CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
An hour ago, when sleep still wouldn’t come, Vince made his way downstairs to the hotel’s lobby for a drink at the bar.
But instead of sitting at the bar like some hapless old man looking to pour out his soul to the poor soul behind the bar counter who had to listen to it, he took his drink and sat at a table.
A few ladies came by, all hoping he wanted company, but he didn’t.
He ignored their advances. His lady friend Cecily, whom he’d been fooling around with, off and on since his divorce, phoned him a few times.
But he didn’t answer. Which she knew meant he didn’t want to be bothered.
But she kept calling anyway as if she didn’t understand that he could dump her as easily as he dumped his three ex-wives.
But for some reason, gorgeous girls always thought there was no way a man wouldn’t want them.
Which brought his mind right back to Ricki.
He’d never known anybody like her. All of the women he’d been with were the kind of pretentious ladies who wanted him to believe the sun didn’t shine until he got up.
They were respectful. They were kind. They kept themselves beautiful and magnificently put out every single time he saw them.
They were determined to do everything in their power to stay in his good graces and, even more so, to stay in the good graces of his wallet, power, and prestige.
But Ricki was the exact opposite. He annoyed her as much as she annoyed him.
They argued as many times as they held conversations.
She didn’t give a damn about her looks even though she had that special something that could run circles around every woman he knew.
He had to all but beg her to accept his money and his help, even though she was struggling far more than any woman he’d ever been with in his life.
And every one of those ladies gladly accepted his coins.
Ricki was in a class all by herself. He wanted to be with her desperately.
But was it because of her body, or because of her? It was always a lust thing for him, never a love thing. Even with every one of his three marriages. Why, then, did he feel as if it was the exact opposite with Ricki? Lust had a little to do with it, but love had more?
Love?
Him in love?
His social circle would laugh him to scorn if he so much as suggested such a thing!
But as he took a long sip of his beer, he was suggesting that very thing.
To him, being in love with Ricki was no longer the big question.
He believed he was in love with her or he would have left Milton when he drove away from her parents’ home, and driven straight to his home outside of New Haven.
But he went to the hotel in town and stayed there instead.
He couldn’t just leave town without her.
Because if felt as if she should be with him.
That he wouldn’t be just leaving her, but leaving her behind. And that he wasn’t going to do.
So it was no longer a question of if he was in love with Ricki. Inasmuch as he knew what love was, he was. The question was what on earth was he going to do about it?
“Do you ever sleep?”
It was the voice of his attorney and best friend, George Grantham.
George had entered the hotel’s bar area with Fontaine-Bachman’s chief investigator Milo Bacca, a big black man with a bald head.
If there were secrets in this town, Vince knew Milo would uncover them.
He and George sat down at Vince’s table.
“How ya’ doing, Boss?” Milo asked.
“What you got for me?” Vince asked.
“Vincent, you do realize he just got in town, right? And it is after midnight?”
Vince continued to look at Milo. He knew he had something.
“While I was in flight, I hired an investigative team from Hartford to come over and find out what they could. Since they know the culture here. They know these people. From what you was telling me was that the kid, Erica, had been raped by Dr. Proctor when she was twelve.”
“Right.”
But Milo was shaking his head. “That don’t sound right to them.”
Vince and George were both curious. “What do you mean?” Vince asked.
“According to their sources, which I will confirm of course, but according to their sources Erica and Dr. Proctor were an item.”
Vince frowned. “What do you mean an item?”
“They were dating, the two of them. It was clandestine. They didn’t go out in public or nothing like that. But small towns can’t hold big secrets. A lot of people knew.”
“Wait a minute here,” said George. “Are you telling us that the man that raped that child when she was twelve years old, and gave her an abortion without parental consent, became her boyfriend?”
Milo nodded. “That’s what they were told.”
George looked at Vince. Vince was floored too. “Did her family know?” he asked.
“They say hell no,” said Milo. “Her old man is supposedly super-strict. So is her mother.”
“But if this doctor loved the girl,” said Vince, “why would he allow her to get on drugs and prostitute herself for money?”
“Because none of that’s true,” said Milo. “That’s what they wanted people to believe because it kept the spotlight off of their relationship. But Erica Richardson was not a hooker, nor was she an addict. She was a young lady in love.”
But Vince was shaking his head. “It’s not adding up. If he loved her, why would he keep hiding her?”
“Why do you think?” asked George.
Vince looked at Milo. “He was married?”
Milo nodded. “For twenty-plus years, yes. Has four kids too. All of which were older than Erica.”
Vince leaned back. “Wow.”
“So anybody could have killed that doctor,” said George, “including his old lady.”
Milo nodded again. “That’s right.”
But Vince kept feeling as if he was missing something. Something right under his nose.
Then he thought of something. “If she wasn’t on drugs or selling her body, why would she tell her sister that she was doing both things?”
George and Milo had to think about that. “Maybe she was afraid her sister would tell their parents,” said Milo.
But now Vince was shaking his head. “Her sister has no relationship with their parents. She left when she was eighteen and hardly ever looked back. That was ten years ago. If Erica was just a kid in love, she would have told Rasheda the truth.”
“So what are you saying? Are you saying this story about the doctor and Erica isn’t true?”
“I don’t know what’s true and what’s not true in this town,” said Vince. “But what about that pickup truck that ran us off the road? Were those Hartford guys able to find any video footage of the incident?”
“Only one business in that area had a camera working, but it was so grainy they couldn’t make out a thing on it.”
“And you’re sure it wasn’t a drunk driver like Ricki thought?” asked George.
Vince shook his head. “Not the way that truck came at us. Whomever was driving it was targeting Ricki. As if somebody was trying to scare her into silence or to leave town, or both.”
“But the question remains,” said Milo as his phone began ringing, “is why? What does she have on anybody in this town?” He pulled it out, looked at the Caller ID, and then quickly answered.
“What up?” he asked. And as soon as he asked that question, he looked over at Vince.
And then, as if he had just gotten some shocking news, he jumped up on his feet. “What the fuck?!”
“What is it?” Vince asked anxiously.
“It’s the security detail. They said there’s been a massive explosion over at the Richardson house. The house just imploded,” Milo said.
But before he could say those last three words, Vince had already jumped up and was running out of that hotel to his car. His heart was hammering. All he could think about was Rasheda!
George and Milo, who’d never seen their boss so invested in a woman the way he seemed so invested in this woman, a woman he’d just met, jumped up and ran after him too.
They knew they could quarrel with who’s telling the truth about the nature of Erica and Dr. Proctor’s relationship, and whether or not she killed him and then killed herself, but they couldn’t quarrel with an explosion.
Because not one of them would ever believe for a second that it was a mere coincidence that the childhood home of the woman who’d just hung herself in the county jail would have accidentally blown up too.
It took all they had to run up and hop into that Bentley before Vince sped away without them.