All Shook Up

by Susan Andersen

  “Hell, no; that’s all taken care of.”

  Then it was a woman. “You’ve stepped in some kind of shit—I can hear it in your voice. You might as well tell me what it is.”

  “Ain’t nothing to tell. Jesus, what’s your problem, Carver? A guy shows a little concern when his buddy disappears, and suddenly he’s up to something? What kind of shit is that?”

  “You know I’m gonna find out, so why don’t you just save us both the time and trouble and—”

  “Where the fuck are you, Carver?”

  “Hot on the track of whatever it is you’re trying to hide,” J.D. snapped back, responding to the tone. He banged the receiver into its hook and stalked back to his table.

  Shit. He should have listened to his instincts—calling Butch was a big mistake. He’d hoped once he talked to him the simmering resentment that had filled him since last week would disappear, but he was even more pissed than he’d been before.

  Butch had his flaws. Mostly they were minor, but he had one that was a killer: he wasn’t good at accepting responsibility for his own actions. Nothing was ever his fault.

  It had been that way as long as J.D. could remember, but usually it was over little stuff: a reprimand at work, a fender bender or speeding ticket, an argument with his wife. Last Tuesday, though, Butch’s inability to own up to his mistakes had led to his calling in J.D.’s marker. Reliving it one more time merely took yet another layer of shine off their former friendship, but like a tongue to a broken tooth, J.D. just couldn’t leave it alone.

  Butch opened the door to his apartment, and J.D. peered past him into the living room. “Gina is working late tonight, right?”

  His friend grinned, his handsome face creasing in amusement. “Why is everyone always so anxious to avoid Gina? So she gets a little cranky. Big deal.”

  J.D. snorted. “Saying Gina is a little cranky is like saying pit bulls are a little tenacious. That woman is a hundred and twenty pounds of pure mean, and you know it.”

  “A hundred and fifteen. You don’t even wanna let her catch you adding weight on her.” He nodded at the sack in J.D.’s hands. “That beer?”

  J.D. reached in and pulled a bottle out of the six-pack, then handed the bag over. He dropped down on the couch while Butch continued into the kitchen. Popping off the top, he took a pull and said, “You know, I’ve never quite understood why you married her. You two are so different.”

  The refrigerator door slammed shut. “Hey, what can I tell you? It’s a love match.”

  J.D. snorted. “More like a fight to the death, if you ask me. I hope to hell flirting was all you were doing with Kittie Lockrill at The Tug the other night, because if Gina ever catches you screwing around on her, you’re a dead man.”

  Butch shrugged and turned on the television set. They propped their feet up on the coffee table and settled in to watch the Mariners game.

  J.D. attended to it with only half his attention. The rest was tied up trying to think of a way to tell Butch about his unexpected windfall from Edwina. Ordinarily he would have said something immediately, but he’d learned of the inheritance during Lankovich’s trial, when he’d been a very unpopular man in their neighborhood. And since Butch was out of work because of J.D.’s actions, neither bragging about his sudden good fortune nor trying to explain why he felt conflicted about it seemed like a smart idea.

  He was mulling over ways to bring it up, and brooding over Robbie Lankovich still dogging his footsteps, making all those stupid-ass threats for turning in his father, when a knock sounded on the door. Butch backed toward it without taking his gaze off the screen. As he pulled the door open, his attention was on Alex Rodriguez coming up to bat, but J.D. straightened at the sight of the two visitors.

  He’d spent too many years on the streets not to recognize a cop when he saw one. And though he hadn’t broken any laws since he was a kid, he still had a knee-jerk distrust of them.

  “Yeah?” Butch demanded disinterestedly, then groaned as A-Rod’s first hit flew into the foul zone.

  “Butch Dickson?”

  “Yeah, who wants to know?” He turned and looked at them for the first time. “Oh, shit. Cops. Whaddya want?”

  They stepped inside without waiting to be invited. “We need to know where you were this afternoon, Butchie boy,” said the older one. “At four o’clock, when someone answering to your description robbed the One Stop over on Ninth.”

