by David Bishop
While Vera talked, Linda went over and closed the window curtains over the kitchen sink in the combination kitchen and sewing room. The two living room windows that looked out to Second Street were already fully covered.
“Vera, listen closely. No one can know Linda Darby is in Cranston. For this visit I am Carol Benson. You must remember. If you call me Linda, I’m sunk. I’m Carol Benson. Please start now. Call me Carol tonight. Get in the habit. As for staying with you, I’d love to, but I can’t without raising questions about why the stranger woman in town is staying with Vera. I arrived on the midday express just before Carlos Molina was murdered. I’ll buy a few things in your shop. We can have lunch. Be seen becoming acquainted not as old friends, but as new friends. Like when we used to play act roles from movies we’d seen. I’ve taken a room at the Frontier Hotel. I need to stay there.”
As Linda finished, Vera was nodding. “I get it. Okay. All right already. Now give, Girl. What’s this all about? Oh, wait. First, I need to do something, just take a minute.”
Vera went upstairs, moving sprightly as she climbed two stairs at a time, her bare heels hanging back over each stair used. After a couple of minutes Linda, hearing Vera speaking upstairs, assumed she had made a call. Linda couldn’t understand all of what she heard. The pitch and cadence of Vera’s voice sounded different, but part of the new message was that she would not be available tonight.
An iron piece of furniture with shelves for dishes and hooks for hanging pots stood boldly along a sidewall which ran the length of the kitchen. The piece was attractive and had great utility but didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the furniture, like a stray cat that showed up one day and was taken in.
“All’s cool, now,” Vera said as she came down the carpeted stairs and back to the chair at the kitchen table. She resumed her knees-up position with her sleeping tee again taut over her legs, red toenails peeking out.
“We won’t be disturbed,” she said, “so spill it, Girl.”
Chapter Five
Life is what happens to us on the way to our dreams
Over the next three hours, while Linda filled Vera’s kitchen with her story, the two old friends killed a couple bottles of wine, adding in some cheese and crackers and two cut up apples. Linda started with a review of her involvement with Billy twenty years ago. This was mostly a refresher for Vera had been moral support during all of that. During those years, Linda’s hormones were racing. Billy was ten years older. He knew so much more than Linda about the relations between a man and woman. Linda had loved his lessons. His one-on-one tutoring used to drive her crazy.
“Was I a dumb little twit or what, I mean I was completely gaga over that man,” Linda said. “But even then I knew he would make a lousy husband. You recall that in our day, the end game was still getting a husband. According to my mother, my father was just like Billy and we constantly fought about my involvement with him. She hated men. Those disagreements with my mother were a large part of why I came to realize Billy was no good. Eventually, I admitted to myself that mother had been right—not that all men were louses, but that Billy Cranston was Captain Louse.”
“Hey, did you hear,” Vera said, “somebody burned down Billy’s old horse barn and part of his fencing.”
“I heard some mention of a fire. Could it have been an accident?”
“The sheriff and the guy from the fire department found a gas can near the point where the fire started. Yet they doubt it was started with gas. They know it was started somehow using some hay that had worked out between the boards at the back of the barn. It’s officially booked as a case of arson.”
“Who?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“When did this happen?”
“Last Thursday night. The story is they know nothing more now than they did then. I guess that’s not totally accurate. They now know where and generally how the fire was started, just not who had the balls to do it.”
There was nothing more to be said about the fire, so the talk drifted around to Linda telling Vera about marrying on the rebound from Billy, and divorcing her first husband seven years later. That she then moved to Sea Crest to hide from life, and how Sea Crest had gradually become her home and not just her hideaway.
Linda did not tell Vera about her involvement with Ryan Testler and how that had permanently changed her. How Testler helped her discover her confidence. Even from Vera, Ryan Testler must remain secret.
