Family was forever. Liam’s love liaisons were not.
* * *
AS IT TURNED OUT, Tamara was the most help to Gabrielle. The girl had an organizational eye that rivaled her own and between the two of them, they had the files sorted within an hour.
“These are identical to the files the FBI pulled out of Walter’s desks at home and at work,” Gabrielle said late in the morning.
“He had copies of all of his home files and his work files here?” Tamara asked.
“He had file folders with these same labels in both desks back in Denver,” she told the room at large. Missy was at her sewing machine table, going through a midsize moving box of things. Presumably Walter’s.
Liam had left to clear out his father’s side of the closet he’d shared with Missy. She’d asked him to do so.
Gabrielle had watched Liam all morning, her heart aching for him, the need to hold him growing stronger with every hour that passed.
“It would have been hard to keep track of everything if he had different filing systems everywhere.” Tamara interrupted her thoughts.
“I’m surprised he didn’t just use the computer,” Missy added. “I kept telling him that he could keep things in the cloud and have access to them wherever he was.”
“People who are doing illegal things aren’t going to put their stuff out on a cloud, Mom. Everyone knows clouds can be hacked.”
“We don’t know for sure he’s guilty.” Gabrielle felt oddly compelled to remind the girl. “He swore to me that he’s innocent.”
Tamara looked up, a sweet, vulnerable expression in her gaze. “Do you think he’s being framed?”
“I don’t think so,” Liam said softly, coming into the room carrying a large suitcase, which he put down as he crossed over to Tamara. “You and I are proof of his duplicity. All these years, I’ve had a sister, and he didn’t tell me. If he can rob us of a relationship, he’s certainly capable of robbing investors...”
With one hand on her shoulder, he looked over at Missy, who’d stopped what she was doing. A small pile of mementos: ticket stubs, photographs, brochures, even a room key, lay beside her. “You said I could speak freely?” Liam asked.
“Of course. I’d prefer that we hear things from you rather than on the news. Some of Tamara’s friends have met Walter. They might recognize him if his picture gets out there.”
“They’ll recognize his name, won’t they?” Gabrielle asked.
Missy shook her head. “When Walter was with us he was just... Walter,” she said.
“He said he could just be himself when he was home with us,” Tamara explained, looking from Liam to Gabrielle.
“It seemed really important to him.”
Gabrielle had wondered about the nice, obviously costly but quite small cottage that Walter had called home when he’d visited Florida. She’d assumed, until that morning, that he’d stayed in the hotel suite he’d rented every time he came to Florida. She’d seen the bills...
“Yet he wouldn’t let me have a normal life,” Liam said. “He took away my car for a year because I wanted to live in a dorm.”
“You were his golden boy, Liam,” Missy said. “You were everything he was not. You’d been born to money. Raised to know nothing but the good life.”
He looked at Gabrielle. She’d never needed so badly to wrap her arms around him. And pushed the sensation away. Far away. “It makes sense,” she told him. “He left his harsh beginnings behind when he had you.”
“Except for Buckus,” Liam said.
Gabrielle picked up the Florida file she’d found on the man, eager to get a look inside. Based on what she’d seen in the Colorado file the night before...
“I think they were closer than you realized,” she said, getting ready to tell him more when Missy interrupted.
“Ray Buckus?”
“You know him?” Liam’s gaze was sharp as he glanced at the other woman.
“Who’s that?” Tamara looked between her mother and newfound brother. At just five feet and in skinny jeans and a T-shirt, the blonde looked vulnerable enough to be blown over in a big storm.
“He works for your father,” Missy said.
“He grew up with him.” That was from Liam.
Missy’s hands were trembling. “I didn’t know that.”
“So who is this Buckus guy?” Tamara asked, her tone giving no indication of the obvious nervousness in her gaze as she looked at her mother.
“Have you ever met him?” Gabrielle asked Missy.
The older woman shook her head. “I thought he was an accountant. Walter told me he had no family, other than Liam, that he grew up in foster care and has no ties to that part of his life. Why wouldn’t he have told me that he’d known Ray all his life? Who is this guy?”
“He’s a financial broker at Connelly,” Liam said. “He and my father—” he glanced at Tamara “—our father,” he corrected, “grew up together. Ray got into some trouble, did some time in juvenile detention. I’ve wondered if maybe Dad was involved in whatever it was and Ray took the rap for both of them. All I know is that Ray straightened himself out as soon as he got out. Because he’d been a juvenile offender, his record was sealed. He went to college and was working as a bank manager for a major chain when Dad offered him the job at Connelly thirty years ago. Ray was as eager to leave the past behind as my father was. I’ve known him all my life. He’s a good guy.”
“He sent you checks.” Gabrielle jumped in when Liam finished. She was looking at Missy. But didn’t miss the sharp turn of Liam’s head as he aimed his steely gaze at her. “I spent part of yesterday and last night going through files the FBI sent over on the five top-floor executives at Connelly. I noticed that Buckus had made a couple of deposits into your offshore account.”
