Treasures Read online

  THE CRITICS LOVE

  BELVA PLAIN

  AND TREASURES

  “A MOVING PORTRAYAL … A WARM, COMPASSIONATE FAMILY PORTRAIT OF THE TIES THAT BIND … her stories evoke a sense of heritage, aided by astute characterizations and a finely detailed plot.”

  —Cape Cod Times

  “A JEWEL OF A FIND … an exciting, attention-holding read.”

  —Pittsburgh Press

  “THE QUEEN OF FAMILY-SAGA WRITERS.”

  —The New York Times

  “Treasures has warmth, danger, passion, true love, drama, melodrama, glitz, riches … it will not disappoint.”

  —The Tennessean (Nashville)

  “Belva Plain doesn’t know how not to write a bestseller.”

  —Newsday

  “BELVA PLAIN IS, ONCE AGAIN, RIGHT ON TARGET!”

  —Troy Record

  “COMPELLING … Belva Plain takes us once again into the intimate lives of an unforgettable family and into the very heart of the conflicts that beset our troubled times.”

  —Petersburg Progress-Index (Virginia)

  Critical Acclaim for

  TREASURES

  “A JEWEL OF A FIND … an exciting, attention-holding read.”

  —Pittsburgh Press

  “A MOVING PORTRAYAL … A WARM, COMPASSIONATE FAMILY PORTRAIT OF THE TIES THAT BIND … her stories evoke a sense of heritage, aided by astute characterizations and a finely detailed plot.”

  —Cape Cod Times

  “TREASURES has warmth, danger, passion, true love, drama, melodrama, glitz, riches … it will not disappoint Belva Plain’s loyal following.”

  —Nashville Tennessean

  “Belva Plain is, once again, right on target!”

  —Troy Record

  “COMPELLING … Belva Plain takes us once again into the intimate lives of an unforgettable family and into the very heart of the conflicts that beset our troubled times.”

  —Patersburg Progress Index (Virginia)

  Published by

  Dell Publishing

  a division of

  Random House, Inc.

  1540 Broadway

  New York, New York 10036

  Copyright © 1992 by Bar-Nan Creations, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address: Delacorte Press, New York, New York.

  The trademark Dell® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  ISBN: 0-440-21400-9

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-8041-5256-3

  Reprinted by arrangement with Delacorte Press

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Part One: 1973-1981 Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Part Two: 1981-1990 Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  The two United States marshals, who had come to make an arrest, parked their inconspicuous black car, got out, and looked up at the ornamental neomodern roof of the sixty-five-storied tower. Somber rain clouds drooped over the city, releasing their first drops just as the pair in their plain dark suits reached the bronze doors that fronted the avenue. The younger man, who seemed almost imperceptibly to hesitate, followed the other across the marble floor to the long rank of elevators. This was no ordinary assignment today, nor was this a part of New York into which he usually was sent, and he was feeling a certain tension. It bothered him that he did. It was unprofessional.

  “It seems funny in a way to handcuff the guy,” he said. “Guy’ll be wearing a Brooks Brothers suit probably. You know what I mean? He’s not an armed thug.”

  “But you can’t ever tell what a person will do. He could go off his nut and start punching. Or he could even head for the window. Press the forty-first floor, will you?”

  The elevator slid upward silently as if on silken cords, while a red light efficiently marked each number as it passed.

  “Smells of money, doesn’t it, Jim?” remarked the younger.

  “Sure does. And lots of it.”

  “Wonder what the guy really did. Really, I mean.”

  “God knows. You’ve got to be a high-priced lawyer to figure it out. I wouldn’t bother to try.”

  “Seems kind of sad, doesn’t it? Being hauled off from a place like this.”

  “It’s always sad no matter where it is. You never feel good about it,” Jim said seriously. “But it’s a job, Harry. You get used to it.”

  The door opened and they stepped out in front of a long glass wall with many glass doors.

  “Which way, Jim? Which is his?”

  “He owns the whole floor. Two floors, actually. I’ll get you there, don’t worry.” Jim grinned.

  Receptionists are always pretty, reflected Harry, allowing his senior to do the talking to her while he himself examined the surroundings. He didn’t know anything about rich living, he knew he didn’t, and yet, when the brief opening and shutting of a door gave him a view of quiet gray carpeting and a corridor lined with paintings, he knew that he was seeing the real thing. Gold was gaudy and quietness was expensive. Maybe he had read that somewhere.

  He thought: In one of these rooms, perhaps a room at the end of that very corridor, a man is going to have a terrible shock. In another minute or two. A terrible shock.

  The receptionist must have telephoned because now a woman came rushing in. A fussy-looking matron with fuzzy gray hair, she was terrified.

  “What? What? United States marshals?” she cried, confronting Jim.

  He showed his badge, and Harry did the same.

  The woman’s eyes, enlarged by her glasses, sprang tears.

  “It’s got to be a mistake! I can’t let you see him before he talks to a lawyer. This isn’t right! No, you’re not going in.”

