Читать книгу Chasing Shadows - Карен Харпер - Страница 10

3

“Let’s sit at the picnic table over there,” Nick suggested as they got out of his black BMW at Sugden Park just across US 41 from where Claire lived. The traffic sounded muted here. It seemed like another world.

He carried a cooler and a tartan blanket, no less, when the temperature must be in the high eighties. She couldn’t wait for the weather to break to the clear coolness of autumn days, but the oppressive humidity and the cloudy sky seemed appropriate somehow. She was sure she would—at least should—turn him down.

A warm Gulf breeze rippled the man-made lake that was set back a mile or so from the shore. The park service was giving kids waterskiing lessons today, and several small sailboats zigged and zagged across the surface. The screech of ospreys sailing overhead reminded her of the drone in the sky at the courthouse.

Then, high above the lake, she saw there was a drone, a white one, hard to see in the sun against the sky. She’d read those might be used to spray for mosquitoes, but surely over the Everglades, not in a populated locale like this. She scanned the area to see who might be controlling the drone. Maybe the man way down where the bike trail disappeared into the woods.

She watched Nick flap the blanket over the worn wooden surface of the picnic table. He took soft drinks—with plastic glasses and ice—and two plastic deli cartons out of the cooler. Plastic utensils, napkins, dark rolls and tiny tubs of butter. She saw everything was from Wynn’s, a market uptown she loved but usually avoided because she’d walk out of there with a bill twice what she’d intended.

“Lobster salad,” he said, sitting across from her with his back to the lake, when she was hoping he’d sit beside her so he didn’t seem to be interrogating her. She was really sensitive about body language, and his said impatience and controlled aggression right now. Worse, since his back was to the sun, he took off his sunglasses and regarded her with those disturbing silver-gray eyes. “Hope lobster’s okay.”

“Great. I’d eat that even if I had no hands instead of just one that’s working well. So how is the state of Florida involved in this St. Augustine situation, other than, if your friend is indicted, she’ll go on trial there?”

“So you have been thinking about this case. Good sign.”

“Maybe, but I’m not ready to sign up.”

“Let’s not do a contract per se, except for this.”

He fished a piece of paper out of his shirt pocket, unfolded it and turned it toward her. He was eager now, in a hurry. And he had not answered her question.

She took off her sunglasses to read the paper better. It was not a contract but an offer letter, for two hundred dollars an hour for interviews! And fifty dollars for “general consultation” time! She’d never earned more than seventy-five dollars for an entire interview. It also offered a daily rate of three hundred dollars while in St. Augustine (St. Johns County) and someplace called Palatka (Putnam County) to be paid weekly to her account. Her stomach cartwheeled as she read on. If she helped his South Shores company prove that Jasmine Montgomery Stanton did not murder her mother, Francine Montgomery, there was a $10,000 bonus. He’d signed the paper and had it dated and notarized.

She just stared at the document at first, a forkful of lobster salad halfway to her mouth. She put the fork down and stared into his intense gaze. He moved across from her to block the sun from streaming into her eyes.

“This means a lot to you,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “You said she—this Jasmine—was a friend. Is that why?”

“It’s not the only reason. Through South Shores, I usually take cases in which I believe a so-called suicide or accident is actually a murder. I don’t want to sway what you’ll find out but I don’t think this woman would kill herself. She was influential in St. Johns County, owned Shadowlawn Hall, one of the largest pre-Civil War plantation houses in the area—not a working plantation anymore but a real historic and cultural treasure. It’s been handed down in her family for generations. For financial reasons, she came to the difficult decision to either deed it to the State of Florida or auction it privately. But her daughter Jasmine disagreed with letting it go from the family, despite the financial crunch. I’m convinced Jasmine did not kill her mother, so someone else did. People who knew the deceased are the ones who need to be deposed—I mean, interviewed.”

“And Jasmine herself, of course.”

“Indirectly. She’s been through hell with the authorities, and they still may indict her. She has a small staff and there is at least one other acquaintance who needs to be interviewed.”

“Then let me start briefly with you, since you know her well enough to be quite assertive that Jasmine is innocent. She and her mother did have a disagreement on the fate of the property, which some could construe as a motive for murder.”

