by Jan Coffey
“I can’t.”
“Okay. Then can I call you? Say Monday?”
“Don’t bother.”
“Why not?”
“Because I won’t be there.”
“I heard you were staying around for the summer, even for the school year.”
She started crossing the street toward the park. He kept pace with her.
“Oh, I know! You meant you won’t be there on Monday. How about Tuesday? I can call you after I get out of work.”
Heather whirled around to face him by the entrance to the park. “I won’t be there on Tuesday. Or Wednesday. Or Thursday. Or any day after that. And no, you can’t send me e-mail or contact me. Just drop it, Chris. Just chalk me up as permanently unavailable. Period!”
~~~~
Pulling into the jammed parking lot of the Bucks Equipment Rental, Mick realized why he never came down here at 8:00 a.m. on Saturday mornings. All the do-it-yourselfers were out in force. He had to go around the building and park in the back. As he got out of his truck, he saw a couple of Doug’s guys wrestling a hitch onto an old Honda. An open trailer behind the car already had a lawnmower and a shop vac, a floor sander, a hedge clippers and bunch of other hand power tools loaded into it.
“Hey, Mick.”
“Looks like somebody’s planning a relaxing weekend,” he joked, giving a cursory glance at the inside of the car. Cans of paint, brushes and pans and rollers, drop cloths, and other odd and ends were all piled up on the backseat.
One of the men stood up and jerked a thumb at the car. “Only if this old rice-burner will pull it all.”
“Haven’t you heard these cars are made in America now?”
“You don’t say!”
Mick shook his head at the pair and headed toward the back door. “Doug in?”
“Yep, and I heard he has a line on that backhoe you wanted for Monday.”
“About time.”
As he reached the shop door, he paused with his hand on the door knob and cast another glance at the car. From this angle he could see the license plate. Maryland.
The door moved against his hand, and he turned to face Léa coming out.
“I am not stalking you.”
“That’s what they all say.” Her smile reached her hazel eyes, and Mick felt a same strong pull of awareness between them. The tendrils of blond hair that had pulled loose from the ponytail were dancing around her face. The effect was to make her look much softer, younger.
“So where are we going next?”
Her smile turned to laughter.
“All I can say is—” Her voice dropped down low, “I’m glad you told me you are not hitting on me.”
She stepped past him. He let the door close.
“And if I were?”
Her gaze flitted away. As he watched the color rise prettily into her cheeks, Mick found himself admiring her soft skin. The way her chin curved so delicately upward to the full lower lip.
“Then I’d say I wouldn’t have much of a chance.” With a shy glance in his direction, she turned and walked across the lot toward her car.
Mick stood for a full minute, watching her and realizing that something had just happened to him.
The stirring that he was feeling a few inches below his belt was not unfamiliar, but that other something—that connecting spark that just leaped from one contact to the other—that was the stunner.
He continued to stare, admiring the perfect fit of her butt in the tight jean shorts, the long and shapely legs. He remembered how seeing that compact little body of hers in the wet T-shirt and shorts had affected him last night. He’d done his damnedest to hide it.
“You coming in, or should I come out?”
Mick turned to see the heavyset owner of Bucks Equipment Rental holding the door open. Doug looked over at Léa, who was now leaning over to help the two guys with the hitch.
“Nice ass!”
“Mind your manners.” Mick took a hold of the door and motioned the proprietor back into the store.
“What? Just because you’re single, you think you have a monopoly on every attractive woman in this town?”
“It has nothing to do with that. She is a customer, for chrissakes. How the hell do you expect to run a business when a woman can’t feel comfortable walking in here without getting harassed?”
Doug led the way to the small office behind the counter. “I wasn’t harassing her. Hell, I didn’t even help her. Gracie did. I just admired her…uh, physique—and not to her, but to you.” He sank down in his chair as Mick leaned against a dented file cabinet. “And quit giving me so much shit. There’s no law against looking.”
Gracie poked her head unceremoniously into the office. “Can you believe it? That was Léa Hardy.”
“Ted’s sister? No kidding?” Doug pushed to his feet and went to the window, pulling up the blinds. “What do you know about that!”
“She rented quite a few things.” Gracie looked from Doug to Mick. “Wanted to know how to go about renting a Dumpster for this weekend. I told her she was dreaming if she thought she could get one inside of a month.”
Gracie moved next to Doug and started peering out, too.
“She’s doing some fixing up of that house they own before putting it back on the market.”
“Dumpster, huh?” Doug said thoughtfully. “She’s gonna need more than a Dumpster for that place. Nobody from around here would want that house if she was giving it away. That place is just bad luck.”
“Are you two renting equipment or running a real estate office here?” Mick frowned fiercely at them. “What do you say, Doug? Are we going to get to my jobs, or what?”
With a flirtatious smile at Mick, Gracie left the office, but Doug kept looking out.
“Forget it.” Mick started for the door.
