He raised an eyebrow, adding, “Perhaps some of your former business associates can assist you with the matter. I’m sure that on occasion they use banking facilities abroad that don’t question the source of great sums of cash.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Griff said. “But even if they do, I won’t be associating with them anymore.” He looked over at Laura and added, “Ever.” He emphasized it with a curt bob of his head.

Speakman asked Griff if he had any more questions. They cleared up some minor points. And then Griff raised one that turned out to be major. It concerned a potential problem with the long-term payout. Ten, fifteen, twenty years down the road, he didn’t want to encounter a dilemma for which a solution hadn’t been worked out ahead of time.

A heated discussion ensued. No solution was reached, but Speakman promised to think hard on it and get back to Griff with a resolution as soon as possible. Could Griff live with that? he asked. Grudgingly, Griff said he could. That settled, Speakman suggested they seal their deal with a handshake, which they did.

Speakman then invited him to stay for dinner.

Before Griff could accept or decline, Mrs. Speakman said, “Oh, darling, I’m sorry, but I didn’t notify Mrs. Dobbins that we’d have a guest and she’s already left for the day. I thought the idea was to keep Mr. Burkett’s visit here a secret. Manuelo is one thing, but…”

Looking flustered for the first time since she joined them, she searched for excuses not to sit at the table with him. Apparently she had no qualms over having carnal knowledge of him, so long as she didn’t have to eat with him. “Besides,” she added lamely, “I’ve got a massive amount of work waiting for me upstairs.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Griff said. “I’ve got plans. In fact, I’m already late.”

“Then don’t let us keep you any longer,” Speakman said.

Laura Speakman stood up. She seemed relieved that he was leaving, and possibly just a bit ashamed over her inhospitality. “You should be hearing from me in about two weeks, Mr. Burkett. How can I reach you?”

He gave her his phone number, the one Turner had connected in the shabby apartment. She wrote it down on a slip of paper. “I’ll call and tell you where to meet me.”

“In two weeks?”

“Thereabouts. It could vary a day or two either way. I’ll be using an ovulation predictor kit to test for an LH surge.”

“LH…?”

“Luteinizing hormone.”

“Ah.” As in “I see,” when actually he didn’t have a clue.

“Hopefully I’ll be able to predict the day, but it might be short notice.”

“Fine. Whatever.”

Her eyes skittered away from his, and that was when Griff figured her out. She could play hardball with the big boys up to a point. She could have her menstrual cycle, and ovulation, and his sperm count talked about freely in technical and practical terms. But when it came down to the nitty-gritty, to actually climbing into bed with a stranger, she turned pure female. Which to him was reassuring.

She said good-bye and excused herself. Speakman offered to escort him to the front door. When they reached it, he said, “I’m curious, Griff.”

“About?”

“What you’ll be thinking about as you leave here. Will you be considering what to buy first?”

Actually, what he’d thought as he’d driven away from the gray stone mansion was that, even though they looked like reasonable and intelligent people, it was probably a good thing that Foster and Laura Speakman couldn’t reproduce, because both of them were fucking nuts.

Who would do this? Nobody, that’s who. Not when there were scientific methods of fertilization available. Not when you had the money to pay for those methods. Maybe in Bible days this was the way to go when you couldn’t have a kid. But not today, when there were options.

By the time he’d reached his destination, he’d almost convinced himself that he would never hear from the couple again.

Almost.

“Another?”

He glanced up. The cocktail waitress had returned. He was surprised to find the glass of bourbon empty. “No thanks. A Perrier, please.”

“Sure. I’ll be right back.”

I’ll be right back. She had used that expression twice, not knowing that the seemingly harmless phrase was like salt on an open wound to him.

His mother had said those words to him the night she left. For good that time.

She’d often stayed away for days at a stretch, leaving without so much as a “so long,” returning without explanation or excuse for her absence. He never got too upset or worried when she wasn’t around. He knew that when she got tired of the current boyfriend or vice versa, and the guy either kicked her out or simply moved on, she would come home.

When she did, she never asked how he’d been, or what he’d been doing while she was away. Was he okay? Had he gone to school? Had he eaten? Had he been frightened by the storm? Had he been sick?

One time, he had been. Sick. He got food poisoning from eating an opened can of beef stew that had been left out too long. He puked till he passed out, then came to on the bathroom floor, lying faceup in diarrhea and vomit, a knot as big as his fist on the back of his head from the fall.

He was eight years old.

After that, he took more notice of what he ate when his mother was gone. He learned to fend pretty well for himself until she reappeared.

On the night she left for good, he knew she wasn’t coming back. All day, she’d been sneaking things from the house when she thought he wasn’t looking. Clothes. Shoes. A satin pillow a guy had won for her at the state fair. She slept on it every night because she said it preserved her hairdo. When he saw her stuff that pillow into a paper grocery sack and take it out to her present boyfriend’s car, he knew this absence would be permanent.

The last time Griff saw his father, he’d been in handcuffs, being shoved into the back of a police car. A neighbor had called the cops, reporting the domestic dispute.

Dispute. A polite name for his father beating the shit out of his mother after coming home and finding her in bed with a guy she’d met the night before.

His mother went to the hospital. His daddy went to jail. He was placed with a foster family until his mother had recovered from her injuries. When the case came to trial, the DA explained to the six-year-old Griff that maybe he would be called on to tell the judge what had happened that night because he’d witnessed the assault. He lived in dread of that. If his old man got off, he would make Griff pay for tattling on him. The retribution would include a beating with his belt. It wouldn’t be the first, but it promised to be the worst.

And he honestly couldn’t say he blamed his dad. Griff knew words like whore, slut, and cunt meant ugly things about his mom, and he figured she deserved to be called those bad names.

As it turned out, there was no trial. His father entered a guilty plea to a lesser charge and was sentenced. Griff never knew when he got out of jail. Whenever it was, he didn’t contact them. Griff never saw him again.

From then on, it was just his mother and him.

And the men she brought home. Some moved in for extended periods of time, a week, maybe two. Others were guests who hit the door as soon as they got their pants back on.

Griff remembered, not long after his dad had been put in jail, crying because his mom had locked the door to his bedroom and he couldn’t get out, couldn’t get away from the spider that had crawled onto his bed. The guy she was with that night had finally come into his room, killed the spider, patted him on his towhead, and told him it was all right, he could go back to sleep now.

When he was old enough to be sent outside to play, some of his mother’s men friends had looked at him with apology, even guilt. Especially if the weather was bad. Others didn’t like having him around at all. That was when his mother told him to get lost and stay lost for a few hours. Sometimes he was given money so he could go to a movie. Most often when banished from the house, he would wander the neighborhood alone, looking for something to occupy him, later looking for mischief.