by Nora Roberts
“How like her,” Julia murmured. The panic had fled. Even under the pall of sadness she felt a bright, beautiful admiration. “I wonder that she never tried her hand at directing.”
“She just has.” It wasn’t very difficult to smile. Paul kept his arm around Julia’s waist as they began the long walk to the front of the church. He noted tears and solemn eyes, but as many sharp glances, studied poses. Here and there clutches of people were murmuring among themselves. Projects would be discussed, deals would be made. In Hollywood, no opportunity could be missed.
Eve would understand, and approve.
Julia hadn’t intended to go up to the coffin, take her last look, say the last good-bye. If it was cowardice, she accepted it. But when she saw Victor staring down at the woman he loved, his big hands clenched, his broad shoulders slumped, she was unable to simply slide into the pew.
“I need to …”
Paul only nodded. “Do you want me to go with you?”
“No, I … I think I should go alone.” The first step away from him was the hardest. Then she took another, and another. When she was beside Victor, she searched her heart. These were the people who had made her, she thought, the woman who slept so beautifully against the white silk. The man who watched her sleep with grief-ravaged eyes. Perhaps she couldn’t think of them as parents, but she could feel. Going with her heart, she laid a hand on his.
“She loved you, more than she loved anyone else. One of the last things she told me was how happy you had made her.”
His fingers convulsed on Julia’s. “I never gave her enough. Never could.”
“You gave her more than you realize, Victor. To so many others she was a star, a product, an image. To you she was a woman. The woman.” She pressed her lips together, hoping what she was doing, what she was saying, was right. “She once told me her only real regret was waiting until after the movie was finished.”
He turned then, looking away from Eve to the daughter he didn’t know he had. It was then Julia realized she had inherited her father’s eyes—that deep, pure gray that could go from smoke to ice as colored by emotion. The knowledge had her taking a quick step back, but his hand was already coming down to cover hers.
“I’m going to miss her, every moment of the rest of my life.”
Julia let her fingers link with his and led him to the pew where Paul was waiting.
The line of cars sedately cruising to Forest Hills streamed like a black ribbon for miles. Inside the individual cars some grieved deeply. Others cuddled in the cool lushness of the rented limos mourned in an abstract, general way, as people do when they hear on the late news that a celebrity has died. They mourned the passing of a name, of a face, of a personality. It wasn’t an insult to the person behind the face, but a tribute to its impact.
Some were simply grateful to have been included in the guest list. For surely such an event would warrant plenty of print space. This, too, was not an insult. It was simply business.
There were others who grieved not at all, who sat in the silent cave of the big, smooth car holding pleasure in their hearts as dark and shiny as the gleaming paint that glinted in the sunlight.
In some ways, this, too, could be considered a tribute.
But Julia, who stepped out of the car to make the short walk to the gravesite fit none of these categories. She had already buried her parents, already taken that long, difficult step from daughter to orphan. And yet, moving with her with each step, was a deep, dragging ache. Today she would bury another mother, face yet again her own ultimate mortality.
As she stood, smelling grass, earth, and the heavy curtain of flowers, she blocked out the present and let her mind travel back into the past.
Laughing with Eve beside the pool, drinking a little too much wine, speaking much too frankly. How had it been that she had been able to say so much to Eve?
Sweating together as Fritz whipped them into shape. Grunted curses, breathless complaints. The odd intimacy of two half-naked women trapped in the same cage of vanity.
Shared secrets, candid confidences, unwrapped lies. How easy it had been to forge a friendship.
Isn’t that what Eve had wanted? Julia asked herself. To ease her into friendship, to make her care, to force her to see Eve as a person, whole, vulnerable. And then …
What did it matter? Eve was dead. The rest of the truth, if there was a rest, would never come out.
Julia mourned, even as she wondered if she could ever forgive.
“Shit.” Frank scrubbed his hands over his face. His job was pushing from him at all angles. He saw only one route, and it led straight to Julia Summers.
All of his professional life, Frank had relied heavily on instinct. A good gut hunch could guide a cop through the labyrinth of suspects, evidence, procedure. Never in his career could he remember his instincts being so dramatically opposed to the facts.
They were all in front of him, in the fat file he’d been building over the past three days.
Forensic reports, autopsy, the typed and signed statements of the people he or one of the other detectives had interviewed.
And the timing, the goddamn timing couldn’t be ignored.
Both the housekeeper and the secretary had seen Eve Benedict a few minutes before one P.M. on the date of the murder. Gloria DuBarry had left moments before, after a short private conversation with Eve. Julia Summers had arrived at the gate at approximately one, had chatted with the guard, then had gone inside. The emergency call from the guest house had been logged in at one twenty-two.
Julia had no alibi for that vital length of time, that vital twenty-two minutes, when, according to the evidence, Eve Benedict had been murdered.
The hook on the brass fireplace poker had impaled the base of her neck. That wound and the blow had resulted in death. Julia Summers’s fingerprints were the only ones found on the poker.
All the doors had been locked except the main entrance, which Julia had admitted to opening herself. No keys had been found on Eve’s body.
