Read Online Dismissed With Prejudice (9780061760631) by Judith A. Jance - Free Book Online

it?”
    â€œWhat about the computer?”
    â€œWhat about it?”
    â€œWas it on or off?”
    â€œOff,” she answered decisively, without the slightest hesitation. “Most definitely off. I already told you, he wasn’t working. He was sitting there rubbing the sword with that piece of silk like he didn’t have a care in the world while my mother was home working like a dog to get packed and out of there.”
    â€œWhat did you know about your father’s business?” I asked.
    â€œNot much. Only what everyone else knows, what I read in the papers. Until it was settled, the patent infringement lawsuit between MicroBridge and RFLink, Ltd., was hot news in newspaper business sections for months.”
    â€œWhat was it all about?”
    â€œMy father used to work for a man named Blakeslee. His job, as engineering manager, was to develop a system of local area networks. There were evidently hard feelings when he left, and Blakeslee claimed that when my father started MicroBridge a few months later, that he did it using technology and patents that rightfully belonged to Blakeslee’s company. Blakeslee took him to court and won. Blakeslee was in the process of putting my father out of business.”
    â€œSo you knew that your father was in some financial difficulty?”
    She shrugged. “Vaguely, but I didn’t have any idea how bad it was. And even if I had known, I wouldn’t have been able to help. From what I’ve gleaned from my mother, he must have personally guaranteed a line of credit and put second and third mortgages on the house in order to meet payroll and keep the company afloat during the lawsuit. When he lost the case in court, the bank pulled the note.”
    She paused and shook her head. “My father and I didn’t get along, but I always thought he was brilliant. I believed he was brilliant. I still don’t understand how he could do such a stupid thing.”
    â€œWhat did he do that was so stupid?”
    â€œHe bet everything on winning that case—this house, their personal possessions, their chance of a comfortable retirement—everything. And he lost it all.”
    â€œHe must have thought he was betting on a sure thing,” I suggested.
    â€œHe was a fool!” Kimiko Kurobashi’s dark eyes flashed with anger as she spoke. Her contempt for her father was absolutely unforgiving. Despite the years of hostility, the child in her was now being stripped of all lingering illusions. She was getting an adult look at her father’s feet of clay, and she didn’t like what she was seeing. Kimiko regarded her father’s failure as a personal betrayal of her mother’s simple trust, and seeing it for what it was tore her to pieces.
    â€œNobody but a fool bets on a sure thing!”
    Machiko appeared at the corner of the house, limping slowly around the Suburban and the horse trailer.
    â€œYou know, she packed the entire house by herself,” Kimi said, watching her mother’s slow progress toward us. “Every bit of it. The boxes are there in all the rooms, carefully labeled in her own handwriting, waiting for the movers. It’s like he forced her to dismantle her own life, piece by piece.”
    â€œAre they labeled in English or Japanese?” I asked.
    â€œJapanese. I’ve spent all morning relabeling them. That’s another thing. How is she going to get along? She never learned to speak English very well, and she doesn’t write it at all.”
    Kimi didn’t add, “My father wouldn’t let her.” She didn’t have to. From the way she said it and from the look of disgust on her face, I knew this was yet another unpardonable sin laid at her father’s door without Tadeo Kurobashi having a chance to defend himself.
    Just as I suspected, the warfare between them was continuing unabated. If the message on Tadeo’s computer screen was truly intended for his