Thick as Thieves

by Sandra Brown

  He had submitted his application, figuring that a relocation to Texas was about as adventurous as he was likely ever to get.

  Little had he known then.

  He survived the rounds of interviews conducted over the telephone and was awarded the position. He packed his car to the gills and made the move. He signed a lease on a duplex whose best feature was that the rent included a cable hookup.

  The hearty friendliness of the people, as well as their accent, would take some getting used to. He had a virulent gastrointestinal experience with his first Tex-Mex meal. But the mystifying lake, whose lore included a sasquatch, lived up to the pictures he had seen online. His new situation held promise.

  That was dashed on his first day on the job.

  His boss had shaken his hand, welcomed him to the accounts receivable/payable department. Then, with badly capped teeth glittering, he had said, “You mess up, you’re history.”

  He was a strutting, bandy-legged tyrant to whom management and terrorism were synonymous. Brian was a perfect target for his scornful putdowns. Within a week of his employment, Brian had become miserable.

  However, he couldn’t—wouldn’t—pack up and go home and have his mother tell him, “I told you so.” He resolved to tough it out for as long as he could stand it, telling himself that there would come a day.

  That day had come in early January.

  He had returned to the store from his lunch break when he’d collided, literally, with a young man with spiky orange hair.

  “Hey, sorry, man,” he’d said. “Didn’t see you. This damn thing.” He’d shifted the cumbersome box from beneath his left arm to beneath his right. “My mom sent me to get a refund.” He’d snorted contempt. “My dad’s idea of a romantic Christmas present for her. Pots and pans. Seriously? Even I know better.”

  Unable to think of anything else to say, Brian remarked that the cookware set had been on sale through Christmas Eve.

  “Probably was when my old man bought it. Last minute, you know. Anyhow, she sent me to bring it back. Didn’t know there would be such a damn long line.”

  He’d leaned in a little closer and lowered his voice. “I thought about walking the box back to the housewares section and just leaving it there on the shelf, screw the refund. But they’ve got cameras everywhere,” he’d said, glancing up at the ceiling. “If somebody saw me do it and wondered What the hell is he up to?, I’d have to spend time explaining. Just as well stand in line.”

  “The cameras aren’t real. They’re for show.”

  “Get out!” the young man had exclaimed in a stage whisper. “They’re fakes?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re shittin’ me.”

  “No.”

  “How do you know? Do you work here?”

  “Accounting.”

  “A bean counter, huh?” He had said it with good humor, not like he was deriding Brian. “You must be really smart. Me and numbers? Forget it. PE and lunch are my standout subjects.”

  PE and lunch had been Brian’s worst two hours of the school day, but he chuckled as though he shared the joke.

  “How long have you worked here?”

  “I signed on just in time for the Christmas season.”

  “Oh, man. How bad did that suck?”

  Brian was enjoying being talked to in the vernacular. Although the stranger was a few years younger than he, he was conversing with him in the casual manner of one man to another, and that rarely happened to Brian. Correction: It never happened to Brian.

  However, as much as he was enjoying it, he remembered the time. “Well, I’m due back from lunch. Have a nice day.” He’d been about to move off when the young man waylaid him.

  “Say, listen. Could you help me out here? Since you’re an employee, you could jump this out-of-sight line, right?”

  “Well, I—”

  “Just carry this box behind the counter like it’s your business. I’ve got the receipt. My old man paid cash. Should be a no-brainer to get the money back. What do you say?”

  Brian had hesitated and was still considering it when the kid had nudged him with his elbow. “Grandpa Welch probably wouldn’t appreciate a new employee telling a customer that the security cameras are bogus.”

  A wave of dizziness swept over Brian. He had actually felt the blood draining from his head. He heard his mother calling him a dumb bunny.

  But then the young man had thrown his head back and laughed. “You should see your face,” he’d chortled. “I’m harmless. Swear I am. My old man is the sheriff.”