“See, I knew you were good. But it isn’t like that,” he insisted, hunching forward. “She loved her mother. I’ve known her—both of them—for years. Francine was a friend of my father, which makes this case more important to me. He thought the world of both of them.”

“I read your father started your law firm.”

“True.”

She’d thought a slight change of subject would calm him, but he seemed even more agitated. And she needed much more information than he seemed willing to share. He gripped his plastic fork so hard he snapped it in half. He sighed deeply, frowned and put the fork down.

“After founding the firm,” he told her, “Dad got into some real estate investment problems that ruined his reputation, but this isn’t about him.” He narrowed his eyes. “So, have you been reading up on me like I have on you?”

“Not yet, but you’re not exactly a private person around here.”

“No, but I’m a deeply concerned person. Claire, I need your help on this. Maybe on other cases, too. I saw how damn good you are. Besides being a Certified Fraud Examiner, I see on your website you’ve trained to be a Forensic Document Examiner, too. I don’t think any forgeries are involved with this case, but that could be important for the future.”

The future, she thought. We’re already talking about a future?

“You’re strong,” he went on, “but you can come off as gentle and nonthreatening. There’s something about you people like and trust, but you’re wily and clever in psyching out and piercing through their armor of lies. Let me ask you the same question I overheard a reporter ask you. Besides verb tense and body language, how do you psych people out?”

She nodded, on familiar ground now, even though she was well aware he’d shifted the conversation from himself. She took a bite of the lobster salad—delicious—though she wasn’t tempted to take a second one right away because he was asking her about her passion. People. People who built walls the way her parents had, people who could help or hurt others and too often did the latter.

“To summarize six years of working my way through college with a double major in psych and English, here it is. When people are lying, they seldom refer to themselves and they tend to talk around direct action. They don’t say, ‘I unlocked the door,’ but ‘The door was left unlocked.’ They speak evasively, try to answer a question with another question like, ‘Why in the world would I kill my own brother?’ They use you’ve-got-to-believe-me language with oaths or vows like ‘I swear,’ or ‘God as my witness.’ They either leave out details or talk too much, often off the subject. So in court, as you saw in the trial, explaining this as I testify makes me an expert witness—hopefully a credible one who can sway the jury.”

“As I’ve seen close up and personal,” he said. He nodded and rapped the table with his knuckles. “You should have gone to law school. And that psyching people out is the way I’m trying to learn to think. Maybe after this St. A case, you can do a workshop for my associates at the firm.”

“I’d rather do that than go to St. Augustine, Nick, because I should stay home. Besides, my sister and doctor will have a fit if I go with this shot-up arm over three hundred miles away anytime soon. You said soon, right?”

“Are the terms suitable?” he countered, pointing at the paper still open before her.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “And evasive people sometimes counter a question with another question.”

“Touché,” he said. “I need to know you’re on board before I tell you everything. Some of this is privileged. But I should have said the offer includes room and board. We’ll be staying at the Bayfront Hilton in St. A. It’s a drive from Palatka and Shadowlawn, but we’ll need our creature comforts. I’ll drive you there, get you settled, help set up your interviews, introduce you to the right people, then be in and out.”

“You’re assuming I’m going with you.”

“Aren’t you? Jasmine needs your help. Shadowlawn Estate does—I do.”

“I’ll need a doctor there to check my arm if it takes over a couple of days.”

“No problem.”

“Nick, there is a problem. It’s leaving my daughter behind for a while, even though my sister’s family is great to her. I need to know exactly how I’ll get around if you’re not there since I can’t drive safely right now with one arm. I can dictate into a computer, but can’t use a keyboard easily without two hands. In short, I’ll need some sort of transportation and digital backup.”

“Heck,” he muttered.

“What? You didn’t think of that?”

“No, Heck—Hector Munez, goes by Heck. He’s my South Shores geek genius. I plan to set things up with you, run you around, but he’ll be available to help you with anything digital and drive you if I’m not there for a while. I’ll have you meet him before we head out tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? I couldn’t!”

“Day after tomorrow at the latest. I’ll make things work out for the best. You’ll see.”

The sun came out from the clouds and blazed brightness and heat on them. Their gazes snagged and held. Mad, bad and dangerous to know...

