Dark Deeds: An Asher Blaine Mystery (Asher Blaine Mysteries Book 2)

by Alice Sabo

  “Mr. Blaine?”

  Asher surfaced from his ruminating at the sound of concern in Jo’s voice. He twisted to face her in the back seat. “Huh?”

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  He gave her a genuine smile. “I’m fine, sweetie. I was thinking about all the work I need to do.”

  “Oh.” She eyed him carefully. “We’re here.”

  Asher realized they were parked in front of his cottage. “That was quick.”

  “You want me to cook you some dinner?” Jeff asked hopefully.

  “No, actually I’m in the mood for some Chinese.” Asher noted the air of disappointment from both of them. He dug in his pocket for some cash. “You can pick it out. No octopus or anything too weird. Spicy is good. Get stuff for yourselves, too.” He handed Jeff the money.

  “You got it!” The broad smiles were back.

  Asher gathered the chainmail up in his arms before heaving himself out of the car. He stood there with it, watching the car bump down the rutted driveway. When he was Jeff’s age, he was already making movies and behaving badly. He could barely remember high school. Tonight, when he called Ellie, he wanted to talk to her about parenting.

  “Blaine!”

  Asher turned expecting to see Imre. A burly, angry man in jeans and a sweat-stained T-shirt stomped across the driveway toward him. That wasn’t Imre. It wasn’t anyone he knew. But his earlier thought about old coworkers with grudges came flying back. He knew about angry people. Asher shifted the heavy mail, preparing for some sort of encounter. At the least, he could throw the mail at the guy. It was heavy enough to do damage.

  “That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” Asher said in his flightiest voice, hoping to defuse the situation.

  “What the hell are you playing at?” The man was red-faced and breathing hard.

  Asher had learned that facing anger with anger escalated confrontations into disasters. Calm people could control irate ones. It had been a hard lesson to learn, and he had the scars to prove it. Stillness could be so slippery and confusing to a furious opponent that you could sidestep the violence. He showed the man a blank, docile face. “What?”

  “I’ve seen you hanging out with Jeff and Jo. You’re old enough to be their father. You leave them alone. I’ll get the sheriff on you if I hear about you being around them again.”

  “And who are you?” But he already had an inkling. Up at the stables, Ed had said something about a strong family resemblance. Asher could see the hints of Jeff in the man’s broad face.

  “I’m their uncle.”

  There was an uneasiness behind the bluster. So this was Erwin, the man Jeff suspecting of stealing his inheritance. Why did the uncle suddenly intervene? Something wasn’t quite right. Asher needed a little more information. He tossed out a random question. “Have you talked to Alma?”

  “Alma?” There was a fleeting glimpse of fear on Erwin’s face, quickly covered with an uptick in emotion. “You stay away from my family!” Erwin came closer, practically frothing with outrage.

  Asher guessed that Erwin was accustomed to using his size to intimidate people, but when he crowded Asher, he was the one at the disadvantage. Asher had a couple of inches on him. Erwin might have the muscles of a man who’d worked the land all his life, but he also had the gut of a man who loved his biscuits and gravy. Asher was lithe and strong and had trained to fight in martial arts, broadsword, quarterstaff and switchblades. True, it was only snippets here and there, but a good portion of it had stuck with him. He took a stance, and something changed between them.

  Erwin took a step back. “You better. . .” He backed away. “You stay away!” He shook a beefy fist in the air before marching off.

  Asher didn’t move as Erwin got into a pickup truck and peeled out of the driveway. A plume of dust flew up behind him marking long bars of late afternoon sun. Light footsteps sounded behind him. Asher was surprised that he recognized them. He took a deep breath and relaxed as Oscar came up next to him.

  “What the hell was that?” Oscar asked.

  “Not sure,” Asher said. He thought that it was a warning to stop digging into the will disguised as a concern for Jeff’s welfare, but Oscar didn’t need to know that.

  “You channeled Clint Eastwood there for a minute. Were you honestly going to take him on?”

