by Roslyn Woods
“I think I should.”
“No, really. Don’t bother,” she said.
He stared at her for a minute, but his eyes didn’t soften. “Okay,” he said.
He stood up and followed her into the kitchen. She looked back to say, “You should probably lock the door behind me. You can’t be too careful.”
Then she walked out and shut the door with a little more force than necessary. She was all the way up her own back steps before she heard him lock his door with a loud snap.
Her eyes stung and pain burned in her chest. She wanted to break down now, to crawl into her bed and cover her head, but she knew she couldn’t. He would be waiting and watching for when she left the house, and she couldn’t stand for him to know how hurt she was.
She packed an overnight bag and grabbed her purse and laptop. Then she went out the front door, locked it, and went down the steps. She paused a moment when she saw someone sitting in the dark on Dean’s front porch, but a moment’s real looking told her it was Dean. He was watching to make sure she left. He didn’t say good night, and neither did she.
Chapter 25
It only took ten minutes to get back to Margie’s house. Shell climbed the steps with her bag, and Margie, watching for her from the living room window, opened the door and drew her in without a word.
“What’s going on?” she asked in a whisper.
“Is Donald asleep?”
“Yeah. He has to work tomorrow.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry about this.”
“What happened?” Margie was asking as she motioned for Shell to follow her into the kitchen.
“Brad’s been following me,” she answered quietly, “and he followed Dean and me from here to Barrow tonight.”
“Oh, my God!” said Margie. She closed the kitchen door and they sat down at the little table. “How on earth?” She leaned forward and got a good look at Shell. “Honey, have you been crying?” She leaned forward and put her hand on Shell’s arm.
“I’m okay. He bought a new car, a Honda Pilot, the car I’d said would be practical for taking paintings to art shows, and he drove it down to Austin. Then he came to your house and waited till you left on Saturday. Remember that was our shopping day?”
“I can’t believe it!”
“So he followed you to my house and he’s been watching me ever since.”
“Oh, my God!” Margie said again. “How did you find out?”
“Dean noticed we were being followed, but then we sort of lost him or something, and we went to the house. We were going to have a glass of wine, and Brad started pounding on the door.”
“Well I guess that spoiled the mood!”
Shell let this pass. “I saw it was Brad through the peephole, and anyway, I let him in. I thought they were going to fight, Margie. I swear it was awful.”
“You thought Dean and Brad were going to fight? Oh my, this is exciting!”
“Yeah, not in a good way.”
“But they didn’t?”
“No. Brad finally calmed down, and he told us there’d been a guy going in and out of the house.”
“Oh, no! How? What do you mean?”
“Some guy has keys to my house and Brad has seen him going in and out.”
“Did he say how many times?” she asked
“Probably three times.”
“Did he see what he drives?”
“He didn’t know exactly. A silver or gray SUV that’s smaller than a Pilot was the best he could do.”
“Did he say what he looks like?”
“He said he had brown hair.”
“That’s it?”
“Just a guy with brown hair.”
“Gosh, that doesn’t really narrow the possibilities much.”
“It wasn’t Kojak.”
“And did Brad leave willingly?”
“Actually, yes. He was pretty civilized at the end.”
“So why did you come back here?”
“Dean thinks the bad guys are looking for something they think Amanda left in Lana’s house. He thinks it’s not safe for me to stay there.”
Margie sat looking at Shell for a full minute. “So what does he want you to do? Move out?”
“That’s about the size of it,” said Shell with a little break in her voice.
“Well that won’t happen. You can stay here till the problem gets worked out. I’m sure Dean doesn’t really want you to move out.”
“I think he does, Margie. He said he shouldn’t have rented the house to me.”
“Really?” she asked. “He seemed pretty happy with you earlier this evening.”
“Well I don’t think he’s happy with me now,” she said quietly.
“Because of Brad,” said Margie knowingly.
“I have no idea what he’s thinking, just that he wants me out of his house.”
Margie sat twisting a lock of long, copper hair around her fingers absently.
“Look, let’s have a girls’ day tomorrow. You and I can go shopping, and we’ll talk this out and plan a strategy about getting this problem solved.”
“No, Margie. I really think I should move. I don’t want to be anywhere I’m not wanted.”
“Let’s talk about it tomorrow when we’re not so tired,” she said reasonably. “Things will look different when the sun is shining.”
But it was cloudy the next day. Shell got up and showered before Margie was up. She dressed and thought she might go pick up a few things to bring back to Margie’s. Or maybe she should just get a room somewhere. Somewhere where Dean wasn’t always the main topic of conversation.
She packed her little bag again and gathered up her makeup and brush from the dresser. There were Margie’s pictures. Her eyes landed on the wedding shot of Dean and Amanda. She felt a little pain in her chest when she looked at him.
How could she have let down her guard so easily? How could she have allowed herself to get interested in her best friend’s brother? It was a terrible idea. And for God’s sake, Brad was right. I’ve only known him for a week! She hadn’t even considered the possibility that she could damage her friendship with Margie and Donald. At least she’d had a wakeup call, and maybe Dean didn’t know the extent of her emotional upheaval. Something had almost happened between them. She would have to make sure nothing ever did.
