It makes a difference whose ox is gored.
— Martin Luther
Grady limped around the room, unable to resist giving the dresser another kick. That way his foot would hurt again, and he could curse again.
How could she? How? This woman, who guarded her privacy so much. This woman, who’d just found out that privacy had been caught on tape for an old man who was meaner than a snake. A man who had made his life’s work browbeating his children and making everyone around him miserable. This... this... this billionaire.
Aw, shit.
“The money,” he ground out, slamming his fist against his other palm. “The damned money. All right, all right, so Annie doesn’t have much money. She was honest about that, the same way she was honest about why she took this job.”
Honest. Nice word, but something inside him wasn’t buying it. Annie told the truth, but she only told as much truth as she found necessary. Sure, he knew now that she’d been a foster child. He believed her, too. She might have watched a million movies, but nobody was that good an actor. Her story had been real, her pain had been real.
And both had been thrown out the door without a backward glance when stacked up against the fifty thousand she’d make playing Archie’s long-lost granddaughter for a month.
What had he thought about her? Oh, yeah. Too good to be true. Man, he’d got that in one! When was he going to start listening to that nagging little voice in his head? Probably not until he stopped thinking about Annie— her smile, her laugh, her wit... how she felt in his arms.
Grady knew what was wrong, what ate at him most. He’d seen Annie as someone he could really care about, someone he might just love, and now she’d disappointed the hell out of him.
He wanted out. He wanted far away, as fast as he could get there.
And he’d be damned if he’d leave Annie here, to make it through the rest of the month without him.
Grady picked up his cell phone, punched in some numbers. “Quinn?” he barked after two rings, as soon as he heard the receiver being picked up.
“No, Grady, it’s Shelby. Quinn’s in the shower. How are you? Is anything wrong? Are you bringing Annie down to meet us this afternoon? Quinn said you weren’t but, well, have you changed your mind? I’d really like to meet her.”
Grady took a breath, willed himself calm. “No, Shelby, honey, we can’t get away. The high price of duty, and all of that. I was just wondering if Quinn would do me a little favor, that’s all.”
“Oh. Well, okay, I’ll have him phone you... oh, wait. Here he comes now.” Grady could tell she’d put her hand over the mouthpiece, although he could still hear her laughing, saying, “Quinn! Stop that, you’re getting me all wet. Here, talk to Grady, because now I’m going to have to go change my blouse. Honestly, darling, it isn’t as if we didn’t just crawl out of bed a half hour ago...”
“Yo, pal? What’s up?” Quinn asked a moment later, as Grady was raking a hand through his hair, remembering that he and Annie had been that happy, just a half hour ago.
“I want you to do some more digging, okay?” he told his partner and friend. “Very private, just on Annie Kendall, and with the information you find delivered to me personally, either by phone or by messenger. I don’t want Maisie within five miles of anything you find out. Got that?”
“I’ve got that,” Quinn said, then added, “and you’ve got something, too, by the sound of your voice. What’s the matter, Grady? I’m the angry one and you’re the laid-back one, remember? Why do I feel like we’re doing some weird role reversal here? Is it Maisie or Ms. Kendall? Because somebody’s sure put a bug up your—”
“Maisie is doing her usual good job, in her usual incomprehensible way,” Grady cut in. “Which leaves Annie. I found out some things about her that might help in a search of her background, and I want you checking them out personally, okay?”
“Because she got to you? How did she get to you, buddy? Give me all the news that’s fit to print.”
Grady sat down on the edge of the bed. “Quinn, can we just leave it alone for a while, okay?”
“Wow. That bad, huh? Okay, pal, no more questions. Just give me what you’ve got, and I’ll take it from there. But what if you don’t like the answers I come up with? What then?”
