If he replied she didn’t hear him. As soon as she rounded the corner, Juliet ran.
SHE HADN’T BEEN HOME half an hour when the front door slammed. She waited to hear her daughter’s robust voice but was met with silence.
“Mary Jane?” Pulling over her head a T-shirt that matched the black-and-white drawstring bottoms she’d changed into, Juliet came out of her room.
There was no answer. Other than a cupboard slamming in the kitchen. The sound of a glass on the counter. The refrigerator being swung open hard enough to rattle the bottles stored inside the door.
“What’s up?”
The child, dressed in jeans with a matching jacket over a purple lace shirt, spilled the milk she was pouring. “I quit Brownies.”
“You can’t quit Brownies. Only I can do that. I paid for it.”
“Then I haven’t quit, I’m just not going back.” Leaving a puddle of milk on the counter, Mary Jane brought her glass to the table and sat down, her chin at her chest. Her cheeks were puffed out with indignation, her lower lip protruding as though she was about to cry.
“Can we talk about it first?”
“Yeah,” she said with more challenge than acquiescence in her voice. “But I’m not going back.”
Juliet ignored the milk on the counter. Pulling out the chair closest to Mary Jane’s, she sat. “Why don’t you tell me what happened.”
“It’s not what happened, it’s what’s going to happen.”
She was having trouble following Mary Jane’s line of thought. “What’s that?”
“Mrs. Byron said we have to do a father-daughter banquet.” Mary Jane looked over at her accusingly, as though she’d planned the whole thing. Juliet didn’t even know Mrs. Byron. The woman, whose daughter was brand new to the troop, had just been made activities director. “I don’t have a father. I don’t want a father.” The little girl stood with such force her curls bounced against her cheeks. “And I don’t want to go to Brownies anymore.”
“No one’s going to force you to go to Brownies,” she said to the retreating back.
When it rained, it poured.
LATE AFTERNOON, a full two weeks since he’d seen Juliet McNeil, Blake was in his office looking over a library bid to be submitted to city council the next morning, when his secretary buzzed him.
“Paul Schuster to see you, sir.”
“I thought you’d gone home.”
“Just leaving.”
“Drive carefully and I’ll see you tomorrow,” Blake told Lee Anne Boulder, the mother of three who’d lost her husband in a construction injury two years before. “And please, send Schuster in.”
Slipping his arms back into the navy suit coat he’d dropped on the chair in front of his desk when he’d come in from a lunch with the mayor several hours before, Blake met the attorney at the door. Why hadn’t the other man called to let him know he was coming?
Schuster got right to the point.
“Eaton James was on the stand today.”
“That must’ve been entertaining.” He motioned to a leather couch on the other side of his office. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“Thanks, I could use a stiff one.”
“Whiskey?” Blake walked over to the wet bar along the far wall. It was there strictly for business meetings. He’d never once used it alone.
A habit his father had taught him very early in life. A man who drinks alone at work has a problem with drinking.
“Whatever you’ve got.”
Pouring a couple of shots of twelve-year-old scotch, Blake handed one to the older man and took a healthy sip of his own. If Schuster was here to tell him they were going to lose, he was going to need more than one.
“When you were in court, answering Juliet McNeil’s questions, you testified that you were in the Cayman Islands five years ago.”
“I was. On and off. I was working on a project in Honduras and used to fly over for a week every now and then. Why?”
“Did you ever do any business there?”
Something in Schuster’s voice, his low-key demeanor, set Blake on edge. Putting his glass on the coffee table, he took a seat across from the prosecutor.
“Never.” Where the hell was this going?
“What did you do there?”
“Lay on the beach. Kayaked. Snorkeled. Ate. Made love with my wife.”
Schuster’s gaze was guarded as he looked up. “Where did you stay?”
“Various places, hotels, a bed-and-breakfast. Once we even camped on the beach. Why? What does any of this have to do with James’s testimony?”
Was the man trying to claim that Blake had something to do with the Eaton Estates deal, other than checking to see if it was legitimate at the request of his mother?
“James launched a bombshell in the courtroom today. I’d bet my career on the fact that no one was as surprised as his counsel.”
Chills slid through Blake. Ignoring the drink he’d left on the table, he watched as the other man swirled his whiskey. Drained the glass. Set it down.
“He claims there’s a bank account in the Cayman Islands that holds every dime of all monies unaccounted for in his books. Those paid invoices for shipments that never seemed to happen? Well, that money was being squirreled away in some bank in the Cayman Islands.”
“He admitted it,” Blake said, elated and sickened at the same time. “We won.” And then, observing the other man’s bowed head, he added, “You won.”
“Not so fast.” Schuster shook his head, looking old and tired in a jacket wrinkled from hours of sitting in court. The energy that seemed to pulse through him twenty-four hours a day was eerily absent.
“James didn’t admit to anything but being blackmailed.”
Frowning, Blake sat back, a curious numbness spreading through him. “What? By whom?”
“Your father.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
SITTING BACK with his arms resting on the sides of his chair, Blake hoped he looked relaxed. He was working hard to maintain the facade.
“My father.” They were the only two words spinning around in his mind. There should be more. Would be more. He knew that. For now, focusing on remaining calm was keeping him detached.
Or a sense of survival was.
Schuster, forearms on his knees as he leaned forward, nodded. His hands were clasped as though he didn’t quite know what to do with them.
“My father had no reason to blackmail Eaton James.”
The man’s pockmarked face thinned as he continued to watch Blake. “Apparently he did.”
No, he didn’t. James was a liar, on trial for fraud. “Why?” If Blake was going to clear his father’s name, he had to have the facts.
“After James claimed that he lost the money your father had invested with him, your father hired a private audit firm to inspect James’s books. His right to do so was in the contract he’d had his lawyers write up at the time of the investment.”
Blake recognized his father’s hand in that. Walter Ramsden had been at times almost maniacal in his need for control.
He’d