Escape (16 page)

I connected the dots. “Your husband’s family saw it.”

“But Jack knew. I told him when we first met. He didn’t care.”

“She’s been with me for eighteen months,” Vicki said, joining us, “and I’ve never once had cause for doubt.”

I wasn’t surprised. The way Lee talked, the way she looked at me or didn’t, even the way she carried herself held a lack of guile. I was a fairly good judge of character.

Of course, I’d bombed when it came to Jude, and the jury was out on James.

Still. “How did you come to be working here?” I asked.

Seeming unsure how much to say, Lee looked to Vicki, who said, “Mom brought her. They’re cousins.”

I smiled, intrigued. “Really?” Here was a new side of Amelia the Queen. “Did I see you at Vicki’s wedding?”

Lee shook her head. “I’m not the kind of relative you’d want to have around.”

“The problem was more Mom than Lee,” Vicki put in. “Do you know where she came from?”

“No.”

“Uh-huh. She never talks about that. She wants you to believe she was born into high society, but her family is very … plain.”

“Vicki is being kind,” Lee said sadly. “I’m not the only felon in the family. We don’t kill or do drugs, we’re just thieves. Mama was the worst. She got away with a lot before she was caught. In my family, you break the mold when you go straight, but some of us try.” Her face hardened in support of innocence. “I made one mistake and paid for it, but I did not steal money from any trust fund.”

“Amelia must believe that, or she wouldn’t have brought you here,” I said, and connected a few more dots. “She was the one who hired the guard outside.”

Vicki confirmed it. “He’s a member of the local police force, and he’s recovering from a broken leg, so this gives him something to do
other than shuffling papers at a desk. As far as the town knows, he’s just keeping an eye on the green.”

“What’s the danger?” I asked Lee, wanting to hear the rest of her story.

But Vicki was into it now, vehement in Lee’s defense. “They’ve sent thugs after her. They put ugly little notes in her mail slot and dog poop on her front step, and they show up watching her at odd times, just standing at the edge of her backyard staring at the house. Sometimes they have a camera, like they’re cataloguing a crime.”

“Are you sure it isn’t a local pervert?”

“The guys vary, no one knows them, and they’re always gone before the police arrive.”

“Two weeks ago,” Lee said, “two of them pulled up in a car with papers saying I had to go to the DA’s office to give a deposition.”

“The papers were bogus,” Vicki held. “Mom checked it out.”

“How’d they find you?”

Close to tears now, Lee shrugged.

“She keeps to herself,” Vicki argued, “never says her last name, never calls her family, even though we gave her a phone. She doesn’t mix with people in town, so it’s not like she’s flaunting herself. We figure whoever it is tracked her through Amelia.”

I thought of Jude. There he was on the Bering Sea and—
ta-da—
got whatever he needed on the Web. Lee’s connection to Amelia wouldn’t stay hidden for long. “But why would they go to the effort?”

“Our guess,” Vicki mused, “is that someone really is draining that trust fund, likely the brothers themselves—putting the money in an account that Lee can’t touch—so they’re looking for a patsy. Lee’s it. They may not be able to pin anything on her, because they sure won’t find the money, but they’re taking pleasure in the chase. It’s all about intimidation. They smell vulnerability.”

“Because of the record?”

“Because I ran,” Lee said, pleading again. “Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I didn’t know what else to do. I sold the jewelry Jack gave me so I could pay bills, but I couldn’t keep up with them, and the check from
the trust fund barely paid the heat. I’d have taken in a renter, but the zoning laws don’t allow it, and if I do something under the table, I’ll be caught for sure. I talked with three realtors about selling the house. All of them told me not to. And then there were people knocking on my door, asking about my bank account—”

“Also impostors,” Vicki charged.

“But what could I do?” Lee cried. “I talked with a local lawyer, but I didn’t have money for the retainer, and, anyway, he was smalltime and would have had to butt heads with the biggest in town—”

“What town?” I asked. I was familiar with New York law, but each state was different.

