Tough Customer (19 page)

"Me?" she exclaimed. "I've been thinking the same about you."

"Good try, but that tactic didn't work when you were in middle school, and it doesn't work now. You can't redirect this conversation."

"You've been onto my manipulation?"

"Since you were old enough to exercise it. But I'm not sure
manipulation
is the correct word. It denotes some mean purpose. You were never mean, just extremely clever."

"Not that clever. You caught on. And here I thought I was being so smart."

"Smart you are." Caroline's tone changed, became softer, more serious. "Also unshakable and in command of your emotions. It's unlike you to fly off the handle the way you did with Ski."

"'Ski'? 'Dodge'? I've never known you to get so chummy with men you've only just met. Although..."

"You're doing it again. This isn't about me. It's about
you.
"

"Although," Berry continued stubbornly, "I believe you knew Dodge Hanley before today. And I'm not trying to divert the conversation away from me and my problems. We'll get to them, I promise.

"But first, I insist on being brought into the loop, because, up to this point, I've been left out." She lay back down and stacked her hands behind her head. "I'm listening. Who is this guy? You met him before today. I know you did. Otherwise you'd be put off by his manner and vocabulary."

Caroline sighed. "All right, I confess. I met Dodge in Houston a few years ago."

"How?"

"Through my friend, when she retained him to do some private investigating for her. She was uncomfortable with the whole idea. It seemed sordid, sleazy, a B-movie-type action to take. Dodge, being Dodge, made her even more apprehensive. So she wanted me to meet him and give her my honest opinion. Did he seem reputable? Worth his fee? That sort of thing. I had no experience in those matters, either, but she valued my judgment of people in general."

"Which friend? Do I know her?"

"Yes, but I can't tell you who it is."

"How come?"

"Because that would betray her confidence."

"Did Daddy ever meet him? Dodge, I mean."

Caroline laughed. "Goodness, no. Can you imagine the two of them even being in the same room?"

Berry smiled. Her dad had been a slender man, not very tall, but so dignified that his modest stature went unnoticed. He was tidy and compact, soft-spoken, cultured, and genteel. The polar opposite of Dodge Hanley.

Caroline was saying, "I didn't tell anyone, even Jim, about the straits my friend was in. It was a messy, humiliating situation."

"Cheating husband?"

"All I'll say is that she was desperate, or she would never have sought the services of a private investigator."

Berry mulled over her mother's wording, then asked softly, "Is that why you sought his services? Do you regard my current situation as desperate?"

"Not yet. He'll help keep it from becoming so."

"He's a street fighter."

"I'm sure."

"Irreverent, disrespectful of authority, and beyond the pale."

"I doubt he lets rules get in his way."

"He's unrefined."

"You should have seen him in Mabel's Tearoom."

Berry laughed. "You took him to a tearoom?"

"I had to meet him somewhere." She thought for a moment, then added, "Actually, he handled it with more aplomb than one would expect."

"He's kinda cute," Berry said. "If you're into scruffy."

"I hadn't thought of him in that way."

Berry gave her mother a playful nudge. "Come on. He's cute. Admit it."

"Some women might find him attractive."

Berry grinned at the evasion, mainly because her mother was working so hard at being evasive.

Following an acceptable period of grieving for her dad, Berry had encouraged her mother to start dating, especially when Caroline moved to Merritt, where no one had known her and her dad as a couple. The town had a large retirement-age population. There were a lot of unattached men of suitable age and means available.

Caroline would hear none of it.

"I'm done with that," she had said when Berry suggested she get back in circulation. "I had a good marriage. I had the love of my life. I will never have another."

But Berry continued to hold out the hope that her mother would meet a man who would change her mind. She was beautiful and smart, lovely and fun. She had much to offer, and Berry hated the thought of her living the rest of her life as a single.

"I like Dodge," Berry said now, almost expecting her mother to challenge the definitive statement.

But she didn't. In fact, Caroline was quite earnest when she asked, "Do you?"

