Claim the Crown Read online

  “Is David around?” Ashley asked. “I need to talk to you guys.”

  “He’s making iced tea.”

  “Where’s his Rover?”

  Barky nodded toward the back of the barn, where the fifteen-year-old Land Rover was parked with its hood up. Although he was nearly as rich as his twin sister and also owned a black Ferrari, David Wakefield was still partial to, and identified by, the Land Rover he’d bought to commute to the University of Massachusetts as a forestry student.

  Ashley helped Barky with the last of the sheets and pillowcases, and they walked down to the house together. The kitchen was big and airy, its floor worn linoleum, its shelves open and simple, its appliances outdated but functional. Everything was spotless. There was a glass of black-eyed Susans on the middle of the big pine table, across from the cold wood cook stove.

  David gave his sister a lopsided grin. “Hey, Ash, just in time for some burgers and iced tea. Hungry?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  At twenty-nine, her brother was strong and sinewy with the tanned, healthy good looks of a man who spent most of his day outdoors. He had deep blue eyes, much darker than Ashley’s, but his hair was exactly the same dark shade as hers. He was working sporadically on his master’s in forestry, and he had no steady job—not that he needed one. He helped out at the farm, helped out his buddies, helped out owners of small woodlots and farmers struggling to hang on to their land. Mostly, though, he liked physical work. He had built a house high on a hill in a small town north of Amherst.

  He poured three tall glasses of iced tea, and they all three—the last of the Wakefields—sat at the big pine table and drank up.

  Finally, Ashley said, “I came by to let you both know that I’ve arranged to have the jewels brought here—to Boston, I mean. They should arrive via bonded courier tomorrow.”

  “What the hell for?” David demanded.

  Barky said nothing.

  Ashley shrugged, not looking at her brother or uncle. “I want to wear them.”

  “I thought you said they were gaudy.”

  There was a note of accusation in David’s voice. She understood: four years ago, she had said the jewels in the safe-deposit box in the vaults of Piccard Cie in Geneva, Switzerland, were indeed gaudy. And they had agreed to leave them there, untouched, hidden. “I changed my mind.”

  “Ash, jeez.”

  She bit into an ice cube, feeling the sweat drip down the middle of her back. “It’s just the tiara and the choker. The rest will remain in the vault. I...wanted something different to wear to the opening of the institute’s new wing next Saturday.” She forced herself to brighten. “Why don’t you two come?”

  David pushed back his chair and stood up. “I’d have to wear a tux.”

  “Barky?”

  “It’s not a good time to leave the farm.”

  It never was, Ashley thought. He had come to Boston, once, to see her duplex overlooking Charles River and her offices on the Boston waterfront. He had never been to the New England Oceanographic Institute, although it consumed her every bit as much as her work. She was a director, trustee and major donor. But she had quit expecting her uncle would take an interest in that part of her life. When she was on the farm, they generally discussed canning and freezing and weather and animals—never the jewels, the money, the questions that had gone unanswered for four years. He was getting old now, into his sixties. Was that why she had taken the radical step of deciding to wear the tiara and the choker? Was she afraid he would die before he had given them answers? She wasn’t sure. She had awakened one morning, at a friend’s beach house on Cape Cod, and decided she had to do something. She couldn’t go on like this, not knowing, not even trying to know. She had never been good at maintaining the status quo. Now she desperately wanted to know: what would happen if she wore the jewels in public, just for one night?

  Probably nothing, she’d told herself again and again. But she had to find out.

  She looked at her uncle as he downed half his tea in a single swallow. “I won’t wear them,” she said, “if you don’t want me to.”

  David leaned against the cold wood stove and, too, watched their uncle intently. “Yeah, Barky. Now’s the time to come clean.”

  But Barky got up and rotated his thick shoulders a bit, stretching, and announced he had to slop the pigs. When he reached the screen door, he pulled off his baseball cap, put it on again and turned to the niece and nephew he had raised from infancy. His expression was gentle, but there was an intensity to his gaze Ashley had rarely seen in him. “I have faith in you,” he said. “Now have faith in yourselves.”