  Asher huffed out a relieved laugh. “No way. But I remembered some martial arts guy telling me that if you looked like you could do it, then you probably wouldn’t have to.”

  “Well, you nailed it,” Oscar said sounding impressed.

  “Thanks.”

  “You okay?”

  Asher thought about it. He was a little pissed, tired and hot. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

  Oscar slapped his shoulder. “Gotta go. I got a steak on the grill,” he said and walked away.

  Asher let himself into the cottage, juggling the weight of the chainmail. He wasn’t sure if he should mention the confrontation with Erwin to Jeff. Tomorrow they would see the lawyer and get the ball rolling on that puzzle. It might be a good idea to let the sheriff know about it. Especially since Erwin used him as a threat. He walked through the dim living room to the bedroom. He needed to find a place to store the mail. He flipped on the light to find a woman on his bed.

  It wasn’t so much that there was a woman on the bed, because she was older, and fully dressed. His mind skipped and stuttered around not wife in my bed to not seduction and slammed into pointing a gun at me. His brain clanged back into gear, noting the bloody bandage on her arm. She sat up slowly, but her gun hand was rock solid. She wore jeans so pale they were almost white and a threadbare T-shirt that had blood on the sleeve.

  “Hi, I’m Asher,” he said in as steady a voice as he could manage.

  She rolled her eyes, but didn’t lower the gun. “I know who you are. Why the hell do you think I came in here?”

  Asher sighed. He saw the same Cahill cheekbones and mouth, again. First Erwin, now crazy Aunt Sue. “If this is about Jeff and Jo. . .”

  “Erwin’s an idiot.”

  “So if you don’t think I’m a. . .,” he wasn’t going to say molester, “. . .um, bad influence, why the gun?”

  She gave him a long hard stare with no hint of an answer in it. “How long you people been here?”

  “Um, a week?” Asher said, not believing it had been so short a time.

  She frowned at him. “A week? Damn.”

  He shifted the chainmail in his arms. “Can I put this down? It weighs a ton.”

  She lowered the gun. He took that as permission. Asher tossed the mail onto one of the matching armchairs. He went back to lean against the doorjamb, keeping a good distance between them.

  “Sue Cahill,” he said.

  “That’s right. You got any bandages? I need to freshen this up.”

  Asher nodded, but didn’t move, yet. “Don’t you want to go to the hospital?”

  “People go to hospitals when they’re dying. I ain’t there yet. I can take care of this myself.”

  “Jeff and Jo are picking up food and coming back here.”

  “Then you better get those bandages fast. And a clean shirt.”

  Chapter 29

  Asher kept a blank face as he watched Jeff peer from him to Aunt Sue and back. The kid would open his mouth to ask something and shut it again with a shake of his head. Asher was sure both of them recognized the shirt. They were doing his laundry, after all. And he knew Jeff couldn’t put together why Aunt Sue might be wearing one of Asher’s shirts. It hung on her wiry frame halfway to her knees. The short sleeves covered her arms to below the elbow, neatly hiding the tidy new bandage.

  Jeff and Jo had come in with enough Chinese food to feed an army. They were all sitting together in the tiny kitchen in silence. Sue hadn’t said a thing after demanding bandages. Asher had given her a clean shirt and shown her where all his brand-new first aid supplies were in the bathroom. She had come out while Jo was setting the table. Jeff had simply handed her an extra
plate. The kids were apparently used to Aunt Sue arriving unexpectedly.

  Asher helped himself to more sweet and sour chicken. He’d start working out in earnest tomorrow, so a little more sugar and fried food tonight shouldn’t be a problem. Maybe he could find a pool and get back to doing laps every morning. He was thinking about what Ellie would say when he told her about his day on their call tonight when Aunt Sue finally broke the silence.

  “You’re seeing the lawyer,” she said, pushing her empty plate to one side. Jo automatically took it to the sink.

  “Dad’s lawyer died,” Jeff said between bites of Mu Shu Pork. “We’re going to see the guy who took over.”

  Aunt Sue leaned back in her chair and nodded. “Your momma never had a whole lotta brains in her head, and I think the meth has killed off what she had left.”