Linda told Vera about her marriage to Clark Ryerson and his death while serving in the Middle East as a mercenary, an excellent paying job he took to earn the money to build them a home on the cliff overlooking the ocean. “I didn’t want him to go.” Linda pursed her lips like she was kissing a memory.
After a quiet moment spent fighting back tears, Linda added, “Clark was a good man, loving. So, I’m over forty with a divorce from my first husband and widowhood from my second. Life is certainly what happens to us on the way to our dreams.” She blotted her eyes with the napkin from under her wine glass. “I believe I could have had a fine life as Mrs. Ryerson, but it wasn’t to be. I’ve learned that the only thing about the past over which any of us have any control is how we choose to let it affect our future.”
Linda found it grand talking with Vera. Like they had seen each other regularly all the years they hadn’t. They talked about Linda’s mother and how, in her later years, she became much like Vera’s own mother.
Vera said, “Our mothers remained congenial, but never developed a close friendship. The few times they tried, their discussions about men sank their efforts. Your mother never married and mine never remarried.”
Eventually, the conversation came around to the most startling event in Cranston in as long as Vera could remember: the murder of Carlos Molina. Linda described seeing him die, about her face-to-face with Sheriff Reginald “Reggie” Blackstone, and being in the same room with Billy Cranston.
Linda paused, her glass partly raised. “Tell me about Carlos Molina.”
“What’s to tell?” Vera began. “Carlos is like a lot of low-ambition men who figure they got a right to be rich without having to get a good education or work hard. He was a good looking man who figured the world would just spread its legs for him. For the record, he was a laborer at the Cranston feedlot. Single. He lived with his mother, a nice lady with no clue as to her son’s sordid life. She shops here some, but generally my things are too pricey for her.”
“What did you mean, ‘for the record, he was a laborer at the Cranston feedlot’?”
“Carlos always had too much money for a feedlot worker, and he always seemed, I don’t know, too clean or something. Rumors were that he was involved in some criminal activities. Some say smuggling illegal aliens from Mexico. I heard he was a low-level cog in the wheel that moves marijuana to Chicago and Kansas City. There’s another one that claims he is part of a gang that pulls off out-of-town stickups. Small town banks, like that.”
“Really?”
“No proof of anything. All of it could be true or none of it. He was never arrested, just stories. People talk. He’s Mexican so there could be some racial stereotypical horseshit stoking those rumors. Likely, it’s a load of crap. But certain truths remain. Carlos pretty much came and went as he pleased during the day which a worker at the feedlot couldn’t do. And his skin and nails were way too nice for a man who works cattle.
“I liked Carlos,” Vera went on, “he was a handsome man, always polite. He helped me carry in supplies whenever he saw me struggling with them. I even let him in my bed once. Well, two times . . . or so . . . who’s counting.” They laughed. “Like I said, he was a handsome young man. I had the role of the older woman, hopefully not old enough to be considered a cougar. He’d let me lead whenever we found ourselves bed-dancing.”
They laughed again.
Linda looked down for a moment, swirling her wine glass. “I expect by now you have all the men in town trained in the art of making love.”
“So how involved were you with Carlos Molina?”
“Not all that much. Neither of us felt it was exclusive or anything. On my birthday he gave me flowers. On his last, I dressed up for him, gave him a lighter, and went down on him. I prefer gifts that keep on giving. Like that.”
Linda scratched her knee. “You haven’t changed a bit, Girlfriend.”
“What?” Vera asked. “What’s so funny?”
“Your honesty about sex, and the way you end things you say with ‘like that.’ You did when we were kids and you still do.”
“So why should I stop?”
“Don’t stop. It’s part of . . . you.”
With the discussion of Carlos Molina waning, Vera asked Linda the hard question: What did she hope to accomplish by coming back? Trying to explain it to Vera helped Linda understand the why of it herself. The easy part was for the reading of her mother’s will which would happen in several days. Her estate was not large. No estate in this part of Kansas was large, except for Billy’s. The local probate attorneys handled little wills which came to seem bigger to them than they were. Her mother’s will named a few other people besides Linda so the reading would take place whether or not Linda contacted the attorney.
