Let's Fake a Deal

by Sherry Harris

  Kitty started bouncing. “Yes. That’s purrrrrr-fect.”

  I managed not to shake my head as I left. I just hoped this wasn’t going to be a cat-astrophe.

  * * *

  I stopped stock-still when I got home. Seth sat on the top porch step of the house I rented an apartment in. It was almost five. Pellner must have followed through on his promise to call him. He was focused on his phone. A small frown formed as he stared down. He was still in a suit with the tie loosened, and his dark hair looked like he’d run a hand through it more than once. I hadn’t expected to see him. I knew he had some fund-raiser for a senator tonight. Seth had asked me to go with him a few days ago, but I had said no for a couple of reasons. Earlier in the week I’d promised a friend that I’d meet her, and I still felt awkward at fancy social events with the rich and famous. Especially the ones his mom attended.

  I hoped that it was a good sign he was here and that he wasn’t waiting to tell me my bail was being revoked. Seth was the kind of man who would deliver bad news in person. Might as well get it over with instead of standing here. I took a couple of steps before Seth looked up. His happy look stopped me again. Sometimes being around Seth made it hard to breathe. He had thick, broad shoulders and intelligent brown eyes. Seth stood and trotted down the stairs. Two seconds later he hugged me to him. I wrapped my arms around his waist under his suit coat, inhaling his soapy, lovely scent.

  “Are you okay?” Seth asked.

  “As much as anyone can be after they’ve been accused of selling stolen goods and booked for a felony. It’s probably not good for the DA to be seen with a common criminal.”

  “Screw that,” Seth said. He tipped my chin up and studied me with his dark eyes before he kissed me. “You come first. I’ve been trying to tell you that for months. I hope someday you will believe me.”

  Being with Seth felt right and good. But doubts always swirled through my head. Was it too soon? Could anyone ever love me the way I wanted to be loved? If I couldn’t make it work with CJ, could I make it work with anyone? While Seth’s words made my heart beat faster, he had to be practical. “Face it. Your family wants your position as the DA to be a stepping-stone to a bigger political career. People have plans for you.”

  “You’re my plan. None of the rest of it matters if you aren’t there with me.”

  Seth had told me once last winter that he loved me. He had put me first during the last few months. Seth had let me guide how fast or slow our relationship went. And it had been slow. So hearing this, now, on such a rotten day, felt overwhelming. I leaned my head against his broad chest. “Thank you.”

  Seth tightened his grip on me. “Always.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Two hours later I sat at a high-top table at Gillganins, an Irish pub and restaurant close to one of the gates to Fitch Air Force Base. My friend Michelle Diaz sat across from me gripping the stem of her glass of cabernet so tightly I’m surprised it didn’t snap. I took a sip of my Sam Adams lager, wondering why Michelle looked so stressed.

  “Congratulations,” I said loudly. The bar was noisy, lights were dim, booze flowed. It was filled with businesspeople and Air Force personnel. We were here to celebrate the fact that Michelle’s name had been on the list of lieutenant colonels selected to be promoted to colonel. Once the list came out, it was forwarded to the Senate for approval. After that it was a waiting game for assignments and for the month that you’d actually pin on your new rank. But Michelle didn’t seem like she was in the mood to celebrate.

  “Are you okay?” I asked. We had met at Gillganins because her squadron had held a function here right after work. That and Gillganins was a fun place.

  Michelle brushed her lush brown hair away from her face. It fell below her shoulders. During the day when she was in uniform, it was pinned up in a neat bun. Honestly, she had that whole “librarian by day, sexpot by night” look going on even though she was neither. Not that she tried to look that way. If anything she tried to downplay her beauty.

  We’d met about ten years ago when my ex-husband and I’d been stationed at the same base as Michelle. She had traveled so much since she’d been assigned to Fitch that we hadn’t seen much of each other. Plus until two months ago she’d been seeing another lieutenant colonel on base. After they broke up and her travel scheduled slowed, we’d gotten together a couple of times a week to go to a movie or lunch. We had taken up right where we’d left off ten years ago.

