LIVE Ammo (Sunshine State Mystery Series Book 2)

by Lynda Fitzgerald

  “And it was on sale. What kind of liquor costs eighty-six dollars and seventy-five cents on sale?”

  “I’d say it was the good shit,” Sheryl said, picking up the bottle and studying the label. “A hundred years old. Doesn’t this stuff go bad?”

  “Apparently not. Do you see a sell-by date anywhere?” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I can’t believe she asked me to spend almost a hundred dollars on a bottle of whiskey.”

  “I don’t think it’s really a whiskey. It’s a liqueur,” Libby said, patting Allie’s arm. “It’s real good tasting, I hear. Not that I’ve ever had any myself.”

  “I have,” Sheryl muttered. “Worst hangover I ever had in my life.” She put the bottle back down on the counter. “You’d think a crusty old broad like her in a nursing home would want rot-gut gin or something.”

  Allie sank down on the couch. “It was awful. The woman is a monster.”

  “Now, Allie, Janet has her rough edges,” Libby said, wheeling her chair over closer to the couch, “but I wouldn’t say she’s a monster.”

  “You know her?” Allie asked in surprise. Did the woman know everyone in Brevard County?

  Libby nodded. “We even worked together once. Waitressing.” Libby smoothed her dress over her legs. “That was before my stroke, of course, not long after Evangeline let me go.” She looked embarrassed. “Howard had lost his job because—well, because, and we really needed money. I thought I’d try my hand at waitressing. I wasn’t very good at it, I can tell you, but Janet did her best to show me the ropes.”

  “What’s she like?” Allie asked.

  “Well, dear, I haven’t seen her in years, and I only knew her for that little while. She wasn’t shy about talking back then, though. That’s a fact,” she said with a smile. “Seemed like I knew all her business after the second day working with her.”

  Allie looked at her expectantly. Sheryl perched on the arm of the couch. Libby settled back in her chair, realizing she had an audience. “She’s from around here. West Melbourne, I think. She was living in a trailer park when I met her. I remember she had to take a cab to work and back, and she said it cost her half her tips. Her daughter was, oh, sixteen or thereabouts then. Janet told me Jean was wild in those days.” She laughed. “I guess they both were. Janet liked the men, and from what she told me, her daughter was fond of the boys, too. Janet said Jean gave her a gray hair a day, the way she ran around with every Tom, Dick—” She broke off, looking at Sheryl, and then Allie. “Oh, dear. I guess this is what you’d call gossip, and I don’t like to gossip.”

  “Everyone likes to gossip,” Sheryl said, nudging her chair with her foot. “Go ahead. It’s for a good cause.”

  “For Cord,” Allie echoed.

  Libby’s face softened at the name, much as Janet French’s had. “Well, if you think it will help Cord.”

  Allie nodded without a single pang of guilt. She was getting better at this.

  “Well, then, what can I tell you? I don’t think Janet ever married. At least she told me she never did. She didn’t seem embarrassed about having a child out of wedlock, although it wasn’t the thing to do back then.”

  “It still isn’t,” Sheryl said. “Too expensive.”

  “Yes, well, I don’t think she knew for sure who Jean’s daddy was. She told me she’d narrowed it down to three possibles, but that it could have been any one of them. I thought it was sad because she told her daughter the same thing. I don’t think that’s something you should tell your child.” She was lost in thought for several minutes. Then, she sighed. “I remember—” She broke off, and Allie wasn’t sure if a thought had caused her to lose her train of thought or if her internal censor had kicked in a gain.

  “You remember?” she prompted.

  Libby blushed prettily. “I remember when Jean set her cap for Cord. He was a winsome thing, even then. That was when he went off to the military. He was a sight to see, all dressed up in his uniform.”

  “He still is,” Sheryl said. Then, she seemed to realize she’d spoken aloud, and she looked embarrassed.

  Libby laughed. “And don’t I know it? If he’d been ten years older, I might have set my cap for him myself.” She sighed. “But then I wouldn’t have had my Howard, and we wouldn’t have had Joe.”