  “Hey, go hassle somebody else. Do I look stupid to you? If I was going to rob a convenience store, I sure as hell wouldn’t pick one in my own neighborhood.” Arms stiff and his hands in his jeans pockets, Butch hunched his shoulders. “Besides, I cleaned up my act. I haven’t been in trouble for years now.”

  The younger detective looked around the apartment, and J.D. looked around himself, trying to see it as a stranger might. One thing he’d give Gina credit for, she’d fixed the place up nice.

  The cop clearly agreed. “Pretty spiffy digs for someone with no visible means of support,” he said.

  Butch turned on him. “Fuck you. My wife works full-time, and I had a good job until my employer went belly-up month before last. I’ve been collecting unemployment while I look for a new job.”

  “Is that what you were doing at four this afternoon?” the older cop demanded. “Collecting unemployment?”

  Butch gave him a flat-eyed stare. “This is a trick question, right?”

  “Where were you at four, Dickson?”

  “Right here,” Butch shot back. He jerked a thumb at J.D. “With him.”

  J.D. didn’t so much as blink an eye, but everything inside him stilled. What the hell was this? He hadn’t shown up until five. Oh, Christ, what had Butch gotten himself into?

  Then he pulled himself up short. Since when did he let the cops make him jump to a hasty conclusion? Maybe Butch wasn’t the most accountable guy in the world, but he had stayed out of trouble since J.D. had gotten him the job at Lankovich’s six years ago. And like he’d told the cops, he wasn’t stupid enough to knock over a store he used on occasion. He was probably just trying to save himself the hassle and expense of having to prove his innocence through the legal system.

  In any case, the look Butch turned on him reminded J.D. that he owed him. So when the cops demanded to know if that was a fact, that he and Butch had been together during the stated time, he shrugged and said, “Yeah.” But anger and a sense of betrayal gnawed at his gut with dirty little rat teeth.

  “Thanks, buddy.” Butch danced back into the living room after he’d slammed the door behind the cops’ departing backs. He grinned as if he and J.D. had pulled off the scam of the century, then made a face when he noticed that J.D. didn’t share his jubilation. Shrugging, he went to get himself another bottle of beer out of the fridge. “You want one?” he called.

  “No.”

  Butch flopped on the couch a moment later and raised his beer in a salute. “Here’s to outfoxing the pigs.”

  J.D. just looked at him.

  “What?” Butch demanded in exasperation. “C’mon! You pissed that I called in your marker? You owed me, bud.”

  And it bothered J.D. more than he could say that his friend had been keeping score all these years, after all. He felt like the greenest sort of rube for believing Butch was better than that. “Yeah,” he said shortly, contemplating the last inch of beer in his bottle. Then he looked Butch in the eye. “We’re square now, though.”

  J.D. thought about that now as he eyed the noisy group who’d just entered the Eagle’s Nest and were busily admiring the spectacular view. He remembered the sinking feeling he’d gotten in his gut at the giveaway signals that Butch was hiding something. J.D. hadn’t demanded to know if Butch had robbed the store; he really hadn’t wanted to know.

  For then he’d have had to do something about it—and he hadn’t known how the hell to reconcile doing the right thing with a gut-deep conviction that he was honor-bound to repay the old debt.

  All bets were off, though, whe
n late that night he’d heard on the news that a store clerk had been shot during the robbery and was in critical condition at Highline Hospital.

  He’d tracked his friend down the next day and demanded to know what the hell he’d been up to. And that was when Butch had confessed that he’d been with Kittie Lockrill that afternoon. “But, J.D.,” he’d said plaintively, “how the fuck was I supposed to tell that to the cops? You know damn well it’d get back to Gina—and if she finds out, I can kiss my dick good-bye. Compared to her, Lorena Bobbitt is filled with the Christian spirit of forgiveness.”

  J.D. had been frankly relieved. In the twelve hours between learning that someone had been injured and talking to Butch, he’d wondered if his friend could have done it. He hadn’t truly been able to envision it, because Butch had never been the violent type, but he was impulsive—and that sometimes led him to rash acts. It was good to know that Butch was only stepping out with some hot-pants Kewpie doll, stupid as that was.

