Walk-in

by T. L. Hart

  “I can’t protect you if I don’t know everything I can find out about you.”

  “Just do your best. I’m not fooled by my soon-to-be-ex-husband nor impressed by his macho charms. I just don’t want to be followed around everywhere I go.”

  “Which brings us to another issue,” he said. “You are already being followed around. At this point, if you don’t want a bodyguard, I suppose we can follow the guys who are tailing you. Watch the watchers.”

  “Gregory’s goons. He’s trying to get proof that I’m a danger to myself. If he could lock me up somewhere and not have to divorce me, he would be a very happy camper.”

  “We already have enough dirt on him to dissuade him of that plan. What I want to make sure of is that he isn’t into something so bad he has no way out. Cornered animals are mindless and dangerous.”

  “So what’s the plan?” I asked. “I let him follow me around until you catch him?”

  “Something like that.” He picked up the journal and fanned the pages. “Give me a couple of days to go over this and I think we can have a clearer idea of how we want to proceed.”

  “Okay.” My head was throbbing like crazy. “Are we done for now?”

  “Not quite.” He looked uncomfortable, rather like a man having to knock down a hornet’s nest—certain that it was necessary but not looking forward to the job. “I have to talk to you about Jo Keesling, and I’m afraid you aren’t going to like what I have to say.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “If I’m not going to like what you have to say, Mr. Greenly, maybe you ought to consider not saying it.”

  He was watching my face intently—looking for a sign that it was safe for him to proceed. I was, after all, the paying client. I could feel the blood rush to my cheeks, knew they had to be flushed and red. Red light. Danger. Stop. He didn’t.

  “Sometimes in my line of work, you discover things you have to deal with whether you like it or not. Things that are in your client’s best interests to know—however they choose to deal with it.” He was choosing his words carefully, not a good sign. “There are sensitive issues that have come to light.” He cleared his throat and started from a different direction. “You’ve been protected all of your life, Jennifer. Your parents had the means to shield you from having to act out of need or desperation. Everyone isn’t so lucky.”

  “I realize that having money makes life easier, Mr. Greenly.” I wasn’t in the mood for a discourse on the advantages of being rich. “How does this have anything to do with my divorce or my girlfriend?”

  “Your divorce is only a part of what I see as a potentially harmful situation. How much do you know about your friend…about Ms. Keesling?”

  “What about Jo? Is she in danger?”

  “Maybe, but my bigger concern is that I think she puts you in danger. Her partner in her last relationship was killed, some think by her husband.” He shrugged. “I’m not so sure of that myself. The police never had enough evidence to arrest him.”

  “I am very aware of the circumstances. Max Sealy shouldn’t still be walking the streets. Jo’s terrified of him.”

  “I understand that. However, Ms. Keesling is not exactly the innocent victim that you might suspect. She was involved in a situation with a local psychologist, Dr. Cotton Claymore, that didn’t paint either of them in the best light. Jo’s involvement may have been a factor in her lover’s death.”

  “Of course it was a factor. Her affair made that big jock into a raving manic killer. That wasn’t her fault.” I was getting angry. “An affair doesn’t justify murder.”

  “The affair was only the final straw, as the saying goes. There may have been much more complicated things going on than it seems at first glance,” he said. “I haven’t got enough evidence to make a direct accusation, but you might not want to be so quick to trust a woman you haven’t known all that long.”

  “Long enough,” I snapped. “What do you have on Jo to ask me to keep her at arm’s length? Not that it’s likely to happen, just so you know.”

  “Ms. Keesling came from a very unfortunate background. Dirt poor, alcoholic single mother—pretty grim.” He spoke quietly, sympathetically. “She was a great beauty from the time she was a teenager. It was the only currency she had to trade on to get out of that place. She became skilled at using her charm.”

  “Hold on a minute.” I held up a hand to keep him from speaking right away. “Be very careful what you imply about Jo. I won’t have you trashing her to me.”

  “And I’ve no desire to do so. You need to know that she developed a pattern of—shall we say—attaching herself to people who had money or fame or notoriety and used it to her own benefit.”

