by Karen Young
Ryan’s face was grim as he studied the menu. “The hairdresser and the homecoming queen were similar types?”
“Yes.”
“Did she tell you how it happened?”
Elizabeth closed the menu and put it aside. “They were at a house party Austin had insisted they attend, but it was inconvenient, so close to the wedding date. Patricia was unenthusiastic about going. You can imagine the thousand and one details waiting for her at home regarding the wedding. But he pushed it and she caved, or at least, compromised. She’d go, but only for half the weekend. They’d be there Friday and Saturday, but were to leave Sunday morning. It was after they were in the car that she realized how furious he was. They had a terrific argument and she wound up with a broken jaw.”
“He’s lucky she didn’t hang his ass.”
“Charges were filed, as Lindsay learned when she first talked with Patricia’s friend and maid of honor, but the records are sealed. Which points to Curtiss Leggett’s friends in high places. But it doesn’t matter. Patricia’s willing to testify now, thank God.”
Ryan watched her sip from the wineglass. “Now that I know how he treated Gina, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at anything, but to break the jaw of the woman you’re planning to marry? And two weeks before the wedding? The guy’s a mental case.”
“It’s rage, not insanity, the same emotion that drove him to chase Gina in a car going sixty miles an hour when she made him mad. Abusive men are, by and large, angry men. Why they’re angry and with whom are intriguing questions, but I’m uninterested in poking and prying into Austin’s psyche,” Elizabeth said, feeling a surge of frustration. “I just want him brought to justice for what he did to Gina and put out of the picture as far as Jesse’s future is concerned.”
Ryan lifted his own glass of wine. “I’ll drink to that.”
An hour and a half later, they were both pleasantly sated and mellow after an entrée of fresh sea bass and a little wine. Ryan suggested a stroll along the boardwalk after dinner before tackling the drive home, telling her that they needed to change the subject. “Enough about Austin’s dark side,” he said. Then, he spent the next ten minutes educating her on the particulars of this or that boat passing on the inlet of Galveston Bay. He seemed especially partial to the sportfishers.
“I bet you have a boat,” she said as he admired a huge and very expensive Bertram cabin cruiser with a Miami registration.
“I do,” he told her, guiding her to a wrought iron bench facing the water. “See that one behind the Bertram? Mine’s similar.”
“Nice,” she said, thinking that although it wasn’t a cruising yacht, a boat of that style and quality meant boating was more than just a casual hobby. It also explained his deep tan. “Where is it docked?”
“Galveston. We’ll drive down soon and I’ll take you out.” He sat with one ankle propped on a knee and threw his arm over the back of the bench. “There’s nothing like it, Liz. You get about thirty miles offshore and the water’s so blue it looks like it can’t be real. And clear. Sea creatures you’d only see in an aquarium are swimming all around you. And the fishing! You haven’t lived until you’ve landed a billfish. It’s great.”
“What’s a billfish?”
“Could be a blue marlin, a striped marlin, nothing small. We’re talking big babies.”
She smiled. “I can guess what you do in your spare time.”
He grinned. “And with my spare money. You know what they say. Owning a boat’s like opening a hole in the ocean and pouring money into it. But, God, I love it. I can’t wait to take you out.”
She was frowning over a scrap of memory. “Do I recall that Austin has a boat? I think Gina once spent a weekend cruising off the coast of Mexico with him.”
“Not Austin, it belongs to Curtiss. It’s a yacht, not a boat. A Bertram. He’s an avid yachtsman. Beside his, my sportfisher is chopped liver.”
“Does Jennifer like going out with you?”
“She does. In the past, it’s been our best time together. But Diane hated it. She suffers from seasickness. Nothing seemed to help.” He turned his head to look at her. “Have you ever been on a pleasure cruiser? Did you ever sail? It’s all the same. If you were good to go then, you’ll be fine on the Jennifer Jay.”
