Shona Jackson- The Complete Trilogy

by Vicky Jones

  “What the hell?” she whispered to herself, bemused at the state of the room. On closer inspection, the hallway was in an equally messy state as she turned into the kitchen. There she found the sink filled with unwashed dishes and the floor sticky with whatever David had splashed out of his dinner bowl.

  “Chloe?” Shona repeated, louder this time.

  Chloe came whizzing into the kitchen, her face like thunder. “Quit your yelling. I just got David off to sleep.”

  Shona looked at Chloe and for the very first time ever she was surprised, almost repulsed. Her hair was matted with grease. She had a huge gravy stain down the front of her grubby white short-sleeved blouse and her face was completely devoid of make-up. Her eyes looked hollow, with dark circles hovering underneath them.

  “I’m sorry for shouting. Are you OK?” Her own gaze travelled around the messy kitchen. “Can I help?”

  “Maybe if you weren’t out until late every night, I might be able to manage to get everything done around here. I need help every day, Shona, not just when the mess gets too much for you to stand.” Chloe’s face was bright red from the exertion of trying to keep her voice low so as not to wake David. “Where you been anyway? In that bar again?”

  Shona put her hands on her hips and clenched her mouth. “No, actually,” she replied. She strode out of the kitchen and into the living room and began sorting through the pile of clothes on the armchair. “I was just thinking about stuff and pulled over for a bit, you know.” She found the pair of jeans and blue denim work shirt she’d been looking for, then frowned. “Honey, I don’t mind the pants being creased, but I really ought to be wearing an ironed shirt for work.” She held out the creased shirt. “Doesn’t give off a good impression to customers now.”

  Chloe, her face quivering like a rumbling volcano, took the shirt off Shona, looked down at it, then moments later threw it back at her in rage. “Are you serious? I tell you I need help and all you can come back with is that?”

  Shona peeled the shirt away from her face and held her hands up in defense. “Hey, settle down, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it. I can do it myself if it’s that big a deal.”

  They stood glaring at each other. Shona relented, throwing the shirt back onto the clothing pile. “Look, why don’t I run you a bath, huh? I’ll keep watch on the boy.”

  “I look like shit,” Chloe huffed as she looked down over herself.

  “Give me five minutes,” Shona replied in a quiet voice, then padded into the bathroom.

  Chloe came out of the bathroom wearing a pair of yellow cotton shorts and a crisp white undershirt, looking and smelling completely brand new. She wandered into the living room in search of Shona, a dreamy relaxed smile draped across her face. Shona was busying herself plumping up cushions, the pile of creased clothing now ironed and folded, all the dirty dishes now gone.

  “Wow, you have been a busy little bee,” Chloe marveled, letting her eyes drift around the neat and tidy room.

  “I just wanted it to be all nice for you when you came out. You enjoy your bath?”

  “It was perfect. I feel much better now. I’m sorry I snapped at you. I just miss you sometimes when you’re out all day. Is that so bad?”

  Shona sashayed over to her. “Well, I’m here now. How about we reacquaint ourselves.” She wrapped her arms around Chloe. “Gosh, you smell so good, I could just eat you all up.”

  Chloe squirmed a little in Shona’s grasp, pulling away. “Baby, I’m not in the mood. How ‘bout we watch a little TV, snuggle up?” Her face looked weary, and normally Shona would want nothing more than to do that, but she felt her own frustration bubble over this time.

  “We ain’t been together for months now,” she fumed. “Is this how it’s gonna be forever now we got a kid?” As soon as she’d let those pent-up words leave her lips, Shona immediately regretted it.

  “A ‘kid’? His name is David,” Chloe shot back. “You don’t have the first clue how tiring it is bringing up a ‘kid’, as you call him? Or what I’m going through right now?” She drummed her finger against her temple, her eyes shooting wildfire at Shona who looked on bemused as Chloe began pacing the floor. “I’m dealing with a lot of crap in here at the moment. I’m stuck in these four walls every goddamn minute of the day thinking about what happened to me back in Alabama. Every time I look at David, it’s a reminder of what Kyle did.” Chloe stopped, her body swaying before she regained her focus. “I’m so lonely, Shona. I’m not coping. My head. It hurts.”

