by J. D. Mason
“You surprise me, Xavier. Never, in all my years at this firm have I ever known you to interfere in another attorney’s relationship with a client.”
“I never have, until now.”
Solomon shook his head. “Gatewood money pressing down on you?” he asked sarcastically.
Xavier didn’t respond.
Solomon stood up to leave. “I can appreciate the pressure you must be under, Xavier. Truly. But I’m a big boy, and a damn good attorney, more than capable of handling my workload and choosing my clients and making this firm a great deal of money. If the man has a problem with me, then he needs to come to me. If you have a problem with me, just say the word and I’ll pack up my client list and leave. But I’ll be damned if you or anybody else is going to tell me how to do my job.”
Solomon left, fuming. If Gatewood or even Xavier thought he was some punk that they could push around, then both of them could kiss his ass.
An hour later, Solomon was standing on Desi’s doorstep ringing her bell with her negotiated contract in his hand. He’d lied to Xavier about it being sent off to the publisher.
“Hey.” She answered the door smiling and barefoot.
Desi wore a simple sundress. Her hair was pulled away from her face. The woman was in her forties, old but in that moment, looked twenty years younger.
“Come on in.” She stepped aside. Solomon followed her into a massive but empty living room. The only thing in it was a blanket spread out in the middle of the floor. “The new furniture is being delivered in a few days,” she explained sounding a little embarrassed, seeing him standing there looking a bit confused.
“You just move in?”
She nodded. “A while ago.”
And she still hadn’t bought furniture?
“Is that the contract?”
Desi was prettier than he remembered, compact, with soft curves.
He handed her the package and then followed her into the kitchen to the center island. She looked at him and smiled hesitantly as she opened the envelope and laid out the contract. At first, she just looked at it, and then she began to leaf through each of the pages.
“There’s so much here,” she said nervously, tentatively glancing up at him. “It’s all good though?”
He nodded. “It is now.”
In that moment he understood that it wasn’t the money that had motivated him to take this project. Solomon, quite frankly, was intrigued. Desi intrigued him. When she first came to his office he expected to meet Desi Green, the bad guy. But that’s not what he saw then, and it certainly wasn’t what he saw in her now.
“So, I can sign it?” she asked, reluctantly, with beautiful, doe-like eyes.
“Yes,” he said, handing her a pen. “And when you’re done, I’ll drop it in the mail for you.”
Camelot
Olivia Gatewood sat up straight in her chair and gasped softly at the sight of him walking through the door. Oh, what a fine man he was. Tall, café au lait brown, with hooded eyes and a goatee perfectly trimmed framing perfect lips and a strong, square chin. She demurely averted her gaze and privately scolded herself for being so forward and so brazen as to stare, but … She slowly raised her gaze to meet his. He was staring too. Of course he was, she blushed. Olivia was a beautiful woman, and men stared. They couldn’t help themselves.
Jordan stopped before approaching his mother sitting on the patio just outside her bedroom suite. “How is she today, Abby?” he whispered to Olivia’s private nurse.
“Today’s a good day,” she whispered back. “But she may not know you,” she gently warned.
Jordan thanked her and walked over to his mother. She wouldn’t look at him, but he could tell that she was acting out a role she was used to playing. Olivia was a beautiful, Southern woman, reserved but flirtatious. There had been a time in her life when men had flocked to her, bearing gifts and promises, courting her the way a lady of her caliber should be courted, hoping to be the one she chose.
“Good afternoon,” he said, smiling. Jordan had been the object of this game before with his mother, and he didn’t mind indulging her from time to time. To refer to her as mother, or to remind her now, of such a thing, when she was that younger version of herself in her mind, would’ve been cruel.
She delicately cleared her throat, folded her small hands in her lap, and avoided looking at him. “Good evening,” she said in a tone as delicate as flower petals.
