Ladies' Night (43 page)

“That’s correct, Judge,” Nelson said finally. “I was in the army. Fifth Infantry. Did two tours, managed to get home in one piece. How about you?”

“Er, no,” Stackpole said. “I like to think that my time in the judiciary is of some small benefit to my community. But I thank you for your service to this great country.”

“You’re welcome,” Nelson said. “I got drafted, so it wasn’t like I had a choice or anything.”

Stackpole looked at Nelson over the rim of his glasses. “I understand you had some kind of verbal altercation recently with your daughter-in-law?”

“Altercation’s a big word for what we had,” Nelson replied calmly.

“Your daughter-in-law is saying that you did use strong language in your conversation with her. In fact, she says you actually threatened her. Did your grandson hear you making threats against his mother, hear you using strong language?”

“I reckon he did,” Nelson said, his chin dropping. “I’m ashamed of that, Judge. Ashamed I let her get me riled up like that. And I’m here to promise, I won’t let her get my goat again. No sir.”

Betsy Entwhistle cleared her voice. “Judge? If I may?”

Stackpole gave her a curt nod.

“I’d just like to point out that Mrs. Keeler is not charging that Nelson Keeler has ever neglected or in any way harmed his grandson. Because he hasn’t, and he wouldn’t. And if you’ve read Dr. Shank’s report, you can see that Mrs. Keeler’s assertion that Nelson is suffering from dementia or the onset of Alzheimer’s disease is totally untrue.”

Betsy took a deep breath. “Dr. Shank is waiting on the rest of the test results, but she believes Mr. Keeler’s occasional, er, bellicosity, could be simply the result of low blood sugar. In fact, she’s suggested that Nelson Keeler might be suffering from diabetes, which could be responsible for all these symptoms Mrs. Keeler seems to want to believe are Alzheimer’s.”

The judge glanced over at Nelson Keeler and considered the old man sitting in the armchair across from him.

Nelson’s thinning gray hair was neatly trimmed and combed. He wore a pair of navy dress pants, a white dress shirt that he hadn’t donned since his late wife’s funeral, and a pair of well-polished black lace-up dress shoes.

“I’m not senile,” Nelson volunteered. “There is nothing in the world wrong with me, except maybe a little sugar diabetes, and I told the doctor I’d get that checked out and lay off the Pop-Tarts.”

“You do that,” Stackpole said finally. He closed the file folder. “I’m going to tell Mrs. Keeler and her lawyer that for now, I agree with your Dr. Shank. It appears to me that you have all your mental faculties and that you pose no threat at all to your grandson.”

“Good!” Nelson exclaimed. He pulled himself to a standing position and extended a hand to the judge, who took it, somewhat reluctantly.

“Judge,” Betsy said hurriedly. “This is the second time in as many weeks that Mrs. Keeler and her attorney have launched one of these baseless attacks on my client and his father. I hope this will reinforce our argument that it is not in Bo’s best interest for you to allow his mother to move her son out of state and away from his father’s care.”

“You’ve made your point, Ms. Entwhistle,” Stackpole said. “I’ll take it under advisement.”

*   *   *

Camryn Nobles was sitting at their regular corner table at the Sandbox, with Rochelle seated right across from her, their heads nearly touching, deep in conversation.

Grace dropped down into a chair beside her mother. “I’m starved,” she announced. “What’s the lunch special?”

“Shrimp burger, tuna melt, gazpacho,” Rochelle said.

“Gazpacho?” Grace raised one eyebrow askance.

“My produce supplier gave me a whole bushel of tomatoes with bad spots, for next to nothing,” Rochelle said. “Do you have something against gazpacho?”

“I love gazpacho,” Camryn said. “Unless it’s got green peppers, which don’t agree with me.”

“This recipe is straight off Grace’s Web site,” Rochelle said. “No green peppers. Cucumbers, garlic, cilantro…”

“You read my blog?”

“When it’s interesting, which I occasionally find it is,” Rochelle said.

“You bought cilantro?” Grace’s second interruption was a clear annoyance to her mother.

“Yes,” Rochelle said. “And I peeled the cucumbers, just as your recipe specified, for your information. With, I might add, a garnish of diced avocado and shrimp. Now, is there anything else?”

“No,” Grace said, somewhat meekly.

“Would you like a bowl of gazpacho?”

“Yes, please,” Grace and Camryn said in unison.

