Bullet in the Night (31 page)

Everything happened so fast, my head spun. “Nick, will you go home and get the children off to school? I need to be sure Lenora’s okay and make sure they test her blood for an overdose of sleeping pills. I’ll follow the ambulance to the hospital.”

Hours later, Lenora’s internist, followed by a resident, strode into her intensive care room. I jumped up from the chair at the side of her bed. The doctor flipped through her chart before turning to me. “She was heavily sedated, but it’ll be wearing off soon. We got the antidote in her just in time. It’s a good thing you arrived when you did. She should recover completely.”

I resumed my post in the chair beside her bed. When she awoke, I wanted to be there, needed to be. Her physical agony would be nothing compared to the emotional shock of Tucker’s betrayal.

Lenora stirred, focused her eyes, saw me, and smiled. Her lovely wide lips held a smile until she looked around the room. She struggled to sit up as a light of recognition darkened her eyes. “How did I get back into the hospital?” She started to cough.

“Would you like some water?”

“Please.”

I held a plastic cup with a straw to her lips. Then, taking her hand in mine, I spoke in the same tone that I used when Jenny awoke from a nightmare. “I have some good news and some very bad news. Do you think you’re up to hearing it now, or would you like me to wait awhile?”

“Tell me, Jennifer.”

“First, the good news is you’re going to be fine. And you can leave here soon.” I smoothed my palm over her hand. “I don’t know of an easy way to break this. I’m so sorry, dear friend. Tucker’s confessed to being unfaithful to you. He’s been having an affair with a woman from the university and also embezzled money from the foundation.”

Lenora gasped and fell back. “No. It can’t be true.”

I leaned over and wrapped my arms around her. “Sadly it is.”

“It’s like being slammed against a wall.”

“I can only imagine how hard this is. I wish with all my heart it wasn’t true. There’s more.”

“What else?”

“You’re here because he used one of his snakes and almost killed you last night. Tucker’s responsible for shooting you in his earlier attempt to kill you.”

Lenora sat back up. “No!” Her eyes bulged, and her mouth fell open. She seemed to age in front of my eyes.

“He’s been cunning with his affair. My heart breaks for you.”

“But the poisonous snakes are locked up. Tucker never lets them out. Are you certain you’re not mistaken?”

I’d expected she’d be in denial at first. I knew she’d need a few details to convince her. “Last night he released them all.” I gave her only as much information as necessary to support the truth. “He put the snake in your bedroom after giving you an overdose of sleeping pills. No way could you have called 911 for help. Tucker meant for you to die.”

“How did you find out?”

“It’s a long story. We got there in time to get you to the hospital where you could receive the antidote to the venom.” I bit my lip. I’d give her a full account another time.

Lenora rubbed the back of her hand across her forehead. “I remember feeling weak and groggy before falling asleep.” She stared into space.

I waited as she tried to make sense of the horrid pain of total betrayal. Was there any agony worse for a woman?

When she spoke again, her voice was a whisper. “I thought Tucker loved me. He seemed to care for me and be sincerely interested in my work. He helped me start the foundation.” Her eyes pleaded with me to agree.

“Tucker wanted your non-profit protected. He saw it as the source of his future income in perpetuity. As President of the Board he could give himself a huge salary and no one would object.”

Lenora crossed her arms across her chest. “How was this girlfriend involved?”

“Are you sure you want to know?”

“Yes.”

“The police interrogated her. She claims to have known nothing about his plot to harm you. Tucker had told her he was deeply unhappy in his marriage and in the process of divorce. She claims he spoke of extensive travel plans for their future. He recently took a leave of absence from the university.”

“No way!” Lenora pulled herself to a more upright position. “Last night’s coming back to me. Tucker gave me three sleeping pills. I asked him if that wasn’t too many. He claimed they were super mild.” She turned her head away and reached for a Kleenex. “What you’re saying is beginning to make sense. I mean, I knew he was unhappy about my large charitable donations, especially to the foundation. This week I’d intended to see our lawyer and accountant to check on a few financial discrepancies I’d noticed. I’d asked Tucker about them, but he couldn’t explain. I never dreamt he would be unfaithful and dishonest.” She shook her head again. “Talk about stupidity.”

