“I’m not talking about money, dipshit. I’m talking about Wiley Jim—your dad.”
I sat up again, this time pushing myself all the way so I could look him square in the face. “They worked together, I know that, and Pop said something about Tommy betraying my da, but he betrayed the whole clan when he stole the money, didn’t he?”
“He stole from the clan and took off, yeah,” Judd said. “But what he took from your father was far more valuable.”
“And what was that?”
“His life.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
MY FACE WAS starting to hurt from the smile I’d plastered on when I’d reached the mahogany door of Tommy’s house. The party was already in full swing when I’d arrived, and it had taken me several minutes of fighting through the sea of designer labels and overflowing martini glasses to find Spencer. She was in the kitchen, directing a staff of uniformed waiters loaded with trays of hors d’oeuvres. Her efficiency would have impressed Bridget Sheedy, although she spoke in a voice much too kind for that old bat’s taste.
“There you are,” she said, skirting around the edge of the island to avoid knocking into one of the waiters. “I was wondering if you’d come to your senses and decided to skip this horrible event all together.” She crossed to the kitchen door and lifted herself on her toes to kiss me hello.
I kissed her back, though it was hard to revel in it the way I would have done before Judd’s revelation. She’d been so busy the last few days helping her dad that we hadn’t had much time to talk, giving me plenty of time to stew over what Judd had told me. Tommy murdered my da, and although his sins certainly weren’t Spencer’s, it was getting harder to separate the two. There was no denying I’d missed her the past few days, but finding out the truth had lit a fire under my ass. There was no way I’d be leaving this house tonight without the ledger. I might’ve thought I loved this girl—and maybe I really did—but I was certain I loved my mother and my brother, and what Tommy had done had nearly destroyed my entire family.
“Are you finished giving orders?” I asked, my arms still wrapped around her waist.
“I think so.” She glanced around the kitchen. “These guys cater every one of my dad’s parties, so they know what they’re doing.”
“Good,” I said, holding her at arm’s length to get a better look at the cranberry dress that hugged the curves of her body and ended around mid-thigh. “This dress is too good to waste on standing around in the kitchen.”
“You keep talking like that, and no one will be seeing this dress for the rest of the night.” She kissed me again, and this time whatever her father had done to mine twenty years ago didn’t stop me from returning it with all the heat and electricity I felt running through every nerve in my body. If there would’ve been any real chance that she and I could sneak up to one of the neglected guestrooms upstairs, I might’ve even put my mission to find the book on hold for a while.
But it didn’t look like that was going to happen, at least for now. She turned the open-mouthed kiss into a quick peck and leaned back. “I guess we should go see if my dad needs me to do anything else.”
We found Tommy in the living room, entertaining a group of suits. “So an American on vacation in Ireland decides to play a round with a few local gentleman,” Tommy said, waving the Scotch glass in his hand as he spoke. “He takes a few practice swings, sets up his tee, and proceeds to hook the hell out of the ball, which goes way out of bounds.”
“Is this a story about you, Richards?” a middle-aged guy with an orange spray-tan asked, eliciting a round of chuckles from the assembled crowd. Richards lifted his glass, offering a good-natured smile and a mea culpa nod.
“So the guy re-tees,” Tommy continued once the chuckles had died away. “He says to the gentlemen, ‘I’m taking a mulligan,’ then pounds one down the fairway about 280 yards. Proud of himself, he beams at his playing partners and says, ‘In the U.S., we call that a mulligan. What do you call it here?’ The locals stare at him for a long time and finally one guys says, ‘hitting three.’”
The room erupted into laughter. I glanced down at Spencer who shrugged at me, apparently less familiar with golf than she was with Phillies baseball.
“There she is,” Tommy said, noticing Spencer for the first time since we’d joined the group. He waved her over. She left my side, flashing an apologetic grin, and joined her father at the center of the room. “Dave, you remember my daughter, Spencer, don’t you?” This he said to the orange guy who’d taken the piss out of Richards a minute before.
“Sure!” Dave said, giving Spencer a lecherous smile that Tommy didn’t seem to catch. Or, at least, I assumed he didn’t since he didn’t deck the guy on the spot. “You still in the business program at Balanova?”
Spencer nodded, leaning away from him a little.
“She’s in her second year,” Tommy said with a proud smile. “And at the top of her class. Well on her way to the MBA program at the Wharton School.”
Spencer looked at me for help, and I gave her an encouraging smile. When she turned back to the conversation, I decided that this was my chance to get back into Tommy’s office. I skirted the crowd that had gathered to regale Spencer with tales of their days at the University of Pennsylvania and found my way back into the entry hall of the house.
I was relieved to find the hall on the other side of the stairs deserted, although the light from under the bathroom door told me it might not stay that way for long. I found the second door to the right and slipped inside, pulling it closed beside me. I didn’t have time to fumble around in the dark, so I took the risk of flipping the light switch. The fixture overhead filled the room with soft light, and I crossed to the desk and opened the drawer I knew contained a stack of notepads. I flipped open the cover of the pad on top and found some hastily scrawled notes and a list of names and phone numbers. Nothing that looked like a combination. I turned a few pages to find much of the same and moved on to the next book. This one had a list of what I guessed were company names, some marked with a star, others with a question mark, some crossed out with a stroke of Tommy’s pen. Potential investments, maybe, but nothing that could help me get into the safe behind the ugly seascape. The rest of the notebooks were empty, and I slammed the drawer in frustration.
The sound of feet moving down the hall drew my attention, and I crouched behind Tommy’s desk. I waited for the doorknob to turn, debating whether I should hide myself better or just make up a reason for being in the office, but the feet passed by without stopping. I blew out the breath I’d been holding and straightened up to my full height again. I tried the drawer with hanging files next. The tabs at the top told me these were mostly client files, but several folders were unmarked. I opened one, pulled out a handful of receipts, and paged through them. Tommy had shelled out several thousand dollars for this cocktail party, it seemed. The catering company alone had cost him almost five grand for food and the wait staff. Another five for the alcohol and bar service. Though, in this crowd, I was surprised it hadn’t been more. You could take the Traveler out of the Village, but give him a no-limit platinum card and he’d still throw a damn good party.
I stuffed the receipts back into their file and flipped to the last folder at the back of the drawer. There was one sheet of paper inside, and my sore cheeks had to endure another broad smile when I read what was written across the top in block print: PASSWORDS. A string of numbers and letters followed. Some were labeled, “electric, water, gas, bank, bank2, bank3,” and it occurred to me this sheet of paper might come in very handy if Pop decided he wanted his five hundred Gs back after all. Near the bottom, a handful of four- and six-digit codes were written, and I moved to the safe, intent on trying each one.