  She scooted her barstool up closer to the table, glancing left and right before speaking. “Someone filed an IG complaint against me.”

  “What? Are you kidding me?” I asked. Michelle was a good officer with a good reputation. I was shocked.

  “I wish,” she said.

  Complaints to the Inspector General were filed anonymously and they had to have something to do with fraud, waste, and abuse—or FWA, as it was called. That was bad enough, but even worse, it meant Michelle’s name wouldn’t be sent to the Senate and she couldn’t be promoted until the allegations were cleared up. “I’m so sorry. That’s just wrong.”

  Michelle drank some of her wine. “I think I need something stronger.” She signaled a waitress and asked for two shots of tequila. When the waitress brought them, Michelle pushed one over to me. I hated doing shots but decided now wasn’t the time to protest. So we clinked glasses and tossed them back. The tequila burned down my throat and hit my almost empty stomach with a splat. But pretty soon its warmth spread through me. I realized that except for my few minutes with Seth, I’d felt numb all day since my arrest. I also knew alcohol was no way to solve a problem.

  “You know how much I love being in the military,” Michelle said. “I always tell my civilian counterparts that I’ve done more by ten a.m. than they’ll do in a year.”

  “Maybe a lifetime,” I said. It was true. Women in the military were afforded unique opportunities to have a lot of responsibility from a young age. And the good old boy barriers continued to come down, slowly, but steadily.

  “I’ve traveled all over the world, interacted with people from other cultures that I never would have had the opportunity to meet otherwise. And now this.”

  “I’m sure it will be cleared up quickly,” I said.

  “Another?” Michelle asked, but she was signaling the waitress before I even had a chance to answer.

  “Only if you give me your keys and we order some food. That last thing you need is more trouble.” A DUI could tank a career in the military.

  Michelle dug around in her purse and handed over her keys. I would have to order us a car from a ride-sharing app to get us home. She ordered two more shots. I ordered potato skins, mozzarella sticks, and wings for us to share. A nice healthy dinner. Plus two glasses of water.

  I noticed a group of men at the bar watching us. They weren’t giving us come-hither looks. It was something creepier. Two of them leaned their backs against the bar and had their elbows resting on it. Three more stood on either side of them. They all held frothy mugs of beer. All had short haircuts, were clean-shaven, and wore Air Force uniforms.

  “There are some guys over by the bar staring over here,” I told Michelle.

  She turned and looked their way. No subtle glance, but a steady stare until three of them turned their backs. One of the men leaning on the bar lifted his beer in her direction, but his expression was anything but pleasant.

  “Who are they?” I asked.

  “One is my boss.”

  “Which one is he?”

  “The one who lifted his beer and has the lovely expression on his face. The butter bars work for me.”

  Butter bars are second lieutenants, so called because the pins indicating their rank are rectangles of gold that looked like two bars of butter. They now had their backs to us.

  “The captain and major work for me, too. The major has his head so far up my colonel’s rear end he can’t see a thing. They are the assholes who filed the complaint.”

  I leaned back. Michelle rarely
swore. “You know that for sure it’s one of them?” I asked. “I thought IG complaints were anonymous.”

  “There’s knowing and then there’s knowing. I know.”

  “Do you have any idea why?”

  “Some people resent women being in a position of power.”

  “And that’s enough for someone to file a complaint?” I asked.

  “It could be if it was worded correctly. They could say I hate men. And that I favored the women who worked for me.”

  “But you don’t hate men.” I’d seen Michelle interact with her troops before. She was firm, but fair. “You couldn’t function in the Air Force if you did.” There were approximately four men to every woman in the Air Force, and the odds were even more skewed in the other services. “Are you sure that’s it?”

  “No. They could say I was incompetent, wasting taxpayer money. The list is endless. And none of it’s true.”

