Houseboat

by Paul Shadinger

  I finally got her calmed down enough that she could tell me in some sort of a coherent manner what was going on. She explained about Richard calling Green on Monday after the two of them had left and Green demanding a meeting as soon as possible. Green claimed his client, Miss Bottomsley, was so distressed she was now under a doctor’s care. Green had also insinuated there was a possible lawsuit waiting in the wings if Jennifer didn’t either withdraw her claim, or prove she actually was somehow related to Slim, which Green had said he doubted was possible since it wasn’t true. Jennifer begged me to go with her to the meeting. At first I had resisted, but after I realized she was crying on the phone. DUH! Of course, I gave in.

  What is it with women and tears? As if they know once the tears start to flow, a man can never say NO! To be honest, I probably would have gone anyway, but the tears sealed my fate.

  So Jennifer and I arranged to meet in Richard’s office at the scheduled time. I checked to see if I was going to be available, making sure I could be there for her. From past experience, I knew Richard wouldn’t have any problems with me bringing in BJ. However, I felt Bottomsley, and whomever she might have in her entourage, probably wouldn’t understand why a dog was present at her meeting. I still maintain: love me, love my dog, but I was willing to forgo having BJ with me today.

  Once more I donned a suit and when I arrived at his offices, Richards’s receptionist took me to a small, but luxuriously appointed room directly behind Richard’s office. I was only in the room for a few moments when the receptionist brought Jennifer in. What I saw shocked and worried me terribly. Jennifer appeared so pale and wan. The woman I had dropped off last Friday and the woman standing in front of me now didn’t look anything alike. From the looks of Jennifer, I could imagine how terrified she probably felt just being in this room. The idea of meeting the now infamous Miss Audrey Bottomsley was obviously enough to cause her great fear. If I had to be honest too, I was a bit concerned as well. Bottomsley’s reputation had preceded her.

  I was thankful I’d thought to call ahead and ask Richard if he could have a more private area than the front waiting room for Jennifer and me to wait. I knew what she dreaded most was having to meet Bottomsley in person. It was only at Silversmith’s insistence that she was even going to confront the woman. I trust Richard, but I had to admit I sure hoped he knew what he was doing. It was my belief Richard felt when Jennifer finally confronted Bottomsley, if Bottomsley was not on the up and up, Bottomsley would cave in, and go away. At least at the meeting, Richard would see what she was trying to pull. Once Richard understood what Bottomsley was up to, he would see if he could put a stop to it. I guess it was an okay strategy, but I knew the meeting would be hard on Jennifer.

  At first, Jennifer sat with me so I could hold her hand to try to comfort her. After a few minutes, She stood and started to pace the room. She reminded me of a caged wild animal looking for a way to escape.

  After around five minutes, there was a sharp rap at the door. She whirled and stared intently at the door as if it held some unknown danger beyond. It turned out to be Richard who asked us to follow him.

  As we walked through Richard’s office to a large adjoining conference room he told us Bottomsley and her entourage had arrived and were waiting downstairs in the main waiting area. The new room had a long, expensive looking wooden table occupying the center. At the far end of the room were floor to ceiling windows with a commanding view of Puget Sound. Clearly this was the office of a very successful firm. Several chairs sat along each side of the table, and at the far end of table was a phone. What surprised me was the presence of a few scattered ashtrays on the tabletop.

  The other three walls consisted of bookshelves stretching from floor to ceiling, each bookshelf packed with books. I wondered to myself if anyone had ever read all the books volumes crammed onto the shelves.

  Richard motioned us to take a seat at one end of the table next to him with our backs to the window. Richard sat at the very end of the table, and Jennifer sat to his left. I sat to the left of her. I don’t know if it was on purpose or not, but the only chairs left at the table were now on both sides of the far end. There wasn’t a chair at the end of the table. It was an interesting arrangement, because it did two things. The first thing was now the light coming through the window was behind us which put our faces somewhat in the dark, while it would make the others at the far end have to squint. It also left Richard as the only person at an end of the table. It put him in the power position at the table.

