Rexanne Becnel, the author of nineteen novels and two novellas, swears she could not be a writer if it weren’t for New Orleans’s many coffeehouses. She does all her work longhand, with a mug of coffee at her side. She is a charter member of the Southern Louisiana Chapter of Romance Writers of America, and founded the New Orleans Popular Fiction Conference.

Rexanne’s novels regularly appear on bestseller lists such as USA TODAY, Amazon.com, Waldenbooks, Ingrams and Barnes and Noble. She has been nominated for and received awards from Romantic Times, Waldenbooks, The Holt Committee, the Atlanta Journal/Atlanta Constitution and the National Readers Choice Awards.

Old Boyfriends
Rexanne Becnel

www.millsandboon.co.uk

From the Author

Dear Reader,

You’d think an author with eighteen books under her belt wouldn’t be so excited about the publication of her nineteenth!

Wrong!

Old Boyfriends marks the beginning of a new direction for me: from historical romance to what I fondly call “girlfriend” books. Little did I know when I started writing about Cat and Bitsey and MJ that a new publishing outlet was being created for that exact sort of book. I am so happy to be a part of NEXT and their wonderful lineup of books and authors. Writing about women my age with my concerns and my fears and hopes has rejuvenated my creative side. Maybe too much. You see, I write in a coffeehouse and I know some of the other patrons wonder about me. I sit at my corner table, pen in hand, and grin and frown and mumble to myself. Sometimes I even shed a tear or two. But I’m too happy with what I’m doing to care if they think I’m crazy.

Writing Old Boyfriends was sometimes hard and sometimes effortless, but always fulfilling. I hope you find reading it equally satisfying.

Best wishes,

Rexanne

For my friends on Jackson Avenue

who keep me sane and focused.

CHAPTER 1: Death and Dieting

CHAPTER 2: Not Without My Daughter

CHAPTER 3: Getting the Hell Back to Dodge

CHAPTER 4: Men and Whine

CHAPTER 5: Baby You Can Drive My Car

CHAPTER 6: The Heat Is On

CHAPTER 7: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

CHAPTER 8: Are You In or Are You Out?

CHAPTER 9: Should I Stay or Should I Go?

CHAPTER 10: On the Brink

CHAPTER 11: Bed Head & Boob Jobs

CHAPTER 12: Walking to New Orleans

CHAPTER 13: Home Again

CHAPTER 1
Death and Dieting

Cat

M y friend M.J.’s husband died on a Friday, lying on the table during a therapeutic massage. A massive heart attack, that’s how the newspaper reported it. But that’s only because his son and the PR firm for their restaurant chain made sure that’s what they reported.

The truth? Viagra and the too-capable ministrations of a pseudowoman, pseudomasseuse wearing a black oriental wig, a red thong and fishnet hose are what did in Frank Hollander. The table was actually a round bed covered with black satin sheets, with an honest-to-God mirror on the ceiling. The House of the Rising Sun serves a very good hot and sour soup downstairs, but the therapy going on upstairs isn’t the sort that the chairman of this year’s United Way Fund Drive could afford to be associated with.

Needless to say, the funeral was huge. The mayor spoke, the bishop said the mass, and the choir from St. Joseph’s Special School, a major beneficiary of the United Way, sang good old Frank into the ground. As pure as those kids’ souls were, even they couldn’t have sung Frank into heaven.

Afterward, M.J.’s stepchildren entertained the mourners at her home, where everyone came up to the widow and said all the things they were supposed to:

“If I can do anything, Mary Jo, just call. Promise me you’ll call.”

“Your husband was a great man, Mrs. Hollander. We’ll all miss him.”

Blah, blah, blah. It was all I could do to keep my mouth shut. But Bitsey had given me my marching orders and I knew my role. I was there to support M.J., not to air my opinion about her sleazy bastard of a husband and his gang of no-good kids.

Thank God for Bitsey—and I’m not using the Lord’s name casually when I say that. Thank you, God, for giving me Bitsey. She’s like the voice of reason in my life, the perfect mother image for someone sorely deprived of that in her biological parent.

M.J., Bitsey and me. Three girls raised in the South, but trapped in California.

Well, I think that maybe I was the only one who felt trapped in the vast, arid beigeness of southern California. But then, I felt trapped wherever I was. I was slowly figuring that out.

That Tuesday, however, at M.J.’s palatial home with the air-conditioning running double time, and Frank Jr.’s Pacific Rim fusion restaurant catering the after-funeral festivities, we were all feeling trapped. Sushi at a funeral is beyond unreal.

