What had happened to his family? The wife, sons and father-in law whom he was meant to adore? They had not come out of hiding to mourn his death. Why had Don Richardson left his wallet and documents to be readily found in a car that he had only rented that morning? What had happened to the missing money? He must have used an alias for the past four months. Were his family still living in this disguise? And if the family still had the embezzled funds, then what did Don Richardson's suicide actually achieve? It hadn't restored any livelihood to those who had lost it.
The press carried on for a few more days. The mystery of the months spent in Spain. The possible lifestyle the Richardsons might have lived on what was once called the Costa del Crime. The whereabouts of the grieving family. As always, Spanish authorities said they were co-operating closely with the Irish law forces to track them down. Efforts to find the family had been intensified among British and Irish expatriates in the area of the drowning tragedy. They had led to nothing. Nobody had ever heard of this family. There had been no trace of any of them since that morning four months ago when they had arrived in Spain using their own passports, and simply never been seen again.
And gradually, as other things happened, the story and speculation about Don Richardson disappeared from the papers. And public opinion began to revert to the thinking that he really had drowned. Brenda noticed from hearing people talk in the restaurant that the pendulum had swung back to where it was before. There had been no sightings of Don back in Dublin. And surely, if he had staged his own suicide, it would have been to get away from the mindless anonymity of being in a Spanish resort,
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back to where he had been king of everything. To Dublin, where he was a somebody. Don the great risk-taker would have known enough people who would have hidden him. And yet there had not been a whisper.
Ella was in control again. She was alert and interested when Derry had introduced her to some of his financial people, the section where Firefly Films would direct their final budgets. She concentrated hard so that she would be able to put a face to each name.
Kimberly suggested she see some films already made on similar themes, and got her in touch with a viewing theatre. It was all very simple, if you had an introduction through the Kings. Ella realised more each day how important they must be and was glad she had not really understood this at the outset.
Most evenings she ate in a restaurant with Derry. He chose all kinds of different places for her, and seemed pleased with her company. He said he hated to eat alone in restaurants and usually wound up with take-out and ate at home, so she was saving him from indigestion. They talked easily. She never asked him why a man so wealthy, so single and obviously very eligible, managed to escape the New York prowling ladies. She told him tales about her childhood, and though she mentioned that they lived in what had been a garden shed next to their old house, she never said why.
Derry told her tales of holidays in Alberta when he was a child; the three children went to their Canadian grandparents for the whole summer. Five years they had done that, it had always been magical. He never said why his mother had not gone with them, and she never asked.
She told him about Deirdre who had been her friend since she was ten and how Nick and Sandy were going to get married. She said she missed teaching, but that she had needed to leave herself free to make money this summer.
He seemed to think that this was a perfectly normal thing to do. He himself had left school at fifteen and had worked in a variety of jobs. When he was twenty, he realised he'd need qualifications if he were to try to give his brothers any kind of start in life. So he got a job as a cleaner/janitor in a college and arranged his hours so that he could do business studies as well. It hadn't been easy, of course, mopping the floors and clearing the litter bins when other kids were going out to ball games or bowling alleys. But then nobody had it easy all the time, and he got a few good
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night-watchman stints too, which of course made it very easy for him to study. So he had done well in his examinations and won scholarships. And he had got his brothers into college as well.
So Ella didn't ask questions. She told how she would have loved brothers and sisters, but Deirdre had said that they were vastly overrated and that rabbits were a much better idea.
He had laughed. "She sounds like a character, this Deirdre."
"Oh, you'll meet her in Dublin."
Tm not going to Dublin, Ella," he said.
"Sorry, I forgot."
Ella had decided not to push it. And maybe it "would be much better if he didn't come. They would be freer to get on with things.
He very rarely talked about his work as the head of a hugely successful office supplies company, one of the biggest in the United States. He said it was a team effort, that he had been lucky to identify a need at the right time, something that "wouldn't change every few hours as computer software seemed to do. Kimberly had been brilliant on the marketing side, and almost everyone had been there from Day One, so in many ways it ran itself without his having to be there every day. That's what gave him so much time to deal with the Foundation, which was what he really enjoyed.
Yes, of course he had to be ruthless sometimes at work, make decisions that he hated in his heart. When he had to close down a division of his company he made sure the employees were retrained or given early retirement. He was indeed easy company. Kimberly must have met someone very special in Larry if she were able to walk out on Derry King.
Every night when she came back from her dinner with Derry King, Ella sat down at the computer and looked up the Irish papers of the day. She read with horror how there had been a thought that Don was not really dead. If only this were true. If only it were possible. She would go to any part of the earth to tell him she loved him. That she understood why he had to do what he had done. But she knew that he was dead. He had written to her to say goodbye.
Then she would read about Margery and the children. And where they could be in hiding. Only Ella knew where they were. In Playa de los Angeles, using her name. Calling themselves Brady.
