Texas Baby Conspiracy

by Barb Han

  Most of the others fled with the minister, leaving Janessa with Brody, Margo and Abe’s attorney, Asher Parkman, who was also Abe’s cousin. It’d been Asher who’d called her four days ago to tell her of Abe’s death, and to inform her that Abe had insisted that she and her mother, Sophia, come to today’s graveside funeral. Both had refused. Janessa had politely done that. Her mother had declined with an “if and when hell freezes over.” That was it, the end of the discussion.

  But then the letter from Abe had arrived.

  The letter had been postmarked the week before his death, but because she’d been away on business, Janessa hadn’t opened it until this very morning. After reading it, she’d dropped everything and made the four-hour drive from her home in Dallas to Last Ride. She’d arrived just as the funeral had been about to start so there hadn’t been time to ask anyone about the letter.

  “Abe insisted I read his will at the graveside,” Asher announced when Brody turned to leave. “He wanted you to be here,” the lawyer added, giving glances to Janessa, Brody and Margo. Asher huffed, though, when he reached in his jacket pocket and came up empty. “I just need to get my reading glasses from the car.” He kept an eye on the swirling storm clouds as he hurried off.

  “Abe wants it read graveside because he probably hoped we’d all get hit by lightning,” Margo grumbled. Keeping her purple flowered umbrella positioned over her perfectly groomed head of seriously colored black hair, she walked to the tombstone and kicked it with the pointy toe of her red heels. “You miserable puss ball.”

  Janessa saw the muscles tighten in Brody’s jaw. Felt her own stomach tighten, too. Even if the miserable puss ball and flamin’ bunghole labels applied, those things shouldn’t be said at a funeral, and it definitely didn’t seem right to kick a man’s tombstone.

  “I guess you’re wondering why I married him,” Margo went on, talking to Janessa now. “Since it’s obvious I hate every puss-ball inch of him.”

  This definitely didn’t seem like graveside conversation, but yes, Janessa had indeed been wondering that just minutes earlier. Actually, she’d wondered it when she was seventeen and first met Margo, who had already been in the process of divorcing Abe. Instead of asking for an answer, though, Janessa simply shrugged. That lukewarm gesture was apparently enough to keep Margo going.

  “I hate Abe because of the way he treated me after our marriage went south,” Margo continued. “After things fizzled, he fizzled, too, and he turned dirty. And I don’t mean dirty in a good-in-the-sack kind of way.” She paused, and her fit of temper seemed to be waning fast. She sighed. “But before that, Abe did have...appeal when he wanted to have it.”

  Janessa had never actually been on the receiving end of that appeal. Her earliest memories of Abe were of the custody court battles between her mother, Sophia, and him. Shout-filled confrontations and spearing glares aimed at Sophia, but it had spattered onto her, too. Janessa had seen Abe’s angry face plenty of times, and even at that young age, she’d wondered why this man was fighting so hard to get her when he hardly spared her a glance.

  Abe had lost his final custody appeal when at age twelve, she was asked by a judge which parent she wanted to live with. It hadn’t been a fair question, of course. Live with the mother who’d, well, mothered her or the father who wasn’t a father. Of course, Janessa had chosen Sophia, and Abe had walked out. Again, without looking at her. And he hadn’t contacted her since.

  Not until sending her the letter.

  “You didn’t know Abe, not really,” Margo went on. “I mean, your mother divorced Abe when she was still pregnant with you, and she only lived at the ranch a couple of months before she hightailed it out of here.”

  True, and Sophia hadn’t come back. Ever. Added to that, she hadn’t wanted Janessa to come. Ever. Ever. Sophia might have gotten her way on that, too, if Janessa’s teenage rebellion hadn’t kicked in and she’d made the trip to Last Ride. A trip where Abe still hadn’t looked at her and she’d met Brody. It’d been a crazy summer of discovery and mixed emotions.

  Margo glanced over her shoulder in the direction of Asher’s car, and she huffed. “Asher’s sitting in there making a call while we’re all out here risking life and limb.”

