Blue Willow (33 page)

“I want you to tell me if you knew or suspected that anything strange was going on,” Artemas continued in the same, deadened tone. “Anything you can remember—comments Richard made, any odd behavior on his part, anything at all.”

Her voice finally escaped from the knot of despair in her chest. “I won’t help you make a scapegoat out of my husband. If you think I’ll ever help you do that, you don’t know me at all.”

A muscle popped in his cheek. “My sister is dead. My brother will walk with a limp the rest of his life. Several executives from companies owned by Colebrook International were killed. For God’s sake, Lily, so many lives were lost—and so many people will have to live with that grief. They deserve justice. My family and I deserve it. You’re caught in the middle, and you have to think about what’s fair, what’s decent—no matter how hard it is to accept the truth. There’s nothing I can do to protect you.”

“I’ve never needed your protection. I’ve proved that.”

“Lily, your landscaping business is tied to this. You worked on this project from the beginning.”

“Are you forgetting why? That I didn’t want any part of it—I didn’t want Richard’s firm to be part of it. That you coerced me.”

“Coerced?” His face, lined with strain, became even more drawn. “I gave a struggling pair of young architects an opportunity no one else would have given them, and a talented landscape designer the chance to prove herself.”

“You insinuated yourself into our lives, and I couldn’t even tell Richard why. I couldn’t hurt his pride. You knew that.”

His shoulders slumped a little. “There’s no point in arguing about my motives now.”

“You’re right,” she said, her tone condemning. “Because I understood them a long time ago. You’re capable of being ruthless to get what you want.”

“I came here to ask you for access to Richard’s personal files. I’ve been told he did most of his drafting at home. I want you to let my people go through Richard’s files.”

She stared at him. Her mind was hollow, except for one thought.
He wants to punish me for marrying Richard. He wants to shame me for having a child with Richard. He wants me to beg him for forgiveness
. “I chose my loyalties a long time ago,” she said evenly, “and I won’t desert them now.”

“They’ll ruin you. And if you don’t cooperate with me, there won’t be a damned thing I can do to stop it.”

“So you’re saying you have the power to save me?” She put her head in her hands. “If you had stayed out of my life, my son would be alive. My son is dead because of you.”

It was as if all the room’s light had been absorbed in his silence. When he finally spoke, his voice was a bare whisper, raw and stunned. “Your son is dead because of
Richard
. My sister is dead because of him. My brother is maimed. I’m going to prove that to you, even if you hate me for the rest of your life.”

She watched him walk swiftly to the doors Richard had built with such loving care. The heavy wooden panels gave rough, protesting groans as they slammed into the walls adjacent to them. He left without a backward glance, his posture brutally erect. The doors closed behind him gingerly, as if bruised.

They gathered in the hall outside James’s hospital room. The hall had the quiet, empty feel of evening, though bright, fluorescent lights played harshly on the white walls. Visitors’ hours were coming to an end soon. Nurses worked silently at their station. The low murmur of a television came from the open door of a room across the way.

Michael pulled the door to James’s room nearly closed. The hospital reminded him too much of the week he’d spent by his wife’s side, watching her fade under the hideous spell of the aneurysm in her brain. He felt the same stark defensiveness as now. It wasn’t possible that such a
joyous, vigorous life could hinge on the workings of a tiny artery. It wasn’t possible that his dynamic brother was trussed up by slings and bandages and humiliating tubes, in the bed beyond this door.

Cass leaned against a wall, her face bleak, her slender hands lying unfurled along the sides of her tan silk slacks. Several coffee stains dotted the white angora sweater she wore. Elizabeth wavered in place, her body so leaden with fatigue that the shoulders of her suit-dress seemed to be holding her up. She put an arm around Alise’s shoulders, and Alise wearily tilted her head against her sister-in-law’s. Alise held a clenched hand to her stomach. Michael noticed that blood had speckled the ivory blouse she wore. He touched her hand. She looked at it wistfully, then tucked a square of bloodstained gauze into a pocket of her long skirt. She had kept it when the nurses were changing one of the bandages on James’s leg.

“I can’t understand why Artemas isn’t here yet,” Elizabeth said. “If he doesn’t get here soon, he won’t get to talk to James again until after surgery tomorrow.”

