Echoes of Titanic

by Mindy Starns Clark

  The call ended with the caller leaving her cell phone number, but Kelsey already knew the number the voice was going to say before she said it.

  Overcome with a wave of nausea, she handed Rhonda back her phone.

  Gloria.

  The message had come from Gloria.

  Kelsey looked at Rhonda. Her mouth was moving and she was saying something, but Gloria’s words were the ones pounding in Kelsey’s brain:

  “You don’t have to go down there, you know. You don’t have to do this at all. You could walk right out the back door and go home, and I could tell Walter you weren’t feeling well and had to leave.”

  Kelsey sucked in a deep breath, a chill going through her. Gloria had known that Rupert and Rhonda were planning to come to the ceremony yesterday. She’d known but she hadn’t stopped them—and she’d never said a word about it to Kelsey at all.

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  When the cab crossed 40th Street, Kelsey knew they were getting close to Rhonda’s hotel. And though she would rather have avoided the encounter altogether, she had to admit that it had given her some good information. It had also raised a number of new questions as well.

  “Listen, can we back up a little bit?” Kelsey asked with some urgency as they rumbled across 41st. “Just a little while ago, you were talking about the message on your phone and you said it sounded like the woman from the last time. What last time? What are you talking about? I hate to sound stupid, but as you can see, I’ve never heard about any of this stuff before.”

  Rhonda nodded. “Well, Rupert’s a lot more familiar with all that than I am, but I’ll tell you what I can. Our side of the family has tried to straighten this whole thing out a couple of times before.”

  “Straighten out in what sense?”

  “My daddy came and talked to your daddy and tried to make him understand that we had some money coming to us. Your daddy didn’t think so, and in the end they had to bring in some lawyers and work it all out that way.”

  Kelsey stared at Rhonda in disbelief. Her father had dealt with these accusations in the past? Why had he never told her anything about it?

  “When was this?” she asked, wondering if maybe it had happened when she was away at college.

  “The first time I was in my early thirties and busy with two little babies at home. Guess you could say I was kinda preoccupied with taking care of them, but I do remember hearing my father ranting and raving about it. Adele Tate had just died a couple of months before, and he couldn’t stand knowing that all her money was getting passed down the other side of the family. It wasn’t fair, not when he knew for a fact that half of it should have been coming to us.”

  Keeping her expression blank, Kelsey did the math. Adele had died when Kelsey was just nine years old, so if the first time this has come up was pretty soon after that, it made sense why she’d never heard about it. She’d been a child at the time. There would have been no reason to involve her in matters of money and wills and ancestry disputes.

  The cab lurched as the driver turned right onto 44th Street. Just a few blocks to go.

  “So after they brought in the lawyers, the matter was settled?”

  “For the time being, anyway. Again, I don’t know all the details, but in the end I know our daddies came to some sort of settlement over the whole matter. Your daddy paid out a bunch of money, and my daddy signed a paper that said he promised to keep quiet about everything and never bring it up again.”

  “And did your father honor that agreement?” Kelsey asked, still trying to wrap her mind around what Rhonda was telling her.

  “He sure did. I know he wasn’t completely happy about it, but I guess he figured a little money was better than none at all, and at least it was a lot easier than having to go to court and prove our case and all of that.”

  “So where does Rupert fit in with this?”

  “Well, that first time around, he was younger than he is now and more hotheaded too. He was furious at our daddy for taking that deal. I don’t even think for him it was about the money. It was more important to him that the world know the truth, that this woman who called herself Adele was not who she said she was.”

  Kelsey was actually glad when they hit heavy traffic on the other side of 9th Avenue and came to a dead stop. Though this conversation had turned out to be more fruitful than she’d expected, there was still more that she wanted to know before they parted ways.

  “Anyhoo,” Rhonda continued, gazing with excitement at the billboards and posters lining the front of one Broadway theater after another, “Rupert kind of stewed in silence for a number of years, but when our father passed away, he refused to keep quiet anymore.”

  “And when was that?”

  “Oh, ’bout 10 years ago now. Rupert figured that once daddy was dead, that agreement to keep quiet died with him. The internet was catching on then, you know, so Rupert used it to do some poking around and tried to dig up even more proof than our daddy had. He finally found something, and so back in ’02 or thereabouts, he came up here to confront your daddy and convince him that our side of the family was still owed a bunch of money.”

  Kelsey sat up straight, listening intently. In 2002 she was graduating from college and going on to graduate school. Once again, there would have been no reason for her father to tell her about any of this. It had probably never crossed his mind to do so, and she hadn’t been around to hear anything about it.

  “So what happened that time?” Kelsey asked, frustrated when the traffic cleared up ahead and they quickly made the next block.

  “That time your daddy didn’t deal with it much at all. Instead, it was a woman…I can’t quite remember her name. Lake? Pool? Pond? Some kind of water.”

  “Poole? Gloria Poole?”

  “That’s her. Anyway, she handled things that time around. At first she was nice about it and all. She even offered us a whole new settlement with more money, but a part of that settlement was just the same as before: If Rupert took the money, he had to promise he would never say anything about any of this ever again. No way was he going to agree to that. Like I said, for him it was more about the principle of the thing. He wanted the world to know what really happened back then, but the people at your company were ready to do anything they could to stop that from happening.”

