The Rich Shall Inherit (10 page)

She was setting ashtrays on the tables and checking the candles in their little red containers to make sure they didn’t need replacing. Taking his glass, he walked over to her. “Lauren Hunter?” he asked. Her head jerked upward and she stared at him with huge, frightened eyes. “I’m sorry if I startled you,” he said gently. “I got your name from Johannes Lieber, the lawyer in Geneva. He asked me to see you. There was no reply from your home number. They told me at Denny’s you worked here at night.”

“Johannes Lieber?” she asked, bewildered.

“It’s about Poppy Mallory’s estate.”

Lauren’s legs went suddenly weak and she sank into a chair. “Does that mean I really am the heiress, then?”

“I’m afraid we don’t know who the heiress is yet,” Mike said quickly. “Lieber just wanted me to see you and find out a few more details.” Her disappointment showed in her eyes as she stared at him, and he added, “Of course, it doesn’t mean you’re
not
the heiress, I’m just here to help sort out your story.”

“I see. Well, there’s not much more to tell. I wrote it all in my letter to Mr. Lieber. I wasn’t even sure whether it was worth it, but my mom always said you don’t get anywhere without trying, so I did. Anyway, everything I said in that letter was true!”

“I don’t doubt that,” he told her. “I’d just like to chat about it a bit more, if we could.”

She glanced nervously at the rapidly filling room. “I have to get to work,” she said, standing up.

“Could you meet me afterward?” Mike asked. “What time do you finish?”

“One o’clock. But I don’t know … I’d have to call the babysitter.”

“I see,” said Mike, her background clicking suddenly into place.

“No, you don’t,” she replied, looking him straight in the eyes. “You don’t see at all. I’ll be here, at one o’clock.”

Wondering what she’d meant, he finished his drink, watching as she moved busily and efficiently between the tables. She was obviously good at her job, conscientious and efficient. And she was a hard worker—he knew she had a day job at Denny’s. She was young and she was bright, and she should have been in
college, but of course now he knew. She had a responsibility. A child to bring up; another mouth to feed.

He filled in the time at a movie on Hollywood Boulevard, grabbed a bite at Musso and Frank’s, and was back at Teddy’s at a quarter of one. Lauren nodded when she saw him. “One o’clock,” she mouthed across the room, pointing to her watch. Mike took a seat at the bar and ordered a drink, watching the milling crowd on the dance floor. The music was so loud, it vibrated through his chest and he wondered how she put up with it, night after night. And afterward she had to go home to her kid, who no doubt was up at six a.m. and raring to go, while poor Lauren would have to face another day’s work at Denny’s. He surely hoped she was Poppy Mallory’s heiress, she certainly could use the money!

“Hi,” she said, standing beside him. She wore blue jeans over her leotard and an old denim jacket. She had washed off the lipstick and the mascara and she looked about sixteen. With a shock, Mike remembered that she was only a couple of years older than that anyway. He took her arm, guiding her through the crowd. It felt thin through the denim sleeve, thin and fragile. It made him feel protective, as though he wanted to feed her …. “You hungry?” he asked.

“Sort of,” she replied.

“What’s your favorite?”

“Chinese,” she said unhesitatingly.

He took her to the New Moon on Ventura Boulevard, and watched as she devoured egg roll, beef in black bean sauce, and Singapore noodles. “Feel better?” he asked with a grin.

“You bet!” she retorted with a satisfied sigh. “Thank you, Mr. Preston. It was awesome! The best I’ve eaten in a year.”

He thought it was sad that her best meal in a year was in a second-rate Chinese eatery with Formica-topped tables, but at least she looked happier and more relaxed. And she was a whole lot prettier without that worried expression in her blue eyes. They were a nice shade of blue—deep and far too revealing. He felt he could read her mind through the changing expressions reflected in her eyes.

“Who exactly are you?” she asked, sipping her Coke. “I mean I know you’re something to do with Mr. Lieber, but
what
, exactly?”

“Actually, I’m a writer,” he said.

“That
Mike Preston!” she exclaimed, her eyes round with astonishment. “But I’ve read your books!”

