A whirlwind of thoughts rushed through Rachel’s head—money and freedom and the power to live her own life. “Why is Augusta looking for you now?”
Jenny took another sip. Jenny’s hands were shaking and the coffee in her cup did a tiny dance before she set it down. “I’m not sure, Rachel. Something must have happened with the money. If her grandson had the birthmark, he would have inherited. Augusta probably tried to lay her hands on the money and found out she couldn’t get it. That’s the only reason a woman like her would start looking for legitimate heirs after all these years. She probably needs me to get to the money.”
“But if I have the Key that means the money belongs to me, right?”
“There are certain conditions, Rachel.”
Rachel already knew the conditions. “That I have to marry a suitable male St. Clair, right?”
“Yes, that’s the condition. And Augusta’s grandson is the obvious choice.”
“But then I’d have the money, and I could live my life any way I wanted.”
The statement was thrown in Jenny’s face like a challenge. Jenny cringed. “Yes, but...but, Rachel. Think of what that would mean. You would marry an Englischer. You would go under the meidung. You would lose everything you have, your life, your family, me, your papa...”
“What it would mean, Mama, is that I could do what I want to do. I could go to college, I could become a vet, I could live my own life without a lot of rules and regulations. And without...”
Jenny’s face was white. “Without what, Rachel?”
“Without a crazy man yelling at me, ordering me around, making my life a living hell.”
Jenny stood up. Her face blanched and her body shook. “Rachel Hershberger! Your papa is not crazy; he is ill. He...he...”
Rachel stood up, too. The two women stared at each other across the table. Rachel pointed her finger at Jenny. “He’s not sick; he’s a bully. He doesn’t love me; he just wants to control me. Sometimes I wish...”
“What do you wish, Rachel?” Jenny’s voice was icy cold.
Rachel took a breath and then the words came tumbling out, like water rushing through a sudden break in a dam. “I wish he would have drowned in the ocean. I wish he never came back. I wish...I wish he really were dead!”
Jenny’s mouth moved but no words came out. Rachel turned and rushed out of the room. She ran down the hall into her room and slammed the door behind her.
*****
It was late afternoon. Rachel stood at the bank of phones outside the general store. She looked at the card in her hand and started to lift the receiver, but something held her back. Her mama’s words rang in her head like sledgehammers on an anvil.
“This man works for Augusta St. Clair. He is a very bad man. Bobby warned me about him. He is a professionally trained killer and he means us no good. Whatever you do, you must not contact him.”
Rachel stared at the phone in her hand.
What can I do? Something tells me I should not call this man, but I need to know if what he said is true.
Then she had an idea. She dialed the zero. A voice came on the line.
“Operator, how may I help you?”
Rachel took a breath and then answered. “Yes, operator, I need to be connected to information in New York City.”
There was a pause and a click, and then another voice came on the line.
“New York information, how may I help you today?”
“I need the phone number of someone in New York City.”
“Do you have a name, please?”
Rachel paused. She thought she heard someone calling her name. She looked around but she was alone.
“I need a name, ma’am.”
Rachel swallowed hard and then spoke. “Yes, I’m sorry. I need the number for Augusta St. Clair.”
*****
Augusta St. Clair sat at her desk, going over some papers. Randall’s report had given her a severe case of indigestion. An open bottle of Tums and a glass of water sat on a tray in front of her. A quiet buzzer sounded on Augusta St. Clair’s intercom. She pressed the answer button.
“What is it, Eva?”
“There’s a call for you, ma’am.”
Augusta waited and then sighed.
“Who is it? Surely you have a name?”
“Oh...yes, I do. It’s a Rachel Hershberger.”
“Rachel Hershberger? Who’s that?”
“She says her grandmother was Rachel St. Clair.”
Augusta’s ears perked up.
“Rachel St. Clair?”
“Yes, ma’am, and she says she has the Key, whatever that means.”
Augusta’s heart skipped a beat.
“Well, let me speak to her.”
There was a moment of silence, a click, and then Augusta heard the connection go live again. She spoke.
“Hello, who is this?”
A soft, youngish-sounding voice answered.
“Mrs. St Clair?”
“Yes, this is Augusta St. Clair. Who is this?”
There was a pause, and then the voice answered.
“This is Rachel Hershberger. My mother is Jenny Hershberger, but her birth name was Jennifer St. Clair. She is the daughter of Robert St. Clair and Rachel Borntraeger St. Clair.”
Augusta could hardly contain herself, but she took a breath and answered back.
“And why are you calling me?”
“A man—he said his name was Randall—he came to our farm looking for the daughter or grandchild of Robert St. Clair. He talked about the St. Clair fortune and the birthmark that proves who the heir is. He called it the Key. I have that birthmark.”
Augusta stood up from her chair. She kept her voice modulated to a low pitch as she began to walk back and forth behind the desk with the phone to her ear.
“Why didn’t you just tell Mr. Randall when he was there?”
“I only met him for a few moments, and I didn’t know why he had come to our house. Then when my mama told me who he was, I didn’t want to call him. There was something...nasty about him. He made my skin crawl. I thought it might be better to just talk to you.”