  Brian’s knees had gone weak with relief.

  “Had you going there, didn’t I?”

  Brian had tried to laugh at the teasing, but achieved only a squeaky sound.

  “I’m sorry. Really. Now, what about doing me this little favor?”

  Brian heard himself say, “Sure.”

  Bravely, he’d jumped the line of disgruntled customers. Even the employee working the counter gave him grief until Brian had told her that he was acting on behalf of the sheriff’s son.

  “Rusty?”

  Brian wasn’t sure what to make of the way she raised her penciled brow and gave a sour-sounding harrumph.

  He returned to where he’d left the young man waiting and counted out his refund. “The lady at the counter said your name is Rusty.”

  “Rusty Dyle. What’s yours?”

  “Brian Foster.”

  “I don’t forget favors, Brian. Thanks.” After pocketing the refunded money, he’d given Brian an assessing once-over. “Got a wife?”

  “No.”

  “Live-in girlfriend?”

  “No.”

  “You gay?”

  “No.”

  “Great. Let’s hang out. What’s your phone number?”

  Brian’s boss had been waiting for him at his desk, fuming over his lateness. Brian calmly had said, “I’m a few minutes late because I was doing a favor for Sheriff Dyle’s son. If you have a problem with that, I suggest you take it up with him.”

  He had never felt more like a man.

  Rusty had phoned him the very next day and invited him to meet at a spot on the lake. “You’ve turned twenty-one, right?”

  “Almost twenty-two.”

  “Awesome. You get to buy the six-pack.”

  They had three more beer-drinking sessions before Rusty broached the subject of the burglary. He’d prefaced it with: “This might sound crazy. Hell, it is crazy. But what’s life all about if you don’t take a few risks?”

  Brian had risked his livelihood—everything—in order to pull off the burglary. He was already dreading Monday and the playacting he would have to do. And now Rusty was asking him to take yet another risk.

  They’d gotten away clean. Then that broody boy with the blue eyes had gotten himself arrested, and Rusty was convinced that he would betray them. Rusty wanted Brian to help him hide the money.

  Brian wanted to throw up.

  How had he gotten himself into this mess? After tonight, and for the rest of his life, he would be a criminal. Him. Dull, drab, blah Brian Foster. Nobody would believe it of him. His mother wouldn’t believe it of him. He didn’t believe it of himself.

  Maybe this was a bizarre and elaborate nightmare from which he would soon wake up.

  But Rusty had also said that they needed to set up Joe Maxwell as their fall guy.

  Brian didn’t know Mr. Maxwell well. When he’d been fired from Welch’s, Brian had had the misfortune of having to give him his severance check. Taking his anger out on Brian, Joe had given him a tongue-lashing that had been heavy on expletives.

  But a few days later, Mr. Maxwell had called to apologize for his outburst. “I’m sorry I created that scene. It wasn’t your fault I got canned.”

  Coworkers had enlightened Brian to Mr. Maxwell’s lamentable history, being left a widower, losing his business. Given the circumstances, Brian had thought the apology was most decent of the man.

  While Brian was thinking ba
ck on that phone call, and the moral fiber Joe Maxwell had exhibited by making it, Rusty had been enumerating all the traits that made the older man the perfect scapegoat.

  Rusty called him a loser who had nothing going for him. The more Rusty talked, Brian gradually came to realize that Rusty was also characterizing Ledge Burnet, who’d already served a stint in juvenile detention. He was bound for jail for the second time, and he hadn’t even graduated high school yet. With even more clarity, Brian realized that he could fill in his own name each time Rusty made a disparaging comment about the down-and-out Mr. Maxwell.

  That’s when it dawned on him that they all three would make ideal patsies for Rusty Dyle, whose immunity was practically guaranteed because his father was not only a high-ranking public official, he was also the most corrupt.

  Rusty ended his speech by saying, “So let’s meet there, okay?”

