Читать книгу Confessions Bundle - Jo Leigh - Страница 19

AFTER SPENDING a couple of hours perusing Ramsden Enterprises’ tax records and bank statements, Juliet left work early on Monday to take Marcie to her first prenatal visit. And then, when the doctor reported that, yes, Marcie was approximately six weeks along and everything looked perfect, Juliet and Marcie picked Mary Jane up from school and went for ice cream to celebrate. That led to a trip to the mall to look at baby clothes. A late dinner at the food court had to come next. And then, long after the sun had gone down, the threesome went home to the cottage.

Mary Jane skipped off to bed with a smile on her face.

Which made up for the time spent away from figuring out how to prove to a nameless jury that Blake Ramsden had nothing to do with the Cayman Islands bank account bearing his name. Lack of paperwork aside, if the prosecution found a way to bring up the account, he could play on the Cayman Islands confidentiality laws as the sole reason for the lack of paperwork. To make that stick, all he had to do was convince the jury.

Unfortunately, Juliet’s time with her sister and daughter didn’t take her away from other thoughts that continued to spiral out of control at unforeseen moments throughout her day. Thoughts of Blake as he’d been, naked in her arms, nine years before.

Of the man who’d laughed with her over drinks just weeks before.

And of the strong, ethical man who was attempting to stand against the lies and disasters plaguing his life.

A man she had no business thinking about.

THE PILE OF MAIL on her desk on Tuesday was twice as thick as usual, because she hadn’t yet attended to Monday’s stack. Going through the usual briefs, invitations and junk that just took up space and killed trees, she was surprised by a legal-size envelope toward the bottom of the pile.

For two reasons. The return address was Eaton James’s. And there was something little and hard inside.

Staring at the envelope gave her an eerie feeling, raising all of the dark emotions her client’s death had evoked several weeks before. How could Eaton James have sent her anything?

It didn’t take long to find out.

The letter had been sent from James’s attorney—a part of the distribution of his estate that no one but James and his attorney had known about. Other than the predated letter from James, telling her this, the only thing inside was a small key. And a post-office-box number.

THE BOX WAS IN La Jolla, not far from the address Blake Ramsden had given her. Juliet didn’t get out that way often. She thought about driving around to see if she could find his place—just to see it.

And because she couldn’t afford anything that was going to tie her to the man any more closely than she’d already been tied, she didn’t.

It took her several minutes and a couple of conversations centered on the signed and notarized letter in her hand, but Juliet finally persuaded a supervisor at the post office to tell her who was registered to the box number and key she held. The answer sent chills down her spine.

The box had two registered users. Eaton James and Walter Ramsden. And inside were several recent bank statements from a bank account in the Cayman Islands.

The name on the account was Blake Ramsden.

“WE’VE GOT TROUBLE.” On her cell phone in the post-office parking lot, Juliet used every calming technique she’d ever learned. The bright sun, which usually cheered Juliet, was giving her a headache.

If he was guilty, she wasn’t going to be able to save him. And she couldn’t fathom the alternative.

“Juliet? What’s up?”

She’d found Blake in his office. He sounded preoccupied.

“I’d like to talk to you in person. Can we meet someplace?”

In the end, she agreed to wait for him in La Jolla, on a stretch of private beach not far from his home. As soon as he’d figured out that the news she had was not good, he’d opted for the ocean as a meeting place.

Juliet wasn’t surprised. She’d made all of her toughest decisions by the ocean. Sitting on a beach late one night, letting the waves wash up around her legs, she’d decided to keep the baby she carried.

And not to tell the baby’s father that he’d made a child.

She found the parking alcove and picnic table just as he’d described. She could drive right up. Take two steps to the table. No reason to remove her pumps and hose to walk in the sand. But she did, anyway. She couldn’t pass up the feel of the sand between her toes and the scratching along the bottom of her feet.

Had Blake lied to her?

Juliet had left the jacket to her violet spring suit in the BMW, but it wasn’t long in the bright sun before she was sweating anyway. Not that she cared.

Her ability to judge character had always been one of her strongest suits and was a significant factor in the success of her career.

Blake wouldn’t lie to her. Or anyone. He was honest to a fault. If anything, his propensity to tell the truth proved the old adage that too much of anything was a bad thing.

