Legacy of Secrets (8 page)

Shannon shook his hand and hurried away. She jumped into the little second-hand pickup truck she had bought when she had traded in her beloved black Mercedes 500SL, and headed out of town through the pouring rain.

The Long Island house had not yet been stripped of its furnishings, though the paintings and the finest ornaments had already been sent to Sotheby’s, to be sold separately.

As she drove up, Shannon noticed the auction tent being erected on the big lawn and her heart gave a lurch, remembering the marquee for her birthday party only a few weeks
ago. Officials were striding around the house affixing stickers to tables and chairs and ashtrays, which they confidently expected to bring inflated prices simply because they had belonged to Big Bob Keeffe. The house was on the market for fifteen million dollars, but the attorneys had told Shannon it was a drop in the financial ocean of what Keeffe Holdings owed.

“But how did it all happen?” she had asked Brad Jeffries. “Dad was always such a good businessman. How else could he have gotten where he did?”

“I only wish I had known,” Brad answered nervously. “I’ve always considered myself Bob’s anchor. Whenever his schemes got too grandiose, I was the one expected to bring him down to size. But he kept this quiet from me, Shannon.” He shrugged. “I never looked at the books. Why should I? That’s what accountants are for.”

It was the same with Jack Wexler. He had come to see her, looking miserable and nervous. “I’m not good at this, Shannon,” he had said tersely. “You know I care. And I wish to God I could have done something about it. But I didn’t know. None of us knew how he was juggling things. If I had designed the new skyscraper I could have controlled it. But Bob didn’t want me to design it,” he added bitterly. “He wanted a big name. Bob didn’t care what it cost either, he just wanted ‘the best’ and it seems he borrowed from everyplace he could to finance it. It’s there now, on Park Avenue, half-finished, sticking up like a sore finger in the sky. Some monument! Jesus.” He had groaned, putting his head in his hands. “I’m sorry, Shannon. If there’s anything I can do, you know, money … well, anything. Just let me know.”

“I will, Jack,” she had promised, though of course she never would. In her view they had let her father down and now they were blaming it all on him. She would never take money from any of the traitors.

Surprisingly, though, it was J.K. who was the greatest source of strength. “Your father gave me everything I ever had,” he had said simply. “Now I can repay my debt. If
there’s anything I can do, anything you need, it’s yours.” He had hesitated, staring down at his feet, his thin, pale face coloring. He’d fiddled with his gold-rimmed glasses and then said, “It seems ridiculous to be saying this to Bob Keeffe’s daughter, but if you need money, count on me.” He had pulled a checkbook eagerly from his pocket. “Name a sum,” he’d said quickly, blushing deeper. “Anything. Ten thousand. Twenty. Fifty. Whatever you want, Shannon. It’s yours.”

But of course she had refused J.K., too, proudly telling him she had enough to get by on, that she would get a job, and anyway, she would soon be getting married.

And with Buffy gone and Wil back at Yale, it was J.K. who helped her with the packing. It was J.K. who had instructed Sotheby’s on the sale of the houses and the contents. And it was J.K. who had personally overseen the crating and removal of her father’s art collection.

He was waiting now in the hall, and his face lit up when he saw her. “I was worried about you,” he said, glancing at his watch. “It’s after two and you said you’d be back by lunchtime.”

“You sound just like a nanny I used to have.” She managed a smile. “There was traffic, rain … the usual Manhattan blues.”

“I wondered if you could find time to go through this inventory?” He held out a daunting sheaf of papers, and she glanced helplessly at them and then back at him. “Must I? It all seems so pointless somehow.”

“Of course not. If you trust me to take care of it.”

She stared curiously at him, her gray eyes narrowing suspiciously as something occurred to her. “J.K. You were the man closest to my father. He always said you knew everything about him and everything about his business. If that’s true, then how is it you didn’t know about the mess he was getting into?”

“There were things he kept from me,” he said, meeting her gaze squarely. “The company’s finances were a complicated web with your father like the spider at the center.
Only he knew the full facts and how out of hand it had all gotten. I was worried about certain things, but I never guessed how bad it was. He had never done that before and so I never suspected. Until it became obvious—the banks calling and so on. And by then it was too late.” He stared at her a little desperately. “Believe me, Shannon, if there had been any way to save the situation, I would have found it.”

“Of course you would.” She walked sadly away, noticing that her wet shoes made track marks across the hall tiles. Buffy would have hated that. The silver tray on the hall sideboard held a couple of letters and she picked them up disinterestedly. She thought sadly that it was amazing how little the phone had rung since her father died. And, after the first official flow of condolence letters, it was surprising how few people had contacted her. She supposed they were all afraid of being tainted with the Keeffe scandal.

One of the letters was a statement from her bank informing her that she had exactly three thousand two hundred and forty-six dollars in her account, and that they were holding in their vault the title deed to the small piece of property in her name in Nantucket.

Recognizing the writing on the other letter as Wil’s, she tucked it into her jacket pocket, smiling. Wil was the only bright spot on her horizon.

Tomorrow she intended to hitch the little trailer containing her worldly possessions to the back of her pickup and drive to New Haven. She would move in with Wil, then find herself a job in the town. And when Wil completed his studies next year, they would get married.

She glanced up at the sound of heavy feet tramping through the house. Workmen were rearranging the furniture in lots in different rooms and the house looked alien. She turned and hurried back along the hall, down the broad steps and across the wet lawns, along the avenue of plane trees to the lake.

It was raining hard, a gray, relentless day, but her space beneath the big willow tree at the edge of the lake was dry
and safe. It was where she had always come as a child to lick her wounds, and she sat as she always had, knees hunched under her chin, arms wrapped around herself in her own soft green world. If she peeked between the fronds dipping into the shallows she could see the gazebo where her father had died, but instead she stared upward at the delicate tracery of branches.

