скачать книгу бесплатно
“No.” Red shook his head. “That’s the worst thing you could do. Victor’s main concern was that Marianne and the kids wouldn’t have to find out. I’m telling you, Allison York doesn’t seem like the tattling type. I’d bet my life that, unless we antagonize her, she’ll leave well enough alone.”
Lewis stared at Red a long time before answering. Finally, after another sip of water and three more taps with the napkin, he cleared his throat. “But it isn’t your life that’s in jeopardy here, is it? It isn’t your family. It isn’t your legacy.”
“No, but—”
“We cannot substitute our judgment for Victor’s. He said he wanted us to wait a week, then double the offer. That’s exactly what we’ll do.”
“Big mistake. She’s offended by the idea that we want to buy her silence. Besides, the offer itself is offensive. It’s too low, Lewis, even if it’s doubled. Tripled. Given what she’s up against—”
“What she’s up against?” Lewis tilted his head, which, with his hooked nose, made him look oddly like a vulture. The plate of glistening, wormy squiggles in front of him didn’t help. “Sounds as if you feel sorry for the woman.”
“Not really. I simply see the reality of her situation. Being a single mother can’t be easy.”
“Immoral behavior leads to difficult situations.” Lewis sniffed. “She should have thought of that.”
Red’s shoulders tensed. “God, Porterfield. I was thinking this room looked a little Victorian. An attitude like that fits right in.”
Lewis smiled again. “Are you defending her? Interesting. I’m curious about this excess of sympathy. In fact, Redmond, I’m wondering if you might be a touch compromised here.”
“Really? Well, I’m wondering if you might be a touch reptilian. Putting basic human sympathy off-limits is a little cold-blooded, don’t you think?”
Lewis steepled his fingers and stared at Red over the tips. He spoke in a contemplative voice, almost as if he were alone, mulling over a thorny point of law. “Actually, I am not particularly surprised. I told Victor it was risky, sending a man like you to do a job like this.”
Red’s jaw felt tight. “A man like me?”
“Yes. A man with a…shall we say a fondness for a certain kind of young woman? Shall we say a certain vulnerability to their charms?”
Without realizing how it happened, Red was suddenly on his feet. “Shall we say bullcrap?”
Though Red was three times Lewis’s size, the lawyer didn’t show a hint of fear. He lifted one pointed shoulder. “You may call it whatever you want, but I call it a problem. I think perhaps I’d better be the one to deliver the next offer.”
“No.”
“No? Why?”
“Because—” Red caught himself right before he could say the words, because you’re an arrogant jackass, and you’ll piss her off so much she’ll tell Marianne everything just to spit in your eye.
That was what the whole ugly mess always boiled down to, of course. Protecting Marianne. And Dylan. At twenty-eight, Cherry was probably mature enough, and far enough outside the fray, to handle the truth, but Dylan was already messed up as hell. He and Marianne needed some peace. They needed time to heal.
And Red had promised to help make sure they got it.
“Because I’m the fool who vowed to fix this,” he said, pushing his chair in and preparing to get out of this oppressive room. “And I’m going to do exactly that.”
THE MEETING WITH Lewis had left a bad taste in his mouth—and it wasn’t only the thought of that revolting calamari, either. Red went to the Diamante office, hoping to lose himself in some paperwork. The city council had sent over traffic figures for three of the new locations he was considering. They looked good, but he wanted to analyze them carefully.
For once, though, work didn’t help. The numbers ended up running together, like crazy hieroglyphics on the computer screen. So by three o’clock he turned off the computer and decided to leave early.
The Malone brothers hadn’t ever been brooders. Nana Lina had always said there was no case of the blues that a good sweat wouldn’t cure. Consequently, they worked hard and they played hard, and that didn’t leave time for the sulks.
Work had failed. Time to try play.
Matt and Belle were out of town on their sixth honeymoon in four years, so he was no help. On the way out, Red checked Colby’s office. A good heated game of handball would be perfect, and Colby was ahead in their lifetime stats.
His brother wasn’t there, but Nana Lina had commandeered his desk. When she saw Red, she smiled and motioned him in.
