“All right, let's have it.” Mason removed his fisherman's cap and set it on the back of the seat. “And take those glasses off. I don't like talking to someone I can't see.”
“I'd rather not,” Lou Edna replied.
“Why in heaven's name?” Millie asked, and then gasped at her own unspoken answer. “Lou, you aren't—you didn't—”
“Girlie, you better not be,” Mason interrupted. “We been through that, already, and once was enough.”
The girl sighed and rested her head in her hands for a moment. “Sometimes, I just wish I was dead.”
“Don't say that!” said Millie, who must have experienced similar thoughts during her own lowest moments and could identify. “Next thing you know, that's all you can think about.”
“You've got a boy in the other room whose sun rises and sets on you,” the colonel reminded her gently. It was the first time Stella could remember him saying anything encouraging to Lou Edna. “In his eyes, you're perfect.”
“It's true,” Stella agreed. “The greatest influence on any child is their own parents. It's a proven fact.”
“He'll never forgive me,” she mourned.
“What's to forgive?” Gerald argued. “He's so little he doesn't know the difference.”
“Oh, somebody will tell him, they always do.”
“Unless somebody else...” It was Cole's voice instead of Stuart's coming from the doorway as he came through. “Straitens up and makes some changes. So the kid at least has a mother he can look up to.”
“Nobody can change what they don't feel, Cole.”
“Who needs to feel it? Just find out what's normal and do it.”
“You should talk. Right?”
“Well, he's right about that, anyway,” the colonel pointed out. “Doing right is a precursor to feeling what's right. It's the way one learns to judge between right and wrong. Good and evil, you might say.”
“Are you saying I'm evil, now, Mr. Colonel?”
“Don't get sassy, girlie,” Mason warned. “And take off those sun glasses. You got people who care enough about you to try and help figure things out—show a little respect.”
“I don't feel like it.”
In answer, he reached across the table, lightly knocked the bill of her ball cap up and snatched them off. Only to reveal a glaring bruise that circled her left eye and the bridge of her nose. An audible gasp escaped Stella. Millie said, “Oh, no!” And Gerald leaped to his feet so fast he teetered before darting at Cole.
“Hey, wait a minute...” The younger man stood up to his full height and pointed a warning finger at the ridiculous figure coming at him in his half serape hanging over a green sweat suit “You just wait one minute!”
“Put 'em up!” Gerald danced back and forth on his feet in front of him and began to circle his fists. “You woman beater!”
“Don't make me pop you one, old man. You hear me?”
“Nobody's gonna pop anybody,” said Mason. “Sit down, Gerry.”
About three seconds before Gerald surprised everyone with a lightning-quick punch that knocked Cole DeForio in the nose so hard it started to gush blood, and sent him sprawling backward onto the floor.
5
Somebody hollered, and the men got up to intervene. But it was unnecessary, as Gerald staggered back at the realization of what he had done, and sank down onto the nearest edge of the dining table so he wouldn't slip into a dead faint. Stella hurried to get a cold cloth to stop the bleeding, as everyone else hovered around Cole and tried to get him back on his feet, again. Which wasn't having much effect since he wasn't responding.
“Good grief—” Gerald pulled his watch-cap off and ran a hand through his thinning brown hair. “Isn't dead, is he? Didn't mean to do all that. Oh, I say!”
“He's out cold,” Mason pronounced. “Where'd you learn to fight like that, Gerry?”
“Alarming number of people liked to beat up on me, when I was young, so I took boxing lessons. Don't know what came over me to hit him so hard. Must have done it in a blaze of anger.”
“I'll say you did,” said Lou Edna. “Serves him right!”
“He's coming to,” the colonel observed just before the victim moaned and uttered a muffled curse.
Suddenly, there were two bells in rapid succession, and then another two, and the young man struggled to get to his feet.
“You better stay put till the bleeding stops,” Mason suggested. “It's just Stuart wanting to drop the anchor outside those narrows and wait for the tide to change, again. And don't anybody go anywhere,” he added as he started for the door that led out to the decks. “We're going to get to the bottom of all this, one way, or the other. You hear me, Shortcake?”
“Pop, I came back—isn't that enough?”
“No.”
“Well, I don't approve of any of it.” Millie returned to the table and stirred three spoons of sugar into the tea she had poured from the things Stella set out earlier. “Resorting to physical violence is no way to solve problems.”
“I agree,” said Stella. “Cole, have you ever thought of taking a course in anger management?”
“Anger management—tell that to Lou. It was self-defense. She was hammering my gut like she was contending for some heavyweight championship.”
“I don't have an ounce of fat on my body! Hit him, again, Gerry.”
“E-gads—I'm still shaking from last time. I detest it when things get bloody, I really do.”
“Lou Edna Wilson!” Millie set her mug down so hard tea sloshed out. “What on earth has gotten into you?”
“I'm regretting smuggling somebody aboard, that's what's got into me. Been all high and mighty ever since Cap promoted him. Like nobody else is good enough, anymore. I'd have taken the Senator with me if I didn't have to get another job and find a place to live, first. I wasn't really leaving him. I was going to send for him as soon as I got settled.”
