Inheritance

by Judith Michael

He watched the captain open their wine while a waiter arranged two plates of p§t6, cheese, and crackers in front of them. He knew what he wanted.

  Judith Michael

  A piece of the Salinger empire.

  Because even though his early hunger for revenge had faded over the years, the craving to get something from the Salingers had not. But he knew now that what he had wanted when he was young had been childish and paltry.

  He remembered his first wild imaginings of what he would do to get the revenge Judd had talked about more and more feverishly in the months before he died: send rattlesnakes into the Salingers' bedrooms, dynamite them at the dinner table, toss black widow spiders into their limousines. But to a thirteen-year-old the family seemed huge, remote, untouchable— and he did nothing. Then his mother remarried and Laura and Clay were bom, and his anger and loneliness were eased by the adoration of those two babies who followed him around as they grew up, treating him like a kind of god. Eventually he stopped thinking about snakes and spiders and dynamite; they weren't practical. Neither was killing Felix or Leni or Owen. Because even though he had become a thief, like his father, he wasn't a murderer and never would be.

  The only thing he could think of was to rob them, to make them feel the loss of something they loved, as he had. It was really Felix he wanted to rob, but Felix loved nothing but the family hotels. That left Leni's jewels, which Ben had read about: they were valuable legacies from her great-grandparents in Austria and, even better, they were much treasured by Leni. And Leni was as close to Felix as Ben could get.

  But all that had been infantile, Ben thought as the waiter finished arranging their plates and pat6 knives and foiics. As childish as rattlesnakes and spiders. Because stealing treasures from a wealthy family was like pinching an elephant: it was only a momentary twinge that left everything exactly the same as before.

  The way to get revenge and make a lasting change in the Salingers' lives was to become part of their empire. The only thing Felix loved was his hotels. Therefore, Ben would take as much of the hotel empire away from him as he could.

  "You haven't told me what you want," Allison said as soon as the waiter and captain had left.

  "I will." He contemplated her striking good looks. She wore a pale blue dress Uiat left her shoulders bare; diamonds

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  were at her throat and ears, and her blond hair, held with a diamond band, cascaded down her back. "But not yet. I want to talk about you. You haven't told me anything about your family."

  Her eyes shadowed. "You want to know about the hotels.**

  He shook his head. "I want to know about the people who are important to you; the ones who make you happy. Or unhappy.'*

  Allison smiled. "You want me to tell you all that in one evening?"

  "As many as it takes. We're going to have a lot of evenings." He saw her quick flush. "But you can start. You had a grandfather and a husband. That's all I know. Except, of course, we all know about your father, since we work for hun."

  Allison sat back, taking small bites of the spicy duck pate and sipping her wine. "Owen and Iris started it all. My grandfather was bom in the last century, and he began the hotels and had two sons ..." She described her family, lingering on Iris, who had died almost twenty-five years before she was bom. "But it doesn*t matter so much that I never knew her. The way my grandfather talked about her and how much they loved each otiher, it*s as if she's part of my life, and I think about her when things go bad or I'm wondering what I should do and there's no one I can talk to.*'

  "Not even your mother?**

  "Mother is wonderful, but I can*t run to her with everything. Some sadnesses you have to woik out yourself, don*t you?**

  "Yes. What kind of sadnesses?'

  "My grandfather dying . . .**

  *That's one sadness."

  "And my divorce . . . One hates to fail, you know, and everybody had told me not to marry him—^Paul and Laura and Grandfather—and I did anyway.**

  "Laura?** The word sounded strangled and he cleared his throat.

  "Paul and Grandfather tried to talk me out of it. Paul Jans-sen, my cousin. And Mother wasn*t too happy either. But I igiiored everybody, I thought I knew exactly what I was doing, and I was wrong."

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  Ben cleared his throat again. "Is Laura a cousin, too?"

  "No. She's somebody I really don't want to talk about, Ben. I have lots of cousins if you really want to hear about them—you've already met Patricia—^"

  "I'm more interested in what makes you sad. Did Laura have something to do with it?"

  Allison bit her lip. Once again she gazed through the window, absently noting the families chatting together on the decks of the houseboats. Other boats passed; people were cruising through the canals in the last of the evening light, looking calm and content. None of them looked as if they had secrets or would be miserable whenever they thought about the past. "Laura was my friend," she said abruptly. "She lived with my family for years, since she was eighteen; she worked in the kitchen and helped my grandfather organize his library. Her brother was there, too, but Laura was the one I cared about; we spent a lot of time together. She didn't know anything and I taught her to play tennis and dance and buy clothes—my mother and Aunt Barbara helped her, too—she was very pretty and we helped her be beautiful—and Rosa taught her to cook and I took her to restaurants so she'd learn how to order things, and we'd practice staring down rude waiters and laughing. ..." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Sorry, I'm being silly, crying after all this time. But she was so much fun; she had a lovely laugh and she was wonderful at mimicking people, and she was loving and honest and smart . . . well, she wasn't honest, but for a long time we thought she was, and when I'd ask her advice on something she told me what she thought, and she was usually right. . . ."

