Chapter 10

 

With tea under way in the parlor and me in no mood to be polite to guests, I entered the kitchen. The baker, Lee, was taking cookies from the oven. Vicki had just returned from the front with a plate to refill. At my stormy entrance, both looked back.

“Someone is following me,” I announced in a belligerent voice. “I have seen the same car sitting out front since the day I arrived. I don’t know who sent him, but someone is watching everything I do.”

Vicki didn’t seem surprised. “The gray SUV?”

“Yeah, but I don’t recognize the guy inside. Who is watching me?”

“Not watching you,” said Lee, drawing my eye. She was wearing oven mitts and a crestfallen face. “Watching me.”

Startled, I looked back at Vicki, only then realizing what I had missed in my own self-absorption. From the start, there was something she had wanted me to know about Lee.

“I think I need to be with my guests,” she said now, and slipped through the door.

Lee took a second cookie sheet from the oven and put in two new ones before looking at me again. I’m not sure if she thought I’d be at the table reading the newspaper, disinterested now that I knew I wasn’t the one in the crosshairs. But I was standing right there, waiting.

Did you hear about the lawyer hurt in a crash? An ambulance stopped suddenly.

I was no ambulance chaser, but for the first time I understood what drove some lawyers to it. Money, you’re thinking, and for some that might be true. For others, it was a morbid fascination with wrongdoing, coupled with too much legal know-how, and for still others, just the adrenaline rush.

For me, right now, it was pure escapism. I leaned a hip against the counter, settling in.

“He’s watching me,” she repeated in a small voice. A swath of brown hair covered one eye, but the other held mine.

“Why?”

“Protection.”

“He’s protecting you. From what?”

“My husband’s family.”

Married? I wouldn’t have guessed that. She had struck me as being solitary to the extreme, and she wasn’t wearing a ring. “Why is his family after you?”

“They say I stole money from them. I did not,” she vowed with such a hard look that I believed her.

“What does your husband say?”

The hard look wavered. Her face came close to crumbling before she grabbed a spatula. “Nothing. He’s dead.”

“Dead. Oh, Lee, I’m sorry. When?”

“Three years ago.”

“Foul play?” I asked, because Lee didn’t look to be more than forty, and given accusations that necessitated a bodyguard, it sounded like his family was trouble. I imagined organized crime.

“He had a massive heart attack.”

Not something he had bought into. “I’m so sorry. How old was he?”

“Sixteen years older than me, but he loved me. They keep trying to say he didn’t and that I was just using him for the money, but I didn’t want money. All those things he gave me? I didn’t ask for any of it. He was the first person who ever loved me for me.”

She went at the cookies on the first of two sheets, lifting each with a spatula and slipping it onto a plate. They were oatmeal raisin cookies, and the smell was incredible, though I felt guilty even thinking that, given the subject at hand.

“Why do they say you stole money?”

She made a dismissive sound, seeming not to want to say more. I didn’t know whether it was the lawyer in me begging release, the woman in me feeling compassion, or the wife in me not wanting to think about Jude, but I said softly, “I may be able to help.”

“That’s what Vicki said, but I don’t know if anyone can.”

“Try me.”

Having emptied the first cookie sheet, she handed me the plate. “Would you bring these out front?”

I half worried that in the minute it took, she would run off. But she was at work on the second cookie sheet when I returned. Clearly upset, she wasn’t as efficient with these. Several broken cookies lay discarded by the rim of the sheet. This batch held chocolate macadamia nut ones, and those broken pieces were a serious temptation. It was all I could do not to grab one, they smelled so good. Or was it simply that my sense of smell, having been gone for so long, was more vivid?

The spatula skittered again. A dark sound came from Lee’s throat, then a bewildered, “I don’t know where to begin.”

I did. Talking with my husband might be a challenge, but talking with plaintiffs? I was good at this. With a fleeting thought of Layla, the young woman I had been trying to help last Friday morning in New York, I asked Lee, “How long were you and your husband married?”

“Six years.”

“Any kids?”

“No. And there weren’t any others. He had never been married before.”

“How did you meet?”

