Matters of the Heart (27 page)

Investigations afterward had determined that their marriage was in trouble, and Finn had asked her for a divorce, which she had refused. There was some question as to whether he had caused the accident, but whether he had or not, he had let her die. Charges had been formally brought against Finn, he was given a five-year suspended sentence and five years probation and had his license revoked for manslaughter for the death of the truck driver. His late wife’s death was deemed an accident.

The investigator had contacted the family of Finn’s late wife, in California, who were still bitter about it and said that they believed Finn had intentionally killed their daughter, in the hope of inheriting some money. Her father was a wealthy stockbroker in San Francisco, and he and his wife had brought up their daughter’s child, who was seven at the time of his mother’s death. They said that Finn had flatly refused custody of the child. They had told the investigator that Finn had seen his son twice in the ensuing years before he left for college, and they believed he had seen him a few times since, but had no real role in their grandson’s life. They considered him a poor influence on the boy and a dangerous man. He had attempted to extort money from them after their daughter’s death, threatening to expose her use of alcohol and drugs and immoral, promiscuous lifestyle. They had reported his extortion attempts to the police, but never brought formal charges against him. They just wanted him out of their and their grandson’s life.

They were aware of his literary success in the years since their daughter’s death, but nonetheless considered him responsible for her death, and said he was a man without a conscience, who was after money and cared for no one but himself. They said he had claimed to love their daughter in the beginning, and was charming. And he had cried copiously at her funeral. A doctor’s report attached said that in his opinion, she would have died anyway, with or without help. Her injuries were too extreme, and she was brain dead.

It was chilling to read the report, and Hope looked up at Mark without comment. His wife’s death had in fact been an accident. But he had done nothing to help her. There were several more pages about women he had gone out with. There was also a separate sheet that documented that he had eventually gone after his wife’s estate, and sued her parents for support, although they were supporting his child. All his efforts to get money from them, legal and otherwise, for himself had failed. It was certainly wrong of him, but it didn’t make him a murderer either. Just a crook or a man desperate for money. He had also attempted to invade monies that had gone to the boy directly from his mother, and her parents were able to stop Finn’s attempts to get money from his son as well. Hope couldn’t help wondering if Michael knew about that. He knew his father was a liar. But Finn was infinitely worse. He was totally amoral.

Among the women Finn had gone out with were several wealthy women, some of whom he had lived with for a short time, and it was generally believed that they had given him money and gifts. His finances had always been shaky throughout the years, despite his literary success, and his appetite for money was apparently voracious. There was an additional page about his publisher’s current lawsuit against him, and a list of other lawsuits that had been filed against him, usually without success. There was one in particular, by a woman he had lived with, who had brought charges of mental cruelty, but she had lost the suit. All together it painted a picture of a man who exploited women, and all the subjects interviewed said he was a pathological liar. Two of them said he was a sociopath, and an unnamed source at his publisher said they considered him unreliable, untrustworthy, unethical, and incapable of following rules of any kind. All of the subjects, including his ex-parents-in-law, said he was charming, but many considered him an unscrupulous, dangerous man, entirely motivated by greed, and who would stop at nothing to get what he wanted. There were no kind words about him in the report, except that he was charming, and was always loving and kind in the beginning, and heartless and cruel in the end. It was what Hope was discovering as well and hoped wasn’t true. The report made it hard to deny.

Hope sat back on the couch and looked at Mark after she read it. And added to it, but not in the report, was the girl who Finn had told her himself had committed suicide because of him. So indirectly, he had caused two deaths. And Hope suddenly remembered his question to her when she had found the photograph of Audra, when he asked her if she would ever commit suicide herself, almost as though it would have been a compliment to him. The question had a whole new meaning now. She was surprised to find that she was shaking as she thought about it all and tried to absorb what she’d just read. It was horrifying to think that all those frightening stories and details of his life had slipped through the cracks over the years and become obscured. The investigator had worked hard to unearth them.

