trouble, Amy.” He gave her a bittersweet smile. “It usually made my day.”

  She smiled too. “Thank you. But I mean—”

  He cut her off. “I know what you mean, Amy. I want you to know that there is no question in my mind that what you’re doing is necessary as breathing to you, or you wouldn’t be doing it. And your continued breathing, by the way, is as important to me as my own.”

  “Will you tell me what happened that night?”

  He frowned. For some reason, he hadn’t followed her question. She looked to Cy.

  “She asked, sir, if you will tell her what happened the night of your wife’s death.”

  “Ah.” He turned to her. “I’m sorry. I assumed that you had come to ask about the Jessup story.”

  She exchanged glances with Cy, a look meant to confirm their decision to put off telling her father about their encounter with Zach Hollingsworth. “That too, Daddy. But about my mother...”

  He began to toy with a pen on his desk. “You already know it, Amy. To my knowledge, everything happened the way your uncle described it to you. I can’t account for what went on after I left the house to go find Brent. But I have no reason whatever, nor have I ever had reason to believe that your mother died that night of any cause but a freak fall.”

  Her throat tightened. “Could you start at the beginning, Daddy? Start with what had already gone so wrong in our family?”

  He took a deep breath. “Our marriage was in trouble, Amy. Your mother and I had been at serious odds even before you were born.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  He rose from his chair, crossed his chambers and stood looking out the windows at the city lights. “Up until yesterday, when Hollingsworth’s piece broke, I believed it would not serve you to know.” Cy repeated in sign for her. “Your uncle told me that he was quite harsh with you. Too harsh, perhaps. But he has always respected my wish to protect you from ever learning the sordid details.”

  Amy had never seen her father so ill at ease, so uncomfortable in his own skin. He was a man of strong opinions and rare doubts. If she had ever witnessed the slightest degree of uncertainty in him, she couldn’t remember the occasion. But now...was he saying, as Perry had claimed, that he would lie to her face to protect her from the harsh realities?

  “Would you go so far as to lie to me, Daddy?”

  He lowered his head, almost as if praying. “I hoped the questions would never arise. Even so, were it not for what you already know from Hollingsworth’s article, I would not be willing to discuss my private life with your mother. Now you are entitled to certain answers—what your uncle has or has not said or done was intended to discourage your ever asking.”

  She believed Perry’s motives in bullying her went far beyond discouraging her questions, but that was another subject.

  “Was she leaving you, Dad?”

  “I suppose that was her plan, yes.”

  “How did you know your wife’s intentions, sir,” Cy asked, “when you were in Denver, and then en route back to Steamboat right up until Amy was rescued?”

  “I learned of it in the couple of hours after Amy was pulled out.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “I never learned her reasons. She had threatened before. I assumed it was the accumulated weight of her various complaints. But the simple truth of the matter is, I refused to listen to her.”

  He looked consideringly at Amy, deciding, she thought, how he would tell her. “Your mother was furious with me for taking you, for shoving her out of the way when the rescue team brought you up. She went on ahead to the house. She’d run a warm bath for you by the time I got back with you, but I wouldn’t let her take you from my arms. You were clinging to my neck, Amy. You wouldn’t have gone to her anyway—which only infuriated her more. Do you remember?”

  Amy shook her head. According to parade of therapists, hearing specialists and physicians she had been to, it would be highly unlikely for her to remember the trauma of her fall or its aftermath.

  Even the question of what she had seen or heard that night was dicey from the standpoint of “recovered memory” —which was known now to be far more unreliable than psychologists had believed years ago.

  All she could hope was that something she learned now might trigger fragments of recall that would stand up against Perry’s stonewalling.
r />   “Did she leave then?”

  “No. She insisted that we had to talk, then and there. She said your grandmother should ‘get off her scrawny ass’ and come take care of you. ‘Make herself useful,’ she said, ‘for once in her pampered existence’—referring to Fee of course. We argued. Briefly. Bitterly. She must have said something to the effect that she was leaving me, but I ignored her and told her again to get out.” He broke off, cleared his throat, unfisted his hands. “You’d already been through a hellish experience, Amy. I wasn’t about to leave you with anyone else. Not even your grandmother. I told her that I was the one who was going to take care of you. That you came first, and that she would have to wait.”

