Blue Willow (34 page)

“I’m certain Richard didn’t change the bridge specifications,” she said abruptly. “If he had, the revised blueprints would be here on his CAD system.”

Marcus stared at her intently. “But that suggests Frank could have changed them without Richard’s knowledge.” He glanced at the interns. “Would that have been possible?”

They traded speculative looks. “Yeah,” one said. “But there was no good reason for it.”

Lily felt as if the blood were draining from her head. Dizzy, she took a shallow breath and rubbed her temples. Could Frank have done something behind Richard’s back?

“We may never know exactly what happened,” Marcus reminded them. “Unfortunately, that means we may never be able to conclusively clear the firm from liability.”

Lily stifled a moan of despair. They had reached a dead end.

The comptroller, Mrs. Lacey, closed a file and removed her glasses. Lily had never liked the woman, though she was very good at her job. There was something self-righteous about her. Frank and Richard had hired her from the established firm they’d worked for after graduating from college, and the first time she and Lily met, Mrs. Lacey told her it was God’s will that they hire her to work for them when they started their own firm. Nothing to do with pay raises.

“We must face the possibility of scandal and have the courage to place the blame where it belongs,” Mrs. Lacey said now. “Pride goeth before a fall, and as much as I respected Frank and Richard, they were sinfully proud men.”

Lily got up slowly, went to the table where Mrs. Lacey sat, retrieved the woman’s stern little purse from the floor, and set it in front of her. Bending down so that she was on the same level as Mrs. Lacey’s startled, rebuking eyes, she said, “Get out of my house and don’t come back.”

Mrs. Lacey gasped. “Mrs. Porter, you’re not being rational.
Really
—”

“
Out
,” Lily commanded, and slung the purse. It thudded against the doorframe.

“Easy now,” Marcus said quickly, leaping up and coming to Lily. He clamped a hand on her shoulder.

Lily leaned closer to Mrs. Lacey. The woman’s eyes flickered with fear. “Richard was good to you. He was good to everyone. And the least you can do is believe in his innocence—and Frank’s.” Lily’s voice shook with violence. She raised her head and stared at Marcus. “And you too.” Then the interns. “All of you.”

When she was disconnected from her pain, she reacted
with plodding determination—hypnotized by any chore that crossed her path. But when something provoked a fresh wave of agony, she lashed out recklessly. Suddenly she wanted to grab Mrs. Lacey by her short brown hair and drag her out of the chair. “Don’t preach
sin
to me,” Lily told her. “You’re just worried that somebody’ll accuse
you
of something.”

“Lily, calm down,” Marcus interjected. “No one’s trying to accuse Richard. We’re trying to get the facts.”

Mrs. Lacey sniffed. “But I won’t allow myself to be coerced into ignoring my suspicions.”

Lily slammed a fist on the table. Mrs. Lacey bolted, barely pausing to snatch her coat from the back of the chair and her purse from the floor. She whirled around, backing from the office, her pallid face contorted with fear and disdain. “I have my own reputation to think of!”

Lily started around the table. Marcus grabbed her by one arm. “
Leave.
” he told Mrs. Lacey. She spun on her heels and hurried off. Lily struggled to get free of the attorney’s grip. “Lily, she’s the least of our worries,” he said. His voice penetrated her fury. Lily sank down in her vacant chair and stared grimly at the file folders there, listening until she heard the front door slam. Awkward silence filled the room.

There was a rattle and crash. Her head jerked toward it. One of the interns scrambled out of his chair. The office’s answering machine lay upside down on the floor. “Lily, I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I was thinking of ways to strangle her, and my hand slipped.”

“What happened?” Little Sis asked. She had returned at a run, and stood in the doorway, again.

“Chuck just knocked the answering machine off.” Lily leaned back in the chair and shut her eyes. The intern replaced the machine next to the phone on Richard’s desk. “Don’t worry about it. It was broken anyway.”

Little Sis shuffled in. “No, it’s not.” She checked the connections and punched a button. The answering machine whirred smoothly. “It just didn’t have a tape in it.
And it had been unplugged. I noticed one day. Got a new tape for it. It works fine.”

