In spite of the heat, a chill prickled her arms. “Yes, who are you?”
“Judge Hartwell wishes to speak with you.”
Unease twisted the pit of her stomach. Why did Tripp’s father wish to speak to her? Better, yet, how did he find where she lived? The wheels of her brain rotated in overtime. Had she slipped up and given Tripp clues to where she lived?
No!
Perhaps Tripp had asked Carla.
No, again. Carla, whose circumstances matched her own, wouldn’t betray her address to Tripp. Then how did Judge Hartwell find her?
Honey Belle’s heart did a little leap. Perhaps Tripp had changed his mind and asked his father to take her shopping for an engagement ring.
No, that still didn’t answer the question of how the Judge had located her and his reason for being here.
The uniformed driver opened the limousine’s door and, with a sweep of his hand, indicated she should get in.
She smoothed down the green peddle-pushers she wore. The fabric felt fragile from the many washings it had endured. She gave the driver a questioning glance as she slid inside the car and settled on the plush black leather seat and drank in the air-conditioned coolness. Sitting across from her was a distinguished-looking man with features much like Tripp’s, but not the same. Though he was sitting, she figured he must be about the same height as Tripp’s six-foot stature. He wore a double-breasted navy blue suit. The diamond-studded cufflinks could more than pay for an air conditioner for her parents.
Wordlessly they stared at each other. The silence made her uncomfortable. She waited for him to speak. He didn’t. It took a moment for her to find her voice. “This is an unexpected and a pleasant surprise, Judge Hartwell. It’s nice to meet you.”
Extending her hand forward, she felt awkward and embarrassed when he rebuffed the gesture. Not schooled in etiquette, she feared she’d made a social blunder, and eased her hands together, settling them on her lap. She swallowed, unable to subdue a clamoring pulse.
“H-has something happened to Tripp…is he okay?”
The elder Hartwell reminded Honey Belle of a vulture sizing up his prey when he reached inside his suit coat and withdrew a white envelope. He offered it to her. Apparently, it was the puzzled look on her face that caused him to speak.
Sarcasm laced his voice. “Open it, Miss Garrett.”
Once she’d pulled the check from the envelope, she didn’t say a word. Lightheaded, she tried to concentrate on all the zeros in the total amount, her heart racing ahead of her brain. She tried to speak. The words stuck inside her throat.
Evidently Judge Hartwell mistook her silence as a demand for more money. “If ten thousand isn’t enough, Miss Garrett, name your price.” The sardonic smile he offered twisted his handsome features into an ugly snarl.
“This is a wonderful gift, Judge Hartwell. Tripp will be as pleased as I.”
His laughter mocked her. “I’m afraid you misunderstand, young woman. I have no intention of allowing my son to marry the likes of you.”
How silly of me, to think the money was a wedding gift.
“I may not be a brilliant person, Judge, but I am smart enough to know an insult when I hear one. Perhaps you’d better explain what you mean by ‘the likes of me.’”
His angry tone startled Honey Belle. “You are the kind of woman who brings an intelligent man down to her level. I have plans for my son’s career.”
The man reminded her of a puff adder ready to strike when he leaned forward. “Let me be perfectly clear, Miss Garrett, these plans do not include you.”
A thick fury rose inside Honey Belle, threatening to shut off her air. She tossed the check toward Tripp’s father. “Tripp loves me, and we will be married, whether you like it or not, Judge Hartwell.”
“Don’t press me, young woman. I’m a powerful man.”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
He settled back against the seat. His eyes locked with hers, his voice even and deadly. “You should be. You see, with one phone call, I can arrange for you and your mother to lose your jobs at the Burger Bin.” He accentuated the name of her workplace as if reassuring her he knew where she worked. His hand swept toward the tinted window. “And this pigsty you call home? I can arrange for the landlord to kick you out. I can arrange it to where any hovel you try to rent will be beyond your affordability. And don’t begin to think your parents will get new jobs. I know about your father’s failing health, your mother’s lack of skills, that you’re a high school dropout… Need I say more?”
