Page 17 of Bad Seed

With this bit of good news to go on, Larry disconnected and went back to work.

***

Justine needed to make peace with her father and the sooner, the better. But instead of using her cell, she used the landline in the room and punched in the number to his office.

Unaware it was Justine calling, Larry answered on the second ring.

“Hello, this is Larry.”

She took a loud, shuddering breath and turned on her little-girl voice…the one that sounded like she’d been crying.

“Daddy, I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. None of that will happen again, I swear.”

Larry sighed. “I’ve heard this before and you’ve reneged every time. I don’t have time for any more of your drama. I’m about to leave the office. I have a meeting with the event coordinator.”

“Fine. Be like that,” she snapped. “I’m going for a drive.”

“And I’ll see you at dinner,” he said, then disconnected and hurried out of the room.

Justine grabbed her key card, boarded the penthouse elevator, and headed back down to her father’s office. She needed a little information about Brendan Popeand knew it would be on the job form he filled out. She couldn’t get into her father’s computer, but there were hard copies in the files in the back room. It wouldn’t take long to get what she wanted there.

***

After Larry stormed out of the kitchen, Brendan went back to work, but it felt like he’d just gone ten rounds with Clyde Wallace. The only thing missing was the actual beating his father delivered afterward. The blowup with Larry Beaumont was long overdue, but it had done a number on Brendan, as fighting always did. He shut down.

He’d gone through all kinds of kitchen drama during his years in New York. He’d had asshole roommates, chefs that needed to be on Prozac, and had a thousand complaints and failures heaped upon him to get to the skill level he was today. He had confidence in his ability to make magic in the kitchen and was still searching for that one woman who felt like a keeper. But never in his life had he ever dealt with someone like Justine Beaumont. There was an odd glitch about her that went beyond her irrational behavior. Definitely the bad seed of that family. Something was definitely wrong with her, and he wanted out of her whirlpool of drama.

He guessed Larry lit into her good after his trip through the kitchen, but there was no way to know how she would react to being called down. His gut instinctwas that she was going to find a way to make him the scapegoat, but time would tell.

By the time he finally left the hotel that night, he was emotionally exhausted. He drove through the streets of Jubilee and thought of Alex Fallin and the little boy he’d found in the ditch, and imagined the mother’s relief when they were reunited. He knew from Wiley that Alex’s surgery had been successful and that the little boy had been reunited with his mother. It felt good to know he’d helped make that happen.

By the time he pulled up in his driveway, he’d turned loose of everything to do with the hotel. All he was thinking about was a hot shower and some downtime. He aimed the remote at his garage door, and as it was going up, he glanced over at his front door and thought he saw something taped to it. He pulled into the garage and got out. The garage door was lowering as he went through the house to the front door.

There was a note taped to the door that had been written with a black marker. He didn’t recognize the writing, but the message was both brief and angry.

I’LL MAKE YOU SORRY YOU WERE EVER BORN

The moment he read it, the hair crawled on the back of his neck. Justine Beaumont! It had to be her! But how did she know where he lived? And what did she mean by this threatening note? He knew she was capable of almost anything. What the hell would she do?

He took a picture of it still taped to the door, then got a plastic bag from the pantry, removed the note with a pair of tweezers, and dropped it in the bag. If this was how she was going to play it, he needed to start covering his ass and, starting today, report every uninvited move she made.

He ate supper standing up at the kitchen island, still stewing about all of the events of the day until good sense prompted him to let Liz Devon know what was happening.

He went to get his laptop, then sent her a detailed email, including the harassment he’d been putting up with from Justine and of how she’d been treating staff. He didn’t like the feeling of being a narc, but Liz was her father’s eyes and ears while he was still in recovery, and she needed to know what was happening, too.

After it was sent, he got ready for bed, set the alarm for his usual 4:00 a.m. wake-up, and crawled into bed.

***

Liz Devon didn’t think this day was ever going to be over, and then finally it ended. She didn’t even remember driving home until she was walking into the penthouse of Hotel Devon. The fact that she was married to the man who owned Serenity Inn’s biggest competitor had never been a conflict of interest for either of them, but her father’s heart attack and then the ensuing heart surgery had scared all of them. She was already worriedabout Larry Beaumont’s managerial skills at her dad’s hotel, and the meeting she’d had with Larry this afternoon only exacerbated it.

She still had a headache from the stress of the fight that had ensued and kept going over the incident, thinking if she’d been in the wrong.

It all began when Larry walked into her office without knocking, then sat down without so much as a greeting.

***

Liz was on the phone with Josie Fallin, discussing the upcoming event at the hotel and just learning that Josie’s brother was one of the passengers on the charter bus that crashed.

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