Raising the Stakes

by Sandra Marton

  “No trouble,” Gray said easily. “I’m not a cop, I’m a lawyer.”

  “A lawyer? An’ you want to see Dawn?”

  “Yes. I’m trying to find her for a client.”

  “What in hell for?”

  “I really can’t say too much, Mr. Kitteridge, but since you’re her husband, I suppose it’s all right to tell you that this involves settling the estate of your wife’s grandfather.”

  “That’s nuts. Dawn ain’t got no…”

  Kitteridge stopped in midsentence. Bingo, Gray thought, and waited.

  “Are you sayin’ somebody left my wife money?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Kitteridge,” Gray said politely. “I have to meet with your wife.”

  “Yeah. Okay. Uh, where are you? I mean, are you comin’ to town?”

  “Actually I’m already here. I’m in a gas station on the corner of Main and Liberty.”

  “Uh-huh. Ah, there’s a diner across the way. See it?”

  Gray peered out the window. A red neon sign blinked the words Victory Diner through diagonal sheets of rain. “Yes, I see it.”

  “Go on in, get us a booth. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “Be sure your wife is with you,” Gray said, as if he had no idea Dawn Kitteridge had flown the coop.

  Kitteridge hung up. Gray let out a breath, checked for nonexistent traffic and drove across the road to the diner.

  Almost twenty minutes later, he was nursing a cup of inky black liquid the waitress had poured him when the door opened. A man stepped inside. He was maybe six-three with a rugged, work-hardened body and a face Gray figured men would call nasty and some women would call strong. The guy shook himself like a wet dog as the door swung shut, thumbed an oily-looking lock of black hair from his forehead and scanned the room even though Gray and the waitress were the only people in it.

  “Coffee,” he barked in the general direction of the counter. He walked toward Gray with a loping swagger. “You Baron?”

  Gray got to his feet. “Yes.” He forced himself to hold out his hand. He had the irrational feeling he’d want to wipe it off after Kitteridge shook it. “Harman Kitteridge?”

  Kitteridge looked at Gray’s hand as if he’d never seen a lawyer’s hand without a subpoena in it before. Then he grasped it and fixed his eyes on Gray’s.

  “That’s my name.”

  He squeezed Gray’s hand hard. Harder, when Gray didn’t flinch. What Gray really wanted to do was laugh. Was he actually being invited to have a pissing contest in a run-down diner on Main Street, U.S.A.? He was going to have some interesting tales to tell when he got back to New York.

  Kitteridge grunted. Gray wasn’t sure if it was a sign of dissatisfaction or pleasure. He let go of Gray’s hand, slid into the opposite banquette and sat back while the waitress served his coffee. He poured in cream, added half a dozen heaping teaspoons of sugar, stirred the coagulating mess and licked the spoon before dropping it on the table.

  “What’s this all about, Baron?”

  “It’s about your wife’s grandfather’s estate.”

  “What about it?”

  “Sorry. I can’t discuss it with anyone but her.” Gray looked past Kitteridge, as if he expected to see Dawn standing near the door. “Where is she? I told you to bring her with you.”

  Minutes passed. Kitteridge’s stare was filled with venom. Finally he drank some coffee, then put down his cup.

  “She ain’t here.”

  “Where is she, then?”

  “Listen, man, my wife is out of town. You want to waste this whole trip?” Kitteridge grinned, showing off sharp, yellowing teeth. “Or you want me to think you always hang around places like this diner and Queen City?”

  Okay. Kitteridge wasn’t really stupid. Gray could only hope he was greedy, greedy enough to swallow the story he was about to tell him. It was one part truth, nine parts fantasy, and—he hoped—sufficient to get information without giving any.

  “Well, I guess it won’t hurt if I fill you in on some of the details. This is about Ben Lincoln.”

  “Who the hell is Ben Lincoln?”

  Gray reminded himself that losing his temper and telling this asshole that he was an asshole would be counterproductive.

  “Your wife’s grandfather,” he said calmly. “On her mother’s side.”

  “What about her mother?” Kitteridge’s eyes narrowed. “Who you been talkin’ to?”

