Queen Never Cry novel · Chapter 4 of 32

Chapter 4: Emerald

Hester opened the door of her apartment with her cane raised.

Then she saw Garret Mercer on the landing behind me, and she lowered it slowly.

"You are the trucker," she said.

"Freight, ma'am."

"Trucking with more paperwork." She looked him up and down.

"My granddaughter was in prison for twenty-six months, young man."

"Yes, ma'am."

"What do you want with her?"

"Desmond Roarke's head," Garret said.

My grandmother considered this for a long moment.

"Acceptable," she said. "Do you eat ham?"

I don't think I had ever seen anyone get through that door so fast.

By four o'clock he was sitting at the kitchen table with a ham sandwich, and Hester was feeding him questions.

He answered every one of them.

Desmond had come to him eight years ago as a money partner for a three-truck startup.

He had been funny, generous, and always agreeable, and he had signed every paper Garret handed him.

Then one Monday Garret's company belonged to someone else, under a transfer with Garret's own signature at the bottom.

"I never signed it," he said. "I wasn't even in the state."

"Forgery," Hester said.

"Beautiful forgery. He practiced my loops on cocktail napkins at my own wedding rehearsal."

"You were married?"

"For eleven months." He took another bite. "She left when the money did."

I sat across from him with my hands around a mug, and I felt something in my chest shift a notch.

Not trust.

But something near it, on the same street.

"Desmond did the same to me," I said slowly. "The wires went out at 2:14 in the morning from the laptop in our study."

"Where were you?" Garret said.

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