by Nancy Rue
The crowd gasped as one, but Sully knew he’d basically stolen the thing. So did his rivals, who saluted with their paddles and gazed at him in undisguised envy.
He sat through the frenzied bidding on a few china cabinets and antique tables, just to observe the bizarre array of behaviors, but he got up to leave at the break and headed for Paddle Girl. A male version of the Estes women, minus the dyed-blonde, was talking to her, his own wavy gray hair grown thin with his seventies. The eyes and the unmoving expression were definitely from the same gene pool. He stood straight and solid, though gravity had been less kind to him. His conversation with the girl appeared to be intense, but Sully worked his way toward them anyway. He wasn’t sure exactly how he was going to find out if this was Wyatt Estes, or what he’d say after that. That kind of thing usually worked itself out.
The discussion was clearly over for Paddle Girl by the time Sully got within two layers of people. The gentleman continued to speak near her face, but she directed her eyes elsewhere and didn’t even pretend to be listening. Sully liked this girl.
As he elbowed past the line at the concession stand, she kept up her mindless scanning of the crowd until her eyes lit on him. He held up his paddle.
“You done?” she called to him. She said, “Excuse me” to the man and cut off three people to get away from him. The old guy watched her as dispassionately as she’d left him.
“Looks like you owe me,” Sully said as he handed her his paddle.
“Where do you get that?”
Up close, Sully caught an aura of gold in her eyes. The attitude couldn’t hide the fact that she was nearly beautiful.
“I got you away from the old codger.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not going to get you far.”
“I don’t want to go far,” Sully said. “Can you show me who to talk to about picking up my car?”
“Follow me.”
She led him along a row of now empty chairs and out a slit in the tent no one else seemed to be aware of. Sully suspected she knew all of life’s shortcuts.
He waited until they were crossing the yard to say, “So, who was the old guy anyway? I think I’ve seen him before.”
“You have if you live around here,” she said.
“I don’t.”
“He owns something on every block in South Kitsap County.” She looked unimpressed.
“Is he an Estes?” Sully said.
“Ya think? That’s Wyatt. It’s his aunt, by marriage, who died. He’s here to make sure we women don’t screw up her estate.”
“Are you women likely to do that?”
“How hard is it to dump the money in a bag and hand it to him?”
The girl stopped in front of the Impala and eyed the tireless wheels. “You weren’t thinking of driving this out of here, were you? Okay—see the blonde woman over there?”
Sully tried not to snicker. “They’re all blonde.”
“Cute. She’s the one wearing the leather jacket—”
“Got it.”
“She’ll take your check or whatever.”
“Thanks,” Sully said. He smiled at her. She hadn’t told him anything useful, not that he knew what he was looking for anyway.
He expected her to go back to her pile of paddles, but she folded her arms and looked at the Impala again.
“Seriously,” she said, “what are you going to do with that thing? It’s been sitting in Gramma’s garage for, like, thirty years.”
“I’m going to restore her to her former beauty. Do you think Gramma would approve?”
“Are you kidding? She spent like a hundred thousand dollars trying to do that to herself.”
So he had heard right. Ellen Estes was her grandmother, which made Wyatt Estes her—
He was still trying to sort that out when the girl said, “So if you don’t live here, what are you going to do, have it towed to wherever?”
“I’m going to see if I can find garage space to rent,” he said.
“Good luck with that.”
“Why?”
“You won’t find anything like that in this neighborhood.”
“Where would I look?”
She fiddled with her earring, the first behavior he’d seen in her that didn’t seem conscious.
“I’d say Callow,” she said. “Definitely Callow. They have a bunch of empty buildings there—I don’t know if any of them are garages.”
“Thanks for the tip.”
“No problem. And can I just say—it is so refreshing to talk to a guy who isn’t hitting on me.”
Sully laughed out loud. “I’m twice your age.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ve had seventy-year-olds ask me to lunch.” She looked at him straight on. “I hate being hit on.”
