Fool Me Once

by Fern Michaels

  The woman’s words rocked Olivia. She hoped her expression didn’t betray what she was thinking and feeling. She grappled for something to say. Leaning back in the lemon yellow chair she was sitting on, she pulled words out of the air. “Well,” she drawled in return, “there is the moral aspect of the whole thing. And the civil suit you could be facing by the grandson of the man who now owns the bank. Everyone knows, even an idiot, that insurance companies never give up. They’re going to want their money back. A trio of women pulling off a heist like you three did is great human interest. The press will have a field day with it. Remember that civil suit against O.J. Simpson? The press fed on that for over a year. You need to think about that, Ms. Bank Robber.” Olivia wondered if anything she said was true. It looked to her as if Jill was wondering the same thing.

  “Guess I’ll just have to deal with it,” Jill said coolly.

  “I wouldn’t get my passport ready just yet if I were you. I’m prepared to watch you twenty-four/seven. All I have to do is make one phone call, and this place will be under surveillance night and day. You will be forced to become a real recluse. Not that pretend deal you had going on back in New Jersey.”

  Jill leaned forward and reached for a cigarette. She blew a stream of smoke in Olivia’s direction. “Why are you doing this? What will it take to make you go away?”

  Olivia wished she’d accepted the offer of coffee. Holding a cup would be something to do with her hands. “Nothing.”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed. She blew another stream of smoke in Olivia’s direction. Olivia waved it away. “Come on, money makes the world go round. How much?” she demanded. “Oh, I get it, you inherited Adrian’s estate. You have no need of money. Are you some kind of do-gooder, or is this some kind of vendetta against your mother? She did give you up the day you were born.”

  “Yes, she did. But then you did the same thing to Mary Louise, just a little later, didn’t you? You’re just like Allison. Gwen was different. I met her, you know. She’s really down on her luck. She hardly has enough money to feed her cats. Guess what? She’s contented with her life. Did I say she lives in a trailer?”

  “Is that supposed to mean something to me?” Jill snapped. Olivia shrugged.

  “Just out of curiosity, Jill, did you give up your daughter because that’s what Allison did? Did you divorce Gill because Allison divorced Dennis, my father? You envied her, didn’t you? You wanted to be just like her. That’s what she thought. She left a diary. She thought you and Gwen were stupid. She didn’t even like you.”

  Jill’s nipped and tucked face tightened as her eyes sparked with anger. “My reasons for my actions are none of your business. I never liked your mother. Actually, I hated her guts. To me she was evil personified. I didn’t much care for Gwen, either, but she was way better than your mother. A girl needs friends at college. I’m going to call your bluff, Ms. Lowell. Do what you want. That whole scene was a lifetime ago. No one will be interested at this point in time.”

  “Oh, that’s where you’re wrong. The media will be very interested in how Allison Matthews started up that mail-order business. Think trickle-down. You can’t run fast enough to outrun an insurance investigator. They’re like dogs with bones, and they probably get a percentage of whatever they recover. Remember, I told you Allison left a diary. It’s all in there.”

  Olivia didn’t think it was possible for the woman’s features to turn even tighter and colder, but they did. “Do you really expect me to believe you’d turn your own mother in?”

  “You better believe it, Jill. This is my pound of flesh. You see, my father told me my mother died giving birth to me. Then one day a week or so ago, a lawyer showed up at the door and told me about Allison Matthews. And then I read her diary. She thought of me as an it. Yet she left her entire estate to me. Out of guilt, I suppose. She also left a letter for me asking me to return her share of the money to the bank. She asked me to locate you and Gwen and to get you to return your share of the money, too. She seemed to think you two would be carrying a load of guilt, and she wanted to get you to return the money so that you could assuage your consciences.

  “Since Gwen doesn’t have two cents to her name, and, incidentally, has found religion and is prepared to take whatever punishment comes her way if I go to the authorities, I’ll return her share out of Adrian’s money. You, on the other hand, seem to have no conscience at all, so you’re going to swing in the wind for your share. The civil suit might even ask for punitive damages. You could be wiped out. The first things they’ll ask for are all your bank and brokerage statements.”

