“Ha ha.”
“No, really, you should. You’re very good.”
I blushed. “I can’t carry a tune to save my life.”
He joined me and we sang a duet, looking into each other’s eyes. Rina came out and saw us singing to each other and she rolled her eyes. “Gross. Get a room.”
We both giggled. “We’re only trying it out, Ladybug.”
She came up to me and whispered. “Don’t call me that around my friends. It’s embarrassing.”
“Okay.”
As she walked away, Axel put his arm around me. “Don’t feel bad. She’s going to get to the age where you’re going to be embarrassing to her no matter what you do. Trust me. In a year or two she won’t even know you if you’re out in public with her. Fair warning.”
“Yeah, I know. I did the same thing to my parents. We used to go to the mall and if I saw some of the kids from my class, I hid from them. I didn’t want them to see me with my parents. I know that Rina is going to be the same way. Abby maybe won’t, though. She’s just a little doll.”
“Oh, Abby will disown you too one day, mate. Just trust me on this.” He kissed my forehead. “I think that everything is good to go.”
I looked around and knew that Axel was right. Everything was in place and I think that I didn’t need anything else. The kids were going to have fun.
The doorbell rang, and about three kids, and their mothers, came in the door after I answered it. I greeted all the mothers, and shook their hands and made small talk while their daughters ran into the living room. They were energetic and bouncing around excitedly and I heard more than one shriek.
Over the course of the next half hour, all the kids came in with their mothers. Amelia Stone was the last one to come through the door with her mother.
Amelia was a pretty girl - tall, thin, blonde and somewhat awkward. She had the slightly slouched posture of a young Taylor Swift, and she was gangly like her as well. She looked, for all the world, like a young lady who would blossom into supermodel status at any moment, but, at present, she just looked like an awkward tween girl. Complete with braces.
Her mother, whose name I didn’t yet know, looked like an older version of Amelia. Tall, long blonde hair, sophisticated. Carried a designer purse, wore designer shoes and she was tanned. Since it was November in Kansas City, the only way that she could have attained a tan was through a tanning bed or a long vacation in a sunny place.
I guessed the latter was the case.
“Hello,” she said. “My name is Megan Baker. I’m Amelia’s mom.”
I nodded and shook her hand. “Harper Ross. This is Axel Springer. He’s my right-hand man in this. My partner in crime.”
She nodded at Axel appreciatively, and they shook hands.
Amelia reluctantly joined the melee that was happening in the living room. Somebody had turned on a music video station, and the girls were dancing and singing along while the boys stood around awkwardly.
James was one of the boys, and I thought Abby had decent taste. He was a cute kid - skinny, with floppy copper-colored hair and freckles. I saw him looking over at Abby more than once and I saw him go over to her as she stood off to the side. Abby looked like she was embarrassed, because her face was turned down towards the floor and I saw him lightly punch her in the arm as she giggled.
No doubt about it, he was digging her too.
I wished the best for her.
“Well,” Megan said. “I’ll pick up Amelia around 11. Would that be okay?”
“Yes.” I hesitated. “But I would like to discuss something with you, if you don’t mind.”
She looked perplexed, but nodded her head. “Okay, sure.”
She followed me into the sun room and I beckoned her to sit next to me. “Would you like something to drink?”
“No,” she said. “I really can’t stay long. I’m meeting a guy at McCormick and Schmick’s on The Plaza at 8.”
“I won’t keep you long. I just wanted to ask you something. I hope that I’m not prying.”
She looked uncomfortable when I said that. Her eyes didn’t meet mine and she looked around the room. “This is a cute room,” she said. “I love the colors you chose. The yellow walls are very bright and sunny, and the green curtains go very well with the walls. The rug pulls it all together. Very nice.” She picked up her purse and clutched it to her chest.
“Yes, this room wasn’t me, unfortunately. I don’t have a good eye for such things. I hired an interior decorator. I think that she did a pretty good job of making my house not look like a color-blind person lives here.”
She smiled weakly and nodded her head. “Yes. I’ll have to get her name from you.”
I took a deep breath, knowing that there was a time limit on what I was going to ask from her. She indicated that her date was at 8, and it was presently 7:30. The Plaza wasn’t very far away, but it was a Friday night, and parking was always hard to find at this time. “Yes, I’ll give you one of her cards before you leave.” I hesitated. “But I didn’t want to talk about my decoration of my house. I wanted to…”
She looked at me, her eyes quizzical.
“I wanted to ask you about Amelia’s father. Her father is Gerald Stone, isn’t it?”
The color drained away from her face and she clutched her purse tighter to her chest. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business. I just met you. Why are you asking me these questions?”
I leaned back in my chair. “I’m an attorney. I’m working a case. A murder case.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“I’m working a theory. It involves Amelia’s father. I know that you don’t have to answer questions from me now, but if you don’t, I’m going to have you subpoenaed to answer questions under oath. I don’t really want to do that. I know that Amelia and Rina are friends, and I don’t want to drive a wedge between them, and believe me, if Rina gets wind that I’m grilling her friend’s mother, she’s going to hate me for sure.”
