The Daughter-in-Law (15 page)

“You know,” Nicole concluded when Alexandra had ended her presentation, “what you’re doing is much more obscene than anything I’ve done.”

Alexandra considered the indictment. “It may be,” she answered. “Using the power of money to direct other people’s lives is not something I enjoy. If it’s not obscene, it certainly isn’t playing the game fairly. But if I let this go on, you’ll have nearly as much money to fight with as I have. I’ll lose my advantage. And the things I’m defending—my son, my family’s reputation—are dear to me. I can’t risk losing them.”

Alexandra turned and climbed the steps to her front door. She didn’t ask Nicole to join her.

TWENTY-TWO

N
ICOLE RETURNED
to the guest cottage, packed the essentials, and drove off in the convertible that Jonathan had left for her use. She nearly spun the security guard around as she flashed past the gate, and seconds later she merged into the parkway headed for Manhattan. She let herself into Jonathan’s apartment, called him at his office, and told him she needed to see him right away. She paced in front of the window until he stepped out of a taxi in front of the building. She was in his arms the second he stepped through the door, sobbing so deeply that she couldn’t even speak.

“What’s the matter? What is it?” he kept asking.

She couldn’t answer. Finally, when her wracking had calmed to a shiver, she managed a broken sequence of words between her deep breaths. “Your . . . mother . . . wants me . . . to . . . leave.”

“Leave the house?”

She nodded. “And leave you.”

“Leave me? Don’t be ridiculous, Nicole. Why would she want that?”

She tried to answer, but began crying again. Jonathan led her tenderly to the living room sofa, seated her, and then went for a glass of water. He watched her struggle as she sipped, and then moved around behind her where he could massage her neck and shoulders. “Don’t try to talk,” he whispered when she began a fumbling attempt to string a few words together. It was nearly half an hour before she could try an explanation.

“Your mother found out things about me. Awful things. Things that I never wanted you to know.”

“Then I don’t want to know ...”

“But I have to tell you. I don’t ever want you to hear about me from anyone else.”

He started to disagree, then stopped. “Okay. Whatever you want to tell me.” He settled into a chair across from her.

She began in a faltering voice. Her high school introduction to the stage had captivated her. She had gone to community college to prepare for a business career but her heart had never been in it. She had worked nights and weekends until she saved up a nest egg. Then she had gone to Chicago where she had a better chance of getting cast than she would have in New York. “People told me that I’d need professional credits in New York. That’s why I quit school and went to Chicago.”

Jonathan nodded. It sounded sensible to him. But he knew there would be more to the story so he didn’t interrupt.

She had spent two years there, and had gotten only one small part. A New York touring company had taken all the leads on tour, filling in the minor parts with locals. She was a dippy chorus girl with just two lines.

But in all the months of frustrating casting calls, she had learned all the ways that an attractive young woman could make money. Lots of money. She could pocket a thousand a week dancing in an adult nightclub. One night was worth more than a month of waiting tables. She could model clothes for visiting buyers. The manufacturers tipped lavishly if their sales went well. She could pose for men’s magazines and for the porno Web sites. Maybe a thousand dollars for a four-hour session. Sure, all the men were hitting on her. The club owners, the buyers, the photographers. But that was nothing new. In high school it was the football players. In college it was the teachers. Waiting tables it could be the owners as well as the customers. One thing a good-looking girl learned was how to deflect leering propositions. Never say “no.” Just tell them why it would have to be later.

“There was this English professor who called me in to tell me that with a little more effort I could get a really good grade. ‘Maybe with a little tutoring over the weekend . . . ’ I stalled him through the marking period, always strapped this weekend, but maybe next weekend. He gave me an ‘A,’ and then I told him that I just didn’t have the time for his personal attention. And the photographers, with their promises of photos for my book ...”

Jonathan had no trouble visualizing the maneuvering involved in holding out hope without ever actually delivering. He began feeling rage against the creeps who would use a young woman’s desperation
to take advantage of her. But then he remembered how many women he had led along just by flaunting his wealth.

