“No,” Tru shook her head. “We talked about you learning to deal with people more politely.”
“That doesn’t include a hostile witness during an interrogation.”
“I’m not a hostile witness,” Liz snapped.
Trudy held up her hands, hoping that was the universal sign for peace, not surrender. “Let me handle this, Bee.”
“Who is Bee?”
Trudy flinched. “Liz. I meant Liz. Let me handle this, Liz. Why don’t you go ahead and get to work now? Ben’s just upset because he’s worried about…”
“You’re hostile all right.” Ben talked right over Tru. “Why is that by the way? This job too tough for you? Maybe you don’t think you get paid enough. Maybe you know more about these crank letters and emails than you’re telling.”
Trudy felt like the filling in an Oreo.
Ben pushed her out of the way. It would have worked if Liz hadn’t been pushing in the opposite direction. They were both too busy to notice she wasn’t moving.
“Maybe some of these letters are coming from you.” Ben leaned over Trudy’s head.
She wished she were a foot taller, and, while she was wishing, she might as well wish to be an offensive lineman for the Dallas Cowboys.
“Or maybe you’re trying to scare a raise out of Tru by harassing her.” Ben’s eyes narrowed. “Or maybe you think you could make more as a bull dog than you’re making now.”
Low blow. Tru had noticed Liz’s clothing for the day on her flying trip downstairs. She wore a knee length turtleneck sweater. Beige. It emphasized her rather unfortunate resemblance to a bulldog. She thought a few minutes of intensive counseling right now might be just the thing for Ben. Too bad she was so busy not getting crushed. She wondered how her real-world counseling actually worked. How did you interrupt someone who behaved in a horribly antisocial way and interject your advice? She decided she had to try.
“Could you please let me have some room here?” Trudy spoke into Ben’s shirt front. “There’s no reason we can’t discuss this calmly, like reasonable adults. We don’t have to let our tempers have free rein.”
We? Wasn’t that how the Queen of England talked? We are not amused.
“And how do you figure I’m a witness?” Liz barked. “Witness to what? Nothing ever goes on around here.”
“You’re a witness to the comings and goings of this house. You know who calls, who sends mail. How is it that Tru hasn’t gotten a nasty letter for over a month until yesterday? The emails keep flooding in. The calls come to her work, but not home. If this loon is still harassing her in other ways, why did he stop writing?”
Ben must have exhaled, because Trudy had a square inch to move. She twisted around and faced Liz’s electrified, ebony black hair and her bared teeth. She regretted changing positions.
“They come here,” Liz snarled. “Letters and calls both. I just hang up on the callers and throw the crank letters in the trash.”
“What?” Ben went ballistic behind Trudy and she was suddenly glad she couldn’t see him. “You get repeated threatening letters and calls to Tru’s unlisted phone number and you don’t inform the police or even tell your boss, the woman who pays your salary?”
“Liz is right.” Trudy wished she could get behind Ben. Sure, he was bossy and ignored her and pushed her around. But he was a cupcake compared to Liz. “I did tell her to throw them away. This is my fault.”
“I told her about it.” Liz acted as if Trudy hadn’t spoken. “How do you think she knows? She wouldn’t even know which way was up if I didn’t point the direction every morning.”
Trudy narrowed her eyes. The ungrateful woman could at least acknowledge that her employer just took the blame for what went on in this house
“She told you to do that a month ago. When the letters kept coming from the same source, you should have fumbled around until you found a light switch in your brain and realized this was something more serious. Then you should have done something about it.”
“Ben, calm down.”
He ignored her. “Instead, you toss the letters and hang up on the callers. You leave the phone number the same and don’t even tell Tru she might be in danger.”
“If she’s in danger, it’s your fault. That man probably just wanted to talk to her. Now you’ve interfered and made him mad. You probably made him flip out, and she didn’t help because Miss Big Shot TV Star Lady here is too selfish to give the poor guy a few minutes of her precious time, and you were too arrogant to let a desperate man have his say.”
