Fortune's Woman / A Fortune Wedding

“I’m so sorry, Ross.”

He cleared his throat and told himself he was nothing but relieved when she pulled her hand away.

“Thanks again for everything you did tonight,” he said. “I would have been in a real fix without you.”

“I’m glad I could help in some small way.”

She smiled gently and he was astonished at how that simple warm expression could ease the tightness in his chest enough that he could breathe just a little easier.

“It’s late,” she finally said. “Or early, I guess. I’d better go.”

“Oh right. I’m sorry again you had to be here so long.”

“I’d like to say goodbye to Josh before I leave, if it’s all right with you,” she said.

“Of course,” he answered and followed her into the kitchen.

In his fantasy childhood, the kitchen was always the warmest room in the house, a place scattered with children’s backpacks and clumsy art work on the refrigerator and homemade cookies cooling on a rack on the countertop.

He hadn’t known anything like that, except at the occasional friend’s house. To his regret, Frannie’s kitchen wasn’t anything like that image, either. It was as cool and formal as the rest of the house—white cabinets, white tile, stainlesssteel appliances. It was like some kind of hospital lab rather than the center of a house.

Josh sat on a white bar stool, his cell phone up to his ear.

“I told you, Lyns,” he was saying, “I don’t have any more information than I did when we talked an hour ago. I haven’t heard anything yet. I’ll tell you as soon as I know anything, okay? Meantime, you have to get some rest. You know what—”

Ross wasn’t sure what alerted the boy to their presence but before he could complete the sentence, he suddenly swiveled around to face them. Ross was almost certain he saw secrets flash in his nephew’s eyes before his expression turned guarded again.

“Um, I’ve got to go, Lyns,” he mumbled into the phone. “My uncle Ross just got here. Yeah. I’ll call you later.”

He ended the call, folded his phone and slid it into his pocket before he uncoiled his lanky frame from the chair.

“How’s my mom? Is she with you?”

Ross sighed. “No. I’m sorry.”

“How long can they hold her?”

“For now, as long as they want. She’s being charged.”

His features suffused with color. “Charged? With murder?”

Ross nodded, wishing he had other news to offer his nephew.

“This completely sucks.”

That was one word for it, he supposed. A pretty accurate one. “Yeah, it does. But there’s nothing we can do about it tonight. Meanwhile, Ms. Osterman needs to get on back to her house. She came in to tell you goodbye.”

He was proud of the boy for reining in most of his outrage in order to be polite to Julie.

“Thank you for giving me a ride and staying here and everything,” Josh said to her. “And even though I told you I didn’t need you to stay so late, it was…nice not to be here by myself and all.”

“You’re very welcome.” She smiled with that gentle warmth she just seemed to exude, paused for just a moment, then stepped forward and hugged the boy, who was a good six inches taller than she was.

“Call me if you need to talk, okay?” she said softly.

“Yeah, sure,” he mumbled, though Ross was pretty sure Josh looked touched by her concern.

They both walked her to the door and watched her climb into her car. When she drove away, Ross shut the door to Frannie’s wedding-cake house and wondered what the hell he was supposed to do next.

He would just have to figure it out, he supposed.

He didn’t have any other choice.

This was just about the last place on earth he wanted to be right now.

In fact, given a choice between attending his despised brother-in-law’s funeral and wading chest-deep in a manure pit out on the Double Crown, Ross figured he would much rather be standing in cow honey swatting flies away from his face than sitting here in this discreetly decorated funeral home, surrounded by the cloying smell of lilies and carnations and listening to all the weeping and wailing going on over a man most people in town had disliked.

It would be over soon. Already, the eulogies seemed to be dwindling. He could only feel relief. This all seemed the height of hypocrisy. He knew of at least a dozen people here who had openly told him at separate times over the last few days how much they had hated Lloyd. Yet here they were with their funeral game faces, all solemn and sad-eyed.

He glanced over at his nephew, who seemed to be watching the entire proceedings with an odd detachment, as if it was all some kind of mildly interesting play that had no direct bearing in his life.

