Hush (5 page)

Finn watched her walking across the grass.

“Margaret! Emma! Riley! Look this way!” a man shouted.

Finn turned his head to find that TV crews were closing in on
the women. Local cops were present to provide security. Not one of them made a move to intervene. Heading off assault by media clearly wasn't why they were there. All three made the classic mistake of looking toward the shout as reporters and cameras converged on them. They had no security, and their only defense against the onslaught was to avert their faces and hurry toward the limo. A couple of men in suits, rent-a-cop types, got between the women and the oncoming horde. A uniformed driver—part of the package provided by the funeral home, Finn had no doubt—jumped out to open the rear door for them.

The tilt of Riley Cowan's head and her long strides as they ate up the grass radiated anger. Those oversized dark glasses hid her eyes, but her jaw was rigid with tension and her mouth was hard with it.

“I want to hold off approaching her directly for a little longer,” Finn replied to Bax, watching as the trio reached the limo.

Stonily ignoring the shouting, swarming reporters that her woeful security team was doing a piss-poor job of holding at bay, Riley got in last, sliding into the car behind her mother- and sister-in-law. He got the impression that she was protective of them, which was another interesting thing under the circumstances. Since she'd divorced the Crown Prince, he would have expected her relationship with her in-laws to be less than cordial.

If nothing happened in a day or two, he decided, he would pay her a visit, but for the moment he preferred to wait and see what, if anything, she would do. Now that Jeff's funeral was over, she might make a move.

He would be waiting if she did.

Softly, softly, catchee monkey.

“W
ill this awful day never end?” Margaret murmured as Riley stopped beside her.

Under the cover of the rattling of the air conditioner and the murmur of dozens of voices, it was possible to steal a few moments of private conversation even though the house was packed. The older woman was pale and exhausted-looking, with dark circles under her eyes. Riley's concern for her, already high, ratcheted up another notch.

“The answer was a big ‘no,' hmm?” Riley's voice was equally low. She could tell that just from looking at Margaret's face. Margaret had been meaning to ask Bill Stengel, their longtime lawyer, if there was any way around the clause in Jeff's small life insurance policy that precluded a payout for suicide, especially in the face of the family's contention that he was murdered. When Riley had seen them talking a few minutes before, she'd been pretty sure of the topic.

“Bill says the company has to go by the official cause of death.” Margaret sounded defeated.

“Figures.” Riley wasn't surprised. The way things had been going lately, the surprise would have been any scrap of good news.

They were in the small dining room of the modest brick house that Margaret and Emma had shared with Jeff after George had gone to prison. With a living room, dining room, kitchen, three bedrooms, and a single bath all on one level, the rental was a little run-down but had the immense advantage of being cheap, which was what mattered most to them nowadays.

The walls were painted in muddy earth tones, the floors were scuffed hardwood, and the furniture—because the family hadn't been allowed to keep much more of their previous belongings than a few select personal items and their clothes—had been bought at a secondhand store.

Margaret looked as out of place in it as a peacock in a chicken coop, but she was adapting with a dignity that, to Riley, was the embodiment of what she'd grown up referring to as class in North Philly. (One thing Riley had learned since marrying Jeff was that people with class never talked about anyone having class. It was the poor shmucks without it, of which she had to admit she was still one, who used
class
as a descriptive.)

Case in point: without any outward sign of embarrassment, Margaret was hosting the traditional postfuneral reception in a house that most of her acquaintances clearly, if silently, despised.

In theory, only close friends of the family should have been present, but in actuality the guests were a hodgepodge assortment ranging from a few of Riley's coworkers to Jeff and Riley's onetime
couple friends to high school students to members of some of Houston's wealthiest clans. A pair of security guards at the door—they worked weekends at the Palm Room just like she did and Riley was paying them out of her own pocket for tonight—were charged with keeping out undesirables, such as media and law enforcement types. Catty, gossipy socialites were harder to defend against, and Riley had little doubt that the Cowans' reduced circumstances would, like Jeff's death and George's arrest, be an endless topic of conversation among the country club set for the foreseeable future.