Olivia’s health began deteriorating after Julian’s death. The stress of the trial and the public attention weighed heavily on her. Olivia had a series of mini strokes, until a major one nearly took her life. Dementia had set in nearly a decade ago, and Jordan and his sister Janelle, who now lived in Atlanta, watched painfully as their mother vanished inside a shell of her former self.
Before Julian’s death, Olivia had been one of the most intriguing socialites in Texas, but as time went on, she retreated to the thirty-five-thousand-acre Gatewood estate north of Dallas, and became a recluse. Olivia seldom left the house anymore.
Miss Black Texas, 1961, Olivia Franklin was a sight to behold back then. His mother was the love of his life. She was seventy, and despite the deep lines etched around her eyes and mouth, the silver streaking through her hair, the crooked angle of her mouth when she smiled, she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on.
“May I offer you something cool to drink?” Olivia asked politely.
He smiled. His mother’s eyelashes fluttered and she hesitantly smiled back.
“Yes. Thank you,” Jordan replied.
She waved her hand in the air to get the nurse’s attention.
“Yes, ma’am?” Abby responded promptly and in character. She looked at Jordan, and winked so that Olivia wouldn’t see her.
“Could you please bring us two glasses of iced tea?” She looked at Jordan. “With lemon?”
He nodded.
“With lemon,” she continued.
“Certainly,” the nurse said, smiling, before disappearing.
“I hope you can stay for supper,” Olivia said coyly, brushing a stray hair from her face.
“It would be my pleasure, Miss Franklin,” Jordan told her.
He’d never been particularly close to his father. There were times when Julian was as much an anomaly to Jordan as he was to any stranger on the street. Most of the time, Julian seemed to wish he were someplace else on those rare occasions when he was home. He was tolerant of his wife. Olivia pretended not to notice. His sister pretended not to care. Jordan stayed away from him. When he found out his father was dead, it wasn’t Julian that he mourned. It was Olivia. He watched her heart break and a part of her died with him.
Desi was supposed to just go away. She was supposed to take the money and disappear from their lives. He’d spent millions on sorry-ass attorneys who couldn’t stop the inheritance. Desi had occupied every single day of his life for the last twenty-six years. Her name was always in the back of his mind, on the tip of his tongue.
Olivia was fragile, and she’d been hurt so much by the man she loved, the man who was supposed to love and cherish her. She’d been humiliated to the point that she’d become a hermit in that house. Desi was crazy if she believed he’d let her put his mother through that embarrassment all over again. The bitch didn’t have to say it but he knew what she planned on putting in that book. He had decided to wait, and let her make a fool of herself. Nobody in their right mind would believe her lies. It was her word against theirs. But if even one person believed her story, it would be one person too many.
“There’s a simple fix to this problem, Jordan. All this can be over, and you and your family can get on with your lives, put this behind you.”
“What do you need from me?”
Jordan was just a kid, not much older than Desi, but he was his father’s voice now.
“Permission.”
The team of lawyers never told him the details, and he didn’t ask. Desi Green was found guilty. That’s all th
at mattered.
“We’re having a lovely roasted quail tonight for supper,” his mother said eloquently. “With sweet peas, and a fresh tossed salad. For dessert,” she smiled coyly, “I’ve made peach cobbler from scratch. You do like peach cobbler. Don’t you?”
He smiled. “Yes. I love peach cobbler.”
Olivia blushed.
Judge Not
Russ Fleming had been retired for six years, and he’d all but forgotten that that girl had even existed until he read in the paper that she had inherited millions from Julian Gatewood. Justice certainly had a sense of humor. She had been convicted of killing a man, and then ended up with his money. Russ was old enough to be able to tout that he’d seen it all, but that right there caused him to stumble a bit.
“Desdimona Green’s writing a book.” Tom Billings called out of the blue. Like Russ, he’d retired years ago, and the two of them hadn’t spoken in ages. “It’s in the paper,” Tom explained with his slow way of talking.
“I know.” Russ sighed. “I’ve read about it.”
