Chapter 40
The next morning I got up very early, having passed a relatively sleepless night. As I was walking through the corridor on my way to the upper deck to get some coffee, Russell emerged from his room, haggard and red-eyed. He was still in the clothes he’d been wearing the previous evening. He’d obviously been up all night. His whole manner toward me seemed different, much softer and more solicitous.
“Jo, may I talk to you?”
“Of course, Russell, what is it?”
He led me into his room and sat down at his desk. His face illuminated by the soft light of the monitor, he clicked away at the keyboard, then stopped and looked up at me.
“You didn’t tell me about Max Vermilion,” he said.
In fact, I had purposely not told him about Max, in part to save him from that final humiliation, and also because I didn’t think it was particularly relevant, given all the other things that were going on.
“What about him?”
He pointed at the computer. “Read that.”
I walked over and looked at the screen. There was an article from a British online newspaper. I read the headline: “Americans Flock to Taunton Hall Ball.” A couple of sentences caught my eye.
Lord Max Vermilion escorted Carla Cole, stylish wife of missing billionaire Russell Cole, to the dance. . . . The evening raised more than fourteen million pounds for the Taunton Hall Trust, ten million of which were donated by Mrs. Cole for the much-needed restoration of the famous copper roof . . .
Russell glared at the screen, seething.
“She knows how much I loathe and despise him,” he said.
“Why? Because he went out with Lulu?”
Russell lowered his head and said softly, “This has nothing to do with Lulu. Carla lied to me. She told me she would never see him again.”
“What do you mean? They only just met.”
“Who told you that? Max?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, he did,” I said.
Russell scoffed. “Figures.”
“Russell, what are you talking about?”
Russell got up and closed the door and motioned to me to sit down. He sat behind his desk again. He spoke slowly and hesitantly. I could see how painful this was for him.
“Carla told me everything about her past before we got married. I knew what she’d been. I didn’t care. Women like Carla really know how to take care of a man. She didn’t compete with me, like Lulu did. She didn’t want anything from me except my happiness and my comfort. She always thought of me first. Do you know what a change that was from Lulu, who always thought of herself first and then of her social friends? Never me. Carla loved me. Just me. And I loved her. God, how I loved her. . . .” He paused to reflect. “I’d even go so far as to say I was obsessed with her.”
He rubbed his temples as he went on. “Everybody thinks I met Carla at a party in New York and that we had this coup de foudre, as the French say—this thunderclap of instant attraction. But that’s not true . . . Jo.” He hesitated. “I’ve never told this to another soul . . .”
“Go on,” I urged him.
“I met Carla long before that night. I met her when I was in a sanatorium in upstate New York.”
I purposely didn’t let on that I knew all about his stay at Golden Crest. I decided not to say a word until he’d finished.
“I’d had an episode,” he went on. “And this place—Golden Crest, it’s called—it’s one of the only places left in the country where they still give electroshock treatments. I went there more than once. It was a big secret. Lulu said it would be very bad for the family and the business if anyone found out that I was having these problems, not to mention this particularly drastic treatment . . . Lulu was ashamed of me and my condition. She almost never came to visit,” he said bitterly. “Lulu wants everything in her life to be perfect, even the people. But people aren’t perfect, Jo. Far from it,” he said with a mordant little laugh.
He lapsed into one of his trances. Finally, I prodded him gently to keep going.
“I’m sorry,” he said, snapping to. “Lulu was ashamed of me and of my condition. Just like she’s ashamed of Courtney and her ‘condition,’ as she calls it. My daughter is . . . well, she has no interest in men, if you get my drift . . . Lulu took it very hard when Courtney told her. She blamed me.”
“You? Why?”
“Lulu blamed any ‘psychological aberration,’ as she called it, on my side of the family—the crazy side, as she always referred to it. So I was at this place—Golden Crest—and so was Antonio Hernandez, Carla’s husband at the time. Carla came up there nearly every weekend to visit him. Most times he was too ill to see her.”
