I took a sharp, swift glance at Richard Bourne’s face then; saw discomfort, even shock, briefly exposed in his eyes.
‘I didn’t want to believe it either, Mr Bourne,’ I went on. ‘I told myself, more than once, that Holly couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the things that were happening to me. Holly’s happily married, I told myself. Holly’s an attorney now, like her father. It couldn’t be Holly.’
‘But now you think it is.’ Bourne’s voice was stiff.
‘Yes, I do.’
For a moment or two, I thought I saw the practised, unflappable lawyer starting to drown beneath the father’s swamping fear of the unthinkable. But then the father disappeared again, and the attorney returned.
‘And this is why you want me to give you Holly’s address?’ Bourne asked. ‘So that you can confront her, make these accusations face to face?’
‘So that I can check out the happy, married, New York lawyer for myself,’ I told him, staying steady.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I don’t want my daughter’s life disrupted.’
‘Then you’ll know why I feel the same way about my own family,’ I said.
Richard Bourne picked up his glasses but didn’t put them on. ‘Your accusations are very serious, Nick.’
‘Yes, they are.’
‘I assume you have no proof to back them up.’
‘Not yet.’
‘Then I suggest you’re very careful not to make them again to anyone else.’
‘Are you going to sue me if I do?’ I asked him.
‘It’s certainly a consideration,’ Bourne answered.
I shook my head. ‘You won’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you’re too close to believing me.’ I was staring right at him. I felt, at that moment, as if I had pinned him down, in emotional terms, the way an entomologist might pin down a butterfly on a board. ‘You don’t want to believe me, but you’re certainly afraid there’s a chance I’m right.’
Bourne rose from his chair, walked slowly over to the floor-to-ceiling oak bookshelves on his right and stared at nothing in particular for a while. I gave him the time he needed. I felt for the man. Though nowhere near as much as I felt for Nina and Phoebe and Zoë.
Finally, he turned around.
‘Do you trust me, Nick?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Enough to leave this with me?’
‘That depends on what you plan to do with it,’ I said, aware suddenly that I had won at least the first round of the battle. Holly’s own father, a man of influence and some power, was not dismissing my suspicions outright. That was almost more than I’d dared hope for.
‘I need you to leave that up to me, too, Nick.’
‘I’m not sure that I can do that.’
‘Do you have much choice?’ Bourne smiled, a joyless, tired smile.
I shrugged. ‘I can go looking for Holly.’
The lawyer sat down again, steepling his manicured hands. ‘I don’t want Holly harassed, Nick. I assure you I will look into everything you’ve just told me.’
‘And then?’
I could not afford to let him off the hook. I needed as much out of this encounter as I could get, because I knew I might never get another chance. If Eleanor Bourne got to know about our talk, for example, she would tear everything I’d told Richard to shreds, make him swear to ignore all I’d said and to protect only Holly. But if Bourne had given me his word, as a man of law, then I figured – maybe naïvely, maybe not – that there was a chance he would stand by it.
‘And then, if I find there’s any truth in any part of it – and I must tell you that I don’t believe, for a second, that there is—’
Sure you do, I thought, but managed not to say.
‘– but if I find even a scrap of truth, I promise you that I will deal with the problem, and that, after today, my daughter and her whereabouts need be of no more concern to you.’
‘Simple as that? Concern?’ The anger flooded back, rich and hot. ‘My sister-in-law is still hospitalized. The San Francisco police have searched my home for drugs. I don’t use drugs, Mr Bourne. They’ve pulled me in for questioning about molesting children.’ I got to my feet and focused down on him hard. ‘As it happens, I’m not all that concerned about myself – I sure as hell don’t care to be unjustly accused of outrageous crimes, but if all this were just about me I could probably deal with it.’
‘I do understand, Nick,’ Bourne said.
‘Do you?’ I stayed on my feet. ‘Do you? Do you understand that I’m afraid for my wife? For our baby?’
‘I don’t believe that my daughter would ever hurt anyone.’
‘Yet Phoebe still has two broken arms and a head injury, and hasn’t been able to speak a word since the fall. Someone did that to her, and I have a terrible feeling that that someone may be Holly.’
Bourne was paler than ever.
‘You said that you trusted me,’ he reminded me.
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Then I’m asking you – for all our sakes, your family as well as mine – to let me deal with this. I give you my solemn vow that I will do that. That if – and I repeat if – there is the slightest evidence that you are right in any part of your accusations, I will take appropriate action.’
I knew that was the most I could hope for. I didn’t expect the man to cave in, to cut up his daughter and serve her to me on a plate. I don’t think I even really expect him to denounce her, to the cops or anyone else, if he does find out that I’m right. But I did think that there was a reasonable expectation that Richard Bourne would do what he had said he would. Look into it. Deal with it.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘All right.’
There was relief in the other man’s eyes.
‘Thank you, Nick,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
I was.
Now that I’m back again in my deserted, Holly-damaged home, I think about all the other things I wanted to say to Bourne, to ask him. How does he plan to go about finding out the truth about Holly? Does he realize just how devious his daughter is, what a great actress she is?
How very, very sick she is?
