Truth and Justice

by Fern Michaels

  Myra and Annie both blinked at the disgust and downright hatred they were hearing in the older man’s voice.

  “Bella, his widow, told us Sara got his insurance money, and I guess she also cleared out his bank account. Nothing illegal about any of it. The major had given his sister his POA,” Annie said. “Bella was left with nothing. We’d like to find Sara and perhaps explain to her that she needs to make things right with her brother’s widow.”

  “That’s the thing, though, ladies. Sara is not Andy’s sister. She was no relation at all to Andy. I don’t see the young widow having any rights here. Andy was of sound mind when he gave her his power of attorney. While we might not like what Sara’s done, and even though she is not a blood relative, she did not do anything illegal. Underhanded, yes. I don’t know what you think you can do to make it right?” Henry Olsen said.

  “By the way,” Maddie interjected, “a month or so after . . . after our dear friends passed, Henry and I went to the courthouse and searched the family-court records to see if we could establish that Sara was adopted. The people there were really nice and helped us. We couldn’t find a thing. We even had Sara’s social security number because Andy gave it to us. Well . . . he didn’t exactly give it to us, what he did was he showed us some paper in regard to the house, and Sara’s name and social security number were on it. I said I had to get my glasses to read it and walked over to the desk and copied it down. I don’t even know why I did it. Something just told me to do it. Would you like it?” Both Myra and Annie nodded. Maddie scampered over to a tiny corner desk and a minute later returned with a sticky note with Sara’s social security number.

  Annie and Myra just smiled. They were happy they could confirm the information they already had.

  “You just shush now, Henry. These fine ladies know what they’re doing, and while we wouldn’t or couldn’t do anything, they can because of who they are. Ladies, you have my blessing, and Henry’s, too.”

  “Do you know how we can locate Sara. We’ve already talked to her ex-husband, a famous sculptor who lives in Baltimore.”

  “Sara was married!” the Olsens said in unison. They looked shocked to their core at the news.

  “Yes, to a man named Steven Conover. He does beautiful work. The marriage only lasted three years. Sara left him and took all his money, and other than receiving papers indicating that she had divorced him, he has not heard from her since she walked out with his money. He claims he has no clue where his ex-wife might be, and we believe him.

  “We thought she might have come back here to Oklahoma. To the home base, where she grew up and was comfortable knowing Steven wouldn’t follow her. In fact, he said he did not even know the name of the town here in Oklahoma where she lived. He excused it all by saying he was in love. Bella, Andy’s widow, did and acted the same way. Being in love seems to be the standard go-to answer for everything that didn’t work out. And that’s why we’re here,” Myra said.

  “I’m taking the fact that you didn’t know Sara was married to mean you also don’t know anything else about her,” Annie said.

  “That’s as true a statement as any I could come up with. We never knew any of Sara’s friends. As far as we know, she never brought any home. Sonia said she thought it strange, but then she said, and Henry and I don’t know how she found out, but she told us Sara was hanging with a rough crowd, motorcycle people with tattoos and piercings, things like that.

  “Dan never said a bad word about the girl. That always bothered Sonia because she was a tad jealous of Dan’s first wife and Sara being her child and all,” Maddie said.

  “Do you know if any of Andy’s friends from the early days are still around?” Annie asked.

  “I do know the answer to that, and it’s no. Andy only had a few friends, and they scattered across the country. Andy said in one of his rare e-mails to us that he tried to track down some people named Lynus and Zack, but he couldn’t find them. Do you ladies know how to work Facebook? Maybe Sara uses it. We don’t do social media. I can see Sara using it. Most young people do today. Henry and I are old-fashioned,” Maddie said primly.

  “What’s going to happen now?” Henry asked.

  “I don’t honestly know, Henry. We’re going to try to find Sara. Right now, that is our top priority. We can’t do anything for Major Nolan except try to make things right for his young widow,” Annie said. She debated saying something about the fertility clinic for a moment but changed her mind. Some things were just better left unsaid.

