The big house was exactly that: a house on a hill with an ancient castle look about it.  The Fontaine estate dwarfed Charles’s estate, although the acreage was half of what he possessed, but it was still, hands down, the most recognizable and iconic estate in Jericho.  And as Charles’s Jaguar drove up the driveway toward the front entrance, it was obvious why.

“Age,” Charles said to Jenay, who sat on the passenger seat.   Brent sat in the backseat, in the middle, leaned forward.  It had been many years since he had to take a backseat to anyone.

“That’s the difference,” Charles continued.  “Age.  It’s rundown.  Could use a coat of paint.  But it’s still the main estate in town.  It’s still considered the biggest house in Jericho, although it’s not by many miles.  But that’s what age gets you: that good old thing called reputation.”

Brent smiled.  “You mean like your rep as a ruthless sonafabitch?”

Jenay laughed.

“Exactly so,” Charles said.  “And don’t laugh.  It keeps these won’t-pay-their-rent lay-abouts around here from laying-about on me.  They know I’m an asshole and won’t hesitate to show it.” Then he exhaled.  “But I still don’t understand why Lou Fontaine would have two pissheads try to piss on me.”

“And neither one of those rogues could shed any light on it,” Brent said.  “They were paid, a thousand bucks each, to rough you up.  That’s all they claim to know.”

“But the big question still remains why,” Jenay said.

Charles nodded and glanced at her.  She was leaned back, with her legs crossed, looking so sexy, he thought.  “That’s the question,” he said, agreeing with her.

An old liveried butler met them at the front entrance, and opened the car door for Jenay.  Jenay stepped out, while Charles walked around to assist her.  He was not looking forward to this meeting.  He knew how people like the Fontaines felt about him.  He just didn’t want those assholes to try to show that obnoxious disdain toward his wife.

“Right this way, sirs,” the butler said, “and ma’am.”

They followed the old man up the steps, into the house, and across the wide foyer.  Jenay looked at Charles.  It smelled of old wet clothes at the entrance.

“You would think they could afford a better maid,” she whispered to her husband.

“They can,” Charles whispered back.  “They’re just too cheap to get one.”

Jenay smiled.  “The thrifty rich,” she said.  “Probably why they stay rich.”

Charles smiled. “Now you get it,” he said playfully, and placed his arm around her waist as they were escorted into a room off from the foyer in the front of the house: the library.

“Miss Fontaine will be with you shortly,” the butler said, and stepped out, closing the door behind him.

“Is it me,” Brent asked, “or does this place smell like old wet clothes?”

Charles and Jenay laughed.  “It’s not you,” Charles said.

But they didn’t have time to say much more because, as if she had been waiting to come in all along, the door opened almost immediately and the dame herself, Louise Latimore Fontaine walked in.

What struck Jenay as soon as she entered was the fact that she didn’t look as frail in person as she often looked whenever she was passing by in her limousine, or on television during some charity event.  She looked right spry in person.  And she had a very arresting smile.

“Charles, hello,” she said, extending her hand as she came toward them.  “How are you?”

“I’m okay.”  Charles found her fake affection a little off-putting.  He couldn’t be fake if he tried.

“And Chief,” Lou said to Brent, shaking his hand. “How are you?”

“I’m fine.  And you?”

“I’m good, thank you.  Now what can I do for you gentlemen?”

No shade, Jenay wanted to say to that old woman.  But that’s shady!

But she had Charles to fight her battles.  He pushed her slightly forward.  “I don’t think you’ve met my wife.  This is Jenay Sinatra.”

“Oh, yes, of course!  How rude of me.”  She extended her hand.  “How are you, Mrs. Sinatra?”

“I’m okay.”  Jenay sounded as dry as Charles.  She didn’t have a fake bone in her body, either.

“Sit down, all of you,” Lou insisted.  “What would you care to drink?”

“Nothing for us,” Charles said as he escorted Jenay to the sofa.  Given her potential connection to that break-in, he didn’t want any of them poisoned.  He was also careful to keep Jenay as close to him as he possibly could.  This woman was not going to hurt her the way she allegedly tried to hurt him.

