by L. T. Vargus
“Why Dutch and I never got married?”
Charlie nodded, feeling a little sheepish for prying.
“Gloria mentioned some sort of arrangement her parents had. That he was free to see other women as long as he never divorced her,” Charlie said. “She said it was his way of honoring her, to never marry again after she died.”
Vivien let out one of her cackles that made her sound borderline insane. It was a full thirty seconds before she could bring herself to speak.
“Oh my. That’s rich.” She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “Dutch’s way of honoring her. My, but Gloria was naive under all her stoicism, wasn’t she? At least when it came to her father.”
Vivien inhaled deeply, staring out the window at the trees flickering by on the roadside.
“Dutch proposed to me six months after Helena was buried. And many times since,” Vivien said. “He wasn’t the one opposed to marriage. I was.”
“Why?”
“My father was what some might call ‘old-fashioned,’ by which I mean that he was a misogynistic twat.”
Charlie couldn’t help but snicker at the word coming from Vivien.
“Well, he was,” Vivien insisted. “The trust fund I inherited when I turned eighteen came with a laundry list of stipulations. I could go to college, but my choice of major was limited to a select few my father deemed ‘appropriate for women.’ He didn’t want me having an actual career, you see. But the big one was the marriage incentive. If I were to marry, the funds available to me through the trust would have doubled.”
“And that’s a bad thing?” Charlie asked.
“Yes, because the other half of the clause stated that my husband would automatically become the trustee of the trust fund. He’d gain absolute control of the money. In my trust fund. It’s the exact opposite of what most people do. The last thing any rational person would want is for the spouse of their child to gain control of the trust. But my father did precisely that, and he did it by design. In his mind, the woman was always to be subservient to the man. Husband knows best. I was expected to be a perfect little brood mare, just like my mother.”
Vivien turned to face her.
“And before you think the reason I didn’t marry Dutch is because I didn’t want him to have access to my money, that wasn’t it, either. My father died years ago, and that means I now have complete autonomy over the entire estate. But his attitude toward marriage and a woman’s place in it soured me on the prospect,” Vivien said, then let out a heavy sigh. “If I’m being perfectly honest, the real reason I never married was purely to spite my father. I hope his corpse is rolling around in his grave knowing I won. Just spinning down there like a rotisserie chicken.”
Her white teeth glinted in the sunlight as her mouth spread into a wicked smile.
Charlie supposed she could appreciate Vivien’s justification, as petulant as it was. But there was something else she didn’t understand.
“Dutch’s kid’s must know you’re… well, independently wealthy,” Charlie said. “Why do they act like you’re some…”
“Gold-digging whore?”
Vivien’s grin turned even more impish as she said the words.
“Well, yeah,” Charlie said.
One of Vivien’s shoulder’s quirked into a shrug.
“I suppose it’s what they want to believe. And I should say, the boys have always been civil, if not exactly warm. The younger girl, too. Dara. She’s a bit of an odd duck,” Vivien mused. “I have a nephew with Asperger’s, and while I’m not one to make armchair diagnoses, I have always wondered. Now Marjory, on the other hand… that one is a greedy little pig, and I assume she thinks I’m the same. That’s how people are, you know. They think everyone thinks the way they do. You’ve met her husband?”
Charlie shook her head.
“Trevor is a darling man. Smart as a whip and sweet as a newborn kitten, but you should see the way Marjory looks at him. Like he’s something filthy stuck to her shoe. And the way she speaks to him.” Vivien shook her head. “But he’s loaded, and I think that’s all she’s ever seen in him. Trevor has cerebral palsy as a result of something that happened during his birth. His parents won a malpractice suit against the hospital, and Trevor inherited fifty million dollars on his eighteenth birthday. He invested it in a biotech startup, made a fortune. Anyway, it’s always been painfully obvious to anyone who cares to look that Marjory’s only interest in Trevor is his money.”
Vivien’s assessment of Marjory struck Charlie as especially harsh. And despite her own feelings about Marjory, perhaps a bit unfair.
“Why would she marry him for money when she’s rich herself?” Charlie asked.
“Marjory? Rich?” Vivien said. “You must know that Dutch was quite strict with his children when it came to money. He paid for their education, of course. But there were no trust funds for the Carmichael children. They had to earn their own way.”
“Yes, but surely Marjory receives a decent salary heading the foundation.”
Gripping the door for support, Vivien doubled over with laughter.
“Oh God, no. I’m sure her salary is no pittance, but it’s probably barely enough to cover the property taxes on that house of hers.”
Charlie wasn’t sure if she should trust Vivien’s take on wealth. When someone was born a billionaire, did any number with fewer than nine zeros at the end suddenly become a trifling amount?
“And what about Gloria?” Charlie asked. “She certainly wasn’t your biggest fan.”
“Ah. Well, with Gloria there were two strikes against me. The first is that I’m fairly certain she saw me and Dutch together once, back when her mother was still alive. She had a curious habit of lurking in doorways. Almost like she wanted to catch people doing naughty things. She always struck me as a suspicious sort. Convinced everyone around her was up to no good when she wasn’t looking. Anyway, I can imagine how she would have felt about catching her father fooling around with another woman.”
