Short Fuse
© 1992/2016 by K Pelle
Chapter 14
"Why the big frown, Daddy?" Shannon asked quietly.
"Oh, it's nothing important. I just don't see why I have to be at the reading of either of the two wills next Monday."
"Oh, I never thought of that," Shannon looked surprised. "I saw the will, but it didn't dawn on me until now. I think I'm supposed to inherit Granny's house."
"Wow! You have your own house?" Cindy blurted, then looked chagrined as Arlene frowned. "Oops, I'm sorry."
"I don't want Granny's house!" Shannon said firmly, then crawled back into my lap and began to cry softly against my shoulder.
Poor Cindy looked like she wanted to kick herself and I could see the tears in her eyes. I really didn't know what to say or do, but Arlene and Emily took Cindy outside so that we were left alone. For a few minutes, I simply cuddled Shannon and let her cry, meanwhile I thought about what to say to try to ease her pain.
I was completely at a loss for words, instead, I simply held her gently and rubbed her shoulder and back like I would a child in pain. It must have been five minutes before she sniffled as she sat up and looked me in the eye.
"I guess Granny wanted to be sure I was looked after, didn't she Daddy?"
"I think so," I sighed. "I think she knew I had set aside money for your education, but she might have wanted to make sure that you didn't have to take any menial jobs when you got out of school."
"I think she knew Mom was trying to cut both you and me out of her will," she said firmly.
"Well, since my net worth is so much more than your mother's was, I think she might have been able to cut me out of her will, but not you," I said quietly. "The court would step in otherwise."
"What do you mean your net worth?"
"It's how much money I'm worth if you count everything I own. The difference between your mom's net worth and mine, is mostly the value of our house, but that house is worth a lot of money," I sighed. "When we got married, your mom wanted to sell it. My family got angry with her over it and insisted that she would never be one of the owners, just so she couldn't sell the house. They insisted that she sign a prenuptial agreement that she had no share in the house, not since I had bought it before we were married."
"How could they do that? That doesn't sound like Granny Gamble or aunt Michelle."
"Oh honey, they can be stubborn too. Our family is a bit strange that way. You see I had put the money from my share of the inheritance of your grandfather's estate into buying their shares of the house, so they classed it as a family inheritance. My whole family had worked hard to repair that house and I had bailed out the construction business by leaving my share with them, so they felt the house should stay in the family. They knew Claire was pregnant with you, but they felt your mom was a blatant money grubber, so they insisted on the prenuptial agreement to protect me and you, even though you weren't even born yet," I explained. "Actually, for a while it seemed that your mother was doing everything she could to prove that they were right."
"What do you mean, Daddy?"
"Well as I said, when we were married, your mom was pregnant with you, but we were both still going to University and didn't have a lot of money. Claire wanted to sell the house and move into a smaller place in order to live closer to her mother," I sighed again. "Then too, when I bought the house, I didn't have a bunch of money, so I didn't have much furniture in the house. When we got married my side of the family dug out old furniture out of their attics and filled the house with furniture while we were on our honeymoon. As soon as your mom and Granny Leech saw all that antique furniture, they tried to get me to sell it, even though it was all just lent to us by other members of my family. Of course I refused to allow that to happen and warned them that my family would charge them with theft if they tried it, which pissed your mom and your granny off, but by that time I didn't care."
"Oh boy!" Shannon shook her head. "Even I would have been angry about that."
"Yeah, it caused problems," I smiled sadly. "None of the people on my side of the family were happy at all and they wanted me to back out of the marriage, but I was stubborn with them too. Claire was pregnant and since I was responsible, I ignored all of my family's complaints and worries."
She looked at me sadly, so I hugged her tightly and kissed her forehead. "I'd do it all over in a minute just so I could have you sitting in my lap like this."
"Oh Daddy," she snuggled close and neither of us spoke for a while.
After a few minutes, she lifted her head and smiled softly. "It wasn't all bad with you and Mom was it?"
"Oh no, we had our good times too," I smiled again. "Once I started bringing in a larger pay check and we had money to spare, your mom wasn't so wierd about things of that sort. Actually, until you started school, Claire was quite happy to stay home and look after you. She even got to the point where she liked all the old furniture and even when we could afford to buy new furniture, she didn't want to do that."
