Chapter Ten
BEN DONLEAVY’S WIFE, Lara, is sitting up in bed beside him, scrolling the news on her phone, when she says, ‘Oh my God, Ben, look at this!’
He looks over at her phone, reads the headline WEALTHY BUSINESSMAN LOST AT SEA, PRESUMED DEAD. There’s a photograph of Greg Westcott on his sailboat, Fortune Seeker, holding up a racing trophy, smiling in triumph. ‘That’s Ted’s brother,’ he says, shocked.
‘Yes – and Ted and Jill were on the boat with him!’
‘Jesus, really?’ He looks closer. He reads the short article, then turns to her. ‘How awful,’ he says sincerely. Ben has recently turned forty and now everything that reminds him of mortality seems to bother him more than it used to.
‘Tragic,’ his wife says with feeling. ‘He was only forty-two.’
‘Why would they go out in such conditions?’ Ben asks. He’d like to think that it was the man’s own stupidity that killed him.
‘Oh, you know what a hotshot he was.’
They’d both met Greg Westcott, but only a couple of times, and only briefly.
The first time was at Ted and Jill’s brownstone, at a party for Jill’s birthday.
Ben remembers a man who had a certain charm, but who sucked up a lot of the attention in the room and then left early.
The second time, they’d attended an event at the art gallery where Jill is employed, and Greg had dropped in and bought the most expensive painting there.
He’d hardly even looked at it. He’d studied the price tags more closely than the paintings.
So yes, Ben agreed with his wife that Greg Westcott was a show-off.
Well, it looks like his arrogance has caught up with him.
‘He wasn’t even wearing a life jacket, for Christ’s sake,’ Ben notes.
‘That’s a bit odd, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know, is it?’ They don’t sail. He and Lara are golfers.
If you have money, it’s usually one or the other.
They’re perfectly happy with their golf.
It’s a great way to socialize, to meet the right people.
Expensive, but you get what you pay for.
The club is very nice. ‘Poor Ted and Jill,’ Ben says, still thinking uneasily of mortality and their intimate brush with it.
‘To be out in that. They must have been scared shitless.’
‘They could have died too,’ Lara says. ‘The Coast Guard rescued them.’
‘Lucky that Ted’s a good sailor.’
She nods, a concerned look on her face. Jill is her best friend. Ben watches his wife call Jill, but it goes straight to voicemail. She leaves a short, supportive message and disconnects.
‘I’ll try to see Jill tomorrow, see how she’s doing,’ she says.
‘Good idea,’ he agrees. ‘They must be really shaken up.’ He settles back against the pillows. He likes Ted and Jill, enjoys their company; Ben and Lara also live in Brooklyn Heights. They socialize with them on occasion. The wives are closer and see each other regularly.
Ben turns out the light, imagining what must it have been like, out there alone on the Atlantic Ocean, the winds so strong, the waves so high, water crashing over the boat.
To see someone go overboard and be unable to save them.
To wrestle with a boat like that alone – Jill’s no sailor, he knows that.
She must have been terrified. They both must have been terrified, facing death like that.
He prefers golf. The only thing you have to worry about is being struck by lightning, and that doesn’t seem very likely.
Especially if you don’t play in a thunderstorm.
Lara lies in the dark beside her husband.
She wonders if they will have a funeral if they don’t recover the body.
It’s such a shock when someone you know, even slightly, dies suddenly.
And Greg Westcott was such a force of nature – that’s how she remembers him, as larger than life.
A big man, with a big personality. She didn’t really know Ted’s older brother, but he was worth a fortune, she knew that much.
He was a very successful businessman, very entrepreneurial.
She wonders how much he was worth, and who will get that fortune now. Surely not Ted.
She considers that for a moment. Greg had no family of his own – it confirmed that in the news article, which said he was survived by his brother, Ted Westcott.
No wife or children. She knows there’s an ex-wife, though.
No mention of any other siblings, and she knows there aren’t any.
So maybe Ted will get it all. She lies awake and stares at the ceiling in the dark while Ben snores gently beside her.
Wow. That would really be something if Ted and Jill inherited all that money.
She thinks about how she feels about that.
To be honest, she doesn’t like it. No one ever does, do they, when a close friend or even a family member suddenly becomes much wealthier due to some stroke of luck.
She’s seen it happen. It upsets things, changes the balance.
