Chapter Fourteen
AT FIVE O’CLOCK, two representatives from the Coast Guard regretfully inform Ted that the search for his brother’s body has been called off.
They again offer condolences, for which Ted graciously thanks them.
He also thanks them again, sincerely, for the rescue of him and his wife the previous day, and for their tireless efforts to recover his brother’s body. He can’t thank them enough.
He just wants to go home. His stomach is full of acid from the endless crappy coffee and the hours of dread watching the investigators study Greg’s boat from afar. He wonders what they’ve found. He texts Jill. Recovery effort called off. Am coming home now. Love you.
She answers. K. Come home. Love you too.
The two men are still on the Fortune Seeker. As Ted leaves the marina, he hesitates, then turns and walks toward the slips until he is standing in front of his brother’s boat. Agent Ramirez is crouching down on the deck and lifts his head and sees him.
‘How’s it going?’ Ted asks, feigning nonchalance.
Ramirez stands up and walks over to the edge of the boat.
Ted doesn’t see the other man; perhaps he’s gone below.
He is unsure of what to say; he obviously doesn’t want to ask about the cameras.
But as it happens, he doesn’t have to. Ramirez looks down at him and says, ‘In case you’re wondering, we didn’t find any cameras. ’
He nods casually, as if it’s all the same to him, but as he begins to turn away, his knees weak with relief, Ramirez says under his breath, ‘I bet that’s a relief.’
Ted turns back and says, ‘Excuse me?’ But Ramirez has already turned away and is disappearing down the hatch.
For a brief moment Ted’s not sure he heard it at all.
He stands there flatfooted, both relieved and unnerved.
Ramirez must have picked up on their alarm this morning when he mentioned the cameras.
So he suspects them. But there is no evidence.
There is no way they can be charged with murder, not without proof.
His mind races as he drives home from the marina in Lower Manhattan and over the Brooklyn Bridge to Brooklyn Heights. He must tell Jill the good news. They are safe.
When he arrives home, closing the door behind him, Jill comes to meet him in the foyer, looking anxious. He takes her by the arms, looks into her eyes, and says, exultant, ‘There were no cameras!’
He moves past her into the front room and heads directly for the sideboard. ‘I need a drink.’
‘How do you know?’ she asks urgently, following him.
He pours her a drink and hands it to her.
‘They were searching the boat all day – I saw them. Special Agent Ramirez and someone else from the Coast Guard. I watched them from the marina. They spent hours on it.’ He tosses back his drink; it mixes uncomfortably with the acid in his stomach.
‘But as I was leaving, I went down to say hello, and Ramirez told me there were no cameras on the boat.’
‘And you’re sure he was telling the truth?’ she asks, her voice tense.
‘Yes.’ He doesn’t tell her that Ramirez had seemed … disappointed. Doesn’t tell her what else he said.
‘Thank God,’ Jill breathes, closing her eyes for a moment. When she opens them again, they’re shining.
‘We’re in the clear,’ he says. Jill looks like she might faint from the relief.
‘I was so scared,’ she admits.
‘I know. But now all we have to do is sit tight,’ he says, ‘and wait for the money to come through.’
She nods and walks into his arms.
He holds her, kissing the top of her head. They have nothing to worry about now. There were no fucking cameras! There are no witnesses. Nobody will ever know. He puts what else Ramirez said to him at the docks out of his mind. It doesn’t matter. ‘And tomorrow,’ he says, ‘we see the attorneys.’
Lara Donleavy is ensconced in her own luxurious brownstone, just a few streets away from Jill and Ted’s.
She and Ben hadn’t overseen the renovations themselves, as Jill and Ted had; it had already been remodelled when they bought.
Lara and Ben preferred it that way. And while the Westcotts had painstakingly preserved every historical detail, theirs has a more modern vibe.
Now, Lara pours her husband a glass of wine – a crisp Sauvignon Blanc.
He’s just arrived home from work – he’s in mergers and acquisitions at a law firm in Manhattan – and as he enters the kitchen, where she’s prepping dinner, he loosens his tie automatically.
She stops what she’s doing and watches him.
She’s always enjoyed watching him loosen his tie – she finds it sexy.
But tonight her mind is on other things.
‘I went over to Jill’s today,’ she says.
‘How’s she doing?’ Ben asks, interested.
‘She seemed pretty shaken up.’
‘Well, she would be.’
She tells him all about it. ‘She never mentioned anything about who inherits, and I didn’t feel I should ask.’
He raises an eyebrow and smiles at her.
‘Don’t pretend you’re not curious,’ she replies. ‘It was a bit weird, sitting there, with this big elephant in the garden with us. I mean, it was all over the news this morning that Greg’s estimated net worth is about forty-five million.’
‘Yes, I saw that.’
‘It’s a lot of money.’
‘It is.’
‘I just hope it doesn’t change things,’ she says.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You don’t think Ted and Jill will change if they inherit that much money?’
He shrugs. ‘Maybe. Money changes people sometimes. It doesn’t really matter to us, does it?’
She turns around and looks at him. ‘It might not matter to you,’ she says, a little ruffled, ‘but Jill is one of my oldest friends. And I like things the way they are.’
Special Agent Ramirez is alone this evening in his cluttered apartment in Jackson Heights, a neighbourhood of Queens.
He can’t afford to live in Manhattan or Brooklyn.
He grew up in Queens. His father was a bus driver, his mother a schoolteacher, both now retired.
Ramirez is unmarried, currently not seeing anyone in particular, and totally focused on his career, so there are no distractions.
Now, he’s thinking about his current investigation.
He’d found absolutely nothing amiss on the Fortune Seeker, or anything from his review of the accident report, or from the statement the day before, to suggest that Greg Westcott’s death was anything other than an unfortunate accident.
Nothing in the way of evidence. But his interview of Ted and Jill Westcott this morning – and his gut – are telling him something else.
He’s certain from their reactions when he mentioned cameras that things didn’t happen on that boat the way they said.
He’d deliberately goaded Ted Westcott at the end of the day at the marina.
He probably shouldn’t have said what he did.
But people like the Westcotts get under his skin without even trying.
So much privilege. They think they’re better than everyone else.
Ramirez knows already that he will probably never be able to nail them for what happened to Greg Westcott, but he wants them to know that he thinks they’re hiding something.
He’d reported back to Donovan Brady at the end of the day with his suspicions and his lack of evidence.
They know that Ted Westcott is Greg Westcott’s only surviving relative.
They know Greg Westcott was worth a fortune.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist. Brady had told him not to spend too much more time on a lost cause. Ramirez ponders it long into the night.