Shopaholic to the Rescue (26 page)

“A fine piece,” I say, with a brisk nod. “And which ees precious to your
heart
?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Raymond gives an awkward, heavy laugh. “I have a fond spot for this one.” He points at a much larger, abstract piece, glazed in lots of different colors.

“Aha.” I nod. “We will examine zem….” I pick up
Twice,
and Suze picks up the multicolored one. “Let us study zem in ze light….” I move away from Raymond, and Suze follows. “Aha. Zis one, it remind me of…a
potato
.”

Suze was right. Potato is a really,
really
bad code word. But it works. In one seamless movement, Suze and I hold the sculptures above our heads.

(Suze’s looks much heavier than mine. I feel a bit bad. But, then, she’s got strong arms.)

“All right,” I say, in my most menacing voice. “Here’s the truth. I’m not Pauline Audette. My name is Rebecca. Graham Bloomwood is my father. And I want to know the truth about what happened on your road trip. If you won’t tell us, we’ll smash the pieces. If you fetch help, we’ll smash the pieces. So you’d better start talking.” I break off, breathing hard, wondering whether to add “buster,” then think better of it.

Raymond is clearly one of those very slow, think-everything-through types. It feels like about half an hour that we’re standing there, our arms aching, our pulses racing, waiting for him to respond. He scans from me to Suze. He blinks. He screws up his face. He opens his mouth to speak, then stops.

“We need to know,” I say, trying to prod him into action. “We need to know the truth, right here, right
now
.”

Again, Raymond frowns, as though pondering the great mysteries of life. God, he’s frustrating.

“You’re not Pauline Audette?” he says at last.

“No.”

“Well, thank God for that.” He shakes his head in wonder. “I thought you’d gone crazy.” He peers more closely at me. “You look like her, though. Just like her.”

“I know.”

“I mean, that is
incredible
. You’re not related?”

“Not as far as I know. It is incredible, isn’t it?” I can’t help unbending to him a little. I
knew
I looked like Pauline Audette.

“Well, you should google that.” His eyes brighten with interest. “Maybe you have some ancestor in common. You could go on one of those TV shows—”

“Enough of zis chitchat!” barks Suze, sounding like a Nazi kommandant. “We need the truth!” She frowns disapprovingly at me, and I see I’ve let myself get sidetracked.

“That’s right!” I say hastily, and hold
Twice
up even higher. “We’re here for a reason, Raymond, so you’d better give us what we need.”

“And don’t try any funny business,” adds Suze menacingly. “The minute you call the cops, your two pieces of pottery will be in smithereens.” She sounds like she can’t wait to get smashing. I didn’t realize Suze had quite such a violent side.

There’s another minute or so of silence—which feels like half an hour—as Raymond digests this.

“You’re Graham’s daughter,” he says at last, staring at me. “Don’t look like him.”

“Well, I am. And he’s gone missing. We’ve been trying to track him down and help him out, but all we know is, he’s trying to put something right. Do you know what that is?”

“Has he been here?” puts in Suze.

“Has he made contact?”

“Can you tell us what this is all about?”

Raymond’s face has closed up as we’ve been talking. He meets my eye briefly, then glances away, and I feel a twinge in my stomach. He knows.

“What is it?” I demand. “What happened?”

“What’s he
doing
?” chimes in Suze.

There’s another flicker in Raymond’s eye, and he stares at the far corner of the room.

“You know, don’t you?” I try to catch his eye. “Why won’t you speak? Why did you turn my mum away?”

“Tell us!” exclaims Suze.

“Whatever he’s doing, that’s his business,” says Raymond, without moving his gaze.

He knows. We’ve come all this way and he knows and he’s not telling us. I feel such a surge of fury, I start quivering.

“I’ll throw this to the ground!” I yell, brandishing
Twice
. “I’ll throw everything to the ground! I can do a lot of damage in thirty seconds! And I don’t care if you call the police, because this is my dad and I
need to know
!”

“Jesus!” Raymond seems shocked at my outburst. “Chill out. You really Graham’s daughter?” He turns to Suze. “Graham was always Mr. Calm.”

“He still is,” says Suze.

“I take a bit more after my mum,” I admit.

“So…you’re Graham’s daughter,” he says for a third time. God, is he always this slow on the uptake?