Josh seemed to be holding up well under the strain of the last five days. Maybe too well. The boy’s only intense emotion over anything seemed to be rage at the prosecuting attorney for moving ahead with charges against his mother.

It had been a hellish five days, culminating in this farce. First had come the medical examiner’s report read at Frannie’s arraignment that Lloyd had been killed with a blunt instrument whose general size and heft matched the large piece of pottery his sister had purchased shortly before the murder. Then reports had begun to trickle out that the heavy vase had several sets of unidentified fingerprints on it—and one very obvious identified set that belonged to his sister.

Added to Crystal’s testimony that Lloyd had a heated phone call with Frannie shortly before the murder, things weren’t looking good for his sister.

A good attorney with the typical cooperative client might have been able to successfully argue that Frannie’s fingerprints would naturally be on the vase since she had purchased it just a short time earlier, and that a hearsay one-sided telephone exchange—no matter how heated—was not proof of murder.

But Frannie was not the typical cooperative client. Despite the high stakes, she refused to confirm or deny her involvement in Lloyd’s murder and had chosen instead to remain mum about the entire evening, even to her attorney.

Ross didn’t know what the hell she was doing. He had visited twice more since the night of the murder in an effort to convince her to just tell him and the Red Rock police what had happened, but she had shut him out, too. Each time, he had ended up leaving more frustrated than ever.

As a result of her baffling, completely unexpected obstinacy, she had been charged with second-degree murder and bound over for trial. Even more aggravating, she had been denied bail. Bruce Gibson had argued in court that Frannie was a flight risk because of her wealthy family.

He apparently was laboring under two huge misconceptions: one, that Frannie would ever have it in her to run off and abandon her son and, two, that any of the Fortunes would willingly help her escape, no matter how much they might want to.

In the bail hearing, Bruce had been full of impassioned arguments about the Fortune wealth and power, the entire time with that smirk on his plastic features that Ross wanted to pound off of him.

The judge had apparently been gullible enough to buy into the myth—either that or he was another old golfing buddy of Lloyd’s or his father, Cordell. Judge Wilkinson had agreed with Bruce and ordered Frannie held without bail, so now his delicate, fragile sister sat moldering in the county jail, awaiting trial on trumped-up charges that should never have been filed.

And while she was stuck there, he was forced to sit on this rickety little excuse for a chair, listening to a pack of lies about what a great guy Lloyd had been.

Ross didn’t buy any of it. He had disliked the man from the day he married Frannie, when she was only eighteen. Even though she had tried to put on a bright face and play the role of a regular bride, Ross had sensed something in her eyes even then that seemed to indicate she wasn’t thrilled about the marriage.

He had tried to talk her out of it but she wouldn’t listen to him, probably because Cindy had pushed so hard for the marriage.

When Josh showed up several weeks shy of nine months later, Ross had put the pieces of the puzzle together and figured Lloyd had gotten her pregnant. Frannie was just the sort to try doing what she thought was the right thing for her child, even if it absolutely wasn’t the right decision for her.

In the years since, he had watched her change from a luminous, vivacious girl to a quiet, subdued society matron. She always wore the right thing, said the right thing, but every ounce of joy seemed to have been sucked out of her.

And all because of Lloyd Fredericks, the man who apparently was heading for sainthood any day now, judging by the glowing eulogies delivered at his memorial service.

Ross wondered what all these fusty types would do if he stood up and spoke the truth, that Lloyd was just about the lousiest excuse for a human being he’d ever met—which was really quite a distinction, considering that as an ex-cop, he’d met more than his share.

In his experience, Lloyd was manipulative and dishonest. He cheated, he lied, he stole and, worse, he bullied anybody he considered weaker than himself.

Ross couldn’t say any of that, though. He could only sit here and wait until this whole damn thing was over and he could take Josh home.

He glanced around at the crowd, wondering again at the most notable absence—next to Frannie’s, of course. Cindy had opted not to come, and he couldn’t help wondering where she might be. He would have expected his mother to be sitting right up there on the front row with Lloyd’s parents. She loved nothing more than to be the center of attention, and what better place for that than at her son-in-law’s memorial service, with all its drama and high emotion?

