Willow (The Willow Series Book 1)

by Cheri Lewis

  “Here,” a Hispanic man says leaning against the wall never looking up.

  “Fred Dulley…,” he waits and nobody answers. “Fred Dulley,” he says again with a gasp and waits a few seconds before going to the next name. “Penny Parker.”

  A tall slender blonde crosses her arms over her chest and arches an eyebrow. “Vivica James,” she corrects him in a charming sweet southern tone.

  He taps the clipboard. “It says here Penny Parker. So I’ll be calling you Penny Parker.”

  If her eyes were lasers he’d be incinerated but she does it in a way that says she’s still in control. She nods her head slowly and graceful almost leaning into a bow. I can’t believe she’s wearing black heeled boots that go half way up her legs with leggings and a large oversized blinged out belt with clear rhinestones that resemble diamonds which bring attention to her wasp-like waist. Perfect makeup and hair is pulled up but still it’s been styled. She should be going out on a date not walking up and down the roads picking up trash.

  “…Matthews.” I look at the overweight man when he says the name again, “Wilhelmina Matthews.”

  Crap! I guess I wasn’t paying attention. “Here and I prefer Willow.”

  He taps the clipboard. I raise my eyebrows and shrug.

  “Okay, follow me. I’m Chuck and I’ll be giving you your zones and paperwork. On your paperwork it shows how much work you should have completed by the end of your eight hour shift. One person on your team will be outfitted with a walky-talky. Call into base if there’s a problem…” I find it hard not to laugh at how serious he’s being. We’re picking up trash not performing brain surgery. How hard can it be to know what to do and not to do? “…me I’ll get your uniforms and separate you into groups.”

  I follow behind the seven people in front of me. He stops at a table stacked high with bright neon pink folded towels, I think. He asks the man standing in front of him, “Size?”

  “Extra Large.”

  Size? He hands him a towel which I find out is not a towel, but a uniform, coveralls. The man takes them and goes to a bench sitting down taking off his shoes. You mean to tell me we have to wear that? I remember him mentioning a uniform but I never put it together and I thought he meant a safety vest or something. Penny is two people ahead of me and asks for a small. I don’t want to be smothered so I get a large even though a medium would probably fit. The words community service are stamped in eight inch bold black letters on the back of the pink outfits. My eye’s twitching and I know Charlie, good ol’ sweet dead meat Charlie, at the D.A.’s office did this on purpose.

  “I don’t know what you’re thinking but I like it.” I look up and Penny is standing over me smiling wide with her perfect lipstick in place and a hand on her hip full of attitude. I glance around at everybody else and they’re already dressed in their pink uniforms. Well, everybody but me. I look back to her and she’s placed her fancy belt on the outside of her coveralls with her heeled boot legs shoved up under the pants of the coveralls. I’m not much of a fashion guru but the belt and boots actually match and look great against the pink. I kick my shoes off and she sits beside me. “This your first time?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Mine too.” That explains the boots. “What’d you do?”

  I slide my feet down into the leg holes doing a dance to get them up and over my clothes and begin zipping it up. “Assault.”

  “I’m here for unpaid parking tickets.” I look back to her with surprise and she laughs. “I wouldn’t sleep with the hobbit of a man at the D.A.’s office.”

  My eyebrows raise. “Charlie?”

  “That’s him. Even madams have standards,” she murmurs the last part and I let out a laugh then eye her because for some reason I get the feeling she’s telling the truth. Penny is a prostitute? Penny the prostitute flows through my mind and I find it has a ring to it. I say it a few more times. I’m not sure why she changed her name to Vivian or whatever she said it was. She continues to sit by me as I lace up my boots. She has her arms crossed and seems perfectly content sitting in a room wearing a pink uniform at the sanitation department early on a Friday morning.

