“So it had nothing to do with me?” Pressure was building in Beth’s chest.
He stared at her, still gulping air, still bright red in the face. “No,” he said blankly, as if the question was wildly irrelevant.
“Then why divorce me?” she screamed.
He tried to burrow his butt into the gravel at her feet. “I don’t know! Because I didn’t want a wife on my hands in Mexico! Because I didn’t know if—when I’d be coming back. I just wanted to make the break clean!”
Her eyes narrowed. She spat, “You just wanted the extra money you could take with you if you dumped me and stripped me down to broke.”
“It wasn’t that much extra,” he muttered, and she nearly kicked him again. He covered his crotch with both hands. His eyes rolled.
“Do you know what you did to me? Do you even care? No, you don’t. You bastard!” Beth felt her self-possession shatter. “You pretended to love me until I was trapped with you, and then you played on my fear of losing you so I wouldn’t leave you, and I served you, and I tried to love you, and I told myself I loved you—” Beth felt herself running out of oxygen and gulped, gulped again. “I wasted my life trying to love you! And then you insulted it! I gave as much as I could, and you threw it away!”
She stopped to breathe again and stood, panting, watching his face. He wasn’t listening at all. He was waiting to be kicked again.
Well, she wouldn’t do it that way.
She knew by now what mattered to him.
“How much money is in that briefcase back there?” She jerked her head.
“Four mil. I sold the place in Tahoe and the timeshare. I’ll give you half,” he said hopefully.
Beth laughed without humor. She shook her head. “And the partners are paying you how much?”
“They’re giving me another two mil in cash and two more in an account in the Caymans.”
Mindblowing. How much money did he need? In Mexico he could live like a sultan on the interest from half a million. If she wanted to kick him, she should kick him in the money, because money mattered to him.
The whole divorce was simply unimportant. He’d ruined their lives, and left her destitute and emotionally devastated and feeling utterly worthless, and he hadn’t even noticed.
“Where’s the account information?” she said, but she knew. She’d dug it out of his files back in Blake Shanley’s bachelor pad at the Doral and copied it onto a thumb drive.
Sure enough, his lips shut tight. With what little strength of character he had, Blake was protecting his money.
Beth smiled. “Let me guess.” She summoned her rage-fueled and succubus-enhanced memory for numbers. “Grand Cayman Banco Privat Internationale, account 43-20212-24BS? In the name of Blake Shanley?”
His face fell.
She looked at her watch. “It’s getting late. Don’t you wish you were at the airport by now?”
Before she realized what he was up to, Blake hurled himself up off the ground at her. With hands like claws, he clutched her around the throat. His legs kicked hers. He snarled and slobbered in her face like a rabid doberman.
Wheezing and thrashing in an unfocused panic, Beth realized she was not made for action. She was blacking out and fighting it, trying to warn Blake with her tongue swelling and sticking out of her mouth that even if he choked her, she would just wake up and come after him again.
Then she felt a tremendous thump through his body.
Blake yelped like a dog. His hands went slack on her throat.
“Ya fucking jerk!” Reg’s voice came, panting. “Git off her!”
Blake was hauled away.
Beth rolled over onto hands and knees and beat on the gravel with her fist, trying to suck oxygen through her abused air passage. Demon powers, demon powers, she reminded herself. She pictured the airways opening, the pain fading, the ache and stiffness easing in her neck. Soon she was breathing again.
From the sounds behind her, she guessed that Reg was kicking Blake’s nutsack back up into his throat.
“I had him,” she croaked. “But thank you.”
“Okay, that’s enough,” said another man’s voice. Oh no! Detective Doyle! “Enough. Stop it! Police, stop!”
Beth scrambled to her feet, feeling less sprightly than she would have liked.
Reg and Detective Doyle were scuffling over Blake’s recumbent form.
This couldn’t end well. Beth yelled, “Reg! Reg, stop! Stop it!”
Reg managed to wrestle free of Detective Doyle’s grasp and backed away from Blake.
Beth had time now to notice that Pog’s Beemer was pulled up behind the Mercedes, and behind that, a plain-clothes cop car with tell-tale searchlight by the driver’s window and spinning blue mars light on the rear turtledeck.
