The Sundowner Hotel in Charleston was the sort of plantation house that was once exceptionally grand, a proud symbol of the wealth and power generated by cotton in the eighteenth century before the Civil War. Now the Sundowner seemed to live up to its name, having become part of a big mid-market corporate hotel chain, and seemed to have lost a little of its charisma and charm in doing so. But the location of the hotel, in the historic district of the city, more than made up for it, thought Tess. The pastel-coloured town houses, gas-lamp streetlights, and grand clapboard houses with Juliet balconies and shutters – they all had a romance and a certain faux-English grace that was somehow appropriate for a city named after King Charles II.
The air-con hit Tess as she walked into the Sundowner’s grand but slightly peeling lobby and she was glad of the cool. The weather was beginning to turn rather cold in New York, so the balmy warmth of South Carolina had been most welcome, but a Southern lady never perspires, she thought with an inward smile. In these surroundings, Tess could actually imagine herself as a character in Gone with the Wind, especially when the concierge with a thick Deep South accent directed her to the Mistral Bar; this was the fictitious hometown of Rhett Butler, after all.
Her good mood evaporated as she spotted the man she was meeting. Ted Kessler was in his late fifties, with a grey moustache. He was dressed in dark trousers and an open-necked blue shirt. A crumpled jacket hung over the back of his chair. He didn’t rise when he saw her, simply put down his paper, and nodded.
‘I thought I’d get a table by the window,’ he said. ‘Don’t suppose you’ll be in town long, but you can see everything worth seeing from this spot right here.’
‘How kind,’ said Tess thinly, taking a seat opposite him and holding his gaze.
‘What do you want, Mr Kessler?’
When Meredith had given her the blue letter three days earlier, Tess had been surprised that the anonymous sender had decided to reveal himself, signing off his simple message with a scrawled telephone number. Tess had wasted no time in arranging a meeting; there wasn’t long to go until the wedding and she wanted nothing and no one to spoil her clean slate and jeopardize her bonus. Ted Kessler had to be dealt with as swiftly and ruthlessly as possible.
‘Can’t we start with a little old-fashioned Southern hospitality?’ He called over a white-coated waiter and ordered two bourbons.
‘I wish I had the time,’ said Tess coolly, shaking her head at the waiter. ‘As I said, what do you want? I feel certain you do want something.’
She pulled out the first letter Ted had sent and put it on the table.
Your family has a secret, it had said. Which secret, exactly? wondered Tess. They’ve got plenty.
The bourbon arrived on a silver platter and Ted took it, settling back in his chair, a smug expression on his face.
‘How about I tell you a little story?’ he smiled.
Tess rested her hands in her lap and tilted her head. ‘Please do.’
‘I’m from North Carolina and for five years I was with a marvellous woman. She died recently.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Tess, not feeling too much sympathy for this obvious opportunist.
‘The lady’s name was Marion Quinn,’ said Kessler, leaning forward and handing Tess a photograph. In it a smiling lady of about forty was flanked by a little boy and a very young girl aged about four who was in a wheelchair. The girl in the wheelchair was obviously severely disabled. Her long hair was shiny and golden as corn, but her head flopped to one side of her body, her small shoulders were hunched. It was the sort of photograph that made you instantly sad.
‘The lady in the picture, that’s Marion,’ continued Kessler. ‘She was as sweet as she was pretty. She lived hereabouts and she used to take in foster kids – all the ones no one else wanted. Sick kids, handicapped kids. She had the patience of a saint.’
Tess pointed at the handicapped girl in the picture. ‘Was this little girl one of her foster children?’
Her words had a shot of both curiosity and wonder. Professionally she was trying to work out the connection to the Asgills, but privately she was marvelling at this remarkable woman who would take on a child who was not her own flesh and blood, a child that must take enormous time and personal strength to look after. Most of all, she wondered what a woman like Marion Quinn was doing with Ted Kessler, a man clearly on the make.
‘That’s an old photo,’ said Kessler, sipping his whiskey. ‘Marion took in those kids nearly ten years ago, before I was with her. A few months after this photo was taken she got sick, Crohn’s disease. It was pretty bad and she couldn’t do the foster thing no more. Those two kids went back to their natural parents.’
Tess looked at him, wondering where this was leading, but suspecting this was just the beginning of the story.
‘The little girl was called Violet,’ he said, pointing to the young child in the wheelchair. ‘Marion heard rumours that Violet’s mother didn’t want her no more and, well, you can imagine how that made Marion feel; made her feel as if she let poor little Violet down. Then she heard the child had been put up for adoption. As it happened, Marion had met Violet’s mother a few times before and she tried to get back in touch with her, maybe persuade her to keep Violet, but it was too late, the mother had moved out of town. She didn’t care nothing for the kid. Anyways, before she knew it, child had gone to new parents.’
