Big Daddy Sinatra: There Was a Ruthless Man (The Sinatras of Jericho County Book 1) (22 page)

He
smiled when the doors to the Jericho police station opened, and his brother
Tony, who was a couple years younger than he was, walked in.
 

“Dad
called you too?” Brent asked him.

“Yeah,”
Tony said as he took a seat beside his brother.
 
“But I was still in class.
 
You’ve
seen her?”

“They
claim she’s still being processed in.
 
She can’t see any visitors until she’s been processed.”

“You
know that’s a bunch of bull, right?” Tony asked.

“Hell
yeah I know it,” Brent responded.
 
“They
don’t like Dad so they figure they’ll sock it to us.”

“And
you still want to be one of them?”

“I
still want to be a policeman after I graduate,” Brent responded.
 
“Absolutely!
 
What’s so wrong with that?
 
Because some cops don’t know how to take their oath seriously doesn’t
change anything for me.
 
One day, after
I’m working here, I’ll run this place.
 
I’ll get rid of the bad apples then.”

Tony
didn’t doubt his big brother for a second.
 
He always did what he made up his mind to do.
 
But to want to be a cop was an odd thing to
want to be, in Tony’s mind.
 
“Do they
know she one of Dad’s?” he asked.

“Donnie
says people have been talking around town, so I’m pretty sure some of those
bozos heard it too.”

“But
who is she?
 
And why isn’t Donnie
here?
 
He lives in Jericho.
 
You and I had to drive damn near an hour to
get here, all the way from Orono to get here.
 
Robert’s all the way in California, so he can’t help.
 
But Donnie’s right here!
 
Why didn’t Dad call him?”

Brent
looked at his brother.
 
“Why do you
think?” he asked.
 
“Donnie’s too young and
immature to handle something like this.”

Tony
smiled.
 
“The one who’s married with a
child on the way is the immature one.
 
Talk about irony!”

“If
it’s major,” Brent said, “Dad isn’t going to trust Donnie or Bobby to handle
it.
 
They’re his two youngest sons, and
he loves them dearly, but they’re his problem kids let’s face it.”
 
Brent looked at Tony.
 
“And you aren’t much better.
 
Dropping out of college on a whim like that.”

“Why
do you keep bringing that up?
 
I’m back
in school.”

“Because
Dad made you go back.
 
Don’t act as if
you went back of your own freewill.
 
You
didn’t.
 
I know it and you do too.”

“Anyway,”
Tony said, not interested in discussing his past mistake, “who is this female
Dad ordered us to come and see?
 
At first
I thought he was talking about Miss Abby, since she’s been one of his ladies
for years and years.
 
But then I thought
hell no.
 
He wouldn’t call me away from
school, and you too, for Abigail Ridge, Paige Springer, or any of these ladies
around here.
 
So who is this new chick?”

“Her
name is all I know.”

“Jenay
Franklin?”

“Right,”
Brent said.
 
“When I called Donnie on my
way to town, he says Dad knocked him down just for being rude to her last
week.
 
He says she’s Dad’s new
girlfriend.”

“And
that’s what Dad calls her?
 
His
girlfriend?” Tony asked.

“According
to Donnie, yes.”

Tony
leaned back and ran his hand through his long, wavy black hair.
 
“I don’t get it,” he said.
 
“Since when does Dad give a toss about some
female in trouble?
 
I remember when Miss
Abby was in the hospital for damn near a month and he hardly went to see
her.
 
He paid all her bills and paid the
hospital bill, but that’s not the same thing as being there.
 
But not only does he want us to be here for
this particular lady, but he’s leaving a business meeting and flying in himself
to be here?
 
This doesn’t even sound like
Dad.
 
At one point I expected him to call
Aunt Sprig and ask her to come to this station.”

Brent
laughed.
 
Aunt Sprig was the nickname for
Jacqueline Gabrini, their father’s sister.
 
She had been in a very bad marriage with a hot-tempered Italian, had
gotten away from him and returned to her hometown of Jericho. Now she was a
hopeless alcoholic who hated Charles as much as the rest of the townspeople
because of his refusal to enable her bad habits.
 
Charles and Sprig hadn’t spoken in
years.
 

“I
was disappointed when Aunt Sprig didn’t show up to Don’s wedding.”

Brent
frowned.
 
“Don didn’t invite her to his
wedding,” he said, “so I don’t know why you would be upset with her.
 
Be upset with Donnie.
 
He’s just as moralistic as Dad.
 
They’re both alike if you ask me.
 
That’s why he’s always up under Dad the way
he is.”

“Dad
let him get away with murder,” Tony agreed.
 
“The least thing you and I do and we get called out for it every
time.
 
But Donnie?
 
He’s his baby.
 
He’s his heart.
 
He doesn’t get called out for shit.”
 
Then Tony looked at Brent.
 
