Blue Willow (38 page)

Eighteen

The click of her flat blue shoes was the loudest sound Lily had ever heard, and every step closer to the door of James Colebrook’s hospital room made a sharp throb in her pulse. She had come once before. The memory was fuzzy; maybe it had been the week after the funerals. Almost six weeks ago. Eternity Yesterday Aunt Maude had insisted on driving her here that time, thank God.

Lily remembered standing at the foot of his bed, staring at him speechlessly, lost in the horror, seeing the tiny clear tube running from under the sheet to a yellowish bag attached to the bed’s lower railings, and his leg, swaddled in white from hip to foot and hanging in slings. His face had haunted her—eyes closed, asleep, deathly white, a limp shock of hair the color of Artemas’s feathering his high forehead. He resembled Artemas so much—with the same sharp cheekbones, the same harshly sculpted mouth, but his features were leaner, more elegant.

His wife had been the only other person in the room. She had risen from a chair and come to Lily silently Lily recalled looking down into a stunned, pretty face framed by straight, mink-colored hair. She recalled holding out a hand to Alise Colebrook, and that Alise had taken it.
Whatever they had said to each other had been compassionate, and there had been quiet tears. Lily wasn’t certain how long she’d stood, watching James sleep, holding his wife’s hand.

She stopped outside the open door, her heart hammering in her throat. Her body reacted to emotions she didn’t know she felt; everything was buried too deep. She knew she was nervous because she felt the physical sensations, but her mind was calm, almost sluggish. She heard voices inside the room. Several different ones, but all female. Then a low murmur. Masculine.

She had to make these people understand that there was no reason for them to suspect Richard.

She brushed a hand over her clothes and glanced down, stalling for time. Straight dark skirt, white blouse, camel-colored cloth coat. Black hose, blue shoes. Blue purse dangling from the other hand. Wide gold wedding band and large diamond engagement ring. Nails bitten to the quick. Long dull braid of hair fastened with a black band, lying on her right breast. She plucked a dozen stray wavy strands from her coat’s lapel Her hair was falling out all over the place—streaking the throw pillows on the den’s couches, clogging the shower drain, filling her brushes. Nerves, Big Sis had said.

The respectable inventory reassured her that she was thinking rationally. She hadn’t noticed much about the selections while she was getting dressed.

She started to knock on the door, then lowered her hand. Knocking seemed too polite, as if she were about to breeze in carrying flowers and a fruit basket. Lily lifted her chin and walked slowly into the room.

When they saw her, there was shocked silence. She halted just beyond the corner of the bathroom wall, where the room opened up. Their faces flashed across her mind like slides changing too fast. Cassandra. Dark accents. Whip-thin. Standing. Elizabeth. Blond.
Zaftig
. Standing. Alise. Delicate. Sitting on the edge of a chair.

Lily’s breath rattled in her chest.
James
, finally. No sling. No catheter. A pillar of white extending from his left
hip, lying parallel to the ridge his right leg made under the sheet. He was sitting up with bright white pillows stuffed behind him. A silky black pajama top hung loosely on his powerful shoulders and chest.

His face was pale and furious. “I suppose,” he said in a low voice, “you didn’t have the guts to face the cripple until now.”

The words felt like a hand shoving her chest to her backbone. Lily looked at him with dull agony, struggling to breathe.

Alise leaped up. “James, she came here before. I told you.” But the look Lily received from her contained icy dignity. There was no compassion in it. “You shouldn’t have come back.”

James appeared not to notice either his wife’s fiercely soft words or her loyal, protective movement to his side. “If you’re looking for my brother, he’s not here. He might be interested in hearing whatever you came to say, but I’m not.” His gray eyes were hard on Lily’s. His mouth took a crueler slant. “And when this family is finished with you, you’ll know better than to expect any welcome from
him
, either. In fact, he’s trying to find you, as we speak. I’d say your illusions of friendship won’t survive much longer.”

Lily dragged her voice from the clenched fist inside her throat. “I’d trade places with you if it would change what happened—if it brought back my husband and son, or your sister, or any of the others who died.”

“What a nice sentiment. What a useless sentiment.”

“Have you all made up your minds?” she asked, looking from him to his wife and sisters. “Without any evidence?”

