All That Lies Broken (Ashmore's Folly Book 2) (34 page)

Finally:
Francie and Laura are likely to remain in close contact.

So close that Francie had helped herself to Cameron St. Bride. Lucia had omitted
husband-stealing
from the list of Francie’s hobbies.

Of course, Francie had started her husband-stealing career later, after she’d left home.

No doubt, no doubt at all, who the girl on the right had grown up to be. Same date of birth as Laura St. Bride. Same hair, same eyes, same mezzo voice, same lovely skin, same sad air to her as Cat Courtney. She looked like someone who had known her whole life that she shouldn’t have been born.

She looked like someone who had grown up to write a song called “He Never Loved Me.”

She also looked – way back behind those solemn eyes – like someone forged in a pitiless crucible.
That woman is tough as boots.

Not so for her Irish twin, Francesca, who looked full of the devil. She had the air of someone who had never heard or said no in her entire life. He’d bet that Francesca had been no virgin when she’d graduated from high school in – when?

June 1988.

These two girls had disappeared days after graduating from high school.

Meg St. Bride had been born in September 1988.

Which meant that Cameron St. Bride, getting his doctorate at Stanford, had somehow met high-school senior Laura Abbott from Williamsburg. He’d been twenty-nine, she’d been barely seventeen.

What a bastard.

Why would two girls from a good family run away?

Because one of them, desperate for affection, had found herself pregnant.

Brian said aloud, softly, “Bingo.”

He sent the web page to the printer and disconnected from the Internet.

~•~

It was almost dawn and he’d had no sleep and way too much coffee, but Brian felt energized. In less than forty-eight hours, he had followed the trail from a bewildering number of corporations with the same name to the true identity of one of contemporary music’s most elusive figures. He’d solved a mystery that no one else in six years had come close to solving.

And now that he’d solved it, what was he going to do?

Showering, he started to write the story in his head.
Exclusive to KTXX
…. He needed to get full credit for this.
Documents obtained exclusively by KTXX confirm that singer-songwriter Cat Courtney, who has maintained her anonymity despite four double platinum albums, is the widow of Cameron St. Bride, the local CEO killed in the September 11 attacks….

No. Too wordy.

Laura St. Bride, widow of St. Bride Data founder Cameron St. Bride, is the singer Cat Courtney….

He stared at himself in the mirror, shaving cream still covering half his jaw. Poor Laura. He wondered if he’d ever passed her on Central, seen her at the mall, eaten near her in a restaurant. She’d glided all these years beneath the surface, invisible, and he was about to blow her out of the water.

Singer Cat Courtney, who has the nerve to think she can keep the rest of us from finding out things that are none of our business, has been unmasked as….

No. No. Never feel sorry for a subject. The public’s right to know, et cetera.

World exclusive… Cat Courtney’s secret identity is mild-mannered Laura St. Bride….

Emma thought that Laura was a major bitch. What was he doing, feeling sorry for her?

In a weird twist on foreplay, and because she hates her sister-in-law’s guts, Emma St. Bride has handed a man she hardly knows the key to the great Cat Courtney mystery….

And no wonder Emma hated her. Laura St. Bride had done something with her life besides rack up three failed marriages.

Cameron St. Bride, boohooed by one and all because he had the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, was a world-class bastard who knocked up a high school girl, caused her to run away from home, neglected to marry her until after the baby was born, and then spent their marriage cheating on her, including but not limited to a little fling with her sister.

There. That was the truth. Too bad
that
story couldn’t run.

He finished shaving and got dressed in his usual Friday business casual. Might as well get in early and start writing the story, get some face time with the managing editor to discuss how and when to run it. He felt confident that, right now, no one else had it. Other reporters might be puzzling over Aural Gem CC, but they wouldn’t have the keys Emma had presented him on a silver platter. They wouldn’t have seen the piano, or heard Emma refer to little Miss Cat, or heard her mock Laura as a dumb
artiste
with copyrights. They wouldn’t have heard about Francie.

But
– the Friday after a holiday… if KTXX ran the story today, it wouldn’t get the buzz it might generate if he broke it early next week. Sitting on the story for a few days gave him time to go to Williamsburg and poke around – on the station’s dime, of course. He had Lucia Maitland’s number, but lawyers were notoriously close-mouthed.

The AP story had mentioned another family member – the architect son-in-law, husband of Diana-the-suspect. The architect ought to be easy to run down. He’d have only a peripheral connection to Francesca and Laura. It might be easier to get him to talk.

He might even run into Laura herself, who had shipped a piano somewhere near the Chesapeake.

Brian fixed himself another cup of coffee to tide him over until he got to work, then checked his email. A sweet good-morning from Emma – and why wasn’t she still asleep? He’d left her sleeping soundly. The usual spam. An outbid notice from Ebay. Offers for a performance enhancer, the last thing he needed right now.

A press release from the news alert he had set up on Cat Courtney.

He read about the concert for the neonatal wing at St. Blaise Hospital, Williamsburg, Virginia. He read about Hampton Roads Club and Tavern, owned by –
damn
– Diana Ashmore and Lucy Maitland.

At the bottom of the press release, he read that interested parties should contact Lucy Maitland for more information.

Well, Lucy, I certainly will. You can count on that.

