Marrying Money: Lady Diana's Story (9 page)

“
It's been my experience that only people with guilty consciences feel that need to start screaming for a lawyer the minute their bums touch the interview room seats,” the man replied.

“Great
, now you've annoyed this bozo! Besides, we can't afford Arnie the Ambulance Chaser, let alone a barrister,” Sally shrieked.

“
I happen to have several cousins who are officers of the courts,” I said sniffily, I redirected the glare at the man sitting opposite us. “And as for you -  Our bums have hardly
just
touched the seats; we've been here for hours! I have a lunch date. I
did
have a lunch date!”

He grinned evilly.
“Have you mentioned your suspicions about James Hegarty to anyone in the Ransome household?”

“I
don’t even know a James Hegarty. Let alone have suspicions about him.” I sniffed petulantly.

“Of
course you do, dummy, it's Juicy James, the chauffeur.”

Bless Sally, always fast to jump in with info I’d rather keep to myself.

The man across the table was grinning widely, a grin which grew to almost face-splitting proportions as the door opened and none other than Juicy James, er, James the Chauffeur, walked in.

“Ah
, 'tis Juicy James himself!” the officer snickered

“What
?”

“Oh
, nothing, nothing at all, sir.”

“Sir
? The man's a common criminal! Why are you being so polite to him and treating us like crap? You call this justice?” Sally snapped

“Shhh
, Sally,” I muttered, pulling her back down into her seat. It was all starting to slowly dawn in my brain.

“
I'm sorry you've been kept here so long, they were waiting for me to get here,” James said, settling himself down in the chair the detective had already vacated. “I hope they've treated you well?”

I wanted to leap across the table and rip out his throat with my teeth.

“Look, James or whoever you are, we've been here over two hours. We haven’t had a cup of coffee or even a pee break. This detective was positively rude, and now you come waltzing in here, smooth as honey and hope we've been treated well?”

He must have caught the deadly note in my voice. I guess
a man this good-looking has developed a well-honed survival instinct for recognizing a woman on the edge of reason.

The man called James
, certainly a more authoritative version of the one we called Juicy James the chauffeur, turned to the woman officer who stood on dragon duty at the door, “Is this true? No bathroom breaks or coffee?”

“Detective
Inspector O'Grady's orders, sir.”

“Did
Detective O'Grady say why?”

“Well
, sir,” the woman had the good grace to blush, “He said they were English so they must be guilty of something. “

I knew it was only a matter of time before an Ashburnham would be called upon to pay for our Cromwellian ancestors' excesses, but I never thought it would be in some grungy little interview room in the back end of Dublin.

With great restraint I kept the thought to myself. Discretion is the better part of valour. Maybe I'll have that emblazoned on the coat of arms as our new family motto. Sure beats what we have scrawled on the bottom of it now, which I am sure is a botched translation of some noble Latin declaration of familial honour.

James scowled.
“Bloody hell, okay, let's get this straight. You're here as a protective measure while we ask some questions to ascertain some things. You are not under arrest. You are free to leave, with my apologies for the way your visit has been mishandled.”

A master of
confuse-and-distract, was our James.

“However
, it is very important to a police operation, and to me personally, that you stay and answer our questions.”

Sally and I looked at each other. The same thought was passing through both our minds. Who could turn down such a lovely request from someone as tasty as James?
Besides, we really were ravening to find out what this was all about.

“Okay
,” Sally said firmly, “We’ll stay and at least hear you out. But first, a trip to the ladies room without the Dragon Lady over there as company, and two cups of latte, large.”

“It
will be done,” James said, standing and opening the door for us. “Back here in five minutes?”

“Yeah
, right.”

Of course we weren't back in five minutes
. We hung around the less than salubrious police ladies' room for as long as we could. When we returned, there were two delicious looking lattes in tall glasses awaiting us, along with an amused looking James who was swigging down what looked and smelled like a super-sized, double strength Columbian.

“So
, Detective O'Grady says that you mentioned seeing me in Richard Ransome's study the last night?”

“
Yes. You must admit it does seem a bit strange, especially as Mairead told me you weren't even in the house at the time,” I said pointedly. “I don’t know what you' were doing there, or what you've said to these policemen to get them to—oh my God!”

Call me really dumb, but even when James was sitting there opposite me in the interview room, I thought he'd been brought in for some sort of comparison between our stories.
Duh! It took a while for it to dawn on me that James was there in the police interview room because he was a policeman. Double-Duh!

“You’re
a cop!” Obviously, a light bulb went off for Sally at the same time.