"Oh Daddy. That's not so strange. She really liked antiques. Did you know she bought Granny Leech small antiques all the time?"
"No, I didn't."
"Well, she did and she helped Granny Leech pay off the mortgage on her house too. You must have known that."
"Yeah. That's something I did know about. When I started making more money from my books, I remember her setting up a deal where we paid off a lot of the debts her mother had."
"So you guys shared your paychecks?"
"Sort of," I smiled. "The money your mom earned from her job wasn't that much, but it went into a joint bank account with mine. The only money we kept separate was the money from my books. I had to keep that out of general funds for tax purposes. So I had Jaro set up several funds for special purposes, like your education fund, or holiday and retirement funds, that sort of thing."
"You mean Mr. Santos, don't you? Why do you call him yarrow? Isn't that a plant?
"Oh, Jaro is just a nickname, because his full name is Santos Jarosynski, spelled with a 'J' not a 'Y,' but he's European, so they pronounce the 'J' the same way we pronounce 'Y.'"
"Oh, I didn't know that, but Daddy, I think Mom had a couple of bank accounts that were separate too."
"Oh?"
"Unh huh. I remember one time just after I started grade school, I was with her and we went into a strange bank downtown. It was just after she'd started her job and the bank was near where she worked."
"Probably for convenience, so she could cash a check if she needed it," I shrugged.
"Well, she had several different bank books that she kept with her all the time too."
"Are you sure?" I looked at her in surprise.
"Unh huh. She always tried to hide them, but I do know she had at least three different ones for different banks."
"Well, she handled Granny Leech's money too. I'll bet that's what it was."
"Unh uh, she had one for Granny too. That was separate," Shannon stretched and shifted. "She was always especially careful about that one, but I don't know why?"
"Probably because it was her mother's money."
"Maybe? I don't know about that though," she sighed and snuggled for a minute.
I was in a bit of a dither, realizing that Claire had kept secrets about money from me, but I wasn't really worried. It was just one more thing to add to the facts that I'd missed about my marriage. I knew things now that I'd never bothered to check on before and I wondered what else I'd find out, quickly realizing that Claire had been a lot less open with me than I'd thought she was.
"Daddy?" Shannon's quiet question snapped me out of my thoughts.
"Yes, Punkin?"
"You mentioned that our house was worth a lot of money. How much?"
"Oh, I don't know? Since it's on such a big lot and it's fixed up so well, I suppose it's probably worth well over a hundred thousand dollars by now because of the way real-estate prices are climbing."
"Our house is worth that much?"
"Probably," I thought for a moment. "When your granddad bought our house, he and Granny paid about sixteen thousand dollars for it, but we had to fix it up. I'd imagine we added another four or five thousand dollars to the value when we repaired and replaced anything that was worn out or rotten. I was thirteen then and your Aunt Michelle was twelve, but we worked right along with your granny and grampa. Since I'm thirty four now, that means our family has owned the house for twenty-one years and the value has been appreciating rapidly during that time. I think I heard that houses have increased in value by something between five and ten times in the last twenty years, so I'm guessing that our house is worth at least a hundred and twenty thousand dollars. I'd imagine Granny Leech's house is worth at least half as much as our house, maybe more."
"I guess I can accept that it might be my house now," she sighed. "But Daddy, what do I need a house for?"
"That's a good question," I sighed. "I'm afraid that right now, I don't have a good answer for you though. Of course I don't know of any other investment that has as good a return as real-estate does."
"But what will I do with it? I really don't want Granny Leech's house to live in or anything."
"Honey, I really don't know what's going to happen with that. I can tell you that I'll help you, in fact since you aren't eighteen, the court will insist that I help you. You see, until you're eighteen, I'm responsible for looking after you and your best interests," I sighed again. "When it comes to deciding exactly what we're going to do, I'll ask for advice from experts and then talk to you about our choices before we make any decisions."
"Oh, I knew you'd do something like that and thanks for explaining things," she snuggled for a second, then sat up. "I'd better go talk to Cindy, I think she probably feels bad about upsetting me and it isn't really her fault."