  “I’m sorry we couldn’t be of more help. But we’re glad you stopped by. We don’t see many people around here. Sonia and Dan were our only real friends. People who live in this community are not what you would call friendly. Everyone minds their own business, and no one joins anything. Activities are nonexistent. So it’s nice to have company once in a while. I wish, though, it was under other circumstances. If you like, Henry and I will try to see if we can find out anything that might help you. We have all the time in the world to do whatever will help you. If you give us an e-mail address or phone number where we can reach you, that would help,” Maddie said. “And don’t you worry for even one little minute, your secret is safe with us, ladies.”

  Myra and Annie nodded as Annie rattled off their cell phone numbers and Myra’s e-mail. Maddie dutifully copied them down in a tight script.

  The goodbyes were quick, with Annie expounding away about how people took thirty minutes to say goodbye when all the other person wanted was to be on their way. When Annie said goodbye it was goodbye, and that was the end of it; and she never looked back, either.

  Myra called the number on the card the Uber driver had given them. He said he would pick them up in eleven minutes.

  To pass the time Annie suggested a walk around the block, but then changed her mind, and said, “Let’s just walk up to the corner. This place depresses me. So we’re going to the Commodore Hotel to meet up with Avery, is that right?”

  Myra said it was.

  “Are we staying overnight or flying back home? I need to call Peter and let him know.”

  Myra shrugged. “I’m okay either way. I’m sure we can buy whatever we need in one of the shops in the hotel if we stay over. Seriously, though, Annie, I doubt we can accomplish anything here that Avery can’t with his people. The Olsens pretty much summed it up. Sara left, and we got all there was to get of the back story, so I’m thinking we should meet Avery, share what we have, and head home. We can probably do more from our home base, anyway.”

  “That works for me, and I agree with you for a change.” Annie laughed. “Here comes our ride, right on time. How do they do that, get it to the minute like that?” Annie fretted. “He said eleven minutes, and it is exactly eleven minutes.”

  “You know what, Annie. I don’t know the answer, nor do I care. Do you really care?”

  “I-do-not!” Annie linked her arm with Myra’s. “Don’t ever change, Myra,” she said, opening the door of the Uber car.

  “I won’t if you won’t.” Myra giggled as she slid into the back seat, Annie right behind her.

  “Please take us to the Commodore Hotel.”

  “Sure thing, ladies.”

  Chapter 10

  Nina Lofton, aka Sara Windsor Nolan Santiago Bernard Conover, exited the main terminal, dragging the designer suitcase that cost more than her airline ticket from Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., to Tulsa International Airport. She exited the main terminal, looked around to get her bearings, and walked over to a line for Uber pickups. She took her place behind two casually dressed older women. She heard them call each other by name. Myra and Annie. Old-fashioned names, she thought to herself. They looked pleasant. Even motherly.

  She missed not having a mother. Once, she was told, she had a real mother. Then, when she was older, she was told that her mother, her real mother, had died, and she was going to get a new mother whose name was Sonia. She had someone she was supposed to call Dad, but he wasn’t a real dad, either. Just tw
o people whom she lived with. She worked hard at not calling either one Mom or Dad. For some reason, she just couldn’t get her tongue to work to say the words. In her mind and in her thoughts, she called them Sonia and Dan. She hated both of them even more than she hated a two-headed snake. But she had endured because of . . . because of . . . Andy.

  Those people, Sonia and Dan, said Andy was her brother. It was a lie. She didn’t have a brother, just like she didn’t have a mom or a dad. Andy was theirs. Andy belonged. She didn’t belong. She wasn’t theirs. She was just tolerated. She hated that they thought she was too stupid to figure it all out. Wasn’t it Plato who said, “Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools speak because they have to say something”?

