Mr. and Mrs. Wrong

by Fay Robinson

  “Tiring day,” she said. “One more crisis and I’m down for the count. I can’t believe everything that’s happened in the past eight hours.”

  “Me, neither.”

  After lunch, when everyone had finally begun to stop talking about Terrell Wade, Shannon and Bill’s oldest child had accidentally locked her baby sister in the bathroom, sending her parents and grandparents into another fit. Shannon had wailed louder than her daughter.

  “I’ll fix that door this week so the kids can’t mess with it again,” Jack said.

  “I didn’t know that old lock still worked. Being here by myself so many years, I’ve never had any reason to use it.”

  “A slide bolt farther up that only adults can reach would be better. I’ll take care of it.”

  “I didn’t realize you were so handy. The new fans. The neat trick you did with the paper clip. You had the door open before I could even find the key. How’d you do that?”

  “Old cop trick.”

  “You’d make a first-class burglar.”

  “I’ll consider that when I retire.” The newspaper was folded to one of the inside pages that showed some of her extra photographs from the train death, and he motioned to them. “Great photos, by the way. Where were you standing to get the big one Leigh printed on the front?”

  “Uh…on top of the fire truck.”

  He guessed from the elevation that had to be what she’d done. “How’d you get up there?”

  “I was very, very careful,” she said, patronizing him. “It has some little fold-out steps and I held on really tight. I didn’t put the baby in any danger. I promise.”

  “Did you climb the bank to get up to the track or walk in from the road by the barricade?”

  “Climbed the bank.”

  “With that steep an incline? Must have been a tough climb.”

  “Deaton helped me. He pulled me part of the way up.”

  “Could you have made it by yourself?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not.” She eyed him curiously, then turned to the photograph to take a second look at it. “Why are you asking me about that bank? What’s so important about it?”

  “I didn’t say anything was important about it. I was wondering how you got up and down, that’s all.”

  “I’ve just been sneakily interrogated, haven’t I.”

  “Man, you have a suspicious mind.”

  “Comes from being married to a cop.”

  “I worry about you, Lucky. I don’t want you falling.”

  “Uh-huh. But that’s not the only reason you’re quizzing me, is it.”

  “Mm,” he answered noncommittally.

  “When do you get the autopsy report on Mr. Bagwell?”

  “A few days for the preliminary, but the final one will take a while. They’re backed up in Birmingham, so it could take months for all the results to filter in.”

  “Expecting anything out of the ordinary?”

  “No reason to. How’s the head?”

  She growled in frustration and slapped him with the paper, making Beanie lift her head to see what was going on. “Ooh, I hate it when you change the subject like that. Drives me nuts. My head’s fine, thank you very much. Tender, but okay.”

  “Headache gone?”

  “Finally. You were great this afternoon, taking charge like that and keeping my family sane. Thank you.”

  “All in a day’s work.”

  “I can’t believe I was stupid enough to nearly knock myself out. It’s a good thing Terrell wasn’t really trying to hurt me.”

  Worry lines appeared on her forehead. He sensed there was more she wanted to say. And he had a good idea what.

  “Don’t let what he did get under your skin and make you second-guess your actions, Lucky.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just because he was nice today doesn’t mean you were wrong about him twenty-one years ago.”

  “I know, but…I’ve never told anyone this before, not even my sisters or Cal, but I’ve worried my whole life that I did something bad when I testified against Terrell. That inability to trust my judgment—a lack of confidence, if you want to call it that—has undermined my choices ever since. I’ve been fearful to step beyond the comfort of my small world.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  “Maybe, but I’ve never gotten past it. And today, when he was so polite, it brought back all those old doubts. What if he didn’t kill Miss Eileen, but was only a witness to her death?”

  “Sweetheart, any scumbag can be polite. Doesn’t mean he’s not a scumbag. In some of the worst cases I’ve worked, the perpetrators have been people whose neighbors swore they were saints. Meanwhile, they were chopping up their wives or putting rat poison in their husband’s food.”

  “Were you ever wrong about any of them? Have you ever helped convict someone you later found out was innocent?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. Most of these creeps got off with less punishment than they deserved. Throw that—” he pointed to the rectangle of white cloth she’d folded and put on the coffee table “—in the trash and forget about Wade. Save yourself grief.”

  “You’re probably right,” she said with a sigh, but she remained pensive and he knew it continued to bother her.

  Before they went to bed, he showed her a few self-defense moves to use if anyone ever attacked her for real. “Use your fingernails in his eyes or poke him with your thumbs. Hit him in the nose with your fists as hard as you can. That’ll put a man out quicker than anything.”

  “I shouldn’t try to kick him…down there?”

  “If you can knee him hard, yes, but if you don’t disable him, he’ll come back and be twice as mad. You’re better off going for the nose.”

  After the session, he gave her something more pleasant to dream about. “Your parents seemed happy when everything settled down and we finally got a chance to tell them about the baby.”

  “Oh, especially Dad. Did you hear him? He put in an order for a boy.” She imitated her father’s authoritative voice. “‘Enough girls in this family already.’”

