“Some people would die for a chance to work on Wall Street or play college football. You never know how life would have turned out,” Bennett lectured, “only how it has turned out. You can’t look back, Cole.”
Cole’s expression became one of resolve. “I wanted to know my father, Bennett. It’s as simple as that. But there’s no chance of that now.”
Bennett finished his drink. “How about a little pool, Cole Egan?” Bennett flashed a cheery smile, and held up the ten-dollar bill the bartender had given him as change for the twenty. “Ten bucks on a game of eight ball.”
“I’m not very good,” Cole said in a low voice, as if playing pool were the last thing he wanted to do right now.
“Sure,” Bennett said cynically. “Come on.”
“All right,” Cole agreed. “But first I need to make a call. I want to see how Nicki is.”
Bennett nodded and ambled toward one of the three pool tables at the back of the bar. He cut through the dance floor and almost ran into the young woman with the red bandanna around her neck. She smiled at him, then dipped below her partner’s arm as he twirled her.
Bennett inserted two quarters in the pool table’s slot and with a loud rumble the balls rolled down into a shelf under the end of the table. Bennett picked them out one by one, placing them in the triangular rack lying on the beer-stained green felt. By the time Cole had made it to the back of the bar, the table was ready for play.
“How is she?” Bennett asked.
“Okay,” Cole answered. “She’s still pretty upset about her friend.”
“I can understand that,” Bennett said. He pointed at the cues standing against the wall. “Choose your weapon. I need to warn you, though, when I was a teenager my career choices were law enforcement or the professional pool circuit. I could have made some good money with a cue.”
“I guess it’s going to be a long night for me.”
Several drinks later Cole had hustled Bennett Smith out of a hundred dollars. Cole intentionally lost the first three games, driving the bet higher and higher, then quickly ran the table in the fourth.
“That’s all for me,” Bennett muttered under his breath as Cole dropped the eight ball in a corner pocket. He pulled out his wallet, counted the bills, then held them out.
“You don’t have to pay me, Bennett.” Cole laughed. “Really. I had a good time. It’s been great just to talk to you.” He put his hand on the older man’s shoulder. “I can’t tell you how much it’s meant to me to learn about my father and mother.”
But Bennett still held the wad of bills out.
“You don’t have to pay me, Bennett,” Cole repeated.
“Nonsense, I always pay my debts. I’d be offended if you didn’t take the money.” Finally Bennett stuffed the bills into Cole’s shirt pocket. “Where the hell did you learn to play like that?”
“Around,” Cole answered casually. “Hey, how about one more game?” He could see Bennett was going to leave and there were still questions he wanted to ask. “All you have to drop is the eight ball, and I’ll give you a hundred to one odds.”
“No way. You’d still beat me. I’m going to my cabin and get some sleep.” On the way into town this afternoon Bennett and Cole had each rented a small cabin for the night at a campground a half mile from the Kro Bar. “I’m tired.” He held out his hand and smiled. “It was a pleasure getting to know you today, son.”
Cole shook Bennett’s hand firmly. “Likewise.”
“I’ll stop by your cabin in the morning before I leave.”
“I’d appreciate that, Bennett. You’ll stay in touch with me, won’t you?”
“Yes, I will. Like I said, you can always leave a message for me at that Washington phone number I gave you. You won’t get me immediately, but I check my voice mail often, and I’ll call you back as soon as I can. Don’t hesitate to call if you need me.”
“I won’t.” Cole let go of Bennett’s hand. “Bennett, do you think I’m safe?” he asked. “Do you think that, now that I don’t have the Dealey Tape, the guy with the scar will leave me alone?”
Bennett nodded slowly. “I think so.” He paused. “But watch your back for a while.”
Cole laughed. “That’s not too comforting.”
“It isn’t meant to be.” Bennett quickly scanned the place for the young woman with the red bandanna but didn’t see her. “Why don’t you come back to the campground with me?”
“Nah, I’m not ready to go to sleep yet. I’m going to try and scare up another game. I need some legitimate competition,” Cole teased.
Bennett blinked slowly, pretending to be irritated. “See you in the morning, Cole.” He turned and walked away, smiling to himself. He had known all about Cole’s prowess at pool.
“See you,” Cole yelled over the music, watching Bennett head for the door. When the older man was gone, Cole leaned back against the wall, pulled the wad of bills from his shirt pocket and counted the hundred dollars. He grinned. Maybe he could hustle enough pool to repay the people at the Blue Moon. He stuffed the wad of bills back in his pocket. He wouldn’t put this money toward the Blue Moon debt, though. This money was going back to Bennett Smith tomorrow morning, even if he had to hide it in the man’s car.
“Hi, cowboy.”
Cole glanced up. Standing in front of him was the young woman with the red bandanna. “Hi yourself.”
“Do you want to dance?”
Cole shrugged. “Sure.”
The young woman grabbed his hand and pulled him out onto the floor. For twenty minutes Cole twirled her around like a rag doll. Finally, at the end of a fast song, she fell against him, breathing hard.
