Her back was to me, but I could see a delicate hand stirring what looked like a tall glass of iced tea, lime wedge sitting on the rim. The hostess pulled out my chair, left a menu, and announced that our server, Kevin, would be by shortly to take my drink order. Then she promptly excused herself, but not before flashing me a smile brimming with possibilities.
Amy considered me with some apprehension, her eyes quickly sizing me up. I hadn’t worn anything resembling business attire: just a light blue button-down long-sleeve shirt that I hadn’t bothered to tuck inside my blue jeans, and a pair of very casual leather loafers and no socks which is to say, my standard casual evening wear.
“Ms. Kelly?” I said.
“Mr. Justice?” She stood and offered her hand.
“Please, sit,” I said. She sat, and I took the seat across from her. “Call me Jason.”
She was maybe five four and slender, and she had overdressed for the occasion. She wore a basic black little dress, pearls, small diamond studs, and a small black purse. Her sandy blond hair was pulled back, and her short bangs fell over her alabaster forehead to make her look younger than she was. Under her bangs, wide blue eyes stared at me with a certain degree of nervous anticipation. She blinked quite a lot, which made me focus on the eyes more than I otherwise would.
“Very well,” she said with a shy smile. “Jason it is, then.”
And then I saw it: there, in the eyes. They spoke of sadness, unresolved issues that cut deep, a melancholy she could not hide. Even though she looked to be in her late twenties, the lines under those expressive eyes gave her a bit of a weathered look. I instantly felt for this woman my softer side bubbling up.
“Please, call me Amy.” Her voice was soft and low, almost a sweet murmur.
Our waiter came, was appropriately cheery, and left with my order for a Cabo Wabo margarita. Then we were finally alone.
She broke the ice first. “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, Mr. Justice.”
“Jason, please, remember?” I smiled at her. I could see that she was a bit tense, so I decided to ease her into the conversation. “You and Nora known each other long?”
She shook her head. “Not really. We’ve spoken on the phone mostly. She had been keeping me informed of my mother’s condition for the last couple of years. My mom and I didn’t communicate all that much. You know what I mean?”
She let that hang in there as though begging me to inquire further. I didn’t. I had learned the hard way always to let potential clients explain their situation in their own words and their own time. Our drinks arrived, and we ordered dinner. Cesar salad for Amy and fresh grilled Wahoo for me. I took a sip of my drink. Perfect.
“I really don’t know if you can help me,” she said. “Maybe I’m just wasting your time.”
“Maybe you’re right,” I said as I took another long swig of margarita. “Maybe there isn’t anything anyone can do. But for the argument’s sake, why don’t we assume it’s not an impossible situation, and we start with you going over what happened.”
“Very well.” She let out a deep sigh. “First of all, I want you to know that I am a recovering drug and alcohol addict,” she announced firmly, almost defiantly. “That’s one of the reasons my mom and I grew apart. She married this man, this bastard that screwed her up even more. He convinced my mom to cut me off from everything, even from her
life.
And she let him.” Her voice grew a little louder, and her eyes flashed.
“She kicked me out. Told me I was a loser. A junkie. All of this while her jerk husband watched, big smirk on his stupid face. She told me not to come back until I was clean.”
“I’m sorry,” was all I could mange in the moment.
She looked straight into my eyes and said, “I’ve been clean now for the better part of two years. I even went back to college, Jason. UCLA. I have only four more classes left to graduate. Somehow, I don’t know how, but I’ve even managed to make the dean’s list and all. I have worked really hard at everything I’ve done since I decided to clean up my act. It hasn’t been easy.” She took another sip of her drink, which was almost half gone.
“So, as I go to enroll for my last semester, those last twelve credits I need to graduate, I discover that I can’t pay my tuition. The accounts were cleaned out! There’s no more money left. My mother was broke! Left destitute thanks to the bastard she married, and then he leaves her just disappears!”