Doyle bent over her battered ex-husband. “He’ll live.”
“Too bad,” Reg grumbled.
“Reg!” Beth said warningly. “That’ll do. Thank you for finding me.”
Reg peeled off his fancy white tee-shirt. “Holy fuckin’ shit, Beth! You’re all bloody!” He tried to wipe her face.
She pushed him away and took the tee-shirt from him. “Thank you. You don’t have any water, do you? Or ten or twenty candy bars?” Her sweatpants were so tight around the waist, she was going to have trouble breathing again soon.
“Sure, I got Evian in the car. Jee likes it. What did he do to you?”
“Shh.” Beth put her finger to her lips. The fewer names Doyle heard, the better. “He hit me in the face with a spade.” There was certainly a lot of blood on her face, scalp, neck, arms, and now-hopeless tank top.
Doyle stood up. He had handcuffs on Blake, who still lay on his face on the gravel drive. He came over and took the tee-shirt away from her. “If you don’t mind, can you come and sit in the car for a bit, until the EMS gets here? We’ll want evidence photos.” He led her to his copmobile and tenderly sat her in the back seat with her legs sticking out of the car. From this, she assumed that she wasn’t under arrest. Doyle went to the Mercedes and inspected the open trunk. “Where’s the spade now?”
Beth indicated the direction where she’d heard Blake digging. Doyle glanced at her, at Reg, and at Blake, then stumped down the hill into the trees.
“What did you do with the diamonds?” Reg whispered to her.
Beth pointed.
When Doyle had disappeared downhill amongst the trees, his view blocked by the Mercedes, Reg eased open the left rear passenger door of Blake’s car, sneaked out Amanda’s off-white Coach bag, and pressed the door shut with a faint click. Beth watched him stuff the bag under the front passenger seat of Pog’s car. Then he returned to her with a bottle of Evian from Pog’s glove box.
“You’re a life-saver, Reg,” she said gratefully. “How did you know to follow me when I left that ladies’ room in disguise?”
“You smelled like you,” he said.
“Well, you were great. Thanks, onsite manager houseboy buddy.”
He looked so happy, she leaned out of Doyle’s car and gave him a playful slap on the cheek. Reg looked ready to roll over on his back and put all his paws in the air.
“I love you, Beth,” he gushed.
“You’re cute,” she said.
The EMS, the evidence technicians, two squad cars, and a vanload of coed demon sluts all arrived about the time Doyle came up the hill. He hauled Blake to his feet and put him in the back of a squad car. The evidence techs took pictures of everything, including the gory inside of the Mercedes trunk, the briefcase full of money, the grave Blake had been digging, the bloody spade, and Beth’s no-longer-smashed-in forehead. The paramedics cleaned her up and forced her to take two Vicodin. Doyle got a preliminary statement from her. His face went very grim when she got to the part where Blake hit her in the face with the spade. About then the Vicodin kicked in, and Beth began smiling like an idiot at everything he said, and Doyle dismissed her.
After all that, her roommates sat her in the van and opened a two-foot-square
cardboard box that proved to be packed full of giant burritos wrapped in foil.
“Happy first-week-on-the-job anniversary, Beth,” Pog said.
Beth was too busy eating to do more than give her a weepy smile.
“For Pete’s sake, get her out of those clothes,” Jee said, four burritos later. The sluts wiped her down more thoroughly with Evian and Reg’s tee shirt and, when that was too gory to be useful, a grotty old beach towel out of the back of the van. Jee produced some slinky black pants and matching long-sleeved tee. Beth changed in the back of the van, then resumed engulfing burritos.
Night fell. The evidence techs brought out a generator and lights on tall poles. Doyle circled back around every hour or so and asked more questions. Beth’s roommates said some uncomplimentary things about Blake, which made her feel good. Reg found a case of Snickers bars in the back of the van.
“I think we call a lawyer now,” Amanda said after the third round of questions from the homicide detective.
“Ugh,” Pog said.
“She’ll need one for the divorce settlement re-hearing anyway,” Amanda said.
