Objection Overruled (12 page)

“You mean offshore accounts?” Weaver pulled the paper closer to him.

“Exactly. Sophisticated clients have offshore accounts all the time, so initially, this didn’t cause me concern. But, when I realized Ashe was faking trades in Italy, something clicked. The forth transaction down shows the code for Andorra, a tiny principality between France and Spain. Andorran bankers say their accounts are known only to the holder and God. It’s the most secret place in the world to hide money. This shows money going into Andorra, then some coming back into the Ashe funds, some staying in Europe and the rest swept into accounts in Dubai, the Caymans, and Switzerland. No one moves money around like that unless they are hiding something.”

Weaver and Erickson leaned back in their chairs and smiled knowingly.

Brandon tensed. “What?”

Erickson gathered the papers and tapped them into a neat pile. “We have a good idea what Ashe is hiding, and this might be the proverbial nail in the coffin.”

Erickson’s gloating grin irritated Brandon. “Are you going to share your theory with me?”

“Not yet,” said Weaver. “But, I’ve reconsidered my position on watching North. If she puts two and two together, and if Ashe knows she has, she might end up in worse shape than the previous expert in this case.”

Brandon’s gut clenched. The previous expert lay in an unexplainable coma. He had to find Jackie and warn her. The FBI may have said they’d watch her, but he couldn’t trust them to keep her safe the way he could. He wasn’t going to lose another woman because of Ashe. He got up to leave, but before he could get out the conference-room door, Weaver moved in front of him.

As if reading his mind, Weaver warned, “If you’re thinking about flying to Jackie North right now, think again. No unusual moves or our deal is off.”

Chapter Ten

Jackie tapped into her dwindling inner core of determination and shored herself up like solid oak. Her meeting with her friend at the US Attorney’s office flew by, and she sailed through the motion in the local court, doing her best to camouflage her wardrobe malfunction.

Maybe she still had her mojo. One day, the underpants debacle would be a source of laughter, but for now, the humiliation stung. Even worse, she despised herself for caring so much what one man might think.

On a mission to get the offending panties into the garbage, Jackie hurried out of the courthouse to head back to her loft to change her clothes. After she’d walked only a few blocks, the sweet, full-bodied smell of fried dough from Pete’s Cosmic Doughnuts stopped her.

She detoured to the shop and picked up two apple fritters to go. She then beat a path to the Bank of Maryland building to see Stan. Turquoise panties be damned; she owed Stan a doughnut.

A heavyset woman with teased bangs and a frizzy ponytail sat in Stan’s usual place at the guard’s desk.

“Where’s Stan?” Jackie plopped the bag of pastries on the desk.

“Oh, he’s out today.” The guard eyeballed the bag of doughnuts, her nostrils flaring.

Jackie snatched the bag off the desk before the guard’s pilfering fingers could touch her pastries. Those were Stan’s and no one else’s. “Is he sick?”

“Dunno. I just go where they tell me, and I’m here for the week.” The guard scooted her chair to the right, trying to get a view of something or someone behind Jackie.

Before Jackie could turn around, someone grabbed her arm hard and spun her around.

“What the hell—” Jackie growled.

“What do you think you are doing?” Gary Stone’s fingers dug into her upper arms like a vise.

“Get your hands off me!” Jackie’s voice was loud enough that people in the lobby stared in their direction and whispered among themselves. The security guard picked up her phone and started to flip through a Rolodex.

Stone’s grip relaxed, although he still held on to her. He looked at the security guard’s panicky face. “Everything’s fine. I’m Gary Stone. My firm’s on the top floor. Jackie, this way.”

As if being Gary Stone gave him a license to assault women in his firm’s lobby! Had Stone’s audacity quotient risen? Why had it taken her so long to realize he was nothing but an arrogant ass?

Stone steered her to a deserted hallway where stairs led to the parking garage.

“Checked your e-mail lately?” He sneered, practically spitting on her.

“No,” she replied with venom.

“Might I suggest you check that out now?” His breath was hot on her face.

“Back up, Gary, for Christ’s sake.” She pulled her phone out of her bag and tapped in her password to bring up her e-mail. A message with an attachment from Gary Stone was in her inbox. Her hand trembled as she tapped the message. A photo of Brandon with his thumb in her mouth from just hours ago filled the mini screen. It was blurry but undeniable. A knot formed in her throat.

