The Reckless Engineer (10 page)

CHAPTER 13

Monday, October 18 — Three Days Later

Marianne had always been in the background in Jack’s life. Jack had said it was because of the boys, but Jeremy had always thought there was something more than that in the relationship. Jack’s description had not done justice to the woman that greeted him at the door. Marianne had a beautiful face, a naturally slender and petite figure about 5’ 2” in height, and long, glossy, and straight honey-brown hair that flowed down all the way past her waist. She looked much younger than her 37 years, a year older than he was, as if time had stood still for her since the photograph from the time Jack and she were married that Jack had tucked away in a box in his workshop.

‘Mum, this is Jeremy Stone, Dad’s friend.’

‘I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Stone. Please come in. I have heard so much about you from Peter over the years.’

‘As have I of you, from both Jack and Peter, Marianne. Please call me Jeremy.’

‘How is Jack? Is he okay?’

‘He’s in good hands with my friend, Harry Stavers. Harry is one of the top criminal defence attorneys in London.’

‘Thank god you are there for him.’

Marianne led Jeremy through to a reasonable-sized living room while Peter took some supplies into the kitchen. It was the main reception of the Victorian house with high ceilings and original period features lovingly restored. If Caitlin’s reception could be described as opulent and a little impersonal with expensive antique pieces liberally placed in spaces proportioned more than twice or thrice in size, Marianne’s living room was decorated with a finely classical taste and an artistic, personal touch. A faint scent of roses teased his senses. A grand piano stood at the centre of the room space to the right of the entrance.

Jeremy ran his fingers over the keys and played a brief cord with one hand.

‘Marc plays.’ Marianne smiled engagingly. ‘My mother gave me that old piano handed down to her from grandma. I had it tuned and restored. I also give piano and violin lessons to Jack’s brother’s two little girls. They live round the corner just three blocks down.’

The proportions of the rooms were less than half the size of the McAllen mansion. Any antiques in here, like the piano, were family hand-downs, not expensive purchases from exclusive antique shops and auctions.

‘Are you off work today?’ he asked.

‘I have taken two weeks off. I need to shield Marc and Peter from all this and try to find some funding to send Peter off to his medical degree. The University’s been pretty good with giving me the time off right at the start of the new academic year. I have been working there as a researcher since completing my Doctorate in biochemistry.’

‘Ah, yes. I heard that Douglas McAllen had threatened to cut off his allowances to Peter, Marc and you, but I believe that’s all on hold now. He mentioned that he wants to look after Peter’s education in any event even if it is not through the present arrangements. Peter is like a grandson to him. I think it is his intention, since Michelle’s death, to keep the status quo going.’

Jeremy made a mental note to confirm with Douglas McAllen and Magnus Laird that the funds to Marianne’s family were not in danger now. Jack would have wanted him to.

He took a seat in an armchair. Marianne had made lemonade and crushed apple juice and had set two chilled jugs and glasses on a tray on a side table. A box of Cavalier chocolates lay next to them. Marianne offered him some, explaining that it was one of the luxuries Jack had got her addicted to since starting the McAllen job. Jeremy took a few truffles. They were indeed as good as he remembered. Jack had acquired his taste for the chocolates from Caitlin and had in turn spread it to everybody he knew. Jeremy remembered how Jack would put a box on a desk in their engineering lab at Marine every Friday with a note for everybody to help themselves.

‘If that is so, it would be a weight off my shoulders. I don’t want to add fuel to the fire bringing it up right now, for Jack’s sake. Still I don’t want Douglas McAllen twisting Peter’s arm to get him to read civil engineering when what he really wants to do is to read medicine. You might think Douglas McAllen is being generous to the boys and me, but he is just buying my husband and my sons to make electronics, civil, and petroleum engineers for his company, the shrewd investor that he is. No, I have to look into Peter’s funding options anyway.’

Marianne took the seat on the sofa to his left.

‘I have made an appointment to see a solicitor about the McAllen divorce agreements, especially for Peter’s sake. Marc and I are fine. I’ve got a decent income from my teaching and research and I have saved carefully over the years. McKinley & Laird solicitors have said that Jack would have to take over payment of any divorce agreements if he separated from Caitlin, but I don’t think he can afford that on his own. Jack has been very generous with the boys’ expenses until recently.’