  “Ma’am,” said Jim, “here’s the warrant. Read it. We can force our way in. You don’t want us to do that, do you?”

  They were moving through the door toward the gray carpet, following the frantic woman. They entered a room, spacious, with many windows, more paintings, and a great desk at which a man was seated. Upon seeing them, he stood.

  The woman was almost babbling. “I couldn’t stop them. I don’t know what all this is, I—”

  The man was young. He’s about my age, thought Harry, and all this place is his. And somehow the pity he had been feeling for this stranger now turned to anger. To be my age and own all this! I hope he gets what’s coming to him, whatever he did.

  The man was standing on dignity, but he was scared to death, his face had gone blue-white. He stammered.

  “There’s a mistake here. A terrible mistake. My lawyer’s working on the matter right now.”

  “That’s all right,” Jim said. “You’ll be able to call your lawyer. But you’ll have to come along.” He took out the cuffs. “I’m sorry, but you’ll need to wear these.”

  “You don’t understand,” the man said. “
I’m not the sort of person—”

  “Please. Make it easy for yourself,” Jim told him patiently.

  The woman was openly weeping. “He’s a good man. Be gentle with him.”

  And Harry’s pity flowed back. “Don’t worry,” he heard himself say.

  In less than five minutes they were out of the building with their prisoner, whose handcuffs were hidden by the raincoat that the woman had dropped over them. Silently, stunned and proud, the prisoner climbed into the car and was driven away through the dreary rain.

  On the forty-first floor in the room from which he had been taken, there had been a fire under a carved mantel, and a spray of yellow flowers on the desk.

  The event made the front pages of all the papers as well as the television news. Telephones rang in the offices of the city’s prestigious corporations.

  “Have you heard how it happened? Well, I heard—”

  At dinner parties all up and down Fifth Avenue, Park Avenue, out to the North Shore, and in Connecticut, it was the topic of the moment.

  “Everybody loved him,” people said, commiserating and astonished. “So bright, so charming, so kind. And no one in the world was ever more generous, we all know that. I can’t believe it! What can have happened? How can you explain it?”

  PART ONE

  1973-1981

  CHAPTER ONE

  The downstairs neighbors had provided hot soup, cold meats, salad, and a home-baked pie, food enough for a dozen hungry eaters, Eddy Osborne remarked to himself. But there were only his sisters Connie and Lara and Lara’s husband, Davey, at the kitchen table, none of them able to swallow more than a few mouthfuls of the good things. If anyone had told me I’d swallow even that much on the day of my mother’s funeral I wouldn’t have believed it, he thought.

  He stood up, poured a cup of coffee from the pot on the stove, and went to stare out of the rain-beaded window at the bleak March afternoon. A shudder chilled his shoulders. Here was the ultimate desolation, the gray gloom and the grief.

  Poor Peg, poor Mom! Sometimes the wig had tilted to the side, mocking her gaunt face with a rakish, jaunty look; she had been so vain, too, about the thick, tawny hair that all three of her children had inherited.… And Eddy’s heart broke. Making a little sound like a sob, he covered it with a cough and turned his face.

  Lara said softly, “One thing, anyway, should be a comfort. She was never alone. One of us was always with her. And she did appreciate that private room, Eddy. Remember how she kept asking whether you really could afford it?”

  “She’d have had that if it had taken my last penny or if I’d had to steal, so help me!”

  “Oh,” Lara cried, “she must have known there was no hope for her, yet she never said a word. How brave she was!”

  “No,” Connie said. “The real reason is that she was afraid to admit how lousy life can be.”

  The grim, harsh comment shocked. But there was no sense in challenging it. Connie would defend herself by saying that she was merely looking truth in the face. She had few illusions, young Connie. The elder sister felt that was a pity, but answered only, “Let’s go inside. No, leave the dishes, Connie. I’ll clear them later. I’ll be needing something to do tonight after you go home.”

  The living room had once been an upstairs sitting room when the house had been built for a banker’s family a century ago, before everybody who could afford to move had left town for the new wooded suburbs in the hills. The small space was dominated by the television, whose great blank eye was staring as they all sat down. It would have been unseemly to activate it on this night, and no one did.

  Connie pulled down the shades, complaining, “Damn rotten weather!” as if, on this day at least, the rain need not have been so furious or the wind so wild in the trees.

  “Your mother would say,” Davey responded in his mild way, “that rain like this nourishes the earth.”

  No one answered. Yes, Eddy knew, that would be typical of her. When, in high school, he had broken his arm she had told him to be thankful he hadn’t broken it before the soccer season. But I’m not like her, he thought, nor is Connie.

  Too restless to be still, he went back to a window again and raised the shade that Connie had lowered. The houses across the street were mirror images of this one where Lara lived, a tall, shingled Victorian with a second door cut into its front to accommodate an upstairs flat. Before each house lay a narrow, woebegone yard bordered with neglected, weedy shrubs and dotted with piles of soiled, melting snow. Above the rooftops, in a brown sky, thin clouds raced toward evening.