  "She wasn't honest?" Ben asked when she stopped talking. He was holding himself in, trying to see it all as Allison saw it, and also as Laura must have seen it, and all the time he was remembering Laura's smile and the way she once had looked at him with love and trust. "What does that mean: 'She wasn't honest'?"

  "She was a thief," Allison said bluntly. "She'd been arrested in New York, and convicted—^I don't know the details —and my father thinks she and her brother came to our house at the Cape to rob us. Actually, he's sure they did rob us

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  because our house was broken into that summer and Mother's jewehy was taken, but he can't prove it and the police never arrested anybody for it."

  "Do you think she did it? Maybe her brother did."

  "I don't know. I don't care anymore. We loved her and trusted her, and she never told us the truth about herself and then, after my grandfather died—^" She stopped and shook her head fiercely. 'That's enough about her; let's talk about you again."

  **No!" At her startled look, Ben said quickly, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to yell at you. I got involved in your story and I wanted to hear the end of it."

  She studied him. "You really care about it."

  "I care about the things you care about."

  Her quick flush came again. "My grandfather had a stroke and was very sick for about a month, and then he died. Laura was with him that whole month—most of the time, anyway —and just before he died he got his lawyer to change his will, leaving her his house and some stock in the Salinger corporation and four of his hotels."

  "My God," Ben breathed.

  "What?"

  "It sounds like a fortune."

  "My father said it was. He called her a fortune hunter. But I didn't think she was. I thought it was wonderful that she inherited the hotels and the rest of it, because she and Grandfather loved each other, and if he wanted her to have something after he was dead, that was his business." Once again she fell silent, her eyes staring unseeingly across the room.

  "So she's a wealthy woman," Ben said. "But why does that make you sad?"

  "Because she's not my friend anymore. She's no
t wealthy, either. I told you, she lied to us. Fot four years she told lies and kept secrets from us, while we were as open with her as we could be. And then, when Grandfather was ill, she did something—I have no idea what, but something that made him afraid or upset . . . something. His behavior was very odd after his stroke; he was restless, and he seemed angry or excited or unhappy—we couldn't tell which—and none of us could understand him when he tried to talk. Laura said she

  Judith Michael

  could, so we let her translate for us. It was awfiil to go into his room; I didn't know what to say to him. I thought Laura was magnificent because she'd be sitting there talking to him and listening when he made those garbled noises as if they were having an ordinary afternoon tea. ..."

  "She sounds magnificent," Ben said.

  "I don't know. Somehow, when she was alone with him she got him to add a codicil to his will, leaving her the house and stocks and the hotels. He hadn't done it when he was well; he hadn't even told anybody he was thinking about it; but somehow Laura convinced him to do it, even though he couldn't talk or think straight—^"

  Ben's eyes were narrowed. "How do you know she convinced him?"

  "I don't, not for sure; I wasn't in his room as much as I should have been—none of us was, we let Laura do it, and I don't admire us for that. But the lawyer who drew up the codicil testified that—^"

  "Testified? In court?" There had been vague talk, he remembered, about a contest over Owen Salinger's will, but it hadn't affected the Amsterdam Salinger so no one paid much attention.

  "My father sued to get the codicil thrown out; in the original will, he and my uncle got everything."

  "And what happened?" Ben asked; he was trying to mask his impatience.

  "My father won. We did, if you want to look at it that way. The jury decided that Grandfather wasn't in his right—wasn't able to think clearly when he dictated the codicil."

  "So she doesn't have anything."

  "Not from Grandfather. I don't know what else she has. My father forced her to leave after Grandfather died, and I didn't see her again until the trial last July, and I didn't talk to her then. I wanted to, but she was so cold and distant, and I guess I was still so angry I didn't make the effort. I don't know where she is now or what she's doing. All I know is that we gave her everything and she threw it in our face, lied to us, took advantage of my grandfather. . . . And danm it to hell I still think about her all the time and miss her and I wish we

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  could undo everything and go back where we were, being friends, almost sisters ..."

  Her voice trailed away. The sounds of the restaurant drifted between them.

  Ben was leaning back in his chair but, hidden by the tablecloth, his hands were gripped together in his lap. My father forced her to leave after Grandfather died. Triumph had surged through him as Allison said those words. Well? he demanded silently of Laura. Not such a perfect family after all, are they? I warned you, but you wouldn't listen. You wanted them, and you turned your back on me to get them. And they kicked you out. It serves you right.

  He was angry at her, too. She could have told him; she could have asked for his help. She must really hate him, not to turn to him at such a rotten time in her life.

  But then he felt a rush of pity. He still remembered the feel of her delicate shoulder bones the last time he hugged her good-bye. Damn it to hell, she was a little girl who'd never harmed anyone, and that fucking Felix Salinger had thrown the whole legal system at her.

  With grim amusement, Ben reflected that now he had two scores to settle with Felix. "What?" he asked Allison as she looked at him, her head tilted. He sat straight and drank off the wine in his glass. "Fm sorry; I was thinking. About your story.'*

  *T said I don't want to talk about it anymore." Briefly, she put her hand on his. "You're a wonderful listener and I appreciate your being so interested, but it's so hard for me. . . ." She gave a small laugh. "It was easier getting over my marriage than getting over Laura. Let's talk about you again. You still haven't told me what you want."

