Gold Hill

by Christian, Claudia Hall

  “I’ll wait for your answer,” the Attorney General walked toward the door.

  “You have it,” Seth said.

  The Attorney General continued walking. When he reached the door, he turned to look at Seth.

  “Does my daughter know?”

  “I won’t keep your secrets.”

  “And Rodney Smith?”

  “He doesn’t want to know,” Seth said. “He’s one of the most incredible men I’ve ever met. I’d say person, but Yvonne’s daughter, Tanesha, is just that much better a human being than he is.”

  “And?”

  “He doesn’t care about your excuses, your reasons, or the past. He’s not going to waste his life on anger or revenge,” Seth said. “He’s busy changing lives in the present.”

  Aaron Alvin raised his eyebrows and gave a slight nod.

  “There is one thing you could do . . . for him, for yourself.”

  “What’s that?” the Attorney General asked.

  “Release Yvonne.”

  The Attorney General flinched and opened his mouth as if to say something. No words came out.

  “Let her come home,” Seth said. “It’s been over twenty years. She’s still a beautiful woman. She has a family who will look after her, a family who love her, no matter what condition she’s in, or what she’s done. You don’t need her in your stable.”

  Without saying a word, the Attorney General walked out of the house.

  “That’s him?” Maresol’s voice was low and conspiratorial.

  Seth gave her a quick nod.

  “You were nice not to throw him out,” Maresol said.

  “I’m going to marry his daughter,” Seth smiled. “Can’t be too mean to the father-in-law.”

  Shaking her head at him, Maresol went back into the kitchen.

  ~~~~~~~~

  Friday afternoon — 2:11 p.m.

  “Oh yes!” Charlie yelled. “Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!”

  Charlie jumped up from his seat and danced. He wiggled his rear and shook his arms in the air. He was in the middle of hopping on one foot when Delphie peeked in on him. He jerked to standing straight up.

  “Everything all right, Charlie?” Delphie asked.

  “Um.” Charlie pointed to his computer screen.

  “What is it?” Delphie beamed at him. Even though she knew his answer, she wanted to hear him say it.

  “I GOT AN A!”

  Charlie grabbed Delphie’s hands and began jumping up and down. He picked her up and twirled her around. Mike looked in the door.

  “Hey! Put her down,” Mike said.

  Charlie set Delphie down.

  “What is all this fuss about?” Mike’s voice came out in fatherly tones. “You’ll wake the baby.”

  Delphie and Charlie pointed toward the computer.

  “YOU GOT AN A!” Mike began hopping up and down in imitation of Charlie.

  Charlie and Delphie jumped up and down with him until they were laughing and jumping at the same time.

  “Congratulations, man,” Mike shook Charlie’s hand. “Call Mom. She’ll want to know.”

  “Good idea,” Delphie said. “Call Anjelika.”

  Unable to keep from smiling, Charlie nodded.

  “What should I make to celebrate?” Delphie asked. “We had brownies last night.”

  “I’ll eat anything,” Charlie said.

  “I’ll make a cheesecake,” Delphie said as she walked out of the room. “Maybe two so Valerie can have her own.”

  “Good thinking.”

  Charlie raised a hand to wave good-bye. Sitting back down at his computer, he sat for a moment and stared at his grade. It was the first time in his life that he’d done well at anything so square. He felt the flush of wanting to get high. Uncomfortable, he hopped to his feet and paced. He was about to leave the room when his cell phone rang.

  “Go,” Charlie said in his coolest voice.

  “Why hello Charlie,” Sandy said. “How are you doing?”

  Charlie chuckled at her mocking of his cool cell phone answering technique.

  “Sorry,” Charlie said. “Old habit.”

  Sandy laughed.

  “Did you get your test back?” Sandy asked.

  “What test? I don’t know anything about a test.”

  “English grammar,” Sandy said. “Weren’t you going to hear this afternoon?”

  “I GOT AN A!” Charlie yelled into the phone.

  Laughing, Sandy cheered.

  “Listen, I know you want to use,” Sandy said. “But you’ve come this far, if you use . . . ”

  “I’ll go backwards, not forward,” Charlie said. “I just thought of that. Thanks Sandy.”

  “I have a couple more clients,” Sandy said. “But I’ll call Aden. We’ll celebrate tonight.”

  “Ok,” Charlie smiled.

  “See you tonight. Love you Charlie.”

  Charlie hung up the phone. Sandy dialed him right back.

  “I love you too Sandy,” Sandy said imitating his voice.

  “I love you too,” Charlie said.

  “Call Anjelika,” Sandy said. “She’ll be so excited.”

  “I will,” Charlie said. “Thanks!”

  “Why don’t you invite them to dinner? I think her husband is home,” Sandy said. “They’re fun to have around.”

  “Okay,” Charlie said.

  “See you later,” Sandy said.

  “Bye,” Charlie hung up the phone. He stood for a moment tapping his phone against his chin. He could call a guy he knew and get some . . .

  Smiling to himself, he called Anjelika.

