His face blanched. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” The muscle in his jaw flexed.
She hadn’t intended to say that. Somehow it just slipped out. She had thought it, sure, in the deep recesses of her mind, but never intended to say it to his face. She could have bitten her tongue the moment it slipped out. Laughing, she tried to pretend it was a joke.
“That’s not funny.” He took a long swallow from his wine glass and, grabbing the bottle, refilled his glass more than halfway. “If you’d give up some of that money of yours, I wouldn’t have to work so hard.”
The old money issue was raising its ugly head like a deadly snake. She wasn’t going to let that comment go. “You mean you wouldn’t have to work so hard if you didn’t buy cars like that Lexus.”
His face had grown blotchy. “I deserve it. I do work hard. You think all the travel I do for my job is easy?”
“My job isn’t easy either, Zack. Most people’s jobs aren’t easy. That’s why they call it work.”
“Yeah, well our lives would definitely be a lot better if you’d share some of your inheritance with your family.”
Dena rolled her eyes. “Not that again. By going to law school and making more money than I did as a teacher, I am sharing it.”
Throwing down his napkin, Zack pushed back from the table. “Yes, that again. It’s time you thought about how you could help the whole family if you’d just get off it, especially help yourself. Did it ever occur to you that you could do something with that money besides pay for law school? You could do something with your office. You could fix up the house. You could spend a little on the kids. Hell, just look at yourself in the mirror sometime. You could stand to spend some money fixing yourself up, too.” He rose and stalked in the direction of the kids.
A heat wave swept her body. Damn him. Since when had he thought there was something wrong with the way she looked? She hadn’t heard that one before. Glancing down at her hands, she examined her fingernails in the candlelight. Her nails were different lengths, unpolished, and even a bit ragged. All the paperwork she processed every day and all the water she put her hands in every night didn’t help. She could opt for a manicure occasionally. Maybe she could get her hair done more often and do something different with it. She could ask John, her hairdresser, for his opinion. Wait a minute. Why did she care what Zack thought, anyway? He was fixing to be history ... just as soon as she could put her plan in motion.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ALAN SELLERS
“You’ll never get away from me,” he whispered into the phone. “I know where you are, and I’m coming to get you.”
“Alan, please leave me alone.” Ginny moaned. “All I want are my few things you have left and for you to leave me alone.”
“No. I’ll never let you go. You belong to me.” He liked hearing her plead. It made him feel in charge. Kicking back in his recliner, he took a long swallow of beer.
“Please, let me go,” Ginny begged. “I don’t want to belong to you any more.”
“I don’t care what you want.” He laughed under his breath. He wanted to make sure she couldn’t sleep at night. She’d never know when he might show up at the door or a window.
“Alan, quit calling me. I’ve got a protective order against you. You’re not supposed to call me.” Ginny’s voice cracked as she cried out the words.
“Ginny, hang up the telephone. Just hang up on him,” Ginny’s sister, Mary, hollered from another room.
His cell went dead. He tapped the little telephone symbol on his cell again, a redial.
“We’re going to get a recorder,” Mary said into the phone after it had rung once. “Alan, she doesn’t want to talk to you. Leave her alone.”
He didn’t say anything. He knew better than to let Mary hear his voice. That would make it two against one. He could just see that old judge putting him ‘under the jail’ as he had put it, based solely on what Ginny and Mary said.
“Alan, I know you’re there. You can’t scare me like you do Ginny. Stop calling,” Mary yelled.
The line went dead one more time. Sellers tapped the symbol again. He could see Ginny in his mind’s eye, her eyes all red from crying, her face wet, and her hair streaming down around her shoulders.
Someone picked up the phone and Sellers heard: “Don’t answer it, Gin. Just let it ring.” Mary’s voice. Then he heard: “I can’t let it ring. It’s driving me crazy.” Sellers grinned and waited for her to speak to him. She said, “Alan, stop calling. I’m not changing my mind.”
“You’ll never get away from me,” he said in a quiet monotone.
“Didn’t you hear what my lawyer and the judge told you? You’re under a protective order, which you’re violating by calling me.”
“I don’t care what they said. I’m going to kill you, Ginny. I’m going to kill you and your lawyer and your sister and anyone who gets in my way. You’ll see. You’ll never get away from me.”
“Your number shows up on my phone, Alan,” Ginny said. “I’ve got evidence you’ve been calling me, so you’d better quit it.” The line went dead again.
Sellers’s chest grew tight. He didn’t really think anyone could tell it was him from the number of the throwaway phone he’d bought. He’d have to buy a couple more, just to be on the safe side.
CHAPTER TWELVE
DENA
“Lucas.” Dena stood in the doorway of his office. When he looked up, she said, “We need to talk when you have some time.”
Lucas threw down his pen. “Now is as good a time as any. What is it?”
