Beckett's Cinderella

by Dixie Browning

  “That’s not what the papers said.”

  “Don’t trust everything you read in the papers. They can be bought off just like everybody else. Look, she’s living it up out there on the beach, right?”

  “It didn’t look like a beach on the map.”

  “Close enough. We’ve got her spooked now, so once we turn up she’ll break and then we can get us a story and sell it to the highest bidder. I’m thinking National Enquirer, but I’ll settle for the Star.”

  “I guess,” Patty Ann said doubtfully. “I’m startin’ to wish I hadn’t stole her address book. It makes me feel kind of…I don’t know. Bad, I guess.”

  “I know, babe. But look at it this way—she had her big chance. She blew it. That’s tough, but hey, that’s the breaks. Now it’s our turn. Once we get the goods on her, we write our own story. If she’s dirty, we go to the cops. If she’s really innocent like you say, we go to the papers with a story about how this society woman is repenting her sins, living in the sticks and all. Papers pay big money for human-interest stuff, and the good part is, either way, we get our name out there. First thing you know we’ll be going on all the talk shows, telling about how we tracked her down using no more than an address book, a few phone calls and a first-class stamp. That’s real brainpower. Best kind of publicity in the world. Hey, we might even write a book.”

  “Ha! Now I know you’re crazy.”

  “Look, all I’m asking is, trust me on this. Either way it turns out, we get enough publicity to launch our business, and like they say in the movies, the rest is history.”

  Patty Ann Garrett, currently employed by an old cow who called her Betty Jean half the time, idly scratched the back of her ankle with a freshly polished toenail. It was one thing to be in love with a brilliant, ambitious man. It was another thing to try and keep up with the way his mind worked. What if he thought she was too dumb and started looking around for another partner? She loved him, she really did. She’d loved him ever since they were in high school together.

  “I guess it won’t hurt to show up, like we just happened to be in the neighborhood and all.”

  “I promise, we’ll just show up accidental-like and talk to her.”

  “Won’t she wonder how we knew where she was?”

  “I’ll figure out something on the way. But listen, six years as a security guard is five years too much. The uniform’s okay, but the pay’s rotten and the benefits are worse. I been planning this thing for years, just waiting for the right opportunity to connect—something that’ll get me some free publicity. You’re my connection, babe. I won’t forget it. From now on, we’ve got it made.”

  It was too early to go to bed. Liza knew she’d never be able to fall asleep. Wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the book she’d thought was so wonderful just yesterday, either. The writer was clever—she had a great ear for dialogue, but the hero was only in his twenties and had baby-blue eyes and boyish dimples. In Liza’s opinion men didn’t even begin to ripen until they were in their midthirties.

  L. J. Beckett was probably nearing forty, maybe even a year or so on the other side. If he had a dimple, it was in a place that didn’t show. Which brought on a whole new line of thought, one that was strictly off-limits.

  “What’s the score now?” she asked, dropping into the vacant chair, shucking off her clogs and sighing.

  “Tied at three, but our guys is red-hot tonight.”

  “Ever the optimist.” She smiled fondly at the relative she had never met until little over a year ago. He had saved—well, if not her life, at least her sanity.

  There hadn’t been any more hang-up calls for more than a week now, and the single letter could have been a fluke. Probably one of those automated envelope stuffers that couldn’t tell when the ink ran out on the printer.

  Oh, sure. The hang-up calls were wrong numbers, and the blank letter was a computer glitch. And L. J. Beckett was a friendly IRS agent, trying to find out if she had stashed away any unreported ill-gotten gains.

  “Storm looks like it’s headed this way. Too far out to tell yet.”

  “Lord, not a rainy Labor Day weekend, that would be awful for everybody’s business.”

  “Feet don’t hurt, leastways no more’n usual. Maybe she’ll sheer off. Feller said to give you this.” Without looking away from the screen, her uncle fished out an envelope and handed it over.

  Liza stared at it as if it were a copperhead poised to strike. “Do you know what it is?”

