Savage Distractions (The Love is Murder Social Club Book 3)

by Talia Maxwell

  “Annie, you know I’m kidding. Also,” he seemed irritated, “I’m not. Your last serious boyfriend was the robot guy.”

  “The robot guy?”

  “The guy that looked like those boxer robots that fight each other. Or the guy who needed to borrow money from you to open up a food cart.”

  “That was a legit business opportunity.”

  “I love you and you’re the smartest person I know. I need you to know that when I say the next part…you’re stupid with men, sweetheart. You choose the wrong men. Twoly will help. We are excited to see what the program brings you.”

  “Because, for the record, I’m incapable of getting a man on my own.”

  Jack laughed and pounded a fist into his chest, smiling, “Ha, no, no. You had no trouble getting a man. You have been incapable of getting the right kind of man on your own.”

  “You mean someone rich?” Annie asked outright.

  “I mean decent.”

  “None of my boyfriends have been decent?”

  “There’s a garbage problem, Annie. Twoly is the solution.”

  “I’m offended,” Annie said and she shifted on the chair.

  Her father seemed aggravated by her own offense. “Well, it’s been a good lunch my favorite daughter. I’ve already got my assistant to call in the restaurant and pay, so we can just go—” he balled up his napkin and started to make a move to go, but Annie stuck out her hand to stop him.

  “That’s all? Don’t look into William Schubert’s murder and, hey, since you suck at dating so bad, let’s make some jokes before I go? I don’t even get a chance to ask about your life?”

  “What do you want to ask?”

  “Like, how…are you?”

  “Okay, Annie, that’s cute. This was a business lunch. The business is done and now I’m getting back into the helicopter.” He stood and tossed the napkin on to his plate.

  “Dad—”

  “Yeah, I’ll see you soon.” Jack began to walk away and Annie stood, too, and said, loud enough to stop him in his tracks.

  “I’m not going to do it,” she said. She closed her eyes so she didn’t have to see his face. “I’m not going to let you control—”

  “Annabelle Ruth Yael Gerwitz,” her father said her whole name, as though she were a child sneaking an extra cookie. “You will. Or there will be consequences…”

  “Oh yeah? Do tell,” Annie challenged, shaky from hearing both her middle names spoken with such distaste. She wanted to say to him, Do you know how old I am? Do you know what I do every day? Don’t you have any respect for me? Lawyer to lawyer? Instead of Dad to Daughter? Do you care that I’m happy or just that you can check some box on your parenting list? Her fear, the fear of angering him, made the argument over before it began.

  “First of all, there would be natural consequences beyond your imagination that you’d never be able to account for or hide from. But after that, Annie, it’s like this…we’re paying your loans…”

  “You wouldn’t,” Annie interrupted in anger. Even though her voice was low and her dad had walked a few feet back, the tables closest to them turned to see if they were okay. Annie adjusted her volume and her tone. “You can’t give me a straight answer as to why you need me to drop and you’re threatening to cut off financial help?”

  “Do you hear yourself?” her father asked and Annie knew it was pointless: they were fighting for different outcomes. “With your skill set, you could leave your job and find something in corporate or private that would triple your pay. It’s a choice, Annie, you are making a choice. And your mother and I are still working, in part, to continue to pay for your schooling while you pursue this—”

  “You paid off Andrew’s school loans, too. And Asa’s.” She glared across the table and hoped her dad could see the hypocrisy without her needing to spell it out. “And you know that would crush me. Financially. You know that. I’d have to get a second job…”

  “Maybe you could look at it differently. It would push you to do something better.”

  “I’m too old for your authoritarianism, Dad,” Annie said, but she could tell she was near tears. She was an adult; how could he have that much power over her emotions? “I have pride, you know. And stubbornness. I got it from you.”

  For a second, she thought she saw her father slip from strict anger to fear, and Annie wished that he could let his guard down for one moment to tell her the truth. Except, without the truth, she felt emboldened to do whatever the fuck she wanted. If he wasn’t willing to be open, she had no obligation to make a decision in the dark.

