All That Lies Broken (Ashmore's Folly Book 2) (24 page)

7. Blow up his stupid airplane.

8. Tell everyone what a lying, cheating bastard he is.

~•~

A pretty good list to start with. So the big question –
how?

(Hey! Look at me, all goal-oriented and making lists! Richard would be proud of me.)

1. Smash his face in.

I’d already done that. And it hadn’t been as fulfilling as I’d hoped. All I’d done was break his glasses and put a scar on his face.

I drew a line through #1.

2. Whittle the Standing Stone of Ireland down to a nub.

A delightful prospect. With the bonus of rendering him unable to sire more perfect little Ashmores to loose upon the world. But a major drawback: I hadn’t been in close proximity to the Standing Stone in eleven years, and I hadn’t seen it for six years before that. Doubtful I’d ever get close enough again to make #2 a dream come true.

I scratched out #2.

3. Get Julie to come live with me.

Fat chance. I knew where Julie’s loyalties lay. She loved her piano and her horse a lot more than she loved me.

Scratch.

4. Take all his money.

Just how much did Richard have? He seemed to live well enough, and any time I ran short he had stepped in and helped me out. (Okay, points for Mr. Perfect. But why shouldn’t he? He
owed
me.) He’d paid cash for the Lexus, according to Lucy, and for the Audi before that. I should get Kevin to ask for an up-to-date financial statement. Maybe even find out how much remained in the Great Lakes shipping trust – although I was pretty sure that was completely tied up for Ashmore Park.

I put a question mark next to #4.

5. Wreck his car.

A great idea, except with what? My car? No thank you.

Next.

6. Burn his house to the ground.

That might land me in jail again. Not to mention that every single structure at Ashmore Park, except for the old slave chapel, was made of stone. Even I knew stone didn’t burn.

Scratch, scratch.

7. Blow up his stupid airplane.

What was Mr. Perfect flying these days? Did he still have the Bonanza, or was he using Philip’s old plane instead?

How do you blow up a plane anyway?

Another line.

8. Tell everyone what a lying, cheating bastard he is.

I stared at that one for a long time.

Ding! Ding! Ding! Folks, I do believe we have a winner.

~•~

So I nursed along a drink, and stared at my crossed-out ideas, and ruminated.

And I noticed the calendar by the fridge. And the date.

And then I had another idea, a really,
really
good idea.

Brilliant, even.

So I got dressed. I made sure my eyes didn’t look all red and cried-out. I made sure I looked like a million bucks.

And then I went out to my car.

~•~

The annual Fourth of July party. The party where, once a year, the Holy Hermit opens up the gates of his fortress and allows the
hoi polloi
to trample around his mother’s gardens. She’ll be there, you can bet your life, that sweet, demure little girl. He’ll want to introduce her to his world. He’ll want Lucy and Tom and the McIntires to get to know her, make her feel at home, make her feel
welcome
. He’ll want to make sure she knows what she’s in for before he takes that second chance.

Maybe she’s even playing hostess for him. Greeting his guests, directing the caterers, hobnobbing with the Queen Bees.

And people saying that, well, so much better suited to him. So much nicer, so much sweeter, so much easier to deal with, than Diana.

(So much younger.)

Oh, no, you don’t, Mr. Perfect. Not on my watch.

I will not go so easily or quietly into that good night.

~•~

Happy 4th, darling.

Oh, say, can you see....

Mine eyes have seen the glory....

What a splendid day. I’m in the mood for some fireworks.

~•~

Oh, and you, Miss Cat Courtney? Don’t get too comfortable. I’ve got plans for you too.

Act Two: Dangerous Days

Ah, gracious lord, these days are dangerous.

Virtue is choked with foul ambition,

And charity chased hence by rancour’s hand.

(History of Henry VI, Part II, Act Three, Scene One)

Chapter 8: A Woman’s Weapon

NO ONE COULD HAVE ASKED FOR better weather for the party. The storm over the Atlantic, the meteorologists said reassuringly, would not hit until midnight.

Time enough for fireworks.

~•~

“Forty years of feminism,” said Mel McIntire, “and look. They’re over there talking football and politics and the newest wrench at the hardware store, and we’re over here, talking men and kids. Things never change.”

“Just like junior high,” Lucy said. “Boys on one side of the room, girls on the other.” She grinned at the rest of the Queen Bees. “No margaritas back then, though. We’ve come a long way.”

“Sure you won’t have one, Laura?” Mel said.

Laura shook her head. So far, this was turning out to be less of an ordeal than she had feared. Lucy had greeted her with a hug and told her how much she liked her hair up in a French twist; Mel had taken her in hand as they greeted the guests, whispering five-second biographies to let Laura know who was who and what was what. “The Leventhals – a power couple, don’t cross either of them, they will eat you for lunch… the Barclays – he owns a horse farm, she twitches whenever he’s around, hope the story isn’t what I think it is… the O’Reillys – Scott said when they were restoring the winery, they found a cache of guns under the floor, and James kept talking to Richard about Sinn Fein… the Lords – never was a couple better named, they just found Jesus and they
will not
stop talking….”

A good thing she was standing right next to Mel, part of the extended host family. She could imagine the whispered comments otherwise. “Tragic, but she’s worth a fortune now… must use a lot of makeup on stage… do you think Diana has a clue….”

