Page 94 of The Bride Wore White

“Yes, sir. She asked for directions. The doorman called a cab for her.” The clerk chuckled. “She’s a pretty popular lady today. You’re the second person to ask about her whereabouts this afternoon.”

Jack told himself to breathe. He had to stay cold and in control. For Prudence’s sake. “Who else wanted to know where she was?”

“A Mrs.Smithton stopped by for a visit. Said they were old friends. I told her Miss Ryland was at the library. Why? Is there a problem?”

“What did Mrs.Smithton look like?”

“I didn’t get a good look at her, because she was dressed for a funeral. Wore a hat with a black veil. But from what I could tell, she was a very attractive woman with blond hair. Does that help?”

“The widow is the last one standing,” Jack said quietly.

“What was that, sir?”

“Nothing. Thanks.”

Jack hung up the phone and turned to Luther, who was lounging against the polished bar, waiting. “Let’s go.”

Chapter 50

It was you all along,” Prudence said. She brought the Ford to a halt in the driveway of Jack’s burned-out house. “You came up with a plan to avenge yourself on the Dovers, and you set it in motion by marrying Rollins.”

Ella raised the veil of her hat with one gloved hand and crumpled the netting onto the brim. The pistol was very steady in her other hand. “The entire Dover line has been extinguished. I now control the company.”

“I’ve got to hand it to you. Clara never realized that you were the enemy within the walls of the Dover household. She never saw you as anything other than the wife of her second son.”

“Before she died, I made certain she knew exactly who was responsible for destroying her empire.”

“You were the one who killed her in the hospital.”

“I took my time with that pillow,” Ella said. “Dover Industries and her own bloodline were the only things Clara cared about. Iwanted her to understand that everything she had built and the future she had planned were all going to disappear.”

“If making Clara suffer was your goal, why not follow through with Rollins’s plan to have her committed? She would have hated that.”

“It was tempting,” Ella said. “But I knew Clara well enough to know she would probably escape. Threats. Money. Power. Whatever it took, she would have found a way to use it. That woman was brilliant when it came to manipulating people. Between you and me, I think she actually was psychic when it came to strategy and planning.”

“So you are the last one standing, but it looks to me like you may be standing over the smoking ruins of whatever is left of the empire you conquered. Dover Industries may not survive the scandal and the drama that wrecked the family.”

“You don’t understand. My goal wasn’t to inherit Dover Industries. I wanted to see it obliterated, just like the family.”

Prudence looked at her. “I guess the only question I have is, why?”

“The Dovers and all of San Francisco society knew me as Ella Norcroft before I married Rollins. Norcroft was my mother’s maiden name. But I was born Ella Comstock.”

“I don’t understand. Should that name mean something to me?”

“No. And the reason it doesn’t mean anything is because Clara Dover destroyed my father’s business on the way to building her empire. Comstock Manufacturing was one of the many companies she crushed. She barely noticed the damage she caused.”

“I think I get the picture.”

“When she destroyed Comstock Manufacturing, Clara Dover destroyed my family. My father put a gun to his head. My mother went into a decline from which she never recovered. She startedtaking pills. One day she overdosed. I found the body. I went to live with an aunt on the East Coast, a bitter woman who resented me from the start because I was so much prettier than her own daughters. She treated me as if I were a servant. She could not wait to kick me out of the house.”

“That explains a great deal,” Prudence said gently. “I must remember to tell Jack he was right.”

Ella looked wary for the first time. “About what?”

“He said at the beginning that this was all about revenge. The problem was that it was literally awash in revenge. So much of it. You and Rollins worked together to murder Gilbert, didn’t you? You used your wedding dress to set the scene in the honeymoon suite at the hotel. I recognized it in the newspaper photos at the library.”

“Is that what you were doing at the library today? Looking for photos of my wedding?”

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