Nothing but Trouble_ A Kevin Kerney Novel - Michael Mcgarrity [15]
“I’ll call his office as soon as I get back to the hotel.”
“Are you driving?”
“My girlfriend is with me,” Johnny replied. “She can drive.”
“Okay. Make sure you see your physician.”
After paying the bill by credit card and signing a release to let his Santa Fe lawyer get a copy of his ER chart, Johnny went back to his hotel room to find Brenda trying on a new pair of red running shoes.
“I found this great designer-shoe store near the Plaza,” she said, bouncing up and down, pointing her toes so she could admire the new footwear, “and they had these in my size. How did it go in court?”
“I got another continuance.”
“Your lawyer called.”
“The guy here in Santa Fe?”
Brenda shook her head and pirouetted in front of the full mirror on the closet door, studying her shoes as she twirled. “Nope, Jim Blass in Denver. Call him back right away. He said it was important.”
Johnny flipped open the cell phone, speed-dialed the number, and got put through to Blass immediately.
“I couldn’t reach you on your cell,” Blass said. “The call kept getting dropped.”
“What’s up?” Johnny asked.
“Your wife has filed a claim against the proceeds from your sports-channel contract. That means the money will be tied up until the divorce settlement is finalized, unless we can work something out.”
“That bitch,” Johnny said. “Did you talk to her attorney?”
“Yeah, I did. Seems you borrowed money from her right before you got married.”
“Borrowed, hell. We used that money for our honeymoon trip to Europe. I paid her back.”
“That’s not what she says,” Blass said.
“Fuck her,” Johnny said. “What can you do?”
“Tell me the facts, Johnny. Did you pay her back the loan?”
Johnny’s squeezed the cell phone in frustration. Sometimes he hated telling the truth. “No.”
“How much?”
“Twenty-five thousand and change.”
“I’ll offer repayment to her from your contract proceeds,” Blass said. “But don’t expect a rapid response. Madeline is determined to make you suffer as long as she can.”
“Push it along,” Johnny said. “I need that money.” He hit the disconnect icon and threw the phone on the bed.
“Bad news, baby?” Brenda asked as she cuddled up to him.
Johnny filled her in with a sanitized version of Madeline’s latest legal maneuver.
She sighed sympathetically, shook her head, and threw her arms around his neck. “I’d never do something like that to you,” she said breathlessly. “Never, ever.”
“I know you wouldn’t, sweetie pie. But I was going to use some of that money to find us a bigger apartment. We need to get settled into our own place and see where our relationship is headed.”
Brenda smiled gleefully at the idea, wiggled her rump, and slid her hand down the front of Johnny’s trousers. “Could we get a condo downtown?”
“I don’t see why not,” Johnny said.
Looking over Brenda’s shoulder, Johnny grimaced slightly at the thought of keeping up the charade with her. His sour mood quickly evaporated when Brenda unzipped his pants and dropped to her knees.
Police headquarters sat on the outskirts of the city at the edge of a business park, in an area that had experienced explosive growth over the past decade. To the southwest residential subdivisions, strip malls, apartment complexes, town homes, fast-food franchises, and trailer parks had filled up vast tracts of once-vacant land along a four-mile stretch of road that led to the municipal airport.
For a city that touted its romantic charm, unique architecture, beautiful setting, and rich cultural and artistic traditions, the area had become Santa Fe’s version of tasteless urban sprawl, featuring ill-proportioned faux-adobe pueblo and territorial-style buildings with no character.
Fortunately, few tourists saw it, so the city’s reputation as a lovely four-hundred-year-old Spanish village at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains remained mostly intact.
In his second-floor office at headquarters Kerney read through the art-theft case files. The most recent rip-offs had occurred when two pieces, a small bronze and a miniature oil painting,