  “Surely she could understand—” Cy began, but her father shook his head.

  “On the contrary. Julia was utterly incapable of putting anyone but herself first.”

  Cy frowned. “Even under those circumstances?”

  “Even so.” He shrugged. His shoulders seemed suddenly less substantial to her than the image of him she carried in her mind. “She might have been more reasonable,” he went on, “if Amy had been more obviously injured by her fall. Physically damaged in some way.” He looked at her. “If you’d had broken bones, gashes or abrasions that needed tending, but—miraculously—you didn’t. In her mind, you had always come first with me, Amy. This was just one more affront to your mother and she wouldn’t stand for it.”

  “Why did she hate me so much?”

  “It wasn’t you, Amy. It was never you—only that you reminded her of someone... someone else. A woman she believed was a—a rival, I suppose. A woman with whom she accused me of being in love.”

  “Let me guess.” Cy grimaced. “We’re talking Pamela Jessup now.”

  DELAYED BY THE insane amount of traffic on 1-70, Brent didn’t clear the westbound Eisenhower Tunnel till nearly four o’clock. He didn’t know what time people knocked off work at the fancy-assed architectural firm where Amy worked, but if he didn’t get in for another hour, he’d miss making a call he had to make.

  He didn’t know where Amy was. He had to find out without at the same time setting himself up.

  He pulled over long enough to dig out his cell phone and punch in the numbers, then pulled back into traffic.

  For once the cell phone behaved. He got a chipper little answer and asked for Amy Reeves. No surprise, she was taking the week off work. What he needed to know was where she would be and when. He figured she had to have someone running interference for her, doing her interpreting.

  He schmoozed the Sykes & Bladestone receptionist till he got the name of Amy’s personal assistant, then hung up, pushed redial, and this time accessed the maze of the company directory till he could select Jessie Verdell’s extension.

  He nearly swallowed his tongue when the woman answered. He had to talk to someone, there was no getting around it, but he was shaking now. “Jessie, hi. You don’t know me, but I’m Amy’s brother, Brent Reeves—up in Steamboat Springs.”

  “Yes?”

  He gripped the phone hard. His hands were sweating. She wasn’t exactly extending herself. He had no way of knowing what Amy would have told the woman about him. “I hate to bother you, but... I need to get a hold of my sister and I thought maybe you could help me.”

  “Amy’s out of town, I’m afraid. She went to see your father. I...yes. She left yesterday before noon.”

  Little bitch... God only knew what she was telling the old man. “Yeah, I knew that much,” he said. “I thought I’d surprise her. You know, drive down to Denver and pick her up at the airport.”

  “It may be a waste of your time. She seems pretty well taken care of with that FBI guy—”

  “Cy McQuaid.” The more informed he seemed to be, the more likely she was to take him at his word. He improvised, playing on the faceless woman’s sympathy. “Ames is pretty upset about all this going on with Dad. We both are. We just sort of need to stick together now. Problem is, in all the uproar, I can’t find her flight information.”

  “All I know is that she won’t be in until late tomorrow.”

  Close enough. “Well, thanks, Jessie. That’ll give me plenty of time to check with Dad. I appreciate your help.”

  “No problem. Tell her we’re all thinking about her here.”

  “I’ll do that. From what I hear—” he hadn’t heard anything, but so what? “—she’s in with a pretty great bunch of people. Oh, wait. One more thing.” He knew when, now, but not where, and he couldn’t think how to get an address out of the dim bulb without her getting suspicious. He couldn’t take the chance of asking directly whether Amy was even working on a house renovation now or not.

  About the time he figured out what to do, he realized his silence had grown awkward. “Sorry about that. Never mind. Hey, listen, Jessie. Thanks for your help.” He went through the drill again, rang off, then punched redial one more time, then 0 for the Sykes & Bladestone receptionist.

  Putting on a rough, construction-worker voice, he said, “Yeah, this is Acme Building Supply. Got a wrong delivery address here. We need the renovation site for Miss Reeves.”

  “Sixth and Holly, you mean?”

  “Yeah.” The ease of it made him damned near giddy. “That’d be it.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Let me guess...Pamela Jessup.

