Any Man I Want (12 page)

“And we're supposed to sit by the hearth knitting booties or something while they do whatever damn fool thing they are going to do?”

“You gotta better idea?” Belle asked.

“Why does everyone keep forgetting that Renee was my friend first? I've known her since she had good sense. All of this mess with Kevin? I guarantee this was all Renee from the beginning. This was her plot from jump to watch us squirm. I'm over it. I got other things to do with my life than wonder when Renee will rear her head again. Veronica and I will be there in thirty minutes. Let the guys do what they do, we'll handle a few things for ourselves.”

“Now that's what I'm talking about.” I high-fived Belle.

“One other thing?” Jewel added.

“Yeah?” Belle asked.

“Can you order me in a veggie omelet with a side of bacon. And some hash browns. And toast? Oooh, and grits with cheese.”

I laughed. “What are you, eating for two?”

“Well, actually . . .” Jewel hinted.

“Oh my God, congratulations!” Belle squealed.

I narrowed my eyes at her. “If you two heffas end up pregnant at the same time, I swear to God . . .”

“Wait,
what?
” Jewel shrieked.

“I'm not pregnant. At least not that I know of. I could be, but it was only once and no matter what Beau says, he's not that damned potent,” Belle answered. “But I am starving, so if we're trying to make brunch happen, I'm all in.”

“We'll see you soon,” I told Jewel and disconnected. “Tara, got a minute?” I called out to my intern.

She hustled in. “Yes, ma'am?”

Both Belle and I winced. “No more
ma'am
s, okay? I can be Katrina. Anyway, have you eaten?”

“I had a granola bar,” she admitted sheepishly.

I shook my head. “Sweetie, that's not breakfast. See if the chef will come early and do a brunch for the office. If she can't, order in. Omelets, waffles, breakfast tacos, a variety of stuff.”

“This place rocks,” Tara said as she walked out.

“You know what?” I told Belle, “This place
does
rock. All those years prancing around in other people's clothes on other people's runways, taking midnight classes online and hopping planes and eating two sticks of celery for dinner? We did that so we could run our own house. This house.
Our
house. No one gets to ruin that for us. We built this. And it does rock.”

“And once we take care of Ms. Renee? It's going to continue to rock, sugar.” Belle and I exchanged determined nods and the fist bump for good measure.

“She musta forgot who we are,” I said.

Belle sat on the edge of my desk, crossed her legs, and swung her foot back and forth. “She let the pretty fool her. People do that. They see all the pretty and think we'll put up with shit.”

“She gonna have to learn the hard way,” I muttered.

“Damn right.”

Carter—Tuesday, June 22—9:38 a.m.

 

 

G
ramps's townhouse was in North Dallas in an area called North Park. The house was small enough for him to take care of, but big enough for him to have a small yard with a vegetable garden out back that he tended to like it was a favored child. In addition to helping out with the foundations, Gramps attended church, played bid whist, and got together with a group of retired vets at least once a week.

When I called and told him what we needed, he snapped to attention like he was back in uniform. I climbed out of my car just as Roman pulled up.

“Parks,” He greeted me.

“Montgomery.” I nodded and we headed up the sidewalk.

“This woman has been a thorn in my side from day one,” Roman said.

“Renee has?”

“Man, listen, I get less drama from my ex-wife than this chick.”

Roman had a son from his ex-wife, Jacquenetta. I heard she was some piece of work, so if he thought Renee was a bigger pain in the ass? Well, that was really saying something. “How is the little man?”

“Chase is almost ten now. He's gonna be a big brother before too long.” Roman grinned proudly.

“Congratulations. Did you and Beau plan this?” I knocked twice and walked in the front door.

“Plan what?” Beau asked, reaching out a hand to fist bump first Roman and then me.

I looked from one brother to the other. “Are both of your wives pregnant at the same time?”

They exchanged amused glances. “Jewel is.”

Beau clasped his younger in a hug that lifted him off the ground. “
Mon frère, impressionnant
! Belle might be.” Roman slapped him on the back and they grinned at each other. I had to admit I felt a little twinge of envy. Katrina and I weren't there yet. Hell, we were barely at the point where she let me take a meeting on her behalf.

Gramps clapped me on the shoulder. “You're falling behind, son, you need to catch up.”

