either, and she felt a little foolish calling him. But she wanted a contact in Dublin now in case she needed help. She didn’t want to go back without some kind of support available to her there. And he was all she had. “I’m not sure what kind of help I need, if any, at this point. My agent, Mark Webber, thought I should call you.” And after reading the investigator’s report she thought so too, in case any legal complications arose from her relationship with Finn. She hoped things would calm down with him, but they might not. From what she’d read, more likely not.
“Of course. Whatever I can do to help, Ms. Dunne.” His voice was intelligent and kind, and he sounded patient. She felt a little silly explaining it to him, as though what she wanted was advice to the lovelorn, and maybe she did. But this wasn’t just about being lovelorn, it was about assessing danger and potential risk. It all depended on who Finn really was, what she meant to him, and how desperate or dishonest he was. Money was clearly important to him. But how important? Maybe this time, for him, their love story had been for real, in spite of all the other horrors she had read in the report. Maybe he truly loved her. She wanted to believe that. But it seemed doubtful at this point, and impossible to assess.
“I feel stupid telling you this story. I think I’m in a mess,” she said as she leaped in. It was four o’clock in the morning in New York, her apartment was dark, and it was the heart of the night, when everything seems worse, dangers loom, and terrors grow exponentially. In the morning, the ghosts recede again. “I’ve been involved with someone for the past year. He lives in Ireland, between Blessington and Russborough, and he has a house in London too. He’s a well-known author, very successful, though in a professional and financial disaster at the moment. I took photographs of him in London last year, we went out afterward, and he came to see me in New York after that. To be honest, he swept me off my feet. He stayed with me for several weeks, and we’ve been together almost constantly ever since, staying at each other’s houses, in whatever city. I have an apartment in New York and a house on Cape Cod. We’ve been everywhere together, though I’ve been mostly in Ireland lately. He has a house there that he told me he owned, and I discovered he didn’t. It turned out that he was renting it.” Robert Bartlett was making small acknowledging and sympathetic noises as she told the story, and he was making notes as well, to keep it all straight when they discussed it later. “I discovered that he was renting, although he said he owned it,” she resumed after a pause. “He said it was his ancestral home, and he had reclaimed it two years before. That was a lie, he said he was embarrassed to admit he didn’t own it. Actually, there were three big lies that I discovered at about the same time, after nine months that were absolutely perfect. I’d never been happier in my life, and he was the nicest man I’ve ever known, but suddenly after nine months, there were these three big lies.” She sounded sad as she said it.
“How did you discover them?” Bartlett interjected, intrigued by the story. She sounded like an intelligent woman, didn’t sound particularly naive, and was a businesswoman, so he knew that if she’d fallen for the lies, the perpetrator was undoubtedly good, smooth, and convincing. Originally, apparently, she’d had no reason to doubt him.
“The lies just kind of popped out of nowhere. He said he was widowed, and had brought up his son alone. His son came to visit us in Ireland, and told me that he didn’t grow up with his father, as Finn had told me. His name is Finn, by the way.” Bartlett knew who he was on the literary scene, most people did, and he didn’t comment. He was certainly an author of major fame, and of equal stature to her in her field. She hadn’t picked up some homeless guy off the street. She didn’t sound like the type for that. So it seemed like a fair match, on the surface, even if it wasn’t, and had probably seemed that way to her too. So it made sense in the beginning. “Anyway, his son told me that he grew up with his maternal grandparents in California and hardly knew his father while growing up, and doesn’t see him much now. That’s not at all what his father told me. I asked him about it, and Finn said he was embarrassed to admit that he hadn’t brought up his son. He has never admitted that he scarcely knew him. He also told me that he and his wife weren’t getting along when she died, and they probably would have divorced eventually. She died when their son was seven. But I’ll tell you about that later.
“A few months before that, I had found out about the house being rented. He still claimed it was his ancestral home, which I believed, on his mother’s side, which it turns out is bullshit. Sorry,” she sounded embarrassed, and he smiled.
