Seven in the evening, forty-two hours before her wedding was scheduled to take place, Brooke St. Vincent heard a knock on her apartment door. She was naked except for her matching bra and panties, so she threw on a thin robe, knotted the belt, and peered through the spy hole. Kurt Guernsey stood on the other side. Brooke opened the door.
“Hey, you,” she said.
Guernsey stepped across the threshold and the two embraced. Brooke closed the door. Guernsey reached for her, his fingers working the knot of her belt.
“I like your outfit,” he said.
Brooke slapped his hands and backed away.
“Stop it,” she said. “Melissa and the others will be here in thirty minutes. I still need to get dressed, put on some makeup.”
“You don’t need any makeup, and it won’t take thirty minutes.”
“Oh, really? That’s what I have to look forward to? A lifetime of quickies?”
“We’ll take as much time as you like.”
They embraced again. This time they kissed as if nothing gave them greater pleasure. Eventually Brooke put her hands on Guernsey’s chest and backed him up.
“I told you I’m having dinner with your sister and my bridesmaids,” she said.
“I know.”
“What are you doing here, anyway?”
Guernsey turned his head so she couldn’t see his face.
“Brooke, we need to talk,” he said.
“About what?”
“Let’s sit down.”
“Kurt, you’re scaring me.”
They found chairs at Brooke’s kitchen table.
“I’m so sorry,” Guernsey said.
“What? What, Kurtis?”
“My family. I’m sorry Brooke, but my family…”
Guernsey pulled several sheets of paper from his inside pocket, unfolded them, and smoothed them out in front of Brooke. He held a pen in his hand.
“My family insists that you sign this before the wedding,” he said.
“What is it?”
“A prenuptial agreement.”
“A what?”
“A prenup. My family—”
“You bring this up now? We’re getting married on Saturday.”
“I know, I know. But my family—”
“You mean your father.”
“My father, then—”
“How old do you need to be before you stop taking orders from that man?”
“Brooke.”
“You told me that you didn’t want a prenup. You stood right there.” She pointed at a spot in her living room. “You said that you didn’t want to negotiate your divorce before we were even married. You said it was bad luck.”
“I know what I said. Brooke, I’m sorry, I really am. You know how my father is.”
“He thinks I’m a gold digger. He thinks that I’m only marrying you for your money because that’s what your stepmother did.”
“It’s just that you’re so very beautiful. You could have any guy you want and you chose me. I’m not a handsome man, Brooke.”
“Who says? Your father?”
“I’m also eleven years older.”
“He’s forty years older than—”
“Brooke, please.”
“What if I don’t sign?”
“The wedding—Father said that when the minister asks if anyone here can show just cause why this couple…”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Brooke, I promise—I promise that one year from now, we’ll do it on our first wedding anniversary, we’ll burn the damn prenup in front of him. We’ll throw a party at Axis Mundi. Invite everyone we know. For now, though…”
“Do I even get a chance to read it?”
“Of course, of course, take your time.”
Guernsey sat there, pen in hand, and waited.
“Not now,” Brooke said. She spun in her seat until she could read the clock on her microwave oven. “Melissa will be here in fifteen minutes.”
“Tomorrow, then? I need to get my father off my back.”
“Tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry, Brooke, springing it on you like this. I promise it’s only temporary. Give it a year and we’ll burn it.”
“All right.”
Brooke walked Guernsey to her door. They embraced, and Guernsey kissed her cheek.
“Have fun tonight,” he said.
“I’ll try.”
“You are so beautiful.”
She was, too. A beautiful bride. My experience, most aren’t. We say they are when we watch them walking down the aisle; we actually speak the words “What a beautiful bride.” Mostly, though, we’re just being polite. After all, if we’re at the ceremony in the first place it’s because we’re family or a friend. But Brooke was beautiful. She looked like she should be modeling gowns for one of those bridal magazines. She seemed happy, too. She was smiling in every pic David Helin showed me. He had downloaded a bunch of them into the personal file on his computer. Guernsey seemed happy as well, especially when his arm was draped around his wife’s shoulder or her arm was wrapped around his waist, or they just stood there holding hands. It occurred to me the actual wedding was probably the high-water mark of their relationship, as blissful as the couple would ever be, because they divorced only three and a half years later.
“They never did burn the prenup,” Helin said. “It was always going to be done next year. Finally, Brooke had enough. Enough of the insults, enough of the abuse—”
“Guernsey abused her?”
“It’s a long story. The bottom line—they divorced. Kurtis asked the court to enforce the agreement, which incidentally left Brooke with absolutely nothing. She told the court that he had reneged on his oral promise to tear up the prenuptial. Unfortunately, that promise was not referenced in the parties’ written agreement. Moreover, the parties had disclaimed reliance upon oral statements by either party, a relatively standard provision in most prenups.”
