Ballet Shoes and Engine Grease (2 page)

What
did it matter to a dead person anyway who stood by the
graveside? And it was not as if they’d meant anything special to
each other. Stephan Constantine had married Esmeralda Mills on a
whim, most likely to spite his frosty ex-wife, and had probably
regretted it even before the wedding flowers faded.

Crimson wriggled in the
narrow airplane seat. She hoped the man
had enough charity to leave her mother some money to live on. If
not, Esmeralda would have to go back to cooking school dinners.
Crimson certainly couldn’t support anyone. At twenty-six, she had
no skills, and would struggle to pay her own way.

Unless...

No. She brushed aside the thought. Why
would Uncle Ste
phan have
left her anything? Heavens. Even though they’d liked each other,
she barely knew the man, and he had a son of his own blood. They
were estranged, but when push came to shove, blood ties
won.

Huddling beneath the small fleece blanket,
Crimson
recalled the
photos she’d seen of a young man with dark hair and eyes. In her
favorite picture, he’d been shirtless, arms roped with muscle as he
bent over the open hood of a racing car, tinkering with the
engine.

Like always
, when she allowed her thoughts to linger on his
image, her imagination began to spin fairytales in choreography.
She saw dancers gliding on the stage, a snow queen with long
silvery hair, the prince of darkness with brooding, handsome looks.
She drifted off to sleep just before she got to the part where the
prince of darkness pulled the snow queen into his arms and brought
his mouth down to hers in a passionate kiss.

****

“
Crimson! Crimson!
Co-ee
!”

Heavens? What was that? An out of season
Father Christmas? Crimson peered through the crowds in
International Arrivals at JFK.
No. That creature in bright red was her mother. Dragging her big
trolley case with her left hand, her carry-on with her right,
Crimson made her way toward the parental welcoming
committee.

“
Hi, Mom!” She forced a cheerful note. “I
didn’t expect you. I don’t think I gave you my flight
details.”
Of
course I didn’t.
Her
mother was a nervous driver who refused to get behind the wheel
unless she knew every inch of the route. She would never have
ventured into New York City, a hundred miles south of
Longwood.

Esmeralda
tugged at Crimson’s arm to direct her attention to
the elegant, middle aged woman who stood beside them, immaculate in
a beige suit, blond hair twisted into a neat chignon. “This is
Myrna Constantine,” she announced proudly. “Myrna figured out which
flight you were on. She is good at getting information from
people.”

When Crimson
’s only reaction was stunned silence, her mother
added, “Myrna is Stephan’s first wife. Nick’s mother.”

Speechless
, Crimson clung to the handles of her suitcases as
the woman in beige leaned forward to brush air kisses on both her
cheeks, first one side, then the other, enveloping her in a cloud
of perfume. “So lovely to finally meet you, Crimson.” Her voice was
cool and cultured.

From the corner of her eye, Crimson saw a
flash of red. It was her mother, gestu
ring toward the exit. “Let’s go,” Esmeralda said,
ushering her along. “We have a limo waiting at the curb. We can
talk on the way to Park Avenue.”

Click, click,
click
. Two pairs of high
heels set off across the floor. Crimson followed, hauling her
suitcases. Her brows drew into a frown as she mulled over her
mother’s words.

Myrna is
Stephan’s first wife.
What was going on? Two women
who were supposed to be enemies were behaving like a schoolgirl
reunion and taking her to some unspecified place on Park
Avenue.

In the limo, they seated her in the
middle. Myrna Constantine tapped the driver on the shoulder and
said something. A second later, a transparent screen rose to
insulate the rear seat from his prying ears—that is, if he was
interested enough in their conversation to pry, which Crimson very
much doubted.

“
Guess what?” Her mother said, blue eyes
round as a full moon.

“
No idea,” Crimson replied.

“
It
is
rather wonderful news, my dear,” the elegant stranger
said.

“
Mrs. Constantine...”

“
Please. Call me Myrna. And may I call you
Crimson?”

She
could hear a tiny quiver of distaste in the woman’s voice.
A wave of childish anger at her mother swelled within Crimson.
“Sure,” she muttered. “Go ahead.”
Crimson, puce, purple, mauve.
As a kid, she’d been called
every shade of red. Even now, at twenty-six, echoes of those
childhood taunts rode in the limo with her.

“
Well, Crimson.” Myrna sat with her spine
ramrod straight, knees pressed together and folded to one side,
hands resting in her lap. “We are the joint new owners of
Constantine Motors. The three of us. Isn’t that exciting, my dear?”
Her pink lips curved into a strained smile.

Crimson
made a non-committal sound. If she hadn’t worked
on the stage, where dancers sometimes had to smile until their
cheeks cramped, she might have been fooled into thinking the
woman’s delight was genuine.

Her mother grabbed her hand and squeezed
it with the strength gained from hauling heavy pots and pans.
“Crimson, honey, do you understand? Stephan left the business to
you. We’ll run it together. It will be fabulous. Just like Dynasty,
except there are no horses or oil.”

When
Crimson failed to reply, her mother pressed on, “Do you
understand, honey?”

Crimson
turned to the left, away from Myrna’s cloud of
Estee Lauder, toward her mother’s equally powerful scent of Oscar
de la Renta. “No, Mom, frankly, I don’t,” she said. “Why would
Uncle Stephan leave his business to me and not to his
son?”

P
erfume clouds mingled as Myrna Constantine made a sweeping
gesture with one manicured hand. “Oh, Stephan offered the business
to Nick, but he turned it down. That boy is so maddeningly
stubborn. Independent. Refuses to follow in his father’s
footsteps.”

“
He turned it down?” Crimson asked, full of
doubt.

“
Yes,” Myrna said, in the slightly
overbearing manner of someone who knows she is telling a boldfaced
lie. “He prefers to be independent. Make his own way.”

