by Lexi Blake
He sounded cold. “How can you say that when you’ve met him? I don’t think I could live with myself if I shoved him in a home. It certainly isn’t what Portia wanted.”
“I seriously doubt Portia would want you to give up your career in order to watch over a man who will rapidly not care what happens to himself. Do you understand where this disease is going? He will become violent over time. He will need people around to stop him from hurting himself and others.”
She shook her head. “You still think he did it. No matter what you say, I can see it in your eyes. After everything we’ve uncovered, you still think he killed her in a fit of rage.”
He held his hands up and stepped back. “I don’t want to fight with you.”
She didn’t want to fight either, but his attitude was the first red flag she’d had. They’d been in perfect harmony it seemed. Of course, they’d also been in a pressure cooker. Sometimes it was easy to cling to each other when the times were bad.
Would they be able to make it in the real world? A world where they both went to work every day and might make it home for dinner a couple of times a week? Could they work if they had such a difference of opinion on how to treat someone like Trey?
“Isla”—he prompted her to look at him—“let’s talk about this later. Like I said, it’s nothing for us to worry about now. I have to see if I can even get him in front of a judge first. From what I understand Miranda and Oscar went in for interviews yesterday and I was told Oscar refused his attorney.”
She winced. “Yeah, he was being an ass about it. Miranda told me the ADA didn’t ask anything out of the ordinary and that her story corroborated my own.”
“And we have zero idea what Oscar said, but we have to think he implicated his father.”
“And maybe me.” She didn’t like to think about Oscar telling Royce she’d had an affair with Trey. Royce would believe him without any kind of proof. Of course they would try to get him recused from the case, but until there was an arrest, there wasn’t a lot they could do.
“It’s going to be okay,” David assured her. “Let me know if you find anything, and think about what I said. You don’t have to make decisions now, but you might have to soon. Kiss me goodbye. I’ve got to hop on a call on my way to the office.”
She nodded and let him kiss her again, but she needed time to think. He strode away, putting the phone to his ear, and she watched as he disappeared.
How could he be so heartless? What did she really know about her lover? He was good to her, but she’d been shocked at his callousness with Trey’s future.
She could handle it. There was plenty of money. Surely that would make things easier.
Although she’d seen the toll it had taken on Portia. Still, she couldn’t imagine making the decision to leave him in a home that wasn’t his own.
She stared at the elevator. David was overwhelming. He was smart and kind and something didn’t sit right about his reaction this morning.
Was he having second thoughts?
And what would she do if he recommended taking a plea? Could she fire him and still have a relationship with him? She knew the stupidest thing she could do was ignore the advice of an incredible criminal lawyer because she was too emotionally involved with her client.
She was in such a tough position and she had no idea what to do, but she’d been placed in this exact position because Portia had trusted her, believed she would do what was best.
The problem was that what was best for Trey might not be best for Miranda and Oscar.
She turned back to the work at hand, staring down at the pile marked Adams. A whole family’s life and choices, their future and past, in one neat stack. Those papers represented everything from private school records to last will and testaments.
It hit her then that she was responsible. She was the one responsible for Miranda and Oscar and Trey, and they would likely fight her on a lot of the decisions to come.
All the pain of motherhood and none of the joy.
Erin strode in looking cool and confident in her slacks and white button-down. She would put on a jacket when they went out, the better to cover the Beretta she carried at all times. “We’ve got guests. According to the front desk, Cressida Bardsley is downstairs and she has Oscar with her. You want to see them?”
She should text David, but he was in the middle of a conference call.
If Oscar was here, she wasn’t sure how that could be good. Still, she wouldn’t do herself any favors by not seeing them, and she had a few questions for Portia’s sister now that she’d apparently woken up from her Xanax stupor. Isla had been calling for two days to see if she could set up an interview. “You can let them up.”
She wished she was better dressed but it was still early. She’d barely finished her second cup of coffee. She hoped David didn’t get pissed that she took this meeting without him, but she wasn’t sure Cressida would make herself available again.
Within a few minutes, the door opened and Cressida Bardsley walked through. The woman liked to make an entrance. She was dressed in black from head to toe, her mourning translated into fashion. Her makeup was impeccable, but she looked gaunt, a bit haunted. Oscar was by her side, his hair slicked back and an arrogant look in his eyes as he entered the penthouse.
“Well, Isla, it looks like you’ve traded up in the world. This place is even better than ours. Who are you fucking to get this?” Oscar asked.
Erin’s brows shot up. “Hello, young asshole. I don’t know that I like how you’re talking to my client.”
Oscar was about to say something, when he seemed to notice that nice-sized gun in Erin’s shoulder holster. He backed down quickly. “Sorry.”
It was good to know someone could handle Oscar.
“You wanted to talk to me, Isla?” Cressida’s heels clicked along the floor. “You left enough messages. Between you and that disgusting gold digger, my phone is full.”
“Gold digger?” Isla asked.
