The Daughter-in-Law (20 page)

It was two days later when she called Rockbottom to announce that she was coming and then drove out to the North Shore in Jonathan’s convertible. Her attire was intentionally toned down to her basic black without jewelry. The exceptions were her wedding and engagement rings, symbols of Jonathan’s commitment to her. Her cosmetics were applied sparingly—a bit of lipstick and a hint of eyeliner. She didn’t bring an overnight bag so she couldn’t be coerced into staying.

She had a pleasant smile for Raymond, who offered his sympathies, and then she walked nearly the length of the house to Jack’s study where she was told the family would be waiting.

Pam’s greeting was emotional. She threw herself at Nicole, clutched her in an embrace, and burst into tears. They rocked in each other’s arms for nearly a minute. Jack stood, crossed to her, and took her hand. They exchanged words of condolence. Alexandra remained seated in a leather chair that had been designed for a men’s club. She had a cup of coffee balanced in her lap. Nicole went to her and bent to kiss her cheek. There was no response from Jonathan’s mother. It was as if she had kissed a statue.

Jack began the conversation with random remarks about the tragedy and the great loss that they all shared. He had been demanding of his son, he admitted, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t loved him. “I was excited about his plans in Belize. He promised to share the details with me and I was looking forward to partnering with him.” Then he mumbled assurances that Nicole was part of the family, and asked her if there was anything she needed. “You’re welcome here, of course. But if you prefer the city . . . or Newport. . . just let us know.”

Pam begged her to move into the caretaker’s cottage. They had so much to talk about. She had lost her brother and wanted to be sure that her new sister didn’t just drift away.

Alexandra got right to the point: there were legal matters and property questions that had to be settled. It might be easier for
everyone if Nicole spent a few days at the house so that all the issues could be discussed. Nicole was noncommittal. She would give it some thought, but for the present, she wanted to be in Manhattan. She was “between lives,” and needed time to sort things out. Perhaps she would settle back into her old job and reclaim the career that she had just put aside.

She walked with Pam down to the cabana, borrowed a bathing suit, and went for a swim. They sat on the edge with their feet dangling into the water while they reminisced over the plans that Jonathan had made for a diving service and a first-class resort hotel.

“Are you going ahead with it?” Pam asked.

Nicole shook her head. She didn’t think so. “That was Jonathan’s dream, not mine. I would have done it for him. But that’s not the kind of place where I want to spend the rest of my life.” Pam was buoyed when Nicole assured her that there were many things they could do together. “Maybe that gallery you were thinking about,” Nicole said. “That would be more to my liking.”

They toweled, dressed, and walked back up to the house. Alexandra was waiting on the patio. “Nicole and I have to talk,” she said, dismissing her daughter and gesturing Nicole into a chair. She had a pitcher of lemonade brought out from the kitchen.

“You said you were between lives,” she began after the servant had left them alone. “I can understand that. Everything happened so quickly. It must be difficult for you to imagine what role you could possibly play in our family.”

Nicole nodded. “It is difficult. Particularly when you’ve already told me that I’m a danger to the Donners and Sound Holdings.”

Alexandra was pleased at Nicole’s frankness. It would save a great deal of polite evasions. “I still feel that way, and I think with a little effort that you will appreciate my viewpoint. Jonathan’s presence might have spared you open criticism and derision. But with him dead, and given the suspicious nature of his death, I’m afraid all gloves are off.”

“Suspicious?” Nicole’s antenna was up.

“Well, unresolved,” Alexandra conceded. “Circumstances that make it difficult to tell exactly how he died.”

Nicole set down her lemonade. “I’ve told the police and your investigators exactly how he died.”

“Yes, of course you did. But there were only two witnesses, and
Pam brings up different details every time she talks about it. Add that to the fact that you are the major beneficiary of his death and I think you can appreciate the probability of rumor and insinuation.”

Nicole stood and broke through her cover of respect for the older woman. “You’re the only one who has insinuated anything. So, if there are any rumors, I’ll certainly know who started them.”

“Sit down!” Alexandra ordered.

“No thank you. I’m about to leave.”