  Being all too familiar with his friend’s facility for lying, however, he’d gone to see Kittie to verify Butch’s story. When it checked out, J.D. had packed up and left town with a clear conscience.

  He’d kept to himself the news of his inheritance and the fact that he was leaving Seattle to claim it. It was probably dog-in-the-mangerish to blame Butch for collecting on the debt, but his doing so had severed a crucial tie between them. J.D. hadn’t known him half as well as he’d thought he had.

  So there just hadn’t seemed to be all that much left for him in Seattle.

  J.D. packed up the ledgers and headed for his car. He needed to move, and while driving down the mountain to the town of Star Lake, he did his best to put the past out of his mind. He bought some provisions at a grocery store called the Pack ’n’ Save, then stopped at the lumberyard and picked up material to repair the cabin roof.

  He drove back up the mountain and found the road that led behind the cabins. Minutes later he’d parked the Mustang behind his new home and transferred the contents of the car into it.

  Shortly after seven, the silence drove him out again. He was accustomed to the sounds of neighbors and traffic, airplanes and sirens. All this peace and quiet was making him twitch.

  It sure smelled good up here, though. The aroma of meat roasting on a barbecue wafted from one of the other cabins, and heading down the path toward the dock Dru had mentioned, he breathed in the verdant, green scents of the forest. He appreciated the lack of carbon monoxide fumes that painted the city air with such heavy-handed brush strokes this time of year.

  It was quiet in the woods surrounding the lake. The placement of each cabin had been planned for maximum privacy, and if anyone occupied the one he passed, he didn’t see them. No voices carried on the wind and no kids pounded along the trails that wound in and out of the trees edging the lake. He felt as if he had the entire area to himself.

  He stopped at a long, narrow dock that jutted out from shore. Rowboats were tied up along one side of it and two jet boats were moored on the other. Hands in his pockets, he walked to the end, enjoying the creak of wood and the dock’s slight sway beneath his feet. The boats on either side bobbed gently with the movement.

  Out on the lake, at an angle to the dock, was a float with an elevated lifeguard chair and a high-and-low diving tower. It rocked slightly on the mirror-smooth lake, and J.D. caught a glimpse of two swimmers who had clearly just abandoned it. When he turned to follow the direction of their progress, he saw the tip of another dock just beyond a forested jut of land. That was probably the dock the kids used to swim to and from the float, since the one he stood on had the boats. It didn’t seem prudent to mix swimmers with boaters.

  Though he had no burning desire to talk to vacationers, J.D. stepped off the marina to check out the other dock. If he was going to be part of this resort, he needed to know how everything worked.

  Rounding the curve of land a minute later, he stepped onto the second dock, then stopped dead.

  For standing at the end of the dock, with her back to him as she bent over to dry her legs with a thick towel, and her head raised to watch her son swim the last few yards to the dock, was Dru Lawrence.

  4

  She wore a faded black tank suit with red piping. Except for its high-cut legs and racer-back, it wasn’t at all distinctive. The material had certainly seen better days, but when he looked at the curve of her nice round butt, it wasn’t the snags roughening the fabric that held his attention. His fingers flexed and his palms itched like a bad case of nettle poisoning. Damn, he didn’t understand this attraction at all. Rubbing his hands down the thighs of his jeans, he cleared his throat.

  She jumped slightly and whirled to face him. “You startled me!”

  Lake water ran in rivulets from her soaked braid; her nipples, hard from the cooling evening air, poked against the wet cloth that stretched over the fullness of her breasts; and J.D. really wished he’d slipped away while he’d had the chance.

  That put his back up. Big deal, so she had a nice set. He was a red-blooded guy; it was his job to notice these things. All it meant was that he should have gotten himself laid before he left town—because he wasn’t about to mess up this opportunity over a few stray hormones. And he sure as hell wasn’t cozying up to any woman without knowing what the hell she and her family were up to.

  As if she’s interested in cozying up to you, anyhow. J.D. nearly snorted. He doubted a woman could be more oblivious. She gave him roughly five seconds’ attention for every fifty-five devoted to watching Tate’s progress toward the dock.

  Then a thought hit him like a sledgehammer between the eyes. “So where’s Mr. Lawrence?” he demanded. Funny that it had never occurred to him she might be married. Considering she had a kid and all, that was pretty dumb.

