With Child. Janice Johnson Kay
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ONCE HE’D GOTTEN HER to thinking about money, by God that’s all she seemed able to think about. When could he find a buyer for the security business? How did she go about selling the boat? Now the Camaro. The cherry-red Camaro Dean had coveted all his life and loved with a passion.
“What?” Quinn stared across the paper-strewn kitchen table at Dean’s widow. “You’re already planning to sell his car?” When he wasn’t even cold in his grave?
She heard the unspoken part. Her face took on that closed, stubborn look he was coming to detest even more than the frail, woe-is-me expression she’d worn for the first few weeks.
“I don’t want to drive it, and I can’t afford the payments.”
“How much are they?”
She pushed the bill across the table.
Quinn picked it up and frowned. She was right. Dean owed a whopping amount, and she really couldn’t keep up the payments.
Quinn had been spending most of his off hours either making decisions in Dean’s place for Fenton Security, mowing the lawn and doing upkeep on the house, or helping Mindy untangle her husband’s financial affairs.
Secretly, Quinn was appalled by how recklessly Dean had borrowed. Maybe he shouldn’t be—Dean always had wanted the nice things in life, and had been a bigger risk-taker than Quinn. But damn it! He’d been living on the financial edge, Quinn was discovering. Balancing fine, because his business was successful and expanding, but without a hell of a lot in the way of reserves. He’d have been in deep doo-doo if the economy had taken a downturn, for example, and a good share of his clients had gone out of business or decided they could do without security.
But Quinn wouldn’t have criticized Dean aloud to anyone, much less to the cute little blonde who’d enjoyed all of Dean’s toys as long as someone else was paying the bills.
“I’ll buy the Camaro,” he heard himself say.
“And paint it black?”
That stung. “Thanks.”
She flushed. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah, I’m serious. Dean loved that car.”
“Then…if you’ll take over the payments, it’s yours.”
He was blown away by the offer even though there was no way in hell he could take it. He’d started to think of her as greedy, but, okay, maybe she had some conscience.
“I’ll pay you.” He hesitated, then forced himself to say, “But thanks.”
Her eyes were wide and luminous. “I meant it. Dean would love to know you’d kept his car.”
“And I can afford to buy it.” He held up a hand. “No argument.”
The momentary glow on her face was extinguished, and Quinn felt like a crud.
“Okay,” she said, voice dull. “Do I really have to wait for probate to finish before I sell stuff?”
“We’ll talk to Armstrong,” Quinn promised. Surely the attorney would be reasonable. “If the bills can’t be paid, something has to go.”
Mindy nodded and said like a child, “Are we done?”
He pictured her, a tiny, scrawny kid, asking politely, “May I be excused now?”
“Bored?”
As she stood, anger flashed on her face, erasing the childlike impression. “Frustrated. I might as well go watch TV. I can’t do anything about any of that.” She waved at the piles of bills and bank statements.
With strained patience, he said, “Solutions don’t always happen instantly, just because we want them to.”
“Have I ever mentioned that you’re a jerk?” she snapped, and shoved the chair in.
He rubbed the heel of his hand against his chest, where his heartburn was acting up. “Your opinion was obvious enough, thank you.” And rich, he thought, coming from the drama queen. No, not queen—princess. Little Miss I’m Entitled.
She stomped out. Suppressing his own frustration, Quinn put away the papers in a plastic file box and left it on the table. He was almost glad when his beeper went off. A dead body would be a welcome diversion.
HE BEGAN TO WONDER if she was throwing parties every night, or maybe just attending them. Far as he could tell, she was never up before ten or eleven in the morning, and then she would look puffy-eyed, wan and repelled by any suggestion that she should make decisions. Quinn didn’t remember Dean ever commenting that she was a night owl, but then he and Dean had hardly ever talked about Mindy at all. It had been safer that way.
As far as Quinn could tell, she wasn’t job hunting, so he guessed she was planning to live on her inheritance as long as it lasted. Thus her panic about unnecessary drains on the final total.
Quinn had originally figured she’d be left a wealthy young woman, but clearly that wasn’t going to happen. Too many bills had come to light, too few investments. Still, when it all shook out, he thought she’d have a decent amount left. If she was careful, enough to get by for a couple of years without working. Pretty good deal considering she hadn’t been married that long and hadn’t had a damn thing when she’d met Dean.
Quinn recalled she’d worked as a barista at a Tully’s downtown, which was where Dean had met her. She’d apparently been making a little on the side with her “art.” She’d probably sold a few painted wood signs to friends. The talent Dean raved about hadn’t been discovered by the wider world. She’d lived with a houseful of minimum-wage friends and students near the university.
Given her background, what right did she have to be unhappy to find out she wouldn’t be wealthy? But clearly she was. She got more petulant by the day, more determined that everybody hurry, hurry, hurry so she could sell whatever wasn’t nailed down.
He’d stopped by this morning to tell her he thought he had a buyer for Fenton Security. A pair of buyers, more accurately.
Quinn was beat, after a hard night. A body had fallen from the Olive Street overpass, landing on the windshield of a semi and shattering the glass. The semi had jackknifed, resulting in one hell of a traffic snarl that had closed I-5 south for three hours. The poor schmuck who’d hit the windshield was grizzled, dirty and wearing three layers of clothes and boots with soles that must have flapped when he walked. Staggered, more likely, from the powerful odor of cheap wine that had wafted from him along with the sickly tang of blood. Turned out he was well known in the missions around the Pioneer Square area. Nobody knew his name. Said he went by Crow. Just Crow.
A witness out walking his dog late had spotted a souped-up Toyota pause on the overpass just before she was distracted by the sound of splintering glass, the squeal of brakes and the scream of metal striking concrete abutments. Weirdly, she had even remembered half the license-plate number.
“Because it’s identical to mine,” she had said. “ALN. I call my car Alan because of the license plate.” She’d looked a little embarrassed at the admission. “But the numbers were different.” Her eyes had gone unfocused, and then she’d said in triumph, “Seven hundred. It was seven hundred something. I don’t remember the rest.”
“Ms. Abbott, you’re amazing,” Quinn’s current partner had told her with a generosity that didn’t come so easily to Quinn.
Ellis Carter was bumping against retirement, which meant he could be a little slow in the rare event of a chase, but his warmth and ease with witnesses more than atoned for the potbelly and arthritic knee.
They had run the plates and—bingo!—had come up with only one blue Toyota Supra carrying license number 7—ALN. It was registered to a twenty-something scumbag who, when he’d answered his doorbell, smirked at the idea that he might have tossed a drunk from the freeway overpass just for fun. The smirk had faded when he’d heard there was a witness.