Beth looked at her with amazement. “How did you know I’d seek a re-hearing?” she said thickly around a bite of Snickers bar. The burritos and sugar had soaked up the Vicodin fast. Either that or some demonic resistance to drugs had kicked in.
Amanda shrugged. “I assume you don’t want the jackass who handled the divorce for you.”
Beth swallowed Snickers. “You assume correctly.” She took a bite of burrito.
“We have someone,” Pog said.
Amanda said, “That sounds ominous.”
Beth relaxed.
Jee climbed in next to Beth. “She’s falling asleep, guys. Let’s go home.”
“Ask Doyle,” Beth mumbled.
“You had enough of those yet? Because I’m hungry too,” Reg said.
“Ladies.” Beth leaned back on the van’s upholstered bench seat. Amanda fastened her seat belt. “Reg gets to eat.”
“Give some to the cop guys, too,” Pog suggested from behind the van’s wheel. “They’ve been here hours.”
It turned out Doyle wasn’t in the least too proud to eat their burritos. Nor were the paramedics, the evidence techs, or the uniformed officers. Even Blake got one, although he had to have it fed to him by one of the uniforms.
Doyle licked salsa off his knuckles and stuck his head into the van. “Are you going to be at your apartment in the Doral tomorrow?”
Beth eyed him. “You know I don’t have an apartment at the Doral.”
“I’m going to pretend you do. Just like I’m pretending you don’t look like a teenage supermodel half the time. And—a piece of advice, missy?” Doyle said, smiling and looking at her all over in a way that warmed Beth down to her bloodstained flip flops. “Show up to official depositions and court appearances looking like Beth Saunders, okay?”
She growled. “Why are you so happy?”
Doyle looked her in the eye now, and she got even warmer. “I shut this case down with no dead people. That makes my day.”
For two cents she’d tell him what she thought of him. If she could only figure out what that was. “How did you know that was me when I walked out of that ladies’ restroom?”
“You smelled like you,” Doyle said simply. He smiled at her, slid the van door shut, and slapped the roof twice.
Beth was speechless.
Amanda climbed in the front. The van backed up. Reg got in Pog’s old Beemer and followed.
The last thing Beth saw before she fell asleep was Doyle standing under the bright lights erected by the evidence techs, scowling into the Mercedes trunk.
The lawyer Pog said they had turned out to be Ish Qbybbl. He turned up at the Lair looking like a sixty-year-old Vegas strip-show promoter in his Sunday best, and he acted nervous, as if he expected to be gunned down by a rival strip-show promoter at any moment.
“Ish has agoraphobia,” Pog explained. “He hardly ever leaves the Regional Office. He’ll do great in front of the judge, though.”
It took Ish almost two hours to read all the documentation from Beth’s divorce, including the settlement hearing, and all the documents the sluts had snitched out of Blake’s Doral bachelor pad. Then he made Beth describe all her Blake adventures since the divorce, not omitting the spade in the face and the ride in the car trunk.
And then, a week later, Ish sailed into judge’s chambers and perforated Blake in a dozen places, legally speaking. Blake hemorrhaged money.
Jee, in a severe black suit and a pair of two-carat diamond earrings, sat beside Ish in front of a pile of folders, looking only barely like a junior lawyer and much more like arm candy Ish had rented.
Darleen was present for the hearing, since she was able to testify how long her father had been using the Doral apartment: longer than he had owned it, apparently. Her eyes got rounder and rounder as Ish rolled out his evidence.
Darleen’s brother Jeff turned up, too, heavily bearded and hiking-booted, in plaid flannel and jeans. Beth could hardly see his face for bristling brown hair. His brown eyes were wary, and she thought she detected a jeer in them, whether for herself or for Blake she couldn’t tell. She had been tempted to exclude him from the proceedings, but the judge didn’t object to him, and she let him stay. Maybe, she thought, if he actually heard all the ways his father had screwed her, hiding money not just before the divorce but for years during Jeff’s own childhood, he’d be able to grasp where his mother was coming from.
Beth herself sat through it, bemused. She wore the rest of Jee’s diamonds and felt detached, as if she were listening to a public reading of her high school diaries. Only when she looked at Blake was she aware of a desire to reduce him to the place where he’d left her.
