Chapter 21

"Katy," Dad said, "If I've said it once, I've said a hundred times. I will not allow you to get close enough to Melville to read his thoughts."

"Fine, then put me next to some of his closest confidants, like that psychiatrist Jason fired," I replied.

The four of us, Dad, Jason, Sara and I, were huddled in the great room of the house where our tenders had taken us after meeting our flight from Phoenix. Little Donna was playing in the backyard under the watchful eyes of a middle-aged, oh-so-perky woman named Nora Segal. Our other tender, Jerome Daley, was grocery shopping, which didn't make him happy, but Donna wouldn't have anything to do with him. Dad, Sara and I had prepared the shopping list. Daley and Segal referred to the house we now occupied as a safe house. I hoped the name had meaning beyond the lingo our tenders used in their profession.

Dad's frown softened, and then he smiled. "Now, that's not a bad idea, but let's start with the nannies and nurses Melville fired. If he inflicted pain on one of them, he probably did the same with another. You can accompany Daley, using follow-up interviews as an excuse. Let's see, you could be... no, you couldn't pull it off."

"Pull what off?" I asked.

"Be Daley's colleague, a private investigator."

"Maybe not," Sara said, "but she could be a secretary, pretend to take notes, that sort of thing."

"She's too young and beautiful," Jason said.

I gave him an appreciative grin. "Thanks, lover, but I can make myself look older." Uglier, too, probably, but I didn't want to admit it to Jason.

"Yes!" Dad exclaimed. "You gave me an idea, Katy. Let's find us a makeup artist, someone who'll know how to give Katy a different look, even make her ugly if necessary. Perfect!"

Yea! I'd cracked the dam. Soon the dam would break wide open. We needed to win our war with Melville, and we needed to do it quickly. To that end, I had to put myself next to the enemy. The group's needs would be the hydraulic pressure that would eventually break the dam that Dad and Jason had constructed to stop me from getting up close and personal with the Destroyer.

"How about I meet with Melville's lawyers, too, his business lawyer and divorce attorney?" I asked.

"Good thinking, Katy," Sara said. "And with a makeup artist, you can present a different appearance for each meeting."

Sara was on my side. We'd had a private discussion.

"There is a small problem," I stated.

"What?" Jason asked.

"Dad solved the problem with his suggestion about follow-up interviews with the nannies and nurses. During those meetings the women will be thinking about Melville. When I meet with the psychiatrist, Melville's lawyers and others, the meeting might not be structured so the person I'm meeting with has Melville on his mind. If not, the thoughts I hear might or might not give us any useful info, probably the latter. We'll need to somehow push the person I'm meeting to think about Melville."

"I hear you," Dad said. "Sara, would you get with Katy and make a list of individuals Katy should meet with. Once the list is made, we'll sit down with Daley and Segal and create scenarios like the one I dreamed up regarding the nannies and nurses that will prove fruitful."

Sara smiled and nodded. Having her daughter by her side again had transformed her into a new woman, and being involved in our war with her ex-husband was icing on the cake. Dad's daily forays into her pussy didn't do any harm either, just the opposite.

"Okay," Dad said, rubbing his hands together. "Now let's talk about Melville's weaknesses. Katy, do you still have the list we made during our last trip to Denver?"

"No, but I think I remember it. I wrote down seven weaknesses." I flipped a finger up each time I named a weakness. "Pathological hatred of women, sadist, neat freak, thief, ruthless, control freak, and the seventh one, other crooked activities."

"Weaknesses?" Sara questioned. "The list sounds more like a litany of Gary's negative character traits, not weaknesses."

"Trust me, Sara," Dad said. "They're weaknesses. What happened when Melville came home to a mess?"

"He'd go into a rage."

"Precisely. Whenever a person gets extremely angry, his reasoning ability deteriorates," Dad stated. "We want Melville so angry he can't think straight. We'll manipulate his compulsions for neatness and control until smoke starts shooting out of his ears."

Sara laughed gaily. "I see what you mean. Let's do it!"

"Uh-uh," Dad said. "Your job is to advise us and take care of Donna. The rest of us will handle whatever needs to be done."

Sara pouted, and her pout was more than half serious. "Spoilsport."

"The makeup artist can do his magic on Sara, too, Dad," I said. My father was getting as protective about Sara as he was about me.

