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  “Just be reasonable, Randle. Carrie wants to put this behind her.”

  Feeling cocky, I said, “Sure, with all the other stuff she has behind her.”

  Connie took a breath that sounded like the return vent on your home air conditioner. “Carrie hid some things from you because she didn’t want you to judge her for her past.”

  Pretty close to an admission that Carrie had read my email. “Shame on me for not digging into her past before I married her.”

  “Well.” Connie stretched the word into three syllables. “Why don’t I treat you to dinner tonight? I can fill you in on some history.”

  Is she defending her sister or hitting on me? “Can I have a raincheck? I have to go to Atlanta for business.”

  “We need to talk, Randle. About things.” She sounded perturbed, but then she softened. “You can drop by anytime for dinner, you know?”

  Hitting on me. “That’s … kind of you. I’ll take you up on it.”

  “Okay. Open invitation.” I thought we were about to hang up, but she was just mustering her courage. “There’s one thing I should tell you before we hang up, if you have another minute.”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  She cleared her throat before continuing. “When Carrie and Chance divorced they were poor, and Carrie had to start with nothing and build a life as a single mother. That was hard on her.”

  She waited for me to commiserate, so I did. “She was lucky to have a supportive family.”

  “Yes, she was. Then she divorced her second husband, Phil, and she got nothing out of that either. Phil walked away with everything, even though he was the one who cheated.”

  “Maybe I should hire Phil’s attorney.”

  “Don’t make light of it, Randle. After Carrie divorced Phil, she got lucky and fell in love again. It was a storybook romance except that the man was married.”

  “Not a storybook romance for the guy’s wife.”

  “Let me tell it, Randle. He separated from his wife, bought a condo, and moved in with Carrie. They were madly in love, lived together for more than a year. Then one day he up and went back to his wife. Did it for his kids.”

  More likely, he decided his wife was the lesser of two evils. That’s what I should have done: lived with her long enough to know the real Carrie Tomkins Dickson Simmons before adding Marks to her name.

  “Happens every time, Connie. The guy always goes back to his wife.”

  “Broke her heart and made a real mess of things for the man.”

  I filled in the blanks. The “man” must have been Richard Puralto, Carrie’s putative third husband. He was the guy she used for revenge on Simmons, and Carrie got nothing out of her divorce from Simmons because Phil caught her cheating with Puralto. To me, she had represented her revenge as a one-night stand, but it had actually been a yearlong affair. Liar.

  “What’s his name?”

  “His name isn’t important, Randle. He still lives with the same wife in the same neighborhood and doesn’t deserve any negative attention.”

  “Lucky guy—disposed of Carrie, got his life back, and you’re still protecting him.”

  “Let me make my point, Randle. You don’t have to be sarcastic all the time.”

  As she so often did to me, I ignored her admonition and plowed ahead. “This man must have had some money to keep a wife and kids in one house while he kept his mistress in a condo for months.”

  “Yes he did. He was a doctor. But the breakup was messy because Carrie’s name was on the deed … to hide it from the wife, while the mortgage was in the doctor’s name. Of course, Carrie couldn’t afford it after they split up, and the doctor wanted to sell it, but Carrie wanted to live in it. They got into a scuffle about the condo, and Carrie filed an injunction to block the sale.”

  “I can see the complication.”

  “Yeah, the judge denied the injunction, and Carrie was homeless again.”

  Filling in some more blanks, I guessed the doctor and Carrie worked at the same clinic and that her desire to quit work when we married was to put distance between her and the doctor. No problem for Carrie; she found a new sugar daddy—me.

  “That’s why the country house is so important to her,” I said.

  Connie sighed. “You were important to her. You could heal her wounds and give her a fresh start. Now she’s heartbroken again.”

  Now I was infuriated by this whole set of lies and excuses for bad behavior. “Heartbroken? Let me reimagine The Life and Times of Carrie Tomkins. She messed up her marriage to Chance Dickson and got nothing material out of the divorce, so she traded up for Phil Simmons.”