She broke the rhythm of her work to meet my gaze, daring me before she said a word. “I worked in a bar. He sat at one of my booths. He was lonely and wanted to talk. He kept coming back for that.” Looking down again, she scooped off the last cookie and murmured, “Poor waitress dupes rich customer.”

“Was he rich?” I asked.

She seemed to consider how much to tell me. Finally, quietly, she said, “His family is. They make junk food. You’d know the name if I said it.”

“I take it they weren’t happy with the wedding.”

She rolled her eyes in response, and handed me the second plate of cookies. She was about to push the baking sheets into the soapy sink, when I said a helpless “Whoa,” and caught the edge of one. “You cannot throw these down the drain, Lee. I’m sorry”—I gathered up the cookie scraps—“I truly am focusing on your story, but it would break my heart to let these go to waste.” Once I had them in hand, I set them on the counter safely distant from the suds. I took the plate of perfect cookies into the dining room and hurried back, using the time to order my thoughts.

Taking up position beside the sink with a dish towel in my left hand and a shard of warm cookie in my right, I went on. “You say that he loved you. Did his family not believe that?”

She was scrubbing the first pan, putting anger into it. “They believed his feelings all right, just not mine. You can imagine the names they called me.”

I could. They would be classic. “And then he died.”

“Yes.” She lost her steam, suggesting what came next.

“No prenup.”

“No prenup. Just his will, leaving everything to me. That set them off.”

“How much is everything?” I asked, because wealth was relative, and Lee appeared to have none. Jeans, flannel shirt, sneakers—all were old and worn. Her hair was a mud brown that looked home-done; same with its chin-length cut. She wore neither makeup nor jewelry, and if she had a car, it was hidden from sight.

When she didn’t reply, I realized how intrusive my question was. The lawyer in me had kicked in. It must have threatened her. “You don’t have to answer that.”

“Vicki trusts you,” she said. She didn’t look like she fully agreed, but I sensed she was desperate. Still, it wasn’t until she handed me the first pan and started scrubbing the second that she said, “There was his share of the family money. I still don’t know how much that comes to. Ourselves, we had two houses, one in Manchester-by-the-Sea—in Massachusetts—and one in Florida. I sold the Florida one after he died. It was too big, and I never felt comfortable with his friends there. The Manchester house was big, too, but Jack had loved it, so it had emotional value, and I had to live somewhere. But it’s old and on the water. It cost a load to keep up, and the mortgage was huge. Jack had always said there was enough money in the family trust fund to support both homes, and then I just had the one, which should have made it easier, but the checks I got from the trust kept shrinking until I couldn’t pay the bills. When I asked the family lawyer about it, I got excuses like poor investments and a down market, and I believed it at first. Jack’s friends were all talking about investment scams, and I knew the market was bad.”

She passed me the second pan and, taking one of the mitts, removed the two last sheets from the oven. Chocolate chip here. The smell was too good to be true.

Nibbling on what I already had, I waited patiently.

“Then it got harder to contact the lawyer,” she finally said. “He was never in, and he wouldn’t return my calls. After a while, I’d have to be really stupid to buy it. So I called the trustee.” Her eyes met mine, pleading. “I was so careful not to accuse anyone of anything. I kept saying that I didn’t understand, and that I wasn’t sure what to do. I thought of selling the house, only nothing was selling, and something inside me felt like the money was there. Jack’s brothers weren’t selling their houses. I mean, it was pretty obvious. They were just trying to cut me out.”

“Did you say that to the trustee?”

“Oh yeah,” she said with regret. “Right after that, I got a call from the lawyer. He said that it looked to him like I was skimming money from the trust fund, and that I’d better hire a lawyer of my own, because I was in deep trouble.”

“Did you deny it?”

“Omigod, yes. It’s pretty funny he would even think I could pull that off. I don’t know how trust funds work, and I wouldn’t have a clue about how to skim money from one.”

“Did you tell him that?”

“Yes.” Her voice dropped, but not her eyes, which held mine, daring again. “He asked me whether a judge would believe the word of a convicted felon over that of a well-known, reputable family.” She looked like she was swallowing something big and bad.

“You have a record,” I said.

She nodded.