But I know I have to leave all that to him to work out for himself.
And I believe now, at least, that there is a chance that he will.
Chapter Forty-three
The day after Nick came to Washington, Richard Bourne cancelled forty-eight hours’ worth of meetings, appointments, lunches, dinners and games of golf, and flew to Los Angeles to see Holly.
Eleanor thought he was going on business. Richard had not told her about Nick Miller’s visit, nor did he plan to until after he’d talked to Holly by himself. Eleanor would not have believed Nick. Eleanor would not have forgiven Richard for giving Nick’s claims even a hint of credence. God only knew Richard didn’t want to believe them either. Yet something deep inside told him that it would be an even greater betrayal of his daughter to ignore them completely.
It was just after five in the afternoon when the cab dropped him and his overnight bag outside Holly’s office building on Figueroa. Like Jack Taylor, Bourne had had some difficulty comprehending Holly’s decision to leave Zadok, Giulini, O’Connell and set herself up as Taylor, Griffin – yet Bourne, too, had seen that Holly was determined to go her own route. Holly had been that way ever since she was a little girl; soft and vulnerable and appealing some of the time, unmalleable iron when she chose to be.
If Bourne was honest with himself, he knew that he and Eleanor had lost true insight into their daughter’s psyche long ago, certainly once she’d changed direction and chosen NYU over Harvard. If he was even more honest and looked back at the earlier years – at the time when she and Nick Miller had first become intimately involved without any of their parents having the slightest suspicion – he had to admit that they couldn’t have known as much as they ought about Holly then e
ither.
That admission made him shiver now, as he took the elevator up to the eighteenth floor of Holly’s building.
It was the first time Bourne had visited her there. It was, he could not help feeling as soon as he stepped through the door, a deeply ordinary office, a world away from the plush comfort, atmosphere and pace she must have grown used to at Zadok, Giulini and at Nussbaum, Koch, Morgan in New York City before that. Still, he reminded himself, if Holly was happy with her decision, that was all that mattered.
She was waiting for him in the outer office.
‘Daddy, this is such a lovely surprise,’ she said, coming straight into his arms. She looked and smelled wonderful, the way she always did, always had. Her secretary, she told him, had left for the day and she had no more appointments, so they had the place all to themselves – though she still didn’t understand why he had insisted on coming to Taylor, Griffin rather than meeting her and Jack at home or in a restaurant. Because, Richard told her right away, (partly because he thought his nerves mightn’t stand too much prevarication), there were matters they needed to talk about that were strictly private.
Holly led her father into her own office and drew him down onto her small leather sofa.
‘You’re not sick, Daddy, are you?’
The anxiety in her lovely eyes touched him and stabbed fresh guilt in his gut and heart.
‘No, Holly, I’m not sick.’ He glanced around. This office, too, was neat and practical, but oddly devoid of atmosphere; no artwork on the walls and not a single photograph on the desk.
‘Is Mother all right?’
‘Your mother’s fine.’ Bourne paused. ‘Though she doesn’t know I’m here.’
‘I know. You told me that on the phone. You asked me not to tell Jack either.’ Holly smiled. ‘So what’s the big secret?’
Bourne took another moment, looking his daughter over. She was wearing a charcoal linen suit with a white silk blouse, and her hair was tied back off her face with a black ribbon. She looked sophisticated, innocent and very beautiful. He felt, abruptly, like weeping.
‘Daddy, what’s the matter?’
He shook his head, dragged himself together.
‘Long flight,’ he said. ‘I’m tired.’
Holly put a hand on his arm. ‘Then why not go to the hotel and take a nap?’ She knew that he’d reserved a room at the Beverly Wilshire. ‘Or come home with me?’
‘No, not yet,’ Bourne said. ‘What I could use, though, darling, is a drink. Do you keep any scotch here?’
‘Naturally I do.’
Holly kept it in a small walnut reproduction cabinet that matched her desk: not quite up to her father’s style, but good enough for her purposes.
‘Dewars,’ she said, pouring for him. ‘All right?’
‘Perfect.’ He took the glass from her. ‘What about you?’
‘Not right now.’ Holly considered briefly, as she had once or twice before, telling her father about the baby, but decided, yet again, that the time wasn’t right. She looked at Richard’s face, saw the tension in his jaw and on his mouth, thought she saw a kind of sadness in his eyes. Perhaps even a touch of fear. She experienced a sudden jolt of apprehension herself.
‘Tell me.’ She sat down again beside him. ‘Tell me what’s wrong, Daddy. Please. You’re scaring me.’
Bourne took a drink of scotch, then crossed one leg over the other, cradled the glass in both hands, and prepared himself.
‘When did you last see Nick Miller?’
Holly blinked. Otherwise, she prided herself, apart from mild surprise, there was not a flicker of reaction.
‘Years ago,’ she said, vaguely. ‘About six, I think. In New York City.’ She paused. ‘Why?’
‘He came to see me,’ Bourne said.
‘When?’
‘A few days ago.’
‘In Bethesda?’ Holly stood up. She needed to do something with her hands. She went back to the cabinet, found a bottle of tonic, opened it and poured.
