Chapter 32

 

On Wednesday morning, the sun was already hot when Sarah took a cab from her condo to the Bellevue Avenue mansion of Senator Rutherford. It was a short ride, but her mind was racing.

She’d had a call from Judge Arnold on Tuesday night advising her of the time and place of the meeting. The two of them hadn’t said much on the phone. Despite their four years of working closely together, these past five days had created a chasm that she knew would never be bridged.

Sarah still had the extra file that she’d taken out of Rosen’s briefcase in her possession. The contents of the file were a life story of Hal from his early years in high school and college up to the present. The file contained dozens of investigative reports, all done with a focus on Hal’s lifestyle, on his vices, and on his friends.

And all of it had been conducted on behalf of the judge.

Hal was far from being a saint, and Sarah had always known it. But these reports made him look far worse than she had ever imagined. Summaries of his gambling, drinking, drugs, and spending habits. Photocopies showing astronomical credit card debt. More graphic and much more damning were the photos of Hal’s sexual dalliances. There were at least a dozen pictures of him with various young women, sometimes with more than one, often in compromising positions, and sometimes in very public places. It was the picture of a self-indulgent spendthrift, a confirmed hedonist. It was the picture of a life out of control. It was a depiction that Avery would have found appalling, to say the least.

None of this was crushing for Sarah. From the beginning of her relationship with him, she’d known that Hal was very much a product of his wealthy upbringing. So there were no real surprises there. And interestingly enough, she realized that even after seeing all those photographs, she had not come close to feeling the way she had when she’d discovered that picture of Owen and Tori together.

The dates on the reports went way back, but what had bothered Sarah the most was the fact that Avery had been copied on everything that was injurious to Hal’s image. One could easily argue that Judge Arnold had been making certain for a long time—from the time Hal was in prep school—that Avery should see her son as lacking the character and the responsibility needed to handle the demands of such a huge inheritance.

The most recent letter in the file was the most incriminating of them all. In this, the investigator notified the judge that, as requested, a fresh set of the older prints had been mailed to Avery on a specified date. Sarah remembered the date; it was two months prior to Avery’s death—the very time when she’d insisted on changing her will yet again.

Sarah couldn’t understand any of these people. She’d lost the respect she once held for Judge Arnold. She disliked Hal for giving in and becoming what his stepfather expected him to be. And she felt sorry for Avery, a woman who had allowed herself to be manipulated for all of her life.

The cab came to a stop before the iron gate of the mansion, and Sarah paid the fare and got out. She was ready to go and get this thing done with. She was ready to get on with her life.

As always, the grounds of the estate were meticulously groomed. The short walk up the drive gave Sarah a chance to clear her mind of everything but what she was here to do. After ringing the front entrance bell, she was surprised to see Edward North answer the door. She had met Rutherford’s young chief of staff a few times. Most recently, they’d exchanged a few friendly words at Avery’s funeral. But she hadn’t expected him to be letting her in.

“Am I early?”

“Not at all. Please come in.”

Sarah followed the younger man through the large entry foyer and a maze of elegantly furnished rooms and hallways. Though she tried not to let her nerves get the better of her, there was clearly no one else around. How easy it would be for these people to get rid of her here on the spot. They arrived at a closed set of double doors.

“Please make yourself comfortable in the library. The senator will be right down, and Judge Arnold called to say he is on his way.”

Sarah went inside and the door closed behind her. Left alone, her immediate reaction was to look for some avenue of escape. Two large glass windows on either side of a pair of French doors looked out over an extensive terraced lawn. Small, formal gardens graced each level with flowers and greenery. Beyond the lawns, she could see the fence that separated the estate from the Cliff Walk. From there, it was a sheer drop to the sea.

Though it was cool in the mansion, she was sweating. She unbuttoned the jacket of her white silk suit and, in an effort to calm her nerves, looked at the impressive collection of books covering the walls. The smell of freshly brewed coffee wafted from a hot plate stationed on a side table under one of the windows. A silver tray of pastries sat beside a number of delicate gold-rimmed cups.

She studied the symmetrical arrangement of two leather chairs around a small leather sofa near the fireplace. Her attention was drawn to a large mahogany desk across the room.

Reaching inside her shoulder bag, Sarah touched the single tape for assurance.

She didn’t have to wait much longer. Voices could be heard coming down the hallway. A moment later, the door opened, and she gathered herself as Judge Arnold and Senator Rutherford entered the room together.

“Sarah!” The senator’s greeting was welcoming, as if nothing at all was wrong in the world. The judge, on the other hand, only nodded vaguely in her direction before walking toward the coffee pot.

“I was just asking the judge here about this mystery meeting you’ve requested for this morning.” He led her to a leather chair. “He tells me he doesn’t know anything about it, except that you had to talk to both of us at the same time and that it was quite urgent.”

“It is,” she announced. “But I need both of you to be a part of this discussion, for there is no sense in belaboring the issue.”

Her barb was directed at Judge Arnold, who continued to stand with his back to them.

“Charles? Are you planning to join us?” Rutherford called to him.