Or was she just blinded by memories of sand and moonlight and the most incredible mind and voice and hands? And mouth.

She couldn’t forget that mouth. It had done things to her body, aroused responses inside her, that she hadn’t known were possible.

Responses she hadn’t felt since that night.

And if he hadn’t lied? What then? There was no way she was going to be able to fight a bank statement bearing her client’s name. Some things really were black and white.

But there had to be some explanation. Blake would be able to clear this up. She just had to wait for him to get there.

Down at the water’s edge, she waited for the shock to come as the cold water lapped at her toes. Seagulls skimmed the edge of the ocean looking for prey.

What had happened to the days when being on the beach meant looking for shells and dreaming of sailing out to sea with a dashing captain? When had she lost those days, those childish dreams? At thirteen? On the move to Maple Grove? During law school? When she’d won her first case?

“I expected to find you back here.” She hadn’t heard Blake’s steps in the sand.

She didn’t turn. Not yet. She hadn’t found the answers, the solid place to stand, she’d been looking for.

“I couldn’t get this close and not feel the water,” she told him, knowing he’d understand.

They’d discovered the night they met that they were ocean soul mates.

“Do you get to the ocean often?”

She looked over at him, squinting. “Every day. I live in a cottage on a private strip of Mission Beach.”

His smile was small but genuine as he glanced down at her through his dark sunglasses.

“If I’d had to guess, I’d have had you living on the beach.”

She’d left her sunglasses in the car. She needed to see the colors of the sky and the ocean and the golden glow of the sun on the beach in all its bright splendor.

“Do you own the place?”

It wasn’t really a question for a client to ask his lawyer. But perhaps it was one that an old lover might ask?

Or, probably more accurately, it was one that might allow him to avoid the reason they were there together in the first place. It would give him a moment to soak up a bit of the ocean’s healing energy.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s not big, just three bedrooms, but I love it.”

He’d removed his shoes, too, and rolled up the cuffs of his navy slacks and the sleeves of his white dress shirt.

“How long have you been there?”

“Four years.” Just before Mary Jane had started at the first of a couple of private schools for gifted children. While academically they’d challenged her a bit more than her current situation, Juliet hadn’t been happy about the rigid exclusivity. They were reputedly good schools but not the very best. Unfortunately the best had waiting lists ten years long.

“You live alone?”

They weren’t here to talk about her. They were here to establish whether or not Blake Ramsden had lied to her, or to find the miracle that would explain the evidence sitting back in her car.

“My sister lives with me.” She told him the truth, knowing that it wasn’t the way he’d have presented the truth given the same circumstances. He’d have mentioned everyone who lived in his house.

Juliet tried hard to ignore the pressure in her stomach.

“Is she a lawyer, too?”

Hands in the pockets of his slacks, he started to walk slowly along the water’s edge and she fell in beside him. The mail in her car was going nowhere. The facts would be the same later that night. And every night after as well.

“No, she’s a hair designer hoping to get on with one of the studios here in San Diego.”

Grinning, he started to walk again, leaving imprints to fill with water behind him. With a couple of quick steps, Juliet caught up with him.

“What’s so funny?”

“Not funny,” he said, still grinning as he looked down at her with an expression that was more bemused than humorous. “I’m just trying to imagine two of you in the same house.”

“Marcie isn’t like me,” she assured him. “She’s a lot more laid-back.”

“You sound as if that’s a bad thing.”

“Of course it’s not bad.” She reached down to pick up a beautiful, luminescent shell. A rare find. “It’s just like anything else, though. For every good side, there’s a corresponding bad. Take me, for instance. I’m a go-getter, but I push too hard sometimes. I don’t always know when to quit.”

And take you. You’re so caught up in telling the complete truth you aren’t ever going to forgive me if you find out the truth I haven’t told you.

“So what’s the downside that brought that worried tone to your voice when you mentioned your sister?”

It had been like this nine years ago. Her urge to confide in this man—to tell him things she didn’t talk to anyone about. Back then it had been dreams of the future and her need to prove herself.

That was how they’d started that long-ago night—drinking and confiding, partly because it had been so safe. They’d been strangers, with nothing invested in the relationship, who would never see each other again.

A couple of kids were throwing a Frisbee behind one of the houses above them. She couldn’t make out what they were saying, but the innocence in their laughter carried clearly.

