The Accountant's Wife

I wasn't sure it was going to resolve anything, and my expression must have betrayed my feelings as Rebecca came and knelt in front of me and took my hands in hers.

"Can we talk, please? she asked me. I nodded and looked at Karen and Francesca. They took the hint and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.

"Do you know anything about these people we are meeting now?" I asked her.

"No, I guess we'll find out tomorrow. Mike, I'm sorry I kept the changes to the party from you; I thought it was for the best as I didn't want you to worry. I knew that Marcus was going to be there, but it didn't seem important while I thought you'd be there as well."

"How long did you know?"

"Long enough that I know you are going to be pissed at me. Dad changed the date and the guest list over a month ago. I honestly thought that changing the date wouldn't make any difference; you'd still be there and Roger and Marcus were just two amongst the 30 or so extra guests that my father added. It's all a part of a plan of his to expand the firm's presence here. He's talking about opening more branches in Europe, especially now that it looks like the U.K. is going to leave the union."

I closed my eyes, only half listening to her rambling excuse and images of Marcus with his arm around Rebecca's waist were burnt into the inside of my eyelids.

"Why did that girl think that he was your lover?" I asked, a bitter tone in my voice as I interrupted her.

She drew a shape breath in and then let it out with a deep sigh. "Probably because I behaved like he was for most of the evening." She cringed in embarrassment as she spoke.

That made me flinch away from her. My suspicions were correct, what I'd seen had been far more than her being polite to a client. "You looked like you were enjoying his company and it wasn't the first time was it, Becky?" I asked bitterly.

She looked around the room, not wanting to meet my gaze. "No, it wasn't," she finally admitted. "I promise you I've never betrayed you, but I have been enjoying his company. He's charming, witty and fun to be with. We've been seeing each other a fair amount over the past couple of months because of the case. It started out as meetings at our office to discuss his case, but lately, we've been meeting for lunch a couple of times a week."

"Christ, not that old chestnut; long lunches at intimate restaurants where he tells you how wonderful you are. How naïve are you?"

"It wasn't like that," she said, but the blush that crept up her neck contradicted her words.

I bit back the obscene retort that was eager to escape from my mouth. A couple of deep breaths and I continued. "You need to be honest with me," I said. "Because while I love you, just now I'm not sure I like what you've become. I guess these lunches have become more than a meal and conversation. When did he suggest you go somewhere more comfortable afterwards?"

"Last week, I was upset that you were going to miss the party. I'd spent a lot of effort to get it right, and on top of that, Dad was going to make a big announcement. He was going to announce my promotion to senior partner. It was linked to the firm's expansion into Europe, and I'd be in charge of it."

"Why the hell didn't you tell me? If I'd known how important the party was to you, I'd have blown off the trip to Rome."

"No, you couldn't," she countered. "I know why you had to go. I asked Lesley if you could reschedule it and she told me it involved missing money from Francesca's bank. You wouldn't let her down, and I was sworn to secrecy so I couldn't tell you."

Fuck, I thought, I really needed to talk to Lesley about the bounds of professional privacy. That could wait; I needed to get this conversation back on track. What had my wife been doing with Marcus, because if she'd crossed the line, I wasn't sure I'd be able to forgive her.

"Are you going to tell me about your after-lunch meetings?" I pursued.

"We talked, he held my hand, and we kissed when I left." She tried to make it sound very matter of course.

"This is ridiculous," I complained. "I thought you wanted to talk. You're not telling me anything. If you are not going to tell me the truth, then I see no point in continuing." I started to stand, and she put her hand on my chest to stop me.

"Wait, I'm sorry. This is very hard for me because you warned me about him and I chose to ignore you; I thought I knew better. Karen just pulled me over the coals about my behavior. Michael, I behaved badly when I was with him, but I swear to you I never stepped over the edge of impropriety. In the beginning, our meetings were just what they were supposed to be; business meetings. Lately, they have become more personal."

How the hell hadn't I noticed the change? There hadn't been any indication that I'd noticed. I'd been ultra-suspicious of Marcus's motives, but until I had seen the pair of them together earlier this evening, I'd not been aware how close they had become.