He plopped in the chair opposite her and got comfortable. A dose of Nana Lina was always good for what ailed you.
“So, did you finally get wise and fire Colby?” He grinned. “I always said the guy was overrated.”
Nana Lina never bothered to laugh at stupid jokes. If they got lucky and said something genuinely witty, her eyes could twinkle with true appreciation, but after living around three boys so long, she was immune to the daily exchange of cheap sarcasm.
She looked at a spreadsheet she apparently had been studying. “He’s out at Half Moon Bay, number three. We got word that the drawer’s not right again. Sixth time this week.”
Red frowned. “Since when did the company attorney have to count the pennies in the cash register? Don’t we have a decent manager out there?”
“You know Colby.” Nana Lina raised one graceful pewter eyebrow, as if mildly amused. “They think it’s the Mathison kid they hired last month.”
Red groaned, finally understanding. Colby took these things so hard. The oldest Malone brother, Colby talked tough, but he was a hopeless idealist at heart. He never could quite believe that, when they gave summer jobs to the sons of their friends, the kids would rob them blind.
“What is it about rich kids?” He laced his fingers behind his head, stretched and yawned. “No work ethic. Not paragons of industry and virtue like me.”
Nana Lina made a disapproving sound between her teeth. Then, finally, she smiled. “If you boys were half as useless as you pretend to be, I’d have to get out the switch.”
“Ooh. The switch.” This had been Grandpa Colm’s running joke. No one, neither their parents nor their grandparents, had ever laid a violent finger on any of them, but Grandpa Colm had loved to refer to the mythical switch as if he beat them daily.
Every now and then, when she was feeling particularly affectionate, Nana Lina would borrow the jest. It gave Red a warm feeling now, remembering his vibrant grandfather and the musical Irish lilt he’d never dropped, no matter how many years he’d been in the United States.
No, no one had ever whipped the Malone boys. No one had needed to. Their parents had been intelligent, calm, loving. And the three brothers had never been bad kids, though of course they’d had their defiant moments. Red had been slap in the middle of his worst adolescent prickliness when their parents died.
But after the accident—one of those freak automobile catastrophes that happened a few miles from their own home—the rebellious attitude dropped from the boys like magic. Once they got a glimpse of true tragedy, they never again confused it with the little annoyances, like curfew or chores. No more mountains out of molehills.
“I wish Dylan Wigham had someone like you to turn to right now,” Red said thoughtfully. “He’s been having a rough time since Victor died.”
Nana Lina nodded. She knew the family well, as they all did. Victor hadn’t been her favorite person, but they were in the same social set and ended up at many of the same functions. And, of course, Red’s friendship with the Wighams meant that they got invited to most of the Malone/Diamante events.
She might not know all the details of Dylan’s struggles, but she knew that the boy had been in a rehab clinic for the past several weeks. “When is he getting out?”
“I’m not sure. Soon, I hope. Marianne needs him at home, I think. She’s pretty lonely.”
“Yes,” Nana Lina agreed, though her voice remained crisp. She wasn’t a fan of extravagant mourning. Though Red knew she missed Grandpa Colm every day of her life, she had turned to work to give her life meaning. Work and her grandsons.
Predictably, she thought everyone should do the same.
She gave Red a straight look. “I hope you’re not planning to try to fill that void yourself.”
“I spend as much time with her as I can,” he said. “But if you’re asking whether I’m romancing her, the answer is no. Of course. Victor’s only been gone two months, but even if it had been two years, Marianne and I are just friends.”
“Good.” Nana Lina never leaned back in her chair, but Red thought he saw a slight relaxation in her shoulders. “She’s not right for you.”
He laughed. “She hasn’t got enough starch?”
Nana Lina had said this about the brothers’ girlfriends so often it had become the code word for her disapproval. Conversely, when she said a woman did have starch, they knew it meant a world of respect. The first time they’d heard her say it, she’d been talking about their own mother. For in-laws, those two women had had an amazingly solid and close relationship.
“No, actually, she hasn’t,” Nana Lina said tartly. “She was probably born with starch. You can glimpse it, sometimes, underneath the silliness and the insecurity. But marrying Victor was probably the worst thing she could do. He valued her looks, but he didn’t value the qualities she possessed that were far more worthwhile. Consequently, she lost respect for them, too. So all she’s left with is a pretty face, which won’t hold anyone up in a crisis.”