Lily straightened quickly and opened her eyes. Her mouth went dry with bewilderment and dread.
Richard had said it was broken. When? How long ago
? Her thoughts whirled. She pressed her fingertips to her forehead, dug her nails into the skin.
About a week before he died
.

Why would he lie about it? Had he simply made a mistake? Or had there been recordings of conversations he didn’t want her to hear?

“Lily?” Marcus spoke her name worriedly. He was rubbing her shoulders. She felt dazed.

“She needs some rest,” Little Sis snapped. “She hasn’t slept more than an hour or two a night since Artemas Colebrook came to see her, and that was a week ago.”

Lily dragged herself out of the chair and looked at the group. She would hold herself together by sheer willpower until she was alone. “Y’all go on home. And thank you for coming.” She turned to Marcus and clasped his hand. “I’m sorry I’m not able to look at this objectively. I’ll pack all these files up and send them to you. I know you have to have them.”

“Yes,” he said gently. “Don’t turn anything over to Colebrook. He had no right to ask you to help him.”

“He has a right,” she said. “But I can’t let him turn that into a crusade against Richard.”

After Little Sis herded the men outside, Lily shut the office door. She walked numbly to the answering machine and ran her fingers over it. She was seeing Richard, remembering small details the fog of grief had shut away from her until this moment.

How strained and jumpy he’d been at the office ceremonies. How he’d been that way for days—at least a week—beforehand. She shut her eyes and recalled waking up just after dawn once to find him down here, with the door shut, talking on the phone. He’d looked upset when she’d opened the door, and he’d ended the conversation quickly. When she’d asked him what in the world he was doing at that time of morning, he said he’d called Frank to
go over last-minute details again. Julia Colebrook was hounding them about some minor problems, as usual.

She remembered him yelling at Stephen the next night for leaving toys scattered on the couch in the den. Richard had never raised his voice to his son before. And when Stephen burst into tears at the shock of it, Richard had hugged him desperately, looking very close to tears himself.

She remembered reaching for Richard in bed, thinking she could break through his bewildering moods that way He’d shoved her hands aside, then apologized profusely, then gotten out of bed and gone downstairs to the office. She had followed and found him staring at the computer. At the Colebrook blueprints.

All of it could have been ordinary nervousness over the project. But none of it was remotely like the man she had known since college.

Lily paced the office, her hands latched behind her neck. Her legs felt like rubber. Without knowing why, she went to her drafting table near the windows. Bookcases on the wall beside it overflowed with volumes on landscape design and horticulture, with framed photographs of Stephen and Richard. She clutched the edge of a shelf and bent her head to it. From the corner of one eye she glimpsed books jumbled in front of something that was barely visible behind them. Blue and white.

She shoved the books aside and cupped her hands around the Colebrook teapot. It had resided there for years. Richard, who’d known that her family and the Colebrooks had been neighbors, had assumed it was a gift the family had received long before her birth. She had let him believe that small fable, because she never discussed Artemas with anyone, not even Richard.

Shivering, Lily jerked her hands away She should never have let Artemas return it to her. Touching it filled her with guilt, as if she’d betrayed Richard. She sank down on the couch. She’d married the best man for her, a man who hadn’t measured his love for her against his ambitions and loyalty to his family. A man who kept no secrets from
her. Had she been wrong?
No
. Her life had unfolded as it should. Shutting her eyes, she remembered.

She was bent over a dresser in the tiny attic bedroom of Aunt Maude’s house. In the fall she’d move to a dormitory at college, down in Atlanta. A window fan pushed the sticky afternoon air across her flushed face. Boxes and paper bags were strewn around the room. It seemed impossible that she could fit her things into the cramped dresser and closet. Impossible that she could never go back to her own home. Impossible that she’d lost Artemas.

“Someone’s here to see you.” Lily pivoted quickly at the sound of Aunt Maude’s voice. “From New York.”

Her hands closed tightly around a stack of folded white socks.
Artemas. He’s come back to get me
, was her first thought, but it died when Aunt Maude shook her head. “Not
him
,” Aunt Maude said, her tone gentle but stern. “He sent someone else. A Mr. Tamberlaine.”

Lily bolted past Aunt Maude and went down the short, narrow stairs to the second floor. Squaring her shoulders, she made herself walk slowly down the long stairs to the first floor. Her heart pounded.