“Speaking of being called out: word around
campus is that you and Kerstin have broken up yet again.
 
True?”

Brent
nodded.
 
“True.”

“For
good this time?”

“For
good this time.”

“You
said that last time.”

“Yeah
well.
 
It’s for good this time.”

Yeah
right, Tony thought.
 
“But getting back
to Miss Jenay.
 
I still wonder what it is
about her that’s got Dad all involved like this.”

“She
must be hot,” Brent said with a smile.
 
“That’s all I know.
 
She must be
something hot.”

They
continued to sit in that stale police station, asking if they could see Jenay
Franklin repeatedly, but being rebuffed every time.
 
At one point the desk sergeant advised them
to go back where they came from and try again tomorrow.
 
They knew their father didn’t order them to
this police station to leave with no results, so they ignored such advice, and
kept on waiting.

And
then, nearly three hours later, the double doors of the station flew open, and
Charles Sinatra, like the weather event his presence sometimes felt like, came
storming in, his suit coat flying behind him from the sheer wind the
fast-opening door produced.
 
Both sons
quickly stood to their feet.

“Where
is she?” he asked them as he hurried toward them.

“They
claim they’re still processing her in,” Brent responded.

Charles
knew better than that.
 
He hurried up to
the desk sergeant.
 
“Where’s Joffee?”

“
Chief
Joffee,” the sergeant emphasized,
“is indispose at the moment.”

“Get
him,” Charles responded.
 
“I want to see
him now.”

“That’s
not possible, sir.”

Charles
stared his vivid green eyes at the sergeant in a way that left no room for
ambiguity.
 
He was not going to take no
for an answer.
 
“Tell him Charles Sinatra
wants to see him.
 
Now,” Charles ordered.

The
sergeant glanced at Brent and Tony, who were staring at him, and then
reluctantly made his way to the office at the back of the room.

Brent
and Tony walked up to their father.
 
“You
okay, Dad?” Tony asked him.

“Tired
as hell, but I’m okay.”

“So
who is she?” Tony asked.

Charles
looked at him.
 
Having any vulnerability
exposed to his sons was something he wasn’t comfortable doing.
 
“Jenay Franklin,” he said.
 
“She’s my new GM over at the Inn.”

 
“Oh!
 
She works for you?”

“Yes.”

But
that only made it even more implausible to Tony and Brent.
 
Especially to Brent.
 
“So you wanted us to leave school and come to
be by the side of one of your employees?”

But
their questions only fueled Charles’s anger.
 
“Why are you concerned about that?
 
I told you to do something, you did it.
 
Nothing further to discuss.”

Both
Brent and Tony knew to back off.
 
And
they did.
 
And then Amos Joffee, the
chief of the Jericho Police Department, came out of his office.

“Charles,”
he said with a grand smile, “how nice to see you again!”

It
was a stark contrast to the disrespect he had shown Brent and Tony, and Brent
and Tony knew it.
 
But they were used to
it in this town.
 
People always attempted
to get back at their father, by mistreating them.

“I
attempted to get you on the phone several times,” Charles said, “but your
people claimed you weren’t here.”

“I
wasn’t here,” the chief said.

“Now
that’s a lie,” Tony responded.

Joffee
ignored him.
 
“What can I do for you,
sir?”

“You
have a friend of mine in your custody.
 
Jenay Franklin.
 
I want her
released.”

“I’m
sure you do, and I’m sure she does too, but that’s not possible at this
point.
 
She was caught red handed in her
thievery.
 
We had no choice but to turn
it over to the prosecutor.
 
It’s in the
DA’s hands now.”

Charles
was even more upset now.
 
He hadn’t
expected to hear that.
 
“Let me see her,”
he decided to say.
 
“I want to see her.”

“That’s
also not possible.
 
She’s still being
processed in.”

“Bullshit!”
Charles proclaimed. “I want to see her, Joff, and I want to see her now.”

Joffee
knew there was position in this town, and there was power.
 
Sinatra was the power.
 
And he knew it was the power people who kept
him in position.
 
“Ed!” he yelled to his
desk sergeant.

“Yes,
sir, chief?” the sergeant asked.

“Bring
Miss Franklin into my office, please.”

The
sergeant looked at Charles.
 
He hated
that they couldn’t stick it to his arrogant ass the way they were able to stick
it to his sons.
 
But he was no fool
either.
 
“Yes, sir, chief,” he said, and
headed for the cells.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Charles,
Brent, and Tony waited in Joffee’s small office while the sergeant went to
retrieve Jenay.
 
Charles was leaned
against the front of the desk, his arms folded, his legs crossed at the ankle, while
Brent and Tony were leaned against the wall.
 
Chief Joffee himself was seated behind his desk.

“It’s
a hell of a thing, Charles,” Joffee was saying.
 
“That’s the problem.
 
