Tuesday, April 26^th

Trent Marshall steered the sleek black sedan into the below ground parking garage. The car pulsed like a leashed lion struggling against its restraint. Its engine emitting a low, barely audible roar. Powerful. Eager to be set free.

“Welcome back, Trent,” the slim young man in the uniform said.

“Thanks, Bat,” Marshall responded. “You keeping everything under control around here?”

The young man laughed. His name wasn’t Bat. Marshall had taken to calling him that because he knew about the baton the young man kept out of sight. It looked like nothing more than a cane an old man might use. Trent happened to know it had a lead core that converted it into a potentially lethal weapon.

To Marshall’s knowledge Bat had never used the weighted stick. If the time ever came, he was confident the young man would emerge unscathed. They had spent a couple of hours one lazy afternoon practicing maneuvers with the stick as a weapon. Bat had some tricks of his own. Trent taught him a few more. Bat was a security guard. Not a cop. He wasn’t allowed to be armed. But he had no intention of going down in a fight if he could help it.

“It’s all good here,” the young man said. “The thugs steer clear of my building.”

“Good job.”

“Hey, that’s a new car, isn’t it?” Bat asked. “What happened to the Caddy?”

“It’s in New Orleans,” Trent said, referring to his Cadillac CTS-V, the fastest car ever built by General Motors. “This is a Bentley Continental GT Speed. Six liter. V 12. 626 horsepower. Faster than the Caddy.”

Bat whistled.

“How fast?” the young security guard asked.

“Top speed…204 miles per hour.”

“Did you hit it on this trip?”

“Came close out in west Texas,” Trent called over his shoulder as he steered the powerful vehicle into the garage.

He pulled into his assigned parking space. The Bentley cost almost twice as much as the house Trent lived in as a teenager with his father. As an adult he had lived paycheck to paycheck, like his parents before him. His life changed forever when his last living relative, his mother’s elderly aunt, died leaving him a thousand acres across the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge. Land that once had been planted in sugar cane. He formed a partnership with a builder. Together they built a world class golf course. They surrounded it with more than a hundred houses. Big houses. Expensive houses. $1 million would barely cover the price of a guest house. The partners each walked away with an immense fortune.

The parking space was assigned to him by Darcey Anderson. Two parking slots came with the condo she purchased as revenues at her firm, DJA Designs, soared. One space sat unused until Trent’s first visit the previous August. Darcey’s white BMW X-5 was in the other slot. Trent knew she might or might not be home. The condo was only a short walk from her small office building on California Street. Unless she had business outside the office, she usually walked to work.

The Bentley’s trunk held only two items. A large black duffel bag. Very heavy. It was one reason that Trent preferred to drive rather than fly. The other item was a standard small, soft-sided roller bag. It contained only what he needed for the drive from his home in New Orleans. Four to five days for most drivers. Fewer for Trent.

Lifting the duffel to his shoulder he pulled the roller bag toward the elevator, reaching it just before the door closed. He forced the door open with his foot, causing the elderly woman inside to scream with fright.

She pressed herself into a rear corner of the elevator.

“Stay away from me, young, man,” she demanded, her voice quivering. “Why are you following me?”

Trent spoke calmly. “I’m not following you, Ma’am,” he said.

He saw she had already pressed the button for the 15^th floor, one of the three top floors requiring a security key for access. He had his own key but since she had already used hers there was no need for him to repeat the process.

“You are following me!” the woman screeched. “You don’t live on the 15^th floor. You’re following me!”

“No, ma’am,” Trent said, doing his best to remain calm. “When I’m in San Francisco I live on the 15^th floor. I’m not following you.”

“I don’t believe you. I’m calling 9-1-1 just as soon as I get into my condo.”

“Lady, believe me. I’m not following you,” Trent said, his patience wearing thin. “If I was following you I would certainly be regretting it by now.”