  “You four and you four.” Chuck points to one set of four on the other side of the room then at me, Penny, another woman and the Hispanic man who introduces himself to us as Hector Sanchez. The other woman is Paula Sushi. She’s doing community service for public intoxication and if I’m not mistaken— I’d be willing to bet a six pack of Budweiser—she’s already half lit on her way to being blotto by the looks of the flask she keeps taking a swig from. On top of that we learned her last name is Sullivan not Sushi when Chuck called her by name to inform our group she’s the team leader.

  “Poor gal is so tossed she slaughtered her own last name.”

  I smile because Penny and I are thinking the exact same thing. She just said it out loud. We get our papers go outside to get our assigned vehicle. Four people are supposed to pile into an S-10 pickup that has a wooden boards hanging on both sides of the bed. The boards are painted with handwritten white letters that read, “Litter Patrol.”

  I glance into the bed and it’s pretty clean. Garbage bags, buckets and picker sticks lie in one corner. “I’ll ride in the back if you drive,” I say to Hector cutting my eyes to our team leader. Thankfully he’s already caught on to her drinking and picks the keys up off the table.

  “I’ll ride in back too,” Penny chimes in. I want to tell her she’ll mess up her hair but today is going to be a scorcher, so by the time it’s over her hair will be flat and the sun will have melted off all her makeup. She hikes her leg up and pulls herself up and over the tailgate. I follow behind her and we sit against the cab of the truck waiting to get this day started.

  Hector opens the sliding glass on the back window. “Are you both situated?”

  “I’m good,” I say.

  “I’m good,” Penny echoes as she pull sunglass out from somewhere, sliding them on her face.

  A loud voice appears at my left shoulder. “Hey, you two want a drink?” Paula asks as she sticks her flask out the window.

  “I’m good right now but I might in a bit,” Penny replies being kind.

  I feel a poke on my shoulder. “How about you buttercup. You want some?”

  I raise my hand waving her away. “I’m good, thanks.”

  She lets out a loud wolf howl and Penny and I both burst out laughing.

  “Today should be interesting,” Penny says to me. We can hear Hector fussing at Paula telling her to turn herself around and sit down. Paula disappears back into the cab of the truck and can be heard saying, “Okay, okay, daddy-o.”

  Thankfully it turns out to be a pleasant day. The wind blows a constant breeze and my stomach hurts from laughing at Paula’s antics. She uses the team leader radio keying it up saying, “Breaker, breaker, one nine. This is hot momma needing some help and some lo-ving.” Then she breaks out into the Blues Brother song Gimme Some Lovin’ singing the chorus over and over.

  Chuck was nice the first couple of times then she presses her luck. He shows up and is pissed that his ‘fat ass has to get out in this heat’. His gasping words, not mine. He wants to know which of us was playing around on the radio. We all keep quiet which surprises me. Besides, she’s the team leader it should be obvious it’s her. If he’s too stupid to figure that out then it’s not my problem. I’m sure he played ignorant because he doesn’t want to fool with her and that’s fine by me. She’s driven me nuts in some ways but at the same time the day passes quickly because we do make a good team. She may be a drunk but she’s the hardest working drunk I’ve ever seen.

  I do have to hand it to Penny though. She pulled a black handkerchief out about an hour into our day and tied it around her head. She went from prostitute to pinup model in about three seconds. Hector couldn’t take his eyes off her. She did have to reapply her lipstick but that’s the only thing that faded throughout the day. She worked hard, too, which impressed me. I figured she’s be stan
ding around watching us work or limping complaining about her feet hurting by wearing those fancy shoes but she didn’t, not a single complaint and she stayed right on task with the rest of us.

  After our day is over we have to wait in line again to check back in our uniforms and have our papers signed. Chuck glares at each one of us as we check in. He has to know it was Paula but he still pretends he wasn’t sure even though she smells like she took a bath in alcohol as much sweating as we did. I decide to go ahead and sign back up to work again Monday. Get another one out of the way.