“In other words, Guernsey’s promise wasn’t worth the paper it was written on,” I said.
“Exactly. The court enforced the prenup, which it nearly always does.”
“What happened next?”
“Brooke came to me. We appealed the court’s decision claiming coercion. We argued that the premarital agreement was unenforceable because Brooke’s consent to the agreement came as the result of duress and that, because of the timing, she didn’t have access to independent legal representation. The fact that the prenup had left her with nothing proved that there had been no bargained-for benefit. The appellate court agreed. It ruled—well, here, read it for yourself.”
I did, starting where his finger pointed. “‘Under these circumstances we find it would be unfair, unjust, and inequitable to enforce this prenuptial agreement. The timing of the agreement negated any inclination Mrs. Guernsey may have had to secure independent advice. The first meeting to review the agreement took place two days before the wedding; the signing of the agreement was done the evening before the wedding. Mr. Guernsey admitted that any hesitation by his future wife would have resulted in at least a delay of the wedding. Obviously, the night before her wedding a bride has concerns that seem more important and immediate than the potential dissolution of her marriage and waiver of her interest in future community property.’”
“What happened next?” I asked.
“We went back to square one,” Helin said. “Negotiated the divorce as if there had been no prenup. Eventually we settled for a onetime payment of three-point-seven million and no spousal support.”
“Nice.”
“Yeah.”
“Now tell me about the hacked email.”
Brooke had stared at the door after her fiancé left. Truth be told, she actually did care for him. He was funny, he was smart, and he treated her like a princess. The fact that he was a member of the Guernsey family that owned Minnesota River State Bank, among other things, only added to his appeal. She didn’t want to lose him. On the other hand—did her future father-in-law really think that Brooke was foolish enough to sign a contract without reading it first, without having her own lawyers read it?
Her cell rang. Melissa. Did she know what her brother was up to? Brooke wondered.
“Lissa,” she said, “I’m running way behind. Give me twenty minutes.”
“Okay, but hurry. The driver’s anxious to see some male strippers. Aren’t you, Fisk?”
“Whatever you say, miss.”
Brooke hung up. Instead of donning her red silk, though, she took the prenup to her computer setup and scanned in the pages one at a time. Afterward, she prepared an email, attached the prenup, and sent it off to the older brother of the man who had taken her virginity a decade earlier with the note “Tell me what to do?”
“She and my brother were deeply in love,” Helin said. “I was a little in love with her myself, to tell you the truth, even though I was ten years older. Unfortunately, their devotion to each other lasted only until they went off to college on different sides of the country. They kept in touch, though, had many friends in common, and I would run into her from time to time.
“Anyway, Brooke sent me the prenup, and I read it. I called her immediately. I begged her not to sign it. I told her that it was ridiculously one-sided. She was in a limo with her bridesmaids at the time and heading to a club. She said she couldn’t talk. She said to send an email explaining what she should do and she’d read it when she got home. I did, picking the document apart in gruesome detail. I was shocked when Brooke signed it. She told me later that she was afraid that if she put up a fuss the marriage would have been postponed if not canceled altogether. She also said she believed Guernsey’s promise that he would destroy the prenup once she proved she was going to be a good wife to him. Girl in love, what are you going to do?”
“So,” I said. “Your argument before the appeals court that Brooke was unfairly coerced into signing the prenup…”
“That part was valid.”
“Not the part about having access to legal representation, though.”
“Technically—we never actually spoke about this matter except for the brief phone conversation when she was in the car, never met in person. Moreover, Brooke hadn’t formally hired me. She wasn’t a paying client, and no money changed hands.”
“Technically.”
“That’s right.”
“What would happen if Guernsey learned about the email?”
“He’d probably move to have the appeals court’s decision reversed, ask that the provisions of the original prenuptial agreement be enforced, and demand that Brooke return his three-point-seven million bucks.”
“Would he win?”
“He’d have a strong argument.”
“What about you? Would you be in trouble?”
“It could be argued that I had failed to fulfill my candor obligations to the court.”
“Meaning?”
“If Guernsey made an issue of it, I could receive an admonishment by the ABA’s disciplinary council. I might even get a reprimand by the court or the Lawyers Professional Responsibility Board.”
“Suspension of license?”
Helin shrugged.
“These are not good things,” I said.
“No, they’re not.”
“Why did you do it, David? I’ve never known you to skirt the rules before.”
“When you meet the woman you’ll understand.”
“Who knew about the email?”
“What do you mean?”
“Who knew that the email existed?”
“Me. Brooke.”
“Who else?”