Charlie nodded, thinking that was exactly the kind of thing Gloria wouldn’t be able to forgive.
“So what was the second strike?”
“I don’t suppose you know the story of Gloria’s marriage?”
Charlie shook her head.
“Her husband left her for his much-younger secretary. A tale as old as time. She’d tolerated me before, but things changed after she and Roger got divorced. I became a representation of the other woman. The floozy.” Vivien pursed her lips and looked a bit sad. “It’s too bad. I got the sense we could have been great friends if things had been different. I was sorry to hear about her passing.”
The words echoed in Charlie’s mind as she turned onto the road leading to the Carmichael estate. Her passing. The words were too clean and mundane to describe what had happened to Gloria. Charlie pushed that thought aside, though. She needed to keep her mind sharp.
“Do you have any idea what Dutch might have done with the bulk of his money?” she asked Vivien. “Gloria said there were hundreds of millions of dollars unaccounted for.”
“I haven’t the faintest,” Vivien said. “I’ve always found money-talk dreadfully boring, to be quite honest. It’s fun to spend but nothing sucks the energy out of a room faster than financial chatter. Except maybe religion.”
The gate was closed when they reached Dutch’s driveway. Charlie stopped the car just short of the metal bars.
“I don’t suppose you have the gate code?”
“Of course, I do,” Vivien said with a knowing smile. “One-nine-six-seven. The year he made his first million.”
Charlie climbed out and punched the sequence into the number pad beside the gate. There was a clanking sound and then the gate parted with an electric hum.
As Charlie guided the car up the drive, she glanced over at Vivien.
“One more nosy question, if you don’t mind?”
“Go ahead.”
“How did your father make his money?”
Vi
vien snorted.
“By marrying my mother. She was the sole heir of David Fernsby, the founder of Fernsby Pharmaceuticals. I assume you’ve heard of it?”
“Of course,” Charlie said. Everyone had heard of Fernsby Pharmaceuticals.
“Yes, my father gained his fortune through pure nepotism. Not a dime of it was earned on his own.” Vivien smiled. “I’ve always thought that was ironic.”
Charlie parked beside the now familiar Apollo fountain and shut down the engine. They undid their seatbelts and climbed out. At the door, Vivien produced the key from her purse, slid it into the lock, then paused.
“You know, I was perfectly calm all the way over here, but now my heart is racing!” She giggled quietly. “Is your job always this exhilarating?”
“Rarely. Ninety percent of it is sitting around waiting for something to happen.”
“Or digging through a stranger’s garbage?” Vivien asked with a wink.
“Exactly,” Charlie said.
Vivien tutted and twisted the key.
“I suppose that’s for the best, or I’d be tempted to become a P.I. myself just for the high.”
She opened the door and let it swing wide, revealing the darkened entryway before them. With a mischievous glint in her eye, she turned to Charlie.
“Shall we?”
FORTY-SIX
Charlie followed Vivien upstairs to Dutch’s bedroom. They passed by the bed and the wardrobe and entered his private study. Vivien paused just inside, seeming to study a painting of a ship.
“Get the lights, will you?” Vivien asked.
Despite the empty driveway, darkened interior, and obvious hush that said the house was empty, Charlie hesitated. It was silly, of course. She had the family’s permission to investigate, and anything she found was for their benefit. But she couldn’t help but feel she was trespassing. Treading where she shouldn’t. More than that, she felt like she was being watched. Maybe it was because she’d brought Vivien with her, knowing that Dutch’s children probably wouldn’t approve of her being here.
Charlie shook off the irrational unease and flipped the light switch. The recessed lights in the study flared overhead.
Vivien lifted the painting from the wall, revealing a safe behind it.
“I wasn’t supposed to know about this,” Vivien said. “Dutch was very secretive. But I saw him open it once, when he thought I was asleep in the other room.”
Charlie stepped forward, studying the combination dial.
“Any idea what the combination might be?”
“Try 40-21-35.”
Charlie’s eyebrows rose at Vivien’s instant response.
“They’re my measurements,” Vivien said. “Same as Jayne Mansfield.”
As Charlie spun the dial, she couldn’t help but think Vivien had sounded quite proud of this.
“I mean, wouldn’t you be?” Allie asked. “Although—and I have to preface this by saying that Vivien has a rockin’ bod, no doubt about it—there is no way she has a twenty-one-inch waist.”
Charlie stopped on the first number.
“I don’t think that’s even physically possible,” Allie continued. “Not unless you have some ribs removed or something. All doubts aside, I should have known Vivien’s big bajungas would play a role in all of this.”
“And Dutch… he knew your measurements?” Charlie asked, carefully reversing back to the second number.
“Yes. He asked me once, and then wrote it down in a little book. At the time, I thought it might be something he did… collect the measurements of his conquests.” Vivien chuckled at the thought. “Goodness, I miss him.”
Charlie finished entering the combination. The handle turned easily, and the front of the safe popped open with a thunk.
Behind her, Vivien squealed with delight.
Charlie tugged at the handle, and the metal door swung aside, revealing…
Nothing.
