“That was different!” Even I could tell my words held little conviction.
“Was it?”
Dammit, he was right. I had been on a job for Denise Dobbs, but it wasn’t a private investigator job; it was as her petty personal assistant. Technically, what I had done could be construed as harassment. Technically. If someone wanted to waste a lot of time and money to take it to court, they could. Unfortunately, Denise’s husband struck me as one of those people who had time and money to burn.
Wait a minute. Somewhere in my law classes I had come across a handy phrase for what was going on here. “That’s a false equivalence. Any mistake I made does not excuse the mistakes you made. No one hired you to surveil me.Youdid not have ‘permissible purpose.’ Delete those pictures.”
“I wasn’t surveilling you. I was surveilling him.”
I thought about correcting him, but some instinct stopped me. If he wanted to believe I was sleeping with Trista’s husband, then so be it. Let him simmer in his own ignorance. If he tried to humiliate me with those pictures, then I could sue him.
But all this had to end now. “Ken, you don’t want to go down this road with me. I’m going to tell you once: The threats are over, the games are over, our relationship is over. If, however, you come for me or for my friends or my family, I won’t be petty. I will be vengeful.”
He laughed. He had the audacity to laugh at me. “Sure you will. I let you have the title because I do think you’re petty enough to call the IRS on me, but I guess ol’ Malone’s doing something right based on watching you last night. Too bad he’ll have moved on to another woman in three months like he always does.”
He’s not talking about your Malone.
No, but my Malone had built an expiration date into our relationship. He might still be a tomcat, but he wasn’t a cheater.
So far as I knew. Since my BS detector was on the fritz, what did I know about anything or anyone?
“Hey,” Ken was saying. “When he leaves, I’ll be here waiting. We’ll be even then. We can start over then.”
Ah, so that was his play. I’d caught him cheating. He thought he’d caught me “cheating.” This all came back to wanting someone to take care of him, his house, and his business after Eloise got smart a lot quicker than I did.
A laugh burbled up. “No.”
“What do you mean ‘no’? I signed the car over to you!”
“Sure did, because that’s the right thing to do, the fair thing to do. But you betrayed my trust, so we wouldn’t be ‘even.’ It doesn’t take a genius to see that the only reason you want me back is because I kept things running. I was the woman who did it all. I kept your house clean,andI kept your accounting straight, but here’s the funny part.”
“What’s the funny part?” Ken asked once it became obvious his participation in the conversation would be required.
“You’re not even that good of a private investigator.”
“What?”
“You heard me.” Time to try some rhetoric of my own with a redirect. “Whatever happened to Eloise anyway?”
That question wiped the smile off his face.
“We didn’t last a month. I proposed because she was a little skittish after you groped her, but then some friend of yours came and told her a bunch of lies about me.”
“Interesting.”
That had to have been Salcedo, but she’d never mentioned it.
“Not interesting. Horrible. She was ...” He closed his eyes, smiling wistfully. “So young and firm and—”
“Pliant.”
His eyes snapped open.
“Yes, Ken. Your secret is no secret to me. Somehow, you charm women into your bed, but what you really love is being the boss, directing their lives for them. Maybe what happened with us is that I was no longer a challenge. You beat me down until it wasn’t as much fun anymore to bend me to your will. I’m glad Eloise escaped your clutches.”
His mouth opened and closed, but he couldn’t manage anything other than “You take that back!”
“No,” I said. “I don’t believe I will.”
