“My father.” She snatched the picture from him and put it face down on top of the others, then carried the entire stack to the trashcan inside the pantry and dumped them in. She hid her trembling fingers in fists. The tremors moved up her arms and rocked her whole body.
“That’s evidence,” he said, moving toward her.
She backed away shaking her head.
“Enough evidence to put somebody away for a very long time.” He stepped closer.
“Seventeen years.” Her hip hit the counter.
He reached for her. “How old were you?”
She held her hands up to keep him from getting too close. Her throat closed too tight to speak, and she turned away to keep from seeing the disgust in his eyes.
“Haylie, don’t do this. Don’t shut me out.” He moved closer.
Her hands fisted against his chest and she pushed him away. “You need to leave.”
He held her wrists and his voice softened. “We don’t have to talk about it. At least not now. But you should’ve told me.”
“Get out!” she yelled. She didn’t want his pity, and she couldn’t bear to see the way he was looking at her now. There was no way he could want her anymore. They had all but ended things on the jailhouse steps. These pictures didn’t change that, but they destroyed the private wall she’d built around her pain. She had never felt humiliation so thoroughly. “Get out, Blake!” The tears came hard. She jerked her hands free and slid to the floor.
Grady came barreling down the hall. “What’s going on?”
Blake waved him off and dug the pictures out of the trash. He shoved them in a dishcloth he grabbed off the counter, then knelt down in front of her. “These are evidence, and you need to turn them over to the police.” He lifted her chin, forcing her to look at him. “You don’t have to do it alone, but you can’t pretend it didn’t happen anymore.”
Tears slipped down her face. The tenderness had disappeared from his eyes and anger tensed the muscles in his jaws.
“Not in front of Grady,” she pleaded.
Blake hesitated, his eyes searched hers. “Fine. Call me when you’re ready. I’ll be at my office.” He stood, still gripping the photos in his white-knuckled hand and turned his attention to Grady. “Take care of her.”
Chapter 8
Three weeks later, Oysters Grille at the Sheraton Beach Club hummed with conversation of the brunch patrons. Kara whipped the celery around in her Bloody Mary and stared at Haylie through the dark lenses of her sunglasses.
“Ever think you’re getting too old for this?” Haylie asked. “Think you’ll ever settle down?”
“Yeah, six feet down,” Kara said. “I’ll quit having a good time when y’all start throwing dirt on top of me.”
“Looks like you’re having a blast right now.” Haylie’s laugh was drier than she’d intended it to be.
“If you were that worried about me, I’d be sleeping instead of having this ‘necessary’ meeting with you.”
“The cocktail auction is in four days. I thought we should go over the agenda.”
“I’ve been a DJ for ten years. I think I can handle talking a bunch of white collars into spending absurd amounts of cash on drinks that they can write off. It’s all for a good cause. In a room where nobody can stand to be outdone by anybody else, you’re going to raise butt loads of money.”
“I made notes for you and summarized the proposed services the foundation will offer once we have the needed funding.” Haylie passed a stack of index cards across the table.
Kara set them aside. “I can handle it, Hay.”
Haylie sat back and cupped her coffee mug with both hands. “I know,” she said softly. “The foundation’s just vulnerable right now.”
“How ’bout you? I heard you’ve had quite a bit of drama going on at your place these last few weeks.”
She shrugged. “Grady’s awaiting trial. Meanwhile, he’s doing community service work and getting a voluntary drug test every week so he can prove to the judge he’s staying clean.”
“Blake will take care of it.”
Haylie didn’t respond. She hadn’t spoken to Blake since he’d seen the photographs in her kitchen. She hadn’t called, and neither had he.
Kara pushed her sunglasses up on her head and leveled her red-rimmed eyes with Haylie’s. “When are you going to cut the man a break?”
“I did cut him a break, and he took it. I haven’t seen him in weeks. Three if you’re counting.” She licked the dryness from her lips. “We’re a non-issue. He’s looking out for Grady, and I appreciate that. End of story.”
