by Mary Brady
“He’s such a nice man,” her sister continued.
Sociopath, Addy thought. He knew just how to stroke people to get them to trust him. He would have presented himself as earnest, confident and sympathetic. Zach had a hard time believing Carla would be fooled, but Addy knew what that was like. She hadn’t fallen in love as Carla had, but she had nonetheless been taken in and made a fool of by Rasa and her husband.
A thought struck Addy that horrified her. “He didn’t come to your house, did he?”
“He called me.”
“If he does come, don’t let him in and don’t let him near the girls.”
“You’re scaring me again.”
“It might be justified this time.”
“Why? He’s not the bad guy. You’ve got the bad guy up there.”
“I need you to trust me on this one. Carla Blankenstock’s husband is not going to help you get your money back.”
“Okay, sis, we’ll see. I tell you he’s a nice guy. So tell me what he’s really like.”
“Carla’s husband?” Addy knew what her sister was asking. What was Zachary Hale really like? Tall, strong, abs that beg to be touched, kisses that made her forget her own name. His smile slightly lopsided when he was relaxed. Honorable. A man she would like to spend the rest of her life with. A man who would not let her emotionally near him because he might be embattled for the foreseeable future. Couldn’t he see she’d fight that battle at his side and love every minute? That she would not care about the unkind and sometimes evil things her competitors and erstwhile friends would write about him and sometimes her.
“Addy, Addy are you there?” her sister called.
“What?” She hoped she hadn’t said any of that aloud. “I’m here.”
“Hale. What’s Zachary Hale like?”
“I don’t want to talk about him.” I want him now and always, she thought, I want his arms around me.
Talk was not good enough. If she got Carla Blankenstock’s husband to give himself away, maybe this could all be over. “Go back to sleep. Thanks for the info.”
* * *
ZACH SAT IN the chair across from Carla Blankenstock’s desk while she paced on the other side. The midmorning Boston sun streamed brightly through the window.
“Carla, this isn’t you. None of this is you.”
“You have to leave, Zach. My husband will be here any minute and he’ll be furious if he finds I’ve been talking to you.”
She looked older than she had just a few weeks ago. Her dark brown hair seemed to lack its usual luster and her features were drawn in deep concern.
“He’s occupied right now.” Zach knew Addy would soon be deep into her interview of Carla’s husband.
Carla strode to the window of her expansive office and put her hands over her face and cried. Zach didn’t go to comfort her because the Carla Blankenstock he knew would summon her personal strength and thank no one who tried to help her.
After a few minutes, she took a deep breath and pulled her shoulders back. She held her hands folded lightly in front of her. It was her low-threat, high-power stance. She always used it when she was not quite certain of the position she had taken.
“I’m so sorry, Zach. So sorry. I’ve wanted for so long to tell you what was going on but I felt paralyzed and like a prisoner in my own life.”
Zach felt sorrow for his former partner and how wrong her life had gone. For whatever reason she chose to be frank with him now, he was grateful. “Start at the beginning.”
She barked a sad kind of laugh. “That’s easy. I’m a fool. An embarrassed and stupid fool. I fell in love. Isn’t that funny? Like a schoolgirl I fell for a sweet-talking guy.”
Zach couldn’t exactly call Addy sweet-talking but he understood the sentiment of love, something he had never quite grasped before Adriana Bonacorda and he couldn’t let himself feel now.
“I thought he was in love with me. He said we were spending the money for us, our new home, our fabulous vacation home, an investment for our future children, our farm in France that would be our retirement haven.”
Zach nodded, but let her continue.
“After we went through my money, he was angry at first to find most of my family money is tied up in trust. Our grandfather drilled into my sister and me if we ever lost the family fortune we would be failing the whole family. When I told my husband I could make any amount of money we needed, his words became so beautiful, his promises so sweet. I couldn’t disappoint him.”
“That’s when you turned to Hale and Blankenstock for the shortfall.”
She came over and took the chair next to his. “It turns out I couldn’t make money fast enough for what we needed. I know now no amount would have been enough. For the first year, there were no irregularities in our accounts because I set up a dummy company from which my husband could withdraw at will. He made everything he said, everything he got me to do, seem so plausible. ‘Things will only be this way for a short time,’ he would say.”
“I’m trying to picture the Carla I knew in school making the first illegal transaction.”
She gave a small derisive laugh. “It was so easy in the beginning. I knew I’d put it back in no time. I took a little here and there, but when the returns started to look subpar, I borrowed a little from the new accounts to pay the withdrawals. I should have stopped before I borrowed, but I didn’t.
“The worst part of all this is that I knew it was happening. It wasn’t as if I was drugged or unconscious or somebody had taken over my life. I knew each and every thing I did wrong was going to hurt someone. I knew that we were going to get caught and I knew we were blaming you. I knew all this and I did nothing. It was as if pleasing him was an addiction. I was always going to fix things tomorrow.”
“You’re doing something now. You’re telling me.”
“I’m a coward. I never knew it until now. I’m scared to death to face all this alone.”
“You won’t be alone, Carla.”