Honey Belle sighed heavily. She blinked back the tears gathering behind her eyelids.
“Ah, my dear, don’t look so surprised. I know quite a bit about you and your parents.”
Mustering as much courage as possible, she repeated herself. “You don’t scare me. After Tripp and I are married and settled in Massachusetts, I’ll get a job and send money to my parents. I’m sure Tripp will help out, too.”
The Judge roared with raucous laughter, and then a mean sneer draped over his face. “Obviously, you don’t know my son very well. When it comes down to who controls the purse strings, coupled with my son’s drive to become a high-ranking politician, I can assure you, Miss Garrett, money and power will win out over lust and surviving on baloney sandwiches.”
When she opened her mouth to protest, he lifted a large brown envelope from the seat and shoved it toward her. “If you need more convincing, imagine my son’s reaction when he sees these photographs. You’ve misled him, haven’t you, Miss Garrett?”
“No. I never have.”
“Take a very good look at them. Perhaps you’ll change your response.”
Not knowing what to expect, her hands trembled as she removed the pictures from the envelope and, one by one, looked at black-and-white images of her backyard, strewn with a sundry of car parts, an old washing machine, a broken toilet, stacks of rotting lumber from a project her father had never gotten around to building, and rusting barrels overflowing with black plastic garbage bags.
There were pictures of her mother wearing a slip while she hung clothes on the clothesline, another of her father and his cronies seated on cinder blocks drinking beer, and shots of various angles of the house with its peeling paint, broken steps, and windows whose cracks were repaired with gray duct tape. The worst picture of all was of her sitting in a man’s lap. She held a beer can in one hand and with the other was making an obscene gesture at someone out of camera view. As bad as it was, the last and most incriminating were the scenes of her standing under the elm tree in front of the two-storied house where she always met Tripp, of her walking toward the front door of her pretend home, and then others of her walking away from the house as soon as Tripp had pulled away from the curb.
She turned one particular picture toward Tripp’s father. “This is my cousin. Bubba and I were just having fun.”
“Photographs speak louder than words, young woman. They prove an important fact about you. Are you interested in knowing?”
Sitting up a little straighter, and feeling as if she already knew the answer, there was a perverse need to hear someone other than herself speak the words. “By all means, Judge Hartwell, enlighten me.”
A scornful smile stiffened his face. “Simply put, Miss Garrett, it proves you are a liar.”
It was true. All of it. She was a liar. She had deceived Tripp about everything except the fact that she truly loved him.
In a rush of anger, she ripped the pictures into shreds and threw the pieces at the impeccably dressed man seated across from her. “You are a mean, despicable man, Judge Hartwell. I hate you.” She didn’t try to control the shriek in her voice.
“Hate me all you please, Miss Garrett. The fact remains that my son’s future is at stake. Whatever it takes, I will go to any measure to see he reaches his fullest potential.”
Tripp’s father slipped a smaller envelope of pictures from a briefcase, and held them for her to see.
“This is blackmail.”
Consumed with humiliation, she reached to snatch the photographs from his hand.
He laughed and held them out of reach. “Call it what you will, young woman. As a judge, I’d say it’s evidence against a conniving little gold-digger.”
She wanted to slap the smirk off his face when he held up the image of her mother dressed in a slip thin enough for the sun to outline her nude body, and then the one of herself straddling her cousin’s lap, and another of her father in the backyard, asleep on an old divan, a beer can dangling from his hand.
“You’ve probably heard the old saying, ‘You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.’ Do you know what it means, Miss Garrett?”
She hated the way he enunciated her name. She let her gaze wander over his shoulder to peer through the tinted window at a dust bowl coming down the dirt road. A pickup truck roared past, shrouding the limousine with dust.
Honey Belle had lost, and she knew it. “I’m sure you’re itching to tell me.”
“In all honesty, Miss Garret, can you imagine you or your parents at the governor’s ball, hobnobbing with political royalty?”