  Jill reached for another cigarette. Olivia was pleased to see that the woman’s hand trembled when she fumbled with the lighter. Olivia waited…for what, she didn’t know.

  “The whole thing was Allison’s idea. Gwen and I didn’t want to do it. Back then Gwen didn’t have enough sense to come in out of the rain. I wasn’t much better. Allison never let us forget how smart she was. She set it all up, but it was Gwen and I who actually picked the package off her desk and put it in the safe-deposit box. All she did was substitute plain paper for the bonds in the package on Mr. Augustus’s desk and put the bonds in the package we stashed. She was smart enough to parlay that into the fortune you inherited. When we met the last time to divide up the bonds she said we should go our way, she would go hers, and we should never get in touch with each other again. I thought she was scared, that maybe she knew something we didn’t know, so we did what she said. Gwen and I stayed in touch for a short while. I saw what she was all about rather quickly, so I cut her loose the way Allison had cut us both loose.”

  Olivia frowned. It all sounded so rehearsed, so clever. She didn’t believe any of it for a minute. “It doesn’t matter. You’re all equally guilty,” Olivia said.

  “How much is the payback?” Jill asked suddenly.

  Chapter 15

  Olivia was momentarily stunned at Jill’s question. Somewhere during the past thirty minutes she’d obviously managed to hit a nerve. She wondered if the spur had been her mention of a civil suit or perhaps the words “insurance fraud.” She rummaged in her bag for the paper where she’d done her calculations. She pretended to study it as her mind went in all directions.

  “Well?” Jill asked irritably, her eyes narrowed, her jaw tight and grim.

  Once again, Olivia plucked words out of the air. “If we settle up now for the face value, and that includes the twice yearly attached coupons, I’m out of your life. This,” she said, extending the sheet of paper that had Jill’s name sprawled across the top, “is your share.” Jill winced as she read the number. She didn’t say a word. Instead, she got up and walked out of the room. When she returned she had a check in her hands drawn on a New York Goldman Sachs brokerage account.

  “I’d like it if you’d leave now,” Jill said coldly. “Don’t come back, either. I never want to see your face again.”

  “Why?” Olivia asked suspiciously. “Are you planning on leaving?”

  “No, I’m not leaving. I just never want to see you again. You remind me too much of your mother. This is finished. Get out of my life.” Jill walked to the door, opened it, and tapped her foot impatiently as she waited for Olivia to shove all her papers back into her bag.

  Jill watched Olivia cross the pavement to the parking area and get into her car. She moved then, faster than lightning, to the laptop sitting on a small desk in her bedroom. She clicked and clicked until a summary of her brokerage account appeared on the screen. She clicked furiously until the screen showed nothing but zeros. The window that appeared said, Funds successfully transferred. She then tapped out a message to her broker telling him to cancel check number 5694. She smirked with satisfaction. Now all she had to do was wait until it got dark so she could leave again. The girl was smart, but not as smart as her mother was. Allison would never have fallen for such a blatant about-face on Jill’s part.

  There was no doubt in Jill’s mind that whoever had tracked her to this pla
ce, probably some private detective who’d spoken to the old busybody that lived next door to her in Woodbridge, hadn’t investigated beyond the end of his or her nose. Everything these days was done by computer. Little did they know, whoever they were, that she held temporary leases on the two condos on each side of the one she was sitting in right then, but only on paper. All she had to do was go out the back door, into one or the other of those condos, after dark—disguised, of course—and leave.

  And everyone thought Allison was the smart one. Jill grudgingly admitted she had learned one thing from Allison Matthews. It wasn’t enough to have Plans A and B. You also needed Plan C. She was operating on Plan C.

  She poured herself a glass of wine and settled down to watch an afternoon filled with stupid soap operas. She got up several times during the course of the afternoon to look out the window. There was no sign of Olivia’s car. Jill was smart enough to know that didn’t mean anything. The girl could be lurking anywhere.