Sully was convinced.
Too bad he couldn’t thank her, Sully thought the next day. She’d been right about Callow. Not only was there garage space for rent there, with no one else leasing the other two bays, but a camping trailer out back, which at first pass seemed livable, came with it. He was tired of motels, and this had—character. He’d be working on the Impala during the day anyway, when he wasn’t doing legwork for Ethan Kaye.
There was no way he couldn’t. Not after he told Ethan he’d bought the car and that he’d be staying in town for a while. Not after he heard the unspoken need in Ethan’s voice, the need for someone to walk him through this, help him find out what he was dealing with.
“Come over and see her when she arrives,” Sully said about the Impala. “And we can talk strategy.”
“Strategy,” Ethan said.
“For finding out what old man Estes and the Saint Bernard are up to, before they strike again. Uncle Wyatt is a control freak, I found out that much. He’s not gon’ let this die.”
Ethan chuckled into the phone. Sully knew he’d get him with the Tennessee accent.
“When’s she coming?” Ethan said.
“They’re delivering her first thing tomorrow.”
“You two bond for a while,” Ethan said, voice dry. “I’ll stop by after I leave the office.”
“Pick up some sandwiches on your way over,” Sully said.
“By all means. Please don’t cook.”
The Impala looked even better being lowered from the tow truck than she had amid the riffraff of Edith Allen Estes’s golf carts and patio furniture. It was as if she knew she was about to be transformed back into the stunner she once was. Sully was sure he heard a longsuffering sigh when the driver set her down on the blocks Sully had carefully placed for her.
“We’ll get you new shoes, babe,” he told her. “Soon as you’re well enough to stand up.”
“This thing’s in great shape for as old as it is,” the tow truck guy said. He resituated the chew tucked in his cheek. “Some of the electrical still works.”
“No way,” Sully said.
“Dude, check this out. Go stand behind it.”
Sully moved behind her—this person obviously had no understanding of what he was in the presence of—while the guy slid into the front seat. The Impala’s trio of brake lights on each side shuddered to life, blinking beneath the film of dust on her red covers.
“Can you believe that?” the driver shouted back.
The lights flashed. Six red taillights. Again. Yet again.
Sully blinked, opened his mouth to tell him to stop. Couldn’t.
They flashed again—in alarm—a panicked pounding of red through the dark.
“Stop! No—stop—something’s wrong!”
The lights went out but the screaming went on and the darkness swallowed the rest of her up. Sully hurled himself forward.
“Okay—dude—I stopped.”
Sully heard the last of his own shouts and stared down at his hands clenching the back bumper. He jerked his chin up. The tow truck driver stood at the Impala’s hip, face whitening between scruffy tufts of beard. The taillights were out, the Impala was still, and Sully shook.
“Did that
freak you out?” the guy said.
Sully forced his hands into his pockets. “Yeah, man, who knew she’d still have it in her?”
“Yeah. Seriously.”
The driver eyed Sully and took a step backward. Sully attempted a grin he knew didn’t cover the trembling in his lips.
“Hate to see what I’m going to do when I get her running,” Sully said. “So—what do I owe you?”
The guy took the money and ran, though he did pause as he climbed into his truck and said, “I’ve seen guys get into these old cars before, but, dude, you take it to a whole new level.”
Sully made himself go back to her tail. He fingered the lights, plowing through the greasy dust until the red glass shone clearer. She was this car, not that one. She was in this place, at this time, and that was where he was.
He’d told patients that—he’d written about it—he’d soothed the beast of the past in radio listeners who sobbed to him over the phone. He wondered now if they believed it any more than he did.
Sully grabbed a rag and went to work on the taillights again. He had to believe it, because it was true. The flashback was evidence that he wasn’t ready to go back to Colorado, to work. Not a problem. He needed to focus on the now. On bringing an old passion back to life. On repaying a debt to a friend. Maybe even on bringing somebody else out of a dark place, like the one he’d been in. That was, after all, why he was in business.