“Oh, Daddy, Daddy,” she whispered. “Oh, darling Daddy. Was there nothing any of us could do to help? Nothing we could do to stop you? Did all our love and caring mean so little that you had to kill yourself?” She shook her head. She would never believe it. Never.

Pulling Wil’s letter from her pocket, she opened it, quickly reading the two brief paragraphs.
“Under the circumstances, I think it would be better if we ‘postponed’ our wedding…. I’ve decided to take a sabbatical at the end of this semester and take a trip to Australia, maybe work on a sheep farm. Dad says it’ll be good character-building stuff. I hope we shall meet again sometime, when I return.
…”

Shannon stared blankly at the letter. The diamond on her finger felt like a lead weight as the awful reality of her situation confronted her. She was no longer the pampered, courted, protected princess, a rich girl. No longer the wild, headstrong, do-as-she-pleased Shannon Keeffe everyone loved and wanted to know. She had nothing and therefore she was no one.

J.K.
STARED WORRIEDLY
after Shannon as she ran past him up the stairs. Her red hair was dark with rain and her freckles stood out against her chalky face. Tears ran unheeded down her cheeks and she seemed not to see him, though he moved to one side to allow her to pass.

She stumbled on the landing and fell, and he took the stairs two at a time to her side.

“Oh, God,” he groaned, putting his arms around her. “You didn’t go back to the gazebo? You mustn’t, you’ll only hurt yourself more.”

She shook her head, sobbing helplessly against his shoulder, all her hard-gained self-control gone. He glanced down at her straggling hair and tear-stained face, thinking of all the times he had dreamed of holding her. And only now, because of what had happened, was it possible. Fate, he thought angrily, was a funny thing. His dark eyes glittered with emotion and instinctively he tightened his grip.

“It’s Wil,” Shannon gasped through her sobs. “He’s going away. To Australia for a year. He thinks maybe it’s better if we
postpone
our marriage.” She lifted her head, staring piteously at him through her swollen eyelids. “How could he? Wil. Of all people. J.K., did no one love me? Or my father? Was it always just our money?”

She sat back against the wall, her long bare, mud-spattered legs sticking out in front of her, limp as a rag doll. “I’m sure that’s not true.” He took her hand and patted it
comfortingly. “I guess Wil was just too young to …” He tried desperately to think of a reason. “He was just too young to take on the responsibility of marriage right now. After what has happened.”

Her hand was freezing and he rubbed it briskly. “Look, I’ve got this little farm out at Montauk. Why don’t you go there for a while. There’s no one to bother you—no reporters, no TV cameras. Take one of your girlfriends for company, you’ll need someone to talk to. It’s always been a kind of refuge for me and maybe it could be the same for you.”

Shannon eyed him solemnly. She had never seen J.K. in this caring role before. He had always been so brisk and businesslike, the perfect executive machine. But now he had turned out to be a machine with a heart. “I never thought of you as a person needing a refuge,” she said, sniffing away her tears. “You always seem so controlled. So in charge of your life.”

“Everyone needs an escape from something, even if it’s only the day-to-day grind. But I mean it, Shannon. The place is yours for as long as you want it. And I promise I won’t even come to visit unless you ask me.”

Managing a half smile, she mopped her eyes and promised to think about it. He helped her up the stairs to her bedroom. “I didn’t let them touch your things,” he reassured her. He was still holding her hand, and she squeezed his gratefully. She closed the door behind her and he waited outside for a moment. He heard her soft footsteps on the carpet, and then the terrible sound of her sobs again as she flung herself onto the bed. He sighed as he turned away. Shannon Keeffe was going to find it tough to be an ordinary mortal, he thought.

Going directly to Bob’s study, he picked up the phone and called the manager of Shannon’s bank. Explaining who he was, he instructed him to allow her whatever funds she needed over the next few months, up to $50,000. He personally would guarantee the amount. Then, sitting back in Bob’s old leather chair, now bearing a sticker proclaiming
it to be in Lot 154, he thought wearily about his own future.

W
HEN
S
HANNON WOKE
it was dark outside. The rain had stopped and there was no sound. She was still in her rain-damp skirt and jacket and she stood up and wriggled out of them, then climbed back into bed. She wrapped the blankets around her, remembering that this was her last night in this bed. Her last night in this house. In this life.

Staring at the lighter square of blackness where the window was, she wondered whether to take up J.K.’s offer of the Montauk farm, but she knew it would only be a stopgap. She remembered her father saying to her all those years ago,
“You’ve got to go after whatever it is you want, little darlin’. And you’ve got to want it real bad.”
But right now she didn’t know what it was she wanted. She felt aimless, spineless, useless.
“You’ve got the blood of your fightin’ Irish ancestors, Shannon,”
he had always told her, but it surely didn’t feel that way now.

Sitting up, she turned on the lamp and glanced around her. Everything looked as it always had: simple, immaculate, and pretty. There were even fresh roses, pink ones, in a vase on her dresser. She would bet she had J.K. to thank for those. That strange man was turning out to be her rock in stormy waters and for the first time she understood what her father had seen in him. Nevertheless, she could not accept his offer. She had to stand on her own two feet. Her father would have expected it.

The two letters lay on the rug where they had fallen. She picked them up and read Wil’s first. It sounded just as final as she thought it had in the first ten readings and she threw it bitterly back onto the floor.

The bank’s letter proved more interesting. There was three thousand two hundred and forty-six dollars in her account. Most of it was from the sale of her car, and the rest was what was left from her month’s allowance. She sighed, telling herself people had started life with less, including her father. She was young and able-bodied and
well educated. She could darn well get herself a job and join the real world.