The Babbling Brook Naked Poker Club - Book One (20 page)

Candace was fidgeting and pacing, and that
stopped both. “Eddie? I . . . I. Why? What difference
does it make?”

“Because he says I was there waiting for
him. But you were the one who told me to go there.”

“But you hit him.” Her tone was flat and
unfriendly.

“Only after he grabbed me and bounced me off
the wall.”

“Prove it.”

I pulled up my sleeve.

“You do know he’s claiming you made a pass
and he rejected you, and then you hit him.”

“Yes, I know.”

“This is a fine mess. You say one thing; he
says another. Hard to know who’s telling the truth here.” Candace
narrowed her eyes and glared, and it suddenly occurred to me that
maybe there was something else going on here. Did she, like most of
Brookside’s residents, have a crush on Eddie?

“Calvin says I’m to tell you to stay
strictly away from Eddie until this thing is settled.”

I lifted my chin. “I’d like nothing better
than to never have anything to do with Eddie Colter again for the
rest of my life.”

Candace scoffed. “Just see that you stay
away from him here at Brookside.” She turned and marched out.

Funny, I thought I knew Candace. Although
she’d never been warm, she’d always been pleasant. It made me
shiver to know she wouldn’t accept my version of what happened.

~ ~ ~

The lawyer Josephine found for me, one Abigail Nathouser, “call me
Abby,” was a tall, angular woman with sharp features and
intelligent eyes. Frankly, I couldn’t imagine ever calling her
Abby, but then, I never expected to call Josephine anything other
than Mrs. Bartlett.

Abigail’s graying hair was pulled back and
settled into an efficient bun at the nape of her neck, and her
clothing, a severely styled gray suit and a plain white blouse,
perfectly matched the hairstyle and demeanor.

She shook my hand firmly, eyeing me from
head to toe. When men do that, it makes me squirm, but Abigail’s
assessment, if anything, reassured me since she has the same aura
of competence and of knowing her place in the world that Mac
has.

“Well then,” Abigail said, gesturing for me
to take a seat at the small table in her office. “Why don’t you go
ahead and tell me what brings you here.”

Knowing that Josephine was going to be
billed several hundred dollars an hour for the time I spent with
Abigail, I’d organized my story accordingly, and I went through it
quickly. Abigail recorded the interview, but she also took
notes.

“This man who is suing you is over six feet
tall and weighs nearly two hundred pounds. And you’re what? A
hundred and ten pounds soaking wet? How did you manage to do so
much damage?”

“I’m trained in tae kwon do.”

Abigail’s eyebrows shot up. “What
level?”

“Black belt. But he didn’t know that. I
don’t think he was expecting me to counterattack.”

“We’re not going to use that word,” Abigail
said. “Counterattack. It’s much too aggressive for our purposes.
Say instead he didn’t expect you to defend yourself.”

“Yes. Okay.”

Abigail then asked a series of specific
questions about previous interactions with Eddie, and whether I had
ever reported being harassed by him to my employer. She frowned
when I said I hadn’t, but she was obviously pleased when I said a
police officer did interview me about two of the incidents.

“It’s a good thing we’ll have police
reports. And we’ll use Candace Bodman’s testimony she sent you to
the apartment. That will undermine his claim you were lying in
wait. All good.”

I also told Abigail about Josephine and
Lillian discovering that Eddie had been stealing from residents,
and that he’d lied about having a daughter with cancer.

“Hmm. Interesting. I may be able to use some
of that, but likely most of it will be inadmissible.”

Abigail then went into my personal history,
asking about relationships, where I’d lived, gone to college,
worked. That made me want to squirm. I was honest, but I truncated
the information to the bare minimum, which earned another
frown.

“I think I have enough to go on for the
moment,” Abigail said finally, much to my relief. “From what you’ve
told me, this should be straightforward, but we’ll still need to be
prepared.”

She stood, shook my hand, and escorted me to
the door.

In the elevator, I glanced at my watch.
Although it had felt like a long appointment, it had taken only
forty minutes. That was good, since I’d been forced to fit this
visit to downtown into a two-hour break from work.

