A Fortune to Die For (White Oak - Mafia Series Book 1) (2 page)

“Is this mine?” he asked.

She glanced back. He pointed to the glass of green tea on the kitchen table.

“It is.”

He hurried back to the other room with his drink.

Coward.

She entered her safe room with two bowls of chili. He hadn’t left any room for her to set the chili down on the coffee table, so she placed it on a pile of death threats.

His right eyebrow rose as he picked up the bowl. “It does look better now.” But after one bite, he made space for it on the coffee table and returned to reading the letters.

“What’s wrong with it?” It tasted fine to her.

“Nothing. I just need to stay focused on my work.”

Stacks of paper littered her coffee table. The clipped-from-magazines threats were all in one, the small print in another, and the large, angry scrawling ones with excessive use of explanation points in the largest pile. “Sorting by penmanship?”

Upon staring at the groupings, a faint smile tugged at his lips. “Not purposely, but now that you mention it, they do seem to be falling out like that.”

How else could he be sorting them? To her they were all much the same.
You didn’t give me money, I’m pissed, and I wish you a life of misery and hell.

“In the future, you should save the envelopes as well,” he added.

“Okay.” Her interest in eating was gone now. Odd how death threats could dampen the appetite.

Once he set his current letter on the clipped magazine pile, he asked, “Do you by chance keep any of the non-threatening letters?”

“The Beg-a-thons? No…well today’s. I’d have to pull them out of the trash…but I compost, so my trash is pretty clean.”

“If you wouldn’t mind.” Grabbing up the next letter, he gave it his full attention.

She stood and retrieved his untouched chili. “I could cook you a turkey burger if you’d rather.”

“No, I’m fine,” he replied, never taking his eyes off the letter. A chill ran up her spine when she recognized the tiny, neat print. It was the psycho who promised to send her the body parts of other lottery winners to prove his death threat was serious.

Unable to be around the hate any longer, Megan returned to the kitchen. Recalling her offer to the officer, she put a turkey burger in the skillet, then dropped a lid on it. Scattering her trash on the floor, she retrieved all the non-Beg-a-thon correspondence and returned them to the bin.

Thirty-something letters remained on the floor. After locating a new box, she gathered them up and dumped them inside. He’d probably want the envelopes matched to the letters. Sighing heavily, she sorted through and attempted to match them by their handwriting or the name on the envelope. Most of the letters began with
God told me you would help me
or something similar. God was a very talkative fellow except to her.

The letters were all basically the same. They needed money to get out of trouble. And somehow it had become her job to pay their overextended credit card bills, their past due mortgage before foreclosure took their homes, send their kids to college, or buy the classic car they’d always wanted.

But Helen’s letter was different. First, she actually knew something about Megan, so she’d done her homework. Second, she was offering to sell her something of value and even claimed she’d do it for a price below market value. Third, God was not mentioned once.

Having no desire to watch the policeman read her death threats, Megan escaped to her office and researched Helen to determine if the woman truly did own the forest or if this was the modern day version of con artist George C. Parker’s selling people the Brooklyn Bridge.

An hour later, with a few calls to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Helen Campbell proved to be the owner of two hundred thousand acres of flood lands and woods.

“Flood lands… So it can’t be built on?” Megan asked the Iowa clerk on the phone.

“Not back when Helen’s grandparents bought it all for a hundred dollars. But now…sure. Take down the trees—they’re worth a good penny—then use the timber money to pay someone to cart in gravel and dirt. It will take a few years, but you could build a whole city there. But before you get too excited over the prospect, I should warn you. If the old gal gets a whiff of your intentions, she won’t sell the property to you. All the local builders have tried and failed.”

“And why are you telling me this?” Megan asked. To say she’d become a cynic since winning the lottery was like saying the traffic in New Jersey was slightly challenging.

“Honestly? Because we need the jobs such a project would bring to the state.”

“Well, thanks for the information.” Without waiting for a response, Megan hung up. Rudeness was another trait she had acquired in the last four years…along with getting a different unlisted phone number every month.

“Miss Clarke,” a male voice called out from the kitchen.

For a moment, a lightning rod of fear and panic surged through her. She’d forgotten all about the policeman. Opening the door to her office assured her she had forgotten more than the officer. The stench of burned meat struck her forcibly.

“Damn it, I burnt your burger.” She pushed him aside, grabbed the skillet, and threw it into the sink. It continued to fill the room with smoke, causing the fire alarm to scream. She flipped the cold water on, hoping it would contain the situation. Instead, an explosion of angry grease rewarded her efforts. As she lifted her arms to protect her face, a strong and masculine arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her away from the volcanic display.

Once safely out of the spewing water and oil, he disconnected the screaming fire alarm and faced her. “Are you okay?” His fingers frisked her face for injuries. His scent of sandalwood and musk along with his touch caused her libido to wake up. When he examined her neck, which seemed oddly more intimate to her, she stepped back. “I’m fine. Sorry I burnt your burger.”

His lips tugged into the most adorable grin. “I never asked for a burger.”

God, he was sexy, which only made him more dangerous to her heart.

“Well, you didn’t like my chili, so I went for meat. Can’t go wrong with a burger, right?” A burst of laughter escaped her upon realizing how wrong she could and did go with the burger.

“Were you able to find the other letters?”

She pointed to the box on the counter. “Those are the Beg-a-thons for today. If you want me to start keeping them, then I’ll need to purchase a dumpster.”

He grabbed the letters and led her back into her safe room.

His refusal to laugh at her attempt at humor annoyed her. Instead, he escorted her to the couch and then sat down beside her at an angle. His stern face had
lecture
written all over it.