“No problem. I’ve heard the word. Never used it myself, of course, but I get the drift.” They both laughed, and she liked him. He sounded sympathetic and was listening closely to all she said, despite the fact that it sounded crazy, even to her. “He said he was ashamed of that too, that he was renting. And we were planning to get married by then, so I bought the house last April.” She felt a little stupid admitting it to him now.
“As a gift? Did you put it in his name?” It was not a criticism or a reproach, just a question.
“A kind of future gift. It’s in my name, but I was going to give it to him as a wedding present when we got married. For now, it’s in my name, and I rent it to him for a nominal amount. Two hundred dollars a month, just to keep things clean. I paid a million five for it, and I’ve put in about the same amount in restoration, and another million in furniture and decoration.” Hearing it now, it was a huge amount of money to spend on his house, although technically it was hers, but she had done it all for him. “I drew up papers after we bought it, and it’s in my will. In the event of my death, if we are married, it goes to him, free and clear, or in trust to our children, if we have any.”
“Does he know that?”
“I can’t remember. I think I said it to him once, maybe twice. I told him I would leave it to him. I thought it was his family house then. I discovered a few weeks ago that the house has no relation to him. It was just another lie, among many. But he made a big deal about being embarrassed to have me know he only rented. And I believed his story, hook, line, and sinker.”
“To give the devil his due, he sounds pretty good at what he does.” So far, he had played on her sympathy every time. He was smooth.
“I also told him what my ex-husband gave me in a settlement in our divorce. I didn’t want to keep any secrets. Finn asked me how much, so I told him. It was fifty million dollars, with an equal amount on my ex-husband’s death,” she said sadly.
“Hopefully not for a long time,” he said politely, and there was a pause at her end, while she caught her breath.
“He died this week. He’s been very sick for eleven years. That’s why he divorced me, he didn’t want me to go through that, but I did anyway.”
“I’m sorry. But let me get this straight. You have another fifty million coming to you now from your late husband’s, sorry, ex-husband’s estate. Is that right?”
“Yes.” There was a soft whistle at the other end in response and she smiled. “It’s a lot. He sold his shares in a company that makes high-tech surgical equipment, and did very well. So Finn knew what I had and what I had coming.”
“Has he ever asked you for money?” It didn’t sound like he needed to. He was doing fine anyway, since she’d bought him the house, and promised to pass it on to him, at their marriage or her death. Either way, he stood to win.
“Only recently,” she answered. “He wanted five million dollars cash, no questions asked. And more when we get married. He’s only asked me for that in the last month. Before that he never mentioned money. He’s in financial trouble, which was the third lie that got me worried. He told me he had just signed a new contract with his publisher, for a lot of money. We celebrated it, in fact. As it turns out, he owes them two books, they broke his contract, and are suing him for close to three million dollars.”
“Did he want the money to settle with them, as a loan of some kind?”
“I don’t think so,” she said, thinking about it. “He just wanted it outright and he wanted more than he’s being sued for. Two million more. I don’t know what’s going to happen with the lawsuit. He’s trying to stall them, but his name is mud right now in the business. And he says he has no money, not a dime. He said he didn’t want to ask for an allowance. I suggested some kind of petty cash account, and I pay all the bills anyway, so he has no expenses. But he wants five million cash in his own account, with no accounting to me for it. Just a straight gift, and more when we get married.”
“And when was that supposed to be?” He hoped it was no time soon from the sound of what he was hearing.
“Originally October.” She didn’t tell him about the baby she’d lost in June. He didn’t need to know that, she didn’t think it was relevant to the story, and the memory of it still pained her. “We put it off till the end of this month, on New Year’s Eve, and I recently told him I wanted to wait till June. He’s livid about it.”
“I’ll bet he is,” Robert Bartlett said, sounding worried. He didn’t like the story, and just as he was thinking that,
