Summer Flambè - Comic Suspense (The Rachael O'Brien Chronicles, No. 2)

by Paisley Ray

  “She brought the psychic she left your dad for to meet him? Are you kidding?”

  “I wish.”

  “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  I picked at the cording on the pillow case cover. Since I left home for college, a higher than normal amount of fakers had screwed around with my life, messing with my plans. In one breath, I blurted, “I’m pretty sure Mom’s friend is her girlfriend. My gaydar is flashing. I think she switched camps.”

  The phone went quiet. I took a drag.

  “Are you okay with that?” he asked.

  Exhaling smoke out the window, I felt the night’s bleakness wrap around my heart. “No, I’m not okay. She raised me, traditionally, blissfully naive. Now she’s gone alternative. I can’t handle images of them—spooning and kissing and—doing stuff. I thought I could be cool about her psychic pursuits, but she keeps dropping new bombs that I can’t digest. And her girlfriend, she reads tarot cards, auras, and is a follower of Nostradamus. She’s a freak, like someone you pay to view inside a carnival tent.”

  “Rach, relax. Your mom is discovering things about herself that she thinks are important. As much as you have trouble swallowing the new her, you need to, or you’ll lose her. Besides, it couldn’t get any worse. I mean she’s dropped the biggest bomb there is. Right?”

  “I could use some company. What are you doing for July Fourth weekend?”

  “You want me to stay at the O’Brien’s house of dysfunction?”

  “You’re a calming force. Can you drive up and visit for a few days?”

  “I should be able to swing it.”

  NOTE TO SELF

  I have a premonition this won’t be an ordinary summer.

  Flambé fiasco. Whoever thought it was a nifty idea to set food on fire?

  I would’ve liked to be pleasantly surprised, and dead wrong regarding my predetermined imagery of Betts. That didn’t happen.

  Asking Dad for permission to have Travis stay over Fourth of July. Must use cunning and choose the moment wisely. Yeah right. How the hell am I going to convince him?

  JULY 1987

  CHAPTER 4

  Electrical Storm

  A tin chandelier radiated light across the farm table, reflecting the dings and nicks under the varnish, and Dad’s silhouette in the corner nook. Seating in our kitchen was an eclectic mix, no two chairs matched. Dad’s favorite was a high-back upholstered in velvet. After being on his feet and bending over a worktable during the day, he’d take two aspirin and rest his lower back against a heating pad. An auction guide and a pile of mail lay sprawled in front of him. I brought him cold can number two of Iron City Beer. As he popped the top, I leaned into the back frame of a shaker chair and strategized my approach.

  Being nineteen was dodgy. No longer a child, I still needed permission for Travis to visit. It’s not like I could hide him for four days—not easily, anyway. I determined that a direct approach would be best, but waited until Dad swallowed enough gulps of beer. When he neared the bottom, I ambushed. “Could a friend of mine who’s a boy visit for the Fourth of July weekend?”

  Mid-swallow he unnaturally jerked. “This weekend? What boy?”

  “One I met in North Carolina. His name is Travis, and he lives in Kentucky.” Dad pushed his auction guide aside. With his alert detection turned on high, he tightened his eyelids and contorted his mouth.

  Initiating damage control, I clarified. “He’s not a boyfriend. Just a friend.”

  Dad sighed. “Rachael, any boy that drives from Kentucky to Canton, will be looking for more than friendship.”

  My tongue brushed across my crooked eyetooth and I hiccupped. Placing a hand on Dad’s, I patted down his concern. “Trust me. Travis is a friend.”

  Dad didn’t look convinced, and I hesitated. I hadn’t told anyone about Travis being gay. “His preference for romance falls in the same category as Mom’s.”

  Dad grimaced. “He likes older women?”

  Steadying eye contact, I said, “Dad, he’s gay.”

  Dad went silent for a beat. “We’re tight on space with Trudy in the house,” he said.

  I picked at furniture polish stains on my palm. “I noticed.”

  Our normally meticulous home had exploded with medicine balls, jump ropes, and Suzanne Somers’s Thigh Master. The butcher-block island was a clutter of herbal bottles with funky names like bilberry fruit, wormwood, and black walnut hull. They reminded me of ingredients for a witch’s brew and I made a mental note not to consume anything Trudy offered.

  Dad put the tab top inside his can and rattled it. “I agreed to let your mom and her friend stay in the studio above the shop.”

  “I’m surprised you’re okay with that.”

  His eyes closed. “I don’t know what I’m okay with anymore.”

  “No one’s at Trudy’s, maybe Travis could stay there. If she okays it.”

  Coming to terms with Trudy in the house, and his estranged wife paying a surprise visit, sputtered and clunked the gears in Dad’s head. Mom’s surprise visit sent the life he’d adjusted to without her amuck. Now she and her “girlfriend” were in Canton for a celestial summer of horoscope plotting, levitation, and channeling. Neither Dad nor I knew how to react. On the plus side, the complicated female dynamics in our lives weakened his focus on rules and regulations.

  I had an ulterior motive for having Travis stay at Trudy’s that I didn’t mention to Dad. In addition to providing me with mental solace, I thought he and I could kibosh the tidy thief folklore. If he stayed there without incident, we could convince Dad and Trudy that the apartment was safe for habitation, giving Dad and me some elbowroom to adjust to my gypsy mom.

  “When’s this boy coming?” Dad asked.

  I bear-hugged his neck. “You’re gonna love Travis.”

