Out of Bounds (21 page)

“Not really,” she objected.

The lawyer’s bushy eyebrows pulled together,
and he pursed his lips. “Ah,” he said. “Good heavens. Did you not
get any of the correspondence?”

Jetta shook her head, spirits plummeting. So
it was true—only half of the house was hers. “I presumed I’d get
something once Gran died,” she said. “Confirming details and so on.
But there’s been nothing yet.”

“And nothing in years past?” A worried frown
continued to crease Horrie’s brow.

“Absolutely not.”

“Most irregular,” he said. “I signed every
communication myself. They all went to Lucy and David, because of
course you were initially a minor. David took care of everything
for you. He was to apprise you of the situation once you reached
your twenty-first birthday.”

“I’m sure he looked after everything
splendidly,” Jetta agreed. “But he died right before I turned
twenty-one.” She leaned forward in her chair. “What exactly was he
looking after?” she begged. “I’ve never seen anything at all. When
Anton turned up out of the blue, it was a huge shock.”

“We didn’t quite hit it off, did we?” Anton
said.

“You could say that,” she agreed. “Or you
could say we fought like a pair of pit bulls, each trying to
protect what we thought was ours.”

A wry grin hovered about the corners of his
mouth for a moment, giving her a fleeting glimpse of the carefree
man she’d first met.

Anton, perhaps sensing wordiness to follow,
dived in quickly. “I’ve told Jetta that my half of the house was
used to cover her grandmother’s expenses for her lifetime. That
you’d arranged for all the bills to be paid automatically because
her grandfather was getting worried about his wife’s health.”

“Lucy was a gentle soul,” the lawyer agreed.
“David had always tended to their finances, and this seemed an
ideal way to give them both peace of mind.”

“So half of the house is now Anton’s?
Why?”

Horrie cleared his throat. “Because of who
his father was. And his mother, too, of course. Isobel was my
secretary for many years.”

The phone gave a polite beep.

“Do excuse me for a moment,” Horrie said,
lifting the receiver from its cradle and listening for a few
seconds.

“So who’s your father?” Jetta whispered. None
of this made sense yet.

“Arthur John Haviland.”

She shook her head. “Never heard of him.”

Anton shrugged. “That’s the name on my birth
certificate.”

Horrie replaced the phone and cleared his
throat again. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you young people to come
back another time,” he said. “That’s my first official client for
the day, beginning to get a little fractious because he’s due to
fly out somewhere quite soon. Poor Sue has had enough of him.”

He rose to his feet, and Jetta found herself doing
the same.

“Arthur John Haviland...” Jetta murmured as
they drove back to the house. The name still triggered no memories.
She glanced sideways at Anton. “I’d love to ask your mother about
him. Do you think that’s possible?”

“You’ll risk getting your head bitten off,
but she might be in a mood to talk. You’ll have to wait until she’s
back from Australia though. She and her sister are cruising the
Whitsunday Passage about now.”

Jetta wrinkled her nose in annoyance. “She’s
by far my best bet. I suppose I’ll be in New York by the time she’s
back—damn! Could I write a note for you to give to her?”

He nodded, eyes on the road and not on her.
“Yeah, okay.”

Lighten up,
she wanted to snap.
Pay
me some attention again. I know you’ve got worries, but so have I.
Worries and mysteries and secrets now. Why didn’t Grandpa tell me
any of this? Who is Arthur Haviland? And how come it’s
you
who gets the other half of my
house?

“Am I dropping you at work?”

“Yes,” she said, making a quick decision.
“They’ve been very good about the funeral and the fire, but I can’t
keep taking time off, even though I’m so close to finishing. We’re
not too busy so I might come home early and have a good think about
things.”

Anton reached across and surprised her by
taking her hand and holding it for a few seconds. “Sorry this has
all gone pear shaped. We were good.”

Sudden dread flicked across her nerve
endings. “And now we’re over?”

He shrugged at that. “I’m not much fun right
now.”

“I was going to New York anyway,” Jetta said,
trying to keep it light.