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It was strange to think that she could lift a telephone and give their address to the authorities. But she would never do that. Don deserved better than a girlfriend who would blow everything. He had looked after those who needed to be looked after. His children and their mother and their grandfather.
And Ella. He had sent her those bank drafts, which she could cash and get her father out of trouble. Oh, if only he were alive, even for an afternoon, she would tell him how glad she was that he had loved her after all.
The emptiness of the last four months had been filled by something strange like a curious sense of peace.
And eventually the formalities were all done. Ella had booked the Thursday night plane home. "I'm going to miss our suppers," Derry said.
The, too, but you won't come to Ireland and continue them, so what can we do?" she said.
"So if tonight's going to be the last night, then let's make it in my place," he said.
"That would be great." Ella was pleased. She wanted to see his duplex apartment that she had read about long before she met him. Full of paintings by young people. Many of them now valuable since the artists had been on the way up. Some of them by people who had never made it. But Derry King bought what he liked, not what he thought would appreciate in value.
Kimberly too seemed sorry she was leaving and asked her for a last lunch.
"You even get to meet Larry," Kimberly promised. "And that's not given to every looker that comes across my path."
"Oh, I'm not a looker," Ella laughed. She meant it, too. Since she had come to New York she realised how unglamorous she looked, so shabby and ungroomed.
"Oh, you are a looker, Ella Brady," said Kimberly, and she meant it, too. So much so that Larry was only going to join them for a cocktail.
He was handsome with longish dark hair and a designer suit, sunglasses which he took off at once, very
assured and confident. Slightly showy, with large gestures, holding Kimberly away from him so that he and everyone could admire her grey silk outfit. Then a long, admiring look at Ella and a light stroke of her long blonde hair.
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"Perfect," he said as if he had been asked for an opinion by a judging panel. "Just perfect." And then to the waiter: "Am I not a lucky guy, having cocktails with not one but two beautiful women?"
"Very lucky gentleman," said the Chinese waiter, who had taken in the whole situation at a glance and knew that the lady in grey silk would be the one with the credit card.
Larry spent thirty over-excited minutes with them. He told them about various dramas and screaming matches back at the showrooms. How this buyer had threatened to burn the place down unless she got her order and that designer had said he was leaving for the Islands before he had finished his spring collection.
"Which islands?" Ella asked with interest.
"Oh, who knows, who cares, Ella. He won't go there, it's only a cry for attention," Larry explained.
He asked nothing about Kimberly's morning, which had been spent meeting their advertising agency. He asked nothing about what Ella was doing, with her long blonde hair and Irish accent, in New York. But he was very excited about a reception they were going to later. It was an art exhibition and it was so far uptown they were thinking Albany. But they had to go, and Kimberly must leave time to go home and change, and if she was tempted to eat pasta carbonara for lunch, then she must remember the zipper of the new dress was notoriously sticky and had to be fastened so maybe she might think twice about carbonara!
And he was gone, with a flurry of goodbyes, secure in the knowledge that everyone in the bar saw him go.
"Isn't he something else?" Kimberly said proudly.
Ella struggled to agree.
"Very different from Derry, as you can see," Kimberly said.
"Oh, indeed, yes, totally."
Ella had just been thinking that and wondering what kind of madness had made Kimberly King attracted to Earry. Maybe being a part of the fashion world appealed to her. But to give up Derry King, with his crinkly smile and his ability to understand what you were thinking before you said it... for this guy. A man who looked at himself in mirrors, for God's sake. It was beyond comprehension.
"Earry makes me feel young again, you see." Kimberly answered the question Ella had not asked aloud.
"He's full of excitement, isn't he, and totally gorgeous looking."
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Ella hoped there was enough enthusiasm in her voice to match the look of adoration there had been in Kimberly's eyes when she spoke to Larry.
"He certainly keeps me on my toes. I had indeed been thinking of pasta before he reminded me of the new dress." Kimberly gave a little giggle and picked up the menu to choose the salad with no dressing which she ordered instead.
Til have the same," Ella said.
"No, you like your food, have what you like," Kimberly pleaded.
Tm having dinner with Derry tonight. I'll have plenty then," Ella explained.
"Where's he taking you?" Kimberly had a huge interest in good restaurants, although she had rarely eaten three hundred calories worth of food in any of them.
"At his place. I'm looking forward to seeing it."
"Well, be prepared for a two-hour tour of child art first. He's kept all kinds of rubbish as well as the valuable stuff. Oh, and remind him to call the take-out early on. Often he leaves it too late."
"You and he are wonderful together. Kind of jokey, but no bitterness."
"What's to be bitter about? Derry's a great guy. He gave me half of everything. That's how I set up the business with Larry. And he's so practical, he said there was no use trying to hang on to me if I wanted to go. I would have done that for him too, if he had been the one to fall in love with someone else. It's crazy to try and kick life into something that's over."
