Patricia nodded through a loud sniffle, hoping that he wasn’t planning on sneaking off from the golf course to spend a quick hour with her. She needed more time with Jethro after tonight, and was about to tell him so, when his soft nibbles on her earlobes sent hot promises of what was in store for her if she just said yes.
“Good,” Jethro said with a wink and a sultry smile, all the while opening the door and pushing her right out when he heard the security guard’s heavy footsteps in the hall. He closed the door and started cleaning off his desk, giving himself fifteen minutes before heading down to his car. Last thing he needed was to run into Patricia. He didn’t want her tonight. He wanted and needed his wife.
The vibration of his cell phone tickled his waist. He looked at the caller ID and smiled. It was Anthony, the security guard, one of the few black men that he liked. There were several he respected—Lamont Green, his most fierce adversary, being one. But there were very few that he liked.
“Coast is clear,” was all Anthony said and hung up.
Jethro smiled again, grabbed his briefcase, and hurried out. It was good to be white, fifty-three, male, rich, Southern, feared, envied, and handsome. And Jethro knew he reminded folks of a tall, husky version of the actor Ray Liotta. Women loved his rich coloring, thick silver and black hair, and dark gray eyes with thick black lashes. He was also a well-dressed man, looking awfully striking this evening in a dark gray pinstriped suit, dove gray shirt, lavender silk tie, dark gray silk socks with tiny lavender “Js” embroidered in them, a pale gray undershirt in the softest silk/cotton/lycra blend, gray silk boxers, and a pair of sleek, black lace-up Cole Haan shoes.
He hurried down the corridor to the elevator, and then paused just one moment to admire himself in a large mirror hanging on the wall.
“I love being a ‘white boy,’” Jethro thought smugly and grabbed at the “package” that made so many of his mistresses say “oh my.”
He pushed the down button and tapped on the wall impatiently when it seemed like the elevator was stuck at the lobby level. It finally moved to his floor, and he had to wait several more minutes for the maintenance crew to push that cumbersome cleaning cart off. Then they took up even more of his time, when the man just stood at the back of the elevator, not making any effort to come off until the woman said, “Get off now.”
Jethro had seen some interesting folks working in the building’s maintenance department. But he didn’t think any could top these two. He made a point of treating the cleaning people as if they were invisible. But he found it difficult to ignore this couple. The man was wearing eyeglasses with lenses that were so thick they looked like the bottoms of two vintage Coca-Cola bottles fused together. And it was all he could do not to stare at the woman’s teeth. They looked like they were made of that yellowish putty dentists used to make molds of your teeth. He got on the elevator thinking, “I hope they don’t clean my office.”
As soon as the elevator was down on the lobby level, Baby Doll looked up and down the hall to make sure that nosy security guard, Anthony, wasn’t around and then whispered, “No one’s around,” to Mr. Lacy, who took off the glasses and slipped them into his coat pocket. He massaged the tender imprints on the bridge of his nose and put on his shades.
“Girl, them thangs must weigh a ton.”
“But they worked, Daddy,” Baby Doll answered. “Those things were so thick, nobody could see your eyes good enough to be able to figure out that you blind.”
Baby Doll placed her forearm up under his hand and guided him, along with the steel cleaning cart, down the hall and straight to Jethro’s office suite.
She rolled the cart into the middle of the floor, took out some Pledge and a dust rag, and laid it on Jethro’s desk. Mr. Lacy felt around the cart and located some trash bags, which he placed on top, to make it look like he was emptying all the trash cans.
“Girl, you gone be able to find them papers?”
“I think so,” Baby Doll whispered as she reached for the trash can Jethro kept under his desk and put it on his black leather chair, with a built-in massage system she sneaked and used from time to time. She put on a pair of rubber gloves and then rambled through the crumpled-up papers in the can.
“Here it is,” she said softly and triumphantly, holding the paper up for Lacy to “see,” wondering why people like Mr. Jethro Winters were so full of themselves they played themselves at their own game. It was never a wise thing to act as if the person cleaning your office when you weren’t around was less than you.