She tiptoed into the kitchen and made coffee, but she needn’t have worried about making noise. Margie and Donald soon wandered into the kitchen yawning. Donald was already showered and dressed for work, but he seemed tired.
“Oh good,” said Margie, still in her bathrobe. “Shell’s got the coffee made.”
“Hi, Shell,” said Donald. “Margie told me there was a showdown at the OK Corral last night.”
“Yeah,” said Shell, laughing ruefully. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“That’s okay. I went back to sleep. Now listen, you get your stuff and stay at our house as long as you need a place. This little problem will get solved.”
Donald was a true optimist. He was getting a travel mug from the cupboard and hunting for the lid in a drawer. Margie got up from the table and opened a different drawer and handed him the lid without a word. “Oh, thanks. You ladies have a nice day. I’m off to listen to crazy people.” He kissed Margie, and she handed him a little paper bag.
“Here’s some pumpkin bread,” she said. “What time you coming home?”
“Probably about six.”
When he was gone Margie looked at Shell and smiled. “Okay! Now we can have a whole day to ourselves!”
Shell was wrung out and passive. Margie drove her up to The Domain. It was a fairly new shopping center that had opened in 2007, but in the past six years, many new stores had been added. The buzz around town was that it had become a great place to shop, and Shell had never been there. Even though there were lots of shops Shell and Margie had talked about trying, today Shell’s heart wasn’t in it.
The Domain was big. With Dillard’s on the south and Neiman
Marcus on the north, Shell wondered if she had enough energy to walk from one end to the other. Finally, she and Margie only picked a few stores to try. Margie was on the hunt for clothes, and mostly for her friend to wear. In spite of feeling bad, Shell wandered around and allowed herself to be pressured into trying on and buying a few blouses and a periwinkle blue, knit dress.
“It really shows off your shape!” said Margie enthusiastically. She made several purchases too, and then they went to the Daily Grill for lunch. The place was humming with the lunch crowd, and Shell was glad they were shown to a quiet table on the west side of the building and away from the hubbub.
“So tell me,” Margie asked when the soup had arrived, “Did Brad declare his love for you last night?”
“Yes,” Shell answered as she absently twirled a spoon on the white table cloth. “He said he wants to marry me. It was terribly embarrassing for him to reveal he’d been following me.”
“My guess is Dean wasn’t embarrassed for you. My guess is he was jealous.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Think about it. You’re about to have a romantic glass of wine, someone bangs on the door, and instead of letting him just go away, you open it and invite him in. There he was, Mr. Gazillion-Bucks breaking into your moment. Dean probably felt you’d chosen Brad over him.”
“The knocking was pretty demanding. I don’t see how I could have done anything else. And I wouldn’t call what I did inviting anybody in. I asked him what he was doing there, and he just walked right in.” Shell couldn’t tell Margie that the moment Brad had interrupted had been even more romantic than she imagined.
“In my experience, men are pretty big on being top dog. That’s all I’m saying.”
“I don’t think that was why Dean wanted me to move out. I think it was the guy who’d been in and out of my house.”
“But jealousy could have contributed. Maybe Dean thinks you’re considering Brad’s proposal. Anyway, all we need to do is undo some of the things that make it more dangerous for you to live in your house than it is for Dean to live in his. He’ll figure out soon enough that you’re done with Brad.”
“What do you want me to do? Buy a gun?”
“No, but I think we should get you a dog.”
“Not that I think that will help, but I’ve actually been wanting one. I’ve discovered I don’t like being completely alone, and you know I love dogs.”
“Let’s go by the shelter on the way home,” said Margie. “We’ll just have a look.” She looked at her friend and smiled. “Donald and I really noticed the attraction between you two.”
“What? We’re just friends,” said Shell, hoping she could nip this idea now.
“I know, I know, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be a natural development if—”
“Margaret, don’t match us up! I’m just getting out of a bad relationship—”
“And so is he.”
“Right.” Shell paused, thinking of Amanda. “She was so pretty,” she said, “he’s probably going to have trouble getting interested in any other woman anyway.”
“Pretty is as pretty does!” said Margie. “She was not a good person, and I happen to know Dean got over her fast when he realized what she was like.”
“What do you mean?”
“Only three months after the wedding he told me he’d made a mistake. And if he waited till then to tell me, you know he figured it out a good while before that. He’s been alone for a long time.”
Dean himself had told Shell nearly as much, but she wasn’t aware of the early date of his discovery. But there were things she didn’t understand, and she wondered what Margie thought. “So then, why did he stay with her and give her everything she wanted?”