  “Said he owed you some money.”

  “He doesn’t owe me a darned thing. I’ve never even met the man before today.”

  “Seen a lot of folks in my life. This one don’t strike me as a fool or a crook. He says he owes you money, it’s ’cause he does. Or thinks he does. Any rate, you might’s well open it, long’s he left it here.”

  Liza could tell her uncle was burning with curiosity. Another batter struck out, and he didn’t even turn to watch. “All right, I’ll open it, but that doesn’t mean…” The bills fell out in her lap. Ten of them, each featuring a portrait of Grover Cleveland. Nausea clenched like a fist in her belly.

  “Cash money, huh? Know what that means? Means we don’t have to report it.”

  When she could catch her breath again, she said, “Uncle Fred, stop joking. I can’t take this money. The man’s out of his mind.”

  “Who says I’m joking? I’ve not got many more miles left in me, but I wouldn’t mind seeing me a ball game at Turner Field. Might even take in a race or two while we’re down that way.”

  Liza stared down at the Federal Reserve notes scattered on her lap. Ten thousand dollars. Nobody owed her so much as a single dollar, much less ten thousand of them.

  “I’ve got to find him and give it back. Did he say where he was going?”

  “Back to the motel, I reckon. Not much else he could do around these parts.”

  “He’s staying at the beach?” She didn’t look forward to driving all the way to Kitty Hawk at this time of night, but if he got away, she would never be able to put an end to this stupid charade.

  “Fin and Feather, right up the road. Asked me this morning if there was a place, and I told him it was clean as any and cheaper’n most.”

  Liza continued to stare down at the bills scattered across her lap. She was so tired she could cry. Why couldn’t people just leave her alone? She hadn’t done anything wrong. She might have been stupid for not realizing where James’s money was coming from all those years, but she’d paid for her stupidity. Paid for it dearly.

  “I’ll be back in half an hour,” she said, gathering up the thousand-dollar bills and cramming them back into the plain brown business-size envelope.

  He was good. Oh, he was good, all right, but whatever he was up to, she wasn’t falling for it. Even stupid people could learn from their mistakes.

  Beckett wasn’t too surprised when lights flashed across the window of his unit, which was one of only five. He’d parked off to one side to avoid a pothole. Whoever had just driven up—he’d lay odds it was Queen Eliza—didn’t care about potholes. Ten-to-one she was steaming. Back stiff as a poker, fire blazing in those whiskey-brown eyes. Oh, yeah, she’d be something to see, all right. Move over, Old Faithful, get ready to see a real eruption.

  He opened the door before she could knock. Grinning, he asked, “What took you so long?”

  Stabbing him in the chest with the envelope, she said, “You can take your blasted money and—and shove it!” She stepped back, but he caught her arm.

  “Whoa…hold on a minute, how do I know it’s all here?”

  Her eyes alone could be classified as lethal weapons. Tossing the envelope onto the table beside the remains of his take-out meal, he led her gently into the room, careful not to exert any undue pressure. He had a feeling she would bruise easily.

  Had a feeling she could also inflict a few bruises of her own, given the opportunity.

  “Look, I think you’ve got the wrong idea about me—about w
hat this is all about.”

  “I don’t think so.” Her arms were crossed again. If she had any idea what it could do to a man’s libido to see a pair of small, soft breasts under thin white cotton, squished together and propped up on a shelf of tanned forearms, she’d be running for cover instead of glaring at him that way.

  “I guess the papers have spent too much time in various attics over the past century or so. Charleston’s gone through a few major hurricanes over the years—what with leaky roofs, hungry bugs and fading ink, it’s a wonder we were able to resurrect even that much. The thing is, the Beckett men—” He broke off, wondering how to explain it in the simplest terms.

  “The Beckett men what?”

  He tried a smile on her, then shrugged and said, “They have a tendency to procrastinate. Look, could we sit down? It’ll take a few minutes, but I’ll try to sum it up. My father is Coley Jefferson Beckett. You might’ve heard of him, he was a state senator for three terms.”

