Betrayal (23 page)

Tallie spent an hour with her father and told him what was going on. He was satisfied with how things were moving and what she could tell him, although he was still shocked about Brigitte. She had fooled them all. She was a total sociopath.

After she sat with her father for a while, Tallie went home. She turned all the downstairs lights on for Jim’s visit, dug in the fridge for something to eat while she waited, and came up with
half
a melon and a piece of cheese. She hadn’t eaten a decent meal in two months. She didn’t have time to cook, and she didn’t care, and she had lost weight as a result. Her torn jeans were hanging off her.

The doorbell rang just as she finished the melon, and she let Jim into the house and thanked him for coming. He had brought a copy of the report from the San Francisco bureau with him, and he handed it to her as they sat down in the kitchen.

“I can offer you soda water, half a lime, a Diet Coke, and a PowerBar, which might be stale. I just checked. What would you like?” she offered with a grin, and he laughed.

“Wow, that’s a tough choice. Do you want to share the Diet Coke?”

“I’m fine with water,” she said, as she got up to pour the Coke for him.

“You keep a well-stocked kitchen,” he complimented her. “Mine would look like that too, if it weren’t for my fifteen-year-old son. He eats a pepperoni pizza every two hours. I try to make something decent for him on the weekends.” She hadn’t before, but she couldn’t resist asking him a personal question then.

“You’re not married?”

“My wife died five years ago, of breast cancer. I live with my two boys, one of whom is in college in Michigan. The younger one is still at home.”

“I’m sorry about your wife,” she said kindly, and meant it.

“Me too. These things happen. I’m lucky I’ve got great boys. I’d have been lost without them for all these years. We manage pretty well now, but it was tough at first. Very tough. She was a wonderful
woman.”
Tallie nodded, watching his face as he told her. He looked sad, and like he still missed her a lot.

“I brought my daughter up alone too. Her father and I were divorced when she was a baby. It’s a terrible thing to say, but sometimes it’s easier that way, when you’re divorced. Not to have to wrestle with someone about a child. He disappeared out of her life for a long time, and mine.”

“Does she see her dad now?” Tallie shook her head and laughed ruefully.

“Not really. She’s seen him four times in her life for about half an hour each time. He’s a cowboy from Montana on the rodeo circuit. I fell in love with him in college, and Max happened—that’s my daughter. My father thought we should get married. It was never a marriage. We were kids. He went back to Montana when she was six months old, and that was that. She’s eighteen now, and a truly great kid.” She was a year younger than his son Josh.

“I was married one other time for eleven months,” she volunteered. “Simon Harleigh.” He was an actor the entire world knew. “He cheated on me with the leading lady in his next movie. It was all over the tabloids and that was that. Hunt is the only other man I’ve ever lived with, and it lasted longer than either of my marriages.” She smiled at him while he thought to himself that Hunt had cheated on her too. She hadn’t had great luck with men, or made good choices perhaps. And yet she seemed like an extremely kind, decent woman and down-to-earth person. But she lived in a complicated world full of untrustworthy people, dishonesty, and superficial values. He felt bad about how vulnerable she was to
people
like that. It was hard for some people to resist taking advantage, like Brigitte. And he knew it couldn’t be easy for Tallie.

She read the San Francisco report he handed her, and she looked up at Jim afterward in amazement. “She lied about everything. Absolutely nothing she ever said was true, except that her mother had died. The rest was all lies.” It was utterly amazing. “It doesn’t sound like her family likes her much,” she commented.

“It sounds like they have good reason not to. She lied to them too, and ripped them all off. She doesn’t seem like it, but she’s a sick woman. She looks like anything but that.” He told her all about the stores on Rodeo Drive then. It was an incredible story and harder still for Tallie to believe that it had happened to her. She didn’t feel like a victim, and she didn’t want to be.

“When are you going to arrest her?” She told him about Brigitte’s trip to Mexico the following week.