  2

  The tiara and choker, two stunning pieces of diamonds and pearls, arrived from Switzerland late the following afternoon, and Ashley promptly shoved the black velvet-bound cases into her lingerie drawer, under her silk camisoles and tap pants. The prospect of her wearing them in public hadn’t sufficiently unnerved her uncle. She didn’t know why she’d expected it would. In more than four years, he’d calmly maintained he knew nothing whatever about the jewels in the Swiss vault, the money, any of it.

  Except Ashley and David had never believed him. They had decided that somewhere in his deep dark past, in the years before he’d been saddled with two infants, Bartholomew Wakefield must have been a jewel thief. Or known a jewel thief. Or something.

  How else could his niece and nephew come into an anonymous fortune in jewels and cash?

  But he wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t take a penny from them, wouldn’t even look guilty. And that was strange. It just didn’t add up.

  It was also something she and David were trying to accept. As their long-suffering attorney had told them, “Ashley, David, whoever made you both millionaires went to a great deal of trouble to remain anonymous to you. Perhaps that’s something you should respect.”

  Perhaps. But Ashley didn’t really think so.

  On Labor Day weekend, Ashley got the news that some hundred white-sided dolphins had stranded themselves on the tidal flats of Cape Cod Bay. An experienced and avid pilot, she bowed out of a yacht party on Cape May and flew her Cessna 172 down to Wellfleet. Once there, she bummed a ride to the beach with a couple of reporters. The New England Oceanographic Institute was coordinating the rescue efforts. An institute volunteer since college, Ashley had helped out at countless strandings, but the mystery and the tragedy of the scene never ceased to affect her.

  With a jolt, she saw her skinny photographer. He had on an orange flight suit and pretended to be taking pictures of the dolphins, but Ashley knew what he was after. Her. She ignored him. In overalls and a sweatshirt, she checked in with the director of the institute’s marine mammal stranding program, who was in charge on the beach, and was asked to instruct volunteers on how best to help the stranded mammals.

  The New England Oceanographic Institute followed a policy of responding to any stranding in a humanitarian manner. Teams of volunteers rescued, reoriented and returned to deep water those animals they believed could survive. They brought back to the institute’s outdoor tanks those they could reasonably be assured of restoring to good health, usually the smaller, younger animals. Those without hope they euthanized on the beach and studied carefully for any clues as to how and why they had ended up there.

  Through the morning and afternoon, Ashley instructed volunteers, rescued dolphins and did whatever she was told to do. In the midst of a stranding, the director of the institute’s marine mammal stranding program was in charge, and she tolerated no arguing, bickering or interference—even from million-dollar benefactresses.

  By evening, Ashley was exhausted, muddy and bedraggled, a sorry sight for her sleazy photographer’s camera. She didn’t care. The institute team had decided to spend the night on the Cape, but Ashley had to get to New York for a charity fashion show the following afternoon. She had learned that if she took an interest in other people’s favorite charities, they were more inclined to take an interest in hers.

  Right now, a
ll she wanted were a bath, food and rest.

  Tired as she was, she performed the preflight walk-around check of the Cessna herself, refusing to delegate that responsibility to anyone, not even the most trusted of mechanics. It was her plane; she was the pilot. She was the one who’d end up in the drink if she screwed up.

  In her muddy gum shoes, drenched overalls and messy braid, she ducked under the left wing.

  Her nemesis photographer jumped out from behind another plane and clicked off a shot. “Hey, Girl Wonder, smile.”

  She groaned.

  And the camera clicked again.

  He wouldn’t leave, and she was too exhausted to argue. As she continued with her visual inspection of her plane, she could hear him jumping around, switching angles, snapping pictures. It was strange, she thought, that adept as she was at handling the media for her clients, and helping them learn the art of professional communications, she was painfully awkward at dealing with the media when she was the focus of attention. For four years, she had been very, very good at eluding the press. It was easier that way. Safer. She wouldn’t have to answer questions to which she had no answers.