“Marcie has a tendency to settle for less than she wants. Our mother did that. And I saw how it ended. I will not see my sister die the same way. I don’t think I’d survive.”

“If your sister is anything like you, she has that core of inner steel we spoke about earlier. It would stop her before she took her own life.”

Maybe. But then, Juliet had been fairly certain her mother had that same core. Where did Blake think Juliet had gotten it from? Certainly not from the weak and clinging man who’d fathered her.

She had to tell him about the bank statements, and then leave. Juliet smoothed her thumb over the soft inside of the shell in her palm.

Not that she had to hurry home. Tonight was Mary Jane and Marcie’s night together.

“Marcie’s pregnant.”

He was the only person she trusted who would never know her sister. That was the reason she’d confided something that wasn’t hers to tell.

“I take it there’s not a husband who also lives with you?”

She shook her head, watching for more shells. “The father is in Maple Grove. They’ve been dating since high school but the relationship is more of a habit than a romance.”

“He hit the road when he found out she was pregnant?”

“No.” She should never have started this. There was no way he, or anyone else, would ever understand.

The waves lapped against the shore and Juliet heard other water. Saw again that tiny, plastic bathtub in the matching tiny bathroom in the trailer where she and Marcie had grown from girls into women. She’d been home for the weekend, preparing for her final exams in law school.

She’d come from Marcie’s shop. They’d planned a surprise trip to San Francisco to celebrate their mother’s birthday. They’d had reservations at a rooftop restaurant. Juliet had gone home to tell her mother to put on her best dress….

“Marcie hit the road. She’s only been living with me for a little over a week,” Juliet said slowly. “She and Hank have had years to get married. Neither one of them has ever been motivated enough—or in love enough, she says—to make it happen. He works in the family hardware store and has no desire to be anywhere else. Ever. He’s committed to his family and the store. She hates Maple Grove. Is bored out of her mind half the time. If she marries Hank because of this baby, she’s going to get tied to that town just like our mother was. The reasons might be different, but the result will be the same.”

“A lot of people live very happy lives in small towns.”

“I know they do!” Although a depressed transient town like Maple Grove didn’t have a high percentage of them. “But Marcie isn’t happy there! She wants to travel. To see the world. To have a social life. All she could talk about while we were in high school was getting out.”

“So why didn’t she?”

“She met Hank and got a job at the local beauty shop. She’s always been into hair and makeup and stuff like that. She’s really good. She drove an hour each way to take classes in San Francisco and got her cosmetology license long before I finished college.” She ground her foot into the sand, comforted by the feel of it against her arch. “Before she knew it, she had more than half the ladies in Maple Grove coming to her. In a San Francisco salon she’d still have been making minimum wage washing hair for some high-paid designer. A couple of years later, when she was talking about moving here to try for a job at a big salon—which had always been her dream—she was offered the chance to go into partnership in Maple Grove. The lure of her own place, and the safety of her relationship with Hank, kept her there. Dreaming.”

She’d never meant to say anything. Let alone so much.

“It’s those dreams that kill you,” she said a couple of seconds later. “They eat at you until there’s nothing left.”

If she thought for one second that Marcie would ever be happy in Maple Grove, if her sister had given any indication of wanting a life there…

“But they didn’t this time.” Blake’s voice was soft. Empathetic. “She got out.”

And Juliet went to bed every night worrying that Marcie wasn’t going to settle in as quickly as she wanted to, that she wouldn’t find a job right away, that she’d let the lure of security in Maple Grove call her back in a weak moment and put in motion the beginning of the end.

THE SUN WAS SINKING over the ocean by the time Blake turned around to head back toward their cars. Another mile or so and they’d have been at his place. He wasn’t sure he trusted himself to have her there.

Especially not now, when she was becoming more friend than attorney. They were treading dangerous ground. And he couldn’t afford any extra danger in his life at the moment. He was too aware of his aloneness to be sure he wouldn’t do anything stupid. Like hit on his lawyer.

“I guess we’ve avoided the bad news long enough,” he told her as they headed back up the beach.

He had to get home anyway. Freedom would be ready for his run on the beach. And then a nice ground-beef dinner. The little guy needed some fattening up.

