by MJ Rodgers
“If you are not committed elsewhere for the next hour, Ms. West, I would appreciate your accompanying me to that safe-deposit box.”
Whitney rose to her feet, pushing her vague disquiet aside. “My calendar’s free.”
“Finding parking in the financial district at this time of day will be difficult,” Adam said. “Ride with me, and I’ll bring you back to your car after our business is concluded.”
“That’s very thoughtful, Mr. Justice.”
“It is for my convenience, Ms. West. Were you to be unable to find a parking space, we would be unable to complete this matter expeditiously. My car is over there.”
As she walked beside Adam, Whitney wondered whether he really suggested she ride with him only for his convenience. It was hardly convenient for him to drive another fifteen miles back to the cemetery when their business was concluded.
Adam Justice was not an easy man to understand. She wondered how long it might take to find out who he was behind that impassive, polished exterior.
They approached his car, an immaculate black Jaguar XJR sedan with no personal license plate. Whitney decided it fit him perfectly. It was as highly respectable, formal and impersonal a label as his dress and everything else about him.
He opened the passenger door and held it for her in a very proper kind of courtesy. That fit him, too. She sunk onto the cool leather seat.
As he circled around to the driver’s side, she noticed he had a phone, a computer and even a fax machine installed on the front console.
The air-conditioning roared to life along with the engine, and then both obediently retreated into a pleasant purr. Cool air bathed her face as a soft instrumental piece seemed to compose itself all around her. She could hear the drums rolling up behind her, different strings in both ears, the piano notes as clear as if she sat at the keyboard.
What a far cry this was from her thrifty beige Saturn, with the stiff vinyl seats and the nicks in the door. She nestled farther into the butter-soft leather, concentrating fully on the sensuous feast this ride had to offer.
Still, as good as this was, she didn’t envy Adam Justice the luxury, convenience or sleek sophistication of his unblemished vehicle. She liked her little Saturn with its vinyl seats and door nicks. Just like people, a car needed a blemish or two to give it heart and make it lovable.
When they pulled into the parking lot adjacent to Washington Federal Savings Bank on Fifth, the attendant handed Adam a ticket and pointed to the first space. Whitney watched the attendant put up a Full sign on the driveway to block any more cars from coming through.
“I don’t believe it,” she said.
“Believe what?” Adam asked, apparently totally oblivious to his good fortune.
“You not only got the last parking space, you got the best,” Whitney answered, pushing open the passenger door before he could come around to open it for her. “Do you part seas, too?” she added under her breath as he led the way to the bank next door.
Washington Federal Savings was one of those wellestablished institutions that sat on the corner of a busy, prosperous intersection. Yet once inside, Whitney found it was beautifully quiet, with gleaming black marble walls and soft recessed lighting.
Heads rose as they passed. Whitney wasn’t surprised. Adam Justice’s bearing exuded an air of someone important. He was a man people would always notice.
She wondered if he was as oblivious to that as he seemed to be to all the other fortuitous things in his life.
Adam spoke for several minutes with a very attractive bank vice president. Although Whitney couldn’t hear what they were saying, she could see the lady wore an adoring look in her eyes and was close to melting in her chair.
The vice president consulted her computer, secured a set of keys, then led them to a thick glass door at the back of the bank. She opened it and gestured for them to go inside.
The room they stepped into was relatively small and narrow, barely five feet wide by twelve feet long. It was lined on one side by safe-deposit boxes. Adam fitted his key into the lock of number 105, third from the bottom on the far left. The bank vice president fitted her key into the adjoining lock.
Adam removed the safe-deposit box and set it on a small shelf in a free-standing cubicle on the edge of the room that resembled a portable polling booth, only without the privacy veils.
“Can I do anything else for you?” the vice president asked, a clear suggestion in her tone, a hopeful look in her eyes.
“No, thank you,” Adam said in his formal, cool tone. It was clear his total attention was on the safe-deposit box.
The vice president left on a disappointed sigh, closing the glass door behind her. Whitney didn’t know many men who would have passed up the chance to at least flirt with the very attractive and obviously willing lady.
There were no chairs in the room. Whitney stepped over to Adam’s side as he opened the safe-deposit box. The original of Patrice’s will and her birth certificate were on top.
When Adam removed these, Whitney saw a yellowed newspaper clipping sitting on top of a thick bunch of stock certificates.
While Adam verified the entries on the original will and birth certificate, Whitney took a closer look at the newspaper clipping.
It was from the Business section of The Weekend Sun—a Vancouver British Columbia newspaper. A stock abbreviated as EP had been circled. It was selling for thirty cents a share.
Whitney glanced at the first stock certificate. It didn’t look like any stock certificate she had seen before. It represented five hundred shares in a firm called Emery Pharmaceuticals. Both the newspaper clipping and the stock certificate were dated nine years previous.
Whitney couldn’t tell exactly how many stock certificates were in the safe-deposit box, but she could tell there were quite a few. She couldn’t help wondering whether this stock was that “little something” Patrice had mentioned.
