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Fortunately, months ago he’d come to grips with the situation and picked up with a new girl. The texts had stopped permanently, and I’d come to realize that the later ones had been his way of trying to help me. After he’d realized what I’d been doing, he hadn’t turned me in, but instead reached out to talk.
Eventually I located Dennis talking to his father.
Serena joined us.
“So you were behind that?” Dennis asked Lloyd.
“I knew you weren’t going to askmeif you needed help, so I had Hugh approach you.”
Dennis had finally told Hugh Stoner last month that we weren’t interested in his livestock feed business.
Stoner had admitted it had been Lloyd’s idea all along.
“That’s underhanded,” Dennis complained.
“It worked, didn’t it?”
It had worked. We’d been in contact with Stoner for a long time, and he’d been there when Dennis needed help talking to shareholders.
Serena elbowed me and whispered, “He didn’t suspect?”
I whispered back. “Not a clue.”
“I told you Cartwright was a snake. He always has been,” Lloyd said. “I still wish he’d gotten jail time. It’s what he deserves.” The animosity was palpable.
Dennis finished his sip of wine. “He’s gone for good now.”
“I wouldn’t count on that. The Cartwrights are like a bad rash, always appearing at the worst times.”
“But you were wrong about the attack on Josh being Cartwright’s doing,” Dennis noted.
We’d been informed that the police had made an arrest in another road rage incident where shots were fired, and the gun they found on the guy matched the bullets in Josh’s car. Since they didn’t have any other evidence, they couldn’t prosecute him in Josh’s incident, but they would get him on the current charge.
“There’s a first for everything,” Lloyd said. “I’ve been right about them all the rest of the times. Bad apples, the whole lot of them.”
While they went back and forth on the Cartwright family, I asked Serena, “Is there a history I don’t know about?”
She nodded. “Dad won’t tell us the details. All we know is it’s bad.”
I filed that comment away for later.
Although Dennis’s solution to getting rid of Cartwright didn’t sit well with his father, it was a win-win, which was pure Dennis. We were done with both him and Melissa. And by taking the company private with Cartwright’s forced help, Dennis no longer had to deal with the Wall Street types he despised.
To add irony to the situation, Dennis told me he’d given Gumpert’s number to Melissa.
I hadn’t understood why, until Dennis had said they had similar moral compasses, and he deserved her.
Having experienced Melissa, I wasn’t sure anybody deserved her.
“Hey, Larry, get control of your dog,” Dennis called out.
Serena and I cracked up.
Larry’s little mutt Binky was dry-humping Dennis’s leg.
The attractive brunette on Larry’s arm raced over to fetch the little monster. “Binky, behave yourself.” She picked him up and whisked him away.
Larry had decided to keep Binky after women started approaching him at the park to meet the hairless wonder.