‘Until his involvement with Michelle Williams you mean?’ Jeremy probed.

‘Until Michelle Williams announced that she was pregnant. That woman was a witch. She had Jack brainwashed and trapped exactly where she wanted by getting herself pregnant after a fleeting affair. When the affair was initially revealed by the anonymous letters Jack met and spoke to me; he didn’t want me to hear it by word of mouth. He promised he was finished with the woman and that it was a fleeting mistake.’

This was very enlightening. Had Jack also wanted Michelle out of the way after a brief fling?

‘But all that changed when Michelle announced she was pregnant. She even waited until it was too late for him to ask for a termination. Jack loves children and he has been considering separating from Caitlin and moving in with that gold digger for the past three weeks. I washed my hands of him. He was a lost cause. Jack always put the boys first before that, but three weeks ago he abandoned them, and the boys lost their father. He stopped coming here after that. Michelle had been pressuring Jack to cut off all contact with us, to break away from BlackGold and take it under his control, and to divorce Caitlin, claiming half of the McAllen mansion and estate.’

How did she know? This could only be guesswork. Or had Jack talked to Marianne about it?

‘I worked with Michelle briefly. She was a very selfish and greedy woman,’ Jeremy agreed.

‘Jack was getting the seven year itch with Caitlin some time ago. When McAllen got Jack divorced from me Jack did it more for his career than for Caitlin. But the money and the glamour was no longer new to him. He was getting tired of the way both Caitlin and Douglas McAllen controlled him and of Ronnie’s strife, the reasons that he never quit Marine to go back to BlackGold full time again. Working and living together with Caitlin 24 hours a day was too much to handle, he said. About two and a half years ago he came back to me and asked for us to get back together.’

‘Really?!’

Jeremy felt like he didn’t know his friend anymore. All this back-and-forth was giving him a headache. Now back-and-forths was something
he
should know about. He was caught in one: Maggie stringing him along, going back and forth between Gregory and him.

‘Yes, but I could not forgive him. It would have been a mess again with Jack going back and forth.’

You are taking the words right out of my head, Marianne.

‘Besides I wasn’t going to mess with the McAllens. Not good for one’s health, I tell you. Look at what happened to Michelle. I had just started dating Martin and I refused and sent Jack away. I sensed that he sort of started straying about that time. All the signs were there again. He wasn’t really serious about any of it until Michelle announced she was pregnant.’

‘McAllen got Jack divorced from you?’ Jack had not told much about that separation to him.

‘Douglas McAllen is a ruthless man, Jeremy. He buys people and he gets rid of them; he plays them like pawns with his money. He wanted Jack for his daughter from the very first interview. He knew Jack’s price straightaway and offered him everything he wanted in his career-an offer he could not refuse. Jack had that fight with me, the first argument we have ever had, and left for the hotel to get some space to think. But divorce papers landed through my letterbox the very next afternoon delivered by hand by McKinley & Laird. McAllen put a wall around Jack so that I could not contact him to sort things out between us. There was always Magnus Laird and his solicitors between us, separating us, cutting off contact. In the end, McAllen bought me off with something
I
could not refuse.’

Marianne combed back strands of straight hair off her face with delicate fingers. They kept falling back around her anyway, thick and heavy like a waterfall.

‘They told me to accept their financial offer, to agree to the divorce amicably, and to have no further contact with Jack asking for reconciliation. If I agreed they said my sons would have the best education, I would be looked after, and Jack would keep paying the mortgage and the household bills. If I did not agree, they would file for divorce on Jack’s behalf. They would make sure all payments to me would be stopped and that I would not get a penny. The solicitors said they would also apply for the full custody of my two boys on the grounds I could not support them. I had two weeks to accept the offer or decline.’

She paused for a long time, greatly distressed at the memory of the events. He poured her a glass of apple juice and offered her some tissues, which she gratefully accepted.

‘I would not have taken a penny for myself, but my boys . . . How could I look after the boys all alone? I had no job then. I could not even pay the mortgage. My children would have been homeless and I would have lost them in a custody battle to Caitlin and Jack. It was blackmail. McAllen ripped us apart, Jeremy. Everything they are going through now is poetic justice.’

