Jennifer Johnson Is Sick of Being Married (30 page)

The man is a titan.

The first time we made love he went into his office and set one of the clocks to the exact time we started making love. “Seriously?” I arch an eyebrow at him.

“Hey, I mark all the momentous occasions in my life this way. Sorry, chief.” He chuckles. “But you count as momentous.”

My satellite phone rings one morning and I wrestle it out of the sheets. It's Ursula Henckles, from the esteemed law firm of Henckles, Luststerben & Grump. She took my divorce case on right before I left town. I haven't heard from her in months; the judge and lawyers have all been locked in tedious stalemates. It's all been quite boring, but her voice is a pleasant surprise.

“Miss Johnson,” she says. “There's been significant action on your case lately. I'll tell you now that we have to get through an oddity, an unpleasantness, and an indecency before we get to the fat sugar cube.”

“Pardon me?”

“It'll be a shitstorm for a while,” she says, “but you'll come out smiling. Okay?”

I say okay, mostly because I have no idea what she's talking about.

The Oddity

Ursula says when I filed for divorce, all my accounts, both personal and joint, were immediately frozen. So were Brad's. Whatever assets we had were frozen wherever they happened to be. All our money waits in big blocks of ice until some judge makes a verdict. That's the bad news. The good news is that all this endless waiting around with nobody being able to move any money allowed her financial forensics team to really dig in and hunt for things.

“And when we hunt for things, Miss Johnson, we find them.”

She says she found something very unusual in my account. Then she asks if I knew that Brad had been transferring stock into my name. I have no idea what she's talking about.

“Are you sure?” she says. “I can defend you if you tell me.”

“What stock?” I say. “Seriously? How?”

Apparently, her crackerjack financial forensics team uncovered Brad's illegal activity. He'd been hiding shares in my name almost the entire time we were married. He hid them under my duplicate social security number. The one I never use . . . the one I gave Emily. He wasn't alone; he had quite a few people helping him, including Todd and Mother Keller.

When I ask her why Brad or his mother would hide their own stock, she reminds me of the bylaws, which say no single family member is allowed to have controlling interest in the company. Nobody can hoard stocks in order to gain power. Brad was probably stashing away stocks to be used at a later date, like after he was president and had nominated enough new board members to change the bylaws. Once he did that, he could march out all his little hidden shares and take control of the company completely.

“Well, that explains Brad,” I say. “But why would Mother Keller hide stocks?”

“Good question. We believe there were plans for an impending hostile takeover.”

“Brad's?”

“I don't think so, and that brings us to . . . the unpleasantness.”

“Terrific.”

The Unpleasantness

“So,” she says. “Did you know your refrigerator was spying on you?”

“No . . . but I always thought the coffeemaker was stealing money.”

She's serious.

Ursula says our Ice Empress 3000 routinely videotaped us and recorded thousands of our conversations. It was being activated by remote satellite and transmitted everything it recorded to an unknown location.

I ask her, “Who would do such a thing?”

“The people who gave it to you, of course.”

The Japanese investment group. The ones who'd come to dinner. They'd been planning a hostile takeover and had been using the Ice Empress to spy on us for the past
year.
That's why they sent us a ten-thousand-dollar refrigerator. To spy on us. It was like a Trojan horse with a cheese-aging drawer. Ursula tells me that according to her sources, the Japanese investors were never planning on doing actual business with Brad, except by way of a hostile takeover. They undoubtedly came to dinner for reconnaissance purposes only—to make sure their spy fridge was working, to plant more listening devices, and to snoop around for sensitive documents.

“So
that's
why Ace was acting so weird! He kept barking, he wouldn't leave the top of the stairs. Someone must've been trying to snoop around up there and he stopped them! Well, bless your little three-legged butt, Ace!” Ace starts barking and I tousle his ears. “Man, what a dog! And people say I rescued him.”

“I wonder who else rescued you that night.”