“Whoa!” Roman put his hands up with a grimace.

“Since any catching up he would do would be with my sister, I'm going to request that we change the subject.” Beau looked pained.

“All right, then.” Gramps waved an older man into the room. “Come on out, Calvin. This is retired Captain Jonas Calvin. After we served together, he went to work for an agency that shall not be named. I had him look into a few things on our behalf.”

Jonas Calvin looked every inch the serviceman-turned-not-allowed-to-say guy. He was tall, lean, and fit, with short-cropped hair. He wore gray pants and a white polo shirt with a navy jacket over it. He was light-skinned, with dark brown eyes that missed nothing. He took a moment to look each of us up and down. None of us flinched under his regard. Apparently satisfied by what he'd seen, he nodded and stepped further into the room. He had a manila folder in his hand. “Gentlemen, angry people who bear grudges are sloppy and sloppy people get caught.”

He had our immediate and undivided attention from that moment on. “If you add in the fact that most people are not as smart by half as they think they are, that opens up a lot of doors for us.” He opened up his folder. “Kevin Eriq Delancey, thirty-five years of age, from South Carolina. Managed a B-plus average in high school, tanked his SATs, so his daddy bought his way into Morehouse. Though it's been kept mostly secret, he did not graduate from there. He left midway through his junior year under a cloud of suspicion involving him possibly paying a young woman to take tests for him in exchange for his unfulfilled promise to marry her. There is additional controversy that Mr. Delancey did not come up with the idea for Serengeti, but stole the concept from his roommate, a Lawrence Payne, who kicked up some dust when the Web site first gained prominence and then was never heard from again. Deeper digging reveals that around that time, a Mrs. Laurencia Payne received an ‘inheritance' from an unknown relative allowing her and her family to relocate permanently to Costa Rica, where they currently run a beachfront bed-and-breakfast.”

Beau whistled and rubbed his hands together while Roman and I sat down on the sofa. This guy was good. He was better than good. We'd had people digging into Kevin's past and hadn't gotten this deep.

The captain continued. “While all of that is interesting, we're just getting close to what you really need. The cameras that were wired up in Ms. Montgomery's domicile were transmitted to a cloud. The cloud is really just data that jumps from remote server to remote server so that it doesn't sit in one place. That's hard to track unless we could tie this to terrorism, which would justify a higher-level trace. However, someone on the other end had to pull that data, in this case the video feed, down out of the cloud. The minute that happens, there is an IP address. As you know, an IP address is tied to an actual computer, router, server, or Wi-Fi system. At some point, the video file piggybacked on Katrina's home Wi-Fi to transmit. Once we figured that out, it was like having a GPS record of every virtual location where that file landed. Who touched it, who changed it, and who it got sent to. The last thing we have yet to do is to definitively tie your friend Delancey to this file. All we have to do is show that one of these files ever interacted with an IP address he has access to and we've got something.”

“There's no way you got all of this in the half hour since Gramps called you,” I said in awe.

“Son, I've been three steps ahead of you since you were knee-high to a curb and I don't aim to slow down anytime soon,” my grandfather said.

“Collin has had me working on this since the day you called from Barbados, Carter.” Jonas nodded.

“Well, when you say
big guns
. . . you mean big guns,” Roman said.

“So what's next?” Beau asked.

“We've got someone who can tie one of Delancey's guys to the fake sex tape. So I'm going to reach out and see if we can incentivize that guy to flip. That's the rundown of what we have on the Katrina side of things. We went ahead and took the information your investigator provided and went a little deeper into Serengeti's business practices and books. I'm going to have to bring in a forensic accountant because it got real messy, real quick, in there. My goal is to get as many criminal charges thrown at this guy as we can. He's not a good guy.”

“What about this Renee chick? Anything on her?” I asked.

“Not too much. I mean, she's a scandal; I wouldn't want my sons to date her, but I can't find anything other than routine messiness so far,” Captain Calvin shared.

“She needs to go down. She's upgraded from nuisance to pain in the ass to an actual problem,” Beau said.

Gramps looked at us and nodded seriously. “Well, we can disappear the girl, but that's gonna cost you some. We don't wipe people off the planet for free anymore.”

Roman's eyes went wide, my jaw dropped, and Beau froze, scared to take a breath.