  The anger wafted off of Michelle like white-hot waves. It was catching and made me think of my arrest this morning. Those jerk fake hipsters had totally taken me in with their “We’re from Indiana, oh shucks” routine. But I needed to shove all those feelings aside for the moment and try to help Michelle. The waitress brought our food, the water, and two more shots.

  “Let’s eat before we do the shots,” I said. I was a lightweight when it came to tequila and didn’t want to risk getting drunk when we were both on edge. I dug into the potato skins. Michelle grabbed a mozzarella stick. Not the best dinner in the world, but at least we’d have food in our stomachs. As Michelle was finishing the last wing, a male voice called out. “Suck it, baby.”

  We whipped our heads around. Her five co-workers were still at the bar, but none were looking at us. In fact, it was conspicuous that they weren’t since they had been all evening. The place was so crowded by now that it was impossible to know for sure who’d said it. It might have been her co-workers, but it just as easily could have been someone else. Michelle threw her napkin down and stood so quickly she knocked her stool over. I leaped up and blocked her in.

  “You’re not going over there.” Michelle was bigger than me, stronger, too. I stood my ground, hoping I didn’t have to wrestle her. It had been a few months since I’d had a self-defense lesson. When I’d taken them, I mostly ended up on my backside staring up at my trainer. I’m not sure how much they’d help me in this situation. “You don’t know who said it or if it was even directed at you.” I was convinced it was, but I wanted to defuse the situation.

  “It was them. I recognized the major’s voice. And it was directed at me.”

  Michelle snatched the barstool she’d knocked over and slammed it back into its original spot. I continued to stand near her. She sank onto her seat, fists clenched at her side. I was lucky she hadn’t swung at me. I had no doubt if she had I’d be flat out on the floor.

  “They aren’t worth getting in trouble over.” I jerked my head toward the men. “It’s what they want you to do. They’re deliberately provoking you. Why don’t you tell me what’s been going on?” When Michelle nodded, I scooted my barstool closer to hers and sat back down. Scooting closer served two purposes. I’d be able to hear her better and I could tackle her if I needed to. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that. I rolled my shoulders to loosen up just in case.

  Michelle tossed back the next tequila shot. I drank more water.

  “The colonel’s been setting me up to fail. He’ll dump something on me last minute and then blame me in a meeting if whatever it was isn’t finished. The major keeps not doing things I order him to do. And yes, it’s come to ordering him instead of asking.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “It is. I’ve always been good on teams and wanted to help my troops succeed. Up until a year ago my performance reports have always been impeccable.”

  “What happened a year ago?” I asked.

  Michelle white-knuckled the edge of the table. “The colonel showed up. Everything was good at first. I thought we were working well together. We were until he shoved his hand down my uniform blouse and I tossed him across his office.” She shook her head. “Some men think every single woman is dying to go to bed with him. Doesn’t matter if he’s married or not.”

  A lot of military women I knew had a harassment story to tell. They also had a lot of ways of dealing with it. Some decided they had to be just as tough as their male counterparts, some kept their heads down and tried to ignore the BS, and some took advantage of their feminine wiles. The last were in the minority, but they seemed to view the Air Force as one big smorgasbord of men.

  “Did you report it?” I asked.

  “No. I thought it would be okay.”

  “You should have.”

  “If I reported every man who’d touched me inappropriately or propositioned me, I’d do nothing but fill out reports. Sometimes I feel like I have an ‘I’m easy’ sign stamped on my forehead.” She pointed at the tequila sitting in front of me. I pushed it over to her and watched her throw it back. She gave her shoulders a shake, then smiled.

  “I didn’t realize things were that bad,” I said.

  “It goes with the territory. Most of the time I just blow it off. I worry about the butter bars though. They’re getting a terrible introduction to the Air Force and what being a good leader looks like. I’ve tried to help.”

  “So you don’t know the specifics of the IG complaint? You were just speculating what it could be?”

  “I don’t. It’s super-duper secret.”

  I worried about the depth of sarcasm in Michelle’s voice. The resentment.