  “She was a gopher for a local publicity firm in Atlanta.” He opened the folder again and took out a sheaf of pages and photographs, which he handed to me. “She left town with an aging actor who was in Atlanta doing a film. She was young and beautiful, if not too sophisticated.”

  Her face in the picture broke my heart. Eager and vulnerable—a target for the fading star who had his arm around her. She was cheaply dressed and unpolished next to him, but she had a spark that lit her up. I recognized the actor from an old legal drama that had made him a household name for two seasons before he went straight to the daytime television melodramas that ran night and day.

  “He was her ticket out of Hicksville,” he continued. “A couple of years in LA and she made a bit of a name for herself doing publicity for a handful of beginners on their way up and feeding inside items to the tabloids. Better haircut. Better clothes.”

  “Stop it. This is none of my business unless she decides to tell me. I don’t give a rat’s ass how she got to be who she is.”

  “Then she met and married Max Sealy. She didn’t have to worry for money any longer. No more hustling gossip. She was able to set up her consulting and public relations firm and had access to all the introductions his name could attract. When they settled in Dallas, he was a big fish and she swam happily along.”

  “I get the picture.” I tossed the material he had given me down on his desk. “I don’t care how she started out or where she came from. What part of that are you having trouble understanding?”

  “Then Sealy retired and started selling cars and renting himself out as a guest at public functions. Jo moved on. She dumped him for a local media darling named Cotton Claymore. The situation caused a lot of buzz and got her a lot of publicity.”

  “That’s enough.” I stood up, intent on leaving. “You’re making her sound like a gold digger. That’s not true. Jo is a successful businesswoman, a really gifted fundraiser.”

  “That she is,” he soothed. “But she made a mistake when she got hooked up with Max Sealy and his cohorts. A few of these men are involved in some under the table deals that make Enron look like a Sunday picnic. They just haven’t been caught yet.”

  “She’s not with Sealy anymore, as you very well know.”

  “No, but she’s still doing business with a lot of the same people,” he said. “And a few of them are very bad guys, no matter what color hats they wear in public.”

  “For your information, right now Jo is working with the man who may be governor in a few more weeks.”

  “Like I said, they haven’t been caught yet.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice although we were the only ones in the room. “Yours isn’t the only case I’m handling. Let me tell you a secret. Quentin Biggs may be the next governor of Texas, but if you shake hands with him, count your fingers when he lets go.”

  “Okay, say that’s true. I wasn’t planning to vote for him anyway.” I stood and gathered my things. “What has this got to do with Jo or me?”

  “That’s a question I’d like you to think about,” he said quietly. “I’m on your side, Jennifer. Instead of asking me about it, ask Jo about how she met Cotton Claymore. Ask her why she’s still involved with Biggs. Then ask yourself what all this social climbing has got to do with Jo’s involvement with you.�
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  Chapter Thirty-Two

  I never asked Jo any of those questions. I picked her up at the airport, gave her a couple of welcome home kisses and told myself to leave well enough alone. Something in the misty reaches of my memory warned me that maybe I had forgotten these details for a reason. I had decided that all I needed was the present. The past was turning out to be way too complicated. I was worn out with meetings and intrigue and warnings of dire things to come.

  I decided to pretend I was Forrest Gump. Simple is as simple does or something like that. All I wanted to do was listen to Jo describing all the fun and chaos she had been part of in Austin. I decided it was time for me to have some fun too. We needed a break, maybe a few days out of town—maybe Vegas or a bed-and-breakfast with massages and facials. I decided to call Aggie and see if she and some lucky woman wanted to join us.

  It turns out Forrest was wrong. Simple never is that simple. Aggie had other plans for us. I vaguely recalled Jo and Ag advocating that we needed to get a gun for protection. I never thought of it again. She had taken that casual conversation and translated it into something I never wanted to do in the first place. Seems I was living in a fool’s paradise, thinking I had any say about my life.

