Lovers and Takers (33 page)

Aubrey went to his father, and he and Jake embraced.
 
Dena, too, began rubbing Aubrey’s back.
 
She looked remarkably disconcerted.

Jake pulled back from his son, but held him at arm’s length.
  
“What happened,
Snug
?” he asked him.

“I came here to confront Troy.”

“Troy Brackston?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” Jake wanted to know.

“I wanted to talk to him, to find out why he did what he did.
 
But we started arguing.
 
He pulled out a knife and we struggled.
 
I was just trying to defend myself.
 
And he was stabbed.”

“He was stabbed?” Willie asked.
 
“What do you mean he was stabbed?
 
You said you stabbed him,” Willie corrected him.

“Not on purpose,” Dena corrected Willie.
 
“You heard him say he was defending himself.”

“I know what he said.
 
But I also know what happened.
 
And based on our preliminary investigation, it didn’t happen the way he’s claiming.”

“It did happen that way,” Aubrey said in an exhausted voice.

“Don’t say anything more, Aubrey,” Roni said.
 
“We know you didn’t kill anybody.
 
Your father will get you out of this if it’s the last thing he does.”

The nerve of her, Dena thought, looking at this female.

“That’s right,” Jake agreed.
 
“You listen to Roni.”

“And who is Roni?” Dena asked.

“She’s the attorney I called in,” Jake said.
 
“Roni, this is Dena Varnadore.
 
My ex-wife.”

Roni suspected as much when she first laid eyes on her.
 
A woman who would devastate a man like Jake to the degree that his ex-wife had devastated him, had to be a piece of work.
 
And if how she looked now was any indication of how she looked when they were married, she was in a class all her own.

“Nice to meet you,” she said to Dena, extending her hand.
 
Dena shook her proffered hand, but very gingerly.
 
But what concerned Roni even more was the fact that she had arrived seemingly with Jake.
 
Was it a coincidence, she wondered, or had they been together again?

“What is this?” a voice said from the bedroom door.
 
Everybody turned to see Wendy Munsford, assistant State Attorney, standing at the door.
 
She began walking into the room.
 
Willie wanted to roll his eyes.

“Hello, Wendy,” he said.

“Why did you allow the parent at the crime scene?
 
You know that’s not allowed, Chief.”

“We haven’t arrested him yet,” Willie pointed out.
 
“They have a right to speak to their son.”

“They?” she asked, looking at Dena.

“I’m Aubrey’s mother,” Dena said.
 
“And we want our son home with us.”

“You can want whatever you wish,” Wendy said, her green eyes blazing, “but he will most definitely be arrested.”

“Oh, come on, Wendy,” Roni said.
 
“You don’t have a case and you know it.”

“I don’t know any such thing,” Wendy replied.

“It was self-defense.
 
Clear cut self-defense.
 
He stood his ground.”

“Don’t even go there, Roni,” Wendy warned.
 
“Don’t even try that.
 
Stood his ground my ass.”
 
Then she looked at the chief.
 
“Arrest him for murder one,” she said, and left the room.

 
Willie and Roni both were disappointed.
 
“He’ll have to come with us, Jake,” Willie said. “It’ll be up to the judge after that.”

Jake understood.
  
He hugged his son again.
 
Dena wanted to hug him, but knew it would only upset him more.
 
They watched as Willie handcuffed him, and then led him away.

Dena looked at Jake.
 
“Now can we get a real attorney?” she asked him.

Jake looked at his ex-wife.
 
He despised that woman.
 
“We have a real attorney,” he said, placed his arm around Roni, and walked with her out of the confining apartment.

Later that night, as the cicadas screeched their loud sounds of nature in Jake’s backyard, he placed steaks on the grill.
 
Roni sat quietly on a lawn chair, sipping coke and listening to the singing cicadas.
 
She remembered less than an hour ago.
 
They were all inside the house.
 
Pam had taken news of her brother’s incarceration hard.
 
She couldn’t seem to understand why they wouldn’t just let him come home since any fool would know that Aubrey couldn’t harm a flea.
 
Then she had burst into tears and ran upstairs.
 
Jake had hurried behind her, to comfort her, while Roni had remained downstairs.

Then Dena had arrived.

Jake apparently gave permission to Security because Dena came right on in.
 
Roni was seated at the desk in the living room making some phone calls with her contacts in the state attorney’s office, when Dena walked in.

“Where’s my daughter?” she asked in that deep, forceful voice of hers, as she removed her gloves and immediately commanded the room.
 
It was obvious that Roni was on the phone, but that meant nothing to Dena.

“Listen, let me call you back,” Roni said into the phone, said goodbye, and then hung up.

“Where’s my daughter?” Dena asked again.

“She’s upstairs,” Roni replied.
 
No sense in getting in any confrontations with the woman, she decided.
 
“Her bedroom is the second room on the---”

“I know where her bedroom is,” Dena said with umbrage.
 
“Who do you think you’re talking to?”

Roni had slipped and forgotten that Dena had been in Jake’s home, and in his bed, just a few nights ago.
 
They had made their peace with it, and Roni would never dream of bringing it back up, but it still stung.

“How old are you?” Dena asked her.

