by Reinke, Sara
“…then tossed in the clothes dryer for a fluff cycle,” Sandy finished in his ear. “So if you don’t call me this morning because you’re too busy pouting, at least call your mom so she doesn’t tie up my phone line again, saddling me with a big, heaping helping of little-old-lady guilt.”
Sunglasses in place, John limped back to the window. To the best of his recollection, it had been mid-afternoon when he’d arrived at the hotel. Not even three o’clock yet, he thought, because he’d been waiting to return to the Show Me! bar to interview the staff.
So even if I’ve been asleep for three, four hours, that should only make it early evening, dusk, tops.
But he could tell by looking outside at the bright quality of light, that this wasn’t the case. The sun was high in the sky, indicative of midday, if not lunchtime. Which made no sense.
Unless I slept the rest of the day through, and the night besides, he realized, startled. Then half of this one, to boot.
He jerked the curtains closed again, then went back to the bed, sitting down heavily.
“You’re not dead,” Sandy said when he called into the office. “Good. You and Wilma got together after all? Where did you take her for supper? We were talking yesterday about how good that one place is over on Thomas Street, the Riptide.”
“Sandy.”
“You know she doesn’t get out much anymore. It’s really so sweet of you to take her. She said something about wearing one of her dresses, putting on some new sandals she bought last year but hasn’t taken out of the box.”
“Sandy.”
“You should have heard her, John. She was just giddy when she mentioned the Riptide, like a junior high school kid getting ready for a date. And you know, Riptide has this great carrot and curry soup. I know it sounds pretty gross, but it comes with a mango chutney that really—”
“Sandy,” he said, more sharply now, and he pinched the bridge of his nose, wincing again to hear the sharp snap of her breath as she stopped speaking, a wounded little intake. “I didn’t go to the Riptide last night. I didn’t see Mom.”
“Oh.” Another little sound. He could see her in his mind, her shoulders slumping in dejection, her blue eyes round and mournful. Sandy would draw her lower lip beneath the edge of her top front teeth when her feelings had been hurt, an admittedly sexy little habit of which she was wholly unaware.
“I’m sorry.” He sighed, shoving his hand through his hair again. “Look, I just…things didn’t go very well yesterday.”
There was the understatement of the century. But he had no intention of telling Sandy what had happened to him, how Lucy had attacked him, because he knew exactly what Sandy’s reaction would be, an immediate command to go to the emergency room. Which he wouldn’t do.
Sandy didn’t need health insurance. She’d told him once that Gracie had retired years ago from a long and industrious career as a U.S. Army civilian secretary, which is where she’d apparently met Colonel Joe, Sandy’s father. As a result, Sandy was somehow under Gracie’s umbrella of post-service medical benefits. Which meant John hadn’t needed to ever shell out the significantly high costs of insurance for her. Which meant he’d always been too cheap to take it out only for himself. As a result, he had no health insurance. And because the idea of pissing away the rest of his newly found five-thousand dollar retainer on emergency room charges didn’t appeal to him, he kept his mouth shut.
“I just didn’t feel like driving all the way back home,” he said lamely. “So I checked into a Days Inn and spent the night. That’s all.”
“You okay?” Sandy asked, her voice concerned now and no longer hurt, as if that intuitive touch her mother claimed somehow had passed down the family tree to her, as well, and she’d read his mind.
“Yeah,” he said. “I have some things left to do here before I head back to the office.” Then, just to make things up to her, because he knew he’d been a dick, he added, “If Mom calls you again, just tell her I had to catch a red-eye flight to Alaska last night. I’ll be gone for the next six months.”
Sandy laughed, if not exactly falling for his ploy, then at least humoring him in his attempt to make amends. “You’re terrible.”
“Makes you glad you’re in love with Harlowe, not me, right?” he asked and when she laughed again, it was more natural this time, less feigned.
“Every single day,” she replied.
***
He didn’t call his mother, but he stopped by to see her, and figured that ought to keep Sandy from nagging him too badly.