  I’m relieved as I climb into my truck. I sit with the a/c blowing full blast and call Heath to tell him I’m on my way to get Joe. I put my truck into drive ready to leave but sit with my foot on the brake when a blacked out Mercedes-Benz pulls up. A man in a suit jumps out of the driver’s seat and runs around to open the door. Penny steps into the car. She’s on her phone and she looks like she’s all business, still looks nicely put together. You’d have had no idea she just spent the last eight hours picking up smelly, disgusting garbage. I can’t believe this chick just got picked up by a driver after working a day at community service? Who the hell is she?

  ****

  It’s now Saturday morning and I’m bored out of my mind. Heath is back on day shift and I didn’t realize how much I met him or hung out with him during the day until he’s not available. I have a few new emails in my inbox with a few new cases to do if I want to take them. One email is from my lawyer’s office for the cheating spouse case they mentioned to me the other day. I figure I might as well go to the office and get the information together to see if I can knock this one out for my lawyer quickly. He pays me a bonus if I do it and do it well, meaning they win in a landslide. When I walk in my office the first thing I notice are my flowers. They’ve wilted and made a mess. I throw them out and clean up where the flowers fell onto my desk and floor. Joe goes to the back room and comes right back out staring at me. “I’ll get you some food and water in just a minute. Let me finish up here,” I say to him as he waits for me.

  I dump the wilted flowers in the trash and go to the back to take care of Joe. Then I move all the boxes I left lying around and place them neatly back in a pile as I contemplate taking them back up to the attic where I don’t have to see them. Sometimes it’s better not having a reminder at just how lazy you are. I open the emails and decide to take an insurance case. An older man in a motorcycle wreck says he’s a hundred percent disabled. These type cases are so easy either they are or they aren’t and if they lie they deserve to be caught. There are a lot of people who need help but can’t get it. I also print out the case information from my lawyer. It’s pretty straight forward as I scan over the file picking up the highlights.

  Chantel Montgomery: thirty nine, husband thinks she’s cheating. It lists her address, vehicle, phone numbers, friends, and credit card statements so I’ll know the places she frequents most. Hair, nails, grocery store, several department stores in the mall. She blows through some money. Bored housewife maybe or maybe he doesn’t want to be married to her anymore because she spends more money in two months that I make in a year just about.

  I also print off the insurance case to have something to do if I can’t locate Chantel fairly quickly. I don’t normally take Joe with me on stakeouts but I don’t want to leave him and I really don’t want to be alone right now. On our way to her address we run through the Dairy Queen for an early lunch and am glad they open at ten thirty. Of course he eats one of my chicken fingers and I get him his own ice cream cone. I lower the window so Joe can ride with his head out part of the way. Cooler temperatures have arrived, thank goodness I’m ready. It’s still hot but we’ve inched a little further away from feeling like we’re in hell. It’s a nice neighborhood not the richest, but nowhere near the poorest that’s for sure probably considered middle income. I’d say it’s at the lower end of the high income bracket.

  We drive past her house and of course the garage door is closed so I’m not sure if she’s home. I park a few driveways down near a lawn service truck so I’m not so exposed and set my rearview mirror to watch her house. I lean my seat back slightly and Joe curls up in the passenger seat anticipating a long wait apparently. I reach over and pet him behind the ear a few times before I pull the file out and study back over it to see if I missed anything.

  A few cars pass by on the quiet street. Forty-five minutes pass and I’m about to give up on waiting here when a car turns onto the street then into the driveway. From where I’m sitting I couldn’t get a good look at who’s driving. I try adjusting my mirrors but I still can’t see them. I look back over my shoulder and I see nothing but the tail end of a car go into the garage that opened allowing them in and it’s now closing. I roll the windows up and crank my truck and put the air conditioning on because I still don’t trust Joe not to jump out and come after me. I look over at him. “I’ll be back shortly.”

  I grab my camera bag and I know it’s wrong on so many levels and Lord please forgive me but I took a bunch of pamphlets that were lying on coffee table in a dentists’ office the last time I was there. They’re Jehovah Witness activity packs for adults and children. I took them for this reason. Well not for this reason exactly but if I need to be out in broad day light folks would assume I was trying to sell something or convert people.

