His Last Wife

“Look, if you’re not going to give me the money—if you’re not going to give us the money—I’ll just move forward with my original plan. Just like I told Jamison before he—” Coreen stopped. “I know every news station in this country will be happy to hear—”

“No, no, no,” Val said with her full attention on Coreen then.

This was Coreen’s ongoing threat: How she’d gotten money from Jamison and now was working on Val—taking her story of a love child to the media. As dated as this kind of dirt was, it was the sort of information that could start a domino effect that could dismantle the carefully built house of cards Jamison had tendered to the public, his friends, and business associates. All of whom supported Rake it Up, the corporate landscaping and preservation service Jamison opened in lieu of going to medical school after college. Since then, the company had amassed a list of loyal corporate clients whose businesses dotted the entire southeast. Corporate clients who still maintained old-world values that could mean they would have to disconnect from an evildoer. Though a love child produced in an affair wasn’t nearly a new concept, it was mucky. And in the South, mucky was supposed to stay behind closed doors. Moreover, all those contacts and connections that had made Jamison a rich man wouldn’t think twice about taking their business elsewhere if they had any reason to disconnect from him. And he was black. And he was dead. Or, as Val’s lawyer had put it, “First, the big clients would leave, then the small, then the money would dry up, and then you’ll be broke.” Val had to stop this.

“I need some time to get you the money,” Val said abruptly. “I don’t have it right now, but I can get it. I just need time.”

Coreen sat back and observed Val suspiciously.

“You’re lying,” Coreen stated.

“No. I’m not. I don’t even know how Jamison was getting you that much cash.”

“He owns a multimillion-dollar company. Don’t play me. I know exactly how much he has, how much Rake it Up made last year alone,” Coreen said.

“Kerry took fifty percent of the business after the divorce and then Jamison sold her another ten percent when he ran for mayor.”

“That means when Jamison died he still had forty percent of that company and my son will get his share,” Coreen asserted wickedly. “You think I don’t know what you’re doing—what both of you think you’re going to do?”

“Who?”

“You and Kerry—you think you can get rid of me. Cut me out of the money. But I’m not going anywhere.” Coreen rolled her eyes and looked at the waiter who was standing nearby and clearly struggling to listen in on the gossip. “I don’t know what I was thinking—meeting you. Like you would really be looking out for me. Like you’d understand.” After uttering that last sentiment, Coreen gave Val a long, hard stare and then picked up her purse. “Jamison was right about you.” Coreen got out of the booth and leered down at Val. “You’re a fucking mess.”

Val had to grab the ends of the table in front of her chest to stop herself from going after Coreen. To let her walk away without causing an incident that would shut down all of the Buckhead Diner and end up all over the Internet, like all of the other public battles she’d endured since becoming the lady on Jamison’s arm. Back then, she was a different person. A country girl with a quick temper and a mean left hook. Back home in Tennessee, Val wasn’t ever afraid of a tough fight; in fact, most times she was the cause of it. It just always seemed like someone or something was trying to steal something away from her.

Val gulped down the last of the cotton-candy martini and reminded herself that she wasn’t that person anymore. Everything she’d been. Everything that had happened. She’d come out on top. Maybe Jamison never loved her. He’d just married her because she was pregnant and would add an ugly blemish to his political portfolio. But he was dead now and she was left with the best part of him. All that money. And she was willing to do anything to keep it. Even if it meant shutting her mouth.

Sometimes.

“You know, I don’t give a shit what Jamison said about me!”

Val had run out of the booth and surprised Coreen in the parking lot from behind by pulling her arm and spinning the red head around.

“He wants to call me a fucking mess? No, he’s the fucking mess. He’s the one who was fucking his assistant with no condom and had a child in another state and wasn’t even man enough to claim him publicly. He was the fucking mess! Not me! Not me!” Val was pointing a sharp finger at herself and tears were coming from her eyes. “After everything I gave that nigga? Everything? And when my baby—our baby—died in a goddamn toilet, he couldn’t wait to leave me in a hospital-room bed. That’s fucked up. That’s a fucking mess.”

