Fairytale, p.17
Fairytale, page 17
She didn’t tell Sam about the reading of the will at first, not wanting to air their dirty laundry in public, or disclose her father’s poor judgment about Maxine, out of respect for him. But as they debated how best to honor her father, Sam made a comment about Maxine.
“I assume she’ll be leaving, after the memorial or before,” he said with relief for her, and Camille didn’t answer for a minute.
“Not exactly. My father made provision for her to stay at the château and manage the winery with me until I turn twenty-five,” Camille said, still shocked at the news herself. “She’s not going anywhere for now.” She didn’t tell him Maxine had already tried to blackmail her and wanted to be paid off to leave, and in a very large amount.
“Don’t worry about it, she won’t stay long. She wants a rich husband, not a winery. She won’t want to run it, and she doesn’t know how. She’ll be gone in no time,” he said confidently, underestimating Maxine for the first time.
“That may not stop her, but I hope you’re right.” They went back to discussing the memorial, and decided that a service by invitation only at their facilities at the winery made the most sense. And she didn’t want anyone at the house afterward. They could serve a buffet at the winery that could be set up after the service. He knew Camille had the staff to handle it there, and she knew how to do it. She wanted it to be a dignified affair attended by the people he cared about, and those he had done business with for so many years. They had already had a flood of calls asking when the funeral was, and if there would be one or a memorial service at a later time.
“Let me know if I can do anything to help you,” Sam said kindly, “and don’t let that woman get to you. She won’t stick around. One of the things I loved about your father was his faith in people, and his innocence. It didn’t serve him well in this case, but she’ll be gone soon.” He believed that Camille would be successful running the winery. She had already been taught by a master, and she had a good instinct for business like her mother. She was unusually mature for her age, even though she looked like a teenager at times. Camille was a smart woman, although not as wily as the stepmother her father had saddled her with three months before. He deeply regretted Christophe marrying her, and had tried to warn him to not.
Camille made headway with the arrangements that afternoon. She set the day for the service, called the pastor of one of the local churches whom she knew her father liked, and walked back to the château, thinking about her father with tears in her eyes. She still couldn’t believe he had died. She had hugged and kissed him only days before.
She found Maxine and her sons at the kitchen table, drinking wine and talking, and they stopped immediately when Camille walked into the room. She paid no attention to them, and remembered verbatim her conversation with Maxine that morning and her threats. All she did was tell her the date of the memorial service, and leave via the back door to visit Simone.
Their conversation continued the moment Camille left and they heard the door close behind her. Maxine and her sons had been discussing the terms of the will for several hours, and how to make it work to their advantage.
“It’s very simple,” Maxine spelled it out for them again. “We have seventeen months to make some serious money here, and I don’t intend to lose this time. We have until the little witch turns twenty-five. Before that day, you can either marry her or get her pregnant, in which case, you will have a hold on her forever, and your child or children will inherit all of Camille’s estate one day. And if you marry her, you can divorce her if you want and get a fabulous settlement. So you have a job to do here, if you want a major share of what she just inherited,” she said pointedly to her oldest son. “She’s not as naive as her father, but you’re a handsome boy, and she’s lonely. She has no one now, almost no friends, no boyfriend, no parents. The field is open. Make her want you, you know how to do it. Marry her, get her pregnant, convince her you love her, it won’t be hard to do. There is real money in it for you if you do it. You’ll be set forever after you divorce her. You’ll never have to work again. And I expect you to pay me a portion of it. I’ll split it with you,” she said coldly as Alexandre looked pensive. “It’s not hard work to seduce a girl her age. God knows you do it often enough for a free vacation. We’re talking about a life of luxury forever if you do this right. And if you get her pregnant, she’ll marry you immediately. She won’t want to disgrace her father’s name.” Maxine had it all figured out. Alexandre grinned evilly as she said it, the prospect of seducing Camille was not unpleasant and had appealed to him since he first saw her and now there was serious money in it, and a golden future.
