Here Comes Trouble

by Leslie Kelly

  “It’s not your fault,” she whispered as she looked out the window. Someday she’d make her sister believe that. And their family, too.

  “Pardon?”

  “Sorry. It’s nothing.” She didn’t even look over, not wanting this boy who was one year ahead of her in age but light years behind her in experience to see the brightness in her eyes and realize they were filling with tears. Not poor me tears. But tears for her sister, who’d put her life on hold and had remained the one person in Allie’s life she could depend on.

  Suddenly, though, it wasn’t so hard to keep her attention focused outside—away from Miss Emily’s good-looking nephew. Because as they passed a couple of old, half-falling-down houses on the north end of town, she saw someone she couldn’t possibly be seeing.

  “Slow down,” she snapped.

  Joey hit the brake. The car didn’t screech to a stop, but it immediately dropped below twenty. Slow enough for her to crane close to the passenger side window and study the dark-haired man getting out of a car and going up to the porch of one of those two houses.

  “It can’t be…”

  “Can’t be who?”

  She shook her head. “Can’t. It’s impossible. He couldn’t have known.”

  “Who couldn’t have known? Allie, is something wrong?”

  Risking a quick glance at Joey, she asked, “Whose house is that?”

  He peered around her. “Not sure. I think it belongs to one of those old sisters. I remember them scaring the fear of God into me when I was a kid and we’d come visit Aunt Emily during the Trouble Founders’ Festival.” His brow scrunching, he added, “I think their name’s Feeney.”

  Old sisters named Feeney. There could be no connection—she had to be mistaken. Allie was thinking that over, almost kicking herself for being so paranoid, when the dark-haired man on the porch of the house turned a little, almost in her direction. She sank down into the seat, unable to silence a gasp. Because she recognized that face and knew that profile. A slow boil of anger rolled up from her swollen feet all the way to the top of her head.

  “What is it?”

  She didn’t answer. The name would mean nothing to Joey, unless she went on to identify the man as the walking six-foot-tall penis who’d fathered her child.

  Only one person in Trouble would recognize the name. And she was the one person Allie most hated to tell—Sabrina. But there was no choice. She was going to have to tell her sister that Peter Prescott had, apparently, followed them to Trouble.

  The bastard.

  This time, when she’d seen him, there was no stab of regret, no secret sadness over one of those passionate moments they’d shared in the beginning.

  He’d followed her. And she was so furious, she could hardly stand it. Reaching the house, Allie could barely find words to thank Miss Emily’s nephew for driving her home. He looked disappointed, as if he’d expected something from her.

  Like the pregnant chick was gonna put out or something as thanks for the ride? Knowing the thought was unkind—and a product of her rage toward Peter—she somehow managed a genuine smile before shooing Joey away. She mourned a little that she wasn’t some free young girl who could take him up on his soft-spoken offer to grab a burger sometime.

  But she wasn’t that girl. Today, socializing with someone her own age and seeing how far removed her life was from his, had underscored that reality.

  Funny, though, she didn’t feel depressed about it. Or weak. Instead she began to feel better—stronger—than she had in a long time. Maybe because she’d finally acknowledged her life was never going to be the same and she could not go back. Maybe because she’d reacted with rage rather than fear when she’d seen the side of Peter’s fat head today.

  Maybe just because she was growing up.

  “Yes. That’s it,” she murmured as she paced around the house a few hours later, waiting for somebody to get home. She’d been alone here with only Butch for company since Joey dropped her off. She and the dog by themselves in the big empty house with a big empty tent out back. Silent. Abandoned. As dead as it must have been before Mr. Potts had bought the place and moved in a few weeks ago.

  At around five, she’d thought she heard someone in Mr. Potts’s private office. Butch growled at the door; he’d heard something, too. But when she went in, she saw no one. Nothing out of place. Just the same dusty old furniture that Max’s grandfather swore he’d have replaced one of these days. And all those nasty, loud clocks that he swore he would not.