She took another sip of her iced tea, her hands a bit shaky now, and looked away for a long moment, as if searching for strength to finish. “So I finally called my mother and asked about the funds in the family trust, the funds that were supposedly earmarked to pay for my tuition, and that’s when she told me: Evan, the man of her dreams, had betrayed her.” Another pause. She lowered her gaze. She seemed to be contemplating her hands.
“My mother was a dreamer, Jason,” Amy went on. “She wasn’t a very strong person. She was highly emotional, always dependent on her medications and men. Always needing a man by her side to feel secure and perhaps even worthy. Boy, she sure knew how to pick them. She liked bad men men that had some growing up to do. Guys that chose to live hard and fast. The kind of guy every other woman wants but is smart enough to walk away from. She had a real knack for picking the wrong guy. I mean, look at my father how smart a choice was
that
?
“I guess eventually her luck ran out, you know? She finally married a
real
bad guy. One who stole not only her heart but everything she owned, only to abandon her. I mean, this piece of filth timed it perfectly. The very next day after he flew the coop, a man from the bank showed up to deliver a notice of default on her house. Which she didn’t understand. There was never a mortgage on the house. That’s when my mother finally decided to check on her affairs. He had mortgaged the house. She discovered she was dead broke. He had taken
everything
emptied all her bank accounts, sold or cashed out everything in the trusts and brokerage accounts. I mean, my mom was not billionaire rich, but she had more than enough money.”
“How much money are we talking about?” I asked.
She thought about it for a moment and said, “Would you believe me if I told you I really don’t know?”
I smiled. “Sure.” No surprise. Most kids were kept in the dark about such matters. “How about a guess?”
“Well, the house in Palm Beach, a friend told me, is about eleven million. He mortgaged it to the tune of six million. I know my grandfather, her father, had left her with a trust fund that had over fifty thousand shares of General Electric, another fifty thousand of Ford Motors, and ten thousand shares of a few other companies companies that sell electricity, if I recall correctly. They paid the best dividend, is what he always said. Does that help?”
“It does,” was my response. It all added up to well over twenty million dollars at today’s significantly depressed valuations. Good old Evan had definitely struck gold on this one. “That is a significant inheritance.”
She just shrugged.
“We were well off or rather, my mother was. I had my own issues. Went down the wrong path. Bad choices when it came to friends. But I hit bottom and decided to turn my life around. I guess I owe Evan that much. If he hadn’t convinced my mom to kick me out, I would have...” She hesitated, then looked up at me and sadly announced, “I guess the Lord works in mysterious ways.”
“So I’m told.” I smiled. “Do you know if your mom was on antidepressant medication?” I don’t even know why I asked that particular question.
“Nora would probably know. I don’t. I’m sure she was depressed. I mean, she was fifty-nine years old. She had MS and had been battling cancer for a long time and had to have constant medical attention. And one day she wakes up and finds herself alone, betrayed, broke and about to join the ranks of the homeless. It’s too much for anyone to bear. I don’t think antidepressants would have helped her much; wouldn’t you agree?”
“I can’t really answer that,” I mumbled, vowing to listen more and talk less.
“Three days after the bastard disappeared she wrote me a short note apologizing for everything. She signed, ‘I am so sorry, baby. I always loved you so very much. Mom.’ She also said that Evan had duped her, that he was not the person he claimed to be. The note was left on her nightstand.” She tried to hold back tears. “My mother supposedly killed herself that night.” She opened her small black purse and pulled out a small tissue and dabbed at her eyes.
“I can’t even begin to imagine how difficult this must be for you,” was my lame response.
She nodded, took another sip of her iced tea, and gazed at me with red eyes. “Even though my mom and I were not that close, she was still my mother and I still loved her, so yes, it is very hard. The thing is, growing up, things were great. The way I remember it, we had a wonderful family life. I have great memories. I was a very lucky child.”
She folded her hands on her lap and played with a small ring on her slender finger. I simply watched her in silence. She then raised her eyes and glanced emptily around the restaurant and said, “It all ended one Monday evening in late October. I was almost six years old. All I knew was that something very bad happened in my dad’s work. Then my dad started coming home late. He seemed preoccupied, I guess... sad, very tense, and irritable after that. For the first time, I heard my parents fighting and screaming. It was very strange for me. They had never fought before, at least, not in front of me. I knew then things were bad. I also knew they would get worse; I just didn’t know how much worse. Then, about two months later, it all came unraveled. My dad was arrested. It was all over the news and the newspapers.