  ~~~~~~~~

  Friday evening — 6:11 p.m.

  Jeraine stopped his brand new, not-yet-available-to-the-public, black Dodge Dart in front of their new home.

  “Are we going to see Gran?” Tanesha asked. “I thought she had dinner plans.”

  “I thought maybe we could go on a date,” Jeraine nodded his head to their little house with the paint scraped off it.

  “In your new car?” Tanesha smiled.

  “I can’t help it if they gave me this car,” Jeraine smiled.

  “Schmidty’s a good agent,” Tanesha said.

  “Got rid of my pimp mobile.”

  Tanesha smiled.

  “Come on.”

  Jeraine hopped out and came around the car. She let him open her door and help her out of the car. He went around to the trunk and took a wicker basket out of the back.

  “Come on,” he repeated. “I have it all set up.”

  He seemed so excited, so happy, she couldn’t help but smile. He put his arm around her, opened the broken picket gate, and led her down their front path. At the door, he stopped. Setting the basket down, he opened the door and picked Tanesha up. She squealed with laughter and he carried her over the threshold. He set her down, picked up the basket, and locked the door.

  Tanesha took in the progress. There was a path of paper down the middle of the shining hardwood floors. Drop cloths lay near the repaired walls as if the painters had just stepped away. The missing heat registers exposed new heating ducts. New pipes were stubbed up in the bare kitchen. The doors were missing from their hinges. The security door to the garden was locked but the inside door was off being refinished with the rest.

  “You have to take off your shoes,” Jeraine said. “Jake said they would paper the whole house on Monday, but he wanted to give the finish few days to dry. We can walk on it though.”

  “What did you work out about financing?” Tanesha gave voice to the question she’d been too afraid to ask before.

  “He said he got a construction loan on the property,” Jeraine said. “I guess you don’t have to make payments for a year. He gave me one of those weird smiles and said he’d see where we were in a year.”

  “So it’s still ours?”

  “Yeah,” Jeraine gave her a toothy grin. “Schmidty got some company to sponsor most of the studio for a logo mention in the credits. The studio is supposed
to go in as soon as the electrical is done, which Jake said should happen by the end of the month. That was one major expense we don’t have to cover. And . . . ”

  “And?”

  “If I work this weekend and next week, I should make enough money to pay off everything we owe Jake and make a tiny dent in my debt,” Jeraine said. “Hopefully I can do it.”

  “Why hopefully?”

  “Movie people,” Jeraine shrugged. “They’ve got the hottest women and the best drugs. It follows them around wherever they go.”

  “You’ve done this work before?”

  “Some,” Jeraine said. “They’re not all like that, but this group? It’s going to be hard to stay focused.”

  “How does Seth manage it?” Tanesha asked.

  “That’s good thinking,” Jeraine said. “He controls his environment. But he’s The Seth and I’m . . . ”

  Jeraine drifted off in thought.

  “You know what? I’ll ask him. He’s been sober a long time. I bet he knows just what to do.” Jeraine smiled. “Come on. Let me show you around.”