  Janessa looked back to confirm that Asher was indeed in his sleek silver Mercedes, and behind his rain-streaked window, he did have his phone pressed to his ear.

  There hadn’t been any lightning in the past couple of minutes so that lessened their chances of losing life or limb while waiting for the lawyer. But the rain was still coming down. That’s why Janessa maneuvered away from Margo and went to Brody, so she could cover them both with her umbrella. He gave her a look with those amber brown eyes that somehow managed to be both chilly and sizzling at the same time.

  “It’s not necessary. But thanks,” he said, his voice a slow Texas drawl. However, there didn’t seem to be any actual gratitude in his tone. Maybe because he believed he couldn’t get any wetter than he already was.

  “You’re welcome,” Janessa answered.

  And with that brief exchange that barely qualified as a conversation, they seemingly ran out of things to say. Apparently, a past intimacy like tongue-kissing a bare chest didn’t keep you connected. Well, except the heat was still there. On her part anyway. She could feel it coming off her own body in thick hot waves.

  “Abe had better do right by me,” Margo grumbled, taking another kick at the tombstone. “He’d better have put in his will that I can keep my house.”

  “Her house?” Janessa asked Brody in a whisper.

  Oh, my. That set off some more muscle twitching in Brody’s jaw, and she didn’t know if that’s because it was a sore subject or if Brody disliked talking to her.

  “Margo got a house on Colts Creek as part of her divorce settlement,” he finally said. “She hated Abe, loved the ranch.”

  Okay, Janessa got that. While she couldn’t say she loved Abe’s ranch, Colts Creek was indeed beautiful. “If Margo got the house in the divorce, then why is she worried about losing it?”

  “Because Abe only gave her the house, not the land beneath it,” Brody explained after a long pause.

  Janessa pulled back her shoulders. What a crappy arrangement, and yet another example of the angry man she remembered from childhood.

  “Why’d you come?” Brody asked, drawing Janessa’s attention next to him. Apparently, they hadn’t exhausted personal conversation possibilities after all.

  It was not the right time to get into the letter so Janessa answered Brody’s question with one of her own. “Uh, how was Abe before he died?” She kept her voice low so Margo wouldn’t hear.

  He stared at her a long time. “Not sick if that’s what you want to know. He was just Abe.”

  Which, of course, could mean a lot of things. “When Asher called to tell me, he said they thought it was a heart attack that’d killed him.” She left it at that, hoping he’d either confirm or dispute that.

  Brody didn’t do either.

  Mumbling something she didn’t catch, he looked away from her, fixing his attention on the tombstone. “Abe had high blood pressure,” Brody finally said several rainy moments later. “High cholesterol, too. He refused to take meds or change his diet so, yeah, the doctors figure it was a heart attack.”

  She jumped right on that. “Figure? They don’t know for sure?”

  “The autopsy results aren’t back yet.” Brody paused, his jaw muscles stirring again. “I wasn’t with him when he died. No one was.”

  The way he said that made Janessa think there was more that he wasn’t telling her. Of course, there was more she wasn’t telling him, as well. But she also detected something else in his tone. Regret maybe.

  “I know you were close to Abe,” she threw out there.

  He scrubbed his hand over his face. Then he groaned. “Yeah. Abe was an asshole to most people but not to me.�
�

  “The son he never had,” Janessa said in a mumble. “I remember the way he treated you when I was here that summer.”

  Abe had invited Brody to eat meals with him where they’d talked about business deals he wanted Brody to be part of. Pretty heady treatment for a seventeen-year-old. Janessa had eaten some meals with Abe, too, but not at his invitation. Abe had done a superior job of freezing her out despite the triple-digit temps that summer.

  “He treated you like a son,” Janessa added.

  “Maybe, but you’re Abe’s only child,” he grumbled, “and he had the DNA test to prove it.”

  Janessa turned to him so fast that her nose nearly knocked into the umbrella stem. “He did a DNA test on me?”

  Brody nodded. “He told me it was something he demanded before he filed his first suit to get custody of you.”