Kara exhaled sharply and shook her head. “Look. I wasn’t supposed to tell you this, but do you have any idea how many times he asked me about you, where he could find you, before I told him we’d be at Banana Bob’s the night he showed up?”
“You set me up?” The shock slammed into her like a tidal wave. No interference, no betrayal, no surprises, only honor and friendship that she could trust unconditionally. This was Belles code, Belles law. Haylie swallowed, hoping to hold down the emotions that engulfed her.
Kara shrugged. “You needed to be set up. You haven’t had a serious relationship since you ended it with him. Men can be assholes. You don’t have to convince me of that. But I don’t know what he could’ve done to make you react the way you did. You never complained about him mistreating you. He wasn’t out running around with other girls. Hell, I don’t think he dated anybody for a year after you broke up.” She stirred her drink again. “Every time he saw one of us, he interrogated us up one side and down the other trying to find out where you were. I’m convinced that’s why he’s such a damned good attorney. He got plenty of practice on us before he ever got to the courtroom.”
Haylie’s hands shook so hard she had to set the coffee on the table.
“He loves you, Haylie.”
She fiddled with the corner of her napkin. “You seem to think you know an awful lot about him.”
“He stops by the studio sometimes when he comes in the station to record his ads. He hasn’t been by in a couple of weeks though.”
“He talks to you about me?” The napkin rolled from between her fingers, and her thumbnail sliced into the pad of her index finger.
“He did. Amanda saw him out with a group of people the other night. Melanie Marshfield was there,” Kara said. “I don’t know. Maybe it was nothing. Or maybe he’s tired of waiting around for you.”
Haylie picked her coffee up again but set it back down without taking a sip. She dug in her purse and tossed a handful of bills on the table. “I’ll let you get some sleep. Call me if you have any questions.”
Kara grabbed her arm before she could get away from the table. “Call him, Hay.”
* * * *
Haylie opened the door to find Grady seated on the sofa, elbows on his knees, head bowed. His shoulders shook and a muffled sound she hadn’t heard in years came in short bursts. He was crying. Lucy lay on the floor near his feet, head on his paws.
She hurried over, but he shrugged her away. Lucy’s eyes moved back and forth from one to the other, but his head stayed on his paws and his tail lay unmoving on the floor. The patches on his coat had almost grown in, and all the stitches had been removed. He was taking longer walks and favoring his fractured leg less every day. He was on the mend. But now it appeared Grady might be broken.
Haylie sat in silence waiting for him to give some indication he wanted to talk to her. She wouldn’t push him. She understood the need for privacy better than anyone. Then she saw it. Face down on the coffee table in front of him. A photograph.
She reached for it. Grady’s arm shot out. His hand caught her wrist.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” His eyes welled with tears.
She sat silent. What was there to tell? How do you tell someone what she had been through? How do you explain something you can’t put words around, wouldn’t want to give words to? She hated her father, hated him so much that until he show
ed up at her door, he only existed as a ghost in her mind. One of those horrific ghosts that come in the night and strangle the life out of people, the kind movies are made of.
The pictures he left for her were a slap in the face. Forcing her to remember what she wanted to forget. They were duplicates. One set had already been used as evidence against him at his trial. Even back then she had refused to speak about what he’d done.
Her attorney told her if she testified he’d go to prison for sure, but without her testimony he might get away with what he’d done. She had only stared in silence at the repeating horizontal stripes of the wallpaper in the prosecutor’s office, a thin line of burgundy, a thinner stripe of green on either side of a wide band of navy blue. All around the room, the colors repeated, but she didn’t utter a sound.
Inside that room, she never spoke a word. Not one. Outside she didn’t speak about what had happened either. If her aunt hadn’t found the pictures, no one would have ever known. Haylie never would have told. Her father never would have spent a minute in jail. Now, his sentence had ended. He had paid for what he’d done, but he would never let her forget. She would pay for the rest of her life.