  “It was our imagination, boy,” she said as she picked the dog up and tucked him under her chin so he rested partly on her big belly. He liked this position, as if he already enjoyed bonding with the baby. “Everything’s fine,” she added.

  For some reason, though, she felt a chill despite the heat of the day. She hadn’t been able to shake the memory of that dark, shabby car parked at the bottom of the hill yesterday. And the shadowy figure inside it.

  By seven o’clock, when those clocks screeched their heads off again, Allie was staring at the shadows lengthening in the house, wondering why her sister hadn’t responded to any of her calls. She didn’t mind being alone…usually. But tonight felt different. She was jumpy, her nerves stretched tight.

  “Cool it,” she whispered. “You’ve spent an evening alone before.”

  She could certainly fend for herself, despite what her sister thought. Doing as Mr. Potts had asked and making herself at home in his kitchen, she whipped up an omelette—protein for the baby—then resumed her pacing.

  Where was everyone? Max and Sabrina she could guess—the way those two had been looking at each other, she figured they might have driven to the nearest no-tell motel and checked out every magic-fingers machine they could find.

  But Mortimer? It wasn’t like him not to show up. Not to return any of Allie’s calls. And when she thought about the fact that he hadn’t been at breakfast—she hadn’t seen him at all since yesterday—she grew more concerned.

  Allie had only know the old guy for a few days. But she already loved him with all the devotion she’d never felt for her own grandfather. Sabrina, she strongly suspected, felt the same way.

  “He wouldn’t just disappear,” she muttered, talking to herself while pretending to talk to the baby. “He wouldn’t have left me stranded, either. That’s not like him.”

  And then there was that car…

  Her imagination had gone so far into overdrive that when she finally heard someone pull up outside, Allie raced as fast as her pregnant belly would let her out to the front porch. Seeing her sister’s blond head, and Max’s dark one, she leaned to watch the rear car door. But nobody got out.

  Now she was worried. As soon as Max and Sabrina stepped out into the driveway, she bounded down the stairs toward them, holding her belly with both hands and sending down a mental apology to the baby.

  “Allie, what is it?” Sabrina asked, immediately hurrying to her side. “What’s wrong?”

  Max was right there, too. “Are you in labor?”

  Ack! She didn’t even want to think about that. “No, no, it isn’t the baby.”

  Sabrina took Allie’s arm. “It’s okay, then, just calm down and we’ll go inside. You know you can tell me anything.”

  Allie always had been able to tell Sabrina anything, which was the main reason she’d wanted to go to Philadelphia for college. She’d missed her older sister badly when Sabrina had gone away, and there was no one in her life she trusted more.

  So, yes, she had a lot of things to tell her. Things like I’m sorry and I forgive you and You’re not responsible for me. Not to mention, of course, the I led that scumbag right to our door thing. But instead she settled for the most pressing.

  Grasping her sister’s hand, she came to a stop and swung around to face her, as well as Max. “I think something’s wrong.”

  Sabrina’s eyes dropped to Allie’s stomach and her face went pale, the washed-out color easy to make out even with the quickly fading light alr
eady dimming toward sunset. “With the baby?”

  She shook her head. “No.” Swallowing, she grabbed Max’s hand, too, wanting him to believe her, though she knew she had no real reason for the near panic she felt. It was merely intuition…mother’s intuition. She just had this feeling. A bad one.

  “It’s your grandfather, Max,” she said. “I haven’t seen him, he’s not answering his phone and he didn’t show up to pick me up today. When I thought about it, I realized I haven’t seen him at all since yesterday.” She stared searchingly into their faces. “Have you?”

  Sabrina shook her head. Max stiffened even more, his body tight, on alert.

  “No. I haven’t. I figured he was napping this morning when we left.” Then, his eyes flashing fire and his jaw working in his cheek, he added, “Tell me what you know, Allie. Tell me everything.”

