Separating Riches (13 page)

The first time I saw Melinda, I knew her as Blackie Blackstone, the billionairess with a fondness for drinking and carousing, and looking down on everyone. I had always thought that her reputation for being a bad girl was just media hype, played up to sell newspapers. But when she threw her eggs back at me and talked to me like I was a dog, and in the third person no less, I knew it was true. It was at the end of my shift working as a waitress in a hovel of a restaurant, and I’d been running crazy trying to take care of a bus load of tourists, when in walks this incredibly sensual, beautiful woman in black leather. She carried herself as if we should all bow and allow her to walk on our backs, lest her feet touch the ground. It’s laughable now, but then, it was infuriating and her beauty notwithstanding, I put her in her place. I lost my job because of it, but as it turned out, I gained the love of my life.

And now, we’re finished. It’s over with.
Damn it! How could she do this to me?

Chapter Eleven

What Have I Done? — Melinda
Blackstone-Livingston
, Norma Shelby
and George Kirk

I woke up feeling heavy and sluggish. I thought maybe I was coming down with a cold, so I made a mental note to eat an apple at breakfast. I rolled over and stretched my arm across the bed to pull Chris into me for our morning hug. She wasn’t there.
Damn, I hate waking up alone.
She probably woke early and went down to have coffee with Norma.

Sitting up to get out of bed, my head began pounding, like someone was hitting it with a sledgehammer.
This is no cold coming on.
I had to lean back against the headboard for a moment to calm my head and clear my vision. The pounding behind my eyes reminded me of a hangover, but for this kind of pain I would have had to down a bottle of the hard stuff, and I knew that I hadn’t been drinking. I hadn’t had hard liquor since I met Chris. Thinking maybe a shower would help, I stumbled into the bathroom and turned on the hot water. As I started to undress, I realized I was wearing pajamas.
What’s going on here?
I don’t wear pajamas. I don’t wear anything at all in bed because clothes just slow me down.

Everything felt strange, off balance, and I had a sudden urge to run and find Chris. She could settle my mind and take away the dread that was beginning to swell in the pit of my stomach. The shower did soothe my pounding head, but I didn’t linger long. I thought I heard a noise and hoped that Chris had come to wake me up in her special way. One time she had brought me to orgasm with just her kiss.
Find her!
I turned off the water and stepped out of the bathroom, not bothering to towel off.

“Chris!” I shouted, expecting to find her in the bedroom. There was no one there.

Standing there naked beside our bed, the pounding in my head came back. I sloshed over to the closet and slipped on jeans and a black T-shirt. Grabbing my cellphone and billfold, I hurried down the stairs, tripping on the last step and nearly falling on my ass.

“Chris?” I called, as I ran into the dining room. But the only people there were George, Norma and Charlotte. “Good morning. Has anyone seen Chris?” I asked, shaking from a sudden chill that ran up my spine.
Why isn’t Chris here?

Norma looked up at me, and I could see the worry in her eyes. “Sit down, dear.”

The tone in her voice cut me like a knife. “No, thank you. I don’t want to sit, I want to find Chris. Where is she?”

“Blackie, you’d better sit down,” George advised. He nodded at Charlotte and she left the room, closing the door behind her.

Something is wrong. Horribly wrong.
“No, damn it!” I yelled. “What’s happened to Chris? Oh, God. Is she hurt?” Panic constricted my throat as tears spilled involuntarily from my eyes.

“No! No, she’s all right,” George said, jumping up from his seat. He put his hand on my shoulder. “She flew back to Memphis yesterday.”

“Memphis? Why?” I asked, and then had a dreadful thought. “Is it her parents, are they hurt? For God’s sake, someone, just tell me what’s going on!”

Norma walked over and put her hand on my arm. She squeezed it tight and looked at me. “Melinda, sit down this instant,” she demanded, as a mother would demand of a child.

I sat down, bracing for the worst. George went over to the breakfast counter and brought back a can of soda, which he opened and poured into my glass. That was my coffee in the mornings because I never liked the taste of coffee, even with five spoons of sugar in it. But I didn’t care about a fucking soda at the moment. I needed to know where Chris was.