  At five o’clock, after turning on all the lights in the condo, she called for a pizza to be delivered. All part of Plan C. Her food arrived at 6:20. She paid for it and carried it inside and dumped it down the trash chute. Trotting into the bedroom, she changed out of her designer clothes. Fifteen minutes later, she looked like a sloppy male teenager with a backpack. Faux dreadlocks hung to her neck. On top of the faux hair she plopped a grungy baseball cap that was even grubbier than her jeans and jacket. Now she looked like half the college students at Ole Miss.

  It was 6:50 when she entered the condo on the left by way of the back door. She turned on the light in the kitchen, then the bathroom light, and waited exactly seven minutes before she turned on a lamp in the living room. For the benefit of anyone who might be watching outside, she ran back and forth turning on other lights, then turning them off. Finally, at 7:35 she slipped on the backpack, which contained her laptop and little else, and prepared to leave the condo, making a point of jingling a ring of keys and locking the door. Shoulders slumped, she slouched down the four steps and proceeded to shuffle away from the condo. She was just another lazy-looking, sloppy college kid. No one gave her a second glance.

  Jill Laramie smiled to herself in the darkness. So she had just lost fifteen thousand dollars with the three minimum down payments and security deposits on the condos. She could live with that. Plan C. “Thanks, Allison,” she chortled.

  Olivia drove up to the small bank where Allison Matthews had worked during her college years. It didn’t look much different from the picture in Adrian’s safe. It had a new red tin roof, and the paint on the white columns looked fresh. She remembered how those same columns had gleamed in the sunshine earlier. Surely the furnishings inside had been replaced at some point during the last forty years. But there were no additions since Allison had worked at the bank except for a drive-through window and a polished brass drawer outside for night deposits. There were still only two tellers and one man, probably the grandson, sitting in a room that was all windows. The desk in the lobby looked as though someone sat and worked there. Although it was empty, a yellow sweater draped on the back of the chair confirmed that particular thought.

  Olivia brazenly walked into the bank and asked the teller to change a hundred-dollar bill. She stared at the teller, wishing she could ask her how long she’d worked at the bank. The teller smiled and asked if she was a visitor. Olivia nodded. “My sister goes to Ole Miss. I just popped down to see her. It’s her first year, and she still gets homesick.”

  The teller adjusted her glasses and smiled. “I see a lot of the students who go to Ole Miss. Quite a few of them bank their allowances here. We hire some of them in the summer.”

  It was the opening Olivia had hoped for. “A friend of my sister’s mother used to work here when she went to Ole Miss. Maybe you knew her. Allison Matthews.” Olivia made her voice as cheerful-sounding as she could. “Of course that was forty years ago.”

  “Well, that was before my time. We’re just a small bank. You’re probably talking about Margaret’s era. She had my position before she retired and I took over.”

  “I hope she’s enjoining her retirement.”

  The teller’s voice matched Olivia’s for cheerfulness. “Not really. She’s dead.”

  “Oh dear, I’m sorry to hear that. Have a nice day,” Olivia said, stuffing the bills into her pocket.

  And that had been the end of that.

  Olivia spent the remainder of the afternoon wandering around the Ole Miss campus, wondering if the places she was walking to and looking at were some of the same places Allison and her friends had traveled. Not that it was important in the scheme of things. She then whiled away another ninety minutes ordering a late lunch before she made the decision to head back to the airport.

  Even though it was close to midnight when Olivia made the seventy-six-mile drive to Winchester, she felt elated. She’d actually gotten a check from Jill Laramie that she would deposit first thing in the morning. She was so proud of that little fact, she gave herself a mental pat on the back. Now all she had to do was figure out a way to return the money to the bank anonymously. Once she accomplished that, she could get back to running her business and spend some serious time with Jeff. She would sit out the probate period of Allison Matthews’s will and deal with the fallout later on.

  Olivia sighed with satisfaction. Tonight she was going to sleep like a baby.

  Once again, she didn’t check her voice mail but tumbled into bed the moment she finished brushing her teeth. As her eyes started to close, she took a second to wonder where her destiny was and what he was doing.