  So she did, including mentioning the strange car—everything except seeing Peter. She concluded by saying, “I have a bad feeling, Max. I think something’s happened to your grandfather.”

  BY THURSDAY MORNING, Max had notified Roderick, the Trouble P.D., the state police and anyone else he could think of about Mortimer’s disappearance. He’d had to leave messages for his brothers, both of whom were currently unreachable—Morgan in the Middle East, Mike undercover. If they’d been reachable, both of them would have been here by now, he had no doubt.

  Getting Roderick to stay put had been tough. He’d only agreed when Max had scared the hell out of them both by saying he needed to stick near New York in case a ransom call came in.

  Don’t think that way, he reminded himself.

  “Mr. Taylor, we have flyers going up all over downtown and volunteers ready to go door to door asking questions. The state police have circulated the picture and description. Don’t worry, we’ll find your granddad.”

  Nodding at Chief Bennigan, Max turned to the fireplace mantel and stared absently at it. A ceramic cuckoo—the things weren’t even confined to the clocks—stared back at him, its beady black eyes adding to his dark mood. “I know you’re doing what you can, Chief. I appreciate you and your officers helping us search the woods last night.”

  The night before had been a long, sleepless one. Trouble’s tiny three-man police force had responded immediately. They, along with Max, Sabrina and her sister, had scoured every inch of the property, wondering if Mortimer had perhaps fallen somewhere in the wooded acreage surrounding the house. But they’d found nothing. No sign of him at all.

  In fact, there’d been no sign of him for two days, they realized. No one had seen him since Tuesday morning at breakfast. They’d figured he had another invitation from one of the locals for dinner that night and was perhaps sleeping in the next morning. And Max had been so caught up in what was going on in his own life that he hadn’t even questioned it. Had never stuck his head in Grandfather’s room to make sure his bed had been slept in.

  Stupid. Thoughtless.

  Typical. Max the playboy, thinking only of himself.

  Never in the past three years had he wanted a drink more. The crystal decanter on the bar in the corner was filled with Mortimer’s best scotch. The old man had offered to put it away when Max arrived. Max had refused the offer, which, of course, had pleased Grandfather. Mortimer liked a man strong enough to stick to his principles and resist even the most obvious temptation.

  He hadn’t been tempted in the weeks he’d been here.

  Until now.

  “You don’t need it,” he muttered under his breath.

  It wasn’t as if Max had always liked to drink. Even in the Service he’d never been known to finish more than two beers a night. No, the booze itself hadn’t really been the crutch during the year of his divorce.

  The lifestyle had.

  The parties, the women, the drinking. He’d been addicted to all of it—anything to shut out the humiliation and the regret over how badly he’d fucked up his life.

  Fortunately, the one vice he hadn’t submitted to was drugs. A lot of the scumbag people who’d appeared out of nowhere—following the party—had offered. But something hadn’t let him take that step—not just his upbringing and his basic values, but also the knowledge that mandatory drug screening could cost him the one thing he had left: his pilot’s license.

  So that, at least, had been one less thing to quit cold turkey the morning Morgan had dumped him out of his bed onto the floor of his trashed beach house. Which was exactly how he’d handled the rest—cold turkey—with some professional help and family support, of course.

  When he’d sent that lifestyle packing, the alcohol had gone, too. He hadn’t missed it—until now.

  “Did you go through all his things and make sure nothing was missing?” the chief asked. “It’s not unheard of for someone to pack a bag and take a personal skedaddle for a day or two. ’Specially someone with as much traveling experience as your grandpa.”

  Bennigan was an amiable, small-town man with a large head that didn’t quite fit on top of his body. One of those smiling bobblehead dolls come to life. But he’d been friendly and concerned. And, surprisingly, quite effective at organizing a search. His suggestion was not unreasonable, either, considering Mortimer’s globe-trotting background.

  “His clothes are all in his room, along with his reading glasses and medications. Besides, he would have told me if he was going away.”

