All That Lies Broken (Ashmore's Folly Book 2) (7 page)

Laura took a deep breath and swallowed. “I want my piano.”

“You want the piano,” said Emma, “come get it. One way or the other, it’s out of here by Friday.”

And she slammed the phone down.

~•~

No matter how hard Laura breathed, her lungs didn’t seem to draw any air. She felt sick to her stomach. Emma’s words sliced through her like a rapier.
Cam died because of you.
She sat in the car and covered her face with her hands, the tower falling again and again, an autumnal apocalypse in her mind.

Emma had to hate her to say something that vicious, that brutal. She must, as Meg would say, hate her
bad
.

But her words were insane, the raving of a desperately angry woman. Mark’s call had kept Cam off that elevator, and no one had ever blamed him. How could he have known that those few minutes meant death? How could he have known of the silver dagger thrusting through the morning sky, aimed at the heart of the tower? He hadn’t known. No one had known.

And it had been Cam’s choice to stay over that extra day, attempting – she felt sick – to talk her out of her decision.
I’m going home.

And Emma knew about Meg. Somehow – how? Had Mark told her, or Cam? –
Emma knew
.

What would she do with that knowledge? Tell Meg?

How could everything that she and Cam had so carefully constructed be falling apart? They’d agreed, from the very first, that the circumstances of Meg’s birth and near abandonment would remain known only to them. Cam had endured his father’s lecture on responsibility; she’d endured the glossing over of their wedding date and the finger-counting by the St. Brides’ friends. But for some reason, at some point, Cam had broken their covenant – more important to her than even their marriage vows. Infidelity she could forgive, but not his blabbing this precious secret to all and sundry. Why,
why
had he done it? Why had he told Mark? Why had he told anyone?

She had to talk to Mark. She had to know right now what he had said to Emma.

She lifted her cell phone, but the battery was low. The charger in her car was iffy at best, and she had groceries steadily defrosting in the trunk. Best to get back to Edwards Lake, calm down, think rationally, come up with some sort of plan.

Put that dreadful accusation out of her mind.

Twenty minutes later, Laura sat down at her computer and logged onto the St. Bride servers. Cam had equipped the corporate jet with satellite service so that he could spend his travel time connected to the home servers, using instant messaging so that everyone could virtually chat with him as if he were sitting in his office. Mark probably did the same thing. She tried all the messaging services on her account, and Mark didn’t show up on any of them.

Well, she certainly had plenty to say in an email, but that could wait. Laura picked up the satellite phone, the battery under recharge, and tried to remember what Cam had shown her about texting. He’d been a past master at it – she still had the brief text message from the north tower in her saved messages – but she had never bothered to learn. She finally found the right key combination and typed out:
U there need 2 talk
, then sent it to Mark’s satellite number.

It took a few minutes before Mark sent back:
OK can it wait? Over Pacific.

No. U alone?

No.

Just as she’d thought. He probably had the corporate counsel with him, off to master the universe. Too bad he couldn’t master his own sister.
E know about M?

?

Laura gritted her teeth. He couldn’t be that dense.
E know M adopted?

NO.

Sure? U tell her?

NO. E say sumthng?

YES.

?

This was going to be difficult to condense into a few characters. Laura typed out:
Argued E said infertile where she get that?

No one reading these inanities would ever know that she’d written poetry since she was a child, that critics had praised her lyrics as intelligent and educated, graceful and lovely. They’d never know that she had won the spelling bee in sixth grade. Cavemen had hammered out more literate messages on rocks.

E guess know nothing.
She was trying to think of an answer when he added,
E in dark re Cam’s prob.
Then,
lips sealed
.

Poss saw adopt papers in safe?

NO. E not know comb.

Laura relaxed. Maybe Emma had taken a shot in the dark. She’d struggled with infertility herself during her marriages, and she’d certainly known and sympathized about the miscarriages. Maybe she’d thought, as everyone else had, that Laura suffered from secondary infertility.

Or maybe she had wanted to tear Laura down for having the temerity to be Cam’s wife.

OK thnx.

No prob. Busy conf call. Call U later Tokyo.

OK bye.

One problem down. Mark’s announcement about their putative engagement and the checks he’d issued to Dominic could wait.

Meg was safe, at least for the time being. But Emma had taken the decision to bring Meg to Virginia right out of her hands. She couldn’t leave Meg down there any longer than necessary, not beyond the end of summer school. Another two weeks.

She’d deal with that later.

Right now, she had to deal with Cam’s gift to her. Ironic that she had to turn so quickly to the same group of people she’d spent the morning trying to escape, but only the SBFA employees knew how to access the files where Cam had kept every single receipt and check he had ever written. She didn’t know how he’d paid for the piano, but it was a sure bet that someone at SBFA would know.

Indeed, Cam’s admin knew exactly where to find the check and receipt and emailed digital copies within a few minutes. The check had a bonus; he had written
Laura – grad gift
in the memo section. Laura wrote the woman a quick thank-you and picked up her phone once more.

“Lucy,” she said when her sister greeted her, “I need a lawyer. Can you help me?”

~•~

“All right,” said Lucy. “This is fairly straightforward. It’s called conversion – that’s where one party takes another’s property and converts it for personal use. Emma is trying to convert your piano to her own use.”

“But she says it isn’t my property,” Laura said, and passed Tom the brownie from her deli box. “She says it’s a piece of household furniture and it belongs to the house.”

“Uh-uh.” Tom took a bite from the brownie. “Gift.”

