“Why don’t you tell us what you know about Deirdre?” I said, struggling to keep calm. “When did you meet her? You said that she’s a client of yours?”
Finn jerked his head. I thought he might stay quiet, just to get back at me for keeping this from him, but he sighed and finally set his glass of Scotch aside. “It all started back over the summer,” he said. “A couple of weeks after that mess with Harley Grimes up on Bone Mountain. One of the bank higher-ups came into my office and said that a big fish had just walked in the door, wanting to move her accounts and other business interests over to First Trust. He asked me to see what I could do for her. The next thing I know, Dee-Dee is strolling into my office. She was just like you saw her tonight—big, bold, confident. We hit it off right away.”
A faint smile pulled up his lips, easing some of the anger that tightened his face.
“At first, I didn’t think anything of her. She was just another client with old family money who spends most of her time lunching with the ladies and doing charity work. Your typical society broad. Apparently, she’d heard about me and wanted to see what I could do with her investment portfolio. Seemed like her last guy had been skimming and mismanaging funds from her charity foundation, and she wanted to get back on track.”
“And . . .” I prompted.
Finn shrugged. “And things just progressed from there. I looked at her finances, straightened out a few things, recommended some investments. She would come by the bank to check on things whenever she was in town. A few weeks ago, she rented a penthouse in Ashland to stay in while she puts together a local charity exhibit. After that, we started seeing each other more often, having coffee, meeting for drinks. Dee-Dee started getting a little friendlier, opening up to me. It happens once a client feels comfortable enough. We talked about movies, TV shows, books. All your usual chitchat.”
“What about tonight?” Bria asked. “What were the two of you meeting about tonight?”
“A couple of weeks ago, Dee-Dee asked me to put her in touch with some folks who could help with her charity exhibit, and she was telling me how well everything was going.” He paused. “Although she wanted to take me out to dinner, said that there was something else she wanted to talk to me about. Something personal. I guess I know what that is now.” He barked out a harsh, humorless laugh.
“What about Hugh Tucker?” I asked. “What’s his story?”
Finn shrugged again. “Your typical assistant. Fetching coffee, taking messages, and the like. He’s come into the bank with Dee-Dee several times now. She rented some safety-deposit boxes in the basement vault for her jewelry, and he carried in the briefcases for her. Nothing unusual there.”
Nothing unusual at all. Many wealthy people in Ashland employed personal assistants. Still, the wealthier the person, usually the more obnoxious the assistant was, some of them even more aggressive than giant bodyguards about not letting you get close to their bosses. At least, not without an appointment. And most assistants were actually concerned with, well, assisting their bosses, not drinking, texting, and being bored like Tucker had been tonight. Silvio would have given him a stern talking-to about proper decorum.
Finn fell silent again and stared at his glass of Scotch, brooding.
“That’s all?” I asked. “That’s all the contact you’ve had with her?”
“Yeah. Why?”
I could have told him that something about Deirdre just rubbed me the wrong way. I could have told him that long-lost relatives didn’t appear out of thin air for no reason. I could have told him that it was obvious that she wanted something from him.
But I held my tongue and kept my suspicions to myself. Finn had gotten a brutal shock, one he was trying to drink into oblivion, and he wasn’t thinking straight right now. He was too close to the situation, too involved, too hurt and curious and hopeful and a hundred other things to wonder exactly why his mother had chosen this exact moment to reappear in his life after being gone for the previous thirty-three years of it.
But I was here, I was thinking clearly, and I wondered all those things. More important, I was determined to get answers to every single one of my questions. And if Deirdre was, in fact, conning Finn, then I was going to rain down a whole lot of hurt onto her for daring to think that she could sashay back into his life and use him for her own dark, devious ends.
But first, there was something else I needed to do.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you sooner, that I didn’t tell you the second I found her file. I just . . . didn’t know how. Of all the bad things that have happened to us, of all the secrets the old man kept from us, your mom being alive . . . it’s not something that I had ever even considered.”