“Guilty!” he replied with a grin. Lauren studied him with new interest. “I’ve never met a famous author before,” she said, “nor a Pulitzer prize winner. I thought at Teddy’s that your face looked familiar—and, of course, now I remember seeing you on a couple of TV interviews. I thought you looked odd,” she added. “Sort of beat-up, like Jean-Paul Belmondo … you’re much nicer looking in real life.” Her hand flew to her mouth as she blushed. “I always seem to say just what I’m thinking,” she said apologetically, “and it’s usually the wrong thing. Still,” she added, smiling impishly, “this time it’s true.”

Their eyes met across the table as they assessed each other without speaking and Lauren felt a little shiver of apprehension run down her spine. There was something in his level glance that disturbed her, a look she wasn’t used to seeing in a man’s eyes … it wasn’t the sort of come-on she got from the guys at Teddy’s, it was deeper than that—and somehow more intimate….

“How do you know about Jean-Paul Belmondo?” Mike asked without taking his eyes off her. “You’re too young ….”

“Sometimes, when I get home from work at Teddy’s, I can’t sleep, I watch those old foreign movies on television …” His glance was disturbing and she turned away, sipping her Coke. “Where do famous authors come from anyway?”

He grinned at her ingenuousness. “This one hails from Madison, Wisconsin. I was raised by my aunt Martha, after my dad died and my mom ran off with a traveling salesman—now there’s the basis of a good story for you!”

“What was it like, being raised in Madison, Wisconsin?” she asked. “I’ve never been farther than San Diego myself.”

He shrugged.
“You
know, the usual—a small, ranch-style house in a middle-class suburb. Aunt Martha had all the good old-fashioned values—church on Sundays, respect for my elders and betters, devotion to the work ethic, and love for my country. I had to earn my allowance by cutting the lawn and taking out the garbage—and any other chores she considered suitable for a growing boy. We raised the flag on the front lawn every morning and lowered it every evening at sundown, and homework always had to be done before there was any chance of escaping to play basketball, or hang out with the other guys at the drive-in.”

“I bet you had a car with
fins,”
Lauren said with a grin.

“You bet I did. And I’ll tell you what else I had—home-baked cookies when I got home from school, and the world’s best blueberry pie—and my aunt Martha’s Sunday roast—I can smell it now, that aroma’ll live in my memory forever.” She smiled at him, her eyes sympathetic and interested, and he said suddenly, “You know, Lauren, Aunt Martha was more than just a kind relative who took me in. I was nine years old, lost and frightened because I’d been abandoned, and desperately worried about the great blank of the future. It was her love that got me through it, and through those tough teenage years … I was always too tall and perpetually growing out of my clothes, it drove her crazy … ‘The expense,’ she would say sternly, ‘can’t you think of the expense, Michael, and stop growing?’”

Lauren laughed and he fell silent for a moment. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,” he said quietly, “but it feels good to talk about her to someone.”

“Is she still alive?” Lauren asked gently.

He grinned. “She sure is. I call her once a week, no matter where I am in the world. We talk for an hour or so, just about this and that, her church meeting, my latest lecture tour, as though we were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table over one of her delicious meals.” He paused, looking at Lauren. “She’s seen me through all the crises in my life,” he added, “including a marriage that went wrong.”

“Were you very young?”

He nodded. “We were both twenty-three, in the same year at Northwestern … I guess it was doomed from the start, but at that age you don’t understand …” He stopped, aware again of how young she was.

“You’re different,” Lauren said softly.

“Different? From whom?”

“Oh, different from the guys I’ve been out with, I guess.”

“That’s because I’m older,” Mike said with a regretful sigh, “although at thirty-seven I didn’t expect to see myself cast in the role of ‘the older man.’”

Lauren laughed and he liked the sound; it rippled joyously around the bare little restaurant so that the other customers turned their heads, smiling, to see who was having such a good time, and he saw what she must have looked like—before Maria.

“The older man chasing the young heiress,” Lauren said mischievously. And then, suddenly sober, “But it’s not me, is it? Things like that don’t happen to girls like me.”

He reached across the table and took her hand. It felt fine-boned and a little rough—all that hard work, he supposed. “We don’t know that yet,” he said, squeezing her fingers encouragingly. “We’re just at the beginning of our investigations. I’m only involved in a roundabout way. I saw the ad in the paper and called Lieber to see if we could help each other. I’m a writer on the scent of a story—he’s a lawyer who’s inundated with claims from so-called Mallory heirs. I’m trying to help sort out the bogus from the real, and at the same time find out the true story of Poppy Mallory.”

“Do you think I’m bogus, then?”

“Not bogus, Lauren,” he said carefully, “but your story is, well … a bit thin.”