“Blackie, you’ve been asleep for over sixteen hours. Do you remember yesterday at all?” George asked.

“Yesterday? I don’t give a shit about yesterday. Tell me why Chris is in Memphis?” I demanded. I was about to jump out of my skin with all these questions. Why wouldn’t they just tell me?

Norma put her hand on my arm again and shook it until I looked at her.

“Chris has left you, Melinda. She has gone home to her parents.”

I heard a scream. A loud, piercing scream, pushing up from deep in my stomach. It reverberated inside my heart, but never escaped to my lips. But I heard it, and felt the pain behind it.
Chris has left you, Melinda.

“Left me? No, she wouldn’t. I don’t understand?” I yanked out my cellphone and held it to my mouth. “Call Chris,” I said, and waited anxiously for the connection to be made. It rang once and then the line was dropped. Did the satellite drop it, or had Chris?

“Blackie, she found you with another woman,” George said. “She said your head was in someone else’s boobs.”

Jumping up, I screamed, “No! Not true! I love Chris. I would never—”

“Why would Chris lie about a thing like that?” Norma asked without inflection.

“I don’t know!” I cried.
Chris has left you, Melinda.
“She wouldn’t lie, but I know that I wasn’t with another woman.”

“You weren’t with a woman at the pizza parlor yesterday?” George questioned me like a cop at an interrogation.

“A woman? Yes! I remember seeing someone I know, but, I, uh…” I shook my head.

George looked at Norma, and then back at me. “What’s the last thing you remember, Blackie?”

“I… I remember leaving the registrar’s office and going to the pizza parlor that I used to hang out in as a student.” That memory was perfectly clear and I envisioned myself walking into the restaurant, but that’s when the picture lost focus.

“And what happened there?” Norma asked.

“I, uh, I can’t remember.”
Why couldn’t I remember?

Again George looked at Norma. I could see it in their eyes. They didn’t believe me.
Why won’t they believe me?
They were beginning to piss me off.

“Look, I’m not lying, I don’t remember. Please, tell me how Chris is,” I begged, needing to connect with her in any way possible.

“Let me tell you what we know and maybe you’ll understand better what Chris is feeling right now,” George said. “You were brought home by taxi, and the driver helped Charlotte carry you upstairs, where Charlotte dressed you and put you to bed.”

“That explains the pajamas, I guess,” I said, trying to squeeze the memory from my frozen brain.

“Chris called me just as the taxi pulled up with you in it,” Norma explained. “She told me what happened, how she found you in the arms of another woman, and—”

“No! Damn it! I told you that didn’t happen!” I couldn’t understand why they were ganging up on me. I did not do the things they claimed I did.

“Melinda, we are just telling you what Chris told us. Do you want to hear the rest or not?” Norma asked in a stern voice.

I nodded, and sat back down, terrified of what she was going to say next. I could feel the disappointment in Norma’s voice and it broke my heart. I had to make her believe me, but how?

George picked up the story next. “Chris said there was an empty bottle of whisky beside you, and that you reeked of liquor. She said the woman, whom she thought was a prostitute, asked if she wanted to join you, and that’s when Chris left. But then she changed her mind and came back, and you were passed out on the pool table, and the woman was gone. Chris put you in a cab and sent you home. Then she boarded a plane for Memphis.”

“Please, you have to believe me. I don’t remember any of that,” I groveled, ready to beg if necessary.

“Then tell us what you do remember,” George said in a non-accusatorial way.

“I went to the pizza parlor as a nostalgia thing. When I was in college that was the place to hang out because it was off campus and would serve drinks if you had an ID. It wasn’t the kind of place that looked closely at the ID, especially if you held a twenty dollar bill behind it. But I had no intention of drinking. Like I did in my freshman year, I offered to buy everyone’s lunch. The kids got a real kick out of it. Then I went to the bar and ordered a beer. But I assure you, I stopped after the second beer because I had promised Chris that I wouldn’t drink more than two. And I didn’t, I swear it. Just as I was paying the tab, the bartender handed me another glass of beer, pointing at someone behind me, who had ordered it for me. When I turned to see who it was, I realized that I knew her.”

“Who was it, Blackie?” George asked.

