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And they headed off down the street, without so much as a backwards glance to see if she’d had a heart attack from the stress and needed them to call an ambulance.
Chapter 3
“What do you mean you can’t tell me what cheques she writes?” Duncan stood in the middle of his office as he barked down the phone to his bank manager.
“It’s private information, Mr Stewart,” the weasel whined. “We can’t hand out that sort of information to just anyone.”
“I’m not anyone. I’m your biggest customer. And you aren’t the only bloody bank in Campbeltown either.”
“It’s against bank policy to give out information concerning other clients to anyone who asks.”
“I don’t give a crap! I want to know if my housekeeper has been paying off the staff I tell her to fire. Technically, this is my business. The cheques were written to people I employed.”
“But they were written from a personal account.”
He felt like his head was going to explode. His free hand clenched and unclenched as he stalked back and forth across his office. Fiona had decorated the room in traditional Georgian style, and he hadn’t had the heart to tell her he hated it. He was a modern décor sort of man: sleek lines and light colours. White. He’d paint everything white if he could, it made a great background for his paintings. Not that he painted anymore, he hadn’t been able to do that since Fiona died, but if he did start painting again, he would need white walls not dark green or, heaven forbid, burgundy.
“Just give me the information I need, McLean,” he snapped at the bank manager. “I’m not some stranger. You know me, and you know why I’m asking for this. Damn it man, don’t make me come down there.”
He thought he heard the weasel swallow hard. “If you come down here, I would have to call the police to deal with you. Be reasonable, Mr Stewart, you can’t just call up the bank and demand access to someone else’s account details.”
The man had a point, but Duncan d
idn’t feel reasonable. He felt mad. “I need that information.”
“I understand, but you won’t get it from me. Perhaps you’ll find a record of all the people Ms Sinclair has let go in her housekeeping files, and you could deduce from that how many cheques she’s written.”
“But it won’t tell me how much I owe her.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.”
“I’ll remember this,” Duncan growled.
“Please do,” the weasel said. “We pride ourselves in protecting our clients’ privacy.”
Duncan clicked off the phone and barely resisted the urge to throw it across the room.
Instead, he pulled out his desk chair and sat down at his laptop. He had access to the housekeeping files. He’d just never looked in them. There’d never been a need to look. Donna took care of everything while he...well...he focused on getting through the next minute without Fiona at his side. And then he focused on the next minute after that. He’d been focused on minutes for over two years. Although, for the past couple of months, there had been days when those minutes had passed him by and he’d gone an hour or more without remembering he was alone.
The realisation stabbed him in the heart. Was it a betrayal to Fiona’s memory that he no longer had to fight every minute to live without her? In a year or two, would he wake up and realise he hadn’t thought of her for days, maybe weeks? And would his damaged heart break further over the knowledge that even the memory of her was slipping away from him?
He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. How could a person long for the relief of forgetfulness and hate himself for forgetting at the same time? When he opened his eyes, his gaze rested on the pen and ink drawings on the opposite wall. They were all studies of Fiona. For years, it had hurt to look at them and be reminded of everything he’d lost. Now, he found himself wondering why he hadn’t used colour. His wife had been full of life, black-and-white drawings didn’t do her justice. If he were to paint her now, he’d use the colours she loved: the ones she’d planted in her rose garden. And then paint the damn wall white to hang the finished work.
He dragged his attention back to the household files. Three hours later, he had a long list of names written out on a sheet of paper beside his laptop. There were check marks beside the people he’d managed to contact. His ex-employees had been happy to tell him how much severance pay Donna had given them. One or two of them had even asked if they could come back and work at the mansion.
Duncan eyed the list with grim resolve. This had to stop. The woman had spent thousands of pounds she didn’t have on payoffs he hadn’t asked her to make. He would pay back every last penny she’d spent in his name, and then he’d wring her neck. Possibly not in that order, unless he’d managed to calm down by the time she got back. He pulled out his phone, with the screen he’d cracked earlier, and sent a text to his errant housekeeper: I need to talk to you.
The reply wasn’t as speedy as he would have liked. I’ll be home as soon as I’m finished in town.
Duncan stared at the message for a moment, the word home jumping out at him. He hadn’t really thought about it until earlier that day, but the mansion was as much home to Donna as it was to him. She was the only staff member who lived on-site, and for the past two years, it had only been the two of them rattling around the vast house. He supposed people might have thought it a strange arrangement, but it had never occurred to him. There were days when he felt Donna belonged here more than he did.
Come home now. He typed the order.
Won’t be long, came the reply. I have a family emergency. Will be back right after it’s sorted.
Family emergency? Yeah, right. That was Sinclair sisters’ code for ‘we’re up to something.’
He growled at the phone before dialling her number to talk to her. His call went straight to voicemail. Annoyed, he stabbed out another text, but he knew there wouldn’t be a reply. Donna had mastered the art of avoidance. Obviously, it was easier for her than actually telling people no—a trait he’d played off the past couple of years. Something he wasn’t proud of, but he’d needed a buffer between him and the world and Donna was it. For some reason, he didn’t find her as annoying as he did almost everyone else on the planet.
