Gotcha! (11 page)

J
ulie took a deep breath, the air
swooshing
out of her lungs. She clasped her hands and looked straight at the other two women. “Just so you know, I’m not good at this. I’m just way too emotional when it comes to the needless death of my son. So if I cry, just bear with me.” Myra and Annie nodded.

“I pretty much told you everything in my letters, but since you didn’t get the first one, I’ll start from there. Larry was the baby of the family. He was always strong-willed, independent, and the kindest, gentlest person to walk the Earth. He loved animals and was always bringing strays home and nursing them. He really wasn’t that good a student, but he made it through college, then got his CPA license. But, just like the twins, he didn’t want to work with numbers, so he set up a catering business and did very well at it. He did all his cooking in the little cottage behind my house here. It was all certified by our board of health. We all pitched in to help if he had a large wedding or some other function that was too big to handle alone. It worked.

“Larry got married to a wonderful young woman named Audrey. They were so very happy. Even happier when Audrey gave birth to Olivia, my only grandchild. One stormy day, Audrey went to Olivia’s play school to pick her up and on the way back, there was a car crash. Olivia survived but . . . Audrey didn’t. Larry took it terribly hard, as we all did. We all worked overtime to make sure Ollie . . . well, you know. Larry threw himself into his business, and it thrived. He was mom and dad to Ollie. He tried to do it all. Then one day, some of his friends decided to take him out to celebrate something or other and he met this . . . this woman, Darlene Jimson, in some karaoke bar. Her tacky friends called her Jimmy, but the family always called her Darlene.

“She smelled money from day one. She was impressed with Larry’s sports car, that he had his own business, and that he owned a house of his own. Well, he had a mortgage on it, but still, Larry did have a house, something Darlene had probably never had in her entire life. Darlene was working in some factory making eight dollars an hour. That’s okay, it was honest work, and she did work. But she drank a lot.

“Did the family like her? Yes and no. In the beginning, she seemed to be good for Larry. He talked her into going for her degree, so she did, and she worked and went to school, and I know it wasn’t easy, but she did it. That’s the good part. Then, as Larry’s business continued to grow, and he was making some really serious money, she changed. They weren’t married at that point. She wanted to move in and Larry wanted her to move in. But he said he wouldn’t do that with Olivia in the house, so he proposed, and they got married. She appeared to love Ollie, but we found out that was just a show for Larry’s benefit.

“Eventually, Larry insisted Darlene adopt Olivia, and she did, but we all knew that was the last thing she wanted to do. But, she did do it. Eventually, Darlene finished school and got a job, but was making nowhere near the money that Larry was. We could all see problems developing. Some of them serious. She liked dressing like a streetwalker and going out at night with her friends and not telling Larry where she was going. She fell in love with credit cards and maxed them all out. The girls, Connie and Carrie, wanted to take her out behind the woodshed and go at it with her, but Larry said no, he was working through it.

“The signs were there that she was cheating on him. None of us said anything until finally he told me and the girls. Larry set traps for her, but she was just a shade too slick.

“Larry’d had a prenup drawn up before they got married. When things started going south, he made a will, with his twin sisters as executors. Darlene signed off on the prenup because Larry said, no prenup, no wedding. But that’s when she really turned into a conniving bitch. She wanted this, she wanted that. It was all about,
hey, look at me, look what I have!
All of Larry’s friends took a step backward; none of them liked Darlene. And, of course, they told this to Larry, who then told us. They pretty much led separate lives, slept in separate bedrooms a year or so into the marriage. Darlene was not mother material. Half the time, she couldn’t even remember Ollie’s name. In short, she never bonded with the child, and Ollie didn’t want to be around her.

“Darlene started working late, telling Larry she had to meet with people, et cetera. The girls and I played detective and staked out the place where she said she was working. She left at five, when everyone else left. At first, Larry refused to believe it.