But shouldn’t she tell him her other caveats? Not that she had trouble even dressing herself, couldn’t so much as hook a bra, but she’d get around that somehow. He needed to know that, like some darned little kid, she needed her naps, that she had to get her sleep at night. She absolutely had to calibrate and balance her meds. She had hidden all that from Jace and, since he was gone so much—actually, was so self-centered—she had managed for a while. But all that had caused her downfall, the blowup between them. But this was just a business deal, not a life shared.

“I’ll do my best to give you an answer soon,” she heard herself promise him.

“Your best is all I’m asking.”

* * *

At home while Lexi took the short afternoon nap Claire always insisted on—she watched her daughter like a hawk for early signs of anything—Claire forced herself to take her twenty-minute power nap, at least that’s what she liked to call it. With a cup of p.m. coffee it perked her right up. Of course, she’d rather have dark chocolate, especially from Norman Love’s shop up on the Tamiami Trail, but once she started on that, she couldn’t stop. She might be narcoleptic, but she was also a chocolate-holic.

She played with Lexi for an hour, and yes, read to her as well, since that had been one good thing “She,” which is often what she and Darcy called their mother, had done for them. Claire had a great American and English lit education before she even took English 101 her freshman year.

Today, when Darcy stopped by to take Lexi grocery shopping with her and Jilly, Claire called a cab to take her to Port Royal to give her condolences to Fred Myron’s family. She’d phoned Fred’s widow to be sure it was all right and had been told the family had already gathered in preparation for the funeral tomorrow. They were getting Fred’s body back today from the Collier County ME, and then they’d be sitting shiva for a week.

At the Myron home with its backyard on a canal, everyone greeted her and commiserated. Repeatedly, she was asked if she knew why anyone would shoot at her, because “our Freddie had absolutely no enemies.” Though she felt exhausted by the visit, she was glad she went; that is, until she started to leave, driven home by Fred’s brother, because they wouldn’t hear of her calling a cab again. A small group of reporters, some of whom she recognized from the courthouse, had assembled on the front lawn.

“We’re not talking to them, not one word,” Jerry, Fred’s brother, muttered as he backed out of the driveway past their shouted questions. “I’d like to get poor Sarah away from them for a while. Those vultures keep circling, trying to prove poor Fred did something wrong when he was only standing up for the truth and the business he’d built up with his own hands. You going to get away so they don’t bother you?”

“Maybe I should now that they know I’m out of the hospital,” she said. “Yes, I guess I may get away for a while.”

“Get some good rest. Put everything bad behind you, right? Forget the reporters and that lawyer that tried to rip you apart.”

“I’m sure that’s good advice.” It was the only thing she could think of to say that wouldn’t be a lie. She hadn’t actually decided she was going to trust Nick Markwood yet. But she was going to do two things before she agreed to go north with him. First, she would research him to death—so to speak. Without talking to him or his contacts directly, she was going to do an online study of him. Then she was going to risk telling him the real reason she was afraid to accept his offer, and hope that he would be the one to back out of the deal.

* * *

Jace never liked riding in the so-called jump seat that was available to pilots. Hard to see out the windows. Rode backwards. Could hear the flight attendants chatting when they were in the galley. But worse, he was close to the cockpit but not in it, so he felt completely out of control. And he hated that.

He tried to doze but he kept replaying the last time he’d been with Claire, seven weeks ago, when he’d flown into Miami and rented a car there to go see Lexi. But that had meant seeing Claire, too. She’d changed since their divorce. She’d always been kind of quiet, almost private, probably because of all she was hiding—she and that sister clone, Darcy. Man, Claire had put one over on him, however quick their courtship had been. If he hadn’t been flying so much, he would have sniffed it out earlier.

“Narcolepsy with mild cataplexy!” he’d exploded a little over a year ago when she’d finally come clean with him, after he found her stash of pills and that gross-looking liquid stuff she took at bedtime. “No wonder you sleep like a rock! No wonder you want sex in the daytime but not at night like a normal woman! I thought it was me!”

“It isn’t you, except I know you can’t stand weakness, can’t stand anyone being sick. You’re a driven perfectionist, Jace, and I’m not perfect.”

“Oh, try to blame me for your lies and hiding things. You hiding anything else—anyone?”

“Of course not. Can you keep your voice down? I don’t want Lexi to hear us.”