Years as Mrs. Cameron St. Bride and Cat Courtney came in handy. She knew how to meet professionals and business executives; she was used to greeting fans from all walks of life at the champagne receptions after her concerts. She shook hands and chatted, helped arrange the various desserts that people brought with them, and tried to keep names paired with faces. Most people were more Richard and Lucy’s contemporaries than they were hers; she didn’t recognize anyone, although an occasional name seemed familiar – an older sibling of a former classmate?

This would have been her world had she stayed at home, gone to school in town, taken up her adult life here. These people would not be strangers; they would be her friends, business associates, fellow PTA committee members. She would have served in Junior League with some of these women, dated some of these men, perhaps married one of them. She would have led a Girl Scout troop for their daughters, been a Cub Scout den mother for their sons, baked cookies for the school carnivals. She would have cheered at soccer games. She would have sung in the church choir. She would now be a familiar fixture at this party, her place in this universe established.

She would not be the exotic flower, whom so many people pretended not to recognize as Cat Courtney. She would not be the 9/11 Widow, compelling so many of the guests to lower their voices, take her hand in theirs, and express their sympathy.

People would know where she fit into the family. Lucy took care of that, although she surprised Laura. “It’s one of those complicated Southern things,” said Lucy to one person. “Richard and I are second cousins through our mothers. Laurie and I are half-sisters through our father. We all grew up together.”

True enough, but it overlooked the simpler connection of his marriage to their older sister. Strange that Lucy wasn’t taking pains to pin her as his sister-in-law.

Richard introduced her simply as “Laura.”

She met Richard’s admin, a pretty brunette named Karen (“my boss,” Richard said, “I live in fear she’ll find a better deal”), and Scott McIntire’s admin Zoë, whose appraising look made it clear that she knew exactly who was who and what was what. She met Julie’s Mike and saw immediately why Julie was attracted to him. He might be a geek, but he was also tall, thin, well-mannered with dark hair and glasses, on his way to becoming a very good-looking man. Consciously or not, Julie had picked a boy like her father at the same age. She must have told him about Cat Courtney, because he asked Laura what she thought about a music notation program that had just come on the market.

“I don’t use it,” Laura said. “My husband wrote a special program for me several years ago that’s hooked into the MIDI board in my laptop. What I really like about it is that it has a pattern matching search in it. I can run searches against music databases to make sure I don’t end up with a subconscious plagiarism problem.”

“Wow, he should market that,” said Mike. “I’ll bet professional musicians would pay for something like that. Maybe you should talk to him about searching the patterns in MP3s too.”

Julie looked uncomfortable, not knowing how to deal with his natural mistake. Laura said, “Maybe,” and turned the conversation to the church lock-in that evening. Mike had asked Julie if she wanted to go with him, and Julie, with a look at Laura, said shyly that she would have to check with her father, who had said he would drive her.

Laura thought that the odds of Richard allowing Julie to go to an all-night teen slumber party with an attractive boy were less than zero. Julie obviously wanted her to go to bat for her, unwilling to drop the notion that Laura had special influence with him.

Well, she certainly preferred that he let Mike drive Julie; their evening could start that much sooner. But she was already planning to meddle enough. Julie was on her own. “You need to talk to your dad,” she said, and Julie’s face fell.

Finally, the flood of guests subsided, and she turned at the top of the terrace to survey the party. She hadn’t seen the back of the Folly before from the outside, and it was breathtaking. In the late afternoon, the western sun spilled a glorious color over the three levels of the stone terrace. Peggy must have had a hand in the planting; her favorite dahlias bloomed in gorgeous color in stone-ringed beds along the terrace boundaries; olive trees formed a wall that extended down around the pool, walling off the Folly from the rest of Ashmore Park. Richard had maintained his privacy even from his parents.

A flag waved in the breeze, a reminder of the real meaning of the day. The caterers had set up a series of tables along the eastern end of the terrace, and a group of children sat at a kid-size table, eating hot dogs and hamburgers. The teens and pre-teens had gone down to the pool, and their splashing and horseplay echoed back up the stones.

Above the conversations around the terrace, the men standing around in groups, the women sitting at the tables, she heard the music on a first-class sound system. Richard had stayed up late to burn his own playlists on CDs (“so I don’t have to listen to anything I don’t like,” she had heard him tell a group laughingly), and she prayed that he hadn’t included any Cat Courtney songs. Enough people recognized her that it would prove awkward if they suddenly heard “Midnight” or “Persephone” and then looked at Laura Abbott, dressed not in lace and pearls but in khaki pedal pushers, navy polo shirt, and sandals.

It would be even worse if they heard the haunting eroticism of “He Never Loved Me” and figured out that the man in the song was their host.

Lucy waved at her. Laura squared her shoulders and went down to sit with Lucy and Mel and the Queen Bees.

Laura had picked up on the group dynamics right away. Surprisingly, Mel, not Lucy, was
the
Queen Bee. Mel was a natural leader, taking charge without hesitation; Laura suspected that she kept her husband and four children in line. Scott McIntire seemed like a nice man – she had watched the interaction between Ashmore & McIntire at lunch, and had seen that they complemented each other well, the silver-quick thinker and the outgoing former college jock – and he appeared fond enough of his wife not to resent her managing ways.

If Mel was the head of the Queen Bees, Lucy was the heart, Laura thought, as she fended off the margarita Mel tried to press on her. As bossy as Lucy could be, no one could ever doubt that she acted from the heart, wanting only the best for everyone. Certainly, in her social circle, Lucy seemed to be the one everyone liked, Mel the one everyone obeyed.