“Ms. Boyd offered us a settlement of a million pounds, American dollars if you will, upfront and ten-thousand-dollars a month child support thereafter and she would keep it out of the papers, keep Nick from getting arrested, from spending time in jail for statutory rape.”
Nick interrupted him. “I went along with it because I was twenty fucking years old by the time I learned she was pregnant. Our first album had just gone platinum. I let the lawyers handle it. All of it.”
He turned his attention to Quinn then. Matter-of-factly, he offered an excuse. “I was young, Quinn. Twenty is too young no matter who you are or what your dreams happen to be at the time. Mine was my music back then. I had no need of being tied down to a kid, or a teenage bride for that matter. The way I saw it, why should I be punished for one bloody night in the sack, one night of a drunken stupor, to be tied down like that when I had the money to make it all go away?
“And from that point on, the whole thing skyrocketed out of my control. The music became a business for me and mine. I was on tour nonstop for almost three bloody years after that.”
Reading through the file, Reese announced, “There was a paternity test.”
Nick nodded. “My lawyers demanded one. And after the baby was born, turns out, I was Quinn’s father. Lisa’s lawyer even let her fly over to Dublin to have the baby there. Lisa knew my mother’s family name was Quinn so she chose that for the baby’s name. I was touched by the gesture… I want to make it clear Lisa was a wonder, a talented…”
“Touched, my ass,” Quinn tossed in just in case anyone had forgotten she was in the room.
Once again, Nick tried to overlook the angry tone. “As I was saying, I gladly ponied up the million, agreed to the ten grand, and signed some papers to make the lawyers happy. About four months after the baby was born, Lisa eventually flew back to America, and took Quinn there with her.”
He breathed out a sigh, staring directly at her now, taking the wrath aimed at him with the full force he deserved. “I’m sorry, Quinn. I was raised better. But I had my career to think about; my music was everything to me back then. At the time, that’s all I wanted.”
“Un-fucking-believable,” Quinn said flatly, unmoved. “There’s just one little problem here, Rock Star. My mother’s name is Ella, Ella Canyon. Think real hard and do your damnedest to try and remember her. I have no idea who this Lisa Redfield is that had your other out-of-wedlock baby and who touched you so.” She snorted at that. “Whoever Lisa is I’m sure she touched you a lot at the time, but she doesn’t have a damned thing to do with me.”
Quinn thumbed her hand at Nick and said to Reese, “These are the answers you thought you’d get? What a joke! I tried to tell you. Rock Star here never even laid eyes on me until today, twenty five years after the fact. He’s a fucking sperm donor to me, nothing more.”
Before Reese could say anything, Nick said quietly, “Uh, that isn’t exactly true. I saw you twice. In hospital, of course, the day after you were born and when you were perhaps three-and-a-half-years-old. I was at home in Dublin, taking a break from touring, my first break in a long time. I had inquired about you when I had some downtime. Someone made a call to the lawyers, set up a meeting, so I could get a look at you again.
“Your nanny brought you to Ireland and out to the farm. We visited for maybe three hours. I gave you a big stuffed frog; you called it Broggy, because you couldn’t say Froggy.”
Reese shot a glance at Quinn, instantly recognizing her dream, the one she’d described as her perfect day.
Quinn had a look on her face that resembled a deer caught in the headlights. Nick had obviously hit a nerve.
“I took you on a tour of the barn that day. There you found a cat you fancied, a solid white one you called Snowball, and cried when you had to leave it behind.” At the memory, sadness engulfed him, remembering a little doe-eyed girl who had wanted nothing more from him on that spring day than a tiny kitten.
He swallowed hard. “And then your nanny said it was time to go and you left. You were a pretty little thing. I remember being disappointed because Lisa hadn’t accompanied you on the trip.”
Quinn ignored the brief perfect-day scenario she’d dreamed about her entire life. Instead, she shook her head in disbelief. “My nanny? You remember my nanny? Get real.” With derision in her tone, she informed him, “I got news for you Rock Star, I never ever had a nanny.”