“Did you eat?” Riley asked.

“Yes,” Margaret replied. Riley knew Margaret was lying but she also knew that there was no point in calling her on it. None of them had been able to eat more than a few bites at a time since it had happened. “I don't think Emma has.”

Emma had a troubling tendency not to eat when she was under stress. She'd always been slender, but since George's arrest she'd lost weight until now she was almost too thin. Riley hated to think what kind of long-term impact Jeff's death might have on her.

“She'll be okay,” Riley said, both because she wanted to comfort Margaret and because she wanted to believe it was true.

“I hope so.” Margaret glanced toward the dining room table, where several guests were at that moment loading their plates.

Earlier she'd overheard one of Margaret's couture-clad friends whisper to another, as she'd picked up one of the coated paper plates and looked down at it with distaste, “Honestly. This is just embarrassing. Even if you didn't have a dime, don't you think you could do better than
this
?”

While it was certainly true that the spread was a far cry from the lavish opulence customary at Oakwood—where the table had been polished mahogany that seated twenty, the plates were fine china, the silverware was real silver, and at least two uniformed maids would have been hovering over a repast prepared by Houston's finest caterers—Riley's blood had boiled, but for the sake of Margaret and Emma, she hadn't said a word.

Grimly she'd reminded herself,
Class, baby. Class.

“Did you eat?” Margaret countered, looking at Riley again.

“Yes,” Riley lied in turn.

The savory aromas that hung in the air should have made her hungry, should have been appetizing, especially considering how little she'd eaten over the past few days, but under the circumstances, to Riley, they were the opposite of appetizing. She'd had a knot of dread in her stomach since finding Jeff's body, and just the thought of food, much less the smell of it, made her feel queasy. Which was why, having refilled the potato salad, she had been hurrying out of the room with an empty bowl in her hand when Margaret had entered, catching her just short of the doorway.

“Riley. You need to.” Margaret clearly didn't believe Riley any more than Riley had believed her.

Riley sighed. What was the point of pretending?

“We all do,” she said, including Emma in that. “We
will,
once . . .”

Her voice trailed off.

We've gotten used to Jeff being gone,
was how that sentence was meant to end. But she couldn't say it aloud, and Margaret didn't need to hear it.

But Margaret apparently understood, because she nodded, then glanced away. “It's getting dark out.”

The beige, discount-department-store curtains were drawn to keep out curious eyes, but in this room they didn't quite meet in the middle. Through the gap it was possible to see that outside, twilight was falling. Soon it would be full night.

Riley asked, “Do you want me to start hinting that it's time for everybody to go?”

Margaret shook her head. Her blue eyes were red-rimmed and blurry-looking, but the tears had stopped after the funeral and she looked composed. “It's been good to see people again. And they'll probably start to leave soon anyway.”

The thought that it would probably be a long time if ever before Margaret saw most of these particular people—these fair-weather friends, in Riley's humble opinion—again popped into Riley's mind, but she didn't say it.

“You'd think,” Riley replied, then hesitated. She hated to leave Margaret to deal with a houseful of guests on her own, but on the other hand she hated the thought of leaving Margaret and Emma alone after everyone had gone even more. “I'm going to run home and grab some clean clothes, and then I'll be back.”

She'd been staying with them since Sunday night. With every fiber of her being she wanted to get back to her own apartment, to her routine, her life, but Jeff's death had shattered any possibility of that: the hard truth was that normal had flown out the window, and whatever eventually took its place would necessarily be different from what had been before.

In any case, she couldn't walk away from Margaret and
Emma now: they needed her. Without Jeff in it, with the newness and horror of his death still so raw that it was like an open wound, the house was a sad and lonely place. She couldn't just abandon Margaret and Emma to it.