I fixated on her statement that she'd behaved badly. "How badly did you behave?" I asked, not really wanting to know the truth.

"He began to make me question the strength of my love for you, which I know is ridiculous because I still love you. Now that I'm able to look at it dispassionately, I can see that he was so slick; subtle little digs at our relationship that sounded so plausible that I began to think I'd been the one to think of them."

"And I'm supposed to think that wasn't improper behavior?"

She looked flustered. "I didn't mean it like that. I admit to having the stupid thoughts, what I meant was that there was no physical impropriety between us; at least no more than a kiss to two that I now bitterly regret."

The tall-case clock in the hall chimed the hour. Christ, it was two in the morning. No wonder I was so tired, and from the look of her, Rebecca was running on fumes as well.

"Enough, love, we both need our sleep," I said standing up and pulling her to her feet. "I, for one, don't want to make any decisions while I'm this tired. I want to see what Geraldine's friends have to say before I make any decisions. Karen put the kids into sleep in their usual room, and she made up the other guest room for us."

Rebecca watched me carefully as she said, "Do you want me to sleep with the children, I'll understand if you do!"

"Do you want to?"

She shook her head, so I took her hand, and we headed upstairs to our room. The rest of the house was shrouded in darkness, only the soft glow of the lamp on the landing guided our feet up the old staircase. My aunt's home was as familiar to me as my own, so I headed unerringly to our room. I kept hold of Rebecca's hand as I opened the door.

"So that's our story," Dave concluded.

We were sitting around the kitchen table belonging to Dave and his wife, Zoe. After an early breakfast the next morning, Karen had driven Rebecca and me to Geraldine's place in Lancing. Francesca had reluctantly stayed with the children. I'd asked Larissa to drive over to our house and pack bags for the journey to Italy.

Geraldine had directed us to an attractive barn conversion about 10 miles away on the outskirts of a small town. As we got out of Karen's car, we'd been greeted by the buzz of a bench saw from the workshop off to the side of the gravel drive.

A man in his mid-30s appeared at the doorway to the workshop, brushing sawdust from his work clothes. He was broad shouldered and dark haired. He smiled in reply to Geraldine's greeting. She introduced us to our host and his wife.

"So, you've had the misfortune to fall foul of Marcus," he said after we settled down around the table. "He's an evil piece of work with the morals of a polecat."

Zoe said, "I came so close to falling for his charm. I was lucky that Dave saw through him and was able to stop him. Don't believe anything he tells you. He's very good, he'll say what you want to hear, just when you want to hear it. He makes you doubt the strength of your marriage."

Dave grunted, and Zoe continued. "While he didn't succeed in damaging our marriage he did destroy my friend Linda's marriage," Zoe said. "She was working in the same office as him, and he set his sights on her. She didn't have someone like Dave to protect her. Their affair had ended by the time he started on me. Somehow, her husband found out a few months later and couldn't cope with it. It was so sad. They were a lovely couple."

For the next half an hour they told us the story of Marcus's attempted seduction of Zoe, describing in detail everything that had occurred. As they did so Rebecca, her face drawn and pale grew more and more annoyed.

She interrupted the narrative on a couple of occasions. "Christ, that's what he said to me," she gasped as Zoe detailed one of her conversations with Marcus.

When Dave got around to admitting he'd been able to read the text messages between his wife and Marcus, both Zoe and Rebecca looked shocked.

"I didn't go looking for them," he told Zoe. "They got dumped automatically to our cloud account after a phone software update. I was looking for some photos of Siobhan you'd saved to the cloud, and I discovered the text folder."

"So that's how you knew what he was planning!"

He nodded, looking a bit guilty. She said, "Thank God for that." She turned to Rebecca who was looking at her phone guiltily. "His conversations and texts were so subtle and insidious that I honestly didn't see what he was doing to me. It took Dave giving me an ultimatum and wonderful proof of his love to make me see the reality."

Dave glowed at her words, and they both glanced across the room to a shelf where sat several wooden carvings.

"Did his text messages look like theses?" asked Rebecca, as she passed her phone to Zoe. Zoe scrolled through the messages and nodded.

