Page 55 of Ten Beach Road

“Dyer made out like a bandit here,” Lisa said. “He was so damned charming. And it didn’t hurt that he kept ponies at the polo club.”

Nicole might have laughed if it hadn’t all been so awful. As a child Malcolm had lobbied hard for a dog, when their mother could barely feed the three of them. He’d had a goldfish once for a week before it had gone belly up and been flushed down the apartment’s finicky toilet. The picture of him owning, let alone riding, a polo pony was a difficult one to conjure. But he’d taken his gentlemanly pursuits very seriously. Those social contacts had afforded him an impressive set of victims.

Grace looked up from her plate then. Her eyes were bleak. “Nathan and I were pretty hard hit,” she said quietly. “But Nathan can make more money. We still have assets. I think I can live without a vacation.” She didn’t look at Lisa when she said this, but the censure was clear.

“But Dyer didn’t just steal from people who could afford it.” She swallowed before going on. “I invested every penny that I’d raised for my foundation—the one that sends children in foster care to college—with him. And every penny of it is gone. What kind of monster would steal from people who have nothing?”

Tears slid down Grace Lindell’s cheeks to dampen her blouse and Nicole wished for just a moment that Malcolm were there to witness the damage he’d done. Stealing from the rich was bad enough; stealing from charitable foundations and those in need was unconscionable. But then Malcolm appeared to have ditched his conscience along with his scruples some time ago.

That afternoon after she’d dropped a disappointed Kyra off at a rental car agency, Nicole sat in the chaise in a nook of the guest bedroom and took out her laptop to begin an Internet search of every victim’s name she’d been able to winnow out of Grace and every email address she’d ever had for Malcolm. But nothing was live; everything had been shut down.

So far, Palm Beach, like every other place she’d searched for clues about Malcolm, had turned out to be one great big dead end. But for the first time as she remembered Grace’s tears and allowed herself to think about all the people Malcolm had hurt, she began to acknowledge that Malcolm needed to be found and punished. In her own way, Nicole had been as selfish as her brother. This whole tragedy was absolutely not all about her.

Still, he was her little brother. She’d loved him since he was born and done her best to raise him. Now, the last thing she could do for him was get to him before the FBI did so that she could make him admit that he’d done wrong and return the money he’d stolen. Maybe if he did those things, and was genuinely repentant, the authorities would go lighter on him.

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