  “I didn’t mean to say any of that…” Shona began, her feet frozen to the spot.

  “Yes, you did. The truth comes out when you don’t get what you want, doesn’t it? Yes, this is how it’s gonna be now we got someone in the house who’s old enough to walk in on us doing stuff he might not understand. And after what I’ve just told you about how I feel? How can you be so selfish?”

  “Selfish?” Shona yelled back. “You make it sound dirty what we do in the bedroom. We might not be conventional like other couples, but what we are ain’t wrong.” Shona paused, remembering their first night together at the Fortua. “You taught me that.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m just getting sick of your bellyaching about not getting your own way.”

  “It’s not my fault you had a kid!” Shona retorted.

  The air in the room seemed to completely evaporate.

  Chloe stared open-mouthed at Shona, stunned into silence. “It wasn’t my fault either. Shame on you, Shona.”

  She turned and disappeared into the bedroom.

  Shona sat in the bar draining her fourth beer. She’d walked around town for an hour or so after storming out of the beach house, devastated at the cruel thing she’d said to Chloe about that fateful night with Kyle. It was the last thing she’d ever wanted to say, especially after she’d seen the state Chloe had gotten herself in, yet the strain on both of them at the moment was becoming too much to bear.

  “Beer, not Coke? Rough night?” Lula asked after sidling up next to her.

  “You could say that,” Shona replied without turning to look at her.

  “Next one’s on me.”

  Shona lowered her eyes to her almost-empty bottle and nodded her thanks, unaware that Lula was moving her arm closer and closer to Shona’s, inches from touching her hand.

  After settling him back off to sleep, Chloe had come out of David’s bedroom, half an hour after her argument with Shona, to find the living room now empty. She looked through the drapes to see the truck still in the driveway. Without thinking, she picked up the keys from the table by the door, slipped on her shoes and jumped into the truck.

  Sitting on a bench not too far from Bertie’s bar, Alan Walker sat watching the front door carefully. The conversation he’d had with Sheriff Lawrence a few days earlier still resonated loudly in his memory.

  “So I want you to keep eyes on that place. I wanna know everyone who goes in, how long they’re there for, everything,” Lawrence had said to him before his smile turned nasty. “You know what’s at stake, Walker. I could have your little diner closed in a heartbeat. Terrible rat infestation down that alleyway next to your place, ain’t there? Or how about an inconveniently timed outbreak of food poisoning?”

  Walker shuddered as he remembered the cold sweat trickling down his back as Lawrence had threatened his livelihood. Now, as he sat watching the door to Bertie’s bar, and the alleyway to the side, he knew he had to come up with a list of names for Lawrence to interrogate. Walker had heard the rumors about the clientele there, but it still didn’t give him any pleasure when he wrote the seventh name down on his notepad.

  The next hour or so dragged on. It was almost nine o’clock at night when a pale blue truck roared down the street and parked underneath a light. He saw a brown-haired young woman leap out of the truck and stride up to the large window on the front side of the bar. The young woman pressed her face to the glass and stared in, recoiling in what looked like anger, then walking over to the entrance. As she dis
appeared into the bar, Walker licked the nib of his pencil and pressed it to his notepad.

  “So then she went straight in there, didn’t come out for a while so she must have been meeting someone. Chloe Clark, that’s right. I guess what Marion told you about her and that broad from the garage has been right all along. Yeah, of course I wrote her name down too. Don’t worry, I’ll stay here until closing.”

  Walker replaced the receiver and stepped out of the telephone booth at the corner of the street, his eyes still fixed on the front door of Bertie’s as he lit up another cigarette.

