Lover By Deception

Perhaps deep down inside his mother had been motivated by much the same impulse that had driven the absentee father in Johnny Cash’s famous song ‘A Boy Named Sue.’ She had known, not that it would make him different, but that it would make him strong. Well, strong he undoubtedly was, certainly strong enough to ensure that J. Cox and A. Trewayne paid back every penny they had gulled from his naive half-brother, even if he had to up-end them and shake them by the seat of their pants to make their pockets disgorge it.

A single bar of sunlight streaming in through the narrow window of his office touched his thick dark brown hair, burnishing and highlighting the very masculine planes of his face. His eyes were as cold and dark as the North Sea on a stark winter’s day when he told the girl who answered his call whom he wanted to speak with.

Oh, yes, J. Cox and A. Trewayne were most definitely going to regret cheating his half-brother. Legally it might be possible to pursue them through the courts for fraud, but Ward had already decided that they merited something a little swifter and more punitive than the slow process of the law.

Like the bullies who had tried it on with him at school, their type relied on their victim’s vulnerability and fear—not, of course, fear of violence, but of being publicly branded either foolish or, even worse, financially incompetent. And that fear prevented the truth of what these con men were doing from being disclosed.

Well, they were soon going to discover that in trying to con his half-brother they had made the biggest mistake of their grubbily deceitful lives.

CHAPTER TWO

‘ANNA! Hello! How are you?’

As Anna Trewayne heard the pleasure in Dee’s voice her heart skipped a small, uncomfortable beat. Dee wasn’t going to sound anything like so happy once Anna had broken the news to her that she had to break.

Unhappily, she wondered whether the three of them—Dee, Kelly and herself—would have taken the decision they had taken to try to bring to book the man who had so nearly destroyed the life and broken the heart of the fourth member of their closely-knit quartet—her own god-daughter, Beth—if they had known just how things were going to turn out.

Kelly, the first of them to pit herself against Julian Cox and reveal him as the cheat and liar that he was, even with Dee’s encouragement and backing, had in the end not been able to go through with their plan to unmask him by pretending to be a rich heiress. Yes, Julian had shown an interest in her, and, yes, he had also made overtures to her whilst still paying court to his existing girlfriend. But then Kelly had fallen in love, and, as Dee had generously acknowledged, there had been no way she could have continued with their plan to unmask Julian once Kelly had fallen in love with Brough and he with her.

And so Dee had announced that they would take their plan to stage two, which meant that she, Anna, had had to intimate to Julian that she would like his financial advice. She had, she had told him when they had met up, a sizeable sum of money she wanted to invest to produce a good return.

Coached by Dee, who had also supplied the fifty thousand pounds Anna supposedly wanted to invest, Anna had listened wide-eyed and apparently naively whilst Julian, true to form, had informed her that he knew just the deal for her and that all she had to do was to write him a cheque for fifty thousand pounds and relax.

‘Fifty thousand pounds, Dee,’ Anna had protested when she had reported this conversation to her. ‘It seems such a lot...’

‘Not really.’ Dee had stopped her firmly. Although at thirty-seven Anna was Dee’s senior by seven years, Dee’s mature and businesslike manner often made Anna feel that she was the younger one.

As a foursome they were perhaps a disparate group, she recognised. Beth, at twenty-four, was a dreamer, gentle and easy-going, which was what had made her such an easy victim for Julian Cox.

Kelly, Beth’s friend and business partner in the pretty shop they ran in the small town of Rye-on-Averton, where Anna had encouraged them to move and open up a business, was much more vivacious and impetuous. Brough and she would make a very good couple, Anna acknowledged.

Dee was their landlady; she owned the building which housed the shop and the flat above it where both girls had lived until Kelly had met Brough. Dee’s father had been a very well thought of local entrepreneur and had been on several local charity committees until his unexpected death just as Dee had been about to leave university. Immediately Dee had changed her plans, and instead of pursuing her own choice of career she had come home to take up the reins of her father’s business. It had been Dee who had been the prime motivator in their decision to bring Julian Cox to book for the way he had humiliated and hurt Beth, although Beth herself was still unaware of this decision.

‘We won’t say anything about any of this to Beth,’ Dee had informed them. ‘It wouldn’t serve any useful purpose and it could even do some harm, especially now that she seems to be getting over Julian and putting what happened behind her.’

‘Yes, she does. She’s tremendously excited about this glass she’s found in the Czech Republic,’ Kelly had agreed, and Anna had been too relieved to hear that Beth was getting over the pain that Julian had caused her to want to protest or argue.

It had been Dee’s idea to persuade Beth to visit Prague on a buying trip after the break-up of her relationship with Julian Cox.

Since her return Beth had thrown herself into the shop with a determination and single-mindedness which had rather surprised Anna, who was more used to her god-daughter’s dreamy habit of allowing others to take a leading role in things.

Perhaps she felt that now that Kelly was soon to be married it was down to her to become the senior partner in their business, Anna decided. She herself was the oldest member of the quartet; Beth’s mother was her own cousin, which was how she had originally come to be asked to be Beth’s godmother. Both families were based in Cornwall and had been for several generations.