When she didn’t answer, he added, “If you care for my son, care enough to step out of his life.”
He offered the check, again. “Take it. Ten thousand is enough money to buy you and your family a new start…in a new state.” He leaned forward as if drilling his next point home. “I want you gone. Tomorrow.”
His narrowed eyes and cold scowl told Honey Belle that Tripp’s father was a heartless man with enough power to squash people’s lives without remorse.
Beyond lovemaking on the beach, what did she really know about Tripp? What if he shared the same cold and calculating traits as his father? Did she want to spend the rest of her life with a man she might later come to hate?
“How did you find where I live, Judge Hartwell?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Simple. I hired a private investigator.”
She allowed her shoulders to slump. As if the photographs weren’t belittling enough, the Judge continued debasing her. “Everything about you is cheap, Miss Garrett, including your name.”
She closed her eyes and rubbed them with her fingers. Her bones felt as if they were slowly dissolving. Opening her eyes, she said, “What’s wrong with my name?”
The way his gaze drifted over her body caused a convulsive shiver to riffle over her.
“Honey Belle…has the definite ring of a fifty-dollar hooker.”
She shook her head in shocked disbelief. She lashed out. Before her hand found its target, he grabbed her wrist.
“I am not naïve enough to believe you and my son haven’t cohabitated.” He pointed a long slender finger toward Honey Belle. “Heed my warning, young woman, and heed it well. If there is a seed growing inside you, make certain my son never knows about it. Take care of it—quietly.” He arched an eyebrow. “Surely you are smart enough to discern my meaning.”
Feeling the edges of her temper growing dangerously frayed, she refrained from pressing her hands against her abdomen. Getting pregnant had never entered her mind. She should have listened to Carla—should have used the condom the girl had offered. Should have asked Tripp to use protection. She forced back the groan building in her throat.
“Your meaning is quite clear, Judge Hartwell.”
“Good. Then we are in agreement that you are not worthy of my son?”
“No, we are not in agreement.” She forced the quiver from her voice. “What you’re doing is wrong. You’re the one not worthy of your son.”
Hartwell’s face looked so stricken she was afraid he might strike her. “I assure you it isn’t my character flaws that will concern my son, not when he sees the pictures. Not when he learns you’ve duped him. He’ll know you for the bloodsucking opportunist your really are.”
He shoved the envelope containing the check toward her. Honey Belle thought she’d outsmart the despicable elder Hartwell. She waved the envelope in the air. “What bank in Charleston will cash a check for this amount of money, and especially for someone who doesn’t have a checking account?”
“Ah, my dear, I thought you smarter than this. Haven’t you figured out by now I know everything about you? At best, the funds are meager. However, we both know you have a checking account. Alas, you are correct. The bank might question whether or not the check is forged if you try to draw funds from it.”
He scratched his chin as if contemplating. “Reaching into his coat pocket, he withdrew a monogrammed gold clip with more money than Honey Belle had ever seen in her lifetime. He peeled off several bills and stuffed them inside the envelope. “Five hundred dollars, Miss Garrett…enough to buy you and your parents passage far, far away from South Carolina, and a check for ten thousand as payment for your promise to never, for the rest of your lifetime, contact my son.”
A nasty grin twisted his face. “I’m a man of my word, young woman. I have eyes and ears everywhere. Don’t think to cross me.”
He pressed a button, and the uniformed driver opened the limousine’s door. Honey Belle had barely stepped out when the door slammed and the sleek black car roared away, leaving her standing with a white envelope in her hand and a crushing pain in her heart.
Chapter Eleven
Wrapping her arms around her waist, Honey Belle watched the black car bounce down the dirt road, trying to avoid the potholes.
As she trudged back to the house, her entire body trembled as much from fright as from anger. So Tripp’s father had hired a detective to find her. She should have known all good things really do come to an end.