  As soon as we were seated, Richard leaned over and placed a hand on top of Jennifer’s. Using a soft, gentle tone of voice, Richard spoke her, “Jennifer, please don’t worry.” The frightened look on her face didn’t waver. Richard continued, “Do you trust me?” Jennifer nodded her head slightly. “Then let me do my job. I am here to protect you. Trust me. You will be a very happy woman by the end of the meeting.” With that he winked, patted her hand and once more asked her, “Do you trust me?” Jennifer nodded her head a bit harder and this time gave Richard the slightest smile.

  His reassurance seemed to help and I saw her posture relax a little and her face didn’t have the “deer in the headlight” look it had before. In just a few moments there was a knock on the door. I watched as Richard pushed a button I hadn’t noticed before mounted flush on the table. The door opened again and one of Richard’s secretaries ushered five people into the far end of the room.

  I watched as all five of them walked single file through the doorway and into the room. The first person in line was a small man with thin pale blond hair parted exactly down the middle and a pencil thin mustache. When I first looked at him, I thought of a tenor in a barbershop quartet. His movements were jerky and quick, and he reminded me of a small bird who was constantly in motion. From the way Don Green had sounded on the phone when I talked to him, I wondered if this might be him.

  The next person through the door was a grossly large woman who could have been anywhere from fifty to seventy-five. Since she was the only woman in the group I assumed this had to be Audrey Bottomsley.

  I had no idea who selected the woman’s outfit or where she got her sense of style. She was probably very serious about her appearance, but she had failed miserably. The woman’s hair was dyed an extremely ugly shade of blue, and yes, I said blue! In addition to the hideous color, she had it styled in a mass of tight little curls. Perched directly on top of her blue curls sat a funny little dark blue straw hat which was about the size of a cupcake. Sticking out of the top of the cupcake hat was a fake daisy. When she walked, the daisy swayed back and forth with her movements and when she stopped, the daisy bobbed a couple more times before it came to rest. Having witnessed this spectacle, I looked up at the ceiling for a moment, trying desperately to get a grip on my emotions. It was becoming more difficult by the second not to laugh aloud.

  And if anything could have been more absurd, there was Bottomsley’s dress. It resembled a tent, a very big, dark blue tent that came halfway down her calves. Her dress was huge and her breasts were even more impressive—if that’s the correct word—than the dress. Her titanic breasts were ensconced in what I believed must be a heavily wired triple G bra. The front of her dress appeared to be dangerously strained, struggling to restrain them. It wouldn’t have surprised me if the seams of her dress finally ripped open at any moment due to the mass of her corpulent body and abundant breasts. On one arm she carried what resembled a small suitcase but I assume it was her purse. Yes, it was also blue. Her stockings were droopy, and they hung bagged around her ankles, and to top it all off, or should I say to bottom it all off, she was wearing badly scuffed blue shoes.

  Her makeup would have done a clown proud. Her face was heavily powdered and she had bright pink dots painted on her cheeks. Her lips were a dark red and I noticed some of her face powder had spilled onto the front of her dress.

  As I watched her move into the room, I was reminded of somet
hing. Suddenly it came to me, she resembled the prow of some large ocean-going container ship, which would push the waves out of the way rather than bob up and down like a smaller vessel would. My analogy spread to the four men who were around her. They made me think of four tugboats getting ready to move a large ship into a berth. As my mind raced through each of these successive thoughts, It was getting harder and harder to keep from laughing.

  I tried to look at Bottomsley as objectively as I could and get a grip on my imagination. I noticed under her heavily caked makeup she had a very red face. Her face was completely round and her features were exactly centered. She had a funny little nose, with a slight upturn at the end, giving her a swine-like appearance. Bottomsley possessed several chins and nestled among the folds of fat around her neck was what looked like a pearl necklace. In addition to her peculiar looks, her face was frozen in a permanent scowl.

