“There was no sound?”
Liam shook his head. “It’s illegal to audiotape someone without their consent.”
“I hadn’t realized that,” Natalie said, disappointed. “You must not have been able to get much from the viewing, then. Did Derry talk to anyone while he was there?”
“No, aside from his interactions with Jack, which were brief. Jack seemed all too happy to keep clear of him.”
“So…it wasn’t helpful.” Regret flooded her, not because the tape was a dead end, but because Liam had risked so much by watching the last hours of his father’s life and they weren’t any closer to understanding Derry’s actions on the night of the crash.
“I wouldn’t say it wasn’t helpful,” Liam replied in a flat tone.
She glanced over at him in surprise, but had to quiet her curiosity when the waiter came with their salads.
“What did you notice?” Natalie asked as soon as the waiter had departed.
“I don’t know if it means anything or not, but at one point, my dad snapped at Jack when he tried to change the channel on the television. I couldn’t hear anything, but Jack’s alarmed look at my dad when he reached for the remote clued me in.”
He must have noticed her confused expression.
“There was a television behind the bar. I could see it better than my dad’s face. It was mounted above the cash register,” Liam explained before he took a bite of his salad.
“I see,” she murmured. “So your father was watching something on the television, and he didn’t want Jack to change the channel? What was the program?”
“The news,” Liam said. He seemed distracted as he put down his fork and pushed his salad away.
“Do you think whatever was on the news is actually relevant?” Natalie asked.
“I don’t see how it could be,” Liam admitted. “The TV was on CNN, airing a story about a corporate takeover by DuBois Enterprises. Those happen often enough. DuBois seems to gobble up some new company every week. Lincoln DuBois himself was on the screen. I can’t imagine why my dad would have barked at Jack that he wanted to watch it. It was definitely because of that story, though, because he wasn’t staring at the television before it aired, and he hardly glanced at it again after the clip was over. He left about five minutes after the end of the segment…once he’d finished his drink,” Liam finished grimly.
“Isn’t DuBois a media conglomerate?”
Liam nodded. “Yeah. A lot more than media is under the DuBois umbrella, though, everything from computer software production, to copper mining, to newspapers and magazines.”
Natalie shook her head in confusion and swallowed a final bite of her own salad before she set down her fork. “Did it say who DuBois Enterprises had acquired in the takeover?”
Liam shrugged. “Yeah, I could see the headlines at the bottom pretty damn well. Some French company called Alerveret that manufactured computer chips.”
“Why would your father be interested
in that?” Natalie asked as the waiter returned to clear their salad plates. Liam didn’t speak until they were alone again.
“Hell if I know. Maybe he wasn’t interested in the news story at all. Maybe he was just in a bad mood, and taking it out on Jack.”
Natalie considered this possibility as their entrees were served. Liam seemed thoughtful, too. In the distance, she heard the tinkling sounds of a piano.
“I’ll go over to the library tomorrow and see if I can’t dig up any information on the DuBois takeover of Alerveret. I couldn’t find much online,” he said.
“Do you think your father could have had investments in Alerveret? Maybe he lost a chunk of money, and that’s what upset him.”
Liam shook his head dismissively. “He was upset before he saw the news clip, remember? Although he seemed damn interested in that story, and even more agitated after he watched it. As far as the bad investment, I think my mom would have told us about that. I never heard her mention losing a huge chunk of money—not before the lawsuits, anyway.”
Natalie’s cheeks heated and she lowered her gaze. The Kavanaughs’ socioeconomic status had drastically changed after the lawsuits against Derry Kavanaugh’s estate. All that money had gone to Mari and Ryan Itani and Natalie and her brother. The bulk of the money awarded to the Reyes family had paid for Natalie’s medical care following the accident. Eric and Natalie had used the remainder to get good educations, something their mother would have wished for them more than anything if she’d lived.
She could tell by his thoughtful manner Liam hadn’t meant his comment as a jab. He was just stating a simple fact.
“I’ll be sure to check about the direction of Alerveret’s stock after DuBois acquired them, though, just to make sure,” Liam said.
“Liam?”