“You’re grilling me now.” Her fingers on her purse were quivering and her leg started to twitch. “What is the difference between grilling me now and you subpoenaing me to come into your office for a deposition?”
“You’ve done depositions before?”
“Of course. Gerald didn’t want to acknowledge Amelia as his own. I had to have a DNA test ordered and paternity established, and then I had to drag him into court to get support.”
“I see.” I raised an eyebrow. “Tell me about Gerald. What is he like?”
“I’m not going to answer these intrusive questions.”
“I’m going to find out anyways. I have ways of finding things like restraining orders you might have filed against him and court records regarding your custody case. So you might as well speak with me, so that you have a chance to defend yourself.”
She looked at her watch. “I have to go. I have to be on The Plaza at 8. You know how parking is.”
“I do. But I want to ask you one question.”
She rolled her eyes. “What is that question?”
“You don’t work, is that right?”
“I do. I’m a homemaker. I raise my daughter. Believe me, that’s work.”
“Oh, I know. I have a nanny to help me raise my two girls, but I know that children are a lot of work. But that wasn’t what I wanted to know.”
“What are you getting at?”
“You don’t work outside the home, but Rina told me that you live in Hallbrook. You just told me that you had to drag Gerald into court in order for him to even acknowledge that Amelia is his child. I would think that he would be the type of guy who would give you what is owed for child support, under the law, and not a penny more. That would necessarily mean that you wouldn’t be able to afford a house in Hallbrook. Not unless you somehow got a nice settlement from Gerald.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. She looked furious, but, at the same time, I saw in her eyes that she wanted to tell me the whole story.
>
“How do you know that I didn’t inherit money from my parents?”
“Did you?”
She shook her head. “No. My parents live east of Troost, if that tells you anything.”
“It does.”
She sighed. “I really have to go. I’ll meet you, though, in your office on Monday if you like. I don’t really want to be put under oath, however. But I’ll tell you anything that you need to know.”
“Thank you. I’m very sorry that I have to ask these questions. I’m just trying to get to the bottom of something.”
She nodded. “It’s okay. Gerald…is not a good person. Not a good man. I found that out too late. But that’s all I’m going to say for now.”
“Let me walk you out.”
The two of us walked to my front door and I put my hand on her shoulder. “Thank you. How about 2 PM on Monday? Here’s my card, so you know the address.”
“Yes, I see.” She looked at my card. “Looks like you’re in one of those high-rises on The Plaza. Do you like working there?”
“Oh, I love it. Thanksgiving is around the corner, so the lights are going to be coming on. My absolute favorite time of year.”
She laughed softly. “Mine too. Well, I’ll be seeing you Monday at 2.”
“Monday at 2.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Monday rolled around and I went to my office, in anticipation of meeting with Megan Baker.
The party with the girls went well. Everybody seemed to have fun, and there weren’t any major fights, so I counted that as a success. Best of all, Abby and James seemed to bond that evening. It appeared to me that he liked her as much as she liked him, so she was very anxious about seeing him at school today.
“What if he doesn’t talk to me?” she asked me anxiously over breakfast.
“He will. Be positive. I think that he really likes you.”
Abby shook her head. “I don’t know, Aunt Harper. I think that he still doesn’t know that I’m alive.”
“Don’t be silly, Buttercup. I saw the two of you at your party. I think that he’s really digging you.”
She smiled. “If you say so.”
For once, Rina didn’t say anything nasty to her sister. In fact, she said something nice. “I think he likes you, Abby. I think that he does. But if he ignores you in school, I’ll get Axel to punch him in the mouth.”
I laughed. “I don’t think that he’s going to do that, Rina. But you never know.”
PEARL POKED her head through the door. “Megan Baker is here to see you.”
“Please send her in.”
At that, Megan came into my office, looking unsure and just a little bit lost. “Hello,” I said, standing up and shaking her hand. “Come on in. Thank you for making time for this.”
She nodded her head and said nothing. “I’m very nervous,” she finally said. “If Gerald knew I was here…” She shook her head. “I worry about what he would do.”
“Have a seat,” I said, gesturing to the chair in front of my desk. “Would you like something to drink? Bottled water, raspberry iced tea, or pop?”
“I’ll have a bottled water.”
I then buzzed Pearl and asked her to bring Megan a water. She popped in a few seconds later, handing Megan the drink. She opened the water and took a nervous sip. Her hand on the bottle was shaking and I felt badly for her.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said. I had done some basic research before Megan came to my office, and I found that she had filed three restraining orders against Gerald. In these orders, she wrote that he had threatened her life, had attempted to strangle her, and had beat her so badly that she ended up in the hospital. I hated that he had gotten away with this. I imagined that the only reason why he wasn’t in prison for assault was because he was wealthy enough to buy his way out of his problems.
Maybe. But I had a feeling that his luck was about to run out. If he was behind murdering Judge Sanders, he was going to spend the rest of his life behind bars. Where he belonged.
“That’s easy for you to say. Gerald has had me followed more than once. I, uh, did some research on you before coming here. I found out that you’re on the case involving the Judge Sanders murder. How is that coming along?”