  Chloe exited the bar five minutes after entering. She’d stood just inside the entrance looking over to Shona, who was sitting at the bar talking to a black-haired girl wearing a trilby hat and leather jacket who seemed to be laughing at everything Shona said, but before she had plucked up the courage to go over to her, her anger had turned to confusion and hurt. One time I didn’t want it? Is that all it takes for you to go elsewhere? Dazed by that crushing thought, Chloe had turned back around and left.

  It was almost two a.m. by the time Shona returned home. Mindful not to turn on the light and wake the house, she held her palm against the wall to trace her way into the living room but as she did so the moonlight shining through the window caught the outline of a strange shape on the floor parallel to the couch.

  “Chloe,” she exclaimed, racing over to her.

  Opening her heavy eyelids, Chloe started to come round. “What? Oh, I fell asleep on the couch waiting for you. Must have rolled off,” she slurred, still waking from her deep sleep.

  “Shit, I thought…” Shona began, lifting Chloe up and laying her down on the couch. “I’ll go check on David. You just rest, OK?”

  Peeking around David’s door, Shona could see he was fast asleep. She came back into the living room to find Chloe crying. Sighing, Shona walked over, sat next to her and slung an arm around her quivering shoulders.

  “Don’t cry. I shouldn’t have said what I said earlier. It was unforgivable. I’m sorry.”

  “I saw you,” Chloe said.

  Shona looked surprised. “What?”

  “At that stupid bar. That girl in the hat drooling all over you. I know I don’t look like when you first met me but I never thought you’d lose interest so fast.” Chloe’s words came thick and fast before Shona could process what she was saying. After several seconds of her rant, Chloe coughed and spluttered.

  “You came over to the bar?”

  “I had no choice.” Chloe stood up and paced the floor. “I needed to know why you go there all the time and now I do. Look at you now, you’re drunk.”

  “And you’re suspicious.”

  “I got good reason to be, ain’t I?”

  Shona paused. “Wait a minute. Did you leave David here all on his own? Chloe?”

  “Don’t. Please, Shona.” Chloe buried her blotchy face in her hands. “You couldn’t make me feel any more like a failure right now if you tried.”

  “Stop it, both of you,” a tiny voice squeaked from the doorway. Shona and Chloe turned to see David standing there in his pajamas rubbing the sleep from his eyes. His little hand clutched at his teddy bear’s brown paws.

  Chloe ran over to him and scooped him up. “Don’t worry, sweetie, we were just playing a game. Let’s get you back to bed.” When she returned, she stood three feet away from Shona, eyes fixed on her. “We need to talk this through. We can’t let that happen again.”

  All Shona had to reply with was a weak nod.

  Chapter 24

  “Well, good morning, Shona. How are things?”

  Shona looked up from her sandwich to see Eric Everett standing in front of her. He was the image of his father—same handsome face, muscular build and fine sandy hair. It had been cut shorter since the last time Shona had seen him.

  “Hi Eric. How’s your father doing?”

  “Oh, he’s still caught up with settling Grandpa’s business affairs. He still can’t walk or talk after the accident, so Mom and Pop wanna be close, in case he…” He paused and smoothed down the front of his brand new, perfectly pressed police uniform. “I said I’d stick around here until they get back, hold the fort, you know? And what better job for an Everett to get, huh?”

  “The town will be glad to have you, Eric. You want me to look at the car?” Shona nodded behind him.

  “Yeah, if that’s OK? It’s making a clunking noise.”

  “No problem. Hey, when you speak to your pop next, say hi for me.”

  “Will do, Shona. I’ll see you in an hour,” Eric grinned and tossed his keys to her.

  As she was closing up the garage for the night, Shona saw Bertie approaching, her expression grim.

  “Hey. What’s eating you?” Shona asked as she looped the chain around the garage door handles.

  “Didn’t you hear? We were raided last night. That goddamn Lawrence has started throwing his weight around again. Since that riot down at Cooper’s Donuts last year he’d been ordered to stop his men from hassling us too obviously. But it’s starting to creep in again. His men arrested two guys recently on the sidewalk for doing nothing more than being seen coming out of the bar. Said it was for being drunk and disorderly, but I know that’s bullshit. I should know, I was the one serving them.” Bertie looked caught between upset and livid.