“You don't have to keep sleeping over here with us.” Margaret patted Riley's arm affectionately. Her fingers felt as cold as ice. Riley knew Jeff's mother hadn't been sleeping, and was running on pure adrenaline. She knew, because she was in the same situation. “Aren't you supposed go back to work tomorrow?”

Riley nodded. Her new day job was as a loan officer for a car dealership. She'd taken it, and her night job, as well, in the wake of George's arrest. She'd needed a steady paycheck to help support the family, who'd been rendered penniless practically overnight as accounts were frozen and assets seized. There was no possible way she could stand by and not help. Margaret and Emma had become as dear to her as if they were her own mother and sister, and they, and Jeff, were useless as moneymakers. Family took care of family was how she'd always lived. They were hers now, and she was theirs. Before that she'd been in the process of building her own investment advisory business, using her finance degree from Drexel and the connections she'd made as a member of the Cowan family to establish a small but growing client base. Of course, after George's arrest, her connection to the Cowan family had turned from an asset into an instant poison pill. Her clients had quit her en masse, and her income—she'd been working strictly on commission—had dried up to nearly nothing.

So now she took car loan applications for Simpson Motors
by day (Patti Simpson was one of the few friends she'd retained after the Cowan name became mud) and oversaw what was basically a high-end bar by night.

At some later date, she would probably have her maiden name restored, the better to distance herself from what George had done. But even then she would have to move far, far away from Houston, because in the wake of the scandal everybody for a couple of hundred miles in all directions pretty much recognized her on sight.

“I don't want to be on my own yet,” Riley lied again. “Are you working next week?”

“Tina told me to take as long as I need.” Margaret grimaced. She had taken the only job she'd been offered—as a salesclerk in the high-end resale shop where she'd once sold her own cast-off designer clothes. Riley knew there was no way Margaret didn't hate it, didn't feel the sting of waiting on women who had once been her friends, but she had never uttered a word of complaint. And there it was again, Riley thought:
class
. Something that at this point she was pretty sure she herself was never going to acquire. “I'll probably go back on Monday.”

Unspoken between them was the fact that they needed the money. It was near the end of the month, and rent—for the house and Riley's apartment—was due shortly. Margaret still struggled with the concept of “broke”—to a woman who'd always had unlimited available funds, who'd been able to write a check or swipe a charge card for anything she wanted, having to watch every penny was as alien as trying to live on the moon—but to her credit she was learning.

“What about Emma?” Riley asked. Emma, a talented artist, was attending the Houston Museum of Fine Arts Painters' Studio, a prestigious (free) summer program that she had worked hard to be accepted into. At one point her college plans had focused on the Rhode Island School of Design, but without a scholarship that probably wasn't going to happen. She and Margaret were hoping that this summer program might open up some scholarship doors.

Margaret sighed. “Monday? We'll see.”

“Okay.” Riley nodded again. “Listen, I'm going to head out now. I won't be gone long. I'll bring back ice cream. Strawberry.” It was Margaret's favorite flavor. “And Chocolate Peanut Butter Crunch for Emma. Let's see her resist that.”

Margaret smiled. It was a thin, tentative thing, with lips that were a little tremulous, but it was a smile, the first one Riley had seen out of her since she had learned of Jeff's death.

We're going to survive this,
Riley promised herself silently.

“Remember how she used to love to stop at Baskin-­Robbins?” The smile still hovered on Margaret's lips. Riley did remember: when she'd first come to live at Oakwood, Emma had been a sturdy ten-year-old who would beg to stop for ice cream any time they went anywhere.

And Jeff had still been her Prince Charming, and Margaret had been the kindly fairy godmother who'd taken a wary, jeans and T-shirt clad Riley under her wing and introduced her to the world of fine fashions, society functions, and the life of the uberrich in general, and George had been the arrogant bully, and had remained so right up until the moment of his arrest.