“Time went on, and Larry tried to be supermom and superdad. He continued with his business, Darlene did her thing, and we all took care of Ollie. And when she was five, Larry got sick a few days before the Fourth of July. A month or so before that, late May, we hired a private detective to follow Darlene. We didn’t tell Larry. When we finally got the goods on her, we did tell him. He reverted back to the old feisty Larry we all knew and loved. He said he was going to make an appointment with a top-notch lawyer in Huntsville. Larry didn’t want to hire one here in Rosemont.

“As I said, Larry came down with some kind of summer flulike condition, and he had all these big catering jobs over the Fourth. We all pitched in and even hired some help to take the pressure off him. Darlene never lifted a finger. Ollie was so excited because she was going to ride in one of the floats in the parade. Larry said he was moving out, and would be moving back in with me the day after the Fourth. He said he just wanted to get through the Fourth for Olivia’s sake, so she could ride in the float. We didn’t like that and tried to talk him out of it. He said he didn’t want Darlene to know that he was leaving until the very last minute. We had to accept it because Larry was so headstrong, and his mind was made up. All he could think about was Ollie riding in the big parade and not wanting to disappoint her.

“Long story short, we managed to get all the catering done, and Ollie had a great day. Larry was too sick even to make it to the parade, so the boys took Ollie. It worked. I went by the house around two o’clock on the Fourth just to check on Larry, and Darlene wasn’t there. He looked terrible and complained his back was hurting him—from a high school football injury that left him in pain from time to time. Sometimes, he’d sleep on the floor for relief.

“Larry said he had told Darlene he was leaving in the morning, and she had started to cry. He said he didn’t mince words and told her to get the hell out. Those were his exact words to me. She took her golf clubs and left. Darlene liked to pretend to play golf, thinking she might meet up with a really rich man on the links. As she was leaving, she asked Larry to promise that they would talk about his decision later.

“I don’t know if that happened or not. That was the last time I spoke to my son. He died early the next morning. The EMS people called me the next morning to tell me Larry was dead. I called everyone, and we rushed over there, but he was . . . gone. I took one look at that evil bitch, and I knew, the way a mother knows, that she had done something. As God is my judge, I just knew it.

“You have the rest in the letters I wrote. I made copies for you. Connie, my daughter, took Olivia home with her that day.

“Things turned ugly really, really fast. All of a sudden, Darlene’s relatives and skanky friends swooped in and took over the house, and Darlene was calling around to see what Larry owned, wanting his bank records, everything. I had all that; the girls had some things, too. Larry didn’t keep any financial stuff in the house where they lived because he said Darlene was always going through his things. He’d set little traps so he’d know. He said she’d go through his pants at night and take money out of his wallet; not a lot, but she did take money. Carrie told me that.

“Darlene was livid when she found out Larry had made a will. He never told her because he didn’t trust her, and he knew his sisters would do the right thing, and that’s why he appointed them as his personal representatives. And they tried and tried, but we had to go legal. The good news is Darlene never got a penny, and the will is still in probate. The girls filed lawsuits. This all went on for years until we ran out of money. We haven’t seen Olivia in four years. I’m sure that baby thinks we abandoned her.

“Darlene moved some man and his kids into the house. People, friends who live in the area, tell us things about the mistreatment of Olivia and what a sad little creature she is. We did everything we could do legally, but the legal bills were astronomical, and we just had to call it quits. I don’t know where Darlene got the money to pay her lawyers or if she even paid them. All I know is, we paid ours and called it quits.

“Just recently, within the last two weeks, God finally smiled on me, and I got an offer to do an Oprah cooking show for next season at really good money. Now I have the money to go back to court and fight, but having been through it once, I know the court system and how futile it is for cases like mine. As far as I’m concerned, there is no point in going back to court. I want . . . I want vengeance and real justice for my son, and I want that evil bitch to pay for his death.”

“Are you saying Darlene killed your son?” Myra asked.