Luckily traffic was light in both
directions, and I managed to be back in my office at Brookside a
full ten minutes before I was due to take a group out for a
luncheon.

~ ~ ~

“I like to know as much as possible about my clients,” Abigail told
me at our second meeting, four days after the first. “So I always
order a thorough background check. That way I’m less likely to be
blindsided in court.”

She gave me a stern look that reminded me of
a teacher I still remembered vividly because she’d been so
unpleasant.

“And you, my dear, Suranna Devi Subramanian,
appear to have a number of secrets that I wouldn’t want our
opponents to know about. If they were to discover, for example,
that another man was injured so severely in an encounter with you
that he later died, it would certainly strengthen their case.”

My heart sank even lower than it had when
Mac told me Eddie was suing me. So low, I simply sat staring at
Abigail.

“You do understand about attorney-client
privilege, Suranna?”

I nodded, still not sure my voice would
work. Not even to tell Abigail I’d become accustomed to being
called by my middle name and now preferred it.

“It’s possible, you know, that I may be able
to help you with both situations.” Abigail stopped speaking,
obviously waiting for a response.

I cleared my throat. “I . . .” Did
I dare tell the truth?

Then I remembered a story I’d read recently
about two lawyers who had kept secret the fact one of their clients
admitted to a crime another man was serving a prison term for. The
innocent man was released only after the guilty man died twenty
years later, and his lawyers were able to come forward.

Abigail might very well be the only person I
did dare tell the truth.

~ ~ ~

The shape and trajectory of my life changed forever the day I met
William Garrison, although I didn’t know that until later, of
course.

William was handsome, charming, intelligent,
and he shared my passion for art. In fact, we met at an art
institute fund-raiser. True, I was there as an employee while he
was there as one of our major patrons—a man who at thirty-three had
already made more money from an app he’d designed than he would
ever need.

He quite literally swept me off my feet with
expensive dinners in elegant settings; weekend trips to Reno,
Aspen, or New York; and spontaneous purchases at Tiffany’s and
Nordstrom. Caught up in the dizzying round of being William’s
girlfriend, I was certain all my dreams were coming true.

“I want to wake up every morning to find you
there,” William said on a flight back from Reno in the corporate
jet on Valentine’s Day.

He’d pulled a small box out of his pocket,
but there was nothing small about the diamond it contained.
Although uncertain, I’d let him slip the ring on my finger.

“Take all the time you need to plan the
wedding, but I want you to move in with me. Tomorrow would be
good.”

“Umm . . . I’d rather wait.”

He’d reared back and looked at me as if I’d
suddenly sprouted a horn in the middle of my forehead.

“For what?”

“U-until we’re married.”

“Why?”

“Because it would hurt my father. He’s a
traditional man.”

“Who married a white woman. Besides, he’s in
Kansas. He won’t even know.”

My thoughts stuttered over that phrase
“white woman.” I looked down at our intertwined hands, noticing for
the first time how much darker mine were than William’s, even
though he was tanned year-round from skiing and swimming.

“You already sleep with me. And now you’re
my fiancée, so I don’t get it.”

I didn’t know why I felt so certain that
moving into William’s apartment on Lakeshore Drive before I married
him was a bad idea, but it just didn’t feel right.

“Can we . . . I don’t know. Move a
bit slower, maybe? This has all happened so fast.”

“Are you kidding me? It’s been six
months.”

The memory of a recent conversation with
William’s brother popped into my mind. “Well, well,” Harry had said
to me. “So you’re the girl who’s managed to keep William on a leash
for four months. Good luck with the next one. I don’t think
anyone’s made it past five before.”

The words had puzzled me, as had the nasty
way he’d said them. But maybe those words had connected with some
tiny whisper of doubt in the back of my mind, leading me now to
hesitate over William’s proposal. And Harry’s comment wasn’t the
only source of doubt.

