All That Lies Broken (Ashmore's Folly Book 2) (15 page)

Many of her classmates had stepmothers, and she’d heard all the horror stories. A father’s new wife meant change. A new wife might say that she wanted to be friends, and she wouldn’t interfere with Julie, and she didn’t want to change a thing, but – her friends had all said – that didn’t last beyond the
I do
. Then the new wife would start rearranging things to suit herself.

She didn’t want anything to change. True, she’d always wanted a sister, but that was before she’d discovered that Richard Ashmore had another daughter nearly her own age.

Richard said dryly, “I’m not drowning in loneliness, Julie. Don’t ring any wedding bells.”

“I won’t,” said Julie obediently. She wanted to ask some other questions –
What about Meg St. Bride? Are you going to try to get her away from Laura?
The hidden fear:
Do you think you might love Meg better than you love me?
Much more important than questions about a divorce everyone in the world thought he should have gotten years ago. But she couldn’t ask. She’d heard enough to understand that everyone was supposed to pretend not to know about Meg.

They rode along in silence. Eventually, he said, “I’m going to give Herodotus his head, are you coming in?” She nodded, and they took off back to the stables at a gallop.

Julie waited patiently – sweet, perfect-daughter Julie – until he left for work to pick up the phone.

“Mom,” she said, when Diana mumbled something into the phone. No use wasting a preamble or greeting; she could tell her mother was hung over. “I couldn’t find it.”

“What?” Diana sounded slurred. “Oh, right. Hold on. I’ll call you back in a couple of minutes.”

A couple of minutes was more likely to be an hour or so in Diana-time. “Sure, Mom. I’m just going to practice for a while.”

She had time to run through her entire harp lesson before Diana called back.

“All right,” and now her mother sounded crisper, less like someone who had tied several on the night before. “Did you get over there yesterday?”

“No.” Julie rearranged the music on the stand in front of her harp. “Well, yes, I mean, I did try. I didn’t get your message until afternoon, so I rode over there. But she was home, so I couldn’t look around.”

“Damn!” Diana sounded vexed. “I know I dropped it there. I hope she didn’t find it—”

“I went back last night,” Julie interrupted. “I had to wait till Dad got home. He was really late, so I set my alarm for 3:30 and snuck out. I crawled all over the patio, but no luck, it just wasn’t there. She almost caught me too. She had the lights on.”

“3:30?” Her mother sounded more like a mother now. “You shouldn’t be out at that hour, Julie.”

“It was okay, Mom. I wasn’t on the roads. I rode Josie over there.”

Nothing while Diana thought. Julie plucked a few stray chords. She knew her mother well enough to tell that something big was brewing.

“I have to tell you something,” Diana finally announced.

Hearing Diana’s side of the story – the cruel service of process, the cold wording of the petition, the heartless lack of any warning, the general perfidy of men – wasn’t the same as Richard telling her that it was time that he and Diana let each other go so that each could find a happier life. Julie listened through several minutes of “Mr. Perfect” and “after what he did” and “smash his face in” (and Diana didn’t know the
half
of it, she sure didn’t know about Meg or this new girlfriend), and tried not to roll her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” when she could get a word in. “I know you must feel hurt.”

“Hurt!” Diana sounded flat. “I can’t believe he’s doing this. Why now? Is he seeing someone?”

“You know he never tells me that stuff, Mom.”

“I know.” Diana hiccupped. “I know.”

And on and on and on… how Richard had never understood her dreams, hadn’t given her a chance to be young, had wanted her to be a clone of Peggy…. Julie listened. Nothing new. That was total nonsense about Peggy, anyway. She didn’t think he wanted someone like his mother. Judging from what she’d seen, her father seemed to like complicated women. She’d adored her grandmother, but complicated she was not.

“Listen, Mom, I’m so sorry, I’ve got to go. I’ve—” She cast around for an excuse. “I’ve got to look over my stuff for camp before Dad and I go shopping, okay?”