Stuffing the cash and the white envelope containing the check inside the pocket of her peddle-pushers, she lifted a hand against the white heat of August. Her mother stood on the porch stoop. “Who was in that fancy car, and why were you sittin’ in it?”
Fighting the bleakness threatening to consume her, Honey Belle said, “Let’s go inside, Mama.”
She walked to the kitchen, filled two glasses with ice cubes, then added sweet tea and handed one to her mother. Her insides churned with worry. Pushing her own glass aside, she crossed her arms on the table, lowered her head, and buried her face, setting free the soul-wracking tears she’d forced back during her confrontation with Tripp’s father.
Her mother’s tender touches were rare. Honey Belle cherished the gentle pats to her shoulder. “It cain’t be all that bad, can it?”
“Oh, but it is, Mama… It really is worse than you can ever imagine.” Honey Belle told her about the photographs and how Judge Hartwell had threatened to send them to Tripp. Between sobs, she said, “The Judge said if we don’t leave South Carolina our life will be worse off than it all ready is. He wants us gone tomorrow.”
Her mother kept a deceptively straight face while she listened to Honey Belle relate all Judge Hartwell had said. Before she opened her mouth, Honey Belle pleaded, “Please, Mama, don’t say ‘I told you so.’”
Delilah Garrett raked boney hands through her sweat-drenched hair. “Tomorrow. How…where are we supposed to get the money?”
“He gave me five hundred dollars.” She pulled the cash from her pocket and laid it on the table. A little voice inside her head cautioned to not mention the check.
“Whew, Honey Belle, I ain’t never in the whole of my life seen that much money at one time.”
“What should we do, Mama? Where will we go?”
She harrumphed. “Ain’t nothing holdin’ us here. Your daddy cain’t work no more, and my health ain’t good.” She tapped fingers against her temple as if thinking of a plan. “We’ll go to my sister’s.”
“Do you think the truck will make it all the way to Georgia?”
“That old truck don’t have too many more miles left in it. Bubba offered me fifty dollars for it. While I stay here and pack, you drive to the bus station and buy the tickets. In the morning, we’ll pick Bubba up on the way to the depot. He’ll have himself a truck and I’ll have money to buy your daddy a new canister of oxygen. �
��Sides, riding in an air-conditioned bus with reclining seats will be a lot easier on him than the three of us crowded into the front seat of a hot truck.”
“Shouldn’t we call Aunt Tess? Since the two of you haven’t spoken for a few years, she might take exception to us showing up on her doorstep unannounced.”
“Don’t matter,” her mother offered. “Tess won’t turn away family.”
“I can’t believe this is happening, Mama. It’s like a bad dream.”
“Then you’d better wake up and get on about the business of buying those bus tickets.”
As Honey Belle drove, she mentally compared the lives of her mother and her aunt. The two sisters were as different as night and day. Delilah had run away at fourteen, married at fifteen, birthed a child at sixteen, and generally made a mess of her life.
The obligatory Christmas card once a year with a short note inquiring about the family’s health was the sum total of what Honey Belle knew about her aunt.
Once, in a rare reminiscent mood, her mother had dug out an old picture album and talked about her sister. Tess, five years older, had never married, attended nursing school, and lived in a fine antebellum home in Valdosta, Georgia.
Honey Belle had watched Delilah trace a finger over the image of a woman dressed in a nurse’s uniform. Even now she recalled her mother’s words. “Tess is a little on the hoity-toity side, but if push ever came to shove, blood is still thicker than water.”
At the bus station, no parking places were available. Honey Belle circled the block. The day had grown hotter, and she didn’t feel much like walking. She drove around the block until she spotted a car leaving the depot. Honey Belle claimed the parking space.
Before purchasing the tickets, she used the pay phone to call her aunt, pouring out all the details of her predicament. Tess listened, giving only an occasional comment to let her niece know she was listening.
Honey Belle twisted and untwisted the telephone cord around her fingers while she waited for her aunt’s decision. She feared the worst when silence filled her ear. “Aunt Tess, are you there?”
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