“I don’t like the answers I’ve come up with, Quinn,” Grady told him. “And, frankly, I can’t believe I could be so wrong about somebody. She’s hiding something, Grady, I know it. Just check her out through the foster care system for me. She’s twenty-five, but didn’t enter the system until she was about three years old. Do the math, use the name Kendall, and check Pennsylvania and neighboring states. Wait—her picture was stamped Liisa of Baltimore. So check Maryland, too, while you’re at it. And she spent at least two years in some sort of foster-care detention center, from sixteen to eighteen. Is that enough for a start?”
“It should be,” Quinn told him. “But I’ll run it as Kendall, and then run it all again with no name, just age and sex, because I haven’t come up with anything on your Annie Kendall so far that matches her. What did Maisie find out?”
Grady dropped his head into his hand. “Enough to blackmail me for the rest of my natural life,” he gritted out. “Never mind. Just tell me again why I’m staying on the job, so that I can look in the mirror when I shave.”
“Why are you staying on the job? Oh, let me see. The money?”
“Definitely the wrong answer,” Grady said, standing up as Maisie walked into the room through the connecting doors. “Never mind. Call me tomorrow, okay?”
He flipped the phone shut and watched as Maisie walked around the room, dragging her fingertips along the dresser, inspecting those fingertips for dust. “Hiya, stud muffin, honey,” she said at last, when Grady was just about ready to strangle her. “How’s tricks?”
“Not funny,” he told her. “Shouldn’t you be packing?”
“Why? I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you. How’s the foot?” she asked as he limped over to the window to glare at the scenery, which by rights should have burst into flame under the heat of his gaze.
“Not broken, yet. But if you want to bend over, I guess I can give it another shot.”
“Now who’s not funny, honey?” Maisie said, depositing the bottle of mauve nail polish on the dresser before sitting down on the edge of the bed. “Look, you’re embarrassed. I don’t know why, because from the little we heard, I’d say you did a bang-up job—”
“Maisie, you’re fired.”
“Right. I’ll send myself a termination notice. But, in the meantime, I was the one with the earphones on, Grady, not Archie. He didn’t hear a thing, honest. I was just about to sneak the tape out of there and bring it to you when you started yelling that you were coming to get Archie. Honey, if you ever want to laugh, you’ve got to see an old man with wet toenails and cotton stuck between his toes, trying to run around, find a place to hide. He’s really scared of you, you know. Bullies are like that. They get away with whatever they can get away with, then turn tail and run when somebody finally stands up to them.”
“And that concludes today’s lesson in psychology from a woman who paints old men’s toenails and calls it being an investigator.”
“What’s the big deal? I used to paint Grandpa Schmidt’s toenails for him all the time. He loved it. So, I figured, maybe there’s more than one way to skin a Peevers.”
Grady looked at his assistant with new respect, and not a little trepidation. “If I’ve said it before it bears repeating. Maisie, sometimes you really scare me.”
She patted her curls. “Men are always saying that to me, honey. Anyway, I did good, right? I found the taping room before you did, didn’t I? And these.” She ended, opening the knapsack of a purse she carried with her everywhere, dumping cassette tapes out onto the bed. “And you thought I was just another pretty face. Hah!”
Grady turned around, walked over to the bed. He couldn’t help himself. He picked up the tapes, one after the other. “Muriel. Mitzi. A.W. Junior. Banning and A.W. and Junior? Now that’s interesting.” He dropped the others and inserted the last tape into the machine on his desk.
“I’ll use my own phone to call down for coffee,” Maisie said, already heading back to her own room. “You just listen, and then I’ll transcribe anything you want a hard copy, okay? Unless you still want me to pack? Leave here? Leave her?”
“All right, all right, you’ve made your point. But I swear, Maisie, if you ever repeat anything you heard on that tape this morning...”
“What tape, honey? What did I hear? Did I hear anything? Nope, don’t think so.”
“Thanks,” Grady said, pushed the play button, and sat down at the desk, ready to listen.
* * *
An hour later, with Maisie back in Archie’s rooms, acting as nail-file-wielding bodyguard, he was standing on the first tee with Jefferson Banning, having called and asked if it was possible they could get in a round of golf that morning.