Jonas and Gramps stood stone-faced until they exchanged glances and cut up laughing. “Woo, you should see your faces!” Gramps slapped his thigh.

Captain Calvin shook his head. “Boys, we're joking.”

“Mostly,” Gramps said.

The three of us chuckled nervously. “All right, then. You got us,” I said warily. “What else do you need from us to keep going?”

“Not a thing, I'm all set. Let's get together again next week and I'll give you an update. Only in person, nothing online,” Jonas declared.

“Sir, we can't allow you to do this for free,” Roman said.

“You boys will all be getting an envelope so you can pledge a little something to the Foundation, don't you even worry about that,” Gramps announced before shooting me a look. “And you, son? You get to work on my great-grandchild.”

I exchanged uncomfortable glances with Beau and Roman and we rose as one to depart.

Katrina—Saturday, June 26—2:15 p.m.

 

 

“O
h my God, will you please hurry up! The smell of this potpourri she has everywhere is making me nauseous,” Jewel whined while I typed fast and furiously onto the laptop.

“Everything makes you nauseous! I thought it was supposed to be morning sickness; it's well after noon.” I snapped back at my sister-in-law as I entered in the information as quickly and accurately as I could.

“Like my body gives a damn.” Jewel breathed slowly and deeply, speaking between the inhalations. “Just wait until you get pregnant. I'm going to torture you every second of every day.”

“Don't hold your breath. Wait, the way you were heaving earlier? Do hold your breath and don't stand directly behind me. But I have to agree, she went way too heavily on the scent infusers in here. Smells like a place where all the floral life in the hemisphere came to die. Like a botanical garden threw up in here.” Jewel gagged and I chuckled evilly.

She smacked the side of my head. “Your day will come.”

“Look here
Bijou
, it's your fault we've had to resort to this foolishness, so suck it up another few minutes.”

“How do you figure?”

“Renee was your friend to begin with. You foisted her on the rest of us.”

“Well, if you're going to be all technical about it . . .” Her cell beeped. “Oh shit, they finished early. Veronica is going to try and stall, but we can assume we don't have a lot of time left.”

“I'm almost done. Text Belle and tell her keep her eyes peeled.” I keyed in the last command and hit enter.

“Yeah, yeah. You do know what you're doing, don't you?” she asked for the hundredth time.

“I can follow simple directions. If you quit talking I can finish up and we can go,” I scolded.

“My God, you Montgomerys are high maintenance!”

“You're married to one, raising another, and carrying a third—you are stuck with us for life!” I cackled and waited for confirmation that the program had finished running. Letters and numbers flashed by on the monitor and finally a double beep sounded. A message flashed up on the screen. “It says
program complete
. We are out of here.” I erased the history, powered down the computer, closed the lid, and got up from the chair.

Jewel and I tipped around Renee's loft, making sure everything was as we found it. Yes, I said
Renee's loft
. After doing some investigative work of our own, we discovered that Renee lived in a building managed by Parks Properties. One covert call to Shawn and we not only had the code to get in downstairs, but the key to open the front door. When he discovered what we were breaking and entering for, he also provided us the software and some instructions. The software he gave us allowed us to clone Renee's computer and access it from a remote location without her knowing. I was just going to go in and look around, but having the time and leisure to search without worrying about getting caught was even better.

Veronica took one for the team and invited Renee out to lunch. Seeing as they hadn't really spoken since Veronica ended up married to Renee's ex-fiancé, it was a calculated risk, but we assumed that Renee wouldn't pass up the chance for some drama. We were right. So while Veronica had Renee occupied, Belle was downstairs in the parking garage acting as lookout and Jewel and I were in the loft loading the software.

Okay, so we may have gone overboard. We all dressed in black jeans and black T-shirts with black sneakers. Hair pulled back into ponytails, no makeup. What can I say? We'd watched too many crime dramas growing up. We got caught up in the moment. How many times in our life were we going to attempt something like this? Never again, we hoped.

But Renee had gone too far and we decided if she was going to just out-and-out lie, there was really no reason for us to play fair and square. The guys said they came up with a way to expose Kevin for the deceitful fraud that he was, but they weren't sure what to do about Renee. Well, we knew what to do about Renee. Girl power, baby. All we had to do was think like she thought, wait for her to overplay her hand, and then we would have her.