Cass stirred, brushed broken fingernails across lips chapped from being chewed constantly, and said hoarsely, “I remember Tamberlaine saying they might be late. I think they were going almost an hour’s drive from here. Someplace in the suburbs north of the city.”

Alise sighed. “Why did Artemas feel he had to see her
today
?”

“She’s an old friend,” Michael said. “He didn’t want her to hear the news from one of her attorneys.”

Cass’s mouth curled in dismay. “An old friend,” she echoed, acid in her tone. “Who probably knew that her husband and his cronies were screwing us over. Hell, she was even in charge of the landscaping. She had to know what they were up to.”

“Not necessarily,” Michael said. “Artemas doesn’t think so.”

“Does it matter?” Cass shot back. “Anyone connected to those bastards deserves to suffer. I say she’s guilty by association.
She was married to Porter. She knew what he was capable of.”

“We don’t know who did what yet,” Elizabeth reminded her.

“Yes, but as soon as Oliver Grant caves in and talks, we will. If I hear his lawyers say ‘Our client followed the architects’ instructions’ one more time, I’ll strangle the S.O.B.”

Alise pressed two fingers to the bridge of her nose. Her face was as pale as the walls. “I don’t know who to hate.”

“You will. We all will,” Cass promised.

Michael searched the front pockets of his dark trousers, found the bronchial inhaler he always carried, and rolled it between his fingers like a worry stone. His chest felt tight, as if the soft cotton polo shirt were binding it. Dammit, he always had to deal with his asthma when he was upset, but he would deny it as long as he could. “Whether Grant talks or not, the facts will come out. If he and the architects were willing to undercut construction standards to save money, we’ll know it, as soon as the investigators dig into all the invoices and work schedules.”

“But
why
would they have been so desperate?” Elizabeth asked. “Couldn’t they have just told Julia that the project would run over budget? There’s no evidence that any money was embezzled. They weren’t diverting the construction accounts. Perhaps they simply miscalculated the cost to complete the building. That happens all the time.”

“Or they were sloppy and extravagant in managing the budget, then had to cover it,” Cass answered.

“No, Julia was obsessed with tracking every expense. She’d have known if they were running over budget in some areas.”

Michael felt grief pulling at the corners of his eyes. He tried to smile, but winced. “She always bragged about that. She could recite the per-unit cost of everything from the doorknobs to the filters in the air-conditioning system. And she knew labor costs to the penny. For each job title. One time she told me what the electricians were paid per
hour, then whipped open that leather binder she always carried and pointed to her notes to prove it.”

Elizabeth gave a painful little laugh. “She said she’d show us that she could bring even the Taj Mahal in on time and on budget.”

Cass straightened ominously. “She was wonderful, and they killed her. And that bitch Artemas calls his
friend
is part of it.”

Silence descended. Finally Michael said, “Our brother won’t condemn an innocent person. But if she’s not innocent, he won’t hesitate to make her regret it.”

“I know that,” Cass told him, the fury fading from her eyes. Michael put one long arm around her and gave her a hug. Elizabeth and Alise moved into the circle. The four of them stood together, linked in faith.

An elevator door opened at the end of the hall. They gratefully watched Artemas stride toward them. He frowned at their huddle. “Has something happened with—”

“No, he’s fine,” Elizabeth said quickly. “We were just letting him rest a minute while we waited for you.”

Artemas studied the weary, ragged-looking group protectively. Sometimes he had to remind himself that they were no longer children, nor he their surrogate parent. Michael and Elizabeth and Alise were thirty-one years old, Cass, thirty-three. He wanted to tell them that he felt broken inside, that today he’d lost more than they could imagine. But how could they understand? They only knew bits and pieces of the Mackenzie-Colebrook history, only that he had been planning to begin restoring the old estate at Blue Willow as part of the corporate move to Atlanta, only that Lily and he had been casual, distant friends over the years.

“How did your meeting with Lily Porter go?” Michael asked.

Artemas shook his head. “Badly.” Later he would have to relay the important points to them. God help him, there might be no way to prevent them from hating
Lily and wanting to punish her. His eyes felt hollow and grainy. His throat was raw. But he had a role to play here, and he would not let them down. He never had. He cleared his throat and said brusquely, “Let’s go see James.”