  Jeraine led her through the house. He pointed out the color swatches taped to the walls and the furniture descriptions set in various places on the floor. In the living room, he patted the air as if it were the back of a chair.

  “I’ll sit right here,” He dropped down into a kind of squat. “Drink my non-alcoholic beer and watch my non-winning Broncos on my big flat screen TV.”

  “Where am I?” Tanesha chuckled.

  “You’ll be off hanging out with all those hot med students,” Jeraine made an exaggerated sniff. “Leaving me to take care of business.”

  Tanesha laughed. Jeraine jumped up and pulled her into the bare kitchen.

  “I’m going to make fancy dinners for my exhausted wife,” Jeraine said. “We’ll have pots of tea ready for long study nights and . . . ”

  She kissed the back of his neck.

  “What about your therapy and stuff?” Tanesha asked. “You’ll be hanging out with all those hot nurses. Oh Mr. Wilson, you’re so smart and . . . ”

  He spun in place and kissed her. She laughed. He took her hand and led her up the newly finished oak stairs to their attic bedroom. The shining floors spanned the entire space. Jill had placed their claw foot bathtub in the soon-to-be-master bathroom. Plastic sheets covered most of the floor of the bathroom. A cozy mattress covered with pillows and comforters sat in the middle of the room. Pillar candles rested on newspaper around the room and a portable turntable sat on a ledge.

  “Look up,” he said.

  Tanesha looked up to see that they had set the skylights in the roof.

  “It’s not done or insulated so it’s a little cold,” he said. “But the plumber hooked up the tub and the water’s hot.”

  “I thought the solar wasn’t going in until the roof was completed.

  “Right,” Jeraine said. “We have a gas tank. The solar guy said we’d always have a back up so it’s new and big and hooked up. You want to take a bath?”

  “This is really perfect,” she smiled at him.

  “I know!” he hugged her. “Oh wait.”

  He ran over to the turntable and gently set the needle down on a jazz record.

  “Old school romantic music,” he said. “Would you like to dance?”

  “Why . . . I mean what . . . is all of this?” Tanesha shook her head as if she was confused.

  “I want you to know that I love you,” Jeraine shrugged.

  “But . . . ”

  “No, I mean really know that I love you,” he said. “That’s what this is. I got your favorite comfort food from CoraFaye’s.”

  “Chicken and chocolate cake?” Tanesha asked.

  “Blane made the cake for me,” he said.

  She smiled at him.

  “And a little dancing, a little bathing, a little love making,” Jeraine put his hands on either side of her face. “For one moment, I want you to know that you are my whole world.”

  Tears began to stream down her face and he kissed her.

  “Oh, I forgot.” He pulled back and began digging in his pockets. He tipped his head to the left to think for a minute and then nodded. He pulled a velvet pouch out of his pocket. “You know how your girl Jill’s been helping me with my bling.”

  “She said you have a lot of stuff, more jewels than any woman she knows,” Tanesha smiled.

  “Right,” Jeraine said. “And good that I do. She’s going to help me auction it off on one of those sites and . . . anyway, that’s not the point. I had everything out and tucked next to back of my case, I found this.”

  He held up the velvet pouch out to Tanesha. She gave him a puzzled look.

  “Oh right,” he took a ring out of the pouch. “After I left here, just two days, I got on a bus to go on tour with . . . Oh it doesn’t matter. I’m blowing this.”

  “Blowing this?”

  Frustrated, he blew out a breath.

  “You were on a bus on tour with some big star singing back up,” Tanesha said. “Your mom said you had to learn the ropes.”

  “Right,” he said. “I had some money in my pocket for the first time and, like I said, just two days after I left here, we stopped at this . . . I don’t know what it was, estate sale, junk sale, in Arkansas. The lady running the show liked to shop at these side things, especially in places where white people didn’t expect us. Throw them off guard or whatever.

  “I got you this,” Jeraine held out a ring. “It’s a yellow diamond from Arkansas. I thought it would look really pretty on your dark skin.”