  “I’m hoping they’ll question one of my team who does stand by me,” Michelle said. “If I hear what kind of questions they’re asking it might give me a clue to what the complaint is about. That’s the best way, the only way, to get any information.”

  “It sucks. Why don’t you file a countercomplaint? This seems like it’s gone too far.”

  She choked out a laugh. It wasn’t a happy one. “I’d rather handle it myself. I’m a big girl and can take care of the likes of them.” She swung her hair over her shoulder. “Let’s forget about them and have fun.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I punched my alarm off and rolled out of bed at six Friday morning. My head ached from the beer and two shots of tequila I’d consumed last night. In the end I’d called my brother, Luke, instead of a car service. He had picked Michelle and me up and drove us home. We’d deposited Michelle at her house on base around one a.m. She’d flashed her ID to get us on. I even walked her to her room and tucked her in bed. At seven Luke was swinging by to pick me up and then Michelle to take us back to our cars—other wise I’d still be snoozing. Then Luke was heading out of town for a day or two to cover some story for a local newspaper.

  I moved about my small kitchen fixing coffee, which would have to do until I had time to get to Dunkin’s. Their coffee was way better than mine even if I used their beans. My kitchen had just enough room for the usual appliances, a few cupboards, and a little table with two chairs. I drank a couple of sips of coffee as I stood by the table covered with a vintage tablecloth with pumpkins and leaves in oranges and yellows. But I decided to sit in the living room by the window that overlooked the town common.

  I walked across the white-painted wide-planked wood floors of my living room. An old Oriental rug was soft under my feet. I skirted an old trunk I used as a coffee table. It sat in front of my garage-sale-find couch covered with white slipcovers my mom had made for me. The ceilings on one side of the room slanted down to a four-foot wall, adding to the charm of the room. My grandmother’s rocking chair sat by a window that overlooked the town common with its towering white Congregational church. Since I was on the second floor, I had a spectacular view of the trees on the common that flamed bright reds, oranges, and yellows.

  It was a good place to contemplate life. From the little pain in my stomach my subconscious must have been hard at the contemplating while I was sleeping last night. I had tried
to block the anger and shock of my arrest yesterday by thinking about Michelle’s problems and by drinking tequila, but another part of my brain had been obsessing about it. The part that made my head and stomach hurt. I drank some more coffee and rocked.

  It was so great to have Luke living here in Ellington since we’d been apart for almost twenty years. He traveled a lot for his job as a reporter, but when he was home we saw each other as often as possible. I cringed thinking about him seeing me tipsy last night. I just shouldn’t ever drink tequila. Michelle and I serenaded Luke all the way to her house. Then I’d told him how much I loved him and how happy I was that he lived here now. We’d been estranged for a long time until last spring. It was still hard for me to express my love for him, but apparently a couple of shots of tequila did the trick.

  Pretty soon I managed to shove myself out of the rocker and went to get ready for the day. As I shampooed my hair in my big claw-foot tub, I decided after I retrieved my car I’d camp out at the Dunkin’ Donuts on Great Road again for a bit and see if the Greens showed up. I went to Dunkin’s almost every day anyway. It couldn’t hurt. Then there was the neighbor who’d been standing on his porch and called the cops on me. Maybe he’d have some insight to share if the police hadn’t told him not to talk to me. Pellner didn’t want me talking to him, but Pellner didn’t want me to talk to anyone. After a quick rinse, I got dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Then I finished my morning routine by blow-drying my blond hair, which was down past my shoulders for the first time in a long time. A bit of eye shadow, some mascara, and a swipe of lipstick, and I was ready for whatever the day had in store for me. I just hoped it wasn’t the police.

  By eight thirty Luke, Michelle, and I were pulling into Gillganins’ parking lot. All of us were armed with Dunkin’s coffee and sharing a bag of donut holes. There were only two cars in the parking lot, my big white ten-year-old Suburban and Michelle’s silver SUV. Luke parked equidistant between the two.

  “Thanks for the ride,” I said to Luke. “I’ll miss you.”