All That Lies Broken (Ashmore's Folly Book 2) (46 page)

Quiet. He felt two cynical green eyes on him.

“How come Mom didn’t ask her boyfriend to drive her?”

“I beg your pardon?” He grew still.

“Oh, yeah,” said Meg cheerfully. “Mom has a boyfriend. She was with him tonight. You know, Lucy needs to watch it when she uses three-way calling.”

Too late, Richard Ashmore saw disaster impending, the iceberg dead ahead. “Why?” He took his eyes from the road long enough to look at her straight on. “Why does Lucy need to watch it on three-way calling?”

She never blinked.

“
Well
,” said his niece, “she must have connected me into the call without realizing it. I heard Lucy tell Tom she was pretty sure Mom was over at
Richard’s
for the night. Then Tom said he didn’t want to hear about it and if people are going to ignore his advice he’s not responsible for any trouble they get in. Then I heard you say, ‘Not now, Lucy,’ like you were mad at her for waking you up, then Mom got on the phone, like two seconds later.
Plus
, I saw you kissing her out by the car. And she’s got your shirt on because she got her own wet? Why didn’t she just get one of her other shirts?”

The ship hit the ice and sank right to the bottom.

Richard Ashmore saw years of discretion vanish in one rueful moment.

“You know, Mr. Ashmore, it’s okay, I’m not weirded out or anything, but don’t treat me like I’m stupid, okay? I’m not stupid. I’m really very smart. I just talk this way so people won’t know how smart I am. My dad said it’s better if people underestimate you.”

And he had. He’d seen those Francie mannerisms and that deliberately impish façade, he’d remembered her poor grades, and he had immediately slotted her as an undisciplined spoiled brat. His mistake. For all her shortcomings, Francie had been far from stupid, and he was anything but. In this child’s blood flowed generations of Ashmore intelligence and achievement.

And she had just demonstrated that she was an Ashmore by blood, if never by name.

“Do people underestimate you?” He kept his voice cool.

“Oh, yeah,” Meg said. “All the time. But my dad said, if people don’t know how smart I am, it will make them relax around me, and I’ll learn more. He said it’s a strategy. He taught me to play chess. Do you play chess?”

A strategist. And what else had St. Bride taught his daughter? “Yes. My grandfather taught me.”

“I didn’t like it at first,” Meg said. “It can get kind of boring, and it takes way too long. I like cards better. But my dad said it teaches you to think ahead and see the other person’s weak spots.”

He saw the exit sign for Williamsburg.

“That’s true,” Richard said. “It also teaches you to conceal your strategy – in card parlance, not to show your cards too soon.” He took the exit.

Meg was silent for a minute. “Did I show my cards too soon?”

“Yes, you did.” What an astounding conversation. Moments before, Richard had wanted to spank her; now he found himself now fully engaged with her. “The first rule of taking on an opponent is to size up the other person’s strengths and weaknesses but keep him – or her – from knowing your own. The more you know and the less they know, the better.”

“So – I should have let you think I wasn’t that smart.”

“Tell you what.” He stopped at a crossroad. “We’ll play chess this weekend, and you can try out some strategies on me. I have my grandfather’s chess set.”

They drove along the country road to Ashmore Park, while Meg thought. The Lexus plowed through standing water and slick curves, the only car on the road. He glanced at the dash clock. Only a few hours till dawn. With Laura and Meg there – and Julie still to return in the morning – he’d have to scrap his plans of rising early and going in to the office to work.

She waited until he turned into the gates before she said, “So you
are
my mother’s boyfriend.”

He said nothing until he pulled the car under the canopy of the
porte cochère
, where he and Laura had sat not too many hours ago. He turned to look at her daughter for a long, knowing moment before he turned the engine off.

“You’ll have to ask your mother. In the morning, that is. You are not to bug her about it tonight.”

“I don’t get it. Why won’t you just tell me? It’s
obvious
.”

