Ditching David

by Jenna Bennett

  I left my contemplation of what had been Rachel’s office, and pushed open the door to David’s.

  And stopped in the doorway, struck by emotions.

  Here, everything looked the same. It even smelled like him, and although I’m not a fan of Nautica, I inhaled deeply. When my eyes filled with tears, I didn’t try to fight them. We’d spent eighteen years together. Eighteen—for the most part—good years. A lot of affection and laughter, some fighting, some makeup sex, and a whole lot of breakfasts and dinners and conversations and TV shows. And now he was gone. The smell was the only thing left, and soon that would be gone, as well. And while I didn’t mourn the man who had cheated on me, and left me, and tricked me into filing for divorce first, and tried to hide assets from me so I would get as little as possible in the divorce settlement—I did mourn the husband he’d been for the seventeen years prior to that.

  I don’t know how long I might have stood there, sniffing, if it hadn’t been for the sound of a key in the front door. Then the scrape of the handle turning, and a change in air pressure as the door opened.

  I figured it was either Rachel or Farley. Nobody else had keys, as far as I knew. Which was why, when I heard a thud, followed by a very unladylike curse in a breathy, female voice, I arched my brows and turned in that direction.

  The newcomer was someone I had never seen in my life before. Younger than Jacquie, with a cloud of sunny, blond hair and big, China-blue eyes. An extremely nubile little body was decked out in faded jeans and red-and-white gingham shirt tied between her breasts. She was even wearing cowboy boots. It was like watching Ellie Mae Clampett in the flesh.

  The very, very young flesh.

  Happily, I seemed to have startled her as much as she’d startled me.

  “Oh!” For a second, it looked like she might be about to drop the cardboard box she was carrying. It slipped an inch or two before she firmed her grip on it.

  “Hello.” I smiled. Tightly, and with no teeth.

  There was a pause. When she didn’t speak, I added, pointedly, “I’m Regina Kelly.”

  “Oh.” This time she flushed, from the cleavage to the roots of her hair. She juggled the box so she could reach out a hand to shake. “Michele Weber. But you can call me Shelby!”

  Or not. “Nice to meet you,” I said. And waited. She still hadn’t explained what she was doing here.

  She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “I’m Mr. Hollingsworth’s new assistant.”

  Ah. Well, that explained Rachel, at any rate.

  “Congratulations,” I said. “I’m just here to pick up some of David’s personal effects.”

  She nodded. “Farley...” She shot a guilty look at his office door. “I heard about your husband’s accident. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  She was well brought-up, if nothing else. “Thank you.”

  There was another beat.

  “If you’re looking for Rachel’s office,” I said, “it’s through there.” I gestured to the door. “I’ll just go back into David’s office and see what I can dig up.”

  Shelby nodded. I waited a second to see whether she’d say anything else, and when she didn’t, I headed back in the direction I’d come.

  This time I didn’t stop in the doorway to smell the Nautica. The scent had mostly dissipated anyway, in the couple of minutes the door had stood open. Or maybe my nose had gotten used to it. Instead, I headed directly for the safe in the corner of the room, as I dug David’s keychain out of my pocket. I could hear Shelby moving around in what used to be Rachel’s office. Getting ready to start work on Monday, I guess. Maybe Farley had informed her that he wouldn’t be paying her to get settled in; she’d have to show up Monday morning ready to work. Maybe that’s why she was moving her stuff in today.

  And then I stopped thinking about it when the door to the safe opened.

  Five minutes later, I closed it again, frustrated. The safe had yielded nothing of interest. Certainly no copy of David’s will. There’d been the original documents David had used to set up the accounts I had found statements for in the penthouse, as well as the original documents for the accounts we held together, but I already knew about those. There’d been a couple of life insurance policies: one each for Krystal and Kenny, with David as the beneficiary, now moot. One on me, with David as beneficiary; also moot. One on him, with me as the beneficiary—and I had kept that one out, so I could notify the insurance company on Monday that he’d passed away.