Wilma lived in the Orange Acres mobile home community that wasn’t quite southern enough to be considered part of the island’s posh South Shore region. A stereotypical Florida Keys retirement home in a stereotypical Florida Keys retirement neighborhood, her coral-colored trailer had been trimmed with white lattice and was surrounded by a small but well-manicured lawn with a concrete patio framed by potted flowering shrubs.
As he pulled into her driveway, he wasn’t the least bit surprised to see Wilma out in her yard. She loved gardening. Before selling the small home in Northport on the mainland upon the death of John’s father two years earlier, she’d tended more than a half dozen fruit trees—key limes, oranges, avocadoes, lemons—as well as a colorful menagerie of blooming tropical plants. Now her collection was limited to a pair of hot pink bugenvilias that now towered nearly to the roof of her home, a few potted hibiscus plants and a strange cousin to the cactus family called a night-blooming cereus that John had always thought looked eerily like the man-eating plant in Little Shop of Horrors.
“Hi, Mom,” he called as he stepped out of the Galaxie. He’d folded the top up, despite the crystalline-blue sky and soaring temperatures because the sun had felt unbearable to him. Even with his shades on, he still squinted.
His mother turned, drawing the blade of her hand up to shield her eyes, this in spite of the fact she wore a floppy hat with a wide enough brim to drape her face, her entire body and a broad circumference of the lawn beneath her in shade.
“John,” she called brightly. “What a surprise!”
He thought she had been watering her flowers with a garden hose, but as she walked toward him, he realized she wore some kind of backpack that was connected through tubes to a large, brightly colored plastic gun held in her hand.
“What is that?” he asked as she gave him hugs and kisses.
“A Super Soaker,” she replied, holding it up. Pressing the trigger slightly, she sent a geyser of water spurting momentarily skyward, before spattering around his feet. “I got this with it, too. See?” She pivoted slightly, modeling the backpack. “It holds up to one hundred ounces of water at a time.”
“You shouldn’t be lugging that heavy thing around.”
She flapped her hand, dismissive.
“Why don’t you just use the hose?” he asked, biting back the words, like normal people?
Another hand flap. “Because they’ve posted water restrictions,” she said. “You can only use sprinklers and hoses on certain times and certain days of the week. I can’t keep up with all of that. Besides, I got tired of untangling the hose only to tangle it up again going around the yard. I was afraid I’d trip over it one of these days and fall, break my hip.”
She frowned, clapping his face between her hands and squishing his cheeks. “What have you done to yourself?”
He’d stopped along the way at a Walgreen’s and bought some antibiotic ointment, gauze pads and paper tape, which he’d slapped over his wounds. “Nothing,” he said, shrugging her away as she flapped and fussed over his bandaged arm and neck. “It’s nothing, Mom. Cut myself shaving.”
“Come on inside, sit down.” Wilma led him by the hand up the steps to her side porch. “You shouldn’t be on your feet.”
“I’m not dying, Mom,” he said, trailing reluctantly behind her, wondering if he could turn tail, run back to his car and speed away without her notice, and before she could get him trapped inside the mobile home. “I told you. It�
��s nothing.”
“Well, even so, you should come in and sit down. I’ll fix us some lunch.”
He sighed heavily. As the door slapped shut behind him, he was enveloped in the crisp coolness of air-conditioning.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call you yesterday,” he said as Wilma ducked into the kitchen. “I was…”
“Working. I know. That nice little secretary of yours told me.”
“Her name is Maureen, Mom.”
“She’s a cute girl.” Wilma opened the refrigerator and put her hand on her hip, reviewing the contents. “You should ask her out some time.”
John rolled his eyes. Here we go.
When she wasn’t trying to convince John to reconcile with his ex-wife, Wilma had tried to push him into dating whenever and with whomever she could. He’d stopped humoring her a month ago, when she’d set him up on a blind date with a woman twice his age, who’d popped her upper denture plate out before giving him head. Granted, it had been one of the better blow-jobs of his life, but still.
