Think Before You Speak

by D. A. Bale

  “Touché is French,” the attorney corrected. “Not Italian.”

  “Work with me,” I countered. “I’m trying to root for your side here.”

  The practicing attorney stood and took a bow, eyes connecting with mine containing a hint of humor – and interest – hidden within the gleam. As the ruckus died down, I made my way down the bar to take care of other patrons while Banker Boy stepped away to take a phone call. I needed some time to think what other names I could come up with besides Things One and Two. The moniker for Radioman had come to me so effortlessly upon my first meeting of the Three Musketeers.

  Seth and his love of debate got me thinking about Ranger Zeke and our constant repartee when we’d hung out during my attempts at clearing Bobby’s name of murder. Thinking of Zeke made me think of the weeks of unrequited sexual frustration while sleeping on his couch. Thinking of sex made me think of Nick. Nick made me think of San Antonio.

  San Antonio brought my churning thoughts around to Reggie.

  Even with the suspicions I’d carried for years, seeing my dear friend in a whole new light had been jarring. Reggie was good at the role he played so effortlessly before the public, and neither the past nor the present-day façade changed the way I saw him. He was a good man. A good friend.

  But blackmail? The how was somewhat obvious. If my heated past still haunting me after all these years was any indicator of humanity’s ability to hold a grudge, then Reggie’s juvie record getting out portended an approaching disaster of epic proportions in both his personal and public life. His lucrative design business could crash and burn faster than a Formula One race car driven by my best friend’s genteel granny. The who and why remained the biggest questions.

  It had to be someone with ties either to Reggie’s past or someone who had access to those criminal records. Zeke again came to mind, but I quickly discounted the notion. The Ranger might be a lying, cheating bastard when it came to fidelity among the female persuasion, but he took his work-related duties quite seriously. No way would he ever stoop so low as to sully the Ranger code.

  And it wasn’t like he needed the money. The family ranch kept the Taylors sitting pretty for the cowpoke clan. Zeke prided himself on taking care of his own bills, but he’d still inherit that sprawling spread someday. With his father’s poor health bringing Zeke back from Austin several years ago, that responsibility had the potential to pass to the next generation sooner rather than later.

  So scratch one Zeke Taylor from the list of suspects. That left the new girlfriend, a nosey client, or someone from Reggie’s past who’d put two-and-two together and gotten my friend in their sights. Starting tomorrow, I needed to touch base with Reggie to find out exactly when this had all started, how this had all started, and to get my hands on the blackmail notes.

  One thing I’d learned when last helping out a friend? No one was safe from suspicion, which meant everyone was a suspect.

  Including my mom, I realized with a shudder. With my dad behind her credit card bill, I could definitely see the sperm donor using blackmail as a tool to gain leverage over someone. After all, he’d proven long ago he had no qualms about seeing how low he could go – and I had the photographic evidence to prove it.

  Wait a minute. Did that make me a blackmailer too?

  Don’t answer that.

  Chapter Eight

  The hold Han had placed me on extended past five minutes, so I took another moment to refill my coffee cup a third time. With my mind churning over Reggie’s predicament, I’d awakened much earlier than anticipated this morning. As a bartender, I’m late to bed and late to rise, and if I see anything before ten o’clock in the morning, bitchy mode kicks into play. There’ve been many a man on the receiving end of my too-early-morning wrath. Unfortunately for him, today it was Reggie’s assistant.

  When he finally found the time to return to the line, I thought the built-up pressure was gonna send my eyeballs popping out of my head like in my favorite horror movie. In this case though, it was probably more like too much caffeine.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Bohanan,” Han responded in his nasal tone. “But Reginald still isn’t answering his phone.”

  “Well, when do you expect him to return from his appointment?” I asked in my best debutante huff.

  “Oh, you know Reginald. He returns when he’s ready. Perhaps around lunchtime?”

  “Doesn’t he have other appointments today?”