“You know all about me,” Grady said. “Everything.” He looked betrayed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“How did you get that picture?”
“Found it stuck to the wall behind the trashcan when I took out the trash.” He wiped a tear from his cheek and continued to grip her wrist.
“I’m sorry you found it. I’m sorry you saw me like that.”
“Nothing about this is your fault. You were a kid. And whoever did that to you needs his balls cut off. Isn’t that what you always told me?”
Haylie closed her eyes.
“You never talked to anybody, did you?”
Haylie met his eyes but didn’t answer.
“All that therapy you pushed me through. Told me I had to go. Had to talk it all out, do what they wanted me to do. You didn’t do any of that, did you?”
She shook her head. Her mother never took her for counseling, never acknowledged what had happened. Never stopped blaming Haylie for her father’s absence.
“You just handled it on your own, huh?” Challenge and sorrow filled Grady’s voice.
“I’m doing fine. We’ve got a roof over our heads. I can afford to feed you, that’s an accomplishment in itself.”
“Don’t get cute.” He loosened his grip on her wrist. “I couldn’t ever figure out how a hottie like you who had her stuff together couldn’t get a man. But you don’t want one, do you? You can’t let this shit go enough to love anybody. That’s why Blake doesn’t come around here anymore. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You’re not wrong.”
“Girl, you’re screwed up and you don’t even know it. And I don’t need all those years of therapy to tell me that.”
“Why’d you sell pot?” she asked.
He did a double take. And probably not just because she’d changed the subject so quickly. She’d never forced an explanation from him before, about anything.
“I never sold it.”
“You mean you hadn’t gotten around to selling it yet?”
“No. I mean I smoked it. I bought it from some friends who sold it. And I listened when they told me I could make more money selling weed than I could working my ass off all summer delivering pizza.”
“You got lazy.”
“I got stoned. It makes you lazy. And I drove around with a bunch of baggies in my car for a couple of weeks, but couldn’t ever get up the nerve to pass them off.”
“What about the money I found in your duffle bag?”
A sheepish grin spread across his face. “I pulled it out of my savings and got the bank to give it to me in twenties so I wouldn’t have to tell the guys I was chicken shit.”
Haylie groaned then laughed with relief.
He put his arm around her shoulder. “You gotta talk to somebody, Homma. Not me. But you’ve got to get it out, or it’ll eat you up inside.”
“I’ll think about it,” she lied. “By the way, I like the fro.”
He grinned and rubbed his hand over his hair. “Yeah, the chicks are digging it. I even caught Ashlyn eying it.” He waggled his brows.
“She’s old enough to be your Homma.”
“Nah, that’s your job.”
She rose and reached for the picture. Lucy’s head jerked up. A growl rumbled in his throat and a ridge of hair stood along his spine.
Grady jumped off the couch and headed to the door.
“Don’t answer it.” She wasn’t ready for him to meet her father. She would never be ready for that.
Grady looked back, his eyes full of questions. Then, as if she hadn’t made any sense at all, he swung the door open.
A Fed-Ex driver held a box in one hand and his signature board in the other. Grady signed and handed the delivery over to Haylie.
She lowered her head. Her father had already accomplished what he’d set out to do. He had her scared half to death.
“You going to open it?” Grady asked.
Coming from Blake’s office, it probably had something to do with the upcoming trial. She ripped the tab and removed an odd shape wrapped in brown paper.
“What is it?”
She unwrapped the figurine and held it up to him.
“You’ve already got one of those, don’t you?”
“This is the one I’ve always had. Any idea how Blake got it?”
* * * *
Ashlyn, Kara and Amanda, drinks in hand, gathered around the table Haylie had commandeered at Banana Bob’s.
“So what’s the emergency?” Kara asked.
