Priceless (6 page)

Wiping her mouth, she looked at herself in the mirror. A little pale. She pinched her cheeks and opened her eyes wide.
Pull yourself together, Charlotte.
She entered her father’s study and called the lawyer.

“Arthur?” The line wasn’t very good, and it sounded as if he wasn’t alone.

“Charlotte? Are you at the apartment?”

“There are police here, Arthur, with a warrant for Dad’s study.”

The lawyer sighed. She’d known Arthur Bedford all her life, and she’d never heard him sound stressed before. “Your father has been accused of some very serious crimes, Charlotte, and the FBI and the SEC are totally within their rights to search the apartment.”

Charlotte looked out the window. Everyone was carrying on as normal. Tourists were climbing into horse-drawn carriages.
Children were playing. Did no one realize the world had ended?

“The warrant only covers the study. I’m in it right now. No smoking guns. No piles of cash.”

Arthur had lost his sense of humor. “Don’t touch anything, Charlotte. Don’t take anything out.”

She frowned. “Why would I, Arthur? The sooner they clear this all up, the sooner we can sue them for defamation of character.”

Another sigh. This was beginning to make her feel anxious.

“Dad is innocent, right, Arthur?”

“Charlotte, I wish I knew.” She heard the sound of louder voices. “Let’s talk in an hour or so, OK?”

She stood there a moment, lightly touching the things on her father’s desk. His laptop was there. A detachable flash drive. Keys to his files. Nothing was hidden, no secrets there.
Fine. Let them come.

She collected the key to her father’s study from Greta and went back into the library. She decided to address Dale, the FBI agent.

“My lawyer advises me that my father wants to see me. Will that be allowed?”

Surprisingly, Dale turned to Scarsford.

Charlotte raised one eyebrow. “I thought the FBI was holding my father?”

Scarsford looked annoyed at Dale, briefly. “They are, but the SEC began the investigation. I’m the lead investigator.”

Charlotte started to feel the tiniest flicker of anger, deep within her fear. “Gentlemen, let me be crystal-clear. You think my father is guilty of something. You think he is a criminal. But I assume your suspicions don’t extend to me?”

A short pause, each waiting for the other to catch the ball.

“Or do they?”

The cop caught it. “Not at this time, Miss Williams. The investigation is just beginning.”

“I thought your case was watertight? That’s what you’ve told the media. You’ve hung my father before you’ve even begun? That’s not very sporting of you, is it?”

She walked to the window and looked out for a moment, composing herself and pulling together every ounce of inner strength she possessed. She wanted her father to walk through the door, laughing, telling everyone what a good joke this had been. But when she turned back to the investigators, she looked as if she were serving tea rather than an ultimatum.

“If at any time during this investigation I feel I am not being treated with the utmost respect or that I am being deliberately misled in any way, I will cause problems for each and every one of you that will make you wish you had not been born. My father and my family are connected at the highest levels of government, of society, and internationally. Please remember that you have been welcomed into my home and treated with civility. Do me the courtesy of extending the same civility.”

She took a deep breath.

“Now, will whoever’s in charge please answer my simple question: May I see my father?”

Scarsford smiled. “Of course, Charlotte.”

“Miss Williams.”

The smile didn’t wobble. “Miss Williams, sorry. Once our people have begun to search your father’s study, I will take you to him myself.”

“Very well.” She extended the key to him. “Here is what you
need. Nothing has been disturbed or removed since my father left for work this morning. We have nothing to hide.” She looked Scarsford in the eye. “Can you say the same, Mr. Scarsford?”

He flushed.

It was actually an hour before they could leave the apartment, and during that time, Charlotte was able to talk to Emily on the phone. Emily seemed more amused than anything.

“It’s just ridiculous, Charlotte! There are photos of your dad on CNN, for crying out loud. And not very flattering ones, either.”

Charlotte made a face. “That’s hardly a problem right now, Emily. When this is all cleared up, I’ll make sure to update their file photo, ok?”

Emily was unchastened. “Well, he looks heavy, is all I’m saying.” She giggled. “Maybe he’ll be like Martha Stewart and get in shape in jail.”

“Emily.” Charlotte’s tone was sharp. “Don’t even joke about it. It’s not funny.”

She could hear her friend pouting. “It is a little bit funny, Charlotte. It’s silly. Why on earth would your dad steal money when he’s so wealthy? The po-po are so stupid.”

Charlotte happened to be looking at Detective Mallory as Emily said this, and she thought she’d rarely seen a man who looked less stupid, but there you go.

“Shall I come and visit you?” Emily sounded giddy. “I can
wear dark glasses and cover my head with a shawl and creep in.”

“Don’t you dare, Emily. Stay away so you don’t get dragged in the mud, too. Besides, I’m going to see Dad soon, so I won’t be here much longer.”

“OK, Charlotte. I’ll call you later, ok?” Emily hung up, presumably to call all of her other friends and revel in schadenfreude.

Charlotte was getting a pretty good handle on her anger now, and she found herself irritated by her friend’s lighthearted response to her crisis. Not once had Emily said she was sympathetic or said that she felt bad that Charlotte was going through this or offered to do anything concretely helpful. Oh well. To be fair, she wasn’t sure what she would do if the situation were reversed. She smiled at the thought of Emily’s parents getting in trouble. For what? Shoplifting at Zabar’s? Buying non-fair-trade coffee?