Trent stood still, staring straight ahead. The woman remained pressed into the rear corner. Finally the elevator reached the 15^th floor. The doors opened. Most of the condos on the lower floors were smaller. Those on the three top floors were large. There were only four units each on the 15^th and 16^th floors. The 17^th floor held two penthouses. Trent knew how much Darcey’s 15^th floor unit cost. He figured the price of the penthouses would be more than the Gross Domestic Product of several countries admitted to membership in the United Nations.

Trying to do the gentlemanly thing, Trent held the elevator door open so the lady could exit. She squeezed past him hurriedly and rushed down the hall.

“Don’t you dare follow me,” she shouted. “I’m calling 9-1-1. You just stay away from me.”

The door to one of the condos at the far end of the hall opened. An elderly man stepped into the frame.

“What’s all the fuss about out here?”

“This man is following me,” the woman said. “I don’t know why. He doesn’t belong on this floor. He leaped onto the elevator before the doors could close. I’m calling 9-1-1.”

“Oh, shut your trap, Jean,” the man said. “I hope he is following you. And I hope he does something terrible to you!”

“I see it all now,” the woman said as she fumbled to unlock her door. “You put him up to it, James Williams. You’re trying to make me pay for my sins. Well, you have to pay for your sins as well. I’m calling 9-1-1 right now. Both of you will be spending the night in jail.”

She finally got her door open. After she slammed the door, Trent heard at least four locks slide into place.

He turned to the elderly man. “I’m very sorry about all that, sir. I don’t know why she got so upset.”

“She does it nearly every day. That’s the widow Philby. She’s always complaining about something or someone.”

“Well, I’m sorry you were disturbed.”

“No need to apologize,” the old man said, with a nasty laugh. “Watching her running scared is the most fun I have all day.” He ducked back inside his own condo and slammed the door.

Trent was left standing in the hall alone. He didn’t know which of the two was most unpleasant. The old woman who suffered from abnormal fear of strangers, perhaps fueled by something in her past for which she felt guilt, or the old man who seemed to enjoy her fear.

It wasn’t a hard decision. The old woman was irritating. The old man was cold-hearted.

He used his own key to open the door to Darcey’s condo. It occurred to him that if the woman did call 9-1-1 there were some things he didn’t want to have to explain to the police. He took his bags to the master bedroom and stowed them in his closet. As a precaution he called Bat and told him about the unfortunate incident with Mrs. Philby.

Bat laughed. “Don’t worry about it, Trent. She calls 9-1-1 all the time. They have to respond, but they’ll talk to me first. They won’t bother you.”

Twenty minutes later Darcey was home and sitting on the edge of the bed. Trent was in the bed. His upper body was naked. The bedclothes covered him from the waist down. An open bottle of Mumm’s Napa Brut Prestige sat in an ice bucket on the bedside table. They each had a flute from which they were sipping.

“What? No gun?” she queried, knowing Trent’s tendency to be armed at all times. Even when it was less than convenient.

“I have all the weapon I need,” he said, flashing her a devilish grin, as he took the champagne flute from her and set it with his beside the ice bucket.

He pulled her down to him. Her lips parted as his mouth covered hers. A deep kiss. Their tongues playing out a dance. A welcome dance after a month’s separation. As they kissed he unbuttoned her blouse and she let it fall away. His fingers went to the hooks of her bra, freeing her D cup breasts. The breasts he loved to touch. To taste. To bury his face in.

“You wore a bra knowing I would be here today?” he teased.

“Hey, I had business meetings today. I couldn’t let the girls swing free,” she replied, mischievously.

Standing she kicked off her shoes and reached behind her to unzip her knee-length skirt.

“But somehow…” she said with a rakish look of her own as she let her skirt drop, standing naked in front of him, “somehow I totally forgot to wear panties.”

He had thought to surprise her by being naked in bed when she got home. She outdid him again. In a most delightful way.

After dinner they wrapped themselves in robes to sit on the terrace. Darcey had made a quick and delicious meal of scampi with linguini. Trent had opened another bottle of Mumm’s.

Darcey laughed. “So you met Mrs. Philby. She’s forever claiming people are following her. She believes they’re trying to make her pay for her sins.”

“That’s what she said. And that sadist who lives across from her seemed to enjoy it immensely.”

