Sadie watched him for several seconds, touched by his reaction. She tried to stay on her side of the table and wait him out, but she couldn’t. The torment was coming off him in waves. She reached out and put a hand on his forearm, causing him to look up at her.
“I knew she’d freak out about this.”
“Why?”
“Because she hates me . . . us.”
“And why is that?” Sadie remembered the flares of anger she’d seen when May talked about Keith Kelly.
“Who are you?” he asked. But beneath his confusion was something else, something . . . longing and hungry.
It was the second time he’d asked the question, but she wasn’t willing to tell him anything more than she already had. She was saved having to answer by the ringing of Richard’s cell phone. Normally, she found it rude for people to answer their phone while with another person, but she was grateful for the interruption this time.
He unhooked his phone from his belt. He looked at the screen, then up at Sadie as he pushed a button and lifted the phone to his ear. “Hi, Dad,” he said, staring straight at Sadie.
She froze. Would he give her up?
“I had to stop and pick up some things for the kids.”
Kids? Sadie’s heart sank. Was he married and yet still pining for May? She looked at his left hand, relieved to see it was ring-free. She looked back at his face; he was still watching her. She could see that he knew exactly where her thoughts had taken her. He wasn’t embarrassed, but she was a little bit.
“I’ll be another forty-five minutes,” he said. “I know. . . . I know. . . . Right. . . . I know, Dad.” His voice didn’t tighten; it didn’t show frustration or anger or anything. “You’ll have it first thing in the morning. . . . I know. . . . I know.” He went quiet, and Sadie could hear the snappy tone of the voice on the other end of the line—lecture mode was hard to hide. Richard looked down at the table while throwing in a few more “Okay”s and “I know”s before finally finishing the call. He put the phone on the table between them.
“I didn’t tell him about you,” Richard said.
“I noticed,” Sadie said. “Why not?”
“Because he’s the reason I lost May the first time.”
Sadie absorbed every word and weighed them while simultaneously remembering what May had said—that the whole Kelly family was arrogant and opportunistic. That Keith Kelly had ruined her life once and she wasn’t going to let him do it again.
“You’re in love with her,” Sadie said, wondering how on earth this story was going to play out.
“Have been since I was fifteen years old,” Richard said without hesitation.
“You have children,” Sadie added—this was no boy-meets-girl fairy tale.
He nodded, but offered little. “I do.”
“Are you married?” If he was, Sadie wasn’t saying another word about May. Proving a murder was one thing, meddling in marriage was something else entirely.
He shook his head. “Not anymore.”
“What happened between you and May, then?” Sadie asked, relieved that there wasn’t a Mrs. Kelly wondering where her husband was.
Richard’s gaze was intense, and it was all Sadie could do not to look away. She was suddenly grateful for the boring car trips of her youth when she and Jack would have staring contests. “I’ll tell you everything,” he said in a low tone. “I’ll answer every question you have about my father, but I need you to promise me something.”
“What?” Sadie asked, reeling from the magnitude of his offer.
“I need to be face-to-face with May at some point.”
That shouldn’t be too difficult, Sadie thought, though she was hesitant to make promises. She had a pretty strong sense that May would want nothing to do with Richard.
“Promise me,” Richard said. “Promise me you’ll help me see her. It won’t be as easy as it sounds.”
A tingle of trepidation spread through Sadie’s spine. “Why? Is she afraid of you?”
“Yes,” Richard said slowly. “No one has hurt her the way I did.”
Sadie backed up. “Hurt her?” She had sudden visions of some sociopath using her as a gateway to reach a prior victim.
“I broke her heart,” Richard clarified, “to the point that I don’t think she’ll ever forgive me for it, but I have to tell her how wrong I was and how truly sorry I am for everything.”
Sadie was nearly bursting with curiosity. “And you need me to help you find that opportunity?”
Richard nodded. “I’ll tell you everything you need to know if you’ll promise me five minutes with May.” He stretched his hand across the table, and Sadie regarded it carefully before looking up into those intense eyes again. Trust your gut, she told herself. And her gut was telling her to trust Richard. She reached out her own hand and grasped his tightly. They shook one time before pulling their hands away.
“So,” Richard asked, “what do you want to know?”
“Did your father kill Jim Sanderson?” Sadie asked, almost without thinking.
His body visibly shook and his eyes went wide. “Is that what May thinks?”
Oops, Sadie had not only given away her employer, now she’d given away what she was investigating—and yet had it really been on accident? Sometimes it took a little shock value to take someone off guard enough that they would give up information they wouldn’t otherwise. But giving up so much so fast didn’t sit well with her either. This investigating stuff was a lot harder than it seemed at first, but Sadie quieted her concerns in order to take advantage of the situation she’d just created by revealing May’s suspicions. Richard still looked stunned, but Sadie could see that he was forcing himself to be objective.