  She, Sara Windsor, fell in love with Andy Nolan when she was seven years old and tasked with watching over her three-year-old little brother who really wasn’t her brother, little or otherwise.

  Andy adored her, that much she knew. It was hard not to smile and laugh with him. She had fun playing with him, reading him stories, and pretending to be the characters she was reading about. But she did all of that out of sight of Sonia and Dan. What feelings she had for Andy were private, even way back when she was a little girl who was wise beyond her years. Of course, she didn’t know that then, though she came to know it with each passing year. She wondered how that had happened because it was such a long time ago. Where did those smarts come from? Her real mother maybe. It made her feel good to think that.

  A gust of wind whipped through the tunnel-like area where she was standing with the line of people who were all grumbling about the lack of, and the slowness of, the Ubers they’d all called for.

  The two ladies in front of her seemed to be the loudest, calling each other by name. “We should have taken Henry Olsen up on his offer to drive us to the hotel,” the one named Annie said. The one named Myra shaded her eyes against the October sun and squinted down the road. “I think you’re right. I think this was an exercise in futility. What did we even really learn?”

  Annie poked her friend in the arm and hissed, “Check out those shoes on the woman behind us. Louboutins, and that pair goes for nine hundred bucks. Saw them in Neiman Marcus. I wonder if she’s trying to match that red hair she’s sporting. You can tell it comes out of a bottle,” Annie sniffed.

  Myra shrugged to show she wasn’t interested in the woman’s red shoes or her red hair. “We should have stayed home and let Avery handle this. No one knows anything about Sara Nolan or Sara Windsor or Sara Conover or whatever name she is using at the moment.”

  Nina Lofton almost fell out of her red stilettoes at the mention of her name by two strangers standing right in front of her. She did a double take, then backed up carefully, a step at a time, so as not to call undue attention to herself, and ran as fast as her spike-heeled shoes could carry her back into the airport, where she called a number she knew from memory for a car service. She walked over to the service exit and waited, her foot tapping the concrete floor, her guts churning. Weird things happened to her all the time, but this was definitely one of the weirdest things ever. Here she was, standing in a line waiting for an Uber and thinking about Andy Nolan, and two women she’d never seen in her life were talking about her. Her! She told herself that was about as weird as it could get. Why? Who were they? Why did they mention Sonia and Dan’s best friends, Maddie and Henry Olsen. Andy called them aunt and uncle, but they weren’t blood relatives. She never called them anything but the Olsens.

  Sara leaned against the wall and closed her eyes while she waited for the car service she’d called. Andy’s dear sweet face swam behind her closed eyelids. Andy made her life bearable. Andy always knew just the right thing to say to her, knew when to give her a quick hug or take her hand in his. Once he’d kissed her tears away. If she lived to be a hundred years old, nothing would ever compare to that one minute of time in her young life. Instantly, things in her little world were made right when he was in her line of sight or near her. She questioned how that could be when Andy was four years younger, and everyone knew girls matured faster and more quickly than boys. She told herself whoever had made that observation didn’t know Andy Nolan.

  * * *

  They told each other secrets, and as far as she knew, Andy never divulged anything she ever told him. And she’d never told anyone anything he’d confided to her. In the end, who would she tell, certainly not the Olsens or Sonia and Dan, and she had no friends to speak of. Andy Nolan was her only friend. And she was okay with that.

  Until . . . until Andy discovered girls. More to the point, when girls discovered Andy Nolan. Girls flocked to him because he was sweet and cute. Sweet and cute grew into handsome, and from handsome he went to drop-dead gorgeous, and then it was look-out-world-here-comes-Andy-Nolan! He took it all in stride and didn’t get serious about the adoration or admiration. Football was serious, getting ready for college was serious, and going into the military was serious. He didn’t want baggage, and girls, he’d told Sonia, were baggage. In a good way. He went on to say when he left to make his way in the big, wide world, he didn’t want to be encumbered in any way except by Sara because she was his big sister and he loved her. Like a sister.