Missy nodded, looking slightly sick. “When Walter was out of the country. I just thought it was his accountant making the deposits. Walter told me his name because he wanted me to have someone I could call if I ever needed anything and couldn’t get in touch with him.”
“Did you ever call him?” Tamara asked.
“No.”
“But you knew my father was paying you through an offshore account.” Liam’s comment bordered on accusation. Tamara slumped down to the rocking chair next to her mother’s cutting table.
“I did.”
“And you didn’t find that suspicious?” Gabrielle was interested in the answer, as well.
“He told me that because Connelly does global business, some of their accounting is in Switzerland. It had to do with tax breaks.”
Liam’s expression smoothed a bit, which indicated to Gabrielle that Missy’s answer was plausible.
And as a lawyer, she had some questions.
“Did he ask for his stuff back?” She’d been wondering why Walter hadn’t already made arrangements to collect his files and other personal items from his ex-mistress.
“No.”
“And you didn’t find that odd?”
“Truth be known...” Missy was choking back tears.
“Dad broke my mom’s heart,” Tamara said, her tone gaining an edge now. “She’s barely been able to work.”
“What do you do?” Liam asked.
“She’s a registered nurse. She works for a doctor’s office here in town. When Dad called and told her they were through...”
With a hiccup, Missy said, “It’s all right, sweetie. I’m fine. I’ll be fine.” She turned to Liam. “I loved your father—blindly, apparently. I was so shocked when he broke things off.”
“You two weren’t having problems?”
“No more than we ever did. It was hard, with him having two lives...”
“Did you ever suggest moving to Denver?” Gabrielle asked.
“Of course.
Walter valued our anonymity as a family too much to give it up. And then there was Liam...” She glanced his way.
“Did he tell you why he kept you hidden from me?” Liam’s chin jutted forward as he shoved his hands in his pockets.
“He said you’d never understand...because of your mother. And then, later...we were years deep in our secret. He said that telling you would cause problems that we didn’t need.”
Gabrielle watched the expressions chasing themselves across Liam’s face. He might have made trouble. His father still should have trusted him. And told him even if he didn’t. Liam had had a right to know.
Gabrielle stepped forward around the desk, easing closer to Liam. “So you didn’t wonder why Walter didn’t send for his things?”
“He’s a billionaire. Nothing here he couldn’t replace. He even had copies of his files....” She looked into the box she’d been sorting through. Probably figuring none of the memories meant anything to Walter.
And she could be right.
The man had cut Liam out of his life, out of his will, for buying a building. It was conceivable that if Missy and Tamara had grown to be a problem for him, he’d cut them out completely, as well.
“If you want to know the truth, Mom thought Dad had found someone else,” Tamara said. She was talking to Gabrielle. Avoiding Liam’s gaze.
“As far as I know, he didn’t,” Liam said. “But then, I haven’t known about you two all these years...”
“There’s no indication from his finances that he’d started traveling somewhere new,” she offered, seeing the pain on their faces.
Walter Connelly had much to answer for. Far beyond possible criminal fraud charges.
“And he was still sending you money. I saw a deposit into the account less than two weeks ago.”
“Some of it goes into my college fund,” Tamara said.
“But he supports you, right?” Liam asked his sister.
“He bought the cottage outright years ago,” Missy said. “And had it deeded in my name only. I pay all of the bills. The money he sends is all spent on Tamara or put in savings for her.”
“The FBI thinks that Buckus is involved in the fraud. They think he and Walter are working together.” Gabrielle tried to steer the conversation into less painful areas.
“What do you think?” Tamara asked, sitting up on the edge of the chair.
“I think that if Buckus was in on it, he’d have wiped away evidence of your mother’s account. He was the only one, besides your father, who knew about it. Why leave it there? Why leave that money in danger of being seized? It doesn’t make sense. I think that the account was left because whoever cleared all incriminating evidence from Connelly computers didn’t know about it.”
“Which means that our father didn’t wipe away those files.”
“Or he got stopped before he could finish,” Liam said, but Gabrielle was already shaking her head. Missy was, too.
“Walter would have wiped that one first,” Missy said.
“So, what?” Tamara asked. “You guys are saying that Dad didn’t do it?”
“We know he’s been duplicitous,” Liam said. “And I know he’s been gambling again.”
Missy’s catch of breath told its own story. “You didn’t know that,” Liam said.
“No. I didn’t. He told me he’d had trouble with it when he was young but had soon seen how destructive it could be and stopped.”
So why had he started up again? Unless he knew that he was in financial trouble. Unless he had been trying to get back funds that had been spent, funds he needed to pay those wronged investors without other arms of his business being tapped to pay the debt.