“The days between now and that reading,” Linda told Vera, “I’ll spend ridding myself of the uglies of my youth. Just as Scrooge had his ‘ghost of Christmas past,’ I have things I need to confront, to clean up so I can leave them behind and move on with my life.”
“But why this Carol Benson bit? Why not just come back as yourself, Linda Darby?”
“I could have, I guess,” Linda said. “Maybe I should have. I just wanted to see Billy Cranston without him seeing me. I wanted to see the town without the town seeing me. I didn’t want to be on the defensive with Billy. I should’ve shed Billy a long time ago. When I knew him, the only way to get on his good side was to be a woman and available. He was older, rich, and influential. He treated me as a sex object. That let me feel like hot stuff at an age when most girls want to feel like hot stuff.
“I want to see my family home through the eyes of an adult. To experience it without my mother’s constant haranguing about the horrors of men.”
Then, today, right in the middle of what Linda hoped would begin the last chapter of her family drama, Carlos Molina was murdered. She saw the Molina murder as coincidental and unconnected to her. She had no reason to think otherwise. The odd fire at Billy Cranston’s ranch not long before she arrived was another imponderable. Vera said that no one in the town would dare attack anything owned by Billy. Yet someone did, someone without the sophistication to hide that the fire had been started intentionally.
Linda’s overall impression was unmistakable. Her hometown felt different, felt strange. The people she observed since arriving seemed tight, edgy. She sensed it even before the murder of Carlos Molina.
Chapter Six
A successful undercover incursion requires an effective diversion
Linda headed back to her hotel room. She closed the blackout drapes, shutting out the ambient light coming through the window from Main Street. In bed, she tossed and turned for a while before falling asleep. A few hours later, she didn’t know what time exactly, she got up and went to the bathroom.
Back in bed with her head again nested into the pillow, she smelled coffee, she thought, but there was none in her room. In addition to the aroma, she noticed, no, she didn’t exactly notice, she felt something, a presence—someone. She looked around as best she could without moving or turning on a light.
Then a voice broke her quiet.
“Hello, Linda.”
A man’s voice, a deep voice, a familiar voice but one she couldn’t immediately place. The voice of a man who knew her real identity. It wasn’t Billy Cranston. He only knew her as Carol Benson, at least as far as she knew right now.
Linda steeled herself not to move. She didn’t want him to panic. If she did, he might.
With a bit more time the influence the bathroom light had on her eyes faded, allowing her to make out his outline. He sat in the chair at the side of her bed, in front of the window over which she had drawn the drapes. Sneaking in light framed him and shadowed his facial features. He was big. Not huge, but wide. Similar to Mud at The Drop, but she doubted the bartender would steal his way into her room. Besides, Mud only knew her as Carol Benson. She guessed her visitor was somewhat tall, but height is hard to judge when a person is sitting.
He spoke again. “It’s Ryan Testler. It’s wonderful to see you again, Linda. It’s been a while. Or should I say Carol Benson.”
“What are you doing here?” Linda said, bolting up onto her elbows. Her bedding sagged lower.
“Just checking in with my favorite lady.”
“I just walked to the bathroom and came back naked.”
“Nothing I haven’t seen before.”
“How did you get in my room?”
“Not important.”
She punched her pillow to bunch it up behind her back and sat up. Then, remembering her nakedness, she pulled the covers up near her shoulders. “Are you still into that ‘not important,’ crap?”
“When asked something that’s not important, yeah.” He reached over and turned on a small lamp setting on the oversized marble sill along the base of the window.
She could see him clearly. The masculine lines in his face, testament to lessons learned and taught.
“Here’s something important,” she said. “Have you learned anything more about how my husband died in the Middle East?”