“Mr. Williams,” Darcey shuddered. “He’s a little scary.”

“The Germans have a word for what turns him on,” Trent said. “Schadenfreude. Taking pleasure from the discomfort of others.”

“That fits him perfectly.”

“Interesting that he told her to ‘shut her trap’ instead of shut up or quiet down,” Trent said. “The etymology of the phrase ‘shut your trap’ also comes from German by way of Old English. It originally was a warning to trappers to keep their traps shut when not in use to avoid injury. Makes you wonder what he did for a living.”

“You’re being weird, Marshall,” Darcey said, refilling his glass with sparkling wine.

“You’re right. Enough of this talk of sadists. Do you realize what day this is?” he asked.

“It’s Tuesday, April 26^th. It was one year ago today that we met.”

It had been an eventful year. Trent had built an emotional wall to protect himself after losing his wife, his mother, his father, his best friend. He had sworn he would let no one get close to him ever again.

And then came Darcey. She had come to him asking for help in solving a one hundred fifty year old mystery that was again threatening her family. As they began to unravel the mystery, they suffered betrayal from people they thought were friends. Both Trent and Darcey’s mother were kidnapped. Darcey was briefly held hostage by a mad man. A crooked cop fired two shots at Trent and Darcey, missing them by inches. Two good women were murdered as were a psychologist and a security guard at a hospital for the criminally insane.

Trent, Darcey, and her mother survived. One of the villains was killed by Trent to save Darcey’s life, a second in self-defense. A third was wounded by Darcey in a shootout with a woman who was preparing to kill Trent. Trent had already put the woman’s husband out of action by breaking his nose with a shovel. Those two would likely never be released from prison.

The only one who escaped was the cop who tried to shoot them.

Surviving the attacks and threats, they solved the mystery that had plagued Darcey’s family for a century and a half.

In the process, Darcey broke through Trent’s protective emotional wall though she had to threaten to shoot him to do it. Given Trent’s fondness for guns and respect for those not afraid to use them, she chose the right strategy.

Darcey had difficulty understanding Trent when they first met. Eventually she accepted his love of fast cars and guns. She even came to share it.

She thought it strange that all his cars were black as were most of his clothes. She asked him if that was symbolic. He thought for a few seconds and told her it was. Of what, she wondered? That he likes black, he told her.

She came to understand that Trent was easily bored. He was, she guessed, an adrenaline junkie. He wouldn’t go long without finding a challenge. The more dangerous the better. She was frightened in the beginning. But she learned he was fully capable of protecting her as well as himself. More importantly, she discovered that she, too, was capable of defending herself and him. Of using violence if necessary.

He made his first trip to San Francisco in August. Through the year they grew ever closer. Darcey didn’t push him. She patiently let him move at his own pace. It was a wise decision. They were starting to feel like a couple.

He invited Darcey and her mother, Betty, to his home in New Orleans for Thanksgiving. They were joined by Ivy and Walter Ford, the elderly, black couple who looked on Trent as a son.

Ivy had worked with Trent’s mother at the venerable Coffee Pot, the restaurant in the Vieux Carre’ that had served locals and visitors alike for over a hundred years. She was protective of the young white woman struggling to support her son. When a would-be Romeo from the kitchen tried to hit on his mother, it was Ivy who backed him off.

“Don’t nobody mess with this girl,” Ivy warned. “If you mess with her, you’re messing with me.”

When his mother passed away suddenly and unexpectedly, Ivy became a surrogate parent to him. After his father took his fourteen year old son to Baton Rouge to live with him, he saw to it that the boy visited Ivy and Walter often.

Darcey hosted them all for Christmas. Her three bedroom condo was spacious enough to accommodate everyone. Trent flew Ivy and Walter to San Francisco first class as part of his Christmas gift to them. They were wide-eyed at the view of the city from Darcey’s terrace. Especially the lights of the Golden Gate and Bay bridges at night.

Though there were times she wouldn’t have thought so, it was a year that ended well.

Trent took another sip of wine.

“Now there’s something I need to talk to you about,” Trent said.