Mystery Heiress

by Suzanne Carey

  His longtime secretary, Joan Carmody, greeted him with her usual deference. “Welcome back, Mr. Fortune,” she said with a smile. “I promise not to belabor the point. But I’d just like to say that all of us here are convinced of your innocence.”

  Unable to hide his embarrassment over the situation in which he found himself, he thanked her awkwardly for her support.

  “Your Wall Street Journal is on your desk,” she added. “I’ll get your coffee right away. Let me know when you want to tackle the mail. As you might imagine, there’s quite a stack of documents awaiting your approval and signature.”

  Perused with black coffee instead of the scotch Jake would have preferred, the business-oriented newspaper only confirmed that Fortune Industries stock continued to take a beating. Despite the company’s assets, which were legion, it would soon be a takeover target, he guessed. If he didn’t want to find himself attempting to beat back a hostile purchase offer with his right hand while quelling an internal revolt with his left, something would have to be done to stop the hemorrhaging in the share price before the fall stockholders’ meeting.

  An hour and a half later, after they’d plowed through perhaps a third of the most pressing matters that required his attention, he suggested Joan take her usual coffee break. It turned out to be an unfortunate move on his part. A new recruit, the assistant she left in charge of his outer office, didn’t have the standing to deny Nate entrance to his inner sanctum without first consulting him.

  “So…you’re back in the driver’s seat,” his brother said sarcastically, bursting in and striding forward to plant himself squarely in front of Jake’s desk. “Any crack-ups yet this morning? Or have you managed to stay out of hot water, on the theory that one murder charge hanging over your head—and the company, I might add—is enough?”

  Since learning that he might not fully share Nate’s privileged parentage, Jake had struggled with an inferiority complex where his brother was concerned. His unenviable position as an accused murderer, and his very real fears about what his future might hold, had only exacerbated those feelings. Now the contents of the affidavits Monica had been using to blackmail him had been made public by her would-be actor son—and on national television. Jake had little doubt Nate soon would be in contact with Brandon Malone to learn the details, if he hadn’t phoned the little twit already.

  “This is a private office,” he declared, reining in his temper with difficulty as he got to his feet. “I’d appreciate it if you’d leave, and come back when you have an appointment. As you can see, I have work to do.”

  Nate stood his ground. “You’re damn straight about the work,” he agreed with a curl of his lip. “If it were solely up to you and that bottle of Scotch you keep so handy, this company would be down the toilet. Fortunately, a lot of dedicated people, myself included, have worked their tails off to keep it from happening. But there’s only so much we can do without the proper authority. If you care anything at all about saving the business our parents built, you should step down as CEO and temporary board chairman…let go of the reins so I can do what needs to be done, at least until this farce has been adjudicated….”

  Stung by his brother’s harshly stated demands and somewhat deserved recriminations, Jake didn’t catch the half-buried hint that Nate believed in his innocence. “Don’t you mean the business our mother and your father built?” he shot back. “I’m sure you’re aware of the revelation Brandon Malone dished out to the press on Friday. You probably cheered.”

  Nate was visibly taken aback by Jake’s characterization of him. “Like hell I did!” he disputed. “You’re my damn brother, whoever your father was. I will admit to being curious…”

  Jake wasn’t listening to anything but the sudden throbbing at his temples. “No way in hell am I going to roll over and play dead just to please you,” he said, rounding his desk and giving Nate a little shove. “Now get out of here. The next time you want to talk to me, you can call my secretary for an appointment!”

  Reared in the same volatile household, with the same magnanimous but temperamental father figure on hand to help mold his character, Nate had a temper to match his. “Take your hands off me, you misguided baboon, unless you want me to punch your lights out!” he threatened.

  Luckily for both their sakes, Joan Carmody chose that moment to return from her break. “Is something wrong, Mr. Fortune?” she inquired, directing her question to Jake as she opened the door that connected their offices partway.