  Her eyes were direct and curious. She was fascinated by him, and almost as trusting as Laura. Ben caught the tantalizing scent of her perfume; the touch of her fingers lingered on his hand. Felix's daughter. She had style, she was strikingly good-looking, she wanted to prove she wasn't a failure at marriage, and she was still young enough to be malleable. She was everything a man could want.

  *Tell me what you want," Allison said again, sofdy.

  Judith Michael

  "Love," he said. "And work. I'm not much different from other men: I want a woman to beheve in; an empire, or a piece of one, for myself; and a family to fulfill the dream of the one I never had."

  His words settled around her like a familiar cloak, warm and fitting her as if made for her. And once again, as so many times before, Allison Salinger thought to herself, I could be that woman; I could make his life what he wants it to be. I could make him happy.

  Chapter 15

  WES Currier was a financier who had moved beyond the skyscrapers of New Yoric and Chicago to roam the world as consultant to international corporations that straddled geographical, political, and religious boundaries, and even raging wars. He had been on the move through three marriages, and now, at fifty-five, with half a dozen homes in Europe and America and memberships in as many exclusive clubs, he was known as a master of mergers and acquisitions, a generous supporter of the arts and of young people starting their own companies, and one of the most eligible bachelors on two continents.

  No one really knew him. After his second divorce, a reporter had written a breathless book about him archly titled Currier's Lives, but it had been nothing more than a pastiche of newspaper articles and secondhand gossip that disappeared almost as soon as it was published. Even a good reporter would have had a hard time with Wes Currier, who had made his fortune by following his hunches and never showing his hand; who nurtured his reputation for unpredictability; and who had no intimate friends. And while everyone in the financial world tried to keep one step ahead of him, no one would lay odds on being able to do it, and no one else had begun another book about him.

  *Though Fm told a couple of journalists are collecting information for one," he told Laura carelessly as they sat in the

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  dining room of Damton's on a hazy morning in September. It was the Labor Day weekend, the lodge was full, and they were having breakfast together before he gave the opening talk at a conference on international trade. It was his second talk at Damton's, following the one he had given three weeks earlier. "I can't believe they don't have more important things to do with their time."

  Laura looked at him quizzically. "You don't mean that. People want to know how you shape their lives."

  "I don't shape; I influence."

  She shook her head. "You know how powerful you are. You help determine the future of the companies people work for, the products they buy, the stock they own—^"

  "I influence external forces. But as for shaping—we shape our own lives; no one does it for us."

  Impatiently she looked away, disliking his arrogance. Automatically, as soon as her attention changed, she found herself making a quick survey of the dining room. All the tables were occupied, and guests were waiting in the lounge; coffee cups were being refilled promptly; tables that were vacated were cleared without delay and as quickly reset with the dusty rose cloths and stoneware dishes that were used for breakfast and lunch, and would be replaced, for dinner, with white linen, crystal, and china. Bending down, she reached out to pick up a napkin a departing guest had dropped from his ample lap, and laid it on the table for the busboy.

  And then, knowing everything was in order, she turned back to Currier. She had had dinner with him in August and again on Ms trip, and she found him attractive and intriguing, but in his very success he was also exasperating. "You assume everyone has the same luck or skill you have. Most of us don't control fate the way
you do."

  "I make it, my dear, that's far better than controlling it." He drank coffee and gazed at her. "I'm curious to know why you think you haven't been in control of yours."

  "I'm in control as long as all our guests get breakfast on time," she said lightly, ignoring the flash of irritation in his eyes: he was a man who didn't like being put off. "And if I can get away this morning to listen to your talk. I hope I can."

  "You heard most of it last month."

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  "I like to watch you; you*re very good with an audience."

  "Thank you. You're very good at changing the direction of a conversation.'*

  ^Thank you." They smiled and Currier acknowledged to himself that her reserve was going to be harder to breach than he had expected.

  "You'll have dinner with me tonight?" he asked. "We can eat on the mainland if you can recommend a good place."

  *The Post House is good; almost as good as here. I'd like to have dinner with you if I'm able to get away."

  "You can always get away. The sign of a good executive is a good staff."

  "I'll remember that," she said evenly.

  "I'm sorry," he responded quickly. "I have no right to tell you how to do your job. It was a poor attempt to make sure of you for dinner."

  "I'll do my best." They stood, and as they walked through the room, Laura nodded to the guests and noted the trays the waiters were carrying: smoked trout and scrambled eggs seemed to be heavy favorites this morning. "And I will try to get to your talk."

  They parted in the Great Hall as Currier left for the conference room and Laura went to her small office adjacent to Kelly's. Her desk was covered with stacks of bills to be verified, samples of drapery fabric from which she and Kelly would make final choices for redecorating some of the rooms, and letters of confirmation to write to designers showing in a fashion show to be held at the end of the month. But she was having trouble concentrating, and shortly before nine-thirty, she pushed back her chair and walked down the corridor to the stairs that led to the lower-level conference room, greeting guests by name as she passed them, and feeUng pleased at Sieir delight in being recognized.