Mystery Heiress

It was clear from the detective’s tone that he was more than ready for their conversation to end. “Maybe you should turn on the morning news, if you want that kind of information, Mrs. Fortune,” he suggested.

Before saying goodbye, he made a point of giving her a number to call if Jake surfaced. “It would be better for him if he got in touch with us voluntarily,” he advised. The implied threat was hard to miss.

Erica was stunned as she put down the phone. Her first impulse was to call Natalie—at twenty-seven, the third-oldest of the five children she’d had with Jake. Natalie lived in an aging farmhouse that had been converted into a duplex, directly across Lake Travis from the mansion that had once belonged to Ben and Kate Fortune—which also happened to be Jake’s current residence. She and her father had always been close. Since he’d moved into his parents’ home, following his split with Erica, Natalie had crossed the lake on a regular basis to visit him. Maybe she knew something.

About to punch the speed-dial button she’d programmed with Natalie’s number, Erica ran one elegantly manicured hand through her silver-blond bob. It might be better to phone Sterling Foster, the family’s longtime attorney and respected legal advisor, first. If Jake was in a bind and the police had become involved, Sterling would know how to handle it.

It was Saturday. He wouldn’t be at his office so Erica rummaged in her desk drawer for her leather-bound address book. Finding it, she located Sterling’s home number.

The attorney was just getting out of the shower. He hadn’t read the morning paper yet. Or made contact with his first cup of coffee. He answered on the third ring, gruff because of the early call and the necessity of answering it wrapped in a bath towel.

“Hello?” he growled, adjusting the towel so that he wouldn’t drip all over on the carpet.

She tried not to sound too worried, knowing he wouldn’t like it. “Sterling?” she said. “Hi, it’s Erica. Sorry to disturb you at home, especially on the weekend. But I just got a call from Detective Rosczak of the Minneapolis police. Monica Malone has died, and the police want to question Jake about it. They can’t seem to find him. It’s possible he might be in some kind of trouble.”

Though he hadn’t heard of Monica’s death, Sterling didn’t evince surprise. “Sounds like it,” he answered dryly. “But then, when hasn’t he been in some mess or another, lately?”

Erica was irritated at what she considered to be his cavalier attitude, and still ready to spring to the defense of the man who was still her husband. She didn’t consider an inquiry from the police a laughing matter. “You have contacts in the department, don’t you?” she asked, her soft, cultivated voice taking on a more strident note. “I want you to call them…find out what’s going on. And find Jake! If he disappears when the police need to talk to him, he’s bound to look guilty of something!”

Dropping the towel, which he no longer needed, Sterling reached for his bathrobe. “All right,” he conceded. “I’ll do what I can. Go back to bed and stop worrying. If you plan to go husband-hunting after all these years, you’re going to need your beauty sleep.”

Touchy on the subject of her breakup with Jake, not to mention her age, which, despite her still-youthful classic good looks, she didn’t consider an asset, Erica considered the remark a put-down. It sent her through the roof. “Sorry to shatter one of your treasured clichés about me, but I’m getting ready for a Saturday-morning class!” she snapped, slamming down the receiver.

A tight sensation in her chest, she quickly called Natalie for emotional support. For his part, Sterling started to dial Kate, the spirited family matriarch whom he knew to be alive and well, though her family believed otherwise.

Seconds later, he changed his mind. Instead of phoning, he’d drive to her current hideaway, a penthouse apartment atop the renovated LaSalle building in downtown Minneapolis. She owed him breakfast, dammit. The last time she’d offered him brunch in conjunction with a business discussion, his ulcer had been kicking up. He hadn’t been able to partake. Devoid of sympathy, she’d devoured her blintzes and strawberries under his nose with her typical gusto.

He decided to have a look at the morning paper first. Wincing slightly, he saw that Monica’s death had made the front page, above the fold. Described as “still under investigation,” it had been given a banner headline. A photo of the aging star, taken in better days, accompanied the text.

Scanning the story, which had been written by a reporter he considered competent, Sterling learned that Monica had been stabbed several times in the chest. She had also suffered an injury to her left temple. Signs of a struggle had been evident. Several of Monica’s Summit Avenue neighbors had seen a man leaving her mansion shortly before her maid returned and found her body. No description of the caller seemed to be available, at least to journalists.