  “Not my problem.”

  “Fine. The thing is, he was supposed to have located any Chandler heirs and paid them off years ago, only he was too busy campaigning. Now he’s suffering from emphysema, so it’s pretty much out of the question. Dad’s brother, my uncle Lance, might’ve done it. Trouble is, he’s got his hands full at the moment with—well, that’s beside the point. That leaves me and my cousin Carson, who’s currently laid up with a few broken bones.”

  Her eyes had gradually grown round with disbelief, so he hurried to finish before she got up and walked out on him. “But now that PawPaw’s had this stroke—”

  “PawPaw?”

  “My grandfather. At any rate, it was PawPaw who originally promised his father to find these people and make good on the old family debt, only he never got around to it. I told you the Beckett men were good at procrastinating.”

  Liza stared at him for a full count. “Am I supposed to understand all that gibberish?”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s pretty hard to keep score. I’ve got a genealogical chart in my briefcase, but it’s yours, not mine.”

  Frowning, Liza nibbled on her lower lip. She was half tempted to believe him, if only because the whole mess sounded so utterly absurd that nobody in his right mind could make it up. The con artists she’d read about usually went for simpler setups. The more complicated the lies, the easier it was to trip over them.

  Actually, James was the only con she’d known personally. When his palatial house of cards first began to collapse, he claimed it was all a mistake. Liza had tried to believe him. She’d lived with the man for nearly eleven years, after all. And although he was far from perfect—far, far from perfect—she’d once loved him enough to marry him. The initial passion had quickly faded, but she’d never had an inkling of what kind of man he really was until shortly before the end.

  He’d always been something of a charmer—it was one thing she’d come to despise about him. Teasing her and calling her his trophy wife, he’d spend a fortune on her clothes and jewelry, far more than she would ever have spent on herself. In the early years, he’d taken her with him to entertain potential clients. But then he began going on trips without her, which suited her just fine. By the time she’d learned about his mistresses, their marriage had essentially been over. She’d been more sad than angry. At that point, James had moved to a hotel and she had started divorce proceedings.

  And then things had started getting crazy. First the police—two men from something called the Financial Crimes Unit. Then James’s lawyer, her own lawyer, and then the victims’ lawyers and, finally, the IRS.

  Months later, after James had been shot and killed and she’d done everything she knew how to make amends to the people he had cheated, she started reading about all the ways unscrupulous people could trick gullible ones out of everything they possessed. What hurt the most was the fact that James’s victims had usually been people who had saved all their lives for a decent retirement. On being told that they could live in relative luxury rather than eke out an existence in some low-rent retirement community, some had borrowed even more money to buy into whatever it was her bastard of a husband had been peddling. Offshore oil leases that never existed. IPOs for nonexistent companies that were guaranteed to double in value within the first three months. Promissory notes…

  Oh, yes. James George Edwards had been smooth, all right.

  And so was this man. “Do you have any identification?”

  He pulled out a worn ostrich-skin wallet. Flipping it open to reveal a driver’s license, he handed it to her. “Pilot’s license? Credit cards? You want to see my business card?”

  Liza shoved it back at him, trying not to notice the shape of his mouth, the way it moved when he spoke. “Business cards are a dime a dozen,” she said flatly. “Same goes for fake licenses. I suppose next you’re going to tell me you’re a card-carrying member of the Screen Actor’s Guild, right?”

  He did a slow double take. “Beg pardon?”

  All right, so he reminded her of a cross between Mel Gibson and George Clooney. “Look, can we just let this whole thing drop? I’m tired. I’ve obviously interrupted your supper. I’m not interested in accepting money from a stranger, so why don’t we just leave it—”

  A soft buzzing sound had him reaching for a cell phone. “Yeah? What’s up, you find out anything new about the other one?”