Actually, Red thought that was a perceptive evaluation. And Nana Lina should know. She was still one of the most beautiful women he knew, with her silky waves of gorgeous silver hair and her lively, intelligent blue eyes set in a heart-shaped face. In pictures, he’d seen what a stunner she’d been as a young woman.
But she’d never let vanity control her. She worked as hard as any of the Malones, male or female, young or old. He’d seen her mussed and covered in flour, pulling all-nighters in the kitchen before Diamante took off enough to pay someone else to do all that. He’d seen her sweating and splashed with paint, or potting soil or sawdust. And she always looked amazing, vibrant and intelligent and in love with her life.
“I wish you could adopt Marianne,” he said. “I bet you could straighten her out in no time.”
Nana Lina laughed. “I’ve got my hands full, I’m afraid. But you don’t need me. You know how to help her. Tell her to spend less time picking out earrings and more time being genuinely productive. Get a job. Or, if that’s beneath a Wigham, she should do a Google search on the word volunteer. Or charity.”
To Red’s surprise, Nana Lina’s voice sounded sharper than usual. He gave her a more careful look. Was she a little pale? Just the other day, Colby had said he thought she looked tired.
“Okay. I’ll do that.” He tried to sound casual. “So, enough about Marianne. How are things going for you? Everything okay?”
She frowned and shook her head. “Everything is fine,” she said, “except that people keep coming in and distracting me, so that I’m never going to get this report analyzed. Don’t you have somewhere to be? Some property to buy, some widow to console?”
He stood, smiling. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. But he made a mental note to ask Colby what he thought. No way they were going to let Nana Lina get sick, even if it meant they had to get out the switch.
WHEN RED GOT OUTSIDE, squinting against the bright sun after hours in the artificial light, he saw a rectangular piece of paper hooked under his windshield wiper, and his sour mood turned even nastier. God. A ticket?
But it wasn’t. When he yanked it out, the wiper bouncing, he saw that it was a flyer for the Splash Camp kickoff, which was being held today at Baker Country Day School in Russian Hill.
Marianne Wigham must have put it there. She was volunteering at the kickoff. Damn it. How could he have forgotten? This was the first time she’d done anything official or public since Victor’s death. And since by now everyone at the Baker School knew about her son’s problems, this was bound to be a stressful day.
In fact, though she hadn’t exactly asked Red to come, she’d made very sure he knew exactly what time her shift was, and which tent she’d be staffing. She clearly hoped he would show up for moral support.
Not a far-fetched hope. For the past two months, he’d stopped by at least three times a week. He’d brought flowers and food. He’d visited Dylan in rehab. He’d offered a shoulder to cry on, and a hand to hold.
And now, because of the mess with Allison York, he’d almost let Marianne down on this one.
He looked at his watch. Just three-fifteen. If he hurried, he’d be fine.
The traffic was with him, so he made it to the school with time to spare. He parked in a space left by some early departure, then climbed the emerald-green lawn toward the solid Normanesque buildings that housed the school.
Only the best of the best got into Baker. In spite of his crazy-high IQ and his good address, Dylan almost hadn’t made it. Victor’s family tree had the right kind of roots, but Marianne was officially a nobody. She’d been a nineteen-year-old cosmetics model when Victor married her, which made the older Baker moms shiver politely and made the younger ones jealous as hell.
She’d had an extra strike against her simply because she was not Erna, Victor’s beloved first wife, who had succumbed to a heart attack.
The grounds looked serene, daffodils swaying in the breeze and birds wheeling high in the blue sky. Most of the action was out back, where the Olympic-size swimming pool and field houses were found. But a few hospitality tents had been set up out front, and Marianne was in the one farthest west, out where the school grounds began to slope toward a thick, shadowy greensward.
It wasn’t an accident, of course, them putting her in the hinterlands. Red felt a surge of annoyance at the snobs who couldn’t see that she was better than all of them.
Or maybe they did see it. Maybe that was, in the end, Marianne’s unforgivable sin.
