Once Upon a Friendship

And she could be right.

The man had cut Liam out of his life, out of his will, for buying a building. It was conceivable that if Missy and Tamara had grown to be a problem for him, he’d cut them out completely, as well.

“If you want to know the truth, Mom thought Dad had found someone else,” Tamara said. She was talking to Gabrielle. Avoiding Liam’s gaze.

“As far as I know, he didn’t,” Liam said. “But then, I haven’t known about you two all these years...”

“There’s no indication from his finances that he’d started traveling somewhere new,” she offered, seeing the pain on their faces.

Walter Connelly had much to answer for. Far beyond possible criminal fraud charges.

“And he was still sending you money. I saw a deposit into the account less than two weeks ago.”

“Some of it goes into my college fund,” Tamara said.

“But he supports you, right?” Liam asked his sister.

“He bought the cottage outright years ago,” Missy said. “And had it deeded in my name only. I pay all of the bills. The money he sends is all spent on Tamara or put in savings for her.”

“The FBI thinks that Buckus is involved in the fraud. They think he and Walter are working together.” Gabrielle tried to steer the conversation into less painful areas.

“What do you think?” Tamara asked, sitting up on the edge of the chair.

“I think that if Buckus was in on it, he’d have wiped away evidence of your mother’s account. He was the only one, besides your father, who knew about it. Why leave it there? Why leave that money in danger of being seized? It doesn’t make sense. I think that the account was left because whoever cleared all incriminating evidence from Connelly computers didn’t know about it.”

“Which means that our father didn’t wipe away those files.”

“Or he got stopped before he could finish,” Liam said, but Gabrielle was already shaking her head. Missy was, too.

“Walter would have wiped that one first,” Missy said.

“So, what?” Tamara asked. “You guys are saying that Dad didn’t do it?”

“We know he’s been duplicitous,” Liam said. “And I know he’s been gambling again.”

Missy’s catch of breath told its own story. “You didn’t know that,” Liam said.

“No. I didn’t. He told me he’d had trouble with it when he was young but had soon seen how destructive it could be and stopped.”

So why had he started up again? Unless he knew that he was in financial trouble. Unless he had been trying to get back funds that had been spent, funds he needed to pay those wronged investors without other arms of his business being tapped to pay the debt.

“If he didn’t wipe away evidence of Mom’s and my account, then he didn’t do it.” Tamara latched on to the piece of evidence that was uppermost in Gabrielle’s mind as well.

“I’m not ready to believe that,” Liam told his sister. And Gabrielle wondered if he ever would be ready to trust his father again.

Walter Connelly might not be fraudulent in his business deals, but the man had committed some pretty hefty wrongs, just the same.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

BY LATE THAT afternoon Liam was wishing his father had never been born—except that would have meant neither he nor Tamara would be in existence, either. Spending time with his little sister was phenomenal. But the unwelcome specter of their father kept popping in.

Whether Missy had been totally duped by Walter and had not been aware of the part she’d played in his father’s adultery or she’d known that she was sleeping with Liam’s mother’s husband was unclear to him.

He didn’t want any of it to matter.

But it did.

“Wait a minute.” He glanced at Gabrielle, who was riding with him in the leather backseat of Missy’s newish four-door sedan on the way to the pier where the four of them would be boarding a boat to have dinner on the ocean.