“Where did you get this?”

Stone inched closer. “I don’t think you’re in the position to be demanding any answers from me, Jackie. What’s going on with you and Marshfield?”

“I don’t owe you an explanation, Gary.” She sidled sideways to get away from him.

Stone moved with her and blocked her escape. “Oh, but you do.”

Although his threat was unspoken, it hung between them as tangible and cold as the granite wall pressed against Jackie’s back.

Jackie squared her shoulders, determined not to show weakness. “It seems to me that you might be in more trouble than me, Gary. You didn’t do a very good job at interviewing your expert to exclude any potential conflicts, did you? I should file a motion to disqualify Marshfield. Maybe it’s already drafted and waiting for me on my desk. What will your client think of that?”

The color drained from Stone’s face.

Jackie seized the moment and once again inched sideways to extricate herself from Stone, but he moved in closer to her.

“I have no interest in taking you down professionally. I’m sure you feel likewise,” Stone said with an oily smile. “We’ve known each other too long. Worked together too long to sink to threats.”

Jackie flattened herself against the wall to create space between her and Stone. “Your little games to the contrary, right?”

Stone looked away and rubbed his hand over his mouth. “What I’m trying to say is—I loved you. I still love you.”

“Not again.” Jackie couldn’t look him in the face. Seeing him plead would be more than she could tolerate.

“It’s not too late for us.” He leaned closer to her but didn’t touch her.

“Not too late? You’re married. It’s over between us and has been for a long time.” She closed her eyes tight, willing him to disappear. At one time, she would have given the world for Stone to crawl back to her. Now, his groveling turned her stomach sour.

Stone sighed. “At least let this case go. You don’t understand what you’re facing.”

“Give me a break, Gary. I’m more than capable of facing you in court. Don’t tell me you’re worried?”

“Listen to me.” Stone’s voice was strained as he grabbed her arms and shook her. “Am I worried? Yes. And you should be too. Afraid, in fact. There’s more to the Ashe family than is seen in polite circles. That’s all I can say.” Beads of sweat pearled on Stone’s lined forehead. He took her hand and slid a piece of paper into it. “Watch out for yourself. Don’t trust Marshfield. Believe me.”

Before she could say anything, he dropped his arms and strode off down the hall. The torn piece of paper had a name and phone number on it, neither of which was familiar. She hurriedly left a note for Stan on her way out of the building, anxious to put as much distance as possible between her and Stone.

Walking on autopilot, Jackie found herself across the street from her office, having forgotten about her quest to change clothes. The exchange with Brandon had left her hot and flustered, but the encounter with Stone had given her the chills.

Of course she knew Ashe was a scumbag. But what could he be up to that put the fear of God into Gary? And, what did Gary know about Marshfield? He was probably just bluffing. Under Stone’s slick bravado was a man desperate for approval. After all, it was his insecurities constantly manifesting as manipulations and control that had put her over the brink when they were dating.

She crossed the last intersection, dodging cabs in the midmorning rush. The note from Gary was wadded in her hand, moist from the day’s humidity and her own sweat. Getting out of the outfit from hell would have to wait. Jackie wanted to check on Marilyn’s progress and see if she could track down the information on the name and number scrawled on the slip of paper.

Yet when she entered her office, Marilyn was missing from her post at the front desk. Surely there wasn’t another IT problem. “Hello?” Jackie called.

“In the multipurpose room, dearest.”

Two card tables pushed together served as a conference room table. Papers covered it like an avalanche. Marilyn beamed, her hands on her hips and her sling-back pumps set precisely on the folding chair against the wall.

“What’s all this?” Jackie craned her neck.

“This”—Marilyn spread her hands out before her—“is Brandon Marshfield.”

Jackie moved around the table to stand next to Marilyn. Dozens of newspaper articles chronicling Marshfield’s life lay in front her.

She picked up the one in the upper left-hand corner of the table. It was a copy of a newspaper microfilm of an obituary from almost twenty years ago. The picture showed a beautiful woman with wavy, shoulder-length hair, a square jaw, and intense eyes.