This lent a new urgency to the story. Probably no one else had the St. Bride angle –
yet
– but Lucy Maitland was now a target for any other reporter trying to get a story on the elusive Miss Courtney.

In fact, this gave him his hook. He’d call Lucy this morning, make an appointment for an interview, fly up there as fast as he could get a ticket.

It made perfect sense that Laura St. Bride might have gone back to her roots. Since 9/11, she’d lived in London, estranged from her family, working under extreme stress, a newly reconciled wife who had abruptly and horribly become a widow, mother to a kid who was undoubtedly devastated. She clearly wasn’t welcome in the home where she had lived with her husband, so she’d returned to her family. 9/11 had done that; wrought changes in the national psyche. People had gone back to church; they were rediscovering traditional values of home and family. People needed comfort, and where would a widow whose in-laws disliked her go for comfort? She’d go to the people she’d grown up with, who’d have to take her in.

He wondered why she hadn’t taken her daughter with her. Story there?

What a bastard he was. She’d gone home to reconcile with her family, and he was going to open up her life to the world.

Sometimes, he really didn’t like his job at all.

Chapter 10: Diana, Smoldering

I HATE MY SISTER.

I
hate
her.

I HATE HER.

Standing with him, defending him. The two Ashmores ranged against stupid, pathetic, trespassing Diana. I should have known that, when push came to shove, Lucy was going to prove to be more Ashmore than Abbott.

The pain of that betrayal is so sharp. I want to scream and curse at her, but I can’t. Because Lucy is probably the one person on earth that I can still count on
most of the time
to take my side.

Or at least listen to me.

So I can’t scream at her. I need her too much.

~•~

I was dying inside the whole time I was circulating, playing the perfect hostess. I knew what they were thinking.

Sure, everyone was saying
hi
and
how are you
and
we haven’t seen you for a long time, Diana,
and
how are things?
(Meaning,
are they going to arrest you again? How did you get away with it?
) I didn’t get away with anything, you cretins. I’m not left-handed. He was hit on the left side of his head. The only way I could have used that much force was to lie across the grand piano and clout him with more force than I’m capable of in that position. Even the damn police finally figured that out. Learn some forensics, for God’s sake.

But they were also dying to know:
What is she doing here? Did he invite her? Are they going to get back together?

Does she know about the new girl? Is she going to cause a scene?

And, of course, hoping I’d do just that. Give them a show. Fuel the gossip about for months to come. Turn his boring, totally predictable soirée into a night to remember.

Well, I did that, didn’t I? Kill two birds with one stone, that was my brilliant plan. Put him through the wringer, and teach my treacherous little sister a lesson.

But she taught me one instead.

~•~

This I will not forget. Never, ever believe in that sweet, demure facade. Never, ever forget that Miss Cat Courtney is, first and foremost, the most ruthless of cats.

And I
hate
cats.

I wonder how long she’s been planning that.

Planning to humiliate me.

Planning to throw Francie in my face because she thinks I killed her precious twin.

Which I fucking well did not, thank you.

The only thing I’ve done right professionally, the only time I made Daddy proud of me, was the time he conducted me for the Tidewater Opera. I worked and worked on “Nessun Dorma,” harder than I’d worked before and certainly harder than I’ve ever worked since. I was pitch perfect that night. I wore Mama’s emeralds, I had the shoulders lowered on my wedding dress, and I looked like a million dollars and sang like ten million.

So what if Puccini composed it for a tenor? I’m not the first soprano to sing it. I made it my own that night.

And she took it. She took the one thing I’ve ever managed to do right clean away from me.

~•~

I hate my sister.

I
hate
her.

I HATE HER.

And you, Miss Cat, know this. I don’t forgive and forget.

Just ask Mr. Perfect.

Chapter 11: None Shall Sleep

THE STORM WASN’T SUPPOSED TO START until midnight, but at nine o’clock sharp, it ripped through the sky, and the heavens opened up.

What havoc the storm wreaked on to the party, Laura didn’t know. If it interrupted the fireworks display from Williamsburg in the sky over the woods of Ashmore Park, she didn’t know. If the guests went running for cover, or if many people were still there to have to run for cover, she didn’t know. If her carefully fashioned
tarte à l’orange
– Terry’s signature dessert – drowned in the deluge that suddenly poured down on the Tidewater, she didn’t know.

She had left, shaken and sick, all the adrenaline of her star turn deserting her, pain slashing behind her eyes as lightning now slashed through the sky. How she’d made it back to Edwards Lake, she didn’t remember; she drove mindlessly, without thought for oncoming traffic or stop signs. Once safely inside her temporary home, she tore her clothes off and threw all her laundry in the wash, and then she huddled in the shower for a long time, letting the water rain down on her, cleansing away the day. Cleansing away the sight of her sister face to face with her lover, electricity sparking between them, mating them for life.

She stood now at the drawing room window at Edwards Lake, cleansed in body but not in spirit, Max purring against her shoulder, and watched with blank eyes and blank heart as nature exacted vengeance for too peaceful a day.

When a crack of lightning knocked out the power to the electric grid for the entire area and plunged the house into darkness, she scarcely noticed. She needed no illumination. She was a creature of the night.

~•~

She might have stood there all night, watching the storm, the fury of the heavens counterpoint to the leaden emptiness of her heart, if her phone hadn’t brought her back to the land of the living.