“Dated when?”

“Twenty years ago,” she said in a trembling voice and, taking the spatula, went to work plating the newly baked cookies. “I was working as a cook for a family like Jack’s. The wife was always losing her jewelry. She just left it around, and then, when no one could find it, she filed a claim with her insurance company. It was kind of a running joke in her family. This time it was a diamond bracelet. She dropped it near the toaster, a little snaky thing that tempted me just like those cookies tempted you. I left it there for the longest time. Usually she’d come looking. This time she didn’t.”

“Did you tell her about it?”

“No,” Lee said, scooping up another cookie, sliding it onto the plate.

“Why not?”

“I wanted to see how long she’d leave it there. Finally, I just took it. I didn’t have the guts to sell it, so they found it there in my room. Then they claimed I had taken other things that had gone missing. Since they only had me on the bracelet, I got fourteen months. The rap sheet lasts forever.”

I connected the dots. “Your husband’s family saw it.”

“But Jack knew. I told him when we first met. He didn’t care.”

“She’s been with me for eighteen months,” Vicki said, joining us, “and I’ve never once had cause for doubt.”

I wasn’t surprised. The way Lee talked, the way she looked at me or didn’t, even the way she carried herself held a lack of guile. I was a fairly good judge of character.

Of course, I’d bombed when it came to Jude, and the jury was out on James.

Still. “How did you come to be working here?” I asked.

Seeming unsure how much to say, Lee looked to Vicki, who said, “Mom brought her. They’re cousins.”

I smiled, intrigued. “Really?” Here was a new side of Amelia the Queen. “Did I see you at Vicki’s wedding?”

Lee shook her head. “I’m not the kind of relative you’d want to have around.”

“The problem was more Mom than Lee,” Vicki put in. “Do you know where she came from?”

“No.”

“Uh-huh. She never talks about that. She wants you to believe she was born into high society, but her family is very … plain.”

“Vicki is being kind,” Lee said sadly. “I’m not the only felon in the family. We don’t kill or do drugs, we’re just thieves. Mama was the worst. She got away with a lot before she was caught. In my family, you break the mold when you go straight, but some of us try.” Her face hardened in support of innocence. “I made one mistake and paid for it, but I did not steal money from any trust fund.”

“Amelia must believe that, or she wouldn’t have brought you here,” I said, and connected a few more dots. “She was the one who hired the guard outside.”

Vicki confirmed it. “He’s a member of the local police force, and he’s recovering from a broken leg, so this gives him something to do other than shuffling papers at a desk. As far as the town knows, he’s just keeping an eye on the green.”

“What’s the danger?” I asked Lee, wanting to hear the rest of her story.

But Vicki was into it now, vehement in Lee’s defense. “They’ve sent thugs after her. They put ugly little notes in her mail slot and dog poop on her front step, and they show up watching her at odd times, just standing at the edge of her backyard staring at the house. Sometimes they have a camera, like they’re cataloguing a crime.”

“Are you sure it isn’t a local pervert?”

“The guys vary, no one knows them, and they’re always gone before the police arrive.”

“Two weeks ago,” Lee said, “two of them pulled up in a car with papers saying I had to go to the DA’s office to give a deposition.”

“The papers were bogus,” Vicki held. “Mom checked it out.”

“How’d they find you?”

Close to tears now, Lee shrugged.

“She keeps to herself,” Vicki argued, “never says her last name, never calls her family, even though we gave her a phone. She doesn’t mix with people in town, so it’s not like she’s flaunting herself. We figure whoever it is tracked her through Amelia.”

I thought of Jude. There he was on the Bering Sea and—ta-da—got whatever he needed on the Web. Lee’s connection to Amelia wouldn’t stay hidden for long. “But why would they go to the effort?”

“Our guess,” Vicki mused, “is that someone really is draining that trust fund, likely the brothers themselves—putting the money in an account that Lee can’t touch—so they’re looking for a patsy. Lee’s it. They may not be able to pin anything on her, because they sure won’t find the money, but they’re taking pleasure in the chase. It’s all about intimidation. They smell vulnerability.”

“Because of the record?”

