Big Daddy Sinatra: There Was a Ruthless Man (The Sinatras of Jericho County Book 1) (25 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The
cab drove him from the airport to the Inn, and dropped him off at the front
door.
 
He paid the driver, grabbed his
suitcase, and hurried inside.

“Good
evening, Mr. Sinatra,” the cheerful desk clerk said.

“Hello,
Rita.
 
Has Miss Franklin knocked off for
the day?”

“She
was off today, sir.”

That
surprised him.
 
She wasn’t the type to
take a day off.
 
What prompted that?
 
They weren’t exactly on great terms right
now.
 
But he didn’t discuss his concerns
with any clerk.
 
He took the elevator up
to the VIP suite.
 
He was just about to
use his keycard, but decided to knock instead.

It
had been three days since the police arrested Donald for beating his wife.
 
Three days since the police refused to arrest
him for what he did to his son.
 
In the
eyes of Jericho law enforcement, a man beating on a man was a fight.
 
A man beating on a pregnant woman was a
crime.
 
Donald was arrested.
 
And for the first time in Donald’s entire
life, Charles didn’t come to his rescue.
 
He was going to face the music this time.
 
He had crossed the line.

It
had also been three days since Jenay set him straight about any notions he had
regarding shacking up.
 
He left town, on
business he had been neglecting for the past month, not only so he could give
her a little breathing room, but he needed his space as well.
 
He didn’t phone her, he didn’t check up on
her.
 
He kept his distance.
 
He even, initially, questioned if he wanted
to continue a relationship with her or anybody else at this time in his
life.
 
He didn’t like to be driven by
emotions.
 
He didn’t like to live like
this.

But
by the night of his first day away, he was missing her.
 
By day two, he picked up the phone to call
her and put it back down nearly ten different times.
 
By day three, he had to see her.
 
He even phoned her on his way in from the
airport, but it went straight to her voice mail.
 
Now he was desperate.

When
she didn’t answer his knocks at the door of the VIP suite, he decided to use
his master key and enter.
  
He called her
name, and walked around the suite, but she wasn’t there.
 
Then a thought occurred to him.
 
She had taken the day off, according to the
clerk.
 
He’d been gone for three days,
which would have been ample time for her to leave him, if she wanted to.
 
He hurried to the closet and flung the doors
open.
 
And to his horror, it was
true.
 
All of her belongings were
gone.
 
He looked through the drawers.
 
They were empty too.
 
He immediately picked up the telephone and
called Bookkeeping.
 
Meg answered.

“Jean
is off today?” he asked her.

“Yes,
sir,” she said into the phone.

“Then
why did she clear out the VIP suite?”

“Oh.”

“Yes,
oh.”

“I
thought you knew, sir.”

“Knew
what?”

“She
moved.”

“To a
different room?”

“No,
sir.
 
She moved out of the Inn and into
her own place.”

Charles
frowned.
 
He couldn’t believe it.
 
“When?”

“Yesterday,
sir.
 
She took today off so that she
could get things organized.”

“Do
you have her address, Meg?” he asked her.

“Yes,
sir,” she responded.

“Give
it to me,” Charles said, although his heart was a cross between concern, and
outright rage.

To
his surprise, his Jaguar was still parked at the Inn.
 
Had she left him so completely that she
refused to drive his car anymore, he wondered, as he got in it and drove
off.
 
He left his suitcase in the VIP
suite.
  
Despite the evidence, he still
wasn’t ready to accept her departure.

But
when he put her new address in his car’s navigation system, drove to the small
cottage on Cornerstone Lane, and she answered the door as if she’d lived there
for years, the realness of her decampment hit him hard.

When
she saw that it was him, she stepped aside and allowed him passage in.
 
It was obviously a furnished rental home, but
he could tell she was cleaning it and still settling in.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”
 
She closed the door.

“That
your car?” he asked her.
 
A used Ford was
parked on her driveway.

She
nodded.
 
“Yes,” she said.

“A
rental?”

“No,
I bought it yesterday.”

“Oh
yeah?
 
From where?
 
I own a car dealership, Jenay.
 
If you were tired of driving the Jag, you
could have told me so.
 
You could have
selected any car you wanted.”

“I
know that, but I received the insurance check and saw this car in the
paper.
 
So I purchased it.
 
It was a private sale.
 
I got it for a really good deal.”

Charles
was attempting to contain his anger.
 
She
could have gotten one for no deal, no cost, but she decided she didn’t want his
help.

“Anyway,”
she said, “how’s everything going with you?”

“How
do you think?”

He
was going to be belligerent about it, she could tell.
 
He wasn’t interested in seeing her side of
the coin at all.
 
She decided to move
on.
 
“How’s Susan?
 
Have you heard anything?”

Charles
hesitated.
 
She had changed subjects on
him, and it was too important a subject for him to ignore.
 
“She’s still in ICU,” he said.
 
