Masters & Lovers Box Set One

*****

Later, as everyone is leaving, I want to catch Michael alone making some excuse to send Elizabeth off with Ross to the car.

James and Charlotte are heading out, but hover in the doorway as I snag the blond man by the elbow.

"What's your other thought, Michael? Earlier, when you were talking about Albert's will, you obviously didn't like to say what you were thinking back there."

He looks me in the eye. "You don't think that will is a bit odd? I was thinking that the executor to the will is the one that gets to see all the paperwork... That lot." He waves back at the conference room. Perhaps Albert wanted Beth to see all this stuff?"

James says, "Forty years' worth of parking tickets and supermarket receipts?" He looks unimpressed.

"Or perhaps," says Michael, "there's something among it all that he didn't want easily found? Something best lost among a lot of other paperwork."

Is he on to something?

Or is it just an over-active imagination?

"Needle in a haystack tactics?" I say. "Why would he do that?"

Michael rubs at the back of his neck. "What springs to mind is that Beth has already said that her family closed ranks when she tried to find out who Charlotte's mother might be." Family secrets?

"There was a thought it might be her Uncle...um.... Uncle George. He had a reputation if you get my drift."

"Yes, she did, But Uncle George has been conveniently dead for some years I gather. He can't comment on whether that might be true."

"And you think there might be something else that everyone in the family, except Albert, wanted covered over?"

Michael cocks his head. "It's a possibility don't you think? It fits the facts we know."

"There's only one way to find out isn't there.... You happy to keep looking through this stuff?"

"Oh, yes," he nods. "It's got me hooked."

*****

James

I have a lunch appointment with Will Stanton, Police Commissioner. When we first met, he wasn't too impressed by me, I think regarding me as a sex offender who 'got away with it'. Since then, we have come to know each other a little better and our relationship is more amicable.

And now I have something specific I need to ask him.

"The address Klempner gave you is genuine enough...." Stanton slides the paper back across the desk to me. ".... but I wouldn't like to say how much of a sign of good will it is that he gave it to you." "No?"

"No. James, we're talking about records more than twenty years old. This is the address where Klempner tracked Frank and Michelle Conners to. He had inside help of course...." "Corby?"

He nods. "Almost certainly. With the advantage of hindsight, Corby, or under his real name, Elliot Bech, had already infiltrated the police force and was sitting on the inside with access to much of the information as to where the investigation was going. That's around the time Charlotte's father, Conners was murdered." He taps on the scrap of paper with a forefinger. "But Klempner would know that area of the city was demolished. There's nothing left there to find."

This isn't what I want to hear. "Michael tracked down her parents' marriage records to a church in that area. The parish records. And from that her birth certificate. There could be more to find...."

He raises brows. "Such as? I think you've probably seen most of it with what you already have. What you need is a way of tracing where Michelle Conners vanished to after that."

"But surely the police gave her a new identity...."

Stanton raises helpless palms. "Corby...."

Always fucking Corby....

.... At least the bastard's dead.....

".... He would have known about the new identity. After Frank Conners died, Michelle simply vanished, but she didn't do it using that ID. After she emptied her bank account, there is no trace of the account being used again, or of say.... penalties on her driving licence, use of a passport, anything. That identity was left behind. Whatever Michelle Conners did next, she started again."