Bitsey had explained to M.J. that she had to stay downstairs until the last guests left. She was the hostess, and it was only right. But yes, she could anesthetize herself if she wanted to. Everybody else was.

So M.J., in her perfect size-six black Giselle dress and her Jimmy Choo slingbacks, sat in Frank Sr.’s favorite fake leopard-skin chair and tossed back five vodka martinis in less than two hours.

M.J. drank, Bitsey ate, and I fumed and wanted to get the hell out of there. That awful, morbid couple of hours sums up pretty well how the three of us react to any stress thrown our way. And God knows there’s enough of it. When Bitsey hurts, she eats. Even when she was on Phen-Fen, and now Meridia, if she’s hurting—especially if her husband, Jack, pulls some stunt—she eats. Considering that Jack Albertson can be a coldhearted bastard, and unlike Frank, doesn’t bother to hide it, it’s no wonder she’s packed close to two hundred pounds onto her five-foot-four frame. The more she eats, the fatter she gets, and the more remote and critical he gets. Which, of course, makes her eat even more.

But I digress, which I do a lot. According to my sometimes therapist, that’s a typical coping mechanism: catalog everybody else’s flaws and you’ll be too busy to examine your own. M.J. drinks, Bitsey eats, and I run. New job. New man. New apartment.

Today, however, I had vowed to hang in there, bite my tongue and generally struggle against every impulse I had.

“So sorry, Mrs. Hollander.” A slick-looking man with a classic comb-over bent down a little to give M.J. his condolences. His eyes were on her boobs, which are original issue, contrary to what most people think. He handed her his card. “If I can help you in any way.”

After he wandered away, Bitsey took the card from M.J.’s vodka-numbed hand. “A lawyer,” Bitsey muttered, glaring at his retreating back. “How positively gauche to hand the bereaved widow a business card at her husband’s funeral. Is there even one person in this entire state who was taught a modicum of manners?”

“She’s going to need a lawyer,” I whispered over M.J.’s head, hoping the vodka had deadened her hearing. “Frank Jr. isn’t going to let her get away with one thin dime of his daddy’s money. Her clothes, yes. Her jewelry, maybe. In a weak moment he might even let her keep the Jag. But the house? The money?” I shook my head. “No way.”

“Shh,” Bitsey hissed. “Not now.”

M.J. turned her big, fogged-over blue eyes on Bitsey. “I need to use the little girls’ room.”

“Okay, honey.” Bitsey patted M.J.’s knee. “Do you need help?”

Somehow we guided M.J. through the crowd without it being too obvious that her feet weren’t moving. Good thing she’s only about a hundred pounds. The girl is as strong as an ox, thanks to Pilates three days a week, cross-training two days and ballet the other two. But she doesn’t weigh anything.

Instead of the powder room, we took M.J. to the master suite where we surprised Frank Jr.’s wife, Wendy, scoping out the place. The bimbo didn’t even have the grace to look embarrassed that we’d caught her in the act of mentally arranging her furniture in M.J.’s bedroom.

But when I spied the delicate ceramic bunny rabbit she held in her greedy, sharp-nailed clutches, I saw red. Bloodletting red. Bitsey had made that rabbit in the ceramics class where she, M.J. and I first met. She’d given it to M.J., and a cat figurine to me. I glared at Wendy until the bitch put the bunny down and flounced away.

Bitsey gave me a scandalized look. “Please tell me she wasn’t doing what I think she was doing.”

I rolled my eyes, hoping M.J. was too far gone to have noticed her stepdaughter-in-law’s avarice. But as M.J. kicked off her shoes and staggered to the “hers” bathroom she muttered, “Wendy wants my house. Frank Jr., too. She’s always saying how a big house like this needs kids in it.”

M.J. paused in the doorway and, holding on to the frame, looked over her shoulder at us. Tears spilled down her cheeks. She was gorgeous even when she was drunk, miserable and crying. If she wasn’t such a lamb, I’d hate her. “Like I didn’t try to have children,” she went on. “I always wanted children, and we tried everything. But…” She sniffled. “I just couldn’t get pregnant. She always lords that over me, you know. We’re the same age, but she’s got three kids and I don’t have any.” M.J. went into the bathroom and closed the door.

Bitsey looked at me. Her eyes brimmed with sorrow, but her mouth was pursed in outrage. “And now Wendy wants her house?” She fished the lawyer’s card out of her pocket.