“Okay.” Diana swallowed a sob. “I know you’re busy. Thanks for looking.”

“I’ll try some more,” Julie promised. “Maybe she picked it up. I’ll go visit her and see if I spot it, okay?”

“Thanks,” said her mother. “I’d call Laura except – well, I’m a little put out with her right now. Look, Julie, if you do find it, don’t listen to it, all right? Just give it back to me. It has some stuff on it for – for a project of mine.”

“Sure, Mom.”

“You should call her soon. She may go away for the 4th,” Diana said. “Although she’s dating someone, so she might go off with him again. She was gone last weekend. Too bad. If she’d been there, I wouldn’t have waited for her, and then I wouldn’t have dropped the damn thing.”

Laura had gone away with someone for the weekend.

“Really?” said Julie. “Laura has a boyfriend?”

~•~

As soon as she met Jay Spencer, Laura knew why Lucy had recommended him. He was tall and handsome, in his fifties, with fatherly eyes and a courtly manner – just like Philip Ashmore. He was the epitome of Wall Street attorney transplanted to the colonial South. She trusted him instinctively.
Expensive, but worth it,
Lucy had said.
The nicest guy. A real pit bull. Even meaner than me.

Lucy must have primed him, because he personally came out to the well-appointed reception area to greet her and escort her to an office that put Matthew St. Bride’s office at the bank to shame. It looked like a movie setting for “distinguished old law firm.” It spoke of masculine power, old money, and Virginia aristocracy, and made the perfect setting for him in his beautifully tailored suit. His secretary served her tea in Lenox china with a sterling spoon.

Lucy must have told him that the operative number was a three.

But Jay made her feel better right away. He read through the subpoena and told her that the chances of her being forced to testify were slim. “Even if these allegations are true,” he said, “all of this occurred fourteen years ago, am I correct? In Virginia, adultery dating back beyond five years generally has no bearing.”

“There’s a new wrinkle,” Laura said, and told him about the divorce petition.

Jay said that he was inclined to agree that Diana now had bigger fish to fry. “Although she might decide to up the ante and bring pressure to bear on him if she doesn’t like the way it progresses,” he said. “So I want us to be prepared. Do you have any documents?”

She described the flight log. “But it’s in a storage area, and I don’t have the key.”

Jay looked at her shrewdly. “Who’s paying for the storage area?”

That startled her. “I didn’t think of that,” she admitted. “We have an unusual setup. Our expenses are all charged to separate ledger accounts, but they’re paid out of a general account, and everything is settled at the end of the year. So Cam may have paid for it, or it may have come out of my account. I don’t remember seeing a charge for it, though.”

“If you paid for it,” Jay said, “you may be construed to control it. Let’s call these people.”

Right there in his office, she called SBFA. The people at SBFA were probably laughing at her, she thought, as she waited for Cam’s admin to find the information. No sooner had she declared independence than she had started asking for help. First the piano, and now this… but then Jean came back to the phone, and she forgot all about any possible embarrassment.

“Nothing?” Laura drew back in surprise, even though Jean couldn’t see her over the speaker phone. “There’s nothing at all?”

“I found some checks back in 1991 and 1992 for a storage unit,” Jean said cheerfully. “That’s going from Cam’s old check files and the ledger program he was using then. It looks to me as if he stopped paying on this particular unit in January 1992. I don’t have anything else coded to that account that isn’t accounted for by the company. Is it important?”

“Yes.” Laura tried to collect her thoughts. “Can you tell what’s in storage for the company?”

“Sure. We keep an inventory on the server. What am I looking for?”

“Look for Francie Abbott or Francesca Abbott.” Laura spelled the name. “She was my sister.”

“Before my time, I guess,” said Jean, and her keystrokes came straight through the line. “I don’t think I ever met her… Abbott – no, nothing here. Anything else?”

“No, Jean, thanks.” She looked at Jay after they disconnected. “Now what? I don’t have any idea what my husband did with Francie’s stuff. I thought all these years it was in storage.”