“Read what’s on it to me,” he said.
She slipped her mold teeth out of her mouth and scanned the paper before reading the contents out loud.
“Can I just give you the gist of what’s on it? This stuff is real boring, Daddy.”
“That’s fine,” he answered impatiently, thinking that there were times when being blind was such an inconvenience. “Just tell me what’s on the daggone papers.”
“After Mr. Winters gets the contract to rebuild the Cashmere, he plans to get Ida Belle Robinson’s baby girl to help him buy up all the land around it.”
“But there are houses, very nice houses I might add, around the Cashmere. What they plan on doing, just asking all of them peoples to move?”
“Something like that,” was all Baby Doll said, then asked, “You think this is something Lamont Green would want to know?”
Mr. Lacy started grinning.
“Come on over here and give me some sugar, baby. Not only would Lamont want to know this, it’s just what he needs to stop Jethro dead in his tracks.”
Baby Doll was about to empty the remaining contents of the can into a large trash bag when something pressed on her heart to look at the rest. She pulled out two small folders that had once held room keys for the Siena Hotel in Chapel Hill with Jethro Winters’s name scribbled across one and Patricia Harmon’s name written neatly on the other.
“Looka here, looka here.”
“You find something else useful in that trash, Baby Doll?”
“There are some hotel room key holder things with Mr. Winters’s and his girlfriend’s names on them.”
Mr. Lacy snorted in disgust. Men could be so stupid when they ran around on their wives. Some of them actually behaved as if they wanted to get caught.
“Keep that, too. Might come in handy if those other papers don’t get Lamont the edge he’ll need going up against someone like this sly Jethro boy.”
Baby Doll put the papers and the key holders in her purse at the bottom of the cart.
“Daddy, we better hurry up and finish this office. That no-good Anthony’ll be strolling by here shortly to check on Mr. Winters’s office. That lazy, no-count Negro walks around here actin’ like he Mr. Winters’s personal assistant.”
Mr. Lacy felt for the carpet sweeper and began working on the large area rug, while Baby Doll finished emptying all of the trash cans before she started dusting. She was so excited about what they’d found and tried not to rush through her work. Many years ago before she got too crazy-acting, she’d been a part of Durham’s black community. She had a good memory of most of the people she was now becoming reacquainted with, even if none of them remembered her.
Baby Doll had come a long way from where she used to be. A lot of the folks she used to hang around were dead, so crazy they didn’t know their butt from their toes, so sick they couldn’t do anything for themselves, or just hanging around on the fringes of life in the community trying to pretend like they were in the mix, making fools of themselves because it was clear to everyone that they were not.
But the Lord had blessed her by taking her from the fringes and given her a toehold back into the mainstream of her community’s daily life. She hoped that by helping Lamont Green beat out that no-good Mr. Winters, she’d be able to get her whole foot through the door.
Jethro’s large, plush, and sparkling chocolate Mercedes sedan made a smooth left turn into his neighborhood. When Bailey had first decided that they we
re moving into the Surrey Green development, right off Hope Valley Road in Southwest Durham, he balked—it wasn’t flashy enough for his taste. But after driving through the quiet neighborhood, and basking over the price she’d negotiated for a very plush house, he capitulated and wrote the check.
That was just one of the things he appreciated about his wife—her exquisite taste and eye for a delicious bargain. Their house, in one of the newer and more opulent Triangle communities, would have cost them tens of thousands of dollars more—not to mention demanding a much higher tax rate. And like Bailey had once told him, just because they were rich didn’t mean they shouldn’t look for a good bargain.
Bailey Catherine Fairfax-Winters, unlike his women, was the real deal—a classy Southern belle. She was tall, gorgeous, with thick, shiny chocolate-colored hair Jethro loved so much he special-ordered his six-figure-tagged car in the exact same color.
