Crystal Ball

by Laney Kay

  I could imagine him as a hell-raising teenager and laughed at the thought. “So you grew the business and now you’re here. Why’d you leave? Were you just tired of New Orleans? You needed a change? What?”

  He hesitated for a minute, and then he looked at me. “Are you sure you want to hear all this?”

  I shrugged and looked at him, confused. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  He looked down at his plate, forked up another big bite of egg and chewed slowly. Once he swallowed, he looked at me soberly. “Daisy, it’s a long, ugly story. I really don’t talk about it much.”

  I snorted. “Really? Is it uglier than your husband knocking up his prepubescent secretary, who looks just like you, by the way, but much younger, you smashing his testicle and leg with your car, being arrested for it, and then being ridiculed for weeks on national TV?” I shook my head. “Please. You’re telling me it’s worse than that?”

  He put down his fork and looked at me with an expressionless face. “Yes. It’s actually worse than that.”

  Holy shit. That must be bad. I finished my eggs and picked up my toast. “Seriously? Worse than that? Worse than being called ‘that crazy Southern nutcracker’ by every late night asshole on TV?”

  He still didn’t crack a smile. “A lot worse than that.” He forked in another bite of egg and the corner of his mouth tipped up and he amended, “Well, maybe a different worse than that.”

  I couldn’t imagine what could have happened. Mark had said it was a pretty screwy story, but I couldn’t imagine what could be worse than my story. I told him to finish his breakfast and we’d go back to my house so he could see it, and then I wanted to hear this story. He looked at me for a minute, I’m sure trying to decide if he wanted to tell me his tale of woe, and then said that sounded like a great idea. We finished our breakfast chatting about nothing of consequence, he paid the check, and then we walked outside. He had walked to the restaurant, so I told him to hop in my car and we’d head to my place so he could check it out. He agreed, so we jumped in the convertible.

  I smiled as we pulled into the driveway about a minute later. “Well, here we are.”

  Luke laughed. “Wow. Good thing we drove or we’d both be exhausted.”

  “Ha. Ha. I know, I live about 40 feet from the restaurant, but I was going to run some errands right after breakfast, so I drove.”

  Luke was halfway out of the car, but stopped. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to screw up your plans. You need to get going?”

  I shook my head and pointed up toward the house. “No, it can wait. Now quit being such a wuss, come on in the house, let me show you around, and then you can tell me your horrifyingly-worse-than-mine story.”

  As we walked through the house, Luke was impressed with the quality of the finish work. “Lola did all this?”

  I laughed at the thought of Lola doing any sort of manual labor. “Uh, no. Lola is not a hands on girl, but she is an excellent general contractor.” I shook my head at the mental picture of Lola in a toolbelt. “Her skill in life is telling other people what to do, and that really seems to work for her in construction. She’s got a good crew now, so it’s much easier than it was.”

  “Was all this trim here, or did she have someone do it? And the bookcases and window seat? Did her carpenter do all that?” He ran his hand over the door trim. “Whoever did all this did a great job.”

  I told him I wasn’t sure what was original and what was added later because Lola had gotten it after someone else had already done a lot of the renovation. “When she got it, all of the kitchen cabinets and appliances were sitting in the kitchen but hadn’t been installed, so her guys put in the kitchen and laid my terracotta tile floor with the doggie footprints. I know the bathrooms were already done, the floors were refinished, and only half of the replacement windows had been installed.”

  He nodded, taking in all of the details. He pointed out that he loved the way the light came through the stained glass sidelights in my front door and made a big fuss over the quality of my built-in window seat. As I watched him go through my house, exclaiming over the same things that I found so appealing, I realized that Lola was right. I like this guy.

  His whoop shook me out of my thoughts, which was great because they were starting to freak me out. He was standing in front of my enormous TV with a huge smile on his face. I realized I had no idea what he had said. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

  He pointed to my TV. “I asked how big is this thing?”

