A Gift of Time (The Nine Minutes Trilogy Book 3) (5 page)

I knew he
was teasing about my overdressed state and laughed along with him. Lunch was
pleasant and friendly until it turned serious.

Alec
confided that Paulina had left him and the boys. She hadn’t been happy for
years and had been on a series of antidepressants.

“I guess she
just couldn’t find her happy place.” His normally cheerful expression looked
downright melancholy. “I think she was looking for it in all the wrong things.
You know what I mean, Gin?”

“No.” I
frowned. “What do you mean ‘the wrong things’—the medication?”

“She thought
happiness could be bought. New car, bigger house. When that didn’t make her
happy, she thought children would be the answer. They only depressed her more
and gave her a sense of responsibility she didn’t want. You had to have sensed
it, Ginny. I’ve seen you with your children. They’re your life. Paulina
considers our children the end of hers.”

“Oh, Alec,
I’m just so sorry. Tommy hadn’t said anything to me. And I guess you probably
know we were having some problems of our own.”

I looked
away uncomfortably, not knowing how much, if anything, Tommy had told Alec.

“Don’t be
sorry. I haven’t told him a lot. I knew you two were dealing with some issues
of your own, and I didn’t want to burden him.”

“So where is
she? Does she come around to see the boys? Are you on friendly terms?”

I was
curious about their situation but also trying to turn the conversation away
from my and Tommy’s recent problems, subconsciously kicking myself for
mentioning it in the first place.

“She’s out
‘finding herself.’” His voice was casual, and he was momentarily distracted as
he handed the waitress his credit card.

“So there’s
a chance she’ll find herself or whatever it is she’s looking for and come back
to you, then. Right?” I had to be careful how I tread here. It wasn’t too long
ago that I’d left Tommy to do some thinking of my own. I was reminded of a
Bible verse: Judge not lest thou be judged.

He looked
down. “I’d take her back, but she’s never coming back.” The waitress returned,
and he signed the receipt.

Before I
could decide whether or not it was polite to ask why, he answered my question
for me. “She’s out finding herself with her yoga instructor.”

I was
shocked—another man was involved. I had to admit I was surprised. I
couldn’t imagine Paulina finding a man who could come close to replacing Alec.
In my opinion, he seemed to be the epitome of everything a woman could want.
But I didn’t live inside their marriage and had no right to speculate, I
quickly reminded myself.

“Have you
met him? Do you know his name or anything?”

“Yes, I have
met him,” Alec said drily. “He’s a she, and her name is Sherry.”

I didn’t
know what to say so I didn’t say anything. I’m sure I just stared at Alec with
my mouth open.

He smiled
warmly at me then. “We need to get back to the office so you can see Tom and
then meet your client.”

I looked at
my watch and realized we’d been eating lunch for over two hours. Where had the
time gone?

“Oh, no! I
won’t have time to see him. I have to get going so I can be home when Jason
gets off the school bus.”

“I’m sorry,
Ginny. I hadn’t realized the time either. I hope this doesn’t look bad for that
client you were supposed to meet.” He looked at me with a knowing expression, a
playful smile on his lips.

I gave him a
sideways smile. “You and I both know there’s no client, so stop being a
smart-aleck.”

We both
laughed at my pun. His eyes grew serious then.

“I hope Tom
appreciates what he has. You are definitely a rare gem, Ginny.”

There was
something in his look and the way he said it that sent a small thrill through
me, but I told myself it was nothing. What forty-something woman doesn’t want
to hear herself compared to jewels?

I brushed it
off as lighthearted banter between two friends and let him walk me out to my
car.

After
hastily dropping Alec off in the parking lot at Dillon & Davis Architects,
I sped home as fast as I could so I could change into clothes that wouldn’t
have my son questioning where I’d been.

I’d have to
surprise Tommy another time.

Chapter Eight

Mimi

1997,
Fort Lauderdale

Mimi told herself
if the safe didn’t open on the third try,
she’d just have to ask her parents for a copy of their marriage certificate.
But she really didn’t want to do that. Her heart was set on surprising them,
and they would know something was up if she asked to see it. Not just see
it—she’d have to borrow it to have the plaque made.

She sat
cross-legged on the floor and breathed a sigh of relief when she heard the
telltale click of the safe releasing. She turned the handle slightly and
tugged. There was a suction that grabbed for a split second, but gave way when
she applied more force.

After seeing
its contents, she hesitated. She sat up straight and resolved to handle this as
professionally and maturely as possible. After all, she was almost a teenager.
If you want to be an investigator, Mimi, you’re going to have to probably see
things worse than this. She memorized how everything looked so she could be
sure to put things back exactly as she found them.