“Because it is none of your business.” He unbuckled his seat belt. “Some ground rules before we wake her up. I don’t tolerate invasion of my privacy. Relationships between adults are their own af – business. What your mother chooses to tell you is between you and her.”
And, Laura, my love, think carefully before you tell this one anything.
“If you and I are going to get along – and since we both care about her, we need to – remember that I’m the adult here, and you are not.”

Meg studied him intently.

“The other rule,” Richard said, “in my house or my car, you do things my way. Got it?”

She processed his words. What a bolt from the blue, on this night of nights, to see his own strategic thought processes mirrored behind the eyes of Francie Abbott. Genetics popped up in the most unlikely places.

“Okay,” said Meg St. Bride, and stuck out her hand. “Got it.”

Chapter 13: Deep Pockets

“HOW MUCH DID YOU DRINK LAST NIGHT?” Lucy asked.

Diana shifted in the passenger seat. “Not nearly enough. And would you mind not talking right now? It’s bad enough you dragged me out of bed at this ungodly hour.”

Lucy didn’t feel a drop of sympathy for her sister, no matter how hung over she was. And Diana was hung over, no doubt about it. She’d known as soon as her sister answered the door that Diana had had a rough night. Her eyes were sunken and listless, her skin was pale and blotched and puffy. She must have gone right to the club from Ashmore Park to drink most of the night’s profits away.

This was happening too often lately. Between Dominic’s death and this divorce, Diana had too much to drink about. Lucy made a mental note to see about hiring a manager. Or maybe she should do as Tom had suggested the night before, sell her share to Diana once this concert was behind them and wash her hands of the entire venture.

Diana shifted again, restlessly. “Why did you drag me out this early anyway? Where are we going?”

“We are going,” said Lucy, “to Ash Marine. But first, we’ve got an appointment at the police substation.”

That got her sister’s attention. She shot up straight. “Police? What the hell for?”

“To see if any unidentified bodies might have washed up from the island.”

“Oh, that.” Diana slouched down again. “Are you still obsessing about that?”

“Still obsessing. I’ve been doing some research.” She’d spent most of the week on the phone and the Internet, trying to make sense of the fantastical story that Laura had told Diana. After repeated questioning, Diana had managed to dredge up the memory of a phone call from Francie – a phone call she had failed to mention for the last eleven years.

She’d vent about that later on, Lucy thought grimly, but at least that phone call had narrowed down the time period when Francie and Laura might have come back. The more Diana talked, the more she remembered, enough so that Lucy’s rough timeline put Francie’s so-called murder during the summer when Richard and Diana had been at each other’s throats about Julie.

“I don’t see why I have to come along.” Diana’s voice was muffled through a yawn. “I’ve told you everything I know.”

“Oh, I doubt that.” Lucy took the road that led to the bridge-tunnel to Norfolk. What a massive pain in the neck to drive to Ash Marine; usually she sailed with Tom or flew with Richard. “Look how you magically remembered the phone call the fifth time I made you tell me the whole story. Who knows what will suddenly pop into your head once you walk the scene.”

If it had happened at all. If Diana hadn’t dreamed up that entire story. If Laura hadn’t taken it into her head to see just how gullible Diana was.

“Oh.” Diana let the seat back and leaned her head against the headrest. “I figured you wanted to hash out yesterday.”

“That too.”

But Diana didn’t pick up the conversational cue. She stared out the passenger window, even in the tunnel that connected Hampton with Norfolk where there was nothing to see but the dark walls of the tunnel, and Lucy let her stew.

The storm had left the morning clean and fresh; everything had a just-washed look to it as they emerged from the tunnel onto the bridge. Sailboats decorated the sparkling waters of the James as it opened up to the Chesapeake. Most people had the day off and were getting an early start; she was glad she had set the alarm for even earlier so that she wouldn’t have to fight the traffic on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.

