Page 78 of Blame it on the Bet
In the blink of an eye, Walker O’Halloran has a baseball bat in her hand. She must keep it behind the bar in case things get really out of control.
“Step the hell back,” she hisses in a soft but deadly voice. I hold up my hands and do as I’m told.
“Walker, put the bat down.”
From behind her, Hennessy’s voice is small and defeated. When she steps around, I can see her beautiful face, temporarily disfigured with the bloat and staining of hard crying.
“Hennessy, oh, thank God. I have to explain to you?—”
I stop mid-sentence when I catch sight of a familiar, very unflattering picture of myself in her hand. It’s a photocopy from the front page of a newspaper I’d hoped to never see again. And now she’s got it in her hands.
“What’s to explain?” She levels her blue eyes on mine. They’re so arctic that I feel a chill run through my body. “That’s you, isn’t it? Bryan Broadmore?” she asks, wagging the papers in my direction.
“That’s not my name.”
“Oh, but it was, wasn’t it?” I don’t reply. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Go ahead, read it,” she suggests.
“I don’t have to. I already know what it says,” I inform her flatly. “Hennessy, I swear to you, this is not what it looks like.”
“No? Cause it looks kinda like you helped to defraud hundreds of innocent people out of millions of dollars. Is that the gist of it?”
Oh hell.
This situation is going down fast, and I don’t think I can get it back on course. She holds the paper up and starts to read the headlines aloud.
“‘Broadmore Scam Leaves Hundreds of Seniors Broke and Broken.’”
She looks at me with sheer disdain. It’s nothing new, of course. I’ve seen it thousands of times in the five years since this article was published. But somehow, it’s never hurt as much as it does right now, coming from Hennessy O’Halloran.“I’d never have known,” she continues.“Nobody would have. I mean, the way you changed your name and all. You could just breeze into town, take what you want and then get out before we were any the wiser.”
And here I thought I was finally past this.
“Look,” I object, holding up my hands to slow her accusations, “I haven’t done a damn thing but get to know this town and the people who live here. I tried to buy the pub for above asking price, if you recall. I tried to work out a deal where we’d both come out ahead. So how, exactly, have I swindled you, or anybody else out of anything since I got here?”
“Is that you in the picture?” she asks me instead of answering my question.
I nod.
“Is your name really Bryan Broadmore?”
“It used to be,” I say quietly.
“Were you charged with fraud?”
“Yes, but I was cleared…”
“Did you have anything to do with this, Bryan? Were you in any way connected?”
“Yes, but Hennessy, you have to understand—there’s a lot more to the story,” I protest, the volume of my voice climbing.
“Oh, I’m sure there is,” she hisses at me with a sneer that makes my blood run cold. “Because things like this aren’t planned overnight, are they? How many days, weeks, months did you spend plotting this? What happened to the money? And how on earth did you end up back in business when your father was rotting behind bars, Bryan?”
“No. No, no, no… You’ve got this all wrong…”
“Do I? Somehow I doubt that. I’ve defended guys like you because it was my job. But you know what? Those days are over. I will never again stand in defense of a hateful, hurtful, callous criminal like you. Starting right here, right now. I. Am. Done.”
“Hennessy…” I try one last time, but she won’t stand for it.
“I don’t think there’s anything else to say, Bryan Broadmore, or Truitt, or whoever the hell you are. When everyone else finds out—and trust me, everyone is going to find out—you might find yourself in need of a wheelchair. So, I suggest you get out of town while you can still walk.”