  “So were they finally able to come to some sort of agreement?” Kelsey asked.

  “No. In the end it all got kind of nasty. Once Rupert turned down the new settlement, that Gloria lady got pretty tough. She brought in a whole team of lawyers, and they went through the original agreement our father had signed. Seemed like they proved it was still enforceable even after all these years and even though the man who signed it was no longer living. It was something about how our father had signed on behalf of the entire family, present and future. Rupert talked with a couple of lawyers of his own, and in the end he finally had to give up. He hasn’t been happy about it, but there wasn’t much he could do.”

  Kelsey thought about that. It wasn’t hard to picture Gloria taking matters into her own hands and wrapping up the matter of the delusional cousin swiftly and legally.

  “And has anything happened with all of this since then?”

  Rhonda shook her head. “No, Rupert just kind of put it out of his mind, but then when that letter showed up a few weeks ago, well, that was like pouring gasoline on a campfire. Especially that part about if the company got sold we’d lose any chance of ever getting the money we were owed. Rupert didn’t know how that could be true, so he did some research and sure enough found something called an ‘innocent buyer law.’ What the letter said was right. Because of that law, if the company got sold our chance at any sort of settlement would be gone.”

  “Maybe so,” Kelsey replied, “but isn’t that kind of beside the point? Brennan & Tate isn’t for sale. It never has been and never will be. It’s our family’s firm. It’ll be owned by Tates for generations to come.”

  Rhonda shrugged.
Looking out the window, she seemed to be growing antsy. Soon, the Wilton Plaza was in sight up ahead, and as they drew nearer, Kelsey tried to think of what other questions she wanted to ask.

  “What can you tell me about this proof Rupert has? I know he said he was saving it for the courts, but if he ends up suing us, he’ll have to hand it over during discovery anyway.”

  “I’ve never seen it myself, so I’m not exactly sure what it is, but I do know it’s some sort of document that’s been passed down through our side of the family. Our father seemed to think it was significant. Rupert does too.”

  Kelsey couldn’t imagine what that document might be, but she felt certain it wasn’t all that rock solid. Otherwise, Rupert or his father would have won this battle years ago.

  “Anyway, I’m glad we’ve had this time to talk,” Rhonda said, “and I really appreciate this ride back to my hotel. Mostly I just wanted to apologize for my brother. He’s actually a nice guy once you get to know him, but he’s just so obsessed with Titanic—and with what happened to Jocelyn and Adele—that he tends to go a little crazy. He’s been consumed by this issue for years.”

  Kelsey, too, was glad they had had this opportunity to talk, though as they came to a stop in the front of Rhonda’s hotel in the heart of the theater district, she couldn’t help but feel a bit cynical. What had been this woman’s intention exactly in coming here to New York? Watch her brother impugn someone who wasn’t alive to defend herself, destroy that woman’s legacy and the value of the company she’d left behind, and then take in the sights and catch a couple of Broadway shows? Unbelievable.

  “Look, while I appreciate your apology, Rhonda, I have to ask what you thought was going to happen once you came up here. Didn’t you realize what your brother was going to do at the ceremony?”

  Reaching for the door handle, Rhonda paused and turned back to look at Kelsey.

  “Not really, no. I had a feeling this was a bad idea—the whole trip up here, I mean—and I tried to talk him out of coming, but he wouldn’t listen to me. He never does. So I knew I had to come along too. I figured if anything happened, at least I’d be here to help smooth things over afterward.”

  Kelsey wasn’t convinced. “But you had to know he was going to pull something.”

  “Well, yeah, but I never expected him to go off like that in public. I thought he’d get through the ceremony and then try and talk with you in private. I’m really sorry. You gotta believe me.”

  With a final goodbye, Rhonda stepped out of the cab, closed the car door, and headed on into her hotel. The cab quickly pulled back out into traffic to bring Kelsey to the destination she’d first given him, her parents’ house. Settling into her seat, Kelsey reviewed the surprising things she had just learned. Out of all the new information she’d gleaned from Rhonda, the fact most prevalent in her mind at the moment was that Gloria had known Rupert would be coming to that ceremony and hadn’t done anything about it.

  Why not? Why hadn’t she stopped it? At the very least, why hadn’t she warned anyone? She had known, but she’d never said a word! The thought made Kelsey feel so hurt and so angry that she didn’t even know what to do with those emotions.

  She took in a deep breath and blew it out between pursed lips, telling herself to calm down. She needed to strip the emotion from all of this and look at things objectively. Closing her eyes, she tried to picture that last encounter with Gloria, up in her office just before the ceremony. The woman had been acting incredibly odd, at turns sad and happy and anxious and weepy and evasive…and most of all stressed.

  Of course she’d been stressed, because she had known what was about to happen. She had known but she hadn’t said anything even to her protégé, the young woman she’d mentored all these years and who was now about to go out on that stage and get publicly humiliated.