“Wait, wait. I have it right here.” Doug picked up a paper from the tray of the printer. “Back hoe on Monday. Two Dumpsters by 7:00 a.m. at these two addresses on Tuesday. Let’s see…I had this other list someone from your place faxed me yesterday. Where the hell is it?” He went behind his desk and started pawing through the paperwork, but his gaze kept drifting to the window.
Mick took the step to the window and pulled the cord. The blinds dropped with a snap.
“You know what you said earlier?” He planted his hands on Doug’s desk and leaned toward him. “Guess what? I am single. And yes, I may just be planning on monopolizing this one. Do you have any objections?”
Surprised, the heavyset man eyed Mick for a long moment. “I guess not.”
~~~~
The stack of old sneakers in the corner filled the teenager’s room with a certain unmistakable aroma.
The flip side of Chris’s organized and responsible behavior, his mother thought, was his inability to throw old shoes away. Patricia Webster left the door open and dropped the basket of folded laundry on her son’s bed. Pulling up the blinds, she opened the windows wide.
The fog had finally burned off outside. She took a deep breath of the morning air.
The phone rang next to the bed, but before she could reach it, she heard her husband answer it downstairs.
She took a pile of neatly folded clothes out of the basket and put it on the dresser next to the other pile that Chris had not yet put away. She also moved the half-dozen socks he’d left beside the computer on his desk and put them with the other piles. Patricia thought their son worked too hard. But her husband still kept pushing him.
Every Saturday, year-around, he worked behind the cash register and stocked shelves at the pharmacy downtown. In addition to that, twice a week during the summer months, he mowed lawns and trimmed hedges and did all kinds of outdoor work with a landscape company. And if that weren’t enough, he was now washing dishes at Hughes Grille whenever Brian’s regular guy didn’t show up—which was practically every other night.
She put the empty laundry basket on the floor and stared for a moment at the shelves of trophies and certificates and pict
ures lining the wall.
The phone rang again. This time Patricia didn’t even bother to reach for it, as she was sure her husband would take care of it. More and more, he seemed to be taking care of everything in their lives.
Patricia smiled as she started putting the clothes away for Chris. Every drawer was perfectly organized. Boxers at one end of one drawer, undershirts at the other end. Collared shirts separate from the T-shirts. Everyday T-shirts separate from the nicer ones. So much like his father. She couldn’t help but wonder if someday Chris might even decide to take after Allan and become a minister.
She opened the overflowing bottom drawer where Chris put his socks. So unlike him, she thought. Everything was a total mess here.
“Finally, you left something for your mother to do.” Patricia knelt down on the rug with the clean pile and got to work. She took out handfuls of the jumbled mess. As she pulled out more and more socks, she reached deeper into the drawer. Then, her fingers brushed against something at the back. It was a worn and partially folded envelope.
Patricia’s heart sank. She knew what it was before she even took it out, and her fingers were trembling when she reached for it. She turned the envelope over and opened it.
She stared at the half-dozen pictures that dropped onto the rug when she took out the handwritten letter.
“No! Please no!” Her body rocked back and forth. Her fingers shook so badly that the words were a blur. But she forced herself to read.
Dear Christopher,
Here is a little something to keep you smiling until next week.
I’ll be waiting.
Marilyn
“You bitch. You whore,” she cried in anguish, tearing the letter into shreds. “Why don’t you leave us alone?”
The photos might have looked innocent enough to someone who didn’t know better, or who hadn’t seen them before, or who had not heard explained in graphic detail what events followed the taking of them.
Marilyn standing behind Chris, her hand on his belt buckle. In the next, he was sitting at her kitchen table, and she was leaning over him. Her breasts were pouring out of her low-cut blouse beside his face. There was one by the car. Another one of Chris alone, stretched out on a bed, smiling.
“No! Dear Jesus, no!” Patricia sobbed. With tears coursing down her cheeks, she picked up the pictures one at a time, tearing them in half, and then in half again, and again, until they were shreds scattered around her knees.
“I was on the phone. I heard you cry out. I ran up to see…” Allan’s large frame filled the doorway. He tried to catch his breath. “What’s wrong, Patricia?”
The tears continued to fall. “She is not dead. Not dead, I tell you.” She raised a hand helplessly toward her husband. “Marilyn is not dead.”
He came to kneel beside his wife, gathering her slight frame against him. “Don’t talk rubbish, my love. Don’t! The woman is gone.”
Patricia shook her head. “An envelope. A letter.” She motioned to the shreds scattered everywhere on the floor. “They were the same pictures she promised to destroy. She promised me, Allan. We talked. I went back again. I begged her. She told me she wouldn’t put her filthy hands on our son again. And you…you told me the Lord takes care of things. You said you would make sure she never comes back.”
“She is not coming back, my love. Everything has been taken care of. She is never coming back. Believe me, she is never going to hurt us again.”
~~~~
Come to town and I’ll tell you who did it.
Léa was back in town; but she had to make sure everyone knew it. Making a stop at the busy newspaper shop on Main Street was a last minute thought. She pulled the car and the trailer into a double parking space and hurried across the street.
She picked up a paper and paid the heavy-set woman behind the cash register. “The last time I was in town, this was an ice cream parlor,” she commented.