As she slipped off of my lap, I watched her go and realized that for a fourteen-year-old, she was certainly a lot more grounded than I would have expected. Actually her reaction surprised me, I would have expected her to be a lot more self-centred than she was. I smiled, pleased that she was thinking about others even though she was quite upset herself.
Then I began to think about Granny Leech's house. What would we do with the darn place? First of all, I knew it would have to be cleaned out before we could do anything else. At the moment I was leaning toward the idea of selling the place and reinvesting the money in something safe for Shannon's future, but I wasn't about to make any decisions yet. After all, it sounded as if Claire had been playing fast and loose with her money, so who knew what shape her mother's funds were in. For all I knew that house could be mortgaged to the hilt.
When I was thinking about Mrs. Leech's personal possessions, it suddenly dawned on me that Claire's minivan was probably still packed full of her things. Damn, I was going to have to do something about those too. And what the hell was going on with all those check books Shannon had mentioned. What in hell had Claire been up to with those? I was frowning as I thought about that, but my concentration was broken when Arlene and the girls came back inside.
"Dave?" Arlene said quietly.
"Umm, oh, yeah," I hauled myself out of my personal doldrums.
"I was just wondering, how long will it be before you know what we're going to do."
"Well, we have to wait for Jaro to call back about whether there's to be a burial or a cremation, but since Shannon doesn't want to go to the funerals or to the funeral home to view the bodies, I think we could just slip away."
"I don't think it will be all that simple," she sighed deeply. "If there was one photographer here who had the guts to sneak down the driveway to take pictures, I'll bet there are five of them out on the street or somewhere nearby, just waiting for us to stick our noses outside."
"You're right. I didn't think of that," I sighed heavily and thought for a few seconds. "Since Shannon and I are the point of their being here, we're the problem. Now, we could just walk out and hop into the rental car, but then they'd be asking you all sorts of questions after we left, so that wouldn't be very smart."
"We can handle any questions," Arlene snapped.
"But I don't want you to have to handle any questions," I snapped back, then sighed. "Sorry, I didn't mean to sound grouchy."
"At the moment, you have a reason to sound grouchy," Arlene shrugged her shoulders. "We all do, I guess. I'm getting to feel like I'm penned in myself. It feels almost as if we're under siege here. I mean, Noreen was going to come over this morning, but I warned her it might not be a good idea because of all the photographers and crap."
I stared at her and then grinned. "I just got an idea, maybe she should come over."
"What? Why should she do that?"
"Well, the two of you do look a lot alike. If she came over and stayed for a while, then say she ran down to the corner store and came back, I'll bet the reporters would try to ask her questions right?"
"So?"
"So if she came and went a few times, they'd get used to the idea. Then you could leave and they wouldn't be suspicious."
"And what does that accomplish?" Arlene demanded. "You'd still be here then and the rental car would still be parked right out front, which means they'd still be watching the place."
"I have an idea," Emily spoke quietly. "I could return the rental car and Noreen could pick me up to bring me back home. All it would take would be a phone call from you to the car rental business. If I implied that Dave and Shannon had run off somewhere, they'd be off on a wild goose chase."
"That's fine Mom, but we are planning on taking off somewhere," Arlene sighed. "Why let them know?"
"Well, if Dave phoned the airport and inquired about four tickets to Hawaii, that might help too," Emily grinned. "He wouldn't even have to buy them. He'd just have to enquire about them. I'm betting that the papers would pick it up and run with it, then they'd have to stake out the airport, which might reduce the number of people around here."
"In other words lay a false trail," I nodded. "It sure sounds good to me. I think we might be able to cause a bit of confusion if we did it right."
"Perhaps we should call Dick Fairchild first?" Arlene said quietly. "He might have some thoughts on that. Actually, I suppose he could leak it to Edmunds, couldn't he?"
"Edmunds?" I frowned. "Who is that?"
"Oh come on Dave, I just mentioned him this morning. He's the cop who leaked the idea to the press that you were staying here."
"Oh, well I suppose we should mention anything we're doing to Detective Fairchild. What he does with the idea is up to him though. I don't think he should lie about anything."
"Oh, he wouldn't lie about anything, he might just ask some questions though. Then Edmunds would likely hunt for the answers we want him to find," she said quietly. "While you call the airport on your cell phone, I'll call Dave."