  “Even if he wanted to do something risky and knew you’d try to stop him?”

  Max couldn’t help laughing. “I couldn’t stop my grandfather from climbing into a volcano for his seventy-fifth birthday. After all these years, I know better than to even try. So there’d have been no reason for him to sneak away.”

  Bennigan nodded, appearing convinced, not beating on the possibility any longer. Which brought him up another step in Max’s estimation. “Well, with his car being in the garage, we know he can’t have gone too far.”

  “Unless someone picked him up,” Max muttered. He hadn’t stopped thinking about the car Allie had mentioned seeing. “Have you had any luck with the neighbors? Did any of them see anyone lurking around here?”

  Bennigan rose from the lumpy sofa—looking relieved to be off it—and stretched his back. He’d had a long night, too, but hadn’t uttered a word of complaint. “Well, with the house’s reputation, there’s always people lurking about.”

  “Reputation?” Sabrina asked as she entered the room, carrying two large glasses filled with iced tea.

  Max’s heart twisted at the sight of her. Was it really just twenty-four hours ago that they’d embarked upon that crazy-hot plane ride? Not to mention the hours of incredibly erotic sex they’d had in the cockpit once they’d landed?

  He shifted a little, wondering if there would ever come a day when he’d be able to think about Sabrina Cavanaugh without his pants getting tight. Maybe when they were ninety.

  Whoa. Where the hell had that come from?

  Max hadn’t thought of growing old with a woman in, well, forever. Even during his marriage there had always been something in the back of his mind that said it might not last. Probably the circumstances under which they’d gotten married. Not to mention, of course, the whole lesbian thing.

  But with Sabrina, he was picturing all the things he had never thought he’d want again. Sleeping with her every night, waking up with her every morning. Family…

  Insane.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Bennigan said, taking the glass of tea from Sabrina’s hand and nodding gratefully. “You folks do know about the murder, don’t you?”

  Max had heard about it when he arrived in Trouble, mainly from people who were unhappy about Mortimer’s arrival and likely wanted to scare them off with tales about the house. But he’d never gotten the specifics. “I know who it was, and that it happened somewhere in this house.”

  Bennigan pointed through the open French doors toward the foyer. “Right at the bottom of those stairs.”

  Sabrina’s eyebrow cocked, but she didn’t seem jumpy or ner
vous. He almost laughed, thinking all her experience with horror movies had enabled her to remain blasé when a lot of people would have at least gone pale at the thought of walking over a spot where someone died. But he just couldn’t muster up the laughter right now.

  “Who was he?” she asked.

  Bennigan sipped his drink appreciatively. The air-conditioning was not quite adequate for the hot Pennsylvania summer they were experiencing. “Former mayor of Trouble. The man who owned this house.”

  Walking to him, Sabrina handed Max his drink. Their fingers touched briefly and she met his eyes, offering him a warm smile. No shyness, no reservations. Yesterday had completely erased any possibility of that.

  They already knew each other so intimately, Max could predict when she’d lick her lips or tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. After what had happened between them, he was completely in tune with her, the way he’d never been with anyone else.

  They shouldn’t have spent last night and today in a terror over his grandfather. If all had been right with the world, Mortimer would have been safely sleeping in his own bed. Allie would have decided she simply had to sleep inside the house. And Max would have been sliding all over the silk pillows in that tent, making love to Sabrina in every way known to man.

  “He wasn’t well liked around here,” Bennigan said.

  Max and Sabrina had been looking only at each other, both of them—he knew—reliving the wickedly delightful moments from the day before. Clearing his throat, he murmured, “Thanks,” then stepped a few sanity-saving inches away from her and focused on the chief. “He stole some money from the town treasury, right?”

  Bennigan’s mouth pulled tight. “He’d been siphoning it off for years, a little at a time, probably waiting until he had enough to run. Only, I guess he never thought there was enough.”