Not a Creature Was Stirring(90)

At peace.

Myra tapped the phone with the tips of her long fingernails, almost breaking one. What she wanted to do this morning was go into Bobby’s room and get the money out of his safe. That was what she’d decided to do, last night, after they’d had their little talk. She didn’t know how much he had in there, but she thought it must be a lot. It might even be enough to cover her losses, although she doubted it. Her losses were going to be huge. It made her crazy. Her plan was simple, and foolproof, but once it was blown it was blown. There could be no starting over again after a disaster.

First, she and Bobby bought stock in Hannaford Financial under assumed names.

Then they held it, for a year.

Then Bobby started a very discreet rumor that Hannaford Financial was going to be the target of a takeover.

Then the stock went up.

Then they sold it.

Perfect.

Unfortunately, Bobby had been a much bigger fool than Myra had ever suspected. Instead of using his own money to buy secret stock, he’d embezzled it from the company. Instead of being content to wait and make a single killing, he’d gotten involved with that man McAdam. As soon as Myra had heard that name come floating through Bobby’s door, she had wanted to slit her throat. Business gossip wasn’t restricted to the dusty caverns of old-line men’s clubs. It was thrown around freely in the women’s clubs, too, and in the country clubs everyone on the Main Line belonged to. Rumors about McAdam were where Myra had gotten her idea in the first place. He was supposed to be doing what she was doing, but on a much bigger scale, and not with family. He was just paying people off, delivering thousands of dollars in $100 bills to confederates here, there and everywhere, delivering it in cash and in briefcases.

There was all that cash in the safe in Bobby’s room.

There was all that cash washing inexplicably through the accounts of Hannaford Financial over the past two years.

There was no reason to forget, now, that this was exactly what had gotten Ivan Boesky arrested.

Myra Hannaford Van Damm was not a hypocrite. The legal name for what she and Bobby were doing—and for what Bobby and McAdam were doing—was “insider trading,” but what it really was was simple fraud. She had no qualms about engaging in simple fraud. Or complicated fraud, for that matter. As far as she was concerned, Daddy had asked for it, by taking a fit and cutting her out of what should have been hers. She did have something against getting caught. That was why she had finally decided not to take the money out of Bobby’s safe. Bobby was asking to get caught. He’d been running around flashing warning lights at federal regulators for two years. They had to know what he was doing by now. He’d gone out to meet McAdam again this morning. If he didn’t manage to get himself arrested today, he’d do it next week, or next month. She had no way of knowing what the time frame was.

Just in case it was very, very short—hours instead of weeks—she thought it would be a good idea not to have a lot of unexplained cash wandering around her life. She also thought it would be a good idea not to try to sell her Hannaford Financial stock right now. The price was going to be in the toilet as soon as Bobby’s little party hit the papers. She was going to be out almost a quarter of a million dollars. It didn’t matter. She would much rather be poor than arrested.

She left the telephone room and looked into the kitchen, where Mrs. Washington was having a “baking day.” There was flour everywhere, and no sign of any of the family. Mrs. Washington never liked company on baking days. Myra turned around and went down the hall in the other direction, to the dining room. That was where the family was, or what of it was awake and moving around and still in the house. Bobby, of course, was absent. The rest of them—Bennis, Teddy, Anne Marie, Chris—all looked depressed. The poinsettia centerpiece, decked out for Twelfth Night in candles and foil, looked lunatic.

She came in, sat down at the table, and said, “Does somebody over there want to hand me some coffee?”

Bennis, standing at the coffee urn with a cup and saucer in her hand, turned around. “Oh,” she said. “Myra.”

“I see you got the music off,” Myra said. “God, it was driving me nuts. All that tinny harpsichord music.”

“Mother loves harpsichord music,” Anne Marie said. She was standing at the coffee urn, too, or right beside it. Right beside her was Teddy, looking pained. Chris was the only one, besides Myra herself, sitting down. Myra thought he hardly looked capable of standing up.

She took the cup Bennis passed to her and put it squarely in front of her on the table. “Just because Mother loves harpsichord music doesn’t mean I have to. And it was eerie, all those Christmas carols and everybody in mourning.”