“I don't know, but I nearly killed those men. I almost poisoned them with bad fish and then our chandelier came within inches of crushing them. I ran them out of the house in under half an hour. Plus there was no furniture on the first floor.”

“No? Why not?”

“Because my mother-in-law was hell-bent on ruining the dinner. She deliberately screwed up the catering and then had a steam-cleaning service pick up all my furniture hours before the party. I had no couches, no chairs, no dining room table . . .”

“Brilliant. Nowhere to put a listening device.”

“Pardon?”

“No furniture, no listening devices—and where was all the paperwork?”

“Paperwork? What paperwork?”

“Your office, filing cabinets. Financial papers. Where were they?”

“Well, that was all in Brad's office, but—”

“It was stripped clean too.”

“Um . . . yes.”

“You see, I think your mother-in-law somehow knew about the Japanese takeover. That's why she was hiding stocks and that's why she destroyed your dinner.”

“No, I'm pretty sure she just wanted to make me look stupid. It's her hobby.”

“If she just wanted to ruin dinner, why clear out Brad's office? Why remove paperwork? You see, I think her goal was to ruin not your plans . . . but theirs.”

“Um . . . No. You'd need to know her. She was definitely trying to ruin my dinner.”

“Didn't you say she always wanted to keep Keller's Department Store in the family?”

“Well, yes. Keeping Keller's in the family was like her prime objective in life, besides torturing me and having a not-gay grandchild.”

“So, wouldn't she naturally detest the idea of ‘foreigners' coming into her empire?”

“Detest? Um . . . That would be accurate.”

“You said she's always meddling in everyone's business. Isn't it possible she knew these Japanese businessmen were up to something? And if she did . . . look how brilliantly she foiled them. They could take nothing, because nothing was there to take. They could leave nothing for the same reason. They were uncomfortable, left early, and never came back. There was even a government official there to assist in their departure. Most amazing is that she orchestrated all this without anyone knowing she did. That takes skill. I wonder if she's CIA.”

I'm not fast to accept the idea . . . Is it possible she's right? I mean, what happened right after the Japanese were gone? We wound up with Christian investors that she met at church. That sounds like a Ma Keller plot if there ever was one. I'm suddenly flooded with conflicting emotions. What if this monster I hated had actually been trying to protect us, without our knowing about it? I hadn't even thought of the possibility. I was too blind with rage at her. One thing is certain: She is as brilliant as she is evil. I suddenly regret not getting to know her better. The real her. Whoever that is . . . underneath all those layers of shellac and chiffon. I wish she would have let me in on some of her evil plots. I'd make a very good sidekick for a villain, I think.

I certainly could have helped with her wardrobe.

Ursula tells me she must make one confession. It wasn't her computer forensics team that found the clues that led to this information. “It was not my men,” she says. “It was yours. I received an unscheduled visit from your maid last week. She did not have an appointment.”

“Bi'ch? She's my ex-maid.”

“She brought her grandchildren with her.”

“Star Fan and Pho? Was baby Pac Man there?”

“That is no baby, Mrs. Keller. I can assure you. Babies cannot run down the hall with a fire extinguisher. Anyway, they brought me the information about the Ice Empress.”

“It was Pho, wasn't it?”

“Yes. The Pho boy is most intelligent, and I do not like children.”

“No surprise there.”

She says Pho uncovered the code that revealed just how long the Ice Empress filmed us, which was apparently from the moment we plugged her in to the moment I unplugged her during book group. When I told Pho to reprogram her, the original espionage software was corrupted and she stopped filming us. Then when I asked Pho to reactivate her original voice, he rebooted her system, restarting her original programming, and the camera was reactivated. She says Pho was able to extract some very interesting video footage.

“Oh God,” I groan. “This is the indecency, isn't it?”

“Big-time,” she says.

The Indecency

“So . . . a video of what?” I ask, feeling queasy. “What was on it?”

“Miss Johnson?” she says. “We
caught
the sonofabitch!”

“Pardon?”

“Your husband! The video Pho brought me . . . it contains
concrete proof
that your husband was engaged in an affair. It is absolute, concrete proof!”