  Looking at his expectant, happy face, Tanesha took the ring from him. She gave him one last glance before looking at the ring. It was old with gorgeous hand detailed flowers along the side. The gem was about half an inch long in a radiant cut.

  “The lady said her great-great grandmother wore it and that her great-great grandfather found the diamond in Arkansas. No slaves,” Jeraine said. “Jill said it was Victorian filigree and big – at least three carats or more. It was expensive. All the bonus money; every penny I had at the time. Everyone thought I was an idiot for getting it but I thought it would be so pretty on your hand and . . . ”

  Tanesha slipped the ring next to hear plain gold wedding band.

  “It fits! Look, it’s so pretty!” He kissed her. “Jill said she thought it might. Do you like it?”

  “It’s . . . all this . . . Oh Jer . . . ”

  “Don’t cry!” he smiled. “Let’s dance.”

  She threw her arms around him and he held her close. Listening to the music, they began to sway.

  Chapter Two Hundred

  He Said

  Saturday morning — 7:53 a.m.

  Westword reporter, Barton Gaston, opened his car door in the King Soopers parking lot. With his eyes never leaving the four-plex across the street, he slipped into the driver’s seat. It wasn’t until he slammed his car door that he spilled his precious hot coffee all over himself.

  “Crap.”

  He fumbled around in the trash on the back seat of his car until he found an old fast-food napkin to mop up the mess. His attention was so focused on the spill that he didn’t notice the car pull up across the street until the car door slammed.

  “Well I’ll be God damned,” Barton said, as a man got out of the driver’s seat.

  He grabbed his digital camera and began to snap photos. Across the street, the scene played out. Before the man was halfway up the walk, a beautiful woman opened the door in a lace negligee. Even from this distance, he could see how attractive she was, how gorgeous she must have been. Through the telephoto lens, he took in the numb look in her eyes and the lack of joy in her lovely smile. She smiled at the man and stepped back to let him into the apartment. Before she closed the door, her eyes scanned the yard.

  Thinking she’d seen him, Barton ducked down behind the steering wheel. He counted down two full minutes on his digital Mickey Mouse watch before he dared to look. When he did, he saw what he’d s
een the entire hour he’d waited – cars rushing past well cared for four-plex apartments. He took a drink from his coffee cup. Going through the photos, he realized he didn’t have a photo of the man’s face. He’d need that for anyone to believe him.

  His source had told him the man stayed for at least an hour, sometimes two. Feeling safe, Barton got out of the car and walked down the block. When he was far enough away not to be noticed, he took a photo of the man’s car and made sure to get the license plate and the street sign in the frame. To be safe, he went around the block before getting in his car again.

  Now he waited.

  In two hours, he’d have the story of his life.

  ~~~~~~~~

  Saturday morning — 9:53 a.m.

  “I need to speak with him.”

  Aden heard a man speaking outside his office. Before his secretary could fend him off, the man leaned into Aden’s office. Aden blinked. Nate Zalofsky, the father of one of the blonde girls who had given Noelle such a hard time, was standing in his doorway. He was the only one of the three men who still worked at Lipson construction.

  Aden got up from his desk.

  “Have a minute?” Nate asked.

  “Sure,” Aden said.

  “Jake here?”

  “Jake’s out checking sites today.”

  “Where’s Sam?”

  “He went to spend time with Celia,” Aden said. “He’s with her from ten to eleven every morning.”

  “That’s right. I forgot,” Nate said. “Maybe I should come back.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind?” Aden asked. “I can have my secretary sit in if you feel uncomfortable . . . ”

  “No, it’s better to talk in private.”

  “All right,” Aden went to the door. His secretary raised an eyebrow to him. He nodded that he was all right and closed the door. “Have a seat.”

  Aden went around the desk to his office chair.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I know things haven’t been great between us,” Nate said. “I think you know that I’ve had a lot . . . on my mind since everything . . . happened.”

  Aden watched the ordinarily glib man fumble for words.