But it was no woman. “That was Don,” he said after he ended the call. He tossed his phone back on the nightstand. “He’s got some information. He’ll be here in the morning he said.”
“I thought Don was guarding my apartment door.”
“His men are in rotation doing so. They flew in after what happened at Tasha’s house.”
“Is his information about Natasha?”
Edmund nodded.“Yup.”
“Did he give you a clue what it was?”
“I didn’t ask. It’ll be some of her bullshit I’m sure.”
Maude shook her head. “If I live to be a thousand years old, I’ll never understand your sister.”
Edmund smiled. “Welcome to the club.” Then he shook his head too. “But I still can’t figure out this one. Why would she get in cahoots with a man that would accuse her of murder? Why would she have anything to do with a man that would have her arrested for murder?”
“That’s the part I can’t get over either,” said Maude. “Unless Ross Hampton isn’t involved, and something else is going on that we don’t know about.”
Edmund nodded. “I thought about that too.”
Maude looked at him. “Any ideas?”
He shook his head. He had none.
“What about that safe deposit box?”
“They haven’t found it,” Edmund said. “It’s not at the bank where she usually banks. They have a key, not a code. They’re checking other local banks. That ambushed happened before I could ask her where it was located.”
“Now I doubt if it’ll have any treasure trove of information like we thought it would have if she and Hamp are colluding in this.”
Edmund agreed. But Maude needed more. She turned on her side towards him. “You said she was arrested before for vehicular homicide, right? And that the charges were dropped?”
“That’s right.”
“Were they dropped because she didn’t do it?”
“Oh she did it alright,” Edmund said. “She was high at the time and her car did indeed crash into that woman’s car and killed her.”
“But let me guess: Your father got her off?”
“Via my intervention, yes.” Then a look of regret appeared in his eyes. “Sometimes I wished I would have never intervened.”
Maude leaned on her elbow with her face resting in her hand as she studied him. Unlike what many people seemed to think, she was finding Edmund to be a very emotional man. Maybe more so than most. He just knew how to conceal it better than most.
“Had I let her ass rot in jail like it should have,” he said, “maybe my son would have never gotten caught up in her craziness.”
Wait,what? Did Maude hear him right? “You have a son?”
Edmund looked at her. “And a daughter, yes.”
Maude was floored. She sat upright, her entire upper body no longer covered. “You have children? You never said you had children, Edmund.”
He looked at her breasts, then he looked at her face.
“Why didn’t you say you had children?”
“It never came up.”