“That’s
right,” James said, “But not the uniformed type. I'm an officer with CAB, the Criminal Assets Bureau.”

“So
why were you in Mairead's study?” Sally asked. “And why do you think you get to keep my necklace?”

“It’s
my necklace, and he was in Richard's study,” I pointed out. Sally glared at me. I shrugged.

“What
necklace are we talking about?” James asked, making a show of looking puzzled.

“Oh
, please,” Sally muttered, rolling her eyes heavenwards. “The necklace I handed to you when I received my prize on Ladies' Day. Are you going to try to wriggle out of that? You stole a very valuable heirloom.”

“You
didn't hand me a necklace. You gave it to Mrs Roberts-Pierce. She was standing next to me and she was exclaiming about how lovely it was, and you asked her to hang onto it for a minute and maybe I could take it back to Mrs Ransome's house.”

“See
, I knew you were involved.”

“But
I never had the necklace. I was called away. I thought Mrs Roberts-Pierce would either give it back to you, or see that it got to Mrs Ransome for you.”

The room was quiet. Sally had gone very pale.
“I remember now,” she said, sniffing back tears. I searched furiously through my bag for tissues. Sally in a full tearful flow is not a pretty sight. “I did offer it to you, but Mrs Roberts-Pierce, if that's the sweet lady in pink with the dreadful peacock feathered hat—? “

James nodded
.

 
“Then the necklace is truly missing. I thought I gave it to you. I thought we'd soon have it back. Oh, Diana, I'm so sorry, what will we do?” Sally was in full-fledged wail now and the men were all backing away looking embarrassed.

I handed her a bunch of tissues to mop her face with, feeling calmer than I had since this whole thing started.
“Doesn’t someone have Mrs Roberts-Pierce's phone number and we'll give her a call?” I suggested. Middle-aged matrons who wore pink suits and peacock feather hats did not, at least in my experience, generally commit quarter of a million pound robberies.

James was pulling out his mobile phone, but I waved him away.
I had mine out already. “Let me call her. If she gets a call from CAB she'll likely have a heart attack. What's the number?”

Another officer handed me a slip of paper with the number he'd looked up in the phone book. And just like that, we found my precious Ashburnham Emeralds.

A very embarrassed Mrs Roberts-Pierce explained that she'd intended to give the necklace to Mairead's chauffeur, only he had gone. “I was going to find Mairead, but my daughter phoned to say she was having labour pains and asked me to come immediately. It's my first grandchild, a beautiful baby boy, and everything else went out of my head until this morning, when I was clearing out my handbag and found the necklace. I was going to wait until a more decent time than 7:00
a.m.
to call and apologize,” she said breathlessly.

I
congratulated her on the new grandchild and told her someone would come by to pick up the necklace.

“Now
that that's been cleared up, we're off,” I said, “I have a luncheon date with Lord Overwater.”

“Oh
, I'm afraid you're not going anywhere. You’re still helping the police with their inquiries.” James' voice was so quiet and firm, I momentarily wondered if he had handcuffs.
And if he had any creative uses for them...

I saw his odd look and hoped he didn’t guess
what I was thinking. “You’ve got five minutes, ask your questions. I have a lunch date at noon, and I need a full manicure, pedicure, a full body job, really.”

“A
full body job?”
Was that a blush on his manly cheeks?

“Yeah
, well, I think I'll skip the bikini area wax.” It was worth it to see the guys wince.

“What
do you need a full makeover for?” Sally asked. “You’re having lunch in a public place; it's not likely he'll know whether you've waxed or not…” Sally's voice trailed off and her lower lip wobbled. A fat tear followed its fellows down her cheek and she wiped her face on the cuff of her sweater.

“Well
, maybe not on this date,” I replied blithely, hating myself for cruelly hurting my friend's feelings. She'd just better get used to the idea; this is
my
husband hunt and Joshua is
my
class of guy.

So why did it feel so bad?

But I would feel a whole lot worse when James was done with us.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“So
, are you going to tell Mairead?”

Sally
wanted to know if I was going to warn my cousin she was possibly married to a crook.  We didn’t know for certain, the jury hadn't convened yet.

“I
honestly don't know.”

“
Well, I think that policeman – the one with the eyes like a toad -would be very upset with you if you warned Mairead about what's happening and ruined their investigation.”

“I
thought you believed all the police are pigs and we should do whatever we can to undermine them?” I said, reminding Sally of rant she’d had when her then boyfriend, Billy Carter, had been arrested for breaking and entering. Billy’d been guilty as sin, too., even though he'd been guilty.