  Definitely an asshole, but he needed him. Take it easy, Gray told himself, and just keep smiling.

  “Nobody. I’m trying to give you some background, make sure you understand the importance of this conversation.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I got that. Go on. What’s the deal?”

  “Your wife’s grandfather left her something in his will.”

  Gray could almost see the dollar signs light up in Kitteridge’s eyes. “Dawn’s got money comin’?”

  “The inheritance isn’t much. Not by most standards. Look, I can’t actually discuss it with you, so if you’d just tell me where I can find your wife—”

  Kitteridge shot out a hand and grabbed Gray by the front of his shirt. “Listen here, Mr. Lawyer, I’ve about had it with your games. How much is comin’ to her? I’m her husband. I got the right to know.”

  Gray closed his hand around Harman’s wrist and pressed his thumb against a pulse point. He could see the shock in the other man’s face as he began exerting pressure. When he was a kid, he’d worked his father’s pathetic excuse of a ranch, branding cows, neutering bulls, breaking the few horses Jonas usually let Leighton buy for next to nothing each year. He’d played rugby at Princeton, soccer at Yale, and as soon as he found himself chafing at the sedentary boundaries imposed by his profession, he’d taken up handball, racquetball and Japanese aikido. His body was honed and hard, his grip strong and unyielding and he knew, with a little rush of satisfaction, that the prick seated across from him had not expected any of it.

  “Let go of the shirt, Kitteridge,” he said softly. “Right now, or you won’t be able to use that hand for a month.”

  Kitteridge stared at him through eyes flat with pain and rage. After a minute, he smiled. It made him look like a Halloween mask designed to scare the pants off kids who had seen one horror movie too many.

  “Sure. No harm meant.”

  Kitteridge dropped his hand to the table. Gray let him settle his shoulders back against the cracked vinyl of the banquette.

  “Guess we got ourselves off to a poor start, Baron. It’s just that I don’t like somebody comin’ around, askin’ about my wife without me knowin’ what’s up.”

  Gray nodded. He could still feel his blood pumping hot and fast through his veins but he was here for information and beating the stupid son of a bitch across from him to a pulp wasn’t the way to get it.

  “Yeah. Okay. I understand, but you need to understand my position. I’m legally charged with seeing to it that your wife gets what’s coming to her.”

  “Trust me, Baron. I want her to get what’s comin’ to her, too.”

  Harman saw the lawyer’s eyes narrow. Stupid, he told himself, stupid, stupid. He had to watch what he said around this slick bastard. The guy wasn’t from around here. He was from a big city, Phoenix or L.A. or even someplace on the East Coast. He wasn’t as easy as he looked, either. He had a lazy smile, clean fingernails, a way of talking that made him sound as if he’d been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he also had an iron grip and a hardness to him that had been a surprise. And what in hell was this talk about that bitch, Dawn, and some kind of inheritance?

  He still had trouble saying Dawn’s name, even thinking it, without wanting to put his fist through the wall. Goddamn slut, taking off in the middle of the night, walking out on him as if she had the right to do whatever she wanted. He should have slapped her around more often. That would have kept her in line, same as it had done for her mama.

  And all these damn fool questions about Dawn’s grandfather. She’d neve
r talked about a grandfather. Hell, she hadn’t talked about her own mama much, never mind anybody else, and now, from out of nowhere, she had a grandpa who had left her money? Hot damn, that was something to think about. Some dead presidents would go a long way toward making up for what the bitch had done to him, leaving him with an empty bed, leaving him to cook and clean for himself, stealing his son even though he’d been able to see, even four years back, that the kid was going to grow up soft, like his mother.

  Well, he’d have changed that. He’d still change it, when he found Dawn. And he would. He’d always intended to; he’d be damned if he’d let her think she could get away with walking out on him. But now, if there was money on the line, there was more reason than ever to find his sweet wife.

  If she had money coming, it belonged to him. A man had the right to be king in his home. Dawn had never understood that but she would, once he got her back. He’d bring her home to the mountain, beat the crap out of her and the kid, too, until they both understood he was the one law in their lives.

  He lifted his coffee cup, took a sip of the rapidly cooling liquid and did his best to conjure up a smile.