Damn, Sterling thought, tossing the paper aside. What was Jake doing there? The woman was poison. It’s bad enough that Ben was fool enough to mess around with her. Reluctantly he admitted that Erica had a valid point. Kate’s oldest son might turn out to be in some very hot water.

Though she’d probably heard the news of Monica’s death by now, he doubted Kate had any inkling of her son’s involvement. If she did, he reasoned, she’d have phoned him immediately. No, Jake’s name hadn’t appeared in the news. And Detective Rosczak, whoever he was, hadn’t gotten in touch with her, because he didn’t know of her existence.

She wouldn’t have a clue.

It would be Sterling’s job to break the news. Brushing his teeth, he shaved and put on a crisp white shirt, a maroon silk tie, gray sharkskin slacks and one of his expensive but conservative cardigan sweaters. A few minutes later, with his thick white hair impeccably combed and an unobtrusive Patek-Philippe watch adorning his left wrist, he was taking the elevator down to the basement garage of his condominium apartment building and striding purposefully toward his maroon Lincoln Town Car.

The LaSalle, a twelve-story brick-and-stone building dating from 1920, had been built in a style Sterling thought of as Mississippi River Valley Gothic. It had originally served as Minneapolis’s YMCA. In recent years, its sturdy shell and somewhat decrepit interior had been exquisitely restored to contain thirty or so smallish, extremely private luxury apartments. You needed a key to operate the elevator. There were no nameplates—just numbers—beside the theft-proof mailboxes.

A child of the Depression era who’d grown up at a time when twelve stories constituted a fairly tall building, Sterling liked its cozy size, black-and-white terrazzo lobby, clubby woodwork and art deco details. He suspected Kate was similarly minded. Having moved around a great deal to avoid detection since she’d faked her death, she’d rented the LaSalle’s top floor several months earlier. It was divided into two penthouse apartments. Hers, luxuriously carpeted and decorated, boasted several skylights, a small fireplace and a sweeping bird’s-eye view of western Minneapolis and its adjacent suburbs.

As he backed his Lincoln into an empty space at the curb and went inside, Sterling thought about the strange set of circumstances that had prompted him and Kate to agree on the extraordinary step of letting her family believe she had perished. Had they done the right thing? Or were they fools to think their scheme would help them flush out a would-be kidnapper or murderer?

As yet, it had been spectacularly unsuccessful. For perhaps the thousandth time, he puzzled over the identity of the hijacker who had stowed away in Kate’s plane on her solo trip to a remote Brazilian village in search of a key ingredient for the Secret Youth Formula she was trying to develop for Fortune Cosmetics, then appeared in midflight to hold a gun to her head. The plane had gone into a nosedive in the ensuing struggle. By some miracle, Kate had been thrown free, to fall through the dense undergrowth, moments before it crashed and burned.

In Sterling’s opinion, her attacker had been a killer-for-hire, in the pay of some unknown enemy. It was fair to say he’d probably never be identified. His badly charred remains had been taken for those of Kate by the Brazilian authorities. Meanwhile, having suffered a concussion, multiple fractures and countless cuts and bruises, Kate had been found and nursed slowly back to health by the natives of a remote Amazon village.

Aware that someone had wanted her dead, and might try again if they realized they’d failed, she’d disguised herself when finally she was well enough to travel, and made her way back to Minneapolis with extreme caution. Sterling would never forget the morning she’d phoned, her husky voice laced with fear and umbrage as she whispered into the receiver, “I’m alive, Sterling. I’m alive. Don’t tell anyone.”

Though he had a key, Sterling knocked at Kate’s apartment door instead of letting himself in, as he sometimes did, since he hadn’t taken the trouble to call first. Kate let him in. Clad in a red Chinese-silk bathrobe that flattered her small, slim figure and complemented, rather than clashed with, her upswept silver-streaked auburn hair, she clutched a mug of black coffee in one diamond-studded fist as she led him to the living room and a breaking news program on the television.

“Sterling…come in! You’re never going to believe this!” she commanded, waving him peremptorily to a chair.