Scowling, the judge sat. Taking a deep breath, Sarah looked from one man to the other.

“As you both know, I came across a certain document while I was transferring some of Avery’s belongings to a new safe-deposit box. Now, the action of taking possession of the document occurred by accident and with no malice intended. And as you also now know, I left for Ireland having no idea of the chaos that remained behind.”

“Before you get too far into this,” Rutherford interrupted, “I don’t know what document you’re talking about. This is all very new to me.”

“You can play dumb, if you want to, Senator, but it serves no purpose here.” She met him eye-to-eye. “You can hear my proposition regarding what I want in exchange for a certain incriminating letter and tape, or I can hand these pieces of evidence over to the police. I am certain they’ll be more than a little excited to learn what they contain.”

“Well, your intention of blackmailing us is clear enough, Ms. Rand, but I don’t believe I am the originator of these documents.” He gentled his tone. “Certainly you don’t expect me to bargain for something, when I have no clue what it is. So if you would be kind enough to tell me what it is exactly that you have.”

She nodded. “I have in my possession a letter written in Judge Arnold’s hand. In the text of this document, there are three references made. The first one pointed me to a dead-file location at our office’s storage facility, where I was able to retrieve a tape of a conversation made eighteen years ago. In this tape, you, Senator Rutherford, make a plea to your then-partner to come and help you…as you have just accidentally killed your wife in the hotel room you were staying at in Philadelphia. The second item in the letter is the location of where the judge indicates that the two of you buried your wife afterward. Strawberry Mansion Bridge. Do I need to continue?”

“That’s all a lie.” Rutherford turned sharply to Arnold. “Julia ran away. There were witnesses who saw her leave the hotel and get into a cab.”

“I did mention that there are three items listed on the letter, didn’t I?” Sarah interrupted. “The third note made by Judge Arnold is in reference to a junior attorney named Andrea Beck, a woman with similar coloring to your wife. Ms. Beck was, by the way, also attending that conference in Philadelphia that same weekend. As the judge indicates in the letter, Ms. Beck willingly put on your wife’s clothes, answered to your wife’s name, and essentially aided and abetted you in staging a scene where a number of hotel employees could testify later that your wife left the hotel the next morning under her own volition, without you.”

Sarah could see the senator’s complexion begin to pale beneath his tan.

“Unfortunately,” she continued, “Andrea Beck was killed during a burglary in her apartment three months after your wife’s disappearance.”

Rutherford walked to his desk and took the seat there. His hands were steepled before him.

“Go on.” he said quietly.

Sarah tried to contain her own anxiety. “I spent the last few days making phone calls and reading some archived newspapers issues about Andrea Beck’s case…which, by the way, is still open. What I found most interesting was the similarity in the method in which we were both murdered.” She stared at Rutherford. “Shot in the face. Did you use the same people to do the job, Senator? Or is that simply a mandatory requirement for an array of contracted hit men?”

“Why did you have Andrea killed, Gordon?” The judge’s voice was a low, accusing growl. “She believed you when you said the whole thing was an accident. She wasn’t going to tell a soul about it.”

“Shut up, Charles.” Rutherford snapped. He turned his glare on Sarah.

“Nice try, Ms. Rand, but you don’t have a thing on me.” He stood up. “And it would have been wise, young lady, to check your facts before you dragged your little ass in here. Those storage files were burned to ashes this past weekend. There is no way you could get anything out of there.”

She smiled. “You are quite wrong, Senator. Not about the fire Sunday, which I know you paid to have set. Fortunately, I took the tape on Thursday… the same day that one of your paid henchmen mistakenly stabbed Hal instead of me.”

“I still say you are bluffing.” He pressed a button on his desk. “I had nothing to do with my wife’s disappearance.”

Sarah reached for her briefcase and took out a tape, holding it in the palm of her hand so that both men could see it.

“Then I guess you won’t be wanting this?”

At that precise moment, a tap on the library door was followed by the entrance of Edward North. “Did you need something, Senator?”

“Yes.” Sarah saw Rutherford open a drawer in his desk and pull out a pen and a pad of paper. “Come and sit here and take some notes. Miss Rand was just getting ready to explain to us the terms of her blackmail.”

Startled, North nonetheless walked in and went to sit in the chair Rutherford vacated. The senator joined Arnold and Sarah. “May I examine this tape?”

Her fingers closed around the tape. “Although this is a duplicate, I would prefer that you not listen to it. At least, not until we’ve discussed the terms of our deal.”

“You greedy little parasite, you won’t get a dime from me. Do you hear me? I had nothing to do with my wife’s disappearance. And I say there is nothing on that tape. As far as that letter goes, Arnold wrote it to incriminate me. Perhaps he killed my wife and Andrea Beck.”

“As you wish,” Sarah said as she dropped the tape in her bag and rose to her feet. “I would advise both of you gentlemen to contact your lawyers. I’m turning these over to the authorities this morning. And Senator, I think your political career is about to come to a crashing—”

By the time she saw North advancing with the gun in his hand, it was too late.

A single shot rang out, and Sarah Rand fell back on the chair, her blood already staining the white silk suit.