  “Stay safe,” he said and rapped his knuckles on the table harder than Annie would’ve liked. “That’s all I’m needing. But I won’t beg, Annie.”

  “You’ve already done the equivalent,” Annie said and she put her head down, wishing for everything to disappear. “Maybe next time,” she said in a muffled voice, “you want to threaten to financially cripple me if I don’t get married or stop looking into an old cold case you can do it over the phone. I don’t have a helicopter, okay. Takes sixty minutes to drive back down to my office…”

  “Come on, get up,” Jack said.

  He snapped at her with his right hand.

  Snapped at her like the doctor snapped at her on that date—like she was a pet or a toddler. Annie stood on command, even though she wasn’t done with her water, and walked past her father and out into the cool Astoria winter. She tugged her coat around her and got into her car without saying goodbye.

  Jack barely acknowledged her existence as she drove by him, already buried in his phone, sunglasses in winter hiding his exasperation. The whole thing made her blood boil and the rage simmered just below the surface.

  By the time she was cruising back down the 101, she had music blaring to hide the storm of emotions brewing inside of her.

  Her foot on the peddle, her voice screeching along to all her favorite 80s rockers, Annie knew she was calling in a sick day for the rest of her afternoon and blowing off her appointments. She never called in sick and she was an hour away and feeling defeated. Fueled by anger and the terminal disappointment only a parent could bestow, Annie knew she couldn’t get anything done at work anyway. She’d be worthless to herself and most other people for a good twenty-four hours while she wallowed in self-pity.

  Except, it wasn’t just self-pity; she had a compelling argument against going home and watching rom coms while eating sea salt caramels in her underwear. No. She wasn’t going to do that—she wasn’t going to roll over. She was going to ignore him. Something ancient and deep inside of her began to come untethered and as her speed increased, so did her desire to rebel.

  And that meant there was only one place to go.

  Chapter Twelve

  Benson pulled into the driveway of the beach house and he saw a car already parked at the end of the short driveway.

  A beige sedan. Empty and waiting.

  Annie’s car, he thought.

  At first, he wondered if Annie had somehow heard of his disappeared date from Twoly and Linda Remington’s appearance at the Oceanside the day before. It was a small town after all and she had little ears everywhere. He was still rattled by the entire event, and even the next day, he was no longer clear on what had happened.

  He’d been fired from Twoly.

  One date into the program. Twenty minutes.

  Not fired per se—but he’d been dismissed as a customer. Because of who he was and what he was interested in following. Which meant—he was on the right track with something important and Benson wasn’t going to let Linda scare him off.

  She’d strong-armed the wrong reporter.

  Benson got out of his car and walked past the empty sedan; the front seat was covered in fast food wrappers and books and papers. In the back seat, she’d amassed a pile of clothing—sweaters, pants, tennis shoes. If he didn’t know any better, it looked like Annie was living out of her car. Maybe it always looked like that; maybe she didn’t care.

&nb
sp; His visitor wasn’t anywhere in sight.

  He walked around to the back porch and pushed his way through the small gate to scan the horizon, looking for light hair flapping in the Oregon coast wind, an Annie on the beach. Instead, he saw her huddled near the back door with a book in her lap, using her phone as a flashlight.

  She sat cross-legged like she was still in school, a pair of reading glasses on her nose. And she didn’t look up as her finger scanned the page line by line.

  “Hello,” she welcomed him with a soft smile, unexpected and warm, as though she knew how strange it was for her to show up on his doorstep. She paused, kept her finger where it was, and moved her hair out of her eyes as it whipped in the wind. The sun had set only a few minutes before, but the cloudy horizon made the sunset unspectacular and gray.

  “How long have you been sitting here?” Benson asked, stepping over her to unlock the back door and let them both inside.

  “Only an hour,” she yawned. “I had some reading to do anyway. I came over earlier, but…I didn’t wait.”

  She didn’t text to ask where he was. So, she’d wanted the surprise factor.

  “How did you find out where I lived?” he asked with a tip of an imaginary hat in her direction.