  Allie and Sheryl looked away, but Libby didn’t seem to notice. She was again lost in her memories.

  “It was one time when Cord was home on furlough. There had to have been some hanky-panky going on, because on his next time home, there was a quick-like wedding. I didn’t see Jean for a long time after that. Janet, either. I have to admit that I didn’t feel sure just whose baby she was having. Not until he started growing up. Once his boy-face started to develop, there couldn’t be any doubt who his daddy was. He was the spitting image of Cord.”

  She paused, seeming to collect her thoughts. “I hear Cord’s the only reason Janet has a place to live at all. He’s the one who pays for that retirement home where she stays.”

  Allie frowned. “I can’t imagine Cord putting anyone in a place like that. It’s horrible.”

  “Oh, Cord didn’t put her there. Jean did, after Janet’s heart attack. She sold her mother’s trailer and car, and when Janet got better, she had no place to go. Cord tried to get her to move to a nicer place, but she said—oh.” She covered her mouth with both hands. “Now, this really is gossip. I don’t know if I should—”

  “You should,” Allie and Sheryl said in unison, leaning forward.

  A mischievous smile lit Libby’s face, and just for a moment, Allie glimpsed Libby as a girl. A lovely girl.

  “Well,” she said conspiratorially, “I was told that Janet turned Cord down flat. She told him that her daughter had used up all his life and damn near all his money and that she’d be damned if she’d let him squander another nickel of his hard-earned money on her family.” Libby beamed at the two of them. “What do you think about that?”

  Allie and Sheryl looked at each other. Allie sat back against the couch. She wasn’t at all sure what she thought about it, but it certainly painted a different picture of the woman Allie had called a monster.

  An hour later, while they were cooking dinner, the phone rang. Allie had gone to the bedroom to change her clothes and grabbed the phone from the bedside table as she headed into the living room. One look at the number display, and she grimaced.

  “Hello, Mother.”

  “I wish you’d just say hello like normal people, Allison,” her mother said. “You don’t have to flaunt the fact that you finally have caller ID. The rest of us have had it for years.”

  Allie said nothing.

  After a minute, her mother broke the silence. “I called because I heard the AJC is hiring entry-level reporters. I thought that might be a good career move for you.”

  “Thanks, but I just got a promotion here at the Sun. To investigative reporter. With a raise,” she added, with a grin at Sheryl. Sheryl pumped her arm in the air.

  Her mother’s voice came back over the line. “Don’t be ridiculous, Allison. A title at that dinky little newspaper is meaningless, and they can’t be paying you very much.”

  She felt her face flame. “They’re paying me plenty, and the title means something to me, Mother. That’s all that matters.”

  The shocked silence came across the lines as loudly as words. Finally, her mother said, “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Allison. It must be living in that house down there, but you’re beginning to sound just like your aunt. She was just as independent, flaunting convention…”

  Her words went on, but Allie no longer listened. Her mother had meant to insult her, to bully her back into line, but instead, she’d paid Allie the greatest compliment possible.

  She heard the hiss and sizzle of a pot on the stove boiling over. “Sheryl, would you grab that? I’ll be off in a second,” she added, not bothering to cover the receiver.

  “Sure,” Sheryl said, jumping to her feet.

  Silen
ce greeted Allie’s ear. Then, “So that woman is still there?”

  Allie had created the fiction of Sheryl being her houseguest months ago to prevent her brother from coming down and commandeering her house and her life. It was the first time the subject had come up since. “Yes,” Allie said, grinning. “Sheryl is here.”

  Her mother made a harrumphing sound in her throat. “Well, I think it’s unnatural for two grown women to live together in the same house. What will people think? You need to find yourself another husband and settle down. You should—”

  Enough, Allie thought. “Sorry, Mother, but I have to go. Dinner’s ready.”