Ted and Jill might start to socialize with people more wealthy than they are and forget all about her and Ben.
But maybe she isn’t doing Jill and Ted justice.
They’re good people. And heaven knows they’re already wealthy enough, just as she and Ben are.
Maybe the extra money, if they get it, won’t change them.
But she’s a bit doubtful. Money always changes everything.
Maybe it will go to the ex-wife. Or maybe Greg left it all to charity, because he never seemed to care much for his younger brother.
And Greg was the kind of man who’d want to have his name on the wing of a hospital.
If that happens, she will be there for Jill.
Because of course she and Ted would be disappointed.
Perhaps even secretly furious, although they would never let it show.
She will call Jill again tomorrow.
The next morning, Jill wakes and scrolls through her phone looking at and listening to all the messages of concern and condolences that have arrived while her notifications were turned off.
Everyone has heard. She listens to the message from Lara.
Ted stirs beside her; it’s after eight o’clock.
Jill has Mondays off, and Ted’s obviously not going to work today.
No one would expect him to, after what happened yesterday.
She doesn’t want to talk to Lara, or anyone, until she’s had a shower and a cup of coffee.
She kisses Ted awake and gets up and opens the bedroom curtains to a still, sunny day, so different from yesterday’s wind and scudding clouds. She feels optimistic, yesterday’s ordeal behind them, their bright future unfurling in front of her.
Ted joins her in the shower. He tells her, ‘They must have resumed the search by now.’
She nods. She and Ted don’t really expect them to recover Greg’s body.
He would have gone straight down once he drowned, his lungs filling up with water, dragging him to the bottom.
The body might never resurface, but in any case, the Coast Guard will call off the search before long.
But it doesn’t matter either way. If they find his body, that’s okay.
It won’t tell them anything. If they don’t, that’s fine too.
They’re prepared for that. They know what they have to do.
They have done their research. The old-fashioned way – nothing online, nothing traceable.
They have visited various libraries and read books in the stacks, without signing them out, so there is no record.
And they know that if they don’t recover the body, Ted’s lawyers will have Greg declared dead by the courts in New York.
But that won’t be a problem. They won’t have to wait years and years to do it like you have to in other jurisdictions.
Because in New York, fortunately for them, you can have someone declared dead without waiting.
As long as you can show that they were in peril just before they went missing, and that any recovery search has failed.
It’s not going to be a problem. Which is good. She has never been good at waiting.
God, she loves New York.
Ted is waiting nervously for his phone to ring. He and Jill are out of the shower, dressed, and having their morning coffee in the kitchen. But he moves around restlessly, unable to sit still.
He’s Greg’s next of kin. Greg used the same prestigious law firm his parents employed, Turcotte, Weiss it’s a very large firm.
Greg probably had several different attorneys, for various purposes.
Ted knows it won’t be long before someone from the firm calls him, if only out of courtesy, to give condolences.
He’s about to leave for the marina when his cell phone buzzes.
It’s his own attorney, Marlon Fiddick. Ted glances at Jill, who looks up, alert, and accepts the call. ‘Hello.’
‘Hello, Ted?’
‘Yes. Hi, Marlon.’
‘Ted, I’m so terribly sorry to hear about Greg.’
‘Thank you.’
‘This is such a tragedy. It’s so awful for you to go through this. You have the sincerest sympathies of myself and of the firm. Your brother was a fine man.’
‘Thank you, Marlon,’ Ted says, taking care to sound suitably upset. He blurts out, ‘I don’t know what to do.’ He glances at Jill, who’s watching closely.
‘No, of course not,’ Marlon says, his voice soothing. ‘It’s a shock. No one does, at a time like this. We’re here to help.’ He pauses. ‘I will be speaking with your brother’s attorneys later today. Maybe after that you could come into our offices, and we could all have a discussion?’
‘A discussion?’
‘About next steps.’
‘Yes, of course.’ He glances again at Jill, who is standing closer now, listening.
‘How’s first thing tomorrow? Nine o’clock?’ the attorney suggests.
‘Um, okay. Yes, that’s fine. We’ll be there. I’m sorry – it’s all such a shock.’
‘I know. We’ll get you through this. And again, I’m so sorry for your loss. We will all miss Greg.’
‘Thank you.’ Ted disconnects the call. He takes a deep breath. ‘It’s happening,’ he says.
Jill looks back at him, her eyes shining.