I snatched the card and tore it in half, then tossed it in a garbage basket. “No. Not that lawyer. If he’s here at Frank’s funeral it’s because he’s a friend or business acquaintance. Some kind of way he’s connected to Frank Sr., and therefore Frank Jr. When M.J. gets a lawyer, we have to make sure it’s someone who doesn’t have any ties to the Hollander clan.”

“You’re right. You’re right,” Bitsey conceded. “You have a very suspicious mind, Cat. But sometimes that’s good.”

“A girl’s got to watch out for herself.”

Bitsey gave me a warm, soft hug. “And for her friends.”

M.J. went alone to the reading of the will. We found that out later. I would have canceled my appointments to be with her if she’d asked. Bitsey would have gone, too, not that she would have spoken up against a room half full of lawyers—all men—and the other half full of relatives—all bloodsuckers. But at least M.J. would have had one person on her side.

M.J. went alone, though, and when I called her that afternoon to see if she wanted to have dinner, all I got was the answering service. Even the housekeeper was gone. That’s when I knew something was wrong. Ever since the funeral, M.J. hadn’t left the house except for her exercise classes. I called Bitsey.

“Maybe she’s taking a nap,” she said. Bitsey is big on naps.

“Or drunk.”

“Or drunk,” Bitsey agreed. “We should go over there.”

“What about Jack? Isn’t it his dinnertime?” I tried to keep any hint of scorn out of my voice; I’m not sure I succeeded. The thing is, Jack Albertson is an overbearing jerk. Bitsey is the perfect wife, but nothing she does is ever good enough to suit him. She’s Julia Child and Heloise rolled into one: perfect meals served in a perfectly kept house. I helped her decorate it, but she keeps it up herself. Even their kids are perfect, good grades, no car wrecks or illegitimate babies—no thanks to Jack. But does he appreciate any of Bitsey’s good qualities? Not hardly. In his book she’s too fat, too permissive, a spendthrift and a brainless twit. Oh yeah, and did I mention? He thinks she’s too fat.

Sometimes I hate the jerk. But then, I’m beginning to think that maybe I hate all men.

“Jack’s working late tonight,” she said. “His division is entertaining a group of businessmen from South Korea and they’re pulling out all the stops to impress them.”

What I heard in her determined explanation was, “He’s nothing like Frank Hollander, so just turn off that suspicious little mind of yours.” For her sake I did.

“Okay, then,” I said. “I’ll meet you at M.J.’s in, say, twenty minutes. We’ll take her out to dinner.”

Twenty minutes later nobody answered the door, so we went around to the back. The gate was locked, but through the iron fence and tall border of variegated ginger and papyrus plants we could see M.J. lying on a chaise longue on the far side of the pool. She was asleep. At least, I hoped she was asleep.

When we were hoarse from trying to rouse her, I swore. “That’s it. I’m going over the fence.”

It would have been easier if I was twenty years younger or ten pounds lighter, or both. I had on high-heeled mules, ivory silk cigarette pants and a sleeveless black turtleneck. Very chic and severe, as befits an interior designer to the quasi rich and famous of Bakersfield, California. But it was lousy rock-climbing garb, and by the time I tumbled into a bed of pothos and aluminum plants, the whole outfit was ruined. “Hells bells. I think I broke something.”

“No you didn’t. Open the gate,” Bitsey demanded. So much for being motherly.

We hurried over to M.J.; for once Bitsey moved faster than me.

“Please, God,” Bitsey pleaded. “Don’t let her be dead.”

“Don’t say that. She’s not dead,” I muttered. “Dead drunk, but not dead.”

I was right, but barely. The last bit of margarita in the pitcher next to M.J. would definitely have finished her off. She was breathing but not responsive beyond a few indecipherable mutters.

“We should take her to the hospital,” Bitsey said as we wheeled her inside on the chaise longue.

“She’s just drunk. Look how big that pitcher is. She drank almost all of it.”

“What if she took something else?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Sleeping pills. Painkillers. And look how sunburned she is. She must have been out there all afternoon.”

M.J. woke up when we turned a cold shower on her. “Stop. Stop!” She covered her face with her hands and curled on her side in the group-size shower stall.

“Mary Jo Hollander, what did you take today?” Bitsey exclaimed in her sternest I-am-the-mother-around-here voice.

“Tequila. Leave me alone.”

“What else?” I turned the cold up to full blast.

“Nothing!” She squealed in protest. “Nothing else.”

“No pills?” Bitsey demanded, her blond hair beginning to droop in the spray from the five-point water delivery system. “Mary Jo! No pills?”

