Chapter Fourteen #2
She answered in a shriek. ‘Leo, I can’t talk to you now! Somebody’s emptied the business bank account.’
Shock flooded through him in a hot wave and he swore. ‘Have you reported it to the bank?’
‘Of course!’ She half-screamed at him. ‘What do you think?’
‘My accounts have been emptied too. Give me the details of your police contact and I’ll report what’s happened to me, because this cannot be a coincidence.’ Freezing rage pulsed through him at the obvious conclusion. ‘I think you should get hold of your father,’ he said.
‘It can’t be anything to do with Daddy,’ she snapped. But then she choked, as if her breath had halted in her throat.
‘Then who else?’ Leo asked softly. ‘I can’t think of anyone but you and him who could help themselves to my password book. What about your personal accounts?’
‘Oh, fuck,’ she breathed.
Despite everything, his heart ached for Isabella.
On Wednesday afternoon, Jade found time to meet Sheenagh and stroll along la passeggiata, as it was known locally, the walkway beside the lake to Villa Olmo, past lazily stirring moored boats and a bright green dredger, while cormorants broke the silvery surface with their arrow-straight dives.
It was one of Jade’s favourite walks, not only because of the wide, curving, undulating promenade beside the sparkling water busy with boats and the occasional seaplane, but because of the gracious villas they passed.
This white one had an iron gazebo, this peach one a bridge spanning a mini canal that ran through its garden to the lake.
Villa Rotunda was a pleasing shape. A fountain spouted what looked like molten diamonds in the sunlight.
But her attention flew to Sheenagh when the older woman, plainly shaken, told her Leo’s bank accounts had been emptied, and those of the Black Falcon and Isabella too.
‘Leo’s chasing his own tail between the bank, the police, the fraud people and Isabella, trying to piece together what’s gone on.
’ Sheenagh’s coil of hair quivered as if in outrage.
‘But nobody can fail to notice that Teddy Dangerfield disappeared just before the money did.’
Jade, who’d anticipated Sheenagh wanting to rehash Geneva’s sudden appearance and what Jade would do about it, stared aghast at Sheenagh.
‘Surely he hasn’t defrauded his own daughter?
’ She frowned. ‘If he’s taken money from the Black Falcon’s accounts, is it even fraud?
He’s a partner, so could easily have access. ’
Sheenagh scowled. ‘But he’s not a partner in Leo’s savings, is he?’
‘Of course not.’ Jade blew out her lips and listened in disbelief as Sheenagh detailed the whole outrageous saga.
Later, once home in Pensione Three Sisters, she sent Leo a text.
Sorry to hear about your trouble.
Hours later, when she was lounging on her sofa, reading a novel set in an English seaside town, she received a terse, Thanks, in return.
Over the next couple of days, Leo rarely left her mind, but other things crowded in there too.
Erin and Rosalie were preparing to return.
Mary Smith had produced the figure for the property tax and they’d each sent her a third.
OK to stay in the apartment when we come, Jade? Rosalie asked on the WhatsApp group.
The beds are ready, and so are your keys, Jade replied.
The facts said that she was inheriting one-third of Pensione Three Sisters.
Her heart felt as if she were losing two-thirds.
The facts said she was gaining two sisters.
Her heart said she was paying a high price, because those sisters could poke their noses into her running of the pensione.
If that made her a bad person, she’d live with that insight and somehow navigate any turbulence in her future work life.
By early afternoon on Saturday, when she’d completed all necessary duties and wasn’t covering Reception till 5 p.m., Leo was still uppermost in her mind.
He was in trouble. She couldn’t forget how, after Geneva turned up – her mother, who’d abandoned her thirty-nine years ago, strolling back into her life to ask for a job!
– he’d arrived at the pensione solely to check she was OK.
He’d let her spill her emotions all over him.
Maybe she should respond in kind. She swapped her hotel black for a loose red dress, dropped a few things into a shoulder bag and set off for Villa Panorama.
Rain hadn’t fallen much in August, unusually for the Italian Lakes, where soft summer showers regularly pattered through the city, or even storms, thunder echoing around the mountains while lightning flashed from inky clouds, and winds like giant hands whipped the surface of the lake, tossing boats around.
Jade always enjoyed the drama. But for now, temperatures were in the thirties and she sought shade where she could as she threaded along a lakeside thick with summer visitors in sunglasses and shady hats.
