36. Paid The Price
36
PAID THE PRICE
“T hanks for meeting with me on such short notice,” Justine said when she walked into a conference room to talk with Roark French.
Roark had gotten in touch with Garrett quickly, she’d been by his side and talked to him and they set up a time for her to meet with him and someone on his staff who is licensed to practice in Indiana.
“Not a problem,” Roark said. “I’ve done some reading on your father’s case. Or I should say your stepmother’s case. Karly is going to be here in a minute. She’s on a call right now. She’s one of my best. Like a poodle getting a bone from a mastiff. She’ll find a way to make it happen.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” she said.
“I’ve heard a bit about you through the family,” Roark said, smirking.
“From Selena or Gabriela?” she asked.
“Both and then my sister. She said she’d emailed you twice. She has no idea you are here and I wouldn’t say a word, but she calls me all the time to ask questions and then hangs up quickly once I answer. But she told me she’d met you and was going to be picking your brain.”
“I find it exciting,” she said. “I look forward to it. I think I’ve got to look forward to a lot of things right now. Or I’m trying to.”
Roark reached his hand over and laid it on hers. Maybe it was a family trait to comfort people.
“We are going to try to get you some answers. We’ll get that footage. Don’t worry about it. Whether there is anything on it or not is the question.”
“That is part of my frustration. If the company said it was only six months of footage, I’d let it go.”
“No,” Roark said. “You never let it go. You want proof that the footage was destroyed and not stored somewhere else. We will turn over every rock to find out. And much faster than the DA or police. But we need to get on the same page as them.”
“Working together,” a woman said, coming into the room. “I’ll play nice to start and then I’ll run them over. I’m Karly Paterson and you’ve got to be Justine Keller.”
She stood up to shake the woman’s hand.
Karly looked to be in her mid-forties with a bright smile on her face. She was average height, dressed unassuming, and most likely blended into a crowd.
People like that could be dangerous if it wasn’t their personality on the inside.
She was thinking that was how Karly got the wins.
“John Bloom is pretty easy to work with so far,” she said. “When he gets back to me. I know he’s slammed and there are other cases on his desk. I’m not a priority, I’ve been told. I get it. I’d like this to move faster. I know my stepmother is guilty and she should be behind bars where she belongs and not living in a nice apartment on my father’s money.”
“Seems like she doesn’t have as much of it as she wants,” Karly said. “Roark filled me in on the will and how it turned out and what is remaining is frozen right now.”
“She was greedy. She is greedy. Says she needs money for her defense. That’s not my problem. She shouldn’t have killed my father then. She told me not that long ago she would drop it so that she could get her share and we’d have to buy her out of the house, which was left to the three of us equally. I told her if she dropped it, we’d contest it due to the case not being closed.”
“Good for you,” Roark said. “That would be our advice right away. Keep her desperate. Desperate people do stupid shit all the time.”
“My father paid the price for that,” she said.
“We are sorry for that,” Karly said. “But we are going to try to give you closure.”
She noticed they didn’t say justice.
They couldn’t promise that. They didn’t know enough.
No one did right now.
“I think closure might be the only thing I can hope for. Baby steps.”
“Why don’t we get started,” Roark said. “We’ve got some papers for you to sign and then once we get what we need out of this, we’ll reach out to John Bloom and see if we can get in touch with this security system and do the legwork for them.”
“Anything to get this moving,” she said.
When she walked out an hour later, she felt more hope than she had in a long time and called her sister right away.
“How did it go?” Jordan asked. “I’ve been waiting for this call.”
“Aren’t you working today?” she asked.
“Nope,” Jordan said. “I’m going in tonight.”
“Sorry if I woke you,” she said. It was only ten in the morning. She’d come over on the ferry last night so she wasn’t rushing around this morning.
She was going to get a hotel and Garrett told her that was crazy and gave her the security code to get into his condo.
He wanted to be with her and she said she had to do this on her own. For a number of reasons.
She didn’t think he’d give in, but he had.
Maybe he couldn’t get the time off. She didn’t know, she didn’t ask.
This was one of those things they talked about and she’d fill him in, but she had it covered.
