Maggie stifled a yawn as she made her way down to the kitchen using the back stairway. It was early, just two minutes past seven. She had awakened at six o’clock and couldn’t go back to sleep, so she’d gotten up, showered, and was now going to start the day by cooking up a batch of pancakes.
Everyone knew she hated cooking, so she had no clue why she’d volunteered to cook breakfast for Paul Montrose. Especially pancakes. The girls all liked pancakes, which meant she was going to be making stacks and stacks of them. She figured each sister would eat at least four. Paul Montrose was probably going to be able to scoff down at least a dozen. Lordy, lordy, she’d be making pancakes till the sun went down. She giggled at the thought; then her thoughts went to Ted and how they would make breakfast on Sunday mornings, read the funnies, then hop back in bed. Those were some of the best days of her life. More days to come just like those if she didn’t get carried away over one thing or another and make a mess of her relationship with Ted.
She loved Ted. Ted loved her. For now it would stay that way because to change things might endanger their strange relationship, and she did not want that to happen. Even though she didn’t like to cook, she was actually a good cook and Ted loved, loved, loved her blueberry pancakes. She missed him and wished he and the boys would finish up their business in Seattle, which seemed to be taking much more time than anyone had thought it would. She was sure the other Sisters were wishing the same thing.
Maggie sniffed when she hit the bottom step of the stairway. Bacon! Coffee! She looked around. Alexis was already at the stove, wearing an apron. She was separating the bacon, which looked especially lean. “Wow! You’re up early,” Maggie said.
Alexis laughed. “Do you have any idea how long it takes to cook three pounds of bacon?”
“Actually, I do, so have at it. Do you have any idea how long it takes to make pancakes for just our crew, and today we have two extra mouths? Why weren’t we smart enough to suggest bagels. I would have run into town for them.”
“Because you said Mr. Montrose said he liked pancakes. And we want to be nice to Mr. Montrose, so we can pick his brain while we try to arrange something between him and Bella. Or did you forget?” Alexis teased.
Maggie poured herself a cup of coffee. “Sometimes . . . actually, a lot of times, I get caught up in the moment and say something or volunteer for something that sounds so right at that moment, but when it comes to executing whatever it is, I wish I hadn’t. Does that make sense?”
“Yep, happens to me all the time. To everyone, I think. What do you think he’s like?”
Maggie didn’t have to ask whom Alexis was referring to. Paul Montrose was, unfortunately for the Sisters, who all missed their men, the only male within miles on this particular day. “Probably tall, sandy hair, hazel eyes, good build, is a gym rat. Was he the one someone said was forty-three? Not married. Wonder how he escaped that? Maybe he’s gay and has a partner. Bella really didn’t know much about him other than that her husband considered him his best friend.”
“A lot of men who make the military their career don’t want to get married. I read that somewhere. They say it’s not fair to the family because they’re gone all the time. I hear there are a lot of military bachelors out there. Bella said Mr. Montrose was a full bird colonel, but he got out. I assume that means he actually retired from the military. I guess if he’s forty-three, he put in his twenty years and decided not to make the military his life, or was not promoted and had to retire. Now he gets a pension and he can have a second life and get married and have a family if that’s in his plans. Maybe, if we’re lucky, he and Bella will hit it off and become a couple. And if not, friends. He sounded really nice via his texts. My goal in life is not to be a matchmaker, so I’ll just keep my fingers crossed,” Maggie said.
The Sisters started to trickle into the kitchen one by one. While everyone was freshly showered and dressed, they all still looked sleepy. As one, they mumbled the word coffee, and in the blink of an eye, the pot was empty and Annie was filling it up again. “Whatever would we do without our morning coffee? I think I would just curl up and wither away. How did we ever get so hooked on something?” she asked.
“I don’t know, and right now I really don’t care,” Nikki said as she looked up at the monitor over the door. “I think our guest just arrived. Hop to it, Maggie!”
“Bella isn’t here,” Myra said.
“That’s because you told her to come at eight o’clock, and it’s only a quarter of now. Mr. Montrose is also early. Whose turn is it to set the table?” Yoko asked.