“Nooo!”

Bitsey and I shared a look. As one we decided to believe her. So I turned off the water, Bitsey found some towels, and together we got M.J. dry and changed and into bed. This was beginning to be a bad habit. After that, completely done in, we threw ourselves onto the twin couches in the living room.

Bitsey kicked off her shoes. “She shouldn’t be living alone.”

“We both live alone.”

“I don’t live alone.”

I massaged my left ankle, which still hurt from my adventures with the iron fence. “Your kids are gone. Jack’s never around. Face it, Bitsey, you’re just as alone as me and M.J.” I knew I was being mean for no reason, but I was in a pissy mood.

“On the rag are you?” Bitsey was a sweetheart, but she wasn’t totally defenseless.

She was no match for me, though. “At least I’m not too old to still have a period.”

She glared at me. Bitsey was very sensitive about the impending death of her forties. She’d gone through the same tortures when she was thirty-nine and her first daughter went off to college. Forty was old! Four years later her middle girl went off without too much trauma. But the baby had left last August, she’d turned forty-eight the next month, and according to her gynecologist, she was officially in menopause. She hadn’t yet recovered from any of it.

I knew she’d be okay once she actually turned fifty. But we had another year and a half till then. Despite my nasty mood, I probably shouldn’t have made that last crack.

“At least I won’t die alone,” she finally said, but without any real venom in her voice.

I hugged a silk-tasseled pillow to my chest. “Sorry.”

She nodded. “Me, too.”

We sat in silence, surrounded by the self-conscious splendor of M.J.’s home. Pure California posh. By day it was bright and elegant: white everything—floors, walls, carpets, furniture; art in every shade of red; and the bright green of potted palms and ferns. By night the lighting turned everything amber, dark emerald and the color of blood. Dramatic.

You’d think as M.J.’s best friend I would have been consulted on the decor. But Frank Hollander used a big interior design firm from L.A. for everything: home, restaurants and his latest venture, a boutique hotel in San Diego. Despite my professional jealousy I could appreciate the house’s artistic merit. But it didn’t suit M.J. She’s a big softy at heart, so that slick, polished look didn’t come naturally to her. She had to work at it.

“I’ll stay with her tonight.”

“Good idea,” Bitsey said. She sighed. “She needs to get out of here.”

“You mean a vacation?”

She shrugged. “Something like that.”

“The trouble is, if she leaves—even for a week—Wendy and Frank Jr. would be in here with the locks changed. Possession is nine-tenths of the law and all that.”

Prophetic words. Hours later, after we forced two cups of strong coffee into her, M.J. spilled all. “He left me with nothing. Well, practically nothing,” she wailed, sitting cross-legged on the bed.

It was a garbled tale, interrupted by a bout of vomiting and lots of tears. By the time we had the gist of it, M.J.’s head was beginning to clear. “All those years,” she muttered. “Seventeen years of marriage and he betrays me, not only with that…that freak of nature woman-wannabe, but he lied about taking care of me. The kids inherited the corporation, and everything belongs to it—the restaurants, the hotel, even my house. And my car, too!”

“Wreck it,” Bitsey muttered.

I swiveled my head to stare at her. “Wreck it? You mean the car?” M.J.’s Jaguar sedan is the most gorgeous hunk of metal and leather you’ve ever seen.

Scowling, yet also looking like she wanted to cry, Bitsey nodded. “Wreck the car, wreck the house, wreck his reputation.”

M.J. sat up against the leather upholstered headboard of her Ponderosa-size bed. Vindictiveness in Bitsey was enough to sober anyone. “Wreck my car?”

“Wreck the house?” I said. “What do you mean?”

Bitsey got up, turned her back on us and stared out at the pool and the cunningly lit courtyard that surrounded it. “He deserves to be punished.”

“He’s dead,” I pointed out. “That’s pretty significant punishment, don’t you think?”

She shook her head. “It’s not like we have to lie about him. The truth will do just fine.” She turned around. “Maybe a little public humiliation will teach those horrible kids of his to mend their ways while they still can.”

Personally I didn’t think Frank Jr., Celeste and Roger would learn anything from a stunt like she was proposing except to hate their father’s second wife even more than they already did. But what the hay. “I’m in. Heck, I’ll spread the word to everyone I know about Frank and how he really died. I’ll even write a damned press release and send it to every media outlet in Southern California—if that’s what M.J. wants. But Bits, the Jag? I don’t think I have it in me to wreck the Jag.”

