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“Mr. Donald Pastor, what do you have to say to the accusations that your brother is making against you?” He didn’t know because he’d not been paying attention but only had to look at his attorney for him to answer. He said that William had been leading Donald down a path of mayhem and destruction since he’d been a child and didn’t know any better. “I have all the paperwork there on the testing that you have had done, Mr. Palmer. I thank you for that.”
Tuning out again, he continued to draw on his paper and think about the things that William had done in the name of getting money from their momma. Or anybody, for that matter. Donald had never once hit her, not where it would hurt her anyway. Momma had been so good to him, the only person in the world he thought that had been. As he thought about all the times that he and his momma would get together, it hurt him deeper in the heart. Donald sure did miss his momma.
When he was poked, gentle like by Mr. Palmer, he stood up when asked. William and the others were being dragged out, and he was standing there alone. Mr. Palmer told him to tell the judge what he’d been thinking about the day that his brother had killed the limo driver.
“We was in the car, yes sir. We had to go along with what William wanted, or he’d beat us up. Especially me. He said that I was too stupid to argue about how bad it was going to be, so I was just to do as he told me. I didn’t know he was going to keep doing it. Hitting that car. Then, when it was rolled over on its top part, he started yelling at us to go there and drag momma out so that he could take care of Blackbird.” He asked him who that was. “Oh, Ms. Raven. She’s a good person, that one is. When I asked to talk to her about me not being with my family in this here courtroom today, she got a hold of Mr. Palmer here lickety-split, and he’s been real nice to me. I been talking to the police too about stuff. Did they tell you that?”
“Yes, they did. So you want to make a change in your life, do you?” He didn’t understand, so he looked at Mr. Palmer. When he nodded, Donald, in turn, nodded to the judge. “Good for you. Also, I’m not sure if you were made aware of this or not, but the autopsy showed that your mother died from injuries that she sustained in the accident that day. Two counts of vehicular homicide carries a hefty prison sentence. Were you driving the car that day, Mr. Donald?”
“No, sir. I don’t know nothing about driving. William was.” He glanced down at his paper and then back at the judge, just a little confused. “My momma didn’t die that day, sir. She was burned up after she died, having a good time with the kiddies. I don’t know where you heard your information, but that’s what they told me.”
“What I mean is, sir, and I’m sorry you weren’t informed until today, but your momma had a blood clot that she got when she was in that car accident. It was a tiny little thing they found later, but it was what killed her that day.” He asked him if William hitting the car over and over was what gave her the clod. “Blood clot, but yes, that’s what the coroner is ruling. That she was murdered by the car being in an accident.”
“William killed our momma? He went, and…we told him not to do it. All of us did. But he hit Besty Sue when she said she wanted out. So, we had to pretend to be on his side. He’s powerful mean—he went and killed our momma?” He sat down then, lying his head on the table. Sobbing as quietly as he could so as he’d not be called names, Donald hurt badder than he did before. Just knowing that his momma was having a good time when she passed was all right, but this here? William killing her off. It was more than he could take.
Mr. Palmer handed him a box of tissues but didn’t tell him to get over it like William would have. He told him how sorry he was that she’d been killed and that it was just one more thing to blame on his older brother. Nodding when he could, Donald stood up and looked at the judge. He didn’t make fun of him either.
“I’m profoundly sorry for your loss, Donald. I know she’s been gone for over a couple of months now, but it still hurts. Finding out that she could still be around, well, I can’t imagine what you must be feeling toward your brother for his part in her early demise.” Donald wasn’t positive about what demise meant, but he thought it had to do with her dying. “Now. Let me tell you what I’ve done today with the other three. I’ve separated their trials. Like you, I think your sisters have been doing what William wanted for years, and it’s ingrained in them to follow along. I’m charging William with two counts of homicide along with the things that you’ve been able to help the police with. Also, your sisters and you have a few to answer to as well. But I’m not concerned with the petty stuff at the moment. If I were to reduce your sentence, Donald, to say two years, what would you do with your life? I need a good answer and one that you’re going to do too.”
“Well, sir. I’ve been thinking on that a lot. Mr. Palmer told me that I might get me some time off for helping. He didn’t promise, but he did tell me to think on it. I want to go away. Move away and never see them again. I did have me a thinking on my sisters, but they’d be hard to be around all the time and not get us in trouble.” The judge thought that was about right. “I want to get me a job. My first one ever, and make me some money on my own. I don’t want to—stealing don’t help you at all, they told me in them classes I’ve been taking at the jail. It has…” He looked at Mr. Palmer, who told him what it did. “That’s right. The tickle-down effect. Where if’n I steal from someone, they don’t have no food for their kids. Then the kids don’t have a good meal, they don’t study very hard.” Mr. Palmer corrected him. “Oh. Trickle-down effect. Not tickle.”
“It seems to me that you’re making good use of your time in jail, Donald. I’m glad to hear that.” He thanked him and told him that he’d been collecting rocks, too. “Rocks?”
“Yes, sir. I was just sitting around on my bottom when I got my free time. I was told that walking would let me find all kinds of things.” He moved up to the big shelf that the judge was on and handed him a rock. “Mr. Palmer’s granddaughter, she has one of them polishing machines, and she shined this right up for me. After I seen what I could do with them pretty rocks, I started walking more and more. I lost me about seventy pounds, they say. And I feel good. You can have that one. It’s my favorite, but I want you to have it.”
“I wish I could, Donald, but it might be taken the wrong way if I take this from you. It is a lovely rock, however.” He put it back in his pocket and went back to his table. “All right, Donald. You let them bring you back here tomorrow, and you and I will have a conversation with Mr. Palmer, all right?”