At twenty-two Anna had married her childhood sweetheart, Ralph Trewayne. They had been so much in love. So very happy together. Ralph had been a quiet, gentle boy, their love for one another a very youthful, tender one. What it might have grown into, how it would have weathered the tests of time, they’d never had the opportunity to find out. Ralph had been killed; drowned whilst out sailing. They had only been married a very short time and after his death Anna had been unable to bear the sight of the sea or the memories it brought her and so she had moved here to Rye to make a new life for herself. Rye was inland and the river that ran close by was shallow and placid. Even so, Anna had deliberately chosen to buy a house outside the town, and with no views from any of its windows of the river.

Dee had commented on this once in some surprise when the subject had been raised. ‘Well, this house is certainly in a lovely spot, Anna, but most people who move to Rye look upon properties in a riverside location as being in a prime position.’

Anna had seen that Dee was curious about her decision but she had simply not felt she had known her well enough at that stage to confide her feelings to her.

‘This house suits me,’ was all she had felt able to say. ‘I like living here.’

‘Well, you’ve certainly made a very comfortable home of it,’ Dee had responded approvingly.

Ralph had been very well insured, and financially Anna was comfortably off. She had never had any desire to remarry. Somehow it would have seemed a betrayal, not so much of their love, which had now faded to a soft, fuzzy, out-of-focus memory she could sometimes scarcely believe was hers, but of the fact that Ralph was no longer alive, that his life was over, cut off cruelly short. And yes, a part of her somehow felt guilty because she was alive and he wasn’t.

She was sad not to have had children but she enjoyed living in Rye. She liked the town’s quiet pace and the beauty of its surrounding countryside. She enjoyed walking and was a member of a rambling club. Needlework was one of her hobbies, and she was currently working on a communal project involving a tapestry depicting the history of the town.

For the past five years she had been doing voluntary work, helping to provide community care for the elderly, and through her friendship with Dee she had found herself being co-opted onto several charity committees.

‘I’m not quite sure I shall be very much use,’ she had protested when Dee had first asked her to join one of them.

That had been in the early days of what had then been more of an acquaintanceship than a friendship, and Anna, who was normally rather retiring and reticent about making new friends, had surprised herself a little at the speed with which she had become so close to Dee. Despite Dee’s outward air of self-sufficiency, Anna sensed there was an inner, hidden vulnerability about the younger woman that touched her own sensitive emotions. She liked Dee and she respected her and she acknowledged that it was Dee’s energy and insistence that had encouraged her to become more involved with the town and its activities.

‘Nonsense,’ Dee had told her sternly. ‘You undervalue yourself far too much,’ she had scolded Anna, and, with Dee’s encouragement, Anna had even taken the step of starting to train for voluntary counselling work. What was more, she had surprised herself by discovering how instinctively skilled she was at it.

She had her cat and her dog, and her small circle of friends, and all in all she was quite satisfied with her gentle, compact way of life. Yes, it might lack excitement and passion and love, but Ralph’s death had caused her so much pain and despair that she had been afraid of allowing herself to love another man.

All in all, until Julian Cox had become involved in their lives, she had considered herself to be very content. And now here she was, feeling anything but content, dreading having to give Dee the bad news. She knew there were those who considered Dee to be too businesslike, too distant, but Anna knew there was another side to Dee—a softer emotional side.

Taking a deep breath, she announced, ‘Dee, I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news. It’s about Julian Cox and... and the money...your money...’

‘He hasn’t backed out of advising you on investing it, has he?’ Dee asked her sharply. ‘Although it has taken some time to lure him in, I thought he’d well and truly taken our bait’

‘No. He hasn’t backed out,’ Anna told her, ‘but...’

She paused and cleared her throat. There was just no easy way for her to tell Dee this.

‘Dee, he’s disappeared, and he’s taken the money, your fifty thousand pounds, with him.’

‘He’s what?’

‘I know, I’m sorry; it’s my fault...’ Anna began guiltily, but Dee stopped her immediately.

‘Of course it isn’t your fault. How could it be? I was the one... Tell me exactly what has happened, Anna.’

Anna took another deep breath.

‘Well, I did as you’d said, and I told Julian that I’d got fifty thousand pounds to invest and that I wanted a good return on it. He said he knew just the right kind of investment for me. He also suggested that we keep things very informal. He said that the deal he had in mind was an off-shore thing—something to do with Hong Kong—and he said that the less paperwork involved, the better the profit would be for both of us.

‘I did try to ring you to get your advice but you...’

‘I was in London on business. I know. I picked up your message, but even if I’d been here it wouldn’t have made any difference because I would most certainly have told you to go ahead.’

‘Well, I agreed to what Julian was suggesting and wrote him the cheque. I thought that the mere fact that it would have to go through my bank account and his would be proof that he had had the money. He said he’d be in touch. I hadn’t really intended to ring him at all—after all, it was only last week that I gave him the cheque—but then I bumped into Brough’s sister Eve with your cousin Harry and she just happened to mention that she had seen Julian at the airport. Apparently he was just getting out of a taxi as they were getting into one. She said that he didn’t see them and...

‘Anyway, I don’t know why, but I just got a feeling that something wasn’t quite right so I rang Julian. His telephone had been cut off and when I went round to his address his place was up to let. I tried his bank and all they would tell me was that they had no knowledge of his whereabouts. Brough’s made some enquiries, though, and he’s discovered that Julian has closed his account.

‘No one seems to know where he’s gone, Dee, or when he’s coming back and I’m very much afraid...’