“Carey’s wife,” Cressida replied with a long-suffering sigh. “She keeps calling me looking for pictures for the funeral. Who the hell put her in charge of the memorial? I suspect it was you.”
“Amber kind of takes charge and you weren’t exactly up and around,” she started. “Apparently, Miranda told her she could do it.”
“Well, I was in mourning,” Cressida shot back. “I’m sorry that I miss my sister so much that I couldn’t handle planning her funeral thirty minutes after her death. You can tell that woman that she’ll plan my sister’s funeral over my dead body.”
The morning was going great. “Can I get you some coffee?”
“You can get me some answers. Why is my brother-in-law in a hospital instead of jail?” Cressida gracefully sank to the couch.
“He’s in the hospital because he’s sick and you know he’s sick,” she replied.
“Sick enough to kill my sister,” Cressida said.
“I told you she doesn’t care.” Oscar shrugged. “She only cares about controlling our fortune.”
“And he’s in a high-security hospital. It’s rather like a prison. I couldn’t keep him out.” David couldn’t, but had he done everything he could or had he agreed with the judge and thought it was better to lock Trey up as tightly as possible? She hadn’t considered that until he’d talked to her this morning.
Cressida frowned her way. “I don’t want that man walking around free. Who knows who he’ll come after next? I tried to warn Miranda away, but she won’t listen to me. I’m afraid she’ll be his next victim.”
“He wouldn’t hurt his own daughter,” Isla replied, but she could see it was a losing argument.
Oscar leaned forward, his eyes narrowed. “Is that your plan? You let him kill off me and Miranda and then you get all the cash?”
Erin leaned in, too. Oscar frowned and sat back.
She was tired of being the bad guy. “If you and Miranda die, all the cash goes to a charity. I don’t have any way to use the money on myself. I get paid for the legal work I do, but nothing more. I’ll let you read the contract if you like.”
“I already have a copy, thank you,” Cressida said. “My sister stored a copy of her important legal documents at the beach house in case she ever needed them. Believe me I’ve forwarded it to my own lawyer. I find you use extremely technical language.”
It was called legal terminology, but she bit her tongue on that one.
She needed to get her answers before she lost control of the situation. Defending herself wouldn’t mean a thing to Oscar or Cressida. “Do you know a man by the name of Kristoff Paloma?”
Cressida’s elegant brow rose. “No. I can’t say I have heard of him. What does he have to do with anything?”
“I think Isla and Miranda are so desperate to save Dad they’ve made up a fake lover for Mom,” Oscar answered. “They don’t care about her reputation at all. You don’t mind dragging her through the mud, do you?”
Erin reached into her bag and came back with a picture. “He’s a Dutch national, wanted all over Europe for his various frauds and cons. He would likely have been going by another name.”
“He broke into my apartment the day after Portia’s murder,” Isla explained. “We think he’s looking for something. We also suspect he might be the person your mother’s been meeting every Thursday.”
Cressida took the photograph, studying it. “Honestly he does look familiar. I’ve seen him. I can’t say where though. London, perhaps. No, it was Paris. This man was in Paris the last time I was there with Portia and her friends. He was staying at the same hotel as us and we spent some time in the bar together. But he certainly wasn’t romancing my sister. She never did have eyes for anyone but her husband. And she’d been meeting with an old producer friend for the last month of her life. I do believe it was on Thursdays. He was splitting his time between New York and L.A. Thursday mornings were free for him. What’s his name? You know, the one who produced that football show.”
She knew exactly who Cressida was talking about. “Gary Keller? Why would she meet with him?”
“It was all very hush-hush. She wanted it to be a huge surprise. She was putting together a documentary of Trey’s life and career,” Cressida explained. “I thought it was a waste of time since it’s not like he’ll remember it anyway, but she was quite insistent. It was her labor of love. I think she thought it could remind him. Gary was teaching her how to edit. She’d bought a bunch of software that would help her create the movie on her laptop.”
And there went her best lead. “You’re sure?”
Cressida seemed softer talking about her sister. “Absolutely. She wasn’t having an affair. She would have told me.” She turned to Oscar. “And I highly doubt your father was having an affair with Isla.” She looked up, a frown on her face, but not an unsympathetic one. “You’ll have to forgive our dear Oscar. I think his parents made a terrible mistake by accepting him so easily. He’s an artist, and struggle is important to artists. They should have pretended to be horrified when he came out. Then he could have used that as fuel for his fire. He’s been forced to make up drama. I assure you, I told that terribly arrogant Mr. Osborne that my sister’s marriage was practically perfect, with the single exception of her husband’s mental illness, which, yes, I believe absolutely led to her death. I didn’t say I thought he meant to do it, but he’s capable of it. The man always was a barbarian on the inside.”
Isla struggled to keep up with Cressida’s mercurial opinions. She’d always been like this, always changed her stance to keep the drama going. “I wish you would have talked to me before you went to the ADA.”
How could David fight this if most of the family was willing to testify against him?
