“Paranoid, but she kept the baby,” I said.
“She told Lauren she’d always wanted a baby.”
Tish Teague’s outburst came back to me. Recounting Lauren’s cruel parting comment: “You don’t deserve a damn thing from me—you’re not even my family and neither is he and neither are your rugrats.”
No blood connection between Lauren and Lyle’s little girls, yet Lauren had sought them out, brought them Christmas presents, only to withdraw. Ambivalent. How lonely she must’ve been. . . .
“So Jane told Lauren about a year ago,” said Milo. “When did Lauren tell you?”
“Soon after I moved in—maybe a couple of months later. At first, after we started rooming together, she was real up—happy all the time. Probably ’cause she’d just found out. But then her mood changed—she slid way down. Being a natural listener, I kept trying to help her open up. . . . When she did, it was after I’d cooked this big Italian dinner and we’d finished a whole bottle of Chianti—cheap wine’s the great conversation starter, right?”
Milo shifted his bulk. “What was her mood when she told you?”
“At first she was kind of giddy about it—like isn’t that cool, my real dad’s a zillionaire. But then she got real quiet. I thought maybe because she felt she’d missed out on stuff—all those years she could’ve been a princess. I said something to that effect, but she said, no, that wasn’t it at all. She wouldn’t trade her life with anyone’s, but the whole thing had just thrown her off balance. And—this was the main thing—after Jane told her, she got all freaked out and started pressuring Lo to forget about it, not to try to get in touch with Duke. Lauren thought that was cruel and manipulative, and she was right, don’t you think? You can’t just goand dump something on someone then try to hold them back. Lo was furious at Jane.”
I said, “That’s when she complained about Jane wanting to control her.”
“Yes, exactly. She said Jane was a coward and a liar and totally full of shit to think she—Lauren—would just sit there and let someone else make up the rules. She was also mad that Jane had tried to bribe her to keep quiet—said it was sleazy.”
“Bribe her how?”
“After Jane got divorced, she was real poor for a while. So she wrote to Tony Duke and he started sending her money. For her and for Lauren. Even though Lauren wasn’t in the picture—she and Jane had lost contact for years. Jane claimed she spent only her part, put Lauren’s share aside. When she and Lo connected, she started giving Lo a regular allowance, but she never told Lo where it really came from.”
Milo and I exchanged glances. Both of us remembering the deposits in Lauren’s portfolio. A hundred thousand payment four years ago, then fifty a year since.
“Big money?” said Milo.
“Lauren didn’t specify, but it must’ve been, right?” said Salander. “All those zeros. And the way she dressed. But the point was, Jane wasn’t up front about it. Lied to Lauren about where Lauren’s allowance was coming from.”
“What did she tell her?”
“That her second husband was giving it to her—to Jane—and that Jane was sharing with Lauren, out of the goodness of her heart.”
“Lauren believed that?”
“He’s a rich TV producer, Mr. Abbot. Real generous with Jane. Jane was living like a rich woman now. But then, when Jane was trying to pressure Lauren not to blow the lid off the Duke thing, she told Lauren where the money had really come from, tried to make herself a saint—like ‘I put myself on a limb for you, all those years you never talked to me, I still put your money aside.’ And then she offered to give Lauren even more money if she’d stay away from Tony Duke.”
“Why was she worried about that?”
“She told Lauren it would create a big mess, there was nothing to gain from it. Lauren suspected what she was really worried about was ticking off Tony Duke and jeopardizing her own allowance. Protecting her butt. In Lo’s mind, Jane was just trying to buy her off, and she was tired of being bought.”