The Queen of Cool (11 page)

The line was silent again. Lo heard Alisha
sobbing.

“
Oh God, Lo, I miss Dad so
much,” Alisha said. “He walked me through every step of the case…
everything… for months. He prepared me for the trial. When it
finally went to trial, he was…”

“
I know.”

“
Can you forgive
me?”

“
Come home,” Lo
said.

“
I’ll be there in the
morning,” Alisha said. “I’m going to quit my job. Is that
okay?”

“
Why don’t you take family
leave?” Lo asked. “That way you don’t have to decide right
now.”

“
I’ll do it,” Alisha said.
“You’ll meet me at the airport?”

“
Of course,” Lo said. “Love
you Alisha.”

“
Love you too.”

Lo looked at the cell phone when the line
went dead. Driving Mandy’s car, she made the trip to her hideaway
behind her mother’s home. She jogged upstairs for a quick shower
only to find Jaden Sadler waiting for her at the dining room
table.

“
I need a few minutes,” Lo
pointed to her room.

“
He’s having lunch with
you. He couldn’t resist my cooking,” Yazmin said. She raised her
eyebrows in a challenge for Lo to eat. Lo smiled. Yazmin added,
“We’ll be here. Go on.”

By the time she returned from her shower,
the apartment smelled like fresh tortillas. Mandy was sitting with
Jaden at the table. Lo put on a smile and joined them for
lunch.

Q

Tuesday afternoon—1:25 p.m.
Arlington, Texas

Days: 17

Jaden pulled his Mercedes sedan into a
parking space in front of Henry Downs Air Conditioning. From the
outside, the building looked like an average warehouse in the
middle of a block of average warehouses. The only difference was
that this one was deserted.

A little intimidated by the gravity of their
visit and the haunted emptiness in front of them, they got out of
the car in silence. Jaden jangled the keys and they followed him
through the glass door. Standing in the dim light, they were
stunned by the destruction. Manny had said the Feds had ripped the
place apart. Ripped apart was an understatement. Chairs were
broken. Tables overturned. Someone had taken a thorough and
destructive look through everything.

“
Lisa, why don’t you go and
see if you can find what you need in the accounts office?” Lo
asked. “Mandy do you want to go with her?”

“
I’ll go see what’s in the
rest of the offices,” Mandy said.

“
Good thinking,” Lo said.
“Jaden and I will check out the warehouse.”

Jaden opened the door to the warehouse, and
Lo followed him inside. The demolition continued into the
warehouse.

“
Why don’t I take that end
and you can…?” Jaden started.

“
Actually, I wanted to talk
to you for a minute,” Lo said.

The lawyer turned to look at Lo. His
eyebrows went up in an implied “What?” while his eyes worked their
way up the landscape of her body.

“
Alisha interned at your
firm a few years ago,” Lo said.

“
She did.” Jaden’s face
flushed, and he put his hands into the pockets of his suit
pants.

“
Someone broke her heart at
that firm of yours,” Lo said. “So much so that she took that job in
New York to get far away from here.”

“
Is that so?” Jaden made a
show of shrugging. He turned away from Lo to pretend to survey the
warehouse.

“
Did you break my Alisha’s
heart?” Lo asked.

With his back to her, Jaden stood very
still.

“
I ask you this because
Alisha’s coming home,” Lo said. “I don’t know for how long, but
she’ll be here in the morning. And knowing Alisha, she’s going to
want to be involved in our little adventure here.”

Jaden turned to look at her. He’d fixed on
his poker face but his eyes squinted at Lo.

“
Is that going to be a
problem?” Lo asked.

“
I’d prefer it if we kept
to the business at hand,” Jaden cleared his throat and looked away
from her again.

“
This is the business at
hand,” Lo said. “I’d rather starve than be in business with a
person who hurt my Alisha.”

“
Actually, if you must
know, it’s she who broke my heart,” Jaden said. “Not the other way
around.”

