All That Lies Broken (Ashmore's Folly Book 2) (59 page)

She put the card down with Philip’s and felt the unwelcome sting of tears.
You knew, Dad. God damn it, you knew where she was. You knew her name. And you said nothing to us all these years.

She picked up the next card. The day after his seven-hour trip, Philip had left, bound for Ash Marine, at 10:30 in the morning. Passenger:
1
. He had returned at 12:48 p.m. Passenger:
0
.

She stared at that one for a long time and then laid it with the other cards she had pulled out.

Next card. For the third day in a row, Philip had left for Ash Marine, this time at 9:15 a.m. He had returned three hours later. No passengers, coming or going.

She numbly paged through the rest of Philip Ashmore’s billing cards but found nothing out of the ordinary. She turned to the next to last box.

And then a wave of exhaustion swept her over. Damn it, she was tired. She was hot and thirsty and dusty and pregnant. She was sick of it all – her family, her foster brother and her older sister, her younger sister and the mysteries surrounding her. She had better things to do than sit in a dirty hangar, going through index cards. She should be at home in her little sitting room, feet propped up, sipping something cool and herbal, doing nothing but growing her baby.

Lucy closed her eyes, took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and opened the box.

She was in luck. She had only gone through a third of the box when she ran across Richard’s signature – that precise signature that she’d know anywhere. It was for the wrong time period, but at least she had found his tracks in the sand. That discovery, minor as it was, gave her a second wind, and she pressed on through another third of the box.

Then she hit pay dirt. She found a number of cards for the spring of 1988, all signed by Richard with Ash Marine or Charlottesville as the destination. On each card for Ash Marine, in the box for passengers:
1
. Her eyebrows shot up. Not Diana, that was for sure. And this was the spring that he and Francie – okay, so now she knew how and where they had been meeting. She knew dates. Each landing was brief, just long enough to pick up or drop off a passenger, and maybe enough time for a couple of hot kisses.

Maybe I
will
knock your block off. What were you thinking?
Were
you thinking?

These she definitely needed to keep. Here was concrete evidence of the affair with Francie, and she couldn’t risk Diana getting curious and asking to go through billing records.

On through the next three years. Richard had been busy establishing himself in his new career; he hadn’t had that much time to fly, even on the weekends. She went through the cards quickly until she ran across two cards clipped together.

One for August 6, 1991. A takeoff. Signed by Richard Ashmore at 11:20 a.m. Destination:
Ash Marine Inlet, VA
.

The other, same date. Landing at 2:05 p.m. But the signature—

His name, but in handwriting that could scarcely be called that. The letters were shaky and ill-formed, and the ink from his pen had smeared across the top of each letter. It looked as if someone had dragged something across the top of his signature. It reminded her of the time when Tom had sprained his writing arm playing tennis.

Even more interesting, he, or someone, had whited out the signature line, so that his shaky signature lay on top of something else. She ran a fingernail lightly along the edge of the white-out, and a few flakes fell on her lap.

And the
2
in 2:05 looked different from the
2
in 11:20. Richard’s numbers were neat and precise, the printing of an architect. The 2:05 had an ornate tail.

Someone else had filled out that card, and he had signed it.

She shoved her discoveries – Richard’s cards, Philip’s cards, even Cam’s – into her shoulder bag and replaced everything else in the box. She made a note of the box number in case she needed it – you never knew – but she doubted she’d be back. She had found what she needed.

On the way out, she grabbed some bottled water. She must have swallowed a gallon of dust.

~•~

By early afternoon, Emma St. Bride had run out of tears.

At least, Brian Schneider hoped she had. He had never seen a woman cry so long and so hard. Not that she didn’t have every reason to cry. The identification of Cameron St. Bride’s remains had come without warning and had hit hard; he gathered that the family had been resigned to his obliteration. “They only found his wedding ring,” Emma sobbed. “And she
took
it.”

It seemed to Brian that a man’s wife had more right to his wedding ring than his sister did, but he didn’t voice that opinion. Emma clearly was in no mood to be reasonable. He shelved any thought of gently questioning her about her sister-in-law and spent a couple of hours comforting Emma on the huge sofa in the family room, a two-story room almost as large as his house.

Then they moved up to her bedroom, and he comforted her some more.

They were resting when Laura St. Bride called and left a message. How Emma didn’t feel him snap to was a mystery; maybe she was also dozing off from the last round of comforting. He forced himself to breathe normally as the voice of the elusive Mrs. St. Bride came over the speaker phone. “Emma? Emma, I need to talk to you. Please call me on my cell when you get this. Thanks.” If his editor could hear Laura St. Bride’s voice, then listen to Cat Courtney’s CD, no question could remain. Her speaking voice was a soft Southern, but the tones and timber were the same as her singing voice: a certain clarity, an interesting lilt that spoke of that Irish background.

“Oh,
God
,” said Emma. “That’s the last straw, hearing from her today! I wonder what earthshaking crisis she’s got now?”

Brian said, “Perhaps someone’s called her. Isn’t it possible—”

But three orgasms still had put Emma in no mood to listen to reason. “She wouldn’t be calling me, I promise you! She’d be crying all over Mark’s shoulder. No, she probably needs a lipstick sent to her, or some other crucial thing that can’t wait.” She turned on the pillow towards him. “You can be sure she won’t care Cam’s been found. I never met a colder bitch in my life. She was like ice at Ground Zero. Never turned a hair.”

Brian glanced over at her, shocked. He had never seen a woman show less empathy. So Laura St. Bride was reserved? If she were Cat Courtney, she’d had years to learn to control her emotions in public. She had probably had plenty of practice – an unwed mother suddenly made a daughter-in-law, a girl with a hidden background married into this judgmental family.

