Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Lovell stood in front of the picture window that looked out onto the lake; if only he could see it. The storm hadn’t abated as originally predicted, and if he believed the weather maps, they had another twelve hours to go.
At least they had food and didn’t need to worry about running out of condoms.
He smiled. He’d never had sex without a condom before. He chose not to think about why now, why Daphne. It had been an option in the past, not only with Daisy but with a couple of different women he dated after settling into Mystery Lake. But he’d never taken that leap.
Rather than contemplate what it meant, and it did mean something, he replayed their night in his head.
A much more fun series of thoughts. True to her word, she’d let him do all sorts of things to her, with her.
That they were well-matched in that regard surprised him a little, but it was the good kind of surprise.
She had a submissive side that he doubted she allowed many men, if any, to see.
And while the physical pleasure was something he had no words to describe, what made the experience matter was her trust. For whatever reason, she trusted him.
Trusted him enough to be vulnerable in more ways than one. A gift he damn well knew the value of.
His phone vibrated on the kitchen counter, and he pulled himself away from the “view,” checking the fire as he ambled over. He’d add a log or two after he spoke to whoever was calling.
Reaching the counter, he snagged his phone, unplugging it as he did. An unknown number. He almost silenced it when his eyes caught on the letter he’d read the day before. Cautiously, he connected the call.
“Hello?” he answered.
“Is this Mr. Church?”
“Who’s calling?”
A relieved exhale. “This is Henry Jefferson from Marrick, Garrison, & Wheeler. I’ve been trying to reach Mr. Church for several months.”
His heart rate kicked up, as if his body sensed something was about to change forever.
“I’m James Church.” The door to the bedroom opened, and Daphne wandered out, rubbing her eyes and yawning, her cardigan swinging loose over her silk pajamas.
He put the phone on speaker and gestured her over.
She blinked, as if just waking, then crossed the room and leaned into his side.
“You are a hard man to reach, Mr. Church.”
“I assumed the letters were spam mail, as I’d never heard of your firm and don’t generally have dealings with lawyers other than the ones who helped me and my family set up our businesses. A friend recognized the name of the firm on your most recent letter—she suggested I open it.”
The lawyer chuckled. “Hazard of my trade. I’m glad we connected, though. Finally. I have fond memories of your grandfather when he’d come to our house for poker. He was a good man.”
“He was. I remember him mentioning your dad, but as his friend, not his lawyer,” he said.
“He was both,” Jefferson continued. “Your grandfather set up a trust and drew up a will when you were ten. My father helped him, then he fulfilled the terms of the trust until he died. He passed on the responsibility to me.”
“This is where it gets hard to believe. My grandfather was not a rich man. Not even a middle-class one. Not financially. What kind of trust could he have set up?”
“And this is where it gets complicated on my end. I can reveal the existence of the trust and encourage you to take this seriously. But per the terms of that trust, I can only provide the details in person.”
“In person?”
“I’m based in New York. I understand you’re living in California now. Is there any chance you can fly out? It won’t take long.”
He glanced over his shoulder. “What kind of timeline are you thinking? We’re in the middle of a blizzard here.”
“As soon as you can safely make it would be best. By law, the contents of the trust passed to you on your thirty-fifth birthday, but nothing can be done with it until we meet and you sign the paperwork.”
Daphne dropped a kiss on his shoulder. “The storm is supposed to stop tonight. We could leave tomorrow and meet with him the day after.”
“That would work for me,” Jefferson said, seemingly unsurprised by another voice joining the conversation.
They’d have to book a flight or drive to LA, then fly from LA to New York.
Or maybe they could fly from Mystery Lake to Las Vegas and catch a flight from there.
That he didn’t question her coming with him was something he’d think about later.
He could chalk it up to wanting to keep her safe—they still hadn’t identified who’d sent Weeks and Beeks—but he wasn’t interested in fooling himself. He wanted her by his side.
“We’ll book the flights and send you the plan,” he said. “Can you resend your email? I promise I’ll open it this time.”
Jefferson chuckled. “I’ll shoot over the office location information as soon as we hang up. Safe travels, and I look forward to meeting you.”
He ended the call, his gaze lingering on the phone.
Memories of his grandfather played like a film in his mind: learning how to ride a bike in the alley behind his apartment, eating sloppy joes and watching movies on Friday nights, spending Saturday mornings at the library.
His mother hadn’t cared where he was, so James spent most weekends with his grandfather—weeknights, too, if he could manage it.
Even before he understood what it meant, his grandfather’s apartment, his company, had always felt much safer than being with his mother and siblings.
“You okay?” Daphne asked, leaving his side to check the coffeepot. Seeing it empty, she pulled the grounds from the cabinet.
“Yeah. The memories are good ones now. It took a few years to get there, but they feel good now, not quite as…hard.”