Nicole moved on to the next phase of her career. She had moved to New York and found a comfortable situation with another aspiring actress. Their days were spent taking acting and voice lessons and going out on casting calls. They had both been overwhelmed. There were hundreds of aspirants for even the smallest roles, and the level of talent was incredible. Nicole had sneaked out of one try-out without even auditioning. From the wings she had heard three girls toy with notes that were far beyond her range.

“I knew within a month,” Nicole confessed to her husband, “that I had no future in musical theater. But I thought that it’s not always the most talented player who gets the part. Mediocre talents get fantastically lucky. So, I was hanging around hoping for a break.”

She had done some modeling, she went on, and not all of it for name brands. There were poses for the kind of calendars that hang inside gas stations. The dividing line between leg art and the subtly pornographic wasn’t always plain when an agent booked a shoot. Sometimes she simply picked up her things and walked out. But other times, when she needed the fee and the photographer was persuasive, she did poses that she would never want to put in her book.

She had also been a hostess, she admitted, shilling prospects at trade shows, and filling in as a companion for a big buyer in need of a dinner or theater companion. “But that was the extent of it,” she swore. “I was never a call girl. I never turned a trick in my life.”

Jonathan tried to stop her. He had never asked about her past because he didn’t think it mattered. He was sure she had reasons for whatever she had done, and he was well aware that he had sins of his own. “None of this matters to me,” he assured her.

“But it does to your mother. She doesn’t think the family would survive if someone got wind of my past.”

Then she led into the topic of David Hanna, a Broadway and Hollywood director whose name Jonathan recognized. She had met David briefly at a party where she was on the arm of a Pittsburgh buyer. Just a few minutes of small talk. But three days later, on an open casting call for a new musical, Hanna was sitting in the audience. She had done a song and dance number, one of Gwen Verdon’s numbers from
Damn Yankees.
The voice out of darkness had called
“Thank you,” and advised her to leave her name with the stage manager. It was the standard kiss-off. She was going out the stage door when Hanna had stepped in front of her.

“Miss Pierce!”

She pulled up and drew a breath.

“Or is it Heather?” he asked. “When I met you the other night, weren’t you Heather something or other?”

She blushed. “That was just for the gentleman I was with. I didn’t want him to know who I was.”

“Then why were you with him?” David Hanna knew perfectly well why she was with him and he mellowed into a broad, toothy smile that said he understood her predicament and was enjoying her embarrassment.

“A favor to a friend,” she lied.

He nodded. Then he said diffidently, “You don’t really want the part you just auditioned for. It’s chorus line behind feathers.”

She didn’t want to say that she would kill for any part. “It sounded like a lot more when my agent described it.”

“Agents,” he groaned. “They’ll take ten percent of anything.” Then he got to the point. “Do you have a few minutes? Maybe time for a drink? There’s something I’d like to toss out. Just a suggestion, but you might find it attractive.”

Nicole had known perfectly well where his suggestion would lead, but he was a rising power broker in the theater, and she was desperate for a break. Even the crumb he might toss her would be better than what she had been able to get on her own.

Jonathan held a finger up to her lips. “You don’t have to tell me about this,” he said.

“Someone will tell you about it. David might even remember me when he sees my name in connection with yours. I don’t want you to read about him bragging in some tabloid that he had me first.”

“Nicole, what will it matter when we’re living somewhere where there are no tabloids? Maybe a thousand miles away from anyone who wants to talk about us?”

“It’s not ‘us’ that your mother is worried about. It’s the reputation of the family. The integrity of Sound Holdings. She wants that ‘deni-ability’ you told me about. She wants to be able to say that it doesn’t matter anymore because I’m no longer in the picture.”

“We’ll talk to her,” he promised. “We’ll make her understand ...”

“Jonathan, I can’t go back into that house. I couldn’t stand her looking down her nose at me as if I were some kind of trash.”

He took her in his arms again, and stopped her just as she was about to fall back into her hysteria.

“Nicole, why don’t we just go back to Belize? I have a lot of things to put in the works down there. We could leave tomorrow. Certainly by Friday.”