  Brian was dumbstruck by a disturbing realization: He was the last person anybody with half a brain would choose as an accomplice to shoplift a pack of chewing gum, much less to pull a grand heist like this.

  Beyond gaining entrance into the store and opening the safe, what purpose did he serve? His mother would say, “That of chump, stupid.”

  Rusty shouted in his ear. “Brian!”

  He’d been dumbstruck by the revelation and had to swallow several times before acknowledging Rusty.

  “What the hell? I thought we’d gotten disconnected.”

  “No, I’m here,” Brian said huskily.

  “What do you think?”

  He swallowed again. “I think it’s really unfair to Mr. Maxwell. He—”

  “Okay, okay, never mind about that now. We’ll cross that bridge only if and when we need to. Top priority now is to hide this money. Remember where we knocked back that first six-pack of Coors? I’ll meet you there in half an hour. Lots of places along that channel to stash it. See you there.” Then he was gone.

  Brian used three of his allotted thirty minutes just sitting there, staring at his phone.

  Finally he moved, but only his thumb, to scroll through his call log. It didn’t amount to more than a dozen calls, mostly to the pizza place that delivered. But among the calls was the one Joe Maxwell had placed to him a few weeks earlier.

  He took a deep breath and tapped on it.

  Mr. Maxwell must have seen that it was Brian calling, because he answered in a hushed, but surprised, voice. “Foster?”

  “Yes, it’s me. We need to talk, Mr. Maxwell. Like right now.”

  Chapter 18

  Ledge carried Arden’s empty plate to the sink and returned the sandwich makings to the fridge. “Want anything else?”

  “No thank you. Were you convicted of the drug charge?”

  He went back to the table and sat down. “The subject was your dad.”

  “It was. I told you all I know. I want to hear what happened after your arrest.”

  “The case never went to trial. My lawyer negotiated a plea deal for me. Misdemeanor possession instead of a felony charge. He argued that the deputies had stopped me without probable cause. Which was true.

  “It galled me to admit to doing something I hadn’t done, but they had the evidence, so I took the deal. I was resigned to spending at least a few months in county. But when it came time for sentencing, the judge called me, my attorney, and my uncle into his chambers. He offered me an alternative.”

  “The army?”

  “Good guess. The judge was a Vietnam veteran, very pro military, a hawk. He told my uncle that boot camp and a tough drill sergeant would have me whipped into shape in no time. It was quite a recruitment spiel, and Uncle Henry recognized the advantages. But he bargained for the charges to be dismissed.”

  She sat back in her chair and shook her head with dismay. “You must have been so relieved.”

  “Relieved, yeah, but I wasn’t let off the hook. Both my uncle and the judge put the fear of God in me. They warned me that if I didn’t apply myself, there would be hell to pay.”

  Laughing quietly, she said, “I can’t believe it.”

  “At the time, it was hard for me to take in, too. Everything happened fast. I was a couple of months shy of graduating high school, but passed all the exams and got my diploma. Next day, I was sent to basic training.”

  “Applied yourself and returned twelve years later a hero.”

  He shook his head and, speaking low, said, “Don’t mistake me for a hero.”

  “People say you are.”

  “Those who say that don’t know.”

  Frowning with concentration, she said, “Well, I know one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re unlike anyone else I’ve ever met.”

  He wanted to ask her in what way he was unique, but was afraid of how she would answer. He broke her thoughtful stare to glance down at his watch. “It’s late.” He stood up. “I’ll lead you home.”

  “That’s unnecessary.”

  “The road is tricky in full daylight. In the dark, if you don’t know it well, you could wind up in a bayou.”

  “I’ll manage.”

  “Argument over.” He went to the door and pulled it open.

  A few minutes later, her headlights were in his rearview mirror. If she fell too far behind, he slowed down until she caught up. When they reached her house, he got out of his truck and, despite her protests, walked her to the back door.