“Yes, I’m Rebecca,” I say pointedly. “But my dad didn’t want to give me that name. For some reason. Which no one will tell me.”

“And Brent’s and Corey’s daughters are Rebecca too,” puts in Suze.

“Brent’s daughter said, ‘We’re all called Rebecca,’ but I don’t know why, and, basically, I’m tired of not knowing about my own life.” My voice is shaking as I finish, and a weird little silence falls over the room.

Raymond seems to be processing everything. He looks at me and at Suze. He looks at the pots, still above our heads. (Suze must have such bad pins and needles by now.)

Then, at last, he seems to give in. “OK,” he says.

“OK what?” I say warily.

“I’ll tell you what your dad’s doing.”

“So you
do
know?”

“He was here.” He gestures to a paint-stained sofa. “Sit. I’ll tell you what I know. You want some iced tea?”

—

Even though Raymond seems to have decided to play along, we don’t relinquish the pottery, just in case. We sit on the sofa, clutching the two sculptures on our laps, while Raymond pours iced tea from a jug, then arranges himself on a chair opposite.

“Well, it comes down to the money,” he says, as though this is perfectly obvious, and takes a thoughtful sip from his glass.

“What money?”

“Brent signing away his rights. I mean, that’s years ago now. But your dad only just found out, thought it was wrong. Wanted to do something about it. I said, ‘That’s their business.’ But your dad got the bit between his teeth. He and Corey always did have that…I don’t know what you’d call it. A spark. Corey wound your dad up. Anyway, so that’s what he’s up to.”

Raymond leans back as though all is now perfectly clear and takes another sip of iced tea. I stare at him, nonplussed.

“What?” I say at last. “What are you talking about?”

“Well, you know,” says Raymond with a shrug. “The spring. The money.” He eyes me closely. “I’m talking about
the money
.”

“What money?” I retort with a flash of irritation. “You keep talking about money, but I don’t know what you’re going on about.”

“You don’t know?” Raymond gives a little whoop. “He never told you?”

“No!”

“Oh, Graham. Not so holier-than-thou now.” He gives a sudden guffaw.

“What are you
talking
about?” I’m exploding with frustration.

“OK.” Raymond flashes me a grin. “Now, you pay attention. This is a good story. We all first met in New York, the four of us, waiting tables. Corey and Brent were science grads. I was a design postgrad. Your dad was…I don’t remember what your dad was. We were young men, waiting to see where life would take us, and we decided to go west. Have an adventure.”

“Right.” I nod politely, though my heart is sinking. People say, “This is a good story,” and what they mean is,
I’m going to share a random slice of my life with you now, and you have to look fascinated.
The truth is, I’ve heard this story a million times from Dad. Next we’ll be on to the sunsets and the shimmering heat and that time they spent the night in the desert. “So, where does money come into it?”

“I’ll get to that.” Raymond lifts a hand. “Off we went, traveling around the West. And we talked. A lot. No cell phones back then, remember. No Wi-Fi. Just music and conversation. In bars, sitting around the campfire, on the road…wherever. Corey and Brent used to spitball ideas. They used to talk about setting up a research company together. Bright boys, both of them. Corey had money too. And looks. He was what you might call the alpha male.”

“Right,” I say dubiously, remembering the tanned, weird-looking guy we met in Las Vegas.

“Then one night…” Raymond pauses for effect. “They came up with the spring.” A little smile dances around his mouth. “Ever heard of a balloon spring?”

Something is ringing in my mind, and I sit up straighter. “Hang on. Corey invented a spring, didn’t he?”

“Corey and Brent invented a spring,” corrects Raymond.

“But…” I stare at him. “I saw articles about that spring online. There’s no mention of Brent anywhere.”

“Guess Corey had him airbrushed out of the story.” Raymond gives a wry chuckle. “But Brent helped invent it, all right. They came up with the first notion together one night by the fire. Sketched out the concept right then and there. It was four years before it was actually developed, but that’s where it all began. Corey, Brent, your dad, and me. We all had a stake in it.”

“Wait,
what
?” I stare at him. “My dad had a stake in it?”

“Well, I say ‘stake.’ ” Raymond begins to chuckle again. “He didn’t put any money in. It was more like a ‘contribution.’ ”

“Contribution? What contribution?”

I’m half-hoping to hear that my dad was the one who had the blinding insight that kick-started the whole invention.