  Jake flushed that she should have surprised him and Nate on the verge of fisticuffs. “My brother was just leaving, Joan,” he announced. “As for Kenwyn or Kendra or whatever that new girl’s name is, tell her I don’t want to be disturbed by unannounced visitors if you leave her in charge again.”

  With Nate gone, a couple of aspirin beginning to take effect, and Joan Carmody’s help, Jake was able to clean up a considerable stack of backlogged work, winding down a little in the process. However, when the Swiss perpetual-motion clock on his credenza struck noon, he’d had enough. Swiveling his executive chair around so that he could contemplate the Minneapolis skyline, he tried to imagine something that would make him happy, or at least provide him with a modicum of comfort.

  His first thought was of Erica. He hadn’t seen her since the day of his release, outside the judge’s chambers. And he’d wanted to, if only for old times’ sake. Memories of the way he used to call her up and ask her to meet him somewhere for lunch, away from the kids, the household and his responsibilities to the firm, brought a wistful smile to his face.

  I wonder if she’d be willing to meet me today, he asked himself. I’m clean, sober, dressed in a respectable business suit. If we went somewhere out of the way, where the regulars don’t know me from Adam or a well-heeled murder suspect, we might be able to talk in peace like ordinary folk.

  Impulsively he picked up the phone and dialed the number that formerly had been his, as well. She answered on the fourth ring, sounding as if she were somewhat out of breath.

  “Well, Jake…what a surprise!” she murmured, her words seemingly cool, but with an underlying warmth that went a long way toward assuaging the emotional pain he felt. “Is there something I can do for you?”

  “You can have lunch with me,” he answered. “The way you used to do in the old days. Thanks to my newly acquired notoriety, we’ll have to pass on our favorite spots and settle for some hole-in-the-wall.”

  Erica wanted to hug herself. Jake missed her. He’d shaken free of his self-pitying stupor and sought her out—acknowledged that they still had common favorites. “That could be arranged,” she said, trying not to sound too eager. “I know a place not far from the junior college I attend. I’ll need a few minutes to clean up. I was outside, going over some things with the new gardener. Jaime had a heart attack, you know.”

  Jake hadn’t. It seemed that his former life was unfolding, reconfiguring, without him. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he responded after a moment. “If you see him, give him my best. Shall I pick you up at the house?”

  About to agree, Erica regretfully asked if he could meet her at the restaurant instead. She had a class to attend afterward. Plus some books to return to the college library.

  Though he’d been somewhat annoyed with her for deciding to earn a degree just when he was beginning to experience his second midlife crisis, he didn’t mind. “Forty-five minutes?” he asked, grabbing a pen and a pad of notepaper so that she could give him the restaurant’s name and address.

  It really did turn out to be a hole-in-the-wall—a crowded, somewhat noisy burgers-and-pizza kind of place in a small commercial area overflowing with students, most of whom were younger than Allie and Rocky, his youngest children. Asking his chauffeur to return for him in an hour or so, he went inside. He didn’t spot Erica right away. Then he saw her, looking about ten years younger than the sleek society matron who’d put in such a brief appearance at the courthouse.

  She was wearing a gray cashmere twin set
over a green-and-gray houndstooth-check miniskirt, with gray suede flats. Opaque tights called attention to her fabulous legs. The forward fall of her silvery-blond tresses was held back by a barrette.

  “You look like one of the kids,” he said with approval, sliding into a booth opposite her.

  She smiled. “That sounds like a compliment. Tell me what’s been happening.”

  A waitress brought menus, and they postponed the inevitable discussion of his case to order a salad for her and a California burger for him, with fries and extra guacamole. All too quickly, though, they were wading into the latest revelations, first and foremost among them Brandon Malone’s press conference regarding his late mother’s affidavits. To Erica, Jake seemed less concerned with their relevance as a motive for murder than he was with what they might reveal about his parentage.

  “Do you think there’s any truth to the claims of those witnesses Monica’s detective interviewed?” she asked. “I was about to phone you Friday, to ask if you’d been tested yet as a possible bone-marrow donor for Jessica Holmes’s daughter, when that segment came on the news. I realized that, if what the affidavits supposedly say is correct, there wouldn’t be much use in your doing it. Any match between the two of you…or between Annabel Holmes and our children…would be a fluke.”