  She sighed. Whoever he was, her skinny photographer had quite a spread on her now. In a bathing suit at Newport, an evening gown in the Berkshires, a sundress in New York, a business suit in Boston. Now in drenched overalls on the Cape. But who would be interested in pictures of a dolphin-rescuing Boston businesswoman?

  Everyone, she thought, if they found out she was also a mystery heiress.

  * * *

  Devoted to oceanographic research, conservation and education, the prestigious New England Oceanographic Institute occupied an entire wharf on the Boston waterfront. The institute flag—a deep blue graphic of a dolphin against a vibrant orange background—billowed above the new wing, whose starkly graceful modern lines complemented the classic style of the old building. Out front was a wide cobblestone-and-brick plaza, with aquatic sculptures, fountains and benches. The institute’s research ships were docked to the side, and the outdoor tanks were in the rear.

  Inside the new wing, indirect lighting gave the feeling of being underwater, a part of the oceanic environment recreated for public exhibition. A stairless spiral encircled the giant fish tank, where predators swam among prey, content because they were fed regularly from the outside.

  Lillian Parker, longtime newswoman and producer of a network news feature program, sipped a glass of champagne. She was impressed. She liked the sense of the place. And it was one hell of an accomplishment for Ashley Wakefield, whom everyone knew had been the impetus for the project.

  With her practiced eye, Lillian could tell the institute people, with their beards and lack of makeup and unselfconscious style of dressing, from the guests, all so stylish and polished and very aware of themselves and the impact they were having—or weren’t. She noted two United States senators, the mayor of Boston, prominent New Englanders, media people who were there as celebrities, not journalists.

  Lillian herself had not been on the official guest list. A friend of hers, an anchorman for one of the Boston stations, was, and she’d seduced his invitation from him, even getting him to promise he wouldn’t ask her why she had suddenly taken an interest in fish.

  Of course she hadn’t. It was Ashley Wakefield who interested her, whose name in a brief article announcing the opening of the wing in the New York Times had sent Lillian for her brandy decanter.

  But Ashley Wakefield hadn’t yet made her entrance, and Lillian contented herself with champagne and small talk. She knew the two senators, of course. They made sure they came over and said hello. At fifty-two, Lillian Parker was one of the most successful women in broadcasting in the nation, a trailblazer. With her deep auburn hair and cool turquoise eyes, she was attractive, although she’d never given a damn about her looks. She smoked too much, drank too much, and she was bored to distraction when her friends started talking about fanny tucks and facelifts. She was a journalist. A newshound. She always had been.

  It was her greatest virtue, she thought, and her worst flaw.

  There was a hushed silence. Lillian polished off her champagne and looked toward the temporary podium, erected in front of a beautiful exhibit of sea-shells. She expected to see the familiar figure of the governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

  Instead her gaze fell on the slender, dazzling figure of a dark-haired woman in a simple black evening gown that had probably cost upward of ten thousand dollars, and glittering jewels. Her eyes were a vibrant, startling blue, and her smile left people breathless. Lillian was no exception. She found herself spellbound as she moved through the crowd toward the podium.

  Ashley Wakefield. She could be no one else.

  The notes on her in the program were wholly inadequate. She was a trustee and director of the institute, a longtime volunteer who had “adopted” a moray eel as a sophomore in college and now was publisher of the highly respected Currents, the institute’s bimonthly magazine, as well as president of her own private firm. There was nothing about her. Her family, her friends, her background, her love life. Those were the details Lillian Parker craved.

  Ashley Wakefield was stepping up to the podium now. Some of the crowd had recovered enough from the entrance of this outrageous beauty to resume whispered conversations, but Lillian was still breathless, standing just yards from the enigmatic woman who, it was said, had donated a million dollars to the institute.

