Ladies' Night Andrews, Kay (great novels .txt) 📖

the pages of documents until she found one she wanted, a computer printout of a real estate listing for Altadora Commons. The picture showed a series of tasteful cream stucco two-story town houses with orange stucco barrel-tile roofs, and a not-so-tasteful billboard seemingly mushrooming from a postage-stamp-sized lawn that proclaimed, “Bank Owned. Prestige Homes at Distressed Prices!”

“Wow. And Stackpole owns three of these?”

“Judge Stackpole? Your divorce judge?” Rochelle had come up behind them while they were studying the printouts. She leaned over Camryn’s shoulder, staring at the photo of Altadora Commons.

“That’s right,” Camryn told her. “According to my real estate agent, the original sales price, back in 2007, was between 875,000 and 1.6 million dollars for the biggest units, which were actually two town houses joined together. Then, well, you know what happened to real estate around here. You couldn’t give a town house away. Stackpole bought three units from the developer, at what looked like fire-sale prices, in 2010. He paid 420,000 dollars apiece. Which would have been a great deal…”

“Except?” Grace asked.

“Except that the county’s tax digest was reworked in 2011, and now those units are only appraised at 120,000 apiece,” Camryn said, sounding absolutely elated. “He’s underwater, in a major way.”

“But he can’t be broke,” Grace objected. “He lives at Longboat Key, and you told us his wife’s family has gobs of money.”

“The wife’s family has money. Stackpole doesn’t have squat,” Camryn said. “I checked. The house is in her name. And incidentally? It’s apparently a lot bigger than it looks from the street. It’s on the market for 3.2 million.”

Rochelle had eased herself onto a chair. “Bring me up to speed here, Camryn. What does any of this mean to you and Grace?”

“It’s just a wild theory we’ve been tossing back and forth,” Grace cautioned.

“It’s not a wild theory,” Camryn said, tapping the documents on the table. “These printouts prove it. Stackpole’s in debt. His wife has money, but he probably can’t touch it. He’s having an affair with Paula Talbott-Sinclair, and one of them comes up with the idea to mandate women going through his divorce court to seek counseling from Paula, his girlfriend. She gets to soak each of us three hundred dollars per session, for a total of six sessions. There are five people in our group alone, and on the one day I watched her office, I saw three other groups arriving for divorce counseling. Do the math, Grace. They’re getting rich off our misery.”

“You should do a story about this on the news,” Rochelle said excitedly. “Blow the lid off the whole big scam.”

“I intend to,” Camryn said.

“Isn’t it a conflict of interest for you to report on a story you’re involved in?” Grace asked.

“It’d be a first-person piece,” Camryn said. “And if the story’s big enough, I don’t see how my station manager can turn it down.”

“Look, I’d love it if we could prove those two were in cahoots,” Grace said. “But I talked to Mitzi about this yesterday. Even if you did see all those people going into Paula’s office, how do you know they didn’t go there of their own free will?”

“Can’t you just ask her other patients whether or not Stackpole ordered them to attend therapy with her?” Rochelle asked.

“I wish,” Camryn said. “I told you I hung around outside Paula’s office last Friday. What I didn’t tell you was that she apparently saw me standing there in the parking lot. She came outside and asked me what I was doing! I made up some lame story about looking for a diamond earring I’d dropped Wednesday night but I think she realized there was something fishy going on.”

“Mitzi did say she’d take a look at Stackpole’s dockets and talk to any attorneys she knows that have had divorce cases before him,” Grace said.

“But who knows how long that will take?” Rochelle demanded. “We need action!”

Grace gave her mother the look. “What kind of action would you suggest?”

Rochelle thought. She smiled. She walked away from the table, and when she returned, she brought a handful of flyers, which she offered to Grace.

Come play in the Sandbox. Good for one free appetizer or drink

“I remember these. Dad hired kids to put them on car windshields at the new Publix, right after it opened.”

“Until I made him stop, because we were nearly run out of business, giving away all those free drinks and stuffed potato skins,” Rochelle said.

“So?” Grace asked. “Am I missing something?”

“I’m not. Rochelle, if you ever get tired of running this bar, you might have a future as an investigative reporter. This,” Camryn said admiringly, “is brilliant.”

“I still don’t get it,” Grace said, looking from one woman to the other.

“It’s simple,” Rochelle said. “Tomorrow morning, I go over to Paula’s office. I watch cars pulling up and pay attention to who goes inside. Then, I plaster these coupons all over their windshields. When they bring in the coupons for their freebies, you two swoop in and ask them what you need to know.”

“And how do you know they’ll use the coupons? Or when they’ll use them?” Grace asked.

“I’ll just write on the bottom of each coupon that the deal’s good for one day only,” Rochelle said. “Trust me. Nobody turns down a free drink in this town.”

46

Paula Talbott-Sinclair clasped her hands together prayerfully as she stood in the front of the room. She took a deep breath and let it out so s-l-o-w-l-y that the members of the group all subconsciously held their own breaths, wondering what would happen next.

“Hi friends.” Her voice was clear and unusually calm. “I want to start our session tonight by talking about personal responsibility.” She looked around the room. “All of you are here, in a way, because you were forced to take personal responsibility for some action you took against your partner.”

“Ashleigh, you were stalking your husband’s new lover. You vandalized her home in what was a very terrifying and thoughtless act of vengeance.

“Wyatt, you punched out the