Augusta smiled to herself. Randall definitely could be creepy. She probed a little deeper.
“Well, Rachel, how do I know you are who you say you are? Maybe you’re just a girl with a lucky blemish on your skin.”
The voice on the other end flashed back at her. “That’s how you treated my grandmother, isn’t it? You just brushed her and my mama off and left them to die on the streets of New York. Well, my mama didn’t die. I think you must be a very heartless woman. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea, after all. I shouldn’t have even called you. I’ll just say goodbye now.”
The girl has spunk, like her grandmother...
“Wait, Rachel, don’t hang up. I didn’t mean to offend. But there is a great deal of money involved here, after all, and I need to be very sure of whom I’m dealing with. You must understand. Now, let’s just cool down and see how we can verify what you’re saying. After all, if what you claim is true, you are my great-niece.”
“As I said, Mrs. St. Clair—”
“Call me Augusta.”
“As I said...Augusta, my grossdaadi, my grandfather, was Robert St. Clair. My mama showed me the marriage license and her birth certificate.”
Augusta sat down in her chair.
“My men didn’t find a marriage license. I mean...”
“That’s right, your men didn’t find it because it was hidden in the bottom of my grossmutter’s suitcase. It’s all in her journal: how you drove her away from Robert’s parents, how you sent the police to harass her.”
“Now listen, dear. I was only trying to protect my mother-in-law from further heartbreak. She had already lost two sons. There were several girls who showed up at our house trying to say they had relationships with Robert or Jerod. Why, one girl even had a red-haired baby she claimed was Robert’s son. What was I to do?”
The voice on the other e
nd was no longer shy. It was firm and direct. “What you should have done was to meet with Rachel privately and see what she had to say. Then, if she had legitimate proof, you could have introduced her to her mother-in-law. If you had any grace in you at all—”
Augusta laughed. “I’m sorry, Rachel. I’m not laughing at you. It’s just that in the high-pressure world that I live in, there is not a lot of room for...for grace. And, personally, I am not a very gracious person, anyway.”
“That is obvious from my grossmutter’s journal.”
“Point taken, my dear. Now, can we get beyond the unpleasantries and see what we can do about this situation?”
“What do you suggest?”
“I think the best idea would be to meet and have you show me the documents you referred to. Also, we would need to do a paternity test.”
“Paternity test?”
“Yes, Rachel. I believe there are much more sophisticated ways to establish paternity than they used to have in the 1950s. I can have my personal physician—”
“I would prefer to have a neutral doctor do the test. I don’t have a lot of faith in you...yet.”
Augusta scowled, but her voice didn’t show it. “That’s fine, Rachel. However you want to do this. Can you get the documents?”
“Yes, I know where they are. I’ll make copies to show you.”
Augusta didn’t like the initiative that Rachel was showing. “Well, I’d rather see the originals.”
Rachel laughed on the other end of the line. “Right. I may be Amish, but I’m not stupid. I would bring the documents and your man, Randall, would take them from me, maybe even kill me, and then what proof would there be that I am related to Robert St. Clair? No, we will do this my way. You are not a nice person, no matter how pleasant you sound, and I do not trust you in the least. We will meet at a public place. I will show you the copies, and your bodyguard—or whatever he is—will not be there. You and I can go together, and I will give blood or whatever we need to take the test. I will show you the Key. And then you can decide what you want to do.”
Augusta sat back down in her chair. She didn’t like the way this was going. “You’re pretty spunky for an Amish girl.”
“I got it from Mama Rachel, the girl you treated so badly and my own mama. And remember, you need me. I don’t need you. I’m sure there are others in the St. Clair family that I can contact.”
Augusta frowned again. The last thing she wanted was for Rachel to bypass her and go to that pompous Duvigney.
“All right, Rachel. We’ll do it your way. How can I contact you?”
“You can’t. I’m Amish, remember? We don’t have phones. I’ll call you tomorrow at about this same time. I hope you will have all the arrangements made.”
The line went dead. Augusta stared at the receiver in her hand and then plunged her finger down on the intercom button. Eva answered.
“Yes, Mrs. St. Clair?”
“Get that grandson of mine down here immediately. I need to talk to him right now!”
*****
Rachel stood at the phone bank with the phone receiver still in her hand. She was shaking all over. The phone call had been the hardest she had ever made.
I’m glad she couldn’t see me. She wouldn’t have thought I was so tough.
Chapter Fifteen
The Meeting
Gerald St. Clair looked at his watch for the twentieth time. The two-hour trip from Manhattan had been boring—extremely boring. It was always tedious spending time with his grandmother, especially traveling. She didn’t let him smoke cigarettes in the limo or listen to the radio. And now she was dragging him out to a farm to meet, of all things, an Amish girl. Augusta had briefed him carefully before they left, and now he was fidgeting in the back seat beside her. He could just imagine how this Rachel would look—cow-like features, big boots covered with mud and manure, and on top of it all, that stupid bonnet that the Amish girls wear. He needed a drink badly.