As Juliet told him about the key she’d received in the mail, and more horrifically, the contents of the post-office box, Blake continued to put one sandy foot in front of the other. And that was all. The waves that normally called to him were no more than a roaring in his ears, drowning out all but the far-off voice of his defense attorney.

He ran every day. Several miles at a time. And came home barely winded. Now, just strolling the beach, his chest was so tight he could hardly pull in air.

There was a United States post-office box registered in Eaton James’s name with his father as a cosigner. And a bank account in the Cayman Islands in his name, complete with bank statements addressed to him.

The voice fell away. Blake fought through the dark fog to focus on only one thing. The problem at hand. Not its ramifications.

“This makes the Cayman Island account admissible as evidence, doesn’t it?”

They were walking more quickly and had almost reached the point where they’d turn up the beach to head back to their cars. The setting sun made it difficult to look out over the ocean.

“It could, yes.”

“Could?”

“If we disclose the bank statements.”

Blake slowed. “If we disclose them? Don’t we have to?”

“It’s not that clear-cut.”

Here it comes, Blake thought. Those shades of gray he’d been worried about. As good as she was, as much as he needed her, he just couldn’t let her do that. He really believed that his only hope of winning was to stand strong behind the values he’d sacrificed so much to find. If he wavered, if he lied, even by omission, he’d lose.

Blake removed his sunglasses, sliding them into the pocket of his shirt as they walked toward their cars.

“If the evidence is pertinent to the case, then, yes, we have to disclose it, but that’s completely subject to interpretation.”

“I think pretty much anyone would agree that Cayman Islands bank statements are pertinent to this case.”

She stopped, looked up at him. “That account is yours, then? The card attached to it has your signature?”

“No.”

“Then, as far as your case is concerned, I interpret those statements as false documents, and therefore, not subject to disclosure laws. Ethically, I’m obligated to research them and, if I find evidence that they’re legitimate, I have to disclose them.”

“And if they come up later and it’s learned that we already had evidence of them?”

“I’ll argue—and win—that they were subject to interpretation.”

She made sense. And yet…

“It’s not right.”

“It’s right then for us to hang you before we have a chance to figure out why James prearranged to have that key come to me? Or why, for that matter, there’s apparently an account in the Cayman Islands with you as the principal signer? Because I can guarantee that if I turn these over now, Schuster sure as hell isn’t going to try to find out. He’s going to take them at face value and run with them.”

Was it a statement of his emotional turmoil that Blake could accept so much of what she was saying? Was he, when times got tough enough, just as capable as anyone else of selling out?

Juliet laid a hand on his arm. “It’s not an easy question, Blake. Both sides have perfectly valid arguments, but this one really is my call and I have to do what’s in your best interests.”

In his best interests in terms of winning this case? Or in terms of being able to look at himself in the mirror for the rest of his life?

Of course, if he lost the case and went to prison, he probably wouldn’t be facing a lot of mirrors.

“You could turn them over and still do the research.”

He was disappointing her. He could read that in those expressive green eyes—and in her sigh.

“We only have two and a half months until the trial,” she said, still calm, but not as gentle in her delivery. “What if I’m not able to find anything in that time that’ll prove your name on that account was forged? It’ll be your word against a dead man’s, and the prosecutor is sitting there with paper evidence—bank statements that we’ve provided—that proves you the liar. What’s the jury going to think, Blake? What would you think if you were sitting in one of their seats?”

What she was suggesting wasn’t against the law. Things like this were done all the time. It was how the world worked.

And what if it somehow got out that he knew about those statements and his attorney hadn’t disclosed them? No matter the argument, he’d look like a liar by default, and his integrity would take a legitimate hit.

Never in his life had Blake been up against a harder decision, or one less clear to him.

“I want you to disclose them.”

Juliet lowered her head. But she didn’t say what he knew she must be thinking. “You’re making my job a lot harder than it needs to be.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” And he was. She was an angel there to save him and he’d always be grateful for that. Even from a prison cell.

“You understand that there’s nothing illegal about what I’m proposing, correct?”

“I do.”

“And you still want me to go ahead and send the statements to Schuster?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” She started trudging through the sand again toward her car. “I’ve done my best, which is all I can do.”

It didn’t escape Blake that doing one’s best was a form of honesty all in itself.