FORTY-SEVEN
Hands on hips, Vivien clicked her tongue at the empty safe.
“Well, this is an anticlimax.”
The light in Dutch’s bedroom suddenly clicked on. Charlie and Vivien whirled around in tandem to face the open doorway.
“Looking for this?”
Brandon Carmichael leaned against the wall of his father’s bedroom, a black rectangular device in his hands. Dutch’s laptop.
“Yes, actually,” Charlie said. “We were.”
She managed to keep her voice calm and level even as her mind reeled, searching for an explanation for Brandon’s presence. Had he been here the whole time? Or had he followed them? And what about the laptop? How long had he been in possession of it?
“Guess I beat you to it, though not by much,” he said, smiling in a way that Charlie took as gloating.
She expected him to take off then, scampering away with his prize while laughing maniacally the whole time like a cartoon villain. Instead, he crossed Dutch’s bedroom and held out the computer to her like an offering.
“Here you go.”
“I don’t understand,” Charlie said. “Where did you find it?”
“Right there where you were looking. In the safe.”
“When?”
“About an hour ago.”
“How did you get in? The gate was closed, and there aren’t any cars in the drive,” Charlie said.
“I parked on a side street and cut across the property. I suppose I don’t need to ask how you got in.” His eyes slid over to Vivien. “Hello, Vivien.”
Vivien bobbed her head.
“Brandon.”
His gaze swung back over to Charlie, lingering on her dress.
“I have to ask, do you always dress this formally when breaking and entering?”
“Obviously,” Charlie said dryly. She drummed her fingers against the laptop. “Did you know the computer was in the safe all along?”
“No. But I figured it had to be in the house somewhere,” Brandon said. “Unless someone had taken it. But that’s what I came to find out. I figured I’d search the place top to bottom, and if I didn’t find the computer, it probably meant one of my siblings had already gotten to it.”
“Sounds like you don’t trust them very much.”
“You’ve met them, and Gloria must have told you what they’re like. What we’re like.” He crossed his arms. “They’re not bad people. But they all have their own ideas of how this should be handled. I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that Wesley’s been helping himself to the art collection. It’s only a matter of time before the whole lot of them are in here picking the place clean. Without Gloria here to keep us in line, it’ll be every man for himself.”
“Unless you find a will.”
“Exactly. And if there is a will, it’s on that laptop.” He gestured at the machine in Charlie’s hands. “I knew I had to get it before anyone else.”
“And then what?”
“Well, turn it over to you, of course.”
“You planned on giving it to me all along?”
“Of course. That’s why Gloria hired you, isn’t it?” Brandon pointed a finger at her. “Besides, you’re the only one I can trust to be impartial. The only one with no dog in this fight. I figured it’d be better to let you handle it from here.”
“Why not just take your pick of everything?” Charlie asked. “You got in here tonight. You could have loaded up your car with priceless antiques.”
“Because first of all, the house and what’s in it is peanuts. If we can figure out what my old man did with the real money, there won’t be a need to squabble over scraps. Everyone will get his or her fair share,” Brandon said. “And that’s all I’m really interested in. I don’t need the whole pie. I only want my piece of it. This way, we see what’s on the laptop, and will or no will, we all move on. I just want the truth, you know? Unvarnished.”
Charlie could respect this particular blend of self-interest mixed with honor. In some ways, it wasn’t all that different from what Gloria had said
when she’d come into the office that first day. Had that only been two days ago? It was hard to believe.
She had to stop herself from replaying the hit-and-run in her mind again. Instead, Charlie stepped to the tiger maple desk and set the computer down. Then she opened the laptop and powered it on.
“Have you looked at what’s on it?” she asked, internally wondering if he could have already tampered with any of the files they might find.
Brandon shook his head.
“I’m not a big computer guy,” he said. “As soon as I found it, I knew I’d be better off letting you take the lead.”
They fell quiet as the computer booted up.
“Do either of you mind if I smoke?”
Charlie shook her head.
“If you’ll give me a puff or two,” Vivien said as Brandon placed a cigarette between his lips.
He shook a second cigarette from the pack, but Vivien waved her hand at him.
“Oh I haven’t really smoked for years. I only want a drag.”
Brandon lit up, and a tendril of tobacco smoke twined around his head. He looked like the Marlboro Man or something. He inhaled and then passed the cigarette to Vivien.
The computer finished loading, and Charlie slid into the chair behind the desk, brushing the touchpad with her thumb. Brandon and Vivien leaned in on either side of her.
A box appeared, asking for a password.
“Any guesses?” Charlie asked.
“Try the combination for the safe,” Vivien suggested.
Charlie had her doubts that Dutch would use the same code over again, on top of the fact that six digits wasn’t a very secure password. But she didn’t have a better idea.
“Speaking of which,” Charlie said, entering the sequence of numbers, “how did you know the combination, Brandon?”
“Dad had this little book he jotted things down in. Ideas, appointments. I saw that written in there once.”
“You saw the combination once and remembered it?”
“It’s a worthwhile skill to have when you play cards for a living.”
The computer beeped and red text appeared: Incorrect login information.