  The possibility, maybe even the likelihood, that he wasn’t the son of Ben Fortune’s loins didn’t seem to bother her that much. Far from making him feel it was the man she cared about, not his inherited affluence or family tree—something that, by rights, should have cheered him—her attitude plunged him into depression again. If his estranged wife thought the information contained in Monica’s affidavits was true, then it probably was. She’d always had exquisite judgment.

  For her part, Erica could feel him slipping away as their food arrived and he picked at his burger, leaving the fries, which he usually devoured to the last morsel, mostly untouched. She was painfully aware that, descending from the plane of a meaningful exchange that had the potential of bringing them together, their conversation had deteriorated into his usual litany of begging her to urge their children to have faith in him, and her corresponding reassurances they didn’t need reminding—they were behind him one hundred percent.

  He didn’t drop any hints about a desire on his part to patch up their ailing marriage. Or ask her to have faith in him, as well. So hopeful when she’d received his call that things might be changing for the better despite the troubles they faced, she became increasingly despondent. As they parted, she decided with a heavy heart that it was probably all over between them but the shouting.

  It was only when she’d gone, tooling off in her new Acura, and Jake was seated in his limousine, headed back to the safe confines of the Fortune estate, that he really focused on missing her. Since they’d parted, his nights had been long and lonely. He couldn’t help imagining how good it would feel to have her in bed with him again. Soon, though, his thoughts were once more entangled in the intricacies of his case.

  Meanwhile, at their huge, tastefully decorated home in one of Minneapolis’s most elegant suburbs, Nate was unloading about Jake and his stubborn determination to bring the company down with him to his patient, ever-loving second wife, Barbara.

  “I can’t reach him, I tell you!” he exclaimed, pacing like a caged tiger on the exquisite Aubusson rug that decorated their living room. “If he hangs on…insists on staying at the helm while being tried for Monica Malone’s murder…we’re going to lose the company. It isn’t fair to me, Lindsay or Rebecca, or the generation of Fortunes that comes after us. I wish to God our mother were still alive. She’d talk some sense into him!”

  The following weekend, Jess had the Todds, their children and Stephen over for dinner. Both she and Lindsay were delighted with the way the latter’s youngsters, particularly seven-year-old Chelsea, hit it off with Annie. It was the first time since coming to America that Jess’s desperately ill daughter had felt well enough to socialize—and the first she’d had friends close to her own age to do it with.

  “I hope Annie and Chelsea will be able to spend more time together,” Jess said as she wished Lindsay and Frank Todd good-night. “Carter, too, of course, though he isn’t as fascinated with dolls and playing house as Annie and his big sister are.”

  Remaining after his neighbors had driven off, Stephen helped Jess do the dishes and sat on Annie’s bed to read her several stories before Jess took over to kiss her and tuck her in for the night. He was waiting for Jess when she returned to the living room.

  More than a week had passed since the night they’d made love in front of the fire and later enjoyed a reprise in Jess’s bed. Since then, they’d wanted each other unceasingly, and it wasn’t long before they were kissing, deep in each other’s embrace.

  At last, hunger overcoming his better judgment, Stephen begged Jess to let him stay long enough to make love to her. “Annie will never have to know,” he argued.

  “On the contrary, she’s been something of a restless sleeper since becoming ill,” Jess responded, gently extricating herself from his arms. “The truth is, she could wander in at any moment. And I don’t want her scandalized.”

  Forced to agree, though it was a death knell for his hopes, Stephen apologized for his thoughtlessness. Yet he couldn’t deny that his need for her was unabated.

  They said good-night a few minutes later on her front porch.

  “There’s got to be a way for us to be together, sweetheart,” he insisted, aware that love was the emotion he felt as he crushed her to him in the faint glow from her living room window.