We
practically caught her red-handed.
 
We
had to act.”

“You
caught her doing what?” Tony asked.

“Stealing,”
Joffee responded.
 
“She stole the guest
jewels from the safe at your Daddy’s B & B.
 
We found those jewels in her suite, in her closet, in her suitcase.”

Tony
and Brent both looked at their father, but Charles had zoned them all out.
 
Jenay was on his mind.
 
He had spoken to Meg at length, on the flight
back to Jericho, and she told him exactly how it all happened.
 
The jewels, she said, were in one of Jenay’s
suitcases inside the VIP suite.
 
The
suitcase was in the closet, in the back, as if it was being purposely
hidden.
 
When the cops discovered what
had happened, they arrested her on the spot.
 
She was already guilty in their eyes, Meg had said.
 
“What about in your eyes?” Charles remembered
asking Meg.
 
“Is she guilty in your
eyes?”

“I
can’t say,” thoughtful Meg had responded.
 
“I don’t really know her, do I?”

And
that was the rub for Charles.
 
He didn’t
really
know her either.
 
They had their conversations, and they were
growing closer with each passing day.
 
But he didn’t know her like that!

But
he shook his head.
 
He’d seen that
decency in her eyes.
 
He saw that hope
and fear and pain and happiness.
 
He
didn’t see some actress, he saw
her
.
 
And there was no way anybody was going to
tell him that Jenay Franklin stole jewels from that safe.
 
No way.
 
He didn’t care what so-called evidence Joffee claimed to have.

The
office door opened and all three Sinatras stood at attention.
 
Especially Charles, whose heart was
hammering.
 
But when he saw her walk in
with the desk sergeant, bound in hand and feet shackles as if she was some
escaped prisoner they’d just apprehended, and he saw that pain and fear in her
big, gray eyes, his own pain turned to anger.
 

He
looked at Joffee.
 
“Take that shit off of
her and take it off now!
 
Who do you
think you’re dealing with, Joff?”

“That’s
no affront to her, Charles!
 
That’s how
we handle all of our suspects.”

“I
don’t care who else you handle that way,” Charles responded, “you will not
handle her that way.
 
Take that shit
off!”

Joffee
knew he could have ignored such an order.
 
He was the chief of police, after all.
 
But he also knew the backbone of the mayor.
 
He also knew the mayor, his boss, relied on
men like Charles Sinatra every election cycle with their generous
contributions.
 
If Sinatra threatened to
pull his support if he kept Joffee on as chief, then Joffee would be fired
tomorrow.
 
Summarily.
 
“Unshackle her,” he said to his sergeant.

The
desk sergeant was reluctant, but he did unshackle Jenay.
 
As soon as he did, Charles pulled her into
his arms.

Jenay
closed her eyes and released the burden of the past hours as if she was
releasing air.
 
She quickly looked at
him.
 
“I didn’t take that jewelry,
Charlie,” she said.

“I
already know that,” Charles just as quickly replied.
 
“I know that.”

Brent
and Tony were surprised by their father.
 
He usually came down on the side of guilt when it came to his fellow
man.
 
Almost always.
 
But suddenly he believed her?
 
Despite the evidence Joffee mentioned?
 

“Told
you she was hot,” Brent whispered to his brother.

Jenay
had fought back tears the entire time she had been incarcerated.
 
But now they were flowing freely.
 
Charles wiped her tears away and kissed her
on the forehead.
 
“It’s alright, baby,”
he said.
 
“It’s going to be alright.”

“I’ve
never been in a situation like this before in my life.
 
I didn’t put that jewelry in that
suitcase.
 
I didn’t---”

“It’s
okay,” Charles said and pulled her in his arms again.
 
“I know you didn’t.
 
It’s okay.”

Brent
and Tony were now intrigued.
 
This was
amazing to them.
 
They even walked over
to the twosome, to make sure this was really their father playing this
sensitive man role.
 
When Jenay saw them,
she wiped her eyes.
 
She knew, from the
reception, from their pictures on the walls, from the fact that they looked so
much like Charles, that they were his sons.
 
And they were meeting her for the first time, like this.
 
She wasn’t getting any breaks, she thought.

Charles
looked away from his sons when he and Jenay stopped embracing, as his eyes, to their
additional shock, were almost watery.
 
So
Tony took over.

“Hello,
Miss Franklin,” he said, extending her hand.
 
“I’m Anthony Sinatra.
 
Tony.
 
Charles’s next oldest son.
 
Nice to meet you.”

“Hello,”
Jenay said, still trying to get her emotions under control too.

“And
this is my brother Charles Brenton Sinatra, Junior.
 
Better known as Brent.
 
Charles’s oldest child.”

Jenay
and Brent shook hands.
 
“Ma’am,” he said.

“Dad
has told us absolutely nothing about you,” Tony went on.
 