  “Good evening,” Ashley said into the microphone. “I’m glad you all came.”

  But Lillian Parker didn’t hear what else Ashley had to say. The newswoman who had interviewed heads of state and covered the major stories of the past three decades had begun to shake uncontrollably. Her knuckles turned white on the stem of the champagne glass. Her heart pounded. She couldn’t breathe.

  Around her neck, Ashley wore a choker of diamonds and pearls. On her head, woven into her hair, a matching tiara. In the center of the choker was a large deep red stone. A “pigeon’s blood” ruby, perfect.

  In an agonized gasp, the air expelled from Lillian’s lungs. “Oh, Christ in heaven. Oh, Christ Almighty.”

  Lillian Parker managed to stagger out of the crowded exhibit center before she collapsed.

  * * *

  Rob Gazelle used up three rolls of film at the gala opening. Nearly every shot had Ashley Wakefield in it, and he’d even caught her smiling, many times. Dancing, laughing, toasting with champagne, showing off her fish, she dazzled everyone.

  And yet as he focused shot after shot, he perceived a melancholy about her, too, that he hoped would come out on film. He couldn’t put his finger on it: it was as if, in a way, tonight was an end for her, a completion, and she was putting her all into looking happy and excited, when what she was was a little bit sad and a whole lot uncertain—as if she didn’t know what tomorrow would bring.

  Rob grinned. He knew what tomorrow would bring to pretty Ashley Wakefield: Sybil Morgenstern. And this time, he thought, ol’ Syb would not be denied.

  3

  On Monday morning, Ashley and Caroline Kent, vice president of Touchstone Communications, huddled in Ashley’s office overlooking Boston Harbor. They were going over a redesigned internal communications system for a corporate client. The work was decidedly dull. Ashley had slung her gray silk shantung jacket over the back of her leather chair and kicked off her Charles Jourdan open-toed pumps. Her hair was up, her face highlighted with soft-hued cosmetics, and she was feeling very brisk and businesslike...and strangely impatient. With the opening done with, the jewels worn and safely back in her lingerie drawer, there seemed to be nothing else to look forward to. No excitement, no adventure. She made a living out of telling people how to talk to other people. This morning she was sick of it.

  “Ash?” Caroline looked at her with concern. Always impeccably dressed, Caroline was big boned, yet lean, and had close-cropped hair and glowing ebony skin. She had joined the company six months after its founding, and she was hard-nos
ed and brilliant and a good friend—despite her oft-stated opinion that fish were best served broiled with butter and a touch of lemon. “You okay?”

  “Just bored, I guess.” Ashley smiled. “Maybe I should take up a new hobby. Ballooning or jumping off cliffs or skydiving—something with a little risk in it.”

  Caroline grunted. “I think you’re just disappointed nobody took you by the throat Saturday night and said, ‘Those’re my jewels, honey.’”

  “I don’t know. No—maybe.”

  “You thought something would happen and nothing did.”

  Ashley shrugged. “I suppose I should be grateful.”

  “But gratitude won’t get you answers, will it?”

  Answers. For the past four years, Ashley had talked herself into believing there never would be any answers—just questions, dozens of them, locked up inside her, not even asked. Caroline Kent was one of the handful of people who knew the truth about how the Wakefield twins had suddenly and mysteriously become millionaires at age twenty-five. The others were Barky and Nick Duval, the executive director of the institute, and Evan Parrington, the Park Avenue lawyer who, just over four years ago, had driven out to the farm and informed them they were the beneficiaries of a Liechtenstein trust.

  “I don’t need answers,” Ashley said, upper lip stiff.

  Caroline snorted. “Horseshit.”

  “I’m going to return the jewels to Switzerland.”

  “Why not have them appraised by some expert? Maybe they’re famous or something. Then—”

  “I can’t do that”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “What if Barky’s a jewel thief?”

  “Oh, come on, the old guy hasn’t taken a cent from you. He won’t even let you buy new linoleum for his kitchen!”