Nobody’s Hero (Ben Koenig #2)

Chapter 97

‘My brother Anthony married a wretched woman,’ Margaret said. ‘A spiteful beast who saw everyone as a threat and no one as a friend. Little wonder she died alone. Not even her daughter, my niece Felicity, called upon her after Anthony finally succumbed to his gout.’

‘Gout’s not fatal,’ Draper said.

‘It is when your fingers get so swollen you can’t call the emergency services after you’ve fallen into the cesspit.’

‘Where’s Lassie when you need her?’ Koenig muttered. He was getting impatient. They’d been in the air thirty minutes, and he still had nowhere near enough information to question Nash.

‘Anyway, Felicity’s a lovely woman. Madder than a beef-fed cow, but doesn’t have a nasty bone in her body. When her mother died, the family solicitor asked Felicity to find some paperwork relating to inheritance tax. Now Felicity, God bless her stupid soul, had no idea what she was looking for, so she ended up looking everywhere. And guess what she found in a locked drawer in my mother’s old roll-top writing bureau?’

No one replied. It was clearly a rhetorical question.

Margaret continued like they’d answered her anyway. ‘Exactly, she came across paperwork detailing what had happened to my daughter,’ she said. ‘What had really happened.’

‘Which was?’ Koenig said.

‘A childless couple in Oregon adopted her. Good people. It was all done legally, and my mother had kept all the paperwork. And not just the adoption papers. Emily’s new parents sent photographs. Two a year – birthdays and Christmas. There were also papers detailing the trust fund my mother had set up. The medical bills she’d paid. The things she’d done to ensure my daughter had a head start in life. And because Felicity had never been told it was a secret, she didn’t know not to give it all to me.’

‘That must have been quite a shock, Margaret,’ Carlyle said.

‘To say the least.’

‘It sounds like you had a legitimate grievance against your late mother and father. Definitely your aunt. But for some reason it’s the US you’re blaming. Why is that, Margaret?’

Margaret smiled, but the humour didn’t reach her eyes. ‘What do you know about America’s dirty little secret?’ she said.