"The PI who is psychic?" Ally asked.
"Yeah. That's how she knew he was cheating on her, and he tried to con her into thinking he wasn't seeing anyone else but her. It didn't work. She had envisioned his unfaithfulness. When she dumped him, he was off seeing another girl, no delay," Kendra said.
Grayson was glad Kendra hadn't been taken in by Ivan. Though he was ready to take him to task for hurting Amy.
"Okay, not the one for me," Louise said.
While Grayson filled out the paperwork, he wondered whether Louise thought she could reform Ivan.
He knew women like that, who thought they were special, who could change a man into what they wanted. He'd known some men like that, too, who loved a woman but knew she was an alcoholic, or drug addict, or sex addict, and thought he could convince her to give up whatever her vices were. But unless the partner wanted to do it for themselves, it just wouldn't happen.
One of the guys he knew had ended up in divorce court because his wife was a gambler, and there was no changing her. Another man was a con man, convincing his wife they weren't broke and hiding bills and foreclosure notices until the bank repossessed their home and cars. So the con worked for a while, but in the end, she learned the truth.
Ally got a call at her desk and hurried to answer it. “Okay, yeah, sure. We’ll send a couple of fugitive recovery agents over to take him into custody.”
Just then, Ivan walked inside the building. He smiled at Kendra and frowned at Grayson. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Kendra got the information from Ally for their new case before Ivan took it. “Come on, Grayson, we have a case to take care of.”
“You work here?” Ivan asked Grayson, sounding shocked.
“Yeah, and I’m engaged to Kendra. What do we have to do?” Grayson walked Kendra outside to get on with the mission.
“The guy is twenty-three, Marty Loman. I’ve had to take him in several times. He always goes to his grandmother’s house when he’s in trouble. He usually just avoids his courthouse appearances, and then we have to go through this all over again. This time, he actually made it to the courthouse, sat in the proceedings for several other cases, got bored, then left.”
Smiling, Grayson shook his head. “Sounds like he was afraid of what the judge was going to do with him.”
“He just hates the anticipation and figures if he doesn’t go in, just ignores the court date; nobody thinks he’s important enough to go after. They’re always minor cases. This one is for running three red lights in a row. A police officer saw him run the third signal, but others witnessed that he had run through two earlier ones and had caught his license plate number.”
“So he’s not a dangerous problem.”
“Not unless he runs into someone because of his driving record. He stays up all night playing video games, so I imagine he’ll be sleeping right now. The last few times I’ve picked him up, he was sleeping. His grandmother is always so annoyed when I come to pick him up. Not with me, but with Marty. She thinks he has gone to court and done what he needs to do. The last time, she told him he acted like a three-year-old.”
“Does he live with her all the time?”
“Most of the time. His parents kicked him out of their home because he refused to get a job. He said working a nine-to-five job was beneath him.”
Grayson laughed. “If all of us thought that, the world would come to a standstill.”
“I agree. But he feels entitled.”
“His grandmother pays for his upkeep?” Grayson couldn’t imagine relying on a grandparent to keep him afloat when he was an able-bodied worker.
“When she doesn’t want to enable him, he goes off and borrows from friends.”
“So he has had lots of enablers in his life.”
“Yeah. His parents even, until they finally cut him off, but mostly because of his saying he wouldn’t work, and then they’d had enough. Before that, he’d pretended, lied to them about looking for gainful employment, stayed out partying all night.”
“I suppose he wanted to be a CEO at a company rather than work at the bottom rung of an office first.”
“Nah, that might require him to have to work. He just wants money to spend on whatever he wants. He doesn’t have any desire to earn it himself.”
Grayson shook his head. “I’ve always worked.”
“Since you were three years old, I bet.” Kendra sounded like she was joking.
“Yeah, mom had us help with all kinds of chores even when we were two. Throw clothes into the washing machine and move them to the dryer. Mom would lift us up to push the on buttons. We loved it. And cleaning windows? My brother and I did an awful job, I’m sure, but we loved doing stuff like that. Kids need to be taught when they’re little. It’s just a natural way of doing things. And they love doing what the parents are doing.”
