“I spent the rest of May and all of June and July wooing him.”
“Did you end up screwing him?”
She smirked. “No, Hooch only liked to watch while I took care of myself. He was long past being able to get a full erection.”
Grimacing, I tried to forget that detail before it took up residence in my brain and registered for a post office box. “That’s too much information, Susan.”
“You’re the one who asked.”
Lesson learned. “What about the lawyer?”
“Oh, he could still get it up and was rather large in the briefs. He probably had a good inch on Rex. We screwed around during Hooch’s naptimes, but we had to be sneaky. There were tons of cameras around the house. Like I said, he was into watching.”
I squeezed the bridge of my nose. The last thing I wanted to reminisce about on Christmas Day was Rex Conner’s nether regions. “I meant, what did the lawyer get out of you wooing Hooch?”
“If you want specific answers, then you need to improve your interrogation skills.”
“Duly noted.”
“The lawyer and I convinced Hooch to make him the executor of his estate with full access to all of his accounts.”
“And whose idea was it to include you in the will?”
“Hooch thought it was his.”
“But your lawyer pal was whispering in Hooch’s ear about your innumerable qualities, I’m sure.”
She lifted her chin at my backhanded insult. “I was a poor widow with a broken heart and two children to raise. The money would keep me and my kids off the streets.”
Errrch! Back the truck up. “Two children?”
She leaned back on the heels of her palms. “As you know, Violet Parker has two kids, so of course I had adorable twins whose pictures I kept next to our bed.”
“Your and Hooch’s bed?”
“Yes.”
“My kids’ pictures sat next to a strange old man’s bed?”
“A rich old man.”
As much as I wanted to throttle her, I laced my fingers together and let her continue. “So, the will was changed, the lawyer became the executor, and you were added as a beneficiary.”
“Me and my kids.”
Come again? “The letter only mentioned me.”
“The new will split his estate into fourths. One part to a grant program at his alma mater; another part to his only living relative—some adopted nephew he hadn’t seen in almost thirty years; a third part to Violet Parker; and the final fourth to Violet Parker’s kids, split evenly, of course.”
Nutcracker balls! This was even worse than I’d thought. “Okay, so the will was changed and then what? You kicked back on the beach and waited for him to die?”
“Yeah, pretty much. The cancer had spread throughout his body and by early July he was sleeping most of the day and night. I made sure the nurses changed him routinely and rolled him over so the bedsores didn’t get any worse. But the old bastard would not die.”
How horrible to be in such a wretched state and surrounded by gold-digging vultures.
“Don’t give me that look, Violet. You don’t understand. Hooch wasn’t a kind and compassionate man in his youth. He was a ruthless, cutthroat businessman who took great pleasure in hostile takeovers that ended with him squeezing all of the value from his acquisitions before squishing them under his heel like bugs.”
“You’re just saying that to make yourself feel better.”
“It’s the truth. He told me tale after tale about how he destroyed so many lives, grinning the whole time with glee as he bragged about his might in the business world.” She scoffed. “Do you actually think I would do this to some innocent old guy?”
Yes! Wait, let me think about that for a moment … Hell yes! Instead of answering her, I asked, “How come you ran off instead of waiting for Hooch to die?”
She wrinkled her upper lip. “Well, I got into some trouble with the lawyer.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“The love kind.”
“What does that mean?”
“He fell in love with me—or so he claimed.”
I sneered. “He just wanted the money Hooch was giving you and the kids.”
“I thought so, too, at first. But it got weird.”
“Define ‘weird.’ ”
She stood and began pacing at the end of the bed. “He’d buy me jewelry, bring me roses, talk about adopting your kids as his own. He even got a tattoo of my profile over his heart with ‘Violet’ written under it.”
“Why my name? He knew your real name, didn’t he?”
“Yes, but when we screwed around, he’d call me by your name. He said it made our dirty romps more exciting.”
I covered my mouth. Oh, my poor sullied name.
“I soon realized that I was trapped,” Susan continued, still pacing. “If I came clean about my true identity to Hooch, I’d lose out on the money.” She frowned down at her hands. “And by that point I’d done some things to get your name on that will that went beyond deranged. Hooch had kinky tastes, trust me. Money can make people really unbalanced.”
I wasn’t even going to fish in that murky pond. “It sounds like the lawyer played you.”
“He had dreams of us living on the island in Hooch’s house, raising your kids—even though he knew they weren’t mine—and growing old together there.”
“So you ran.” My tone overflowed with derision.
She stopped pacing and scowled at me. “I didn’t know what else to do. I figured that if I disappeared, Hooch would realize I didn’t love him and change his will again.”
“What about all of those gross kinky things you did?”
“Well, you see, there was this guy I’d met at the clubhouse. He owned a local upscale art gallery.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. You were having sex with him, too?”
She slapped her hands on her hips. “I didn’t have sex with him. I just agreed to help him with a couple of shows.”
“Fine. You helped him. What’s that have to do with this whole sordid mess?”
“I realized during those shows that I was much happier surrounded by art, and that my dream was to open my own