“That’s his mother,” said Marilyn unnecessarily. It was Brandon Marshfield’s face, without a doubt.

Jackie scanned the article. Brenda Marshfield, beloved wife of Joseph and mother of Brandon, had passed away after a long battle with lung cancer. Hundreds had packed the church to say farewell to Waynesboro’s grand dame of charitable service.

The Marshfields had run a true mom-and-pop dime store. Brenda Marshfield had filled her nonworking hours with selfless devotion to everything from the Boy Scouts to the quilting circle to the blood drives to the animal shelters. She must never have slept.

“Where’s Waynesboro?” Jackie wondered aloud.

“West of Charlottesville, Virginia. Near the Blue Ridge Mountains. Small town.”

“I wonder if their store is still there.”

Marilyn picked up the next piece of paper and held it out for Jackie. It was another obituary. This one was for Joseph Marshfield.

He’d died only eight years after his wife. The obit was oddly short, in contrast to the half-page spread for his wife. Preceded in death by his devoted wife, Joseph Marshfield had left one survivor, his seventeen-year-old son Brandon.

So Brandon was an orphan, not entirely unlike her, except her parents were both alive. Did it hurt more for them to be gone forever or to lurk on the periphery of your life, appearing at random to wreak havoc? How many times before had she wished them both dead?

Between the string of her dad’s broken promises and her mother’s emotional incapacity, Jackie grew up believing she would have been better off as an orphan. Looking at the tear-streaked face of Brandon and his dad in the paper, she wondered whether she would have been. She pressed her lips together and swallowed hard.

“That’s so sad,” said Jackie. “What I don’t understand is why the mom gets the big spread, but the dad’s obit is so short. And what happened to the store? Did you find anything on that?”

“I did.” Marilyn riffled through the papers and pulled out some handwritten notes. “I thought that was funny too, so I called a friend who knows someone out there who called the newspaper editor at the time of the death.”

Jackie screwed up her face. “What? Who?”

“Never mind, dearest. I ended up speaking with the editor from the paper. It turns out that Joseph Marshfield committed suicide. After his wife died and the family store went under to a big-box retailer, he sank into a deep depression. The editor said the Marshfields were like swans, which mate for life. Did you know that when one swan dies, its mate will mourn for years, sometimes dying of a broken heart?”

“Please don’t tell me it was some horrific death, and Brandon found him.”

Marilyn pressed her lips together tightly. “Shotgun.”

Jackie’s stomach churned as the pain from her own dad’s desertions came back to her. How could someone suffer so much pain and yet seem so unscathed by it? Brandon was so normal. With him, the normalcy seemed natural. She had to fight to keep her front up and worried that she’d already let Brandon glimpse the less-than-perfect parts of her. He still seemed to want her, though. The sound of Marilyn clearing her throat brought her back to the task at hand.

“So, what happens next to our guy? He’s orphaned his senior year of high school and goes on to the University of Virginia, where he met Robert Ashe.” Jackie paced in front of the table. “I wonder why Ashe went to UVA and not Penn like his dad?”

Marilyn shuffled through a stack of papers with a yellow sticky note saying UVA. “Political science. Virginia has one of the best poli-sci departments in the country, apparently. Looks like he was bucking his father’s wishes that he follow in the Ashe men’s footsteps and get into finance.”

None of this made sense to Jackie. “But he did get into finance. He graduated from Towson with a finance degree and has worked at Ashe Investments since college.”

“Ashe was one year ahead of Marshfield in college. They were in the same fraternity. Ashe left suddenly in the middle of the second semester his sophomore year.” Marilyn narrowed her eyes like a tiger in a cage that could smell meat outside the bars but couldn’t see it and couldn’t get to it. “I still haven’t figured that one out. I’m working on some contacts in the president’s office, but nothing yet.”

“Jesus, is there anyone you don’t know? You’re like a spider with her web cast all over the United States.”

Marilyn’s impish smile lit up the room. “Honey, when you are as old as me, you accumulate friends. Only problem is that my best contacts have retired and a few even died last year. This could be my last hurrah, so I’m pulling out all the stops.”

Jackie opened the slip of paper from Stone. “So, do you know the area code for Charlottesville off the top of your head?”