“What’s in it for me?” Gabriel complained, looking petulant. “Why does he get everything? You always favor him. Why can’t I marry her?” he said, looking from his mother to his older brother.
“You’re the same age she is,” Maxine said matter-of-factly. “She’s more likely to want a man two or three years older,” and she didn’t tell him he would screw it up, as he always did. His brother was smarter, and hungrier. Gabriel was a bumbler and more interested in drugs and drinking than women. Alexandre wanted money, which would serve them well, and he was less likely to fail than his younger brother. “We’ll cut you in on whatever we get,” his mother assured him.
“You didn’t after Charles died,” Gabriel reminded her.
“There wasn’t enough for me from those cheap bastards, let alone for the two of you. But I brought you here, didn’t I?” Gabriel nodded and poured himself another glass of wine, as they listened to their mother’s plan.
“So our goal is for Alexandre to marry her and get her pregnant, whatever order it happens, we don’t care. The alternate plan is that she pays us the value of half the winery to get rid of us immediately. I’m not sure she’ll do that. She may think she can outlast us. We will need to make her life miserable to convince her, and I mean miserable in every possible way, physically, mentally, and financially. I’ll start on that immediately. And, Alex, you know what you have to do. Your part in this is easy, you get the fun job. And then you can divorce her, and live on her money forever.”
“What if he stays married to her?” Gabriel asked, and they ignored his question as ridiculous. Why would he stay married if he didn’t have to and could get a fortune out of her? They were all three like-minded and cut of the same cloth, motivated by greed.
“You know, you’re going about this all wrong,” Alexandre said to his mother, squinting as he thought about it. “Why have her pay you off to leave? Her father gave you free rein here for the next seventeen months. That winery is a gold mine. Stay and get everything out of it you can. You’ll have access to the accounts, I assume. I think there’s money to be made there. Take advantage of what you can, and then see what she’s willing to pay you to leave. But get what you’re able to out of it first, don’t just pack and run.” Maxine thought about it for a minute and wondered if he was right. Christophe had named her as co-manager for the next year and a half. That was a lot of time to make some serious money if she was smart about it. Alexandre could help and he was clever enough not to get caught.
“I’ll think about it,” she conceded. And then Maxine laughed as she poured herself another glass of Christophe’s wine. “It’s a shame we can’t just kill her, but that’s too much even for us. If she dies without children before she’s twenty-five, half of everything her father left her comes to me. That’s a bit over the top, even for me. So, my darling Alexandre, it’s up to you to seduce her and marry her, and in the meantime we’ll get as much money out of her and the winery as we can. We have time. Let’s concentrate on romance, not murder, although I have to admit, I’d love to strangle her for what she just inherited. She doesn’t deserve it. She’s a lucky girl to have had a father like that. Now we just have to get her to share it with us.” Maxine laughed again and both boys smiled. “And if she does agree to pay me half the value of the winery, then we will graciously leave. For any less, we’ll stay and Alexandre can use his charms on her.”
“I should go back to France for my exams,” Gabriel complained.
“You’ll flunk them anyway. We have more important things to do here,” his brother said.
Maxine looked pleased. Camille was bright and brave, but she was no match for them and easy prey. And Alexandre was grinning. The fun was about to start for him.
—
When Camille walked into the cottage, Simone was quietly reading, with a cigarette in her hand.
“How did it go today?” Simone asked her, concerned, she knew that she and Maxine had met with the lawyer. “Any bad surprises?” She knew from her long years that you never knew what would turn up in a will, hidden mistresses, illegitimate children, long lost relatives the deceased had forgotten to write out years before. But Christophe didn’t seem like a man of secrets to her, too trusting and sentimental perhaps, and she doubted that he had hidden lives.