  And then he frowned. Liza couldn’t help but stare. Even frowning, the man was strikingly attractive. He might even be on the level—she supposed most con games were built on a logical, legitimate premise. The missing heir or heiress. The forgotten deposit box. Did she dare trust him enough to explore any further? It might be…interesting.

  Stop it. Just stop it right now. And stop what you’re thinking about, too. Good Lord, you don’t even like sex.

  “Thanks, Car. If I leave now I can make it to the airport in about an hour, give or take. Meanwhile, keep me posted on any further developments.”

  Liza rose, thinking to escape while he was distracted. Something in his expression held her there. “Is anything wrong?”

  He looked up, blinking as though he’d forgotten she was in the room. “PawPaw just had another stroke, a big one this time. He’s in the hospital.”

  Four

  He was gone. Out of her life for good. So why, Liza wondered, did she feel this nagging sense of disappointment? She didn’t want his money. Even if what he said was true—that, way back in the dark ages, someone in his family had cheated someone in hers—what difference did it make now? L. J. Beckett hadn’t cheated Eliza Chandler. Might’ve tried to, but he’d picked the wrong victim this time.

  Still, she wished she knew. It would be nice to be able to dismiss him as a crook. That way she wouldn’t waste any time mooning about him. Not that she intended to. Moon about him, that was. So he was good-looking; she’d seen far better-looking men. James, with his almost-too-perfect features, his carefully gym-contoured body and his impeccable wardrobe, had looked like a cover model for a men’s fashion magazine…and look how he’d turned out. She was beginning to believe that handsome men were not only vain but they also relied too often on their looks alone to get them through life.

  Oh, yes, she had definitely learned her lesson. The fact that she’d had no trouble resisting a ruggedly handsome man with a wild tale about wanting to make her rich…that just proved it, didn’t it?

  Sure it did. So why didn’t she feel relief instead of this nagging sense of having missed out on something special?

  It wasn’t the money she was thinking about. It was L. J. Beckett.

  PawPaw—Elias Lancelot Beckett—gazed up at his two grandsons, marveling silently that he’d been born in the nineteenth century, lived through the entire twentieth century, and would die in the twenty-first. How many men’s lives had covered a span of three centuries?

  Unable to participate actively for the past few years, he’d still made a point of keeping up with what was happening in the world around him. And wh
at was happening, he thought, was that history kept right on repeating itself, with the same old lessons having to be learned over and over. At least the soldiers no longer wore red coats with a white X marking the spot.

  Of course, that had been a few years before even his time….

  He’d been watching the news last night when he’d had that little dizzy spell. Whole body had gone numb on him. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t talk. No point in watching the news if you couldn’t talk back. By the time they got him to the hospital, some of the feeling had come back to one arm. But now he couldn’t even shake a fist for all the dratted tubes they had hooked up to his body. He could’ve told ’em, if he could’ve got his tongue to work right, that all the potions Florence Nightingale and her friends kept pumping into his frail old carcass weren’t going to do one dagnab bit of good. What he needed was a stiff shot of good bourbon.

  Pain in the ass, that’s what it was. Might’s well die and be done with it, with all these wires and tubes and blinking black boxes hooked up to his body.

  What are you two young nippers whispering about over there in the corner? You think just because I can’t move, I don’t know what’s going on?

  Eli saw the looks that passed between his two grandsons. He knew what they were thinking. Why’n hell don’t this old buzzard pull the plug, head on upstairs and let us go home? He’s taken up space down here long enough.

  That tall, good-looking pair of fellers staring down at him like they wanted to cry but had forgotten how—they were his own begats, once removed. Big gray-headed boy looked just like him. Other one—Lance’s boy—he had his mama’s eyes. Blue as the fire off’n a stick o’ lightwood. Young Lance had picked himself a real good-looking woman, that he had.

  Elias Lancelot Beckett struggled internally to make wasted muscles respond to the command of his still-sharp brain. Silently, he shouted at his grandsons, telling them to quite wasting time hanging around here, to get on with doing what he should’ve done while he was still up and kicking.