  Even as he said it, he doubted Jess would be willing to leave her downy, precariously better chick with a baby-sitter. The only other option open to them was marriage. And he was too afraid of what would happen if they couldn’t find a donor for Annie, or her transplant didn’t go well, to take that step.

  In the big house hidden behind the thick copse of trees that screened their embrace from the road, Jake was pouring himself another Scotch as he worried about the stock he’d sold Monica to silence her assault on his parentage. Thanks to that sale, which had taken place in a series of transfers over the course of several months, he’d lost most of his clout as a stockholder. If Nate mounted a serious attempt to oust him as CEO and enough disgruntled shareholders lent him their proxies, he might get the boot.

  The fact was, he needed that stock.

  How to get it? Approaching Brandon Malone and asking him to sell it back had seemed like a nonstarter when he first contemplated it. As his mother’s accused murderer, Jake was unlikely to elicit much sympathy from him. The dead movie star’s son had little incentive to give him what he wanted, no matter how astronomical the price he might offer for it.

  A few more sips of his drink and he was thinking in somewhat different terms. According to Gabriel Devereax, the detective Sterling Foster had put on the case, Monica’s estate wouldn’t be settled for some time. Such matters often took years to wend their way through the courts. Further, with the exception of her decaying Minneapolis house and a similar California establishment where Brandon currently hung out, plus her Fortune stock and what Jake guessed would be a few hundred thousand in cash after the debts she’d accumulated during several decades of high living were paid, there wouldn’t be much of an inheritance by Hollywood standards.

  It was common knowledge in Minneapolis that Brandon longed to be recognized as an actor. Since his adopted mother’s death, the thirty-seven-year-old had been negotiating to buy a production company on credit in the hope of showcasing his modest talents. Money in hand might tempt him.

  The more Jake thought about it, the more the idea took on a madcap appeal. Strong men take drastic measures when the going gets rough, he told himself. Of course, the stock didn’t belong to Brandon yet, as the estate hadn’t been settled. But he could give Jake an option on it—deliver the shares when he inherited them.

  With an option, Jake could vote the shares as if they’d never left
his possession. Though it was currently trading at an all-time low, his former Fortune stock was still worth millions, enough to finance a low-budget film or get a production company rolling for the aspiring actor.

  On impulse, Jake phoned Gabe Devereax for Brandon Malone’s number and address. Reluctantly given it, he brushed off the detective’s warning to stay clear of Monica’s heir and dialed California with a fresh drink at his elbow.

  A woman with a Filipino accent answered. At Jake’s request, she called Brandon to the phone.

  “Yeah?” the dissolute young man muttered impatiently into the receiver.

  “Thish is Jake Fortune, of Minneapolish,” Jake said, suddenly unable to keep from slurring his words. “I’ve got ’n offer for you that you can’t refuse….”

  According to the Hennepin County attorney, Jake Fortune had murdered Brandon’s mother. Brandon tended to believe it. In his opinion, there’d been plenty of motive for the Fortune CEO to do so. “This is a joke, right?” he asked bitterly.

  “Nah,” Jake assured him. “I’m givin’ it to you shtraight. Your mother blackmailed me outa most of my stock in Fortune Indushtries. And I wanna buy it back. I’ll give you twenny percent more than it’s sellin’ for on Wall Street. You can use the money to start that produc’shun company you want…without waitin’ for probate. You can give me opshuns….”

  Coming to believe the caller was serious, and that he was indeed who he said he was, Brandon thought a moment. Was the Fortune Industries executive offering him a chance to avenge his mother’s death? Giving himself a moment to think, he asked Jake to repeat the offer.

  “So…whaddaya say?” Jake asked, after complying with the request. “Do we have a deal?”

  Well aware that the terms of Jake’s bond didn’t allow him to leave Hennepin County, Brandon suggested he come out to the West Coast immediately to close the deal. “You’re right in thinking I need the money,” he acknowledged coyly. “The problem is, I need it now, not three days from now. Or next week. If you can come out right away, like tonight, I’ll sell. Otherwise, you can forget it.”