“And where were your going to send to—general delivery, Alaska? We don't know exactly where the lodge is, we have to find it first. Then maybe it won't even be livable, and we'd have to go somewhere else.”
“Cap would have told me when he got back.”
“Maybe he won't want to go all the way back. He's part of the family, now. But I have to tell you, Lou, it practically killed me you would leave without saying anything. After everything we've been through!”
“I'm not leaving you, Millie, I'm leaving him.” She pointed to where Cole was still sitting on the floor with the wet cloth against his face. “What kind of mother would stay with somebody violent? But I knew you all needed him for crew, so I didn't think I should say anything.”
“Lou, if you tell one more lie, you'll be sorry,” Cole mumbled from behind the cloth.
“Truth is the basis of all genuine relationships,” the Colonel pointed out. A remark that caused Stella some discomfort, because she still hadn't made time for that heart-to-heart she felt she owed him, yet, either. Even though she intended to.
“Keeping plans to yourself is not lying, Cole—I do not lie to this family!”
A statement that brought her young man up off the floor so fast, no one was ready for it. But instead of going after Lou Edna, he snatched the backpack she had set on the upholstered bench beside her, instead.
“Give it back to me!” she hollered. “Don't you dare!”
He dared. Even when she picked up Millie's tea and threw it at him, he only ducked and fended it off before unzipping and dumping the contents out on the table for all to see. Millie screamed. The colonel's eyes widened and his mouth dropped open, while Stella—who had stood up that very moment, in order to step between the two before they resorted to an out-and-out brawl—was just in time to catch Gerald before he fell off the table, onto the floor.
There was an assortment of credit cards belonging to various family members in the heap, the colonel's gold pocket-watch the military academy had given him when he retired, and several of Stella's autographed first editions fro
m her book shelves. There was also a genuine shrunken head Gerald had paid a lot of money for on an archaeological dig in the South Pacific, before his invalid days. But the things that had elicited a scream from Millie, and got her reaching for her heart pills, was the notorious Villa Nofre jewelry collection that belonged to the owner's last wife and had been missing for years.
“Where did you get those!” the mansion's former landlady could barely manage a frightened whisper.
“In a trunk up in the attic,” Lou Edna admitted. “When I was looking for things to pawn that you wouldn't notice. Now, you'll probably never trust me again. None of you will!” At which point she buried her face in her arms on the table and gave way to more tears.
“E-gads—those things are worth a fortune—we could all go to jail for this. We're accomplices! What are we going to do, Mil? E.J.'s been a good sport, but I doubt he'd let us off three times. First the household valuables, then the paintings, and now the missing jewels! He'd never believe us a third time!”
“Oh, I don't know what to do—Mason's going to hit the roof when he hears this! You couldn't have got away with pawning those, Lou. The family lawyers have had detectives and everyone else trying to find them for years. The lady who owned them was a Russian refugee who came over here after World War II—some distant cousin to a Czar, or something.”
“They're extremely well-documented,” added Gerald, then grimaced at the very thought.
“We seem to be going from the frying pan into the fire every time we turn around, lately,” said the colonel. “The amount of trouble this incident could have caused every one of us.”
“Don't you have any feelings at all for us, Lou?” Millie implored. “We've shared everything we had with you, and you do something like this!”
“I didn't know they were that valuable—I didn't!”
“You definitely knew the value of everything else,” said the colonel. “And a good idea of how to liquidate them, seeing how fast you were headed back home.”
“What did you take us for?” Gerald pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbed at the beads of sweat gathering on his forehead. “A bunch of pushovers?”
“I'm afraid, that's exactly what she took us for,” the colonel replied for her. “Except considering what terrible things might backfire in your own life as a result of this act, makes you something of a pushover, yourself, Lou Edna.”
“Now, what am I going to do?” she wailed. “If my boy ends up in foster care, I'll kill myself!”
“That wouldn't help one bit,” said Stella.
“I am a horrible person—just like Cole said! There's no hope for me!”
“Of course there's hope for you,” said the colonel. “There's hope for everyone who truly wants it. You only have to ask.”
“Nobody will ever forgive me for this—oh, I could just die!”
“There is one person who will,” he replied. “And he already did the dying.”
“What good would it be if I end up all alone? None of you will want me around anymore!”
“Young lady, you would never be alone in this world, again. That, I can promise you. With only a few words from you, right here and now, your entire life can be turned around. But it has to be genuine. You'd be talking to the one who knows every thought and intent of your heart, yet still loves you enough to give you a second chance. So... what do you say?”
6
“Stella,” the colonel said later that evening, without looking up from his laptop. “You haven't read a word since you opened that book. Is there something bothering you? Something you'd like to talk about?”
“I just can't get over how Lou Edna responded to you. I even think that was a genuine prayer of forgiveness she prayed. Right in front of all of us.”
“Well, it wasn't me she was responding to. I was just the messenger.”
“But how did you know she was ready to pray? She jumped at your suggestion so fast, I think she was actually waiting to.”