She was tired, and it wasn’t the usual first-trimester exhaustion. Richard had stopped in briefly after taking Julie to the lock-in, and his short, pointed discussion with Tom had left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.
Stay out of my affairs
, and after he had left, Tom had remarked, disgruntled, that he’d be glad to if only everyone involved would stop
having
affairs. They’d had a tense exchange over her sisters and gone to bed still out of sorts with each other. Then the call from her niece:
I’m at the airport. I can’t get my mom on the phone. Do you know where she is?
That split second when Richard’s tone had made it crystal clear what she had interrupted.

Oh, lucky fly on
that
wall! She was dying to know what had transpired overnight.

They were flying along the bridge, within sight of Seagull Island, when Diana stirred herself to speak.

“I am never speaking to that bitch again.”

“Who? Laurie?” Part of Lucy – a very small part – felt a niggling sympathy for Diana. Laura certainly hadn’t pulled her punches, throwing Diana’s past triumph right in her face.

Diana stared ahead, her face set in stone. “That was a deliberate attempt to humiliate me.”

True, Laura had done that, but only as a result of Diana’s deliberate attempt to humiliate her – and why Diana had tried to do so, Lucy couldn’t fathom. Diana couldn’t know about Laura and Richard; Ashmore Park couldn’t have contained the explosion. Lucy switched lanes. “Who cares? Richard and I are the only ones who know you sang ‘Nessun Dorma.’”

More stone face. “I don’t care who knows what. She knew. She is not going to get away with it.”

Time for some plain truths. Caught up in the drama of the moment – Diana’s unexpected appearance, the impromptu concert, the palpable tension among the players in this unbelievable triangle – Lucy hadn’t recognized the legal implications until Tom pointed them out on the drive home. “No, Di. You’re going to have to let her get away with it.”

She felt rather than saw the icy look her sister turned on her. “Excuse me? I have to take an insult like that lying down?”

“Yes,” said Lucy. “Lying down. And praying with all your might that all she does is sing ‘Nessun Dorma’ – which, by the way, is not your property. Puccini didn’t write it for your exclusive use. Do you have
any
idea what trouble you landed us in yesterday? You, me, the club?”

“Oh, give me a break,” Diana said sullenly. “I didn’t get you in any trouble.”

“Oh, yes, you did,” Lucy shot back. “We signed a contract with Cat Courtney, Inc., as owners of the Tavern. You violated it. She could sue us, Di. Not that she will, not Laurie, but she can. So you,” she adjusted her rear-view mirror, “are going to play real nice next time you see her.”

“No,” Diana said. “I’m not. And what can she sue us for? Free publicity?”

“No. You violated two clauses in the contract.”

“Oh, so what.” Diana slouched back down in her seat. “So I told everyone Laura is Cat Courtney, or Cat is Laura – I don’t know which way is supposed to be so bad. People didn’t look that shocked, Luce. They all knew who she was.”

“They didn’t know officially. You made a public announcement – acting in your capacity as owner of the Tavern, thanks ever so much – linking Laura St. Bride with Cat Courtney. That is a direct violation of the confidentiality clause.” She’d had nightmares of defending them against their sister in court, until common sense had reasserted itself. Of course, Laura wouldn’t sue.

But someone else might.

Diana sounded a little uneasy for the first time. “But
I
did it. Why would anyone drag you into it? Besides, isn’t that why you incorporated us, so we couldn’t get sued for stuff with the club?”

“Oh, please.” Diana was deliberately ignoring the gravity of what she had done. “Piercing the corporate veil is a snap. It’s just you and me. You were acting in an official capacity when you opened your big mouth yesterday, and you did it deliberately and, let’s face it, maliciously. The corporate veil isn’t going to protect us. That’s not even the worst thing you did either.”

Diana heaved a sigh. “Okay. Lay it on me. What other – ooh,” she gave a mock shudder, “clause did I violate?”