When they’d spooned up the last traces of cold soup and drained their iced tea glasses, Grace and Camryn sat back in their chairs.

“That was pretty damned good,” Camryn said with a sigh.

“Better than my original recipe,” Grace admitted. “But she’ll never tell me how she changed it.”

“Mothers,” Camryn said, in unspoken agreement.

“Yeah,” Grace said. “Now. What kind of dirt did you dig up on Stackpole?”

Camryn reached for her Yves St. Laurent tote bag and extracted a sheaf of computer printouts.

“Judge Cedric N. Stackpole Jr.” she said, with a flourish, “is in debt up to his pointy little ears.”

Grace rubbed her hands together gleefully. “Oooh. Goody. Do tell.”

“This is a list of bank-foreclosed properties I pulled from the county’s Web site,” Camryn said, tapping a fingernail on the first sheet of paper on the stack. She ran her finger down the columns of tiny print and then jabbed one line, highlighted with a yellow marker.

“See here? 1454 Altadora Way, unit C. Siesta Key.” Her finger trailed down the page until it stopped at another yellow-highlighted line of print. “1454 Altadora Way, unit B.” Grace’s eyes skipped down to the next line, which she read aloud.

“1463 Altadora Circle, unit A. But the mortgage holder is listed as Solomon Holdings,” Grace said, squinting at the fine print.

“Solomon, as in, wise King Solomon, biblical judge,” Camryn said, deadpan. “I looked it up. C. N. Stackpole is the sole corporate officer of Solomon Holdings. And then I took a ride over to Altadora Commons. It’s a development of new town houses not far from his address on Longboat Key. I’ll tell you a funny coincidence. I didn’t realize it until I pulled up in front of the complex, but I actually looked at one of those town houses with my real estate agent, right after I kicked Dexter out of the house. Prices aren’t bad, for Siesta, the unit I looked at was a resale, and they only wanted 575,000 dollars, but it was still way too pricey for my budget, and besides, I didn’t like the floorplan.”

Camryn leafed through the pages of documents until she found one she wanted, a computer printout of a real estate listing for Altadora Commons. The picture showed a series of tasteful cream stucco two-story town houses with orange stucco barrel-tile roofs, and a not-so-tasteful billboard seemingly mushrooming from a postage-stamp-sized lawn that proclaimed, “Bank Owned. Prestige Homes at Distressed Prices!”

“Wow. And Stackpole owns three of these?”

“Judge Stackpole? Your divorce judge?” Rochelle had come up behind them while they were studying the printouts. She leaned over Camryn’s shoulder, staring at the photo of Altadora Commons.

“That’s right,” Camryn told her. “According to my real estate agent, the original sales price, back in 2007, was between 875,000 and 1.6 million dollars for the biggest units, which were actually two town houses joined together. Then, well, you know what happened to real estate around here. You couldn’t give a town house away. Stackpole bought three units from the developer, at what looked like fire-sale prices, in 2010. He paid 420,000 dollars apiece. Which would have been a great deal…”

“Except?” Grace asked.

“Except that the county’s tax digest was reworked in 2011, and now those units are only appraised at 120,000 apiece,” Camryn said, sounding absolutely elated. “He’s underwater, in a major way.”

“But he can’t be broke,” Grace objected. “He lives at Longboat Key, and you told us his wife’s family has gobs of money.”

“The wife’s family has money. Stackpole doesn’t have squat,” Camryn said. “I checked. The house is in her name. And incidentally? It’s apparently a lot bigger than it looks from the street. It’s on the market for 3.2 million.”

Rochelle had eased herself onto a chair. “Bring me up to speed here, Camryn. What does any of this mean to you and Grace?”

“It’s just a wild theory we’ve been tossing back and forth,” Grace cautioned.

“It’s not a wild theory,” Camryn said, tapping the documents on the table. “These printouts prove it. Stackpole’s in debt. His wife has money, but he probably can’t touch it. He’s having an affair with Paula Talbott-Sinclair, and one of them comes up with the idea to mandate women going through his divorce court to seek counseling from Paula, his girlfriend. She gets to soak each of us three hundred dollars per session, for a total of six sessions. There are five people in our group alone, and on the one day I watched her office, I saw three other groups arriving for divorce counseling. Do the math, Grace. They’re getting rich off our misery.”

“You should do a story about this on the news,” Rochelle said excitedly. “Blow the lid off the whole big scam.”