He glanced in the rear view mirror.
Apparently seeing no following traffic, he swerved up to a bus stop
and braked.

He turned to her and said with
uncharacteristic intensity, “You’ll be back in a few months. Don’t
forget me.” He reached over and tilted her face up for a long
luscious kiss. Jetta threaded her fingers through his hair and
tugged him closer. The kiss went from regretful through incendiary
to desperate. “Because,” he ground out, “if I get the project to
come right, things will be better. Try not to fall in love with
anyone else.”

She stared at him, open-mouthed—heart
pounding, eyes wide. That had almost sounded like commitment.

Could she really believe him though? He was a flirt
and a tease, and moved at the speed of light. She’d presumed she
was a convenient housemate, a sexual challenge, a short-term
amusement for him. But nothing more. “I don’t want to fall in love
with anyone else,” she protested, but the words were drowned out as
he gunned the motor and shot off the bus stop into traffic.

She returned to the house at four, having
shopped for replacement suitcases and a few extra clothes during
her lunch break. She tipped the glossy boutique bags onto the bed
and shook the contents out, knowing the old wardrobe was already
bulging at the seams. Anton was right—his apartments needed plenty
of wardrobe space.

She gave the hangers a hefty shove along the
rail and exclaimed with pain as her hand hit something sharp. A
quick inspection confirmed she’d only scratched herself—but what
the heck? She felt more cautiously in amongst the clothes and found
a nail in the side wall. And a small flat key hanging from it on a
piece of hairy string.

A suitcase key? She stripped to her underwear
and retrieved yesterday’s shirt from the laundry basket. It would
be going right back there in a minute or two, as soon as she’d
checked to see if the key fitted the old leather suitcase in her
burnt out room.

With plywood nailed over the gaping window
hole, it was eerily dark in there. She edged in as far as the
wardrobe, pulled the scorched door open and felt around inside
until she fumbled onto the handle. Knowing it would be filthy with
cinders, she lugged the case out to the back porch before setting
it down.

It had once been a handsome piece of luggage.
Now the brown leather gleamed only dully under the smoke stains,
and the squared-off brass corner trims had no luster left. The
latches were so rusty she doubted they’d open.

She set the case down flat and knelt beside
it. Yes, the key fitted, but would it turn? Yes, it agreed to. To
her surprise, the old-fashioned catches sprang up easily when she
pressed the release buttons. She raised the lid.

“Gran!” she exclaimed, as her eyes roved over
the contents. “Oh Gran, what have you been up to?”

Two lidless cardboard boxes sat side by side.
Each contained dozens of tidily stacked envelopes—all with the same
dark green Winters and Waterson Barristers and Solicitors
monogram.

The letters addressed to Gran had been
opened.

The ones to Jetta had not.

She lifted some out. The postmarks went back
for years.

Tight rolls of banknotes confined in
perishing elastic bands were crammed into the rest of the suitcase.
Thousands and thousands of dollars worth.

Reeling with shock, she tossed the letters
back in and slammed the lid down, knowing she couldn’t unpack the
contents in the open air. The ancient elastic bands were crisp and
uncurling. The last thing she needed was money blowing all over the
garden.

Ignoring the mess it would make, she dragged
the case back inside, heaved it up onto the kitchen table, and sat
down on one of the chairs before she collapsed with curiosity and
heart failure.

An hour later she’d read twenty-three letters
charting the progress of the trust fund established for her after
the death of her parents and the sale of their home.

Her brain swam with the figures. She’d never
expected anything like this—simply assumed that whatever her
parents had bequeathed to her would have been amalgamated into her
grandparents’ account and used on her behalf. That seemed only
fair. Bringing up a teenager couldn’t have been cheap.

But they’d kept the money intact for her. And
Horrie had done a sterling job on the finance front. There it was,
all carefully detailed—the investments he’d made, the compounding
interest, the current amazing total.

Relinquishing half of number fifteen to Anton
now felt like much less of a blow. Indeed, she could offer him some
of her newfound wealth to help cover the cost of the extra
foundations for Ballentine Park Mews. She could be a property
investor...