  Someone once said that there’s no such thing as a truly ugly person. Obviously, they’d never met ‘ol Audrey. There are many jokes about people you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley, and for my money, Audrey was now at the top of my list. Now that I had seen Bottomsley, I felt sorry for Jennifer and what she had gone through, and the difficult time Bottomsley had caused her emotionally. This woman, and I hated to use that term, was an angry, unhappy person who wanted to make life an unpleasant experience for anyone and everyone else she came in contact with.

  Walking behind her was a young man who I guessed was in his early to mid-twenties. He was also grossly overweight, and dressed in an all-black outfit. His ensemble consisted of a black hooded sweatshirt, a black shirt visible under that, and baggy black pants with lots of pockets and zippers, which he wore so low they looked as if they would fall off at any second. He finished off his getup with black, ratty looking tennis shoes, and grimy socks which might have been white at one time but were now just an ugly shade of gray. The punk even had his fingernails painted black and his ears had some sort of strange hoops in the lobes. His earrings had stretched holes in the lobes to the size of a dime and on top of that, he had a large chrome ring through base of his nose. His face was pasty white and covered with a growth of several days’ worth of old stubble, which did nothing to help hide his pimple pockmarks. His dyed black hair was arranged in a row of five spikes sticking straight up from the top of his head. I wondered who this punk was and how he fit in with the rest of the group.

  Next in line was a very handsome gentleman. He was wearing an expensive looking, well-tailored three-piece suit. He was a breath of fresh air with his normal appearance. His silver hair had been cut at an expensive salon and his moustache was well-trimmed. He had the look of success stamped in both the way he dressed and in his manner. If I was casting a movie and needed a senator, or the President of the United States, I’d have cast this man for the part. Although I didn’t know who this gentleman was, I could instantly tell that he was very good at whatever it was he did. He was a most impressive looking gentleman.

  Last to enter was another three-piece suit. However, there was no resemblance between him and the first gentleman. Where the first one looked well groomed, the second man looked like he’d slept in his suit. He was wearing pants that bagged at the knees with a rumpled and stretched out coat. Both of his coat pockets bulged out from constant usage, and I wondered what he was carrying in them. He was wearing a yellowed shirt with a tie that was a riot of unfortunate color. Even from the far end of the table I could see he was in need of a shave. Being fair though, I’ll admit he was one of those persons that can shave three times a day and still look as if they needed a shave.

  He was a portly man who looked as if he was of Mediterranean extraction. His face had an olive complexion, but his eyes were definitely his best feature. They were soft brown puppy dog eyes. His dark hair looked like it had been some time since it had seen a brush yet there was something about that man which made me think he was not somebody to take lightly. There was a certain look of intelligence in his eyes and I felt it would be unwise to underestimate him. I guess you could call him an intelligent looking Teddy bear.

  The man who I assumed was Green pulled out an armchair for the heavyset woman. When Bottomsley tried to sit, the arms were too close together; the chair was too narrow for her massive butt. It was obvious we needed a different chair and it took a while to locate one. Once the chair was in place, Bottomsley again tried to sit down. When she dropped the last few inches onto the chair, I heard the air whistle out of the cushion and the chair creaked. The person who I still figured was Green waited until Audrey was sitting comfortably in her chair.

  The five of them carefully camped out at the other end of the conference table away from the three of us. They stayed exactly where Richard had arranged the chairs. The punk looking kid sat at the far corner of the table next to the fat woman. The man I thought was Green sat on her other side. The other two men sat on the opposite side of the table with a couple of chairs between them.

  Richard seemed to take this all in stride. He looked at the five people seated at the far end of the table, smiled warmly, and asked, “Is this everyone, then?” The man who I assumed was Green nodded his head yes.

  After finally seeing how absurd Bottomsley looked, and the matter of finding her a chair to fit her massive frame seemed to have relaxed Jennifer even more than Richard’s pep talk had done. Under the table, she gave my hand a soft squeeze. I turned my hand over and Jennifer quickly intertwined her fingers with mine. I was happy to see that she was becoming more at ease with the situation.

