by Jada Ryker
Flora May’s beehive hairdo bobbed in excitement. “Mrs. Kenton won the Kentucky lottery. She won fifty million dollars.” Her large frame jiggled in excitement.
Starla smiled dreamily. “Imagine, Mrs. Kenton’s a millionaire.” She clasped her thin hands in front of her. “It’s so romantic.” She sighed, her long blonde ponytail swaying.
Berea glanced at her wrist and exclaimed. “It’s nearly time for the broadcast.” She pranced her way through the crowd to Althea’s television.
The large screen flickered into life. Berea’s thin fingers eagerly flew over the remote. The sound of a commercial for cat food filled the suite. “I’m up next, everyone.”
The crowd cheered as the image of the happy cat and bowl full of cat kibble faded.
Her long brown hair smooth and her face perfectly made up, the reporter smiled professionally into the camera.
“That’s our hotel behind the reporter.” Althea reached for Clay’s hand.
“We have great news today in the Bluegrass of Kentucky. Mrs. Berea Kenton is the single winner of the fifty million dollar Kentucky lottery jackpot.” The camera angle widened to reveal Berea next to the reporter. “How are you feeling, Mrs. Kenton?”
“Twenty years ago, my daughter was brutally murdered.” Berea was solemn. “Mayla was a twenty-year-old college honor student. She was smart and beautiful, with a wonderful future ahead of her.”
The reporter’s red mouth fell open in surprise. “But—”
“It was Spring Break,” Berea continued, staring into the camera and ignoring the reporter. “Mayla was supposed to go on vacation with her father and me. She called and told us to go on without her. She said she had a stomach bug. A twenty-four hour virus was going around. She said she’d take a day to recover and join us in Florida. As she innocently slept in her own room, an arsonist set fire to the building. Mayla perished.”
The reporter sputtered. “Mrs. Kenton, the viewers want to know how you feel about winning the largest jackpot in Kentucky history.”
On the screen, Berea’s face hardened. “I’ll give the jackpot to the person whose information leads to the arrest and conviction of the murderer.”
The reporter forced a smile. “You heard it here first, folks. I’m Cara Hudson, reporting for WILY news.”
Althea pushed her way through the cheering crowd. “Berea—”
“Hold on, everyone.” Like a maestro in front of the orchestra, Berea raised her silver pointer. “That was filmed earlier today. Here’s an update to the story.”
Appearing more poised, the reporter smiled into the camera. “Berea Kenton has offered her fifty-million-dollar jackpot to the person whose information leads to the arrest and conviction of her daughter’s killer.” The camera angle widened to include the man next to her. “Lieutenant Camden, what can you tell us?”
His youthful face grim, the lieutenant shook his head. His short hair shone in the golden sunshine. His slight figure was covered by a dark suit, the pale blue shirt visible between the lapels. A thin navy tie bisected the shirt. “The case is open and will remain open until we find the killer. During the months before Miss Kenton’s death, an arsonist had targeted vacant homes in the area.”
The reporter interrupted. “Your theory is the arsonist didn’t know Mayla was in the house, correct?”
He nodded. “The previous fires had destroyed empty buildings.”
“Since the fires stopped after Mayla’s death, do you think the arsonist was overcome by a sense of guilt?” The newscaster cocked her head.
The lawman frowned. “Whether Mayla’s death was intentional or not, the outcome was the same. She died.”
The pretty reporter bared her perfect teeth. “Lieutenant, will the fabulous reward goad the police force into solving this murder?”
“That reporter is worse than Parvis Stidham.” Althea kept her voice low.
“As an online investigative reporter, Parvis digs up the most titillating aspects of the story. He doesn’t necessarily care about the newsworthiness of the information.” Clay whispered. “He also went out of his way to hurt Marisa after their personal relationship fizzled. That woman is attacking Lieutenant Camden by putting the worst possible spin on the reward.”
The lawman stared directly into the camera. “The Grayhampton Police Department revisits cold cases on a regular basis. Coincidentally, this case is on our radar. I personally spoke with Mrs. Kenton about her daughter’s death this past summer.”