Banning was dressed in banana yellow slacks and a black top, looking very much the country-club champ of at least sartorial splendor.
Within three holes, Grady believed the guy to also be a champion cheat, or at least a man who wouldn’t think twice about cheating to win.
So Grady let him win. By the time they’d made the turn at number nine, Banning was up four holes in match play, and sitting two at only thirty yards from the green on the par five tenth.
Grady had to hand it to him. The guy really could hit the hell out of the ball. He did his cheating when his long drives missed the fairway, which they’d done three times already. The guy was long as anything, but he wasn’t always straight.
Grady stopped the cart beside Banning’s ball, and waited until the lawyer had hopped out, chipping wedge in hand. “You know, I shouldn’t say this, but I think I might play better if we had a bet going on the round,” he said, shaking his head in self-disgust.
Banning squinted at him from under his golf cap. “We’re already playing for five dollars a hole. That isn’t a bet?”
“Not much of one, obviously, or maybe I’d be playing better. So what do you say we up the ante?”
Banning looked ahead, to where Grady’s third shot had landed badly buried just under the lip of a sand trap beside the green. “Okay, if you want to lose money to me, I’m not going to argue with you. What’s the bet?”
“You win and I hand over five hundred bucks a hole for each hole I’m down when it’s over.”
“Five hundred a hole? Did I hear that right? I’m up four holes with only nine to go, I’m sitting two with no reason I won’t reach the green, and you’re sitting three, in the trap. Much as I hate taking candy from babies, you’re on!”
Grady waited until Banning had landed his chip ten feet from the pin, then asked, “Don’t you want to know what you owe me if I win?”
“Why should I? You can’t possibly win,” Banning said, hopping back into the cart. Grady wondered how the guy would look with his chipping wedge wrapped around his neck. “Oh, okay, what is it? How much?”
“Everything you know about Double A Enterprises,” Grady said, slamming his foot on the pedal so that Banning had to hold on as he drove the cart onto the side of the hill next to the green.
“What’s the matter, counselor?” he said, as the two of them got out, Grady reaching for his sand wedge, Banning for his putter. “You’re not smiling anymore.”
“That information is confidential,” Banning said, as Grady stepped into the sand trap.
“Really? Not from Archie, it isn’t. Or didn’t you know the old bastard has the place wired for sound? Fart in the morning room and he smells it coming from his state-of-the-art surveillance equipment set up in his sitting room.”
Grady looked at his lie, decided where to place his feet and, with a minimum of effort, blasted the ball out of the trap, to land two feet from the cup. He wouldn’t win the hole, but it would be the last one he lost or he’d know the reason why.
Actually, he did win the hole, because Banning three-putted from ten feet. It wasn’t easy to putt, not when your hands were shaking and you were worried about staining your really keen banana slacks.
* * *
“Can we talk?”
Annie looked up from the book she’d been reading as she sat in one of the gazebos, because suddenly all of Peevers Mansion wasn’t large enough to hold her. The book hadn’t been enough to hold her interest, either, but she’d kept reading. It had been easier than thinking.
She’d sensed Grady’s presence before he spoke, had actually been watching his approach out of the corner of her eye. She knew his walk, his voice, his smile. The fact that he had a flat, brownish birthmark on his left hip that had, she’d told him, reminded her of a map of Texas.
But she didn’t know him, and he didn’t know her. They’d slept together, made love together, and they didn’t know each other. Now, most probably, they never would.
“Free country,” she said, snapping out the words, and Grady, who had been standing on the first step up to the gazebo, his hand on the white-painted wood, boosted himself up the three steps and into the enclosure. Which suddenly got smaller than a bread box. “Not that I have to listen. Besides, I thought you’d quit.”
Grady took off his golf cap, and Annie’s heart did a small, lurching flip as he revealed his hat hair; those shaggy sandy bangs pushed forward onto his forehead, making him look like a cross between a young, earnest Robert Redford in The Way We Were and Matt Damon in just about anything.