Neither of them said a word for several minutes. Both men were in their late sixties, and had grown up together in Blink. Tom was the sheriff twenty-six years ago when Desi Green was arrested for murder. Russ ended up being the judge presiding over the case. A big thing like murder in a small town like Blink was news enough, but a big thing like the murder of one of the richest men in Texas was almost too much for their small town to handle.
A tidal wave of reporters rushed Blink from all over the country to cover the story of the teenage girl who’d shot and killed Gatewood. Desi Green was eighteen at the time, but she could’ve passed for twelve or thirteen.
“What do you think she’s going to write about?” Tom probed.
“Her life, Tom,” Russ shot back. “It says she’s writing a book about her life. I take it that’s what it’ll be about.”
Again, Tom hesitated. Russ could almost hear the wheels turning in the man’s head through the phone.
“What are you worried about, Tom?” Russ asked, irritably.
His wife came out onto the porch carrying two glasses of lemonade. She put one down on the small table close to him, and kissed his cheek. She sat down in the chair next to him, and sipped from her glass.
“I ain’t worried,” Tom finally said.
“Good.”
“But…”
Russ sighed, frustrated. “But what?”
“I saw her a few weeks ago,” Tom explained. “You know that she sold the house.”
“I heard.”
“I don’t know, Russ. Now that she’s got all that money … I don’t think it’s right for her to go off and write a book. She needs to let the past stay in the past and let the Gatewoods rest in peace.”
“There’s no law against writing a book, Tom, and even if there was, there wouldn’t be a damn thing you or I could do about it.”
Tom was quiet for several beats before continuing. “You go to Mary’s funeral?”
Russ huffed irritably. “No, I didn’t.”
“Mary Travis said she saw Ida in the grocery store before Mary moved to Cold Springs,” Tom continued nervously. “Said Ida looked at her funny. She just stared so hard at Mary that it set her hair on end. Wouldn’t say nothing to her, but wouldn’t stop staring at her.”
“So, she stared at the woman!” Russ shot back, impatiently. “Big deal!”
Tom was one foolish old man if he thought he could bait Russ into admitting to any conversation he may or may not have had with either woman. Ida Green was gone. Nothing she said or did back then mattered one bit anymore and Mary Travis had been buried weeks ago. “You’re fishing in an empty pond, Tom. Ida Green was a concerned and distraught mother, torn to pieces by the fact that her child shot and killed the man she loved. She was grief stricken,” he reasoned. “Mary Travis was the forewoman at the trial who read the verdict. Of course Ida hated her. She hated anybody who had anything to do with her daughter’s conviction, which is understandable,” he quickly added. “She had a right to be angry, just like the system had a right to convict a killer for murder.”
“I’m too old for this. I don’t want my name associated with anything related to Desdimona or Ida Green, ’specially not in a book!”
“Why’d you call me, Tom?”
“I called to see if you knew anything about what she was going to put into that book.”
“What makes you think I’d know anything about Desi Green or her book?”
Tom hesitated. “You know everything, Russ.”
He hung up without saying another word to dumb-ass Tom Billings.
“What was that about?” his wife, Delilah, asked. Concern was written all over her face.
“Desi Green and her goddamned book,” he said, gruffly tossing the newspaper he’d been reading on the floor of the porch.
Delilah reached over and rubbed her hand on top of his. She shook her head slowly, and then stared thoughtfully out into the yard. “Poor Olivia Gatewood,” she said, solemnly. “I feel so bad for that woman.” She frowned at her husband. “Remember how she looked in that courtroom? Beautiful woman, torn down, and worn out by the burden of the death of her husband, finding out about his mistress and having to sit there in the same room with that woman.” She pursed her lips together. “I tell you, I couldn’t have done it.”
He shrugged. “Well, the man was no saint, but he didn’t deserve what happened to him either.”