“Nothing much. It went pretty much as you know. He went on a mission, it turned to mush. He didn’t come back. In the end, nothing else really matters. Do you still miss him?”
“Every day, in every way. You?”
“We’d been close since the year before we started kindergarten, as close as brothers, closer than most I’d imagine. But he knew . . . we both knew and accepted the possibility of sudden death being part of our work. It goes with the job.”
“Why do you keep doing it?”
“I’m good at it.”
Linda knew for a fact that part was true. “There has to be more to it than that.”
“I need something like another five years to finish funding my private pension. I’ll quit when I’ve squirreled enough away and not look back. With what I’ve already been able to, ah, put aside, I could be quite comfortable.” He paused, but looked pensive. Linda waited. “My goal is to live more than quite comfortable. For your part in my work you’ve been able to put aside over a million, so you’re well on your way too.”
“That’s true. I would like to have gotten it a different way, but I’m not squawking. As for you, your plan will work if the odds don’t catch up with you before then.”
He shrugged. “I proceed as if nothing will disrupt my plan. My work is what I do. Not who I am.”
Right then, Linda knew that part of their conversation was over. Ryan would not say more about himself or her late husband.
“Here’s a couple tips on how to go about what you’re here to do.” Linda sat still until he continued. “Don’t try to use the law against Billy Cranston, not directly anyhow. He controls the law. Cranston is like the guy in Monopoly who has all the hotels and just sits back waiting for you to land on them. He can afford to wait.”
“Meaning?” Linda asked.
“One by one, you need to tip over his hotels. Change the layout of the Monopoly board. Find out what activities he engages in that are aided by his controlling the town. Find a way to use those things against him. Men like him are always surrounded by weak, greedy people who want his crumbs, and, for them, will do his bidding. Identify those people and use their weaknesses to gain control of them. What do these weak little people want? They don’t love him. They resent the way he treats them. The way he makes them feel about themselves. Use their greed a
nd resentment to convince them they’ll benefit more by turning against him. In short, to conquer him, you must isolate him.”
“We can’t outbid Billy for these people’s favor,” she said.
“No, you can’t, if you bid money. But there are other things that mean as much to them, even more. Bid those things and Cranston’s money will no longer win the competition for their services. What those things are will vary from one person to the next: for one, staying out of jail, for another protecting a loved one, keeping their job or reputation, preserving their lifestyle, getting their nuts out of a vise, and so on. The levers need to be crafted to fit each individual.”
“I’ll need to think about that. Why are you here?” Linda asked.
“Ah. Now that’s important.” Ryan reached down to the floor and brought up a paper bag. “Coffee with cream, the way you like it.” He handed her a cup with a Sippy lid. “It may be a little cooler than you’d prefer. As I recall, you wake up for a pit stop around two in the morning. It’s now closer to two-thirty. I have a couple of bear claws, too. I’m keeping a low profile in Cranston so I got these at the truck stop out along the interstate. With a jacket and an old ball cap and a little care, it’s not all that difficult to keep my face out of range of the security camera. Of course, you realize this because you’re here incognito yourself.”
“That’s how you got here. I asked why you’re here.”
“You told me you were coming here before you left Sea Crest.”
“I also remember telling you I didn’t need you to come. That I would handle it.”
“I know. But a successful undercover incursion needs a good diversion. After reconnoitering, I decided to create the diversions.”
Linda folded her arms across her modestly-covered chest. “The fire at Billy Cranston’s barn about a week ago, was that you tipping over one of his hotels?”
“Not important. Still, it was fortuitous.” He smiled. “No one has ever challenged Mr. Cranston’s dominance of the town. The ambitious and confident citizens have mostly moved to live some place where the deck’s not stacked against them. Over time the community’s become mostly populated by those who will accept living under constraints. The barn made to look like an obvious arson, not an accidental fire, got his attention and worked in your favor. He’s had no experience handling real challenge. He’s lousy at it.”