Inside the
safe were some dark tan envelopes stacked on top of each other. She was certain
they contained what she was looking for. But it was what was on top of them
that had her swallowing hard. Two handguns and several stacks of cash.

She tried
not to think about why her father had guns and cash. It was probably something
all fathers kept hidden away from their families. He was their protector, and
he was responsible enough to keep the guns locked away where a child couldn’t
get to them. And the cash she was certain was for emergencies. There were also
some small boxes, she realized. Probably some of Mom’s more expensive jewelry.

With
surprisingly steady hands, she removed the guns one by one and set them to the
side. She did the same with the cash and small boxes. She reached in for the
first envelope and smiled when she noticed her brother’s name written on the
front. Jason. The one below it had her name written on it. She set them both
down.

The final
envelope didn’t have anything written on it. It was thicker than the other two.
She turned it over in her hands and decided to undo the clasp. She opened it
and pulled out the stack of papers. There was a large cluster held together
with a big paperclip. It looked like the deed to the house. She fanned through
the rest and saw what she thought were life insurance policies. There was a
Last Will and Testament with both of her parents’ names.

It has to be
in here somewhere. She rifled through the papers, found her parents’ birth
certificates and laid them aside.

“Found you!”
she exclaimed out loud as she saw the marriage certificate. She held it
carefully and read slowly.

Her smile
faded when she got to the date. According to this document, her parents’
anniversary was off by almost two months. This can’t be right. Unless...

No. Not her
parents. Especially not her mother. There was no way her mother was pregnant
with her before she married her father.

Mimi let out
a sigh, her shoulders slumping. So her parents weren’t perfect. That was okay.
It might’ve even been a bit of a relief. They got married and stayed married,
and that was more than she could say for a lot of her friends’ parents.
Unfortunately, she wouldn’t be able to surprise them with a silver-plated
marriage certificate without letting them know she knew their secret. She
harrumphed out loud when she realized her surprise wouldn’t have worked anyway.
They would surely know where she’d found their marriage certificate—and
they’d know what kind of snooping she’d have done to find it.

“Sometimes
you don’t think, Mimi,” she said aloud.

Carefully,
she put everything back in the envelope, closed the clasp, and laid it at the
bottom of her father’s safe. She reached for the envelope with her own name and
started to put it away, but stopped herself. What kind of things were her
parents keeping for her? She’d come this far. What was a little more
investigating going to hurt?

She undid
the envelope and pulled out the contents. The first item gave her pause. It was
the deed to a house. It looked like the same type of paperwork she’d seen in
her parents’ envelope, except this deed was in her name. Miriam Ruth Dillon.
And the address on the paperwork was in the Shady Ranches subdivision. She
recognized the address immediately. Why was her name on the deed to Uncle Bill
and Aunt Carter’s house?

She shuffled
through her immunization records and First Holy Communion and Confirmation
certificates, then came to her own birth certificate. She smiled to herself as
she held the document and realized she really didn’t care if her parents
weren’t married when she was conceived. One thing she knew for
certain—she was a baby made out of pure and sheer love. She sometimes
watched how her parents looked at each other, and it was obvious even to a
twelve-year-old how completely devoted they were. Their little secret was safe
with her.

She picked
the stack of papers up and shuffled them, banging them slightly against her
knee to straighten them so she could fit them back into the envelope neatly,
when a smaller white envelope fell out and landed on her lap. She picked it up
and studied it. It was sealed and didn’t have anything written on the outside.
What could this be?

Carefully,
she broke the seal. It was so old that it came loose easily. She took out the
paper folded up inside and squinted as she tried to understand what she was
seeing.

It was her
birth certificate. Again. Wait, hadn’t she already seen this? Why was there
another copy folded away in an unmarked envelope? This was identical to the one
she’d just read, so why...

Her eyes
widened. Was she reading this right? There must be some mistake. This was her
name—well, part of her name. They got her first and middle name right,
but not her last name. Her birthday was correct. Her mother’s name was clearly
written. Guinevere L. Lemon Dillon.

But where
her father’s name should have been was a name she didn’t recognize, and one she
was certain she’d never heard before.

Who the heck
was Jason William Talbot?

Chapter Nine

Grizz

1988,
Prison, North Florida

Grizz grabbed William
“Pretty” Petty roughly by his arm and
yanked him out of the small library office. He half dragged, half pushed the
reluctant inmate around a large bookshelf and into a small alcove.

“Are we away
from the camera?” Grizz asked quietly as he shoved Petty away from him.