  Those three words were like a knife in Sara’s heart. That’s when she knew for certain there would be no future for her with Andy in her life. And Andy was oblivious to her feelings, which made it hurt all the more.

  When it was time for college, she elected to go to the community college so she could still stay in the Nolan home while Andy finished four years of high school. When Andy was accepted to the university of his choice in California, she packed up and left with him. She used all her wiles to convince him she needed to be there so he could have what he called a big sis to talk to.

  She made a joke out of flying the coop, and Andy had laughed and said he was secretly glad she was going to go with him because he was afraid of being homesick because he’d never been out of Tulsa, not to say the state of Oklahoma. Nor had Sara, so that made them even closer in Andy’s eyes.

  As for Sara, she simply could not imagine her life without Andy close by. No way. She counted the minutes until Andy would get out of class so they could talk or grab a burger someplace. Just telling each other about the hours they had spent apart.

  Sara knew and dreaded the day when Andy would start bringing college coeds to meet her. She’d be Miss Nice Lovely Big Sis to them, and later, when she was alone with him, she’d pick the coed to pieces and Andy would then move on to the next girl. Just the thought of Andy kissing a girl and maybe . . . just maybe . . . doing other things with her made her violently ill. So ill she would throw up. Andy Nolan was hers. Andy Nolan belonged to her. And no one was going to take him away from her. No one!

  Sara’s life revolved around Andy. People always commented on how close the brother and sister were. She always beamed with pleasure. Andy just . . . what Andy did was stare into space at their comments. She never did figure that out. She worked two part-time jobs so she could have free time on Andy’s schedule. She told him she was taking night classes, but it was a lie. He said he was so very proud of her. She remembered how she’d about gone into orbit at his praise.

  He, in the meantime, was easily pulling down a GPA of 4.0. Andy was incredibly smart. He constantly joked that he was going to leave her flat and go to England to attend the London School of Economics. Then he laughed and so would she because they both knew it would never happen. Because, as Andy put it, it rained all the time in England, and he hated rain. He liked sunny, warm days. He was going to live forever in the sunshine state of California.

  Weeks, months, years passed, with Andy completing his college education in three years and one month. He immediately signed up for the military, enlisting in the army.

  Boot camp. Six weeks of nothing. Then OCS on the horizon. Sara wanted to lie down and die right then and there. How could she exist for six weeks without seeing or talking to Andy? How?

  Sara had to s
tay behind. Communication between the two of them dropped to nonexistent. She stayed in bed for days at a time. She couldn’t cope. She literally could not function. Sometimes, she didn’t eat for days. She lost weight. She started to think she might die.

  Then, suddenly, the magic began. Five weeks into boot camp, Andy found a way to call her on the phone. His voice was hoarse, choked up when he said how hard boot camp was, but he was going to make it because he was determined. The word failure was not in his vocabulary. A career in the military was something he hungered for, and he wasn’t about to give it up. He said he just worked harder, doubled down, and made it all happen. He told her how much he missed her. The reason for the call was to ask her if he could bunk with her for a few days before he headed back to Tulsa to see his mom and dad before being shipped out to God only knows where because suddenly he wasn’t sure about Officer Candidate School. She remembered how she had literally swooned at his request.

  Her response was, “Yes, yes, yes, a thousand times yes.” Andy made a smacking sound with his lips and she did the same before she hung up. Long-distance kisses. If only she could experience the real thing. If only.

  Sara bounded out of bed as though her feet were spring loaded. She had her life back. She headed for the refrigerator and ate everything edible that didn’t have something mysterious growing on it. Then she showered and washed her hair. After that, she cleaned her tiny apartment from top to bottom and ran to the store to buy more food. She needed energy and stamina.

  She went back to bed and slept deeply for six straight hours. A wonderful, restful, happy sleep. She woke full of spit and vinegar, ready to take on the whole world.