Obsessed With You (16 page)

“
Ten. I’ll be able to visit
with the kids for a little while before I have to leave. I’m going
to see Mom and Dad after the meeting.”

Sherry hugged him and said good
night.

Aaron settled into the bed in the
spare room and checked his messages on his phone. Dammit, he had
forgotten to write Marsha’s reference letter and she was asking him
about it again. He wrote her that he was sorry and would come by the
office the next day to dictate it, if she could type it up. She wrote
back within a minute saying that would be fine.

His mother had sent an email
saying she looked forward to seeing him and she was making his
favorite. Aaron searched his mind for what that might be. His mother
made so many favorites. He guessed he’d just have to be surprised.

The rest of his messages were
news alerts, stock alerts, and spam. He had given up long ago on
hoping to see a message from Cathy.

The following morning, Aaron woke
up early and took a shower in the bathroom that was part of his
bedroom suite. The rich aroma of coffee led him into the kitchen
where Sherry was putting bowls of cereal on the table for the kids.

“
Good morning,” he said with
a cheeriness he didn’t really feel. But he needed to put on a good
face for the children.

“
Sit by me,” Ragan said
pleadingly as Aaron came to the table.

“
No, me,” Jimmy said
forcefully.

“
I’ll sit between you,”
Aaron said diplomatically.

Sherry brought him a cup of
coffee and went back to the stove. “I’ll have some breakfast for
you in a minute,” she said.

While he waited, Jimmy gave him
pieces of milk-soaked Lucky Charms. He slid the slimy colored
marshmallows in his mouth. It had been his favorite cereal as a
child, something he found hard to believe now as he swallowed the
gooey pieces.

“
Ummm,” he said to Jimmy.

Sherry put down a plate of
scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast in front of him.

“
Eat up, Bro. You look like you
need it.”

She handed Ragan and Jimmy a
piece of bacon each and they snatched it out of her hand.

“
Are you living with us now,
Unca Ron Ron?” Ragan asked with a mouthful of bacon.

“
I wish I could, Ragdoll,” he
said. “Then I could keep my eye on you all the time.” He reached
his hands out to both kids’ stomachs and goosed them at the same
time. They howled with laughter.

“
Where’s that nice lady?”
Ragan asked after she stopped giggling.

Aaron and Sherry looked at each
other.

“
Do you mean Cathy?” Aaron
asked.

“
Yeah. Cathy. She was nice.”

“
She’s living in Florida
now,” Aaron said, hoping to end the line of conversation.

No such luck.

“
What’s she doing in
Florida?” Ragan asked staring at Aaron now.

“
She’s living there next to
the water,” he said.

“
I want to live next to the
water,” she said.

“
Me too!” Jimmy said. “Water,
water, water. I love water.”

Both kids started giggling and
that was the end of it.

Sherry settled them in front of
the TV for some morning shows. “We’re going outside after lunch,”
she called to them as she returned to the kitchen.

“
What’s your plan for that
house down there?” Sherry asked plopping back down into her chair.

“
Right now, it’s an
investment. I’m going to get it fixed up, and if I don’t get
Cathy back, I’m probably going to sell it to the highest bidder.”

“
Do you mean that if you do get
Cathy back, you’re going to stay there?” Sherry asked in
surprise.

“
I might,” he said. “I
don’t think we could go back to the Buckhead house. Besides, it’s
on the market.”

Sherry asked him a few more
questions and he answered her as honestly as he could. No sense in
trying to hide anything from his sister. She knew him too well.

“
Right now, my goal is to find
out who set me up. I’ll see what happens after that.”

After breakfast, Aaron packed his
bag and headed to the den.

“
Kids, I’ve got to go now,”
he said to the backs of their heads. The TV was the only light in the
room.

They both jumped up from the
floor and ran to give him a hug. He stooped down to embrace them,
feeling their hot breath on his neck. He kissed the top of their
heads and stood to give Sherry a hug.

“
Good luck, Bubba,” she said
as he walked to his car. “Keep me informed.”

Aaron’s thoughts were all over
the place as he drove into the city. But mostly, they were about
Cathy. The last time he’d seen her and she was puffy-eyed from
crying. His shock when he had returned home to an empty house. The
day he proposed to her and the look on her face when he gave her the
sapphire ring.

He forced himself to concentrate
as he approached Atlanta. He wouldn’t have far to go; Randy’s
office was on the outskirts in a questionable area of town. He found
a parking space a block over and hurried to Randy’s storefront.
Frazer PI was painted across the front window in old-fashioned block
letters. He opened the door. Randy swiveled around in his chair and
smiled at him. The office was one large room with boxes and stacks of
paper on the floor and a large table on the right. Aaron didn’t see
anyone else.

Randy stood and shook Aaron’s
hand. He motioned for him to sit in a leather chair beside his desk
that looked like it had been through a war.

Aaron looked beyond the clutter
to Randy’s computer system. It was top notch, with one large screen
and another smaller screen.

“
Let’s go over where we are,”
Randy said, his elbows on his desk and his hands in a steeple. “I’ve
found every single old girlfriend on your list. I know where the tie
came from—thanks to my diligent girlfriend. Don’t worry, no
charge for her time.”

“
I’m not worried,” Aaron
said. “I just want answers.”

“
I know you do,” Randy said.
“And I don’t want to waste your money on wild goose chases. And
that’s what the old girlfriends are. Wild goose chases, unless you
tell me that you’ve seen one of them while you were wearing the
tie.”

“
I haven’t seen any of them
in years,” Aaron said.

“
So you said,” Randy said
with a sigh. “So we’ve got to concentrate on the things we know
and try to tie them together.”