Crimson pursed her mouth
. “I see.”

In silence, she listened as the two women
prattled on, informing her about their mino
rity shares and her majority holding in
Constantine Motors. And, all the while, a seed of dread niggled in
her belly. It simply didn’t make sense. No sense at all. She was
sure that for each word they told her, a dozen more were left
unsaid.

Something was wrong.

Something was very wrong.

****

The law off
ices on Park Avenue seemed so upscale it surprised
Crimson they allowed her to enter in her traveling outfit of black
cotton pants, a ratty pink cardigan, and worn white Reeboks. As
they settled in three identical chairs opposite the shiny mahogany
desk, her mother bent to whisper into her ear.

“
Reproduction. Queen Anne. Not all of it is
solid wood.”

“
Heavens, Mom,” Crimson muttered under her
breath. “You know antiques?”

“
Dolls’ houses,” her mother whispered back.
“I want mine to be authentic.”

Across the table, the lawyer
cleared his throat. He looked
like Donald Trump after a month on hunger strike. They had already
been introduced. Adam Andrews. Limp handshake. It seemed clear to
Crimson that the small man was nervous, and not at all happy with
the turn of affairs.

“
So, Miss Mills.” He handed back the
passport she’d used to prove her identity. “I understand you have
been informed that Nicholas Constantine is not willing
to—”

Myrna cut in.
“Surely, there is no need to go into
anything…irrelevant.”

The lawyer
jerked his head up, like a surprised turtle.
Crimson felt his slightly protruding eyes settle on her.
Evaluating. Assessing. Something flickered in their dull gray
depths. “Perhaps you are right,” he replied, and addressed his next
words to her. “Miss Mills, when I provide you a copy of the will,
it will be an extract of the relevant portions.”

Crim
son heard her mother exhale in relief.

Myrna Constantine gave the lawyer a regal
nod.

Something
is definitely
wrong
, Crimson thought,
but she couldn’t figure out what. It involved her, and things that
were better left unsaid. She brushed aside the thought. Her mother
was a loyal, sincere person, able to keep secrets, but she was also
naïve and gullible. It might not be too difficult to trick her into
revealing what they were trying to hide.

T
he lawyer continued, in his annoying way of turning
questions into statements. “So, Miss Mills, I understand that you
have been informed of your inheritance?”

“
I’ve been told that Uncle Stephan left me
sixty percent of his company, but I have no idea why. Mother and
Myrna—” She sent a quick sideways glance and a tiny smile to Mrs.
Constantine, to prove they were on first name terms “—will each get
twenty percent.”

Adam Andrews
took down his horn rimmed glasses and polished
them with a silky polka dot cloth he pulled from his breast pocket.
“Perhaps your stepfather felt that you were the best person to
leave his fortune to,” he suggested. “That is the usual
reason.”

“
Or he wanted to annoy someone else by not
leaving it to them.”

The lawyer restored
his glasses on his nose, dragging out the
gesture to cover up his reaction to her comment. Crimson got the
impression that he wavered between respect and disapproval at her
bluntness.

“
Do you have any business skills?” he
asked.

“
Business skills?” She emitted an
unladylike chortle. “No. I’m a ballet dancer.”

He spoke slowly, as if
lecturing at an uncooperative child. “In
which case, have you given any thought as to how you will satisfy
the condition of running the business until the end of the
financial year without a decline in profits?”

“
What?” Crimson swiveled to the right to
glare at her mother. Then she swung to the left, landing her angry
gaze on Myrna Constantine. Both women tried to shrink in their
seats. Myrna, with her slender frame and discreet clothing managed
it better than Esmeralda with her bulk encased in red.

“
Did you two know about this?” Crimson
demanded.

Her mother squirmed
in her seat. “Honey, don’t fly off the
handle.”

“
Crimson, please.” Myrna reached out and
dug a set of manicured nails in Crimson’s forearm, as if to stop
her from escaping. “We knew about it,” she said in her upper
class
don’t-argue-with-me
tone. “But we felt that Mr. Andrews with his detailed
understanding of Stephan’s legal affairs is in better position to
explain everything to you.”

Crimson
met the woman’s innocent blue eyes.
“Poppycock.”

It occurred to her
how alike the two wives of Stephan
Constantine were. Blue eyed blondes. If her mother had grown up
with more money and a better sense of nutrition, she might have
turned out similar to Myrna Constantine. Crimson thanked heavens
for inheriting her father’s brown eyes. Otherwise, she might have
felt like a clone, in a bad remake of
The Stepford Wives,
a town filled with brainless
women trained to obey their men.

“
All right,” Myrna admitted. “We chose not
to tell you the details.”

“
You lied, you mean.”

“
We omitted to tell you everything we
knew.”

“
Fine.” Crimson turned to the lawyer. “Can
you tell me the rest?”

“
In order to inherit, you’ll have to run
the business until the end of December and show a profit at least
in line with the previous financial year. That will be just over
seven million dollars before tax. You are not allowed to employ a
manager. You must run the business yourself, with the existing
management team.”

“
And if I refuse?” she asked. “Or if I fail
to make the required profit?”

“
The company will be sold to Ballard
Automotive and the proceeds donated to charity.”

“
Good Lord, no,” Myrna cried
out.

“
Shit,” Esmeralda muttered.

Crimson glared at the pair. “Tough luck,”
she told them. “Get a job. You’ve had a free ride long
enough.”

“
No, no. You don’t understand.” Myrna was
wringing her elegant hands together in her lap. “There is...bad
blood...between David Ballard and my son...I can’t understand why
Stephan would have agreed to the sale...unless he really hated...”
She looked up, a bruised look in her pale blue eyes. “Can he really
have hated his own son so much...?”