“Not pretty, is it?” Mark commented, looking worried.

“No, it isn’t,” she said sadly. He was charming, as they said, and extremely loving in the beginning, but almost every one of them considered him a dangerous man. “Now what do I do?” she said almost to herself, staring out the window into space, thinking about Finn, wanting with all her heart for him to be who he had been at first.

“I don’t think you should go back,” Mark said wisely, and she thought about it for a long moment, and how confused she had been when she left. She wondered if he was trying to drive her to suicide, but he wanted the five million dollars first. And if she married him, he would have more. If he had a child with her, he could pump her estate forever, and the child, or her.

“I think I need to go back and sort it out. In my own head at least.” He was two people. The one she had fallen in love with and the one in the report. She couldn’t help wondering if his late wife’s parents blamed him because they couldn’t accept their daughter’s death, and it was easier to blame him. She wanted to believe that, and was wrestling with herself. She tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, but it was hard to do in light of the report. “We were supposed to get married and for my own sake, I need to find out what is real.”

“What if he kills you?” Mark said tersely.

“He won’t. He didn’t kill his wife. It was an accident. The police report, and the coroner both said so. I think what he wants is to get as much money out of me as he can.” That was ugly too, and she still wanted to believe he loved her. “I’ll call your lawyer in Dublin before I go back, so I have a contact person close at hand.” She felt so alone in Ireland now, and could no longer trust or count on Finn. Whoever and whatever he was, there was a part of him that was evil. Strangely after what she had just read, Hope wasn’t afraid of him. She knew that part of him was good too. She still believed that. She also knew she wasn’t crazy but there was a possibility that Finn was. It was why he wrote the books he did, all those dark characters lived in his head, and were different sides of him, the ones that didn’t show. “I’ll be all right. I need to see this through and sort it out,” she reassured Mark, handed him back the report, and thanked him. “I’ll call you before I leave.” She wanted to be alone, to mourn the man she loved, who possibly didn’t exist, and never had.

The silence in her apartment was deafening after Mark left. All she could think of now were those wonderful months she had shared with Finn, how completely she had believed and loved him, how real it seemed. Tears rolled down her cheeks, knowing there was a strong possibility now that every moment of it had been a lie. It was hard to believe and harder still to accept. The dream she had lived with him may never have been more than that. A dream. And suddenly it had turned into a nightmare. She no longer had any idea who Finn was. The good man she fell in love with or the ne’er-do-well in the report? All she knew was that she needed to go back, look him in the eye, and find out.

Chapter 18

H
ope waited up until four in the morning to call him, which was nine in the morning in Dublin. She held the slip of paper with his numbers in shaking hands. A receptionist answered, put Hope on hold while she listened to music, and then passed her on to a secretary. Hope explained that she was calling from New York, and it was too late for him to call her back, and then finally Robert Bartlett took the call. His accent was American, and he had a pleasant voice. Mark Webber had emailed him, as had the head of their New York office. Johannsen, Stern and Grodnik was an American law firm, with offices in six American cities, and foreign branches around the world. Robert Bartlett had been the managing partner of the New York office when they asked him to take over the Dublin office, because the senior partner died suddenly of cancer. He had enjoyed being in Dublin for several years and was ready to go back to New York in a few months. He was actually sorry to leave Ireland. The situation there had been perfect for him.

He didn’t know the nature of the problem, but he knew who Hope was, and that she was an important client of the firm. He was well aware of the hour in New York, and although he didn’t know her, he could hear a note of tension in her voice when she introduced herself.

“I know who you are, Ms. Dunne,” he said reassuringly as she started to explain. “How can I help you? It’s very late in New York,” he commented. He sounded easygoing and calm, and he had a surprisingly young voice.