  “Yes, but he doesn’t always return to the studio between them unless he needs me as a tagalong. Thursdays are usually follow-ups to make sure all projects are on track before the weekend arrives,” Han continued, his voice dropping to a whine. “Those visits don’t include me.”

  Okay, so the guy was milking the sympathy card for all it was worth. I didn’t care how much it sucked to be Han right now, I just needed to touch base with my friend.

  I took a deep breath and tried again. “Can you at least leave a message for him and ask him to call me ASAP.”

  Something in my voice must’ve sounded desperate. Han’s voice ticked up with a measure of concern – or was that excitement? “Is there a problem with your remodel? The bedroom furniture is still on backorder. Perhaps I could come by and consult with you.”

  “No, everything’s fine with the remodel,” I said, then faltered. Then why was I calling? What excuse could I offer that wouldn’t give anyone the impression I needed to talk to Reggie about anything other than business? “Uh…it’s just that I’d like to talk with him about…pillows. Yes, I was thinking about adding a few more decorative pillows for when my bedroom furniture arrives.”

  When in doubt, go with pillows, my mom always said. She was a big fan of throw pillows as an easy fix to change up the seasonal décor throughout the mansion. Pillows on the sofa. Pillows on the chairs. In the window seat. Mounds across the beds. Pillows billowing from every nook and cranny. Pillows everywhere you looked.

  I’d really come to hate pillows over the years. Thank God Reggie had gone easy on them when redecorating my place. Thus far, I’d only counted two in the window seat and two on the couch, as long as you didn’t count the two on my bed. Those were for actual function and not mere decoration.

  Han’s voice fairly dripped with longing. “I tried to tell Reginald we were going too light on them around your apartment.”

  “It’s just that…”

  “I have all of the swatches here, so all you have to do is tell me which ones to order. Or did you want to add some additional colors? Patterns? Maybe some floral to offset the stripes.”

  Was Han channeling my mother right about now? I took a deep breath and thanked the stars above that Reggie had held strong on design choices against not just my mother but, from the way things sounded, his assistant too. Made me want to help my friend clear up this blackmail mess all the more.

  “Just have Reggie call me when he touches base,” I instructed.

  Disappointment echoed through the connection. “I will do so, Miss Bohanan.”

  I thanked Han and hung up as fast as I could, then set a fresh pot of coffee brewing and jumped into the shower. I’d barely wrung the water from my long, ebony hair when a loud thunk thudded through my apartment. That new door was gonna destroy plenty of knuckles. Maybe I should check with the building superintendent about what it would take to wire up a doorbell.

  A quick wrap of towels around my head and body, then I dragged the front door open to a loud and boisterous greeting.

  “Mein liebchen!” Reggie cried and barreled into me with a hug before pulling back and giving me the once over. “Victoria could turn a man with one glance in that outfit, no?”

  I shut the door. “Cut the act, Reggie. It doesn’t work on me anymore, remember?”

  The pursed lips fell and the hands slid from his skintight red leather pants and matching bolero jacket to hang at his sides. “It’s the clothes,” Reggie said in a deeper voice sans accent. “They help set the mood.”

  “And the scene,” I
replied, taking in the fluorescent orange and pink silk shirt cascading with ruffles. “Momma’s gonna need sunglasses with you in that getup.”

  “It’s the one nice thing about this persona,” he said with a flounce. “Getting dressed in the mornings can be a real riot. It’s the clothes I’ll miss most when I retire.”

  His smile lit up the room until his gaze fell to the notepad on the coffee table where I’d spent the better part of last night and this morning making notes. A few moments was all he needed to plop on the couch and scan the list of potential suspects.

  “Your mother?” he asked, his tone heading toward the rafters.

  I sat down beside him, grabbed the notepad and picked up a pen. “One thing I’ve learned the hard way is that anyone…even those closest to you…can be a suspect.”