“But?”
He shrugged and shook his head. “Confused, I guess. Or curious. He had an old Triumph bike, a classic even back then.” He paused, smiling at the memories of his first maintenance lessons.
His grandfather kept the bike in his apartment as it wasn’t safe on the street, and four times a year, they’d take it apart, clean the pieces, and put it back together again.
Knowing what he knew now about bikes, the process wasn’t as thorough as that, but it had felt that way back then.
“Maybe he left me that?” he posited.
“Maybe,” Daphne said, pouring water into the tank, then hitting the Power button. The machine immediately started percolating. “It would be fun to have something like that from him.”
He would have loved having his grandfather’s old bike, but forty-eight hours later, he sat in Henry Jefferson’s office gaping.
It was nothing like that.
“Eight million dollars?” he asked. For the second time.
Beside him, Daphne slid her hand over his.
Henry, as they’d been asked to call him, smiled.
“Your grandfather was a savvy man. He lived frugally, bought himself a life insurance policy, played the stock market better than most trained traders. It was valued at a little over three and a half million when he died, but some of the companies he invested in have not only stayed in business but have skyrocketed in value. There were a few duds in there, too, but not enough to make a serious dent.”
Lovell sat back, the leather of the sofa cooling his skin through his shirt. “I can see why he didn’t want me to have access to it until I was an adult.”
Henry nodded. “He suspected your mother would find a way to defraud you, maybe even something more sinister.”
He flinched but didn’t deny the statement. Three and a half million dollars would be life-changing for a lot of people. For his mom, it would have been a way to ensure a constant supply of her current drug of choice. He wouldn’t have put it past her to kill her youngest son to get her hands on it.
“There’s a letter from him in the packet. Drafted when he put everything into place. You were ten at the time,” Henry said.
Maybe the letter would explain some of this, because he still didn’t totally understand. Oh, he understood the facts, but, well, it hadn’t quite sunk in yet. And he had so many questions.
“Why thirty-five?” he asked. It wasn’t really relevant, but why not twenty-five or forty-five? Did his grandfather have some expectations of him by the time he reached this age?
“It might be more thoroughly explained in the letter, but according to my father, he wanted you established in your own right before receiving the inheritance,” Henry answered.
That sounded like his grandfather. He would have wanted Lovell to be old enough to fend off any vultures, but also old enough to have built a life that was his own, one based on honesty and hard work.
Traits his grandfather valued and instilled in his grandson.
At this point in his life, his decisions would be a lot less influenced by the money.
Daphne’s fingers twitched against his skin, and he looked over. She was staring at Henry, but with a look on her face that resembled the one her sister wore when thinking about something.
“Does anyone else know about the inheritance?” Daphne asked.
Henry looked to him, and Lovell nodded. “No one’s been told of it, no,” the lawyer answered.
“Not anyone from James’s early life?” she pressed. His senses went on alert. He recognized the trail her mind traveled down, and although he didn’t think it likely, he didn’t step in to redirect her.
Henry started to shake his head, then paused.
“As I said in the letter, six months before your thirty-fifth birthday, we started looking for James Williams. It took us a while to dig up the name change—once we had that, finding you was much easier. But between the time we started looking and when we uncovered the name change, our private investigators might have reached out to people from your past hoping to find you.”
“Is there any way to find out?” Daphne asked.
Henry’s gaze darted to him once again. Daphne’s hand squeezed his, drawing his attention.
“Law firms like Marrick, Garrison, & Wheeler don’t deal with small estates.
If someone from your past was contacted by the PI and did even the most cursory of searches, they would have figured that out. ”
“But the firm only inherited the work, it wasn’t brought to them,” Lovell pointed out.
“They wouldn’t know that, though. It’s not unreasonable to think that they’d assume there was a big payout waiting for you.”
“My mother’s dead,” he said. “Died while I was in the army. I got the notice about a month later. I was twenty-one, I think.”
“You have a brother and sister, though. Are they alive?” she asked.
He frowned. “I don’t know. They were both long gone to drugs and violence when I left. I’d be surprised if they were.”
“An estate from a firm like this is enough to tempt someone, especially if their moral compass isn’t strong to begin with,” she insisted.
He could see her logic and didn’t disagree, but it was a stretch.
Her eyes held his as he toyed with the possibility she presented.
That maybe Daisy had nothing to do with the attempts on his life and it was all about this inheritance.
Something he’d known nothing about until two days ago. Silently, she asked him to consider it.
On a breath, he turned to Henry and nodded. “Is there a way to find out?” he asked. Daphne may not be right, but it couldn’t hurt to know.
Slowly, Henry nodded, then leaned forward and hit a few keys on his computer. “Let me pull up the investigator’s notes.”