‘Mr Kessler, I’m a busy woman, can we get to the point? How does this involve my clients?’ asked Tess. She was trying to brazen it out, but suspicions were already forming in her mind. Kessler waved away her protestations; he was clearly going to tell the story at his own pace.
‘I met Marion five years ago when she moved down to Charleston. She wasn’t as sick as she had been then, so we got married.’
‘And when did she die?’
‘Beginning of summer.’
He paused and drained off his bourbon.
‘Of course, I had to go through all her stuff, sort things out. She used to keep this file full of letters and pictures from the kids she’d looked after, real sweet. But then I found something interesting.’ He pulled out a toothpick and began to clear something from his teeth. ‘I found an old New York Times newspaper clipping that she’d kept. A story ’bout eight or nine years old, a story about a New York model called Paula Abbott who was marrying some super-rich heir to a cosmetic empire.’
Tess and Ted looked at each other across the table. Ted put the toothpick down on the table and smiled.
‘The little girl Violet, the handicapped foster kid? She was called Violet Abbott.’
Tess instantly recalled that Paula’s maiden name was Abbott, one of the bits of trivia she’d picked up when she’d researched the family before she began working with them.
‘Paula is Violet’s mother?’
‘You didn’t know that?’ he laughed sarcastically. ‘I don’t suppose she would have told many people. Probably not the sort of thing you boast about in polite society, that you dumped your kid because they weren’t perfect.’
Tess pursed her lips. ‘It’s speculation at best, Mr Kessler. Abbott is not exactly an unusual name.’
Kessler laughed. ‘Oh, give me a break.’
He reached into his jacket and pulled out another creased photo and slid it across the table. ‘As I said, Marion kept everything, she was quite a hoarder.’
The photo was old and grainy, but it was clear enough. Paula couldn’t have been more than twenty. She was kneeling down next to the girl who, heartbreakingly, appeared to be smiling at her mother.
‘Same girl as in the New York Times wedding story, right?’ said Kessler, a note of triumph in his voice.
Tess couldn’t deny it. Impossible though it seemed, Paula Asgill had another daughter. Focus, Tess, focus, she told herself. Okay, was this really such a big deal? After all, John Kennedy had a sister closeted away in a mental home and it didn’t do his political career any harm. But a nagging voice in her head told her that things were different back then; in the Sixties the mainstream press didn’t pick over a public figure’s private life and use it as fuel to burn them at the stake.
Still, this might be a scandal, but it wasn’t an overdose at a sex party. Tess could certainly spin this in a more positive way – frightened young girl forced into adoption by circumstance and poverty, society is to blame, the child was well cared for – but there was one big stumbling block to that approach. Meredith. She wouldn’t like this at all. Tess had no idea how badly a scandal about Paula’s past would upset the Billington family, but she knew for sure that Meredith had been firm about one thing: no controversy before the wedding. None at all.
‘Is it money you’re after, Mr Kessler?’ said Tess.
‘Smart girl. Money for my old age,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘Marion looked after that kid good. She never told no one.’
‘Which is more than can be said for you.’
Kessler ignored the jibe. ‘This Paula’s a wealthy woman now,’ he said. ‘She got the life she wanted at the expense of her child. Well, now she can afford to pay me to keep her little secret.’
There was a tiny part of Tess that agreed with him. She wondered how Paula could have given her child away? She had seen how hard Kevin Donovan was prepared to fight for Jack and what the thought of living without him had done to him. Tess felt sure that if she were a parent she wouldn’t–she couldn’t. She paused, realizing it was the first time she had thought about motherhood in a very long time.
‘It isn’t going to look very good, is it, Miss Garrett?’ continued Kessler, wiping his palms on his trouser legs. ‘Even down here we’ve heard of the Billington family. I don’t reckon a grand family like that is gonna like seeing Paula Asgill disowning her handicapped kiddie like that.’
‘I didn’t come here to be blackmailed, Mr Kessler,’ said Tess.
Kessler appeared unmoved. ‘Do you know how much Marion got for looking after Violet?’ he said. ‘Two hundred dollars a month. She paid for the medical bills out of her own pocket. She wasn’t a rich woman, just a decent one.’
‘More than can be said for her taste in men.’
His expression soured. ‘Take the photograph Miss Garrett,’ he said, standing up. ‘I got copies. Unless you wire me two hundred thousand bucks, I’ll be sending it to the media.’
‘Two hundred thousand …’ Tess tried to keep her cool.
Kessler buttoned his jacket and nodded to the waitress. ‘I’ll let you pick up the cheque. And I expect an answer by Friday.’