“The brothers live in Connecticut,” Vicki injected, “but their father lived in Boston. The trust fund is with a firm there.”

Lee looked devastated. “They have lawyers all over the place, and money to spend. Me, I have no money and a criminal record. I couldn’t win. So I ran.”

Like me. But not.

I thought of the incredible breakfast breads I’d been eating. “Where did you learn to bake?”

“Growing up. It was one of the few things I did right.” She teared up. “That was our dream. Jack had been tagging along in the family business all his life, but he loved to bake. We used to do it together—like, instead of going to a movie, picking a recipe and making something really good. We dreamed of owning a bakery in a nice area where people would come mornings and weekends. It wasn’t going to be big, more like a hobby for him, but he was excited about it. I mean, when you have that much money, you get bored. When your family is one big corporation, there’s not much to do every day. His brothers play tennis and golf. They cruise on the family boat, but even then, like, there’s a full crew, so what do you do? You invite every friend you know to come for a ride, only they wouldn’t be friends if you didn’t have the ride—” She caught herself. “At least, that’s what Jack always said. I was his escape, he said, and I believed it. He did well
with me. He lost weight, and his blood pressure went down. He said we’d start that bakery and live a long life together.”

She brushed at her tears, in the process pushing aside that swath of hair, leaving her face open and vulnerable. For the first time, I took in broad pecan brows, high cheekbones, and hazel eyes filled with gentleness and longing, any one of which might have attracted a lonely middle-aged bachelor.

“Only it didn’t work out that way,” Vicki concluded, and cut to the chase. “So what can we do to help her?”

The “we” was really me. I was the lawyer. Yes, Vicki wanted me to hear of a woman running away under more dire circumstances than mine—and yes, it was sobering. But she also wanted legal advice.

Funny thing about that. Lawyer jokes to the contrary, we did serve a practical purpose.

“A restraining order is the obvious thing,” I ventured, “but without evidence linking someone to what’s happened to Lee here in town, there’s no case. We’ll need a detective to identify whoever’s lurking around up here and link him to the brothers. We could also get an accountant to examine the trust fund. That would definitely shake up the brothers.”

Vicki’s eyes lit with glee. “I like it.”

Lee wasn’t so sure. “They’ll retaliate.”

“Meaning that we set a trap and they take the bait, so we’ll
really
get them,” Vicki promised, and turned to me. “Go for it, Emmie.”

“Uhh, I can’t.” I wasn’t practicing law right now.

“Sure you can. I know you. You make things happen.”

While I loved her for the vote of confidence, it wasn’t entirely justified. Yes, I could make things happen. But would they be the right things? I didn’t have a great history of that right now—and that was
before
Jude had shown up to mess with my mind even more.

“For starters,” I hedged, “there’s a problem with jurisdiction. I can’t practice law in Massachusetts.”

“Can’t you work with someone who does?”

“I don’t know anyone who does probate work.” A thought came. I smiled. “But James does. One of his college friends is with the kind of firm you need.”

“Can James call him?”

I kept the smile on my face. “I don’t know. Let me ask.”

I didn’t ask that night. Calling James with a favor when I wouldn’t do him one—like leaving my BlackBerry on—was pushing it.

So I felt guilty about not helping Lee, and guilty about not telling Vicki that Jude was back, and when she suggested that we have dinner at The Grill, I wanted to go hide somewhere all by myself instead.

But Vicki was my angel in Bell Valley. And The Grill had great zucchini sticks. So I went.

Chapter 11
 

I didn’t realize what I was in for. The heart of Bell Valley ate at The Grill, and much as I’d been sitting in clear view on the green, this was truly my public debut. The place was wood and comfortably dark—walls, ceilings, and booths—yet a steady stream of locals stopped at our table to say hello. Some remembered me as Jude’s girl from ten years ago. Some only knew I looked familiar and, since I was with Vicki, were drawn by curiosity.