Closing the door behind her, Dena went to one of the two leather chairs that faced his desk, picked up the stack of files from the seat, and sat down with them in her lap. “I need some money.” His office smelled of stale pipe smoke. She felt a little headache coming on, over her right eye. That always seemed to happen when she ventured inside Lucas’s office. She didn’t know whether it was physiological or psychological and didn’t care. All she knew was that it hurt and as soon as she got out of there, she’d have to pop some painkillers.
“Don’t we all,” he said and chuckled at his own joke, his broad front teeth glistening.
“I’m not joking, Lucas. I want to cash in some of my inheritance.”
Lucas sat up straighter. “I thought we agreed that after you got through paying for law school, you wouldn’t spend any of that. I thought you wanted to save it for your old age or for the kids.” He sipped coffee from a Styrofoam cup. “Yuck, cold,” he said and threw it into the wastebasket.
Dena drew a deep breath. She’d known there would be an argument, and she was ready for him. “I know what I said. I changed my mind. How soon can you cash some of my stocks?”
“The market is doing well right now. You’d be a fool to cash anything in.” He gripped the edge of his desk and pushed himself back.
“Some bonds then,” she said, determined he would do as she wished.
He eased out of his executive chair, the leather groaning from the strain, sidestepping the stacks of books on the floor, and stood over her. “They’re locked in. What’s gotten into you?”
Why did men always like to stand over her? Weren’t they bigger than her already? “Just because you’re executor of my father’s estate doesn’t mean you can tell me what to do with my money.” She kept her tone even and met his eyes with a determined look.
In the past, she’d been unable to have a confrontation about personal matters without getting defensive or teary-eyed. She was determined to overcome her timidity. She did fine when dealing with other peoples’ business, but when came to her own, she had trouble holding it together. “I’ve let you manage things all these years, but if you won’t do as I ask I’ll go to Probate Court and demand an accounting.”
“For heaven’s sake, tell me what you have in mind.” His labored breathing made her wonder how long it would be until he had some kind of attack. He weighed well over two
hundred and fifty pounds, and he wasn’t very tall. She had no desire to mother him, and she had quit mentioning his health some time back.
“Calm down, Lucas.” She waved him back to his chair. “Sit down, and let’s talk about this civilly. You want a drink of water or something?”
“No, I’m all right. Listen, you know your father wanted me to safeguard that money for you. You know how he felt about Zack getting his hands on it.”
She pressed her lips together. “Let’s not go into that again. My father was very patronizing toward me, but you don’t have to be.”
“No, really. Is it for him? Is he pressuring you to spend it? Tell me what’s going on.” He coughed, a hard hacking sound in the back of his throat, and spit something into his handkerchief.
Dena suppressed a gag reflex. She stared out the window behind his desk. How could she tell Lucas she needed money to start her own law practice? She could tell him she was planning on leaving Zack, but she didn’t want to. She wanted to play her hand close to her chest…wanted to get everything in place before anyone found out. There would be no talking her out of either one. No stopping her from becoming the free and independent woman she’d longed to be since before she went to law school.
Taking a deep breath, she squared off with her cousin. “It’s not for him, okay? He doesn’t even know I’m talking to you. It’s a surprise.”
“For what? Just tell me that.”
She shook her head. “No. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but I want to keep my business to myself.”
“For heaven’s sake,” he said. “How much money are we talking about?”
Dena pulled a piece of paper from her jacket pocket and glanced at it. “A hundred and fifteen thousand, three hundred and fifty dollars.”
“Now you’ve really got me curious. When do you need this money?”
“Give or take a couple of months, but I wanted to give you plenty of notice, you know, to make the best possible arrangements.”
“And you won’t tell me what it’s for?”
She just stared at him. No way was she going to tell him about the small office building she wanted to put a contract on or that the sum of money she was asking for included the price of a full set of office furniture for her new office.
As for Zack, she’d figured out the cost of a dinette set, bedroom suite, and living room suite of furniture for an apartment for him plus bunk beds and chests of drawers for the kids for the second bedroom of his apartment. Once the divorce got to the end stage, she’d withdraw more money to buy him out of his share of the house.
Lucas shook his head. “You know if you do this every couple of years you won’t have anything left by the time you reach retirement age.”
“I’m making very good money right now, Lucas. In the next few years, I should start making a lot more, you said so yourself. I’ll invest some of it.” She wasn’t about to give up. She knew he had to do what she wanted. It was her money, and there was nothing he could do about it.
He hooked his thumbs in his vest pockets and sighed, his sunken eyes resting on her face. After a few moments, he said, “Sounds like you’re determined to go through with it.”
She relaxed a bit when his tone changed. “I’ve been thinking about this for a long time.”
He rocked back in his chair. “Look, I have a better idea. You know that old warehouse a couple of blocks over where we store our files? Why don’t we sell it instead of cashing in anything?”
Taken aback, Dena said, “That old building? I haven’t been over there in ages. You’d sell a piece of real estate?” She’d never considered that. She’d thought he’d never part with any of the precious real estate that had been left to them by their fathers. Each of them owned a fifty- percent-undivided interest. Lucas had always managed it for a modest fee, much less than they would have had to pay a real estate management company. He enjoyed dealing with tenants and leases and that sort of thing. To her, it was all very boring and tedious.