  Asher flinched at the harsh words, but Jeff nodded as though he’d heard them before. Jo started making coffee.

  “It’s too late for her, boy. You need to let her go.”

  Jeff kept his eyes on his plate.

  “Shame about her brother. Bobby shoulda never gone in with Clyde. That man’s crazy as a bedbug. Meth’ll do that. Shoulda stuck to moonshine like his daddy and granddaddy. Meth’ll kill ya, just look at your momma.”

  Asher learned a few things from that interchange. One was that Jeff’s mother, Alma, had a brother named Bobby. The second was that Bobby worked for Clyde the meth dealer. Although, Clyde and Bobby were now out of work since their meth lab exploded and burned the woods behind Kozy Kottages. It was also a good guess that Alma got her drugs from Bobby which made him think back to the day after the explosion when he’d questioned the Cahills about it. Jeff had smiled. Had that been relief or smugness?

  Jo put out a milk pitcher and sugar bowl that Asher hadn’t seen before. Then she put matching cups and saucers on the table. It was formal and homey at the same time.

  “Uncle Bobby doesn’t come around anymore,” Jeff mumbled angrily. “Not since the last time you ran him off.”

  “You won’t be seeing him again,” Aunt Sue said flatly.

  Asher thought that sounded ominous. Maybe he was blaming the wrong Cahill for that explosion.

  Jeff nodded obediently. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Jo poured coffee for everyone which surprised Asher. He hadn’t seen either of the kids drink coffee before. Jo added three sugars to the small cup, so Asher thought it was more of a tradition for Sue’s visits. Jeff went to the fridge and poked around. He found the remainder of the banana nut loaf that Bunny had served the other day. He cut it up and handed it out. Jo collected forks. They worked in the silent accord of long habit. Asher didn’t speak. He preferred to watch the peculiarity of this family’s routine.

  “You get into that cooking school?” Aunt Sue asked in an accusing tone.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You livin’ home?”

  Jeff twitched a shoulder. Asher could see that he didn’t like the prospects. “Don’t have a choice.”

  Aunt Sue downed her coffee in one gulp, then placed it back in the saucer with a odd delicacy. “You taking care of your sister?” she demanded.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Aunt Sue skewered Jo with an icy glare. “You going to school?”

  Jo nodded wide-eyed and reluctant.

  “You livin’ home, too?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jo said barely above a whisper.

  Aunt Sue stood up. “Things are changin’.” She walked out of the kitchen.

  Asher heard the front door slam. Jeff let out a gusty sigh. Jo got up and tossed her coffee in the sink.

  “Does she always show up like that?” Asher asked.

  “Always has,” Jeff grumbled.

  “She’s hard to figure out,” Asher said.

  “Aunt Sue is different,” Jo said. She gathered the dirty dishes and utensils. Jeff packaged up the leftovers.

  “I probably won’t eat that. You guys want that for lunch tomorrow?” Asher said.

  “Sure,” Jeff said, but the enthusiasm had drained away.

  Asher wasn’t sure if he should broach the subject, but charged ahead anyway. “You worried about your mom?”

  Jeff ignored him. “I’ll put this in the car,” he said hefting the bag of leftovers.

  Jo turned around from where she stood at the sink. “Momma’s bad a lot these days.”

  “Do you have a plan?”

  Jo cocked her head. “For what?”

  “For when you can’t take care of her anymore,” Asher said gently.

  Jo blinked back sudden tears. “You mean when she passes?”

  “No. When she needs somebody to watch her all the time.”

  Jo grabbed a dishtowel and twisted it in her hands. “I guess I’ll hafta quit school.”

  “Maybe you should think about a nursing home for her,” Asher suggested.

  “That’s wrong. I couldn’t ever put Momma in one of those places.” Jo threw the towel on the counter. “I gotta go.”

  She was out the door before Asher could say another word. He stood in the kitchen going back over his words. How else could he have phrased it?

  Footsteps on the porch alerted him to another visitor. Bunny came in without knocking. “Dinner with the kids again?” he asked.

