His Third Wife

“Come on!” Leaf pointed at the cameras that were still rolling.

Jamison got into the car, and Leaf pressed the gas pedal like he’d been waiting for such an incident all his life or maybe he’d done it before.

Jamison turned to look out the window and watched Dax watch him ride away.

“You got something against answering your phone?” Leaf asked.

Jamison ignored the question, but when they were out of the lot and driving up Peachtree, he turned to Leaf with his own question.

“How did you know I was there?”

“I’ve been calling you. I’m always calling you. You don’t answer.”

“Leaf!”

“I got a tip.”

“On me being at the jail? From who?”

“No, my tip was about Dax. I’ve had a tail on him since the courthouse thing. My tip said Dax had a tip about you. I just followed the cheese,” Leaf explained.

“The cheese?” Jamison looked out the window once more, remembered everything Dax had said. The smug look on his face. “Fuck! That motherfucker!”

“I told you to stay away from the jail,” Leaf said rather authoritatively, but Jamison was too busy hearing Dax in his brain to discern this. “Why did you go there?”

Jamison’s anger had him pulling out his phone, dialing a number.

“Send your guy in,” Jamison ordered into his phone to a voice that sounded garbled to Leaf. “Get Dax.”

“Who is that? Who is on the phone?” Leaf asked.

Jamison clicked the phone off and sat back in his seat stone-faced. “Just drive,” he said. “Drive.”

Kerry had rung the doorbell three times, knocked more than that. Now she was banging. When she was about to pull out her cell phone and call to reconfirm her reason for being at Jamison’s front door, the big block of wood opened just a few inches and the former secretary with poor letter-writing skills was on the other side with sleepy eyes.

“Yes?”

“I’m here to get Tyrian,” Kerry barked. She wasn’t the kind of woman who’d put her hand on her hip, but there it was. And her eyes were rolling, too. She had reason to be annoyed. She’d called ahead to let Jamison know she was on her way to retrieve her child after he’d picked him up from camp. She’d expected the boy to be waiting on the steps with his book bag dangling at his feet. That’s how they always did it. Then she wouldn’t have to speak to anyone in the house. Not Val, of course.

“Tyrian?”

Kerry’s eyes widened. Also out of character for the Southern belle was saying something nasty . . . but there the words were, right in her throat. Still, she decided not to let the situation pull her away from who she thought she was.

“He is here, right? Jamison picked him up from summer camp today. I just spoke to him. Told him I was on my way,” Kerry said.

“Oh, I didn’t know. I’ve been asleep,” Val said, stepping back and rubbing her stomach a little. “Our baby keeps me up all night.”

“Sure. So . . . Tyrian?” Kerry kind of shifted her eyes into the house.

“Well, Jamison left out a little while ago, but let me check to see if Tyrian is still here. He’s probably upstairs with Mrs. Taylor.”

Val was about to go into the house and close the door in Kerry’s face, but then she came up with a better way to put Kerry in her place.

“Come in and have a seat.” She opened the door and led Kerry into the living room.

They could hear Tyrian upstairs giggling.

“Oh, there he is,” Val said, acknowledging his laughter as if Jamison hadn’t told her Tyrian was in the room with his mother and asked her to have him ready to go when Kerry got there.