Jim Scarsford, watching her from across the room, saw a brief smile soften her features for a moment, then fade away. Mallory came over and spoke to him.

“We’re good here. You can take her downtown now, if you want. Or keep her waiting some more. It’s up to you. Sometimes if they get worked up enough, they make a mistake, you know, blurt something out in frustration that they wouldn’t have otherwise.”

Scarsford frowned at his NYPD counterpart. “I doubt she knows anything. She’s been away in Paris for the last year, and before that, she didn’t seem interested in anything but boys and clothes. I doubt Charlotte Williams is a criminal mastermind.”

Mallory looked less sure. “She would have been arrested for arson if she’d been anyone else, you know that. Yale hushed it all
up because Daddy stepped in and threw money at the problem. If she’d been an eighteen-year-old black kid from New Haven, she’d be in jail still, and where’s the fairness in that?”

All three men had been watching the Williams family for quite some time. Charlotte surely would have been embarrassed if she knew how much both of these men knew about her life. Including her love life.

She stood as Scarsford approached her. It was a pity he was the devil—he was actually nice looking.

“Can we go now?”

When she stood close to him, he realized she wasn’t as tall as he’d first thought. He’d been seeing pictures of her day after day for the last several years, and he’d been prepared for her prettiness. What he hadn’t been ready for was the intoxicating mix of reserve and heat she gave out. Very controlled, very elegant, very stylish. But she moved like a cat, and her face was so expressive. He wished for a moment he could take her to bed, really find out what made her smile, what made her eyes close in delight, what made her curl up inside. But that was never going to happen, because he was going to put her father in jail, and that tended to be a dating no-no. Smiling wryly at himself on the inside, he maintained his cool and simply nodded.

ONE OF THE
things an expensive Upper East Side education gave you, supposedly, was the ability to make polite conversation with anyone. You might run into a diplomat one day and a
king of some small country the next, and a properly educated young woman should easily be able to discuss a variety of neutral topics. But it turned out that riding downtown in a car with a man responsible for arresting your parent was a tough situation to chat your way through.

“Music?” As soon as he said it, he kicked himself.

Charlotte simply turned and looked at him, one perfectly arched eyebrow lifted. “What would you suggest? ‘Folsom Prison Blues’? ‘Jailhouse Rock’?”

Silence. He’d graduated first from his class at Columbia Law, slaved as a junior associate at a white-shoe firm, learning the ins and outs of securities litigation, and joined the SEC determined to bring big business and fat cats to task for cheating the common man. Instead, he’d spent most of the previous half-decade watching rich people get richer while getting away with crimes poorer people would have rotted in jail for. He wanted to feel nothing for Charlotte Williams and her ilk, the protected offspring of the wealthy. But she was hot and smart and apparently had a sense of humor even now.

“Sorry, you’re right. Not appropriate.”

More silence. They were crawling down Fifth, and he cut across the park, joining traffic that was moving a little faster. She gazed out, seeing familiar buildings sliding by, filled with people who presumably had worries of their own. Piles of stubborn black snow clung to the corners here and there.
Sometimes the puddles in the intersections got so deep they’d go over her boots when she and daddy were walking to the park, jumping and squealing, even though he’d gotten her the boots with the string at the top, even though his strong arms held her up when she jumped, even though.

Scarsford looked over. She was looking out the window, her profile still. He’d seen many people in trouble, and some weeks, those were the only people he talked to. Usually, they were chatty, trying to win you over, trying to make things easier by making a connection, hoping you would overlook whatever the hell it was they’d done. Not this one, not this girl. She couldn’t care less about him. She was probably thinking about what to wear to dinner.

Sometimes they’d go to ride Charlotte’s pony, and he would walk alongside her, talking about the trees and the birds, making up stories about what the pony was thinking, about how he dreamed of her all week, waiting for her to come and ride him, and his head would be level with hers almost, because the pony was very small and he was very tall, Daddy was.

She sighed. Scarsford sneaked a look again, nearly rear-ending a cab. The sudden stop made her jump, disturbing whatever shopping spree she was dreaming of. Charlotte turned to him, her eyes full of tears. She looked at him for a long moment, her face the prettiest and saddest thing he’d ever seen, and then the traffic moved again, and so did they, and he lost her to her dreams once more.

Then they were there.

THE METAL DETECTOR
was interesting. Scarsford went first, pulling a gun from inside his jacket (Charlotte had been surprised to see it, short and ugly and lying like a toy in the plastic tray), then a wallet, a watch, a class ring.

Then it was her turn. She removed her watch (IWC), a tennis bracelet (Tiffany’s, a present from her dad), a ring (emerald,
vintage, Alexander’s), and a collar pin (also emerald, vintage, Alexander’s, of course). All told, it represented more than the annual salary of the woman working the metal detector, but she couldn’t have cared less. She’d worked there for nearly two decades, and honey, she’d seen it all.

“Shoes?” Charlotte looked at Scarsford, but he shook his head.

“Not here.”

“Jacket?”

This time, he nodded. She slipped it off, revealing a simple lawn chemise, sleeveless, utterly see-through, La Perla underwear clearly visible. She stepped over the metal threshold, but it beeped. She frowned, stepped back, tried again. Another beep.

Scarsford was waiting on the other side as the woman stepped forward with the wand, and he let himself follow its path up and down her slender body. Clean all the way down, clean all the way up, but then it beeped at her head. She had been frowning, slightly embarrassed to be holding up the line to be scrutinized by strangers, but now her face cleared.