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Holly isn’t exactly shocked to silence, but she’s certainly surprised. Shock will come later.
“Holly? Ms. Gibney? Still there?”
“I’m afraid I know no such thing,” Holly says. “She was well off. My Uncle Henry was, too. But that was before Daniel Hailey.”
“I don’t know that name, I’m afraid.”
“She never mentioned Hailey? The can’t-miss Wizard of Wall Street investment counselor that took everything my mother and my uncle had and ran off to one of those non-extradition islands? Along with God knows how many other people’s money, including most of mine?”
“Pardon me, Ms. Gibney, but I’m not following.”
“Really?” Holly realizes the lawyer’s perplexity makes a degree of sense. When it came to unpleasant truths, Charlotte Gibney was a master of omission. “There was money, but it’s gone.”
Silence. Then: “Let’s rewind. Your cousin Olivia Trelawney died…”
“Yes.” Committed suicide, in fact. Holly had actually driven her much older cousin’s Mercedes for awhile, the automotive guided missile Brady Hartsfield used to kill eight people at City Center and wound dozens more. For Holly, fixing up the Benz, changing its color, and driving it was an act of healing. And, she supposes, defiance. “She left a considerable amount of money to her sister Janey. Janelle.”
“Yes. And when Janelle died so suddenly…”
That’s one way of putting it, Holly thinks. Brady Hartsfield blew Janey up, hoping to get Bill Hodges.
“The bulk of her estate went to your Uncle Henry and your mother, with a trust fund set aside for you. It’s Henry’s share that is paying for his current, um, residence, and will for however long he lives.”
Something is beginning to dawn on Holly. Only that’s the wrong metaphor. Something is beginning to dark on her.
“Henry’s estate will also come to you upon his passing.”
“My mother died rich? That’s what you’re saying?”
“Quite rich indeed. You didn’t know?”
“No. I knew she was rich at one time.”
Holly thinks of dominoes falling over in a neat line. Olivia Trelawney’s husband made money. Olivia inherited it. Olivia committed suicide. Janey inherited it. Janey got blown up by Brady Hartsfield. Charlotte and Henry inherited it, or most of it. The money getting steadily whittled away by taxes and attorneys’ fees, but still an extremely tidy sum. Holly’s mother had invested her money and Henry’s money with Daniel Hailey of Burdick, Hailey, and Warren. Later, she had also invested most of Holly’s funds, with Holly’s agreement. And Hailey had stolen it.
So Charlotte had told her daughter, and her daughter had had no reason to disbelieve.
Holly lights another cigarette. How many is that today? Nine? No, eleven. And it’s only lunchtime. She’s thinking of something in Janey’s will that had made her cry. I am leaving $500,000 in trust for my cousin Holly Gibney, so she can follow her dreams.
“Ms. Gibney? Holly? Still there?”
“Yes. Give me a moment.” But she needs more than a moment. “I’ll call you back,” she says, and ends the call without waiting for a reply.
Did her cousin Janey know that as a frightened, lonely girl, Holly had poetic ambitions? She wouldn’t have known from Holly herself, but from Charlotte? From Henry? And what does it matter? Holly wasn’t a good poet, no matter how much she desperately wanted to be. She had found something she was good at. Thanks to Bill Hodges, she had another dream to follow. A better one. It came late, but better late than never.
One of her mother’s pet sayings clangs in her head: Do you think I’m made of money? According to Emerson, Charlotte had been. Not early but later, after Janey died, yes. As for losing it, and losing Henry’s, and losing most of Holly’s trust fund to the dastardly Daniel Hailey? Holly quickly googles Daniel Hailey, adding Burdick and Warren, the other two partners. She gets nothing.
How had Charlotte been able to pull it off? Was it because Holly had been so grief-stricken at the passing of Bill Hodges and at the same time so entranced by the business of detection, of chasing the case? Was it because she trusted her mother? Yes to all three, but even so…
“I saw stationery,” she whispers. “A couple of times I even saw asset sheets. Henry helped her trick me. He must have.”
Although Henry, now deep in dementia, would never be able to tell her so, or why.
She calls Emerson back. “How much are we talking about, Mr. Emerson?” This is a question Emerson is duty-bound to answer, because what Charlotte had is now hers.
“Adding in her bank account and the current value of her stock portfolio,” David Emerson says, “I’d put your inheritance at just over six million dollars. Assuming you outlive Henry Sirois, there will be another three million.”
“And it was never lost? Never stolen by an investment specialist who had my mother’s and uncle’s power of attorney?”
