The Daughter-in-Law (34 page)

Alexandra would be apoplectic when she learned that her daughter-in-law had made off with a fortune. Not that she couldn’t spare the money but rather because the girl that she wanted to crush had slipped out from under her shoe. And there was no deniability in fifteen million dollars. That was more than her daughter-in-law would have cost her in a lifetime. Nicole was afraid to ever see her again. Alexandra, she knew, was perfectly capable of killing her.

She knew that Alexandra hated her and thought that she had killed her son with all the cold detachment of a psychopath. Jonathan’s mother wasn’t sure exactly how she had done it, but she knew that Nicole had caused her son’s death just to lock in her claim to the Donner fortune. Jonathan’s life traded for Nicole’s financial security? Alexandra could easily have pulled the trigger.

Nicole walked two blocks from her hotel before using her cell phone to call Ben, and even then she talked as if someone might be listening. “It’s me!” she announced. “Just calling to see how everything is going. Any hitches?”

He recognized her voice. “No, just the accountants setting up our fee and computing the set-asides. Looks like about nine going into your account now and maybe another three after the taxes clear.”

“When?” she asked.

“Maybe late tomorrow. Certainly by Friday. Where can I call you to tell you when the money is yours?”

“My cell phone. But I’m keeping it turned off, so I’ll be hard to reach,” Nicole said. “I’ll call you Friday. And Ben, do what you can to make it happen. I don’t want to wait around over the weekend.”

“Nicole, what’s the matter? Is something wrong? Are you in some sort of danger?”

“People are looking for me,” she answered. “It’s best if they don’t find me.”

He searched his memory. “You mean Alexandra? Are you still worried about Alexandra? Because she’s not your problem anymore. If she doesn’t like the arrangement she can take it up with Jack.”

“Alexandra will always be my problem,” she answered.

Ben thought she sounded confused. “Nicole, you have nothing to worry about. If you want, you can come to my place. You can stay there until everything clears. ...”

“Thanks, Ben,” she answered. “I’ll call you on Friday.”

SIXTY

“T
HE NEGOTIATIONS
are over,” Jack reported to his wife when he returned home that night. “You won’t have to worry about her anymore.”

“She agreed? With no future claims?”

“She agreed to everything.”

Alexandra squinted suspiciously. “How much did she get?”

Jack rolled his eyes. “Nothing we can’t afford. It was a good deal all around.”

“Two million?” Alexandra speculated.

“Oh for God’s sake,” Jack snapped. “Isn’t this what you wanted, Jonathan’s wife out of your sight forever? Well now you have it. She’s gone! Banished!”

“Jack, we have all the evidence we need to get rid of her. We don’t have to pay her.”

“Well, we paid her, and she’s gone. So now we don’t need to keep digging up evidence. We can stop all this and get on with our lives.”

“It was more than two million, wasn’t it?” She recognized his habit of trying to disguise a bad deal.

“Yes, it was more.”

“A lot more,” she prompted.

“I gave her fifteen million, which was less than half of what Jonathan’s estate might have come to . . . ”

Alexandra stared blankly and then began to chuckle. “Fifteen million? Exactly what did she have on you?”

His fists clenched as he struggled for control of himself. He turned away abruptly and stormed into his office, slamming the door behind him. In his humiliating retreat she knew she had guessed correctly. The bitch had seduced him, making it impossible for him to stand up against her.

SIXTY-ONE

J
IMMY
F
ARR
was beginning to understand that a fortune was slipping through his fingers. He had been puzzled by Nicole’s absence but not alarmed. Her recorded message, saying that she would be away a few days, made perfect sense. Probably playing house with Jack Donner, he figured. That was her surest way into his boardroom. Or maybe out at the North Shore mansion, trying to make peace with Alexandra.

But she wasn’t anywhere. She hadn’t come home, and there was nobody at the town house. Jack Donner was showing up at his office and taking his limo home at night, so they couldn’t be off someplace together. And his watchmen hadn’t seen any sign of her around the family mansion.

Nicole’s absence could mean only one thing: she had been paid off! All her claims had been settled and she was footloose with a few million of the Donners’ money. She had double-crossed him, even outsmarted him, and that was something that he couldn’t allow. Whatever she had gotten, he was entitled to his share. And if she tried to hold out on him, he would take it all.