“Your dad gave them the pad of paper they wrote it on.”

“Paper,”
I say, deflated. “Is that all?”

“It was enough! They joked about it. Corey and Brent were desperate for something to write on. Your dad had a big sketchbook. He said, ‘Well, if I give you my sketchbook, I want in on this,’ and Corey said, ‘You got it, Graham. You’ve got one percent.’ I mean, we were all joking. I helped them sketch out their ideas. It passed a few evenings.” Raymond takes another glug of iced tea. “But then they made the spring. The money started pouring in. And as far as I know, Corey stuck to his word. Sent your dad a dividend every year.”

I’m dumbstruck. My dad has a stake in a spring? OK, I take it back. This is a pretty good story.

“I had an inheritance around that time,” Raymond adds, “so I put some real money in. Set me up for life.”

“But how can a spring make so much money?” says Suze skeptically. “It’s just a piece of curly wire.”

That’s
exactly
what I was thinking, only I didn’t want to say it.

“It’s a kind of folding spring.” Raymond shrugs. “Useful thing. You’ll find it in firearms, computer keyboards…you name it. Corey and Brent were smart. Corey had a gun; he did some hunting. They’d take it apart in the evenings, play around with the spring-loading mechanism. It gave them ideas. You know how it is.”

No, I don’t know how it is. I’ve sat around loads of times with Suze, and we’ve taken plenty of things apart, like makeup kits. But I’ve never invented a new spring.

I suddenly understand why Dad was always so interested in my physics report. And why he used to say, “Becky love, why not go into engineering?” and “Science is
not
boring, young lady!”

Hmm. Maybe he had a point. Now I half-wish I’d listened.

Ooh, maybe we can train up Minnie in science and she’ll invent an even more advanced spring and we’ll all be squillionaires. (When she’s not winning the Olympics at show jumping, of course.)

“When they got back from the trip,” Raymond is saying, “they hired a lab and developed it properly. Four years later they launched it. At least, Corey launched it.”

“Only Corey? Why not Brent?”

Raymond’s face kind of closes up. “Brent bowed out after three years,” he says shortly.

“
Three years?
What do you mean, before it launched? So he didn’t make any money?”

“Not to speak of. He pretty much just signed away his rights.”

“But why on earth would he do that?” I demand in horror. “He must have known it had huge potential.”

“I guess Corey told him—” Raymond breaks off, then says with sudden heat, “It’s in the past. It’s between the two of them.”

“Corey told him what?” I narrow my eyes. “
What,
Raymond?”

“What?”
echoes Suze, and Raymond makes an angry, huffing sound.

“Corey had taken over the business side. Maybe he gave Brent the wrong impression. Told him the investors weren’t coming forward, told him it wasn’t developing commercially, told him it was going to be expensive to take it to the next level. So Brent sold out for…well. Pretty much nothing.”

I stare at Raymond in utter dismay.

“Corey
conned
Brent? He should go to prison!”

Into my head flashes an image of Corey’s Las Vegas palace, followed by Brent’s trailer. It’s so unfair. I can’t bear it.

“Corey didn’t break any law as far as I know,” Raymond replies stolidly. “He was right in some of what he said—it
wasn’t
a sure thing. It
did
need investment. Brent should have looked into it. Shoulda been smarter.”

“You know Brent’s been living in a trailer?” I say accusingly. “You know he’s been
evicted
from a trailer?”

“If Brent was fool enough to fall for Corey’s patter, that’s his problem,” returns Raymond aggressively. “I believe he attempted legal action, but the facts didn’t stack up strongly enough. Corey’s word against Brent’s, see.”

“But that’s so
wrong
! Brent helped invent it! It’s made millions!”

“Whatever.” Raymond’s face closes up even further, and I feel a surge of contempt for him.

“You just don’t want to know, do you?” I say scathingly. “No wonder you hide yourself away from the world.”

“If Brent’s so talented,” puts in Suze, “why didn’t he make something of himself anyway?”

“Brent was never the strongest character,” says Raymond. “I think it ate him up, seeing Corey succeed. He drank, married too many times—that’ll burn through your money.”

“No wonder it ate him up!” I almost yell. “It would eat anyone up! So, you think this is OK, do you? One of your friends conned the other and you don’t want to do anything about it?”