Then he began to break down.
Ish finished his presentation.
Blake’s attorney looked helplessly at Blake swaying and leaking tears in his comfy padded chair and said, “No questions.”
The judge put her glasses on and cleared her throat. “In view of the charges against Mr. Saunders by the Securities Exchange Commission, and bearing in mind that the IRS is taking an interest in Mr. Saunders’ tax filings under both his identities, it seems unlikely that a new settlement amount will be determined in less than several months. I’m sorry, Mrs. Saunders,” the judge said, looking at Beth. “Can you manage without the funds for that long?”
“She can stay with us,” Darleen said quickly, eyeing her mother’s diamonds. “We’ll clear out the study. We were going to build a new room onto the house anyway. Suite. Because you can’t take care of yourself, Mom.”
Sickened, Beth didn’t respond.
The judge looked at Jeff.
“All I have is a sofa in my loft,” Jeff said curtly to the judge, not looking at his sister or his parents.
Beth lifted her chin. “My friends have offered me a job and a place to stay. I’m going to be fine.”
“Are you quite sure?” The judge looked over her glasses at her. “This could take as long as six or seven months. Mr. Saunders’ assets have been frozen. The IRS does not move swiftly.”
Blake uttered a stifled sob.
The judge added reassuringly, “Since you were awarded very little of the total in your original settlement, and since Mr. Saunders issued a dishonored settlement check, the IRS has decided you are not complicit in Mr. Saunders’ tax evasion. I’m just warning you, that won’t make them work any faster. It’s possible that I could convince them to free up funds equivalent to your original settlement, at least, since that constitutes a small fraction of the total assets involved.”
Gratefully, Beth smiled. “That’s very nice of you, your honor, but I’ll be fine. I always am,” she added, sending a maliciously bland look at each of her children.
“Once the IRS and the SEC have finished their investigations, you stand to collect the bulk of the remaining assets,” the judge said.
“I think I’ll set up a trust f
or my grandchildren’s education,” Beth said, watching Darleen.
Darleen turned white, pressed her lips together, turned red, got up, and left the room.
Somehow or other, the hearing ended. Blake’s lawyer led him out. The judge called in her clerk to pack up her papers and departed. Ish muttered something that could have been interpreted as congratulations, shook Beth’s hand, and vanished out the door.
Jee looked at Beth. “Well? Will that do for revenge?” She looked absurdly young to be playing lawyer-shark.
“Yes. I think so. I really do.” Beth felt so weirdly peaceful, she was floating. She noticed Jeff taking in Jee’s black suit and flashing eyes. “Oh, Jee, let me introduce you to my son. Jeff, this is one of my roommates.”
Jee smiled absently and looked at the phone in her hand. “Pog wants to know are we done. It’s lunchtime.” She looked at Jeff. “Bring him along.”
“Uh, is that a good idea?” Beth said.
Jee looked Jeff up and down. “Sure.”
Beth resisted an urge to warn him to bring his own condoms, or, if he hadn’t any, to ask his mother for some.
Fuck it, she thought, and let go of everything. She floated up out of her smotheringly comfy leather judge’s-chambers chair. “Let’s eat.”
Pog
It was strange seeing Beth looking like her old self, and I do mean old. I suppose she had to show up in court wearing Beth Saunders’ face. When she came out of that hearing she seemed younger in spirit than her Beth Asucar succubus self ever had.
Jee had some young guy with her who turned out to be Beth’s son, Jeff. “Jeff’s coming to lunch,” she announced. I noticed Beth glance nervously at them.
I also noticed that Reg, who had insisted on coming to the courthouse, was deep in conversation, off in a corner of the waiting room, with Ish Qbybbl. Awesome. Reg’s dark blue jacket, white tee and black jeans made Ish look even cheesier than normal, but of course, Jee had dressed Reg. I bit my lip. It would be just like Ish to decide that, now Jee had gotten Reg nicely under control, we should have a different manager. While I watched, Ish clapped Reg on the shoulder, shook hands, and slithered out. Reg pranced back to where Jee and Beth and I and Jeff’s kid waited for him.
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