Sidney Sheldon & Tilly Bagshawe 3-Book Collection: After the Darkness, Mistress of the Game, Angel of the Dark. Tilly Bagshawe
Budds said, ‘Lemme tell you something. The warden wanted her dead. Tha’s why he sent her to me. But I’m tellin’ yous, Grace is okay. She ain’t the way they made her out to be in court and on TV. Just give her a chance.’
Slowly, grudgingly, the women began to include Grace in their conversations. Winning their acceptance, and later their affection, meant more to Grace than she could express. Society had labeled the women of Bedford Hills as criminals, as outcasts. Now, for the first time, Grace wondered if perhaps it was society that was criminal, for casting them out in the first place. Grace had lived the American Dream all her life. The fantasy of wealth, freedom and the pursuit of happiness had been her reality since the day she was born. Here, at Bedford Hills, she witnessed the flip side of that golden coin: the hopelessness of poverty, the unbreakable cycle of fractured families, poor education, drugs and crime, the iron grip of gang culture.
It’s all just a lottery. Prison was these women’s destiny, the same way wealth and luxury was mine.
Until someone stole it from me.
Grace was luckier than most inmates. She had something rare and priceless, something that other girls at Bedford would have given their eyeteeth for: a sense of purpose. Here, in jail, Grace finally had something to do, other than shop for designer clothes or plan her next dinner party. She had to find out what really happened at Quorum. It wasn’t about freedom. It was about justice. About truth.
If Grace had to pick one word to describe how her first year in prison made her feel, it would have been liberating. That, perhaps, was the greatest irony of all.
From nine till three every day, Grace worked at the children’s center. The work was rewarding and fun. Kids came in daily to spend time with their mothers, and though the bond between parent and child was usually obvious, both sides sometimes struggled to fill the hours in such an artificial environment. Grace’s job was to make that easier by providing some structure: story time, reading lessons, art classes, anything that moms and kids could enjoy together without having to think too hard about where they were and why. The children’s center was the only place at Bedford Hills where inmates were allowed to dress in ‘outside’ clothing, provided for them by the Sisters of Mercy. Sister Theresa, who ran the facility, made a strong case to Warden McIntosh. ‘The children are frightened by the uniforms. It’s tough enough rebuilding maternal relationships without making Mommy look like a stranger.’
Grace loved the feel of ordinary cotton against her skin. She loved the cheerful routine of the work: planning activities, laying tables with jars of paint, brushes and paper, playing games with the kids that she remembered from her own childhood. Most of all, she loved the kids themselves. When Lenny was alive, she’d never felt the desire to have children. But now that he was gone, it was as if a switch had flipped inside her. All her natural, maternal feelings came flooding out.
Working at the center, Grace was aware of a feeling of inner peace, a sort of low hum of contentment that followed her everywhere. It was the only place she could shut out thoughts of Lenny, and John Merrivale, and how he had betrayed them. In her simple cotton blouse and long wool skirt, it was hard to distinguish Grace from the nuns who ran the center. It occurred to her that prison life was not so unlike the world of the convent: enclosed, ordered, the days made up of a repeated series of simple, satisfying tasks. At the children’s center, Grace felt the same deep peace of a nun fulfilling her vocation. Except that she had not found God. Hers was a mission of a different kind.
The only downside to Grace’s work at the center came in the form of Lisa Halliday. Another A-Wing lifer, Lisa had been sent to Bedford Hills after an armed robbery that left a store clerk permanently paralyzed. An aggressive bull dyke with close-shaven blond hair and a livid scar across her chin, Lisa Halliday was viewed as a leader by the prison’s white inmates, a small but vocal minority. Inmate leaders played an important role in the running of any prison, something Warden McIntosh understood only too well. He had given Lisa Halliday a cushy work detail, and the job at the children’s center had appeased her for a while. Until Grace Brookstein showed up. Lisa Halliday made no secret of her loathing for Grace, whom she considered to be Cora Budds’s ‘pet’ and a traitor to the white girls at Bedford. Not to mention a stuck-up bitch who’d somehow gotten the warden wrapped around her little finger. Lisa never missed an opportunity to bully Grace, or to try to get her into trouble.
The real work of Grace’s days began after three, when she was allowed two hours in the prison library. Davey Buccola had promised to help her, but Grace had heard nothing from Davey in months. Impatient to make some progress, she devoted all her free time to researching Quorum. There was a lot to learn. Following Davey’s advice, she had started at the beginning. She read about the stock market, what it was and how it worked. She discovered for the first time what a hedge fund actually did – it had never occurred to her to ask Lenny. She researched endless articles on the economy. In the past, terms like credit crunch and bailout had washed over her. Grace had no idea what they actually meant. Now she made it her business to know. She wanted to understand why companies like Lehman Brothers had failed. Why so many people had lost their jobs and their homes because of Quorum. The first few months were like painting the background to a huge canvas. Only once she’d finished the sky and the stormy sea could Grace begin work on the ship itself: the fraud that had brought her here. That, of course, was the most intricate, difficult part of the picture.
The main problem with hedge funds, Grace learned, was that they operated behind a veil of secrecy. Top managers like Lenny never gave away their investment strategies, let alone specific details about individual trades. And that was perfectly legal.
Karen Willis asked Grace, ‘So how did people know what they were buying into? If it was all such a big secret.’
‘They didn’t,’ said Grace. ‘They looked at past performance and took a bet on future performance.’
‘Like betting on a horse, you mean?’
‘I suppose so. Yes.’
‘Kind of a big risk, don’t you think?’
‘That depends on how much you trust the manager.’
People had trusted Lenny. They had trusted Quorum. But something had gone terribly wrong. The more she studied the press reports, the more Grace understood why the FBI had failed so singularly in their attempts to trace the missing money. With so much secrecy and funds passing between countless different accounts, onshore, offshore, all over the planet, it was like combing a beach for a specific grain of sand. Shares were sold before they had been bought, creating ‘phantom’ profits that were then leveraged, multiplied three, four, ten times before being reinvested in derivative structures so complicated they made Grace’s eyes water.
Davey Buccola finally came to visit her. From the look on his face, Grace could tell he had news. She could barely contain her excitement.
‘It was John Merrivale, wasn’t it? He stole the money. I knew it.’
‘I don’t know who stole the money.’
Grace’s face fell. ‘Oh.’
‘My investigation took a different turn.’
Davey’s expression looked sober, his lips pressed together in a grim line. Grace’s stomach began to churn.
‘What do you mean? What sort of a turn.’
Davey thought, When I walked in here, she looked so happy. I’m about to blow her world apart. And what if I’m wrong? Then he thought, I’m not wrong. He leaned across the table and took Grace’s hand.
‘Mrs Brookstein.’
‘Grace.’
‘Grace. I’m sorry to have to tell you this. But I believe your husband was murdered.’
‘I’m sorry?’ The room began to spin. Grace clutched the table for support.
‘Lenny didn’t kill himself.’