  Well, heck. Janessa hadn’t heard a word about this. “He didn’t believe I was actually his daughter?”

  “He wanted it confirmed. Abe wanted a lot of confirmations,” he added in a snarl. “That included proving to the gossips that he hadn’t bedded my mother. He hadn’t.”

  “Why would he want to prove something like that?” she asked.

  “Because you and I are both thirty-three, and I’m only six months older than you. My mother was involved with Abe right before she married my dad and got pregnant. Abe had the DNA test done on me when I was born. I guess because he didn’t want your mother to have any ammunition to use against him in the divorce.”

  Put that way, Janessa could understand Abe’s reasoning. At the time Brody was born, Sophia would have been about three months pregnant with her and had already left Abe. Judging from the few tidbits Janessa had managed to glean, Sophia had wanted a quick divorce and gotten one, but the complications started after her birth when Abe pressed for custody.

  “Abe told me I was a nuisance.” Janessa cringed the moment she heard the words leave her mouth. Words still coated with hurt after all this time. Even if the hurt was justified, the timing was wrong to bash a man at his funeral.

  Thankfully, Brody didn’t have time to respond to her confession because Asher finally got out of his car. After popping open his huge black umbrella, he started back toward them. Not a brisk pace but rather a slowpoke stroll. The lawyer’s expression was like a textbook example of someone bearing bad news.

  Swallowing hard, Asher put on his glasses and opened the small white envelope he was carrying. “I’ll go ahead and read Abe’s opening statement as he instructed, and then we can go over a summary of the will.”

  Asher stopped, gave each of them a glance, then huffed. “Look, you should know right off that you’re not going to like what I’m about tell you. I tried to talk Abe out of doing this, but as you know, he didn’t always listen to reason.”

  Janessa felt her stomach clench into a little churning ball. Margo groaned and kicked the tombstone again. Brody, however, didn’t stir from his spot while Asher began.

  “‘I figure if you’re listening to this, then you’re wanting to know what and how much I left you,’” Asher read aloud. “‘I have some stipulations. Now, that’s a big-assed word for you, isn’t it? A fifty-cent way of saying you’ll have to do as I say or you get diddly-squat. My lawyer will tell you all about the terms, but I’ll bottom line this for you. My daughter, Janessa Parkman, inherits everything.’”

  Janessa froze, then blinked. “Excuse me?” she managed to say.

  “Everything,” Asher verified.

  “Everything?” Margo shrieked.

  Janessa shook her head, looking first at Asher, who gave her no clarification whatsoever. He certainly didn’t add a laugh and say wasn’t that a fine fifty-cent joke?

  Janessa whirled toward Brody to assure him that she not only hadn’t expected this, she darn sure didn’t want it. But Brody was already on the move, stepping out from the umbrella and walking away.

  “Wait!” Janessa and Asher called out at the same time.

  With the rain pelting down on him, Brody didn’t stop. Janessa ran after him. No easy feat what with her shoes slipping in the mud. He was already in his truck before she managed to reach him.

  “I’m so sorry,” she blurted out. “Why would Abe do something like this?”

  “Apparently, you weren’t a nuisance after all,” Brody drawled, right before he slammed the truck door, started the engine and drove off.

  There were so many emotions racing through her that Janessa wasn’t sure which one she felt the most. She thought about it a second and decided that really-bad-pissed-off fury won that particular award. The ranch should have been Brody’s, and nothing should have gone to her.

  When Janessa turned back around, she saw a fresh glare from Margo. “I didn’t know,” Janessa insisted. “And I’ll make it right. I can give the ranch and assets to Brody and you.”

  “Well, actually you can’t do that,” Asher said, drawing her attention back to him. He got that messenger-of-really-bad-news look on his face again. “I understand Abe sent you a letter.”

  That cooled some of her anger. “He told you about that?”

  Asher shook his head. “No, but Abe arranged for a courier in San Antonio to deliver a copy of that letter to my office in the event of his death. The courier company just found out that his funeral was today so they brought it over. It arrived a couple of minutes ago, and my assistant called to tell me about it. I haven’t read it yet,” he quickly added, “but on the outside of the envelope there was a sticky note saying you’d already received the exact same letter, that he sent it to you a week ago.”