“But I’m sure that was just an
oversight.
 
Right, Charles?”

Charles
gave him a chilling look.

“Right,
Dad?” Tony corrected himself.

But
Jenay was on Charles’s mind.
 
“How have
they been treating you in this place?”

“They’ve
been. . . okay.”

“You
aren’t just saying that?”

“No.
 
Of course not.
 
But what happens next?
 
Do I have to stay here tonight?”

“No,”
Charles said to everybody’s surprise.
 
“I’m going to do whatever I can to get these ridiculous charges
dropped.
 
You just keep praying.”

Jenay
nodded.
 
“I will,” she said, pleased to
hear all of the certainty in his voice, even if she didn’t truly believe
dropping the charges were possible.

The
charges weren’t dropped.
 
The DA wasn’t
bought and paid for the way Joffee was.
 
But Charles did manage to get her out on bail.
 

Jenay
walked into Jericho Inn’s VIP suite like a woman given a last minute
reprieve.
 
Charles was with her, as his
two sons had gone back to their college campus, but he didn’t feel any
gratitude whatsoever.
 

“Where
was the suitcase?” he asked her, as soon as they entered the suite.

“Back
here,” Jenay said as she escorted him into the bedroom.
 
“The cops were searching every room.
 
I was with the Robbery detective when they
entered this room and searched it.”

“So
you saw those jewels in your suitcase with your own two eyes?”

Jenay
nodded.
 
“Yes.
 
They were there.
 
That wasn’t a mistake or any setup by the
police. They had been placed in my suitcase.
 
But I didn’t place them there.
  
I
swear to you, Charles.
 
I had nothing to
do with this!”

Her
tears returned and Charles held her again.
 
“Don’t cry,” he said tenderly, as she cried in his arms.

“I
was only trying to do my job.
 
I never
seen inside of that safe.
 
Meg told me it
existed, and had shown it to me, but I never even thought to look inside of it.
 
Meg had the responsibility for doing the
end-of-day check.
 
I viewed my role as
the backup.
 
I knew the code and I knew
what to look for if somebody had tampered with it.
 
But even Meg said there had been no
tampering.
 
She checked in every way she
could.
 
And I believe her.”

Charles
nodded.
 
“I do too.”
 
Then Charles pulled her back and looked into
her eyes.
 
“But I want you to stop
worrying about that.
 
We’ll get this
figured out.
 
I’ll hire the best
detectives in this country if I have to.
 
You will not be going back to that jail, I promise you that.
 
Now let’s get you a bath, and get you to
bed.”

“You’re
going to stay here tonight?”

Charles
was touched by her need.
 
“Yes,” he
said.
 
“There’s nowhere else I would
rather be.”

Jenay
attempted to smile, and she nodded okay.
 
But even Charles’s presence that night could not quell her devastated
heart.

The
next morning, while Charles was still asleep, she woke up with a start.
 
She remembered it.
 
She remembered it when she was going over the
books with a fine tooth comb.
 
It was a
small matter, but it could mean a lot.

Charles
had her in a bear of a hug, and she had to peel away his big arms just to get
out of bed.
 
But she got up, showered and
dressed, hurried downstairs and then into her office.
 
When she found what she was looking for, she
began to hurry toward the elevator just as Meg was coming in to work.
 

“You’re
free!” Meg said with joy in her voice, and ran into Jenay’s arms.
 
“When did they let you out?”

“Late
yesterday.
 
I don’t know how Charles
pulled it off, but he managed to get my case on the docket before court
adjourned for the night, and the judge granted me bail.”

“Bail?
 
You mean they didn’t drop the charges?” Meg
was disappointed.

“No.
 
But
 
.
. . Meg, I know you have a key to the house safe.
 
Right?”

“Right.”

“Who
else has a key?”

“You.”

“And?”

“And
that’s it.”

“Are
you positive?”

“I’m
positive.”

Jenay
nodded.
 
“Okay,” she said.
 
“Thanks for the info.”
 
And then she hurried back upstairs.

When
Charles opened his eyes a few minutes later, Jenay was sitting on the edge of
the bed.
 
But she wasn’t smiling.
 
She had a look of grave concern.

He
leaned up on his elbows.
 
“What is it
now?” he asked her.

“When
you took over this place, Charles, did you have all of the locks changed, or
did you just reprogram them?”

“No.
 
They had those old-styled key entry locks. I
changed the entire building to keycard locks.”

“And
there were levels of master keys, right?”

“Right.
 
The maids could enter the bedrooms, and
maintenance could enter the outer rooms, etc..
 
But only myself, my manager, and my bookkeeper, Meg, had access to the
entire building.”

“Including
the safe?”

“Right.”

“And
you have your key, Meg has hers, and I have Beatrice’s.”

“That’s
right.”

Jenay
handed him the paper she found.
 
“Then
what is this?”