“I never told anyone. I didn’t have a reason. When I sent it—it was well over four years ago now. I can’t speak for Brooke, though.”
“We have a theory, Freddie and I. We don’t believe the attack was random. We believe the hacker knew about this email, that he hacked your computer specifically to get at it.”
Helin thought about it for a few beats. “And the others?” he asked.
“The same. He knew what you all did and searched your computers to find evidence that would prove it.”
“Five separate law firms. We never work together. We don’t spend time with each other. Why us?”
“There must be a common denominator of some sort. Something that ties all the cases together.”
“I can’t imagine what.”
“Neither can I. That’s why I want your permission to interview Brooke and anyone else involved with the case. I’m going to ask the same thing of the others as well. Something connects the five of you. If we can find out what it is…”
“This could take time.”
“That’s why I got up early this morning.”
“I’ll call Brooke and tell her you’re coming over. I already told her about the hack. I don’t know what the others might have told their clients, though, if anything.”
“I’ll deal with them later. I picked you first because you’re my favorite attorney.”
“Is that true, Taylor, or are you saying it because I bill more hours?”
“Both.”
She moved with a peculiar grace, a kind of gliding motion that gave the impression that she was walking an inch above the floor. Her golden tresses required no hairdresser’s magic, and her clear blue eyes spoke for themselves. I understood instantly why Dave Helin would lie and cheat for her. Given the proper motivation, I would probably do the same.
Despite her millions, Brooke St. Vincent worked for a living. She was a loan servicing specialist for an investment firm concentrating on funding energy companies. I was lucky she agreed to meet me in a coffeehouse located in the lobby of the building where she was employed.
Mostly my job is asking questions. Personal, business, social, thousands of questions of hundreds of people over—how long had I been doing this now? Ten years? I ask the questions during business hours or just as often in the evening and on weekends because I need to talk to people when they’re available, not when I am. Often, it involves role-playing, transforming myself into someone people would readily confide in because many of them hate to talk to private investigators just as much as they hate to talk to cops. Sometimes it requires me to become Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe or Jim Rockford—remember Rockford?—or even Sherlock Holmes because many of them love to talk to private eyes.
Brooke didn’t seem to care one way or the other. To her I was just a guy interrupting her day. She bought a cup of coffee, light cream, and made her way to the table where I was sitting. I stood for her.
“David Helin said I should speak to you,” she told me.
“Thank you for your time.”
We sat across from each other.
“I knew Kurt would never let bygones be bygones,” Brooke said. “I knew that he’d come after me. Being forced to pay a hundred thousand dollars for every month we were together, it must have felt like losing to him, and the Guernseys, they don’t like to lose. Even Melissa. She claimed that she was my friend and always would be right up until the judge ruled the prenup was invalid. We haven’t spoken since.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s what comes from being a girl from the wrong side of the tracks.”
“Where are you from?”
“Edina.”
“That’s one of the wealthiest suburbs in the Twin Cities.”
“It’s not Lake Minnetonka, though. Or North Oaks. Or Sunfish Lake. You need to understand. These are people who never attend the Minnesota State Fair for fear of rubbing up against the wrong kind of people.”
“You should be glad to be out of the family, then.”
“I loved him, Taylor. Kurtis. I would have done anything for him. Sexual things that I found appalling because … You don’t want to hear about that. It was never good enough anyway. I was never good enough. No one could possibly be good enough. It’s what Kurt was taught every day of his life, him and his siblings. There’s the Guernseys and then there’s everyone else. They live above the rest of us.”
“Yet he married you. From the photos I’ve seen, I would guess you were both in love.”
“I was in love. Kurt was making a protest against his family. No, that’s not fair. Kurtis did love me, and if we had lived somewhere else besides Axis Mundi we might have made a go of it. Only there’s something about that place that drains the soul out of these people. If you meet them anywhere else—Kurt, Robert Jr., and Melissa, too—you’ll believe they’re good people, smart, funny, considerate, brave. At Axis Mundi, though—”
“What is Axis Mundi?”
“That’s the name the old man—Robert Paul—that’s the name he gave to his estate. It means ‘center of the world.’ All of the Guernseys live there. The old man insists. He rules over the place like a feudal baron, controlling everybody’s lives. He has a personal assistant named Fisk following him around, doing his bidding. Once early in my marriage, Robert Paul didn’t approve of something I said at dinner about the Federal Reserve Board. He waved his hand and said, ‘You’re dismissed.’ His flunky, minion, servant, aide—I don’t know what to call him—Fisk walked over, picked up my plate, utensils, and wineglass, and carried them from the room. That’s Axis Mundi.