“Some,” Camille said as she collapsed in the battered leather chair next to her, and Choupette jumped onto her lap, wagging her tail. They had become fast friends since Simone had arrived. “My father said that Maxine can stay here at the château for seventeen months, until I turn twenty-five, and he wants her to manage the winery with me, to ‘lend me her support and help me make good decisions.’ She offered to have me buy her out and she’d leave now. She wants a lot of money to do that. Millions. She said she wants half the value of the winery. I’m not going to give it to her. I don’t see why I should, to get rid of her a year and a half early.” Simone looked pensive as Camille said it. She had heard it all before, when Maxine’s last husband died.
“That’s what she did with her stepchildren in France. She threatened to sue them and try to overturn the will, but she was married to Charles for ten years. I don’t think she’d have much power here after three months. You are your father’s heir, but she may be a considerable nuisance in order to induce you to pay.” She knew her daughter well. “Did he leave her anything?” Although she didn’t see why Christophe should after only a few months, but he was a generous man.
“A hundred thousand dollars,” Camille confided to her. “It’s not much, compared to what the winery is worth. She knows that. He wrote her into the will right before they were married, and he didn’t think she needed money, so it was just a token gift.”
“He was wrong,” Simone said, and stubbed her cigarette out. There were ashes down the front of her dress. She hadn’t combed her hair since she got up that morning, and she hadn’t bothered to take off her gardening boots. Camille had come to love the way she looked, and even the familiar smell of smoke around her.
“Maxine always created the impression with my father that she had a great deal of money behind her, and had done all right in the settlement with her stepchildren, although she thought she deserved more.”
“Don’t believe everything you hear. I told you. She could hardly pay rent. I was three months behind when I left. And the boys are no better. I heard something the other day from Gabriel that Alexandre is deep in debt. I’m not surprised. Make no mistake, she’ll go after you for everything she can, if she has a leg to stand on legally, and if not, she’ll try to bully it out of you. That’s more her style. You’ll have to be strong,” Simone said firmly and went to check a pot on the stove. When she lifted the lid a wonderful aroma filled the room. It was coq au vin made with Christophe’s wine. “It’s a sin to cook with wine like that, but it makes the cooking very good,” she said and smiled at Camille who was too tired to even want to eat. But Simone ladled two portions into big bowls and told Camille to sit down at the table. “You’ll need your strength to deal with Maxine,” she reminded her and Camille knew it was all too true. Maxine would stop at nothing to get what she wanted. No one knew that better than her own mother, and now Camille.
“The other thing my father put in the will,” Camille explained to Simone as they ate, “is that if I die before my twenty-fifth birthday, with no children, half of everything my father left goes to her. If I have a child or children, it all goes to them. But if I die without children in the next seventeen months, half the estate is hers, the rest goes to his family in France. After I turn twenty-five, if I die, Maxine gets nothing and is out of the picture. Until then, she can live here, run the winery with me, drive me crazy, I can pay her blackmail to leave, or she can inherit half of everything if I die.” Camille said it all matter-of-factly, having thought about it all day, and Simone frowned as she listened. She didn’t like any of the possibilities for her young friend, and at the very worst, Christophe could have signed his daughter’s death warrant without realizing it. But Simone believed that even Maxine wasn’t bold or evil enough to kill her. She was a blackmailer and a crook, but not a murderess. She was greedy, but she wasn’t crazy. Knowing that reassured Simone as Camille snuck Choupette a little piece of bread.
“And if she marries, can she still stay?” Simone asked curious.
“No,” Camille answered. “If she marries, or wants to live with a man, she has to leave immediately.”
“Your father was smart to put that in,” Simone approved. “She’ll start looking for a husband soon.” She knew her daughter well. But she still didn’t like the idea that if Camille died without children in the next seventeen months, Maxine would inherit half of everything. It was a powerful temptation for someone like her, and her sons. The thought of that worried Simone all through dinner and late into the night, long after Camille had gone back to the château to sleep. She didn’t think Maxine would kill her, but you could never know how far greed would push someone desperate for money. And Maxine’s long-term future had vanished with the plane. She had seventeen months of comfort ahead of her, and nothing after that, unless she could badger or blackmail Camille out of enough money to be secure.