Sully stood up, rag still in hand, and looked at the grungy office beyond the third bay. The landlord said he could use that too. Cleaned out, furnished with a couple yard sale chairs, it could make a decent place to meet with this Dr. Costanas.
Ethan showed up around six with Reuben sandwiches. Sully found two metal folding chairs and set them on opposite sides of an upended box of the quarts of oil that were soon going to fill the Impala like a youth serum.
Ethan set the bag on the makeshift table and made the appropriate appreciative sounds over the car.
“As long as I have this place,” Sully said as he unwrapped his sandwich, “you might as well bring your vehicle in for a tune-up.”
“I’ll be buying a new one before you get done with that—”
“Watch it now. She’s sensitive.”
Ethan smiled with his eyes as he chewed.
“So let’s talk about the photographs,” Sully said. “Did you bring them with?”
Ethan nodded, mouth in a grim line.
“How do you think Estes and the Saint Bernard got them?”
Ethan dug into the bag and produced a stack of napkins. “Estes said somebody gave them to him. He wouldn’t say who, but I gather it was right after they were taken. He said whoever it was brought them late at night.”
“I bet that put him in a good mood.” Sully rescued a glob of sauerkraut before it dropped onto the table. “He looks like an old curmudgeon.”
“He’s still sharp. Goes to the office every day, still micromanages his conglomerate.”
“He’s playing this pretty shrewdly.”
“We’re not going to get any names out of him, if that’s what you mean.”
“What about the Saint—”
“St. Clair.” Ethan’s eyes crinkled as he wiped his mouth. “Kevin may be narrow-minded, but he’s honest to a fault. If he says he doesn’t know where the pictures came from, he doesn’t.”
“So Estes—and the photographer—are the only ones who know.” Sully put his sandwich down on the wrapper and rubbed his hands together. “We had a patient—recently, in fact—whose wife paid a detective to follow him and take pictures of what he was doing.”
“I thought that only happened on TV,” Ethan said.
“This was for real.”
“So what was the guy doing?”
“Blowing their life savings on sports bets. But the point is, what if that’s what’s going on here?”
Ethan grunted. “I would bet my life savings Rich Costanas did not hire a PI to follow his wife. In the first place, according to Demi, the photographer was already there when she got there, hiding on the boat.”
“What if Estes hired him?”
“Why would he? Nobody knew what was going on between Archer and Demi.”
“You sure about that?”
Ethan broke off a strand of cheese that stretched from the wrapper. “Look, Wyatt Estes has strong ideas about how things should be done, and he definitely uses his power to get his way. That makes him an opportunist, not a stalker. I firmly believe the pictures just fell into his lap, and he saw a perfect opportunity to take me down.”
“So you think he was disappointed when your professor resigned instead of you?”
“Kevin St. Clair was. I think Wyatt Estes genuinely wants CCC to be an upstanding, morally pure educational institution, whatever that takes.”
“That’s what you want too,” Sully said.
“We have different ideas about how that should be accomplished.”
“And Kevin St. Clair?”
“He wants that—and more.”
“Your job.”
“Only because he thinks he can do it better.” Ethan shook his head. “Their hearts are in the right place, which is why I don’t think either one of them had anything to do with getting the pictures taken.”
Sully nodded at the folder leaning against Ethan’s chair. “Is that them?”
He cleared the box-table, and Ethan pulled out a thin pile of photographs and set them on it. Sully looked at the first one and felt his eyes widen.
“Pretty incriminating.”
The man in the picture was largely hidden by the woman, his face buried in her bare neck. Sully could only see her naked shoulder and short blonde hair falling back as she welcomed him. She wasn’t an Estes blonde. Hers was as real as everything else seemed to be.