Circumstantial, certainly, but damning enough, even without the addition of the argument described in both statements.
Being told she was Eve Benedict’s illegitimate daughter had apparently sent Julia Summers into a wild rage.
“She was screaming, threatening,” he read from Travers’s statement. “I heard her shouting and came running out. She shoved over the table so that the china broke all over the tiles. Her face was pale as a sheet and she warned Eve not to come near her. Said she could kill her.”
Of course, people said that kind of thing all the time, Frank thought, digging at an itch at the back of his neck. It was just their bad luck when somebody died hard on the heels of them using the common little phrase.
Trouble was, he couldn’t think about luck. And with the pressure from the governor all the way down to his own captain, Frank couldn’t afford to let instinct sway him from the facts.
He was going to have to bring Julia in for questioning.
The lawyer cleared his throat as he scanned the room. Everything was exactly as Eve had requested it. Greenburg wondered if she could have known when she had demanded he put everything through so quickly that her time would be short.
He pulled himself up. He wasn’t a fanciful man. Eve had been in a hurry because she had always been in a hurry. The ferocity with which she had approached this new will was the same she had shown for everything. The changes had certainly been brutally simple. That was another quality Eve could assert when the mood struck.
When he started to speak, everyone in the room fell silent. Even Drake, in the process of pouring another drink, paused. When the statement began with the routine list of bequests to servants and charities, he continued to pour. Over the silence was the sound of liquid hitting crystal.
The personal bequests were specific. To Maggie, Eve left a particular pair of emerald earrings and a triple rope of pearls, along with a Wyeth painting the agent had always admired.
For Rory Wi
nthrop, there was a pair of Dresden candlesticks they had purchased during their first year of marriage, and a volume of Keats.
Gloria began to sob against her husband’s shoulder when she heard she had inherited an antique jewelry box.
“We were in Sotheby’s, years ago,” she said brokenly. Guilt and grief waged a vicious war inside her. “And she outbid me for it. Oh, Marcus.”
He murmured to her while Greenburg again cleared his throat and continued.
To Nina she had left a collection of Limoges boxes and ten thousand dollars a year for every year she had been in Eve’s employ. To Travers she left a house in Monterey, the same financial bequest, and a trust fund for her son that would see to his medical needs for his lifetime.
To her sister, who hadn’t attended the memorial or the reading, Eve left a small block of rental units. Drake was mentioned only in passing, as having received all of his inheritance during her lifetime.
His reaction was predictable, predictable enough to bring grim smiles to some of those seated in the room. He spilled his drink, infusing the room with the smell of expensive whiskey. His gasp of disbelief was accented by the tinkle of ice cubes as they dropped from his glass onto the glossy surface of the bar.
While those in the room watched with varying degrees of interest or disgust, he flew into a rage that traveled the spectrum from swearing, to whining, to babbling and back to swearing.
“Goddamn bitch.” He nearly choked on the air he dragged into his lungs. His face was the unhealthy color of an eraser faded by sunlight. “I gave her years, nearly twenty fucking years of my life. I won’t be cut off this way. Not after everything I did for her.”
“Did for her?” Maggie gave a hoarse laugh. “You never did anything for Eve except lighten her bank account.”
He took a step forward, nearly drunk enough to consider hitting a woman in front of witnesses. “All you ever did was leech your fifteen percent. I was family. If you think you’re going to walk out of here with emeralds or anything else while I get nothing—”
“Mr. Morrison,” the attorney interrupted. “You are, of course, free to contest the will—”
“Fucking-a right.”
“However,” he continued with unruffled dignity. “I should tell you that Miss Benedict discussed her wishes with me quite specifically. I also have a copy of a videotape she made, less conventionally stating those wishes. You will find contesting this document very expensive, and less than fruitful. If you wish to do so, you’ll still have to wait until I finish with today’s procedure. To continue …”
There was a bequest for Victor that included her collection of poetry and a small paperweight described as a glass dome enclosing a red sleigh and eight reindeer.
“To Brandon Summers, whom I find charming, I leave the sum of one million dollars for his education and entertainment to be set in trust until his twenty-fifth birthday, when he will be free to do whatever appeals to him with whatever sum remains.”
“That’s fucking ludicrous,” Drake began. “She leaves a million, a goddamn million to some kid? Some snotty brat kid who might as well have come off the street.”
Before Julia could speak, Paul had risen. The look on his face had her blood going cold. She wondered how anyone could survive being on the receiving end of that ice-edged glance.
Threats were expected. A quick, nasty fistfight wouldn’t have surprised. Hell, it would have been enjoyed. Even Gloria had stopped whimpering to watch. But Paul, his eyes flat and hard and level, spoke only one sentence.
“Don’t open your mouth again.”
He said it quietly, but no one could have missed the barbed and ready edge beneath the words. When he took his seat again, Greenburg merely nodded, as if Paul had given the correct answer to a particularly thorny question.
“The rest,” he read, “including all real and personal property, all assets, all stocks, bonds, revenue, I leave to Paul Winthrop and Julia Summers, to be shared between them in whatever manner they see fit.”