  He’d also had an insurance policy on Farley. For business purposes, I guess. Farley might have had one on David, as well—for business purposes—but if so, it wasn’t in David’s safe. And if he’d ever had one on his first wife, it wasn’t here.

  I locked the safe and straightened to look around. There were filing cabinets alone one wall, full of business files, I assumed. But it wasn’t likely that David’s will would be there. Why would it be, when he had a safe he could keep it in?

  I opened a drawer at random anyway, just so I could say I did, and saw what I’d expected to see: a row of manila folders arranged in alphabetical order by last name. Client files.

  And as such, none of my business. I closed the drawer again, just as I heard a door open in the outer office. A second later, there was Farley’s voice. “Shelby?”

  If Shelby answered—with anything but a smile—I didn’t hear it. And I didn’t hear Farley say anything else, either; not even a murmur of voices. But after a moment I heard his footsteps come across the floor, and then he appeared in the doorway.

  “Gina?”

  I pushed the file drawer shut with a finger. “Hi.”

  Farley looked at it, before turning his attention to me. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.” I walked toward the desk, where I’d left my purse. “I was just looking for something in David’s things.”

  “What?”

  Not that it was any of his concern, but— “David’s will.”

  He blinked. Maybe he’d expected me to say I was looking for something to do with the business. And of course I wasn’t. His and David’s business holdings were none of my concern.

  “It isn’t here,” Farley said.

  No, it wasn’t. “I’ll check the safety deposit box at the bank on Monday.”

  He nodded. “What’s that?”

  He was looking at the papers in my hand.

  “Insurance policy,” I told him, as I approached the door.

  He made no move to step out of the doorway. Instead, his brows drew together. “Let me see that.”

  “It’s mine,” I said, although I held it up and pointed. “See? My name. Yours is still in the safe.”

  “Mine?”

  “David had an insurance policy on you, too. One on me, one on you, one on each of his kids. And this one, which has me as the beneficiary. I have to call the insurance company on Monday.”

  Farley didn’t react for a second, then he moved out of the doorway. “There’s a lot to remember when someone dies.”

  Yes, indeed. I glanced around the office. “Most of what’s here looks like it’s business related. But if you come across anything personal, and you want me to come pick it up, you know where to find me.”

  Farley nodded.

  “I think there are copies of everything in his office at home, too. What do you want me to do with those?”

  “Have a bonfire,” Farley said.

  I arched my brows—as a suggestion, it seemed a little out of character—and he added, “If the originals are here, I don’t need the copies. Shred them or burn them. Or if you want, you can box them up and I’ll come pick them up and shred them myself.”

  “That won’t be necessary.” I’d just use them for kindling in the fireplace this winter, if that’s what he wanted. By then, I might not be able to afford firewood. “I guess the same thing goes for the files in the penthouse?”

  Farley muttered something. I waited. “Yes,” he said. “Please.”

  “No problem. I’ll
take care of it. I’m sure you have plenty to do to get Shelby up to speed.”

  I waited for him to say something—something to explain why he’d fired Rachel, who had the experience and who was familiar with the ins and outs of the business—in favor of this fresh-out-of-high-school eighteen-year-old who would probably give his wife conniptions... but he didn’t.

  “Let me walk you out,” he said instead.

  “Thank you.” Nice of him, but completely unnecessary. I knew my way, and it wasn’t like I could get lost.

  “My pleasure.” He put a hand at the small of my back. Again, nice and polite. I don’t know why I felt like he was pushing me toward the exit, because he really wasn’t. I was moving under my own steam. I just felt maneuvered.

  It wasn’t until I was outside in the parking lot, with the door securely latched behind me, that I realized why Farley might have wanted to get rid of me.

  Duh.