She paused, unable to speak for the lump in her throat, her eyes full of tears.

‘There’s nothing in the world I would not do for my kids.’

And McAllen would ruthlessly do anything for his. Would either of them kill?

‘I am sorry you had to suffer through all that, Marianne.’

After a few minutes of silence, Marianne continued. ‘Still, none of us wanted Jack to be involved with Michelle, who was cutting him completely away from all of us. Caitlin never cut him off from the boys like Michelle did. Jack’s half of the vast McAllen-Connor estate was coming to Marc and Peter, but Michelle wanted it all to herself and her kid. We are all glad that the Michelle problem has ended.’

Marianne suddenly sounded jealous, possessive, and angry. Could she have had something to do with the death?

‘To be honest Marianne, for Jack’s sake, I’m also glad that he is out of that entanglement. But he has fallen from the frying pan into the fire if he has had anything to do with that murder, or if he is paying the price for whoever did it,’ Jeremy spoke sternly.

He didn’t really want to pretend to care that Michelle was dead. He only cared that Jack was now in deep shit for it. It was also sad that Jack’s unborn son had died.

‘I do think Douglas McAllen got rid of Michelle.’

Hmm, an attempt to quickly diffuse the tension and draw the attention away from herself,
Jeremy noted
.

‘That’s the other thing I was going to see my solicitors about. I’m planning to go into the police station and give a statement about McAllen, to help Jack.’

This was
not
a good idea. Michelle had taken steps to disinherit Marianne’s sons of Jack’s vast estate, and had caused the substantial funding for their education and her upkeep, from both Jack and McAllen, to be cut off. Michelle had been murdered by poisoning and Marianne was now a PhD qualified biochemist working at the University of Portsmouth, a specialist in the chemistry and the processes involved in the composition and refinement of such a poisonous compound. Both Peter and Marianne would already be in Edwards’ list of suspects, and with good reason. They had the motives, the means, and the opportunity to do it, either individually or together.

‘Phew, Marianne. This is a murder case and it is dead serious. You have to get advice from a good criminal solicitor before doing that. You could inadvertently do more damage than good for Jack. If you need to say anything on Jack’s behalf tell
me
, or I can get you to speak to Harry, and Harry will look after Jack’s best interests. I can also ask him to recommend a good family law firm if you want some advice on your divorce agreements, though I think it is premature to worry about that.’

‘Thanks, Jeremy, I shall accept the advice on both, please. With the McAllens one can never be too careful.’

She walked over to the corner table with the telephone on it, took a sheet of paper from the pad, and jotted down her numbers for him.

‘Jack has always considered you his best friend. I don’t know how to thank you for everything you are doing for him.’

‘I shall speak to Harry this afternoon. I have to advise you not to initiate or accept any contact with the police before you can get advice. We need to give Peter and Marc the same advice.’

‘I understand. I shall also tell Peter. He’s been quite distraught since Jack withdrew from us. Peter has been the person closest to Jack all his life. I sent Peter out to meet Jack alone and speak to him just last week.’

‘Ah, yes, Peter told me about that. Was he able to speak to Jack?’ Jeremy probed for more information about the night.

‘He came back about eleven that night, all wet, and very upset that Jack had been at Michelle’s place all evening. He slept in his room here and stayed the next night also, saying he could not bear to face Dad. And the next day he brought Gillian over saying the police were at Jack’s house. Gosh, I have to tell Peter not to speak to anybody else about any of this.’

The gravity of the information she had just spoken aloud seemed to have suddenly hit her.

‘Tell me what, Mum?’ Peter walked in.

‘To stay out of any involvement with the Michelle affair, Peter, and to speak nothing to anybody else about it.’

‘Okay, I shan’t, Mum. Er, the table is laid.’

‘You must be starving, Jeremy. Let’s have lunch.’

Marianne served homemade meatball carbonara with penne pasta, garlic bread, and a side salad. A long time ago Jack had described to him this, her signature dish, as “a little bit of heaven in your mouth”. The meal was followed by fine Italian coffee served with Cavalier chocolates on the side.