Mr. Tamberlaine was as well dressed and courtly looking as she remembered from her trip to New York in March. He didn’t see her immediately because he stood with his back to the parlor’s arching entranceway. Little Sis was planted in front of him. One of his large, dark hands lay stiffly in her pale ones. She prowled over his palm with a fingertip. Big Sis sat in a chair by the window, chewing tobacco and peering at him avidly.

Lily stopped in the doorway and said nothing, her voice trapped in her throat. She glanced down the front hall. Through the screened door she saw a sedan with an Atlanta taxicab company logo waiting by the curb. Mr. Tamberlaine wasn’t going to be here for long then. And she doubted Artemas had sent him here to get her. The last shred of hope melted.

“We never had a colored man dressed in a nice suit as
a guest in this house before,” Big Sis announced. “It’d be exciting, except you’re here for no good.”

“I assure you, that’s not the case,” Mr. Tamberlaine said. He sounded awkward. Leave it to the sisters to derail his dignity.

“The pain is clear,” Little Sis concluded, pointing at his hand and tilting her head back to stare at him with narrowed eyes. “The pain of the African enslavement.”

“I come from many generations of New Yorkers,” Mr. Tamberlaine answered, his deep voice exasperated. “There hasn’t been an African or a slave in the lot since 1798. My grandfather ran one of the largest banks in Harlem.”

“You know what I mean. You’ve suffered the pain of racism. And you’ve been an outcast as much as a hero to your people, because you’ve succeeded in the white world.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“But there’s pain in your love life too. Losses. Terrible disappointments. They’re all here—you haven’t resolved them.”

He didn’t say anything. Lily watched the rigid line of his back become a little straighter. “I’m divorced,” he allowed. “I have a mentally retarded daughter who’s been institutionalized since birth.”

“Hah! I knew it!”

Lily entered the room. She almost felt sorry for him. He turned when he heard her footsteps. “Miss MacKenzie,” he said gravely, and gave a little nod.

“Don’t talk to him,” Big Sis said, and hawked tobacco juice into a coffee can balanced on her lap. “He’s odd. What’s his job—chief messenger?”

“I am chief financial officer for Colebrook International,” Mr. Tamberlaine intoned grimly.

Lily scrubbed her hair back and exhaled. This was going nowhere, fast. “Would y’all mind if Mr. Tamberlaine and me had some privacy?”

“Yes,” Aunt Maude said. She had come downstairs and now commanded the parlor doorway, watching them angrily. She shook her finger at Mr. Tamberlaine. “What do
you want, you henchman? What other heartache is Artemas Colebrook sending into Lily’s life?”

“Aunt Maude!” Lily flung out her hands and looked from her to the sisters. “Please.”

“Shut up, Maudy,” Big Sis said. “Leave ’em be. He’ll be gone soon enough.”

Aunt Maude grunted and stomped down the hall toward the back porch. Little Sis took Big Sis by one arm. As they left the room, Little Sis peered back over one shoulder at Mr. Tamberlaine. “You have kind brown eyes. Better live up to them.”

When they were finally alone, Tamberlaine went to a table draped in a crocheted doily and opened a bulky leather tote sitting there. Lily watched in speechless silence as he removed the Colebrook teapot and set it on the table. “He asks that you keep this. It has always been yours, he said.”

Her eyes burned. She swallowed hard and said, “Is that the only reason he sent you? To bring that teapot back here?”

“No.” Tamberlaine faced her. He was old enough to be her father, and she couldn’t help feeling respectful in his presence. The sadness in his face touched a chord. “I wanted to apologize to you. My idea, not his. No matter how good my intentions, I contributed to the loss of your home.”

She exhaled wearily and sat down on a delicate little settee, knotting her hands over the bare knees that protruded from baggy cutoff jeans. “He shut himself away, so even a friend couldn’t get to him. I don’t understand all the reasons why, but it was his doing, not yours.”

“You are very gracious. Thank you.”

She shrugged, a miserable attempt at nonchalance. “Tell him I’ll keep the teapot.”

Tamberlaine nodded. “He realizes you may not want to contact him again. I’d be honored if you’d contact me, should you need assistance in any way. Indeed, I’d like to keep abreast of your progress at school and anything else of importance in your life.”

“So he can know without having to ask me himself?”