Not all were warm and fuzzy, our server being a case in point. We immediately recognized each other. Though he was an old friend of Jude’s, he was Jenna Frye’s cousin, so he and I had never hit it off. Now, other than a brief glance to take my order, he didn’t look at me again.

That made me uncomfortable—not so much his relation to Jenna, but his friendship with Jude. Knowing that I knew Jude was back and he didn’t seemed wrong. Of course, not telling Vicki was even worse.

Then came Amelia—talk about feeling like a snake. I should have known she would be here. Amelia was
always
here, because she didn’t cook. She and I had that in common, at least, though it was little comfort now. I cringed when she appeared, and when she slid into the booth on Vicki’s side, I thought I’d die.

She must have known my feelings, because she hit me with a bright smile and said, “This is nice,” settling in as though she’d had a date with us all along. In a single glance, she had the server over. “The special?” he asked, to which she gave him a nod and a thumbs-up.

Vicki said nothing, which was the only way I knew she was no happier than me. Not that Amelia gave her a chance to talk. She controlled the conversation, asking about my work in New York and what I might do for Lee, and though I bought time, saying that it might take James a while to contact his friend, the guilt I felt about that was nothing compared to the guilt I felt about Jude.

Amelia showed no sign of being affected by whatever she had been drinking earlier, and when her Cosmo arrived, she drank appropriately. Then, mid-sentence, she shot up an arm and waved her hand. “Bob! Here!” she called in an authoritative voice

A couple approached. They looked several years older than Amelia, whom I would have guessed to be sixty-two. She barely acknowledged the female half of the pair.

“Bob, I want you to meet Vicki’s friend, Emily Aulenbach. Emily, Bob Bixby. Bob heads the legal department at the Refuge. Emily is a lawyer, too,” she told Bob, who smiled at me then.

“Where do you practice?” he asked.

“New York,” Amelia said before I could.

“Corporate?” he asked next, and since he was looking straight at me, I immediately liked him better.

“Corporate litigation, actually.” It was its own field, separate from the other.

“What firm?”

“Lane Lavash.”

He frowned, considering. “I don’t know that one. I did criminal work in Hartford before I moved here.”

It occurred to me that Amelia could have consulted Bob about Lee. Criminal work would encompass harassment. But Amelia wouldn’t have wanted Bob to know that she had a relative with a criminal record.

“Emily’s been working with the cats,” Amelia told Bob, “so you know where to find her if you need help.”

“We always need help,” Bob warned, but the words were barely out when Amelia made a shooing motion.

“Here’s our food,” she said. “I’m starved. Go order, you two. Enjoy your dinner.”

I was glad to see her include the wife at the end, but the instant they were gone, even as the waiter was setting down our plates, she muttered, “I have
nothing
to say to that woman.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Bo-ring,” she sang, turning a brilliant smile on the server. “This looks wonderful, Jake. As always.”

The special was baked haddock. Vicki and I had ordered hamburgers with our zucchini sticks—would likely have had the zucchini sticks alone as an appetizer if Amelia hadn’t been there. But the server knew that she liked everything served at once, and since she would be the one leaving the tip, pleasing Amelia was what counted.

As we ate, Amelia told me more about Bob and about other recent hires whom she considered to be finds. At one point she glanced at Vicki. “You’re awfully quiet.”

“When would you have me speak?” Vicki asked politely enough. “Between drinks?”

“Ouch,” Amelia said. She was on her second Cosmo, but perfectly articulate. Undaunted, she looked at me. “Mothers and daughters do have issues. What about you, Emily? Are you and your mother best friends?”

I was trying to think how to answer when something changed in the restaurant. Conversation didn’t exactly end, but was broken by a vibrating hush.

I had the briefest glimpse of Jude heading toward us, fending off hugs and backslapping, waving an indulgent hand to return people to their talk, before reaching our booth.