An unamused smile crossed Cressida’s perfect face. “Why, dear? So you could convince me to lie to the police and the DA? You wanted me to plead for my brother-in-law’s life? The truth is my sister was far too good for some athlete. She should have married someone with real talent, but Portia would never listen to good advice. Now, do you have anything else to ask me in your desperate attempt to save my brother-in-law’s pathetic life?”
She wanted to tell Cressida to fuck off and get out, but that wouldn’t solve her problems. She still needed answers. “Do you know of anyone Portia would have wanted revenge against?”
A blank expression crossed her face. “Revenge? That sounds awfully dramatic. I would expect that to come out of Oscar’s mouth, not my sister’s.”
Oscar huffed and sat back. “You don’t know her as well as you think you did. My mom was a saint unless you messed with her family. Then she could be ruthless.”
“Trey said the night she died she talked about getting back at someone, taking them down,” she explained.
“My father could have been talking about a conversation from my childhood,” Oscar said, waving her off. “Mother used to talk about bullies like that. She would cuddle me and tell me she would take them down and then she would lean on the mothers and explain that they would have no social life at all if they continued to allow their brats to mess with me. Mom took care of us. Always.”
“He was very certain.” She didn’t want to lose this. “He also said he heard someone moving around downstairs that night.”
“And two months ago I had to call a service because Dad decided to go scuba diving in the bathroom,” Oscar said with a shake of his head. “He tried to fill the whole of the bathroom so he could do it. He’s insane. You can’t trust anything he says. Look, if Mom was talking about taking someone out, it was likely someone who said something shitty about Dad. Hell, it could have been me she was talking about. We had a fight that morning.”
“The morning you made her breakfast?” She needed to get a timeline of the day.
“Yeah, like I said, she would only eat if I did the work and put it in front of her. Then she would eat it out of pure guilt. She was worried about Dad.” Oscar’s arms went over his chest in a protective gesture. “I didn’t make things easier on her. I told her she should put Dad in a home. He was making her miserable.”
Cressida patted her nephew’s leg. “We all tried to talk to her about that. He was a danger to himself and others. He needed to be somewhere they could handle him.”
Well, wasn’t that the argument of the day. “I don’t think she was talking about you. Your father said she used the term ‘them.’ She said she would take them down. And I seriously doubt she would talk about revenge on you. No matter what happened, she adored you.”
For once Oscar looked like he gave a shit. “She was a good mom.” He was quiet for a moment. “She was a little off that morning. Like I said, she wouldn’t eat. When my mom was upset, she wouldn’t eat, but when I asked her what it was about she said she didn’t want to discuss it. She said I would know soon enough.”
That was mysterious. “But she gave you no indication at all why she was upset?”
“I can tell you some of the things she was worried about,” Oscar offered. “She was worried about me being out in Brooklyn. She was worried about my lack of a boyfriend. She thought Aunt Cressy was drinking too much.”
Cressida shuddered. “Like she should have talked.”
Oscar continued. “She was worried about Miranda because she thinks my sister is screwing one of her professors. She is, but it’s nothing serious. She doesn’t . . . didn’t give Miranda enough credit for having a level head. The man’s not even married or anything. It’s barely a scandal. But mostly she was worried about Dad. Always, always worried about Dad.”
“Maybe she was finally going to put him in a hospital,” Cressida mused. “That would certainly make her tense. I know she wasn’t feeling up to our girls’ trip.”
“You were planning another one?”
“We
wanted to go to Milan for a week with the usual women. I personally would have been happier without Portia’s friends, but she believed in having a group of friends. I found some of them extremely gauche, but she tried to mentor some of the younger wives she met at various functions. She was always taking in strays, you know.”
“Can you get me a list of who went with you on that Paris trip?”
“If I can find it,” Cressida replied in a tone that let Isla know she wouldn’t make this a priority. “I’ve got it somewhere. I was responsible for the private jet and had to have everyone’s passport numbers. I’m sure I kept it since we used the same list for London. I was surprised she canceled Milan. She told me we would still go but quietly. I think she finally got tired of having a procession of obnoxious bitches around her. Speaking of one of them, will you get that Amber thing off my back? The medical examiner hasn’t even released my sister’s body yet. I don’t know when we want the memorial service to be. It certainly won’t be public.”
“Yeah, I think family only.” Oscar was back to being a brat. “That means no interlopers. And I hear the penthouse was released by the cops. I’m going over this afternoon. There are some things I need to pick up. Try not to be there when I am.”
Oscar stalked off toward the elevator.
Cressida rolled her perfectly done eyes. “Of course you’ll be welcome at the memorial, Isla. But you should understand that I intend to challenge the will and you as executor. I don’t have a problem with you except that you’re not family. It’s nothing at all personal, but my sister wasn’t thinking about what was best at the end.”
And now she would have to fight Cressida and Oscar. She would need to pay a lawyer and spend all her time trying to maintain control.