  “You told me enough to make it easy to find you. I thought you did that on purpose… did you do that on accident?” She shoved her book back in her bag and slung the messenger bag shut and back up on her shoulder as she stood, pushing back his hand to help assist her. “Just let me in. I’m so cold.”

  “Alright, alright,” Benson agreed and he pushed the door open and let them both inside, flipping on the outside porch lamps as he went. “Ironically enough,” he said with an apologetic frown, “I’ve had an interesting thing happen…I was thinking about calling you.”

  He was grateful that the beach house was immaculate and that he’d done nothing to turn it into a bachelor pad before her arrival. In fact, it still had an impressive clean sheen to it. Annie remained by the A-framed wall of windows. She waited expectantly for him to explain, but then he wondered if he should tell her about Twoly and his run-in with Linda at all. There was a chance she would focus on the fact that he’d ignored her advice and not the fact that he’d been fired from the program.

  “Oh?” Annie asked.

  Benson redirected. “Maybe it wasn’t all that interesting after all. I feel like you hunting down my house for a surprise visit warrants a better story…” he tried. She nodded.

  Annie launched forward into her own story and it was easy for Benson to simply shift his small Twoly date and its epic outcome to the side. A brief lie of omission.

  “My dad made a special trip to see me today for lunch,” she said and she settled down into his fluffy couch, the seat dipping and absorbing her into the pillows. “In no uncertain terms, he told me to stop sniffing about Schubert and to hurry up and get married already. Took a helicopter, too. Just to say back off and find someone worthy. The consequence if I don’t listen to him, which I hate to say out loud because it’s going to make me sound like a privileged asshat, but…he’ll bankrupt me. They’ve been paying my school loans, which are close to fifteen-hundred a month and—”

  “Okay, slow down,” Benson said and he sat down beside her. He didn’t think to offer her a drink—water, tea, bourbon. “Start with the first part. How does your dad know you’re looking to Schubert?”

  “He didn’t say,” Annie answered with a shrug. “But he’s connected to the case…so, he must have eyes on it.”

  “Does he know what you know?” Benson asked.

  Annie shook her head. “There wasn’t time to discuss anything…that wasn’t the type of lunch this turned out to be.”

  “Okay,” he nodded. “So, you’re out? You don’t want to follow this anymore?” He nodded again and rubbed his hands together, sensing the dread upon him and the understanding that he couldn’t ask her to risk that much for the story. “I get it. You think the other Love is Murders club members will want out, too?”

  Annie pulled back and blinked at him. Her features pulled right and then she knit her brows.

  “What? I don’t want out,” she answered. “Are you kidding?” She tucked a piece of blonde hair behind her ear and gawked at him. “I’m deeper in. I’m more committed. I want to know what everyone is hiding.”

  “Okay,” Benson replied and clapped his hands together once. “So. Your dad says stop. You say, something’s here, let’s go deeper. I’m with you. I am. So, you want to get to work?”

  Annie paused. She nodded. And her demeanor changed; he watched as her brave and no-bullshit façade broke down and her lips trembled. She bit them to quell the rising anxiety and he watched, his heart starting to pound faster, as he recognized the look in her eyes. The softness, the longing.

  “I want…” she started, hesitating, perhaps changing her mind, but Benson didn’t want that. He wanted to know what she wanted—he wanted to give it to her. Anything. Instinctively, he moved closer to her on the couch, his hand limp beside his leg. “I want…” she looked up, locked eyes.

  Oh, how he wanted to finish that sentence for her.

  Say me, Annie, say you want me.

  “I don’t want to feel…like…” she muddled through, weighing everything she said in careful measured doses, “I’m living someone else’s life.” She sighed and waited for him to respond. Annie put her hands in her lap, closed off from him, and she rounded her shoulders to make herself seem small and weak. He knew better—the Annie he’d seen in action wasn’t weak. She was brave and she was bold.

  “You’re not,” he reassured her and when he put his hand on her shoulder, she shied away, and he was certain he’d gotten all the signals wrong.