“She’s just adding insult to injury.” She looked over at her husband. “Desi Green? She got so much more than she deserved.” She shook her head. “She kills a man and then ends up with money from him, and now, she wants to write a book about it? Is that what’s got Tom so up in arms?”
“He’s worried about his reputation,” Russ explained as generically as he could. “Worried about what she might write about him.”
She chuckled. “He should be happy anybody’s writing anything about him. Tom could end up being famous when it comes out. Add some excitement to his dull life.”
Russ smiled thinly.
“She didn’t shoot him!” Ida Green’s anguished voice echoed through his memories. “Desi wouldn’t do this, Judge Fleming! She loved Julian and she wouldn’t do this!”
Some things spoke more clearly and loudly than a mother’s pleading voice. Some outcomes were determined by bigger and greater things. Justice came in all shapes and sizes, and it didn’t necessarily look the same to different people, but it was still justice nonetheless. In the end, Ida Green wasn’t any different than anybody else sitting in that courtroom. She wanted justice. Russ gave her her fair share.
“Nobody wins here, Ida,” he’d said to her, sitting trembling in that chair across from his desk in his chambers. “A man’s dead. An innocent man. Nobody wins. But you do as you’re told, then maybe—everybody can lose a little less.”
“You think she’ll write about you in her book, honey?” Delilah asked, grinning.
He tried to shrug it off as best he could. “I’m sure she’s got a lot more to say in her book than to talk about an old, retired, gray-haired judge.”
Lonnie
“Dammit Jordan!” Lonnie gasped, fisting the bedsheets. “Dammit!”
Moments later, she came all over his face.
He’d begged her to let him come over to her place. “I just want a taste, Lonnie. Won’t take long.”
Less than five minutes after she’d let him in, Lonnie was having the orgasm of a lifetime and he never even bothered to loosen his tie. When he was finished, Jordan stood next to the side of her bed, adjusted his necktie, and loomed over Lonnie, trembling on the bed. Jordan wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and smiled.
“You need to wash your face,” she finally recovered enough to say.
He drove his hands deep into his pockets, adding emphasis to a riveting and impressive hard-on, straining the front of his pants. “I’ll see you later.”
Without saying another word, Jordan turne
d and left, closing her front door quietly behind him.
* * *
Abigail Parker was in her forties, divorced once, married now, with five kids, two of them step. She’d been a nurse for going on fifteen years now and loved it. She loved her job, and Mrs. Gatewood. She made decent money, enough to help pay the bills, but two of her children wanted to go to college. She’d always encouraged her children to reach for the stars, and hoped that they could at least get a hand on the moon. A college education wasn’t the norm in her family. Abby had gone back to school after her divorce from her first husband and she did it while taking care of two small children on her own. She couldn’t even get child support from their father. But she promised herself that she’d finish and she did. It was hard but she did it. She’d worked in a hospital for a while after she’d graduated, but Abby preferred more of a caregiver role to a select few than to be on rotation in a hospital. She was good at taking care of folks. It was her passion.
“Thanks for meeting me here.” The stylish woman across from her didn’t even ask Abby’s name when she sat down. Tall, and slender, she had curves, but not the full kind Abby had. And she wore her hair cut short like a man’s, but nobody would ever mistake a woman like her for a man. Everything she had on probably cost more than Abby’s car sitting out there in the parking lot.
The waiter came right over to the table and asked what she wanted to drink.
“A nice, chilled Riesling would be nice,” she said, smiling.
She could’ve been a high fashion model, she was so beautiful, with dark and smooth skin, sparkling white teeth, and large exotic eyes.
She looked at Abby and smiled. “I hope you haven’t been waiting too long,” she said, apologetically.
Abby managed to smile back. “No. Not long at all.”
“Well, I do appreciate your time. I know you must be busy.”
A woman like her apologizing for taking up Abby’s time? It seemed odd to Abby.
“I’m starving,” she said, scanning the menu.
The menu had no prices on anything, which told Abby that she probably couldn’t afford anything on it.