The reporter’s red lips tightened in disappointment.
The lieutenant’s face took on a feral cast and his mouth thinned. “As with any case, active or cold, we’ll do our best to solve it, reward or no reward.”
Clay touched Althea’s shoulder. “Parvis Stidham found out about your secret writing career and your use of Marisa’s life in your stories. He used the information to hurt Marisa and you,” he whispered.
Berea aimed the remote at the television, and powered it off. Her face was lit by fanatic fervor, her eyes glowing coals in her flushed face, “I’ve offered up a fortune as a reward. The case will finally be solved. Althea, I want you to write Mayla’s story. I know it will take time for you to capture all of the details of her life. By the time you finish, the killer will be in custody.”
“Berea, I’m a novelist, not a true-crime writer. I can’t help you.” Althea opened the door. “I’m happy for your great luck. However, I’m really very busy unpacking. Berea, please take your—entourage—back to your own suite.”
“I wouldn’t ask if you if I didn’t think you’d do a great job, Althea. It’s not as if we’re close friends.” As Berea leaned into Althea’s personal space, silence fell in the suite. “With your triangular face, you remind me of a small, finicky cat. The fine wrinkles in your face are like whiskers, or thin stripes. You walk among the rest of us as if you’re afraid you’ll get the pink pads on your paws dirty, with your little feline nose up in the air.”
Clay angled his body between the two women. “Berea, please—”
She bopped him on the shoulder with her silver pointer. “And you, Clay Napier. You’re so handsome, with your cleft chin and strong jaw line. You sport a few artistic lines from your angled cheekbones to your willful nose. You look like what you are… a retired secret agent.”
Althea gasped. “Berea, you’ve gone too far. I must insist you apologize to Mr. Napier this instant.”
Clay took Berea’s arm. “My dear Mrs. Kenton, please allow me to escort you back to your suite.”
“Do you two ever listen to yourselves when you’re talking?” Mrs. Kenton’s voice rose. “Althea, you always sound as if you have a stick up your ass. ‘I must insist you apologize.’ And Clay, you’re as bad as your lover. ‘Please allow me to escort you.’ Separately, you each come off as pretentious. Together, there’s a synergy effect. The pompous whole is greater than the sum of the arrogant parts.”
“Mrs. Kenton, I must insist you leave.” Clay tried to tug Berea to the door.
“‘I must insist.’ Classic.” Like an emaciated mule, she metaphorically dug her heels in and laid her ears back. “Clay, there are whispers that you killed one of your former colleagues at the nursing home. His death was conveniently blamed on a nurse at the nursing home, an angel of death who killed patients to put them out of their misery.”
Clay hauled Berea toward the door.
The old woman’s face hardened as she tried to slap Althea with her pointer and missed. She retracted the pointer and slipped it in her pocket. “Althea, according to Parvis Stidham’s online investigative reports, you based many of your books on Marisa Adair’s life. You wrote about her terrible childhood with an alcoholic father and school bullies. You also took her private struggles with alcoholism and made them public in your books.”
“Time to go, Berea.” Clay propelled the recalcitrant Berea to the open door, leaving furrows from her shoes in the thick carpet in her wake.
Berea grasped the doorframe like a cat who didn�
��t want to go outside. “You gambled your relationship with Marisa to further your own career, and you lost. Why would you turn down the opportunity to legitimately use someone’s life?” She slapped at Clay’s insistent hands. “Do you get some sort of perverse satisfaction from stealing a person’s life for your books?”
“That’s enough.” Clay pried Berea’s fingers from the wooden doorframe and shoved her into the hall. “It’s time for everyone to leave.” Under his authoritative shooing, people flowed into the hall.
As the happy sounds of the excited crowd faded, only Clay, Althea, Flora May, and Starla remained in the suite.
Flora May shook her head, sending her high beehive of hair into a drunken tilt. “Last spring at the nursing home, Mrs. Kenton was confused. The only thing that kept her upright in her wheelchair was the seatbelts. She haunted the nursing home halls like a smelly ghost—”
“Ghosts don’t leave trails of urine in their wake, Flora May.” Starla wrinkled her tiny nose like a rabbit. “Remember that bedraggled doll Mrs. Kenton kept clutched to her bosom like a baby?”