Alise’s eyes were shuttered. She said nothing. Cassandra’s expression was as vividly contemptuous as James’s. “The evidence is accumulating at a dazzling pace.”

Lily shook her head. Were they blind? “What evidence? There’s
nothing.
”

“God fucking damn,” Cassandra said.

Elizabeth Colebrook stepped forward, scrutinizing Lily as if she were an unfinished china pattern. Her expression
was akin to Alise’s—restrained, disgusted, but not blatantly cruel. “You obviously haven’t heard from your attorneys yet.”

“Heard
what
?”

James leaned forward quickly. The careless movement made him grimace, and he panted. The ruddy splotches of color on his cheeks gave him a feverish look. Alise uttered a small cry of dismay and knelt on one knee by his hips. She clasped his shoulders. “Please, don’t. You have to rest.”

Again James ignored her. The hatred in his eyes twisted Lily’s stomach. “Avery Rutgers,” he said.

“I don’t know him.”

“Oh? He worked for Oliver Grant.”

“Dozens of people did. Either directly, or through subcontractors.”

“Rutgers was Grant’s quality-control expert. He couldn’t quite reconcile that with the deaths of more than a dozen people. He called our attorneys this morning.”

When Lily only frowned in desperate bewilderment, Cassandra interjected, “He said the concrete used in the bridge was shit. That Grant knew and didn’t replace it. And when Artemas confronted dear, doomed Mr. Grant, he confessed that your husband and his partner knew as well. They knew the bridge might not be safe, but they didn’t do anything.”

Lights burst in Lily’s vision. Her face felt cold, her legs like rubber. All these weeks, she’d never come so close to fainting. She took two wavering steps toward a wall and leaned, facing it, her forehead bowed to the hard, cool surface. Oliver was responsible. Not Richard. Not Frank. She’d never believe they’d collaborated with Oliver. She wanted to kill him. She wanted to drag him to Richard’s and Stephen’s graves and kill him with her bare hands.

Her one goal was to get out of here and find him. Through a haze of black hatred she heard James’s voice, speaking to someone else. “… immediately. I won’t have her pass out in my room. I’ll let her lie on the floor like a goddamned piece of trash, if she does.”

“We’ll send someone as soon as we can, Mr. Colebrook,
” came the grainy, disembodied answer over the nurses’ intercom.

Lily pivoted unsteadily, fury surging into her muscles. “It’s not true. I don’t care what you’ve been told. Whatever Oliver did, he did alone.”

His face convulsed in rage. “The only question is, how much did
you
know?” James was shouting. “And if you don’t know what your husband was capable of, what does that say about your judgment?” Sweat glistened on his face and stained the front of his shirt. The others were agitated, closing in around him, trying to push him back on the pillows. “Anyone who fucked—anyone who even
smiled
at—the bastard or his partner is responsible for doing this to me!”

Lily snapped. She lunged to the end of the bed and clung ferociously to the foot railing. “Does that include
Julia
? Do you condemn your own sister for falling in love with Frank Stockman? Do you think she believed she couldn’t trust him? What blame should that place on
her
?”

The hideous accusation registered in their gasps. She noted their horrified expressions, and her blood froze.
They hadn’t known about Julia and Frank
.

“Close the door,” Artemas said.

Lily straightened slowly and turned to face him. He was formidable—his eyes half-shut, head up, the dark brows pulled together in fierce concentration, his mouth harsh. The somber, beautiful suit he wore and the long black overcoat seemed too civilized for the look on his face, and the way he stood there—like some towering magistrate, weighing her fate—would have frightened her if she hadn’t been soaked in rage.

Tamberlaine stood just behind him, looking troubled and alarmed. Michael Colebrook shut the room’s door and positioned himself beside Artemas, staring down at her with openmouthed dismay. “What did you just say?” Artemas asked. His voice was low but commanding.

Lily returned his merciless gaze. The truth his siblings had just given her rejuvenated the dignity that had escaped her so often during the past weeks. She remembered the
kind of person she’d been before. She wouldn’t be anybody’s victim—especially not his. “Julia loved Frank. It was something that developed a year or so into the planning for the Colebrook project.” The calm, sturdy sound of her own voice reassured her. She was as dispassionate as a hired assassin. When she finished here, she would track Oliver down. The consequences didn’t matter.