“I think that’s right,” Lucy said. “This check – and you said there’s a presentation plaque actually attached to the piano, right? – clearly indicates it was a gift. I’m thinking this doesn’t even fall under the will. Texas law governs, so we’ll have to look that up, but usually gifts between spouses are separate property. This might not even fall into the community to go into the estate.”

For the first time since Meg had called, Laura felt herself relaxing. Lucy had greeted her with a hug and Tom had given her a friendly hello; maybe the disagreement over her crush on Richard – an eon ago – had blown over. She felt more secure, sitting here in the Maitlands’ conference room, trading sandwiches and desserts with her sister and brother-in-law. They were family. They were on her side.

They weren’t going to accuse her of killing her husband.

“What can I do?” Laura said. “Mark is the executor of the estate, and he is on a plane right now to Tokyo, and he’s the only one who can tell her no. Apparently he wants to buy me a piano himself, so I don’t think it’s enough just to tell him to make Emma stop this.”

Lucy paused with her sandwich halfway to her mouth. “Why does he want to buy you a piano? Your husband got you a
fabulous
piano. I wish I had a piano like this.”

“What a price tag,” said Tom, looking at the receipt again in some awe. “Do concert grands really cost that much? What’s it made out of? Gold?”

“East African rosewood,” Laura told him. “I think Mark wants to get rid of it and buy me a new one because he wants to replace anything Cam gave me.” She hesitated. “Mark wants to marry me. That’s what provoked this whole thing. He told Emma he and I were getting engaged on my birthday and she was going to have to move out of the house.”

Silence. Two pairs of fascinated eyes stared at her. Lucy finally said, “You didn’t tell me he wants to marry you.”

“Yes, well, I didn’t tell you because it isn’t happening.”

Tom was paging through Cam’s will. “He’s your trustee, isn’t he?” He must have sped-read through the fifty-page will to see such fine detail in the few minutes he’d been looking at it. “That have anything to do with your impending nuptials?”

“They’re not impending,” said Laura flatly. “This is all in Mark’s head. And yes, it’s the trust. Meg and I inherited most of the estate. He and Emma each got one-ninth. That’s definitely a factor in his sudden devotion to me.”

“This will is not out of the ordinary. Actually, it’s generous for siblings.” Tom was still looking through it. “Most men leave their entire estates to their wives and children. I have sisters and brothers too, but I’m sure not leaving them anything. It all goes to Lucy.”

Lucy beamed at him. “And I will bask in the sun and drink piña coladas in your memory. So Mark wants your trust?”

“If I marry him, my trust breaks, plus he’ll still control Meg’s trust. Oh, yes, if we got married, he’d also control all of Cat Courtney, not just half. That’s valuable just by itself. I think Mark may be fond of me, but – he’s fonder of the dollar signs.”

They were both looking at her as if she had blossomed into some wild, exotic flower. Maybe, for the first time, the difference in their economic circumstances was becoming real to them. Up to now, they hadn’t had to confront the money behind Cat Courtney and the heiress to Cameron St. Bride’s fortune; they’d seen plain Laura Abbott, Lucy’s little sister, who did not dress like a multimillionaire and who bought her own groceries and did her own cooking. Even the Jaguar hadn’t really impinged on their consciousness; other people drove luxury cars without bank accounts beyond their wildest dreams. But now they heard words like
trust
and
estate
and saw Cam’s
War and Peace
of a will, and they saw a receipt for a $100,000 graduation gift, and they were beginning to understand.

You did quite well out of that marriage, didn’t you?

She wondered sickly if Richard had grasped the economic reality yet.
Since you’re as rich as Croesus, I’ll raise my fee accordingly
. Might this, like Diana, be an obstacle so great that conquering it would seem unimaginable?

Lucy looked across the table at Tom. “Ask.”

“No,” he returned. “She’s your sister.
You
ask.”

Oh, no, she knew what they were thinking. Lucy looked at her expectantly. “Oh, Lucy, you don’t really want to know, do you?”

“You bet,” said Tom, and winked at her. “We’ll ask you to adopt us. Or a yacht for Christmas would be a nice token of your affection.”

Laura couldn’t help but smile. “I don’t have a yacht. I’ve never even been on a yacht.”

“We’ll let you sail on ours.”

“And you don’t get the family discount like Richard does,” added Lucy. “Well, I’m not going to pretend that I am not wildly, vulgarly curious, so if you feel the need to unburden yourself—”

She was reluctant to say the words. She didn’t want to lose this warmth and camaraderie or want them to think, as they paid bills every month, of the difference between them. They might find it too easy, if things ever got tough, to resent her. Even knowing that she was there as a safety net might throw barriers up between them. She’d spent too much time resenting the need to be grateful to Cam to want it between her and her sister.

Tom rescued her. “Don’t mind our nonsense, Laura. I’ve a pretty good idea from the
Journal
article a few months ago. Just tell me this. Is the operative number a one or a two?”

She held up three fingers.

Tom whistled, and then she felt Lucy rubbing her shoulder. Tom said briskly, “You can throw in an island with that yacht. Don’t worry about it, Laura. We’re not going to hit you up for money, and we still expect you to help with the dishes. Now I’m going to ask you bluntly, given all that, is it worth it to you to go after this piano? Not that I’m advising you to turn tail on this, but you can walk into any music store and buy another one and save yourself your sister-in-law’s nastiness.”

“Not just any music store,” said Lucy. “You don’t pick up a piano like this at the mall. But that’s not it, is it? You want it because Cam gave it to you.”