“I’m not selfish, Liz. I tried to help him.” Trudy was dismayed to hear Liz say that about her. “You shouldn’t say things like…”
“I saved her life.” Ben leaned over until Trudy could see him by her shoulder. “She just stood there and let him drag her off. If I hadn’t been there, she’d have been led to the slaughter like some brainless sheep.”
“A brainless sheep? There’s no need for either of you to call me names.”
“She wouldn’t get out the door and head in the right direction in the morning if it weren’t for me.”
Trudy felt a little spit on her face when Liz yelled, “She doesn’t have the sense God gave belly button lint. It’s a wonder—.”
The spit and the insults and maybe the Oreo filling treatment were all too much.
“All…right…knock…it…off!” She couldn’t believe she could shout that loud.
Silence fell over the room.
Ben craned his neck and looked down at her. Liz stepped a couple of millimeters away from her. Trudy felt a little light-headed, but good. Very good.
“I’m not going to stand here and be called names by two people whose salary I pay.”
“You don’t pay my salary, Tru-Blu.” Ben rested a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m a taxpayer, so shut up!” She glared up at Ben, surprised to see a rather satisfied smirk on his face.
Liz’s fat, grubby hand closed on the shoulder Ben wasn’t holding. “You’re not going to talk to me like that, you little…”
Tru twirled to face Liz, this time with some room to operate. “You’re fired.”
“About time.” Eleanor stood not two feet away, holding a cast iron skillet, waiting for the go-ahead to bash somebody.
“You can’t fire me, I quit.” Liz fumbled in her purse and pulled out her cigarettes. “You won’t last a day around here without…”
“Fired! Now! Get out!” Trudy thought she’d gotten all her temper out of her system with the one blast. Apparently, she was wrong.
Liz reached out, then glanced over Trudy’s shoulder. Trudy didn’t know what Liz saw, but she lowered her hand, stuck the cigarette in her mouth, and pulled out a lighter.
Eleanor snatched the lighter away.
“Hey, that’s mine.”
“Light up when you’re on your way out.” Eleanor went to the front door and tossed the lighter onto the lawn.
Liz glared, and turned back to Trudy. “The computer’s got a password on it. You can’t even open it to pay your bills. You can’t make your house payment without me. You can’t…”
“Eleanor.”
“Yes, Trudy?”
“Go try and open the computer. If you can’t do it, call in a technician to either open it or block my personal information and start new accounts. Have that include new bank account numbers and any other financial accounts Liz has access too.”
Trudy turned back to Liz. “The nice thing about bills, Liz, is they try like the very dickens to collect them. If I don’t pay when they first bill me, I promise, they’ll try again next month. So, I’ll manage just fine alone. You know I lived without you for the first, oh, twenty-six years of my life. How do you suppose I managed that?”
Liz opened her mouth, glanced over Trudy’s shoulder, and closed her mouth.
“Have you got any personal possessions in that office?” Trudy asked.
Ben said with quiet menace, “It will be my pleasure to escort you anywhere in t
he house to pick up your things. But you aren’t going to wander around here alone, not even for one split second.”
Liz snapped, “You’ve got nothing here I want.”
With enough rage to crack the ceramic tiles in the foyer, she stomped past Trudy and Ben.
Just as she jerked the door open, Liz turned and focused her bulldog eyes on Trudy. She said with acid sweetness, “The password for everything is doctorwimp101.”
Trudy took a couple of steps past Ben to prove to Liz she didn’t intend to back down. When the door slammed, Trudy checked the ridiculous chandelier overhead to see if it would come down on their heads.
And now that she’d handled one obnoxious, insulting person in her life, she had another one to deal with.
She turned on Ben.
He looked up as if he were trying to decide if he needed to get out from under her chandelier.
13
Ben decided the thousand or so light bulbs on the ceiling were going to hold. He gave Tru a pat on the shoulder. “I’m really proud of you. My mild mannered little kitten has some claws after all. Good job booting Liz out the door.”
“Get your hand off me.”
Ben lifted his hand slowly from her shoulder. Eleanor snickered but he didn’t take his eyes off Hurricane Tru.