“He was waiting for his mom to die. The doctors had told him there was nothing they could do and it would happen soon. That happened just shortly after Dean got married. He didn’t want Lana to see the breakup in all its messiness. Giving Amanda money and paying for her lifestyle was just a way of keeping things smooth until it was over. And, make no mistake. Dean has plenty of money. Giving her what she wanted didn’t hurt him. He thought of it as buying time.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“About his money? Well, he doesn’t have as much as Brad Bauer with an oil fortune from his daddy, but Dean has done very well.”
“His work?”
“Partly he’s a workaholic, and he’s good at what he does. He has a lot of accounts. He also made a lot of money when he worked in Silicon Valley. He developed some software that’s still bringing in money. And I think Lana’s family left her a lot. She was no spendthrift, so she saved and invested.”
“You know she invested?”
“Lana had two interests. Dean and the Children’s Hospital. She was a big donor, and she invested so she’d have money to give. I got the impression she gave a lot.”
“It doesn’t seem she lived a rich lifestyle.”
“She didn’t. She lived just like we do.”
“Dean told you all this?”
“Sure, he’s my brother and he wanted me to know if we were ever in any trouble we should come to him. He told us that if I wanted to have my own restaurant he’d buy the building and we could do it as a joint venture.”
“Why didn’t you do it?”
“I might actually do it someday, but I have mixed feelings about it.”
“Why?”
“I want Donald’s counseling office to become more lucrative first. He jokes, but he loves what he does, and it has the potential for putting us in a really good financial position. It wouldn’t be good for him to feel his accomplishments were eclipsed by Dean’s.”
To Shell, Donald didn’t seem like the kind of guy who was insecure enough to feel upstaged by another man’s income.
“What else?” she asked, not completely buying the explanation.
Margie looked at her for a few seconds before she answered. “We really want to have a baby,” she said sadly.
“Why are you sounding sad about it?”
“Because we’ve been trying for six months and it hasn’t happened,” she said with a little break in her voice, and she suddenly teared up.
“Oh Margie, it will happen! You can get medical help if you need it, but six months isn’t so long.” Shell realized that at their age it was time to start thinking about their biological clocks.
“I know. It’s just worrisome.”
“Well, the last thing you need is to be worried. I’ve read that stress has an impact on conception.” It couldn’t have helped that, in the past six months, Dean’s marriage had fallen apart, that his mother had died, and that he was being investigated for murder. “You’ve had a lot on your plate. This stuff will be resolved.”
“Some people conceive when things are going on in their lives that are just terrible.”
“I know. But you want to have a calm, happy little baby. It will happen when it happens,” said Shell.
Margie nodded, “It will happen when it happens.”
Chapter 26
Dean had gotten lots of calls since the article in the paper came out the previous Wednesday. Some were from clients wanting to say they were sorry about his wife’s death. Some were reporters wanting him to give a statement. Some were friends.
Rita Anderson had brought a casserole. Jason, his handball partner, had wanted to know if there was anything he could do. Gabe had sounded genuinely sorry. And Ray had called every day. Could he come over? Didn’t he just want to have a few beers? Dean hadn’t been interested.
He supposed it was good that there were a few people in his life besides Margie, but right now, she was the safe harbor where he was anchored. Family. It was so important, and he didn’t have much of it. Thank goodness the family I do have is solid.
He was grateful that Margie had married Donald. Donald was his age and had almost become a brother to him. It was Donald who had helped him train Sadie starting a year earlier. Dean felt th
at time would cement their relationship even more. That’s if I don’t end up in prison.
He rubbed the stubble on his face and looked out his window at Shell’s house. Shell’s house. She had only been moved in a week, and he was already thinking of his mother’s house as Shell’s. His jaw clenched when he thought about the night before, but he wasn’t going to allow himself to dwell on it.
He heard his cell buzzing and tapped the screen. “Hey, Jason,” he said.
“Hey. You doing okay?” his friend asked.
“Not really all that great. I’m okay though. You?”
“I was thinking you might feel up to some handball.”
“Well, I’m kind of in the middle of something.”
“You don’t think you might benefit from some exercise?”
“I do, but today won’t work. Could I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Have you seen Ray lately?” Dean asked.
“Uh, no. Why?”
“You don’t see him up at Dell?”
“They fired him. He’s been gone for a few months. I’ve seen him around maybe once since then. Still the drunk he was the last time I saw him.”
“Why’d they fire him?”
“Why do you think? He’s a screw up. Between you and me, I think he’s using something else.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“How about handball tomorrow, then?”
“Six?”
“I’ll pick you up,” said Jason, hanging up.
Dean sat looking at his phone for a full minute. Then he tapped the screen a few times.
“Ray?” he asked. “Yeah, hi. Listen, I’m trying to track Danny Lopez down. He’s not answering his cell, and he hasn’t been at the bar when I’ve called.”
“I don’t know man. I only met him at your wedding, and I’ve only seen him a couple of times since.”
“Really? Remember I took you over there when I was working on his website?”
“Oh, yeah. That was just the one time.”
“Actually, you went with me twice.”
“I did? I guess I forgot. Well anyway, since then I’ve only seen him a couple of times. That’s all.”
“Really? Where did you see him?”