  “These new locks are impossible,” she said as she worked the key into the slot.

  “They’re meant to be.”

  “For a bad guy, not for me.” The lock snapped, she swung the door open and poked her head inside. “See? No intruder lying in wait.”

  He gave the small of her back a nudge, then followed her in, went around her, and checked out the rooms on the first floor, switching lights on, then off, as he made his way.

  They met at the bottom of the staircase. “You didn’t look up there.” She pointed to the dark landing above.

  “An intruder would have had to come in on the ground floor. Nothing’s been disturbed.”

  “As noted earlier, you’ve been my only intruder.” She gave him a brief smile, then lowered her gaze to the placket of his shirt. “Will you be coming to work in the morning?”

  “Not to restore, but to destroy?”

  Still addressing his shirt, she said, “I suppose I do owe you an explanation for the switch.”

  “Your sister told you last night you didn’t owe me a damn thing.”

  “Well, she’s wrong.”

  “Okay. I’m listening.”

  “I’ll do my best to explain, but even I’m conflicted.”

  “Over what?”

  “It’s hard to put into words.”

  “I don’t know that many anyway. Make it simple.”

  She tugged her lower lip through her teeth. “It sounds so banal, but I came back to Penton to get closure. This house represents sorrow and heartache to me. If it comes down—”

  “It won’t fix a damn thing. I don’t mean to interrupt, but, look, the house is a house. It’s made of destructible materials. All the shit that took place in it when you were a kid will be with you for the rest of your life. It’s not inside the house, it’s inside you. Curse it, accept it, and then turn your back on it.”

  “I can do that with the shit I know,” she said. “It’s what I don’t know that plagues me.”

  All of a sudden he was wary of where this might be going. He backed away from her and leaned against the newel post. “What you ‘don’t know’?”

  “I moved back here needing answers. But not only have they eluded me, the longer I’m here, the more questions I have, the more gaps I see that need filling.”

  She folded in on herself as she sat down on the second step of the staircase. She didn’t say anything for a time, but rubbed her thumb across her other palm, studying the faint network of lines as though trying to gain insight from their intersections.

  “I still feel like that ten-year
-old girl caught up in a crisis. The grown-ups are speaking in euphemisms to shield me from harsh realities. I’ve been given the outline, but not the whole story. I feel that the parts I’m missing are the ones I should know.” She looked up at him and shook her head. “Never mind. I don’t expect you to understand.”

  On the contrary, he understood perfectly, and his conscience was killing him over it. He was missing elements of that night himself, but those he had intimate knowledge of, he had intentionally kept from her. How much longer could he sustain that secrecy? Every day she was here upped the odds that she would discover the active role young Ledge Burnet had played in the course her life had taken.

  Better to drive her away now, when she disliked and distrusted him only a little, and before Rusty got wind of her interest in the events of that night.

  Salving his conscience by telling himself that his lying was for her own good, he lied again. “You’re right. I don’t understand. You came here to get closure. Didn’t work. You’re miserable. Why not call it quits and leave?”

  “You sound like Lisa.”

  “God help me, but she has a point. Have you asked her about those gaps that bother you?”

  “Of course, but Dad’s disappearance affected us differently. It changed her life profoundly, yes. But she was grown, mentally and emotionally, already independent of him. Anytime I bring up my ambiguity, she tells me I should do as she did. Put it all behind me and move on.”

  “I agree with that advice. It can’t be healthy, hanging around a place that pains you. Just go.”

  “With nothing resolved?” She shook her head. “Relocating wouldn’t achieve anything. You said so yourself. The uncertainties that devil me aren’t within the house, they’re—”

  “Forget what I said. It was horseshit. What do I know? I’m no shrink. But maybe that’s what you need.”

  “I’ve had therapy. Lisa couldn’t afford it until after she married Wallace. He was a godsend in so many ways. He and Lisa formed a happy twosome. I was a—”