“It was a girl I dated back in college.”

George cocked his head. “Can you describe what she looked like?”

“The same as she did in college, pink hair, big boobs, and… shit! Was that…”
Oh, God!
“Was that who Chris saw me with?”

“Yes, she said that the woman had pink hair and looked like a prostitute,” George stated, shaking his head. “It’s the same woman, Blackie.”

“No, it can’t be. I only said hello to her and she asked me how I was. I remember sitting down across from her in a booth, and we chatted for a couple of minutes. And then I got Chris’ text to come pick her up… but…” I turned my head, trying to catch the memories that were alluding me. “I can’t remember what happened next.”

“Did you eat or drink anything while you were with her?” George questioned.

“I remember her perfume was choking me, so she offered me her glass of tea.” I turned to Norma, who looked at me as if I were guilty. At least that’s what my frayed mind saw. “Norma, please, you have to believe me. I did not get drunk and I did not make out with that woman. I love Chris. I would never do that to her. It’d be like sticking a knife in my heart.”

“Melinda, dear,” she said in that comforting voice of hers. “I do believe you.”

My voiced trembled with relief. “You… you do?”

“Yes, I do,” she said. “Not even your alter-ego, Blackie Blackstone, would betray someone she loved like that.”

“Oh, my God, thank you,” I cried, jumping up to hug her.

“I believe you, too, Blackie. I think you were—”

I ran to George and hugged him next, completely out of character for me, but their belief in me meant everything. “No one has ever had such faith in me as you two do,” I said, sitting back down. “No one except Chris, that is. How can I convince her that what she saw wasn’t me when I don’t remember any of it?”

“Ahem. As I was saying,” George interrupted my ramblings. “I think someone slipped you a roofie.”

“A roofie? What’s that, George?” Norma asked.

“A roofie. That would explain everything,” I mumbled to myself. “Why the hell would someone do that to me?”

“Norma, a roofie is a drug called Rohypnol and it’s used in date rapes,” George explained.

Oh, my, God. Was I raped?
I shook my head.
No, I’d feel it if I had been… right?

“It renders the subject semi-conscious, and unable to resist, yet seminally aware. But the drug leaves the person with no memory, as is the case with Blackie.”

“That would explain everything, but it doesn’t explain why someone would do that to me. Tori, that’s her name, Tori Wilson, and I used to have wild sex wherever we felt like it, and she preferred me conscious when we did. I can’t believe she would do something like that. Not the Tori I remember.”

“Well, if you’re going to convince Chris that she didn’t see what she thought she did, you’ll need proof,” George stated. “I think you should call your detective friend. She can get to the bottom of all this.”

“Call Meg? No, she’s Chris’ friend, and she won’t believe me. She hates me.”

“All the more reason to call her, dear. Chris will believe your story if it comes from Meg.”

I looked at Norma and nodded. I knew she was right, I just didn’t want to face Meg, who could be a real hard ass when it came to Chris. She believes that everyone is guilty until proven innocent. And I’m innocent. Someone is trying to discredit me in my wife’s eyes and damn it, I’m not going to let that happen.

Groveling at Your Feet — Melinda Blackstone-Livingston,
Meg Bumgartner, Norma Shelby
and
George Kirk

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Meg asked angrily.

At George’s suggestion, I called Meg and asked her if she would Skype with me. Apparently it was still early in the morning, and I think I may have woken her up, which was strike number one. It couldn’t be helped. I needed her to fly out here and help me clear my name. But first, I had to get her to listen to me.

“Would I be groveling at your fucking feet if I were fucking kidding you?” That wasn’t the way I wanted to ask for her help, but she has always had a way of bringing out the worst in me.

“Chrissie finds you with another woman and you’re only lame excuse is that you don’t remember it?”

I could hear the sarcasm dripping from her words.

“Are you listening to me? Someone is setting me up and I don’t know why. No, I don’t remember what happened. I don’t remember being in that pool room or on that pool table with another woman. I love Chris too much to do something as disgusting as that. I would never hurt her like that.”

George jumped in and added his reasoning behind my memory loss. “Meg, I believe her. Blackie has done some questionable things in her life—”