“Oh, yeah, hear her mother never trusted or loved her father enough to come clean about—about this sleeping sickness and getting paralyzed at times!”

“These pills you’re freaking out over keep me from falling asleep or getting paralyzed at times. I’m dealing with my problem. I’m on an even keel.”

“You could have gone to sleep when Lexi was in the tub or the pool! You could have nodded off and dropped her.”

“I told you, it’s all under control.”

“Well, hell, I’m not. You may not have lied to me, ’cause I didn’t ask, but we’ve been living a lie! Is it too much to ask the person who’s supposed to be closest to me not to lie?”

“I knew it would upset you and drive you away. I didn’t want that. Look, Jace, our romance and eloping happened so fast, and you’re gone so much. I know this is about me, but I found a note to you from someone named Ginger on hotel stationery from Singapore in the pocket of a shirt I laundered, so don’t lecture me on not telling everything. It was a come-to-my-room note. I know you’re gone a lot but—”

He’d slammed out of their condo. He’d divorced her soon after, and she hadn’t contested it, a Marital Settlement Agreement with a Parenting Plan, the state of Florida called it. Looking back, he supposed they’d done it just as hastily and recklessly as they’d decided to get married.

But the kick in the gut was that he still felt for Claire, even after all of that. Too often, even now, he recalled their sunset dinners on the beach, how they would dance in the dark in their own living room. How insanely happy they were when she told him she was pregnant and the first time he saw her holding Lexi. How Claire felt curled up against him, or under him...

The airplane intercom kicked on. The voice of Don Thomas, a pilot he’d flown with many times, interrupted his agonizing: “Good afternoon. We’re beginning our descent into the Los Angeles area. Local arrival time should be 2:14 p.m. with a temperature of eighty-four degrees, cloudy with a light northwest wind. Flight attendants, please prepare the cabin for landing. Welcome to or back to the United States.”

Someone in the plane actually clapped. An attendant began announcements about tray tables, seat backs and turning off electronic devices. Yeah, he thought, welcome back to the United States, but he was going to soon head out on yet another flight, to a state far from California, to see Lexi, of course, but also to see the woman he couldn’t get out of his head and his heart.

* * *

Frustrated she had to move so slowly, typing on the keyboard with one hand, Claire had switched to her smartphone to find websites and articles on a variety of subjects: Nick’s law firm; Francine Montgomery; Jasmine Montgomery Stanton; Palatka, Florida; on and on. There wasn’t much about Shadowlawn besides brief mentions of it. Kingsley Plantation near Jacksonville, rather than the little town of Palatka, got all the publicity, but then it was already open to the public and evidently thriving. Pressed for time, Claire gave everything a mere skim read.

She searched references to Nicholas Markwood, Jr., but she had not found one hint about his under-the-radar company he’d called South Shores.

Still, she could patch together why such an entity probably existed. Nick’s father, Nicholas Markwood, Sr., had committed suicide when Nick was ten, evidently over a bad land development deal that had swept him into debt and ruined his reputation and the reputation of his law firm, which Nick had resurrected later. Nick Markwood, the father, had left investors holding the bag for his bad deals, though he’d claimed he’d been duped. His world—and, no doubt, young Nick’s—had collapsed.

Nick was an only child who had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth that was evidently, she assumed, tarnished by the scandal and his notorious father with the same name. But he had put himself through the University of Miami undergrad and law school on scholarships and hard work, even bought his mother a property in Naples before she died, quite young, of cancer. He lived in that same house in the Aqualane Shores area of Naples when Claire had imagined he at least owned a place in tony Port Royal or Quail Creek West. She looked up a photo of his house on Google. It wasn’t pretentious or even very big, though it was on a canal. And the boat moored behind it was hardly a yacht, more like a fishing boat with an inboard motor.

So—surprises all around about Nick. Still, she was going to use her last ploy to see if he would really trust her to take the case he offered and to let her handle it her way, not his. No coddling Jasmine Montgomery Stanton just because Nick wanted that. Shadowlawn Plantation and the generations of women who had run it, including most recently Francine Montgomery, intrigued her. Nick intrigued her. And if he accepted her restrictions and rules when she told him the truth about herself that she’d shared with few others in the past twenty years—only Jace, who didn’t understand, and a kind nurse, who did—she’d take Nick’s South Shores case.