“We're clear,” Jewel whispered over her shoulder and we exited the unit. I sent a quick text to Belle telling her we were coming out. The elevator
dinged
as we neared it and instead of chancing anyone seeing us, we dove for the stairs. Four flights down later, Jewel looked a little green around the gills.

“Uh-oh. Vertigo? Your pregnant mind playing tricks on you?” I asked as she swayed for a second on the landing. We had one more floor to go.

“Shut it before I spew that lovely chicken salad we had for lunch on your two-hundred-dollar jeans, supermodel.”

“You know,” I observed drolly, “pregnancy has made you snarky.”

She whirled toward me and started laughing. “It really has. I about took your brother's head off this morning for eating the last croissant.”

“Well, that's slap-worthy. He knows better,” I commiserated.

“Right?” She giggled and took a deep breath. “I swear I can still smell those crushed flowers. Let's get out of here.”

We reached the garage level and I stuck my head out to make sure we were good. We'd borrowed Carter's black four-door Benz and before I could even step out fully, it backed to the door. I snorted in amusement and waved Jewel out with me. We climbed into the car and Belle drove out of the lot sedately, turned the corner, and then floored it.

“Hold up, killa—it's not like five-o is hot on our tail,” I teased Belle.

She looked left and then right before getting on the highway and accelerating again. “I didn't know, sugar. You two might have been coming out hot.”

“Coming out hot?” Jewel cackled. “What is this?
Set It Off
?”

“Don't start with me, Jewellen! I'm an accessory. You two nefarious heffas may be easy tiptoeing along a life of crime, but I ain't tryna do no jail.”

I crowed with laughter. “Did your bougie behind just say you
ain't tryna do no jail
?” I turn my head to see Jewel rolling around on the backseat in her amusement. “Was there a
Law and Order
marathon on last night?”

Belle sniffed. “
Criminal Minds
, if you must know.”

“Umm . . . They hunt serial killers,” I informed her. “We ran a software program. Is my brother not occupying enough of your time at night?”

“Crime is crime,” she responded.

“Slow down, Jesse James. Speeding is a crime too,” Jewel reminded her.

“And why we gotta be nefarious heffas?” I asked.

Belle finally slowed down to under seventy-five miles an hour. “Y'all took to that creepin' and sneakin' like ducks to water, that's all I'm saying.”

I tittered. “Look here, debutante. It's not like we're going to take up bank robbery. We didn't even jack anything.”

Jewel howled. “Ha! Jack anything! Stop, you're going to make me pee!”

My cell phone rang. I paired it with the in-car system so we could all hear. “Hey Roni.”

“Hey ladies, how'd it go?” Veronica's melodious voice filled the car.

“Well, Belle thinks we're on a slippery slope to knocking over liquor stores on Friday nights. Beyond that, we were in and out no problem,” I told her.

“Good, 'cuz that bitch is up to something.”

“Whoa—why she gotta be bitchy?” Roni was the most mild-mannered of all of us, so her name-calling came as a surprise.

“Listen, after the lunch I just lived through—we need to be happy y'all aren't posting my bail for first-degree murder.”

Belle slid me a look. “See? Nefarious.”

“That bad?” Jewel asked, sitting up and wiping the tears of mirth from her eyes.

“She stood up in the middle of the restaurant and called me a treacherous Jezebel backstabber. Dramatic much?”

“Wait, what?” Jewel asked. “She cheated on Greg by sleeping with Beau.”

“Hey!” Belle interjected.

“Sorry, Belle. Ancient history.” Jewel shrugged. “Anyway, she cheats, gets caught, Greg bails, and you're the Jezebel?”

“She said that I was ‘lying in wait' for ‘her man' and the minute she slipped up, I ‘swooped in' and stole him,” Roni said.

“Oh no, she didn't. She is some piece of work.” I shook my head. “Can I ask y'all: Was she ever a nice person?”

“The funny thing is,” Jewel explained, “she actually was. She had a rough childhood that left her with some insecurities, but overall she was cool. At one point, she was my best friend in the world. And then one day she started getting very concerned about status and status symbols and having the right man, right ring, right car, right house, and right job. She got wrapped up in these plans, but then when she had what she thought she wanted, she wanted an upgrade.”

“Oh, one of those never-satisfied types,” Belle drawled knowingly.