“We’ve got that antique mall on the bottom floor anyway, and those two guys who run the mall have been saying for a long time they might want to buy if the price was right.”
Dena jumped up, energized. “Property has always been like a sacred cow to you. Not that I’m saying no. Go ahead, sell.” Putting his files down in the chair, she headed for the door before he changed his mind.
“Real estate in Galveston is doing very well right now. We could make good money on it.” Lucas cleared his throat. “But, there are a few minor details we have to discuss…”
Oh, oh, here it comes. She turned back and faced him. “Like…”
“Don’t look so skeptical. Nothing bad. It’s just that we’ve been using it for storage all these many years. In order to sell it, or even to place it on the market—”
“Anything,” she said interrupting. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”
“You’ll need to get rid of all your father’s old files and make other arrangements for your own. Oh, and your grandmother’s furniture and—”
“Okay, Lucas. I’ll do it.”
“It’s not going to be so easy. There’s a lot of stuff there. You’ll need some help.”
She tempered her smile, relieved they could reach some sort of compromise without any harsh words. “I can be very resourceful when I want, you’ll see. How long do I have to get it done?”
“How about September first?” He was smiling, too, like there was something she didn’t know, but she didn’t care. “Don’t go over there alone, you’ll need plenty of help. And don’t come back and tell me you’ve changed your mind—”
“Don’t worry, I won’t.” She pulled his door open. “See you, Luke. And hey, thanks.” She blew him a kiss and fled back into her office. Collapsing into her chair, she laughed into her hands. It had been easier than she’d thought. Now all she had to do was line up some help without Zack knowing what was going on. She reached for the phone to call her friend, Ellen, and breathed a big sigh of relief.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
MARTIN
Martin deliberately waited until the end of the week and a payday before approaching his captain, thinking at least that way he had a shot at Boyd’s being in a good mood. On top of that, he waited until after lunch when he knew the captain would have been to the bank and eaten at DeLaRosa’s. Perhaps the cap wouldn’t have the energy to get mad or, if he did, not to yell too loud. As soon as he saw Boyd drop into his chair, Martin launched himself. Knocking on the doorjamb, he said, “Captain, may I see you for a few minutes?” The guys often kidded Martin about how formal he sounded sometimes. He didn’t mean to. It just came out that way about half the time, especially when he was nervous or wasn’t thinking about it.
“Sit down, Richardson.” Boyd belched. “That hot sauce. It gets to me, you know?” Boyd was a balding, half-black, half-Latino man that Martin guessed was somewhere in his sixties. He kept his exact age a secret, as if he was afraid it would be used against him. He was a couple inches shorter than Martin but built like a refrigerator. In fact, he was fond of telling stories of how he used to play tackle on his high school football team. Nobody ever got past Ildefonso Boyd. He belched again.
“Yeah, not to mention the refried beans.” Martin studied the front of the desk before him, waiting for the right opening.
The captain laughed. “Right. So what can I do for you? Everything going okay? I heard about your sister. She okay?”
Martin jerked his head up. “What did you hear?” He wondered if the cap could know about her having a baby. Martin still meant to talk her out of it.
“About that Sellers creep, you know. She shoulda filed charges. We could’ve straightened him out.” He pulled a penknife from his pocket and opened it up and started picking at his teeth. “You know his old man was a big shot in the longshoreman’s union in Houston in his day.”
“He made a point of telling us that when she first started going out with him.”
“Hell, that didn’t hold any water with us. We jailed his butt lots of times when he used to come down here trying to throw his weight around. ‘Specially when he’d go out on the beach, like around the beginning of each summer, and get drunk and ogle the girls, you know?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“And once he beat up a woman at East Beach right in front of a crowd. Tore her bathing suit off her and everything.”
Martin flinched at the thought that Sellers had been raised by a man like that. “What a bastard.”
“Yep. Anyway…” Boyd kicked back in his chair.
“Captain,” Martin said, hating to interrupt the captain’s reverie but afraid he’d lose his chance if he didn’t speak up. “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”
Boyd sat upright, a wistful smile on his face. “Those were the days, though, Richardson, last century. A lot of stuff went down. You should’ve been there.”
“I believe you, Sir.”
The captain closed his knife and slipped it into his pants pocket. “So what is it?”
“Captain, you know how I’ve been lieutenant about two years?”
“What, you want my job? Get in line.”
Martin shook his head. “No, Sir. It’s not that.” He stared solemnly at Boyd. He wondered if he’d get mad and start hollering in Spanish. Martin hated it when Boyd did that. If he was going to get yelled at, he wanted to know what was being said. “I don’t want my job. What I mean is, I was wondering if I could quit?”
“Quit the force? You’re handing in your resignation?” The captain slammed his palm down on the top of his desk. “After what—”
“No. No, just being lieutenant. I’d like to go back to being sergeant. I’d like to go back on the street. Sir.”
“You’re kidding me. I don’t believe it. You want to give it up and go back on the street?”
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