“I didn't know. But since she might never have a remorseful moment like that, again, I thought I better press the issue. Seems to have worked out.”
“It certainly did. Why the change that came over her was almost instant. It was like you could almost see some great weight lifted off her. And it was so touching how Cole came over and hugged her so tenderly afterward. He must have a good heart, himself, to want so much for her to do things right. Maybe he was touched by the love of God at sometime in his life, too.”
He smiled, then gave half a chuckle at the memory. “That's what really changes people, you know. The love of God. It's supernatural.”
“Oh, it is!” she agreed. “In a good way.”
“I'd say the love of God can't be anything but good.”
“I was talking about the supernatural part. There are some supernatural things that aren't good at all. Wouldn't you agree?”
“Most definitely. But you wouldn't want anything to do with that sort of stuff, would you? Life is too short to fit everything in the world into it. And—as long as we get to choose—wouldn't you rather fill yours up with good things?”
“Of course I would. But sometimes we don't have any say in the matter.”
“We always have some kind of choice, Stel. Sometimes it's only a very small one. But if you look close enough, you'll find it's a way out. Had that happen to me, personally, many times.”
Stella thought how looking for a way out is what brought on the worst trouble in her life. But she certainly didn't want to get into that subject at the moment. The troubles at hand were more than enough to deal with. “I wish I could be that sure. I mean, it must be very comforting to have so much assurance.”
“Well, I didn't get it all at once, you know. Just little by little, one choice at a time. Small adjustments, you might say. Life's full of choices—there are dozens every day. How's the saying go...” He cocked his head and thought for a moment. “I have set before you life and death—oh, that you would choose life! The more you practice choosing life, the better you get at it. Sort of a win-win situation.”
“I hope Lou Edna discovers that. If she could only know that choosing to do wrong is what actually diminishes her opportunities. Not life being harder on her than anyone else. She's a smart girl, though. So, maybe it won't take too long for her to realize she can get better options to choose from each time she makes a good choice.”
“Well spoken. And that's exactly what she would hear if she got some good counseling to overcome some of her past perceptions.”
Stella thought how that was exactly where she heard it, but she didn't say anything about that, either.
“However—now that she's asked for it—she'll get plenty of supernatural help to make sure she succeeds,” he went on, “as do we all. None of us are much of a match for the dark side of those spiritual realms. Some of us are just more susceptible to it than others. More easily taken in, you might say. Especially considering those dark forces have the ability to masquerade as creatures of light, for a time.”
A thought that gave Stella something of a jolt—how in the world could a person tell the difference?
“The danger is,” the colonel went on, “that their purpose is to trap you, not give you a way out of anything. They can only lead a person to death and destruction. No mortal is a match for that. Never has been. Which I suppose is why we get so tossed around between good and evil, in the first place.”
There was the opening. Stella realized, right then, that she needed to know how one went about getting that good kind of supernatural help, in order to escape the bad. Because it suddenly became very clear that she had allowed frightening things to rule her life, too. So, she closed her book, took a deep breath, and jumped in.
“You know something, Oliver? I think I've been one of the deceived ones. Before I got my new life, I was convinced the only future I had was to end up in a good rest home instead of a bad one. I guess you could say I was a pushover for the darker side of supernatural, too.�
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“And look at you, now, Stel. Doing wonderful things a lot of younger people don't even get to do. You're on the adventure of a lifetime!”
“Makes me not want to ever look at the dark side of supernatural, again.”
“And rightfully so. It's like opening up a can of worms. Nothing good can ever come of it. Just has some sort of curious appeal. Especially to people who are searching for something more than just everyday living. Which we all do, at some point in our lives.”
“That's sort of what I meant by not always having a choice with those types of encounters. Every once in a while something just... pops up in front of you and you bump into it. What I'm trying to say is... do you believe in ghosts, Oliver? Tortured souls that roam the earth for some horrid reason, or other?”
“I believe they aren't always tortured souls.”
“What are they, then?”
He looked at her for a few moments, then closed his laptop and came over to join her on the couch. “Oh, I don't think it matters much, really. I only know there is no form of darkness that doesn't run for the shadows as soon as a light comes on. Which is why I make such a point of standing as close to the one who created light as I possibly can. That way, I'm not so apt to trip over things. None of us can see in the dark, anyway.”
“I've certainly never thought of it like that before. But it does make more sense to look at it that way, now that you mention it. Especially since Gerald told me he's had more trouble since he started delving into those things than he ever had before that. Did you know he actually used to try to encounter ghosts? He studied old legends and went looking for them. Was even thinking of doing his master's on some ghost over in England. But he says he's never been the same since. Seems to be plagued with them everywhere he goes, now.”
“My point exactly. If you ask me, it's half what's deteriorating his health.”
“That's exactly what he said.”
“Yes, and he's always after some new incantation to ward them off, too. You know he sleeps with tin foil over his head? That's why he wears a watch-cap to bed. To keep it in place.”
Voyage of the Dreadnaught: Four Stella Madison Capers Page 7
