Something about the piano chipped at his memory. He’d seen this somewhere.
Emma said, “Who are you?”
“Brian Schneider. I produce the financial news for KTXX.” He produced his press credentials. Often, at this point, people tended to freeze up and stop talking, not that she’d been a chatterbox so far. Then, again, often people got intrigued at the idea of meeting someone who worked for TV, even if the stories he produced were about the gyrations of the stock market.
“Oh,” said Emma flatly. “We’re not supposed to talk to the press. Mark isn’t here right now. He’s in Japan. He’ll be back this weekend.”
He tucked that information away for future reference. She hadn’t said she wouldn’t talk, just that she wasn’t supposed to. He said, “I can understand. You’re very private people, which is refreshing these days. But there’s going to be some public interest in your brother’s estate now that the inventory has been filed, so do you mind if I ask you some—”
“The inventory’s been filed?” Emma interrupted. “Mark didn’t say anything. That won’t sit well with little Miss Cat—”
She broke off.
She really didn’t like someone, he thought. Who little Miss Cat might be, he could only guess, but he suspected it was the same damn sister-in-law whose piano – whose strangely familiar piano – was being lifted with hydraulics into the moving truck. And Mark St. Bride hadn’t warned his family that a document of public interest was being filed in his brother’s estate.
Where had he seen that piano before?
“Do you mind if I ask you some questions, Ms. St. Bride?” For the life of him, he couldn’t remember her last name. She had been married two or three times.
“Well….” She seemed to be thinking it over. “I can’t. Not right now. My niece will be home soon, and we are very careful about her, Mr. Schneider—”
“Call me Brian.” People liked the immediate intimacy of that.
She acknowledged that with a lift of her eyebrow that showed some interest. She was shifting to the personal, just as he intended. “We’re very protective of Meg. No press. Sorry. But….”
He kept silent. She was ruminating about something. He wasn’t interested in disturbing the peace of a teenage girl, even if she was a very rich teenage girl. Meg St. Bride wasn’t the story. She was just a kid whose father had died hideously at the hands of terrorists.
And she was living here with St. Bride’s sister and brother, but presumably her mother was not around, since Emma St. Bride felt so free to take her name in vain. So where was the mother?
Somewhere near the Chesapeake Bay, apparently.
Emma said, “Watch that, please! I don’t want her bitching at me about scratches on her damn piano.” Temperate speech wasn’t this woman’s hallmark; he wondered if she had passion for anything else besides hating her brother’s widow. “Meg’s going to the lake for the weekend. If you want to give me your card, maybe we can talk after she leaves.”
She held out her hand, a certain sparkle in her eyes, a little flirtatious smile on her mouth. She had more in mind than talking.
Intriguing. Tempting, even. What a spitfire this one was. He had to wonder what sort of woman Laura St. Bride was to inspire such hostility and what sort of woman Emma St. Bride was to care so tenderly for the daughter of a woman she plainly wished at the ends of the earth. Well, it was shaping up to be a long weekend on call for the station; he had to stay in town while everyone else fled the heat. And she wanted to talk. This had possibilities.
“I’ll be at work in the morning,” he said. “My number’s on the card.”
Emma said, and now there was no denying the message in her eyes, “I’ll call you.”
Five minutes later, after more small talk and appraising glances, he left. The movers were gently maneuvering the piano into position in the truck. The niece still hadn’t come home, and Emma was giving him a friendly wave as he started his car.
But, even as he was thinking where they could get together to talk – her mansion? his non-mansion in McKinney? – he thought about that piano. He’d seen it before, and he couldn’t shake the idea that he had seen it on TV. And why did he associate it with a woman with a mane of auburn hair, wrapped in pearls and little else, sitting on that rosewood bench and playing her heart out?
And why had Emma referred to Laura St. Bride as little Miss Cat?
Laura St. Bride’s middle name was Rose. Not Catherine.
Well, the weekend was just starting. He was good at getting people to talk to him. And she was plainly bursting to talk.