“Oh!” I sit down on the bed, suddenly winded. A dull aching hurt rises like a gray balloon in my stomach. Brad was cheating? I had somehow convinced myself that he hadn't been. Stupid, I know.

“We hit the jackpot!” Ursula says again gleefully. “We got him damn good!”

I ask her what's actually on the tape and she says the Ice Empress caught Brad and a brunette in stilettos having sex on the center island. “And, Miss Johnson,” she says, “not only is the footage time-stamped, the Ice Empress camera was perfectly aimed for
irrefutable
evidence that penetration did occur! This is a rare treat for me . . .”

“Oh, and for me too.”

“It means an airtight case, Miss Johnson. I've already contacted Brad's lawyers. God, how I love to hear grown men cry . . .”

I tell her I don't want to hear any more. I only have one more question.

“Do you know who the brunette was?”

She sighs and mutters something under her breath in German. “I do,” she says, and I'm just about to tell her I don't want to know when she says, “Miss Emily Goodhue.”

I pause. I chuckle. “Emily?
Cute Emily?
No, that's not possible, there must be some mistake. She would never . . . She's Todd's secretary. They worked together, that's all. She's the sweetest girl, so friendly!”

Ursula just sighs. “Can you hear yourself yet?”

“Yes. I can . . . but Emily . . . she was getting married!”

“Here we go. The nine-hour ‘This can't be true' marathon. I can do this with you if you don't mind being billed five hundred dollars an hour for it.”

“Isn't Emily getting married?”

“Well . . . yes. We have confirmation that Brad proposed to her.”

“She's marrying Brad?”

“I thought we would just rip that Band-Aid off fast. Now, I have very good news for you that we should move on to. Ready?”

“What are you talking about . . . Brad is marrying Emily?” I feel funny. Like I'm having a stroke. My heart races. I can't seem to puzzle out the words she just said, but the reptilian part of my brain has registered that something very bad just happened.

“Okay,” Ursula says. “Good riddance to bad rubbish . . . Right?”

“I—”

“Onward, Mrs. Keller!”

I'm actually grateful for her gruff tone. It reminds me to straighten my shoulders. Now is not the time to fall apart. Now is the time to keep calm and carry on. I'll fall apart later. In private. Probably after drinking a bathtub filled with cheap red wine. For now, in this moment, I must be brave. Get all the facts and assemble them. Not show my weakness. The truth is, my heart is breaking just a little . . . Possibly more for Emily than for myself.
“That poor girl . . .”
I whisper quietly.

“Exactly,” Ursula says. “Now, you want a fat sugar cube or not?”

“Yes.” I nod. “Please.”

“It's a fat one!” she says.

“I have . . . no idea how to take that.”

“It's actually one of the fattest sugar cubes I've ever seen.”

“Starting to get terrified.”

The Fat Sugar Cube

Ursula thinks I'll figure out what the fat sugar cube is before she even says it out loud. She generously offers to give me a Henckles, Luststerben & Grump beer koozie if I do.

She reviews everything we've already talked about. The fact that all Brad's and my assets were frozen wherever they happened to be when the judge froze them. The fact that this caught Brad off guard. The fact that he'd been putting large amounts of stock into my name without my knowing it . . . and logically therefore hoping I would not find out about it. He of course was hoping to get all the assets himself . . . but he has been unsuccessful.

Now there is new evidence against him . . .

Concrete evidence of a most damning nature.

“The video the Pho boy found changes everything,” she says. “It's a categorical violation of your prenup and because of this, negotiations are over.”

“Over?”

“Over,” she says. “Naughty boys get nothing and winner takes all. Get it?”

“Look, Ursula, I know you're waiting for me to put something together, but I have news for you: My nerves are a little shattered over here . . . I'm not completely over the unpleasantness and I'm
really
not over the indecency . . . and I'm about to pass out, because for all I know a ‘fat sugar cube' means something so awful it defies description.”