She sat there daydreaming about his delighted
reaction until commonsense took over. Maybe she couldn’t access the
money immediately? She’d phone Winters and Waterson first thing
next day and find out before getting his hopes up.

She turned her attention to the cache of
banknotes.

After she’d counted several of the unraveling
rolls she sat shaking her head. So this was why her grandmother’s
clothes had been decrepit and the furnishings so past their use-by
date?

Since Grandpa’s death, Gran must have been
squirreling away anything she could spare from her pension—whether
she could really spare it or not. In fact, much longer, because
there were stray one and two dollar bills there—not legal tender in
New Zealand for years now. The bundles contained a few five and ten
dollar bills, but they were mostly twenties. Even an occasional
fifty. Some of the rolls were worth many hundreds of dollars—and
dozens of them crowded the space not occupied by the boxes.

The throaty growl of the Porsche arriving home
brought her back to reality. Anton really didn’t need to find her
with this lot! She bundled the contents of the case back in,
snapped the catches down, and dragged it back into her old
bedroom.

Anton switched the engine off and sat for a
few moments, head bowed down on the steering wheel. Still no extra
sales signed, so still no more deposit money at his disposal. Still
no added borrowing confirmed.

He was so close to his dream, but right after
the horse had bolted out of the starting gate, they’d found peat.
Soggy, spongy, unstable peat.

He banged his brow down repeatedly and
cursed. Just as everything had come near to fruition, it had all
gone royally wrong.

On top of that, he’d nearly made a fool of
himself by declaring everlasting love to Jetta. Thank God he’d
stopped when he did. He slid out of the car and made his way
wearily inside.

“Hi babes,” he said as he entered the
kitchen. She stood rinsing her hands under the kitchen tap, wearing
only her underwear. “I like your cooking gear.”

She gave him a grin—a very guilty grin if he
wasn’t mistaken—and turned off the water in a hurry. What had she
been up to?

Just seeing her made him feel so much better.
He walked over and stood behind her while she dried her hands,
wrapping his arms around her waist, breathing in her scent, kissing
her neck. His fingers stroked the lace on her bra...caressed the
soft, soft skin above it.

“Do you mind if we get pizza tonight?” she
asked.

“Have you burned the dinner?” A faint smell
of ashes hung in the air.

“Absolutely not. I’ve been busy with
laundry...and things.”

“Pizza it is then. But not for a while yet?” His
fingers slid down into her bra cups and found her nipples. “God,
you turn me on in seconds,” he said, pressing against her so she
could feel the all too obvious evidence.

Just as Jetta walked out next morning, a
courier van screamed to a halt by the curb. But it wasn’t Bren’s
Nick who jogged up the path toward her.

“Jetta Rivers?” the driver asked, brandishing
a courier pack. “Sorry—you should have had this yesterday, but we
had a safety scare at the depot. False alarm as it turned out, but
everyone’s schedule got shot to pieces.”

Jetta signed where he indicated, and wondered
if it was anything urgent. She could always get the next bus. Anton
was long gone—to a breakfast meeting with a prospective client.

She turned back to the house, unlocked the
door, and pulled the rip-top on the plastic pack as she walked
through to the kitchen. She shook the contents onto the table. A
Winters and Waterson envelope tumbled out.

Her eyebrows drew together. Why hadn’t they
given it to her yesterday?

Inside there was a brief note from Horrie,
explaining that Gran had entrusted him with a letter to keep safe
for her. He apologized for not handing it over the day before.

His page had been wrapped around one of
Gran’s familiar old small cream envelopes with the flowers on the
corner—kept for only the most special occasions. This was addressed
‘to my darling Jetta’.

She sat down in a hurry. Given what had
lurked in the suitcase, how much more important could this be? She
peeled up the flap, imagining Gran’s dear face close to the
envelope. She sniffed in case there was a trace of her lavender
perfume clinging to the paper.

Nothing—and no wonder. When she extracted the
letter and checked, it was dated almost four years earlier.

There were three small pages, covered in
old-fashioned spidery writing—the writing that looked so neat until
you tried to decipher it.