Ladies' Night by Andrews, Kay (popular books of all time .TXT) 📕

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“Sir, remove those sunglasses and that hat,” the Honorable Cedric N. Stackpole said, as soon as Wyatt and Betsy were seated in his office.

Wyatt shrugged, took off the glasses and the baseball hat. Stackpole cringed. “Are you having some medical issues?” he asked brusquely.

“An allergic reaction to some underbrush he was clearing,” Betsy said. “He’s gotten a cortisone shot and he has some steroid cream. He’ll be fine.”

Callie was sitting in a chair on the judge’s left side. She was dressed in a short pink skirt and a tight-fitting black tank top that displayed yet another tattoo, and glimpses of her abdomen whenever she moved. She leaned forward and grimaced. “You look like something out of a horror movie.” She glanced over at her lawyer. “I don’t want my son to see him like that. It’s upsetting.”

“I’m fine,” Wyatt said, clenching and unclenching his fists. “The swelling has already started to go down. It’s not contagious. Bo has seen me with poison ivy before.”

“Let’s stick to the subject at hand, shall we?” Stackpole said. He looked down at a file on his desk. “Mrs. Keeler, you’re alleging that Mr. Keeler is interfering with your son’s visits with you? Something about a birthday party?”

“Bo knew we’d been planning this trip to Birmingham, to look at houses,” Callie said. “Wyatt knew it, too. We’d been planning the trip for weeks, and then suddenly, Bo was having a fit over going, because of some little party a friend was having. When I went to pick him up from school on Friday, he wasn’t there!”

She leaned across her lawyer and glared at Wyatt. “You put him up to this. And I know it.”

“Put him up to what?” Wyatt demanded. Betsy gave her client a small headshake, warning him not to be baited.

“Bo deliberately lied to his friend’s mother, told her I wanted him to spend the night with them that night, so he could go to the party! He even packed a bathing suit and pajamas and hid them in his school backpack,” Callie said. “He never would have done that on his own, not without his father giving him the idea.”

The judge eased back in his leather desk chair. “Mr. Keeler, did you suggest to your son that he disobey and lie to his mother?”

“Absolutely not,” Wyatt said. “This is the first I’m hearing about any of this. Bo did tell me his mother had scheduled a trip out of town, and he was upset over having to miss his friend’s party that he’d been looking forward to for weeks. He even admitted he called his mother a bad name. But when I told him that wasn’t acceptable behavior, he told me his mother called him that name first.”

Stackpole raised an eyebrow. “What kind of bad name?”

“Bo told me his mother called him a little shit,” Wyatt said calmly.

“Ridiculous,” Callie snapped.

Stackpole’s head swung in her direction. “Do you deny calling your son that name?”

Her face reddened. “Bo’s been hostile to me for the last few months. He acts out, talks back. Whenever he comes back from a visit with his father, he’s belligerent and defiant. And he’s openly disrespectful to my fiancé.”

“Mrs. Keeler, did you call your six-year-old a ‘little shit’? Yes or no?”

Callie burst into tears. “He’s my little boy! How would you like it if your son told you he hated you? How would you like it if you went to pick up your son and he refused to get in the car? I may have called him that, in the heat of the moment, but I never meant it.”

Wyatt folded his arms across his chest and looked away. Callie loved to turn on the waterworks whenever she was backed into a corner. It was her go-to tactic. He wondered if Stackpole would fall for it. Betsy claimed the judge hated women, but Callie seemed to be the exception to that rule.

Betsy saw an opening and went for it. “Judge, Mr. Keeler is also concerned about his son’s behavior. If Bo is unhappy after returning from a visit with my client, it’s because he is uncomfortable seeing his mother living with a man other than his father. Bo is upset over the breakup of his parents’ marriage, which is totally understandable, and I want to address that in a minute. But in the meantime, Mr. Keeler would like to know more about this past weekend. If Bo wasn’t at school when Callie went to pick him up, why didn’t she notify my client?”

“I left him a voice mail!” Callie said. “He never returns my calls. I basically assumed Wyatt had Bo.”

“But she didn’t know that,” Betsy said calmly. “Did she do anything else to check up on her son’s whereabouts? Question the teachers at the school? Go over to my client’s home to see if Bo was there? Did she call his friend’s homes to see if he’d gone home with one of them?”

“I just told you, I figured Bo was with Wyatt.” Callie glared at Betsy.

Stackpole frowned. “Mrs. Keeler, did you leave town for the weekend without knowing your son’s exact location?”

“We had to get on the road,” Callie said, her voice shriller by the minute. “We had dinner reservations. It’s a long drive to Birmingham, and I was positive Bo was with his father. I never would have left Bo home alone. And it turned out fine! He was with Anna.”

Betsy went in for the kill. “He could have been abducted, Judge. My client relied on Mrs. Keeler’s representation that his son was in her custody for the weekend. He had no knowledge that Bo wasn’t where he should have been. And we find that very disturbing.”

“As do I,” Stackpole agreed. He looked Wyatt up and down. “Mr. Keeler, Dr. Talbott-Sinclair tells me you’ve been attending her divorce-recovery sessions, and I, ah, noted your presence there this week when I stopped by. She seems pleased with your progress.”

He swung around in his chair and considered