“Named after you-know-who,” Elizabeth guessed, still smiling. A couple with two sons strolled past, a toddler and his brother, who looked about eight years old. She saw, with a pang, that the older boy had dark hair and eyes and wondered if she’d ever be able to overcome the pain of never seeing the child she’d given away. She wondered, if this thing with Ryan turned into something serious, what he’d say if he knew what she’d done.
“What’s wrong?” Ryan asked, looking at her with concern.
“What?” She realized he’d seen something on her face. “Oh, it’s nothing.” She glanced at her watch. “Do you think we should be getting back? I worry about Jesse. I can’t help it.”
“In a minute.” He took her hand, idly stroking her knuckles with his thumb. “Jesse’s okay. She’s safe. But before we go back, there’s something else I wanted to discuss with you. And I hope you won’t go home tonight thinking that Austin’s always going to dominate the conversation when we’re together. He’s dead meat once we get the trouble with Jesse straightened out.”
She felt a little flutter in her tummy. “Is it something about Jesse you want to discuss?” He’d volunteered to check the paperwork she’d signed at the hospital when Gina died. And, as Austin’s former attorney, he was familiar with the particulars of Jesse’s situation.
He was shaking his head. “No, it’s about Louie.” She gave a confused nod, waiting. “You know I went to his house last night…at his invitation. He promised to let me look at a bunch of files dating back to the time when my father died. He was as good as his word. He pulled them out of a trunk that looked as if it had been in the Ark and when I realized what they were, I asked if I could take them home with me. He didn’t object and suggested several which I might want to read carefully. Those, I realized when I got home, were cases where my father was the judge, as well as a ton of case files where Matthew Walker was the judge. But what I found most interesting was the number of files he had regarding the Cayman Islands scandal. Have you ever heard of it?”
“Yes.” She turned her gaze to the channel where a boat was slowly passing followed by a swarm of seagulls. A fishing boat, she thought vaguely, not a pleasure craft. “Lindsay and I were talking about it today,” she told him, “among other things. It’s odd that we’re getting little trickles of information from Louie after all these years. We wondered, why now? And in all this material that’s surfaced lately, why is there no mention of Louie himself?”
“Good question.”
She brushed a speck of something from her pants. “When I was a senior in college, I planned to enter law school. I did extensive research about that case. I never read anything about a player named Louie Christian.”
He brought her hand up, idly rubbing it along the side of his face, his thoughts elsewhere. “I don’t think there was anyone named Louie Christian back then. In fact, I don’t think there ever was anybody with that name, period.”
“What are you saying?”
He shifted so that he was facing her directly, now catching both hands. “I worried half the night about mentioning this to you. I know how close you are to Louie. I know what he means to Jesse. His role in her life and yours will only increase now that Gina is gone and hopefully Austin is out of the picture.”
“Just tell me straight out, Ryan. Stop dancing around what you want to say.”
“I think that for some reason Louie is living under a false identity.”
“What?” She looked incredulous.
“Just hear me out, Liz. Maybe he was one of the lawyers involved in the scandal somehow. Or maybe he wasn’t a lawyer at all, but one of the bean counters. The transcripts show that accountants were vital in pulling off a scam like that. He
claims to be a lawyer, but how do we know it’s the truth? With no credentials to show, he could be a CPA just as easily as he calls himself a lawyer. He could have been a court clerk.” He gave a could-be shrug. “In that role, he’d have access to a helluva lot of information, damaging information. It would also explain where those files came from.”
“What?” she asked with asperity. “You’re saying he ripped off a bunch of files and disappeared for twenty-five years? And for some reason, he’s suddenly decided to hand them over? For what purpose, Ryan?”
“Another good question.”
“No.” She was shaking her head. “No, you’re on the wrong trail here. Louie’s past is a mystery, I grant you that, but he’s not a criminal. He’s just too—” She didn’t finish. Couldn’t. But she couldn’t deny that Ryan’s suspicions provoked reasonable doubt. She’d had flashes of something—more déjà vu?—from time to time over the years, but had never let herself dwell on it. She didn’t want to dwell on it now.