She nodded. “It’s all just hearsay really—you know, a story handed down in the family. Except for the family Bible with all the names in it. We’re Mallorys, all right,” she said, shrugging, “but then I guess so are thousands of others. Anyhow, I never knew my great-grandmother or my grandmother, but my mom always said that my great-grandmother had been brought up on a big ranch near Santa Barbara.”

She stared down at her empty plate and he noticed, surprised, the sudden look of fear that crossed her face.

“They said that after she got married Great-grandmother wasn’t quite right in the head,” she continued, her voice very low. “She had a baby and then ran away from her husband and so her baby was put out for adoption. That baby was my grandmother.”

“Are you saying your great-grandmother was Poppy Mallory?”

“No,” Lauren said simply, “she couldn’t be. She wasn’t old enough. But maybe she was Poppy Mallory’s daughter.”

“I see.” He looked at Lieber’s notes thoughtfully. “Yes, that would make the dates about right. Poppy was born in 1880, and the daughter was probably born around 1898 or 1900 … we’re not sure yet.”

“You’re not sure? But I thought you knew; I thought you would be able to tell me ….”

“It’s not that simple, I’m afraid. But that’s where I come in; I’m gathering all the information and hoping I can sort out Poppy’s story, so then we’ll know who the heiress—or heir—is.”

“I’m sorry I’ve not been much help,” Lauren said wearily. “I don’t think I stand much of a chance.”

“There’s always a chance, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. There are lots of other stories that didn’t even warrant looking into. You’d be amazed how many people replied to that ad.”

She looked suddenly tired and dispirited. “I have to get home. The baby-sitter will be anxious. Thanks for the meal, Mr. Preston.”

“It’s been nice meeting you, Lauren,” he said, meaning it. “Take care of that baby of yours.”

“She’s not my baby,” she said abruptly. “She’s my sister.”

“Your sister?”

She nodded. “Mom had only been remarried a year. Doug was an attorney in San Diego, and we were supposed to move down there to live with him, but I wanted to finish Redlands High first—I was doing my college exams, you see, and I had all my friends …. Anyway, Doug would commute and sometimes Mom would go with him while I stayed with a friend. She was pregnant and real happy about it. Usually she’d fly down to San Diego to be with him, but she was eight months and the airlines don’t allow it. They were driving down there one weekend and I was going off to some party and sleeping over at my best friend’s. The police came by later that night to tell me the car had been struck sideways by a drunk driver on Route 101. Doug was killed instantly and Mom was on a life-support machine.

“I went to the hospital to see her. She looked so pretty, and sort of peaceful, and she was breathing into one of those ventilator things—it pumped her lungs up and down, I guess … I don’t know. They said the baby was still alive and they’d have to do a cesarean. The baby was all right …. But after she was born they turned off my mom’s life-support machine.”

Her blue eyes were tearless and her voice matter-of-fact as she went on. “They wanted to give Maria away to be adopted. They said it would be no problem at all, that there were lots of loving couples longing for a baby, with good homes, money, everything she’d need. But I wouldn’t let them do it. I fought and fought and finally they couldn’t dispute that she was my half sister, they had to let me have her. I’d done real well on my SAT’s, I’d been offered a place at Stanford—my ambition—but Maria came first. After all,” she said with a choked little laugh, “I’ll only be in my thirties when Maria’s eighteen, I can always go to college later … there’s nothing wrong with starting a little bit late, is there?”

“Nothing at all,” Mike said quietly. “You’re a brave girl, Lauren Hunter.”

“She was all I had left,” she said simply. “And I don’t regret my decision at all. Maria means everything to me.”

He walked with her to the parking lot, waiting while she got into her old Mustang. She switched on the ignition and rolled down her window. “I’ll be in touch, Lauren,” he said, leaning in to look at her. Their eyes met again. “Good luck, now.”

“’Night, Mike,” she said, a little breathlessly. “Thanks again for the Chinese food—it was intense.”

Mike found it hard to dismiss Lauren Hunter from his mind that night; her gallant smile haunted his dreams and he tossed restlessly in his comfortable bed. He woke up the next morning feeling tired and depressed, wishing he could tell her that all her problems were resolved and she was Poppy Mallory’s heiress. But unfortunately for Lauren, real life was much tougher than that. Poppy couldn’t have known what hopes and dreams her strange will would inspire.