  Stunned by Cy’s intuition, Amy stared at him. Her father looked down, then blew off a deep sigh. “Your performance evaluations, however brilliant, have fallen a bit short of the mark, Mr. McQuaid.”

  Cy shrugged. “I doubt that, sir.”

  “Daddy... were you ever planning to tell me?”

  “I’m sorry you’re only learning of this under these circumstances, Amy. Your mother’s family was never a part of your life. It’s no secret anywhere, even the public record, for that matter, how I felt about what happened to Pamela, or how I tried to help her—but yes. Pamela Jessup was your mother’s cousin—and the one with whom she imagined I was in love.”

  “But Hollingsworth’s story had only to do with your prosecuting—”

  “Not exactly,” Cy interrupted.

  “How did you guess?” she demanded, conveying with her hands her bewilderment.

  “Remember, Hollingsworth’s article alluded to ‘higher stakes.’” Cy looked back to her father, signing his question for her as well. “Will your relationship with Pamela Jessup be next on Hollingsworth’s agenda?”

  “God only knows,” her father answered. “To my knowledge, your mother’s family never believed Julia’s jealousy or her accusations had any merit. He won’t get any encouragement from them on that. On the other side of it, they did believe that I was somehow willing to sacrifice their good name on the altar of the almighty law.”

  “I don’t understand,” Amy signed. “What happened that made them think that?”

  “Pam was raped, Amy. Raped by the son of old family friends—now,” his expression riddled with scorn, “the estimable Phillip Gould, senior—”

  “Senator Phillip Gould?” Cy asked incredulously.

  “Yes.” Amy’s father took a deep breath. His hand closed in a death grip on his Mont Blanc fountain pen. His knuckles whitened. An old and deep-seated anger smoldered in his eyes. “The son of a bitch raped her and got away with it.”

  Sickened, exchanging looks with Cy, Amy swallowed hard. This was what Zach Hollingsworth was looking for, Gould’s reason for taking dead aim at the possibility of her father’s nomination.

  “Unfortunately for Pam,” he went on, “the family was disinclined to believe her. The Goulds were friends. And higher up the social ladder by more rungs than they wanted to count. In the end, her father, your mother’s uncle, threatened to disinherit her if she humiliated them, her sister Candace—whose debutante season would come next—or even the Goulds, by pressing charges. I encouraged Pidge—Pamela—to go to the authorities anyway.”

  “Where did my mother fit into this?”

  “She was several years older t
han Pam, but their grandfather had cut your mother off financially as well, over some teenage indiscretion. I suppose she hoped her own infractions would seem so insignificant compared to Pam’s defiance that she would get back into her grandfather’s good graces.

  “I told your mother privately,” he concluded, “that if the family cut Pam off, I would support her. I thought your mother sympathized. As it turned out, I was mistaken.”

  “She thought you were in love with Pamela?”

  “She was convinced of it.”

  “But if it wasn’t true,” Amy signed, “how could she have been so wrong?”

  “I was fond of Pam, Amy, I won’t deny it. I watched her grow up from the age of thirteen or so. I was aware that Pidge had an adolescent crush on me, but she grew out of it. Your mother didn’t see it that way.”

  Amy had never known her mother’s family, never visited the family estate in the California wine country, where their fortune was made generations before she was born She had never been taken to see them as a child, after her mother had died, and never wanted to as an adult. “Did you manage to persuade Pam to go to the police?”

  “I didn’t have to convince her. She wanted to press charges. She’d told Gould she was going to go through with pressing charges. It might already have been too late in terms of physical evidence, but she never got the chance. Two days after the rape I dropped her off at a hair salon where she had an appointment. I never saw her again. She was kidnapped coming out of the salon appointment.”

  Cy shook his head. “Quite the lucky break for Gould, wasn’t it?”

  Byron grimaced. “Don’t think the thought didn’t cross my mind. For two cents I’d have given Eisman, the kidnapper, immunity in exchange for fingering Gould in a conspiracy.” He shrugged. “In fact, I tried.”

  “Nothing ever came of it?”

  “Eisman refused the bait. We never uncovered a link between them. We did find evidence in Eisman’s apartment to suggest that he’d been researching the society pages for kidnap targets. More on Pam than anyone else. There was even a blurb about where the various debutantes got their hair done.”