The story that had captured her attention was the same one Jessica Holmes had caught the evening before and Sterling had scanned in his morning paper—expanded as more details and peripheral interviews became available. Unlike Jess, Kate had a strong personal interest in the case. Recruited by her many years earlier to act as a spokeswoman for Fortune Cosmetics, Monica had repaid the favor by conducting an illicit on-again, off-again affair with Kate’s husband, Ben, for years. Or at least that was what Kate suspected. Further, she had long sensed Monica to be a deadly personal adversary.

“It’s Monica Malone!” Kate added. “She’s been stabbed to death!”

Given a cup of coffee by the maid, Sterling scowled as a news commentator recapped the story. But he couldn’t hide his growing concern. If Jake was involved in some way, he’d find himself facing an extremely nasty situation.

Kate hadn’t picked up on his worry yet. “So…what do you think of all this?” she asked, her color high, as the station took an advertising break. “You know I’m not the vindictive type…that I wouldn’t wish a rattlesnake harm unless it was about to strike. But I can’t help feeling that what happened to Monica is at least partly her own fault.”

Sterling’s mouth failed to twitch with his usual amusement at her inventive turn of phrase. “I think Jake may have been mixed up in it somehow,” he answered.

“What on earth are you talking about?” she asked in alarm, turning her penetrating blue gaze full force on him.

As succinctly as possible, he described Erica’s call. “I’m just guessing, of course,” he said. “But it’s conceivable Jake visited Monica yesterday evening, and that it was he whom her neighbors spotted leaving the house shortly before her body was discovered. Otherwise, why would the police be looking for him?”

Kate’s brightly lacquered nails dug into the arms of her chair. “You’re not saying he killed her, are you?” she exclaimed.

“You know better than that.”

According to Sterling’s retelling of his conversation with Erica, Jake hadn’t spent the night in the Lake Travis house, where he’d taken up residence after their split. Where was he, then? Had he made himself scarce for a reason? Kate didn’t want to believe it. The Jake she knew couldn’t possibly be guilty of harming anyone.

“There could be any number of reasons the police want to speak with him,” she hedged.

“Give me one.”

“I don’t know…recent business dealings, maybe. He sold her that stock, remember, though God knows what his reasons were. No doubt there were meetings, phone calls. They’re probably combing the woodwork, hoping someone can give them something.”

Sterling shook his head. “I don’t buy it. This feels like trouble to me…right down to the core.”

It did to Kate, too. Her instincts in full flush, she was on her feet, pacing. “Damn that woman to hell…even if she’s probably headed there already!” she erupted. “She had her hooks into Ben for years. Now, as her swan song, she’s going to destroy my oldest child!”

From Sterling’s perspective, it was incomprehensible that Ben had ever preferred Monica to Kate, even as a side dish. Despite her impoverished beginnings, Kate was a genuine thoroughbred. And full of fire still; he’d have bet his stock-market holdings on that.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked.

She wanted him to protect Jake. Run interference for him with the police. Keep him from doing something foolish. Much as she loved her son, she knew his weaknesses. If he realized he was being sought by the authorities, he might panic. Yet he couldn’t call on her for support—he didn’t know she was alive. And he was too proud to call Erica. But he might get in touch with Sterling if he found himself in a jam. Maybe he’d tried to do so already.

“My dear, dear friend…please, go home and wait for him to call you,” she begged. “Keep the line open, just in case. Let me know when you hear from him.”

A bit grumpily, because he’d planned on having breakfast with her, Sterling arose. “As always, I’m at your service,” he murmured.

“If he calls, you’ll go with him to the police.”

“Of course.”

Though he doubted she’d make a habit of it, Kate surprised him with a swift, spontaneous hug before ushering him out the door.

Jake awoke in a run-down motel, with a sour taste in his mouth. He’d drunk to excess the night before—he knew that much. His stomach felt like crap, and his head was pounding. Seconds later, the painful throbbing of his injured shoulder brought back the whole frightening, humiliating scenario that had taken place. Groaning, he shut his eyes as the details of what he’d been running from invaded his memory and settled there. The argument with Monica. Her coming at him with a letter opener. A thrust of pain that had made him gasp. Him pushing her away, and her falling against the marble fireplace…

Like a fool, or some desperate kind of idiot, he’d gone to her house to confront her over the way she’d been blackmailing him—threatening to reveal to the world that his father was a poor slob of a foot soldier who’d died in World War II, not the self-made, illustrious Benjamin Fortune, who’d married his mother and placed a silver spoon in his mouth.