  I started to laugh. “It’s enormous, isn’t it? It’s seventy inches, courtesy of Mark and Harrison. I asked them to pick me up a flat screen TV, and that’s what they brought in here. In this room, it’s like I have my own personal Jumbotron.” I shrugged. “They told me I’d love it, and they’re right. Georgia games on this baby are going to be fantastic.”

  Typical guy, Luke was thrilled with it. “I can’t wait.” He finally tore himself away and turned down the hall. “Let’s see the rest.”

  When he saw my bedroom, especially the size of the closet and bathroom, he pointed out that there was no way that was original. “You would never see that kind of space in a house this age. Did they get the space from another bedroom?”

  I nodded. “I had actually looked up this plan on the Internet since it was one of the original Sears Craftsman bungalows you could order out of the catalog. It looks like the extra room came out of a large dining room. Most of it was used for my closet and bathroom, but a thin sliver of it is part of the combined living room-eat in area.”

  His face lit up. “Do you have the plan handy?”

  I told him I had printed it off somewhere and we could find it later, after he told me his story. I invited him onto the screen porch and asked him to sit and pet the dogs while I got us something to drink. “Water, or does this story require something stronger?”

  Diego hopped up on his lap and the other two stretched out on the floor under the ceiling fan and promptly fell asleep. “I think Diego and I had better just stick to water.” I went into the kitchen, poured the water, and added some lemon and mint. I came back out and handed him a glass, and then sat in the glider directly across from him.

  “Thanks.” He smiled and looked at my backyard, then looked at me. “Daisy, this is an absolutely beautiful home. It’s exactly the kind of house I’d picture you living in.”

  I could feel myself tearing up. “It is, isn’t it?” Embarrassed, I brushed the tears from my eyes. “Sorry, I’m such a wimp, but I just love everything about this house. It’s been home since the first moment I walked in.”

  He leaned over and patted my hand. “It looks like you. Warm and comfortable and happy.”

  What a nice thing to say. I smiled at him and we just rocked in silence for a few minutes. Finally, I looked at him. “Okay, big guy, spill it. I really have to know what could be worse than my stupid story.”

  He looked incredibly uncomfortable, but he looked me in the eye. “Okay, Daisy, here goes.” He leaned back in the rocker and took a drink of water. “The really shitty part happened right after Katrina, but Glenda and I had problems pretty much from the beginning.” He settled in and started to talk.

  “Deep down, I knew from the beginning that marrying Glenda was a mistake.” He start slowly rocking back and forth. “I still remember the first time I saw her, the first day of spring quarter my freshman year. She was asleep by the pool in a tiny pink bikini with her long blond hair pulled up into a ponytail. Even when she was by the pool, I was fascinated that her makeup and nails were perfect, and no matter how she turned, she was carefully posed to make sure that all of her parts were evenly tanned. At that moment I thought that she was the most beautiful, perfect girl I’d ever seen. After a couple of years, I realized that she wasn’t the nicest person ever….”

  I snorted and immediately felt guilty. “Sorry.”

  He laughed. “No you’re right. I was a typical college boy and I was blinded by a lot of blonde hair, teeth and a perfect appearanc
e. Like I said, I eventually started to realize that she wasn’t the nicest person…”

  He looked at me and I mimed zipping my lips, which made him laugh. “…in fact, she was selfish and shallow, but I figured she just needed to grow up. By the time we were about to graduate, I figured it was either time to get married or break up, and I definitely made the wrong choice.”

  “When we graduated, we moved to New Orleans. I started a business as a contractor, and she started her life as a trophy wife. Like most kids, we didn’t have a lot of money, but that never stopped Glenda from buying whatever product or jewelry she needed to feel like she was the rich woman she aspired to be. It was ridiculous. Thanks to her spending, we ended up with a mountain of credit card debt and a shitload of resentment. Glenda was pissed that I couldn’t take care of her the way she wanted to be taken care of, and I was furious that she kept spending money they we didn’t have on what I considered to be stupid crap. Daisy, please explain to me what freaking twenty something needs skin treatments to look younger? How many massages does one woman who doesn’t work, really need in a month?”

