T. Lynn Ocean - Jersey Barnes 01 - Southern Fatality (4 page)

Indecisive, I plopped on the bed and reconsidered donning a blazer so I could carry my everyday piece, a Glock 21. I felt strangely naked without the security of a .45 strapped to my body. In the past, its thirteen-round capacity had proved enough to get me out of most sticky situations, especially since I always carried an extra magazine and kept more in my vehicle.

Shaken at the thought of going anywhere without a weapon, I compromised by carrying the piece I usually wore in an ankle or
thigh holster, my Sig Sauer P232. I toted the Sig in a belt holster and concealed it with a denim blazer, which buttoned at the waist and revealed plenty of cleavage.

In the kitchen, I downed two glasses of water, explained to a perplexed Spud that he’d have to soak the scorched cookie dough from the pan, and headed for El Vaquero. Retirement felt good and my body was ripe with anticipation. For both the Mexican food and a night with Bill.

“
Hello
, darling,” I drawled in my sexy voice. “You look yummy.” As always, the sight of Bill sent a shiver of appreciation through my body. A model and actor who scored roles in made-for-TV movies, he was comfortable in any setting and turned heads in a classy five-star restaurant just as easily as he did while perched on a bar stool at a local dive. Tonight, he wore crumpled jeans and made them look fabulous with a tight silk T-shirt and expensive Ralph Lauren blazer. I was happily retired and ready to enjoy some spicy food with an adventurous male. Life was good, until I noticed the woman cozied up to him. A gorgeous blonde who appeared to be on familiar terms with my man.

“Jersey.” Bill flashed me an apologetic smile. “This is my friend Lisa, but everyone calls her Lolly. We went to the same college to study acting and helped each other get modeling jobs,” he explained. “She called me out of the blue a few hours ago, so I invited her to join us for a drink.”

Lolly stuck out a manicured hand. “So nice to meet you, Jersey. Billy has said so many great things about you.”

I flinched at the bastardization of Bill’s name, but was in too good a mood to let a curveball ruin my night. I shook her hand. “Hello, Lolly. Love your dress.” Although she was far beyond the typical modeling age, there were no ugly DNA globules floating
around in Lolly’s gene pool and I wondered if she’d made the runway or the catalogs. Regardless, she struck me as the type of woman who could control people with a flutter of her eyelashes.

“Thank you,” she replied. “And I love the way you combined a jean jacket with a little black dress. Very few women can pull off that shabby-chic look.”

I could appreciate a compliment just as much as the next person, even if it was stuffed inside an insult. My confidence comes from the fact that if anybody really pisses me off, I can kick their ass. Or in lieu of that, shoot them. Subconsciously, I pressed the inside of my elbow against the reassuring Sig. Like an alcoholic who relaxes at the mere sight of their first vodka of the day, I was immediately comforted by the hardness of the steel. I joined Bill and his friend, positioning myself so that my back was to the wall and I had an unobstructed view of the restaurant’s entrance. Old habits die hard.

“What brings you to Wilmington?” I asked Lolly.

“Oh, I just moved here with my husband and stepson,” she said, fluffing the short white-blond curls. “I’d heard that Bill was living in Wilmington and had to look him up. We were the
best
of friends back then, in school. This is just such a trip, running into him after all these years!” she squealed.

Bill’s eyebrows went up, as though it was news to him that they’d been best friends. “Well, it was certainly a surprise to hear from you, Lolly. What have you been up to?”

Flashing back, the two of them gossiped like girls at a slumber party, but I didn’t mind being left out. I’ve never been much for gossiping, talking on the phone, or shopping—but Bill could hang with the best of them. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was gay.

When a server appeared, Lolly ordered a glass of sangria and decided to skip the food. Bill and I chose nachos with extra jalapeños, chicken and shrimp enchiladas, and a pitcher of beer. I
drink beer like other Southerners drink sweet tea, and, soaking up the ambiance while Bill and Lolly continued chatting, I resolved to make some changes in honor of my retirement. Studying a neon Corona beer light, I began a mental to-do list and put two items on it: leave home without a weapon and cut down on the beer.