Simone sat up almost all night, stroking Choupette, and thinking about her daughter, wondering what she was capable of, and how far she would dare to go to achieve her goals.
The next morning, Camille was surprised to hear from one of her father’s assistants that Maxine was in an office down the hall, and Camille noticed that one of their big ledgers was missing from the table behind her desk where they were kept.
She went down the hall to see what Maxine was up to and why she was there. She found her sitting at a desk with Cesare and Alexandre on either side of her as Cesare explained the system of the ledger to them.
“What are you doing here?” Camille asked Maxine in a firm tone, and she glanced at Cesare with disdain. He had become a traitor so soon. Her father hadn’t even been dead for a week.
“I came to work, as your father intended, to co-manage the winery with you,” Maxine said innocently. She was wearing a navy skirt, a white silk blouse, and high heels, and looked official sitting behind the desk. “Cesare is explaining to me how the ledger system works.”
“It’s all on computer. The ledgers were just to indulge my father, to memorialize the way it used to be done in France. You don’t need to spend time on them,” Camille said evenly, as she approached them. “And what is Alex doing here?”
“I just hired him to work with me. He worked at a bank and has a very good head for figures.”
“I’m sure he does,” Camille said coldly. She knew she couldn’t show weakness for a moment. Maxine was doing what she had promised, turning Camille’s life into a living hell. “You can’t hire anyone, except personally out of your own pocket. You’re here to ‘support’ me and help me make good decisions, not to run the winery. I can do that myself.” It was an awesome job, but she had been trained for it since birth. “And you can’t hire him. He’s an illegal alien. He doesn’t have a visa to work in the States. And I told you, we don’t hire illegals here.”
“I’m getting him a student visa,” Maxine said smugly. “He’s going to sign up for oenology classes at Sonoma State.” Camille looked startled by that. It had been Cesare’s suggestion to them a few minutes before, which seemed the best way to bring Alexandre into the business. He could be hired as an intern for the next year and a half, possibly even for credit for his class. Maxine had loved the idea. It was open warfare between Cesare and Camille now that Christophe was gone. His loyalty had been to her father, never to Camille or Joy, who gave him a hard time over the expense accounts he padded and small amounts of money he stole. And his new champion was Maxine, who had plans on a much grander scale.
Camille made no further comment and asked Cesare to come to her office immediately. But they had won the first round. Getting him a student visa and signing him up for classes was a brilliant idea. Cesare sauntered into Camille’s office half an hour later and sat down across from her desk. He’d been in no hurry to get there, and his attitude was one of defiance as he gazed at her with contempt.
“It didn’t take you long to betray my father, did it?” she said bluntly with fury in her eyes. “What are you doing with those people? If you help them screw me over, or cheat me, it will hurt the winery you love. Think of that.”
“I loved your father. She’s his wife, and he’s gone,” he said stubbornly.
“They’ll be gone soon too. If you double-cross me in some way, it won’t go well with us. I own the winery, she doesn’t.”
“That’s not true,” he said, shouting at Camille. “He left half of it to her,” he said staunchly, and he had obviously cast his lot with the wrong team, but wouldn’t admit it, and Maxine had apparently lied to him about being half owner of the winery now.
“Is that what she told you?” Camille said, looking shocked. “She has a temporary position here until I turn twenty-five in a year and a half, and then she’s gone. Do you want her to destroy everything my father built? And her son has no role here at all. You’re making a big mistake, Cesare.” But Maxine had promised him a huge amount of money if he helped her take control. And she had handed him a check for $25,000 from her personal account that morning, from the money she would inherit from Christophe. It was worth it to her, if Cesare would become her secret agent, and her mole. And he had believed everything she said. She was very convincing, when she chose to be, just as she had convinced Christophe, who was a lot smarter than Cesare.