  Opening her eyes, Kelsey realized something else. This had to be the reason, the real reason, why Gloria hadn’t been willing to participate in the event herself. She’d said her absence was all about helping Kelsey to give an impression of independence. But the truth was, she’d bowed out of that ceremony because she knew exactly what was going to happen there and she didn’t want to be around to see it.

  If so, could that really have had something to do with this Adele-as-imposter situation? Gloria had tried numerous times last night to reach Kelsey before she died. In her messages and texts she had apologized, but without saying what she was apologizing for.

  “Have you ever done something bad out of good intentions?”

  Maybe that’s what had happened with Gloria. She had done something bad, something that had to do with Rupert and Rhonda and what took place at that ceremony. Afterward she’d been so wracked with guilt about whatever it was she had done that she couldn’t bear to live any longer. Gloria did something bad out of good intentions and lived to regret it.

  Correction, Kelsey thought as they finally turned onto the street where her parents lived. Gloria may have regretted it, but she hadn’t lived. She died—and she took her secrets with her to the grave.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  Doreen Tate opened the door of the three-story brownstone and welcomed her daughter inside. As she did, just the sight of her mom’s sweet, nurturing face brought tears to Kelsey’s eyes. She may have been thirty-two years old with a prestigious job and a riverfront apartment and a whole world separate from that of her parents, but once in a while it felt good to be somebody’s little girl.

  Kelsey’s mother hugged her fiercely, stroking her hair and cooing soft words and promising it was all going to be okay. Of course, such kindness only served to make Kelsey cry. Somehow, it had been easier to face the day in full-on business mode, ready to ask questions and gather facts and get to the bottom of things. But now that she was being shown compassion, she feared she might lose it completely.

  Her mother was full of questions about all that had been going on, so after Kelsey fixed her face in the bathroom, she went back up the hallway to the bright, sunny kitchen and sat at the table, answering as best she could. Kelsey had plenty of questions for her mother in return, as she was hoping to confirm the things she’d just learned from Rhonda in the cab. Unfortunately, her mother didn’t remember a whole lot about the whole Adele-false-identity thing and couldn’t confirm or deny much of what had happened back then.

  As they talked, Doreen brewed a pot of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, Kelsey’s favorite. Soon she was serving it to her daughter at the table along with a delicate plate of the most heavenly smelling banana bread Kelsey had ever encountered.

  The presentation was lovely, and the sight of such artfully served food made Kelsey smile. She’d always been closer to her father than to her mother, not necessarily because she liked him any better but simply because they had more in common—including interests and talents and even personalities. She and her father were so much alike, both of them focused and business minded and visionary, with a tendency to work too much and a brain that jumped to conclusions that could sometimes make them seem callous. Her mother, on the other hand, had always been a far more nurturing and creative soul. The poor woman had had so little interest in stocks and bonds and investments and money that she’d spent much of their family time with her eyes glazed over, enduring the shoptalk while she tried to pretend she cared.

  Still, Doreen Tate had always made the perfect corporate wife for her husband, Nolan. After a lifetime of devoting herself to his needs and his dreams, facilitating his career and providing him with a near-idyllic home life, it just didn’t seem fair that once he’d retired and had the time to shine some of that attention back on her, he’d ended up having the stroke. A server by nature, Doreen had never complained. But Kelsey knew it had to break her mother’s heart sometimes to realize that her handsome, vibrant, brilliant husband had been reduced to a weakened, trembling man in a wheelchair who could barely string more than a few words together at a time.

  “How’s Dad today?”

&n
bsp; “Do you mean in relation to all that’s going on or just in general?” Doreen carried a second plate of banana bread to the table for herself and took a seat across from Kelsey.

  “Both.” She slid a bite of the warm concoction into her mouth and had to close her eyes as she chewed, it was that good.

  “Well, generally speaking, he seems pretty much on the ball this morning,” she said, neatly placing a cloth napkin on her lap. “But I can tell this whole thing has affected him deeply. He even cried himself to sleep last night.”

  “Poor Dad,” Kelsey said, trying not to picture it. “Which do you think bothers him more? The attack-on-Adele thing or the death of Gloria?”

  Doreen put down her fork and gaped at Kelsey in surprise.

  “Oh, honey, Gloria, of course. He knew the woman her entire professional life. He respected her and depended on her and considered her a dear friend for many years. You know that.”

  Kelsey nodded, chagrined. “Has he given an opinion on the cause of her death? I mean, whether he thinks it was suicide or…uh…something else?”

  “Yes. He feels that the Gloria he knew would never have killed herself. He’s sure it has to have been a murder. I didn’t know her nearly as well as the two of you did, of course, but I agree. Gloria Poole was a born problem-solver, the kind of person who never accepted defeat and rarely took no for an answer. She wasn’t the type to give up and commit suicide. Don’t you agree?”

  Kelsey did agree, and she had said pretty much the same thing herself to the detective last night. But the more she’d been thinking about it, the more she wasn’t so sure. “Up until yesterday, Mom, I would have agreed with you completely. But if you’d seen the way she was acting before the ceremony, if you’d heard the things she was saying…” Her voice trailed off. “I don’t know. She was acting so strange yesterday that I’m at least willing to consider the possibility.”