He Chose Mistress, I Chose Empire novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Gate Code

The gate log shows Brantley visiting Unit 114 at 2 a.m. eleven times; Haddie sends off his deputy with her receipts and changes the code in his face, then gets served a divorce petition claiming half her company.

I still had the rental agreement in my fist when the sun came up over the Cumberland.

I had driven straight to the warehouse behind the second truck, still in the burgundy gown.

My father's building looked the way it always had at dawn.

Four stories of old red brick, two loading bays, a gravel lot, and a chain-link gate with a keypad.

KITT MOVING & STORAGE, painted on the river side in letters taller than a man.

Wilma had not gone home.

She was in the front office with a pot of coffee and the gate computer turned on.

"Sit down, honey. You're going to want to sit down for this."

The gate keypad logs every code, every time. Daddy insisted on it.

Wilma had printed seven months of entries for one code.

It was mine.

The code I'd used when I drove for him.

I gave it to Brantley the week we got engaged, so he could pick me up after work.

Eleven nights.

Every one of them at two in the morning, give or take ten minutes.

"He came in, went up to the second floor, and left about an hour later," Wilma said. "The camera on the stairs only shows his back. But that's his walk."

"That's his walk," I agreed.

I knew that walk. I'd watched it leave a lot of rooms.

We took the freight elevator up together.

Unit 114 was halfway down the second-floor hall, a plain steel roll-up door.

A heavy brass disc lock hung on the latch.

Not one of ours.

I put my palm flat on the cold door.

Whatever my husband had been visiting at two in the morning was eighteen inches away.

"We never open a renter's door," I said.

"Your daddy said that every week for forty years."

"I know. I heard him."

I took my hand off the steel.

The rent was paid. The law was the law. And if I cut that lock, anything inside was worthless in front of a judge.

"So we wait," Wilma said.

"We wait. And we change some things."

By eight o'clock I had showered in the drivers' locker room and put on a Kitt work shirt from the supply closet.

At nine, a black Range Rover pulled up to the gate.

Brantley was driving. Opaline sat beside him in a lavender suit.

Behind them came a Davidson County sheriff's cruiser.

Brantley got out and buttoned his jacket.

"Morning, Haddie. You look rested."

"I look like a mover. Can I help you?"

He waved at the deputy.

"My wife removed my property from my home last night. I'd like it back."

Opaline stepped up beside him.

"Every stick of it. The sideboard. The Steinway. The paintings in the dining room. You stole from this family in front of half of Nashville."

The crew had started drifting in for the morning shift.

Six men stood along the loading dock with their coffee, watching.

Wilma came out of the office carrying the blue binder.

She handed it to me, and I handed it to the deputy.

"Every item we moved last night is in there," I said. "Every receipt. Every check. All from my father's estate account, in my name, before Brantley ever saw a dime of it."

The deputy opened it.

He stopped at the Steinway and read the receipt twice.

"Ma'am, this is your signature on all these?"

"Every one."

"And the estate account, that was yours alone?"

"My father left it to me. The house was empty when I married into it. Ask his mother. She called it a blank canvas."

The deputy closed the binder and handed it back to me.

"Mr. Talmadge, this is a civil matter. If you think she took something of yours, take it up with a judge."

"She took everything."

"She took what she paid for, sir. That's what these say."

He touched his hat to me and walked back to his cruiser.

Brantley turned red under his tan.

He looked past me at the building, up at the second-floor windows, just for a second.

I saw it.

"Wilma," I said. "Bring me the gate manual."

She already had it.

I walked to the keypad with Brantley ten feet behind me and Opaline behind him.

I opened the panel and punched in the master code.

Then I deleted my old code.

CODE REMOVED.

I typed in a new one with my back to him.

"I hope you didn't need that," I said.

He didn't ask what I meant.

That told me more than the gate log did.

"You think you're clever," he said quietly. "You've got a dying business and two trucks, Haddie. Talmadge wives don't drive trucks."

"I'm not going to be a Talmadge wife much longer."

"No," he said. "You're not."

He got back in the Range Rover. Opaline gave the warehouse one long look, like she was measuring it for curtains.

They drove off.

A blue sedan pulled into the gravel lot right behind them.

A skinny man in a windbreaker got out with a thick envelope.

"Haddie Kitt Talmadge?"

"Kitt is fine."

"You've been served, ma'am."

Petition for divorce.

That part I expected.

The second page I did not.

Brantley was claiming half of Kitt Moving & Storage.

According to his petition, he had put $380,000 of marital money into a new roof on this building, the year after my father died.

That made the warehouse partly his.

I looked up at the roof.

Wilma looked at me.

"Honey," she said, "Kitt paid for that roof. I wrote the checks myself."

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