“Life changed completely after that. My mom became a pariah in her L.A. social circles. I became the subject of ridicule and jokes at school. My mom still had the house in Palm Beach, so we moved back here. She went by her maiden name, and she changed mine to hers so we wouldn’t have to endure the insults. We went to visit my dad in jail twice. The first time, I was almost ten years old. The second time I saw him, I was almost fifteen. His appeal was pending, and he had high hopes for an early release given that he cooperated with authorities and returned most of the money. He was turned down, and he knew then he would never leave that prison alive. By that time, my mother was dating men right and left. Drinking heavily, too.
“Shortly thereafter, my mother was diagnosed with MS. She became even more irrational. I went to see my dad in prison. I was worried she would spend everything she had and we’d be in trouble. He told me not to worry. That’s when he told me he had put away what he called an ‘insurance policy’ in a safe place. For a rainy day. And that I was not to tell anyone about it, especially not my mom. He made me promise not to touch whatever it was under any circumstances unless it was an emergency. Or when I turned thirty. He asked me to promise, and I did. He told me this ‘insurance’ was hidden in the old family tapestry that hung over the main staircase of the house in Palm Beach. That it would be safe there. Then, when the time came, I should get it. I guess it was his way of providing for my future. That was the last time I saw him. He was who he was, I get that, but I know he loved me. I know he disappointed a lot of people, but he was still my father. He always brought me little presents from his business trips. Stuffed animals, things like that...” Her voice trailed off as she held back more tears.
“Do you have any idea what it was that your dad may have hid in the tapestry?”
She dabbed at her teary eyes once more and quietly blew her nose with a tissue from her purse. She shook her head. “It couldn’t have been very big or thick. You know? I looked behind the tapestry once, out of curiosity, and there was nothing there but the old wool and silk material. The tapestry itself is fairly old. It was a work commissioned by King Louis XV of France. It depicts a Chinese emperor enjoying his meal. It’s big and colorful but not particularly pretty, if you ask me. And it’s not very thick. You can’t hide anything inside it.”
“So what do you think your dad may have meant?”
“To be honest,” she said as she put away the tissue in her bag and got out a fresh one. “I don’t know. But I know this much: if my dad told me there was something valuable in that tapestry, you can bank on it. He would never have lied about something like that not to me, anyway.”
“With all due respect, Amy, in your dad’s case, you can’t rule out anything.”
“What do you mean?”
“This may sound harsh, but it is something you must consider.”
“Okay…,” she said in a halting voice, as if fearful of where this conversation was going.
“Your dad was convicted of a massive financial fraud. He is an admitted embezzler a con man. Con men, by nature, are expert liars. Their stock in trade is deceit. Their world is nothing but smoke and mirrors.”
She nodded and lowered her head, maybe a little embarrassed by the cold reality conveyed by those words. I had hit a nerve, but I wanted Amy to be sure.
“Your dad disappointed you, your mother, and a great many others. Most of his world was a well-conceived lie. So you must consider, especially after looking at the tapestry and not seeing any evidence of this ‘policy’ he supposedly hid, the possibility that this insurance may have been...” I decided to choose my words carefully here. This girl had been through enough already. “. . . let’s just say, perhaps, not entirely the way he described it? That maybe there is nothing of real value hidden in it?”
She thought about it for a moment, cocked her head sideways, and glanced at me with hopeful eyes. “Not knowing the kind of man he really was, the kind of father my dad really was, I guess I, too, would come to that conclusion, Mr. Justice.”
“Please, it’s Jason. Mr. Justice was my dad...” I made her smile.
“Sorry.”
“Go on.”
“This may sound foolish, but I trusted my father implicitly. He never broke a promise. Not once. I believe what he told me about the tapestry. I am convinced he hid something valuable in it, and I will continue to believe that until the day I die.”