Suddenly Alexandra was on her feet. “Jonathan wouldn’t have died in some godforsaken jungle if you hadn’t taken him there.”

Nicole went toe-to-toe. “I wouldn’t have taken him there if you hadn’t set out to destroy his marriage. And it wasn’t my idea to get away from you. It was his—”

Alexandra’s simmering rage exploded. Her hand slapped viciously across Nicole’s cheek. Nicole’s eyes widened in shock. But in an instant her own hand was flying, returning the slap with even more energy. The force of the blow knocked Alexandra back a step until she reached the edge of her chair. Then she fell back into the seat.

Nicole gathered her purse and stormed off, her heels sounding like hammer blows against the polished wood floors of the house. Alexandra sat perfectly still, her hand to her burning cheek, her expression bewildered. In all her adult life, no one had dared to defy her, much less slap her across the face.

THIRTY-THREE

N
ICOLE WORE
dark sunglasses to her luncheon meeting with Ben Tobin. It would be easy to say that her eyes were red from crying. There was no point in getting into the slight bruise on her cheek and her altercation with Jonathan’s mother.

They had played phone tag for a few days and finally connected the previous evening. Ben was sympathetic and solicitous, suggesting a meeting in a small downtown restaurant where they were unlikely to be interrupted by friends of the family. He had taken her arm at the doorway, escorted her to the table as if she might not be able to walk on her own, and seated her with the care and concern usually afforded to arthritic dowagers. She laughed when he suggested a glass of sherry. “Ben, I’m not frail and damaged. I’m going to be just fine.” She ordered a Bloody Mary, and then got right to the point.

She needed him to recommend a lawyer. Alexandra didn’t want her to have any association with the Donner family, would probably try to have her marriage to Jonathan annulled, and would certainly contest her inheritance. It promised to be a long and painful battle. He offered his own services and those of his firm. He knew Alexandra fairly well and thought he might serve as a bridge between the two women.

“Can you live without the Donners’ friendship?” she asked. “Because they’ll turn on you the second you take my side. If you have any financial stake with Jack, or obligations to Alexandra, you won’t be able to help me.”

He assured her he was an outsider. Jonathan had been his significant link to the family. He had escorted Pam to a couple of parties and one or two of Alexandra’s charity affairs. And he was providing Pam legal advice on the terms of her trust fund and her hopes of launching a business of her own. His answers to her detailed grilling seemed to satisfy her. By the time luncheon was served, Ben knew
that Nicole was a formidable women in her own right, and wouldn’t need any help cutting her filet.

“There are two dangers,” Nicole said to her new attorney. “One is the legal matter of Jonathan’s estate. I need advice on my chances in court as opposed to my settlement value.” He nodded without looking up from his lunch. “The other is more immediate. I’ll need protection in case they decide to avoid any financial entanglements and simply have me killed.”

He dropped his fork. “You can’t be serious ...”

“Very serious,” she said. “Someone has already tried.”

She told him about the intruder who had invaded their island villa during the honeymoon, and showed him a copy of the police report. “It wasn’t a typical burglary,” she pointed out referencing the report. “It seems that the man came to get me. He knocked me down and tried to drag me out of the house. If I hadn’t managed to make enough noise to wake Jonathan, I’m certain I would have been found floating near the dock.” She explained how they took nighttime swims off their private beach. “It would have been easy to guess that I had gone out on my own, dived off the dock, and hit something in the water.”

“But why Jack and Alexandra?” he asked, still flabbergasted by the suggestion.

“Because they had used detectives to find out where we were. Nobody else knew.”

Then she got into her suspicions about Jonathan’s death. “We were wearing identical wet suits. Pam thought that it was Jonathan who had gone back to the surface. Suppose someone else made the same mistake. Someone who was out there stalking us.”

“You think Jonathan was killed by someone sent to kill you?” He was openmouthed in amazement.

“He was a good diver, Ben. You know that. He wouldn’t have made the kind of mistake that would get him killed. And no one down there wanted him dead. He was about to become a big investor. But underwater, in an identical jacket, he could easily have been mistaken for me. It’s the one explanation that answers all the questions.”