Sixteen

The office she and Richard had shared was a large, handsome, comfortably folksy room of oak walls and muted colors. Big windows fronted the azalea groves outside. Soft print drapes were drawn over them now, keeping out the cold black night. The room was cast in shadows from the lamps.

It felt like a prison.

Lily sat on the floor, with file folders stacked around her and notepads spilling onto the thick beige carpet. Perspiration trickled between her breasts and down her armpits. The ink pen couched in a fold of her sweatshirt was leaking a dark blue blot onto the gray material. As she scanned yet another page from the files, she brushed the pen aside heedlessly It began staining the carpet.

Her energy was devoted to searching for any clue, any salvation.

Two of the architectural interns who had worked for Richard and Frank had crammed an extra chair in front of the computer on Richard’s desk. Side by side, their eyes bloodshot and faces strained, their shirtsleeves rolled up, they peered in tandem at the screen, scanning section after section of blueprints on the CAD system. The firm’s comptroller, a prim-mouthed, middle-aged woman who looked
stern even in a blue jogging suit, sat at a table with folders from Richard’s file cabinets spread before her. She bent low over them, pursing her small mouth and occasionally pushing a pair of black reading glasses up the narrow bridge of her nose. The firm’s chief attorney was sprawled on a couch in one corner, reading copies of correspondence Richard had kept at home.

“I’ll bring another pot of coffee,” Little Sis said from the doorway. She didn’t mind everyone seeing her in her plaid nightshirt and fuzzy slippers.

Lily shook her head dully. “No, go on to bed. Please. Maude and Big Sis already have.”

“You all need some sleep too. ’Specially you.” She frowned at Lily.

The thought of confronting the bedroom filled with Richard’s clothes and other personal items, and the king-sized bed they had shared, or of having to walk past Stephen’s room to get to it, made a dry cavern behind Lily’s eyes. “I can’t. I’m sending everybody else home soon, but I can’t sleep.”

Little Sis grumbled and disappeared back into the den, her fuzzies scuffing aggressively on the wooden floor.

“There’s nothing new here,” one of the interns said, rubbing his eyes. The other young man pushed a key, and the computer monitor went dark. “No changes in specifications, no amended drawings for the bridge. Just the original blueprints.”

Lily looked at the pair with weary bewilderment. “Richard kept copies of everything. Drawings, notes, letters. So he wouldn’t be inconvenienced when he worked at home.”

The attorney, a large gray-haired man whose reputation for brutal honesty had always impressed her, steepled his fingertips under his chin and leaned forward, lost in thought. “So it’s possible that the design work on the bridge—and any changes made to the design later—was done at the firm’s offices and not here.”

She said quickly and firmly, “Marcus, he did
not
alter the design, and he wouldn’t have let Frank do it, either,
not to cut construction costs. Never. Don’t even suggest that he might have.”

Marcus sighed. “Let’s look at what we know for certain. Frank and Richard had a half-dozen other clients—other projects underway—besides the Colebrook Building. Frank concentrated on the aesthetics. Richard was primarily involved in structural analysis.”

She nodded. “Frank was the artist.”

One of the interns added, “I’ve seen him spend hours debating the shape of the bricks to be used in a facade. And when he talked about the bridge in the atrium of the Colebrook Building, he said he wanted a masterpiece. Something so graceful it seemed to defy gravity.”

“It
was
a masterpiece,” the other intern said. “And there was no sacrifice of structural integrity in the design. Richard reinforced every crucial stress point by fifty percent over maximum load. We sat in on the discussions he had with Frank about it. There were a lot of them.”

“But those specs must have been changed at some point,” Marcus noted. “When? And why weren’t any of the interns aware of it?”

“We were assigned to other projects. There was a lot going on. The recognition the firm got from the Colebrook Building kept bringing in new clients.”

Lily bit her lip until it throbbed. All the hopes, all the plans for expansion—destroyed, along with her husband, her son, and all those other lives. Last fall the firm had moved from a suite of rented offices into its own building, a beautiful two-story complex Frank and Richard had designed, with space for the additional staff they had hired.