“Yeah, we
can’t be seen,” the young man mumbled. He looked at the ground and said in an
even voice laced with resignation, “What are you going to do to me?”

The sound of
Grizz’s zipper caused him to look up.

“I’m not
going to fuck you if that’s what you’re worried about,” Grizz whispered.

“You—you’re
not?” Petty cocked his head. “So what is it that you want? Something else?”

“Yeah, I
want something else.” Grizz let the pause hang. “I want to talk.”

Petty ran a
hand through his hair. “I—I thought you were going to rape me. You looked
um ... ready.” His voice was shaky, the doubt still obvious.

Grizz rolled
his eyes. “That boner wasn’t for you. I never had to make myself think about my
woman before while yanking on my dick in front of a guy. I did it to make it
look a certain way in front of that camera in the office. After announcing to
the entire prison in the chow hall that you were mine, I couldn’t not do something
about it in case they’re watching us on the security camera, which I’m sure
they are. They’ll think I’m back here porking your brains out. I had to make it
look real.”

“Actually,
no they won’t.” William rushed on. “They won’t be watching. I’ve had that
camera rigged on a timed loop for whenever I’m in here. I’m given special
privileges by Officer Headly to have some time in here every week, but he
thinks it’s to read. He doesn’t know I get on the computer, and I don’t want
anybody knowing it, so I hacked the camera and used a prerecorded feed from
when I was in the library reading in that chair.”

He pointed
to a table with chairs visible through the big window in the small office, and
just in line with the camera.

“If anybody
thinks to look at the camera feed, they won’t see me sitting at the computer,
they’ll see me reading over there at the table. It’s not perfect, but they
haven’t noticed yet.”

Grizz
nodded. He’d stayed away from anything involving technology. Maybe he shouldn’t
have. After learning about them so many years ago, he knew technology would
play an important role in how they accomplished a lot of what was in the
foreseeable future. He preferred to stay away from it personally, but just
because he didn’t use it didn’t mean he shouldn’t have let himself be more
aware.

“How did you
pull up my mug shot? Is it on the library computer?” Grizz asked.

“No, not the
library hard drive. I had to hack the prison’s mainframe. Which I did easily.”
William looked at him. “You know, your mug shot, from when you were first
arrested, doesn’t look anything like what you look like now. You had long hair
and no beard. Now you have no hair and a long beard. I almost didn’t recognize
you.”

“Yeah, I did
it on purpose. I want to look different. So let me ask you something.”

“What?”

“Can you go
into other agencies’ computer systems and swap out my mug shot? Can you hack
into the police department where I was arrested?”

“What do you
mean? Do you have another mug shot?”

“No, but I
can get one. I want my mug shot to resemble what I look like now. I want the
longhaired, clean-shaven mug shot gone. For now. But one day, I’m going to want
all of it to disappear. Can you do that?”

William
nodded. “Yeah, if you can tell me the names of the agencies you think have
them, I can access them individually. There isn’t a way to do a general
search—you know, with a search engine—but that’s coming in the
future. For now, I have to go to each one independently.”

“So if
somebody, maybe even the newspaper, has articles about me or pictures of me in
their computer files, you can delete them or replace them?”

“Like I
said, tell me the names of the places you think have you in their systems, and
if they have a modem, a way to dial to the outside, then I can dial in. What I
can’t do is erase any evidence that might be on a microfiche machine or in hard
files. You know—how libraries will take actual pictures of newspaper
articles and store them on microfiche? One day physical copies of everything
will be sent to the shredder, though we’re not there yet,” he shrugged. “But,
yeah, if it has to do with computers, I can help you.”

A slow smile
spread on Grizz’s face. This was good. This was very good. He wanted to start
erasing any information that might be available about him and his past. He couldn’t
erase all of it, but he could certainly make a dent in it. When Grizz got out
in a couple of years, he didn’t want any chance, even remotely, that he might
be recognized by someone. Besides, he never wanted his daughter, Mimi, to be
able to run across anything from his past.

“You help me
out, and I’ll make sure nobody bothers you in here again,” Grizz said. “We got
a deal?”

William
smiled broadly. “Oh, yeah. We got a deal.”

Grizz turned
very serious then. “You even think about betraying me, you will suffer and die.
You understand that? I don’t fuck around. With anybody.”

“You keep
Psycho and his crazy friend away from me and my rat, Buddy, and you’ll have my
loyalty and all the help you need.”

Grizz nodded
and motioned toward the small table and chairs.

“Now sit
down and tell me about yourself.”