  “I’m sorry,” Annie said and she stood suddenly and grabbed her coat off the back of the couch, shaking her head. “This was a mistake. I should go home…maybe unwind a bit. Process.”

  “Stay, I’ll make you coffee.”

  Annie stared at him, her jacket draped over her arm, her eyes wide and pleading.

  “No,” she said, clipped and certain. “I had only wanted to tell you about my dad. Warn you that he’s invested in keeping the Cannon Beach Murders out of my hands…”

  “You could’ve texted that three hours ago,” Benson replied and he tilted his head. “You’re here. Let me make you something…” If he knew what she wanted, he’d have done anything to get it for her, but she was there in front of him indecisive and afraid. “Please.” Benson didn’t want to beg.

  But he hoped she’d stay. He wanted to smooth the worry lines on her forehead; he wanted to get her to laugh, to cry, to relax. Like an itch he needed to scratch, he decided Annie deserved a smile.

  He’d seen it a few times, most notably that night on the beach, her hands in the water creating the blue and green sparks dance around them. Maybe she needed permission to leave the shit at the doorstep for just one night.

  God, he realized maybe he did, too.

  “Hold on,” Benson said and he lifted his finger up, his face lighting up with an idea. “Hold on.” He walked up to Annie and took the jacket off her arm, then arm by arm he helped Annie back into her coat and he walked her to the front door. Benson saw that she was confused and apprehensive, as he opened the door and motioned for her to go back outside.

  “Are we going somewhere?” she asked.

  Benson shook his head.

  “I want you to ring the doorbell in sixty seconds.”

  “What?” Annie frowned. She scratched at her temple with her hand and narrowed her eyes. “Ummm…ring the bell in one minute?”

  He nodded and she didn’t appear impressed.

  “I have a lot of work tomorrow and—” she said and he heard the twinge of regret in her voice, the worry that she’d wasted her time trying to find friendship at his porch, huddled and cold.

  “Sixty seconds.” He shut the door.

  He sped back off to the living room and hit play on his parent’s ancient CD
player. The speakers on either side of the room, set up with various stapled wires, carried the Bee Gees in all their glorious melodies and falsetto bopping. He hit the switch to the gas fireplace and turned off the lights—sending the room into a soft, calming glow. With a swift jaunt to the kitchen, he grabbed her a pilsner, popped it into his favorite Everything’s Better at the Beach koozie.

  With an extra second, he filled a pot and started a burner.

  The doorbell rang.

  He grabbed the beer and swung the door wide watching as Annie materialized in front of him, incredulous.

  “Hey!” he said as if she hadn’t just been inside his house, as if he was greeting her for the first time. “I heard you had a shit day…here, a beer, and…come on in, come in,” he touched her elbow and led her inside as Robin Gibb’s voice filled the yellow and orange living room with his pure declarations of 70s love.

  Annie studied the beer in her hand and the changed ambiance of the house, unsure, but still moving forward.

  “Sit here and drink for a minute. I’ll make you pasta and then you can tell me all about it.” Benson put her on the couch and she stiffly sat, her jacket still on, her hand around the koozie. “I’ll take your coat.” She shimmied out of one arm and then the other and then handed the jacket to Benson.

  He trotted out to the bedroom and placed her jacket at the foot of the bed like his mom used to do at dinner parties when they entertained. When he emerged, Annie hadn’t moved, but she was watching him, half of her face in shadow.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, keeping his distance down the hall. They could hear the water starting to boil in the kitchen, the steady roll of water. “I would’ve had the meal ready for when you walked in the door, but I was spending the day feeling sorry for myself at a coffee shop.” He shrugged and then broke into a toothy smile, putting his hands up in kind surrender.

  He was doing the best he could.

  Annie nodded. She seemed relieved to have something to respond to. “You had a bad day, too?” Her voice was dry and on cue Run to Me began to play in the background—its chorus and lyrics punctuating the moment with uncanny authority and prescience. A simple guitar and piano, a call from another time. An offer and an invitation.