"Yeah, David. I deserve to have some fun, too," Sara said with a wide grin. "Ooh, I'd love to mix up the contents of all the drawers in the house, and then just throw everything back willy-nilly. Gary would become apoplectic." She shivered with glee and hugged herself.

"Great! That's the kind of ideas we need from you, Sara, but none of us will enter his home. We'll leave breaking and entering to professionals," Dad said. "Tomorrow, one law firm is filing a law suit to reopen the custody issue. The day after, the other law firm will demand that Melville turn over your inheritance, Sara. By the way, your mother and sister were a big help regarding your inheritance. They put our lawyers with your father's lawyer, the one who drew up the will. Your father was worried about you and made sure there was no question about the legacy being sole and separate personal property. Hopefully Katy's meetings with the nannies and nurses will turn up a woman who will step forward and verify Melville's pathological hatred of women and his sadistic personality. Perhaps Katy's meeting with his business lawyer will uncover other crooked activities. Do you see how the list details weaknesses now?"

"Yes, except ruthless."

"Oh, ruthless is one of his largest weaknesses. Knowing he's ruthless, we'll know how he'll react to our attacks. Hopefully, he won't surprise us."

Hah! That would be a surprise, I thought.

"I don't understand why it's so important for your daughter to be present at the interviews," Jerome Daley said to my father. He was a tall man, an inch taller than Jason. His brown hair was trimmed in a military cut, what I called a burr. He had a large nose and larger ears, full lips, and a jutting chin. He moved with the grace of a jungle cat, and he made me feel safer the minute I met him. Daley would be happier if I never left the safe house.

"Because I have some psychic ability," I stated. "I wish everyone would stop talking about me as if I weren't in the room. Jerome, I can sense some individual's emotions and usually know when someone is lying. Would you like a demonstration?" We'd all decided that I'd need to slowly reveal my gifts to our tenders.

Surprise, surprise! Daley didn't believe me. He wasn't necessarily a paranormal skeptic like Dr. Rourke. Jerome Daley was a skeptic, period. I figured his cynical outlook on life was fallout from his work.

"Yeah. Ask me three questions. I'll either lie or tell you the truth. You decide which."

"All right. How old are you?"

"Thirty-two."

A lie. He thought thirty-one first.

"What is your middle name?"

"I don't have a middle name."

Apparently the truth.

"Where were you born?"

"Buffalo, New York."

Another lie. He was born in Bountiful, Utah. How much should I tell him? Ah, heck, we need him on our side. Let it all hang out.

"You're thirty-one, not thirty-two. You don't have a middle name, but you lied about your birthplace."

His eyes widened, but being a skeptic, he still didn't believe me. He said, "The questions were too general, facts you could have discovered if..."

"All right. Make three statements of your own choosing. I'll tell you which contain lies and which are the whole truth and nothing but the truth."

"Hmm. I named my first dog Fido."

I chuckled. "The whole truth and nothing but the truth. Poor dog. You actually named him Fido?"

Jerome grinned. "Yeah. How about this one? My first girlfriend was named Eloise Ruark. She was a freckle-faced redhead with large teeth and big bazooms."

I laughed. "Jerome, you're incorrigible. Her name was Eloise Ruark. That much was the truth. The rest was pure fabrication. She was a blonde, I think, without a freckle in sight. She didn't have large teeth, but she did wear braces, and because she was only ten years old at the time, I seriously doubt she had any bazooms worth mentioning."

"I'll be dipped! You are psychic!" Jerome exclaimed.

"I'll make the third statement," Nora Segal said, wanting to be involved.

I liked Nora. She obviously adored children because they loved her. Donna had taken to her immediately, but I didn't believe for a second that she was as harmless as she looked. A little older than Sara, Nora was slim but certainly not frail. The auburn-haired beauty stood about five-seven, and her dark eyes and crooked grin made me think she was constantly ready to play a prank on me. Mischievous personified.

"Go ahead," I said.

"My first boyfriend was named James Mallory. He was skinny as a rail, had a shock of curly blond hair and big feet like a German Sheppard puppy."

"The whole truth and nothing... no, wait. Oh, you're bad, Nora. He wasn't skinny; he was chubby... and his name was John, not James. You're a better liar than Jerome."

"Marvelous," Nora said, clapping her hands softly with applause. "We could have used Katy on our last assignment, Jerome."

"Yeah." The skeptic wasn't happy. He'd need to adjust his belief systems, which would be difficult because they were sculpted from experience not fashioned by his intellect. "Okay. I know a makeup artist. Actually, he bills himself as a master of disguise, and he hires out occasionally. I'll contact him this afternoon."