“I’m in a bit of a complicated situation of a personal nature,” she said slowly. She didn’t even know what she wanted from him, or what she would do yet, and it was a little crazy to ask advice from a total stranger. She knew she needed help, or might, but she wasn’t sure with what. He wasn’t a bodyguard or a psychologist, if she needed either, and she felt a little foolish calling him. But she wanted a contact in Dublin now in case she needed help. She didn’t want to go back without some kind of support available to her there. And he was all she had. “I’m not sure what kind of help I need, if any, at this point. My agent, Mark Webber, thought I should call you.” And after reading the investigator’s report she thought so too, in case any legal complications arose from her relationship with Finn. She hoped things would calm down with him, but they might not. From what she’d read, more likely not.

“Of course. Whatever I can do to help, Ms. Dunne.” His voice was intelligent and kind, and he sounded patient. She felt a little silly explaining it to him, as though what she wanted was advice to the lovelorn, and maybe she did. But this wasn’t just about being lovelorn, it was about assessing danger and potential risk. It all depended on who Finn really was, what she meant to him, and how desperate or dishonest he was. Money was clearly important to him. But how important? Maybe this time, for him, their love story had been for real, in spite of all the other horrors she had read in the report. Maybe he truly loved her. She wanted to believe that. But it seemed doubtful at this point, and impossible to assess.

“I feel stupid telling you this story. I think I’m in a mess,” she said as she leaped in. It was four o’clock in the morning in New York, her apartment was dark, and it was the heart of the night, when everything seems worse, dangers loom, and terrors grow exponentially. In the morning, the ghosts recede again. “I’ve been involved with someone for the past year. He lives in Ireland, between Blessington and Russborough, and he has a house in London too. He’s a well-known author, very successful, though in a professional and financial disaster at the moment. I took photographs of him in London last year, we went out afterward, and he came to see me in New York after that. To be honest, he swept me off my feet. He stayed with me for several weeks, and we’ve been together almost constantly ever since, staying at each other’s houses, in whatever city. I have an apartment in New York and a house on Cape Cod. We’ve been everywhere together, though I’ve been mostly in Ireland lately. He has a house there that he told me he owned, and I discovered he didn’t. It turned out that he was renting it.” Robert Bartlett was making small acknowledging and sympathetic noises as she told the story, and he was making notes as well, to keep it all straight when they discussed it later. “I discovered that he was renting, although he said he owned it,” she resumed after a pause. “He said it was his ancestral home, and he had reclaimed it two years before. That was a lie, he said he was embarrassed to admit he didn’t own it. Actually, there were three big lies that I discovered at about the same time, after nine months that were absolutely perfect. I’d never been happier in my life, and he was the nicest man I’ve ever known, but suddenly after nine months, there were these three big lies.” She sounded sad as she said it.

“How did you discover them?” Bartlett interjected, intrigued by the story. She sounded like an intelligent woman, didn’t sound particularly naïve, and was a businesswoman, so he knew that if she’d fallen for the lies, the perpetrator was undoubtedly good, smooth, and convincing. Originally, apparently, she’d had no reason to doubt him.

“The lies just kind of popped out of nowhere. He said he was widowed, and had brought up his son alone. His son came to visit us in Ireland, and told me that he didn’t grow up with his father, as Finn had told me. His name is Finn, by the way.” Bartlett knew who he was on the literary scene, most people did, and he didn’t comment. He was certainly an author of major fame, and of equal stature to her in her field. She hadn’t picked up some homeless guy off the street. She didn’t sound like the type for that. So it seemed like a fair match, on the surface, even if it wasn’t, and had probably seemed that way to her too. So it made sense in the beginning. “Anyway, his son told me that he grew up with his maternal grandparents in California and hardly knew his father while growing up, and doesn’t see him much now. That’s not at all what his father told me. I asked him about it, and Finn said he was embarrassed to admit that he hadn’t brought up his son. He has never admitted that he scarcely knew him. He also told me that he and his wife weren’t getting along when she died, and they probably would have divorced eventually. She died when their son was seven. But I’ll tell you about that later.