Jay Giles
BLINDSIDED
Jay Giles
This is a work of fiction. All the characters, names, places and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any actual locale, person or event is entirely coincidental.
Blindsided
Copyright © 2010 by Jay Giles.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. Printed in the
United States of America
.
Reagent Press
Cover design & illustration by Reagent Press
Cover illustration copyright © 2009 Reagent Press
ISBN:
978-1-57545-818-2
RP BOOKS
WASHINGTON
REAGENT PRESS
WWW.REAGENTPRESS.COM
TABLE OF CONTENTS
It felt like what it was—a cage.
The room was ten by ten at most, lit by strip fluorescent tubes, furnished with a rectangular gray metal table, four straight-backed wooden chairs. On one wall was a door, on another, a one-way-glass observation window. The ceiling was acoustical tile with a big square ventilation diffuser in the middle. Despite the size of the vent, the room was muggy, the air stale. It was quieter than a tomb.
If you were a murderer, rapist or felon, it was the room where you were interrogated.
I was none of those things, but I was in the room anyway.
The police lieutenant “interviewing” me had stepped out to confer with his associates. In his absence, I paced. I had to.
I had been the sole witness to gruesome execution-style killings and the horror was still ricocheting around in my mind. Guns had blazed all around me. I could still smell the gunpowder, see bullets destroying faces, hear the thud of bodies as they hit the concrete floor.
As frightening as it had been, I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that it wasn’t over. I’d had that feeling before—the morning Joe Jesso didn’t arrive at my office. The morning all of this started.
I’d been right about Joe.
I was afraid I’d be right about what else was about to happen, too.
That morning, I’d camped at the lobby window, waiting, watching. Where was he? Worry, whipped by guilt, had me panicky. In the parking area, heat simmered from the asphalt where Joe Jesso’s ten-year-old beige Cadillac should have been parked. Repeatedly, I scanned the approaching traffic for a glimpse of his car. Saw nothing.
My anxiety grew as the minutes ticked by. Why hadn’t I done something to safeguard him? Why hadn’t I had his new wife investigated? Why hadn’t I insisted on a postnuptial agreement?
I’d done nothing. I’d let him down. Upset with myself, I strode quickly to a phone, dialed his number. It rang four times. The recording kicked in. “You’ve reached Joe and Janet,” a female voice said. “We’re out having fun. Leave a message.”
I slammed the receiver down in frustration, went to my office, grabbed the car keys off my desk, returned to the reception area. “I’m going over to Joe’s,” I told Rosemary Shears, my receptionist and assistant. “ If he calls or shows up, get me on my cell.” I opened the front door and held it for Eddie, my Springer Spaniel and constant companion. He scooted through, raced to the car.
Rosemary stood at the door. “Call. No matter what.”
“I will,” I yelled over my shoulder as I ran down the walk. I wouldn’t have chased off like this for just anybody. I thought of Joe more as a favorite uncle than a client.
Eighteen months ago, not long after I opened, Joe had walked into my
Sarasota
brokerage and asked my advice on what to do with a little money. He must have liked what he heard because he kept coming back, giving me more money to invest. Somewhere along the way, we’d settled into a routine of spending Wednesday mornings talking about his passion—stocks.
Nothing—not faulty alarm clocks, car trouble, illness, even the threat of hurricanes—kept him from arriving promptly at 8:00 a.m.
Twenty long minutes had passed since 8:00.
My mind kept coming back to the only reason why Joe would be that late. He was dead.
I opened the Saab’s door. Eddie bounded up and over the driver’s seat, landed in the passenger seat in one jump. I slid in, shut the door, turned the key, and pulled out of our parking garden into the traffic on
Palm Street
.
My thoughts were memories. I pictured Joe carrying a mug of coffee over to his spot on the leather sofa opposite my desk, settling in, talking in a soft voice about price/earning ratios, growth opportunities, potential splits. At seventy-eight, Joe’s mind was razor-sharp. It was his face that had aged. It was thin and heavily lined, and his head was covered with more age spots than hair.
Gold-rimmed aviator-style glasses almost hid kind brown eyes. The pencil-thin moustache didn’t hide his usual smile.
He wore
Florida
old-man clothes. Pale, short-sleeved shirts with epaulets on the shoulders. Off-white shorts held up with a white belt. Dark socks pulled up high, tan soft-leather shoes. The ensemble varied a little each week. Three things, however, stayed the same: he always wore a white captain’s hat with an insignia on the front, had a nail file sticking out of his front shirt pocket, and carried a beat-up old brown-leather briefcase.
One other thing never varied. Even though Joe came to talk stocks, he was always concerned about me. If I was having a tough time, he’d put his arm around my shoulder, talk to me the way my father used to do.
All the Wednesdays we’d laughed together and talked together ran through my mind as I drove to his condo, a twenty-to-thirty minute drive. A long time to dwell on a friend’s death. And the woman who’d killed him.