“Did you know Hernandez?”
He shook his head. “No. I knew who he was, of course. Mexico’s pharmaceutical king,” he said derisively. “There were a lot of us rich looneys in that place, believe me. Hernandez was just one of many. He stayed in his cabin all the time. I only saw him once, from a distance. He looked like a big bear.”
“So how did you run across Carla?”
“It was fate, really,” he said, perking up for the first time. “I was walking back to my cabin one Sunday. Sundays were visiting days and there were always more people around. I saw this very striking, elegant woman coming toward me. She was so out of place in that setting—like a rare orchid in a corn field. I loved the way she was dressed—so chicly. We passed each other on the path. She stopped me and asked me if I was visiting and if I knew where the dining room was. She had no idea I was a patient. I offered to show her. We connected immediately. She was so easy to talk to. So lively and so much fun. I’m not usually good at talking to people when I first meet them—not that I’m much good after I know them, either,” he said with touching self-deprecation. “But Carla made me feel so comfortable. As I said, she thought I was a visitor at first.”
He smiled at the memory. I couldn’t believe anyone was that naïve. It was obvious that Russell was still madly in love with Carla because of how much he relished telling me the true story of their first meeting.
“She told me she came up every Sunday to visit her husband, but that he often couldn’t see her, or if he did, it was only for a short time. We went for a long, long walk together on the property. It’s a beautiful place. Very rural. Very tranquil. You become intimate quite quickly in a place like that. There’s not much small talk. Near the end of the walk, I finally confessed to her that I was a patient there. She stopped dead in her tracks. She couldn’t believe it at first. She said I seemed so ‘normal.’ ” He laughed at the memory. I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes in disbelief.
“She asked me what I was there for. I told her a little bit about my condition. She was gentle and sympathetic. Not like Lulu, who was always so denigrating. Eventually I told Carla that I’d had shock treatments, and that I didn’t remember long periods of my life. She said she’d like to forget certain periods of her life, and then she confessed to me how difficult her own marriage was. Hernandez was a drug addict and a depressive. He was there to detox, but they just gave him more drugs. It was that sort of a place. You could recuperate if you wanted to, or stay addicted if you wanted to. All they were really interested in was your money. Anyway, she told me her life was difficult, but she was determined to stick with Hernandez because he’d rescued and protected her.”
“Protected her from what?”
“From Max,” he said softly. He paused for a moment, clenching his jaw in a rage. “Max was obsessed with Carla,” he went on. “They had a brief affair years ago and Max fell madly in love with her. He wouldn’t leave her alone. She told me how Hernandez had helped her get away from him. She made no bones about it. She discussed the whole thing very openly with me. She confided in me, like a friend. She said I was the only one she’d ever been able to talk to about her situation. She said I made her feel comfortable a
nd hopeful and safe. We were friends at first, Jo. Just friends. Nothing more. I promise.”
I couldn’t believe how clever Carla had been. Like any billionaire, Russell Cole had women flinging themselves at him all the time—all kinds of women, both married and single—all hoping to find a chink in his marriage and take advantage of it. But Russell was a shy, insecure man, clearly frightened by overt sexuality. This was a man who’d married his college sweetheart and who preferred a quiet life. Plus, Russell was no fool. He must have known most of the women who openly pursued him were after him for his money. To approach him first as a damsel in distress rather than a seductress was a stroke of genius. Carla cleverly gambled that her sex appeal and exoticism eventually would speak for themselves. What she needed to gain was his trust. And how better to gain Russell’s trust than to make him a friend and confidant? What man doesn’t trust a woman he believes he’s helping to get through a difficult marriage?
“So Carla and Max have known each other for years. That’s fascinating,” I said, musing aloud.
I thought back to my conversation with Carla the day we lunched at the Forum when she asked me if I’d ever been to Taunton Hall. I recalled the dreamy look on her face when she said it was the most beautiful place she’d ever seen and how there was nothing to compare with it. That was the first inkling I got that she may have been interested in Max. Little did I know then how interested she really was. Or he, for that matter.