They sat down, with Charles and Brent sandwiching Jenay between them.

Lou sat down, too.  “Now,” she said, with her hands resting primly on her lap, “what is it that I can do for you?”  She was looking directly at the head of this clan, as she saw it: Charles.

“You can start by telling us why did you send those two guys to my office,” Charles said.

At first it looked as if Lou was not going to deny it.  It looked as if she was going to fess right up.  But then she seemed to stop herself.  “I don’t understand,” she said.  “Why did I what?”

“Two men entered my father’s office last night,” Brent said.  “There was an altercation.  After my father got the better of the situation, they told him you sent them.”

Lou smiled.  “I sent them there?” she asked, placing her small hand over her heart.  “Why in the world would I send two men over to your father’s office to get into some skirmish with him?”

“They said you sent them there to rough him up,” Brent said.  “Is it true?”

“No, it’s not true!” Lou said.  “You know me better than that!”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Charles said bluntly.  “We don’t know shit about you.  We know your name.  We know your family background.  We know you live in this museum.  But that’s all we know.  I want to know why two guys I’ve never seen before in my life would walk into my office and attempt to beat me down.  And I say attempt because that shit didn’t work.  Just like your denial isn’t working either.”

Brent’s cell phone began to ring.  He pulled out his phone, saw on the Caller ID that it was the station, and stood and walked away from the others, answering the call as he did.

“So you want to tell us just what the hell is going on, Lou?” Charles asked.

Jenay could see a change come over the older woman.  She took one of her wrinkled hands and removed an escaped hair out of her face from the bun she wore.

“Who are they, Miss Fontaine?” Jenay asked.

“I don’t know them either,” Lou finally said.  “I don’t even know their names.”

“But you hired them?” Charles asked.

Lou hesitated.  Then nodded.  “Yes,” she said.

Brent’s call had already ended, as it was on an unrelated matter, but he remained where he stood when Lou started answering.  He didn’t want to interrupt her, or give her any excuse to stop.

“I hired them,” Lou confessed.  “But only because I had to.”

“You had to?” Charles asked.  “What does that mean?  Somebody forced you to hire them?”

“Nobody forces me to do anything!  Of course no one forced me.  But it was the only way I could get back at you.”

Charles stared at her.  “Back at me for what?” he asked.

“For what you did to her.”

When she said her, Charles hesitated.  And then frowned.  “You mean Meredith?” he asked.

“Of course I mean Meredith.  Who else am I going to mean?  You ruined my daughter’s life with your flippancy.  And I felt you needed to pay for what you did.”

Jenay looked at Charles.  Who was Meredith, and what flippancy was Lou talking about, she wondered?

But she didn’t have to wonder long.  “I dated your daughter for a few months.  And then we broke up.”

“After she caught you with another woman,” Lou pointed out.

“We broke up,” Charles said, “before I even married Jenay.  That was years ago!  What in the world does my breaking up with Mel have to do with your decision to send two guys to rough me up?”

Lou swallowed hard.  “She died this week,” she said.

Charles’s heart dropped.  He had not expected to hear that.

“She died all alone in some rundown motel in Atlantic City.  That’s where she took herself after you broke her heart.  She gambled and drank all those years away, and died all alone.  Thanks to you.  And I needed you to understand the pain you caused.  Your father was a good-for-nothing.  Your grandfather was a good-for-nothing.  And you’re the worse of them all.”

Jenay could tell Charles was upset by the news.  She could even hear a change in his breathing rhythm.  And then he stood up, and began to pace around the room, rubbing the nape of his neck with his hand.

But he wasn’t as disturbed about news of his ex-lover’s death as Jenay and Brent might have thought.  Meredith made her own choices and he wasn’t taking the blame for any of them.  That wasn’t what caused him to rise.  He was disturbed about Lou.  Something about her manner made it clear as day to him that something else was at work here.

But Lou continued with her story.  “So, yes,” she said as he paced, “I asked two of the men who did yard work on the estate to pay you a visit.  They would be paid after the job was done.”