  “Uncle Ben?”

  “Your husband, sweetheart.”

  “Oh. Him.” Her laugh was short and surprisingly cynical for someone he’d pegged as a little Suzie Homemaker. She looked him dead in the eye. “Doesn’t exist—sweetheart.”

  Good.

  Shit. What was he—crazy? He had no business feeling that little surge of satisfaction. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Gone with the wind, huh?”

  “So long ago, his memory is dust.” She tilted her head to one side and suctioned her palm against her ear until a little trickle of water ran out. “There, I can hear again.” Then she shrugged. “Which, considering the charm of your conversation so far, may or may not be a good thing. Do you actually have a purpose for being here, or are you just out skulking around?”

  “I don’t skulk, honey; I’m familiarizing myself with the area. I take it this is the dock the guests use to swim out to the float?”

  “No, actually, that’s the one with the boats. Aunt Sophie and Uncle Ben live up there.” She indicated a log house that he hadn’t even noticed atop a small bluff. “This is the family dock.” She raised an eyebrow at him. “You obviously missed the ‘Private’ sign.”

  Yeah, he’d been too busy admiring her butt. Jerking his attention back to the matter at hand, he said with some disgust, “You let kids swim from the same dock where you’ve got boats taking off?”

  She’d turned back to keep an eye on Tate as he swam the last few feet to the dock, and J.D. couldn’t prevent himself from checking her out one last time. His gaze had cruised midway down the long length of her legs when she shot him an annoyed glance over her shoulder and said, “You know, for someone who’s not even been here a full day, you sure seem to have a lot of problems with the way we run our business. It’s a wonder we ever managed to limp along without you.”

  He took a step forward. “Excuse the hell outta me. It doesn’t take a mental wizard to know that jet boats and swimmers are a tragedy waiting to happen.”

  “Which is exactly why every day, from seven in the morning until seven at night, the swimming area is blocked off with ropes and fluorescent floats, from the dock to the nearest corner of the raft, and from the raft’s other c
orner to that tree sticking out over the water. The morning lifeguard strings it out and the afternoon lifeguard brings it back in. Had you looked a little more closely, you would have seen that the ropes and floats are stored in the rowboat at the end of the dock.” Ignoring him, she leaned down to extend a hand to her son. “Hey, Tate! I think you broke your record.”

  J.D. watched as the kid clambered up on the dock and shook off like a wet dog, flashing his big grin. “I think so, too. Hi, Mr. Carver.”

  “J.D.,” he corrected him.

  The kid’s grin did the impossible and grew even brighter. “Hey, J.D. You gonna go swimming? Where’s your suit—you got it on under your jeans? Or are you plannin’ to skinny-dip?”

  “You’re such a Nosey Parker!” The smile Dru bestowed on her son nearly matched his for sheer wattage. Wrapping a big towel around Tate’s shoulders, she curved herself against his back and hugged him to her front. “You writing a book or something?”

  “Yeah, kiss my bum, and we’ll call it a love story!” Tate flashed her a smile both cheeky and wary over his shoulder, clearly pleased with his own daring but unsure how it would be received.

  Dru gave his head a tough noogie. “Tate Lawrence! Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” Then she laughed, spun him around, and planted a swift kiss on his lips.

  “Mom!” He swiped the kiss away. “Jeez, not in front of J.D.!”

  “Pffft. J.D.’s been kissed by his mother. C’mon, gimme a smooch. Give in to the dark side, Luke.”

  Tate laughed and skipped away. “No way! And I’m not Luke Skywalker, Mom; I’m Anakin.”

  “Oh, well, pardon me. I lost my head there for a moment.”

  J.D. couldn’t remember his mother ever horsing around with him, and he could count on one hand the number of kisses she’d bestowed on him. Watching Dru and her kid, he felt his gut knot up. He had a sudden urge to get the hell out of there.

  The dock creaked just as he turned to go and he looked up to see Ben approaching. The older man smiled easily. “Hey,” he said. “You all come on up to the house. Soph’s made crème brûlée, and you know what will happen if she has to eat it all by herself.”