  The Weekend of the Drugstore Cowgirls would have made a heck of a reality show. Aggie drove Jo and me to Bullet Bazaar, a gun store and shooting range for a day of practice before we went to our class and testing for a license to carry a concealed weapon. Jo was upbeat, if not enthusiastic. I was present in body, but definitely not a happy camper.

  The place was my worst nightmare—filled with the reek of testosterone and rows of glass-topped cases filled with Colts, Smith and Wessons and Glocks. They had revolvers and semi-automatics and laser sights. There were shooting targets with everything from a plain bull’s-eye target to human outlines to seated, smiling photographs of Osama bin Laden.

  They had books on shooting in self-defense and home protection. There were thin volumes on gun-cleaning supplies and how to pick the perfect holster, comparing the merits of leather versus canvas with Velcro. It seemed all the authors were particularly worried about the Second Amendment and paranoid that the United Nations was a big front to remove guns from the hands of every law-abiding citizen, something which would then presumably leave only criminals with all the fun toys.

  Cookbooks were popular, although I didn’t look closely enough to find out if the recipes were how to prepare what you shot or foods to eat while sitting in a deer blind. Probably both. And they had bumper stickers touting the joys of gun loving for every occasion. I think I even saw one for Mother’s Day. Pinkie swear.

  We had to rent guns and goggles and ear protectors. Aggie knew the guys who owned the store, so they made us feel right at home. I tried to pretend I wasn’t really there, but before I knew it I was dressed like one-third of an inept SWAT team and herded to the indoor practice range.

  I don’t know if it was the same as getting seated near the kitchen in a nice restaurant, but we were at the very last booth, down three spaces from a guy with a mullet carrying a custom-made crocodile-padded case. He made a big show of opening the case and pulling out a gleaming phallic monster that Clint Eastwood would have died for in the Dirty Harry movies. When he fired it the first time, I screamed like a cornered piglet and thanked the guys up at the rental desk for insisting on the heavily padded earmuff-looking things I had resisted wearing.

  I watched as Aggie demonstrated loading the gun and not pointing it at anyone else and how to pin up the target and move it down range. The din of two big whirring fans blowing the gunpowder-drenched air around and an intermittent barrage of gunfire on top of my headgear made it virtually impossible to hear any of the words she so earnestly was saying. Lip reading and sign language wore thin for me in about five minutes.

  Jo went first. She was almost as bad at shooting as she was at singing. She squinted and closed her eyes when she fired, and it was a miracle we weren’t tossed out the way she waved the gun around. Considering she’d brought up the possibility of getting a gun in the first place, Jo sure wasn’t having the best time of her life. Aggie finally had her sit on a metal folding stool by the fan while I took my turn.

  Aggie decided I should go with the Glock for practice and during my proficiency testing. I argued when she said it was a semiautomatic, thinking that sounded much worse than a revolver. It seems a revolver is a simpler gun, but a semi was faster to shoot especially if more than one round was needed. She explained if you qualified with a revolver, that was all you were able to carry legally; using a semiautomatic during qualification meant you were good to go with either one.

  I used the Glock. It was functional, simple, easy to use and didn’t have a safety, evidently something to be desired during the timed practice shots for the proficiency testing. All I could tell you is that it’s black, metallic and intimidating. Add to that the bullet casings flying around and the hot acrid smell of gunpowder and you’ve pretty well summed up my version of hell, except in hell, there also was no caffeine.

  My first shot missed the target altogether. Aggie consoled me, encouraged me and made me try again. I don’t know what happened, but as it turns out, I’m a crackerjack shot. I put the next seventeen rounds in an area the size of a saucer. Kinda liked the way it made me feel, seeing those ragged holes pepper the paper target. Maybe I was Annie Oakley before I was Jennifer or Cotton. Aggie was slack-jawed with shock and then proud as if I had won a blue ribbon.