“Because I ran,” Lee said, pleading again. “Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I didn’t know what else to do. I sold the jewelry Jack gave me so I could pay bills, but I couldn’t keep up with them, and the check from the trust fund barely paid the heat. I’d have taken in a renter, but the zoning laws don’t allow it, and if I do something under the table, I’ll be caught for sure. I talked with three realtors about selling the house. All of them told me not to. And then there were people knocking on my door, asking about my bank account—”

“Also impostors,” Vicki charged.

“But what could I do?” Lee cried. “I talked with a local lawyer, but I didn’t have money for the retainer, and, anyway, he was smalltime and would have had to butt heads with the biggest in town—”

“What town?” I asked. I was familiar with New York law, but each state was different.

“The brothers live in Connecticut,” Vicki injected, “but their father lived in Boston. The trust fund is with a firm there.”

Lee looked devastated. “They have lawyers all over the place, and money to spend. Me, I have no money and a criminal record. I couldn’t win. So I ran.”

Like me. But not.

I thought of the incredible breakfast breads I’d been eating. “Where did you learn to bake?”

“Growing up. It was one of the few things I did right.” She teared up. “That was our dream. Jack had been tagging along in the family business all his life, but he loved to bake. We used to do it together—like, instead of going to a movie, picking a recipe and making something really good. We dreamed of owning a bakery in a nice area where people would come mornings and weekends. It wasn’t going to be big, more like a hobby for him, but he was excited about it. I mean, when you have that much money, you get bored. When your family is one big corporation, there’s not much to do every day. His brothers play tennis and golf. They cruise on the family boat, but even then, like, there’s a full crew, so what do you do? You invite every friend you know to come for a ride, only they wouldn’t be friends if you didn’t have the ride—” She caught herself. “At least, that’s what Jack always said. I was his escape, he said, and I believed it. He did well with me. He lost weight, and his blood pressure went down. He said we’d start that bakery and live a long life together.”

She brushed at her tears, in the process pushing aside that swath of hair, leaving her face open and vulnerable. For the first time, I took in broad pecan brows, high cheekbones, and hazel eyes filled with gentleness and longing, any one of which might have attracted a lonely middle-aged bachelor.

“Only it didn’t work out that way,” Vicki concluded, and cut to the chase. “So what can we do to help her?”

The “we” was really me. I was the lawyer. Yes, Vicki wanted me to hear of a woman running away under more dire circumstances than mine—and yes, it was sobering. But she also wanted legal advice.

Funny thing about that. Lawyer jokes to the contrary, we did serve a practical purpose.

“A restraining order is the obvious thing,” I ventured, “but without evidence linking someone to what’s happened to Lee here in town, there’s no case. We’ll need a detective to identify whoever’s lurking around up here and link him to the brothers. We could also get an accountant to examine the trust fund. That would definitely shake up the brothers.”

Vicki’s eyes lit with glee. “I like it.”

Lee wasn’t so sure. “They’ll retaliate.”

“Meaning that we set a trap and they take the bait, so we’ll really get them,” Vicki promised, and turned to me. “Go for it, Emmie.”

“Uhh, I can’t.” I wasn’t practicing law right now.

“Sure you can. I know you. You make things happen.”

While I loved her for the vote of confidence, it wasn’t entirely justified. Yes, I could make things happen. But would they be the right things? I didn’t have a great history of that right now—and that was before Jude had shown up to mess with my mind even more.

“For starters,” I hedged, “there’s a problem with jurisdiction. I can’t practice law in Massachusetts.”

“Can’t you work with someone who does?”

“I don’t know anyone who does probate work.” A thought came. I smiled. “But James does. One of his college friends is with the kind of firm you need.”

“Can James call him?”

I kept the smile on my face. “I don’t know. Let me ask.”

I didn’t ask that night. Calling James with a favor when I wouldn’t do him one—like leaving my BlackBerry on—was pushing it.

So I felt guilty about not helping Lee, and guilty about not telling Vicki that Jude was back, and when she suggested that we have dinner at The Grill, I wanted to go hide somewhere all by myself instead.

But Vicki was my angel in Bell Valley. And The Grill had great zucchini sticks. So I went.