“Well, maybe he was a whistle-blower,” Ryan persisted. “It’s not clear how the Feds got involved, but somebody had to give them a heads-up.”
“It was twenty-five years ago, Ryan!” She looked at him with distress and tried to pull her hands away.
“Some things aren’t erased just because time has passed.”
She made a skeptical sound. “Tell me some facts, Ryan. Not suspicions or what-ifs or maybes.”
“That Cayman Islands scandal was a big deal, Liz. There were some really unsavory characters involved in it. If Louie has any connection to it, I want to know about it. He has carte blanche at your house. He walks in and out at will, no questions asked. I don’t feel comfortable with that until I get some answers to the questions that popped up from those files he gave me.”
“But why would he give you files that would cast doubt on him personally?” When she tugged at her hands this time, he let her go. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“And yet another good question,” Ryan said.
“This is not happening,” she said, her voice only a whisper. She fumbled for the tiny purse on the bench beside her and started to get up.
“Wait.” He touched her knee to keep her on the bench. “There’s one more thing. When Louie gave me those files, he told me he knew I’d have a lot of questions. He said he’d try to answer them, but that I was to tell you what I found out first.”
“Why?” She searched his face, confused and upset. “Why would he tell you that?”
“Only Louie can answer that, Liz.”
She looked away from him, unwilling to acknowledge the emotion in her chest. It was night now. Another luxurious yacht cruised slowly past, heading for the open sea, lights ablaze. “I would like to go home now,” she told Ryan.
He stood up and offered a hand to her, but she got to her feet without his help and this time when they walked back to the car, they didn’t touch.
She took Jesse to nursery school the next morning and after again warning the staff not to allow anyone but herself to pick her up, she drove straight back home and called Louie. Whatever had been Ryan’s purpose in sharing his suspicions about Louie Christian, she couldn’t ignore what he said. She’d spent the hours of a long, restless night trying to make sense of everything, but in the end nothing made sense. What wouldn’t be ignored was that Ryan had forced her out of denial.
From the time she’d first met Louie, she’d been drawn to him by something more than neighborliness. It hadn’t been his thoughtfulness in bringing her newspaper in out of the rain or his gifts of tomatoes and cucumbers from his garden. It had been something deeper, but she had preferred not to examine it. There was a little frisson of something that danced just out of reach, or bits and pieces of—not quite memory—that she couldn’t pin down into a recognizable picture. But as she’d gradually spent more time with Louie, friendship had blotted out those notions. Had she simply refused to acknowledge something that her subconscious recognized?
But what?
She walked to his house, as always, across her lawn and through the oleander border. He and Archie were waiting for her beneath the shade of a wisteria that grew over the lanai covering his patio. Archie wagged his tail in welcome, but he seemed to sense tension. She put out a hand and he licked it.
“Can we talk in the gazebo?” Louie asked in a voice that lacked his usual gentle humor. Without a word, she turned and started toward the ornate structure that sat almost on the property line. Louie had approached her with the plans for the gazebo four years before, insisting that the location between two huge live oak trees was the best spot. That particular spot was definitely on Elizabeth’s property. He’d already hired a contractor, he told her, and she could, of course, refuse permission. She hadn’t. It was the first act of trust she’d made since the betrayal of Evan Reynolds. Now she had to ask herself why.
In the gazebo, Louie took a seat on the glider. Elizabeth watched him ease himself down and thought he looked as if the night he’d spent was no more restful than her own. He’d promised to get a full medical checkup and she wondered whether he’d done it yet. Last month, she’d threatened to make the appointment herself and push him into keeping it, but she’d been distracted by Gina and Jesse and their situation. Now, looking at him closely, she didn’t like his color. He looked—
She brought her thoughts up sharply. If he’d been as deceptive as Ryan seemed to think, she needn’t worry herself over his health anymore. She brushed a few leaves from the cushion of a matching chair and sat down.