I patted her arm. “Tucker’s deceived me, too. The man is smooth and cunning.”

“If I died at home, wouldn’t Tucker be the first suspect?”

“I doubt it. He’d spilled a glass of water on the floor to make it look as if you’d gotten up for a drink then fell.” I shook my head. “He said he went to bed, assuming you were fine, claimed the snakes got out, and he never suspected one was in your room.”

Tears flowed now from her stricken eyes and trickled down her cheeks. “Everyone would believe him based on all the concern he’s shown.”

“Exactly.”

“I can hardly comprehend all this. One thing’s not a surprise. Tucker’s very materialistic. It didn’t matter when I married him because I was too.” She snatched another Kleenex.

“Praise God for saving your life. He’s still got work for you.”

Her eyes widened. “The snake could have killed you, too.”

“But didn’t. I’m okay and so are you. We’ll focus on that. And on the One who will never betray you or leave us for a moment.”

Lenora sighed. “He said he was a Christian. He even went to church with me.”

“Only God knows the heart.”

Lenora interrupted. “I know going to church doesn’t mean you’re intimate with our Lord. Being in a garden doesn’t make you a flower. I’ve said as much to clients.”

“If he was genuine, he’d live by different values. No way did he ever surrender to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.”

“My poor protégé, Kirk. How can we make it up to him for all he’s been through?”

“You can start by putting him back to work at your foundation. I’m sure he’d like that. You need to rest now and get home. I’ll be back later tonight.”

I went home and slept for hours.

It would be a long while before Lenora recovered emotionally from her husband’s betrayal. This was not how the world should be. I’d coached lots of strong women through similar devastation. In time, she’d be okay. Christ, the Lover of her soul, would restore her.

EPILOGUE

Six weeks after we survived possible annihilation, Nick and I drove to downtown Chicago for a three-day museum holiday. We stayed at the Marriot on the nineteenth floor. The second morning there I savored my morning prayer with room service coffee and oatmeal.

Waiting for Nick to awaken, I reviewed what I’d written in my journal open before me: Lord, Kirk’s a living symbol of Your miracle-working power. He apologized for running away, and Lenora reinstated him to his position of administrative support liaison with the prisoners. The foundation hired Sarah Nichols to handle paperwork. Sarah and Kirk recently started dating. How cool is that?

When I confronted Chuck Denton shortly after he was taken into custody, he admitted he’d developed the bad habit of unleashing personal frustration on his defenseless wife. To avoid jail time, he was willing to accept help for anger management.

Fortunately, it turned out Chuck hadn’t set fire to the house with his first wife in it after all. The police investigation came up with proof positive. He’d been at a banking seminar in another state when she died in the fire started by lightning. Chuck used the fabricated story as a threat to keep Angela submissive.

Like anyone who fell into sin, Chuck had woven such a web of lies he hardly knew truth himself. I made a counseling referral for him.

In the meantime, I’ve been working with Angela and hoping for the best for their future. Nothing thrills a marriage and family counselor more than a healthy restored marriage.

Lenora invited Thomas Hartford to sit on the Prison Board. He refused because of present business commitments but seemed sincerely flattered and said maybe in the future. I hooked him up with a charity involved in medical mission trips for children at orphanages in Honduras. He and his wife will travel there next month.

Carrie enrolled in a college program for returning women students to study counseling. Her personal experiences will make her a gifted healer. Rob amazed me. Within a few sessions, he learned how to be an encourager. His motivation level upped when pressed against the emotional wall of losing his wife. He even watches the kids without complaining while Carrie studies. Another miracle.

Rob arranged a date for Sandy with a buddy from work. I wouldn’t say there’s romantic interest necessarily, but they enjoyed each other’s company. That’s a mile of progress for Sandy.

As for Tucker, he hired a crackerjack lawyer who accomplished nothing except draining Tucker’s savings. Truth has a way of ringing loud when the facts are revealed. Tucker will probably be in jail the rest of his life. I’m devoid of sympathy.

I closed the journal.