“I promise you, I normally stay in the kitchen when I’m cooking.”

He lifted a thick pile of death threats from the floor. “I’m not worried about your cooking skills, although I’m glad I was here to prevent a fire. My concern is with this group of letters. I can’t believe Sergeant Adams knew about any of these.”

Since he seemed to be waiting for her response, she took the pile from him and flipped through the sheets of colorful letters cut from magazines and pasted to paper, giving a carnival vibe to their assembled death threats. “These started showing up the second year of Mega Misery. They were so childish I never showed them to him.”

Detective Williams released an audible and long breath, then met her gaze. “Miss Clarke, these are serious threats. Serious enough to bring in the FBI. Serious enough for you to take drastic moves to protect yourself.”

Did he think her an idiot? “I replaced all the windows with bulletproof glass, and this is a safe room.”

He stared at the wall. “A real safe room?”

The doubt in his voice bothered her.  Not just because it indicated he truly believed her gullible enough to accept anything people told her, but now she questioned if the vendor had provided what he promised. She’d been gone when the contractor had built the safe room.

“There’s supposed to be three inches of steel behind the drywall.”

He rose and knocked on the wall. Even to her ear, it sounded hollow. “Did you watch them build this?” The doubt in his voice remained.

And hers was growing by the second. “No, I didn’t. I was out of town. Hold on.” She stormed to the basement, found a small sledgehammer, and returned to the room. With one angry blow, the hammer went all the way through to her mud room. “Son of a bitch!” Megan stormed to her phone and speed-dialed her lawyer. He wasn’t available, so she left a message for him to call her and returned to the detective.

“Sorry for the outburst, but I paid a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a safe room with three-inch thick steel walls, and this really pisses me off. My life may be mostly horrible now, but it’s the only one I’ve got, and I would like to keep it going.”

He nodded in agreement. “We need to call in the FBI.”

In an attempt to reduce her stress, she rotated her neck around in half circles, which made it sing like a bowl of Rice Krispies. “You can try, but since I’m not dead…
yet
, I doubt they can afford to throw manpower my way.”

His brow furrowed. “Let me see what can be done. Mind if I borrow these letters?”

“Take ’em. They just depress the hell out of me.”

Once Detective Williams left, Megan called the lowlife cheats who’d built her safe room. Unable to get beyond the damn phone bank, her stance turned litigious. “Unless you connect me to the president of your company now, I’m going to sue you guys.” Her threat got her to a supervisor, who, when he heard her story, connected her to his manager who passed her off to the district manager.

Her lawyer returned her call as she waited for a higher district manager. Noting the time she’d already spent attempting to contact the company, Megan hung up and answered her lawyer.

“David, I need to sue a company for breach of contract.”

He listened to her latest fiasco and groaned. “You know, before you won the lottery, I never heard from you except the occasional tweaking of your Will, but now, you’ve become one of my best clients.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault everyone thinks it’s okay to cheat a person who didn’t earn her money. I’m faxing you a copy of my contract. I just slammed a sledgehammer through the wall, and guess what? It went straight through. Now, unless I’ve developed super-human strength, there should’ve been a three-inch steel plate in the wall to stop my mighty feat.”

“Why are you yelling at me?”

She rubbed her temple. “Sorry. I wasn’t yelling at you. I’m yelling because I’m pissed off at the builders who did this. The room was supposed to be my place of safety.”

Tears tickled her cheeks. Rubbing her shoulders against her cheeks to dry them, she fed the fax machine her contract. Unfortunately, her nose betrayed her with a sniffle.

“Are you crying?” David asked with surprise in his voice.

“No. I suddenly developed a cold.”

Finally, the last page went through. “When you read the document, you’ll notice I was promised three-inch steel plate walls. I’ll need an expert to come in and determine what else the bastards failed to provide.”

“I’ll find one. But you know, this could easily cost you more than the room cost.”

“I don’t care. They put my life in danger.” She then told him about the detective who had come and proven the dangerous package was just a bunch of pictures, but freaked out over her two-foot box of death threats. “He’s planning to bring the FBI in.”

David sighed. “Without a dead body, I doubt they’ll come. But I might need the detective’s testimony on the two feet of death threats. Is it really two feet?”

“I never actually measured the box. It’s what computer paper comes in.”

“Ahhh. Probably fifteen inches…but still a frightening quantity. Why didn’t you mention these before?”

“Because they don’t sign their name or provide their address, so I can’t tell you who to sue for harassment.”

“Megan, you can talk to me about things other than lawsuits, you know.”

“Yeah…” The truth was she couldn’t. She thought him a very good lawyer, but she couldn’t trust him on a personal level. Long ago, she’d fallen in love with him, and after three happy years, he’d just upped and dumped her for another woman. To this day, she couldn’t understand why. Weren’t couples supposed to argue and fight before they broke up?

“I have to go.” She hung up, grateful for her ability to be rude now.

Knowing no room in her house was safe, sleep eluded her. If the contractor for her safe room had lied about his work, what about the guy who installed her alarm system? And the bulletproof windows? Were they really bulletproof?

How would she know?

Maybe Detective Williams could shoot her window to test it. Her hand reached to the phone, but then sanity took hold. He’d probably not appreciate being woken in the middle of the night. So she did nothing, unless tossing and turning counted. If so, she did a great deal.

Normally, Megan woke up early, but not today. The clock chimed ten before she rolled from her bed and stumbled downstairs to fix breakfast. Feeling exposed and in danger by the excessive windows, she rushed about the house pulling curtains and shades.