“It’s interesting timing,” Sadie said, grasping for something she could say that wasn’t in direct conflict with what she was supposed to be doing. “Jim Sanderson dies shortly after inventing a new auto-mat-icator.”
“Atomizer.”
“Right. He died shortly after inventing a low-pressure atomizer that he wouldn’t sell directly to Kelly Fire Systems, and then Keith Kelly solicits a purchase of the business shortly following the funeral. It looks fishy.”
After a few seconds, Richard said, “And May hired you to prove that my father had something to do with her father’s death?”
“I can’t confirm or deny my terms of employment,” Sadie said, hoping she sounded professional.
Richard took a deep breath and leaned back in the chair. “I don’t think Dad killed Jim,” he said in a very calm, very reasonable tone. “But then again, Dad’s done a lot of things I didn’t think he could do. What do you need from me? How can I help?”
Chapter 24
A lot could happen in forty-five minutes—or, at least, a lot could be learned.
They had abandoned the lobby for the famous Voodoo Donuts, a twenty-four-hour, cash-only donut shop unlike anything Sadie had ever seen before, though it’d already been recommended to her at least once. Sadie had passed over the Miami Vice Berry and the chocolate cake doughnut topped with Cocoa Puffs cereal and gone with the basic buttermilk bar, but Richard had ordered the Voodoo Doll, a donut made to look like a person, complete with iced facial features and a pretzel stake through its jelly-filled heart. While Sadie had always struggled with things like biting the heads off gummy bears or chocolate Easter bunnies, she could appreciate the creative genius behind such a thing.
“So, after the company split, you and May broke up?” Sadie was struck by the casualness of her own question. The tension that had been part of the first portion of their meeting had slipped away the longer she’d listened to Richard’s recounting of the split of SK Systems. It was a more detailed version of what May had already told her, but from the Kelly side of the table. In this version, Hugh Sanderson was stealing from the company and making huge oversights, which led to the collapse of the partnership. Sadie took it all with a grain of salt and hoped she could find the truth amid both perspectives she’d now been gi
ven.
Richard pulled the pretzel stick out of his donut, and Sadie tried not to look at the jelly that oozed out. “May and I both hoped that when things blew over, we could make things work.” Richard paused and stared at the tabletop. It was nearly nine o’clock at night, but whoever thought donut shops were for breakfast had never been here—the place was hopping. Luckily, Sadie and Richard had found a relatively quiet wrought-iron table outside of the impossibly small, brick-walled café that had no inside seating. Even outside, Sadie had to lean toward Richard in order to be heard over the continual chatter of people waiting in line or eating donuts or accessing the highly vandalized ATM. It was hard not to get lost in the atmosphere.
Richard continued. “It wasn’t until Jim accused my dad of having stolen the C-Spec account that things trickled down to May and me.” He put the pretzel in his mouth and bit it in half.
“You didn’t think your dad had taken his advantage with C-Spec?”
“Not at the time,” Richard said once he’d swallowed. He pinched off the last remaining arm from his donut. “In hindsight, my support might have had more to do with the fact that he bought me a Land Rover and offered to pay off my student loans if I came to work for him instead of graduating. He needed someone he could trust to serve as Chief Financial Officer of his new company, and he didn’t want to wait.”
“You didn’t graduate from college?” Sadie asked, surprised. She’d assumed he was a CPA.
Richard glanced at her. “I almost did. But the only reason I’d gone to school in the first place was because Dad wouldn’t let me work for him unless I was as good as the next guy he could hire. After four years—and with one more year to go, thanks to the fact that I had spent more time with May than I had studying—he offered me the job and a car and the get-out-of-debt free card.” He paused and shook his head. “At the time I thought I would be a fool not to do it.”
“And now?”
“I know I’m a fool to have fallen for it.” He let out a breath while Sadie nibbled at her donut. “I think he sensed that I was considering other options for when I graduated. The division between our families—May’s and mine—was getting bigger. He knew I’d choose May, so he started tightening the screws on me, manipulating the situation. He knew that I would have little value outside of Kelly Fire Systems without a degree—but I didn’t see it—and my going to work for Dad was the beginning of the end for May and me.”
“How so?”
“We had planned to get married when I graduated from college. Then I dropped out, and Dad demanded a lot of my time those first few months. I also defended my dad when the accusation came up about the C-Spec account. May and I tried to ignore the contradicting opinions, but they ate at us. Little problems turned into big ones. Dad didn’t help, constantly making little references to the Sanderson family, talking about ways Jim had burned him over the years.