Cindy had adored her son-in-law, though Ross thought perhaps he’d seen hints that their relationship had cooled, since right around the time Cindy had been injured in a mysterious car accident.

Still, even if she and Lloyd had been openly feuding, which they weren’t, he would have thought Cindy would come.

He was still wondering at her absence when the pastor finally wrapped things up a few moments later. With the autopsy completed, Lloyd’s parents had elected to cremate his remains, so there would be no interment ceremony.

“Can we go now?” Josh asked him when other people started to file out of the funeral chapel.

Ross would have preferred nothing more than to hustle Josh away from all this artificiality. He knew people likely wanted to pay their respects to Lloyd’s son, but he wasn’t about to force the kid to stay if he didn’t want to be there.

“Your call,” he said.

“Let’s go, then,” Josh said. “I’m ready to get out of here.”

As he had expected, at least a dozen people stopped them on their way to the door to wish Josh their condolences. Ross was immensely proud of his nephew for the quiet dignity with which he thanked them each for their sympathy without giving away his own feelings about his father.

They were almost to the door when Ross saw with dismay that Lloyd’s mother, Jillian, was heading in their direction. Her Botox-smooth features looked ravaged just now, her eyes red and weepy. Still, fury seemed to push away the grief for now.

“How dare you show your face here!” she hissed to Ross when she was still several feet away.

Chapter Five

Several others at the funeral stopped to watch the unfolding drama and Ross did his best to edge them over to a quieter corner of the chapel, away from the greedy eyes of the crowd.

“My nephew just lost his father,” he said calmly. “I’m here for him, Jillian. Surely you can understand that.”

She made a scoffing sort of sound. “Your nephew lost his father because of your sister! If not for her, none of us would be here. He would still be alive. You have no right to come here. No right whatsoever. This service is for family members. For those of us who…who loved Lloyd. You never even liked him. You probably conspired with your sister to kill him, didn’t you?”

It was such a ridiculous thing to say that Ross had no idea how to answer her grief-induced ravings.

“I’m here for Josh,” he repeated. “Whatever you might think about my sister right now, and whatever the circumstances of Lloyd’s death, Josh has lost his father. He asked me to come with him today and I couldn’t let him down.”

Though he had let him down, Ross thought. And he had let his sister down, over and over. He hadn’t been able to get Frannie out of her lousy marriage. He had tried, dozens of times, until he finally gave up. But maybe he hadn’t tried hard enough.

“I want you to leave. Right now.” Jillian’s features reddened and she looked on the verge of some apoplectic attack.

“We’re just leaving, Grandmother,” Josh assured her and Ross was proud of his nephew for his calm, sympathetic manner.

At that moment, Lloyd’s father stepped up and slipped a supporting arm around his wife’s shoulders. “That’s not necessary. You don’t have to leave, Joshua. Come along, Jillian. The Scofields were looking for you a moment ago.”

Cordell gave Ross a quick, apologetic look, then steered his distraught wife away from them. Ross watched after him, his brow furrowed. He hadn’t seen Lloyd’s father in a few months but the man looked as if he had aged a decade or more. His features were lined and worn and he looked utterly exhausted.

Was all that from Lloyd’s death? he wondered. He knew the Fredericks had always doted on their only son and of course his death was bound to hit them hard, but he hadn’t expected Cordell to look so devastated.

Maybe Lloyd’s death wasn’t the only reason the man seemed to have aged overnight. Ross had been hearing rumors even before Lloyd’s death that not all was rosy with the Fredericks’ financial picture. He had heard a few whispers around town that Cordell and Lloyd had been late on some payments and had completely stopped making others.

It wouldn’t have surprised him at all to learn that Lloyd had been the one keeping Fredericks Financial afloat. Maybe Cordell was terrified the whole leaky ship would sink now that his son was dead.

He made a mental note to add a little digging into their financial records to the parallel investigation he had started conducting into Lloyd’s death.