“But I don’t want you to lose everything just on my account.”

He shook his head. “I won’t lose everything. There are millions in my name, and I could put up one hell of a fight before they could take any of it back. There’s more than enough for us to live on forever. Probably enough to start a small version of the resort hotel I was thinking about. If they don’t need us, then we don’t need them.”

He spent an hour trying to explain to her why they were financially independent and why Alexandra couldn’t control their lives.

She protested several times that she didn’t want to know about his finances. She didn’t care about the Donner billions or any portion of it that might be his. “All I want to know is that you love me,” she told him. “Maybe some day your family will see me for who I am and not for the things I had to do.”

Jonathan settled in his father’s office the next day, and refused to leave until Jack canceled his appointment and told his secretary to hold calls.

“Now, what’s so damn important that the world of finance has to stop spinning on its axis?” he demanded.

“I’m resigning,” Jonathan said.

“Resigning? Quitting your job? For what? If there’s one thing I know for sure it’s that no one in his right mind would be giving you a better offer. What are your plans? A hotdog pushcart? Or a soft icecream stand?” Jack chuckled at his own wit. He was used to people laughing at his jokes.

“I was thinking of a dive boat in the Caribbean, or maybe a charter-boat business in the Mediterranean.”

“You think you can make money out of one of your hobbies? What makes you think you’ll be any good at running your own business?”

“I can’t do much worse than I’ve done here.”

Jack laughed. “Look, I don’t have time for this. Why don’t you and your baseball player take a couple of more weeks off? Then, when you get back, we’ll sit down and talk.”

“That’s what we’re doing now, Jack. We’re talking, and I’m telling you what I’m going to do.” He stood, replaced his chair, and started to the door. “I’ll keep you posted on how things are going. Who knows? Maybe you’ll want to invest in me?”

Jack stood and came around the desk after his son. “And what are you planning on using for money? Because the second you step outside that door your salary stops.”

Jonathan laughed. “I was figuring on using all that money you banked in my name to avoid taxes. I know it’s not much to you, but it should keep me rolling for quite a while.”

“You can’t touch that money,” Jack snapped.

“Why not? It’s
my
Cayman Island bank account. I paid the bank fees.”

Jack started to sputter. Rage rose in his face from his collar line until the red tint reached his eyebrows. “Don’t get smart with me,” he snarled. “You’re way out of your league.”

Jonathan held out his hand. “I know that, Dad. You’re the best. No one can touch you.”

Jack waved away the handshake and stormed back to his desk. “You be in here in the morning, or your things will go flying out the window.” He was already on the telephone when Jonathan closed the door behind him.

TWENTY-THREE

T
HEY LANDED
in Belize City the next night, just in time to catch the Beech Baron that flew them up to San Pedro. Their hotel arranged a car to meet them and they were quickly delivered to a three-room cabana with shuttered doors opening out onto the pool.

Jonathan had decided that they should get the lay of the land before moving out to the isolation of one of the island cottages. “I’m not thinking about the intruder,” he had insisted to Nicole. “But I’m going to be meeting with real-estate brokers, bankers, and probably a couple of local lawyers. So, I’ll need to be here on Ambergris Cay or over on the mainland for a few days. Once that’s done we can go back out in a honeymoon bungalow.”

He made a point of calling home. “Might as well save them the trouble of finding out where we are,” he told her. “They will, whether we want them to or not.”

He talked to his mother. “Of course I’ll be coming back. A couple of weeks, maybe a month at most. No, don’t send anyone down. If there are contracts to be signed, I’ll sign them up there. I won’t have time to meet with your attorneys. I’ll be too busy getting things started here.”

Then to his father: “No, I’m very serious. I was working up a formal proposal on the idea, and when I see you I’ll have hard numbers to show you. No, I don’t need one of the consultants. As I told Alexandra, I expect to be flat-out busy for the next few weeks.”

His sister got on the phone. “Pam, baby, this place is heaven. Line up a couple of friends, and buy the skimpiest bikini you can get your hands on. It won’t be long before I’ll have a place down here that you can visit.”