Mustang Case File #1

Chapter Two

ON ONE HAND he was furious, there was only one thing he could think of that was worse than flying and going into a hick town like he'd imagined Akaroa would be, and that was to have to go to the graduation of the business course in five days' time—the course he wasn't even enrolled on, so he definitely wasn't going to graduate from. And he'd had many sleepless nights thinking up excuses to prevent his mother from attending the graduation and discovering his fraudulent secret. Now he could have a really good one!

"Well, I guess I could fly, just for you Mother. But you do realize, we'll miss my graduation?"

His comment hardly registered and it was a long moment before she answered, "I'm sure they'll send your certificate out to you." He knew of course, he'd have the certificate his mother could glance at before anyone else had theirs. Then he would conveniently lose it!

That night (after Natasha had booked Dermot's flight to Akaroa for two days' time) they sat at the kitchen table. Dermot ate his favorite dinner, bangers and mash, and Natasha had her own lentil and chick pea patties—she couldn't abide anything that was forced into the scrubbed salted intestines of a pig!

"Grandmother's never going to let me into her life," he complained.

"Listen, Dermie," Natasha drooled, "we have to play her."

"Play her? She doesn't even know I exist. You've kept me out of her life. I don't know anything about her."

"Listen up, Dermot." Natasha's voice demanded obedience. "We've got the next two days and I'll school you up on what you need to know. The medic who rang said she was not quite her normal self, and as we both know, we don't know what her normal self is anyway."

"Then what do you expect me to do?"

"Charm your way into her life. Help her...physically, you know, if she's wheelchair bound, and you could run the business while she's poorly. You did say you got A+ grades in your business degree."

Fortunately, Natasha didn't see his face scarlet, she was too busy glancing in the mirror on the far side of the wall hoping her re-growth didn't show from ten feet. And she didn't hear him suck his breath inwards in a sudden reaction to his mother's beliefs in him—because she was tapping on her calculator. Dermot peered over her shoulder, he could see a five followed by several 0's. Millions? His grandmother was worth millions?

"So, Grandmother is worth a mint, is she?"

Natasha flushed, quickly deleted the figures and set her calculator down on the table. "We've always told you, your father (God rest his soul) and myself that your grandmother is a very wealthy woman but she's MEAN! We could have had a better life, but your grandmother prevented that!" she ended her statement with the shrillness that would match the early morning rooster. 

From an early age, Dermot was aware of his mother's highly-strung nature, her 'must blame someone else' and an unusual sense of entitlement that had never been full-filled because after she had extricated herself and her family from her husband's family, she would not grovel. "I refuse to grovel," she'd told Dermot on numerous occasions. And after Dermot's father had died when Dermot was 14, and she had every reason to grovel, she wouldn't. But she did complain to Dermot that his grandmother was, "Rich, mean, nasty and wouldn't loan your father and I any money years ago. And as for your father...he was a selfish Mustangonavich to leave us like that!"

"But Father died!" Dermot had answered, but his mother had only sniffed politely and had continued ranting.

Dermot shook away the accusations his mother had reeled out to him on numerous occasions.

"But, Dermie, never call her Grandmother. When you were born—which incidentally is the only time she has ever been in your midst—"

"The only time Grandmother has clapped eyes on me? And you want me to march down there and demand the family fortune?"