“Follow the money” had always been a pretty good creed when he’d been a cop and he saw no reason for this situation to be any different.

“Sorry about that, Uncle Ross,” Josh said when they finally stepped outside into the warm afternoon, along with others who seemed eager to escape the oppressive funeral chapel. “Grandmother is…distraught.”

Poor Josh had a bum deal when it came to grandparents. On the one side, he had Lloyd’s stiff society parents. On the other, he had Cindy. She was no better a grandmother than she’d been a mother, alternating between bouts of spoiling her grandson outrageously with flamboyant gifts she couldn’t afford, followed by long periods of time when she would ignore him completely.

“Don’t worry about it,” Ross assured him. “Jillian’s reaction is completely understandable.”

“It’s not. She knows my mom. She’s known her for eighteen years, since she married my dad. Grandmother has to know Mom would never kill him.”

“It’s a rough time right now for everyone, Josh.”

“I don’t care how upset she is. My mom is innocent! And then to imply that you were involved, as well. That’s just crazy.”

Ross sighed but before he could answer, he was surprised to see Julie Osterman slip outside through the doors of the chapel and head in their direction.

She wore a conservative blue jacket and skirt with a silky white shirt and had pulled her hair back into a loose updo, and she looked soft and lovely in the sunshine.

His heart had no business jumping around in his chest just at the sight of her. Ross scowled. It didn’t seem right that she should be the single bright spot in what had been a dismal day.

How did she have such a calming presence about her? he wondered. Even some of Josh’s tension seemed to ease out of him when she slipped her arm through his and gave a comforting squeeze.

“Hi, Ms. O.”

She smiled at him, though it appeared rather solemn. “Hi, Josh. I was hoping to get a chance to talk to you.”

“Oh?”

She studied him for a long moment. “I have a dilemma here. Maybe you can help me out. I promised myself I wasn’t going to ask you something clichéd like how you’re holding up. But then, if I don’t ask, how am I supposed to find out how you’re doing?”

Josh smiled, the first one Ross had seen on his features all day. “Go ahead and ask. I don’t mind.”

“All right. How are you doing, under the circumstances?”

He shrugged. “Okay, I guess. Under the circumstances.”

“It was a lovely memorial service, as far as these things go.”

“I guess.” Josh looked down at the asphalt of the parking lot.

“When do you go back to school?” she asked.

“Tomorrow. I’ve got finals next week and I can’t really miss any more school if I want to graduate with my class. Uncle Ross thinks I should study for finals at home.”

He and Ross had argued about it several times, in fact. It was just about the only point of contention between them over the last five days.

“I just think he should take as much time as he needs,” Ross said. “If he doesn’t feel ready, he can probably take a few more days, as long as he gets the assignments from his teachers. There’s also the scandal factor. Everybody’s going to be talking about a murder at the Spring Fling and I want to make sure he’s mentally prepared for that before he goes back to school.”

“What do you think, Ms. O.?” Josh asked.

Ross could tell she didn’t want to be dragged into the middle of things but Julie only smiled at both of them. “There are arguments to be made for both sides. But I think that you’re the only one who can truly know when you’re ready. As long as you feel prepared to handle whatever might come along, I’m sure returning to school tomorrow will be fine.”

“I think I am,” Josh answered. “But I won’t know until I’m there, will I?”

Julie opened her mouth to answer but one of Lloyd’s elderly aunts approached them before she could say anything.

“Joshua? I’ve been looking all over for you,” she said. “You’re not leaving already, are you?”

Josh slanted a look at Ross. “In a minute.”

“You can’t leave yet. Your great-grandmother is here. She specifically wanted to see you.”

Josh looked less than thrilled about being forced to talk with more Fredericks relatives but he nodded and allowed himself to be led away by the other woman, leaving Ross alone with Julie.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” he said after a moment.

He didn’t add that if he had seen her earlier, it might have made the whole thing a little easier to endure.

She made a face. “I decided I would probably regret it if I didn’t come to pay my respects. I know Jillian casually from some committees we’ve served on together and it seemed the polite thing to do, for her sake alone. But more than that, I wanted to come for Josh. It seemed…right, especially as I feel a little as if I were involved, since you and I were on the scene so quickly after it happened and I was with Josh for those few hours afterward.”