So I called the airport and spoke to an Air Canada saleslady for several minutes, asking about airfares, flight times, and availability of tickets for Honolulu. In turn, she asked my name, my address, and how many seats I'd be interested in. I suppose I was guilty of leading the poor lady on, but I refuse to commit to a specific plan and finally told her that I'd have to call her back.
After that I called the rental car company and explained that I might have Mrs. Banks return the car for me because I expected to have to go out of town. Since I'd paid for it with my credit card, they decided it would be no problem if someone else returned the car.
By the time I was off of the phone, Arlene was talking to Noreen, having finished her call to Detective Fairchild, but when I moved to get up, she signalled for me to wait a moment. As soon as she was done her call to her sister, she looked at me with a frown.
"Dave wants you to call him, in fact I think he wants to talk to you in person," she said quietly.
"Do you know what's going on?"
"Not really. I think he wants to ask you a few questions about Claire."
"Oh great. Well, I suppose that means my chance of hiding my whereabouts from the press is quite slim," I sighed.
"I don't see why. He could come out here."
"Wouldn't he mind?" I frowned. "I mean, I thought I'd have to go down to the police station."
"Dave, he knows that you have a thing about publicity and that you're under pressure. All you have to do is call him and he'll drop over. And before you ask, he wouldn't tell me what it was about."
I just sighed and picked up the phone. After talking to Dick Fairchild and asking him to drop over, I had a shower, then changed into some comfortable clothes before going back into the living area of Arlene's place. The girls were eating breakfast and dressed in almost matching sun dresses, while Arlene was wearing her painting smock again and sipping a cup of tea as she stood at her easel sketching the girls as they ate and talked. I poured myself another cup of coffee and went out into the back yard. That's where Dick Fairchild found me a few minutes later.
"Hello Detective," I said as he came out with Arlene.
"Hello Dave. Thanks for seeing me," he smiled. "I know you're thinking about going out of town, but before you go, I was wondering if you could clarify one or two things for me about your wife's banking habits?"
"To be honest, there's not much I can tell you, except that she stuck very close to our household budget. She was a stickler about that," I said quietly. "I suppose that was a habit from when we were first married and we had to live on very little money."
"You're referring to your joint account with her?" he asked as he flipped open a notebook he was carrying.
"Well, yeah," I tried to sound slightly annoyed.
I decided that I wasn't about to say much about anything with being asked directly, but I was positive that they'd found those bank books that Shannon had mentioned.
"How much do you know about her banking habits?" he asked.
"Not that much. I know she had a bank account of her own, but then, so do I. As well, she probably carried her mother's bank account book, since she looked after almost all of her mother's purchases outside of the house. Why? What's going on?"
"Well, when we removed your wife's body from her van, we found her purse beside her and we checked it. In it were a total of five different bankbooks from five different banks. None of those were for your joint account with her or for her mother's bank account. Are you telling me that you knew nothing about them?"
"Actually, Shannon told me just this morning that Claire carried more than one bankbook, but I really don't know anything about it. To be honest, I've never looked in Claire's purse. I considered that her private property," I frowned. "Did she break some law by having so many bank accounts?"
"No, not really," he looked puzzled. "It's not the number of bank accounts she had, it's the amount of money that she had in total that astounded us."
"Pardon me?" I frowned even more. "She didn't have a lot of resources to make a lot of money. She had her job and I suppose her mother used to pay her for doing things. Other than that, all she had was our shared account."
"I expected that's what you were going to tell me," he sighed. "She was employed at Bower Brothers, right?"
"Yeah, that was her only job, she was the book keeper or accountant there. You don't suppose she was . . ." I let my voice trail off, not wanting to suggest that she might be embezzling from them.
"No, you don't have to worry about anything there. They just had an audit a few months ago and their accounts are in perfect shape. Actually they seemed quite upset that they were going to have to replace her. Even though she only worked part time, they paid her full wages because she did a full day's work."
"Wait a minute," I interrupted. "She worked full time and she often put in overtime there too. She often came home late."
"No," he frowned. "We checked that. She worked an average of five hours a day. She always started at eight in the morning, but she was never there any later than one in the afternoon."