He started with the airlines. He had one of his exotic dancers call them, one at a time, claiming to be Nicole Pierce, and then Nicole Donner. She had lost her ticket and reservation. Could they help her? They couldn’t, the girl was told over and over again. Not without a reservation number, or the date and destination of the flight.

He called the airports. He had requested a seat with Nicole Pierce or Donner. He wasn’t sure which name she might have used. No, he didn’t know the flight. Could they please help him out? They couldn’t.

Then he tried the hotels. There were a thousand of them in New York, not counting all the Holiday Inns and Best Westerns in the suburbs. And who could be sure what name she might have used to check in? New York hotels didn’t ask for a passport, and chances
were that she paid cash. He struck out enough times to know that it was hopeless.

There was no way that he could find her. He simply didn’t have the manpower to stake out all the places where she might be. All he knew was that she had walked out of her apartment and disappeared. Probably after she had received a couple of million dollars from the Donners to do just that. “Here’s your money. Now get lost!” Easy for them to say, but it had cost him the best opportunity of his lifetime. He had almost been inside one of the circles that fixed the ups and downs of the market. He was guaranteed great quantities of easy money as long as Nicole kept acting like a daughter-in-law, or kept Jack Donner smiling in his town house bedroom. But it was all gone. She had disappeared without a word.

There had to be some way he could get at her. There had to be some inducement he could use to get her back. Maybe threaten to expose her affair with Jack Donner? But what would she care? She had her money, and if Donner’s wife kicked him out, that wasn’t her problem. Or perhaps leak that she had murdered her husband in cold blood. That would get her picture circulated and send a lot of people out to look for her. But, if she were caught, Jack’s money would simply go back to the Donners. None of it would find its way into his pocket.

What he needed was a way to get her attention. Something very public that would follow her no matter where she went, so that even in Europe or South America she would realize that her game was up and that she had to come home and pay off her friends. But what? How? If she were already gone with a few million dollars, what could possibly bring her back?

He found the answer on the arts page, a page that he almost never read. It was a photo of Pam Donner with a soft news story on her new gallery, her partners, and the artists they were trying to attract. Nicole was mentioned as one of the partners. The opening was still weeks away but the article gave the Madison Avenue address.

Stake out the gallery, Jimmy thought. If Nicole is a partner, sooner or later she’ll show up. He concentrated his attention on two places—the gallery and Jack Donner’s town house.

SIXTY-TWO

G
REG
L
AMBERT
was taking a different tack. When Alexandra had ordered him to “find that girl before she gets away,” he had started with the money. How was it being paid? When and where were the transactions taking place? At some point, Nicole would have to make a personal appearance and that was where he would lock on to her. He expected it to be very simple.

His first disappointment was that Victor Crane was already out of the loop. “We got the papers, and she got the check,” he said with a shrug. “We won’t know where she cashes it until the funds clear. Hell, it’s her money now! It’s none of our business what she does with it.” Crane suggested that he talk with Ben Tobin. “He’s the one who’s getting paid by her. I don’t think he’ll let the money out of his sight until he collects his fee.”

Tobin, as Greg Lambert had guessed, had no reason to be helpful. “I can’t tell you anything about her plans, and I certainly won’t discuss any financial arrangements she’s made.” He had hardly sat down when he was back on his feet to end the meeting.

“It would be a favor to the Donners,” Lambert said. “I think you know just how grateful they can be.”

It was terribly tempting. If he brought a piece of Donner business into the firm he’d be able to shake his reputation as a gofer, and maybe get back on track for a partnership. He sat back down again.

“The Donners could have talked to her any time. Jack could have walked into the signing and sat down next to her. So, what’s changed?”

“It’s not Mr. Donner. It’s Mrs. Donner who wants to see her.”

Ben remembered Nicole’s fright the first time she had come to him for help. She was certain that Alexandra had tried to have her killed in Belize, and she had no doubt that Alexandra had tried again at the cottage. He hadn’t taken her fears seriously. He had been Jonathan’s guest at the house on many occasions and more recently
Pam’s. Even though he was hardly an intimate, he thought he knew Alexandra and Jack well enough to be sure that they would never kill anyone. But Nicole was calling him from her cell phone and talking in abbreviated sentences. There was no doubt that she was still afraid.

