out a financial profile, an envelope marked Photos, an audio CD and a DVD.
He surveyed the evidence with distaste. This was the material that could set Eva’s life on a different trajectory. Yet it looked harmless enough unless you were asking it to give up its secrets.
He flipped through the stapled sheets that constituted Ron’s financial dossier on Carter. The report was just as Ron had described. Carter had a mortgaged apartment in San Francisco and sizable loans at the bank. He was no Bill Gates, and probably not even in the ballpark of his Newell antecedents.
Griffin opened the envelope next. A dozen or so photos fell out, and he spread them out on the desk in front of him.
There were a couple of shots of a man who looked like Carter Newell in a parking lot, embracing and kissing a stacked brunette.
Another photo showed the couple walking hand in hand into a restaurant. From their body language, and the way the woman leaned close to the man next to her, it was clear the two were more than friends.
Griffin guessed these photos were taken when Ron had tailed Newell to the restaurant in Berkeley.
Griffin focused on the remaining photos. They looked like they’d been taken at another point when Ron had caught up with the pair. They showed the couple meeting in a park, embracing under a tree near a walking path, and then kissing and touching on a park bench.
The photos were decent evidence as far as they went. But they weren’t strong proof Carter and the woman had progressed to being lovers.
Griffin sat behind his desk and popped the DVD into his computer. Then he leaned back in his chair to watch.
The video began just as Ron had described.
A car was parked in a deserted lot illuminated by yellow streetlights. After a few moments, it began to shake and move with the exertions of its occupants. Eventually a disheveled Carter and a half-dressed woman emerged, and Carter helped the woman with the clasp of her bra and her sweater. While the woman brushed her hair and applied lipstick, Carter ran his hands over her. Finally the pair made it back into the car and drove off.
A second segment on the DVD showed Carter and the brunette arriving at a motel. Through the glass window of the motel’s front office, Carter and his female companion could be seen checking in. Afterward, the pair headed to a second-floor room.
When the video ended, Griffin leaned down to pop the DVD out of the computer.
His lips twisted. Apparently Carter wasn’t too cheap to shell out for a bed occasionally. Or maybe in some situations his sexual encounters didn’t need to be so hurried because he didn’t have to run back to Eva.
The bastard.
Griffin switched out the DVD for the CD Ron had sent, set it to Play and leaned back in his chair again.
After a few seconds, the audio came on. A man and woman could be heard conversing against a low murmur of background noise and voices.
At first the couple talked about banal things like the menu, but after a waiter had departed with their order, the conversation turned sexual.
The woman used Carter’s name a couple of times, while he referred to her as “Sondra” or, more often, “baby.”
Griffin rolled his eyes as the woman recalled her last sexual encounter with Carter, then pouted about not having more of his time.
Yeah, right, Griffin thought. If Carter wasn’t set on reeling in an heiress, he supposed the woman had a fighting chance of getting more of Carter’s attention.
Griffin listened as Carter tried to placate his companion with assurances that he’d soon whisk her away for a Mexican vacation and that he was expecting a windfall that he couldn’t go into details about.
Griffin felt his temper ignite. It was clear Carter’s windfall was his upcoming marriage. Obviously Carter wasn’t going to divulge to his lover that he was two-timing an heiress. It might expose him to blackmail.
Carter was toast, Griffin thought. If he ever got his hands on pedigree boy…
The audio recording continued to follow the couple through their meal. Toward the end of it, Carter began to describe in intimate detail what he wanted to do to Sondra.
When the audio recording ended, Griffin mulled over his options and didn’t like any of them.
Just how the hell was he supposed to share this with Eva? She’d hate him for life, if she didn’t despise him already.
Later that day, he had the misfortune of running into Marcus when the older man stopped by his office just as he was about to exit it.
“Have you heard anything yet from Ron?” Marcus asked.
“Nothing,” Griffin heard himself respond.
He didn’t even have to think about his reply.
But it occurred to him afterward it was the first time he’d had to lie to Marcus Tremont about anything important.
Three
Eva curled up on the couch. Her Bluetooth headset allowed her to speak with her mother while she paged through one of several magazines about San Francisco’s social scene. She liked to keep up with what her clients, as well as her business competition, were doing.
It was a Tuesday evening—a night of the week she could usually count on to be able to kick back and relax.
As a party planner, she lived on the opposite timetable from the rest of the world. Midweek was her weekend, while at the end of the week, she became turbocharged as things heated up at work. On weekends, she was often supervising her employees at some museum fund-raiser or at a socialite-hosted charity lunch, making sure everything went off flawlessly.
Now, however, her midweek was being consumed by wedding planning.
“What about the Fairmont?” her mother asked.
“I’m not sure it’s exactly what I’m looking for….”
It had quickly become apparent to her that her mother was picturing a wedding for hundreds of family, friends and assorted business associates.
The historic Fairmont Hotel, with its gilded rooms projecting an old-world elegance, was well suited for the purpose.
The problem was, Eva acknowledged, that she herself longed for something more intimate.
But Carter seemed to be on the same page as her mother.
“What about the Palace of Fine Arts then?” her mother asked, naming another popular and elegant San Francisco wedding location.
Eva sighed.
“I heard that,” her mother said.
“Did you?” she asked absently.
“It’s too bad your father owns only commercial office space,” her mother remarked with dry humor. “At a time like this, we could use an inside