~•~
The Fourth of July. The first since the attacks. And nowhere that day, Laura found, could she escape memories of 9/11.
She hadn’t seen Richard for two days, and she missed him. She missed the feel of him, the strength of his body, the touch of his hand against the back of her neck. He’d called her from Charleston during a break the day before and again, late, when he’d returned. He had told her about his project as she snuggled beneath the comforter, wishing with all her heart that he’d say, “I’m coming over.” But he’d been tired, she heard it in his voice, and she didn’t want to ask.
If she had asked him, she knew, he would have come, but she still felt raw from his analysis of her feelings for Cam. It had taken a couple of restless nights to admit to herself that Richard thought her as fragile and as much in need of protection as Cam ever had. She didn’t want to seem even lonelier and needier by asking him to come over to be with her.
So she slept alone, and woke up with an appalling headache – the worst since she had come back to Virginia – and the Fourth of July started to go downhill from there.
~•~
She rose early to work on her desserts for the party. Terry had paid penance for his part in Roger’s mischief by emailing her several of his most cherished recipes, and Julie had called the night before to ask if she could come over to help make cookies. Lucy called to remind her to show up an hour early, and Richard called to make plans for the late evening.
“Julie’s going to a lock-in,” he said. “We’ll have the house to ourselves. I’ll rent something.”
“No war pictures.” Last year, Cam had staged a war film festival in his media room, Saving Private Ryan followed by The Great Escape followed by The Longest Day followed by Platoon. She had wanted to scream. “Get something I might like too.”
“No Titanic.”
“No Lethal Weapon.”
“No Sleepless in Seattle.” He was enjoying this.
She tried to remember Richard’s taste in films. “No Monty Python,” she said triumphantly.
He started to hum “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” and that made her laugh. The headache eased slightly, and she forgot the news show broadcasting near Ground Zero. It set her teeth on edge to see so many people down at the crater, as if it were a tourist attraction. “I’ll run by the Wine Cellar and pick up something to chill for us – although you may not be able to lift your head if you sit with the Queen Bees. It’s tradition – Lucy and Mel and their friends inhale margaritas all afternoon long.”
She didn’t relish the prospect of spending hours under the scrutiny of Lucy and Mel McIntire. “I’m not fond of tequila. Get some Chardonnay.”
He paused. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” Time to exorcise that memory. “I’ll bring Rod Stewart.”
And she had just the thing to wear. She’d found it at a high-end lingerie shop the day before – long, white, shimmery, and just as hard to keep up as the woman’s gown in the painting in his room.
~•~
Julie was due over at ten. Laura watched the news shows as she set out the ingredients and chopped up fruits for the strawberry tart that Terry had proclaimed his favorite. Afraid that al Qaeda would seize the moment, the country had braced for another attack, and September 11 haunted every word spoken by the news anchors. She wished they would just stop talking about it. Everyone needed a break, she
thought, and then immediately felt guilty. Meg didn’t have her father to watch war movies with; thousands of families were experiencing a holiday minus a loved one; Manhattan still suffered from the wound in its side. She could deal with listening to a bright young thing talk about the horror almost ten months in the past.
Starting at eight, Mark called every hour on the hour. Laura did what she had done for the last few days – she ignored him.
She knew from Lucy, who had received an answer from Mark (“What a stiff,” sniffed her sister, “I can’t believe he’s so thin-skinned! He’s taking the TRO threat personally.”), that her piano had been retrieved early Wednesday evening and would be making its way to her over the next few weeks. Jay Spencer had told her that Mark had not responded to the email request that all papers relating to Meg be turned over immediately.
She’d had only a few rays of light in the week. Meg had gone off to the lake last night with her friend’s family, so she was safely away from Emma for the weekend. No one had heard from Diana. Jay had negotiated with Kevin Stone to delay the deposition a week, moving it back to the week after the concert. Her manager had emailed her to let her know that, as soon as he came back from a long family weekend in Santa Fe, he was flying up to organize everything. And he liked her new song.