"Not the same words but the personal ones have exactly the same tone he used with me. I can't help noticing, some of the other texts suggest he's in trouble with the law?

"Sorry, I forgot those were in there as well. I shouldn't have shown those to you." Rebecca said. "But yes, he is, and I'm supposed to be defending him in court." She grimaced as she said the last part.

"Jesus," Dave exclaimed, "You've got to drop the case; let the bastard suffer!"

"I've already told my father I can't carry on, but he's threatening to haul me up in front of the Bar Association if I don't stay on the case."

"When did you tell him that?" I asked.

"Last night after we got to Karen's. I wanted to tell him I'd had enough, and there wasn't any point in him sending anybody to the house as they weren't going to be there."

Geraldine said, "Can he follow through with his threat? What would the Bar Association be able to do to you?"

"It would depend on the story he could put together with Roger and Marcus. Some type of impropriety with the case would be my best guess. The fact that my own firm would be willing to bring the case to the Bar's attention would make my position very difficult. They could disbar me."

Geraldine nodded in agreement, "I'm not as au fait with the US bar system as I am with the British, but that sounds plausible."

I sat back in my chair. I understood how important her career as a lawyer was to Rebecca. I could see that Geraldine's confirmation that her father could put it at risk was worrying her. Actually, she was more than worried, her face was white and her hands holding the mug of coffee shook so much that the hot liquid splashed over her fingers.

She hissed in surprise and dropped the mug, hot coffee pooling across the table top and flowing onto her legs. "Christ," she hissed in pain and stood up pulling her skirt away from her legs.

Zoe was the first to her side, a wet cloth in her hand as Rebecca assured all of us that she was okay.

"Come with me," Zoe insisted. "You can't stay in that; I know I've got something that you can wear." She took Rebecca's hand and nodded at the other women. They both rose and followed Zoe and Rebecca deeper into the house.

"This might be a good time for us to talk," Dave suggested. He led me over to his workshop. The aroma of sawn wood was a pleasant reminder of school days in the craft shop. We sat on a couple of stools in front of a workbench scattered with several small animal carvings in various stages of completion. One, a dolphin, attracted my attention, and I picked it up, lazily turning it over in my hands. The wood seemed to grow warm in my hands.

"I've been just where you are," Dave said. "And I found it was the not knowing that so hard to cope with. Zoe never betrayed me, but it was close. Marcus is very good when he sets his mind to it."

"That's just it," I replied. "You know your wife was faithful. Rebecca swears she has been, but I don't know. She's had a lot of opportunities recently. You didn't see how close they were at that damn party! He stopped me as I was leaving to gloat over the fact that Conrad preferred him."

"I know a woman who fell for him, and she wasn't the only one," Dave said, and I surmised he was talking about their friend Linda. "Her affair with Marcus changed her, but I never saw those changes in Zoe, nor have I seen them in your wife. One important thing that you should take to heart is that she told me that once you see the real Marcus, he loses his charm and never gets it back. All the women he seduced I've spoken to say the same thing. Your wife has had her eyes opened, and she's seen the real Marcus."

Dave sounded so sincere that I physically felt the built up tension and doubt from the past months beginning to wash away. "So what do you think I should do?" I asked.

"Tell her you love her and that you believe her."

"And Marcus?"

He gave me a bitter look, "I never had the resources to make him pay for what he put me through. Zoe got a small piece of revenge, she made him pay an arm and a leg for his painting. She's refused to sign it and won't publicly acknowledge that it's one of hers, so it's basically worthless to him."

He looked at me hopefully, "Do you think that's there anything you can do to make his life miserable?"

"Christ knows, I'm looking into his financial background. I do know that there's something very dodgy about this whole deal. It's not just Marcus. Somehow his uncle Roger and Rebecca's father are involved, but I haven't found anything yet. Even if Rebecca knows anything, legally she can't tell me. I'd have to be willing to prove in court that any details I obtained didn't come from her."

He gave me a quizzical look, so I gave him a brief synopsis of what had been going on these past few weeks, culminating with the scene at the party last night.

