Page 30 of Brenna, Brat

But I still didn’t care about that guy, just about the fallout for others. I texted Campbell saying that I’d heard his father had been indicted (not arrested) and asking if he was all right.

It was a lot later in the day that he got back to me, though, and he only wrote, “What’s your address?”

I was at my new atelier trying to deal with the leak problem, so I sent that information and some instructions about the area. A while later, he did show up. I heard his footsteps on the stairs, where visibility was low because there was apparently a problem with the light fixtures—and since I’d visited the building in broad daylight, I’d missed that issue. I hadn’t been looking forward to my descent alone, because by now, it was dark outside and would have been black as pitch in the stairwell. I’d been working here for much too long and now that I paused…well, I saw that it didn’t actually look much better, despite all that effort.

“Hi,” Campbell said as I opened the door. He blinked at the brightness in the room, where I’d carried up and turned on six different floor and table lamps to banish any shadows.

“Where did you park?” I asked back.

“I put my car exactly where you said to,” he answered. “It’s under the street light directly in front of the building.”

I went to the window to check and while I did, he came in and locked the door behind himself.

“I know my car is a target,” he said. “I also know that this neighborhood has plenty of burglaries and break-ins.”

“It should be ok for a little while,” I answered, and hoped that was true. “What happened with your company? Why is your dad going to jail? Did you know about it?”

“Let me see your phone,” he answered, and not understanding, I handed it over. I watched him look at it.

“Do you think I’m recording you or something?” I asked.

“No, but the lawyers said to be careful, so I turned off your location. I don’t know if that’s necessary but I don’t want you to get dragged into this.”

“Into what?”

He looked around for a place to sit but, as of yet, there wasn’t one. The floor was clean, because I’d scrubbed it several times, but it didn’t look that way since a persistent grey grunge was baked into the finish of the old linoleum. Campbell chose to stand, but he leaned against the wall, as if he was tired. He had dark circles under his eyes, too, and his shoulders slumped.

“When I stared working for my dad,” he started, but then stopped. “You have to understand that he’s a flawed person, but we all are.”

“Ok. How did those flaws lead to a criminal indictment?”

Rather than answering directly, he kept trying to explain his father. “It always seemed to me like there were things missing in him. He works hard, inspiringly hard, and he’s a straight-shooter. I mean that he never hesitates to say what he thinks,”he explained. “But I always saw that my dad wasn’t a person to emulate, not in a lot of ways. I never liked how he treated people and I knew that he wasn’t…” Campbell hesitated again. “He wasn’t moral. That word sounds so biblical, but I’m trying to say that he doesn’t think about things like other people do. His behavior doesn’t have the same limits.”

“What does that mean?”

He looked frustrated, but I thought he also looked sad. “I don’t steal stuff in stores because I know, in my heart, that it’s wrong. I’m also afraid of getting punished, but I’m aware that I would deserve it as a consequence. My dad isn’t afraid at all and he doesn’t care about right or wrong like that. I’ve been with him when he walked out of places with merchandise in his pockets that didn’t belong to him.”

“You mean that heshoplifted?” I asked, totally incredulous. “You guys have plenty of money to buy whatever you want!”

“It wasn’t about money,” Campbell told me. “It wasn’t about affording things. He explains it as taking what you can. He means that if you can get away with something, then you should.”

“And this is someone you chose to work for? A person with no morals and, apparently, no sense?”

“He can be a good person, in other ways. When I was a kid, I helped him catch a stray dog that had been injured on the freeway so we could take it to the vet. I run a big charity hockey game and he’s a generous supporter.” He frowned. “That’s cancelled now, of course.”

“Didn’t Ghregg take money from investors and scam them? Is it generosity if he was charitable with stolen funds?” I asked. “I guess you could argue a Robin Hood thing…”

I stopped as Campbell looked at me.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” I acknowledged, although I believed that my doubts were valid. “You should continue. Please,” I added.

“I was telling you that he’s not all bad, like the face of evil.”

“Do you mean that he didn’t do anything wrong, and the charges are false? Do you think that he’ll be proven innocent?” I asked.

“I…” He stopped again, but now I thought that he just didn’t want to say what he thought. The answer to my question was that Campbell believed that his father could be guilty, and his opinion was written all over his face.

“How much do they think he stole over the years?” I asked.

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