The next stretch of quiet was so long and dense, he took his phone from his ear to check he hadn’t lost the call. “Hello?”
Cue the throat clearing. “Your father declared your mother mentally incompetent per the rules of her trusts earlier this year. It was the opinion of two qualified neurologists that she was, and is, incapable of making decisions at this time. So if you require funds from either of their accounts, we will be more than happy to accommodate you—provided the request comes from your father in person. I hope you understand that I am walking a fine line here—”
“I’ll call him right now and get him to phone in.”
Lane ended the call and stared out at the traffic. Then he went over to the door and opened it. Smiling at the manager, he said, “My father’s going to have to call Prospect to initiate the transfer. I’ll have to come back.”
“We’re open until five o’clock, sir.”
“Thanks.”
Back out in the bright sun, he kept his phone in his hand as he strode across the hot pavement, but he didn’t use the thing. He also didn’t remember the drive home.
What the hell was he going to do now?
When he got back to Easterly, there were two more police units in the courtyard by the garages and a couple of uniforms standing at the front door. He parked the Porsche in its usual waiting spot to the left of the mansion’s main entrance and got out.
“Mr. Baldwine,” one of the officers said as Lane approached.
“Gentlemen.”
The sensation of their eyes following him made him want to send the group far away from his family’s house. He had a tweaking paranoia that there were things happening behind the scenes he knew nothing about, and he’d just as soon eyeball those skeletons privately first—without the benefit of Metro Police’s prying stares.
Taking the stairs up to the second floor, he went to his room and shut the door—then locked it. Over by his bed, he picked up the receiver on the house phone, dialed nine for an outside line, and then entered *67 so that the number of the extension he was calling from would not register on any caller ID. When a dial tone came over the line, he entered a familiar exchange and four-digit series.
He cleared his throat as it rang once. Twice—
“Good morning, this is Mr. William Baldwine’s office. How may I assist you—”
Assuming his father’s clipped business tones, he said, “Get me Monteverdi at Prospect on the line right now.”
“Of course, Mr. Baldwine! Right away.”
Lane cleared his throat again as classical music came across the connection. The good news was that his father was anti-social unless human interaction benefited him business-wise, so it was unlikely there were any recent personal conversations between the two men that would give the lie away.
“Mr. Baldwine, I have Mr. Monteverdi on the line.”
After the click, Monteverdi jumped right in. “Thank you for finally returning my call.”
Lane dropped his tone and added a boatload of Southern: “I need one hundred and twenty-five thousand into the general household—”
“William, I told you. I can’t make any more advances, I just can’t. I appreciate your family’s business, and I am committed to helping you sort all of this out before the Bradford name runs into difficulty, but my hands are tied. I have a responsibility to my board, and you told me the money you borrowed would be repaid by the annual meeting—which is in two short weeks. The fact that you require additional funds—of such a small amount? My confidence is now not high.”
What. The. Hell.
“What is the total owed?” he asked in his father’s heavy Virginian accent.
“I told you in my last voice mail,” Monteverdi bit out. “Fifty-three million. You have two weeks, William. Your choice is to either repay it, or go to JPMorgan Chase and get them to do asset lending against your wife’s primary trust. She has over a hundred million in that account alone, so their lending profile is met. I sent you the paperwork on your private e-mail—all you have to do is put her signature on them and this goes away for the both of us. But let me make myself perfectly clear—I am very exposed in this situation, and I will not permit that to continue. There are remedies I could bring to bear that would be very uncomfortable for you, and I shall use them before anything affects me personally.”
Holy.
Shit.
“I’ll get back to you,” Lane drawled, and hung up.
For a moment, all he could do was stare at his phone. He literally couldn’t string two thoughts together.
Then came the vomiting.
With a sudden heave, he jerked in half, barely getting the wastepaper basket over in time.
Everything that he’d eaten in the staff room came up.
After the gagging subsided, his blood ran cold, the sense that nothing was as it should be making him wonder—then pray—that this was some kind of nightmare.
But he didn’t have the luxury of fading into neutral—or worse, falling apart. He had to deal with the police. His sister. And whatever was going on here …
God, he wished Edward were still around.
TWENTY