Gotcha! (16 page)

I
t was barely eight o’clock in the morning, but the Darlene Wyatt household was wide-awake. Olivia was sitting in the family room, eating cooked oatmeal with no milk but loaded with sugar to make it more palatable for the little girl, and watching cartoons on television while her mother and her live-in boyfriend were screaming at each other in the kitchen. It was obvious to Olivia that neither one of them had gone to bed, because they were wearing the same clothes they’d had on when she herself went to bed. It was hard to hear the cartoon characters on the television with all the screaming.

“I told you, we’re doing it, and that’s final. She’s behind all this, and you know it.”

“No, I don’t know that, Adam, and neither do you. For all we know, it could be that asshole ex-wife of yours doing it. She hates me, but she hates you more. And Julie isn’t smart enough to steal my identity.”

“You are so stupid you make me sick. My asshole ex-wife, as you put it, couldn’t be bothered with either one of us. I’m telling you, it’s that bitch. You should go over there to her house right now and kill her. I’ll even help you. Well?”

Adam Fortune stared at the woman sitting across from him at the table, drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette. At that moment, he hated her. Really hated her.

“I am not going to Julie Wyatt’s house, and neither are you. And no one is killing anyone. If you don’t like the way things are here, leave. Go back to Kansas and live with your drunken mother.”

“You bitch! I left my wife for you! You lied to me. You said you were
rich.
You don’t have a pot to piss in. You own nothing. It was all lies. And I fell for it. You promised to buy me a boat and a fancy car, and what did I get? I get to move into your dead husband’s house, with his snot-nosed kid. What’s even worse is that it’s the snot-nosed kid who owns the damned house, not you. Where’s that fancy car, where’s the boat, huh? Huh, Darlene? And another thing, my ex is laughing her ass off, along with that goody-two-shoes new husband of hers. They have it made. They have fucking
money.
That new husband goes to a tony gym twice a week, they belong to the country club, they both have Cadillac Escalades. They eat out, they have good jobs, he buys her diamonds.”

“If you don’t shut up, I’m going to put you through the wall, and don’t think I can’t or won’t. Now, I am going to the police station and file a complaint. Even though it won’t do any good, I’m still going to do it. When they ask me who I think is responsible, I am going to say either your ex-wife or my former mother-in-law. The next step in this drama, in case your feeble brain still isn’t working, is we will be evicted from this house. I don’t know how that’s going to happen, but it’s sure as hell going to. We’ll be living in a tent, or a run-down trailer park. The money I don’t have is on the tent because I don’t have money to pay for a rental trailer. Now, what’s it going to be, Adam?”

“What about the snot? Are we taking her?”

“No, it’s too far for her to walk. We are walking. I’m not taking the motorcycle out, because they’ll just repo it. And it’s almost out of gas, even though I have half a can for the lawn mower. It might help if you fixed yourself up a little, like shave or take a shower.”

Darlene took the punch high on the cheekbone. She cursed, and whacked her beloved along the side of his face. In the family room, Olivia covered her ears and started to cry. She cowered into the corner when she saw her mother coming toward her. “I want you to go upstairs, Olivia. We have to go out. I’ll lock the doors, and we won’t be that long. Do not open the door to anyone. Do you understand me?”

“I don’t want to be by myself, Mommy. I’m afraid to stay alone. I want my daddy. I hate you, and I hate him, too. I want Grandma and Connie and Carrie. I hate this oatmeal, and I’m still hungry. I want my grandma. Please, Mommy, take me there. She loves me. Connie and Carrie love me, and so do Philly and Pete. I miss them, Mommy. Please take me there.”

Adam started to unbuckle his belt. Olivia fled up the steps and into her room. She ran to the closet and crawled as far back into the corner as she could go. She cried for her father, grandmother, and aunts and uncles, begging and pleading for someone to help her.

Always when she did this, she felt something hovering over her. She thought it was angel wings, and that pleased her, because she knew it was her daddy who was an angel in heaven. Sometimes she thought she could actually feel the feathers, and one time she found a feather when she woke up. It was her dearest possession in the whole world, and she kept it in her Crayola box. But she had to take the brown and orange crayon out to make room for the feather. She thought she could feel the feathers brushing against her face. How soft they were. She closed her eyes and hoped she would dream about her father. “Please help me, Daddy,” she whimpered.

“You should feel right at home here, Adam,” Darlene said as she opened the door to the police station. “How many times have you been here for those kids of yours? Six? Seven?”

“Shut up, Darlene. If you keep this up, I’m going to tell these cops you molested my son. I’ll tell them how you left your husband to die so you could inherit all his money. I’ll tell them how you lusted after me and how you almost raped me that first time. I’ll do it, too, and my son will back me up. They’ll toss your skinny ass in jail, and you’ll never see the light of day again. I don’t have anything to lose, so make my day, you sorry-assed reject. I warned you not to mess with me, and I meant it. You are messing with me, Darlene.”

Darlene knew he meant it. She broke out in a cold sweat the way she always did when he threatened her. She clamped her lips shut and walked over to the window, where she told the office girl she needed to file a report. She was told to take a seat, and one of the detectives would be right out.

Forty minutes later, Darlene was on her feet screeching her head off. Adam was blustering and cursing. Two police officers approached, and Adam sat down. Darlene stopped her caterwauling and sat down next to him.

“You need a lawyer, Ms. Wyatt, or whoever you are, not the police. I’m filing your report, but you have no credentials to back up your identity. We can’t go around harassing our upstanding citizens with complaints like this. My suggestion is the same as I told you when you first sat down. Hire a lawyer to investigate your case.”

“I can’t do that, since I have no money. Everything was taken away. We’ve been robbed of our money, our credit, and our identities.”