He found the tent easily. She was apparently dispensing water bottles, though hardly anyone had ventured out this far. Just a crying little kid who had clearly been brought out here for a time-out, and a couple of late-teens eyeing the woods as if they needed a few minutes alone.
“Hey, there,” he said as he got close enough to be heard. “Word is this booth has the best water in town.”
Fiddling with a cooler, she had her back to him and hadn’t seen him approach. She wore a crisp white dress that looked like a long shirt. It was belted around her tiny waist with some kind of turquoise cloth. Her hair lay on her shoulders like a yard of the most expensive gold satin. She always looked fantastic, though he could have told her she’d score more points if, just once, she showed up looking frumpy.
The minute she turned her face to him, he knew it had been a rough afternoon.
“Hi,” she said, and he heard the relief that made the syllable heavy and thick. Her round blue eyes were red-rimmed, as if she’d been crying. “I thought you might not be able to make it.”
“I almost didn’t,” he admitted, finding it impossible to lie to those eyes. “I’ve had a junky couple of days, and I almost forgot.”
“That’s okay,” she said hurriedly.
“No, it’s not,” he said. He touched her shoulder to stop the apologies he knew were coming. “But I’m here now. Tell me about it.”
She opened her mouth, that perfect rosebud that had sold a million tubes of lipstick. But then she shut it again and shook her head. “It’s nothing. Tell me about your junky days. What went wrong?”
Oh, no. That was one conversation he wasn’t going to have.
“Junky days are best forgotten,” he said. He came around the side of the booth and picked up the cooler of water bottles. He plopped it on the cloth-covered table and then propped open the lid. In the unlikely event that anyone showed up thirsty, they could help themselves.
“Come with me,” he said. “You need to get off your feet.”
He would have taken her hand, except that somewhere, no doubt, a snobby Baker School mother’s radar was twitching, and within seconds the grapevine would be humming with the gossip. No one cared that he and Marianne had been friends for fifteen years, or that the two of them had lost someone very dear.
Hell, even Nana Lina had wondered how far his stalwart-friend, shoulder-to-cry-on role might take him.
So he led her to a nearby bench. He swept a few leaves and strawberry crepe myrtle petals from its stony surface, and then they both sat.
For a few seconds, she twisted the fringed ends of her blue cloth belt in her lap and wouldn’t meet his gaze. She sniffed a couple of times, and he knew she was trying to pull herself together.
“So,” he observed mildly. “You look pretty done in. I hope you aren’t letting the snarling blue-blood bitches get you down.”
As he’d anticipated, the straightforward approach surprised her, and actually made her smile. “No,” she said. Then she shrugged. “Not much, anyhow. Maybe a little.”
He shook his head. That was the difference between the two of them. They both failed the sniff test when the social bloodhounds came around. Marianne cringed and tried to hide her background—the foster parents and the GED and the self-made career.
Red, on the other hand, was irrepressibly proud of being an immigrant’s grandson. In fact, sometimes, when he knew he was going to one of the snobs’ black-tie events, he’d hang out in the Diamante kitchens for a while so he would delicately stink of pepperoni. He loved watching the snobs flare their nostrils a bit, then try to pretend they hadn’t noticed.
“To hell with them,” he said. He glanced at the school. The late-afternoon sun was intense and pinkish-gold behind the columns, and the granite twinkled. Pretty, but he knew what went on in there.
“You know,” he said without thinking, “it might do Dylan a world of good to get out of this place. Go to a real school for a while. Meet real people, with real problems.”
“Don’t say that,” she said. “You know how important it was to Victor that Dylan get in.”
Red nodded. He hadn’t understood it, but he knew it was true.
“That’s part of what went wrong today, actually. When I arrived, Gwen Anderton told me the board had scheduled a hearing about the…the party. Dylan’s party.”
Crap. Red pulled out his BlackBerry. This was one date he wasn’t going to let himself forget. She couldn’t possibly face down these barracudas, not without Victor. She had tried so hard to make her husband proud, to fit in his world. But the hopeless struggle to live up to someone else’s superficial expectations had left her with a completely irrational sense of inferiority, as if these people had the right to pass judgment over her.