  I’d been holding Farley up as the ideal of masculine fidelity—faithful to Martha through thick and thin, while David had been sticking it to Jacquie and anyone else who’d have him—and all along Farley had been planning to hire a younger woman to take Rachel’s place. A younger woman he was probably trying to talk out of her jeans right now.

  Duh.

  I turned the key in the ignition with a little more force than necessary, disgusted with David and Farley and the entire male half of the human race.

  Chapter 15

  NOW THAT I knew I could just get rid of David’s business papers, that I didn’t have to sort them and get them back into the correct folders, it didn’t even take two hours to put the office to rights.

  I ate some leftovers when I got back to the house—the CSI crew had grazed their way through a lot of what was in the fridge, but there was enough left for lunch—and then I went to work. All of David’s business papers went directly into the shredder, and then into a half dozen small lawn-and-leaf bags I found in the garage.

  When they were full, I wrestled them, one by one, out to the trash can and tossed them in. After that, the rest of the cleanup was a breeze. All the pens and pencils went back into the desk, along with all the paperclips and rubber bands. I had to sort the various bank statements and bills into piles and stuff them back into the filing cabinets, but there weren’t enough of them that it took forever. I might not have been as precise as perhaps I should have been, either, since I wanted to get the job done. So no chronological order from latest to first or vice versa. But when I was done, everything looked pretty much like normal, other than the streaks of gray fingerprint powder everywhere.

  The first thing I did, was pull out the vacuum, to suck up as much of it as I could. That turned out to be a double-edged sword, as the vacuum picked some of the powder up, but swirled more up into the air. I sneezed.

  After I’d gotten rid of as much of the dry stuff as I could, there was still plenty left, on all the flat surfaces. The window sills, the top of the desk, the filing cabinets. I looked around helplessly, and then reached for my phone.

  “Mendoza,” Mendoza said. He must be in the middle of something, to sound so brusque. Either that, or he was tired of hearing from me.

  Just in case he was in the middle of something, I’d better be brisk, too, and not indulge in pointless chatter. “What do you use to clean fingerprint powder?”

  There was a beat. “You’re calling me for cleaning advice?”

  “Your CSI crew left fingerprint powder all over my office,” I said. “Not that I’m not grateful for everything they did. But I have to clean it up. And it doesn’t vacuum well. It’s making me sneeze. And some of it has stained the carpet.”

  Mendoza sighed. “Dishwashing liquid.”

  “That’s it?”

  “And water.”

  Dishwashing liquid and water. Who knew?

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “You’re welcome, Mrs. Kelly.”

  I waited, but he didn’t hang up.

  “Farley has hired a new administrative assistant,” I told him. “He fired Rachel. It was her last day yesterday. Today, when I got to the office, a new assistant was getting organized. Blond, beautiful, and dumb as a post. Not a day over twenty.” The kind of woman I had expected Rachel to be, back when David hired her.

  Mendoza made a noise. I’m not sure whether it was amusement or cynicism.

  “Do all men cheat?” I said, exasperated.

  I hadn’t expected an answer. I hadn’t asked the question thinking I’d get one. It was more of a rhetorical question, or a complaint.

  Imagine my surprise.

  “Yes,” Mendoza said.

  Great.

  And because I felt stupid, I didn’t think before I spoke. “Does your wife know?”

  There was another moment of silence, long enough for me to realize I’d gone way beyond personal and into pretty damned rude.

  “I’m sorry—” I began, just as Mendoza said, “Yes. That’s why we’re divorced.”

  This time the pause was all mine.

  I was feeling a bit conflicted. Embarrassed, because I’d asked totally inappropriate questions and probably offended him. But also a bit relieved, because... well, because he wasn’t married. So maybe I wouldn’t go to hell for lusting.

  Of course, he was still too young. Although he was well over legal age, so it wasn’t like I was having inappropriate thoughts about a teenager.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again when I’d gotten my breath back. “It’s none of my business. I was very rude. I apologize.”