Bailey was Jethro’s ideal woman. His numerous mistresses were generally thin, slender-hipped, and blond with big, silicone implanted breasts. But his wife was lush and voluptuous with real D cups. And those things were so soft and warm Jethro could get all hot and bothered just thinking about them.
But it was Bailey’s laugh that made her absolutely irresistible. His wife had the most engaging, heartwarming, and rib-tickling laugh he’d ever heard. It was that laugh that caught his attention the first time he saw her surrounded by a bunch of basketball players when they were undergraduates at Duke.
Jethro slowed the car down, so he could enjoy what he cherished most about the close of his obscenely busy days—a languorous drive around his neighborhood before pulling up into his paved-stone circular drive.
Jethro adjusted the earpiece to his cell phone, called out a name, and waited for the number to dial itself.
“Hello,” a woman’s sultry voice traveled through the sound waves to his eager ears.
“What are you wearing?” he asked with so much heat in his voice it made his windows fog up.
Charmayne blinked at her caller ID to make sure the number was right. She almost said, “Negro, you got some nerve,” but stopped when she remembered that Jethro was very white. Instead, her mind flipped through her mental file of ghetto comebacks and she said, “A gun.”
Jethro started laughing. Charmayne was the only woman, other than Bailey, who could make him laugh out loud with her sassy, in-your-face one-liners. And just like Bailey, the girl was definitely a piece of work, which made her all the more intriguing and desirable.
The phone line was deathly silent. Jethro knew that he had committed a serious breach of etiquette by crossing that particular color line with Charmayne. She was part of that generation of black women who did not take too kindly to a white man hitting on them just because his sweet tooth was craving some brown sugar.
“Come on, baby,” he whispered in his deep “good ole boy” drawl. “You too full of sweet brown sugar to be wearing anything as cold and menacing as a gun.”
“You need to get your color scheme straight ’cause I’m a redbone.”
“Huh?” Jethro said, trying to pull up a mental list of black vernacular so that he could figure out what the heck Charmayne was talking about.
“I’m not brown sugar. I’m high yella, light-skinned, a redbone sister,” she retorted nastily.
“Is that how you talked to folks back when you were a bona fide ’hood rat?” Jethro asked, delighted that he’d struck a nerve, when he heard a sound that made him wonder if Charmayne was sucking on her teeth.
She said, “You better be glad that there is a telephone line protecting you from being slapped back into the twentieth century.”
“Do me a big favor and make it the nineteenth. That way I’d have legal right to order myself up a lap dance or anything else I wanted from you, Charmayne.”
“Why are you calling me and getting on my last nerve, Jethro?” Charmayne demanded. She was tired and sleepy with tons of works to do, and in no mood for foolishness.
He opened his sunroof and sighed with relief when the chilly pre-winter wind whipped through his hair and cooled him down enough to remember why he had called Charmayne in the first place.
“I called to tell you that my investors came through with the seed money I promised the county when the DUDC gives me the contract.”
Charmayne smiled. That was good news—good enough to make it worth putting up with Jethro’s craziness.
“Is there anything you want me to do?” she asked.
“Focus on the neighborhoods surrounding Cashmere Estates. Find out how much was paid for each house, how much they’re worth now, and start drawing up contracts to offer the owner fifteen hundred dollars more than the home’s estimated worth.”
“That’s not giving them a lot to work with, Jethro,” Charmayne said. She doubted if the owners would be able to take that money and find a comparable home outside that community.
“Charmayne, we are out to make as much money as we can. So, offering a better deal to those people is out of the question.”
She didn’t say anything. She was one of “those people” Jethro was referring to.
“Don’t go and get a conscience on me now,” Jethro said sharply. “I told you what was going to happen when I first mapped out my plans with you. Those folks are getting way more from you than they ever would from anybody else, black or white, including your precious Rev. Sykes.
“Charmayne, you are ambitious, aggressive, driven, hot, and sexy. But you are not greedy. That is why I hired you for this job. I need someone who will be thorough and honest when it comes time to do the figures on what those properties are worth. That will be very important when the community is up in arms and accusing me of taking property for less than it’s worth.”