  He sipped his water and took a deep breath to compose himself before he continued. “We went to counseling, which was a waste of even more money, because she refused to see her behavior as a problem. She told me that if I’d just make more money, we wouldn’t have these problems. I suggested she get a job, which she found appalling. She said she had never intended to work. Her degree was in interior design so she could help decorators keep her surroundings beautiful, not so she could slave like some...”, he made little air quotes with his fingers, “…’common worker bee’ every day. Eventually, it got to where we basically co-existed in the same house. We attended fundraisers and other events together, but otherwise we led pretty separate lives.”

  I was curious. “Why didn’t you get a divorce?”

  Luke shrugged. “Great question. At first it was because I didn’t have enough money to pay her off in a divorce. Then later, it was just easier to keep going like we were going. I know it sounds stupid, but I knew she would have been such a raging bitch about the whole thing that it was easier not to rock the boat.” He took a sip of water.

  “It also helped that I was always at work building my business. In the late 90’s, my best friend from middle school, Nick Watson, had inherited a commercial construction business in New Orleans from his uncle, so we joined up to combine my residential construction and renovation business with Nick’s commercial one. We hit the market at just the right time, and in a very short period of time, we had grown those two businesses into one huge company that employed several hundred people and grossed millions every year. Watson and Mathis Construction, Inc., had government contracts, we built subdivisions, we renovated and flipped houses, we built office buildings, and enjoyed a reputation as one of the best builders and renovators in the state. Within a few years, I was able to pay all of my personal debts and Glenda finally had enough money to satisfy her inexhaustible need for shopping and personal maintenance. Most importantly, she left me the hell alone.”

  He took a deep breath and let it out in a whoosh. “And then Katrina hit.”

  Luke stopped rocking, leaned forward, holding Diego to make sure he didn’t fall, and looked at me with wide eyes. “Daisy, you can’t imagine what it was like to see your hometown like that. It was absolute hell, with water everywhere, and snakes and gators and drowned animals and stranded people.” He shook his head as if trying to shake the memories loose. “It was absolute devastation.”

  He sank back in his chair and started rocking again. “As soon as the water went down, we got to work. Money poured in as we were awarded millions of dollars in post-Katrina building funds. We were hired to rebuild levees, we were hired to level neighborhoods full of ruined houses and rebuild them, and we were hired to fix office buildings all over the city.”

  “At first, our biggest problem was finding enough workers. So many people, including our guys, had left New Orleans after the hurricane that at first, it was difficult to find experienced construction workers. Their homes were destroyed, they were living with family in other states, but once everyone heard that there was tons of work in New Orleans, they all started to come back. Both the commercial and residential divisions were working like gangbusters. My side of the business got a huge amount of money to tarp roofs until permanent repairs could be done, and I was hiring anyone who could swing a hammer for basic, unskilled work like that. I was trying to oversee everything and ended up running around like a crazy man. We had debris removal teams, tarp guys, home repair guys, we were rebuilding roofs, putting up power poles. We had mold guys. We were working eighteen, twenty hours a day, non-stop for months.”

  “Nick and I oversaw totally different jobs, so unless it was a really big project, neither of us knew the specifics of the projects the other was working on. We didn’t have time to stop and explain, we just kept working. Then I stopped in the office one day to grab some forms for an inspector, and a group of welders that hadn’t been paid for the last week were looking for Nick to ask for a paycheck. I called Nick to see what the problem was. When he didn’t answer, I took their numbers and told them I would figure out what’s going on, and call them later that day.

  “Unfortunately, our long-time bookkeeper had been one of those people who had left town immediately after the storm, and as far as we knew, she was still living in Texas with her family. We didn’t want to hire a new person because no one had time to train them, so Nick and I had agreed that we would each would pay our own subs and expenses out of our separate business accounts until we could find a new bookkeeper to take over. It wasn’t a big deal, because of the way our business was organized. The company already had two separate divisions, commercial and residential. Nick was in charge of the accounts for the commercial division, I was in charge of accounts for the residential division, and we were both signatures on all of the accounts.”

