papers to make sure he was still the primary beneficiary was six months ago. After that, he'd done his best to monitor her phone calls and visitors to make certain she didn't have the opportunity to talk to her kiss-ass attorney again.
Since her death, John's bills had been piling up, most of them now past due, and Monk was breathing down his neck, waiting for his money. To placate him, John had had to up the bonus to twenty thousand.
John fumed while he waited in Benchley's plush corner office. It was outrageous that the attorney was keeping him waiting.
John checked the time again. Three-forty-five. He was supposed to meet his friends at Dooley's to celebrate. He knew they
were probably just now leaving their offices.
The door opened behind him. John didn't bother to turn around. He wasn't going to be the first to speak either, no matter how childish that made him appear.
'Good afternoon.' Benchley's voice was cold, damn near glacial.
'You've kept me waiting forty minutes,' John snapped. 'Let's get this done.'
Benchley didn't apologize. He took his seat behind his desk and placed a thick folder on the blotter. He was a little man with frizzy gray hair. He slowly opened the file.
The door opened again, and two young men John assumed were junior associates walked over to stand behind Benchley. Before John could ask what they were doing, Benchley gave him a clipped one-word explanation. 'Witnesses.'
The second Benchley broke the seal and began to read, John relaxed. Fifteen minutes later he was shaking with rage.
'When was the will changed?' He had to force himself not to yell.
'Four months ago,' Benchley explained.
'Why wasn't I notified?'
'I'm Catherine's attorney, sir, if you will remember. I had no reason to inform you of your wife's change of heart. You did sign
the prenuptial, and you have no claim to her trust fund. I've made a copy of the will for you to take with you. Catherine's instructions,' he added smoothly.
'I'll contest it. Don't think I won't. She thinks she can leave me a hundred dollars and leave the rest to a goddamn bird sanctuary, and I won't contest it?'
'That isn't quite accurate,' Benchley said. 'There is a four-hundred-thousand-dollar gift to the Renard family, to be divided
equally among her uncle Jake Renard and her three cousins, Remy, John Paul, and Michelle.'
'I don't believe it,' he railed. 'Catherine hated those people. She thought they were white trash.'
'She must have had a change of heart,' Benchley said. Tapping the papers with his fingertips, he added, 'It's all here in the will. Each of her relatives will receive one hundred thousand dollars. And there was one other special request. Catherine was quite fond of her caretaker, as I'm sure you're aware.'
'Of course she liked her. The woman catered to her every whim and made no bones about hating me. Catherine was amused
by that.'
'Yes, well,' Benchley continued, 'she left Rosa Vincetti one hundred fifty thousand dollars as well.'
John was infuriated over that news. He wished now he'd had Monk kill her too. He hated the holier-than-thou witch with her hawkish eyes. How he had relished firing her. Now she, too, was getting a piece of his money.
'Every dime belongs to me,' he shouted. 'I'll fight this and win, you pompous ass.'
Benchley appeared unruffled by the tantrum. 'Do what you will. However… Catherine thought you might want to fight her wishes, and so she gave me this sealed envelope to hand deliver to you. I have no idea what's inside. But Catherine assured
me that after you've read it, you will decide against a legal battle.'
John signed for the package and snatched it from Benchley. Venom all but spewed from his mouth when he said,
'I don't understand why my wife would do this to me.'
'Perhaps the letter will explain.'
'Give me a copy of the damned will,' he muttered. 'And I assure you, nothing Catherine had to say in her letter is going to
change my mind. I'm litigating.'
He slammed out of the office. The rage was boiling inside his head. Then he remembered all the bills and Monk. What the
hell was he going to do about that?
'Goddamn bitch,' he mumbled as he got into his car.
It was dark inside the garage. John turned the overhead light on and tore open the envelope. There were six pages in all, but Catherine's letter was the first page. John lifted the paper to see what other surprises she'd saved.
Incredulous at what he was seeing, he flipped back to the first page and frantically began to read.
'My God, my God,' he muttered over and over again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
John was frantic. He broke every law imaginable as he sped up St. Charles, weaving in and out of traffic like a drunk driver
at seventy miles an hour.
Catherine's obscene letter was clenched in his hand. He kept slamming his knuckles into the leather dashboard, wishing it were her face he was smashing. That bitch! That conniving bitch!
He couldn't believe what she had done to him, wouldn't believe it. It was all a bluff. Yeah, that was it. Even in death, she was
still trying to manipulate and control him. She couldn't possibly have gotten around all the safeguards he'd built into his computer. She hadn't been that smart, damn it.
By the time he pulled into his driveway, he had almost convinced himself that it was all a hoax. He misjudged the distance and hit the garage door when he slammed on the brakes. Cursing, he jumped out of the car and ran to the side door and only then realized he'd left the motor running.
He cursed again. Stay cool, he told himself. Just stay cool. The bitch was still trying to get under his skin, unnerve him. That was all. But he had to be sure. He ran through the empty house, knocking over a dining room chair in his haste. When he reached the library, he kicked the door shut behind him and lunged over the desk to turn the computer on, then sat down in the padded chair.
'Come on, come on, come on,' he muttered, drumming his fingertips on the desktop while he waited for the computer to boot up. The second the icon appeared, he slipped in the disk and typed the password.
Scrolling down the documents, he counted the lines as Catherine had instructed in her letter, and there on line sixteen, right
smack in the middle of the transaction made over a year ago, five words had been inserted.
His cell phone began ringing, but he ignored it. Cameron or Preston or Dallas was calling to find out what was keeping him.
Or maybe it was Monk calling to find out when and where to meet him to collect his money.
What in God's name was he going to tell Monk? John rubbed his temples while he thought about the problem. Dallas was the solution, he decided. He would let Dallas handle Monk. After all, Monk didn't belch without Dallas's permission, and he would surely agree to wait for payment if he were told to.
But what would John tell the group? Lying wasn't going to get him out of his nightmare, and the longer he