  “That’s true,” Janessa admitted. “It’s in the car. I brought it with me.” But before she could say more, Asher held her off by lifting his hand.

  “Let’s get through the will first, then we’ll deal with whatever’s in the letter,” the lawyer insisted. “As Abe said in his instructions, he had stipulations.”

  “Stipulations?” Margo growled.

  Asher nodded, but he left his gaze glued to Janessa. “And when you’ve heard them, I’m betting that you’ll be in just the right mood to kick your father’s tombstone.”

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  Keep reading for an excerpt from Kentucky Crime Ring by Julie Anne Lindsey.

  Kentucky Crime Ring

  by Julie Anne Lindsey

  Chapter One

  Allison Hill tucked her infant daughter, Bonnie, into the cloth baby sling around her torso and moved swiftly through the cool morning wind. April in Kentucky was beautiful but brisk, and Allison had a little work to do before she went inside. Normally, her elderly neighbor, Mason, met her on the porch when he heard her truck rock down his long gravel drive, but today he’d stayed inside. He hadn’t answered the door when she knocked, but the phone line was busy, a sure sign he was tied up on a call.

  Mason was one of the few people Allison knew who still had a landline, attached to the wall by a spiral cord, no less. And he refused to get call-waiting because he claimed he could only talk to one person at a time. That person was usually his daughter, Franny, who lived in Minneapolis and worried desperately about her father living alone after his recent heart attack.

  Allison hurried along the side of the home and into the shady backyard, ready to feed Mason’s chickens and collect the eggs from his henhouse. She’d promised Franny she’d handle the tasks during Mason’s recovery. Another family friend was handling Mason’s lawn mowing and prepping the ground for his garden.

  The sound of the river mixed with the blustering wind as Allison approached the henhouse. The ground was soft and muddy from a late-night storm. She curved a protective
arm over Bonnie as the insistent wind picked up, then pulled her baby’s knit cap more securely over her soft blond curls. With only a few days left in her twelve-week maternity leave, Allison was already mourning the loss of her extended alone time with Bonnie. Thankfully her job at the day care would keep them close, even after she returned to work.

  Allison let herself into the gated area around the henhouse, then headed for the little ramp. The chickens swarmed her legs, clearly recognizing her as their morning food source. She took off the lid of the tote of seed and scattered a few scoops over the ground. The hens lost immediate interest in Allison, clucking and diving over one another instead, eager for first dibs on breakfast.

  She squatted to pluck a square of paper off the ground that had been trampled into the dirt by twenty chicken feet. “Litterbugs are the worst,” she told Bonnie. She tucked the scrap into the pocket of her old zip-up hoodie, then put away the container of food.

  A set of muddy footprints caught her attention as she hooked a basket for egg collection over the crook of her arm. The prints were strangely small, closer to her size than Mason’s, and she could see the small outlines of toes. Her brow wrinkled at the thought. Bare feet? In an old man’s henhouse? It wasn’t warm enough to be without shoes right now, and the ground had been hard until the storm.

  Strange.

  Allison finished collecting eggs, then headed for the back porch, eager to know if Mason realized he’d had company.

  She’d barely left the henhouse before getting her answer. More prints came quickly into view near the porch. These prints were accompanied by a trail of larger, heavier marks, likely made by a pair of men’s boots, and about a million of the usual doggy tracks, courtesy of Mason’s geriatric hound, Clark. Allison followed the path to Mason’s door, then knocked. Maybe the man who cared for Mason’s lawn had brought a barefoot child or wife along yesterday?

  Allison knocked and the door swung open beneath her touch. A shiver of unease crept down her spine. “Mason?” she called, slipping into the kitchen. Her toe nicked a small white button, and Allison bent to pick it up. The button was delicate and flower-shaped. Nothing like the buttons on any of Mason’s flannel shirts. Maybe the button belonged to whoever had made the footprints.