  After she hung up, she stomped into the kitchen. “That woman is impossible,” she said, getting a glass from the cabinet. She filled it with iced tea from a sweating pitcher on the counter.

  “Allie’s mom,” Sheryl said over her shoulder to Libby.

  “I don’t know what she thinks gives her the right to dictate how I live my life,” Allie said.

  Libby looked troubled. “I think lots of us older folks tend to interfere because we want what’s best for our children.”

  Allie turned. “You, maybe, and some of the others, but my mother wants for me what’s best for my brother.”

  Libby looked at Sheryl, who nodded, making a face.

  “Well, that’s a shame, honey. It’s never right when a parent plays favorites. My folks had eight of us, and I’m sure they loved us all the same. Of course, Howard and I only had the one. Joe.”

  Her face took on a faraway look, and Allie had no doubt she was picturing Joe as an infant, a toddler, a freckled youth. Then, her expression cleared. “But no matter how much she vexes you, child, you need to keep in mind that she’s the only mother you’ll ever have.”

  Late that night, after everyone was gone, Allie curled up in her bed with a book, her thoughts on what Libby Odum had told her about Janet and Jean and Cord. Allie wanted to talk to Cord again, in light of what she’d learned. Or maybe she just wanted to see him again. He was becoming as much a hero to her as he had been to her aunt. She’d go tomorrow morning. Maybe she could catch him at his apartment in Cocoa. Sheryl had told her where it was. She could head over there early…

  “Libby’s right, you know.”

  “About what?”

  “About your mother. Despite her shortcomings, and we both know what they are, she’s the only mother you’ll ever have.”

  “No she isn’t. You were as much my mother as she was. More.”

  “Then she’s the only one you have left.”

  “I have—”

  “Alive.”

  Allie laid her book on the bed beside her. “She’s impossible.”

  “Aren’t we all? At least in some people’s opinions. You don’t have to love what she says or how she behaves, Allie, but I do think she deserves your love. She gave birth to you, and she nurtured you as best she could. She’s a human being just like you, and she’s doing the best she can.”

  Sleep was a long time coming that night.

  Chapter 17

  The next morning, Florida strutted its stuff. Sometime during the night, Allie heard rain pattering against her windows, and it seemed that this rain ushered in an early cold front. Cottony clouds floated in a pristine sky. When she stepped outside, the air had that just-washed smell, and it was cool. She knew the day would grow warmer. Florida didn’t give up its summer weather easily, not like Atlanta, where you occasionally got a cool, gray day as early as the end of July. No, this weather was an aberration, one she intended to enjoy.

  Spook seemed to feel it too. He pranced down the beach during their walk as if he could barely contain his energy. He even chased a few fiddler crabs back into their holes. It was the most animation Allie had seen him display in the months they’d been together.

  The construction was already underway next door when she stepped out of the house, the Bobcat in full action. At least she knew where the foreman was. She also knew she’d have to hurry if she would catch Cord at his apartment before he left for work, but she took a minute to scan the street in both directions. She didn’t see a dark sedan with tinted windows. No hideous visions in masks and fright wigs. What she did see as she drew closer was her Jeep listing to one side.

  Two flat tires. Two flat almost new tires. Garrison had bought the Jeep for Allie only a few months before he was posted to Brussels. During their interminable years there, the Jeep was tucked securely in her parents’ garage, so the tires and battery were all she had to replace when she returned. Construction debris? Maybe, but she had her doubts.

  She turned toward the construction site, and there he was, sitting atop his Bobcat, a satisfied smirk pasted across his face. Allie stayed where she was until she thought she could confront him without snatching him bald. Then, she crossed the yard and headed straight for him. He sat back a bit when he saw her coming. Apparently, he expected her to skulk away with her tail between her legs. No way. Not now, not ever.

  “Mr. Gray,” she yelled up at him, “did you see anyone around my car this morning?”

  “Huh?” he asked, holding his hand up to his ear. “Did you say something, lady?

  Allie dropped her bag on the ground and climbed up on the Bobcat. “Can you hear me now?” she yelled in his ear.