She stood up, pushing away from the table. She leaned over to where Nick sat. “I’ve heard enough of this bullshit. And if you sent ten grand a month across the sea those first few years, it goddamn for sure never made its way to me.
“For the first eight years of my life, I never even had a stable place to live or enough to eat or proper clothes to wear.”
Or love, she thought now, from anyone.
“Sometimes I didn’t even go to school regularly because I wasn’t enrolled anywhere. As it turns out, it seems Ella had a problem staying in one place, and more than a passing fancy for the nose candy…and booze, the woman loved her morning vodka and orange juice. Naturally, in the evening she’d turn to the really hard stuff and mix the booze with a little of the candy so she’d be in the mood for her regulars.”
She paused to take a breath. “I went hungry, Rock Star. It wasn’t until Ella married Ross Jennetti and we moved to Beverly Hills that things turned around for me. I got to go to school on a consistent basis. So what if I took a knock or two once a week by a stepfather who never wanted a kid around? It was so much better than the way things were before I didn’t dare complain. So if you want to sit there and believe you were so goddamn magnanimous with your fucking money, go ahead. But face it, Rock Star, you never cared shit about me and never wanted to.
“Your record producer had more involvement in my life than you did. But that was before he got a little too friendly with his hands. Those were my teen years when I started filling out, which obviously caught the man’s attention, another sleazebag excuse for a man.
“And then of course let’s not forget your slew of fucking barristers. They’d send me money whenever Jennetti happened to bring some special need to their radar. You never even bothered to sign those checks personally, did you? Some underling lawyer did it for you. So, go fuck yourself, Rock Star.”
She stormed toward the door, muttering, “I’m done here. Thanks for nothing, Reese Brennan. Go to hell the lot of you!”
When the door slammed shut behind her hard enough for the walls to shake, no one quite knew what to say.
Reese had the urge to run after her, to soothe what he could of her temper. But the questions from two decades back nagged at him like a giant pesky fly.
Jessica’s involvement sent up a huge red flag the size of Orange County.
And because of that, Reese was the first to recover from the outburst. “Mr. Baines, how were the payments handled?”
But Nick held out a shaky hand. “Wait! Wait a damn minute. Did she just infer that this Ross Jennetti molested her as a teen?”
Even though Gerald acted like he wanted to change the subject, Reese tightened his jaw. “Yes,” he finally managed to answer quietly. “Still think she’s a snotty, spoiled woman from Beverly Hills, Mr. Tyler?”
Gerald took advantage of the sudden silence and got them back on track. “The settlement went to the lawyer, Jessica Boyd, a check made out to Lisa Redfield for a million American dollars. There’s a copy in the file you have in front of you. After that, each monthly check in the amount of ten-thousand-dollars was wired to her attention in care of the law firm. Our accountants will verify the information.”
“I just bet they will,” Reese murmured as he caught the stunned look on Nick Tyler’s face.
But Gerald went on, “Whenever the child needed anything extra for school or whatnot, anything above that, she had to put it in writing, or rather, her representative did.” Baines nervously mopped at sweat popping out on his forehead, before adding, “That eventually turned out to be the stepfather, Ross
Jennetti.”
Nick eyed Gerald Baines. “Please tell me you’re joking.”
“That was the arrangement. The details, the fine print so to speak, were that everything the girl needed had to be checked out and verified first. Look, Nick, if we hadn’t done it that way, the chances were the girl’s mother and her lawyer would have bled you…”
But Nick didn’t let him finish. “Well for God’s sakes, I can see why she feels the way she does. The thing is…this Jennetti…who the fuck is this stepfather? Jennetti was never my record producer. My producer is and always has been Austin Dempsey. We were schoolmates. Check it out if you don’t believe me.”
But no sooner were the words out of his mouth than Nick looked directly across the table at the friend he’d met in Catholic school at the age of six. He suddenly got a sick feeling in his gut. “Gerald Patrick Baines, you knew this Jennetti personally, didn’t you? You handpicked him; put him in place here in Los Angeles as the representative?”