  “Randle—”

  “To get revenge on Simmons for his cheating, she seduced the simple-minded doctor, but Simmons caught her and she got nothing out of that divorce either.” I was like an avalanche, gathering power as I careened downhill. “She conned the doctor into setting her up in a condo, but the relationship soured as soon as he got to know the real Carrie Simmons, and he ran back to his family.”

  “Unh!” She sounded like she had cut herself while dicing onions.

  “So Carrie tries to steal the condo out from under him, but the judge knew a scam when he heard one and he ruled for the doctor.”

  “My sister is just trying to build a good life, Randle.”

  “By sucking the life out of her husbands. She plays the same game every time, but she picked the wrong sucker when she picked me. She won’t get a windfall out of this divorce, but don’t worry about her, she’ll just find a new sugar daddy.”

  “Stop it!” she exclaimed. “You’re going to get hurt if you don’t cooperate.”

  “Was Carrie coming to hurt me when she broke into my house last week—three a.m. Thursday morning, to be precise?”

  “Carrie didn’t break into your house. She stayed with me Wednesday night, and we went shopping together on Thursday.”

  “Amazing that’s so easy for you to recall. If it wasn’t Carrie, which person with a key was it? The alarm was tripped, but the door was locked when I got home.”

  “Well, it wasn’t her, Randle. She slept at my house.”

  I snapped my fingers like you do when you have an epiphany. “You were her alibi, Connie. She had someone do it for her. She gave him a key, but I had already changed the passcode, so he tripped the alarm.”

  “Maybe it was a false alarm, Randle.”

  “If they’re trying to scare me, it’s not working.”

  “You’ve become a problem, Randle, and they’ve discussed solutions.”

  “They, who? What kind of solutions?”

  Connie composed herself, took a deep breath. “We were all at Momma’s—Carrie, Momma and Daddy, Travis, Carrie’s friend Jerilynn, and me. Carrie was nervous about meeting the judge on Monday, worried she’d get screwed again. She got very emotional and said, ‘Randle needs to roll over and play dead. I’m not walking away with nothing again.’ So Daddy spoke up and told her, ‘I’ll take care of that son of a bitch. You want me to?’”

  I said, “He was showing off for the women.”

  “He’d do anything to help Carrie. They all would. You had to be there to feel the vibe, see the dynamic. Momma and Jerilynn egged her on, encouraged her to invent ways to hurt you. I think Jerilynn was having fun with it, but Carrie was serious. Momma was too.”

  “Your momma’s demented. So Carrie would what? Snip my balls and roast them over a fire like chestnuts?”

  Connie was serious. “Carrie said she could show up on your doorstep unannounced and dressed to kill. Sorry, bad choice of words.” She tittered. “You’d let her in because she looks like she wants sex.”

  She paused again for a reaction, but I didn’t know whether to laugh or get angry. When she didn’t continue, I barked at her, “Then what?”

  “Well, she’s not going to have sex with you,” Connie said as though I was thickheaded. “She shoots you, and then there’s no divorce.”

  “That’s laughable, Connie. Wh
en I answer the door, I’ll be holding my Glock, not my—”

  “Randle!” I could hear heavy breathing as she composed herself. “Momma warned her not to knock on your door. Said you’re too volatile, and she doesn’t want Carrie to get hurt.”

  I shook my head as though I needed to dislodge something foreign in my brain so it could exit through an ear.

  “They’re discussing ways to kill me, but I’m the one who’s volatile?”

  Connie ignored the absurdity. “You can be volatile, Randle.”

  “That’s the plan? Carrie seduces me like she seduced the doctor? Then she shoots me in cold blood?” I laughed out loud—a fake laugh. “They were blowing off steam.”

  The phone line was as quiet as a church between Masses. Connie was barely audible as she said, “I don’t think so, Randle. They came up with several ways to … do it. Daddy could bring her by boat and drop her off in your backyard. She’ll strip and float on a raft until you find her. You always wanted to skinny-dip, so you’ll join her in the water, where you’ll be less mobile and unarmed. Then she’ll … you know.”

