Beckett's Cinderella by Dixie Browning Page B

At any rate, it was PawPaw who originally promised his father to find these people and make good on the old family debt, only he never got around to it. I told you the Beckett men were good at procrastinating.”
    Liza stared at him for a full count. “Am I supposed to understand all that gibberish?”
    â€œYeah, I know what you mean. It’s pretty hard to keep score. I’ve got a genealogical chart in my briefcase, but it’s yours, not mine.”
    Frowning, Liza nibbled on her lower lip. She was half tempted to believe him, if only because the whole mess sounded so utterly absurd that nobody in his right mind could make it up. The con artists she’d read about usually went for simpler setups. The more complicated the lies, the easier it was to trip over them.
    Actually, James was the only con she’d known personally. When his palatial house of cards first began to collapse, he claimed it was all a mistake. Liza had tried to believe him. She’d lived with the man for nearly eleven years, after all. And although he was far from perfect—far, far from perfect—she’d once loved him enough to marry him. The initial passion had quickly faded, but she’d never had an inkling of what kind of man he really was until shortly before the end.
    He’d always been something of a charmer—it wasone thing she’d come to despise about him. Teasing her and calling her his trophy wife, he’d spend a fortune on her clothes and jewelry, far more than she would ever have spent on herself. In the early years, he’d taken her with him to entertain potential clients. But then he began going on trips without her, which suited her just fine. By the time she’d learned about his mistresses, their marriage had essentially been over. She’d been more sad than angry. At that point, James had moved to a hotel and she had started divorce proceedings.
    And then things had started getting crazy. First the police—two men from something called the Financial Crimes Unit. Then James’s lawyer, her own lawyer, and then the victims’ lawyers and, finally, the IRS.
    Months later, after James had been shot and killed and she’d done everything she knew how to make amends to the people he had cheated, she started reading about all the ways unscrupulous people could trick gullible ones out of everything they possessed. What hurt the most was the fact that James’s victims had usually been people who had saved all their lives for a decent retirement. On being told that they could live in relative luxury rather than eke out an existence in some low-rent retirement community, some had borrowed even more money to buy into whatever it was her bastard of a husband had been peddling. Offshore oil leases that never existed. IPOs for nonexistent companies that were guaranteed to double in value within the first three months. Promissory notes…
    Oh, yes. James George Edwards had been smooth, all right.
    And so was this man. “Do you have any identification?”
    He pulled out a worn ostrich-skin wallet. Flipping it open to reveal a driver’s license, he handed it to her. “Pilot’s license? Credit cards? You want to see my business card?”
    Liza shoved it back at him, trying not to notice the shape of his mouth, the way it moved when he spoke. “Business cards are a dime a dozen,” she said flatly. “Same goes for fake licenses. I suppose next you’re going to tell me you’re a card-carrying member of the Screen Actor’s Guild, right?”
    He did a slow double take. “Beg pardon?”
    All right, so he reminded her of a cross between Mel Gibson and George Clooney. “Look, can we just let this whole thing drop? I’m tired. I’ve obviously interrupted your supper. I’m not interested in accepting money from a stranger, so why don’t we just leave it—”
    A soft buzzing sound had him reaching for a