“That
was different, poor Billy didn’t have two pennies to rub together and he was only looking for a decent meal. Mairead's husband is filthy rich and still prepared to rip people off!”

I didn't bother mentioning that Billy had pinched a set of gold cufflinks and a brand new DVD/TV combo along with his ham sandwich. Some things aren't worth arguing over with your best friend. And I knew what she meant – one law for the rich and one for the poor.

“Mairead shouldn’t be punished for what her husband does; I think I should warn her.”

“That’s
fine as long as she leaves with what rightfully belongs to her and nothing illegally received. But if she passes the warning on and he gets rid of the evidence, or leaves with her, well, it's just not right.”

“
But we keep our mouth shut and wait until the trial, if Richard is convicted, then the Criminal Assets Bureau can probably help themselves to most of the stuff and Mairead will be left with nothing – and six kids……”
              “ She might even want to come to live with you, her close cousin.”

Sally can be downright evil, although the awful thought
had briefly
crossed my mind.

There didn’t seem to be any
correct answer, and we were a glum looking pair strolling into our hotel lobby, where I found out my troubles were going to get much worse.

The desk clerk was furiously waving in my direction, distracting me from a commotion over in the corner
; where three hefty security guards seemed to be struggling to prevent a riot.

“I
am so glad to see you, Lady Diana!” The woman said, sounding like she meant it. She pointed loftily towards the scuffle. “Will you please deal with
that
!”

She pushed an envelope at me just as the hefty security bodies parted to
reveal an angelic looking little boy clinging by his teeth to someone's jacketed arm. I only hoped the victim had his shots, because I didn't think Dave and Greg's little son had been to the vet's recently. “What is Adam doing here? And where are his Dads?”

The receptionist gave me a cold look.
“I have no idea, my lady. A harassed looking man left the child here, handed me this envelope and said you'd know what to do.”

Know what to do? Oh, yes, I knew what to do, but the gun laws are rather strict here.

“Now, would you please do something?” shrieked the clerk as a valuable looking vase swayed on its pedestal when kicked by a small leather clad foot.

“Adam
, stop this minute!” I screeched across the room. Living with Auntie Kay's obsession for climbing to high points had given me great voice projection training. All heads swivelled towards me.

“Mummee
! That's my Mummeeee!” shouted little Lord Brookmere, heir to the Hazelmere Estate.

All eyes swivelled back to the child, who now stood looking like one of those big-eyed kids on greetings cards, a tear trickling down one chubby cheek.

“How many times must I tell you not to call me that?” I hissed at him. The heads swivelled back to me, along with a rising murmur of disgust. Sally kicked my shin.

“Everyone’s
looking. Can’t we please get the brat and get out of here?”

“Okay
, okay,” I said, breathing deeply. I can cope with this.
Yes, I can.

“Come
on, then, let's go up to our suite, and we'll get this sorted out,” I said as sweetly as could be.

“You
have only a double room. Additional guests are not allowed without the payment of a surcharge,” the clerk said loudly. I could feel myself blushing.

I handed over the
MasterCard again, issuing a silent prayer to St. Jude that it hadn't been cancelled yet.

The room seemed even smaller than a broom closet when the three of us, plus Adam's luggage, were crammed in there. The first thing the kid did was check the room service menu, then flop on his belly in front of the TV.

“Turn
that sound down, would you?” I asked, as sweetly as my diminishing sanity would allow.

“Why
should I?” came the stock response.

“Because
Sally and I need to talk, and we can’t over that racket,” I replied, trying not to give way to the impulse to batter the child.

“Tough
shit, Mummy.”

I was about to tear my hair out. Beating a child went against all my bleeding heart liberal principles, and yet this child wasn't open to sweet reason.
  Nor was Sally.

She swooped across the small space, grabbed the kid by the sweater and pulled him upright, while at the same time muting the
TV and holding the remote high over her head out of his reach.

I half expected him to kick her, but instead he just stood there looking at her with shocked eyes.

“Don’t you know it's rude to talk to people like that and turn on the television so loudly no one can hear themselves think? What do we do when we've been rude?”

It took a couple of seconds, but eventually he st
omped his foot against the carpet and muttered, “I’m sorry.”

“That’s
better. Now, you can watch television, but with the earphones, while we talk.”

“That’s
why I put the TV on loud, I knew you'd be talking about me, and why I was here, and that you don’t want me. And I don’t want to be here. I want my Daddies.”

Pre-empting a full blown wail, I said quickly
: “Why are you here?”

“My
Daddies had a big fight and so they got rid of me.”

“What
?”