“Max was mad about her. Obsessed with her. He still is, I’m sure.”
“Knowing Carla, I’m surprised she didn’t manage to hook him,” I said cynically.
“Oh, she wasn’t interested in him. In fact, when she heard Max was taking Lulu out, she laughed about it. She said Max was dating Lulu just to get back at her for marrying me.”
“Where did they meet?”
“Max leads a double life. Years ago, he took Carla to Hong Kong on a business junket. He often took ladies like Carla on trips like that, when he wasn’t likely to run into anyone he knew. He fell head over heels in love with her, and refused to leave her alone.”
“Why didn’t he marry her?”
“If you know Max, you know what a snob he is. He would never have married a woman like Carla. But that didn’t stop him from being completely obsessed with her. As I said, he leads a double life. He used to stalk her. Carla and I were both very upset when we found out that Betty had invited him to the bridal dinner. I disinvited him.”
“That was the night you disappeared.”
He looked at me with a pained expression. “Was it? I don’t remember.”
“The next night was the wedding. I sat next to Max at dinner. Carla was there. She acted like she hardly knew him.”
“Where was I?”
“I told you. You had disappeared.”
He cocked his head to one side with a perplexed expression on his face. “Carla knew I was gone?”
“Yes, of course. There’d been search parties out for you all day.”
“And she went to the wedding?” he said in a hurt voice.
“Yes.”
“And Max was there?”
“Yes.”
I saw where his mind was heading and I did nothing to interrupt that obvious train of thought. Meanwhile, I pondered the grand deception myself: How Max had first pretended not to know Carla when they were introduced in Barbados . . . how he had subsequently been present at nearly every occasion where she was. I thought of the dinner I’d given for Max where he engineered it so Carla and Lulu came face to face, knowing that Lulu was bound to make a scene and wind up looking bad. . . . I thought about Carla’s infamous party, recalling it was Max who had suggested all the women’s bags be searched. I suddenly wondered: Was he the one who planted the earring in my bag? He certainly had the opportunity. He all but ruined me that night. . . . Was Max trying to get back into Carla’s good graces by humiliating her detractors? Was he still obsessed with her, as Russell suspected?
“Russell, let me ask you a question. Why wasn’t Carla interested in Max? He’s handsome, rich, a lord. Was it just because he wouldn’t marry her?”
“No, because he’s a complete fraud,” Russell said.
“In what way?”
“In every way.”
“Give me an example.”
“He’s broke, for one thing.”
I guffawed. “Are you kidding? Max Vermilion? He’s rich as Croesus.”
Russell shook his head. “Why do you think he only marries rich women? Max was in trouble even before the dot-com downdraft. Carla told me that he’d lost a fortune womanizing and gambling. He’s been privately selling off paintings and furniture from his house for years in order to keep up the façade. You ask Gil Waterman. Five years ago Gil offered me two of Max’s Canalettos, a portfolio of Rembrandt etchings, and two Dürer drawings from Taunton Hall. I didn’t want them. He finally sold them all at auction, as the ‘property of an English gentleman.’ Gil sent me a copy of the catalog.”
As Russell spoke, I recalled the day I’d seen Max lunching with Gil at the Forum, now viewing that seemingly innocuous social encounter in a more sinister light. I wondered if, indeed, Max had been unloading some other precious object or painting from Taunton Hall in order to keep his life afloat.
“Max has closed off rooms on the National Trust tour, saying they’re under renovation,” Russell went on. “But actually, it’s because their treasures are gone. He’ll have to sell the whole place soon because he can’t afford to keep it up. No one’s supposed to know, of course, although some people do. It’s a miracle he’s kept it quiet for so long. He was only going out with Lulu for her money—and to get back at Carla, of course.”