“Grandmother, do we really have to go through with this?”
Augusta looked up from her magazine. Her sharp face was set in “the look” and Gerald glanced away.
“Gerald, look at me!”
Gerald turned back and tried to meet her steely gaze.
“Do you want to be poor?”
“No, Grandmother.”
“Do you want to live in some crummy apartment on the Lower East Side?”
“No, Grandmother.”
“All the privileges and perks, the life of ease and comfort to which you are accustomed—do you want all that to just disappear?”
Gerald sighed. “No, Grandmother.”
Augusta pulled a compact from her purse and checked her appearance. After another touch of lipstick, she snapped it shut and looked at Gerald. “Now I’m going to explain this one more time. This girl has the Key. That means she inherits everything except the tiny pittance left in my husband’s trust fund and the house we lived in together. And she gets the New York house and the Connecticut estate. When I say she gets everything, I want you to know that means billions.”
Gerald tried to counterattack. “When you say there’s only a pittance left from Grandfather and my father, are you talking a few million, a few thousand, what?”
Augusta smiled the icy smile and reached into the Louis Vuitton bag that held her notebook. She opened it and leafed through until she found an official-looking document between two pages. She pulled a pair of reading glasses from the same bag, adjusted them on the end of her nose, and began to read. “The Trust of Jerod St. Clair—Current cash and bonds, value not including the properties in Manhattan, London and Connecticut: $15,985,000. Expenditures 1989: $4,000,000. Income and interest 1989: $500,000. Net debit 1989: $3,500,000.”
Augusta removed her glasses and put the notebook away. Gerald looked out the window and frowned. It was worse than he thought. He shifted in his seat.
I really, really need a drink.
“So you see, darling Gerald, your profligate ways, your trips to Europe, the gambling in Monaco, the women, the drugs and alcohol, and whatever other vices you have picked up in your short but flamboyant life are grinding us right into the poor house. If you keep it up, we will be out of money in less than five years. And when it’s gone, there isn’t any more except for the property. If we have to sell all the property, we will be able to raise a few million, but that won’t last. Why, you might even have to get a job.”
Augusta chuckled but Gerald didn’t think it was funny. He thought about mentioning his grandmother’s penchant for Arabian horses, five thousand dollar bottles of wine, and trips to Paris for the latest fashions, but he thought better of it and tried a different tactic. “But, this Rachel...I mean, do I really have to marry her?”
“Rachel Hershberger cannot inherit the estate unless she marries a suitable male St. Clair within a certain time period after being verified as the genuine heir, or in her case, heiress. The St. Clairs put that stipulation in the inheritance protocols to ensure that the money would always remain in St. Clair hands. The only other option is for you to marry someone and produce a male heir who would inherit when he comes into his majority.”
“Majority?”
“Yes, Gerald, when he turns twenty-one. So you see, given that it would take you a minimum of nine months to produce an heir if you started today, and assuming that it would be a male, you would still have to wait twenty-two years to get the money. That is, if you survived that long working at a Dairy Queen.”
Augusta paused. “You know, Gerald, you really should have brought a book.” She smiled again and returned to her magazine.
*****
Rachel stood on the corner by the General Store in downtown Paradise. She had the manila envelope with copies of her grandmother’s wedding license and her mama’s birth certificate. The meeting was supposed to be at 10 A.M. but the St. Clairs were late. Rachel stood nervously shifting from one foot to the other. She was so intent on looking for the car that she didn’t hear t
he footsteps coming up behind her.
“Gut mariye, Rachel.”
Rachel’s heart jumped. She turned to see Daniel King standing on the sidewalk.
“Daniel, why must you always come creeping up on me? You scared me.”
His smile faded. A shadow crossed Daniel’s face for just a moment, and then it passed. “A cat looking for a mouse creeps, Rachel. I just happened to be walking by. And judging by your face, I should keep on walking.”
Daniel turned to go.
“Wait, Daniel. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just...it’s just...”
“Just what?”
“I have something very important to do, and I don’t have time to...” She paused.
“To say hello to a friend?”
“Yes. I mean, no, I... Oh, Daniel, why do you always fluster me so?”
“Don’t mean to, Rachel, really. But while we are here, can I ask when you will come to look at the mare and the foal again?”
Rachel felt a twinge of irritation.
Doesn’t he know this is the most important day of my life? No, of course not.
“Really, I don’t have time to think about that. I have a very important meeting.”
At that moment, a long black limousine pulled into the parking spot in front of them. The back door opened and a young man got out. He was dressed in charcoal slacks and a white pullover sweater. He was very handsome with chiseled features and dark, wavy hair. He looked around, and then his eyes settled on Rachel. A smile crossed his face and he approached. Rachel noticed that his eyes were taking in all of her.
“Rachel Hershberger?”
Rachel blushed under his frank perusal and stammered an answer.
“Yes, I’m Rachel.”
The man extended his hand and when she shook it, he held it a little too tightly.
“I’m Gerald St. Clair. It’s very nice to meet you.”
The Amish Heiress (The Paradise Chronicles Book 1) Page 11