I was a blonde again, but a hairpiece caused my blondness, not hair dye. I also looked five-years older than my seventeen years and about five-months pregnant. Charlie Twigs, the master of disguise, figured a pregnant secretary would engender sympathy from the nannies and nurses I'd be meeting.

Twigs was one of life's real characters. Bald except for an unruly fringe of gray hair around his ears, he looked like Dopey, the dwarf in Sleeping Beauty, but his mind was as crisp as a fresh tortilla chip, which confused the association.

We'd prepared a list of questions we wanted Jerome to ask the no-longer-employed-by-Melville nurses and nannies. Discounting the one who quit because Melville sent her to the emergency room, and the one who was fired when she complained about how Melville treated his daughter, the number of nurses and nannies totaled six. Mrs. Grimes was the fourth and last interview of the day. We'd finish the list tomorrow and hopefully move on to the psychiatrist and lawyers, where I anticipated more fruitful ground for the information we sought. So far, the interviews had been a bust, yielding zip.

Mrs. Grimes was a nanny, the woman who testified against Sara at the restraining order hearing. She didn't look like a villain. A kindler, gentler appearing woman couldn't exist on the planet, but the real woman inside her benign outer shell didn't match her appearance.

"Mr. Turnball," I said, "may I speak privately with you for a moment?" Turnball was Jerome's name for the interviews. We stepped outside onto a deck overlooking a lush arroyo saturated with mountain plants, shrubs and trees I couldn't name. I knew the names of desert plants but was sorely lacking when it came to the flora of the Rocky Mountains.

Jerome gave me an inquiring look.

"You need to ask a few questions beyond those you asked the other women, mostly to stretch out the time we'll spend with Mrs. Grimes," I said.

"Why?"

"She's in love with Melville and she's a... witch, I think, although she refers to herself as a wiccan. She knows things, Jerome. She knows a lot about Melville's sick personality."

He nodded. "Any suggestions?"

"Ask her why she testified at the hearing on Melville's behalf. I'd also like to hear her thoughts about religion if an opportunity arises that lets you bring up the subject. For what it's worth, she's still fucking Melville, every Tuesday afternoon. They have a standing appointment."

Jerome winced when I mentioned Mrs. Grimes still fucked Melville. Our tender didn't appreciate my potty mouth.

I laughed. "They certainly don't make love, Jerome. They fuck, although I hesitate to call the pain Melville inflicts on the poor woman fucking. Sorry."

The four of us plus Jerome met that evening just before dinner to recap our activities for the day. Nora was tending Donna in another room. We didn't want the little girl exposed to the vile facts we were discovering about her father.

"The custody case was reopened today," Dad said to start the review. "I'm told Melville threw a fit when he was served with the papers."

"If you want to see a real fit, wait until tomorrow when the demand letter slaps the slimy snake in the face ordering him to fork over my money," Sara commented with a grin.

Dad melted. He sure did like Sara's deep dimples.

"Jason, tell us about your efforts," Dad said.

"This morning, I met with the electronics expert the P.I. firm recommended. Melville's house should be wired for sound tomorrow or the next day."

"What about his office?" Dad asked.

Jason grimaced. "The bug guy recommended caution. After I described what Melville did for a living, he told me he wanted to check around first to determine if Melville hired one of the bug guy's colleagues to sweep his offices for listening devices from time to time. He said he'd give me a call about the offices tomorrow."

The Destroyer purchased businesses in dire financial trouble. He'd infuse a failing business with capital, and then sell off the various divisions of the business he could make profitable, close the unprofitable departments, and finally peddle the furniture, fixtures and equipment for salvage. He also looked for businesses owning fully depreciated real estate that he could market separately at huge profits. He operated under the theory that in some failing businesses the individual parts were worth more than the whole. The business format fit the Destroyer's ruthless personality. He didn't give a damn about long-term employees or their families, fringe benefits, pension plans, or anything with sentimental value. He had only one goal in mind: the bottom line, his bottom line.

"The bug guy also recommended that we hire editors to review the tapes created by the listening devices. Without editors, one or more of us would be listening to tapes 24/7, so I met with the head editor to make certain she knew what kind of information would interest us. She'll alert us immediately under emergency conditions like Melville knowing our whereabouts or hiring others to do any of us bodily harm. After meeting with the editor, I quit worrying we'd miss something important."