Vengeance. Mystery Writers of America Presents B00A25NLU4

“And he was sent away.”
    “For three weeks? Is that all?”
    “His doctors judged that he had recovered well, and —”
    “Doctors you paid for, I’m sure!”
    Henry said, “This conversation isn’t productive, Mrs. Mooney, so I think I’ll —”
    “Is that what you people call justice? Throwing some money around, making promises, and walking away? You promised me justice for my girl!”
    By then, she was talking to herself.

    T HE NEXT DAY she met with Floyd Tucker, an overweight and fussy lawyer who had helped her sort through the paperwork when she had divorced Joe. He sighed a lot as they sat in his tiny, book-lined office. He flipped through the pages of the agreement she had signed for the senator, sighed some more, and finally looked up. “Beth, you shouldn’t have signed this without running it by me first.”
    “I didn’t have the time,” she said.
    “This agreement” — he held up the papers —“there’s a good compensation package, no doubt about it, but the restrictions . . . Hell, Beth, if you even hint at breathing what’s gone on with the senator’s son and your daughter, you open yourself up to lawsuits, financial seizures, and penalties totaling tens of millions of dollars. Do you understand that?”
    “I do now,” she said, staring at the polished desk. “But I didn’t have the time.”
    “Beth, you should have called me,” he said.
    She reached over, plucked the documents from his hand.
    “I didn’t have the time,” she whispered.

    A DAY LATER , she was at her town’s small library. Past the rows of books and the magazine racks, there were three computers, set up in a row. She sat down and stared at the screen, which showed a picture of the library and said that this picture and the words on it were something called a home page. She put her hands over the keyboard and then pulled them away, as if she were afraid she would make something blow up if she pushed the wrong key.
    Beth leaned back in the wooden chair. What to do? She felt queasy, empty, nervous, like the first time she had approached a paying customer with a pair of sharp scissors in her hands.
    “Mrs. Mooney?” a young girl’s voice said. She turned in her seat, saw Holly Temple, a sweet girl whose hair Beth cut and styled. She said, “Do you need any help?”
    Beth said, “I’m afraid I don’t know how to use this, Holly. I’m looking for some information, and I don’t know how to begin.”
    Holly pulled over a chair and sat down next to her. “Well, it’s pretty easy. I’m surprised that Janice couldn’t help you.”
    Her voice caught. “Me too.”

    S HE WAS DRIVING to the rehab center to visit Janice, who had had what the doctors and nurses delicately called a setback. Physically she was improving day by day; emotionally, she was withdrawing, becoming more silent, less responsive. Beth found that she had to drive with only one hand, as she had to use the other to keep wiping her eyes with a wad of tissue.
    At a stoplight, scores of supporters for the senator were gathered at the intersection, holding blue-and-white campaign signs on wooden sticks that they raised as they chanted. They waved at cars going by, gave thumbs-up to passing cars that honked in support. Two young men were staring right at her as they chanted. The light changed to green and she drove by, and she couldn’t help herself — she gave them the middle finger.

    T HAT NIGHT , FOR hour after hour, she dialed and redialed Henry Wolfe’s number. Eventually, at two a.m., he answered, and she got right to the point.
    “Mr. Wolfe, next Tuesday is the New Hampshire primary. The day after tomorrow, I plan to drive to Concord and visit the offices of the Associated Press. There, I’m going to show them the documents that I signed and tell them what the senator’s son did to my little girl.”
    Voice sharp, he said, “Do that, you silly bitch, and you’ll be destroyed. Ruined. Wiped out.”
    “And come next Tuesday, so will your candidate. I may be silly, but I’m not stupid. I know if he wins the primary with a good margin, he’ll be your party’s nominee. And after that, he’ll be the favorite to be president. So destroying him in exchange for losing my shop and my double-wide and the one thousand two hundred dollars I have in my savings account . . . that sounds like a pretty fair deal to me.”
    She could hear him breathing over the phone line. “What do you want?”
    Beth said, “The first time we met,