“I did,” Grady said, definitely catching her attention. “For about five minutes, until I figured out that I couldn’t leave you here on your own. It would be like tying a raw steak around your neck, then throwing you in with the lions. So I’m staying.”
“Gee, thanks. So nice to know you don’t think I can take care of myself,” Annie said, closing the book with a snap, then standing up and beginning to pace. She had to keep moving. If she stopped moving, she’d have to throw herself in his arms and tell him the worst moment of her life had been watching his face as she’d told him she was staying “for the money.”
Grady ran a hand through his hair, but it resettled in those same cap-flattened bangs. “You know, you can be a real pain in my—” He threw back his head, sighed. “Okay, let’s start over, shall we?”
“Let’s not and say we did,” Annie told him, knowing she sounded juvenile, but past the point of caring. She’d been to bed with this man. To bed with this man! And not twelve hours later, they were barely able to be civil with each other. Why couldn’t life be more like the movies, with all those neat happily-ever-afters?
“Did Maisie get the rest of the tapes Archie recorded in your room?”
Annie bit her lip, nodded. “She gave them to me, yes, and told me you had her get them.”
“So you know I haven’t listened to them?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“And you know that Archie didn’t hear what we said this morning? That only Maisie heard?”
“She told me. She also told me she’s already forgotten what she heard. Right after she borrowed my new perfume, which I’m pretty sure I’ll never see again.”
“She has her little quirks,” Grady admitted, smiling slightly. “But you can trust her.”
“I know.” Annie hugged herself with her arms, as if cold. “So, what now?”
Grady began rhythmically slapping his golf hat against his thigh. “So now I tell you what I found out on the golf course today. Now I tell you what Archie didn’t tell us. Now I tell you why he thinks someone is out to kill him.”
Annie sat down on the built-in bench directly across the gazebo. “I’m listening.”
“It was all on the tapes, or at least enough of it for me to go looking for Banning to fill in the blanks.”
“Jefferson? He’s trying to kill Archie?”
“No, Banning is trying to make money no matter how it goes,” Grady told her, his smile fairly close to evil. “I had Maisie do a little research, just as to Archie’s will and Pennsylvania law. If Banning is executor, he gets two percent of the estate for his trouble. If he appoints himself lawyer for the estate, bam, he collects another two percent. And, if there’s a trust, and I’m sure there is, and if Banning appoints himself trustee, which he can do, he stands to collect another one percent per year, every year. Archie says he’s worth about a billion. It doesn’t take a genius to do the math and see that Jefferson Banning, Esquire, stands to make himself a tidy fortune when the toilet-paper king finally excuses himself and shuffles off to that great big men’s room in the sky.”
Annie closed her eyes, reviewed her times table, inserted a decimal point. “Wow.”
“You betchum,” Grady said, glad to have at last proved his point. Besides, he didn’t want Annie thinking Banning was a nice guy. Because Banning wasn’t a nice guy. And neither was he, because he didn’t have to point all of this out to Annie; he just wanted to.
“Now, let me tell you the other part. While Banning is acting as Archie’s lawyer, he’s also acting as lawyer for A.W. and Junior. Stupidly, as it turns out, they frequently hold private little meetings in the sunroom, where Archie has set up both audio and video.”
Annie knitted her fingers together, sat forward eagerly. “This is getting good now, isn’t it?” she asked, suddenly able to forget her nervousness at being so close to Grady after their night together, after their argument this morning. “What are they doing?”
“What they’re doing, Annie, is siphoning bucks out of Daddy’s company and into their own, Double A Enterprises. That’s A for Arthur William, another A for Archie, Junior. Or, if you want, for Absolutely Asinine. Banning set up the corporation for them, and a whole bunch of smaller corporations under the Double A umbrella. I don’t know where they got the seed money—probably that old-fashioned way, they embezzled it.”
“Slow down. I think this is about to get complicated.”