"What I don't understand," I concluded, "is Conrad's part in all of this. I can accept that Marcus is just a seducing bastard who thinks with his dick, and I understand that Roger doesn't want any grief from his sister about her son, so he's protecting him, but Conrad, what does he gain by throwing his daughter to the wolves?"

"I can't help you with that," Dave said. "I can tell you that she loves you, and if she's anything like Zoe, she's completely embarrassed that she let Marcus get under her skin."

"I do, and I am," a hesitant voice from behind me said. "I don't deserve your love. You warned me, Mary warned me, yet I thought I knew better. I let that silver tongued bastard draw me into his sick little world." Rebecca was sobbing when I turned to face her. Zoe was holding her hand and Karen and Geraldine were standing in the doorway.

"Thank you, Dave," I said. "I'm sure we are going to be fine. I think it's time to go, we all have a flight to Italy later today."

"Me too?" Rebecca asked hopefully.

"I told you earlier that it's your decision, but if you decide to come, you have to stay until after Christmas. Francesca has been calling around, and she's invited my parents, and Mary and David to come for a holiday. "

"I do want to come, I need to call the office and let my team know I'll be away and they can deal with the case while I'm away. Anyway, I doubt that much will happen before the New Year."

"What are you going to tell your father?"

She grimaced and said, "I'm not going to tell him anything other than I'm on vacation and I'll be back in the office in January."

Zoe and Dave walked us back to our car. It was only when I went to shake Dave's hand that I realized I was still clutching the carved dolphin. I gave an embarrassed laugh and tried to return it.

"No," he said, "it's found its place in the world. I never sell those pieces, I just wait until they find their way home."

Back at Karen's, we split up to get things organized. Karen took Francesca over to our house to give Larissa a hand packing our bags for the trip. I gave Karen my key to the strong box in my study so she could pick up the rest of our passports; I still had mine from the trip to Rome.

While they were gone, I held a council of war with Geraldine and Rebecca. We sat on the patio so we could keep an eye on Jessica and Davy as they played in the garden.

"Help me understand," I said. "If you don't carry on trying to get Marcus off, your father will use his influence with the bar association in Georgia to get you struck off the register. Can he do that?" I asked the pair of them.

Rebecca nodded, "Actually, no longer being able to practice could be the least of our problems. Dad hinted that if I drop the case or lose it, Marcus and Roger will most likely try suing me, citing an inept defense. If Dad supports their claim, it'll be hard for me to win. They could sue us for millions, Christ, Michael, I've put our whole family's future at risk."

I looked at Geraldine for confirmation.

"I think that's only in the worst case," she said. "They would have to prove gross misconduct for them to win a case like that."

Geraldine asked Rebecca, "How much can you tell me about the case without breaking client privilege. Is he guilty of the charges?"

Rebecca hesitated and then nodded. "If we retain you as our legal counsel, then whatever I tell you is considered privileged information isn't it?" she asked.

"Yes, it's the same as in the States, but remember I'm a barrister, I need a solicitor to instruct me." She smiled as Rebecca looked disappointed and she added. "Technically you are considered a solicitor over here, so do you want me to represent the pair of you?"

"Hell, yes," I said.

"Good, I've never liked Marcus, and I was disappointed that Dave wouldn't go after him. I want to hurt him for what he tried to do to Zoe. We need to make him pay, hurt him in his pocket and take away his freedom."

I said, "I've got a couple of my investigators checking out his finances. They haven't found the smoking gun yet, but they do say the numbers don't add up. I'm going to set the rest of the team on Roger and his companies. He's got to be heavily involved in this, otherwise why is he so desperate to get Marcus off; it's got to be more than a family relationship."

"You need to find something on them that will make them want to dispense with your services," Geraldine stated. "It's got to be so big that worrying about you is no longer important."

"Personal or business?" Rebecca asked.

"Ideally both; in Roger's case, you've got to keep him so busy in the States that Marcus becomes a distraction and he abandons him."

Christ, I thought, how the hell were we going to achieve this without Conrad finding out and scuttling our plans?

"Okay, I'm taking no more clients until this is sorted out. We've got enough put away that I can put everyone on this for at least the next six months and still be able to pay them. We'll find our smoking gun." Or, I thought, I'll create one.