“Makes sense. It was nice of you to come.”

She studied him for a long moment. “Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I get the impression you’re not very thrilled to be here.”

His laugh was rough and humorless. “Is it that obvious? I can’t wait to leave. We were just on our way out. And just so you don’t think I’m rushing him away, Josh is as eager to get out of here as I am.”

She frowned. “How is he really doing?”

He gazed toward the door, where Josh was talking politely to an ancient-looking woman in a wheelchair. “Not as peachy as he wants everybody to think. He isn’t the same kid he was five days ago.”

“That’s normal and very much to be expected.”

“I get the grieving process. I mean, even though his relationship with his dad wasn’t the greatest, of course he’s going to be upset that he died a violent death. But something else is going on. I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

One of the things Ross liked best about Julie Osterman was the way she gazed intently at him when he was speaking. Some women looked like they had their minds on a hundred other things when he talked to them, everything from what they had for breakfast to what they were going to say next. It bugged the heck out of him. But somehow he was certain Julie was focused only on his words.

“I’m sure he’s also upset about his mother’s arrest.”

“True enough. If you want the truth, he acts like Frannie’s arrest upsets him more than Lloyd’s death. He’s furious that his mother has been charged with the murder and that she’s being held without bail.”

“Have you talked to him about his feelings?”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m a guy, in case it escaped your attention.”

“It hasn’t,” she murmured, an odd note in her voice that sent heat curling through him.

He cleared his throat. “I’m no good at the whole ‘let’s talk about our feelings’ thing. Not that I haven’t tried, though. Yesterday I took him out on my boat, thinking he might open up out on the water. Instead, we spent the entire afternoon without saying a word about his mom or about Lloyd or anything. Caught our limit between us, though.”

Why he shared that, he wasn’t sure and he regretted even opening his mouth. What kind of idiot thought a fishing trip might help a troubled teen? But Julie only gazed at him with admiration in the deep blue of her eyes.

“Brilliant idea. That was probably exactly what he needed, Ross. For things to be as normal as possible for a while. To do something he enjoys in a safe environment where he didn’t feel pressured to talk about anything.”

“I used to take my brothers when we were kids. I can’t say we solved all the world’s problems, but we always walked away from the river a little happier, anyway. Or at least we stopped fighting for a few minutes. And sometimes we even caught enough for a few nights’ dinners, too.”

She smiled at that, as he found he’d hoped she would. “You know, Ross, if you think it might help him cope with his grief, I would be happy to talk to Josh in a more formal capacity down at the Fortune Foundation.”

He mulled the offer for a long moment, then he shrugged. “I don’t know if he really needs all that.”

“I’m not talking long-term psychotherapy here. Just a session or two of grief counseling, maybe, if he wants someone to talk to.”

Ross thought of Josh’s behavior since Lloyd’s death. He had become much more secretive and he seemed to be bottling everything up deep inside. Every day since his father’s murder, Josh seemed to become more and more tense and troubled, until Ross worried he would implode.

He had seen good cops take a long, hard journey to nowhere when they tucked everything down inside them. He didn’t want to see the same thing happen to Josh.

His nephew wouldn’t share what he was going through with Ross, but maybe a few sessions with Julie would help him sort through the tangle of his emotions a little better. He supposed it couldn’t hurt.

“If he’s willing, I guess there’s a chance it might help him,” he answered. “You sure you don’t mind?”

“Not at all, Ross. I like Josh and I want to do anything I can to help him through this hard time in his life. I would say, from a professional standpoint, it’s probably better if he gets some counseling earlier rather than later. Things won’t become any easier for him the next few months, especially if the case against Frannie goes to trial.”

“It won’t,” he vowed. He was working like crazy on his own investigation, trying to make sure that didn’t happen. “I can’t believe such a miscarriage of justice would be allowed to proceed.”

“You were a police officer,” she said. “You know that innocence doesn’t always guarantee justice.”