“But I ruined it all. I ruined our wonderful company. I ruined our friendship and you did nothing wrong and I ruined your reputation. I can’t take any of it back. I couldn’t even refuse a date with the charming man I met at the country club.” She laughed a sad sound. “I don’t even know why he was at the club. No one seems to have invited him. When I found that out after we’d been married for almost two years, I asked him and he got elusive and then he got angry when I pressed. That’s when he threatened me the first time. He said I was in too deep to get out and—” she looked up at him “—he said he’d have to take you down for the irregularities if I revealed anything.
“I let myself be convinced that you would not be ruined by what we were doing. You had enough money to buy your way out of anything. I guess some of what fed my idiocy was that I was jealous of your ability to handle anything, anytime. After that he hinted the SEC would like to know what I was doing and since I so heavily represented my family, I’d ruin them all if I stopped. Of course I knew it wouldn’t last, but I couldn’t seem to get control of the situation.”
She shook her head. “I know I could have come to you. Obviously, I should have. I was afraid for both of us by then.”
“What do you mean afraid?”
“He’s unpredictable, Zach. Mean. Cruel, even.”
Dread suddenly hammered at him.
Addy was in danger and she was there because of him. “Addy’s with him. Do you know where?”
“Who is Addy?”
“A reporter who was going to interview him this morning. Do you know where?”
“He usually does interviews in his office in our home. He says there is no point in having a ten-million-dollar home if you don’t show it off.”
“Would they be there alone?”
“I don’t think so. Mrs. Confrey is usually there all
day. He hired the woman. Said she was a good watchdog for the house, a watchdog for me, he meant, but she wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“Or be much help in defending a reporter.” He pushed up from the chair. “I need to leave.”
“What’s wrong, Zach?”
The closing door to her office would have to suffice for an answer right now. He whipped out his cell.
Addy, be safe, he thought as he listened to her outgoing message when she didn’t pick up.
* * *
ADDY HAD BEEN waiting in a coffee shop on Boston Post Road nursing a skim latte and making notes of the questions to ask Carla Blankenstock’s husband and in what order. Chief Montcalm had given her a few, as did Hunter Morrison. Zach had silently pleaded with her to be safe. She was well versed by the time she pushed the doorbell of the house big enough to fit her condo inside about fifteen times over.
She could hear the doorbell echoing inside the palatial mansion in Weston near Boston, where the subject of her interview insisted they meet. The approaching footsteps inside told her nothing. There would be help here and Mr. Blankenstock would be waiting some place in the house that would put him in the best light, a paneled office or if he wanted to be more casual, a sunroom on such a bright and sunny day.
The door opened to a sixtyish woman in a very formal housekeeper’s uniform, à la very old-money Boston. Only this housekeeper had somewhere along the line lost her cool.
“What’s the matter?” Addy asked the distraught woman whose uniform was torn and her cheek bruised.
“I don’t know what to do.” The woman brought her hand to her cheek and pressed the red spot with the back of her fingers.
“I’m Adriana Bonacorda. I’m a reporter and I have an appointment with Mrs. Blankenstock’s husband. May I come in?” Addy knew a source when it was about to break lose. She also knew this woman was in trouble.
The woman nodded and held the door open for her.
They had to step around a very large vase broken on the marble entryway floor. “Is whoever did this still here?”
“No, no, he left.”
“Should I call the police?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.” The woman led her into an office with wooden panels on the walls, of course, and a large, expensive desk. The office had been tossed. Pens, paper, books and bookends had been thrown everywhere. The computer monitor must have been hurled against a wall and what was left of a nautical clock lay burst apart on the floor beside the monitor.
“Tell me your name,” Addy said to the nervous-looking woman.
“Confrey, I’m Gwendolyn Confrey.”
“Can you take me to the kitchen, Gwendolyn?” Addy led the woman out of the office.
Marble, white-stained wood and copper were the theme in the kitchen, beautiful, and best of all the room had not been violently searched. Gwendolyn should feel safer here.
Addy put her arm around the woman to comfort her. “I’ll make us some tea for us.” And you can give me a story, the reporter in Addy thought.
“Did you surprise a thief?”
“I suppose I did. He was searching through everything. I don’t know what he was looking for.”
“Did you recognize him?”
“Certainly. It was Mrs. Blankenstock’s husband. He was pulling things out of the drawers in the office, all the time telling me I was fired and he was leaving this place—he called it a very bad word. He said he was leaving forever.”
“He hit you.”
She nodded. “He grabbed my uniform to try to throw me out of Mrs. Blankenstock’s bedroom when I tried to stop him from searching in there. When I wouldn’t go, he hit me with his fist.”
Addy winced. She’d felt a fist more than once while seeking a worthy story. “I’m going to call the police.”
Addy dialed 911 while she searched for a plastic bag for a few ice cubes for Gwendolyn’s cheek.
The woman sat on a stool at the counter and then leaped to her feet. “I can’t leave a mess. Mrs. Blankenstock will be home soon. Do you really think he’s gone for good?”
“Sit back down. Put the ice on for a few minutes. We’ll go take a look, but you can’t clean things up. The police will want to see it as it is.”