“Okay.” He’d wanted to toughen her up. But now he felt a twinge of regret. The kitten had become a tiger, and turned on him.
“Brainless little sheep?” Tru clenched her teeny soft fists and took a menacing step toward him.
He wasn’t scared.
He leaned over until his nose almost touched hers. “I wondered how many insults you’d stand there and take before you defended yourself. I had a list of names to call you as long as my arm.”
Brushing one finger down the tip of her nose, he said, “And I didn’t mean any of ’em. I think you’re great. One of the smartest, nicest, bravest ladies I’ve ever met. Too sweet for your own good but, trust me on this, I know there are a lot worse things to be.”
Biting back a smile, he watched her turmoil rage. She wanted to tear him limb from limb. Good. His plan was working. Slowly, her rigid shoulders relaxed and the red in her face lightened. Then she got all wide-eyed, as if worried about how rude she’d been.
“I told you to shut up.”
“You sure did, darlin’.” Ben shrugged, proud of her. “And I deserved it.”
“No, you didn’t. I’m supposed to be helping you deal with bad situations in a more loving way. And here I’ve been the worse possible example. My disgraceful behavior this morning may have set your counseling back days or even weeks.”
Ben couldn’t look away from her. She was all stormy and irritated, with too much color in her cheeks and the blue in her eyes nearly burning him alive. “I’m still improving. Didn’t you notice how nice I was to the killer bee?”
“Nice?” Tru screeched. “You were rude. You insulted her and shouted. For heaven’s sake, Ben, you called her a bull dog.”
“Noticed that, did you?” Ben couldn’t hold back a snort of laughter.
Tru’s eyes narrowed.
“I know I was rude. But when it was about you, I was teasing. You’re such a sweetheart, I just couldn’t resist.”
“You weren’t going to snort anymore, as I recall.”
“That’s my last one.” Ben put his hand over his heart and kept a straight face even though it almost killed him.
Tru shook her head and turned to Eleanor. “What’ll we do about covering the phone today?”
Eleanor waved her hands, one holding the skillet, at Trudy. “Go on to work. I’ll handle it. And I think I’ll hire the next personal assistant, if it’s all the same to you.”
Tru nodded as if she were exhausted. Ben took a closer look and saw the dark circles under her bloodshot eyes and the slight trembling of her lips. She was exhausted. “How much sleep did you get last night?”
Trudy grabbed her purse. “Come on, I’m going to be late to work.”
“That much, huh?” Holding her arm, he opened the door, sorry he’d put her through this morning’s scene with Liz. He could have waited until she’d had a good night’s sleep. “Eleanor, I want this ridiculous door fixed as soon as possible. It ought to be steel reinforced. And change the lock, now that Liz is fired.”
Eleanor gave him a sharp little salute. “Yes, sir, we need to keep Trudy safe.”
“You’re finally growing a spine, Tru. Good girl.”
Trudy turned and faced him, uncertain how to right the wrong she’d done to Ben. “What I did today isn’t growing a spine. It’s losing my temper. I’m not proud of myself.”
“Well, I am. I like to see a woman who won’t let herself be pushed around. That’s great.”
He grinned at her like a smug ten-year-old. She had to move fast to repair the damage she’d done. How about if she used blatant manipulation, focusing all her womanly wiles on Ben? That ought to take about three seconds, seeing as how she didn’t have a wily bone in her body.
“Okay, I did something you think is great. I learned how to tackle a difficult situation and not wilt in the face of a confrontation. Now it’s your turn.”
“My turn for what?”
Trudy tried out her very sweetest, manipulative, female smile. “Your turn to try things my way. I’ll take a personal day tomorrow. My methods include intensive twenty-four-hour-a-day therapy. My patients are supposed to have someone live with them, correcting old, incorrect responses. I can’t come and live with you—” A certain gleam in Ben’s eyes told Trudy he planned to say something she’d have to slug him for, so she hurried on. “—but I can spend all day tomorrow with you.”
“I don’t have a day off. Those pesky criminals don’t take annual leave days.”