“And what was the job?” Brent asked from across the room.

Lou looked at him.  “Their job was to beat him up,” she said.  “And I don’t mean a little bit.  I mean severely.  I wanted him hospitalized from his injuries.  I wanted them to stop just short of taking his life, because I wanted him to suffer too.”

Jenay and Brent both understood how devastating a broken heart could be, and how a mother could hold a grudge that deep.  But Charles had stopped walking and was staring at Lou. And he wasn’t buying it.  “Now tell us the truth,” he said to her.

Everybody looked at him.  Especially Lou.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

“I’m talking about this song-and-dance bullshit you’re giving us about Meredith.”

“I loved my daughter!” Lou insisted.

“I didn’t say you didn’t love her,” Charles fired back.  “But she had nothing to do with what happened last night.”

Brent was about to interject and explain to Lou that she’d just confessed to a crime by admitting to hiring men to assault his father, and he would determine the veracity of her tale once he had her downtown at the station.  But then Lou’s look changed again.  And it looked to all of them as if she was going to change her story too.

But she couldn’t.  Because as soon as she was about to open her mouth, the sound of a bullet ricocheting could be heard, as if it had entered the room and bounced off a wall as a warning shot.  And then sound of rapid gunfire took over.

“Get down!” Brent yelled to everybody, and everybody tried to get down.

But Charles yelled, “God, no!” and tried to get to his wife as the bullets sailed through.  He crawled to Jenay as fast as he could, even as she had heeded Brent’s warning and got down, too.  But that wasn’t good enough for Charles.  He lunged on top of her, covering her entire body, as the glass from the broken window the bullets were coming in from shattered and scattered all over the room and could have caused as much damage to them as the bullets could.

Brent wasn’t satisfied with ducking down either.  He was the police chief of Jericho and he’d be damned if somebody was going to try to assassinate a room filled with people under his watch, and get away with it.

Certain that his father would take care of his stepmother, he ducked too.  But he ducked his way out of the parlor.  And then he ran across the foyer, pulling his gun from out of the small of his back.

The old butler came running out of the kitchen.   “What’s happening, Chief?” he nervously asked Brent.

“Stay down!” Brent ordered, and ran across the foyer and out of the front door.

Just as he ran out, he could hear the gunshots suddenly stop, and a truck at the bottom of the property pull in a rifle and then began to speed away.

He cut across the grass, firing at the truck as he ran; attempting with all he had to at least take out a tire to slow the truck down.  He fired and he fired and he ran with all of his considerable athletic speed.

But he was too late.  And the truck was too fast.  Whomever the perp or perps were, they had gotten away.

Brent stood there momentarily, attempting to regulate his breathing, but he knew he had to make sure his parents were okay.

He ran back toward the house, even as he pulled out his cellphone and called in the attack.  He gave the dispatcher a description of the truck: an old Chevy pickup.  Faded white.  With a rifle rack in the back.  About a hundred similar trucks were owned in Jericho alone.

But when he got back inside the house, and back into the parlor, he was met with a different description.  The room had been shot up to such a degree that the entire big, floor-to-ceiling picture window that was once the focal point of the room, had been shattered and laid in ruins all across the room.  And although his father and stepmother were just getting up and brushing themselves off, Lou had not fared so well.   She was still down, and her butler was holding her body.

Brent hurried over to his folks.  “You two okay?” he asked them.

“We’re okay,” Jenay said, although her entire focus was on Lou.

“Did you see anything?” Charles asked his son.

“An old truck sped away.  I might have peppered the back cab with bullets, but I couldn’t get the tires.  I couldn’t get a license plate either.”

“Maybe she has cameras.”

“This antiquated place?” Brent asked.  “I doubt it.”  But he was staring at Lou too.  “Is she dead?” he asked his father.

Charles nodded. “Oh, yeah,” he said.  “They made sure of that.”

“Just when she was about to tell us the real deal,” Brent said.

And then Charles placed his arm around Jenay’s waist, and Jenay, still a little shook up, fell into his arms.

Brent rubbed her back, too, as he looked at the downed matriarch.