She nodded.
“Did he take anything?”
She nodded again. “He took some of Mrs. Blankenstock’s jewelry. Not the good stuff. That’s in her father’s lockbox at the bank, except the Palidor Perfection.”
Addy must have looked puzzled as the woman explained. “A ruby, very large. It’s been in the family since before England’s Regency era. It came by way of Italy as a gift.”
Addy filled two cups from the instant hot-water dispenser and dropped decaf green-tea bags into the cups.
“I have to go up. I have to go look,” the woman said, but stayed perched on the stool.
“All right, but just while our tea steeps. And you won’t touch anything.”
“I won’t touch anything,” she repeated, her voice quivering.
In Carla Blankenstock’s bedroom chaos reigned. The mattress was off the bed. The bedding had been strewn around the room. The sofa and chairs had been overturned.
“Oh, my.” With both hands to her cheeks, the woman ran into the room and snatched up a small photo that had been ripped from its frame. A ruby was at stake and she went for the baby picture. Addy decided right then, she liked Gwendolyn Confrey.
She grabbed the older woman before she could pick up anything else. “The police are coming. Let’s allow them to check things before you touch stuff. Mrs. Blankenstock will understand.”
“If you think so.”
“Addy. Addy, are you here?” a voice came from downstairs.
“He’s back. Oh, hide. He’s back.” Mrs. Confrey grabbed Addy’s arm and tugged her toward a closet.
“That’s not him. It’s not Mr. Blankenstock.” The man calling her name unreasonably sounded like Zach, but she knew Chief Montcalm had him essentially jailed in Bailey’s Cove.
“Mr. Spielmann.” The housekeeper corrected her use of Mr. Blankenstock. “His name. Nobody used it. Are you really, really sure it’s not him?”
“Game man.” Appropriate, Addy thought. “It’s really, really not him.”
“Addy.” The call came muffled from a distance.
Jail or not, Zachary Hale was downstairs in Carla Blankenstock’s home.
“Mrs. Confrey, I need to leave for a moment.”
The woman gave her a sad look of resignation.
“It’s not Mr. Spielmann. It’s Mr. Hale.”
Her face brightened. “I’ve met him. He’s nice.”
“Stay here. The police will only be a few minutes.”
She ran to the landing. “Zach, I’m here.”
In a second he appeared at the bottom of the semicircle of the dark wooden stairs. She ran down as he ran up.
Halfway up or down their kiss was epic.
“You are going to kill me, woman.”
“Don’t be such a sissy man.”
He took her face in his hands and kissed her lips, her nose and her forehead. “You make me a sissy man. I never was before you came along.”
“What are you doing out of the State of Maine?”
“Kissing you.”
She tipped her head to the side and then smiled. “Good enough.”
Pressing her open mouth to his, she drew him close for the next series of kisses.
“Hello?”
A very small voice came from right behind Addy. She pulled back and turned around. Gwendolyn stood three steps above her with the ice bag to her cheek.
“Zachary Hale, you already know Gwendolyn Confrey.”
“Hello, Mrs. Confrey.”
; “Mrs. Confrey and I are waiting for the police and she’s going to tell them how Mr. Spielmann assaulted her, robbed the house and ran away.”
Mrs. Confrey nodded her head.
“And we were just about to go down to the kitchen and have tea. Would you like to join us, Zach?”
Mrs. Confrey seemed so relieved at the prospect, Addy could hardly tell the woman she’d rather leave and go be ravaged by the man she loved and maybe even get a declaration of the same.
If the world was fair at all, he loved her in return. If not, she was certain there must be a position for a blogger in Nepal or Bora Bora. She wouldn’t need much, just enough for her sorry old self to subsist on.
When they got to the kitchen, Mrs. Confrey insisted on putting milk and honey into their two cups of tea.
Addy reached for another cup, but Zach took her by the arm and that could not mean anything good. She leaned into him.
“I can’t stay,” he said.
“Why did I already know that? The chief expects you to remain in Bailey’s Cove and here you are in Boston. He’ll know you’ve left, you know.”
“But chances are the FBI doesn’t. If I go back and they don’t find out, whatever mysterious credibility our Chief Montcalm has with the Bureau remains intact.”
“Mrs. Confrey, I’m going to walk Mr. Hale to the door.”
As soon as they were out of sight of the kitchen, she stepped in front of him and reached up to kiss him. His lips were so warm, his embrace so strong. He was so right for her.
Was it possible he didn’t know that? Yet it seemed everyone else did.
“Has anything changed?” she asked, hoping against what she already knew.
He shook his head. “Just a few of the details. Hale and Blankenstock is still in deep trouble that may take a long time to sort out.”
When he turned and walked down the hall toward the front door she let him go. She knew that in light of the recent spotlight on financial schemes, Zach was implying that he might have to spend some of that time in jail. And that she couldn’t tell the story if she were attached to him.
“Mrs. Confrey,” she said when she got back to the worst cup of tea she’d ever had. “I want you to tell me everything you know about Mr. Spielmann.”