As if to test my new resolution, the pitcher of frothy beer was served instantaneously and the nachos arrived shortly after, radiating mouthwatering steam that rose from tons of melted cheese. Downing almost half a mug of beer with one tilt of my head—to wash down a loaded nacho, of course—I deleted the cut-down-on-beer goal from my mental list. After a few seconds of thought, I replaced it with: be more ladylike while drinking beer. I would much rather have focused my attention on Bill, but Lolly’s presence made that difficult to do. Slightly annoyed and attempting to be patient, I refilled my beer mug.

“Gosh, Jersey,” Lolly said as if suddenly remembering I was there. “Bill and I are so busy catching up, we’re just totally ignoring you! Sorry to homestead on your boyfriend.” She blinked my way in slow motion and thick black lashes seemed to flirt with me. I think she flirted with everyone, both males and females, out of habit.

Chewing on a nacho, I told her not to worry, that Bill and I would have plenty of time together later. Sweet, celebratory time, I thought. Because Bill modeled and went on casting calls, his schedule was as unpredictable as mine and it had been three weeks since we’d spent a night together. We were way overdue. To celebrate, we’d start by opening some bubbly. He always kept a bottle of Moët & Chandon champagne in his refrigerator for special occasions and I figured that my official retirement qualified. Then, we’d jump naked into his outdoor hot tub for a few minutes of steamy, frothy foreplay, I thought, my mind racing forward in anticipation….

“Oh, it’s horrible, just horrible!” Lolly cried, interrupting my fantasy.

“What’s horrible?” I involuntarily asked, wiping a spot of cheese off my chin. I think her outburst made me jump.

“Sam. He’s cheating on me. My husband is having an affair!” she wailed, going from a confident knockout to sniveling damsel in distress in record time.

I looked to Bill for direction. He always knew the proper thing to say or do in situations like these. A few diners glanced our way and I shrugged my shoulders in helpless apology.

“Oh, honey,” Bill told Lolly, “just because y’all are having problems doesn’t mean he’s got another woman! It could be any number of things.” He toed my leg under the table, encouraging me to back him up.

“Well, uh, yeah … Bill is right,” I said stupidly. I hate it when women cry. For that matter, I hate it when anybody cries for no good reason, except babies and toddlers. They can’t express themselves by talking yet, so they are entitled to a good wail now and then.

Bill gave me another toe nudge, urging me to offer something more substantial. He figured a woman ought to know what to say to another woman, as though sporting a set of breasts gave me unobstructed access to Lolly’s psyche.

“Men sometimes have a lot of pressures at work,” was what came out of my mouth. “What does Sam do?”

“He’s a stockbroker, one of those financial guys. He says he’s working late, but then when I call his direct line at the office, he’s not there. He doesn’t answer his cell phone. When he comes home, he just showers, drinks a few bourbons, and passes out like he’s exhausted. A few times I’ve heard him whispering on the telephone in the den when he thought I was asleep.”

Our enchiladas arrived and we paused conversation to rearrange
the table. Sniffling, Lolly pierced a bite of my food with a fork and slowly chewed. I asked the server to bring another plate, as Lolly’s appetite had apparently kicked in.

“Bill said you just moved here. How could Sam be having an affair so quickly?” Logic told me that it would take at least a few months of knowing someone before you jumped into an illicit affair with them. A one-nighter, maybe, but not an ongoing fling.

“I don’t know,” Lolly said in a tiny voice. “We’ve only been married a year. And we did just get to town. Sam is opening another branch office and he’s doing this one in person so he can train his son, who just graduated from the Citadel. Sam wants Jared to become a broker and work with him in the business.” She dabbed a napkin beneath a set of very blue eyes. “But maybe it’s somebody in his company. Some secretary who’s also here to open the new branch …” Her voice trailed off and ended in another bawl.

“Open a new branch of what?” I asked, shooting a mind-your-own-business look at a nearby couple who was openly staring and obviously eavesdropping.

“Chesterfield Financial.”

A piece of shrimp stuck in my throat and I had to chug some beer to keep from choking. Chesterfield Financial was one of the biggest brokerage firms in the country, whose founder could affect the price of a blue-chip stock with an offhand comment during a press interview.