“
Okay,” Aaron said. He was
beginning to feel fidgety.

“
One, it’s someone who knows
about your Johnson. Is it fair to say that all of your old
girlfriends know about that?”

“
Yeah, I guess so,” Aaron
said.

“
Hey, no judgment here,”
Randy said holding out his arms.

“
It wasn’t a topic of
discussion,” Aaron said. “Except maybe with Cathy. She joked
about it. We joked about it.”

“
I get it,” Randy said. “So,
number two. It’s somebody who knows about your little sister. What
exactly happened there, if you can talk about it.”

Aaron had spent more than two
decades trying not to think about Allison and what happened to her.
But every now and then, he did think about it and sometimes talked
about it.

“
She dropped her doll down a
well we had on the farm,” he said as stoically as he could. “She
leaned too far over the well and fell in. She was found the next day,
at the bottom with her doll. No foul play was suspected.”

“
That’s really sad,” Randy
said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“
Thanks,” Aaron said. He
wanted to get off of the subject.

“
So, number two. Who knew about
Allison?”

“
I definitely told Cathy,”
Aaron said, remembering the day he had talked about it. Cathy had
cried and held him as he tried not to cry.

“
Who else?” Randy said.

“
I might have mentioned it to
some of those women I dated, but I don’t have a memory of doing
that.”

“
What about your friends or
coworkers?” Randy asked.

“
I guess Bob Thacker is my
closest friend. I may have told him.”

“
What does Bob do?” Randy
asked.

“
He works at the firm I just
left,” Aaron said. “He was there when I started ten years ago. We
play racquetball—or used to—and Cathy and I have been out with
him and his wife a few times.”

“
Does Bob have any reason to
have it in for you? Like maybe you got better bonuses or did better
than him in your firm? Something like that?”

“
Bob did at least as well as I
did,” Aaron said. “As far as I knew. He’s got two kids and
lives in Buckhead in a very nice house.”

“
Would Bob have any way to know
about your Johnson?” Randy asked.

Aaron hated how Randy referred to
his privates as his Johnson, but what else would he have preferred
him to call it? He would have preferred that it weren’t the topic
of conversation! It was humiliating.

“
Absolutely not,” Aaron said
with confidence.

“
Okay, on to number three,”
Randy said. “The strawberry shaped birthmark on your ass. Who knows
about that?”

“
Well, Cathy, of course. And
the old girlfriends. I can’t remember who I might have mentioned it
to, in a joke.”

“
While sittin’ in a bar
chewing the fat maybe?” Randy said.

“
Yeah, like that. Or maybe
someone noticed it in the locker room at the gym I belong to.”

“
Like who?”

“
Just people in there. You know
how it is.”

“
I’m assuming Bob was one of
those people?”

“
Yeah.”

“
Okay, on to number four. The
tie, the thing that ties it all together, if you’ll excuse the pun.
Who knew about that tie? Bob?”

“
Bob must’ve seen the tie,”
Aaron said. “I kind of boasted about it, showed it off.”

“
So everybody in your office
knew about the tie,” Randy said.

“
I’d say so,” Aaron said.

“
Did you ever take the tie off
while you were in the office?”

“
I’m sure I must have. If I
had to work late in the office, I would usually take my tie off and
hang it on the coat rack.”

“
Did you ever leave it there
accidentally?” Randy asked.

“
It’s possible. I know I had
done that before with other ties, so it’s possible.”

“
Who had access to your
office?”

“
I didn’t lock my office door
when I left for the day. Marsha sat outside in a front office and she
locked up or I locked her door when I left if I stayed late.”

“
Who’s Marsha?”

“
My secretary,” Aaron said.

“
Last name?”

“
Gardner.”

“
How long did she work for
you?”

“
The last five years or so,”
Aaron said thinking back to the lackluster secretaries he had had
before Marsha arrived. Four of them, to be exact. And then Marsha
came in and took charge like she’d been there forever.

“
Where was she before that?”
Randy asked.

“
I don’t remember,” Aaron
said. “I might be able to dig up her resume. I don’t know.”

Randy stood up. “I need a cup
of coffee. You?”

Aaron nodded. Randy went over to
a tiny kitchen area in the right-hand corner of the office and poured
two cups into bland-looking brown mugs. He handed a cup to Aaron. It
was the strongest coffee he’d ever had, and that included the
espresso on his trip to Italy a few years ago.

Randy settled himself back in his
chair and turned to his computer. The screen lit up when he touched
the mouse.

“
I’m going to check some
databases I’ve got access to,” he said.

Aaron looked around the dusty
office as Randy worked on his computer.

“
Bob’s name Robert?” he
asked.

“
Yeah, I think so,” Aaron
said. He was starting to think about Bob and his friendship with him.
Bob had been the one to welcome Aaron when he first started working
at the firm, still a little green behind the ears. Aaron’s mind
kept moving through a trail of memories with Bob. And then he sat up
with a jolt.

“
I got one of Bob’s major
clients,” he blurted out.

Randy turned to him with a
quizzical look. “Oh yeah?”

“
Mrs. Adelle Davis,” Aaron
said. “I met her at one of the firm’s parties and after that, she
requested that I be her advisor. Bob had been handling her
investments for several years when that happened.”

“
How’d Bob take it?” Randy
asked.

Aaron tried to remember. Bob had
come to his office, congratulating him on the coup. At that point,
Aaron was oblivious to Mrs. Davis requesting a change in advisors.
Bob was the one who let him know. Aaron had been dumbfounded about
it, but Bob had been gracious. Aaron clearly remembered that. Or he
thought he did.