“You didn’t,” Jordan said. “I’ll go to bed around noon and get about seven hours of sleep before my shift. Works better for me that way.”
“Good,” she said. “I feel great about the meeting. I hope John is onboard about us getting our own counsel to get the information.”
“He’d be an idiot to not be,” Jordan said. “It takes it off his plate. The sooner we can get that footage, the sooner we can move on from it.”
“If it turns out to be anything,” she said. “I’m trying not to get my hopes up in case it’s a dead end. Maybe it’s cameras on the front and back porch and it’s silly. Or his office or something.”
“It could be all sorts of things,” Jordan said. “Previous fights they had showing that Dad was the victim because we know it.”
“We do, Jordan. But would he want that out there? That his wife might have been verbally or physically abusing him?”
She’d been thinking about this for a few weeks now but keeping it to herself.
“If it puts Elise in jail, then yes,” Jordan said. “Everyone that knew Dad well loved him. Those that didn’t know him, I don’t care about. But maybe it needs to get out there that men are victims too. It’s not something to be embarrassed about.”
“I know,” she said. “I hate so much of his life being on display.”
“There is no way to avoid it,” Jordan said. “You know that. Either way, we need answers.”
“I hope it’s not something we didn’t expect. That there was a part of Dad we didn’t know about.”
“Don’t piss me off, Justine. Don’t go down that road. I didn’t expect it of you.”
She sniffled a little. She was sitting in her car at the docks waiting for the ferry to get here so she could go back to the island.
It wasn’t as hard to get on and off as she thought it might have been.
“I know,” she said. “But it’s true. We didn’t know everything. We are only assuming.”
“That’s right,” Jordan said. “I don’t know everything in your life and you don’t know everything in mine, but we knew Dad was a good person. End of story.”
She needed to be reminded of that. “I know.”
“It’s a waiting game now. Just like it’s been for over seven months. A few more weeks will not make a difference. Go on about your life like me, but keep me posted. I’m not getting myself worked up over this because nothing could come of it but crushed hope. I don’t need to think that any more than you do.”
“I never realized how smart you were,” Justine said.
“Sure, you did, but I don’t always bring it out. Now is the time. Go home to that sexy doctor of yours. Let him give it to you good to get your mind off it.”
She snorted out a laugh. “I can do that.”
There was a pause. “What is going on with you and Garrett?” Jordan asked.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Yes,” Jordan said. “There is something. I can tell by your tone of voice.”
She debated sharing with her sister and only said, “Guess we are finding out the other isn’t as perfect as we thought.”
Jordan laughed. “No one is perfect. I told you there were negatives. Why did you think there wouldn’t be?”
She shrugged, but it’s not like anyone could see her. “No clue. And I’m not sure I thought that just that there weren’t any right away. But you’re right—we’ve all got them. His is avoidance like mine. Shocking, huh?”
“Not really,” Jordan said. “I’m sure he’s tiptoeing around you because of everything you are going through. That doesn’t make him a bad person.”
“No,” she said. “But I don’t want him to do that.”
“You can’t have it both ways,” Jordan said. “That’s being selfish. If he was pushing you, you’d be upset over that too.”
Grrrr. Her sister pretty much said the same thing Garrett had said. There was no winning.
It was hard to be told those things.
“I don’t know how to feel about all of this,” she said. “He told me that he’d like to stay on the island, but that if I didn’t, he could go back to Boston too. But I know he’d rather be on the island. Then he said that he hasn’t said anything because he wants me to make those decisions on my own.”
“That is considerate of him to do that,” Jordan said. “You should be happy.”
“I’m afraid to decide,” she said. “It’s a big decision.”
“What is?” Jordan asked. “You’re not marrying him. If you decide to be located on the island, it’s your job. You said you liked it there. Even if something doesn’t work out with Garrett, you can stay. Or you just pick up and move again. You’ve done it once. You can find a job anywhere.”
The thought of leaving Garrett hurt her heart.
Maybe that was all the answer that she needed.
“You’re right,” she said. “I’m going about this all wrong. I know what I need to do.”