  With typical Reggie flourish, he snatched the pen from my fingers and summarily crossed off Bohanan from the list. “I’ve known your mother since you were a toddler. She is not capable of such deceitfulness.”

  “But you don’t know my dad,” I countered. “The real side of my dad. He’d skin you alive if it made him a buck or two. Even for as little as a dime.”

  “All highly successful businessmen have their dark side,” Reggie admonished.

  “Yeah? For the sperm donor, it’s become less a side than an art form learned from the mob.”

  “Well, I won’t have suspicion directed toward your family. It’s ridiculous.”

  “Fine.” I took the revolving pen again and made a show of thoroughly scratching the family name from the list. “Happy?”

  “Much.”

  That didn’t mean I had to scratch the sperm donor from my mental list. As far as I was concerned, he was always at the top of one or the other of my lists. He’d take top honors in a myriad of prizes if I was handing them out. The winner of Best Dad goes to Frank Bohanan in the categories of How to Manipulate to Get Your Way, How to Torment Your Family, How to Blame Your Daughter for Everything Wrong in Your Life, and my personal favorite How to Use the Church to Discover Your Next Hook-up.

  Remember that photographic evidence I mentioned? Yep, applies to that last one specifically. The photos I’d discovered in the Galveston vacation home were safely tucked away in a place only I knew. Everything else I simply carried the scars for.

  Though again, it niggled at me that here I was trying to help a friend throw off the veil of blackmail while I was kinda, sorta, but not really using the same practice against my dad. In my defense, I’d never once asked for money.

  Unlike Reggie’s predicament.

  “Do you have the letters?” I asked.

  Reggie nodded and reached into his bag. Most businessmen carry briefcases. Interior designers carry enormous totes that yawn open for miles, revealing like a magician’s hat a myriad of color swatches, fabric sample rings, hardwood and tile flooring options, photos, sketchpads, folios and files with client information – you name it. One time when I’d suggested he input all of it into a laptop to make it easier to lug around, you’d think I’d said he was a thousand year-old, hunchbacked has been.

  The current favorite was a huge Prada tote that probably cost upward of eight-thousand dollars and looked like it could hold information on at least half the Dallas population. With all of this, Reggie was still able to reach right in and pull out two letters without having to dump and sort through the contents. Talk about organized.

  “Here,” he said, handing over the letters. “And before you ask, no. I don’t recognize the handwriting.”

  I gingerly held the envelopes. “Maybe we should wear gloves so we don’t disturb the fingerprint evidence.”

  Zeke would be proud of me for thinking that. Too bad we’d already marred the paper handling them.

  Reggie stared at me as if I’d sprouted antennae from my head and my skin had turned a vile shade of green. “And why would we need to worry about fingerprints?”

  “To help lead us to the culprit, silly.”

  “And how are we going to get fingerprints?” Reggie asked. “We’d have to turn these over to the police, who would then open an investigation, about which the topic would be available for public consumption when it hit the papers, which would bring about the ruin of my life, which is what the blackmailer is threatening to do anyway.”

  “Gee,” I muttered after that long soliloquy. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “Now who’s silly?”

  The present discussion took me back to the car conversation with Nick on the way to San Antonio, and his little V-8 juice comment when I’d been trying to discuss engines. Made me want to slap my own forehead right about then. Maybe hanging out with Nick so much had dulled my brain cells.

  See ladies? This goes to show you that even good sex isn’t enough to justify staying with someone who brings you down instead of up. Mentally, that is.

  I opened the earlier postmarked letter then the second and studied the calligraphy. Such handwriting style wasn’t widely known these days but still taught in cotillion circles. Same nice, heavyweight linen paper. Not cheap. Dallas postmark, so the culprit was someone local, or at least someone who had access to the local postal service.

  This didn’t mean the San Antonio girlfriend – or date – was off the hook. Might be the blackmailer’s first mistake or a clever ploy to focus more on the local populace. The conversation I’d had with Detective Dingbat about the two simple motives of a blackmailer had me leaning more toward the former – for now.