I was trying to lighten the mood, but it wasn’t working, at least not with Bitsey. She planted her fists on her hips. “I say burn down the house and drive the car into the pool. What have we got to lose?”

I swallowed hard. I had never seen Bitsey so furious. It wasn’t like the stomping around, cursing fury I was prone to. I might fly off the handle, but Bitsey was too much the genteel Southern lady for that. Instead she was cold and bitter, very scary for such a truly nice person. Struck dumb by her outrageous suggestion, M.J. and I could only follow her as she headed for the kitchen.

“We can plant evidence to implicate Frank Jr. as the arsonist,” she went on. She was serious.

“And you know how to do this?” I asked. “Don’t you watch CSI? You can’t hide something like that.”

“We wouldn’t be hiding it. That’s the beauty of it all. We’d just make Frank Jr. look guilty. Or better yet, Wendy. They deserve it. And after all, they’ll be the ones to collect the insurance. I’m sure she can think of a hundred ways to spend that much money.”

She turned on the steam attachment of M.J.’s elaborate espresso machine. M.J. and I shared a look. Bitsey might be an avenging arsonist, but she made a damned good espresso.

It was after midnight. I had no business drinking coffee, even decaf with lots of milk. But we were avoiding liquor for M.J.’s sake, so coffee it was. We sat in the breakfast nook of M.J.’s kitchen, one of the only cozy rooms in her house. M.J. was wrapped in a pink French terry robe, looking small and childlike with her face washed clean of makeup and her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Even miserable and hung over, the girl managed to still look good.

“Okay,” Bitsey said, setting two mugs of perfectly foamed café au lait before us. “Cinnamon or chocolate shavings?”

I’ve often thought Bitsey should open a coffeehouse. A chain of them. Bitsey’s Kitchen Table.

“Okay,” she repeated, once we were all settled. “Maybe burning Frank’s house down isn’t the best idea. But we should at least strip the place and sell off whatever we can. I can’t believe Frank left you penniless. Seventeen years of marriage and he does that to you? God, men are horrible.”

M.J. stared down at her coffee. “I signed a prenup, you know. But I thought, since we stayed married more than the ten years specified, that I would at least get something. Only it turns out he doesn’t own anything in his own name. It’s set up so that it all belongs to the company.”

“Everything?” I asked. “What about your jewelry? Or the art?” I gestured to a Steve Rucker painting above the sideboard.

“The jewelry’s mine,” M.J. allowed. “I’ll throw it into the ocean before I let Wendy get her greedy mitts on it.”

“Amen,” said Bitsey. She dumped two spoons of sugar into her cup. I reached for a packet of the blue stuff.

“Who bought the art?” I asked.

M.J.’s face screwed up in a frown. “I bought most of it.”

“How?”

“Credit card, of course.”

“Whose credit card?” Bitsey asked.

M.J. straightened in her chair. “It’s in my name. But Frank always paid the bills.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “The art you bought is legally yours, not some corporation’s.”

“Or at least half yours,” Bitsey said. With eyes narrowed, she looked from M.J. to me and back. “Let’s take it. But first let’s eat.”

She took over the kitchen and made us mushroom omelets and fresh-squeezed orange juice. “I can’t believe you don’t have any grits,” she said as we sat down at the chrome-and-glass breakfast table.

“Even I keep instant grits in my pantry,” I threw in. Though I prefer the real thing, microwave grits are better than no grits.

“Frank likes oatmeal. Liked,” M.J. corrected herself. “Liked.”

“Another poor choice,” I said. “Any man who doesn’t like grits should be viewed with suspicion.”

“Did Bill like grits?” M.J. asked.

“Kiss off,” I threw right back at her. Bill was my second husband, now my second ex-husband.

“Jack loves grits,” Bitsey said. “You remember what grits stands for, don’t you?” she added. “Girls raised in the South. Grits.”

That was us all right. Girls raised in the sweet, green humidity of the deep South, and decades later trying our best to get by in the desert that was Southern California—even if that meant burglarizing our best friend’s house.

We worked through the night, stacking paintings, prints, statues and all the silver and china in the garage. By nine in the morning we had a moving van and a storage facility lined up. By noon everything was gone, and by one we were all zonked out at Bitsey’s house. Her husband, Jack, woke us when he came home around six.

“What’s going on around here?” he said from the door to the master bedroom. His voice carried down the hall to where M.J. and I shared the guest room. “What are you doing asleep, Bits? Why are M.J. and Cat here?” He must have seen the Jag. “And where’s my dinner?”