“I need to sit down,” she screamed in Cole’s ear over the start of a new song. “You’re a heckuva dancer.” She took his hand in hers. “Buy me a drink?”
Up close she wasn’t as pretty as from a distance. She had beautiful blond hair, but her nose was too turned up and wide and her eyes too far apart. “Sure,” Cole answered. “I’d be happy to. By the way, what’s your name?”
“Debby. What’s yours?”
“Cole,” he answered as he guided her back toward the bar. “Do you live around here, Debby?”
“Yeah,” she replied. “Outside of town a little ways.”
Cole noticed several young men glaring at him. Obviously the local bucks weren’t pleased that an out-of-towner had distracted her interest from them. “What’ll you have, Debby?”
An hour later they were inside Cole’s rented cabin. He had consumed several more beers after dancing and, despite his drunken state, had realized it wouldn’t be a good idea for him to get behind the wheel of his uncle’s Suburban, which was parked in front of the Erdman Diner. Debby had consumed only half of one drink all night and volunteered to give him a ride home.
He leaned back against the door as Debby pressed herself against him, kissing his chin and neck.
“You want me real bad, don’t you, Cole?” she moaned.
“Debby, I—” But he couldn’t finish the sentence. Suddenly he couldn’t speak.
Debby brought her hands up to his chest and unbuttoned his shirt, kissing and biting his broad, hairless chest. “You’re so hot for me, aren’t you, sweetheart?”
Cole tried to stop her, but his hands felt as if they were tied to the wall as they hung at his sides. He couldn’t remember ever having so strong a reaction to alcohol. Then the room started spinning wildly. He pushed past Debby and reached out for something to support himself, but his fingers met only air, and he toppled to the floor.
Debby bent forward at the waist, her long hair hanging down around her face, hands on her knees, giggling uncontrollably. Finally she fell to the floor herself, sprawled in front of the door.
This was going to make a hell of an impression on Bennett Smith when he knocked on the door in the morning, Cole though
t to himself. A girl asleep on the floor next to him after he had told Bennett how much he cared about Nicki. Cole struggled to his knees. “You’ve got to go home, Debby,” he mumbled. He made it to his feet for a second, then began falling backward. It was the last thing he remembered.
* * *
—
“Did you find anything?”
“No.” The woman shivered as she pulled the collar of her jacket up around her neck and over the red bandanna. It was freezing out here.
“Did you make a thorough search of the cabin?”
“Yes,” she said, exasperated at the question. “He didn’t have that much stuff. Just one bag and some camping equipment.” She wanted to get home and crawl into her nice warm bed. “I looked for almost an hour but I didn’t find anything unusual. He never moved, either. I popped those two tablets you gave me into his last beer and it was all I could do to get him back to the cabin and in the door. He never even moved when I took his wallet out of his back pocket, or when I put it back in.”
The man smiled. The dosage the woman had given Cole would have brought down an elephant. “Okay.”
“Can I go now?”
The man glanced up at the neon sign above the Kro Bar, still illuminated even though it was after three in the morning and the parking lot was deserted. It would be cleaner to kill her, but they might have been seen together, which could present a problem. And it wasn’t as if she had any idea what this was about, or cared. She was just a local who was happy to have picked up some quick cash for her troubles. “Yeah, you can go. But remember, you never met me.”
“Right, right.” She trotted back to her old Ford pickup, jumped in, revved the engine and sped away, unaware of how close she had come to death.
* * *
—
“Cole. Cole!”
The voice was like a hot skewer searing through his brain. “Jesus,” Cole groaned. He tried to raise his head, but the pain was too much, and he let it fall back to the cabin floor.
Bennett sat down in a large chair next to the unused bed and munched on an apple. “Looks like you tied one on last night after I left,” he said, through mouthfuls of the fruit.
“Yeah.” It wasn’t just his head that hurt. His stomach felt awful too.
Bennett tossed the apple core into a trash can beside the dresser and smiled. “Seriously, are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” Cole mumbled. “I’ve had too much to drink before, but this is crazy.” With a huge effort he made it to his knees and crawled onto the bed. “I’ve got this mineral taste in my mouth. It must have been bad beer or something.”
Bennett’s antennae were up immediately. “What happened after I left?”
“I met up with a girl.”
“What did she look like?”
Cole rubbed his eyes. “Long blond hair, tight clothes. I don’t know, I don’t really remember.” He pulled a pillow over his face. “Christ, I think I need to throw up.”
Cole was describing the woman with the red bandanna, Bennett realized. He rose from the chair and pulled Cole off the bed. “Come on, son.” He cased the room quickly, but he couldn’t tell if someone had rifled through Cole’s possessions.
“What the hell are you doing?” Cole tried to stay on the bed, but he couldn’t fight Bennett’s overpowering strength.
“You said it yourself. You need to throw up. The faster what went into your stomach is no longer there, the faster you’ll be feeling better. Come on.”
