‘Mr Kressler, I’m a busy woman, can we get to the point? How does this involve my clients?’ asked Tess. She was trying to brazen it out, but suspicions were already forming in her mind. Kressler waved away her protestations; he was clearly going to tell the story at his own pace.
‘I met Marion five years ago when she moved down to Charleston. She wasn’t as sick as she had been then, so we got married.’
‘And when did she die?’
‘Beginning of summer.’
He paused and drained off his bourbon.
‘Of course, I had to go through all her stuff, sort things out. She used to keep this file full of letters and pictures from the kids she’d looked after, real sweet. But then I found something interesting.’ He pulled out a toothpick and began to clear something from his teeth. ‘I found an old New York Times newspaper clipping that she’d kept. A story ’bout eight or nine years old, a story about a New York model called Paula Abbott who was marrying some super–rich heir to a cosmetic empire.’
Tess and Ted looked at each other across the table. Ted put the toothpick down on the table and smiled.
‘The little girl Violet, the handicapped foster kid? She was called Violet Abbott.’
Tess instantly recalled that Paula’s maiden name was Abbott, one of the bits of trivia she’d picked up when she’d researched the family before she began working with them.
‘Paula is Violet’s mother?’
‘You didn’t know that?’ he laughed sarcastically. ‘I don’t suppose she would have told many people. Probably not the sort of thing you boast about in polite society, that you dumped your kid because they weren’t perfect.’
Tess pursed her lips. ‘It’s speculation at best, Mr Kressler. Abbott is not exactly an unusual name.’
Kressler laughed. ‘Oh, give me a break.’
He reached into his jacket and pulled out another creased photo and slid it across the table. ‘As I said, Marion kept everything, she was quite a hoarder.’
The photo was old and grainy, but it was clear enough. Paula can’t have been more than twenty. She was kneeling down next to the girl who, heartbreakingly, appeared to be smiling at her mother.
‘Same girl as in the New York Times wedding story, right?’ said Kressler, a note of triumph in his voice.
Tess couldn’t deny it. Impossible though it seemed, Paula Asgill had another daughter. Focus, Tess, focus, she told herself. Was this really such a big deal? After all, John Kennedy had a sister closeted away in a mental asylum and it didn’t do his political caree
r any harm. But a nagging voice in her head told her that things were different back then; in the Sixties the mainstream press didn’t pick over a public figure’s private life and use it as fuel to burn them at the stake.
Still, this might be a scandal, but it wasn’t an overdose at a sex party. Tess could certainly spin this in a more positive way – frightened young girl forced into adoption by circumstance and poverty, society is to blame, the child was well cared for – but there was one big stumbling block to that approach. Meredith. She wouldn’t like this at all. Tess had no idea how badly a scandal about Paula’s past would upset the Billington family, but she knew for sure that Meredith had been firm about one thing: no controversy before the wedding. None at all.
‘Is it money you’re after, Mr Kressler?’ said Tess.
‘Smart girl. Money for my old age,’ he said matter of factly. ‘Marion looked after that kid good. She never told no one.’
‘Which is more than can be said for you.’
Kressler ignored the jibe. ‘This Paula’s a wealthy woman now,’ he said. ‘She got the life she wanted at the expense of her child. Well, now she can afford to pay me to keep her little secret.’
There was a tiny part of Tess that agreed with him. She wondered how Paula could have given her child away? She had seen how hard Kevin Donovan was prepared to fight for Jack and what the thought of living without him had done to him. Tess felt sure that if she were a parent she wouldn’t – she couldn’t. She paused, realizing it was the first time she had thought about motherhood in a very long time.
‘It isn’t going to look very good, is it Miss Garrett?’ continued Kressler wiping his palms on his trouser legs. ‘Even down here we’ve heard of the Billington family. I don’t reckon a grand family like that is gonna like seeing Paula Asgill disowning her handicapped kiddie like that.’
‘I didn’t come here to be blackmailed, Mr Kressler,’ said Tess.
Kressler appeared unmoved. ‘Do you know how much Marion got for looking after Lucy?’ he said. ‘Two hundred dollars a month. She paid for the medical bills out of her own pocket. She wasn’t a rich woman, just a decent one.’
‘More than I can be said for her taste in men.’
His expression soured. ‘Take the photograph Miss Garrett,’ he said, standing up. ‘I got copies. Unless you wire me two hundred thousand bucks, I’ll be sending it to the media.’
‘Two hundred thousand … ’ Tess tried to keep her cool.