Nick didn’t wait for an answer but stood up, braced his hands on the table, and leaned over to where his friend sat stoic. “Tell me now you, asshole, come clean this very minute or I swear to fucking God I’ll reach across this table and pull your lying tongue out of your lying head!”
Visibly shaken, Gerald began to perspire even more. “I was looking out for you, Nick. I was right out of College Cork, the ink not yet dry on my law degree. I was going through the files. It was so obvious this Boyd woman kept nickel and diming Portman for every little thing. You remember Portman, don’t you? That pot-bellied swine you had for a barrister who gave the Boyd woman the settlement she asked for without any attempt at bargaining her down? I had to get someone on the inside who could keep things in check, watch out for the bottom line.”
“I’m not a bloody corporation! Quinn’s not a bottom line. She’s my own blood.” Nick swayed with sheer rage coursing through his veins. He ran his hands through his hair and began to pace. He shook his head in Reese’s direction. “You must think the worst of me. But I swear I knew nothing about this.”
Reese took a controlled deep breath of his own to calm down. “That might be, Mr. Tyler. But your neglecting Quinn all those years is on you. Had you bothered to visit her even once a year, you’d have known about this entire scam. You’d have been aware of her early years, known what she had to deal with, what she was up against for yourself. That little girl sent you Father’s Day cards.”
He shot a look at Gerald Baines before turning to Nick. “Did you know that? She waited for a phone call from you, or as she put it, a one-line note that never came, any sign that you might possibly have taken an interest in her from one year to the next. Nothing ever came, Mr. Tyler. And that’s on you. You can blame your lawyer all you want, but one visit in twenty-five years hardly rates a plus when you acted as though she didn’t exist the other twenty-two.”
Nick briefly hung his head but then snapped back like he’d just thought of something. “Go over the file. You have my permission to dig as deep as you need to, find out what the hell is happening here. Why does my own daughter believe this Ella Canyon is her mother?”
“Believe me, I intend to find out. I’ll need copies of everything in the file. I’ll give the originals back to you. And gentlemen, I’m hoping you’re here in L.A. to enjoy all the sights and sounds our city has to offer until we get this thing figured out.”
Nick nodded. “I’m staying put…” He eyed Baines with open disgust before adding, “until I know exactly what went on here, I’m not leaving.”
“Good.” Reese intended to make another point. “And one more thing, our side would like a new DNA test, just to be sure.”
Gerald Baines took one look at his client and without hesitation agreed, “I think that’s a good idea. What do you think happened here, Mr. Brennan?”
“You’re asking me? You need to tell me everything you know about this Ross Jennetti and I want the truth. Where and when did you get him involved with Ella Canyon?”
Gerald glanced at his longtime mate, Nick. “You mean Lisa Redfield. Ross Jennetti married Lisa Redfield. At least that’s what I was told. Jennetti came recommended to me through another client. The man was to keep an eye on both the child as well as the mother, keep the expenses down, the amount of extra money needed to a bare minimum.”
Nick let out a groan. “That’s it, Gerald. We’re done. We get this mess straightened out and I don’t want you anywhere near my family ever again. Is that clear? You work with Brennan here, cooperate fully with him until this thing has a solution, then fly back to Dublin, clean out your offices so there’s nothing to ever remind me of you. Because I never want to see your sorry lying face again.”
“Nick, you can’t mean that? We’ve known each other for almost forty years.”
“That’s right. Funny how you think you know someone like a brother and then find out what a lying bastard he is.” With that, Nick turned and left the room.
In all Reese’s years of practicing law, he’d been involved with some strange cases. He’d had his share of odd clients, a few eccentric shady characters even. But this, this thing with the Boyd Boyd Geller & Gatz law firm was turning out to be the topper on the cake, one for the record books.
Gerald took out a handkerchief, wiped beaded sweat off his forehead again. “I thought I was looking out for him.”
Reese wasn’t interested. Instead, he got the focus back on details. “Okay. Start at the beginning. Tell me what you know about Jennetti.”