People lounged under trees, watching a pair of eagles circling high in the clear blue sky.
The sun beat down as she turned through the iron gates of Villa Panorama and took the short, upsloping drive between the cypress trees.
It had been twenty-five years since she and Gran had downsized to Pensione Three Sisters, but she always felt a tug of familiarity when she visited, as if arriving home after school with Gran and Nonno watching for her.
Today, she slipped past the front desk unnoticed and made her way out to the beautiful, peaceful garden of lawns and trees, so valued by visitors as an oasis of quiet, green space.
As a child, she’d thought of the dark cypresses like nice, neat paintbrushes, and the brighter green palms like old brushes with bristles that stuck out all over.
At the gate to the winding path to Villetta Nascosta, her steps slowed. What if Leo was on the phone, trying to track down his money? Or even entertaining . . . ? When you were a handsome, single man in a tourist resort, you need never be short of female company. Her stomach lurched in dismay.
Then, remembering that Leo just turned up at Three Sisters without warning, she pressed on, up the cobbles between the dark pink oleanders until she could see Villetta Nascosta, squat yet cute with its leaded windows and the roof that looked like a big mossy hat.
Leo Sartori sat motionless on the terrace, alone.
His arms rested on the arms of his chair and bare legs showed below his shorts, one ankle crossed over the other knee.
Black canvas shoes lay discarded on the terrace.
The only movement was his hair stirring in the breeze.
And his washed-denim gaze shifting to fix on her.
But for once there was no welcoming smile or twinkle.
He didn’t rise, take her hands and kiss her cheeks.
Or anywhere else. ‘Jade,’ he muttered dully.
‘Leo.’ After a pause, she settled herself in the iron chair nearest his. ‘How are you doing?’
‘Shit.’ He shifted his gaze to a pink oleander bush, its scent heavy on the air.
‘Sheenagh told me about . . . The money hasn’t reappeared?’ she ventured. ‘When Carlotta’s card was cloned, the bank put the money back. Presumably, this is different?’
He sucked in a long, slow breath and then let it go.
‘Everything hinges on whether I’ve been negligent.
If I haven’t, then my bank might be able to recover the money from the receiving bank.
My UK friend Bryce has a mate who works in banking, and he says that unsophisticated fraud almost always involves someone the victim knows.
I kept my passwords in a book. Perhaps that’s unwise.
Also, some people try to defraud the bank by pinching their own money and then asking for it back – at least no one at my bank has suggested that I’ve done that, yet.
They’re frustrating to deal with though.
They seem hellbent on getting information from me without giving any back. ’
Jade could feel the misery behind his bitter tone. ‘Sheenagh said money’s also missing from the Black Falcon.’
‘Yep. And Isabella’s accounts.’ He stirred and stretched.
‘Piecing things together with Isabella, the obvious scenario is that Teddy Dangerfield’s a villain, who came to the UK to set up as many scams as he could, snooping for account details and passwords while he was in and out of our apartment.
Back in South Africa, he emptied the accounts he’d given himself access to.
A large slice of my balance was the money I received from him and Isabella when they bought me out.
All the time he was manipulating Isabella and alienating me, he must have been pissing himself laughing at how he was able to jerk us around.
The blatant way he set us against each other finally makes sense.
It wasn’t a random act of narcissism, but a business plan.
’ The eyes he turned to her were more bleak grey than lake blue.
‘Isabella says the police are showing renewed interest in recent car thefts from the hotel’s car park, in case he might have co-ordinated those too – including his own Aston, for the insurance, I suppose.
Co-operation between gangs from different countries isn’t unknown, so the police won’t rule anything out.
’ Leo looked as if he felt sick. ‘Isabella’s distraught to think he might have come back into her life purely to set her up. It’s a vicious betrayal.’
‘How shitty for her.’ At least she, Jade, had never harboured illusions about her parents. They’d been rubbish from day one.
Jerkily, he nodded. ‘She’s heartbroken, but furious and co-operating fully with the police.’ He hesitated. ‘I spoke to her before you arrived and offered to return to England.’
Jade’s stomach chilled, but she tried not to let it. He’d been in a long-term relationship with Isabella. Obviously, he’d go to her now. That was who he was. ‘I suppose that’ll make it easier for you to work with the British police, too.’