It was so out of the blue that Roni, at first, didn’t know how to respond.
 
“Excuse me?” she asked.

“Do you have a hearing problem?” Dena asked.
 
“I said how old are you?”

Her nastiness got Roni back on her game.
 
“And you need to know this why?”

But Dena smiled which, Roni noticed, only made her more beautiful.
 
“You’re not his type,” she said as if it were a fact.

Roni just stared at Dena.
 
So Dena repeated herself.
 
“You’re not his type,” she said again.

“How about that?”
Roni replied in such
a
you
can’t rattle me, bitch
way that Dena simply gave up and went upstairs.

Within seconds, however, Jake came bounding down those same stairs.
 
Roni felt a sense of relief.
 
A woman that beautiful did not need to be alone with anybody’s man.
 
And Jake was Roni’s man, she thought proudly, as he came over to her.

“Come on,” he said, reaching out his hand to her.
 
“Let’s put some steaks on the grill and discuss what we’re going to do about Aubrey.”

Roni stood and took his hand.
 
“How’s Pam?” she asked as they headed toward the kitchen.

“Still shocked I think.
 
Her mother came up and they were embracing and sobbing, so I came on down.”

“She’s close to her mother?”

“Yes.
 
Although her mother hasn’t shown any real interest in her.
 
At least not like a mother should.
 
But she idolizes the woman.”

“She’s very beautiful.”

Jake looked over at Roni.
 
“Pam?”

“Pam, too, yes, but I was talking about her mother.”

Jake looked away, as memories tried to grip him.
 
“Yes,” he said.
 
“She is that.”

They continued in the kitchen, washed and seasoned steaks and prepared skewered veggies, and headed for the patio.
 
Jake had already given Hudson the night off, and had no intentions of disturbing his longtime butler.
 
He and Roni, instead, managed just fine.

After placing the steaks on the grill, Jake made his way to the lawn chairs and sat down beside Roni.
 
He folded his legs and held her hand.
 
For a long time, they continued to hold hands and said nothing at all.
 
Just listened to the cicadas.
 

Then Jake shook his head, as his thoughts overtook him.
 
“The idea that Aubrey, my boy, would be accused of something so hideous is still hard for me to even fathom.”

“Aubrey of all people,” Roni said.

“Right,” Jake agreed.
 
“He’s the last person on the face of this earth who would purposely harm anyone.
 
It had to be self-defense.”

Roni didn’t respond.
 
Jake looked at her.
 
“Does it look that way to you, Veronica?”

“Self-defense?”

“Yes,” Jake said.

“No,” Roni said honestly and looked at him.
 
“It doesn’t add up, Jake.
 
Not to self-defense.
 
I saw Troy Brackston’s body.
 
There should have been a series of impressions or even small cuts,
then
a slit throat, if they were fighting for the knife as Aubrey claimed.
 
But it was just the one clean cut, which is always---”

Jake was horrified.
 
“Which is always what?” he asked her.

Roni hesitated, but she knew he had to know the truth.
 
“Which, I’m sorry to say, is always what you see in premeditated, murder one cases.
 
At least that’s been my experience.”

Jake leaned his head back in frustration, and then looked at Roni.
 
“It makes no sense, Roni.
 
Aubrey wouldn’t do anything like that.
 
I know he wouldn’t.
 
Nobody is going to tell me that my boy is that monster.”

“I know.
 
And he’s not, Jake.
 
It just means that I’ve got to work harder to figure out what it all means.
 
Because something is at work here, but it’s not self-defense.”

“Poor kid,” Jake said as his heart squeezed for the young man killed tonight, and the son he knew was innocent.

Roni could feel his anguish.
 
She looked over at him.
 
“I’m going to do all I can, Jake,” she promised him.

Jake looked at her.
 
“I know you will, sweetheart,” he said, rubbing her hand.
 
“That’s why you’re his attorney.”

Roni smiled.
 
“Dena might disagree with that.”

“Dena doesn’t get a vote in the matter.”

Roni knew that wasn’t true, given that she was still Aubrey’s mother, but she didn’t pursue it.
 

But Jake did.
 
“The only reason she came back around here at all,” he said, “was because she knew I needed her shares.
 
It wasn’t because of the children.
 
It was all about her, as usual.
 
If she didn’t think she could get some advantage over me with those shares, she wouldn’t be here I assure you.”

Roni looked at him.
 
“Her shares in your company?”

Jake nodded.
 
“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but this billionaire investor named Craig Halprin is attempting a hostile takeover of Varnadore Global, which is the parent company of all of my subsidiary companies.
 
It’s complicated, but
me
and my children hold forty-three percent controlling interest, with nobody else close.”

“Except for your ex-wife?”
Roni asked.

“Except for that bitch,” Jake said bitterly.
 
“She owns eight percent, which was given to her with the written stipulation that those shares would automatically revert to my children in the event of her death.”

“Good move,” Roni said, nodding.
 
“That way no new husband of hers or any new children she may have can stake any claims in your business.”

“That was the idea, yes.
 
And the only reason she got those shares from me at all was because she would have fought vigorously for custody of our children had I not given them to her.
 
I couldn’t take the chance of her winning that battle.
 
Nobody was taking my children away from me.”