I sat up; M.J. looked at me. We both strained to hear more.

“Honey, I’m home,” I muttered. As I said, I don’t like Jack. I used to. I mean, on the surface he’s a pretty nice guy. Most guys are. But Bitsey was my friend, and more often than not, Jack made her unhappy. That’s all I needed to know.

Apparently he closed the door behind him, because although I could tell they were talking, I couldn’t make out what they said.

“I think it’s time for us to go.”

“Maybe so,” M.J. agreed.

“What’s wrong with the world?” I asked as we slid into yesterday’s clothes. “Bitsey’s husband is a jerk. Your husband was a jerk. Certainly my two ex-husbands are jerks.”

M.J. paused in the process of brushing her hair. “Are you still sleeping with Bill?”

In a weak moment, fueled by margaritas, I’d once revealed that my second ex and I occasionally get together. I didn’t say we slept together, but M.J. and Bitsey had drawn their own conclusions. Accurate conclusions, I might add. I searched for my sandals. “Every now and again.”

“Recently?”

I looked up at her. “Why do you want to know?”

It was her turn to look away. “Because he called me a few days ago.”

“He called you? Bill called you? But why?”

She didn’t answer, which was answer enough.

“You’re kidding. He hit on you, the bereaved widow? My best friend? And he’s trying to get you in the sack?”

“I hung up on him.” M.J. stared earnestly at me. “As soon as I realized what he was leading up to, I hung up. And you’re right. He is a jerk.”

I managed a smile, but my heart was racing. Not from jealousy, though, and certainly not from anger at M.J. Bill was a jerk; I’d always known that. We’d divorced once I realized that he’d never been faithful, not even for one month during the four years we were together. But this was even worse. M.J. was my friend. How could he set his sights on her?

And why did the fact that he was attracted to her leave me so panicked? Any man still breathing is attracted to M.J.

But that sort of logic didn’t matter to me.

M.J. put a hand on my arm. “I’m sorry, Cat. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Fine. And there’s no reason for you to apologize. It’s not your fault he’s a lowlife asshole.”

I raked my fingers through my hair. I thought I was beyond being hurt by the scumsucker, but my hands were shaking. “I wish I was a lesbian. Women are so far superior to men.”

“Yes,” M.J. agreed. “We are.” She gave me a hug, which I really needed. “But despite Frank and Bill, I have to believe there are still some good guys out there.”

I let out a rude snort. “Yeah, maybe. But they’re all prepubescent. The trouble with men is that they all suffer from testosterone poisoning. It shrinks their brains and swells their balls and they’re never the same again.”

M.J. laughed, but I was serious. “Come on, Cat,” she said. “Surely you’ve known one or two good guys.”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Well, I have.”

“Yeah? Who?”

“My old high school boyfriend, for one.”

“If he was so great, why didn’t you just marry him?

“M.J. sighed. “I wanted to. But he went away to college on a football scholarship, and Mama had me on the beauty pageant circuit. That was when I really believed I could have a future in the movies. I guess he and I just sort of drifted apart. You know how it is at that age.”

I slipped on my shoes and let the subject drop. But her remembered high school passion reminded me of my own. He’d been a skinny Cajun boy and our favorite date had been to go fishing. At least we always took fishing gear when we set off in his flatboat. But we never did catch anything. We were too busy making out.

Despite my cynicism, I couldn’t help smiling at the memory. God, how I’d loved that boy.

“Anyway,” M.J. went on. “Not to change the subject, but I thought of something, or maybe I dreamed it. Anyway, we have to go back to the house.” She smiled like an impish kitten. “Frank kept mad money. I don’t know exactly where, but I remember last year when his grandson had a DUI and they wouldn’t take credit cards at the jail. He went upstairs and came down with a fistful of cash.”

“Is there a safe?”

“Yes, but it’s downstairs, and I already checked it.”

While Bitsey fed her demanding husband, M.J. and I took my car to her house. She’d padlocked the gate so we knew Frank Jr. hadn’t been in yet. But it was only a matter of time. Two hours and twenty minutes later we found a false bottom in the humidor in Frank’s study. It was a large, freestanding piece made of beautiful English oak.

Big humidor equals big hidden panel equals big, big payoff. Frank might have let M.J. collect art, but it was obvious that he collected money. Packets of twenties, fifties, hundreds and five-hundred-dollar bills. In his desk drawer we found three collections of the new state quarters and an odd bag of felt-wrapped coins. Old ones.

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