“Exactly!” Veronica exclaimed.

“But really, and again—no shade to Beau, but it was about the time he entered the picture that she rode off the rails. She wanted him and Greg and after she lost them both, she became a different person. Now the older she gets and she's no closer to having what she thinks she should have accumulated by now, it just gets worse,” Jewel continued.

“And somehow this is our fault?” I wondered.

Jewel answered. “She's never going to point the finger at herself; she doesn't have that kind of mirror. But this is a new level of low, even for her.”

“Yeah, she was acting kinda shifty underneath all the mud-slinging. Like she had some secret she couldn't wait to share,” Veronica said.

“Now, see, Belle—that's nefarious,” Jewel pointed out.

Belle agreed. “Point taken.”

“Just tell me we're going to wipe the smirk off Renee's face,” Veronica pleaded.

“And mop the floor with it if all my prayers and dreams come true,” I added. The display indicated a call coming in from Carter. “Uh-oh. Everyone quiet! Veronica, we'll talk to you later.”

I clicked over. “Hey Carter.”

“Kit-Kat—I appear to be missing one car and one girlfriend.”

“You have another car,” I informed him needlessly.

“But only one girlfriend. Whatcha up to?”

“Just running some errands,” I hedged.

“Errands, huh?”

“Uh . . . yes?”

“Errands that require you and your homegirls to dress all in black and run around Dallas in my Benz?” We exchanged looks. He was surprisingly well-informed.

“Do you need the car back?” I evaded.

“You and I both know this is not about the car,” he snapped.

“I don't have to tell you where I am every moment of the day, Carter Parks. And since when do you care what I wear?” I lobbed that out there to see if that would stick.

“That's what you're coming with?” Carter responded. “Okay, then. Hold on a sec.”

I heard some rustling and muted voices.

“Jew-Ro.” Roman called Jewellen Rose by her nickname when she was in trouble. “What you out there getting into while carrying my child?”

“Busted,” she whispered to us before speaking up. “Nothing, babe. We just had lunch. We're going to drop by Madere's and then head home.”

Belle changed lanes to head toward Madere's house.

“Delaney Mirabella Montgomery,” Beau's voice rang out. “I know you're in on this,
chère
. Probably driving the getaway car.”

“Getaway car?” Belle chuckled. “That's some imagination, darling. A girl slithers into a black outfit and all of sudden she's some sort of—”

“Nefarious criminal?” I supplied, sending her a look. She raised one hand off the steering wheel and sent me a ‘talk to the hand' gesture.

Jewel giggled from the backseat.

“
Une momente, ‘tite chou
—you had to slither to get into the jeans? How tight are they?” Beau asked.

“How did you know we're in jeans?” I asked.

“Chase saw you all making your escape. He spilled all the tea. You all needed to get in and out of somewhere quickly and hoped you knew how to work the program. What program is that, ladies?” Carter asked.

Belle shook her head at us. I rolled my eyes at her. We had no intention of telling the guys anything until we knew what we had. “To a ten-year-old everything seems cloak-and- dagger. Wasn't that big of a thing, babe. We're gonna feed Jewellen for the sixteenth time today and then I'll be home. Your girlfriend and your car will be home before you know it.”

“Um-hmm,” Carter murmured. “I'll look forward to that.”

“Jewellen, I'll be waiting,” Roman said.

“
Moi aussi
, Belle,” Beau tacked on.

I clicked the phone off. “Men.”

We pulled up in front of Madere and Pops's place. Madere opened the door and stood there with her hands on her hips. We climbed out of the car and she shook her head. “There better be a good reason why my boys are calling looking for you and the three of you show up looking like the brokedown Supremes on a stakeout.”

Jewellen and Belle kissed her cheek. I linked my arm through hers and stepped into the house. “We're plotting and scheming, Mama. Wanna hear about it?”

Her eyes lit up. “I thought it might be something like that so I sent your father to Home Depot. He'll be there for hours. Spill it!”

“I'll tell you how your daughter and Jewel almost made me catch a case.”

“Catch a case?”
I whispered as Belle stuck out her tongue at me behind my mother's back.

“Madere, did you cook today?” Jewel asked, heading for the kitchen.

Madere smiled. “First trimester, I already have the bowls by the stove. Red beans and rice and shrimp Bienville.”