  The man almost jumped off the Bobcat. “What, are you crazy, lady? What are you doing? You could get killed up here. Geez, you could cost me a fortune in insurance.”

  His last words echoed in the silence. Once again, Allie had halted construction. This time, she’d done it on her own. Allie lowered her voice a little. “No, I’m not crazy. I wanted to make sure you heard my question.”

  He rubbed his chin. “How the hell would I know if someone messed with your Jeep? I’m working here, lady.”

  She could see it in his eyes—guilt, belligerence. The damn man would deny any responsibility. Not that that surprised her. “You’re sure you didn’t see anything? Because all the neighbors have been told to keep an eye out.”

  “You probably ran over some nails or something,” he muttered. “Don’t come crying to me with your transportation problems.”

  “Oh, I won’t, Mr. Gray. I just thought I’d ask you before I check with the neighbors. Then, I’ll take my problems to the Sheriff’s Office. They have ways to tell how a puncture’s been made and with what.”

  After meeting his gaze for a long moment, she jumped down from the Bobcat and picked up her purse. Men watched all around them. As she started for the house across the street, a voice called, “Hey, wait.”

  Allie turned. A man who looked to be in his early twenties approached. “I didn’t flatten your tires, Miss, but I’ll help you get them fixed.”

  The foreman stood up on his equipment. “Bobby, get back here,” he shouted.

  The young man spun around. “No, Dad. It wasn’t right. I told you it wasn’t right when you did it.”

  The older man’s bravado collapsed. “Aw, son.”

  With the help of the construction workers, her tires were plugged and inflated in ten minutes. She left with the foreman’s promise to buy her two new tires as soon as she had time to have them put on and Allie’s promise not to press charges. This time.

  She had to hurry to make up the lost time, but she remained alert all the way across the causeway to Cocoa. Nobody ducking in and out of the little traffic on the road. She felt an almost overwhelming relief, and she turned her mind to the coming interview. If Cord wasn’t there, she would have to talk to him at the Sheriff’s Office, something she would rather avoid if possible.

  Thirty minutes later, she pulled down a long drive past Florida’s equivalent of a McMansion and stopped in front of a two-story carriage house. She breathed a sigh of relief. A car was parked in front, and lights were in the windows. Maybe she’d gotten lucky. It was about time.

  The building appeared in good repair, the yard around it, well tended. From what Allie could see, the downstairs seemed still to be in use as a garage.
A flight of wooden stairs led to the second floor. Although it saddened Allie that Cord had moved out of his own house out of consideration for his son, at least his new place was nice. She climbed the stairs and rapped lightly on the door.

  Cord answered it with such speed that she knew he must have heard her arrive. “Allie? Is something wrong?” he asked, frowning.

  “No, nothing’s wrong. I’m sorry. I know I should have called first, but I wanted to catch you before you left for work, and I didn’t have your home number.”

  “Come on in,” Cord said, opening the door wide. “Have a seat. I was just making some coffee.”

  Allie stepped into the tiny living room while Cord continued into what she guessed was the kitchen. Hokey as it sounded, the room reached out to embrace her. Like her own house, it was furnished with comfortable, worn-looking furniture. The rug on the floor was threadbare but clean. Nondescript landscapes hung on the painted wooden walls. Allie suspected they came with the furniture. The few personal touches captured her attention.

  Against the wall was a waist-high bookcase and, on it, were a half-dozen framed photographs of Rand at all ages. There was one snapshot of him as a baby. Another in some kind of sports uniform. It was a pictorial history of his son’s development, the same son who hated him and had accused him of murder. The display looked to Allie like a statement of naked longing.

  She sat on the sofa and fingered the plaid cashmere throw draped across it. She had been with her aunt when she bought it. For a friend, she’d said. Allie felt a lump form in her throat.

  “Cream and sugar?” Cord called from the kitchen.

  Allie had to swallow before she could speak. “No, thanks. Black, please.”