Jason, how’re the classes coming?” she asked the young law student who supplemented his scholarship by doing runs for a good many of the law offices in town.
“Hard.” The tall, thin twenty-three-year-old grinned as he handed Juliet a clipboard to sign off on the delivery. “And long.”
“You keeping up?”
“Always.” With a nod and one last smile, he was off as quickly as he’d arrived, leaving Juliet in possession of a thick manila envelope from Paul Schuster.
With that almost perpetual knot back in her stomach, she dropped her satchel and keys, sank down to her desk chair and slit the envelope.
AN HOUR LATER, sitting in a quiet out-of-the-way bar not far from Mission Beach, Juliet waited for Blake Ramsden. Meeting for drinks might not have been the best idea, but she wanted Blake to have a glass of whiskey handy when she showed him what Paul Schuster had sent.
Besides, it was Friday night and they would’ve been completely alone if they’d met in either of their offices.
In spite of all of her advice to herself, her heart fluttered the second he walked in the door. He’d said he was coming straight from the office, and while he’d pulled off his tie, undone the top button of his white dress shirt and rolled up his sleeves, he still looked every bit the successful professional that he was.
His dark hair, the exact color of his daughter’s, was rumpled as though he’d either driven with the moon roof open on his Mercedes SUV, or run his hand through it more than a few times.
She hoped he’d driven with the roof open.
“Should we order first?” he asked as he slid opposite her into the back booth of the mostly deserted pub. It was still a bit early for the after-work crowd.
“Probably.”
His eyes, when they met hers in the dim light, were warm. Concerned. “That bad, huh?”
Juliet nodded.
The older female waitress, who’d already been over twice, made a beeline for their table as soon as she saw Blake. She took their drink order, suggested an appetizer platter, and as Juliet and Blake nodded, smiled and said she’d be right back.
“We’re either going to have to stop meeting like this, or start ordering dinner,” Blake said with a half grin. “The carbohydrate count in those appetizers must be sky high. Not to mention the cholesterol.”
“Probably not,” Juliet responded, knowing that, if her stomach didn’t settle soon, she wouldn’t be eating enough of the appetizers for excessive carbs or cholesterol to be an issue. “Not that I pay as much attention to stuff like that as I should,” she added.
“I have only since finding out about my father’s heart condition.”
She frowned, studied features that looked the epitome of health. “Are you at risk for heart problems?” The thought had never occurred to her. Somewhere, in the far recesses of her mind, she’d figured she had an entire lifetime ahead of her to tell him he was Mary Jane’s father. Like maybe after the little girl was married. And he was a grandfather.
Or had she thought that she had a whole lifetime to find out if that magic night nine years before had been anything more than a figment of her imagination, glossed over and made more perfect by the passage of time?
“I’m healthy as a horse,” he said easily. But his expression changed almost as soon as he’d said the words.
Was he wondering if longevity might not matter if his life was spent behind bars? She ran her finger along a scratch in the scarred maple table.
Blake took a long swig from his whiskey and soda as soon as it arrived. Then he set down the glass and looked over at her. “Shoot.”
Juliet handed him the sheaf of papers she’d had on the table beside her.
“Eaton James’s wife found these while going through his personal things at home. She sent them to Schuster, who’s admitted them as evidence.”
Blake remained calm as he glanced through copies of a checking-account register, paying particular attention to the items that had been marked with a yellow highlighter.
Had Schuster done that? Or Juliet?
There were copies of bank statements that corroborated the check numbers and amounts. Copies of canceled checks, both front and signed-off back, that also matched—numbers, accounts, dates.
It didn’t take an attorney, or even anyone very intelligent, to figure this one out. What he had before him was irrefutable evidence that for at least the year before Blake’s father’s death, Eaton James had been making monthly payments to Walter Ramsden.
“Shit.”
“That was my first response.”
Her first. That meant she’d had a second. Blake’s mind raced. “Is it possible James is a forger on a much larger scale then he admitted? Could he have forged my signature on that bank account in the Islands, forged my father’s signature here, and on the post-office box?”
“It’s possible.” She handed him another cluster of papers. Bank statements from the Cayman Islands account.
With highlighted deposits matching the ones he’d just seen on James’s personal account.
“That’s good, right? It fits the theory. For whatever reason, James was writing himself checks out of his personal account and hiding the money in the account in the Cayman Islands.”
“I’m not sure why he’d do that,” Juliet said. The dim lighting prevented him from seeing the brown flecks in her eyes, but their warmth was evident just the same.
He wasn’t sure he needed to see that warmth, though. It weakened him. Made him want things that weren’t going to happen.
“If he was siphoning money from Terracotta…”
Juliet shook her head. “He wouldn’t run it through his personal bank account.”
“He would if…”
Blake had no idea what followed that “if.” He just couldn’t believe that his father had been blackmailing Eaton James. It didn’t fit.
Juliet slid another statement across to him. He looked to see if there was anything else on the table beside her. There wasn’t.
He glanced at the statement on top of his pile. Took another sip of whiskey. Read the damning words again. Skimmed the highlighted entries.
“My father deposited the money into his own personal account.” There was no forging this one. The bank account had belonged to Walter Ramsden. Blake had turned over the information himself.
Sitting back while the waitress delivered their tray of wings and veggies, stuffed potato skins and nachos, Juliet just watched him, saying nothing.
He wished she’d speak and tell him it was over, that she couldn’t help him. Or better yet, that she’d