"That's impossible. She only worked those hours for the first year or two that she was there. The last few years she was seldom home before six in the evening," I insisted. "I almost always picked up Shannon from school and cooked dinner with her help, because Claire was never there. You can ask any of the neighbours. They'll tell you that it was rare for Claire to get home early."
"Oh, we already have," he sighed. "We were hoping that you could give us an idea who else she might have been working for, other than the Bower Brothers."
"I haven't a clue," I admitted honestly. "Maybe Shannon can help?"
"Would you mind calling her outside so I can talk to her about that?" he asked quietly.
"No, not at all."
"I'll get her for you," Arlene suggested and disappeared inside.
"Do you think she was up to something illegal?" I asked quietly.
"We don't know," Dick shook his head. "The thing is that it seems she was so secretive about whatever was going on and there are large sums of money involved."
"Okay, since we're alone right now, how much money are we talking about?"
He glanced around, then leaned close to me and whispered. "The total in her accounts comes to almost a quarter of a million dollars."
I was stunned. I just stared at him in total astonishment. My mind simply refused to wrap itself around the idea that Claire had that much money squirrelled away. I hadn't realized that she was so secretive or that she'd had anywhere near that much money. I still hadn't responded when Shannon came outside and stood beside me. That drew me out of my deep thoughts.
"Shannon, could you repeat what you told me about those check books you saw in your mom's purse."
"Sure Daddy," she answered quietly. "Mom had at least three or four different bankbooks in her purse all the time. They were for different banks, but I don't know anything much about them."
"Were you ever with her when she made a deposit or a withdrawal?" Fairchild asked.
"Not really, the only time I remember being with her in any bank was when I was really small. I think I was only in grade one or two. She'd just started at her job downtown, if that helps any."
"So how did you find out about the other bank accounts?"
"Oh, you mean the bankbooks? Well sometimes, she'd want her wallet out of her purse, and she'd put her purse down somewhere else. I'd get it for her, but she liked me to just bring the whole purse, she didn't like my looking inside it," Shannon blushed then. "I got curious about why she didn't want me to look, so I did peek, but that's all. I didn't even open up any of the bankbooks or anything."
"So you don't really know much about her accounts?"
"No, nothing really," Shannon shook her head.
"Did you know if she worked anywhere else besides Bower Brothers?"
"No. Did she?"
"Well, to be honest, that's what we're trying to find out," he sighed. "Do either of you know if she had any friends or acquaintances we could ask about where else she might have worked?"
I just shook my head, but Shannon frowned.
"There was that Chinese guy who used to call the house once in a while," she said quietly.
"A Chinese man? Do you know his name or anything about him?"
"Not really, I think his name was Mr. Loo, or Mr. Lee, something like that. I really only talked to him a couple of times."
I could see that she was thinking deeply and it was a few seconds before she spoke again.
"I think he called the house long distance one time too."
"Why do you think that?" Fairchild asked.
"Well, the phone had that funny hollow sound, if you know what I mean?"
"I see and when would that have been?"
"Oh, months ago. I think it was just after Christmas, or not long afterward," then she smiled. "I know it must have been around Chinese New Year because he said that Chinese thing. How does it go? 'Gung hay fat choy' or something like that?"
"I see," Detective Fairchild made a note in his notebook. "He didn't leave a phone number did he?"
"Unh uh, just his name and he asked me to tell Mom to call him."
"Do you know if she did?"
"Not really, she might have, but I never noticed."
"He hasn't called since?"
"Not that I know about," she shook her head.
"I see," he sighed. "I don't suppose she would have kept any papers around the house would she?"
"If she did, I imagine she would have taken them when she left," I answered flatly. "Just between us, do you think she was doing something illegal?"
"We don't know," he sighed. "It's just that it seems suspicious to us that someone who worked as an accountant for a small business could make that kind of money."
"So are you fishing for ideas or what?"
"Actually, I'm not sure what I'm doing," he admitted. "I do know that we've asked to have the income tax department check to see if she's paid taxes on the money in her bank accounts. We have done a rough check and it seems she owned an investment company of some sort, but we don't have a current address for it. I suppose we are fishing or hunting or whatever you want to call it."
"So you've spoken to her lawyer?"