“Mom, she’s seeing someone.” He glanced at the collection of framed photographs crammed together on top of the television set: elementary and middle school head shots of him, his senior and police academy portraits. Centermost among these was his wedding picture with Bevi. Wilma had kept it, even now, a year after the divorce had been finalized, wishful thinking on her part.
“Besides,” he continued, turning away from the TV. “Sandy’s my employee. I can’t date her. It’s sort of illegal.”
Wilma pulled a loaf of bread and a jar of mustard out of the fridge. “I thought you said her name was Maureen.”
He started to say something, then shut his mouth and watched as she nudged the refrigerator door closed with her hip. She carried the bread and mustard to the nearby counter and set them aside, opening cabinets and drawers, busily pulling out a pair of plates, a butter knife, some paper napkins.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I told you,” she replied, unscrewing the lid off the mustard. “Making us some lunch.”
“Yeah, but what?”
“Mustard sandwiches.” She glanced up at him as she opened the bread. “What? There’s nothing wrong with mustard sandwiches. Your grandfather ate them during the Great Depression.”
John shook his head. “Come on, Mom.” He held out his hand. “I’ll buy you lunch, for crying out loud.”
***
He took her to the Riptide Bar and Grille. “You know,” he told her. “There used to be a bordello here.”
Wilma blinked in surprise. “What?”
The carrot and curry soup that Sandy had recommended was not a lunchtime selection, so she had settled for something called “Goombay gumbo soup,” the name of which called to John’s mind the creepy green-haired midgets in the 1970s flick, Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Oompa-loompas, they were called.
“A bordello,” he said again. “Upstairs on the second floor. They still have little peep holes in the walls where people used to watch.”
He hadn’t ordered anything, because frankly, the idea of food had left him feeling vaguely nauseous, as if he might just oompa-loomp-goombay anything he tried to eat. Despite not being hungry, he’d been thirsty, desperately so, and so far had guzzled four large glasses of ice water.
“I wish you wouldn’t tell me things like that,” Wilma said with a prim little sniff. “I lose my appetite just thinking about it. And take your sunglasses off. It’s shady here under the trees. Cool, even.” She faked a shiver, rubbing her bare arms. “I might have thought to grab a sweater if you hadn’t rushed me out the door.”
“Mom, we’re in the Florida Keys, closer to the equator than any other place in the United States, for crying out loud. You don’t need a sweater.”
She frowned at him. “You know, if you’re going to be nasty, you can just go ahead and take me home. You invited me to lunch, not the other way around. And if it’s such a burden on you to sit here and carry on some semblance of a pleasant conversation, then…”
“Mom.” That dull ache behind his eyes had worsened exponentially since he’d pulled up at Wilma’s trailer. Now he rubbed his fingertips idly against his temple and wished he could click his shoe heels together and magically appear back on the floor of his office, with Sandy astride his buttocks, her hands working their magic again. He sighed heavily and glanced up at Wilma, who returned his gaze expectantly. “I’m sorry. You want me to go inside, see if they have a sweatshirt in the gift shop?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Don’t go to that sort of bother. Those places are tourist traps. Everything is overpriced.” Again, she rubbed her arms. “I’ll be alright.”
By the time they’d finished lunch, it was nearly three o’clock. “Why don’t we go back to the house awhile?” Wilma suggested. “I’ve got a nice pork roast up in the freezer I can put out to thaw. It’s too much for me to eat all by myself, but it was on sale at the Publix, and I couldn’t pass it up.”
“No, thanks, Mom. I’ve got some work I’ve got to get back to.”
He dropped her off at her trailer, leaving the Galaxie to idle as he got out, went around and opened the passenger door for her.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you drive this car without the top down,” she remarked as he helped her out. “I’m surprised it isn’t, what with as nice a day as it is.”
“I didn’t want to muss your hair,” he told her, leaning down and kissing her cheek. “Talk to you soon.”
