A Trap Set With Flowers
Chapter 07 - A Trap Set With Flowers
The sentence on the ledger troubled Mallerie more than the money. If the mother approaches the child, the guardian loses everything. It sounded like a threat written for somebody else to read. Celeste had known her name, her address, and the date of Owen's birth. She had hired her for a job beneath her qualifications and placed her in the one room where the boy would appear. It no longer seemed accidental that Owen had reached for her among a hundred strangers.
Denise studied the note beneath a lamp. “It may refer to a clause in a trust,” she said. “Who benefits if Gideon is declared unfit as Owen's guardian?”
“Celeste,” Mallerie said, although it was a guess.
“Perhaps. Let's get the trust documents instead of guessing.”
The Vale family trust was written in dense language and amended so often that even Denise needed a second attorney to understand it. Under an agreement signed after Elena's death, any descendant of Gideon's parents could claim a share on reaching adulthood. The board managing the fund could remove Gideon as chair for conduct bringing the foundation into serious disrepute. If removed before his fiftieth birthday, his voting authority would pass to a temporary trustee.
“That trustee is Celeste?” Mallerie asked.
“Celeste and a second administrator,” Denise said. “Dr. Brennan.”
She placed a sheet on the table. It showed that Celeste had been appointed following the engagement announcement. Gideon had approved the appointment because she handled most of the foundation's charitable work.
“Why Owen?”
Denise turned another page. “He gave Gideon a story the press would love. The powerful bachelor becoming a devoted father. It made his engagement seem stable, humane. But if the adoption was exposed as fraudulent at the right moment, the resulting scandal could remove him from the trust.”
The trap required an injured woman to discover her own child in a public room and react as any mother would. Mallerie looked down at the photograph of the ballroom. She remembered Celeste standing there in green silk, waiting until Owen's ankle was visible.
“She wanted me to speak,” Mallerie said. “She wanted Gideon humiliated in front of everyone.”
“And she expected him to silence you,” Denise added. “Either way, she could use it.”
The explanation still left a question. Why take Owen out of the house afterward instead of leaving him where the courts would find him? Ortiz answered when she called that afternoon. Daphne's account had funded a second set of documents, prepared to send the child out of state under another identity. Celeste had apparently hoped to make the child disappear before the investigation established the sequence of transfers. If Owen could not be located, Gideon would appear to have lost the very baby he'd advertised as his son.
Mallerie left Denise's office with a headache. She had wanted so much to believe the worst part was over. It was possible for a child to be loved and still used as leverage by people who counted human relationships as assets.
At the flower shop Frances showed her an order for thirty white roses. No card, paid in cash, delivery to Mallerie's home address. Frances had refused it. “People send flowers when they can't bear to say what they mean,” she remarked. “And sometimes when they know exactly what they mean.”
That evening Mallerie found Celeste waiting in the café downstairs from her apartment. Celeste wore a navy coat and no jewelry. Without the diamonds she looked less formidable, which made Mallerie distrust her all the more.
“I owe you an apology,” Celeste said.
“You owe Owen a life without being moved from house to house like a piece of furniture.”
Celeste winced. “I didn't know Brennan would make another mother suffer. I was told you had consented to a private arrangement.”
“You were in the room when my records were falsified.”
“I wasn't.”
“You hired me because you knew who I was.”
Celeste glanced toward the door. “I thought if you saw the boy, Gideon would finally confront Brennan. You don't understand what that doctor has on him.”
“Then tell me.”
Celeste's hands had been steady on the table. Now she folded them together until her knuckles whitened. “Gideon thinks his sister died of an overdose. She didn't. Brennan told him she did because Gideon's father paid for the official report.”
Mallerie had heard so many different versions of Elena's death that she resisted the impulse to respond.
“What actually happened?”
“Ask Rose what she remembers about the last visit with her mother.”
“Why don't you tell the police?”
“Because the evidence is in Gideon's safe, and he doesn't know he has it.”
Celeste rose before Mallerie could ask what that meant. She pushed a folded napkin across the table. On it was a six-digit code and the words: Elena's birthday, reversed.
At the door she turned back. “Don't let Gideon destroy what he finds.”
May you like
The following morning, Rose called Mallerie before sunrise. Her voice was trembling.
“I remember something,” she said. “When my mother died, I was with her. And the doctor who told everyone it was an overdose was still in the room when she stopped breathing.”