“You also hired me because I don’t have any problem with telling you no,” she said matter-of-factly.
Jethro laughed softly.
“Baby, I’m just a country boy with a bit more testosterone than I probably need.”
“No, you’re a crazy white boy who wants to be the HWMIC in Durham County. You have too much money and way too many old-school debs trying to break up your marriage and steal you away from your wife.”
“HWMIC?”
“Head White Man in Charge,” Charmayne answered.
Jethro hollered with laughter and said, “You are dead on all of my money with that one, baby. But tell you what—just make sure you are in my office on Monday at seven-thirty A.M. sharp.”
“Parvell told me that the three of us are meeting at nine.”
“We are. But you and I need to plan how to buy out that extra property without Parvell. He’s not in on this part of the deal.”
Charmayne smiled and licked her lips.
“I see,” she said, very pleased with the way things were going, especially after Parvell had lied about the money he squeezed out of Jethro. She heard a loud rumbling of metal.
“What’s that?”
“My garage. I need to go—have some housekeeping of sorts to tend to,” Jethro said, grinning at Bailey standing in the garage wearing nothing but a full-length chocolate-colored mink coat, chocolate thigh-high fishnet stockings, and brown patent leather pumps with clear heels.
“I just bet you do,” Charmayne said in a very naughty voice and hung up.
Chapter Nine
THERESA TOOK A BIG GULP OF COFFEE, BIT INTO A breakfast bar, and flipped the newspaper open to reveal a grinning Lamont Green plastered across the front page under the big bold print that read, “Will Green Pastures Successfully Till the Field of Affordable Housing, or Be Mowed Over by a Bigger Plow?”
“My baby boy show does wear a hard hat well, don’t he,” Queen Esther said, as she read the article over Theresa’s shoulder.
Theresa nodded, not wanting to let on that she thought Lamont was looking very sexy in that hard hat, blue jeans, Timberland boots, baby blue cable-knit sweater, and buckskin-colored suede jacket. She’d never paid attention to how broad his shoulders were, a
nd could barely pull her eyes away from them.
“Now those arms on that boy show designed for holding a woman tight,” Queen Esther said proudly, hoping that Theresa agreed with her.
“I guess so,” Theresa mumbled. The last thing she needed to be doing was becoming too interested in how well Lamont Green’s arms could hold somebody. She’d bet some money that his arms were prone to holding a lot of women real tight, and figured the smart thing to do would be to keep her distance. There was nothing worse than loving the feel of a man’s arms, only to discover that you weren’t the only woman with a penchant for the comfort of those arms.
“You guess so?” Queen Esther questioned, wondering what was wrong with that girl.
“Yes, I guess so,” Theresa snapped, wishing Miss Queen Esther would leave her alone about Lamont Green. She was not in the mood to discuss the merits of an unavailable man.
“You kind of touchy this morning, ain’t you, missy?"
Theresa wished she had it in her to be contrite and apologetic but she didn’t.
“I’m not touchy,” she answered evenly, trying to keep the snap out of her voice.
“Well, you show is something,” was all Queen Esther said, as she headed toward the front of the store.
Theresa didn’t know why she felt like slamming things around on her desk. But every time she looked at Lamont Green grinning from ear to ear, a shovel in his hand, hard hat cocked on the side of his head like he was at the club, she wanted to take something and throw it at somebody, anybody.
She made sure that Miss Queen Esther wasn’t in earshot, and was about to slam her hand down on the desk and stomp her foot when the shouting music came on, denying her a great opportunity to take out her frustrations on the poor desk and floor. Theresa took a deep breath and hurried up front, trying to remember if she’d scheduled any appointments before regular store hours.
Mr. Lacy was “looking” around, touching everything he passed in the store, while Miss Baby Doll was in deep conversation with Miss Queen Esther about one of her cleaning gigs.
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