Adam put down the documents he had been checking. He glanced at the newspaper clipping and the stock certificate in Whitney’s hands.
“You didn’t know she had this, did you?” Whitney asked.
“No. We’ll need to find out how much this stock is worth in today’s terms.”
“I doubt the state insurance commissioner will be able to help. Actually I’ve found the best place for tracking down the value of old stock certificates is R. M. Smythe & Co. on Broadway in New York. But even they may have difficulty with a foreign company.”
Whitney felt Adam’s eyes draw to her face. “It sounds as though you’ve been involved in tracing stock certificates before,” he said.
“My partner and I have had several people come in with certificates they’ve found in the attic that some parent or grandparent purchased and then forgot about. Most of the time the company has gone broke and they prove worthless. It generally takes a few weeks to give the client the bad news.”
“We shouldn’t have to wait a few weeks to find out about these,” Adam said. “Marc Truesdale, one of my partners, is close friends with a highly respected investment counselor by the name of Gavin Yeagher. Yeagher is hooked up to the kind of international financial network that should yield the answer we’re seeking.”
“Great. Do we go see this Gavin Yeagher or call?”
“Calling will be faster.”
Adam pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and punched in a number.
She heard Adam’s side of the conversation as he asked Marc to put him in touch with Gavin Yeagher and explained why. Then he replaced the cell phone in his pocket and turned to her.
“Marc will convey our request to Yeagher and ask him to get back to us. He’s paging him on the racquetball courts. While we’re waiting, we should count the stock so that we have an accurate number to give to Yeagher.”
Whitney lifted the rest of the stock certificates out of the safe-deposit box. She divided the pile between herself and Adam.
It took less than a minute to check and count them. “Each one of my fo
rty-eight certificates represents five hundred shares,” Whitney said.
“Each of mine also represents five hundred shares, and I have fifty-two,” Adam said. “That adds up to fifty thousand shares.”
Whitney reached into her shoulder bag for a hand-held calculator. She entered the numbers and multiplied them.
“Fifty thousand shares at thirty cents a share is fifteen thousand Canadian dollars. What is the exchange rate these days, about seventy-five cents Canadian to one American dollar?”
“In that neighborhood.”
Whitney did the calculations. “Then a conservative estimate would place the value of this stock at more than eleven thousand U.S. dollars,” she said. “Not a bad chunk of change. I’m surprised Patrice didn’t cash these in when she was attending UW and trying to make ends meet. That’s what you said she was doing, right?”
“She was living in a very small apartment and working at odd jobs. The money would have certainly made things easier.”
“When did you meet Patrice?” Whitney asked.
“Why do you ask?”
“I’m trying to understand the time perspective on this.”
“We met eight years and nine months ago.”
“Three months after these stock certificates were issued. And you married her three months after you met?”
“Yes.”
“I wonder where a struggling college student got eleven thousand dollars to invest in a stock purchase?”
“I doubt she bought it herself.”
“You’re thinking that maybe someone else bought this stock for her? Who?”
“I don’t have a specific someone in mind. Patrice had been keeping company with several men when I met her. One of them might have given it to her as a gift.”
“That’s unlikely.”
“It is customary for a man to show his affection with a gift, Ms. West.”
“I met your wi—Patrice Feldon. I’m well aware she was one of those phenomenally beautiful women who turned every male head when she walked into a room. Lavishing gifts upon such an outstandingly beautiful woman is the way men respond, I grant you.”
Whitney paused to shake her head. “I suppose coming upon such perfection seems like a religious experience for them. They all feel they have to pay homage at the altar of her beauty or something.”
“Is this knowledge you acquired while pursuing your psychological degree, Ms. West?”
Whitney smiled at the beautifully measured, crisp cadence that had delivered that spate of sarcasm.
“I have two older brothers, Mr. Justice. Watching them struggle through adolescence was more informative than any Ph.D.”
“Forgive me for having assumed your education was of the inferior, formal kind,” he said with a small bow of his head.
Once again he had responded with that elegant, precise diction and not even the barest hint of annoyance.
Whitney’s smile got bigger. She was becoming more and more certain that somewhere beneath that smug sophistication and those tranquil tones lurked a far from tranquil irritation. Although why that pleased her she wasn’t quite sure.
“Still, as certain as I am that there were guys lining up to offer Patrice gifts—and pretty much anything else she wanted—I doubt that’s where she got this stock,” Whitney said.
“You seem most certain of that.”
“I am. Admirers give gifts like magnums of champagne, boxes of chocolate, dozens of long-stem roses, sexy lingerie, jewelry. A bunch of stock certificates hardly puts a gal into a romantic mood.”
“The stock was worth more than eleven thousand dollars,” Adam said.
Whitney chuckled. “You must be a delight to date. Romance isn’t about money, Mr. Justice. It’s about an expression of feeling. When a man gives a woman a gift, it has to be one with some heart in it. How did you ever get Patrice to accept you over those other men? Did you hit her over the head?”