“No, that’s not what I’m saying. What I am saying—based on the police report of what she said—is that when she came home that night from wherever she was, Larry was lying on the floor. She said she thought his back was acting up again and she just called to him and he didn’t answer her so she went to bed. She admitted she had too much to drink that night and she couldn’t wait to go to bed. She said she called out to him to go to bed, and that she was going to go to bed, too. She knew he was sick, but she didn’t care enough about him to even check on him. If your husband is sick, you don’t go out and party. At least, no one I know does that. If she had just checked on him then or called nine-one-one, Larry could still be alive today. We had expert witnesses who would have testified to that at fifty thousand dollars a witness. We didn’t have that kind of money and nowhere to get it. I mortgaged my house to the hilt just to pay for the lawyers over the years. We all strapped ourselves to the bone. There was nowhere else to borrow money. We just had to call it quits.”

Myra, a wicked gleam in her eye, leaned forward. “What do you want us to do, Julie?”

“Make that bitch pay for what she did. I want a confession from her. I want my granddaughter out of that house. I want her and those skanky people she moved in there out of my son’s—no, my granddaughter’s—house. I want her stripped to the bone, made to suffer the way she has made all of us suffer. I just want to honor the promise I made to my dead son that I would make her pay and I would see that Ollie had a good life.”

“I think we can do that, Julie,” Annie said, getting up and heading for the coffeepot like she was in her own kitchen. “Don’t you agree, Myra?”

Myra’s head bobbed up and down.

“I want to help,” Julie said. “My kids will also want to help.”

Annie poured coffee, her eyes glistening with tears.

“How did you ladies survive the deaths of your children?” Julie asked, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“It wasn’t easy,” Myra said in a harsh whisper she barely recognized as her own voice.

“A parent is never supposed to bury a child,” Annie said. “And yet, the three of us sitting here right now had to do that. In my case, there was no one to blame except for the elements. Myra saved my life and, at the time, she said something to me that I will never forget. She told me someday I might be called on to help someone go through what I had gone through, and she was right. I joined the vigilantes. It was before I joined up that Myra and the others found the man who had caused her daughter’s death—and took care of him. Myra got her vengeance, which just goes to show payback is a bitch.” There was such hatred and bitterness in Annie’s voice that Julie winced.

“Listen to me, Julie,” Myra said. “This kind of thing is not for the squeamish. I was the only one of the vigilantes who had to deal with a death. When it was my turn, the others agreed to help, but, in the end, while I got even with my daughter’s killer, I didn’t sleep any better. My daughter is still gone. I’m never, ever going to see her again. I speak only for myself when I say we will get even for you, but we will not kill anyone. That’s not to say that when we’re done with your daughter-in-law, she won’t wish she were dead. If we commit to you and your mission, there will be no turning back. If you have a change of heart, it won’t make a difference.”

“Are you comfortable with that, Julie?” Annie asked.

“I am very comfortable with that.”

“We can either stay on here and map out our plan, or we can return home to Virginia and map out our plan there. This time around, it will just be Annie and me doing the . . . ah . . . wet work. Are you comfortable with that, or do you want the whole second string?”

Julie more or less laughed. “I see in your eyes what I see in my own eyes every time I look in the mirror. I would be honored to work with the two of you. I promise not to get in your way, but I have to be in on it. You understand that, don’t you?”

“We do,” Myra and Annie said in unison.

Annie slapped her hand, palm down, on the table. Myra placed her hand on top of Annie’s. Julie followed suit. “We’re in business, ladies,” Annie said cheerfully.

“We need paper and pens,” Myra said.

Julie made them appear as if by magic. She waited expectantly.

“Tell us what you know of Darlene’s current finances. Where does she bank? Where does she get her money? Does the boyfriend live off her, or does he have money? If you know.”

“I do know. She has a checking account, no savings account or money market fund. It’s at Alabama Federal. She gets money every month for Olivia, and it’s an automatic deposit. Supposedly, she works for some fly-by-night company that organizes home shopping events and gets paid a commission. About six months ago, I heard she was one step away from filing for bankruptcy. They have four high-end cars, all with payments. She buys top-of-the-line of everything, and he is always buying something. She does have a poor credit score, that much I know for certain. I have her Social Security number as well as Ollie’s if that will help you.