It was news his power-hungry half brother, Nate, would glory in hearing, and Jake had been determined to keep it from him at all costs. He should have known Monica would refuse to return the stock he’d sold her under duress, or promise to keep his secret—that she’d try something crazy, like trying to kill or injure him.

Because of her insane and jealous machinations, he’d all but destroyed the company his family had taken a half century to build, and lost most of the respect he’d once had for himself. Now she was dead, a corpse discovered lying facedown on her living room floor, according to the news account he’d watched before bolting from his parents’ former Lake Travis house the night before.

I didn’t kill her! he thought frantically. I know I didn’t! She was alive when I left. She’d regained consciousness, and I’d helped her to the sofa. I should have stuck around, I suppose. Phoned for help and stayed until it arrived. But she didn’t seem to be hurt that badly. She was shouting gutter language at me, threatening to come at me again, and I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could.

Who had killed her then? Jake didn’t have a clue, any more than he knew whether someone had seen him leave the house. If his departure had been observed, he might not have been recognized. Yet his fingerprints would be all over the scene. His blood, too, he guessed, would have dripped from the wound in his shoulder. Plus, she’d scratched him. Bits of his skin would be found beneath her long red fingernails. His DNA would be everywhere. If he’d been placed by someone at the property near the time of death, the police would be looking for him. He’d be facing a mountain of evidence.

Fear congealing like an undigested meal in his gut, he got out of bed and paid an overdue visit to the bathroom. He was still wearing the clothes he’d worn the night before—thankfully, the clean pullover and slacks he’d changed into following the shower he’d taken at his daughter Natalie’s insistence, not the torn and blood-soaked shirt and soiled trousers he’d stuffed into an upstairs bathroom hamper. Unfortunately, his breath still smelled of Scotch. And he didn’t have any toothpaste.

He shook his head. What must Natalie have thought when she came across the lake and discovered him, wounded, drunk and babbling? Now that he’d disappeared, she must be worried sick. Somehow, he’d have to make it up to her.

In the meantime, he’d concentrate on getting out of the mess he was in. For one thing, he didn’t know precisely where he was. He only knew that, after learning of Monica’s death, he’d hit the road and driven for hours, stopping finally at a run-down motel somewhere in Wisconsin’s north country.

A quick scan of the checkout card revealed that he’d spent the night at the Heart’s Desire Motel on Round Lake, near the town of Hayward. It occurred to him that, under the circumstances, his out-of-state flight wouldn’t look good. He might need legal representation.

Though it seemed like years since he’d run from Monica’s house and sped away in his car, less than twenty-four hours had elapsed. It was Saturday. Sterling Foster wasn’t likely to be in his office. Racking his brain, Jake managed to come up with his home number and dial it with trembling fingers.

After leaving Kate’s apartment, Sterling had returned home. But he hadn’t stayed put, the way he planned. Instead, a worried call from Natalie had propelled him to her house, across Lake Travis from the Fortune mansion. She had things to tell him about Jake’s involvement with Monica the night before—things she didn’t feel comfortable confiding over the telephone.

Annoyed that he had to go when Kate had suggested he remain at home and make himself available for Jake’s call, he’d quickly decided the trip had been worth it when he heard Natalie’s tale of an argument between Jake and Monica at her house, possibly over blackmail, Monica’s fall and Jake’s assertion that he’d cut his shoulder. According to the secondhand information he’d received from her, the aging star had been alive and ready to continue their argument when Jake left the house. As for his comments about blackmail, Jake hadn’t been specific. In fact, he’d backed off from them.

His claim that Monica had been alive when he left had alleviated the lawyer’s concern only a little. Coupled with the fact of her death, the circumstances Jake had described to his daughter spelled big trouble for him, in his opinion. Kate had thought so, too, when he reported to her on returning to his apartment shortly before 11:00 a.m.

When his phone shrilled just seconds after they finished their conversation, he picked up on the first ring. “At last!” he exclaimed in response to Jake’s tentative utterance of his name. “Where in the hell are you? Monica Malone’s murder is all over the newspapers and television. The Minneapolis Police are seeking you for questioning.”