  He chuckled. “That’s word-for-word what Cal told me before he left. He said he’s tired of being surrounded by females.”

  “Well, that stinker. What did you tell him?”

  “That we don’t care about the baby’s sex. We don’t, do we?”

  “Doesn’t matter to me.”

  “Me, neither. A boy and a girl would be nice, but I don’t care what order they come in.” Her expression didn’t change, but he felt a subtle shift in her emotions. “What’s the matter?”

  “You’re getting ahead of yourself. This reconciliation isn’t even a day old and you’re talking about more children.”

  “Nothing wrong with being optimistic.”

  “No, there’s not, and I like it that you have so much confidence in us. But personally, I’m having a hard time right now seeing that far ahead. I guess what I’m saying is I need to go slow, take each day as it comes. Can you understand that?”

  He couldn’t blame her for her hesitancy. She was wary of him, uncertain about their future, and he’d have to regain her trust. “All right. Whatever you say.”

  “An open and honest relationship. I realize you can’t always share your work, but in our personal lives—no secrets.”

  “No secrets. Got it.”

  “We do our best to give each other space.”

  “I’ll go along with that.”

  “And respect each other’s differences,” she added. “Agreed?”

  “Agreed.” When she didn’t say any more, he asked, “That it?”

  “I guess.” Thinking a second, she added, “Oh, I do have one question.” A hint of a smile touched her lips, but she tried to hide it. She leaned over and studied Beanie asleep on the floor as if she’d only just noticed her. Looking back over her shoulder, she asked with feigned outrage, “What in heaven’s name have you done to my dog?”

  CHAPTER SIXr />
  Jessup, Maryland

  FOUR MONTHS of wearing the ankle device had given Ray Webster a rash, but he couldn’t complain. House detention was better than prison any day.

  “That’s it, Ray,” the corrections officer said, cutting the heavy plastic band that held the electronic monitor in place. “You’re a free man.”

  Free. Now that he could no longer enjoy freedom.

  When he added up all the times he’d been in jail or prison, Ray figured he’d spent nearly a third of his sixty-four years in the joint, and the other two-thirds either on probation or plotting some crime that was going to get him in trouble.

  Maybe when he was eight he’d been free. Or not. Come to think of it, even as a kid he’d been stealing cigarettes from the drugstore on the corner and money from his mother’s purse.

  Ray didn’t know what it felt like to really let go of the past and start fresh. Only once, when he’d married Grace and the kids were little, had he straightened himself out and lived clean for more than a few months, but the only job he’d been able to get was selling cars for four hundred dollars a month plus commissions. That hadn’t exactly been the golden egg he was searching for.

  If he’d possessed an honest face, he might have made a success of it, but people said he had a look of the devil about him, and, for sure, he’d always had a bit of the devil in him. Ray had realized quickly that he could make more money stealing cars than selling them.

  So he’d done both for a while, and other things—burglary, fencing stolen goods, a little bait and switch. The money rolled in. Life was good.

  Grace hadn’t known of course. She’d thought he was better than he really was, and he’d liked that. He’d come home every payday with his pockets full of cash and pretend he was the best salesman the Ford dealership had ever had.

  But the past always caught up with you. If he hadn’t learned anything else, Ray had learned that.

  One night, while he was doing a little after-hours “shopping” at an electronics store, the cops had shown up two minutes after he got inside. From that point on, pretense didn’t do any good. Grace saw what he was, what he would always be, and had given up on him. When you were born useless, you stayed useless.

  “All your papers are signed,” the officer said, handing Ray an envelope, “and I’ve put my card in here with a letter to your new parole officer. Check in when you get settled.”

  “I will.”

  “You understand this is irregular?”

  “Yes, sir, and I appreciate the consideration.”

  Parolees weren’t allowed to move out of state without permission, a decent place to live and a job. Ray had the first two, but not the last. Only because he received a small monthly disability check because of a supposedly bum arm had the state agreed to let him relocate.

  He gotten the “injury” from an overeager cop who’d twisted the arm while arresting him for walking away from a work-release program. Best deal Ray had ever had—free money from the government for doing nothing.

  The ten years they’d tacked on to his existing sentence for escape hadn’t been a thrill, but along with the good you had to accept the bad. He hadn’t had to serve most of the time, anyway.

  “You didn’t earn early release, Ray. You got lucky.”

  He knew that. Overcrowding, nothing else, had set him free.

  “Don’t think they won’t put you back in. You’ve been given another chance, and you’d be a fool to screw it up.”

  “I won’t screw it up.”

  And he wouldn’t, but not because of the lecture, which he’d heard a hundred times before, and not because he’d suddenly gotten right with the law after all these years, but because he was getting old. And old meant slow. He could no longer pick a lock or fleece a mark without worry. The scams he’d once run so easily took too much out of him now.

  He was an old con without a game, and nothing much to look back on but bad memories and regrets.

  His wife was dead, and his daughter had run off when she was just a kid, burying herself so deep that no one had heard even a whisper of her whereabouts in years. She might be dead like Grace, for all he knew.

  The boy was still alive, though, and living in Alabama. Ray had kept up with him through associates. “Cahill” he was calling himself these days, which made Ray chuckle every time he thought about the name.