“Yes, sir. I don’t mind going back to the jail none. They moved me away from the others, and I been sleeping like a baby. Also, it’s real nice to have a soft bed that my brother doesn’t take from me on account of him wanting it more. Thank you for that.” As he was being taken back to the jail, Donald felt good. He was going to make his momma proud of him while she was up in heaven, and when he saw her, he was going to have only good things to tell her about his life.
Chapter 2
Heather looked over the paperwork that she’d been given and couldn’t make heads or tails out of it. Hiring a detective to find Sebastian had been costly, but without someone telling her what he’d found, it wasn’t doing her a bit of good. She handed it off to her brother, Roger. He laid it on the table and ignored her for the phone call he was on.
“Yes, I’m aware that the will has been read and that it was finalized, but there wasn’t anything there for us to take. Not even the land nor—how the hell did she have so much land and not telling us about it? Or, for that matter, who said that Sebastian could sell it off without our permission?” The man must have answered him because Roger rolled his eyes. “I don’t care what you say about my mother. There isn’t any way that she was of sound mind when she wrote out that will. Where the hell does she get off, leaving us nothing at all when we were her blood relatives?” Roger laid his phone on the table and put it on speaker so she could hear the attorney that their mom had hired.
“Mr. Gerald, I know for a fact that I handed you the paperwork that your mother had filled out about how much you and your sister and brother owed her. Several hundred thousand dollars each was either stolen or borrowed from her over the years. You said that you understood it.” He said that was before they found out that there wasn’t anything for them. “Be that as it may, your mother kept meticulous records of her transactions with you and the other two, and she says that there wasn’t any way that she was going to leave any of you anything since you more than made up for any goodwill that she had for you when you were children. She thought that the three of you would flitter it away, and there would be nothing left of it for her grandchild.”
“You mean Sebastian Gerald? My sister’s kid?” He said that was right. “So on account of Heather leaving her brat with mom all these years, we all get nothing. That’s not the least bit fair if you ask me. My brother and I have plans for that money. I want you to hunt Sebastian down and have him divide it like it should have been in the first place. If his mother wants to share with him, then that’s fine. I don’t, so he needs to give me my third. Or better yet, half of it to me since I’ve had to waste all my time in doing this crap to get the money that I’m owed in the first place.”
“Owed, Mr. Gerald? What about the money that the three of you owed her? I’m sure that she would like to have known that you were really going to pay her back?” He told the man that it was water under the bridge as his mom was dead and that he was still alive. The money would do her no good now. “Well, it won’t do you any good either, as she didn’t feel it necessary to leave it to you three. Please do not call my office again. You will not be put through to any of the offices here, so don’t bother wasting your time. I’ve read the will, and that was all my part was about when she passed away. She was a good grandma to that boy, and you should just leave him alone.”
When the line went dead, she glared at her brother. “What the hell do you mean I can share with my son? I no more wanted him than I did not being able to party all the time. And you certainly aren’t getting half. Do you expect that Conner and I share the other half? No, that’s not how it works. We each get a third.” She thought of something. “You either take a third, Roger, or I’ll have my son not share with you at all.” Her brother laughed.
“You think that he’s going to come running to you when you want him to? That your darling little boy is going to have a thing to do with you after the way that you treated him when he was a teenager?” He laughed harder. “You’ll be lucky if he doesn’t haul off and hit you, Heather, after the shit that you did to him. From what I heard, it took him a full month of monitoring to make sure that he didn’t die from the drugs you fed him. Not to mention the beatings that you hired guys to do to him. Why on earth do you think he’d have a thing to do with you now?”
“Because I’m his mother, dumbass.” He pointed out that their mother had left them high and dry, too. “She was a bitch. And she never wanted us in the first place.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. She did want us. And she was a good mom to all three of us. Right up until we weren’t to her. I’m not saying that I would have changed the way that I treated her when we got out of the house, but we gave her no reason to keep on loving us when we were gone. Not that it makes what she did to us any better, but I’m just saying she did want us around at one time. I think that you and Conner were the worst to her. Leaving her broke like you did. At least I didn’t take all her money and run.”
“No, just most of it. Did you ever find out how much was made off the land? I’m sure that it wasn’t a small amount.” He asked her if she knew that Mom had owned thirty thousand acres of land. “No. That’s not possible. If she would have owned that, don’t you think she would have given some of it to us before she died?”
“Absolutely not. By the time we could have used the land, she was already set on keeping it away from us.” He looked at the paperwork but didn’t pick it up. “Thirty thousand acres of land just sitting there for us to sell off, and we didn’t have a clue. Your son sold it before she was gone. It was in his name long before he got out of the service, too. We might could have fooled Mom, but not him. He was always too sharp for us getting around Mom and would keep it from us better—if he’d just allowed us in the house once in a while, we could have figured a few things out and made some hard cash. But no, he had to stand there at the door with a gun pointed at us. Then, even when he wasn’t there? Christ, when I think of that fucking bastard shooting my car up just because I was ‘trespassing.’ Little fucker. When I see him, he’s going to pay for that.”
Heather knew that she couldn’t take any credit for Sebastian being smart. She’d had nothing to do with his upbringing. But she did, just a little to herself, let herself believe that she’d been the one teaching him how to swindle his uncles. But why her? She was going to ask him when she saw him. A son and their mom were supposed to be close, right? She asked herself.
Finally, Roger picked up the paperwork from the investigator. She went to the kitchen to get herself another beer and offered one to Roger. Heather knew that he’d not take it. Beer was just too low-brow for him. Conner, who’d been sleeping on the couch in the living room, perked up when she snapped the lid off of her own drink.
“Bring me one of them, Heather. I got me a powerful thirst for that.” He always had a powerful thirst when it was someone else’s beer. When he drank it straight down, he reached for hers, and she moved out of his reach. “Oh, come on, sis. I told you I was thirsty.”