“
You want to tell me how a
girl could affect a grown man such as yourself?” Lo asked. She
looked him up and down.

“
That’s not really any of
your business,” Jaden said.

“
If it has to do with
Alisha, it’s my business,” Lo said. “What did you do? You may as
well tell me, because I’m going to ask Alisha. She will tell
me.”

“
She hasn’t told you so
far.”

“
I never asked,” Lo said.
“I just worked to soothe her broken heart and sent her back for her
last year at Harvard Law. She hasn’t really been home since then.
What did you do?”

“
You know what? I don’t
have any idea what I did,” Jaden said. “We were talking about
getting married. One moment she wants to get married, and the next
moment she packs up her things and leaves. I haven’t seen her
since.”

“
What did you do?” Lo
asked.

“
Nothing,” Jaden
said.

“
You were talking when this
happened?”

“
Yes.”

“
What did you
say?”

“
We were talking about our
age difference,” Jaden said. “I’m almost fifty, and she was
twenty-three.”

“
And? If she meant that
much to you, I’m sure you’ve gone over and over this moment in your
mind. What did you say?”

Jaden huffed. His hands went to his waist
and he glared at Lo.

“
What did you
say?”

“
You are the most
irritating woman I’ve ever met,” Jaden said.

“
Get used to it,” Lo said.
“What did you say?”

He closed his eyes, sighed and said:

“
I said, ‘It’s not like
you’re a sixteen-year-old bimbo trophy that I only keep around for
sex.’”

“
Meaning me?” Lo laughed.
“And what did Alisha say?”

“
She said, ‘We have really
different values,’ packed her stuff and that’s the last time I saw
her,” Jaden said. “In my defense, I didn’t know you. You’d never
said a word to me.”

“
Because you’re a stupid
jerk,” Lo said. “You think I didn’t notice your little innuendos
and wandering hands? I’d have to be blind and deaf.”

“
Did Don know?”

“
Of course,” Lo said. “He
wasn’t stupid. He knew what you thought of me. He just didn’t care
about your opinion.”

“
And now?” Jaden asked.
“What do you think now?”

“
Are you doing all of this
because of Alisha?” Lo asked.

“
Yes,” Jaden said. “And
because I misjudged you. By misjudging you, I misjudged Don. I feel
bad about it.”

“
You misjudged Alisha too.
Are you hoping to win her back?”

“
The thought has crossed my
mind,” Jaden said.

“
So she can be wife number
four on your way to wife number five?” Lo asked.

“
So I can have the chance
to spend my life with her,” Jaden said. “I may have married a lot
of women, but I’ve never been bewitched by a woman like I am by
Alisha. I haven’t even been able to date since she left. I used to
accuse her of having her Romani friend put a spell on
me.”

“
You know that Vera got
married when she was thirteen?”

“
I’m a stupid jerk,” Jaden
said. “What can I say? I totally fucked up by being too prejudiced
to notice what was going on right in front of me.”

“
Do you love
Alisha?”

Jaden nodded.

“
YES!” Lisa screamed from
the office. “YES!”

They turned to look toward the noise.

“
I guess she found what she
was looking for,” Lo said.

“
I guess so,” Jaden
said.

They were walking toward the office, when
Mandy gave a blood curdling scream. Lo took off toward Mandy
leaving Jaden in her dust. Ripping open the door, she saw Mandy
standing in front of a disheveled man. His matted salt-and-pepper
hair hung in over his bearded face. The room reeked of cheap
bourbon.

“
Ah Mutt,” Lo said. “You
scared Mandy.”

“
Lo, I’d never scare
Mandy.” The man’s slurred speech matched his condition. “I love
Mandy.”

“
You scared the shit out of
me, Uncle Mutt,” Mandy slapped at his chest and dust rose around
them. “I can’t believe you!”

“
Jaden?” Lo turned to the
lawyer. “Meet Don’s best friend. He’s the only man whose opinion
mattered to Don.”