"Yeah, I do. Warts and all. What I like best is that he makes no excuses for his warts."

"Then I'm glad I made the decision to retain him."

Worriedly, Berry pulled her lower lip through her teeth. "His purpose is damage control. Is that it?"

"Partially. His investigative skills could also be useful to Ski."

"If he'll use them."

Caroline nodded pensively. "Men are territorial. But Ski strikes me as someone too intelligent to decline help when and if he needs it."

Berry took one hand from behind her head and laid her forearm across her eyes. After a moment, she said, "The affair with Ben."

"You're a grown woman, Berry. Well past having to account to me about your relationships."

"Oh no?" Berry peered up at her from beneath her arm. "Isn't it you who's been giving me none too subtle hints that you'd like to have grandchildren before you're too old and decrepit to play with them?"

Caroline smiled. "I still wish for grandchildren. But," she added with emphasis, "I also understand how important your career is to you, because mine was to me. Simultaneously building a career and raising a family can cause conflicts."

"I haven't ruled out having a husband and children, Mother. My biological clock gongs whenever I see women my age with a toddler or two, husband smiling on with adoration. I'd like that very much.

"But let me assure you, Ben Lofland wasn't a prospective life partner. He and I spent a few harmless nights together. Our affair was hardly worth the federal case that Deputy Nyland made of it."

"He didn't make a federal case of it."

"Close."

"There must be a reason for his preoccupation with it."

"He told you the reason. Oren's motive."

Caroline settled an intuitive look on her, the kind that mothers specialize in.

"What?" Berry demanded.

"Nothing. Never mind."

Caroline shook her head. "A wild thought. Groundless probably. Pardon the interruption. What were you saying?"

Exasperated, knowing there was more than her mother was willing to say at the moment, Berry tried to remember where she'd left off. "I refuse to wear a hair shirt because of those sleepovers."

"The affair would have taken on less significance if you'd been up front about it."

"I know," Berry admitted. "I should have come clean about it."

"Why didn't you?"

"Amanda. I didn't know if Ben had told her about us, but I was guessing that he hadn't. In which case, I didn't want to spring a past affair on her when she was having to cope with his getting shot, undergoing surgery, all that. I was afraid that, if I told Ski, it would open a can of worms, unnecessarily. I kept quiet to spare Amanda's feelings and to spare Ben trouble with the wife whom he loves and adores. So much for my good intentions. They blew up in my face."

Caroline spoke quietly. "From here on, I advise you not to withhold anything from Ski."

Berry lowered her arm and looked straight into her mother's eyes. "For instance, you think I should tell him about the phone call I placed to Oren the day before yesterday?"

Caroline looked at her aghast. "Phone call?"

"Thursday afternoon. Oren and I talked for several minutes."

"I don't understand. You came here to
escape
him. Why on earth did you call him?"

"To make amends."

"For what, for heaven's sake?"

Berry worked her way to the other side of the bed and swung her feet to the floor. Moving to the window, she looked out toward the lake, although all she could really see was her own reflection in the windowpane.

"In order to explain, I have to back up," she said. "Do you remember-- Of course you remember," she said ruefully. "The day of my big blowup?"

Caroline said nothing. Berry turned her head. Her mother was looking down at her hands. "You were upset, Berry. Justifiably upset. You didn't mean what you said."

"Don't excuse the inexcusable, Mother. At the time I meant it."

A co-worker had received a commendation from an account manager on the day the same manager had criticized some of Berry's work and had gone on to shoot down all her suggestions for correcting it.

Stung and angry, she'd sought out her mother at her real estate office and, for half an hour, had vented her outrage. She'd cited how unfair the criticism of her work had been, how lackluster the praised campaign was. "Which only goes to show how lousy this manager's taste is!" she had exclaimed. "And I have to answer to him. My position in the company is dependent upon this bozo's crummy opinion."