From my point of view, the pieces of Lenora’s tragedy had come together in a perfect manner except one item. Lenora kept all Tucker’s snakes, except the rattler. She reported she had grown fond of them. Ugghh! I could love all God’s creatures with legs, fins, wings, or tails. The slinky ones, I excluded.

As for me, I’m back to my unpredictable normal. A delightful blend of God and family plus work. I’ve developed a reputation, to my amazement, as a local crime solver. If my services are needed, I’ll give it my best shot, but I’m not going out of my way to look for trouble. But I did get a call yesterday that sounded intriguing…

Please read on to learn more about the author, Judith Rolfs, and to read a sample from another Prism Book Group title,
Flashback
.

Please enjoy this sample from
Flashback
by
Kevin Mark Smith, available from Prism Book Group!

Kenneth Cartwright sat in the City Java Cafe, a bohemian-style coffee bar located on the corner of downtown Dallas’s busiest intersection, Grand and Broadway, a little after ten a.m. The tall buildings shielded the cafe from much of the sunlight. However, the sun’s reflection off the windshields of dozens of passing cars and heat radiating from the massive window to Ken’s right told him that this day would be like most in that part of Texas on a late-spring day—blisteringly hot with no chance of rain.

He sipped a large nonfat mocha and stared out of the window at pedestrians walking past the cafe on the wide sidewalk, mostly other professionals rushing from one point to another.

It was Monday. Despite the good weather and sweet taste of mocha, a heaviness settled on his shoulders that belied his outward appearance. He wore his most expensive navy blue, custom-tailored suit, red power tie, and French-cuffed white pinpoint oxford shirt, complete with diamond-studded gold cufflinks. The ensemble complimented his closely cropped hair, dark brown and flecked with gray, though he wondered if his attempt to look successful and satisfied mattered anymore.

As a lawyer, Ken had been working on deposition questions for a case he had been dealing with for more than two weeks and was taking a few minutes away from his office, just one building to the left, and ten floors above his seat at the cafe, to let his mind relax. No book, no Kindle, laptop, or tablet computer, nothing but his mocha and the classical music pumping through the cafe’s tiny ceiling-mounted speakers that the noise of the many patrons almost drowned out, to occupy his thoughts.

Ken was a junior partner at the firm, thus, he was accustomed to senior partners dropping cases in his lap that they were too ill-equipped, too lazy, or simply too busy to handle, and this case was one of these, qualifying on all three of those levels to some degree. The deposition that he was preparing for the assigning partner would make or break the case, as well as Ken’s reputation. He knew such was the blessing and curse of being, as one of the senior partners called him, “the firm’s sharpest mind.” But that hadn’t compelled him to take a break from his helter-skelter life of one-hundred-hour workweeks and deadlines that even his work ethic wasn’t enough to meet. Nor was it Monday-morning depression. Instead, it was a question that had dogged him for as long as he could remember.

Why had he chosen the path he had taken so many years before?

By all the world’s standards, Ken was successful before his divergence to the law occurred. He had more money than he knew what to do with, a five-figure monthly net cash flow from the ventures other people now ran for him. Yet he had decided being rich wasn’t enough. He wanted prestige, too, the prestige that came from becoming a lawyer like his grandfather. So when he graduated college he moved on to law school, all the time collecting weekly checks from the many business ventures he had begun from his early teens and during his college years—paper routes, real estate investments, coin-operated laundries, and car washes—with the first dating back to his freshman year in high school. He had known at the time what led him to become so ambitious at such a young age, but he had managed to block out most of those haunting memories. His dedication to excellence in his studies and making money masked something deeper and very troubling in Ken’s psyche.

As with everything else that preceded it, he excelled at law school, too—at Harvard, no less. Upon graduating with his service as editor of the
Harvard Law Review
on his resume, as well as a summer clerkship with the firm after his second year in law school, he was offered a prestigious U.S. Supreme Court Clerkship, which was followed by a $200,000 a year associate offer at the multinational, one thousand-lawyer-plus law firm where he was now a junior partner, the partnership offer coming after only two years of brilliant work on the firm’s most challenging cases. Until this very moment he had no regrets.