“It
must have been my fault. I don’t know what I did, but they said they couldn't deal with this with me there, so they dumped me here.” He sniffed.

“Never
mind, kid, at least you got to ride on a plane and see your Auntie Diana,” Sally reassured.

He looked at Sally with th
e peculiar aristocratic down the nose look. You wouldn’t believe a kid so small could have the look perfected like that; especially one who didn't come from the right back ground. I wondered how Greg and Dave had come by their little munchkin. Was one of them the real father?

“I
have flown many times with my daddies,” he said snottily, “And she's my Mummy, not my Auntie.”

I rolled my eyes. When would th
is kid understand there is no way I am his Mum? Sally gave me a questioning look.

“Oh
, no. It's not true at all. I am not his Mummy. I don’t know why he is saying it. I just think it's because I'm his Godmother, I stood for him at his christening, and so—”

“All
the kids at school have a Mummy. No-one has two Daddies. So I tell everyone that Lady Diana is my Mummy but she didn't want me and gave me away to my Daddies. So I’m just like everyone else.”

The kid will be the death of me.
              Sally rolled her eyes. “My, what tangled webs you weave. Okay, Adam, let's turn off the TV and you can come and be part of our discussion about what to do with you. Although my vote goes to putting you in a wicker basket on the River Liffey and letting you float downstream. Are you ever going to open that letter so we can find out what's really going on?” This last comment to me.

That's when I reali
zed I had a death grip on the letter the receptionist handed me. It was from Greg, apparent by the flamboyant way my name was scrawled across the envelope.

I ripped open the envelope, and read aloud:

“Dear
Diana, You're my best friend, and I need your help. Don't know who else to turn to, really
—

“Aww, isn't that so nice?”

“Yeah
,” Sally muttered. “It’s great to be so needed. Get on with it.”

“Okay
:

“Dave
and I are going through a rough patch and we need some time alone to sort things out. The atmosphere was getting pretty rank and neither of us thinks that's good situation for little Adam to be in—

“Oh
, my God, the idiots! They don't want to argue in front of the poor kid, so they dump him off without telling him what's going on!” I shot a sympathetic glance at my godson, who was still staring at the floor and scuffing the carpet.

“
Anyway, it was too late to set anything up, and besides, we didn't want to leave him with strangers, so I thought you wouldn't mind for a day or so – I know he'll be in good hands, and we'll be back as soon as we get sorted. Love, Greg. PS, tell the kid we love him to bits and we'll be back for him.
”

“So
, does that make you feel any better?”

“Yes
!”   Adam said.

“No
!” Sally said.

I looked from one to the other.
“Little Adam, it seems that your dads are trying to do the best they can. They love you, and when they get whatever's bothering them sorted, they'll be back within a day or two.”

“Please
God,” breathed Sally.

“It’s
because Greg says Dave wants to get it on with Akim.”

We both gaped at th
e very knowledgeable five year old. I could see that Sally was dying to ask him if he knew what get it on with meant. I wanted to know  myself. But we were scared of the answer so we both decided we'd rather believe in the mythical innocence of childhood.

“Who’s
Akim?” I asked.

“He’s
the new gardener. Dave is really interested in gardening, now. He's been going around buying all these plants and things. Sometimes he makes me go with him.” Obviously, Little Adam didn't share his dad's interest in horticulture.

“So
when did Akim arrive?”

“A
week ago. Greg got tired of Dave always buzzing around garden stores. He said if we had a gardener, Dave could take more of a gentleman's interest in the garden, rather than being all grubby and sweaty all the time.”

Sally and I looked at each other.
“Guess he never thought the gardener would be interesting, eh?” Sally muttered under her breath.

I started to fold the letter up
and noticed another PS from Dave.

“PS
, whatever Little Adam tells you about the gardener, it's not true. I'm interested in the plants, not the planter.
- Dave.
”

So now I had a possibly crooked cousin-in-law, a very irritated best friend, two friends in dire jeopardy, a
newly returned missing quarter of a million pounds' family heirloom, and a Bolshie kid I had no idea what to do with. Oh, and a luncheon date with a luscious lord I didn’t fancy, in about five minutes.

Fine husband hunting trip this was turning out to be!

Five minutes - eek!

A glance in the mirror showed I looked like something that had fallen out of the ragbag. It would take an hour to fix the damage
and at least a day to be glamorous enough for this date. I told Sally of my dilemma thinking she would be nice enough to help. But she shook her head, no, and gave me a look that said,
sorry, kiddo, no can do.
Not even for my best friend. The best friend who's going out with the fella I want.