Q

CHAPTER Seven

Tuesday afternoon—2:05 p.m.
Arlington, Texas

Days: 17

Jaden stepped across the room. Picking up
Mutt by the shoulders, he gave him a little shake. He began walking
the unkempt man toward the door.

“
What are you doing?” Lo
trailed behind him.

“
Getting rid of the
vagrant,” Jaden said. “You can’t let this junk sleep
here.”

“
Wait.” Lo grabbed his arm,
but he shrugged her off.

“
Let him go!” Mandy
said.

Hell bent, Jaden marched Mutt toward the
front door.

“
Get out of here,” Jaden
yelled, as he threw him out the door.

“
What the hell is wrong
with you?” Lo asked.

“
I’m taking out the trash,”
Jaden said.

Mutt curled up in a ball to protect himself
from Jaden. Mandy dropped to his side.

“
You wanted to restart this
company,” Jaden said. “You can’t do it with garbage like that
around.”

“
Mutt was Don’s best
friend,” Lo said. “What are you talking about?”

“
Don’s biggest weakness was
people like…” Jaden turned up his nose in disgust. “They only cost
money and cause trouble. This one’s been in rehab three times.
Can’t keep it together.”

“
I think you should go,” Lo
said.

“
You’ll find your own way
back?” Jaden asked. “I don’t want to hear that I abandoned you
here…”

“
My brother should be here
any minute,” Lo said. “He can take us back.”

“
Fine,” Jaden raised an
eyebrow to her. “You’ll thank me for this later.”

He stormed to his car. Peeling out of the
parking spot, he drove away from them. Lo kneeled down next to
Mutt.

“
Are you all right?” Lo
asked.

“
Donny’s dead, Lo,” Mutt
said. “How can I be all right? There’s nothing right about
that!”

Mutt pushed his hair out of his face. Tears
dropped from his eyes. Lo leaned down to hug him.

“
Was that Jaden?” Lisa’s
voice came from the doorway. She joined them outside the
door.

“
He threw out Uncle Mutt,”
Mandy said.

“
He’s a dick,” Lisa said.
“You okay, Mutt?”

“
Yes, Miss Lisa,” the
disheveled man said.

“
Have you been living
here?” Lo asked.

“
Donny asked me to,” Mutt
said.

“
You’ll stay with us,”
Mandy said.

“
Where?” Mutt
asked.

“
My mother’s house,” Lo
said.

“
Can I stay in the
basement?” Mutt asked.

“
The nasty, dank,
spider-infested basement?” Lo asked.

“
Donny made an apartment
for me,” Mutt said. “He told me I’d always have a place to live
there, but the hanging lady scares me.”

“
In the living room?” Lo
asked.

“
Scares me.” Mutt shook his
head back and forth.

“
She’s harmless,” Lisa
said. “Plus, we’re upstairs. You and the spiders can have the
basement.”

“
You’re going to have to
dry out,” Lo said. “Don would freak if he saw you like this
again.”

“
I’ll do it, Lo,” Mutt
said. “For Donny.”

“
Do it for Don,” Lo
said.

“
Do it for yourself,” Lisa
muttered. “Let’s get back inside.”

With Mandy on one side and Lo on the other,
they helped Mutt back inside the warehouse. Lisa righted a chair,
and they set him on it.

“
Can you stay with him,
Mandy?” Lo asked. “I’ll get some water.”

“
I’ll finish getting the
files we need,” Lisa said.

Mandy found another chair to sit in. Lo and
Lisa went toward the back of the warehouse.

“
Have you been in the
basement?” Lo asked.

“
No way,” Lisa said. “Too
many spiders and creepy stuff. Haven’t been in the garage
either.”

“
No one knows how to get
into the garage; just the second-floor apartment,” Lo said. “Are
you all right with him staying there?”

“
I guess we’ll find out,”
Lisa said.

“
What do you think about
the fact that he sees Mom in the living room too?” Lo
asked.