Frank didn’t like it one bit, this Billie Earl Johnson business he’d gotten involved with. His alter ego, “Mr. John,” didn’t sit comfortably with Frank, either.
The whole sordid scheme was a far cry from the good thing he had going with Suzanne.
But Frank knew that the plans he’d hatched with Billie Earl were the flip side of that good thing. Frank could have divorced Nancy, sure. He’d been divorced when he’d met her. But Frank’s first marriage had not produced any children. He and his wife had been very young—that had made for an easy divorce. He was much older now, a pillar of the community, and a father. The children would make things especially hard. Frank’s kids knew what a good man he was. He’d never want them to see him in the wrong kind of light. Compared to the harm that would do, life without Nancy would only be a small mercy.
Then there was the secondary consideration: Given a few things he’d been up to in secret over at his accounting practice—given the millions of dollars he’d stolen from his boss, Richard Raley—Frank simply could not afford to have some divorce court judge go through his financials with a fine-toothed comb. As far as Frank was concerned, filing for divorce was the same as walking into his local police station and turning himself in for embezzlement. And that was not something Frank Howard was willing to do.
So the question was, was Billie Earl Johnson the man for the job?
Sometimes it seemed to Frank that he’d been dealing with an imbecile. Already, on several occasions, he’d had to bond Billie Earl out of jail. But the thing he’d paid Billie for, time and again, never got done. Suzanne was on his back every day now about leaving Nancy, and he really had run out of excuses, while Billie Earl was full of them. Excuses poured out of the man like brown water pouring out of a broken Ben Wheeler faucet.
If Frank had known what all to do about it, he’d have done it. But it was too late now that he’d doubled down, again and again, with the money. He had to get something back for his investment.
And yet, Billie Earl got up the nerve to count his money—money he’d done nothing to earn yet—right in front of Frank’s face.
“It’s not the kind of job you rush, Johnny.”
“I’m not telling you to rush it. I’m just saying it needs to happen soon. Sooner than soon, in fact.”
“Why’s that, Johnny? You gonna go to the Better Business Bureau? The Chamber of Commerce? Your local police? Come to think of it, maybe the police would like to learn more about you.”
This was not a turn that Frank wanted his conversation with Billie Earl to take.
“Just do it,” he snapped on his way out of the Western wear store. Seething now and seeing red, Frank was breathing quickly, shaking his head, more upset than he’d allowed himself to be with Billie Earl up to this point. So upset that he didn’t see Billie Earl’s girlfriend, Stacey, standing in the parking lot a few yards away with her cell phone held in front of her.
“What’s that for?” Billie asked moments later, after John drove away, when she showed him the picture she’d snapped.
“Insurance,” said Stacey. “Honestly, that man doesn’t know what he’s doing. He might be playing us two ways, for all we know.”
“Nah,” Billie said. “He may have money, but I still say that he’s as dumb as a rock.”