“Actually,” Louie said, studying her intently through his bifocals, “I thought you might call last night after Ryan brought you home, Lizzie.”
Lizzie. She wasn’t sure when he’d started calling her that pet name. He was one of the few people in the world she allowed to call her that. “I was too upset last night. I had a lot to think about after what he told me. I’m still trying to understand why you didn’t tell me some of this stuff yourself. Why didn’t you tell me you knew my father? Why, in all the time we’ve known each other, did you share the information you have about the judge with Ryan and not me?”
He smiled sadly. “It seemed at the time that I had very good reasons, Lizzie.”
“But those reasons didn’t extend to Ryan? You knew his father and you were quick enough to tell him.”
“Because he’d believed a lie since he was sixteen. He was angry and bitter and blaming Matthew Walker for something I knew to be wrong. I knew the truth about his dad and to tell him meant I’d have to admit I knew John Paxton.”
“So what was the problem with that?”
“Well, for starters, it would open a big can of worms.”
She stared at him, vexed that he refused to give her a straight answer. “Louie, did you know my father?”
Archie had sidled up to Louie and now gave a plaintive whine. Louie put a hand on the dog’s head and Elizabeth saw that it was unsteady. She frowned and perched on the edge of her seat, ready to go to him. “Are you feeling okay?”
He managed a smile and waved away her concern. “Too much coffee,” he replied, adding with a wry lift of his bushy brows, “and, to be honest, a guilty conscience.”
“You’re supposed to be drinking decaf,” she said, while the guilty conscience remark echoed in her mind. But her purpose in confronting him seemed less important when he appeared to be so fragile. And old. She never thought of Louie as old, in spite of his white hair and beard. “Maybe we should have this discussion another time. Did you ever make that appointment with your doctor?”
“Forget me and my pesky health, Lizzie. We need to have this discussion.” He seemed to shift to get more comfortable on the glider. “And don’t stop me until I’ve said it all. For months I’ve been trying to find a way to tell you. And I’ve been thinking about it for years.”
Years?
He appeared to try to get to his feet, then changed his mind and sank back with a disgusted grunt. “I should never have gone along with it
. It was wrong to deceive you and I knew it. Ignored that, to my shame. Hell, I thought I had good reason, but you know, looking back now and seeing the consequences, a man gets a different perspective.” He gave a rueful shake of his head. “It took me a few years in exile, but I finally saw the light. Course that was after it was too late. Way too late. Back then, they said it was the only way and I was in up to my neck by that time, but I swear to you and to God that I thought I was doing what was best at the time.”
“Louie, you’re not making any sense. What are you talking about?”
“My past, Lizzie-girl.” Archie whined and put his front paws up on the glider. Louie put a calming hand on the dog’s head. “And my past is what wrote the script for your future, God help me.”
For the first time, Elizabeth thought he might be suffering some dementia. They’d played a hundred chess games over the years and there had been no indication that he wasn’t as sharp as ever. But still…”Ryan mentioned the Cayman Islands scandal that turned the Houston legal community upside down,” she said. “Is that what you’re talking about?”
“That and the people it ruined. That’s what I’m talking about, Lizzie.” He put a hand on his face and rubbed over his beard briskly as if to clear his thoughts.
“And my father? Did you know Matthew Walker? Is that what you’ve been trying to tell me?”
“I knew him, Lizzie.” He was breathing shallowly now, his head resting against the back of the glider. Whatever he was intent on telling, it was taking a toll. His face, she saw, was pinched and pale. Almost gray. He looked ready to pass out.
“Louie, what’s wrong?” Going to him, she picked up his wrist and was alarmed to find his skin was damp and cold. “Please, tell me what’s wrong. Are you having chest pains?” He took a shaky breath and denied it. “Stay here,” she told him. “I’m going to call 911.”
“Wait, darlin’. I need to tell you. There’s something—”
She was at the steps. “It can wait, Louie. Just hang on. Don’t try to get up. Stay calm. I’ll be right back, just as soon as—”