“Mine. Oooh, look, he’s getting out of the car. Now, girls, that is what I call a mighty-fine-looking specimen,” Kathryn joked. “A pity we’re all taken. If I weren’t, he could park his shoes, or boots as the case may be, under my bed any day of the week.”
“You harlot, you,” Nikki teased.
Kathryn winked. “I’m just saying out loud what you are all thinking to yourselves, and don’t bother to deny it. I really think someone should open the door. He’s knocked twice now, and all we’re doing is standing here ogling him. Helloooo.”
Yoko sprinted across the kitchen and opened the door. “Mr. Montrose, please come in. Let me introduce you to your hosts.”
Introductions over, Myra said, “Bella should be here in a few minutes. She’s staying in my guest cottage. We were . . . um . . . concerned for her safety, so we thought it wise to . . . to keep her close by.”
Nikki stared at the attractive man with the ramrod military posture seated at the table. She didn’t think he could possibly sit up any straighter, but he did when he asked, “Is Andy’s wife in some kind of danger?” He turned in his chair to stare at Myra and Annie, assuming they were in charge of the group.
“This might be a good time for me to ask you people who you are and how it is you’re involved with Bella if she’s in danger. Shouldn’t you maybe at least think about calling the police? There are eight of you counting the newspaper person!”
“It’s a long story, Mr. Montrose,” Myra said. “We’ve just recently come into Bella’s life. Alexis and Nikki are lawyers. They are working on Bella’s case, and before you can ask, Alexis met Bella by pure chance at a restaurant and offered to help her when she saw her sitting at the table crying. We’re simply trying to help her.”
Montrose looked around. “So what you’re saying is you’re strangers to Andy’s widow. I don’t see Sara anywhere. Shouldn’t she be included and be here helping Bella. I think that’s what Andy would want. In fact, I know that’s what Andy would want. If he thought his wife was in danger, his sister is the first person he would call to take care of her.”
Kathryn stood up and stomped her way to the other side of the table. “And how is it that you know what Bella’s husband wanted for his wife, Mr. Montrose?” Kathryn snapped.
The Sisters as one were on their feet, surrounding Paul Montrose. Yoko pressed her tiny hands down on Montrose’s shoulders. In his life, he’d never felt such pain.
“Talk to us!” Alexis said.
“What the hell . . . who are you people? What’s going on here? Where is Bella?”
“I asked you a question. Don’t make me ask you again,” Kathryn said, leaning in so close that she could smell the man’s aftershave and minty breath. She nodded to Yoko, who grinned and increased the pressure on the retired colonel’s shoulders.
The kitchen doorbell rang. Isabelle moved to open the door for Bella. “Right on time, good girl!” she said, and smiled at Bella. “Come in, come in, Mr. Montrose just got here, and he was just getting ready to tell us something about Andy.”
“Good Lord, he looks . . . he looks like he’s in pain.” Bella’s face registered shock at the scene before her at the table.
“He is,” Yoko said cheerfully. She stepped back.
Bella watched the color flood back into Montrose’s face. Her hand shot out. “Bella Nolan. It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Montrose. I appreciate your coming to help us. Me in pa
rticular.”
Montrose looked around. “I don’t understand any of this.” He homed in on Maggie and asked her directly for an explanation as he struggled with the pain in his shoulders, which was slowly easing up.
Maggie sucked in a deep breath and let it out with a loud swoosh of sound. She then let loose and brought Paul Montrose up to date. He looked stunned as he stared at Bella. He thought she was one of the prettiest young women he’d ever seen. He almost said so, but then he remembered she was his best friend’s widow. Better he should keep his opinions to himself. For now, anyway.