“That must have been a long time ago.”
“I guess it was…well, twenty years ago. I should introduce myself.” She stretched a hand across the counter. “I’m Léa Hardy.”
The woman shook her hand with a pleasant smile, but Léa noticed a few heads in the shop turn in her direction. Mission accomplished.
A couple minutes later, Léa left the store and started for her car. As she strode across the travel lane, a gray Cadillac lurched away from the curb and accelerated rapidly. Hearing a sharp warning, she jumped for the curb as the car sped past.
“Jeez!” She saw Stephanie Slater driving the car. Her heart racing, Léa stood on the sidewalk, staring after her.
A bicyclist pulled up beside her. “That was close. Did you get the license plate?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“That lunatic almost ran you down!”
“I’m okay,” Léa whispered, with a grateful nod to the man. He was obviously an out-of-towner and didn’t know it was no crime in Stonybrook to run down a Hardy.
~~~~
“I’m sick of her. I’m tired of this marriage.”
“You can’t give up on her, Ted,” Stephanie pleaded.
“She’s left me no choice.” He crumpled the letter Marilyn had left him. “I’m not going to rise to her bait. No more. She can do whatever the hell she pleases. I don’t give a damn.”
“Please, Ted. Tell me what happened. When she called to ask me this afternoon to come and watch the girls, I got the impression that she was going out with you tonight. I thought maybe…maybe she was coming to her senses and realizing how difficult this whole situation has been on you and the girls.”
“That makes two of us.” He flung the crumpled paper into the fireplace. “She asks me to come over for dinner only to leave a note saying she is going out on a date, and doesn’t know when she’ll be back. Every time…she reels me in to arm’s reach so she can slap me.”
“But you know this is her way of doing things,” Stephanie reasoned. “She thinks by making you jealous, she’ll get more attention.”
“Well, she already knows that doesn’t work. This is not the first time she’s tried to pull this shit.” He paced restlessly across the room. “I can’t do it anymore. I’m not putting up with her games, with her lies, with the blatant screwing around. I’ll file for divorce. I was naïve once and thought she could change, but she was right about that one. She said I’d learn to hate her. And I have.”
Stephanie sank down on the chair. “This will be so hard on the girls. They’re so attached to you.”
“I’ll take them with me.”
“But she won’t let you. She knows how much they mean to you, so she’ll fight you for them.”
“Let her,” Ted said coldly. “But she won’t win. She’s negligent and incompetent as a mother. Christ, she’s incompetent as a human being. I’ll have my lawyers get a statement from everyone who knows her. I can play hardball, too, if that’s what it takes to get custody of my children. She’ll have no choice.”
Chapter 8
It had taken about half a dozen tries. Every time she started the lawnmower and began to tackle the hayfield she once called a lawn, the engine would cut out. Finally, Léa was convinced. She would have to raise the blades and cut the grass a couple of times. There was no quick way of doing anything, it seemed.
She was on one knee beside the mower when a police cruiser pulled to the curb. The officer was eyeing the car and trailer. He started talking through his radio.
Léa’s distrust of the police force in Stonybrook ran deep, but she forced herself to keep a clear head. She stood up and wiped a spot of grease from her hand onto the seat of her jeans. Walking toward the young man getting out of his patrol car, she noted that at least she’d never seen this one testify in court.
“Good morning, officer.”
“Is this your vehicle, ma’am?” He motioned to the car and trailer.
“I rented it this morning. Not even an hour ago. I needed it to bring these things back from the equipment rental place.” She gestur
ed toward the lawnmower behind her and the other things still in the trailer. “Is there a problem with it?”
He took a pen and his book of tickets out.
“Is this necessary?” Léa tried to keep her tone good-natured. “I mean, if there’s a problem…?”
The policeman looked at her through his mirrored sunglasses. Talking slowly, as if she were incapable of comprehension, he went on to explain her violations. She was parked heading in the wrong direction on a two way street. The nose of her car was marginally blocking the driveway of her neighbor to the left. The trailer wheel was approximately twelve and a half inches from the curb. There was a minute crack in the red plastic of the trailer’s left brake light.
“Look, I’m sorry I pulled in like this. I had every intention of parking in the driveway, but I thought I’d unload the lawnmower first and…and…” She looked away, trying to control her frustration. “Would you give me this ticket if I told you my name was Liz Smith, and I really lived on the next street over?”
“Yes, Ms. Hardy.”
Sure. They knew who she was. They had already decided to give her a hard time. Léa couldn’t help but wonder if the building inspector and the fire marshal would be stopping by next. She held out her hand for the ticket.
“Have a nice day, officer.”
She took her keys off the front porch and went to move the trailer. The policeman sat in his cruiser, watching her as she got into the car. Obviously, intimidation was going to be part of the approach.
It would be easy enough to go around the block and park on the right side of the street or even pull into the driveway. But they’d probably stop her for something else like the trailer’s temperamental brake light the rental place had warned her about. Or they might just give her a noise ordinance ticket for squeaky brakes. God only knows what they’d think up.