“You are not in the system anywhere, that’s all I can tell you,” the detective said patiently.

Adam got up and kicked at the chair. “You’re probably in on this, too. No one is that good to pull off something like this without help from the authorities. If you were any kind of a police department, you’d be trying to help us.”

“Yeah,” Darlene said, sliding off her chair. “Thanks for nothing.”

Outside in the boiling sun, Darlene started to wail about the long walk home in the hot sun. She was thirsty, and she was hungry. Adam ignored her as he headed toward home. Jesus, God Almighty, how had her life gotten to this point?

She knew exactly how it had gotten to this point. The moment she cheated on Larry was when it had all started. Her dreams of a rich, lust-filled, wonderful life with Adam were nothing but pipe dreams. There hadn’t been a single thing wonderful about it at all. And, to this day, she had not seen one penny of her husband’s money. Not one penny.

Olivia was set for life—maybe for two lifetimes—but thanks to that bitch Julie Wyatt, Larry’s sisters controlled his daughter’s funds, and she would have to be at death’s door before those two would give up a dime. She couldn’t even petition the court, because she didn’t have any money to hire a lawyer. And, in the end, what lawyer would represent her? She’d stiffed everyone she’d hired to represent her back in the beginning when Julie went after her following Larry’s death. What the hell was she supposed to do now?

“Look, birdbrain, there’s your mother-in-law’s house,” Adam said, thirty minutes later. “A house you’ll never see the inside of again,” Adam sneered. “Ah, look, she’s just pulling out of her driveway. Aren’t you going to say hello, Darlene?”

“Shut up, Adam.” She’d loved Julie’s house and the big dinners and the family parties. Julie had always had a birthday party for her, even though Julie didn’t really like her. Julie tolerated her because of Larry and Olivia. She’d never been unkind to Darlene, though, until Larry died. Deep in her gut, she couldn’t blame Julie; she should have called 9-1-1, but she would never admit to it.

Darlene was close enough to the truck to actually see the freckles on Julie’s face. How nice she looked, how calm and serene. Back in the day, she’d liked that about her, that nothing ever ruffled her. Darlene stopped, because she had nowhere else to walk; she waited for the oncoming traffic to abate so Julie could pull out onto the road. The windows were down in the truck, probably so Julie could see traffic better. She looked right through Darlene like she was invisible.

Darlene pushed past Adam and was about to put her face in the truck when Adam pulled her back. “You did it, you bitch! You happy now? I hope you rot in hell, you piece of shit!”

Julie looked at Darlene and smiled just as a break in traffic came. “Do I know you?” She was still smiling as she whizzed down the road.

“Do I know you? Do I know you?” Adam snarled. “She looked just like the cat that ate the canary. She did it, all right! Did you see that smile? She’s got you right where she wants you now. What are you going to do about it, Darlene? When are you going to wise up and do something to get back at her?”

“Will you just shut up? I can’t stand all your yacking. You’re making me sick.”

“I can’t stand you, either, so maybe we should just call it a day,” Adam snarled again.

Darlene hated the words she’d just heard. If Adam left her, she’d have no one but Olivia. She hated being alone. She needed people, she needed the chaos in her life. She didn’t mean to say it, but she said it anyway. “Whatever you want, Adam. I hope you are going to like living with that crazy-ass mother of yours in Kansas. You better hope they send you enough money for a bus ticket.”

Then she shut up as a vision of herself in an orange jumpsuit, being some convict’s prison bitch, flashed in front of her eyes. She thought she was going to puke her guts out right there on the side of the road. Darlene started to wail and snivel again, sweat covering her body as she trudged along beside Adam.

Darlene’s steps quickened the moment she set foot on her street. She looked all around, knowing that the neighbors, who hated the two of them, were watching her every move. They were probably all cheering that all the cars had been repoed and the kids had moved out. She knew the neighbors reported her every move to Julie Wyatt. She hated them as much as they hated her, because they let her know she didn’t belong and they didn’t want her in their pristine neighborhood. Darlene’s nude sunbathing and Adam’s kids’ drunken parties didn’t help matters, either, what with the police on the street at least twice a week.

Those same neighbors had loved Larry, though. When Larry was alive, they’d been invited to all the neighborhood Christmas parties, the backyard barbecues, the block parties. The kids in the neighborhood played with Ollie, and Darlene had even played golf and tennis with a few of them. They knew early on about her infidelity, because Larry had told them. The minute they set eyes on Darlene—with her bleached hair, the makeup she put on with a trowel, the sleazy outfits—it was all over. Ollie, not really understanding what was going on, told her that one of the neighbors had said Darlene had to go through a car wash to remove her makeup. Well, she had Botox now, and in her opinion, she looked fabulous.

Inside the house, Adam went right to the coffeepot. “Look, Darlene, give me your ring; we have to pawn it. Even as stupid as you are, you have to know it’s all we have going for us right now. Later, when this is all over, and we pin it on Julie, we’ll sue her ass off, and I’ll buy you an even bigger ring. Don’t fight me on this because, if you do, I will kill you right here and now.”

For the first time in her life, Darlene didn’t put up a fight, and she didn’t say a word. She removed the engagement ring Adam had bought her on credit back in the beginning and slapped it into the palm of his hand.

“You’ll be lucky if you get two thousand,” she sneered. “I told you I wanted a bigger diamond, but oh, no, you said this measly two-carat piece of shit was good enough for me. I bet you wish you had listened to me back then.”

“Why don’t you hock Larry’s rings, huh?”

“We’ve been over this before, Adam. One more time: because they go to Olivia when she’s old enough to appreciate them. It’s the least I can do for her.”

“Get the rest of your jewelry, the stuff you said Julie gave you. We need to sell it all or starve. I won’t tell you twice, Darlene.”