“Pick me up as usual, and I’ll go to the office with you. I’ll encourage and gently instruct you on how to correct basic, chronic antisocial reflexes as you interact with your peers.”
“As I what?”
He was sweet—dumb as a rock—but really sweet. “Let me say it in layman’s terms.”
“I can live in hope.” Ben looked at the roof of his truck.
Or maybe he was praying. Trudy wasn’t certain which. “It is critical, as your counselor, that I invest myself through time and effort, in becoming an encouraging, responsible, caring, prosocial adult role model if I hope to effect significant change in your inter-relative responses.”
“Do you have any aspirin?” Ben looked like he was contemplating ramming the truck into a cement barricade and sending them flying off the overpass.
If he did, Trudy vowed she’d treat it as a teachable moment and instruct him on more appropriate uses of his energy. “Working with you isn’t the same as working with subjects often referred to by criminologist as super-predators. Unlike those born into abject moral poverty.”
Ben glanced at her. “I’ve heard you mention moral poverty before. That means it’s a sin to let people be poor, right?”
“Moral poverty is a situation in which there is no underpinning in the rearing of a child regarding basic human decency and a misplaced regard for activities historically considered by the general population as immoral.”
Ben’s hands clenched the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. “I am begging you to speak English.”
“What I mean is,” she said with exaggerated patience. “I’m going to hang around you every minute and, every time you’re rude, I’m going to give you a swift kick in your backside.”
Ben relaxed. “Oh. Okay. That I understand.”
He sat up straight and glanced at her. “Except, uh…no, you’re not. I don’t think you’d better come into the station with me. The precinct house is no place for a civilian, unless they’re under arrest, of course.”
“Of course.” Trudy smiled. “I fired Liz. I let you manipulate me into being tough with her. You owe me.”
“How does your dumping the two-legged bulldog mean I owe you?” Ben wheeled his truck, l
ike a black bullet, off the interstate.
Trudy looked for a posted speed limit sign without success. Ben was driving unusually fast. Probably anxious to get rid of her. “I believe I explained this earlier.”
Ben shrugged. “You might have, but you were speaking psycho-ese, so it’s hard to be sure.”
“Psycho-ese? That would be…?”
“Doctor talk.” Ben shrugged. “A psychologist’s version of the language regular doctors use to keep you so off balance that when you leave their office, you realize you forgot to tell them there’s a bone sticking out of your leg.”
“Psycho-ese,” Trudy muttered. She settled in her seat so firmly, it would take dynamite to blast her out. “I’ll expect you Monday morning at eight-thirty.”
“Expect away. You’re not coming to work with me.”
A tense silence reigned as Ben drove on to Trudy’s building. When he pulled to a stop, she swung the door open. “If you don’t come, I’ll come to you.”
Ben narrowed his eyes like an old west gunslinger at high noon.
“That’s right, Ben.” She gave him her sweetest smile—except maybe she bared her teeth too much. “I’ll wander all around, with no bodyguard, risking life and limb to find you.”
She saw his jaw popping and fluttered her eyes at him, trying to use her womanly wiles. They seemed rusty at the moment.
Oh, forget the wiles. She’d use the technique of her most difficult pupil. She slid out of the truck, face straight, eyes hard. “Eight-thirty. Don’t keep me waiting.”
She marched off toward the Psych building so he wouldn’t see the smug smile on her face. She might have just won her first round in what seemed to be a never-ending battle with Detective Garrison.
Ben dusted the monitor of his computer for the third time.
“Garrison!” Scott stuck his head out of the door and shouted louder than was necessary, even in the noisy police station. “I should have had your report on my desk forty-eight hours ago.”
Scott marched toward him. Ben opened his mouth to snarl back and thought of running to pick Tru up in a few minutes. He could dust all he wanted but that wasn’t what she cared about.
He gritted his teeth and reached for a file he’d let sink to the bottom of his ‘out’ box. He picked it up and turned as Scott bore down on him, eyes blazing.
Loving the Texas Lawman_A Texas Lawman Romantic Suspense Page 11