‘In DC. He came to my office.’
‘What for?’ She could feel her father’s eyes on her, but she didn’t look back at him.
‘He’s been having some problems.’
‘Really?’ Holly took her glass over to her desk, ran her right hand idly through a sheaf of paperwork, then sat in her working chair. ‘I thought everything was great for Nick these days. The book and his marriage and so on.’
‘That’s what I thought, too,’ Bourne said, and waited.
He was suddenly aware of his too-rapid heartbeat. Jolting in his chest the way it had often done when he was a much younger man reaching the end of one of his early solo cases, when judgment was nearing and his own performance was on trial. Victory had always seemed so earthshakingly important. He thought now how trivial it had all really been.
‘Nick told me that some things have been going wrong in his life recently,’ he said. ‘Badly wrong.’
‘What sort of things?’ Holly asked.
Her father didn’t answer right away. He was looking at her in a strange and disturbing manner. As if he were trying to see into her. A man seeking clues.
‘What sort of things, Daddy?’ she repeated.
Bourne seemed to come to a decision.
‘I’m not going to beat around the bush, darling,’ he said, and his voice was strained.
‘Okay.’ Holly found suddenly that she felt very calm.
‘Nick has a theory that you might be behind his problems.’
‘Me?’ Still the calm, the sense of being in control. Her father was the one struggling. It was easier for her, she thought, for she was in possession of the facts. She was, she realized with satisfaction, ready for this. It had taken her a few moments to understand that, but she was ready.
‘Is he right?’ Bourne posed the question softly, while blood seemed to surge in his head.
‘About what, Daddy?’ Equally soft, but far more tranquil. ‘I don’t understand what it is you’re asking me.’
He told her. As briefly as he could, all the time watching her reactions, waiting for her to save him, feeling like a drowning man, choking on his own words, on the doubts that filled him. The telephone on Holly’s desk rang a couple of times, but a machine in the outer office picked up, and Holly made no move to go check her messages, merely sat there and went on listening to what her father was telling her.
Richard wasn’t sure what he had hoped for. Denial, of course, vehement and instantaneous denial – that went without saying. But that alone might not have been enough, that was the nightmare of this awful confrontation with his own child. He needed her to convince him, to prove to him that it was all lies, some bizarre, perhaps deranged invention of Nick Miller’s.
Someone else’s problem. Someone else’s sickness. Please, God.
Not his daughter’s.
In the end, she just confused him. Even more deeply than he had been at the outset.
‘Poor Daddy,’ Holly said.
Pity. In her voice and in her face. Nothing else. Neither anger nor indignation nor reproach.
Oughtn’t there to be shock? Outrage?
‘Nick shouldn’t have done that to you,’ she said.
Dismay at the oddness of her response hit Bourne like a mallet to his solar plexus.
‘He should have come to me,’ Holly said.
Bourne moistened his lips with his tongue. ‘He didn’t know where to find you. You told us not to tell him where you were.’
‘Yes,’ Holly said, softly. ‘I did.’
‘Because you were happy. With Jack. With your life.’ Bourne paused. ‘Aren’t you happy, Holly?’
‘You know I am, Daddy.’
Still that gentle pity. Still no outrage.
Bourne felt a great rush of shame flood his face. Why did he need her to deny the accusations of a man who had become a stranger? A man who, on his own admission, had hit Holly on at least one occasion.
And yet he still longed to hear her denial. Longed for i
t with all his soul.
Holly left her drink, stood up from her desk, walked around it to the sofa and looked down at her father.
‘What do you want me to say, Daddy?’
He turned his face up to hers, but said nothing.
‘Do you want me to say that Nick’s a liar?’
Bourne kept his eyes on hers. ‘If that’s the truth.’
‘Don’t you know that without hearing it from me?’ Holly waited several seconds. ‘Oh, Daddy,’ she said, reproachfully.
Swiftly, Bourne reached up, grasped at Holly’s right hand and drew her down to sit beside him. ‘I want you to listen to me, Holly. Okay?’
She nodded. ‘Of course.’
‘I’m just going to say this once, all right? And then, if that’s the way you want it, you’ll never hear me say it again. Deal?’
Holly gave a small, wry smile. ‘Deal.’
Bourne’s cheeks were still hot. His chest hurt and he felt nauseous, but he knew neither sensation was a symptom of illness.
Get it said. Get it out.
‘Holly, my darling,’ he said, very quickly, ‘if there is any part of Miller’s story that has the slightest truth in it, you must tell me.’ He didn’t wait for any reaction from her now, just plunged straight on. ‘I’m not going to judge you – I only want to help you. There is nothing we can’t deal with together – nothing, do you understand?’
Holly took her hands out of his.
She was staring at him.
‘Holly, I have to say these things to you. You see that, don’t you?’
‘I see that,’ she said, quietly.
‘I wish—’ Bourne stopped.
‘What do you wish, Daddy?’ The words were cooler now. The pity was almost gone.
He said it, at last. ‘I wish that you would deny it.’
‘Why should I?’ Holly asked, simply.
Because it would give me hope.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, wretchedly. ‘I’m not sure.’
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