“They believe she’s going to pull through,
but it’s going to be a long road to recovery for her.”

“What
about the baby?”

“The
baby’s okay, thank God.
 
But it could
have been a very different story.”

Jenay
still couldn’t get over how badly beaten Susan had been.
 
“And your son?
 
Heard from him?”

“He
calls as often as they allow him.
 
He
wants me to get him out on bail.”

“You’re
not going to?”

“No.
 
Hell no.
 
This is one mistake I’m not fixing.
 
This is going to be all on him.”

Jenay
knew it had to be hard for Charles.
 
“Have
a seat,” she said to him.
 
“Would you
care for something to drink?”

“What’s
this about, Jenay?” he asked her.

Jenay
exhaled.
 
In true Sinatra fashion,
Charles did not have time for the sideshow.
 
He wanted the main event.
 
“I
needed my own place,” she said.

“You
had your own place.”

“I
was staying in your VIP suite in your B & B.
 
That wasn’t my place.”

“So
I’m the bad guy for making it easy for you?
 
You work there, you live there.
 
How could that be problematic?”

“It
wasn’t problematic.
 
And you aren’t the
bad guy at all.
 
I appreciate everything
you’ve done for me, Charlie, I really do.
 
But I need my own.”

“Why
all of a sudden?”
 
Charles was
distressed.
 
“Because I suggested we
might move in together?
 
That scared you
that badly?”

“It
didn’t scare me,” Jenay pointed out.
 
“It
woke me up.
 
I can’t ever again allow
myself to dance to somebody else’s tune.
 
Because if we hit a sour note, I’ll be the one out in the cold.
 
And I can’t risk that again.
 
I may not have another comeback in me.”

Charles
stared at her.

“I
accepted your job offer because I knew it would give me great experience, but
also because I did, and still do want to give our relationship a chance.
 
But there has to be some boundaries, Charlie.
 
I’m still getting to know you.
 
There’s still a lot about you that . . .”

Charles
waited for more.
 
She didn’t go on.
 
“That what?” he asked.

Jenay
shook her head.
 
“The way you treat some
of these people around here, the way you show such lack of compassion
sometimes.
 
Even with your own son.”

“My
son?
 
Did you see what that boy did to
his wife?
 
His
pregnant
wife?”

“Yes!
 
It was awful.
 
No matter what the reason, it was awful.
 
But what you did to him was awful too, Charlie.”

But
Charles was still livid.
 
“I didn’t raise
a punk,” he said.
 
“No son of mine is
going to beat up a girl, a pregnant girl, and get away with it.”

“He
was arrested,” Jenay said.

“
I
couldn’t let him get away with it,”
Charles yelled.
 
“I’m not talking about
the law.
 
I’m talking about me! I
 
couldn’t let him get away with it.”

Jenay
realized that such a father-son problem went far deeper than that one night.

“I’ve
always been there for my boys,” Charles went on.
 
“But Donald was constantly in trouble.
 
Always in a jam.
 
And I always got him out of it.
 
But when I saw what he had done to Susan, and
I saw the rage still in his eyes, as if he didn’t give a fuck, I knew right
then that if anybody was going to finally scare him straight, it was going to
have to be me.
 
It had to be me.
 
I’m the one he listens to.
 
But the problem is, instead of telling him
what to do, I smothered him.
 
I ruined
that boy.”

Jenay
stared at him.
 
“Why him, and not the
others?”

“He
was four years old when I divorced his mother.
 
He loved her so much.
 
The rest of
my sons wanted to stay with me.
 
But Donald
wanted his Mom so the courts gave her custody of him, and gave me custody of
the other three.
 
A year later, she fell
in love with some guy she met on the internet, and brought Donnie back to me.
 
You would have thought she had died, he was
so devastated.
 
But she left town, and
went and started a brand new life with her new man.
 
She would phone the boys periodically, not
nearly as often as she could have, but Donald wouldn’t take the few calls she
did make.
 
He was through with her.
 
And I stood in that breach.”

“And
overcompensated?”

“Big
time,” Charles admitted.

“But
. . . you called the police on him yourself, Charlie.”

“Damn
right I did.
 
A man has to pay for what
he does.
 
If they would have arrested me,
I would have paid too.
 
Don will face
that music all on his own this time.
 
He’s a man now.
 
He’ll either get
better or he’ll get worse.
 
But that’s
entirely up to him now.”

Jenay
could see the drain in Charles’s eyes.
 
She went up to him, and took him by the arm.
 
“Let’s sit down,” she said.

They
walked to the sofa and sat down.
 
He was
so emotionally spent, he leaned back.
 

“How
was your trip?” she asked him.

“Surprisingly
productive,” he said.
 
“We sealed the
deal.”

“That’s
good news.”

“Yeah,”
Charles said, then looked at her.
 
“But not
the kind I was hoping to get.”
 
He turned
toward her.
 
“What’s going on with you,
Jean?
 
What’s going on with us?”