  “God, what a miserable way to live,” he thought. “So many years gone by already in this confining town!”

  He turned around into the room. Davey was reading the newspapers. The two women had laid their heads back and closed their eyes. The silence ticked in Eddy’s head.

  Then the street door slammed, vibrating through the walls. In the flat below, where five children were crammed, a fight exploded. Somebody was trying to start a balky engine in the driveway next door; it wheezed, it whirred, it coughed.

  An impetuous fury rose in Eddy. No rest, no privacy, no beauty, no money!

  His sisters had not moved. They were exhausted. And he felt compassion for them, for their tenderness in a tough, hard world. He believed that he understood them; he knew how desperately Lara longed for a child and would probably never have one; he knew how Connie, like himself, longed for betterment, for color, for life, he knew that her feet, like his, wanted to run.…

  Now as they rested, unaware of his scrutiny, he observed his sisters. Connie had a nineteen-twenties look, one which was becoming fashionable again; her lips were a bold cupid’s bow, her nose short and straight, her eyebrows two narrow, graceful curves above alert gray eyes. She was unusually vivacious and knew how to make the best of herself. People looked at her. Yet it was always said that Lara was the beauty, having what were called “good bones”; her face was a pure oval, and she had contemplative sea-blue eyes, the same color as Eddy’s own.

  His, however, were not contemplative, any more than Connie’s were. Their eyes were quick; everything about us two, for better or for worse, is quick, he thought suddenly. And thinking so, it seemed to him that now was as good a time as any to say what had to be said, not that any time was really a good one for the dropping of a bombshell.

  He said evenly, “I’ve something to tell you. I hope you won’t be shocked too much, but I’m going to be leaving you. Leaving town. I’m moving to New York.”

  “You’re what?” cried Connie, sitting up straight.

  “There’s a guy I’ve known since college. He’s an accountant like me, only the difference is that he happens to have an uncle who’s lent him enough to get started in brokerage. He wants a partner. He wants me, and he’s willing to stake me, to take me in with him.”

  A gleam of interest shot through Connie’s eyes. “Wall Street?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am, you bet. Wall Street.”

  “Leaving us!” Lara cried. “Oh, Eddy!”

  “Minutes away by plane, honey. I’m not leaving you. Not ever.” And he repeated, “A matter of minutes. All right, a couple of hours. Not Afghanistan or the end of the world.” His smile coaxed.

  Lara was dismayed. “But you’ve been building up so nicely! I can’t understand why you’d want to leave it all behind like that.”

  “Building? Yes. But it’s too gradual, too slow, compared with this opportunity. It’s small potatoes.”

  She thought, We’re splitting apart already. Peg’s six hours in her grave. Then it’s true what they say: When the mother dies, the family breaks up. Couldn’t he think of that, Eddy, Peg’s golden boy with the bright hair, the sea-blue eyes, and the nonchalant stance? She felt suddenly hopeless.

  Davey asked quietly, “How long have you known this?”

  “About three months. I probably should have told you sooner, but I thought, well, we were all going through enough without having any more on our mi
nds, so I waited.” Eddy reached into his pocket. “Look. I had cards printed.”

  “ ‘Vernon Edward Osborne, Jr.,’ ” Lara read, and in a voice that rang with sad reproach observed, “You’ve always hated the name Vernon.”

  “I know. But just for the card, it’s distinguished. A little different.”

  Davey had another question. “Don’t you have to put up any money at all, Eddy?”

  “Sure, but not much. I’ve saved twelve thousand dollars out of my earnings, and I was incredibly lucky at cards one night a while back. Made another fifteen, believe it or not. So I’ve got enough to put down for my share of the partnership, and I’ll pay off the balance out of what I make in the market.”

  Davey said slowly, “If you make it in the market, you mean.”

  “I’ll make it. I have a feel for the market. I’ve kept a phantom investment account in my head. If I’d had the money to do it, actually I’d have made a killing.” When Davey made no comment, Eddy said, “The market’s on the rise, a long rise. Anybody can see that. Besides, you don’t get anyplace in life without taking a few chances. You have to be willing to risk. That’s what this country was built on. All the great inventors, all the industrialists, took risks.”

  Davey glanced at Lara, and she saw that he was reading her mind, feeling her sadness, as he always could and did.

  Then he said quietly, “To each his own. I guess New York will agree with you, Eddy. It’s no place for us. Lara and I have our places here. The shop’s doing a whole lot better than it did when my dad had it, and I’ve got some inventions, some ideas I’m working on—” He stopped, took Lara’s hand, and pressed it.

  She could read her brother’s mind. How good is “a lot better”? Eddy must be thinking as he glanced around the room. It was a pretty room, furnished with secondhand pieces that she had slip-covered herself in a scheme of pink, red, and cream, copied out of a glossy magazine. But the carpet, which had come with the flat, was threadbare.…