  My outburst was spontaneous. “Ha ha! Tell them to do it that way. I want to see which orifice she uses to hide the gun.”

  Connie grunted. “You need to take this seriously.”

  The kid PI came out on a boat. Harlan’s? But I can’t let her think they’re scaring me. “Okay, how is Carrie going to get away with murder?”

  “She’ll tell the police you tried to rape her.”

  “Um-hum, and who’s her witness?”

  “Huh?”

  “She can’t shoot her lawfully wedded husband and claim it was attempted rape without a witness and forensic evidence.”

  “Oh,” Connie said. It wasn’t quite a question, and it wasn’t quite an exclamation.

  “They’d have to find my DNA in her, and she’d have to be bruised. Down there.”

  “Well, she’s not going to have sex with you just to make it look good.”

  “Then her plan won’t work. What was your daddy doing while Carrie was plotting?”

  “Listening. He doesn’t interfere with the women.”

  Sure, passive-aggressive old coot. “Connie, your sister had the best deal on the planet, and she dropped it in the dirt and kicked it around. All she ever had to be was a halfway decent wife, and she couldn’t do it. Now she’ll be held accountable for her failure.”

  “She just wants to be free, Randle. Don’t make this difficult.”

  “Tell your sister to give in at mediation, because if that doesn’t work there’ll be a trial and we’ll expose every ugly thing she ever did.”

  A pained, strangled cry came though the phone, as though the executioner had opened the trapdoor and the noose had tightened around Connie’s neck. Her mission had failed once again.

  “See, Randle, you’re caught in a vicious cycle. You do something and they retaliate and then you respond and so on, until it becomes a nuclear chain reaction.”

  Neither of us spoke for a minute. I didn’t know what Connie was thinking, but I figured I should maintain a connection with my “Deep Throat.”

  “Listen,” I said. “I’ve got to run, but let me take you to a nice dinner when I get back from Atlanta.”

  “Oh, I can’t do it this weekend. We’re all helping Carrie pack.”

  Pack? “Okay, then the following week?”

  “I’d like that, Randle. Call me when you get back.”

  After I hung up, a locksmith came and changed all the locks. I didn’t expect Carrie to show up dressed to kill and she never did. Bunch of crazy crackers.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  At five a.m. the following morning, I left the house for Atlanta. The white panel van sat alone in the Walgreens parking lot at the corner of my street and Gulf Boulevard. It did not follow me as I turned toward the Pinellas Bayway and I-275. I had slipped the kid’s notice while he was napping.

  When Tony called I was already north of Gainesville. He asked if the PI was on my tail, and I told him I had lost the kid in Dolphin Beach. He said he had complained to de Castro, and she claimed Carrie knew nothing about a PI. De Castro said I must have problems with many women. Yeah, right.

  “One more thing,” Tony said, “and I’ll let you go. I can’t be a part of your schemes, Randle. Don’t send me any more mail from your old account.”

  Wimp. “Treat them like spam. Don’t open them. Just delete them.”

  I could hear him breathing down the line, considering. Eventually, he said, “Drive safe.”

  When Bob Platt, the CEO of Atlanta Medical Analytics, had asked me to come to Atlanta for a partners meeting, I was perplexed. It had been only a week since my last office visit, and everything had been copacetic. When I spoke to my closest associates, Terry Johnstone and Harry Higbee, they speculated that there were new problems with the IPO. That could work in my favor so long as only the schedule was in question.

  AMA’s seven partners gathered in the main conference room. Other than them, the only persons allowed in the room were the CEO’s secretary, Mary Jane Abbott, who would record the minutes of the meeting, and Patricia Masters, our Wall Street banker. AMA consisted of only eighty employees, but our little startup had all the CxOs found in a major corporation—a chief executive officer (CEO); chief operating officer (COO); chief financial officer (CFO); chief marketing officer (CMO); chief people officer (CPO); chief information officer (CIO); and a chief science officer (CSO).