  The first letter referenced the demand for a hundred grand or they would release Reggie’s juvie record to the media. The enclosed copies of the New York court documents showed the legal name change accompanied by the design school admissions forms, neatly tying the pieces of Reggie’s past and present together.

  After my experience in June of obtaining copies of Amy Vernet’s vital statistics records, color me impressed with the blackmailer’s resourcefulness. But then that threw a wrench into my supposition the culprit was local. Maybe he or she wasn’t in the Dallas area or even Texas, for that matter. Or perhaps he or she had friends in or near New York willing to help in this scheme. Yeah, I was gonna get a monster headache if I didn’t reign the brain in. For now, I’d keep it simple and work from the local angle.

  The second letter included reference to a post office box key and the location of said box for delivery of the cash. At least that was pretty straightforward. The envelope had a faint outline puckering the corner, but no key.

  “Okay,” I said, after studying the letters and settling in for the long haul. “These appear to have been written by the same individual. First one postmarked four weeks ago. The second two weeks after. Do you have the post office box key this one mentions?”

  “Yes,” Reggie affirmed, producing the key from his bag. “I’ve spent the better part of the last few weeks at the bank, going from branch to branch every couple of days to withdraw cash since I couldn’t do it in one transaction without some document reporting the withdrawal to the Feds. The last bit I obtained Tuesday morning before leaving San Antonio.”

  “Ah,” I replied. “A currency transaction report.”

  “You know about them?”

  I nodded. “Anytime my dad dealt with a bunch of cash in hand, he’d spend the next week running around the house just grousing and grumbling about how the government should keep their nose out of taxpayers’ business.”

  Reggie’s eyes widened. “Do you think someone was blackmailing him?”

  “Probably just the opposite,” I grumbled.

  Wisely, Reggie left that alone.

  I continued, “It says here you were supposed to leave the cash in the box this past Tuesday by midnight. Did you already do that?”

  “Yes, shortly after returning from my trip. I’ve spent time day and night since, watching the building to see who comes in and out to determine if I recognize anyone. However, I still have a business to run…for now. If I canceled all of my appointments and camped out there twenty-
four-seven, I’d either start losing clients or my staff might get suspicious.”

  “No one then?”

  Reggie shook his head. “Ridiculous of me to do that, considering most of my clients have staff who run their errands. But I did go inside this morning before coming over here and the bag of cash was still there.”

  “Whoever it is may wait awhile before collecting,” I mused aloud. “Wait until the furor dies down.”

  “Or they know my car,” Reggie supplied.

  I picked up the notepad and scanned the list I’d started. “Okay, so who among your clientele have been unhappy with your work?”

  Reggie waved his hand about and slipped back into the accent. “Not a soul vould dare be displeased vith a Reginald von Braun design.”

  “Still, I’ll need a client list.”

  “Proprietary information, darling.”

  “You want my help? This is me helping.”

  He snorted, returning to full-on diva mode. “It’ll have to be a print-out. I can’t have any of the staff discovering an email.”

  “That’s fine. What about the girlfriend in San Antonio?” I asked, returning to the local versus non-local conundrum like a hamster racing in the wheel to nowhere.

  “We just started sharing identifiable personal information once we started talking on the phone. That would’ve been about two weeks ago, after the letters arrived.”

  “The timing of your meeting with her is interesting,” I surmised with a tap of the pen against my lips. “She might’ve gleaned more hints from you earlier than you realized. I need a name and any history you know on her.”

  “There goes my private life,” Reggie muttered.

  I ignored him. “Then last, what can you tell me about your gang years.”

  A definable shudder passed over him, sending silk ruffles rippling like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. “I’ve not thought about that time in so long. At least not until all of this started.”

  “What was the name of the group?” I asked, ready to detail every painful memory like a court reporter during a trial.