  Jeff Bannerman shuffled the papers piled high on his desk. He looked around at the yellow plant standing in the corner. His mother would pitch a fit if she saw the way he’d neglected it. Who had the time to water plants? He reached for a manila folder and opened it. He really didn’t want to write a brief. He didn’t even want to be here in this cluttered office. He wanted to be in Winchester with Olivia and the dogs. Where the hell was she? She should have called him by now to report on her trip to Oxford. He reared back suddenly as a thought hit him. What right did he have to expect Olivia to report to him or call him the moment she had news. He was only part of her life because of Cecil. No, no, that wasn’t true. It was more than Cecil. They’d eaten together, played in the snow together, slept together. That definitely had to count. He didn’t sleep around, and he knew Olivia didn’t, either. They’d crossed the line in the sand that would lead them down a road to marriage. At least he thought it would lead to marriage. The big question was, did Olivia think the way he did? Maybe he should call her. He shook his head. He’d already left three voice mails and sent three e-mails with no response. In all his life he’d never chased after a girl or a young woman. They’d flocked to him for some reason, and not because he’d encouraged any of them.

  Olivia was different. So different, he wanted to take her home to meet his parents and brothers. But she wasn’t answering his phone calls or his e-mails. It was obvious he needed some expert advice. Who better to give him advice than his mother. Without stopping to think, he dialed the number and waited. He’d know his mother’s voice anywhere in the world—it was all warm, cozy, and welcoming. “Hi, Mom, it’s Jeff.” Like she didn’t know his voice, too.

  “Jeff, what’s wrong? Are you all right? You aren’t sick, are you? Tell me you didn’t have a car accident with all that bad weather we’re seeing on television. You never call during the day. Oh, God, Jeff, you didn’t lose that little dog, did you? Jeff, I’d really like it if you would say something.”

  “Mom, I’m fine. I didn’t want to interrupt you, and no, I did not lose Cecil. Really, everything is fine. How are you and Dad? What are you guys doing?”

  “Your dad is reading the paper, yesterday’s paper. He’s reading it all over again because we didn’t get one today. I’m making vegetable soup. You know how your dad likes vegetable soup. I swear that man could eat soup every day. What’s wrong, Jeff?”

&nb
sp; “Mom, I need some advice.”

  “Well, I need a break from all this vegetable chopping. Go ahead, tell me your problem.”

  The words tumbled out of Jeff’s mouth in a rush. He ended with “and the dog hates me. Well, maybe hate is too strong a word. He, whichever one he is, slept with me. He might be coming around. So, should I call or e-mail her again or wait it out? I don’t want to be pushy. She’s not like that, Mom.”

  “Do you really like this girl, Jeff?”

  “Mom, I wouldn’t be calling you if I didn’t like her more than a lot. I think she likes me, too. Is she in love with me? I don’t know, Mom. The question is, should I call her again or send her an e-mail? Do you think I should wait? I should just wait it out, right? Thanks, Mom. I knew you’d steer me straight. Tell Dad I said hello. I’ll call over the weekend. Enjoy the soup.”

  Jeff went back to the brief that was staring up at him. Olivia would call or e-mail him when she was ready. He was sure of it. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to send an e-mail to inquire about Cecil’s well-being. He fired off a one-liner inquiring about Cecil, signed his name, and went back to his brief, but his heart wasn’t in what he was doing. He knew he was falling in love with Olivia Lowell, and it was scaring the pants off him.

  Olivia woke, stretching luxuriously. She’d slept like the proverbial log. How warm and cozy it was under the covers with the dogs snoozing alongside her. She turned to look at the clock—3:30. In the afternoon. It had to be afternoon since it was light outside. She’d slept more than twelve hours. Damn, now she’d never sleep tonight.

  Suddenly the dogs were all over her, so she played with them until they yelped to go out. She got out of bed, walking with her eyes downcast for little puddles or surprises. She was relieved that there was nothing to clean up. How good they were. Twelve hours was a long time for a dog to hold it. She must be doing something right with their training.