“I intend to,” Camryn said.

“Isn’t it a conflict of interest for you to report on a story you’re involved in?” Grace asked.

“It’d be a first-person piece,” Camryn said. “And if the story’s big enough, I don’t see how my station manager can turn it down.”

“Look, I’d love it if we could prove those two were in cahoots,” Grace said. “But I talked to Mitzi about this yesterday. Even if you did see all those people going into Paula’s office, how do you know they didn’t go there of their own free will?”

“Can’t you just ask her other patients whether or not Stackpole ordered them to attend therapy with her?” Rochelle asked.

“I wish,” Camryn said. “I told you I hung around outside Paula’s office last Friday. What I didn’t tell you was that she apparently saw me standing there in the parking lot. She came outside and asked me what I was doing! I made up some lame story about looking for a diamond earring I’d dropped Wednesday night but I think she realized there was something fishy going on.”

“Mitzi did say she’d take a look at Stackpole’s dockets and talk to any attorneys she knows that have had divorce cases before him,” Grace said.

“But who knows how long that will take?” Rochelle demanded. “We need action!”

Grace gave her mother the look. “What kind of action would you suggest?”

Rochelle thought. She smiled. She walked away from the table, and when she returned, she brought a handful of flyers, which she offered to Grace.

Come play in the Sandbox. Good for one free appetizer or drink

“I remember these. Dad hired kids to put them on car windshields at the new Publix, right after it opened.”

“Until I made him stop, because we were nearly run out of business, giving away all those free drinks and stuffed potato skins,” Rochelle said.

“So?” Grace asked. “Am I missing something?”

“I’m not. Rochelle, if you ever get tired of running this bar, you might have a future as an investigative reporter. This,” Camryn said admiringly, “is brilliant.”

“I still don’t get it,” Grace said, looking from one woman to the other.

“It’s simple,” Rochelle said. “Tomorrow morning, I go over to Paula’s office. I watch cars pulling up and pay attention to who goes inside. Then, I plaster these coupons all over their windshields. When they bring in the coupons for their freebies, you two swoop in and ask them what you need to know.”

“And how do you know they’ll use the coupons? Or when they’ll use them?” Grace asked.

“I’ll just write on the bottom of each coupon that the deal’s good for one day only,” Rochelle said. “Trust me. Nobody turns down a free drink in this town.”

46

Paula Talbott-Sinclair clasped her hands together prayerfully as she stood in the front of the room. She took a deep breath and let it out so s-l-o-w-l-y that the members of the group all subconsciously held their own breaths, wondering what would happen next.

“Hi friends.” Her voice was clear and unusually calm. “I want to start our session tonight by talking about personal responsibility.” She looked around the room. “All of you are here, in a way, because you were forced to take personal responsibility for some action you took against your partner.”

“Ashleigh, you were stalking your husband’s new lover. You vandalized her home in what was a very terrifying and thoughtless act of vengeance.

“Wyatt, you punched out the window of your wife’s boyfriend’s car so violently that you smashed his window and injured your own hand.

“Grace, you deliberately drove your husband’s car into a swimming pool and destroyed it.

“Camryn, you discovered a provocative and salacious video of your husband and put it on YouTube, thus exposing him to public ridicule and humiliation.”

Paula nodded at Suzanne. “Suzanne, we’ve all been very patient, waiting for you to admit to us the actions you took that caused you to join this group. Because I’m such a strong believer in personal responsibility, I’ve been reluctant to force your hand. Up until now.”

Suzanne lifted her chin. “I’m ready, Paula. I want to tell the group…”

“Are you sure?”

“No,” Suzanne said, with a nervous laugh. “I’ll never be ready. But I’m willing, and that’s the best I can do.”

*   *   *

“Did I tell you all that Eric, my husband, is also a professor at Ringling?” Suzanne didn’t wait for a reply. “He’s in the English department, too. Anyway, I discovered, by accident, that he was sleeping with a co-worker, a woman who’d been my grad assistant last year.”

“How’d you figure it out?” Ashleigh asked.

Suzanne’s smile was wry. “Modern technology. Eric had gone out for a run. I was doing the laundry and found his phone in the pocket of his pants. As I was putting it on the counter, it pinged, and I saw he’d gotten a text. Darby was at soccer practice, and she was supposed to text one of us to let us know she was on her way home. I just assumed the text would be from her, so I read it. It wasn’t from Darby. It was from her.”