“Come and arrest my son, Joff,” he said, “before I kill his sorry ass.”
And when he said that, and he killed the call, tears welled up in his eyes, and he began to sob.
Jenay was blown away. Charlie crying like that? But she did not hesitate. She hurried to him, and pulled him into her arms.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The cab drove him from the airport to the Inn, and dropped him off at the front door. He paid the driver, grabbed his suitcase, and hurried inside.
“Good evening, Mr. Sinatra,” the cheerful desk clerk said.
“Hello, Rita. Has Miss Franklin knocked off for the day?”
“She was off today, sir.”
That surprised him. She wasn’t the type to take a day off. What prompted that? They weren’t exactly on great terms right now. But he didn’t discuss his concerns with any clerk. He took the elevator up to the VIP suite. He was just about to use his keycard, but decided to knock instead.
It had been three days since the police arrested Donald for beating his wife. Three days since the police refused to arrest him for what he did to his son. In the eyes of Jericho law enforcement, a man beating on a man was a fight. A man beating on a pregnant woman was a crime. Donald was arrested. And for the first time in Donald’s entire life, Charles didn’t come to his rescue. He was going to face the music this time. He had crossed the line.
It had also been three days since Jenay set him straight about any notions he had regarding shacking up. He left town, on business he had been neglecting for the past month, not only so he could give her a little breathing room, but he needed his space as well. He didn’t phone her, he didn’t check up on her. He kept his distance. He even, initially, questioned if he wanted to continue a relationship with her or anybody else at this time in his life. He didn’t like to be driven by emotions. He didn’t like to live like this.
But by the night of his first day away, he was missing her. By day two, he picked up the phone to call her and put it back down nearly ten different times. By day three, he had to see her. He even phoned her on his way in from the airport, but it went straight to her voice mail. Now he was desperate.
When she didn’t answer his knocks at the door of the VIP suite, he decided to use his master key and enter. He called her name, and walked around the suite, but she wasn’t there. Then a thought occurred to him. She had taken the day off, according to the clerk. He’d been gone for three days, which would have been ample time for her to leave him, if she wanted to. He hurried to the closet and flung the doors open. And to his horror, it was true. All of her belongings were gone. He looked through the drawers. They were empty too. He immediately picked up the telephone and called Bookkeeping. Meg answered.
“Jean is off today?” he asked her.
“Yes, sir,” she said into the phone.
“Then why did she clear out the VIP suite?”
“Oh.”
“Yes, oh.”
“I thought you knew, sir.”
“Knew what?”
“She moved.”
“To a different room?”
“No, sir. She moved out of the Inn and into her own place.”
Charles frowned. He couldn’t believe it. “When?”
“Yesterday, sir. She took today off so that she could get things organized.”
“Do you have her address, Meg?” he asked her.
“Yes, sir,” she responded.
“Give it to me,” Charles said, although his heart was a cross between concern, and outright rage.
To his surprise, his Jaguar was still parked at the Inn. Had she left him so completely that she refused to drive his car anymore, he wondered, as he got in it and drove off. He left his suitcase in the VIP suite. Despite the evidence, he still wasn’t ready to accept her departure.
But when he put her new address in his car’s navigation system, drove to the small cottage on Cornerstone Lane, and she answered the door as if she’d lived there for years, the realness of her decampment hit him hard.
When she saw that it was him, she stepped aside and allowed him passage in. It was obviously a furnished rental home, but he could tell she was cleaning it and still settling in.
“Hey.”
“Hey.” She closed the door.
“That your car?” he asked her. A used Ford was parked on her driveway.
She nodded. “Yes,” she said.
“A rental?”
“No, I bought it yesterday.”
“Oh yeah? From where? I own a car dealership, Jenay. If you were tired of driving the Jag, you could have told me so. You could have selected any car you wanted.”
“I know that, but I received the insurance check and saw this car in the paper. So I purchased it. It was a private sale. I got it for a really good deal.”