  The seven partners were all chiefs of something. I was the CSO. Unlike the fabled startups that begin with friends in a garage, a venture capital firm with a novel idea and a bit of scientific intellectual property had fabricated AMA. None of us had more than a passing awareness of the other partners before we had all been recruited. Now the Silicon Valley-based venture capitalists wanted to take the company public and walk off with a gargantuan return on their investment. Everyone was nervous except me. If we were going to reconsider the IPO date, I knew how I would vote.

  Platt called the meeting to order and thanked those who had traveled to it for making the effort to be present. Like me, the CMO, Terry Johnstone, and the CIO, Harry Higbee, lived in different states. The banker had flown in from New York.

  Platt said, “We have to decide whether we need internal closed case trials before going public and, if so, how that would impact our IPO date. With that said, I’ll turn it over to Patricia.”

  Patricia Masters was an ugly woman with severe features and severe attire. There is no kinder way for me to describe her. She was, however, highly respected in business circles. If Masters was your banker, your IPO would be a success. She stood and moved to-and-fro around the head of the table, making eye contact with all the partners as she spoke.

  Facing me and Peter Hayes, the COO, she said, “Thanks to Peter and Randle, we’ve passed our lab tests and we’ve been certified by our internal medical board. That was a big hurdle. And thanks to Harry,” she said, gesturing toward the CIO, “we’ve built the technology for a demonstrable prototype. Another big hurdle and enough to take us public.”

  Masters paused and looked at the floor as she paced back to my side of the table.

  She looked up and said, “However, our research shows that your initial offering price will be lower than we anticipated—perhaps as low as five dollars a share—if we go public without conducting clinical trials.”

  A shocked murmur filled the room.

  “Naturally your share price would increase down the line as you passed clinical trials, but that would delay the exit for your VC firm. It would delay your rewards for sweat equity as well.”

  Terry Johnstone, the CMO, said, “You don’t mean live clinical trials with patients, do you?”

  Masters said, “That would be the best case, Terry, but that takes too long.”

  “And costs too much money,” Richard Barker, the CFO, chimed in.

  “Right,” Masters said. “But we can push the initial offering price north of fifteen doll
ars if we conduct closed clinical trials before going public, using medical case histories for patients no longer under treatment. Of course, we would have to get the results certified by an external board of doctors, as our internal board wouldn’t be considered objective by investors.”

  No one reacted, so I filled the void. “This is a typical approach for science-based startups, right, Patricia?” I waited for her to nod yes. “If we were a pharmaceutical manufacturer, we would take exactly this approach: lab tests, internal trials, IPO, and then live clinical trials. First you announce the drug, get the investors excited, hook them with the IPO because they don’t want to be left out, then you prove the efficacy of the drug and get FDA approval. It’s too capital-intensive to place the burden of live trials on the angel investors. You need public money to make it happen.”

  “Bravo,” Masters said. “You could work on Wall Street, Randle. You have it right.”

  Barker, the CFO, said, “We have live clinical trials scheduled for first quarter of next year. Isn’t it enough for investors to see that we have them scheduled?”

  “Unfortunately, no,” Masters said. “Investors are nervous about bleeding-edge ideas like this one.”

  I interjected, “We may have difficulty recruiting live patients and their practitioners if we haven’t passed internal trials.”

  CEO Platt said, “The obvious question is why didn’t we think of this sooner. And the answer is this: The market was willing to give us twelve dollars a share back six months ago, but now the climate isn’t as favorable. We can still get the number we want, but only with more effort.”

  Barker said, “So it’s a foregone conclusion, and we don’t need a vote?”

  “We need a formal vote, Rich,” Platt said.

  Barker replied, “Then I vote no. We’re going to run out of cash if we keep delaying … unless Patricia can get us some cash.”

  Masters said, “You’ll get your cash with the IPO, but till then you have to get funding from the VC.”

  “That well is dry,” Platt said. “We’re two years behind schedule now. Let’s take a vote.”