  Anyway, it was seriously crazy how much I liked it. It wasn’t about bloodlust or penis envy or mere marksmanship. There was a poetry about it, a purity of the connection between intention and results—a philosophical clarity. I think, therefore I shoot. I think part of the thrill was also a control issue. After so long with no conscious control of my own mind, the ability to massacre paper tigers made a pretty convincing demonstration that I was in charge for the moment, at least if the targets weren’t shooting back.

  And I liked showing how good I was in front of my girlfriend. A little who’s-your-daddy butch thing.

  Despite her initial enthusiasm, Jo wouldn’t let me buy her a gun, not even a little one. She also announced that she wasn’t taking the classes and generally swore off firearms in general. She said they gave her the creeps and winced visibly with every shot that was fired.

  I, on the other hand, finally found a store I could really let my latent shopping skills run amok. I left the store with a Kimber semiautomatic pistol, a leather holster, two boxes of ammunition, a gun-cleaning kit and an incipient case of carpal tunnel syndrome.

  After a two-day course of classroom instruction and written testing, I completed my proficiency training. I was then fingerprinted and background-checked within an inch of my life.

  Two days before I had been a peaceful, unarmed woman with not a hint of knowledge of stopping power or caliber. Without too much arm-twisting, I had become that rarest of all creatures: a liberal lesbian with a license to carry.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Fall was on its way. The temperatures in the mornings and evenings were finally comfortable enough to get outside and into the streets. Jo and I walked a lot. On the mornings we stayed at my place—which was virtually all the time—we’d circle the park before heading to Starbucks to kill an hour or two sitting outside, Jo working the daily Sudoku puzzle while I tackled the New York Times crossword. The puzzle taught me a valuable lesson: you may forget your own name and the faces of your nearest and dearest, but obscure three letter words like “qis” and “suq” are resilient even against the ravages of death.

  In the evenings it was fun to drop by one of the girl bars and have a glass of wine and shoot a game of pool with Aggie or Molly. Sometimes there were cookouts—or call-ins, as Jo referred to her special talent for having people for dinner without cooking a thing.

  “Marty’s delivers booze and cheese plates and desserts. The rest can come from Eatzi’s and voila! Dinner is served and I have time to get my pedi
cure.” She was a girly-girl from tip to toe; a bad toenail day was out of the question. “You get to pick out the music.”

  “I live to serve,” I said humbly. “Do I really get to choose the music or just load what you want into the player?”

  “Of course you get to choose it,” she said reasonably. “I left a whole stack of CDs on the counter and you can pick anything you like from that pile.”

  “You make my life such a joy. Whatever would I do without you?”

  “You always have good old Gregory to fall back on.” She walked behind me and pulled my head back against her breasts. “Of course I’m a lot softer to fall back on than he is.”

  “Hmmm,” I mused, testing her softness and agreeing wholeheartedly. “What a hard choice—a beautiful sexy wench who is bossy as the day is long, but a fabulous roll in the hay—or the illegitimate spawn of Medusa and Microsoft?” I grabbed Jo and twirled her around the room before gently pushing her onto the sofa. “You are so lucky I’m not into hairy knuckles. Besides, I think Gregory has been screwing me so thoroughly in the bankbook, anything in the bedroom would be redundant.”

  “So how is the divorce coming—not that I’m being pushy or anything like that? Any word from the lawyers?”

  “I have a meeting scheduled tomorrow. Maybe I’ll have some news.”

  I had been vague about the details of my divorce proceedings. I hadn’t explained about Himself or the mysterious Greenly Inc. to Jo. Hadn’t mentioned it, in fact. I wasn’t really ready to get in to the whole mess Himself had stirred up. I was avoiding him by avoiding talking about it.

  I loved Jo, but a tiny part of me was still a little unsure of how much to trust her. I had enough holes in my memory to use it as a strainer. Until all the pieces fit tighter, I was leery of giving anyone too much control.

  Besides the nightmare at Greenly Inc., all of Aggie’s snide jabs about Jo had planted their own seeds of doubt. When the day came that I was sure I had my memory back in full and no more surprises were lurking in my gray matter, maybe I’d be ready to share all of myself instead of hiding and not trusting anyone. Maybe.