Chapter Seventeen

 

"Slept well?" Francine peered at Marla over the newspaper the following morning.

"Yes, I did." Marla nodded. "Surprisingly, wondrously well."

Francine lowered the paper and folded it neatly. Heather was busying herself around the kitchen and she waited until she left before she said anything else to Marla.

"What's going on here, Marla?" Francine asked.

Marla looked into her concerned eyes. Even at this time of the morning she was made up to the hilt and dressed in an expensive-looking dress that highlighted her slim shape.

"Why don't you ask Ricky?" Marla helped herself to some tea and sat down.

"I did. He told me some ridiculous story about Yuri being jealous and making things up. I somehow think it's the other way around, though."

"It is." Marla sighed. "Ricky blackmailed me into this marriage. My father killed someone and he caught it on tape. I helped to dispose of the body and Ricky has that over me."

Francine's mouth was opened into a huge o. "Blackmail?" she whispered. "But...I can't believe that...not Ricky! He is not the kind of person to do something like this."

"Francine, you have no idea what kind of person Ricky is," Marla countered quickly. "He is obsessed with Yuri; he only married me because Yuri loved me."

"I am going to have to talk to him," Francine said softly. "I can't believe that this obsession issue has not been cleared up."

"So you knew about it?" Marla asked.

"Yes, I knew about it," Francine snapped. "I wasn't that bad of a mother, you know. I had him sent to therapy in Switzerland. The therapist said that his fixation on Yuri would clear itself up."

Marla raised an eyebrow. "The therapist was wrong. Could you pass the paper, please?"

Francine handed over the paper and Marla turned to the death section. The announcement for her father's funeral was supposed to be today. She scrolled through and found it.

John Roundtree, late of Great Bay, Treasure Beach...funeral on Wednesday, December 15 at the Peaceful Vale Cemetery…

She didn't have a good picture of her father, so the one she sent in for the death announcement was one of his younger self. She looked at the picture for a while. Even then you could see the ravages of torment around his watery, drunken eyes. He had slowly drank himself to death. He had committed suicide.

She closed the paper and looked at Francine, who was slowly eating an orange and looked contemplative, as if she was in a different and unfamiliar world.

She looked up at Marla. "And the baby, it's really Yuri's?"

"Yes." Marla nodded. "No other candidate."

Francine grimaced. "This whole situation is worthy of a soap opera."

Marla got up for some peppermint tea and while she was sitting down she saw the newspaper headline.

Marriage Officer Scam. The registrar department and the police are warning the public that a ring of unlicensed marriage officers are going about marrying people when they do not have the right to do so.

For the past seven years, fourteen men posing as pastors have been marrying people. They were also working with an insider in the RGD who would administer counterfeit certificates. If you were married in the past seven years by the following men, your marriage is not legal.

Marla shook her head; people would do anything for money. She was casually scanning through the list when she saw Burnham Cole, Pedro Plain. She had to rub her eyes again.

Burnham Cole had been the officiating minister at her wedding. Because Ricky had not belonged to any church and her pastor had refused to marry them without counseling, Ricky had gotten someone from Pedro Plains to do it instead.

This meant that she was not legally married to Ricky!

She read the rest of the article, gobbling up the words with rapt attention. Those persons who got married by these fake pastors were told that they should legalize their marriages as soon as possible with reputable marriage officers. Those who were filing for divorce should drop the process, as they were not married in the first place.

Marla slammed the papers shut and grinned. Thank you God! Seriously, thank you. My get out of jail free card!

"What are you grinning about?" Ricky came into the kitchen with a surly look on his face. Marla had pleaded that she was not feeling well and he had had to go around to his guests and assure them that Yuri was hallucinating. It had not been pleasant after that.

Marla grinned wider at Ricky's churlish behavior. She was not legally tied to this self-centered beast. Her name was really Marla Roundtree, not Marla Mills. She was single and pregnant for Yuri Scarlett, who had a girlfriend, a gorgeous girl who looked like she had just stepped off a fashion runway.

Her smile dipped a little but even that was not enough to dampen her spirits.

She got up and stretched clumsily. "I have so many things to do. First, I am going to call Yuri," Marla announced.

Ricky looked at her sharply. "Why on earth are you so bold this morning? Last night changed nothing. Yuri's threats are empty and ludicrous; he can't fight me for this baby. I am your husband. Legally that child belongs to me."

Marla grinned. "That's where you are wrong, buster. Read the headline. You and I are not legally married. You paid an illegal marriage officer to get us married and that means...no divorce necessary, or annulment, or whatever...which is a relief because I had palpitations thinking about the many ways that you would block the divorce when I finally tried to get out of this sham of a marriage."

She laughed as Ricky grabbed the paper and scanned through the article.

"I still have that tape of you killing that man!" Ricky said, looking up at her, harassed.

Marla laughed. "I didn't, my father did, and now he is dead. Good luck on getting someone, anyone, to believe that I did it. And your stupid tape would have to be doctored to show me doing anything untoward. I can readily own up to throwing him out to sea and you know what...I will. I wouldn’t mind getting it off my conscience. As a matter of fact, I am going to the station and I am going to tell Inspector McLaren what really happened."

"I am going to destroy the Scarletts," Ricky growled.

"No, you are not!" Francine said, buttering her toast and looking at Ricky calmly. "You are going to get help for this Yuri issue that you have. My God! Listening to you now, I had no idea how bad it has become."

"Stay out of this," Ricky growled at Francine.

"I am not staying out of anything." Francine looked at him stonily. "I am still custodian of your wealth till you are thirty. Maybe it is time I have a closer eye on your activities. You have been given too much freedom. You are sitting in that chair like a spoiled little rich boy, threatening to destroy a family! Have you forgotten that I did not exactly come from money? I was a poor girl too. Maybe in my over-eagerness to give you all that I did not, I did you a disservice but please, Ricky, stop this nonsense!"

"I am going to pack," Marla said gleefully.

"Marla, get back here!" Ricky snarled. "Now!"

"Nope." Marla looked over her shoulder at him. "I am going to pack up my things, then I am going to stay with the Scarletts. I can't spend one more day in this hell hole. After that I’ll bury my father tomorrow and next, who knows? One thing is for sure, I won't be in Treasure Beach if you are around. Goodbye, Ricky. I can't say the last five years were a pleasure because they were not."

"What are you going to leave in, huh?" Ricky asked, a crazed look in his eyes, "You have nothing; are you going to walk?"

"Of course she is not going to walk," Francine said, "You can take the Range Rover Marla. By tomorrow we will sort out the paperwork. Consider it a gift for your five years of stress. Oh and wait." She walked toward the living room and got her bag and her checkbook.

She wrote a check, her hands flying fast over the paper. She handed it to Marla, and touched Marla on the shoulders. "Please don't take this whole sordid story to the press. This money is a good faith gesture."

Marla looked down at the check and her eyes widened.

She glanced over at Ricky. He was shooting daggers at her. He was angry but impotent to do anything further in the face of her determination. Maybe she should have done this years earlier.

She looked down at the check again and said out loud, "The world should know about Ricky."

"No," Francine pleaded. "Think about your baby. You will need a fresh start, not running around catering to reporters. In time you can forgive Ricky. I promise you, I will get him the help he needs."

"There is nothing wrong with me!" Ricky bellowed. "This is overkill!"

"We'll see!" Francine turned to her son threateningly.