“We’ll get her as soon as she gets back,” he said dryly.

“Then what happens?”

“She gets arrested, we take her into custody. She gets arraigned a couple of days later and is bound over to trial. The judge sets bail at the arraignment, or lets her out on her own recognizance, they take her passport away, and then we wait to go to trial.”

“That’s it?” Tallie looked startled. “She walks around for a year like nothing ever happened?”

“Yeah, that’s how it works, except in crimes of violence. Otherwise, in white-collar crime like this, she goes on with her normal life until she goes to trial or pleads guilty. Then she gets sentenced, and hopefully she’s gone, to prison for several years.”

“What if she runs away?”

“We catch her and bring her back. If they set bail, then she posts a bond, or gives up the deed to her house or some similar piece of property to guarantee she won’t run away. If she’s on her own recognizance, she’s pretty much free till the trial. But they won’t do that if she’s a flight risk. Do you think she is?” Jim asked her, looking concerned. He didn’t think Brigitte was. She had a home she obviously cared a lot about. She wouldn’t just walk away from that.

“I have no idea,” Tallie said honestly. “I don’t even know the woman. I thought I did, but I surely don’t,” she said, waving at the report. “I have no idea what she’d do in a circumstance like this.”

“Most people stick around and go to trial or plead. Very few ever run away. I’ve only had one do it in twenty-six years with the Bureau, and we brought him back. We had to extradite him from England on a big embezzlement case, and that was a long time ago. It’ll happen, Tallie, this will be over. It just takes time. And by the time it is over, you’ll feel like it took forever. These things move very slowly. But sooner or later, they get resolved. The main thing for you to concentrate on now is getting restitution, and getting back as much as you can, which won’t be much. Or it won’t be everything you lost. In this case, it sounds like she spends it all, other than her house. Nice house by the way,” Jim commented, and Tallie laughed.

“I call it Palazzo Parker. I guess it turns out to be Palazzo Jones. It’s a lovely house.”

“You may find yourself the proud owner of it when this is all over. My guess is that you paid for it.”

“She told me she paid for it with her trust fund, or her inheritance, I can’t remember which, and of course I believed her.” It was all lies. All of it.

Jim Kingston stood up then and wished her a good trip, and told her he’d see her when she got back. She hoped that Brigitte would be arrested by then, but Jim couldn’t be sure. He had to wait for the grand jury, the judge, and the warrant, and then they’d be off and running. But they were almost there. Brigitte’s journey into the criminal justice system, and to prison eventually, was about to begin. Tallie felt guilty for thinking it, but after everything Brigitte had done to her, she could hardly wait for it to start, and for Brigitte to pay the price for the crimes she committed.

Chapter 14

THE NIGHT THAT
Tallie was packing for New York was a busy one at Victor and Brianna’s house too. The war between them had been raging for weeks, and Victor had finally accepted defeat. Brianna had never relented on the postnup or the money she wanted, and Victor’s not getting them invited to the Academy Awards nearly two months before, or any of the parties afterward, was the last straw for her.

“You know how badly I wanted to go!” she railed at him. “You promised!” She was half-whining and half-shouting. All she had done was accuse him of things for the past months.

“I didn’t promise, Brianna,” he said reasonably, looking unhappy. He looked even older than he had before. “I’m not a member of the Academy. I don’t get invited to the Oscars. I never told you I could pull that off.”

“You didn’t even get us invited to the after parties,” she accused him with a fearsome pout.

“I would have had to ask one of my clients, like Tallie Jones, and
I
didn’t want to impose. Besides, she has much bigger problems to deal with right now, than getting us invited to the after parties of the Academy Awards.”
Vanity Fair
always gave the best one, but he had no access there either.

“So do I.” Brianna looked surly as she threw her clothes into Vuitton suitcases she had spread out on the bed and floor. “I have a husband who doesn’t give a damn about me, who doesn’t want me to feel financially secure, and who broke every promise he ever made about helping me with my career.”