  After a short pause, Richard started the meeting by asking if anyone wanted coffee. Everyone, except for the young man dressed in black, shook their heads negatively. The young punk asked if there was any beer, and the other three men glared at him. Bottomsley went one step further though, and after she glowered at him, she told him to shut up. The punk responded by sliding down in his chair, and he crossed his arms over his fat stomach.

  Richard paused and then spoke again, “I’m Richard Silversmith, Miss Rockingham’s attorney.” He gestured towards the two of us, and continued. “And this is Miss Jennifer Rockingham and Mr. Matt Preston.” All four of the men at the end of the table stared long and hard at me.

  The man I assumed was Green stood up and started the introductions at his end of the table. “I’m Don Green,” and as he pointed to the woman next to him he continued, “And I represent Miss Bottomsley.” So far, I was batting a thousand. He looked at me for a few moments, and then went on, “And I don’t understand why Mr. Preston is here. If he’s just here to protect his so-called interest in that houseboat thing, I find it in poor taste. If he’s here…”

  Jennifer spoke up, cutting Green off in mid-sentence, “Mr. Preston is here at my request.” Jennifer had released my hand and now she pointed at the piggy creature sitting next to Bottomsley and said, “The same as her guest sitting over there. In addition, I’ve reviewed all the papers pertaining to the houseboat. Regardless of what you or anyone else might think, it’s his.”

  Green’s face turned red, and he started to sputter. “Young lady, you are in no position to dictate any of the final distribution from Mr. Rockingham’s estate.”

  Richard held up his hands, smiled and spoke softly, “Please, please…hold on.” He didn’t raise his voice but it cut over the din, “Hold on here, let’s not lose sight of the reason for this meeting.” The table grew still, “Mr. Green, Mr. Preston is here at the request of Mr. Rockingham’s daughter, Miss Rockingham,” Richard paused, and then added with some force in his voice, “and myself.”

  The woman who I’d assumed was Bottomsley piped up, “I resent that you refer to her, (Bottomsley waved one of her fat fingers at Jennifer) as my dear dead brother’s daughter. You don’t know her relationship to my dear brother. I’d think that we should…” at which point, Richard held up his hand, “Please, can we at least first finish the introductions?”

  Green cont
inued, “This is Miss Audrey Bottomsley, Mr. Rockingham’s sister.” I was still batting a thousand.

  I heard Jennifer mutter under her breath, “Stepsister.”

  Green pointed to the well-dressed older gentleman, “This is Marvin Galante, from the law firm Galante, Galante and Epstein. Over the years Mr. Galante has done a lot of work for Mr. Rockingham, and we felt it was fitting that he was present today.” I recognized the name from the papers Scott had filed for Slim and me.

  He then pointed to the portly man in the rumpled suit, “And this is Julius Epstein, who also has done a lot of work for Mr. Rockingham over the years.”

  After a long pause, and with a disdainful look on his face, he finally pointed at the little hood all dressed in black, “And this is Dudley Bell. Mr. Bell is Miss Bottomsley’s nephew, whom she helped raise after his mother and father deserted him.”

  I thought to myself, “Holy shit, if that kid was mine I’d have deserted him, too.” The young man hadn’t even acknowledged his introduction to the rest of the group. Instead he continued to sit in his chair with his arms folded over his fat chest glaring at Jennifer. For a moment, I considered making a scene by asking why the nephew was present, but I knew Richard would feel put out with me if I did.

  Richard smiled at everyone seated at the far end of the table. He reached inside a folder resting on the table and he extracted three pieces of paper. He stood and moved away from his chair heading to the far end of the table. As he walked to the five persons seated there, he spoke, “I see from Mr. Green and Miss Bottomsley’s comments and their questions exactly what their basic concerns are. Let me first present these documents. I believe these papers should answer a lot of questions, and then we can go from there.”

  Richard walked to the end of the table and handed the papers to Green. Green’s face was turning blood red and his hands had started to tremble. I wondered if he was having a stroke. Richard smiled and continued, “As you can see, the first piece of paper is a marriage license showing that Elmo Fester Rockingham and Alice Rose Anderson were married by a justice of the peace in Santa Fe, New Mexico.