William always seemed to need to be moving.
In the six months I’d known him, we’d not had a single weekend
where we simply lazed around reading the Sunday papers, eating a
late breakfast, and going for a walk. No, the minute a chunk of
time opened up, William ordered the corporate jet, and we were off.
And I was exhausted.

“I, ah.” I kept my gaze on our hands and
that enormous diamond. “I think I just need some time to
. . . to adjust to the idea.”

“Next week, then.”

“No, I mean, I think I’ll need at least a
month.”

He’d let go of my hands abruptly, leaned his
seat back, and closed his eyes. His mouth had taken on a petulant
shape I’d not seen before, and it wasn’t flattering. For a time, I
thought he was faking being asleep, but then he started to
snore.

I moved to a seat across the aisle, but I’d
been unable to fall sleep. Instead, I sat clenching my hands,
feeling the uncomfortable bulge of the diamond against my palm.

When we arrived in Chicago after midnight,
he’d put me in a cab with only a kiss on the cheek. Usually, he had
me driven home in the limo. It couldn’t have been more clear. I was
being punished.

As I got ready for bed that night, I took
the diamond off. I didn’t want it to distract me from thinking
clearly about my uncertainties.

I didn’t see William for three days, but
then he showed up at the art institute to take me to dinner as if
nothing had happened, either his proposal or his subsequent snit.
But, for me, everything had altered.

In the strange time that followed, I often
felt like I was standing to one side, watching myself with William.
Weighing and measuring each of our interactions as if they were
happening to someone else. Looking for deeper meanings, but
deciding eventually that with William what I saw was what I
got.

And what I got was a sulky boy rather than a
mature man. Slowly, our relationship frayed like a piece of ancient
silk that hadn’t been handled carefully enough.

During that time, I was in charge of
mounting a major exhibit of twentieth-century American artists at
the Winterford Art Institute, where I was a curator. As the opening
date approached, it provided me with opportunities to pull away
from William. Often I had to work late during the week, and I began
turning down at least half of William’s weekend invitations. When
we did spend time together, he was irritable and snide.

The magic had departed, and I’d landed back
on solid ground with a painful thump.

My refusing to move in with him had another
effect. It put off any official announcements of our engagement,
something I was grateful for as I worked out the best way to end
the relationship.

The night I planned to give William his ring
back, I was delayed at work because two paintings for the exhibit
due that day hadn’t yet arrived. I left William a message,
canceling our dinner date.

While I knew he was becoming increasingly
upset in the weeks since he’d proposed, what I didn’t anticipate
was that my staying late that night would push him over an edge I
didn’t see approaching.

Arriving home that evening, I found him
waiting in my apartment. His smile had been an unpleasant one.

“How did you get in?” I asked.

“I don’t know a super alive who’ll turn down
a Ben Franklin to open a tenant’s door. And just where have you
been anyway?”

“I told you. I had to wait for two paintings
to arrive.”

“At nine o’clock at night?”

“They arrived by special delivery.”

He glared at me. “I don’t believe you.”

Nervous, I pushed a strand of hair out of my
eyes.

“Hey. Where’s my ring?”

“I don’t wear it at work.” In fact, the only
times I’d had it on recently were when William and I had a
date.

His smile turned nasty and his eyes
narrowed. “Have you even told anyone you’re engaged to me?”

“Have you?”

“Answer the question,
my love
. Or are
you perhaps someone else’s love. Playing me, are you? Getting what
you can out of me?”

“Stop it.”

“No, you stop it. Right here, right now. I
want to know. Why won’t you move in with me? Is there someone else?
Is that it? You’ve been out with him. That’s why you’re late, why
you’re never available to see me lately.”

Then more words came gushing out, awful
words, terrible accusations. His hand went into his pocket and when
it emerged, it was holding a gun. He pointed it at me, saying his
anger was my fault.

Time stopped.

I have no clear memory of what happened in
the next moments. I know those hours practicing tae kwon do shaped
my moves as I struck out at him to kick the gun away. When I was
once again fully aware, William was lying on my kitchen floor.
Blood spurted from his nose and seeped from the back of his head. I
called 911. Paramedics came, and then the police.