  “Dawn’s going to be real upset when she finds out you was here and she wasn’t.”

  Gray nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  “‘Course, there ain’t no real problem. You probably got some papers for her to sign, right?”

  Gray gave another nod, more noncommittal than the first.

  “Well, you can leave ‘em with me. I’ll see to it she puts her name where she ought to and mails them to you.”

  “Yeah. Well, I wish I could do that, Kitteridge, but the law…” Gray leaned forward and flashed a man-to-man smile. “As long as we’re being honest, I have to tell you that I talked with some people around town.”

  Kitteridge’s eyes turned cold. “People ought to learn to keep their mouths shut.”

  “They seem to think your wife left quite a while ago.”

  “If she did, it ain’t nobody’s business but mine.”

  “You’re wrong. It’s my business. I mean, this inheritance…” Gray sighed. “Well, that’s a pity.”

  “I’m here,” Kitteridge said sharply. “And I’m her husband. Whatever’s comin’ to her should come to me. That’s only right.”

  “I agree,” Gray said pleasantly, “but the law…”

  The law, Harman thought. The goddamn law. What he ought to do was drag this son of a bitch attorney out of his seat, do it fast, before he knew what was happening, and beat the crap out of him—but that wouldn’t get him what he wanted. The question was, what would? The thing to do was calm down and think. What would soften up a hotshot lawyer? A little hearts and flowers, maybe. Yeah. A sad story, complete with violins. That might just do it.

  “Okay,” Harman said. He wrapped his hands around his cup and looked down into its murky depths. “I’m gonna tell you the truth, Baron. I don’t talk about it much ‘cause it near to kills me to do it, but my wife run out and left me four years back.”

  “Ah. That’s rough.”

  “It is, for a fact.” Harman lifted wounded eyes, locked them on Gray’s. “She was everythin’ for me, you know? I loved her like I never loved another woman. But she weren’t no good. She catted around, paid no mind to her wifely obligations or to our son.”

  That did it. He saw the lawyer’s eyes go dark.

  “She had a child?” he said.

  Harman pulled a sad face. “Oh, yeah. A little boy. Sweetest thing you can imagine, but she didn’t give no more thought to the kid than she did to me.”

  “You mean, she didn’t take the boy with her when she left you?”

  Harman didn’t even blink. “No.” Violins, sad stories and a leap to abandoned babies the lawyer had taken all by himself. Fine. Whatever would work. “You can see why I don’t talk about it much.”

  Oh, and it was working. Baron was nodding in agreement, clearly thinking bad thoughts about a woman who had slept around and dumped her kid. Well, the sleeping around part was surely the truth, and there wasn’t a way in hell Baron would ever find out she’d taken the boy with her.

  Harman took out his wallet. “See this?” He took out a dog-eared photo of a woman with a baby in her arms and pushed it across the table. “That’s what she left behind. That innocent babe. Boy’s seven now an’ there’s times he still wakes up in the middle of the night, cryin’ for his mama.”

  It was the perfect touch. The lawyer was staring at the picture as if it was the Madonna and child.

  “Yeah.” The attorney cleared his throat. “So, where is she? Where’d she go?”

  “If I knew, don’t you think I’d have brought her back?” Harman’s mouth twisted. “Teach her a lesson for walkin’ out on me?” He saw the way Baron’s head came up. Dammit. He’d overplayed his hand. “I mean, I’d tell her how much she hurt me. How I still love her. How I miss her. How I ‘spect her to keep the promises she made when we was married, is what I’m saying.”

  “The bottom line is that you don’t know where she is, do you, Kitteridge? That’s what I’m saying.”

  Harman smiled slyly. “I don’t, no. But I bet a hotshot lawyer like you got ways to find her.”

  “Maybe, but I’ll need your help.”

  “Anythin’ I can do, you just ask.”

  “You said she catted around. How about the names of some of the men she slept with?”

  “Don’t actually got names. She was sneaky.”

  “Well, how about places she’d been and liked, that she might have gone back to?”