“No, no, no, that can’t be right. I mailed Andy’s packet to his sister. In fact, because it was so important, I went to the FedEx office and sent it that way immediately after I dropped Andy back at the base. I can even prove it, since I’m sure I still have copies as well as the receipt. I kid you not, Andy made his flight with a second to spare. On his mad race to the cargo plane, he threw this manila envelope onto the tarmac and yelled for me to mail it for him but to make a copy first. I did what he asked. Then I deployed myself the following day. I never saw Andy again,” he said with a catch in his voice. “I didn’t even know he’d been killed until about two months ago, when I came East to a wedding for one of the guys. There were six of us from the outfit at the wedding. When it was over we all went to the nearest bar and got drunk, drinking toasts to Andy.”
“We’re going to need that packet and the receipt, Mr. Montrose,” Annie said.
“What was in the manila envelope?” Myra asked. “Did you look at the contents?”
“I didn’t read them word for word if that’s what you mean. Andy did talk to me about it, so that’s how I know. Andy drew up a new power of attorney for Bella. He made a will, and I witnessed it, and so did Zack Bradley. Andy said he left everything to his wife. I asked him about his sister, and he said she was rich and didn’t need his money. There were some other . . . personal papers I’m not comfortable talking about in the envelope.”
“You mean the sperm donations?” Kathryn barked.
Montrose flushed. “You know about that?”
“Andy told me,” Bella said. “I’ve never seen or heard from Andy’s sister. As Maggie told you, it was all such a horrible mess. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t hear from Andy for months and months. I didn’t even know he’d been wounded. I was told he never told anyone he was married, so any and all communications were with Sara, who took it all. His military insurance, his pay, everything. I never got a dime. If she knew about me, she made no effort to get in touch with me. She knew Andy was dead, and she didn’t care enough to let me know. I will never get over that or forgive her for it. It wasn’t the money, although things were tight, what with payment for his new truck.”
Bella took a deep breath. “When I couldn’t take it anymore I went to a lawyer and filed for divorce. I assumed Andy had had a change of heart and regretted our quickie marriage. Especially when the other wives I contacted told me that they had FaceTimed with their husbands at least once a week plus almost daily e-mails. I was making myself sick and could barely function, so I did what I thought I needed to do for my own well-being. The day I signed the divorce papers was the same day I found out that Andy had died. I tried finding Sara but had no luck. The army people had not had any success at that, either.
“Sara impersonated me and went to the clinic and helped herself to my eggs, and I guess she took the sperm donations, too. I didn’t know where those were. Andy never told me, and I didn’t ask. I don’t know why I didn’t ask. I think because it sounded so . . . so decadent.”
“We’ve been on Bella’s case for almost two weeks now. We’ve been searching for Andy’s sister with no success until last night, when we finally found out where she is. Right now we are doing our best to try to figure out how to handle the situation and deal with this. We brought Bella here because we think Sara is deranged. We all agreed she might try to harm Bella if she found out that Bella was looking into this whole mess. By the expression on your face, it looks to me like you’re still skeptical. You do know that Sara is not Andy’s blood sibling, right?” Nikki said.
“What? No! Andy never alluded to that. He just referred to Sara as his sister. He loved her like a sister from what I could tell. He constantly said how great she was, how he trusted her. He told me he didn’t think he could have gotten to where he was in his life without her and how grateful he was to her. The only thing that bothered him was she couldn’t seem to make a relationship last. Other than that, in his eyes, she was perfect. He said she was on to the next man and then another one, looking for Mr. Perfect. Like she was searching for the perfect man and couldn’t find him. He said he really couldn’t fault her for that because everyone was looking for the perfect life partner. Andy simply was not judgmental the way most of us are. This is just blowing my mind.
“If all you say is true, and I’m not really doubting you, I don’t understand how Andy could believe and love her the way he did and not see what she was all about. She would have to be damn near perfect to pull that off, and let me tell you, Andy Nolan was no fool. He was smart as a whip, top of every class we took, and we were together from the get-go. Even though I was older, it didn’t make a difference.”
Myra scoffed. “Some men are not particularly wise when it comes to women. They never look for some reason beyond the surface. What they see and hear is all they need to know for some reason. I don’t doubt for a moment that Andy was smart, but Sara Windsor was, I don’t want to say smarter, but she was calculating, manipulative, and downright sneaky. She wanted Andy for herself, but she was smart enough to know while Andy was what she wanted, she was not what Andy wanted. She had a plan and she made it work for her. The one thing she didn’t count on was Andy’s dying.”