“No, please, Bennett. I hate to throw up. Just let me suffer.”
But Bennett ignored Cole’s pleas. He guided the younger man into the cabin’s tiny bathroom and pushed him down to his knees in front of the toilet. “What’s gonna get things stirring down there?” Bennett asked evilly. “What do we need to think of?”
“Huh?” Cole’s head felt as if it were going to split in half.
“Puking is as much mental as it is physical. What’s your least favorite food, son?”
“Don’t do this to me.”
“Liver?”
“No, please.”
“A couple of raw eggs? Maybe a little rotten chicken or a week-old roadkill carcass? Maybe you need to think of the last time you watched someone else get sick, and smelled that wonderful aroma.”
“Damn you, Bennett!” With that, Cole hunched over the bowl and the poison came pouring out.
10
As Cole stood on the stone walkway leading to the Andersons’ front door, wondering if coming here was a mistake, he saw that the modest two-bedroom house was in a sorry state of disrepair. He hadn’t noticed this the day he and Nicki had driven up from Minneapolis, in the flurry of reunion. But in the long-shadowed light of the autumn afternoon the decay was evident. The front step was cracked and crumbling, the shutters were beginning to rot from water damage, and paint was peeling from the wooden siding in small curling patches. Nicki’s father had labored on the Duluth docks for thirty years, loading taconite, wheat and lumber onto huge ships bound for ports around the world. It was a demanding job that unfortunately didn’t pay well, and he hadn’t been able to save a great deal of money over the years. Much of what he had saved had funded the start of Nicki’s modeling career—her portfolio, expensive clothes and Manhattan living costs—and the house had suffered as a result.
Cole kicked at a pebble on the walkway. Nicki was going to be so angry when he explained to her what had happened back in New York. The fact that, when he knew of the danger, he had just ordered her to remain at Emilio’s and hadn’t told her what was going on. The fact that Maria’s death might have been prevented if he had told her. He kicked another pebble, harder this time, and it skittered onto the brown grass. Why the hell hadn’t he said anything? Why had he held back?
“Cole!”
He glanced up at the sound of Nicki’s voice. She stood in the doorway dressed in a pair of jeans and a short sweater that didn’t completely cover her flat stomach. “You sure can make a sweater look sharp.”
“And you sure can make a woman feel good.” Nicki smiled as she moved down the front step and slipped her arms around him. “I missed you over the past few days.”
“I missed you too.” He locked his hands at the small of her back. She felt so good against him.
“Come on,” she whispered after a few moments. She reached for his wrist and led him toward the house. “Let’s go inside.”
Cole followed Nicki through the entrance hall to the living room, where she sat down on a floral-print couch that faced a dated Zenith console television. He hesitated for a moment in the living room doorway, feeling strangely guilty about being in the house alone with her.
“Come here, silly.” Nicki patted the cushion next to her. “Why are you standing over there like that?”
“No reason.” He glanced around. “Where are your parents?”
“In town doing some shopping. They won’t be back for a few hours.” A sly smile turned the corners of her mouth. “Why?”
“I just wondered.”
As Cole sat down, Nicki tucked her ankles beneath herself and rested her knees against his thigh. “You need a haircut,” she said, brushing his bangs from his eyes.
Cole noticed a faint trace of perfume as her wrist moved past his face. It smelled wonderful. “So how are you?” he asked.
“I’m okay.” She continued combing his hair. “Still sad,” she murmured after a short time. “I got close to Maria over the last six months, which is unusual for me. I’m usually such a loner.”
“I know.” He and Nicki were very much alike in that way.
“Other than you and my parents, I was closer to Maria than anyone else in the world,” Nicki continued. “She really kept my spirits up in New York when things weren’t looking good in the modeling world. She would tell me that I didn’t need to worry when I was receiving all
those rejection letters from the agencies. She’d tell me that I had what it took and that if I kept at it, sooner or later I’d catch on, and she turned out to be right. I owe her a lot, and I miss her.”
“Nicki, I—”
“And that’s enough of that,” Nicki said forcefully, interrupting Cole. “I don’t want to think about sad things anymore. I’ve spent enough time being sad. Now I want to be happy.” She kissed him on the cheek, her lips lingering too long for him to mistake the kiss as simply a friendly gesture. “Tell me about your trip to the Lassiter. Did you enjoy yourself?”
“Very much.” He smiled. “I learned a lot.”
A strange expression came to Nicki’s face. “What does that mean?”
Cole gazed into her eyes. “My father died.”
“Oh, God.” She put her arm around his neck and hugged him gently. “I’m so sorry, Cole.”
“Thanks.” He could feel her heart beating against his chest. “It’s okay, though.” He had come to grips with the fact that his father was gone.
“How did you find out about his death?” she asked, pulling back slightly.
“I met an old friend of Dad’s on the Lassiter. His name was Bennett Smith and he told me all about my father.”
“That’s kind of strange, isn’t it? That you found this man up on the Lassiter, I mean.”
The Legacy Page 12