But this party, this wretched party! Walking out of the restaurant, he had clued her in to Mel’s real purpose. “She makes Lucy look like a piker when it comes to nosiness,” he said. “But we gave her nothing.” Oh, how innocent men were. She’d cast her mind back over the luncheon and cringed when she remembered offering to bake him cookies. Bake him cookies! Announcing that she was his mistress had been more subtle.
Constant reminders of 9/11, a terror alert, Mark bugging her, days waiting for Lucy to pounce on her, the prospect of hours pretending to be Richard’s sister-in-law, Meg out of reach at the lake, and Julie no doubt coming over to playact.
No wonder her head hurt.
But at least she had the evening to look forward to. Tonight’s the night.
~•~
Julie was up to something. What it could be, Laura couldn’t figure out after her niece arrived to “help” her make desserts for the party. As soon as she greeted Julie at the back door, she noticed the tension running through the girl like a hot wire.
Part of it, Laura thought, surveying her niece from the corner of her eye as the girl mixed up the cookie ingredients for her father’s favorite cookies, was the way Julie was dressed. Certainly a new look for Julie, and she couldn’t imagine Richard letting his daughter out of the house if he’d seen her first. Low-rise didn’t begin to describe what was riding on Julie’s hips, and she had defiantly paired the jeans with a skimpy white cotton camisole under which she, most definitely, was not wearing a bra. Julie had ridden over on her mare, a large T-shirt over the camisole; she’d stripped it off the moment she came in the door.
Julie was clearly hoping for a reaction. Laura let her stew for a while.
“New outfit?” She started slicing up a dozen peaches for something Terry called tarte à l’orange.
“Uh, yes,” said Julie, and kept her face averted. “So how long should I mix these?”
“Until all the ingredients are mashed together.” She was willing to bet that Peggy had taught Julie how to make cookies. “Did you get that the other night when you and your dad went shopping for your camp stuff?”
Julie hesitated a moment. Laura suspected that she was trying to figure out a way to make it seem that Richard had authorized the purchase. “Uh, yeah, I needed some new jeans.”
“They’re cute.” For a hooker. Emma had taken Meg to task the week before over jeans far more modest than this, and Laura had made Meg take the jeans back to the store. “So – how did you do it? Try them on in the dressing room and tell him they fit without him seeing them?”
She made her voice so casual and friendly that Julie was caught unawares. The girl looked up swiftly at her and flushed “Um, what?”
“I wasn’t born yesterday.”
“I like them.” Julie stirred the ingredients. “Everyone else is wearing them.”
Oh, the eternal alibi: everyone else. “Look, Julie, you and I both know he’s not going to let you wear those.”
“Like I care,” Julie mumbled, but stopped stirring to hitch the jeans up. It didn’t help.
Laura looked at her curiously. Something was going on; she couldn’t fathom Richard’s perfect daughter deliberately defying him by wearing an outfit that would expose her once and for all as something less than perfect. The girl had even gone to some pains to make sure he didn’t see her when she left to come over to Edwards Lake. Maybe Julie had someone special coming to the party, someone she wanted to impress enough that she was willing to risk her father’s anger.
“Any of your friends coming to the party?”
Julie didn’t look at her. “Mike.”
Mike. Mike. She’d heard the name. Oh, yes, the not-geeky boy who hadn’t asked Julie to the prom. “That’s great! I’d love to meet him. Anyone else?”
“Maybe some other kids. I don’t know.”
Okay, she’d tried. Laura gave up. She’d had enough teenage angst for one morning. An hour earlier, Meg had sulked her way through their morning phone call; for someone supposed to be having fun at the lake, she’d been in a terrible mood. Between this party, Richard on one hand and Lucy and Mel McIntire on the other, plus the continuing emails and phone calls from Mark, Laura had enough to cope with. Let Richard deal with Julie’s attitude and attire.
“That’s mixed enough.” She looked in the mixing bowl. “Put a spoonful each for each cookie, about an inch and a half apart. I’ve got the oven heated.”