  This time I’m sure I heard amusement. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’ll just go away now.” And clean my office. As penance.

  He didn’t tell me not to. “Have a good evening, Mrs. Kelly.”

  “Thank you, Detective Mendoza,” I answered. “You, too.”

  After I’d hung up, I thunked my forehead against the tabletop a couple of times for good measure, and had to go to the bathroom to wash the fingerprint powder off my skin before I mixed up the solution of dishwashing liquid and water I hoped would clean up the rest of the mess.

  * * *

  I HAD HOPED—really, I had—that this would be my last encounter with Detective Mendoza for the day. Usually, I enjoyed a chance to look at him, or even talking to him, but after wedging my foot so firmly into my mouth earlier, I just wanted to avoid the man for a while.

  So of course something happened that necessitated another call to the MNPD.

  It was late afternoon, after five, when my phone rang. The number was not familiar, nor was the voice that greeted me. “Mrs. Kelly?”

  “This is she.”

  “This is Zachary Brennan.”

  Who?

  “I’m the doorman at the Apex, where your husband’s penthouse is.”

  “Of course,” I said smoothly. “I’m sorry. What can I do for you, Zachary?”

  “Well,” Zachary—whose voice I now sort of recognized—said, “are you upstairs right now, Mrs. Kelly?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m in Hillwood.”

  “Is it possible someone else could be upstairs?”

  No one should be upstairs. Unless David had given a key to someone. Like Jacquie.

  Although, even if he had, she had no business there now that he was gone.

  “It’s possible,” I allowed. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because the door’s cracked open,” Zachary said. “One of the other penthouse floor tenants informed me. I went upstairs and knocked and called out to see if anyone would answer, but no one did, and I didn’t want to go inside without permission...”

  He trailed off.

  “I’ll be right there,” I said. “Or not right there—it’ll take about thirty minutes—but I’m on my way. Don’t let anyone into the place.”

  “No, Mrs. Kelly,” Zachary said.

  “And don’t go inside yourself.” Just in case.

  “No, Mrs. Kelly,” Zachary said.

  “I’m on my way.”
/>   “Yes, Mrs. Kelly,” Zachary said. “Should I call the police?”

  I hesitated. I should probably put in a call to Mendoza, but I didn’t want to. I had already made a fool of myself in front of him, or on the phone with him, once today, and if he got there and everything looked normal, I’d look like even more of an idiot. Maybe no one had been inside at all. Maybe the door just hadn’t latched completely behind me when I left this morning.

  OK, so I really didn’t think so. They were strong, sturdy, heavy doors. I’d be more worried about locking myself out than about the door not latching. But it was possible. And until I knew more, I didn’t want to jump the gun.

  “No,” I said, eventually. “Let’s take a look first. There’s no point in involving them if nothing’s wrong.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Kelly,” Zachary said.

  * * *

  HE WAS WAITING for me in the lobby when I burst through the door, still in the same uniform of black pants and red jacket. He looked a bit like a bellhop from an old-fashioned movie. And although he appeared to be around fourteen, he probably wasn’t. Considering how many hours he worked, he had to be of legal age. There are laws against child labor.

  “How old are you?” I wanted to know.

  He swallowed. “Twenty.”

  “Why aren’t you in college?”

  “I’m waiting to apply to the police academy when I turn twenty-one,” Zachary said.

  “You could be getting an education while you’re waiting. Study criminal justice, or something.”

  “I’m sick of school,” Zachary said. “I sucked at it.”

  OK, then. “Do you want to come upstairs, or do you have to stay here?”

  “I’d like to come upstairs,” Zachary said. “Just in case you need help.”

  If any of us needed help, I’d put my money on me helping Zachary rather than vice versa—he was shorter than me by an inch or two, and we probably weighed about the same—but if he wanted to tag along to protect me, I wasn’t going to stop him. It was sweet, and probably made him feel manly.