“What a charming image. And such stirring insight.”
Whitney chuckled delightedly at the impudence of his words encased in such an ultrapolite tone.
“Has anyone ever made you mad?” she asked after she got herself back in control.
“I beg your pardon?”
She leaned closer to him. God, he smelled good—clean and rich and exotic, like the smoky incense of forest woods with just a hint of combustible clove.
“Let me rephrase that,” she said. “Has anyone ever made you so mad that you actually showed your anger?”
He leaned back, reestablishing a socially acceptable space between them. “Indulging anger feeds that anger and ends up making one even more angry. It is a harmful ritual.”
“What do you say to all those people who contend you should let out your anger?”
“I would say that those people are probably angry most of the time.”
“You just keep it bottled up inside?”
“Ms. West, just because anger is not indulged does not mean it’s being bottled up.”
“Look, Adam, if we’re going to argue about this, I really think you should call me Whitney.”
“We are not going to argue about this. I never argue. Why should I call you Whitney?”
“Because calling someone by their first name is more friendly. And the friendlier we become, the less likely you’ll be to throw a punch my way.”
“I do not throw punches. Not even well-deserved ones.”
Whitney chuckled. “Formal delivery notwithstanding, that sentence definitely contained a message that I deserve a punch. I have made you mad, haven’t I?”
“No one can make me anything I don’t choose to be.”
“Yes, I’m beginning to think that must be true. I can see now why Patrice selected you over her other suitors. And it wasn’t because you hit her over the head. Shall I tell you?”
“Another character assessment, Ms. West? How could I refuse?”
This refined form of smooth sarcasm was really quite entertaining. Whitney found herself warming to it even more. She leaned closer, deliberately invading his space yet again and inhaling his exciting scent.
“You weren’t easy like the rest of them, Adam. You didn’t immediately fall at her feet. You remained reserved, cool, aloof, because that’s your style. What an irresistible challenge you must have represented to Patrice. You must still be fighting them off. Well, that certain type of woman anyway.”
“That certain type of woman?” Adam repeated.
“Oh, you know the kind,” Whitney said, leaning back and flashing him a deliberately elusive smile.
“Given your powers of acute observation on human nature, I can only conclude that this knowledge I possess is temporarily beyond my recall.”
Whitney laughed again. “Despite that cool indifference that you exude out of every one of your cosmopolitan pores, Adam Justice, I’m beginning to suspect that you really are curious, so I’m going to tell you.”
Whitney paused for a moment to see if she could detect any change in his calm expression. There wasn’t any.
“She’s the type of woman who needs the adoration of all men, Adam. Only when she meets you, that adoration isn’t immediately forthcoming. So, naturally yours becomes the adoration she needs most of all.”
For just an instant Whitney thought she saw some emotion flash behind Adam Justice’s cold blue eyes. But then the cell phone in his pocket rang, and by the time he reached for it, whatever emotion it was had vanished—if indeed it had ever been there at all.
Adam’s half of the conversation was too sketchy for Whitney to follow. She concentrated instead on piecing together the impressions that had been collecting in her thoughts about Adam Justice.
She kept recalling Patrice’s comments about him as she sat across from Whitney in her office those many years before:
“There’s no one better looking than Adam. Or smarter. I told you he’s a lawyer? Well, he’s never lost a case. He never will, either. He does everything the best. He’s the best husband, the best
lover. He’ll be the best father, too. We decided to have kids right away. It would be impossible not to love him.”
Six months after those words had been uttered, Patrice had left this man whom it would be impossible not to love.
Whitney’s attention returned to the present when Adam closed the cell phone and replaced it in his pocket. His expression gave nothing away about what he might have learned.
“So, is the stock worth anything?” Whitney prompted.
“One hundred and fifty U.S. dollars per share.”
Whitney shot forward. “That much?” Whitney punched the numbers into her calculator excitedly. “Dear heavens, that’s…that’s seven and a half million dollars! I can’t believe this stock is worth that much!”
“It isn’t,” Adam said.
“But you just said—”
“Since these certificates were issued nine years ago, Yeagher tells me this company has split its stock four times. When the reinvested dividends are taken into consideration, the value of this stock is well in excess of thirty million dollars.”
Chapter Four
A.J.’s normally deep voice rose several octaves in Adam’s ear. “I don’t believe it, Adam. I don’t mean I don’t believe you, it’s just…I don’t believe it. She married you under a false name. She left an estate worth more than thirty million dollars. Who in the hell was Patrice?”
“That’s what I need to know, A.J.”
Adam had stepped just outside the bank vault room and stood with his back against a wall to be sure no one was in hearing distance when he called his office and then his sister’s investigation firm.
“Do you really have to get involved in this matter, Adam?” A.J.’s voice asked.
“Patrice made me executor of her estate.”
“She held back so much from you, even her real name. Who knows what we’ll find if we delve into this mess? Dump the executorship. Walk away. You certainly don’t need the lawyer’s fees. Or the heartache.”
“But I need to know, A.J.”