“Go on,” Artemas ordered, staring at her. His eyes were narrowed with a different kind of consideration. Concern? Did he sense her cool madness?

Lily exhaled and tried to concentrate on the conversation at hand. “Once the building was under construction, she spent most of her time in Atlanta. She and Frank were staying together every night—at her hotel or his house. It ended about a year ago.”

“I don’t believe it,” Cassandra said. “How do you know?”

Lily turned her head slightly and said over her shoulder, “Because Frank didn’t make any secret of it to Richard or me. Because Julia talked to me about it. To be specific, because I accidentally walked in on them once, in a construction trailer. They weren’t using the desk to study blueprints.”

She met Artemas’s eyes again. There was a shadow of pained belief in the mask. She hurt for him, but couldn’t relent. “Frank had a live-in housekeeper. Ask her. She can tell you how often Julia stayed with him when she was in Atlanta. Ask Oliver Grant. He knows. Some of his men used to complain that there ought to be a Do Not Disturb sign on the construction trailer’s door when Julia was in town.”

Artemas said slowly, “There was no reason for my sister to keep a secret like that.”

“She worried that y’all would think she’d compromised her supervision of the building. But I assumed she’d confided in at least one of you. Or that you suspected.”

It was obvious, from the looks that passed among the group, that no one had been informed. She glanced at James. His strained expression was infused with a quieter,
more poignant rage. “What you’ve described wasn’t
love
. It doesn’t mean a damned thing.” His large, pale hands knotted in the sheets.

Artemas’s voice cut through her. “Have your attorneys discussed the accusations that came out today about Richard and Frank?”

“I learned about them the hard way, a minute ago, from people who think they’re true.”

If there had been even a flicker of sympathy in his eyes, it was gone. “Don’t blindly defend Richard. This family deserves better than that.”

“My husband deserves better than to be judged by the claims of a building contractor who’s looking to save his own ass.”

“Richard and Frank were desperate to have the Colebrook Building turn out perfectly. They needed the big-money clients it brought them. You can’t deny that. Richard knew he stood to lose everything you and he owned if they failed. He used your personal property to acquire loans he and Stockman needed to build their new offices.”

“I know. I agreed to it.” She’d been trying not to think about those loans, or how they would be handled now.

“Do you realize how many lawsuits there are going to be? That the firm will end up in bankruptcy—and every asset connected to it will go to pay the debts? Will you still forgive Richard when you lose your house and everything else?”

“I’ve already lost what I loved most,” she said, her voice hoarse. “There’s nothing to forgive Richard for. No reason to believe Oliver isn’t lying.”

“If there’s proof to back him up, I’ll get it.” He took a step toward her. Unspoken threat seethed in him. She absorbed it without flinching. “What else should you tell me about Julia?” he asked. “Grant said, ‘Ask Lily Porter. She knows why we were all so crazy toward the end. Ask her about Julia.’ ”

“Frank broke off their relationship when she started talking about marriage. I won’t defend him—he was stupid
about it, and tactless, and I understood why Julia enjoyed making him miserable after that. But she took revenge on Richard, too, and Oliver, and me—everyone connected to the project. She’d always been hard to please. They’d never been able to make her understand that nothing runs smoothly about a project as large as the Colebrook Building. There are delays, mistakes, changes in plans, unexpected costs. Budgets that were approved before construction began have to be altered.

“But she wouldn’t listen. And after she and Frank broke up, nothing was good enough for her. She threatened to sue if the project came in one penny over budget or one day late. She
knew
Richard and Frank couldn’t afford a lawsuit, not with all their money tied up in their new offices. She knew the economy had hurt Oliver’s business, and he was struggling to stay out of debt. She made everyone frantic by the end.” Lily’s hands rose in fists. “I watched Richard exhaust himself worrying about it. He had chest pains. He couldn’t sleep. I’ll never forgive her for what she did to him.”

James interjected in a deadly tone, “Are you saying our sister pressured those gutless wonders so much that they’d do anything to survive, even if it amounted to criminal negligence?” His voice rose. “Goddammit, are you blaming her for what happened?”