“Nicole calls me from time to time,” Ben admitted. “I can get a message to her. I can tell her Alexandra wants to see her and even pass on a time and place.”

“You can ask her where you can reach her,” Lambert pressed. “Give her some reason why you have to get together, and then set up a meeting.”

“I’m not sure she’d go along with that. Besides, I’d be setting her up for a confrontation she probably would want to avoid. Ethically—”

“Alexandra Donner really wants to see her,” Lambert said, overriding Ben’s ethical concerns. “It can be right here in your office. You can stay through the meeting. Mrs. Donner just wants to ask a few questions about her son’s last moments. And, she has information that she needs Nicole to confirm.”

Ben thought for a few seconds, his fingertips touched to his lips as if he were in prayer. “I’ll put it to her in exactly those words,” he offered. “But the decision has to be hers.”

“Whatever you think best,” the security officer said, rising from his chair. “But Mrs. Donner really wants this meeting. I know she’ll be most appreciative if you can make it happen.”

In the elevator, he weighed his chances. There was no doubt that Ben had understood the connection. Set up the meeting and Donner business will follow. The question was whether he was truly committed to a client that he might never see again, or to profitable opportunities that could last a lifetime. Generally, it was best to bet on the money.

But, just in case, he put one of his best men on Ben Tobin. “Follow him into his building and then watch the lobby. When he leaves, follow him wherever he goes.” He handed over a photo of Nicole. “If he meets with this woman, then follow her. She’s the one we’re looking for.”

SIXTY-THREE

I
N THE
morning, Nicole took her shower and then left a towel over her shoulders when she went to the sink. She opened a package of dark brunette hair coloring and read the directions as she mixed the ingredients. Carefully, she applied the color to her scalp and began combing it out through her hair. She could watch the transformation in her mirror. As her hair darkened, her complexion seemed to color with it. Even the blue of her eyes looked deeper.

When she had dried her new color, she brought her Irish passport into the bathroom so she could compare the photo with the image in the mirror. Close enough, she decided. She had used the same hair rinse when she had gone for the passport photo. The new version was a bit darker, but not enough to raise the tired eyelids of an immigration officer. And with her new look she could walk right past Jimmy as she boarded her plane without even turning his head.

She had bought new clothes to go along with her new person. A pair of pedal pushers cut for a tourist. A blouse with more color than she generally wore. A straw hat with a brim that turned up in the front. Tennis shoes. And finally, mirrored sunglasses. The ensemble would suggest “tourist” when she walked through the airport, but it would speak in a soft voice. Not so loud that she would stand out and attract attention, but loud enough so that anyone looking for Nicole wouldn’t even spare her a glance. She posed in her complete disguise and turned around and around in front of a full-length mirror. She was ready.

In the street, she blended in easily with the Manhattan crush, this time walking uptown before calling. Ben came on the line almost immediately.

“Nicole, where are you?”

She ignored the question. “Has the deposit been made?”

“Yes, it has.”

“And the transfer?”

“Nicole, I have to see you. I have to know that it’s really you.”

She laughed. “Even I don’t know that it’s really me.”

“Where are you? Where can I meet you?”

“You can’t. Just authorize the transfer. The bank has the account number.”

Ben paused. Then he answered, “I’m not doing anything with the money until I’m sure it’s you. For God’s sake, I can’t send ten million dollars into oblivion on the basis of a phone call.”

“Okay,” she agreed. “Where do you want to meet?”

“My office?”

“No,” she snapped immediately. “How about the fountain in front of the Plaza. One o’clock?”

She hung up as soon as Ben agreed, even though she felt uneasy about the meeting. What had changed? In their earlier meetings he had never been concerned about forwarding the money. It was her U.S. bank account. Ben had set it up for her so that wasn’t the problem. The money now belonged to her. And he had arranged the numbered account. So, he knew perfectly well that he wasn’t sending “ten million dollars into oblivion.” Then why did he need a face-to-face meeting? It didn’t make sense and more important it was dangerous. A meeting with anyone she knew would compromise the new persona she had carefully engineered. Why was Ben changing signals? Could Alexandra have bought him over to her side? Or maybe Jimmy had threatened him?