Lolly raised a hand to wipe her runny nose, and suddenly it hit me. The rock on her ring finger had to be a full four carats’ worth and it was accented by a solid emerald-and-diamond tennis bracelet. The outfit she wore was of the designer variety and her appearance reeked of pampered wealth, from the fashionable hair color to the professionally done acrylic nails. She was both beautiful and well kept.

“Lolly, what is your last name?” I asked just to be sure.

“Chesterfield.”

“Is your husband, uh,
the
Samuel Chesterfield?”

“Yeah. But he goes by Sam. I call him Sammy when I’m not mad at him.”

I could only shake my head and even Bill seemed astounded when the realization clicked in his socially calculating mind. Apparently, he and his college gal pal hadn’t stayed in close touch. Although he knew she’d gotten married, he hadn’t made the connection. Lolly had snagged
the
Samuel Chesterfield, catapulting her into a position of obscene wealth and notoriety. She didn’t need to work any longer, that was for sure.

Bill’s perfectly shaped jaw dropped half an inch and he remained speechless, a rare condition for him. The president of the United States could have walked through the doors of El Vaquero and Bill would have waltzed up to say hello. But Lolly’s disclosure had awed him into silence. Either that, or he was practicing for an upcoming movie scene that called for some major astonishment.

Lolly explained that Chesterfield’s son was being groomed to take over the conglomerate Sam founded. The family planned to live in Wilmington for several months, giving Chesterfield time to oversee the opening of the new branch office while teaching his kid the ropes in the process.

I took her hand. “Lolly, I don’t know what’s going on. But Samuel Chesterfield would not cheat on his new bride. He’s a financial shark, but a shark with integrity. The American public loves him. That’s why they keep sending him their money.” Thinking my mini speech sounded pretty good, I tipped my head back to finish another beer. Bill regained his senses, closed his mouth, and refilled our mugs, emptying the pitcher.

Racking my memory banks, I recalled that Chesterfield had openly shared his professional and private life with the media, but
that was when he’d been married to the same woman for some thirty years, raised two handsome children, and was friends with all the influential Hollywood types. The nation wept with him when his wife died in a boating accident, after which Chesterfield reverted to a very private, very dateless life. I’d read something about him remarrying, but had no idea that the new missus was twenty years his junior, not to mention an acquaintance of my boyfriend.

Lolly made a show of carefully dabbing a napkin beneath teary eyes in what looked like a scene from a soap opera. “But he must be having an affair! That’s all it could be.” Delicate sniffles escaped her throat and threatened to become hiccups.

Questioning me with his eyes, Bill raised his eyebrows and waited for an answer. It took me a few seconds to realize what he wanted. I was already shaking my head in the negative when Lolly brought up the “D” word.

“Hey, aren’t you some kind of a detective, Jersey?”

“Something like that,” I answered. If you could call breaking into top-security buildings, penetrating foreign safe houses, and stealing back stolen government electronics being a detective.

“So, then I could hire—”

“The thing is, Lolly, I just retired. I’m not working anymore. I didn’t do domestic cases anyway.”

“How old are you?”

“I don’t keep track. What’s your point?”

“Well, whatever your age, it’s certainly too young to retire,” she surmised.

“You’re never too young to retire,” I countered. Especially when you had been doing the kind of work I had been doing. The last time I was shot at, even though the lead missed my head by several inches, it made me wonder what I was working for. I had enough money and investments to live comfortably. I loved my
work, but I also loved my life and decided to start living it in a more stress-free, normal manner. Thankfully, our next pitcher of beer arrived, and pouring the liquid into empty mugs gave me a minute to formulate my turndown. Unfortunately, all I could come up with was a simple “no.” It would have to do.

“Oh, couldn’t you please help? You’re the only detective I know in Wilmington.”

She’d known me for exactly half an hour. “Sorry, but no.”

“Pulleeeze?”

I started to put her off again when Bill spoke up. He didn’t know exactly what Rita and I did—only that my clients were all good guys and that I occasionally did some dangerous stuff. But he did know that I was not your average street dick and he was starting to irritate me by pushing the issue.

“Honey, couldn’t you just look into things for Lolly? Find out for sure if the bastard’s cheating on her, before she divorces him?”

I had no desire to take on some two-bit domestic squabble case. “I don’t think so, Bill, but I’ll recommend a good local private investigator.”