William told
him everything—how his parents had died when he was young, and he’d gone
to live with his elderly grandfather. He had no siblings or aunts and uncles.
It was just him and his grandpa. He was raised in Miami, and they lived in a
small apartment over his grandfather’s appliance repair shop. William could fix
anything by the time he was ten. He didn’t have many friends, but he didn’t
mind. His grandfather was his best friend. He told Grizz how his grandfather’s
favorite television show in the sixties had been Star Trek and how that show
had influenced his interest in technology.

“My grandpa
used to tell me that anything we see on TV, anything we think is pretend, will
actually be a real thing in the future. If a man can dream it up, he’ll
eventually be able to do it. Anyway, even before computers started becoming
popular, I was already learning about them.”

“And that’s
what you do for a living? Did for a living, before you ended up here? Computer
repair?”

“No.
Computers are my hobby, not my job. And nobody knows about my hobby. I think
it’s in my best interest to keep what I do with computers to myself. Nobody
needs to know what I can do. What they can do.”

His last
comment caught Grizz’s attention. “They?”

“I didn’t
mean anything by it.” William sighed. “You wouldn’t believe me anyway.” He
looked at Grizz sideways, shook his head. “My grandpa was big into conspiracy
theories and shit. Studied JFK’s assassination and other crap like that. Forget
I mentioned it. He was a crazy old man. He died believing that our first walk
on the moon was shot in a movie studio. Lovable and kind, but a little nutty.”

Grizz nodded
in understanding. He would save the rest of this conversation for another time.

“You asked
me what I did. I took over my grandpa’s appliance repair business. If it was
broken, I could fix it.”

“So you were
an appliance repairman who dabbled secretly with computers. How the hell did
you end up in here? Hack a bank or something?”

“No, nothing
like that. I was framed.”

Grizz
laughed. “Yeah, everybody in here was framed, myself included.”

“No, I
really was framed. And it had nothing to do with computers. I was in the back
of a bar fixing the dishwasher when the place was robbed. They caught the guy,
and I identified him.” William’s jaw tightened. “I later found out the robbery
was a gang initiation, and I was warned not to get involved. Even the bartender
said he couldn’t remember what the guy looked like, but I was stupid. I
honestly thought I was doing the right thing by helping to get the bad guys off
the street. I was their sole witness, and the guy was convicted. Less than a
month later, I got pulled over for a routine traffic stop. Cop said my
taillight was out. Found drugs in my car. A lot of drugs. They weren’t mine.
Florida is tough on drug offenders, even non-violent ones. I have no prior
arrests or convictions, not even a parking ticket, but I have to do ten years.”

“Ten years.”
Grizz shook his head. “And you’ve only been in a short time, so you have a long
way to go.”

William
looked away.

“What aren’t
you telling me?” Grizz cocked his head. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”

“Well, yeah.
I have to do some time to not make it so obvious, but I won’t be doing the full
ten.” He looked sheepishly at Grizz. “I fixed the records so I get out in a
couple years. I can only hope nobody actually remembers what I’m in for and how
much time I have left. If somebody digs into it, they could figure it out, but
I’m counting on a nobody like me just slipping through the cracks.”

Grizz broke
into a grin. Fuck. He wished he could get away with something like that, but it
would never work for him. He was too well-known. Jason “Grizz” Talbot getting
released from prison wouldn’t go unnoticed, especially with a death sentence
hanging over his head. No, he’d have to play this out for the next couple of
years. At least.

“Can you
look something up for me?”
 

“Yeah, what
do you need?” William’s eyes brightened at the prospect of a new project.

“Can you
hack into government agencies? See what’s going on with the Florida Death
Conviction Laws? I’m trying to find out where they are with passing the law on
death by lethal injection instead of the electric chair.”

“Yeah, sure,
man. I can see what I can find. I’ll work on that, and you let me know where
you want me to search for data on you—you know, erasing or swapping out
what you mentioned earlier.”

Silence fell
between them, and Grizz could hear the wall clock ticking. “So, the inmates
refer to you as Pretty?”

William
turned red, looked away. “Can’t help how I look.”

“I don’t
like it. What’s your real name? Your whole name?”

“William
Franklin Petty,” the young man answered, looking Grizz in the eyes. “But I’ve
always gone by Willie.”

Grizz
thought carefully for a minute. He didn’t want Petty going by Willie. That name
might be turned into something almost as degrading as Pretty.

“From now
on, you’re Bill. Anyone who calls you otherwise will answer to me.”

Grizz rose
from his chair then, retrieved his T-shirt from the office, and headed for the
door.

“Same time
next week, Bill,” he called over his shoulder. And he was gone.