“Someone broke into my house.” Haylie turned her plastic cup between the palms of her hands.
“Oh my God! How much stuff did you lose?” Amanda asked.
“Nothing. Only one thing was taken and I got it back.”
“What was it?” Kara asked.
“A figurine my mother gave me. It’s valuable.”
“No jewelry? Electronics? Nothing else?” Kara said. “You sure Grady didn’t try to pawn it for pot money?”
“Of course not, he’s not a thief.”
“Just a weed dealer,” Kara said with a smirk.
Ashlyn shot her a warning look. “So how did the figurine get returned?”
“Blake got it somehow and Fed Ex-ed it to me.”
“Blake? What’s he got to do with this?” Amanda leaned forward, her red hair spilling over her shoulders.
“I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t get it by accident. I’ve kept it next to my bed since I was a kid. He would have recognized it was mine.”
“So someone took something from your house and you think they gave it to Blake? How would a random thief even know the connection between you two?” Ashlyn asked.
Kara slammed her beer down on the table. “Are you saying you’ve got a fucking stalker?”
“Oh my God!” Ashlyn whispered. “Do you know who he is?”
Haylie fixed her eyes on the table and considered how much she could tell her friends without opening up the entire can of worms.
“A man came banging on my door a few weeks ago. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want you guys to worry.”
“So you’ve seen him,” Ashlyn said. “You can identify him to the police, give a description, so they can nail this guy?”
Haylie shook her head. “I can’t tell the police, and I don’t expect you to understand why.”
“What!” Ashlyn’s voice rose loud enough that people nearby stopped their conversations and turned to the Belles’ table.
“I can’t believe Blake hasn’t called the police,” Kara said.
“I don’t think he knows.”
“How could he not know? You said he sent it back to you,” Amanda said.
“Grady’s his client. He probably thinks Grady had something to do with it. Blake and I aren’t speaking so I haven’t discussed it with him
.”
Kara’s ocean blue eyes narrowed to slits. “Are you sure Grady didn’t take it?”
“It wasn’t Grady,” Haylie said with certainty.
“Is that denial, or are you holding out on us?” Kara said. “What else do you know?”
“I know it wasn’t Grady. I know the thief was the same man who beat on my door the other night. And…” She hesitated. “I know he’ll be back.”
“You have to call the police,” Ashlyn said.
“I agree.” Amanda handed her cell phone across the table. “Call them now.”
“Who the hell is this guy?” Kara said. “And don’t give me some bullshit. You know who he is, don’t you?”
Haylie remained silent.
“Fine,” Kara said. “We’re not going to sit here and let your stubbornness get you killed.” She flipped open her cell phone and keyed in a number.
“Don’t call the police!” Haylie said, reaching for Kara’s phone.
Kara shifted, pulling her phone out of reach. “I’m not calling the police. Yet.” Then after a pause. “Blake? It’s Kara. You mailed a package to Haylie. How did you get it?”
After a few minutes, Kara ended the call and gave the ladies a full report. “He said the figurine was left on his desk. He recognized it as yours, figured Grady left it there, though he couldn’t figure out why, and he shipped it back. He said he would’ve called to tell you, but you’ve got your head too far up your ass.”
“He said that?”
“No, I added the colorful description. He said he was tired of ramming himself into your life like a bulldozer.”
“So it was just left on his desk?” Amanda questioned.
“Yep. He found it the morning after one of Grady’s appointments.”
“Grady didn’t leave it,” Haylie said quietly. “He broke into Blake’s office too.”
“You think the same man who broke into your house to steal the figurine and nothing else, then took his only loot to Blake’s office and left it on his desk?” The tone of Ashlyn’s voice made it clear how feasible she thought the whole rigmarole sounded.
“Why would anybody go to so much trouble over a damn Lladro?” Kara shook her head. “I’m not buying it. Grady was there. In both places. You haven’t convinced me yet he didn’t have something to do with it.”
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