“I did everything I could,” he said unhappily, as she emptied racks of platform shoes into a suitcase, and the bed was piled high with her furs. This was more than just a statement to impress him. It was the end, as far as she was concerned. “Where are you going, Brianna?” he asked with a worried look.

“I reserved a suite at the Beverly Wilshire.” Her announcement filled him with terror for what it would cost him, and even more so for the location. It was across the street from all her favorite stores on Rodeo Drive, which was why she had reserved there. The expense for Victor didn’t bother her at all. She turned toward him with an angry look then and confirmed what he had known was coming at him ever since she brought up the postnup, and he no longer believed it had been suggested by her lawyer. The concept was typical of her.

“Victor, I’m getting a divorce. You’re not the man I thought you were.” He felt her words like a physical blow, but he was no longer surprised. He knew that there was no way he could keep her, and he hadn’t been able to afford her for many months, or even the past two years. What frightened him now was what kind of settlement
she
would want, and how much alimony she would demand. Even with a prenup, he knew that the divorce was going to cost him a fortune. Brianna had been a disaster in his life. He quietly left the room while she was packing, and went to sit in his study alone. All he could do now, he knew, was let her leave, and hope that he would survive the aftermath of the war.

Brianna packed all night, and when Victor woke up in the big leather chair in his office in the morning, she was gone. It was over. He felt a thousand years old, and numb. She had left no note, no message. Leaving financial chaos in her wake, and closetsful of empty hangers, Brianna had moved on.

The early flight from L.A. touched down at JFK in New York at three in the afternoon. With the time difference, Tallie lost most of the day getting there. And after she got her bags off the carousel, and took a cab into the city, she was at her New York apartment at five o’clock. Max had said she’d be back from class at six. And the apartment was dark and empty when she let herself in. It was a spacious, sunny apartment in a high-end modern building in the West Village with a doorman and security. Tallie liked the fact that she felt Max was protected there, and she had agreed to let her stay at the apartment instead of the dorms. It wasn’t showy, but it was a nice building, and the neighborhood was safer than most. And the apartment was bright and sunny, and simply decorated.

There was the usual student debris lying around, clothes in her bedroom, books spread out on the table, full ashtrays, some empty Coke cans, and a pizza box from the night before. Tallie tidied up
while
she waited for Max to come home. She threw the garbage away, made Max’s bed, and ran a bath for herself. She was wearing a cozy pink terrycloth bathrobe and lying on her bed when Max walked in, gave a squeal of delight when she saw Tallie, and took a flying leap at the bed and lay laughing next to her mother in tattered jeans, a red sweatshirt, and flip-flops. She looked no different than she did in L.A., or than Tallie did anywhere. They almost looked like clones.

“I missed you so much!” Max said as she clung to her mother. They had big plans for the week ahead. Dinner out, meeting Max’s new friends, all the places, shops, and restaurants Max had discovered since living there, and Tallie was dying to see at least one Broadway play.

“I missed you too,” Tallie said, holding her in her arms. She suddenly felt as though she had come home. Being with Max was like sinking into a big cozy feather bed. For the first time as she lay there, she realized just how brutal the past few months had been, and what a toll they had taken on her. Max could see it too. She thought her mother looked tired, although she didn’t say it to her.

“You’ve been working too hard, Mom,” her daughter scolded her. “I’m so glad you came!” And then a minute later, the question Tallie had been dreading. “How’s Hunt?”

“I guess he’s okay,” Tallie said, sounding vague.

“What do you mean you ‘guess’ he’s okay?” Max sat up on the bed and looked down at her mother. “What’s that supposed to mean? Is he away?” Tallie didn’t answer for a minute, searching for the right words.

“Kind of.” And then she took a breath and plunged in. “I didn’t
want
to tell you till I saw you,” but she had hoped this question wouldn’t come this soon in her stay, “Hunt moved out.”