Page 68 of Agency

“No, I’m trying to figure out why my agency lied to me.” I paused. “And, yes, Morgan. Even women prisoners need to urinate. You know we’re human, right?”

“Just amazed we’re at this point in our relationship already.”

I snorted. “Well, since we’re at this point, maybe you can tell me about the court case? All I know is that Stella’s trying to get some guy’s DNA, that guy lives here in Missouri, and that the courts finally came through for her.”

Morgan didn’t say anything, not for a long moment.

“Okay. Does the name Graham Landshire Burgess ring any bells?”

“TheGraham Landshire Burgess? Billionaire owner and CEO of GLB Investment and Holdings, Graham Landshire Burgess? Currently in a coma after a stroke, Graham Landshire Burgess?”

“Yeah. That one.”

“He owns all those little fast food places around the shitty rural parts of the country, right? The ones where I always get food poisoning from eating the tacos?”

Morgan chuckled. “Burger Hut. And serves you right for eating tacos at a place with ‘burger’ in the name.”

“But they’re so good, Morgan.” I flushed and went to stand. “So, he’s the one who hired you?”

“Not exactly,” he replied over the sound of the flushing toilet. “He’s the one we’re trying to get DNA from. Stella went for a DNA test to determine the paternity of her baby. She and her boyfriend Eddie had been on a break, and she’d met a guy at some party. So, she gets the DNA test done at nine-weeks, and it comes back that she has relatives she didn’t know about.”

“Wait,” I said, pulling off and crumpling Stella’s maternity top into a ball. “What about Eddie?” I asked as I discarded the top on the counter.

“What about him?” Morgan asked as I removed my bra and dropped it next to the top.

“Was he the father?” I pulled on my own T-shirt from the bug-out bag. “You can’t just pull a Maury Povich on me and not give the answer!”

“Huh? Oh. Yeah, it was Eddie’s.”

“Phew. Okay. Crisis averted. Stella has relatives she didn’t know about, right? Keep going.”

“Turns out, the son of the Burgess family did one of those direct-to-consumer DNA things to see where his family really came from, and it matched that way. This blows Stella away, because she’d never known her father, and her mother passed away the year before. Employment records show her mother worked at the Burgess home for about a year, and her last day was six months before Stella was born. Then, just before the birth, she moved to South Central, LA.”

“And you guys think, what? Graham Burgess is her father?” I opened the fresh toothbrush and applied some paste. “Isn’t he like eighty-years-old and in a coma after a stroke?”

“Thereabouts. But sixty-year-old men have kids all the time, and he hadn’t had a stroke two decades ago. Anyways, turns out there’d been a shell company paying money to Stella’s mother since nearly day one, a shell company which even picked up her college tuition. Once her mother passed, the payments shifted to Stella under the guise of a life insurance policy.”

“That’s fair. Why all the security, though? Seems like Burgess did alright by her. Better than plenty of living, acknowledged parents, even.”

“Remember her boyfriend Eddie?”

“Yeah,” I said, just before sticking the brush in my mouth and going to work.

“Gunned down in a drive-by while he and Stella were out getting lunch, less than a week after her lawyer filed with the courts to obtain the oldest Burgess’ DNA.”

“But hold on,” I said, mouth full of toothpaste suds. “If Burgess is in a coma, who’s fighting this stuff? His family?”

“His kids. Daughter and son, his wife passed about a decade ago.”

“So, what changed?” I asked after I’d spit out my mouthful of paste and rinsed my mouth with some water from a cupped hand. “There’s got to be a reason someone like me was hired.”

“He woke up.”

“Seriously?” I asked, pulling open the door to find him still standing where I’d left him.

“Seriously,” Morgan said with a nod. “He woke up, and gave his DNA over willingly. Turns out that Stella’s mom had her own boyfriend here in Missouri while having the affair with Burgess, but that neither had really pushed to get a test done to show paternity one way or the other. Burgess just paid.”

“Well, when you have billions, what’s a little bit of child support?”