Page 49 of The Beach Hut on Plum Island
“No!” Harriet’s brow wrinkled, and her eyes filled with sorrow. “Maggie is the sweetest kid. I can only imagine she must’ve been an angel as a baby.”
“Compared to Tucker, she was.” Finn laughed. “Aunt Betty and Caroline helped me look after my kids as Trudy always seemed to have one foot out the door of our marriage and her kids’ lives.”
“I don’t understand how a mother can do that,” Harriet exclaimed. “Don’t they have a mother’s instincts?”
“I think some women are not born with it,” Finn said with a shrug. “To Trudy, our kids were just bargaining chips to get control of my company.”
“Wait,” Harriet held up her hands, stopping him. “Can we come back to this? I have some questions about the accident.”
“Sure.” Finn nodded.
“How were you near where the accident happened?” Harriet asked.
Finn finished his coffee before answering. “Trudy and her new husband had stopped at a roadside diner in a town near the Mexican border to get something to eat, and Trudy’s purse was stolen.” He looked into his empty cup and sighed. “I still had some of her boxes at the house, which had our marriage documents in, as well as a copy of her driver’s license. She needed some identification because her passport was in the purse that was stolen.”
“So you were playing the good samaritan even after everything she’d done to you!” Harriet watched him intently.
“Her mother couldn’t drive, and her new husband had no family or any of her documents stored at their new house,” Finn told Harriet. “I was her only hope.”
“That accident did clear your name, though,” Harriet pointed out. “Even though the drugs were in the car, they didn’t all burn, and when they searched Trudy and her new husband’s house, they found proof of their illicit business.”
“They also found a taped recording of Trudy asking me to take the fall for the drug charge that would’ve ended her career,” Finn told Harriet. “Trudy’s team manager had a strict rule that no drugs or sports enhancement supplements could be used. You either won because you were the best without enhancements, or you didn’t deserve to be on the team.”
“But you were a surfer, and it’s sort of expected,” Harriet added, shaking her head. “Only you were the poster child that knocked the surfing stereotype off track because you were clean.”
“Until I took the drug test for Trudy, that is,” Finn told her. “After that, the world was led to believe it was the other way around. Trudy was the one who took drug tests for me so I could keep my clean reputation.”
“What drug tests did you have to take to surf?” Harriet frowned. “I didn’t even know they did that to surfers.”
“They don’t generally,” Finn said. “It was when she got caught. Trudy told her team that I was on probation for drugs, and she had to test my urine. She gave the wrong sample as we took our urine samples at the same time.”
“Clever.” Harriet nodded.
“After that, my career went downhill, and I lost a lot of sponsors,” Finn breathed. “My business, FinnShaw boards, and Skis started taking a nose dive. Then Trudy announced to the press, not me, that we were getting a divorce. She’d been dealing with my drug habit all this time, and she couldn’t take it anymore. She’d moved on.”
“I’ve seen some nasty breakups in my life,” Harriet told him. “But what Trudy did to you was brutal.”
“You mean when she told me on live television she was divorcing me?” Finn asked and gave a brittle laugh. “After that, Trudy and her husband used my kids’ custody to get control of my company, which they ran into the ground within six months.”
“Oh, Finn, I’m sorry,” Harriet said, and he could see it was heartfelt and not pitying. “But you got the better half of your marriage.” She gave him a warm smile. “You got two beautiful, loving kids.”
“I did.” Finn nodded in agreement. “What makes me sad, though, is that they never really knew their mother. Tucker was nine when Trudy and I got divorced, but she was never around him. She never spent time with him. I don’t think she even hugged him unless it was in front of a camera for a publicity shot.”
“At least he had his Aunt Caroline and Aunt Betty,” Harriet pointed out.
“Yeah, he’s never really spoken about Trudy,” Finn told her. “Maggie was only four when Trudy died, and she didn’t even know who Trudy was really.”
“That’s such a shame,” Harriet said, and they fell quiet for a few seconds before she frowned. “Estelle said she had other photos or evidence about something on you.” She bit the side of her mouth in contemplation. “Any idea what she could have?”
“No.” Finn shook his head. “I told the police what had happened, and the firefighters backed up my story as they were all screaming at me to get back. They also all heard what Trudy asked me to do and warned me not to do it.”
“You don’t think…” Harriet’s voice trailed off, and she shook her head. “No, that’s silly.”
“I don’t think what?” Finn asked.
“That maybe Trudy was trying to set you up to look like the one she was bringing the drugs into the country for?” Harriet asked. “I mean, there are other ways of proving your identity without you having to travel all the way to the Mexican border.”
“Actually, that thought crossed my mind many times,” Finn told her. “Especially when they found her purse with the charred remains of her passport in it.”