Julia heard nothing else. The lawyer’s droning voice couldn’t penetrate the buzzing in her ears. She could see his mouth move, see his dark, sharp eyes on her face. There was a tingling in her arm, as if it had fallen asleep and the blood was fighting its way back into circulation with its little pinpricks of annoyance. But it was only Paul’s hand as he gripped her.
She rose to her feet without being aware. Blindly, her feet reaching for the floor like a drunkard’s, she stumbled out of the room and onto the terrace.
There was life there, the vibrant hues from the flowers, the insistently cheerful call of birds. And air. She could pull it into her lungs, feel it stream in, then out again as if it, too, had color and texture and sound. She drew more in, greedily, then felt the stab of pain slice through her stomach.
“Take it easy.” Paul’s hands were on her shoulders, his voice low and soft in her ear.
“I can’t.” The voice she heard sounded much too thin, much too wobbly to be hers. “How can I? It isn’t right that she should have given me anything.”
“She thought it was right.”
“You don’t know the things I said to her, how I treated her that last night. And beyond—for God’s sake, Paul, she owed me nothing.”
He caught her chin, forced her to look at him. “I think you’re more afraid of what you feel you owe her.”
“Mr. Winthrop. Excuse me.” Greenburg nodded at both of them. “I realize this is a difficult day for you, for all of us, but there is one more item Miss Benedict asked me to see to for her.” He held out a padded envelope. “A copy of the tape she made. Her request was for you, both of you, to view this after the reading of the will.”
“Thank you.” Paul accepted the bag. “She would have appreciated your … efficiency.”
“No doubt.” The barest wisp of a smile touched his thin face. “She was quite a woman—annoying, demanding, opinionated. I’ll miss her.” The smile faded as if it had never been. “If you need me for anything, please don’t hesitate to call. You may have questions about some of the properties or her portfolio. And when you’re ready, there will be some paperwork for you to look over. My condolences.”
“I’d like to take Miss Summers home shortly,” Paul told him. “But we’ll want to go inside and have some privacy when we view this. Could I leave you to—to secure the premises?”
Something twinkled in his eyes that might have been amusement. “It would be a pleasure.”
Paul waited until they were alone on the terrace again. Through the glass doors Greenburg had closed at his back came the sounds of heated voices and bitter tears. The old man was going to have his hands full, he thought, then looked at Julia. Her eyes were dry again, her face composed. But her skin was so pale he wondered if his fingers would pass right through it, straight to the grief, if he touched her now.
“It might be best if we went up to Eve’s room to take a look at this.”
Julia stared at the package he held. Part of her, the part she recognized as a coward, wanted to turn away, to go pick up Brandon and run back east. Couldn’t she, if she tried hard enough, convince herself it had all been a dream. From the first phone call, the first meeting with Eve, right up to this moment?
She brought her gaze up, met his eyes. Then he would have been a dream as well. Then he would have to be a dream as well, everything they’d shared and built. All those fragile new hopes would be blown away like dust.
“All right.”
“Give me a minute.” He pressed the tape into her hands. “Go on in around the other side of the house. I’ll be right there.”
It wasn’t easy to go in, to open the door and enter the room where Eve had slept and loved. It smelled of flowers, flowers and polish, and that smoldering woman scent Eve had always carried with her.
Travers had tidied, of course. Compelled, Julia trailed her fingers over the thick satin of the sapphire bedspread. She’d chosen a coffin of the same color, Julia remembered, snatching her hand b
ack. Was that for irony, or for comfort?
Closing her eyes, she rested her brow against the cool wood of the carved bedpost. For a moment, just a moment, she let herself feel.
No, it wasn’t death that surrounded her here. Only the memories of life.
When Paul joined her, he didn’t speak. Over the past few days he had watched her grow more and more delicate. His own grief was like a small wild animal in his gut that kept clawing and chewing and ripping. Whatever form Julia’s grief took, it was slowly, insidiously sucking the life and strength from her. He poured them both a brandy, and when he spoke, his voice was deliberately cool and detached.
“You’ll have to snap out of it soon, Jules. You’re not doing yourself or Brandon any good walking around in a trance.”
“I’m fine.” She took the snifter, then passed it from hand to hand. “I want it over. All the way over. Once the press gets a hold of the terms of the will—”
“We’ll deal with it.”
“I didn’t want her money, Paul, or her property, or—”
“Her love,” he finished. He set his glass aside to pick up the envelope. “The thing about Eve is that she always insisted on having the last word. You’re stuck with all of them.”
Her fingers whitened on the bowl of the glass. “Do you expect that since I’ve known for a week that she was my mother, I should feel an obligation, an immediate bond, gratitude? She manipulated my life before I was born, and even now, even when she’s gone, she continues to manipulate it.”
He ripped the envelope open, slid the tape out. “I don’t expect you to feel anything. And if you learned anything about her over the past couple of months, you know that she wouldn’t expect you to feel.” He shoved the tape into the VCR, keeping his back to her, while the jagged teeth of his own anguish snapped at him. “I can do this alone.”