“I love you, John,” she said.
“I love you, too, Mom,” he replied, and as he drove away, she remained rooted at the edge of her driveway, hand raised in a wave.
CHAPTER FIVE
Against his better judgment, John returned to Lucy’s apartment. He no longer thought she was missing. That much was pretty obvious, given she’d taken a chomp out of the side of his neck only the day before. But he did think she was in some kind of serious trouble. That much had been pretty obvious, too. And while at the time, he’d been too startled and frightened to think rationally, in retrospect, he realized his initial instincts as a former cop had probably been dead-on.
He’d seen plenty of meth heads in his time, and Lucy Weston’s behavior and appearance had all of the earmarks: reclusiveness, aggression, paranoia, emaciation, poor hygiene. Which is going to break her mother’s heart, he thought as he unlocked the deadbolt to the young woman’s apartment and slowly eased the door open.
“Oh, Lucy,” he murmured in a bad Ricky Ricardo impersonation, cutting his eyes around cautiously. “I’m home.”
This time, he came armed, having dug a tire iron out of the trunk of his car. He hadn’t touched a gun in three years without suffering debilitating panic attacks, what his shrink had called acute stress reactions. But that didn’t mean he was incapable of defending himself.
When he crept into the apartment, he carried the tire iron over his head, ready to swing. With the trash bags and blinds torn down from the patio doors, sunlight flooded the narrow circumference, bright enough to make him squint.
He didn’t kick the door closed behind him until he’d completed a tertiary once-over, making sure there was no sign of Lucy. Everything looked exactly as he’d left it, vacant and quiet.
Monroe had told him that he’d conducted a search on the apartment, but John decided to try one of his own, just in case. Inside the kitchen, he poked through her dishwasher and drawers. He dug through her trash can, using a spatula to stir at the contents—spent yogurt containers, blackened banana peels, used coffee grounds, some wadded up paper towels and a still mostly full container of garlic powder.
More than the spoiled food, the smell of the garlic powder was both apparent and pungent to him, even from inside its sealed jar. It struck him as soon as he’d flipped back the lid of the trash can and within moments, it overpowered him, leaving him stumbling back, choked and nearly gagging.
Taking the tire iron back in hand and giving the trash can a wid
e berth, he left the kitchen. He looked through the shelves and drawers of her entertainment center but found nothing unusual, some chick-flicks on DVD, some music CDs, framed photographs of family and friends. No secret stash of money, no hidden cache of drugs or paraphernalia. So far, she was turning out to be the least junk-ified junkie he’d ever seen.
In her bedroom, he spied a laptop computer on a desk near the bed. The overhead lights didn’t work, and he could see the bulb in the desktop lamp had been removed, then apparently shattered on the floor, to judge by the tiny fragments of broken glass on the carpet. He tore down the overlapping layers of plastic garbage bags covering the window to let in some light, then drew his hand up reflexively against the sudden, searing glare. He fumbled for his sunglasses, pulling them out of his pocket.
He double- then triple-checked the closet to make sure it was empty, then sat uneasily in front of Lucy’s computer. The lid had been left open, the auxiliary power cord plugged in to both machine and a nearby wall outlet. A green light blinked out a slow cadence on the keyboard, and when he pressed it, the screen came obligingly to life, emerging from hibernation mode.
With a frown, John opened Lucy’s email inbox. Yeah, what he was doing was technically illegal, but he wasn’t a cop anymore, so the protocols for obtaining and executing a search warrant no longer applied. While Outlook downloaded new messages, John got up and busied himself sifting through Lucy’s chest of drawers.
In the top one, he found a colorful assortment of lacey, satin panties and this distracted him awhile. Tucked beneath, to his amusement—and what would surely be her mother’s mortification—he found a tube of KY Jelly and a box of condoms. Ribbed for her pleasure, the label promised. The box was half-full and the tube, half-empty. Lucy had been a busy little girl.
