“I didn’t think it was subtle.”
Colin didn’t smile as she’d hoped he would. Finally, he said, “The real, basic truth is that my relationship with Jean hasn’t been the usual one, and I’m concerned that if I tell you, you’ll think less of me.”
“I believe that people are the sum of what they’ve been through in their lives. From what I’ve seen, you dedicate your life to helping others. If whatever you went through with Jean helped to lead you to that, then it couldn’t be too bad.”
He looked away from the road for a moment to glance at her. “I like that philosophy,” he said and thought, And I like you. “Okay, here goes.”
As he drove he began to talk, and he didn’t have to tell her that he’d never told the story to anyone else before. Her impression from having seen him with his friends and the town residents was that people thought Colin Frazier didn’t have any problems in life. He grew up comfortably well off, with no money difficulties. He’d been great at sports all through school, made good grades, and now he had a job he loved. What could be wrong?
But as Gemma listened, she heard a deeper story. Colin tried to be lighthearted when he said that his father had “talked him into” working for him, but Gemma had met Mr. Frazier, and her impression was that he could be a tyrant. From what Colin was telling her, Peregrine Frazier had bullied, badgered, and belittled his eldest son into taking a job he hated.
Colin told how bad he was at the job. His example of “bad” was when a single mother with three kids came in with a clunker with 140,000 miles on it. Colin set her up with a car for less than the dealership had paid for it. His father had deducted the discrepancy from Colin’s paycheck. “My father believes in teaching lessons and being fair. He would have done the same thing to any of his other employees, so of course he’d do it to his son.”
“Of course,” Gemma said, but she didn’t agree. Colin was there as a favor to his father, so shouldn’t he have returned some favors?
Colin went on to tell of meeting Jean, and of being so in awe of her beauty and her general demeanor that he’d hardly said a word. “If she hadn’t called me, I would never have seen her again.”
From Colin’s mood today, Gemma wondered if that would have been a bad thing.
When he said that he’d moved to Richmond to live in an apartment with Jean, there was sadness in his voice. But when he told of helping her with her cases, his voice came alive. “I learned a lot about the law, how it worked, and what could and couldn’t be done, and I even did some footwork for the cases.”
Gemma wanted to say “She used you as a free paralegal and a PI,” but she didn’t. She did say, “Roy said you were good at solving mysteries. Did you figure out any of Jean’s?”
Colin gave a shrug of modesty. “A few. Now and then. Not many. I remember one where Jean was defending a man who said he was in another state when his wife was murdered, but his credit card receipts showed that he was near the scene of the crime. I posed as a truck driver and asked some questions at a place where the man’s card had been used. I found out that it was his mistress who’d used the card. She knocked over a display so no one would pay attention to how she signed the receipt. It was a revenge killing because he’d told her he’d decided to go back to his wife.”
“Looks like you were doing the work of a sheriff before you actually were one.”
Colin gave his first smile of the day. “You’re making me remember things I haven’t thought of in years.”
“So when did you break up with Jean? The first time, that is?”
“When the bad of my life outweighed the good. Dad and I were fighting because for six months I’d been almost giving cars away.”
“Did he charge you for them?”
“Oh yeah,” Colin said, “but I didn’t care.”
“Because Jean’s salary was supporting the two of you?” Gemma didn’t realize that she was frowning.
“No. She kept her salary. I paid for everything except her clothes. If I’d done that, I’d have been bankrupted.” He obviously meant to make Gemma laugh, but she didn’t.
“I’m confused,” Gemma said. “Your father debited your paycheck, but you supported Jean? Oh, wait. I bet you have a trust fund set up by an ancestor.”
Colin told her about the software program that was now being used by many of the car dealerships across the country.
She took a moment to digest that information. “So I guess you can afford a house and furniture.” He was looking at her to see how this new information would affect her, but she kept her face blank. “What happened with you and Jean?”
He went on to tell about the earlier breakup, how he’d just walked out. “It was cowardly of me,” he said. “If I’d stayed and talked to her back then, maybe I could have kept her from thinking what she told me last night.”
At last, Colin got to what Jean said that had so upset him.
Gemma listened to every word he told her and marveled at how Jean had twisted everything around so she was the victim of Colin. Gemma had to work to keep her anger down. She wanted to point out that it was no wonder Jean hated losing him. Where was she going to find another man to pay the rent, help solve cases, and keep her entertained at night?
Gemma thought the wise thing to do would be to keep her true opinions to herself.
“One minute she was complaining that I’m too good,” Colin said, “and the next she was telling me that I’m the personification of evil.”
“So if she knew what was going on, that you hated your job, and as she said, you were hiding in her life, then why was she trying to get you back? What does she like about you?”