Althea opened her mouth. Clay squeezed her arm. She closed it.
“The nutty old bat called the doll ‘Mayla’.”
“Flora May, you can’t refer to Mrs. Kenton as either nutty or a bat.” Starla admonished her friend. “Anyway, the newspapers jumped on the story like starved ducks on an innocent, doomed June bug. Mayla’s picture was everywhere for months.”
“She had black hair down to her ass—” Glancing at Althea, Flora May grimaced. “—I mean, her behind, and huge brown eyes in a pretty face.”
Althea sighed. “Mayla was the face of tragedy, at least until the media found something else more exciting.”
“Everyone thought the girl would become famous. They said that when Mayla played the piano, it was as if she plucked people’s emotions with her fingers on the piano keys.” Starla’s gentle eyes filled with tears.
Rolling her eyes, Flora May put her arm around her smaller friend. “Starla, that girl’s been dead a long time. Save your tears for the living. They’re the ones who need it.”
Starla leaned in her friend’s arm and swiped at her nose with the back of her hand. “She was my babysitter. I was too young to remember it, but my mother said Mayla did a good job. What happened was just an accident.” She allowed Flora May to guide her to the suite’s door.
Flora May stopped in surprise. She stared down at her little friend.
“Accident?” Althea’s thin eyebrows rose in her catlike face. “What do you mean, Starla?”
The petite nursing assistant shrugged. “My mom said I wandered out in the road while Mayla was watching me. A neighbor stopped, scooped me up, and carried me inside. The neighbor told my mom that Mayla was snoozing on the couch. My mother was horrified.”
Flora May frowned. “I’d have been more than horrified. I’d have ripped that girl a new one and fired her pretty ass.”
“Mom said she was mad, but Mayla told her she’d been up all night practicing for a show at school. She promised it would never happen again.”
“I have better things to do than talk about a dead kid.” Flora May grabbed Starla’s thin arm. “We’ll leave you alone to get settled, Mrs. Flaxton.”
Starla elbowed Flora May.
The taller woman’s face twisted under the tower of dark hair. “Oh, we do have something to say. Mrs. Flaxton, Starla and I worked at the Home Away From Home nursing facility, and then we worked at the assisted living center.”
“I know.” Althea wondered about Starla’s elbow in Flora May’s ribs. “I was a resident at both locations.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ve gotten to know you over the months. You’re a smart and brave lady.” She pulled away from Starla to plant her work-roughened hands on her wide hips. “But you were wrong to use Marisa Adair’s story in your books.”
“Flora May’s right, Mrs. Flaxton. Please don’t use us in your books. My mother doesn’t want her association with the nursing home made public. It was years ago, and she just wants to forget it.” She glanced at Flora May. “And my friend is very happy with her boyfriend, Henry Worthington. Please don’t destroy our lives like you did Marisa’s life.”
Althea’s mouth fell open as the two women pulled the door shut after them.
Clay put his arm around Althea’s shoulders.
Althea straightened her spine. “Clay, I started out as an obscure self-published author. I sold a handful of books a month. I felt safe using the details of Marisa’s life in my books. Fame, let alone fortune, never crossed my mind. I was convinced my work as Seretha Ranier would molder in obscurity. And I thought if Marisa did find out I had written about her childhood, I’d simply offer her my apologies.”
“Althea, are you saying you’d rather ask forgiveness than permission? That action without honor is permissible as long as you don’t get caught? Or if you’re found out, then all you have to do is to say you’re sorry?” Sadly shaking his head, Clay walked to the door. The lines in his face deepened and his shoulders slumped. “Are you really that person?”
As the door clicked shut behind him, Althea threw herself onto the couch and wept.
CHAPTER FOUR
As dance music filled the conference room at work, Marisa’s head snapped up in surprise. At the doorway, a long, shapely leg swung back and forth in time with the music. The blue spike heel seemed to punctuate the beat of the music.
At the long table, Marisa’s best friend, Tara, the trauma hospital’s Marketing Director, elbowed Marisa in the side. “What the hell?”