“If he didn’t wipe away evidence of Mom’s and my account, then he didn’t do it.” Tamara latched on to the piece of evidence that was uppermost in Gabrielle’s mind as well.
“I’m not ready to believe that,” Liam told his sister. And Gabrielle wondered if he ever would be ready to trust his father again.
Walter Connelly might not be fraudulent in his business deals, but the man had committed some pretty hefty wrongs, just the same.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
BY LATE THAT afternoon Liam was wishing his father had never been born—except that would have meant neither he nor Tamara would be in existence, either. Spending time with his little sister was phenomenal. But the unwelcome specter of their father kept popping in.
Whether Missy had been totally duped by Walter and had not been aware of the part she’d played in his father’s adultery or she’d known that she was sleeping with Liam’s mother’s husband was unclear to him.
He didn’t want any of it to matter.
But it did.
“Wait a minute.” He glanced at Gabrielle, who was riding with him in the leather backseat of Missy’s newish four-door sedan on the way to the pier where the four of them would be boarding a boat to have dinner on the ocean.
“What?” Tamara, dressed in black leggings and a pretty white blouse, turned around from the front seat beside her mother.
“I was just going through these papers,” he said. A folder of his father’s that hadn’t matched any of the ones he or Gabrielle had seen in Denver.
“The folders of papers he hadn’t filed yet,” Gabrielle said.
“That’s what we thought they were. I mean, the forms all match transactions and accounts that we know about, so there was no reason to keep them separate,” he said.
“But now you think there was a reason?” Tamara asked. She was one smart girl. A chip off the old block, not that his old man deserved the credit for that.
“Look at these.” He pulled out papers and handed them to Gabrielle. She studied them with that focused look she got when she was fully engaged in something.
She was being such a great sport. Traipsing along with him for the weekend. Putting up with the drama his father had created for so many people.
Was it any wonder he loved her?
“They’re all signed and dated by him,” Gabrielle said, looking at him. And for a split second he had no idea what she was talking about.
He loved her? Not like he’d always loved her and Marie, but...he loved her?
“Signed in ink, not computer-generated or electronic signatures.” She stopped talking.
He stared at her. As though somewhere on her person was the clue that would let him know that he was wrong. She was just Gabi. One of his two best friends in the world.
Instead, he wanted to kiss her. In the worst way. In a way that prevented anyone from ever taking her away from him...
“Are you feeling okay?”
Her concern, more than her words, got through to him. “Yes.” He looked away. Breathed in deeply and out again. Escaping the emotion threatening to overwhelm him as he’d learned to do at the foot of his father.
She’d been talking about forms. Signatures. “Dad insisted that all investments and payouts be signed in ink,” he said. “By him or George.”
“So we’re to assume that all of these were done while he was here? He’d have scanned them and sent them back, but still kept the originals.” She was still looking at him oddly.
And as she handed him the folder, leaned into him.
He took the folder. And kept his shoulder pressed against hers as he opened it. “That’s what I’m thinking. He’s got copies of transactions in the other files, open transactions, just like he does at home. These are set apart because they’re originals.”
“I can tell you every time he’s been here in the past fifteen years,” Missy said, looking in the rearview mirror as she made a turn that had them heading toward the ocean. She’d changed into black jeans and a sequined sweater and put on more makeup. She wasn’t a beauty, but there was something quietly pretty about her.
; He could see what his father might have seen in her.
He didn’t approve of any of it. Not when he thought of how hard those last years of his mother’s life had been. How hard she’d tried to be the wife his father had needed her to be, to make appearances and host dinners and always look her best, in spite of the pain she’d been in. Or the lack of energy she’d had.
“A list of those dates would be good to have, Missy, thank you,” Gabrielle said beside him, and Liam was ashamed for his bad manners. “If you could just email it to me?” All four of them had already exchanged email addresses before they’d left the cottage that afternoon.
“I have the list, too,” Tamara said. “At least for recent years. I made him sign my diary every time he got there and write me a note in it before he left. I told him it made him feel more real to me during the times he was gone.”
Liam felt as though he’d been sucker punched. His father had written in this child’s diary? To comfort her?
This child had craved their father’s presence while Liam, who’d taken it for granted, had wished him gone much of the time.
“How often did you see him?” He asked a question that should have been first off his tongue.
“Only a couple of times a month, a couple of days each time, when you were home. But since you went away to school and lived on your own, it’s been more often,” Missy said.
“More often since Tamara was little.” He was glad to know.
“I don’t remember the couple of times a month.” The teenager turned to look at him again. And smiled that sweet vulnerable smile that had him in the palm of her hand. “Mostly it was at least a week each month. Used to be even more than that, when I was in elementary school.”
It wasn’t as though Liam would have noticed his father’s absences. Certainly not when he was in college and working nights in Denver. And in later years, they’d both traveled so much, lived in separate homes, spoken only when they had pertinent information to pass along.
He wanted to ask what they did when his father was there. Something held him silent.
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