Ethan slid the photo away, revealing a second. The woman now looked straight at Sully, as if he’d startled her. Her eyes were brown and soft and sad, even in the shock of the moment. Sully still couldn’t see the man’s face; she kept it hidden against her with her hands combed into his hair. He wouldn’t have looked at him anyway. The woman held him with her pain.
“Do I need to look at any more?”
Ethan shook his head and slid them back into the folder.
Sully sat, hands folded on top of the box. “I don’t think there was any force involved.”
Ethan let out a long, slow sigh. “No, I never thought that.”
“Looks like—I mean, what can you tell from a picture—but I’m betting all her struggling was on the inside.” Sully shrugged. “Give her my number. Have her give me a call.”
Ethan churned slightly in the chair. “I will, as soon as I can convince her she needs you.”
Sully envisioned the picture again and leaned forward. “Don’t let her wait too long, Ethan,” he said. “She doesn’t have that kind of time.”
CHAPTER TEN
Daylight basement apartment.
I hadn’t heard that term in ages. Of course, how long had it been since I’d apartment hunted?
The number of years was depressing. So was the hotel room. So was my savings account.
The one piece of advice I’d taken from my mother when I got married was to always have a little money of my own in a separate account. When she died from colon cancer in 1998, I put most of the money I inherited from the proceeds of her house and savings in there, in her honor. I felt good about that, since in life she made it so hard to honor her.
But “a little money” was an apt description now. I’d used the bulk of it to buy Rich’s boat—my last big effort to bring him out of his funk —and in the preceding week I’d chiseled away a chunk of the rest of it, paying for the hotel room I couldn’t sleep in, buying meals I didn’t eat.
Rich hadn’t called, on his own or in response to the messages I left him. I didn’t leave any at the fire station. Knowing Rich, he hadn’t told anyone there that we were separated, and in my current condition, my voice alone would give it away.
I went back to the classifieds, which I’d spread out on the bed. It would actually be cheaper in the long run for me to get a studio apartment. How long could the long run last, anyway? Most of the time I wasn’t sure I could take it another minute. I was paralyzed at every knock on the door for fear it was a sheriff’s deputy serving me with divorce papers. Rich’s silence was excruciating, but it was better than a final decision. And as long as I had to hang in limbo, I might as well do it economically.
If my calculations were correct, I could go maybe two months before I had to get a job. I fought down panic. It wouldn’t be two months—or even one—before Rich would take me back and we would work things out. No point thinking about work yet. If I did, I would surely go right over the edge I was teetering on.
DAYLIGHT BASEMENT APARTMENT. ONE BEDROOM. OVER-LOOKING PUGET SOUND. $700 A MONTH, UTILITIES INCLUDED. PORT ORCHARD.
I circled the phone number, but I couldn’t call yet. Maybe I should try Rich again, let him know what I planned. He wouldn’t let me take this step. It was too permanent, too far from anything we’d ever thought of.
But then, so was my having an affair.
I sank down into the pillows and let the tears run out of the corners of my eyes.
“I’ve Got Tears In My Ears (From Lyin’ On My Back In My Bed While I CryOver You).”
Rich and I had howled over that song in reruns of Hee-Haw, watched when we were too poor to go to the movies and were so happy to stay home in front of a fuzzy fifteen-inch screen. When Rich tried to match the country twang in dauntless Brooklynese, I howled even louder.
We did laugh together back then. I hadn’t laughed since two weeks ago when I’d met Zach’s eyes in mirth at a faculty meeting and stowed it away for the precious time when we would be able to share it out loud—as out loud as our relationship could ever be.
How could I have loved that so much when I had to sneak and lie to have it? How could I be so sorry for it now—and yet miss it?
I sat up sharply. I didn’t have answers. I could hardly stand the questions. I would call the number and ask about the apartment. I would put one foot in front of the other—
I reached for the classifieds, but they slid off the end of the bed, revealing the editorial page beneath them. A heading read: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED AT COVENANT CHRISTIAN?
