“What the hell did I ever do to Owen except help him make a ton of money?” Archer demanded.
Clare waited a moment for one of the others to state the obvious. When no one did, she shrugged.
“You got the girl,” she said. “Mom told me the whole story about how Owen tried to persuade Myra to marry him. But Myra chose you, instead.”
There was a short, startled pause. Everyone looked at Myra again.
“I was never in love with Owen and he never loved me,” she said briskly. “Not really. He was only in love with the notion of marrying the senator’s daughter. He wanted the connections and the lifestyle that he thought I could bring him. I knew that from the start.”
“Then why the hell did you date him?” Archer demanded, outraged.
Myra raised her brows. “To make you sit up and take notice, of course. It was very hard to get your attention in those days, Archer Glazebrook. You were too busy building your precious company.”
For an instant, Clare thought Archer was going to roar. Then he surprised them all with a thoroughly wicked grin.
“I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again.” Archer leaned back in his chair and hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his jeans. He looked smugly satisfied. He also looked like a man very much in love with his wife. “Never play cards with this woman.”
Clare could have sworn that Myra blushed.
Jake cleared his throat. “Getting back to Shipley, his resentment of you may have started when he didn’t get the girl, as Clare said, but it was fed by the knowledge that you were the real genius behind Glazebrook. At the same time, he wanted very badly what the company’s success gave him.”
“Money, connections and a degree of power,” Clare said.
Archer shook his head. “He got all three but apparently they didn’t satisfy him.”
“No,” Jake said. “His envy festered over the years. In short, by the time the cabal identified him as a potential recruit, he was more than ready to leap at the opportunity not only to take revenge, but to become a more powerful talent than you. The cabal gave him a variant of the formula genetically engineered just for him along with the promise of advancement within the organization to clinch the deal. All he had to do was deliver Glazebrook, Inc., on a platter.”
Clare drank some tea and lowered the glass. “What about the others? How did Shipley find Brad McAllister and Valerie, the mom from hell?”
“Shipley decided that the slickest way to get his hands on Glazebrook was to promote a marriage with Elizabeth that would ensure that her husband got her share of the company when Archer conveniently died. Shipley, of course, is in his early sixties,” Jake said. “He knew there was no chance he could ever make himself look like good husband material to Elizabeth.”
“Heavens, no,” Myra said. “He’s much too old for her.”
“You can say that again.” Elizabeth made a face. “I think of him, or rather thought of him, as an uncle.”
“Shipley worked out his strategy and then contacted his superiors in the cabal,” Jake continued. “It all hinged on bringing someone who looked like the ideal husband into the Glazebrook circle. The guy had to be able to successfully court Elizabeth and get the approval of her family. The cabal helped Shipley locate a world-class scam artist, one Brad McAllister.”
“Who was not only good-looking, charming and smart, he was also a strong hypnotist,” Clare said. “I’ll bet that was his biggest asset as far as Shipley was concerned. If charm didn’t work, Brad could always use his talent to dazzle everyone.”
“What did Owen offer Brad to make him risk getting involved in the conspiracy?” Myra asked.
“According to the diary, it wasn’t what Shipley offered that convinced McAllister to sign on for the project,” Jake said. “It was what the cabal offered.”
“Got it,” Elizabeth said. “The cabal made the same offer to Owen that it made to Brad. Power and high status in the organization.”
“And his very own genetically tailored supply of the enhancement drug,” Jake said. “The diary indicates that Brad McAllister was a level-eight hypnotist before he started taking the drugs. Whatever the cabal gave him boosted him straight off the charts.”
Elizabeth sighed. “So that was how he was able to manipulate everyone so well.”
“Everyone except Clare,” Archer said proudly.
Myra smiled. “Yes, everyone except Clare. Thank God.”
Clare felt an odd little rush of warmth. She had to grab a napkin and blot the moisture from her eyes. When she looked up, blinking, she saw that Jake was watching her with an amused expression.
“It was Brad’s idea to have Shipley marry Valerie,” Jake said. “It was the perfect way to slide Brad into your social circle here in Stone Canyon. What better credentials could a suitor have than being the son of your best friend’s wife, Archer?”
Archer scowled. “I had McAllister checked out seven ways from Sunday. There was nothing in the member database to indicate that he was anything but what he claimed to be. Hell, McAllister not only came out clean, arcanematch.com said he was just right for Elizabeth.”
Jake lounged deeper into his chair. “Here’s one of the really nasty bits as far as Fallon is concerned. He thinks the cabal has managed to hack into the Society’s genealogical records and arcanematch.com and that it is able to make alterations to the records.”
Archer exhaled slowly. “That’s going to be a problem for J&J.”
“A big one,” Jake agreed.
“One thing I don’t understand,” Archer said. “Why didn’t Owen pull the plug on his scheme after Brad was murdered? What did he hope to accomplish?”
“He didn’t have any choice but to come up with a new angle,” Jake said. “Traditionally the cabals do not tolerate failure. The revised plan required several additional murders, namely Valerie’s, Kimberley’s, mine and Clare’s, but by then he was desperate enough, or maybe crazy enough, to take the risk.”
“I can tell you that the drug the cabal gave Owen worked,” Archer said grimly. “He didn’t always have that psychic freeze trick up his sleeve. No way he could have concealed it from me all these years. Hell, he was only a mid-range sensitive with a talent for strategy.”
“Fallon agrees with you,” Jake said. “It’s obvious that the new cabal already has a functioning lab up and running somewhere.”