Jay said, “Don’t do anything. You’ve made the effort, and you no longer know the whereabouts of this flight log. The law doesn’t require you to go to the ends of the earth to find it.” He made some notes on a legal pad. “Now here’s what I’ll do, if you want me to represent you.”

“Oh, yes.”
Because you remind me of Philip, and Lucy says you’re mean.

“The firm will require a retainer. We’ll bill you on an hourly basis against it until it’s gone, and then we’ll bill you monthly for any continuing services.” He named a figure, and Laura nodded. It seemed high, but she remembered Cam complaining about the price of lawyers. “I’d like you to sign a short agreement stating that I am now representing you in this matter. Then I’ll call Tom and Lucy and let them know that you and I have met, and I’ll notify Kevin that he is to deal with me. Is that acceptable?”

She nodded again.

“That takes care of the business end of this. Now,” he put aside the legal pad on his desk, which was immaculate – Lucy’s and Tom’s desks looked as if they actually did some work at them – clasped his hands on the mahogany in front of him, and looked at her levelly. “I want to talk about the personal aspects of this.”

Oh, no, should she not have told him that Richard had shown her the divorce petition?

“This is a difficult situation,” Jay said. “Family feuds always are. Lawyers will tell you that, next to a juicy will contest, nothing quite gets the blood flying like a bitter divorce fight. Judging from the subpoena, this case is shaping up to be vicious indeed.”

Laura swallowed.

“It’s particularly difficult because of the relationships in this case. One of Richard Ashmore’s attorneys is his cousin and his wife’s half-sister. Now I know that Tom Maitland is first chair on this, but Lucy is just as bound as Tom to work in Richard’s best interest, which is now against her sister’s best interest. We’ve got the wife claiming that her husband had an extramarital relationship with another sister, and she’s subpoenaed you – there aren’t more of you, are there? – to testify against this missing sister. Four sisters, and each is now set up against all the others.”

“And Richard,” Laura couldn’t help interjecting. “He and I were best friends growing up.”

Jay nodded. “Yes, I surmised that you and he have already talked about this, since you’ve seen the divorce petition. Now, please understand, I am not shocked by the allegations in this subpoena. I’ve known Richard Ashmore for years; our daughters attend the same school, and I know Diana by reputation. People do strange things under stress, so even if Diana’s accusations are true, that doesn’t mean anything except that long ago, when they were very young, two people made a mistake.”

He leaned forward to emphasize his point.

“I see from your reaction that you know a great deal about this relationship between your sister and Richard Ashmore.” Laura made herself look at him calmly and stop biting her lip. “You feel torn about testifying, or you wouldn’t be here talking to me. You have conflicting loyalties.”
You have no idea.
“And people with conflicting loyalties tend to do stupid things to avoid taking sides. They tend to try to protect the people they care about. They tend,” he said distinctly, “to lie.”

She felt herself go pale under his penetrating look.

“Diana has an attorney watching out for her, and Richard has his. But you, young lady, are now my client, and it’s my job to watch out for you. And I’m going to tell you right now, it is not in your best interest to lie to anyone. That includes me.”

He settled back in his chair. “I was trying cases when you were in grade school. I was a prosecutor for ten years, and I have examined more witnesses than you can count. I know,” he said, “when someone is holding out on me.”

She made herself keep on breathing.

“I’m now as bound by confidentiality to you,” Jay said, “as Kevin is to Diana or Lucy and Tom are to Richard. If there is more to your testifying – or some other compelling reason beside family loyalty why you don’t want to or shouldn’t – you need to tell me so that I can represent your interests to the best of my ability.”

“Which is considerable, according to Lucy,” Laura told him, and he laughed.

“That’s nice of her. She worked here right out of law school, did you know that? We were sorry to lose her, but she wanted more control over her hours.” He looked at her shrewdly. “That was a smooth way to avoid answering me. Now tell me what it is you are trying so hard
not
to tell me.”