Mystery Heiress. Suzanne Carey

Instead, a worried call from Natalie had propelled him to her house, across Lake Travis from the Fortune mansion. She had things to tell him about Jake’s involvement with Monica the night before—things she didn’t feel comfortable confiding over the telephone.

      Annoyed that he had to go when Kate had suggested he remain at home and make himself available for Jake’s call, he’d quickly decided the trip had been worth it when he heard Natalie’s tale of an argument between Jake and Monica at her house, possibly over blackmail, Monica’s fall and Jake’s assertion that he’d cut his shoulder. According to the secondhand information he’d received from her, the aging star had been alive and ready to continue their argument when Jake left the house. As for his comments about blackmail, Jake hadn’t been specific. In fact, he’d backed off from them.

      His claim that Monica had been alive when he left had alleviated the lawyer’s concern only a little. Coupled with the fact of her death, the circumstances Jake had described to his daughter spelled big trouble for him, in his opinion. Kate had thought so, too, when he reported to her on returning to his apartment shortly before 11:00 a.m.

      When his phone shrilled just seconds after they finished their conversation, he picked up on the first ring. “At last!” he exclaimed in response to Jake’s tentative utterance of his name. “Where in the hell are you? Monica Malone’s murder is all over the newspapers and television. The Minneapolis Police are seeking you for questioning.”

      The bottom dropping out of his feeble hope that someone else had been caught and charged with Monica’s murder, Jake told Sterling where he was. “You’ve got to believe me…I didn’t kill Monica,” he begged like a penitent child, “though we did have a run-in. She was alive when I left. Still, if the police are looking for me, I suppose I’m in a heap of trouble. I’m going to need your help.”

      Sterling calculated that the motel where Jake had spent the night was roughly a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Minneapolis. An unannounced and unaccompanied return might not be wise. It was entirely possible that the police had alerted their fellow officers throughout Minnesota and the neighboring states to be on the lookout for him. If he was arrested on his way back, or even detained for questioning, he could protest all he wanted that he’d planned to turn himself in and still not be believed.

      In Sterling’s opinion, the best course of action he could take would be to drive to Wisconsin and bring Jake back, after notifying the authorities that the Fortune CEO would appear at police headquarters voluntarily that evening and answer all their questions. That way, he’d have a chance to hear the full story from Jake’s mouth—ask whatever questions he deemed necessary, and help him settle on the official version—before the detectives got a crack at him.

      For Jake, the silence on Sterling’s end of the line was deafening. “For God’s sake,” he pleaded, “say something. Tell me what to do.”

      Having decided how to handle the situation, Sterling was brisk. “Don’t go out,” he ordered. “Wait there for me. Talk to no one. I’ll phone the police when I get to Hayward and tell them I’m coming in with you…that you’ll answer their questions willingly. There’s a young man in my building who can accompany me, and drive your car back for you.”

      Abject in his fear that he’d be accused of a crime he hadn’t committed, Jake quickly agreed to do whatever the attorney suggested. Breaking their connection, Sterling took a deep breath and dialed Kate. “Your son just called,” he said without preamble when she answered. “He’s in Wisconsin. I’m on my way to bring him back. On my advice, he’ll submit to questioning voluntarily. Naturally, I’ll be by his side….”

      There was a brief silence on Kate’s end. “Do you think he’ll be arrested?” she asked.

      Sterling was anything but sure about how to answer her. He tried to be optimistic. “I shouldn’t think so,” he opined. “Of course, I’ll know more after I talk with him in depth.”

      It was the best he could offer her at the moment. Her relief, mixed with a certain amount of dread over what the future would hold, was palpable. “Sterling, thank you!” she whispered. “Without you, the family would disintegrate. Whereas I…”

      Time was of the essence, and she didn’t finish the thought. “Call Erica before you go, will you, so she won’t worry too much?” she added, changing her tack. “She can get in touch with the children. Naturally, you won’t want to give her too many details.”

      At the hospital, Jess had remained by her daughter’s bedside, desperately trying to think of ways to contact the Fortune family while waiting for the first of Annie’s tests to come back from the lab. A nurse entered the room around 1:00 p.m. and noted that Annie was asleep. “You’ve been here all day, since early this morning, without rest or anything to eat, Mrs. Holmes,” she pointed out. “It won’t help your daughter if you get sick, too. We’ll keep an eye on her, and Dr. Hunter will page you when the test results become available. Why don’t you run down to the cafeteria and grab a bite?”

      If they could pull it off, Annie’s rehabilitation would take months. The nurse’s suggestion made sense. Realizing she was starved, Jess decided to take her up on it. She was seated in the brightly lit first-floor cafeteria, munching on a tuna-salad sandwich and drinking a cup of tea, when Stephen slid into the seat opposite her.

      “Is something wrong?” she asked, the panic that lay just below the surface of her thoughts staring back at him.

      She was so lovely. So distraught. And so alone in Minneapolis, unless he was very much mistaken. It was all he could do not to reach across the table and pat her shoulder. “Nothing we didn’t expect,” he replied.

      “Then…the results are in?”

      “Some of them are. Enough to know Annabel’s white-cell count is severely out of whack, with a large number of immature, ineffective cells circulating in her bloodstream. She’s going to need a transplant, and soon, to correct the situation. As an interim measure, until we can find a donor, I want to prescribe a mild form of chemotherapy. It’ll make her fairly sick for a couple of days. But then she should have a brief remission. We’ll have a respite in which to search.”

      Jess had dealt with the problem sufficiently by now to know they didn’t have any other choice. Reluctantly, because anything calculated to make Annie sicker was like a dagger in her heart, she gave her permission.

      “I’ve asked my office nurse to register Annabel with all known marrow sources, including one that’s previously turned up several donors for us in Australia,” he added. “It’ll take a few weeks, maybe longer, to find out if there’s an available match.”

      “And…if there isn’t?”

      “Unless her remission’s far stronger than I expect, your daughter’s not a good candidate for autologous donation, the process in which a portion of the patient’s own marrow is removed, cleansed of cancer cells and replanted after the remaining cancer is killed off with chemotherapy,” he said, his gaze unwavering though it was deeply sympathetic. “We could try it, I suppose, if all else failed. But it would be risky in the extreme.”

      Jess didn’t answer. There wasn’t much use in arguing the point. Annie’s doctors in England had advised strongly against the process in her case, as well.

      “Mind telling me why you decided to come to Minneapolis, of all places?” he asked, changing the subject.

      She supposed she might as well describe her possible connection with the Fortune family, though it hadn’t been proven yet. “When my family members—what few I have—were tested as possible donors for Annie,” she said, “those on my maternal grandfather’s side turned out to be so extremely wide of the mark that her doctors found it puzzling.

      “Shortly thereafter, I was going through some things that had belonged to my late mother. An old letter fell out of a book she’d read to me as a child. To my astonishment, it suggested that my true maternal grandfather wasn’t a man named George Simpson, as I’d always believed, but rather Benjamin Fortune….”