  I walk to the first house closest to my truck and start my ruse. Some people aren’t home I’m happy to find and the ones that are I wish they weren’t. People can be so ugly when slamming a door in your face. I zig-zag back and forth fairly quickly until I reach the house where I need to be. I peek through the front windows and can’t see anything. I stand at the front door like I’ve rang the doorbell and nobody is answering. I glance around to make sure nobody is out watching me. I hope if anybody has seen me walking the neighborhood they’ve hidden to pretend they’re not home. I know I hide when I see them coming and shame on me for doing it. When you admit stuff like this out loud it makes it sound so terrible. I sneak around the corner of the house glancing in the windows as I pass, but not much luck so far.

  I come to a chain link fence and shake it causing it to rattle. I wait a few moments in case they have a big fido protecting their property. That’s something I don’t remember seeing in the notes. I open the gate then slip around to the back taking in the big beautiful pool that sits away from the house in an area where the land flattens out. A cascading waterfall flow down rocks into the back of the pool. I hear talking close by so I freeze slinking up against the wall and tuck myself behind a large shrubby bush. Sweat begins beading on my forehead. I shove the pamphlets down into my camera bag to swap them for my camera. I hear a man’s and woman’s voice but I can’t tell where they are exactly. I peep around the bush and don’t see anything so I tiptoe on around then dip down behind the large air conditioning unit and wait, thankful the unit isn’t running. The voices still sound close but not outside. I duck walk over to the edge of the porch and know I’m going to have my work cut out for me since it’s so high off the ground. When I stand the porch comes to my chest.

  I look through the slats of wood and can see the sliding glass doors are open. Actually they aren’t open they’re the kind that disappear into the wall. I reach in my bag and pull out my small mirror on an extension rod. I extend the handle out and position the mirror just right then look to make sure the sun isn’t shining directly down on the porch anywhere so I don’t send a signal inside saying, “Hey, look at me. I’m out here spying on you!” I stick the mirror out maneuvering around two large potted plants that sit on the side and corner of the porch. I have to stick it out several inches before I can see into the room. They’re sitting on a couch talking. I stand closer to the mirror and squint because it looks like one of them is tiny. I turn my head and my mirror trying to get it to adjust then give up because no matter what I do I can’t get it to work right. I collapse the handle back into itself and drop it in my bag then ease around the porch keeping low. I know it’s a
risk but I step back a foot about the middle of the porch and stick my camera up on top of the porch snapping a few pictures, pretty sure they won’t turn out because it’s light out here and dark inside. But you never know.

  I finish my way around to the steps when the air conditioner unit kicks on. If you want to know how you know people have too much money a sure indicator is leaving the doors wide open with the air conditioning running. I crouch as I climb the steps then get on my knees and lean over. My hip bone connects directly with the edge of one of the steps and I grimace and clinch my teeth trying to contain my urge to shriek in pain. I frown as I inch my way up the next step. I hear a giggle then a squeal coming from in the house. Somebody is happy. I keep scooting thankful to have the cover of some potted plants. I’m screwed though if they decide to come outside right this second. I’m able to get a few more shots of the couple inside. I bring my camera back and block the sun off the screen to see if I got anything usable. I can see a man kissing a woman and he has her lifted into the air it seems but I can’t fully make it out because it’s so bright out here. I hear the woman laughing again and can only hear murmurs of words with the air conditioner running. I extend my arm back out and switch the camera over to video sliding it forward under where the shadow is casting down from the roof.

  Once the air conditioner cuts off I can hear things have really heated up inside from the moans taking place. I ease up and keeping low on my elbows and peek around. I see a naked white flat ass and know immediately I’ve been spying on the wrong cheating spouse. I stop mid movement in shock as I finally see why everything looked unusual earlier. The man has a little woman latched on to his dick. Like a little person, little woman. Hey, if that floats your boat then float away. I’ve just never seen it before so it comes as a little bit of a shock.