Ella thought of Margery Rice. Suppose she had thought like that? Would everything have been different? She could have had half of what Don had. More. She would have let him go. Don would not have taken all those risks. He would have been alive today. And he and Ella would have been together. For one moment Ella almost told Kimberly the whole story.
She was a good listener. Her perfect face was alert and interested but not eager. If Ella wanted to talk, she would have had a sympathetic audience. For a moment she was tempted. But then she decided against it. It was her last day in New York. Tomorrow she would go back to Ireland and whatever was going to happen now. All the decisions that had to be made. About the bank drafts in a safe deposit account. About the knowledge of where Don's
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family lived. It would take a lot of working out. An emotional lunch was not what she needed just now.
Til never be able to thank you both for such solidarity. It was exactly what I needed." She was closing the door very politely.
Kimberly understood. "Sure, well, we were there if you needed us, still are."
1 know one thing I did want to talk to you about, if it's not indiscreet. Is Derry really dead-set against going to Ireland? It would be marvellous for us if he came."
"Utterly. His father was a wife-beater and a drunk and an all round bad guy. And Derry simply blames it on his being Irish."
"So it's really deep. I won't try any more."
"I wish you would try. It's exactly what he needs, to go there, to get the monkey off his back or whatever the expression is."
"You think it would help?"
"It might make him normal. That's his problem, you see, these demons he has about Ireland. It was part of our difficulties, part of everything for him. He had to damn a whole country because of his father."
"But why did he choose an Irish project to support?"
"He thought it was going to send the place up, make it all look very foolish."
"But he doesn't now. I explained all that at the first meeting."
"He's honourable enough to go along with something once he's into it, in order to be fair. He wouldn't raise your hopes, get you over here, and then because of his prejudices pull the plug. But you asked why he chose it in the first place, and I told you. He thought it was going to be a hatchet job."
"He seems so calm and in control."
"And he is calm and in control. He looked after his whole family. He raised his brothers, they adore him. He wanted to get his mom a nice home back in Canada where she grew up, couldn't understand that she had lived so long in New York that she is a New Yorker now."
"So she didn't go?" Ella asked.
"No, she had all her friends in the neighbourhood, she even had some happy memories of her husband. Derry couldn't see any of that. His father is his one blind spot. He can't go into an Irish pub, hear Irish music, says they glorify drink and violence. He's never going to change unless he got back there to Ireland and
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saw they were all as normal as anyone else. Just getting on with their lives."
"Have you been to Ireland, Kimberly?" Ella asked suddenly.
"Why do you ask?"
"Just the way you said that made me think you had."
"You're right. When we were first having our problems I went there. I even went to see his relations. Perfectly ordinary people. I didn't tell them about Derry, just asked around a bit. He has two cousins who started as house painters, run their own business now. They are so like him in many ways. But he'll never get to know them."
"Did you tell him?"
"Tried to, but no use. Then I met Larry, so I had other things on my mind."
"How long have you and Larry been married?" Ella asked.
"Eighteen months. I hope it lasts." She laughed a very brittle laugh.
"You are very hard on yourself, Kimberly. He adores you. Anyone can see that."
"Aha, I wish I had your faith and optimis
m."
"Oh, but he does. You saw him. And so does Derry. He looks at you as if he still loves you a lot."
"No, Derry doesn't love me. He's my great friend. He looks out for me. He keeps a quiet eye on some of Larry's worst extravagances. He doesn't think I know. And I care for him too, as a friend. Were you and this Don Richardson friends?"
"What?"
"I know you loved him, but were you friends?"
"No, no, he went away and left me. He wasn't a friend in that sense. But he still loved me, he wrote to me to tell me that the night before ... the night before it happened."
Kimberly looked as if she were struggling to find something to say. Ella rescued her. "It's all right. Everything changed then. I can do anything now that I know he really loved me."
"I can see by your face that's true," Kimberly said truthfully. Ella's face did look serene and calm. Whatever this guy had said to her, she believed it and it was doing her good.
The tour of the artwork was leisurely. They walked, glass of wine in hand, while Derry King explained about the young people and their sense of vision. Some of the artists were from inner-city
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schemes, where their brothers and neighbours were mainly into gangs and drugs, yet they saw beauty in everyday life.
And Derry King didn't send out for a take-away, either. Instead, he took Ella into his state-of-the-art kitchen and said he was going to make a stir-fry in a wok. He had asked the butcher to cut up the meat into tiny strips, the vegetables were chopped and prepared too. "It's probably not so much making it, more assembling it," he said apologetically.
"Oh, no. I'd definitely consider it was making it," Ella reassured him. "You went to the butcher's yourself, and you don't have a fleet of staff serving it."
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