  Patting the envelope in his shirt pocket, he said goodbye to the officer and left. He’d stashed enough money to buy a used car, and what he’d borrowed from his friend Vinny would help him get set up.

  Ray whistled as he descended the steps. He’d heard Alabama was a nice place. A nice place indeed.

  AFTER THE INCIDENT with Terrell, Jack was adamant about Lucky not going out on the river alone, but she thought he was being his usual controlling self. Terrell hadn’t really done anything except frighten her, she argued. And being able to putt around in her little boat was one of her reasons for living on the river.

  “Please don’t take that away from me, Jack.”

  He offered a compromise: she could go, but had to carry her phone and stay on the main part of the river. “No sloughs or out-of-the-way places,” he insisted. “And you have to let me know where you are when work takes you someplace isolated or unfamiliar. Especially after dark.”

  After several days of discussion, she agreed. It was the best deal she was likely to get.

  But the telephone check-in was a pain. Nearly always she got his voice mail because he was too busy to answer his private cell phone. When he returned the call, more often than not she had her hands in chemicals or happened to be somewhere she couldn’t talk.

  Most days they played telephone tag and never spoke directly. She called him and left a message. He called her and left a message. She called him…and on and on and on. Pain. Pain. Pain.

  The ritual took an unexpected twist one hot afternoon when her patience wore thin. She’d been going nonstop since lunch and was tired and sweaty. Somehow her dang jeans had gotten too small overnight. How was that possible?

  Letting Jack know her whereabouts seemed an unnecessary chore on top of everything else.

  “I know this is for your peace of mind,” she recorded, “but it seems silly if you can’t ever talk to me. I’ll be at the fairgrounds for an hour, then I’m headed home.” She raised herself a bit and unfastened the snap on her pants, then unzipped them with a moan of relief. A bit of mischief struck her. “Hear that? I’m getting naked. Aren’t you sorry you didn’t answer the phone?”

  He called her back ten minutes later as she parked and didn’t bother with a preamble. “Naked? I’ve got one hell of a fantasy going right now.”

  She chuckled to herself. Now she knew what it took to talk to him. “Mmm, I’d like to hear about this fantasy. Tell me every explicit detail.”

  “First I do this…”

  The erotic description that followed made her temperature shoot up for a different reason than the sun.

  “Next I do this…”

  “Wow! I’m not sure my legs can even bend like that.”

  “We’ll test them tonight.”

  “Wish I didn’t have to wait that long.”

  “Drive over and I’ll give you a preview.”

  “I would, but I have three steers anxiously awaiting my presence, and I can’t disappoint them.”

  “Sounds exciting.”

  “Yeah, I lead such a glamorous life.” She opened the console to get her mileage logbook and noticed something she hadn’t seen earlier. “What the…?” The little box had a white ribbon around it, and she quickly undid it. Inside was a tiny porcelain music box. Her gasp made him ask what was wrong.

  “My secret admirer left me another present. I just found it.”

  “Did he?”

  She smiled, enjoying their game. It had begun when she’d stepped into her shoes one morning and found wrapped chocolate “kisses” inside. Later a pot of violets—her favorite flower—had appeared on her desk while she wa
s out for lunch. After that a photography book she’d casually mentioned had found its way under her pillow.

  Several gifts had mysteriously appeared over the past several days. Funny windup toys. A little whistle in the shape of a boat. Bubble bath.

  Jack always pretended innocence.

  “Sounds like somebody’s courting you,” he said now.

  “He’s doing an excellent job. And he has very good taste. This is beautiful.” She turned the small metal crank and the theme from Love Story began to play. “How sweet.”

  “I’m sure he’d be happy to know you like it. He was probably a little unsure if you went for that kind of thing.”

  “Oh, I do! Is it an early anniversary present, do you suppose?”

  “I imagine he simply wanted you to know how much he loves you, and the anniversary present will come later.”

  “Too bad I can’t call him up and tell him how much I love him back. I also have this very, very naughty fantasy I’d like to describe to him.”

  “Oh? Tell me, instead.”

  When she did, he coughed a few times in disbelief. “You’re serious?”

  “Mmm-hmm. I think that would be delicious.”

  At six she drove up the dirt road to the cabin. Jack’s car was already parked next to the house, which was unusual. He rarely left work before six-thirty or seven and almost never beat her home.

  Anticipation raced through her body. She was suddenly more aroused than she’d ever been in her life.

  Would he?

  He would. He met her at the door wearing nothing but his shoulder holster.

  “LORD HAVE MERCY!” Lucky collapsed onto his chest. “That was wonderful, but next time let’s try to make it all the way to the couch.”

  The hard floor was hurting her knees, and the dog kept trying to insinuate herself between them. She scolded Beanie gently and pushed her away. After her heart had stabilized, Lucky struggled to her feet with a groan.

  Jack sat up and groaned even more loudly. “I’ll have a fondness for this floor from now on, but I think I broke my back.”

  Lucky snorted and gave him a hand up. “Maybe you’re getting too old to be having wild sex.”