  “She never went nowhere. Not that I wouldn’t have taken her, if she’d been a good woman, but—”

  “Places she talked about visiting,” Gray said impatiently. “Nothing? Come on, man. Think. Didn’t she ever look at a picture in a magazine or someplace on TV and say how much she’d like to go there?”

  “If she spent time on such things, she was smart enough not to let me know. Wastin’ time makes the devil happy.”

  Gray started to answer, thought better of it and, instead, took his wallet from his back pocket. Coming here had been pointless. He’d wasted two days and he didn’t know anything more about where to look for Dawn than when he’d started. The only thing he’d learned was that her husband was the shithead Ballard said he was, and that Dawn wasn’t much better. She’d slept around, run off, abandoned her child… So much for the lure of Nora Lincoln’s sad eyes and defiant chin, or for the fact that he’d thought he’d seen those same eyes, that same chin, in the photo Harman had shown him.

  “Well, thanks for your time, Kitteridge.” Gray dropped a five-dollar bill on the table. “I’ll give you my card. If you think of anything that might shed some light on your wife’s whereabouts…”

  “Wait just a damn minute, Mr. Lawyer.”

  Gray looked up. Kitteridge flashed a smile as phony as the wood graining in the plastic tabletop.

  “I mean, you ain’t just gonna run off, are you? Now that I told you about my wife, surely you can tell me what her grandpa left her, right?” Harman looked around, then hunched his shoulders and bent over the table. “It’s only right and proper I should know. For the sake of my son, you understand?”

  Gray had an answer ready but he made it look as if he didn’t. “Well,” he said slowly, “I suppose it’s okay, all things considered.”

  Harman licked his lips. “How much?”

  “He didn’t leave her money.”

  “He didn’t… Ah. I got it. He left her a house, right? What do you call it, real estate?”

  Gray tried to look soulful. “No,” he said, “no real estate. Actually your wife’s grandfather died broke.” Was it a lie? Maybe. Then again, maybe not. But the answer would defuse Harman’s curiosity. That was what counted.

  “Broke?” Harman’s eyes narrowed. “Give me a break, Baron. You want me to believe you come here to tell my wife her grandpa didn’t leave her nothin’?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

 
“Yeah, you did. You just told me the old man died broke.”

  “But he did leave her something. A music box.” That part had come to him just this morning. He thought it sounded pretty good.

  Harman’s face was a blank. “You’re shittin’ me.”

  “I guess it had sentimental value to him. It’s a nice music box, actually. Walnut, with mother of pearl inlay and a revolving dancer on the—”

  “You want me to think you come all the way here to tell my wife she inherited a music box?” Harman said in a soft, ominous voice. “I guess you think I’m pretty stupid.”

  “I don’t have any opinion of you,” Gray said pleasantly, lying through his teeth as he got to his feet. “You’re right about one thing, though. Given a choice, I sure wouldn’t have come all the way here but, as my client’s representative, I’m obligated to fulfill his wishes. He stipulated that I was to locate his granddaughter and give her the box. That’s what I’m trying to do.”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “I’m sorry if you’re disappointed, Kitteridge. I’d love to have told you your wife was sitting on a fortune. Unfortunately, she’s not.”

  Harman wanted to lunge over the table and stomp the crap out of the smart-ass city attorney. Instead he curled his hands into fists in his lap. It was the only way he could manage to smile.

  “Well, that’s somethin’, ain’t it? And here I was, feelin’ good for my Dawn, thinkin’ she was comin’ into easy times. It just goes to show, you never do know, ain’t that right?” He stood up, put out his hand. “Nice meeting you, Mr. Baron. Good luck, findin’ my wife.”

  “Yeah. Same to you.”

  “You get any word, you’ll let me know, right? My boy and I sure do miss her.”

  “I will.” Gray took a card from his wallet and handed it to Kitteridge. “I wonder… Could I have that photo?”

  “Photo?”

  “Of your wife and son. It might help me identify her, if I find her.”

  Harman smiled. “I’d like to help you, but it’s the only picture I got to remind me of her. It’s very valuable to me, if you know what I mean.”

  The lawyer wasn’t dumb. He dug a hundred-dollar bill from his wallet and Harman handed over the photo.