“It’s coming along fine. But that’s why I need to speak with you.”
She looked confused. “Okay. I guess I don’t really understand why you need to speak with me. I’ve been trying to figure out the connection, or, at least, how you’re connecting me to this murder. Or maybe you need to speak with me for some other reason?”
“No. I don’t think that you’re mixed up with Judge Sanders’ murder. Not at all. But I have to ask you some more questions about Gerald.”
She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “What do you need to know?”
“Tell me about your relationship with him. I take it that he was already married to Kayla at the time that you and he met?”
“Yes.” She sighed. “I didn’t know that, of course.” She bit her lower lip. “I was working then. At a club. Bazookas. I was a dancer there.”
Bazookas was a strip club downtown that featured totally nude dancing. It was a juice bar, which meant that it didn’t serve alcohol – this was a requirement because of a local ordinance that stated that if girls were dancing nude, then the men cannot be drunk. It was a good ordinance, I thought, because it somewhat protected the girls from pushy men.
“You were a dancer. Did you meet Gerald at Bazookas?”
“I did. He was a regular there. He came in at least once a week. He paid for a lap dance from me, only from me, every time he came in. He told me that he wanted me to give him lap dances because he found me beautiful.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I believed him. I didn’t know who he was. I didn’t know he was rich. I only knew that, at least at first, he made me feel like I was the only woman in that club. He could be very charming.”
She started to cry, and I wordlessly gave her a box of Kleenex. She took one and dabbed her eyes and blew her nose.
I made notes as she spoke. I had a feeling that she was going to be one of my most important witnesses.
“So, yeah. I was a dancer and he was one of my most important clients. He always tipped extremely well. I mean, extremely well. He would tip me $1,000 for a lap dance, so I was excited when he would come in. All the other girls wanted him to choose them for a dance, too, but he was pretty well fixated with me.”
I nodded along and didn’t say anything. I was going to draw her out, so I wanted to say as little as possible.
“Well, sooner or later, he asked me what I was doing after work. At that time, I was working the 2-10 PM shift, three days a week. I would generally go to work and go home and watch television or something before coming back again the next day. In other words, I didn’t have much going on at that time, so I didn’t mind having him take me out. Again, though, I didn’t know who he was. If I did, I doubt that I would have gone out with him. Then again, if I never went out with him, I wouldn’t have Amelia, so, for that reason alone, I’m grateful to have met him. But that’s the only reason why I am glad that I met him, though.”
“Okay,” I said as I made notes. “So, you met him while you were working and the two of you went out.”
“Yes. But we only went out the one time.” She looked down at my desk. “He, uh. He did something. I still don’t know what. But he did something. Put something in my drink or something. All that I know is that I woke up on my couch, the morning after he and I went out, and I had no idea how I got there. But I could tell that he and I had sex. I could feel it - the tenderness that you get when you’ve had sex after not having had sex for a long time.”
I felt nervous when she spoke. It was safe to say that I was going to be very tender, probably be in pain, the next time I had sex. It had been 17 years. I was practically a virgin again.
I also felt an affinity for her. She was raped by Gerald. There was no other word for it. He no doubt put GHB, the “date rap
e” drug, into her drink and then had his way with her while she was unconscious.
“I thought nothing of it at first,” she continued. “I mean, I was angry, but I wasn’t all that sure that we did it. I wasn’t going to accuse him of something like that. I had no proof. So I just decided to move on. Kind of forget that I ever went out with him. I was relieved, too, when I realized that he wasn’t coming into the club anymore. I didn’t want to see him.” She visibly shuddered. “I moved on. I forgot all about him until about six weeks later when I started throwing up in the morning and I realized that I hadn’t gotten my period in awhile.”
I nodded along. “So, you realized that you were pregnant.”
“I guess so. I mean, I didn’t want to accept that I was pregnant. I tried to pretend that nothing was wrong. I’m a dancer, you know. I’m a dancer. I couldn’t be pregnant.” Then she laughed. “And I wasn’t still entirely sure that I had had sex, either. People think that we dancers are having sex all the time, but the reality is much different. At least, for me it was different. I didn’t date all that much. And Gerald was my first sexual experience in more than a year and I hadn’t had sex with anyone else after him. So I just thought that my system was haywire and I had the flu.”
She looked sad and she blew her nose again. Then she looked out the window. I just carefully watched her as she looked out the window and, from time to time, took sips of water.
Finally, she spoke again. “I saw the doctor and found out that I was pregnant. I knew who the father was, of course. And I knew for sure that I had been raped. I wasn’t sure before that Gerald and I had sex, but when I found out I was pregnant, I knew for sure that he had sex with me while I was unconscious. So I was furious. And the first thing that I wanted to do was take care of it. Go to Planned Parenthood and take care of it. I couldn’t have a baby. I was a dancer, making really good money, but I would have to quit, so there wasn’t going to be the money for a kid.”
She sighed and, for a long time, she didn’t say anything else. I saw the look on her face and I knew that telling this story was difficult for her, to say the very least.
Harper Ross Legal Thrillers vol. 1-3 Page 53