The bottom dropping out of his feeble hope that someone else had been caught and charged with Monica’s murder, Jake told Sterling where he was. “You’ve got to believe me…I didn’t kill Monica,” he begged like a penitent child, “though we did have a run-in. She was alive when I left. Still, if the police are looking for me, I suppose I’m in a heap of trouble. I’m going to need your help.”

Sterling calculated that the motel where Jake had spent the night was roughly a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Minneapolis. An unannounced and unaccompanied return might not be wise. It was entirely possible that the police had alerted their fellow officers throughout Minnesota and the neighboring states to be on the lookout for him. If he was arrested on his way back, or even detained for questioning, he could protest all he wanted that he’d planned to turn himself in and still not be believed.

In Sterling’s opinion, the best course of action he could take would be to drive to Wisconsin and bring Jake back, after notifying the authorities that the Fortune CEO would appear at police headquarters voluntarily that evening and answer all their questions. That way, he’d have a chance to hear the full story from Jake’s mouth—ask whatever questions he deemed necessary, and help him settle on the official version—before the detectives got a crack at him.

For Jake, the silence on Sterling’s end of the line was deafening. “For God’s sake,” he pleaded, “say something. Tell me what to do.”

Having decided how to handle the situation, Sterling was brisk. “Don’t go out,” he ordered. “Wait there for me. Talk to no one. I’ll phone the police when I get to Hayward and tell them I’m coming in with you…that you’ll answer their questions willingly. There’s a young man in my building who can accompany me, and drive your car back for you.”

Abject in his fear that he’d be accused of a crime he hadn’t committed, Jake quickly agreed to do whatever the attorney suggested. Breaking their connection, Sterling took a deep breath and dialed Kate. “Your son just called,” he said without preamble when she answered. “He’s in Wisconsin. I’m on my way to bring him back. On my advice, he’ll submit to questioning voluntarily. Naturally, I’ll be by his side….”

There was a brief silence on Kate’s end. “Do you think he’ll be arrested?” she asked.

Sterling was anything but sure about how to answer her. He tried to be optimistic. “I shouldn’t think so,” he opined. “Of course, I’ll know more after I talk with him in depth.”

It was the best he could offer her at the moment. Her relief, mixed with a certain amount of dread over what the future would hold, was palpable. “Sterling, thank you!” she whispered. “Without you, the family would disintegrate. Whereas I…”

Time was of the essence, and she didn’t finish the thought. “Call Erica before you go, will you, so she won’t worry too much?” she added, changing her tack. “She can get in touch with the children. Naturally, you won’t want to give her too many details.”

At the hospital, Jess had remained by her daughter’s bedside, desperately trying to think of ways to contact the Fortune family while waiting for the first of Annie’s tests to come back from the lab. A nurse entered the room around 1:00 p.m. and noted that Annie was asleep. “You’ve been here all day, since early this morning, without rest or anything to eat, Mrs. Holmes,” she pointed out. “It won’t help your daughter if you get sick, too. We’ll keep an eye on her, and Dr. Hunter will page you when the test results become available. Why don’t you run down to the cafeteria and grab a bite?”

If they could pull it off, Annie’s rehabilitation would take months. The nurse’s suggestion made sense. Realizing she was starved, Jess decided to take her up on it. She was seated in the brightly lit first-floor cafeteria, munching on a tuna-salad sandwich and drinking a cup of tea, when Stephen slid into the seat opposite her.

“Is something wrong?” she asked, the panic that lay just below the surface of her thoughts staring back at him.

She was so lovely. So distraught. And so alone in Minneapolis, unless he was very much mistaken. It was all he could do not to reach across the table and pat her shoulder. “Nothing we didn’t expect,” he replied.

“Then…the results are in?”

“Some of them are. Enough to know Annabel’s white-cell count is severely out of whack, with a large number of immature, ineffective cells circulating in her bloodstream. She’s going to need a transplant, and soon, to correct the situation. As an interim measure, until we can find a donor, I want to prescribe a mild form of chemotherapy. It’ll make her fairly sick for a couple of days. But then she should have a brief remission. We’ll have a respite in which to search.”