  “I wanted to make sure we hadn’t already prepared checks for these guys, so I went into our bookkeeper’s old office, sat down, booted up her computer, and went to see what was going on with the bank accounts.”

  “I logged into our accounting software, did an automatic update of all of the accounts so all the balances would be current, and then checked my residential account. There was no problem there. All of the money from FEMA and local insurance companies had been credited to the proper accounts and the bank balance was even better than I expected.”

  “When I opened Nick’s accounts, I was confused. I knew that we had been awarded a $13 million contract to replace a levee that had been destroyed by the flood water, and I also knew that the work had not yet started but the materials were supposed to be ordered that week, so most of the money should have been in the general operating account for the commercial side of the business. It wasn’t. There was a little more than $2,000, but no other big deposits or withdrawals were showing up.”

  “Obviously, there was a mistake. I started opening some of Nick’s individual commercial accounts to see if the money was there. I saw where the other accounts were set up, I saw where other money had posted and other jobs had been completed, but I couldn’t find the $13 million in levee money.

  “Now I was confused. I thought that maybe Nick had set up his accounts differently for some reason. Maybe the feds required different accounts for each job over a certain amount to make sure all of the money was accounted for, since federal disaster funds were involved. I backed out of the accounting software and went to the bank’s website to see if Nick had set up some different accounts under separate jobs. There were no new accounts that I could see, so at that point, I wasn’t really sure what to do.”

  “I finally said screw this. I picked up the phone and called Nick and it went immediately to voice mail. I then texted him and asked him to call me immediately because something was going on and I needed to talk to him. Nothing.”

  “Now I started getting worried. I ran outside and jumped in my
truck and went out to the commercial building where Nick had been working earlier in the week. Some of his guys were there doing some electrical work, but they said they hadn’t seen Nick since the day before. Then I went over to the levee they were supposed to start repairing. There were some markings on the ground indicating where the materials were to be dumped, but nothing else was there, and no sign of Nick.

  “Finally, I went to Nick’s house and started banging on the door. I was thinking maybe Nick was sick or injured, and that’s why no one had seen him at work. No answer. I looked in the sidelights by the front door, but didn’t see anyone and I looked in the window in his garage, but Nick’s truck was gone.”

  “I hopped back in my truck and headed back over to the jobsite where Nick had been working. Mike, the foreman, walked over as soon as he saw me, asking if I’d seen Nick because he needed to get his approval for some small changes that needed to be made for an inspection the next morning. I approved the changes and then asked Mike when he’d seen Nick last. He said, ‘Sometime yesterday morning. He said he was going to pick up something at your house and that he’d see me later, and I haven’t seen him since.’”

  “I remember thinking, ‘What the hell could he be picking up at my house?’ but I tried there next. The night before I’d gotten in super late and hadn’t seen Glenda, but, by that point, we hadn’t shared a room for more than three years, so that wasn’t unusual. She said I snored and disturbed her sleep and I said she was a bitch who drove me crazy, so I had no complaints when she moved into the room down the hall. Well, actually, she had one of my crews combine two bedrooms into one big room with an enormous closet and she had the bathroom redone, so technically, she redecorated and then moved down the hall. I didn’t care…the less I saw of her the better. But now I did want to talk to her to ask if she had seen Nick and knew what the hell was going on.”

  “So I drove up to my house, I pushed the button for the garage door, and the first thing I noticed was that my classic Camaro convertible was missing. I hadn’t noticed the night before because I always parked my truck outside. Glenda used the car occasionally, so I figured that maybe she’d taken the car for whatever beauty procedure she was having performed that day, or maybe it was being serviced. I parked my truck and went in to see if I could find her to ask if she’d seen Nick.”