  “Sorry to hear that,” Shona replied.

  “Yeah, so, Dee and Lula are over at the bar now and Edie will sneak over here when she finishes her shift at the store. I came to ask for your help.” She walked up to Shona, looked around them both, then leaned in close. “This situation is getting way out of control now. I’ve tried to play nice and keep things low key, as I was advised to, otherwise I’d go out of business,” Bertie rolled her eyes, “but they hang around most nights and arrest my drinkers on their way home for no good reason at all. Last night, it was my best friend. All he was doing was having a beer after work with his friend. That’s it. I’ve just been over to the cop shop now to ask Lawrence to let those guys go. He’s had them overnight already. What more does he want? He’s got nothing concrete to charge them with and he knows it. But he’s just being a punk ass. Said they were ‘disturbing the peace.’ How, I’d like to know. By putting a tune on the jukebox he didn’t like? No, Lawrence needs to be reminded that he’s only keeping that office chair warm until Everett decides to come back. He wasn’t perfect but at least he kept things civil between us.”

  “What do you want from me, Bertie? I got no influence here,” Shona protested, her hands on her hips.

  “I need you to join with us. We need to rise up against those bastard cops who think they can push us around. It worked at Cooper’s, didn’t it? People started to listen. We need to show them that we’re people too. Hell, we might even one day get some laws changed. At least get the ones we do have now stuck to. No matter what you seem to think, you are popular with the folks in this town for all you do for them here.”

  Shona shook her head. “I don’t want to get involved, Bertie. We already had this conversation. Anyway, I ain’t got no influence around here. Not really. Yeah, I do the cops a favor with their cars, but Lawrence would shut me down in a heartbeat if I start causing him trouble.”

  “I seen that Minnie Barker come in here all the time, bringing you coffee and stuff,” Bertie replied, leaning against the wall and picking at her fingernail. “You know who her husband is, right? He may be retired now, and a few marbles short of a set, but he’s still got a lot of friends in high places in this town. And there are quite a few who owe him a favor or two.”

  “I ain’t using nobody. Minnie’s a friend of mine. I won’t ruin that.”

  “Look, I’ll level with you, Shona. I’m gonna organize something a little stronger than the last piss-poor skirmish we had. I got some contacts of my own, up in San Francisco. The Daughters of Bilitis, they’re called. Some group made up of women like us. They said they’d get the bus in, as many women as we need, to show these cops they can’t keep pushing us
around. We’ll be throwing a damn sight more back at them than donuts and paper plates, I can promise you that. Now, I need to know if you want a part of this or not.” Bertie’s eyes fixed on Shona, waiting for her reaction.

  “No, Bertie. I don’t wanna fight nobody. I don’t want no part in violence. I’ve seen enough of that in my life already. The way I figure it, we should all try and get along in peace. Or at least try to stay out of each other’s way.”

  Bertie looked furious but remained calm. “I knew it. You’re the type who wants everyone to fight so that you can reap the rewards when times change and your life gets that little bit easier because of someone else’s sacrifice. You’re the type to do nothing.” She shook her head with contempt. “You got it all sorted out now, haven’t you? Gorgeous girl at home. Rich too,” Bertie added with a wink, then her head inclined as she thought of another angle. “Say, maybe Chloe could help too. Money always talks.”

  “No, I don’t want Chloe involved in anything. She needs calm, rest. We both do. You don’t have the slightest clue what we’ve suffered these last few years. We’ve had our fair share of heartache, Bertie,” Shona replied. “You have no idea what we’ve been through to get to this point.” She slammed her fist into the garage doors, causing Bertie to flinch. “I just wanna keep my head down. For the kid’s sake, you know?”

  “I’m sure you do, Shona. But consider this, if we ever do get the laws around here changed then you won’t have to live in secret anymore.”