As the music continued, the woman danced across the conference room, her state-of-the-art phone held aloft in one hand. The slim lines of her figure were emphasized by the pencil-straight sapphire skirt and skin-tight blue sweater. Where the short skirt stopped, her long, golden-brown legs flashed as she executed a leaping pirouette. Her spike heels were exclamation points at her trim ankles.
Marisa met Tara’s bewildered green gaze and snarled. She turned to the newcomer. “Elizabeth Furlong, our interim Chief Financial Officer, I should have guessed it was you. Who else would enter a management team meeting with a dance number?” She glared around the conference table. The management team members’ reactions were twofold. Most of the male eyes avidly followed her every move. The female eyes rolled in disgust.
It’s the new millennium, Marisa mused. But by these men’s reactions, you’d think it was the nineteen fifties. Women like Elizabeth Furlong promote the outmoded stereotypes. No wonder women continue to earn less than men. She repressed a groan.
Elizabeth was as beautiful as a model. All six feet of her was gorgeous and elegant. She was also smart and savvy. She had graduated at the top of her ivy-league college with a degree in finance. In the fifteen years since, she had built an impressive resume in finance. Now, Elizabeth was at loose ends after her last employer had been acquired by a global company with its own finance department. Marisa knew Alex felt lucky to have found her.
Marisa didn’t feel as fortunate. When she sighed, Tara turned to her and whispered. “What’s wrong, Marisa?”
Elizabeth touched her phone. The music stopped. As if they had a strong will of their own, her disproportionately large breasts jiggled in the scooped top as she slid the phone in her skirt pocket. She smiled. “I should be on the television show Prancing with the Stars.”
Alex skidded into the conference room. “Sorry I’m late.” He dropped his open computer on the gleaming tabletop and fell into the chair.
As if her impromptu dance had never happened, Elizabeth Furlong purred. “I’ll start the meeting with my information. Alex, it’ll take me a moment to load it.” Her dark hair swinging at her jaw and shoulder in asymmetrical wings, Elizabeth Furlong glided to the podium at the front of the room.
Alex glanced up from his computer. “I’ll read and answer emails while you get your presentation ready, Elizabeth.” He bent his dark head over the computer.
Elizabeth fished
a flash drive from her skirt pocket and inserted it in the conference room computer.
Marisa’s gaze drifted to Alex. He was intent on his open laptop, his strong fingers flying over the keys. Against the pristine white of his shirt, his tan was exotic under the fluorescent lights. I know what he looks like under that conservative navy suit, she thought. Well, not everything under his clothes. I’ve seen him in a snug t-shirt, his muscles rippling, and shorts, his legs tanned and manly. Whew, is it getting warm in here or is it me? She fanned her heated face with her hand.
At the front of the conference room, Elizabeth laughed. One fall of hair tickled her ear and the other, longer fall brushed her sapphire-jacketed shoulder. “Poor Marisa. Are you having hot flashes?”
Marisa stopped in mid-fan. “Excuse me?”
“At your age, you must be in menopause.” At the podium, Elizabeth bent her head over the computer, her hair falling forward. She minimized the PowerPoint presentation. Her fingers flew on the keys. “Symptoms of Menopause” appeared on the large screen.
“Along with hot flashes, you definitely have the other symptoms.” Elizabeth used her fingers to tick off her points. “Stubborn weight gain in the stomach. Fatigue. Bags under the eyes.” Her full lips curved into a vicious smile. “This one is not as obvious. Do you have low libido, Marisa?”
Director of Nursing Tom Cordon, his pale face and thin neck flushed and his bright red hair standing straight up in a rooster-like brush, was seated across from Marisa and Tara. He turned to Carlos Santana. He and the Maintenance Director exchanged bewildered glances. As if on a string, their heads turned in tandem to the interim finance manager. “Elizabeth, what are you doing? I thought—”
“—the next item on our agenda is my financial review of Marisa Adair’s little idea for the hospital.” Elizabeth cut across his words and deftly minimized the menopause information.
Alex looked up from his computer. “Great, Elizabeth, you’re ready.”