  Asher nodded, knowing he was going to get a lecture.

  “What is this obsession you have with those two? People are talking.”

  That startled him out of his musings. “About what?”

  “What do you think?”

  A rush of pure anger welled up in him. “I think they are good kids that need a little support in a rotten situation.”

  Bunny’s eyebrows shot up. “What kind of support?”

  Asher narrowed his eyes, biting down on the anger. “Moral.”

  “Huh.” Bunny wandered into the living room. He sat in the rocker, waving Asher to the armchair. “Talk to me. I want to understand this.”

  Obediently, Asher took a seat. “Do you remember high school?”

  Bunny shivered. “Not on purpose.”

  “Did you have good parents?”

  “Still do,” Bunny said with a fond smile.

  “They don’t. Jo and Jeff have a brain-addled addict as their only parent. They lost their dad four years ago. They are good kids working hard to get through the day. Alma is a burden that they shouldn’t have to shoulder. I could have been that burden. Still can be if I don’t stay sober. If I can help them on their way a little, I have to. It’s recompense for some of the stupid stuff I’ve done.”

  “But you don’t know them.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I know the situation. If Alma hadn’t pickled her brain, these kids would have a completely different life. A happier one.”

  “You don’t know that either. Alma could be a bad mother, period.”

  Asher leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “They have so much potential. All they need is a little help. They have plans.”

  Bunny sighed. “Sweetie, everybody does. You can’t save the world from all the bad things out there.”

  “No. But I might be able to save those two.”

  Chapter 30

  “You told her to look at nursing homes?”

  Asher could hear the anger in Ellie’s voice. He cringed, cradling the phone against his ear. “I just thought—”

  “No, you didn’t think. Ash, you are an idiot. You do not stick your nose into a family’s business like that.”

  “But I was—”

  “Leave them alone.” Ellie’s words were firm. “You have no right to give them advice. You have never had to deal with a sick parent.”

  “No, but I—”

  “I mean it. You’ve got enough on your plate as it is. Your job right now is to heal, so you can get ready for the movie. You don’t need any distractions.”

  Asher couldn’t argue with that. It was true. But the image of Alma’s unfocused gaze rose unbidden. He’d seen people like that during his sta
y in the hospital and refusing that future had put him on the path to sobriety. He swallowed. There had been silence on the phone for too long.

  “Ash?”

  He forced the words past the lump in his throat. “What if that were me?”

  Another instant of silence before Ellie sighed. “Sweetie, you won’t go there. Not now. You made a decision and changed. She didn’t or couldn’t. It isn’t up to you to take care of her because she was too weak to fix her own life.”

  “Not her. The kids.”

  “How old is Jeff?”

  “Almost eighteen, but Jo is only sixteen.”

  “Old enough to make decisions. They need to figure it out on their own. It isn’t like she went downhill yesterday. I’m sure they’ve seen this coming a long time. You’re just going to confuse them. In a couple months you’ll be gone, and they will have to keep going through the same shit. I am not adopting any more strays.”

  “They’re not kittens.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Asher nodded. “I get it.”

  “And?”

  “I’ll stay out of it.”

  Ellie groaned her skepticism. Asher had said what she wanted to hear, but he wasn’t sure if he could stay out of it. He didn’t have the right words to make Ellie understand. These kids needed him.

  Chapter 31

  The next morning Asher made his own coffee and toast again. Although he missed Jeff’s biscuits, he didn’t need the extra calories. This reminded him of his usual morning routine with Thomas and Sharon. It made him miss them, but he had to admit that he liked having a little time to himself. He sipped his coffee on the back patio, his long wet hair drying in the sunshine.

  After the weirdness of dinner with Aunt Sue and the taboo mention of nursing homes, he wondered if Jeff would show up today. He heard someone on the porch, but hadn’t heard a car, so he assumed it would be Bunny or Oscar. He opened the door to find a stranger. The man was short and solid like a fireplug. He had a buzz cut of pure white hair and bright green eyes.