I was utterly dumbfounded. The mighty Vermilion fortune was legendary, and Max certainly lived as if it were still intact. Gil Waterman had never breathed a word of this to me. He certainly had never told Betty because if he had, the world would have known about it in two seconds flat. Gil was much more discreet than I ever imagined. But I guess, given the art trade, with all its wheelings and dealings, he had to be. The idea that Max would have to sell Taunton Hall because he couldn’t afford to hang on to it was staggering.
What Russell didn’t know, of course, was that while he knew a lot about Max, I knew much more about his wife than he did. Indeed, I was wondering if it was conceivable that Max had told Carla to marry Russell in order to replenish his own fortune. And was that, perhaps, the real reason she had married Hernandez, too—to get money for Max? Was Max somehow behind all this mayhem? Or was Carla merely acting on her own initiative in order to please him?
I decided to spare this pathetic man all the details of his wife’s deceptions and my own suspicions about her. His own mind was doing my work for me.
“Well, Russell, all I can say is, now she’s put a roof on his house with your money.”
Chapter 41
Over the course of the day, Russell worked obsessively on the computer, pulling up all sorts of articles on the Internet that confirmed the things I had told him about the collection and about his fortune. The Wall Street Journal had a long piece about the internal fighting in the RTC Corporation. Because it was a privately held company, the exact facts were sketchy, but according to a source “close to the investigation,” Carla Cole was now in control of the multibillion-dollar entity. Over objections from the board of directors, she had sold off companies and real estate, using her voting powers to basically line her own pocket. Lulu Cole was suing the board on behalf of her daughter. Courtney was battling Carla and trying to get her father declared legally dead in order to salvage what was left of her birthright. He read and re-read the front page New York Times story about Carla donating the Cole collection to the Municipal Museum. The events I had related gradually took root in his consciousness. I used every opportunity I could to sow more seeds of doubt in his mind.
In Russ
ell’s eyes, however, everything paled in comparison to Carla having publicly taken up with Max. This breach of faith trumped all the others combined. Her association with Max was the one thing he couldn’t recast in a sympathetic light. He wondered aloud if Carla had ever really loved him, as she professed, or if she saw him, as I now suspected, as a stepping-stone to the position, the house, and the man she had always secretly coveted: Max Vermilion.
I said to him with great seriousness, “Ask yourself this honestly, Russell: Are you sure Carla would have married you if Hernandez had left her his fortune . . . ? Or would she have married Max? You know Carla very well by now. Which do you think she’d rather be, Mrs. Cole or Lady Vermilion?”
By posing this question, I knew I was playing on all his insecurities. Russell and I stared at each other for a long moment without saying a word. I could almost see his mottled history with Carla tumbling through his mind as he thought about the answer to that question.
Finally, he said, “Do you think Max put her up to it?”
I could just hear Max telling her in that laid-back way of his, “You get yourself a fortune plus a dash of respectability, dear girl. We’ll put a nice new roof over my head, make sure The Hall is secure, and I’ll marry you, what?”
I figured Max’s first allegiance was to his noble heritage. Taunton Hall was the true love of his life. I imagined he would do anything to keep it. He had always married wealthy, well-connected women, but they had been more like stopgaps rather than solutions. Not one of them had the means that Carla now had, nor had they Carla’s interest in putting all their money at his disposal. Indeed, he wound up paying two or three of them large settlements. Grand in their own right, they didn’t covet Max’s title, position, or good opinion the way Carla did.
The idea of the elegant Lord Max Vermilion as a Machiavellian puppet master was suddenly all too plausible.
“Yes, Russell, I think he put her up to it. In fact, I’m sure he did.”
Russell was anxious to set sail, so Rankin suggested moving to St. Maarten, which was a good distance away and a leg closer to our ultimate destination: the United States. Russell would have to go home sooner or later. It was just a matter of timing. As things stood now, if he returned, he would not only be powerless but possibly in grave danger. I needed time to work out a plan.
One Dangerous Lady Page 36