“Nicole, I just can’t believe—”

“The next morning,” she went on, “before anyone in Belize knew he was dead, Jack’s detectives and lawyers were on the scene. How
did they know there was a problem? They were down there with papers to cut me off from Jonathan’s money. Neither of us was anxious to sign.”

“Still. . . it seems so far-fetched...” Ben was mumbling into space.

“It wouldn’t, if you had been the one being dragged out of the house. The Donners want me out of the way as quickly as possible. They’ll try to buy me out, but if that doesn’t work ...”

“Nicole, why would you be such a problem for them?”

“Order us a glass of wine,” she told Ben. “There are a few other things that you’re going to have to know.”

They sat for another hour while she laid out all the gritty details of her past. Her modeling, her work for an escort service, her involvement with drug smuggling, her affair with a director who might promote her career. She held nothing back, giving Ben a vivid description of the photographs that would probably turn up as evidence, and a rap sheet that might be uncovered by someone who dug far enough. It was a litany that Alexandra wouldn’t want recited in front of her family and friends. But kill to keep it quiet? Could she possibly do that?

Could Jack do it? He was known to be ruthless in his business dealings. And if he felt that his wife was in danger of being embarrassed, or that his company’s reputation might possibly be tarnished, he would undoubtedly do whatever was necessary to solve the problem. He had threatened several men who crossed him with financial and social ruin and he had always delivered on the threat. But have his daughter-in-law killed? That was outside of Jack’s definition of reasonable. He wouldn’t know the first thing about hiring a killer in New York, much less than in the Caribbean.

Of course, there were the security people. Ben had met some of them at the gate to the Donner home, and aboard the huge yacht that they sailed out of Newport. Well groomed, impeccably if unimaginatively dressed, invariably polite. But in their eyes they were all business, devoted to doing whatever it took to protect Jack and Alexandra from harm. If Jack explained a problem and told them to take care of it, they would. They wouldn’t talk about the details and Jack would never ask.

He suggested that he make the first contacts with the Donners. “I can make it less legal, less confrontational. They’ll know that I’m
serving Jonathan’s interests. And Pam will certainly polish up my credentials.” Then he put her in a taxi and caught his own cab back uptown to his office where he briefed the partners on the firm’s new client.

THIRTY-FOUR

A
LEXANDRA WASN’T
waiting for the legal dialogue to begin. She had talked several times with Greg Lambert who was still investigating the details of Jonathan’s death, and backtracking over all of Nicole’s activities since she and Jonathan had returned to Belize. She didn’t like what she was hearing.

First was the report that Nicole was a very accomplished diver. The dive boat operators didn’t believe that she was the novice she claimed to be. “She has good technique,” one of the captains reported, “and confidence. New divers don’t have confidence.” She had pretended to be a novice at her husband’s other venturous hobby. Apparently it wasn’t true this time, either.

Nor was it true that she had been sunning by the pool when Jonathan was off meeting with bankers and real-estate speculators. Housemaids remembered her dressing immediately after Jonathan left in the mornings and leaving through the lobby. The concierge said she had requested the timetable for the ferry to Belize City, and he recalled that a local dive operator of questionable reputation had asked for her. “Doesn’t amount to much,” Greg Lambert had admitted. “She certainly could have gone shopping and made inquiries about boats. But I asked at the better stores. They have no sales receipts with her name.”

To Alexandra, it
did
amount to much. Nicole had complained about wasting entire days by the pool, one of the reasons that Jonathan had included her in his later business meetings. That was just one more lie in what she was beginning to suspect was a pattern of lies.

Then there was the police report that said Nicole had gone down with a full tank of air and come back up early. There was no explanation for the difficulties she claimed to have had with her equipment. So, why wasn’t she swimming beside her husband?

Finally, there was the woman at the guesthouse where the police
had put Nicole and Pam when they were brought to shore. She remembered Pam as being emotionally wrecked, but Nicole being very much in control of herself.

It was this last report that enticed Alexandra to make the trip down to Belize. “I just want to visit the site,” she explained to Jack. “Maybe put a flower on the water. And I need to know that the authorities are doing everything they can to recover the body.”