“One day May came to the office, and she and I ended up arguing about something. Eventually everything that had been building up between us and our families came out, and Dad stepped in and then it was both of us against her. She didn’t stand a chance, but returned fire as long as she could before storming out of the office. Dad turned to me and told me to choose my destiny—a hotheaded girl who didn’t trust my decisions, or a stable future and the chance at a life I’d only ever dreamed of. He flat out told me I couldn’t have both anymore, that life has a way of forcing the issue. He said she was a liability for me and, therefore, for Kelly Fire Systems. If I chose May, I’d lose all the incentives Dad had offered me, and I’d be a twenty-five-year-old kid without a degree and without my father’s generosity.” Richard stopped and shook his head.
“You chose your father,” Sadie summed up.
“May wouldn’t talk to me after the fight, so I sent her an e-mail and told her that she was a liability to my future.” He lowered his voice. “I didn’t realize how much that must have hurt her until a couple of weeks later, but I never spoke to her again. She blocked my e-mail, she didn’t answer my calls, and a few months later, I heard she’d moved out of state. I haven’t seen her since.”
“How long after the breakup did you get married?” Sadie asked, making the point that he had moved on with his life.
Richard got the hint and wilted. “About eight months. Leslie was the daughter of one of Dad’s friends from the country club. She was an asset to me—that’s how Dad had said it, and it was hard not to see it that way. I was hurting over all that had happened with May and wanted to prove I didn’t need her, I guess. But Leslie and I weren’t a good match. She got the house and primary custody of our two boys in the divorce; I got alternating weekends and another reason to feel sorry for myself.”
“Do you blame your dad for all that?” Sadie asked.
“I blame myself, but I know I wouldn’t have done what I did without his encouragement. He and I had it out a few years ago, and he came right out and told me that he owned me—that I was bought and paid for and that I should be grateful he rescued me from a life I thought I wanted. I started to wonder what could have been if I’d been more of a man and less of a Daddy’s boy. I found May online—she was living in Ohio—and I wrote to her, but she never responded. After a few unanswered e-mails, I got the point and let it go.”
“And yet you still work for your father,” Sadie reminded him. “Despite all that.”
“Dad pays too well for me to quit. At the same time, he struggles to keep employees long-term because he’s just such a . . . jerk. He needs me to hold things together for him. When I read May’s name in Jim’s obituary, I started to ache all over again, started to wonder if there might be a second chance for us.”
“I’m guessing your father wouldn’t like that,” Sadie suggested.
Richard shrugged. “Would I be here, telling you all this, if I cared what my father thought anymore?”
“What about your job?” Sadie said. “You just told me you can’t make the kind of money you make with him somewhere else. You pay alimony and child support, right?”
“And, like I said, he needs me. I’m willing to risk it.”
Sadie couldn’t help but be a little suspicious. Several of the people she had trusted early on in other investigations had turned out to be far less trustworthy than they’d appeared. While the other situations Sadie had been involved in had given her confidence in a lot of areas, determining who was telling the truth and who wasn’t had not turned out to be one of her strengths. She mentally backed up, not wanting to get too emotionally involved in his story.
“So, May changes all of that?”
“Yes,” he said without a flinch or a pause or even a stutter. She waited for him to expound. He didn’t, and she chose to change the subject in order to keep him talking.
“You don’t seem to have a very high opinion of your father,” Sadie said.
Richard shook his head. “He’s a good businessman, and I admire what he’s accomplished, but that’s about the only credit I can give him. I grew up mostly with my mom—his second wife—which might be part of the reason I jumped so quickly when he offered me what sounded like a partnership. I’ve spent most of my life waiting to have a real dad, you know, until I finally gave up.”
“A few years ago, when you two had it out?”
“Yes. Our relationship wasn’t all that good before, and now we’re more like colleagues than blood relatives. I’m tired of trying to get something from him that he’s not prepared to give.”
“Love?”
“And respect, and appreciation. It’s all about the money to him; nothing else matters.”
“Would he kill for money?” Sadie asked. “Would that be enough motive to murder Jim Sanderson?”
She felt Richard tense before he seemed to force himself to relax. “It’s not really Dad’s style,” he said slowly.
Sadie leaned forward. “But you aren’t ruling it out?” She could hear the surprise in her voice. She hadn’t expected Richard to answer so easily.
“He cheated Jim out of the C-Spec account.”
Richard shook his head. “He would consider that outsmarting Jim and shoring up his interests. Getting rid of the competition is a totally different game.”
“But he does want to buy S&S,” Sadie reminded him, pushing ahead even though she really wanted a break where she could process everything she had learned so far.
“Oh, don’t get me wrong, he’s opportunistic, but for all his faults, I have a hard time believing he’s a murderer.” He looked thoughtful before letting a long breath out through his nose. “May was devastated when we broke up. I’ve no doubt that her accusations against my father are tied up in what I did to her.”
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