"Yes. We have. Her legal representative is as mystified as we are about where the funds came from. When her company was registered, she had a hole in the wall office downtown, but after a year that address was changed to a post office box and the office phone number became an answering service number. So as far as they know, she was operating the business out of her home or perhaps more accurately, out of her purse," he sighed deeply. "We don't know what she was investing in or if the company was simply a diversion of some sort."
"Okay, so you don't know, but what do you suspect?"
"We just don't know," he sighed deeply and threw his hands in the air as if he was frustrated.
My cell phone rang right then and I excused myself, standing up and walking toward the back of the garden as I flipped it open and brought it to my ear.
"Hello."
"Hi Dave. Santos here. You were right, both your wife and her mother did ask to be cremated. However, your wife paid for an interment of the urns in a memorial wall at the cemetery. That was where the confusion arose."
"I see. Is there a ceremony involved in that or what?"
"Actually that was what their representatives asked. They wondered if you wanted to have a memorial service."
"Not right now," I sighed. "By the way, I've got a cop here asking a lot of questions about Claire. It seems she had a business of some kind that I didn't know anything about."
"I just heard about that myself and that was something I was about to mention to you. It seems that the reading of the wills may be postponed because of some kind of investigation," he paused. "You say you didn't know anything about it?"
"Not one damn thing," I growled.
"You don't know what amount of money is involved do you?"
"The cop mentioned it, And I think he said it was under half a mil," I said quietly.
"What? Did I hear you say half a million dollars?"
"Yep, that's what I think he said."
"Holy shit! And you didn't know anything about it?"
"That's right. You could knock me over with a feather right now. She even had a company of some kind that I didn't know anything about."
"Buddy, just to cover your butt, do you want me to see what I can find out?"
"I was about to ask you to do that," I sighed. "By the way, just so you know, I and Shannon are cooperating with the police, at least for now."
"Perfect. I was going to suggest that," he paused for a second and then took a deep breath. "Did you say you had a place where you could hide out for a bit?"
"Yeah, but getting out of the house may be a bit of fun. We think the news people are staked out on the street," I sighed. "I left that stupid rental car parked on the street last night and by now they'll have traced it to my name."
"So? Leave with the cop and have him drop you off at the university. I know how well you know that place. You could lose anyone there. The photographers might get a picture or two there at the house, but if you do it right, it would be at a distance because they wouldn't be ready for you. If you went to the building where your office is located just at class change and went to another floor than they were expecting, then out a different door than you entered by, you could lose them easily."
"What then? Have someone meet me with another car?"
"Unh huh. I went to class there for five years and I still used to get lost at times, how much chance would a photographer have?"
"Well, it's an idea."
"Look, I should get going on this problem you've given me. Will you be carrying that portable phone?"
"I plan on it."
"Okay, I'll call you later."
Just like that, he was gone. I turned around toward the house and found that Arlene and Cindy had joined Detective Fairchild and Shannon. As I walked toward them, they were talking about Emily's idea about us staying out of town for a while.
"The thing is that Dave wants to do it without being followed by the reporters and photographers," Arlene was saying.
"That's simple," Dick smiled. "You just get into the car and pull away. My car is down the street and they won't pay much attention if I walk to it first. When you drive by, I just pull out and block them from following you."
"You're driving a black and white, are you?" Arlene grinned.
"Yep," he grinned back. "All I need to do is make a call and you two could have an escort all the way to the city limits if you want."
"Oh I don't think we need that," I smiled. "I just hate the idea of them sensationalising everything that happens. I also hate reading their lies about things. When I was going to university, I got burned by them, so now I'm very uncooperative."
"Well, I'll tell you what, I'll help you, if you do what you can to help me find out where that money came from," Detective Fairchild offered.
"That's a deal," I smiled and held out my hand. "Actually, I've already told my lawyer to see what he can find out."
"And your lawyer is?"
"Santos Jarosinski."
"He's your lawyer?"
"Yeah, didn't you know that, he was going to have a news conference at the police station, but then there was that bank robbery downtown."
"Ah, so that's his involvement with this case. For some reason I had him pegged as your wife's lawyer."
"No. He and I were room mates when we went to University. I don't have any idea who Claire's lawyer is, in fact I didn't even know she had one until Jaro told me about the will."