Caroline had tried to placate her, but Berry had refused to hear the reason behind her mother's observations. She'd discounted Caroline's advice to carry on and not to let this minor setback become a major self-fulfilling stall.

"You work harder than anyone I know," Caroline had told her. "You're the most dedicated employee that company has. You're talented. Eventually the right people will notice, and your labor, as well as your patience, will be rewarded."

The soft-spoken encouragement had only caused Berry to seethe. She'd gone to her mother for sympathy and got banalities instead. Seeing red, she'd sneered, "Or, in order to get to the top of my profession, I could skip all that kowtowing and do what you did. I could marry the boss."

Even as she spoke the words, she'd known them to be untrue. For years Caroline had worked diligently late into the evenings, on holidays, and over long weekends. Her success was well deserved, based on intuitiveness and hard work, not nepotism.

Berry had also known how wounding the words were and had regretted them the moment they were spoken. But she hadn't apologized. Instead she'd stormed out, leaving her mother reeling from the unexpected and unwarranted onslaught, the source of which was something deeper than anger and disappointment. With that outburst, Berry had revealed a long-harbored resentment of her mother's achievements.

"When I got home," she said now, "Oren was there waiting for me." She laughed drily. "I remember thinking that I probably deserved that for being so hateful to you. He'd brought me Chinese food. He admonished me for working too hard, too long, for not eating right, and for not taking care of myself properly.

"I was in no mood for more gentle chiding, especially his. So I lost it. I yelled at him, told him to take his moo goo gai pan and get the hell off my porch and out of my life. I told him that I'd had it, that if he bothered me again, I'd sic the police on him.

"At first, he responded weepily. How could I be so cruel as to break his heart, crush his spirit, destroy his dreams? I listened to a few minutes of that, and then I cut him off. I told him that he was a joke to everyone who knew him, but particularly to women. I told him that he was boring, that he was a pest, just
wrong,
and that I wasn't the only one who thought so. I told him that he was creepy and pathetic, and that I couldn't stomach the sight of him."

She rubbed her eyes, wishing she could rub out the memory, too. "I must have struck a chord. Several, in fact. Because he flipped out. Right before my eyes, he morphed into the Oren Starks rendition of Mr. Hyde. Outside a movie theater, I'd never witnessed such a dramatic transformation.

"His face became congested and red with fury like I'd never seen before, Mother. He shouted, 'You can't do this to me! I don't deserve
this
!' He threw the carton of food against my front door. It split open, splattered. He called me horrible names. Said awful, obscene things. He said it was no wonder that I didn't return his affection when Ben Lofland was fucking me."

She shuddered. "I can't even bring myself to repeat all he said, and you don't want to hear it. He ended with a chilling vow to make me sorry for rejecting him. In language more elaborate than that, but that was the gist of it.

"I went inside and bolted the door behind me. I had my cell phone in my hand ready to call 911--that's how afraid I was--but he drove away. I went into the bathroom and threw up. When I was done and was washing my face, I looked into the mirror above the sink."

She paused, then said slowly, "That's when I saw what I'd become. I barely recognized myself, Mother. I was as much a monster as Oren. I had been cruel, I'd said terrible things to him, I'd been horrible to you, the person I love and respect more than anyone in my life. And why? Because I was upset over a hand-slapping I'd received at work."

She turned to face Caroline. "I wanted to succeed at all costs. Ambition had consumed me. I'd lost all perspective. I was jeopardizing my relationships with co-workers, with friends, with
you.
"

Dashing tears off her cheeks, she continued. "Oren made me fear for my life that day. But I was just as scared of the person I'd become. I stayed up that entire night, with all the lights in the house on, afraid he would come back, also afraid that I would change my mind about doing what I had decided must be done. By morning I was packed. I came here, hoping that I would find some balance in my life, find the me that had somehow got lost."

She returned to the side of the bed and sat down beside her mother, who placed her hand between Berry's shoulder blades and began to massage the spot. "I'm proud of you."