“And she didn’t count on Andy’s finding Bella and falling in love,” Alexis added. “The tricks that had probably worked with other relationships Andy had had didn’t work in regard to Bella. From what we understand, Andy more or less stopped confiding in Sara, so Sara knew almost next to nothing about her. Sara had to hire private detectives to search her out. One of our people discovered that. Most of this is conjecture on our part, but conjecture or not, when you piece it together, it makes sense. Andy Nolan was Sara’s life. Period. End of story.”
Paul Montrose slapped at his head, his eyes on Bella. “I just . . . It’s just so hard to believe. Andy was so . . . so . . . enamored of his sister. He really did love her. But, as a sister. I believe what you’re telling me, I really do. I’m just having a hard time accepting it for what it is. It’s killing me, but I do believe you. Now, tell me what I can do. Whatever it is you need me to do, I can do. No ifs, ands, or buts.”
“We need you to go back to California and send us that packet of papers Andy gave you to send to Sara. Nikki and Alexis, because they’re our attorneys, will visit the army and the probate lawyers and take it from there. We have to be extra careful right now because we don’t want to spook Sara. She has no clue, at least we don’t think so, that we’re onto her. She thinks she’s safe. We do have two-man shifts surveilling her twenty-four/seven to make sure she doesn’t skip out. It’s uncanny how they tell us she can disappear, then appear across the country with a totally new identity,” Annie said. “Our people are telling us she has dozens of aliases that she uses.”
Montrose just sat there and shook his head back and forth, his eyes glassy. “I don’t have to go back to California. I have a town house here in Alexandria. I bought it before my last deployment, when Andy said that when he got out he was going to buy a house in Kalorama. Neither one of us wanted our friendship to wither on the vine, so to speak. You know, a card at Christmas with the year’s happenings penciled in at the end with a postscript. We talked a lot about going to Redskins games, taking our kids to football games, and enrolling them in Little League.
“I stored all my gear and everything I owned in the town house, which wasn’t all that much when I deployed the last time. I li
ked the idea of having a place here on the East Coast. I thought about selling it when I found out about Andy, but somehow I just never got around to doing it because I was too busy making a new home for myself in California. My two brothers took me in as a full partner in a firm they started when I was in the army. I kind of like living there, but I’m partial to the East Coast for some reason.
“Andy must have told his sister that’s where he was going to buy a house if you say that’s where she’s living now. Again, if true, it shows how much he thought of her and how he discussed everything with her. Like I said, she was everything to him. She was family, and family was important to Andy. Even though, as you say, she wasn’t a blood relative. Obviously, he didn’t care about that, and they were raised together.
“This is eating me alive. All this time . . . I wish I had known . . . I don’t know what I could have done, but something. I would have . . .”
Maggie set a plate in front of him with a dozen pancakes piled high. Montrose took one look at it and shook his head. “I really and truly appreciate your taking the time to make those for me, but I don’t think I could eat a bite of them. Suddenly, I just want to go running and breathe cold air. Would you all mind if I do that?”
The Sisters all looked at one another, shock and surprise on their faces. Maggie, on the other hand, just eyed the plate of pancakes.
“I think that’s a really good idea. I feel the same way. Do you mind if I run with you, Colonel?” Bella asked.
Paul Montrose was clearly flustered. He nodded his head and headed toward the door, Bella right behind him.
“Just follow the path to the barn, and then you’ll see our bike trail. Follow it. It’s a three-mile run from start to finish. More than enough time to clear your heads. Perhaps when you return, you’ll feel more like eating,” Myra said gently.
When the door closed behind the stressed-out couple, Kathryn looked around and asked what they all thought.
“He’s what he is—a good, kind, loyal friend. I saw him look at Bella every chance he could. I would say she’s a subject of interest, and I do not think any of us need to worry about fixing them up. I think they’ll do it on their own. And I say good for them,” Isabelle added.
Truth and Justice Page 17