“Val, if he did all those things to you, then why are you protecting him? Why are you still out here protecting him?”

“Money. Isn’t that why you’re here? You keep talking about me, but what about you?” Val asked suspiciously.

“I already said why I’m here.”

“A little more to the story, isn’t there?” Val said accusingly. “I know about that phone call the morning Jamison died. He was going up to that roof to meet you.” Val stepped in close to Coreen and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Look, I’m telling you, just like I told the police Kerry sent looking for me: I had nothing to do with Jamison’s death. I was not on the phone with him that morning,” Coreen said very confidently.

“That’s really interesting, because Kerry was there with him in the hotel room and she’s sure it was you on the phone.”

“Kerry is in jail for a murder she committed and she’ll say anything to try to peg this on someone else,” Coreen said. “She’s desperate and she hates me. But just like I told her long before you were even a thought, her husband slept with me. He wasn’t my problem; he was hers. When my son was born, I just wanted my money. How was killing him going to get me any more? I loved Jamison, but I didn’t hate him enough to kill him. And you want to know who loved him, but hated him enough to kill him because of those times he lied to her and cheated on her and made her look like a fool? Kerry. She’s looking for the killer? Tell her to look in the mirror. I heard about Jamison’s death just like everyone else—on television.”

Chapter 3

“Leaf—I mean, Detective Johns—this is Val Long calling again. I called you last week. I’m calling this week. I know we haven’t seen each other since . . . everything happened . . . but I wanted to talk to you. I just . . . you know a lot of things just don’t add up. And you were there. You know. Some of these things they’re saying . . . that are happening . . . they just don’t add up. I don’t know. Give me a call. You know my number.”

Certain things were supposed to make other things okay. For children, an ice cream cone can make a recent slip and fall a painless memory. For a teenager, a new love erases the once-shattering tumult of the last lost love. And adults—well, by then it’s a “pick your pleasure” game: Alcohol. Sex. Money. Drugs. God. Guns. Grown folks have a treasure chest of little psychological titillations designed to help the human move on, let go, forgive and forget. And there’s only one rule involved in the deal of replacement: One must never look back.

Basically, that’s how Detective Leaf Johns was supposed to feel two weeks after his last undercover assignment with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation ended with an unearned, unsolicited and—to his knowledge, unwarranted—monumental raise and epic promotion up the ranks at the GBI.

Leaf had been sitting at the bare desk he hadn’t sat at in a month at the Bureau, thinking through his last year on assignment. He’d been handpicked by the chief to infiltrate the new mayor’s staff. His pale, alabaster skin, those emerald eyes, the strawberry-blond hair atop a svelte male frame, made him look like a brainy overachiever, a political wannabe who’d sacrifice all as Mayor Jamison Taylor’s new assistant. The governor, who’d been under suspicion of corruption for years, had strategically placed some of his key players on Taylor’s sponsor list. That meant his dirty politics would turn into the mayor’s politics and the Bureau’s director wanted to take them both down. The only problem was that Leaf had been there alongside Taylor, working most days elbow-to-elbow, and though he’d been suspicious at times, he never found a thing that could spell out corruption for Taylor. In fact, following a fraternity house melee that sent Governor Cade and all of his cronies to jail, Jamison appeared to be the lone political survivor. But then, the very next morning, Jamison was dead. The police pegged his ex-wife for the murder, but for Leaf that was too fast, too cut-and-dry. Too clean of a solution in such a dirty equation. And the one thing that Leaf couldn’t get off his mind even after he left that barren desk and was elevated to a swanky corner office in the newly minted international-residents division of the Georgia Crime Information Center, was that every single person Jamison had helped Leaf put away just hours before he died was now free, out on the street, and back in business. Even Cade managed to run for office again. He lost, but was getting ready for a national run for office. Word was that he’d probably win.