As the weeks wore on and Blake’s tension grew, she was eager to relieve any of it that she could.
Marcie finally landed a job in one of the larger San Diego studios, which lessened one of Juliet’s worries, freeing her up to focus more completely as she studied tax records, company records and bank records, and followed check trails, invoices, inventory, payables and receivables. She talked to every person on Schuster’s list—and Blake’s. Slowly, systematically, she was building a picture of the lives of Eaton James and Walter Ramsden. And to a lesser extent, Blake.
All she could really do for him was build the world’s best character reference. There simply wasn’t any evidence of fraudulent activity between him and his father or Eaton James. He’d been working in Honduras—and a couple of other countries—rebuilding villages. She’d be flying a couple of key witnesses in for the trial and had taken teleconference depositions with many more who would testify to Blake’s activities.
But none of that meant he hadn’t also been in communication with his father. She just couldn’t prove that he hadn’t been.
Schuster couldn’t prove that he had been, either, she assured Blake one Thursday night in late June. They had bank statements but no matching check numbers—no way to prove where the money in the Cayman account had come from. However, as Blake quickly pointed out, with those bank statements hanging over him, complete with matching payments from Eaton James to Blake’s father, Schuster might not have to prove anything else.
So far, nothing had turned up in any records anywhere to show monies leaving for the Cayman Islands. However, ironically, Juliet had found Ramsden contributions to a charity for homeless children in Honduras in amounts that perfectly matched the amounts of money—and pretty nearly the timing—of all the payments from Eaton James to Walter Ramsden.
Also ironic, and not lost on Blake when she told him, was the fact that the money was doing exactly what the Eaton Estates investment was meant to do—feeding poor and disadvantaged children in Honduras.
Blake had to cancel an appointment for drinks the last Tuesday in June. There’d been a fall at one of his sites and while the fault had clearly been a subcontractor’s not working to safety code, Blake had gone immediately to the hospital to sit with the young man’s pregnant wife.
Arriving home a couple of hours earlier than planned to find what she’d expected to be an empty house blazing with lights, Juliet pulled the BMW into the carport and hurried inside. Other than Marcie’s morning sickness, life had been pretty glorious at the McNeil cottage now that school and Brownies were done, and Mary Jane could spend her days at home, at the studio with her aunt, at the office doing odd jobs for her mother and Duane Wilson, or with Donna Wilson.
There were still moments when Mary Jane worried about her mother spending time with Blake Ramsden. Whenever the little girl knew Juliet had been with Blake, she’d crawled into bed with her mother that night. And Marcie had had some fairly alarming—to Juliet—moments of doubts about her decision to leave Maple Grove. Usually after a bad bout of throwing up. And Juliet—well, she was getting used to waiting out her own moments of doubt and guilt and secret longings, of which she was ashamed every time she came home to her single pregnant sister and sweet insecure daughter.
But all things considered, the McNeil women living together was a successful arrangement.
Mary Jane was sitting at the kitchen table, arms folded across her chest. She was still wearing the white shorts and yellow butterfly top she’d had on when Juliet left for work that morning and her curls were completely dry, which meant she hadn’t gone swimming with Marcie as they’d planned.
Frowning, looking around for Marcie, Juliet set her satchel on the counter. “Hi, imp, what’s up? I thought you and Aunt Marcie were going to the pool.”
Since Marcie’s schedule allowed her to be home fairly often during the afternoon, Juliet had bought a family membership to a community center with an outdoor pool.
“We were.” Juliet couldn’t tell if Mary Jane was hurt or angry, but something was obviously wrong.
“So what happened?”
“I didn’t want to go.”
Heart sinking, Juliet sat down opposite her daughter, reaching over to brush the curls behind her ears and watching as they sprang right back. Would Blake’s hair be as curly if he allowed it to grow?
“How come?” she asked gently. “You love to swim.”
“Because.”
Mary Jane stared glumly at the table.
“Where’s Aunt Marcie?”
“In her room.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to see her ever again.”
Juliet drew in a deep breath. Let it out slowly. She’d made it through almost a whole month without the constant panic and tension that had been riding her since Mary Jane had begged not to return to school number two after the Christmas holidays.
She’d complained that the school had had too many dumb rules. And Juliet had had to agree with her. But still…
“Why are you mad at Aunt Marcie?”
Please let this be something simple. Like Marcie eating the last chocolate snack cake.
Not that Mary Jane had ever let something like that upset her.
“She lied.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
OKAY, SO IT WAS a miscommunication. That was relatively easy to fix. As soon as her daughter told her the whole story, she could bridge the gap in her understanding.
“To you?” Juliet waited for the nod.
Mary Jane looked up, her eyes filled with anger. “To you.”
“Sweetie, Marcie didn’t lie to me. We made a pact when we were young that we’d never lie to each other and we never have. Even when telling the truth has been hard and we’ve hurt each other’s feelings.”
Mary Jane’s chin jutted forward. “She lied to you, Mom. I know she did. I heard her.”
She’d never seen Mary Jane so angry and hurt and scared all at once.
“When?”
The little girl’s eyes glistened. “When she told you she wasn’t talking to Hank. He calls here.”
Smiling gently, Juliet breathed a sigh of relief. “He calls, sweetie, but Aunt Marcie doesn’t talk to him.”
Marcie had told Hank that she’d call him when the baby was born and that she didn’t want to talk to him until then. Juliet suspected that her sister was afraid she’d give in and go home to Maple Grove if Hank pressured her hard enough. Hank, who was turning out to be surprisingly determined, still called.
Where had all that determination been for the past fifteen years when Marce had sat home night after night, unhappy and going nowhere?
She