"Well, let's see," he flipped open his notebook. "The other firm involved in this case is McLean and Wilson. I guess I did write that down and I forgot it."
"Excuse me," Arlene interrupted. "Are you okay with Dick's plan then, Dave? Because if you are, I and the girls will go pack a few things to take along."
"I guess so," I shrugged. "I think it will work well if we time it right."
"It will work just great," Arlene laughed. "Just wait, you'll see."
As she went inside, Dick Fairchild turned to me and grinned. "You realize that you're going to be the cause of about a dozen broken hearts down at the police station don't you?"
"Pardon me?"
"You and Arlene. There are young officers all over the station who would give their left nut just to take her out. The way she's acting toward you, I don't think they have a chance, do you?"
"I hope not," I had to smile. "Maybe I'm being callous for moving in this fast, but . . ."
"Oh shut up. I interviewed your wife, remember? I figure that you have to be as close to a saint as any man that I've ever met."
"You're looking at the wrong man," I laughed. "I have about the worst temper around, I've just learned to hold it in until I need to clean house."
I remember the one time I'd lost my temper and decided he should know about it, even if it wasn't something I was proud of. I glanced back toward the house and then moved my chair so I could see the door and face Dick at the same time.
"Since you're investigating things, you'll probably find out about this anyway, but I want you to hear the story from my side first."
"Is this incriminating toward you? If it is, I don't want to hear it," he said quietly.
"No, I don't think so. It's just something I'd rather wasn't widely known, but it is part of my past. I intend to tell Arlene about it, just not right now."
"I see."
"Okay," I took a deep breath and let it out, then I started.
"I told you that Santos and I were room mates, but we certainly didn't start out as friends, not the first year anyway. He was a polio victim who had a chip on his shoulder about a mile wide, while I was a typical football playing jock, but at least we were both intelligent enough not to do more than argue constantly," I sighed.
"I'd been out of town to a game and came back late, to find him sitting on his butt outside our door. He was out of his wheelchair, wearing no clothes except a pair of jockey shorts, and he didn't even have his keys. He had forgotten to lock the door and there were a couple of wise asses down the hall who thought he was somebody they could pick on. They yanked him out of bed, stripped him to his shorts and locked him in the hall, then stood back and laughed at his struggles. What really pissed me off is that they chased away anyone who tried to help him."
"Now he can't stand without a hell of an effort and a lot of pain. On top of that he catches colds easily, so I knew as soon as I saw him out in the hall that he was in trouble. I just opened the door, scooped him up, and carried him to his bed. After I had him under the covers, I called campus security to come check if he needed an ambulance, then I went looking for the two wise asses. They were big, but I was bigger. To make a long story short, I herded them outside, across the quad, all the way to the university fountain. I made them wade right out into the middle of it. Then I made them strip to their shorts and stand there, until they started shivering."
"I kept expecting campus security to show up because at night they used to patrol the quad every fifteen or twenty minutes, but that night they never came by. So I guess it was a good hour before I gave up on keeping those two in the water and went back to the residence. Nobody said one word about it to me, but I know someone must have complained. After all, those two guys had rich parents and thought they were untouchable, so they were a real pair of dipwads. I expected to be expelled at any time."
"That was losing your temper?" Dick said quietly.
"Well, I kind of threw them around a little bit before I could get them to herd well," I shrugged. "I understand they had bruises for weeks."
"You didn't hit them?"
"Nope, I haven't swung a fist at anyone since was about twelve. I'm not a fighter. I'm just big, so I spent a while bouncing them off each other and a couple of walls until they decided it was better to do what I wanted rather than to argue with me."
"And you never heard a complaint?"
"Nope."
"Well, I can tell you that campus security was probably watching the whole thing and laughing their shit lockers off. If you'd gotten carried away and had beaten the hell out of those two bullying idiots, you'd have been in trouble, but it sounds to me like you gave them just what they deserved. If there were any complaints afterward, they probably covered your butt on that as well," he grinned. "Actually, it's the sort of thing I'd have liked to have seen."
"But I acted as a vigilante," I looked at him in surprise.
"No, I'd say you acted as a friend," he chuckled. "There are times like that when an eye for an eye is the perfect justice."
I was shaking my head about that when Arlene appeared at the door.
"We're all ready," she smiled.