When Nick Tyler left the conference room he went to the men’s room and then walked back out to a plush waiting area where a middle-aged receptionist sat behind a computer.
“Did you happen to see where the woman with the long black hair went earlier when she stormed out of the conference room?”
“You mean the Native American girl? She’s in Mr. Brennan’s office. Would you like me to tell her you’re out here?”
Did he? What would he say to her? Good God, no wonder she hated him. How had twenty-two years gone by without him getting in touch with his own flesh and blood? And what the hell had happened to Lisa Redfield? Were Lisa and Ella Canyon one and the same woman? They had to be. It was the only thing that made sense.
And what had his inattentiveness over the years done to an innocent child who now obviously hated his very existence? If he ever got his hands on this Jennetti character, he’d beat the man senseless.
When the receptionist kept eyeing him strangely, waiting for an answer, Nick simply shook his head, walked to the door, threw it open, and trudged outside, overcome with an emotion he didn’t care to share with anyone.
Later, to Reese’s amazement, Quinn hadn’t gone far.
When he opened the door to his office, Quinn stood behind his desk, back steel-straight, looking out of his office window at the traffic below down on Westlake Boulevard.
When she turned around he saw big, fat tears rolling down her cheeks. It was then Reese’s heart rolled over in his chest. “I’m sorry. I owe you an apology.”
She took a deep breath, exhaled shakily. “Yes, you do. Bringing him here without telling me was—wrong on so many levels. Coming here expecting…it doesn’t matter. You lied. But your meddling brought me to a confrontation I’ve wanted to have for years. I want so badly to blame you for bringing him here but… I can’t. I’ve needed this for more years than I know what to do about. I’ve said all of those things to him in my head, or acted them out in front of a mirror, countless times. It needed to be said no matter how badly I might have embarrassed myself or you.”
“You didn’t. Not me,” he said, incredibly grateful she wasn’t still furious with him.
“In fact, you exploded with the rage I wanted to show. You have every right to be upset, angry. But honey, there are things you need to know because as this thing moves forward, you need to keep one thing in mind. If Jessica Boyd was involved in this whole mess, you probably need to expect some kind of fraud occurred. It seems good ol’ Je
ss was in charge of the money. What have we learned these past two months about Jessica and money?”
“She and Alana always found a way to plot and scheme for more.”
“Exactly. The minute Jessica’s name came up in there, the second I saw her signature on the paperwork in the file, I smelled scam and still do.”
But he needed proof, hence the file he intended to examine in its entirety as soon as he had the chance. And he would take advantage of having Tyler and Baines here to walk him through the question that still lingered. Were Lisa Redfield and Ella Canyon one and the same person? And if so, why the name change? Why become a prostitute when she had a ready-made income of ten grand a month? Addiction aside, had she gone through a million dollars during the first years of Quinn’s life?
“Do you want me to tell you what I learned about Ross Jennetti?”
She surprised him by laughing. “How about if I tell you what I know about the man? After all, I lived with the sleazebag for eight years.”
“During any one of those years did you know Ella Canyon or rather Lisa Redfield was set up? Baines put Jennetti in place here in Beverly Hills for the sole purpose of being Gerald’s gatekeeper, to keep an eagle eye on Tyler’s money.”
Eyeing the look on her face, he suggested, “Maybe you should take a seat, honey.”
“That bad, huh?”
He repeated what Baines had told him and then when she started to protest, he added, “That wasn’t Nick’s idea by the way, it was Gerald’s.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you weren’t in the room and didn’t witness for yourself Nick’s reaction. He was so upset he fired Baines on the spot. He’s either a very good actor or he didn’t know about Jennetti’s involvement until today. Look, the ten grand a month was a lot coming in, and Baines wanted someone on the inside to keep an eye on Jessica, mainly because he thought she was milking the attorney in charge at the time, some guy named Portman. When Baines took over for an aging Portman, he slipped Jennetti into the picture.”
Ending Evil (The Evil Secrets Trilogy Book 3) Page 23