Not to mention that Laura Abbott had the look of someone who had only ever had herself to rely on. She’d probably learned to keep her feelings under wraps and her thoughts to herself.

What had the St. Brides thought, when their son brought home his much younger wife and their baby? Had they judged her the moment she walked in? Had she faced this harshness throughout what seemed like a miserable marriage?

No matter that the judgmental-St. Bride-in-chief had laid her cheek against his chest, her breath a warm brush against his skin. When she got on the subject of her sister-in-law, she was thoroughly disagreeable. And, Brian decided, he didn’t like her this way, crazed mink between the sheets or not.

He said clearly, “That’s not fair, Emma.”

Emma lay still for a moment, then lifted her head. She looked stunned. “What?”

“Your attitude.” He sat up, drawing away from her. “I don’t know your sister-in-law, and I really don’t get your relationship with her, but you don’t show an ounce of compassion for her. For God’s sake, the woman lost her husband in the most horrible way anyone could imagine. It was probably all she could do to keep herself together at Ground Zero. Most people would have been freaked out of their minds. Cut her some slack.”

Emma stared at him, her mouth open. For the first time since he had met her – two days ago? seemed longer – she looked her full forty years. Hadn’t anyone ever taken the St. Bride queen down a peg? Held up a mirror to her, shown her how truly unattractive she could be?

She might be well put together, but she was a shrew inside.

He gave her a brief look, swung his legs to the floor, and reached for his clothes.

From behind him, he heard a small “You’re not being fair, Brian.”

“I think I am.” He pulled on his pants. “You’re hypercritical, Emma. You don’t like the way your sister-in-law runs her life, not that it concerns anyone besides her and your brother, and he’s not around to have any say-so. You don’t like that she mourns differently from you. You just flat don’t like her. So, tell me, what—” he sat down again to pull on his socks— “gives you the right to sit in judgment on her?”

“Hold on there.” Emma had found her voice again, and she sounded shrill. “Since when are you such an expert? You don’t know her. You didn’t have to put up with her at Thanksgiving dinner for all those years like I did. God! You don’t know. Just that stupid mysterious silence of hers, and that deferring to Cam all the time, when you could see in her eyes she wanted to slug him. That woman is a gold digger, and she got her gold. She saw a sure thing in him, she got pregnant and made him marry her, and then she took him for everything—”

“Oh, really?” He turned around and looked at her straight. “I doubt that. I doubt that very much, Emma. I don’t think she needed your brother at all. I bought one of her CDs this morning. Oh, yes,” he said at her shock, “I know. You all but handed it to me on a silver platter. Cat Courtney didn’t need your brother. If she stayed with him, it’s because she
wanted
to. She either loved him, and why I don’t know, because he sure as hell didn’t qualify as husband of the year, or she wanted her child to have her father. Either way, those were damn good motives.”

“My God.” Emma’s hand went to her throat. “How did you – no, I didn’t, what do you mean, I handed it to you—”

“Give me a break.” He didn’t care how scathing he sounded. “Little Miss Cat? Copyrights? Francie? That piano? The career in Europe that no one seemed to know about?”

“You – you—”

“What did you expect, Emma? I’m a journalist. This is what I do. I put things together. You handed me a story, and I went after it. You wouldn’t believe how easy it was, once you put me on the right path.”

He buttoned his shirt and looked around for his tie, then remembered stuffing it in the pocket of his jacket, downstairs.

“You
bastard
.” Emma barely got the words out. She had gone completely pale, except for her swollen eyes. Impossible to cry buckets of tears and not leave some traces. “You – you
used
me, you came here for your
story
, is that it? On
her?
”

Her voice ended in a shriek.

Brian found his watch on her dressing table and clasped it on. Then he looked at her.

“I didn’t need to come here for the story,” he said, and didn’t care that it wasn’t, strictly speaking, the truth. “If you think I came over here to soften you up with sex for a story – well, you don’t know me, Emma. You don’t know me at all. I came here because you were upset and you needed someone and I didn’t want you to be alone.”

Emma got up from the bed, the sheet wrapped around those luscious breasts. For a second, Brian felt a pang. He wouldn’t be seeing those again. The next second, he dodged as she picked up a crystal clock from her bedside and threw it at his head.

It shattered against the wall behind him, and the sound seemed to stun her as much as it did him. Damn, if he hadn’t ducked, he’d be on his way to the hospital – if he were lucky.

She seemed as shocked by her action as he felt. But in the wake of shock came a sudden fierce disgust. He crossed the room to her and caught her wrist in his grip.

“Don’t,” he said carefully, “ever do that again. You do, and I won’t hesitate to press charges. Get that god-awful temper under control, and
get over yourself
. Your brother’s been found, yes, you’re upset, you have a right to be. But you have no call to question how anyone else feels about it, and you sure as hell don’t have the right to try to kill me.”

He turned and walked out. After a few seconds, she followed him down the stairs, and he heard her muttering as she tried not to trip on the sheet. Well, to hell with her. She was fun in the sack, and she could be fun out of it when she wasn’t eaten up by jealousy, but she was way more trouble than she was worth. Those three husbands of hers should count themselves lucky.

Thank God he hadn’t gotten in any deeper.

He retrieved his jacket from the family room and turned to leave. She was standing in his way, and she was crying. Again.

“Brian. Please don’t go. I’m so sorry.”

He stepped around her.

“Brian, please! I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

He opened the door.

“Listen,” and now she sounded desperate. This must be a first for Emma St. Bride, a man walking away from her. She was used to cracking the whip. “You want the story? I’ll give it to you! I know everything about Cat Courtney, and I mean everything! I don’t care about her, I can help you blow this wide open—”