“Don’t get me wrong, Taylor. I have no one to blame but myself for what happened. I saw it coming. I knew the moment Kurtis dropped the prenup on my kitchen table the marriage would end with a bang instead of a whimper. He promised to destroy the prenup. I didn’t believe him. Yet I thought at the time—I could make it work. I could rescue the love of my life from Axis Mundi. Arrogance on my part, I suppose. Or naïveté. Or maybe I read too many young adult fantasy novels when I was a kid. Take your pick.”
“When he left you—”
“Kurt didn’t leave me. I left him. He was shocked when I walked out the door. He didn’t think I would do it. He thought his money would bind me to him. I stayed with my sister and her family while I was sorting out my life. He had Fisk hand-deliver a note reminding me, first, that I wouldn’t get a dime if I divorced him and, second, that he was still willing to take me back. I found out later it was the old man who actually composed the note. Fisk was supposed to wait while I packed my bags. I sent him away. Melissa told me later—we were still talking back then—she told me that Kurt had a fit when I didn’t return. It went against everything he was taught about being a Guernsey, that money was always the deciding factor. As far as the old man was concerned, Kurt was a weakling, not a man at all, because he couldn’t hold a wife. Eventually they had to call the family doctor to give Kurt a sedative. Again, it doesn’t surprise me that he just won’t let it go.”
“It’s possible that Kurtis isn’t involved in the hack,” I said.
“We’ll see.”
“In any case, you did go after his money.”
Brooke’s appearance didn’t change, yet I could see that the remark had distressed her. She expressed her concern with her hands, which began picking at invisible fibers on her clothes.
“That was David’s idea,” she said. “He told me it offended his sense of justice that I had so little to show for the time I spent being Kurt’s plaything. He told me he could have the prenup dismissed, that he would do all the work and all I would need to do was nod my head. I nodded. I was in a vulnerable place back then. If David had told me to dive off the Lake Street Bridge, I probably would have.”
“How did you meet?”
“I used to date David’s brother.”
“No. I meant you and Kurtis.”
“Oh. Grad school. I had a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Minnesota and was working for an investment bank. It became apparent that I wouldn’t be able to move into a management position unless I also had a master’s or better. I decided to go back to school. My employers encouraged me. They even paid part of my tuition. I began taking courses at Hamline University’s Minneapolis campus. I was twenty-seven and wondering where my career was headed. I was also wondering if I would ever meet Mr. Right. The first day of class, Kurtis was the guest speaker. Mr. Wrong, as it turned out, yet at the time … He scored a lot of points with me when he insisted that I get my master’s before we set a wedding date. He said he didn’t want his friends to think he was marrying a dumb blonde. I thought he was being cute. I discovered later that he had meant it. In his circle, you see a lot of trophy wives. It was a matter of pride with him that his people didn’t think I was one of them. Yet that’s what they thought anyway, probably more so now because of the settlement.”
“What did you do with it?”
“I invested it. All three-point-seven million. I may be a lousy judge of men, Taylor, but I know money. If this all goes back to court and a judge orders me to return the money with interest, I’ll pay it back with interest. It won’t break my heart at all. I understand David might be in trouble with the ABA, and I’ll be sorry for that. That’s all I’ll be sorry for, though.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“Why would you care?”
“I like you.”
“That’s kind of you to say. Tell me, what happens next?”
Dinner and a movie, I thought, before dismissing the suggestion. I tell myself all the time to never get involved with a subject of an investigation, that it never works out and sometimes can be downright unethical. Mostly, I listen. On the other hand, after all this was settled …
“Have you ever told anyone about the email Helin sent you?” I asked.
“The one telling me not to sign the prenup? No. I read it the day before the wedding. I remember I had a hangover at the time. Afterward, I deleted it. I’ve thought about it a few times over the years, about David’s advice, yet I never spoke of it. I never said, ‘I should have listened to my attorney.’ ’Course, he wasn’t really my lawyer at the time. He was my friend. We didn’t become lovers until … it must have been two, three weeks after my divorce was final. The second time, I mean. After we beat the prenup.”
Probably more information than I needed to hear. On the other hand, if Brooke and Helin were the only two who knew about the email, then maybe Freddie and I were wrong about this. Maybe it was a smash-and-grab after all.
“Did you speak of it while you were going through the divorce?” I asked.
“No.”
“Not even among yourselves?”
“No.”
“At a restaurant, a bar, someplace where you might have been overheard?”
“I don’t think so. I can’t remember … No. I have to say, no.”
“Okay.”
“I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Oh, I won’t. I have family, good friends, a good job, money in the bank, more than enough money to pay Kurtis if it comes to that, and won’t that piss him off. And his father, too. So I’m not worrying at all. It’s like a man once said, living well is the best revenge.”
Unfortunately, I thought, it’s not the only revenge.