CHAPTER ONE
Joseph Lindsay stood at the railing of the house in Palm Springs where he was now living full time. The view was incredible from the top of the mountain overlooking the desert communities. He knew that some people would say his home on the mountaintop was very similar to his upward climb in the business world.
The polished, sophisticated, business mogul with his custom-made suits and shirts, carefully cut hair done by a top stylist in Los Angeles, and perennial tan, bore no resemblance to that little boy from long ago. The little boy who had grown up in a one-room house in Arkansas, a house that had no electricity or plumbing. The little boy whose mother had taught him to read at an early age, so he could escape the poverty and desolation of their life.
His mother, Rita, had made the decision to settle for a life of poverty and hardship when she’d married his father, a man with no education, who had built the small house with his own hands and worked the land around it, barely providing enough food to feed his family.
Once, when Joe had asked his mother why other children at the little one-room school he attended had grandparents, and he didn’t have any, she’d told him the story of how she’d met his father at the little country store in town when he was shopping for seeds. It had been love at first sight.
They’d gotten married, her mother’s parents had disowned her, and she’d never seen them again. Ralph Lindsay, Joe’s father, had served time in prison for killing a man. No one in the community had anything to do with him after he got out of prison, and that contempt carried over to his wife.
Joe grew up with his parents, his brother, Luke, and sister, Theresa. The only people he had any interaction with other than them was his teacher, who taught him from kindergarten through his senior year in high school in the tiny schoolhouse. There were only eleven other children who attended the school.
His mother had a college degree. Later, he would realize that his mother was very unattractive and probably the only man who had ever looked at her was Ralph. But even so, they seemed to be deeply in love.
Rita was dedicated to making sure that Joe’s life turned out much better than hers had. She augmented his learning, and it was apparent at a very early age that Joe was very, very smart. So smart it was difficult for his teacher to find things to teach him.
She was certain Joe was far smarter than she was. She’d come back to the tiny town of Jessop to take care of her aging parents after going to college. She’d never married, but she knew there was much more to the world than the tiny backwoods town she lived in. When her parents had finally passed away, it was too late for her to make a life somewhere else.
She was the one responsible for Joe taking college entrance exams and helped get him ready to take them. Because of his obvious financial need, he was given a full scholarship to the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.
The next few years were difficult, not because of the academics, but because of the college social life. Even getting used to being able to turn on lamps and use a shower was not an easy task for Joe. And he never wanted anyone to know about the poverty he’d come from.
Fortunately, the little country store in his town had stocked jeans, and his mother had bought him two new pairs, along with a couple of t-shirts, when he’d left for college. Even though those were the only clothes the little store stocked, at least they’d been what the other students wore, so visually he was able to fit in.
He was a quick study and within days he’d picked up the social mannerisms of his well-bred fellow students. Joe was very handsome and muscular from the years of helping his father work the land, and young college girls were attracted to him, one in particular.
Olivia was from a very wealthy family who lived near Little Rock. Her father owned rice farms throughout the state, and Olivia was Daddy’s darling. Whatever Olivia wanted, Olivia got, and Olivia wanted Joe.
Her mother had died when Olivia was nine, and Olivia was an only child. When she took Joe home to meet her father, he’d asked Joe about his background.
“Not much to tell you, sir. My daddy worked the land around our home. I went to school in a one-room schoolhouse, then I got a scholarship to college, and that’s where Olivia and I met.”
“Daddy, what Joe didn’t tell you was that he didn’t even have any running water or electricity where he grew up.”
Carl Levinson hadn’t gotten where he was by not being able to read people. And when he read Joe, he knew he could be a winner. A winner he could mold into a multimillionaire for his daughter, actually the only one who had ever expressed any interest in her. And so he did.
The buzzing of the gate intercom at the bottom of the hill took Joe away from his reverie. He listened to the voice on the other end and said, “I’ve opened the gate for you. Come to the front door, and I’ll meet you there. My houseman is off this evening.”
A few minutes later he opened the front door and said, “What the?” when he saw the gun. Those were the last words Joe ever spoke. The killer had fired a single shot into Joe’s chest at point blank range. Joe was dead before his lifeless body hit the floor.
His body was laying half in and half out of the doorway, thus blocking the door from being closed. The killer stepped through the open doorway and dragged Joe’s body a few feet into the house. They stepped back outside, closed the door, being careful to cover their hand with a cloth handkerchief when they touched the doorknob, and then walked away with a smile on their face.
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