“Not too much. Double A has all these little companies, which really don’t exist. The little companies act as the middleman in everything Archie does.”
“How?”
Grady rubbed his hands together, trying to think up an easy way to explain. “Okay,” he said at last. “If a train leaves Pittsburgh, traveling east, at five o’clock, and another train is going west from Philly, leaving at three o’clock—”
“That’s not funny,” Annie told him.
“I know, I know. I just wanted to lighten the mood a little.”
“Didn’t work.”
“I’d noticed,” Grady said, wincing. “I know—think about it this way. Double A, and all its little Double A’s, are toll booths on the roads leading to Peevers Enterprises. Anything that goes into Peevers Enterprises, and everything that goes out, has to pass through the Double A toll booth.”
Annie pointed at him, smiled. “And everyone pays a toll!”
“Exactly! The toll booth doesn’t do anything but collect the toll. Doesn’t supply raw materials or trucks. Doesn’t do squat. Double A is a middleman in its purest—and most illegal—form. Prices jacked up at both ends, with Double A taking its cut. Double A even provides an accounting service for the toilet-paper king, just to keep the books neat. There is barely a penny spent by the Peevers corporation that doesn’t go through Double A and come out smaller, one way or the other.”
“Wow,” Annie said again. “And Jefferson Banning is in on it?”
“Not to his mind, he isn’t. He just set up the corporations, and takes his cut, calling it all fees. As far as the good counselor is concerned, it’s all perfectly legal.
I don’t think the Bar Association would call it ethical, though. However, if Archie keeps changing his will, cutting out his kids, sticking them back in, and maybe one day decides to cut Banning out as well—well, Banning’s got his bases covered. He’s still working for Double A.”
Annie’s shoulders slumped. “Poor Archie. Everybody’s ripping him off. His children. Dickens. No wonder he’s paranoid.”
“We’re not done yet,” Grady told her. “For the last six months, Archie has been slowly taking back the reins, and awarding new contracts to suppliers other than those smaller dummy corporations dealing with Double A. Archie is dealing direct with many of his suppliers again. Our boys are starting to lose money they’d come to count on, they’re probably pretty sure Archie knows what’s up, and that could mean they’re getting desperate. Archie certainly seems to think so.”
Annie shook her head. “I don’t get it. Why doesn’t Archie just tell them he knows, and be done with it? Call the police, or the district attorney, or somebody? Report them, disown them, whatever. Get it over with. It’s not like he likes them or anything, right?”
“Archie? Do something simple?” Now it was Grady’s turn to shake his head. “He can’t, Annie. If he did, it would be admitting his so-called idiot boys got the best of him, even for a little while. He’d rather take an arrow through the throat than admit that. No, he wants this quiet and private and eventually disastrous for A.W. and Junior. He wants to torture them by changing his will every week. But he also wants to stay alive until he’s watched Double A go under. According to our friend Banning, that should be soon. Unless Archie dies, of course, and then Double A will be right back in business, taking the profits from both ends. Now, admit it. Aren’t you proud of me? I’ve figured it out.”
Annie looked at him, her head tipped to one side. “Don’t be smug, because you haven’t solved all of it. You can’t prove either A.W. or Junior tried to kill Archie. And, since you can’t, Archie’s still in danger.”
“You and Archie are still in danger,” Grady corrected, rising, offering her his arm so that they could return to the house. “You do remember that you’re the sacrificial lamb in all of this, don’t you? The unexpected new heir, who could end up owning the business and heir to everything else Archie owns?”
“Everything Dickens hasn’t stolen,” she corrected, trying to pretend that being so close to Grady, her arm through his, their steps matching as they crossed the lawn, wasn’t doing rather pleasant things to her insides.
Grady laughed. “There is that. Now, as I’m hoping we’ve got a truce between us, how about we unearth my handy-dandy fingerprint kit and take on that bathroom of yours. I’m in a hurry to get this solved so we can get out of here. I don’t know about you, but this place is really starting to get on my nerves.”