Julie nodded. They worked for a while in silence. Laura was making a crust from scratch, something she’d never been very good at, and she was trying to figure out why on earth Terry called for lime juice when Julie said, “Are you going to start telling me what to do?”
Her niece’s belligerent tone startled her. She turned her head sharply. “What?”
“Nothing.” Julie looked taken aback at her own daring. “I just wondered why you were telling me how to dress.”
“All right,” said Laura, “that’s it.” She was tired of this. She had a tense afternoon ahead of her, and it was way too long until evening; she wasn’t going to tiptoe around Julie anymore. “Look, Julie, if you want to dress like someone who sells her wares for a hundred dollars an hour, I couldn’t care less. You’re my niece, and that means I do have the right to speak out when I see you wearing something that even the hookers in Amsterdam might think twice about, but good heavens, I don’t mean to stifle your individuality or trample on your rights. I’ll leave that to your father, okay? Let’s drop it.”
Well! That was plainer speaking than the princess of Ashmore Park was used to hearing. Julie was staring at her, the cookie sheet dangling from her hand; the jeans were starting to ride down again. Laura gave her one last exasperated look and went to the refrigerator to pull out the blueberries she’d bought fresh the evening before.
“Hookers charge a hundred dollars an hour?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care. Maybe they charge a thousand.” Laura let her tone get snappish. “That’s not the point.”
“I know,” said Julie. “I’m very sorry.”
She didn’t look at Laura; she bent to put the cookie sheet in the oven. Some of the dough chunks had slid on the sheet and were running into each other, but Laura decided it didn’t warrant comment. Cookies were the least of what was going on.
“You know,” she said, “I don’t really enjoy this, Julie. You did this last week – little barbed comments because you wanted to ask me something and you didn’t know how to get to the point. Let me tell you right now. You’re far better off if you just come right out and ask me.”
She stared hard at her niece.
Julie’s eyes widened, and Laura had the sense again of that mind working away furiously. J
ust like Richard’s – but no, not like his, more like Lucy’s. Even discounting the lack of blood ties, Richard thought analytically, objectively, while Julie and Lucy thought in terms of power and advantage.
“I’m sorry,” Julie said again, and her gaze sidled away from Laura’s.
She took a leaf from Richard’s book. “Not good enough. I don’t want your apology, I want you to stop playing games. What do you want?”
Julie had never learned how to handle confrontation, that much was certain. She looked like the deer in the headlights, trapped with no idea how to get out. Richard might have said that Cat Courtney was at work again, flattening someone who wasn’t a fair match for her; Laura thought it wasn’t Cat so much as it was Meg’s mother with thirteen years of experience.
Julie gnawed at her lower lip, her eyes darting around, never looking right at Laura. Whatever she wanted to know, she must be afraid it would provoke a backlash. Laura’s instincts went on alert.
“Did you know my parents are getting a divorce?”
That question, low and miserable, dented Laura’s irritation. Richard had said that Julie had taken the news well, but then the perfect daughter would never let her father see anything but a positive reaction. “Yes,” she said, “I heard about that. How do you feel about it?”
Julie shrugged, but she looked tense and strained. “Okay, I guess. I mean, they’re never going to get back together, so I guess it’s a good thing.”
Laura’s heart hurt for her niece. She mustn’t forget how bitterly broken Julie’s home was. “I don’t know that divorce is ever a good thing,” she said gently. “Sometimes, it’s the lesser of two evils.”
Julie was staring at the floor. “I don’t even remember when they lived together. I know they were together till I was five, but I really don’t remember it, you know?” She bit her lip. “I mean, I don’t remember us ever doing anything as a family. I did stuff with my dad, but not with the two of them together.”
Laura watched her with concern.
“I mean – other kids at school, their parents have split up, and it’s been okay for them.” She looked up. “I heard you and your husband were getting a divorce before – well, you know—”
All That Lies Broken (Ashmore's Folly Book 2) Page 12