  EDMOND PUT THE SOLDERING gun down and took off his protective glasses. The garden design of the Tiffany chandelier hanging above our heads reflected the gleam of the overhead light, and stripes of color danced on the worktable. Green saturated hues mixed in darks and lights, reminded me of the pond behind our house before dawn when sleepy daylight woke the grasses and the algae that clung to its perimeter.

  Midway through freshman year, my shoulder had dislocated when I fell out of a dorm loft onto linoleum. Besides a small lump on my collarbone that never went away, it had healed but left one odd quirk. The muscles beyond my neck sensed stormy weather. I didn’t need the weatherman to tell me it was going to rain. My dodgy shoulder had become as precise a predictor as a barometer.

  By midafternoon, gusty breezes bounced the underside veins of the aged Buckeye tree leaves in front of O’Brien’s How’s Your Art. Thick gray clouds collided as an approaching darkness hovered in the sky. A strike of lightning cracked. Like the rolling storm, my mind was turbulent, and I struggled to come to terms with the thought that my mother had released her sexuality, and that it favored her feminine side. If she was in love with Betts, causing a rift would be tricky.

  Dad had left to give an estimate on a scratched dining table caused by the owner’s daughter sliding a twig basket across its surface. Distant thunder rumbled. Edmond and I moved to stand between the workshop’s open barn doors.

  I exerted mental energy trying to spin the ‘new her’ positively. Since Mom had unleashed her sexuality, maybe she’d encourage me to do the same, though I didn’t want to follow in her exact footsteps. Her behind-closed-door activities were not for me. I had a side agenda—ask Mom to take me for my first gynie visit—but hadn’t come up with a smooth approach. When I returned to college, I was going to lose my virginity, and I figured I needed to be on birth control for when the moment struck.

  Edmond and I took a break and continued to watch the sky. “The Tiffany is exquisite, who brought it in?”

  He drew a finger across his chin. “Geneva.”

  “Geneva McCarty?” I snorted. “Does Dad know?”

  Edmond rubbed at the calluses on the underside of his palm and shru
gged.

  The horizon erupted with a rumble. I wrinkled my nose. “You and I both know they don’t get along. If their shopping carts passed inside the Valu-King, they wouldn’t speak. If he finds out we’re restoring something for her, he’ll go mental.”

  Like eagle feathers, the layered clouds moved swiftly and my mind raced, dislodging my earliest memory of Geneva. Before the holidays—I must’ve been five or six—she had rung our door bell. Mom and I were busy icing the wall of a gingerbread house. I’d devoured the purple gumdrop chimney, as Mom answered the door. “Geneva?” her voice cracked.

  Dressed in an icing-covered apron that matched Mom’s, I peered at the open front door. Geneva saw me. With whirling snow behind her, she stepped past my mother and into our foyer. She handed me a brown paper wrapped package. Heavy and square, like a book. “I want your daddy to have this, and someday it will be yours.”

  Mom wiped her hands on her apron. “I’ll see that John gets it.”

  Before Geneva left, she said, “It’s something that should be kept in the family. Somewhere safe.” Cupping my chin in her fur-gloved hand, she winked. Mom closed the door behind her and took the package from me, placing it on Dad’s roll top desk. While she poured herself some brandy from a bottle in the kitchen pantry, I snuck over to the desk and placed the brown paper package under the tree.

  A boom thundered close by, and the two of us stood in awe. “Work pays the bills. Besides,” he said, patting my back, “we have extra help for the summer. Repairing the chandelier gives you experience with grinding glass and soldering.”

  “What happened between them, anyway? I mean Geneva is at least thirty years older than Dad. Did they have—relations?”

  Edmond rattled his head. “Rachael.”

  “With the whole Trudy thing and all, I thought maybe Dad—you know.”

  “Phooey.”

  A fat raindrop fell on my cheek, then another on my shoulder. “Did a check bounce? Or did we screw up a painting for her, or what?”

  The wind swayed branches, threatening to shake loose leaves into a shower of confetti. “It isn’t my business, how it all started,” he said.

  “Come on Edmond, I’m nineteen. What’s the big secret?”

  Supersized raindrops splattered the pavers, and in seconds turned into a downpour. We stepped back. He slid the barn doors closed, leaving them cracked open just a few inches. “It’s not my place.”

  NOTE TO SELF

  Travis’s accommodations have been secured. YEAH!

  Geneva McCarty. Is she the client from hell, and Dad just doesn’t want to deal, or is there something more?

  I’m a big girl. If I’m going to do the deed, I need to take precautionary heed. Do medical tables really come equipped with stirrups?

  CHAPTER 5

  Pesky Annoyances

  Erratic storms with heavy rainfall were predicted to roll across the state for two more days. A cold spring had delayed the planting of the Ohio corn crop. The precipitation was received with delight by Edmond, an avid gardener, and the farmers who’d yet to harvest. Not only did the heavy rain provide much needed water, but the downpour would drown the small larva of the European corn borer, a pesky moth that threatened to devastate the maturing crop from Massachusetts to Central Ohio. I had my own troubles, and would’ve liked the storms to wash them away, but knew I had to rely on more than weather to get rid of Mom and Dad’s girlfriends.

  After dinner, a quick burst of sun gleamed on the puddles that collected where the paths and driveways sagged. Peeling back my bedroom curtain, I watched for Sky. She and I had arranged to spend some time together to discuss the future demise of Trudy and Dad’s relationship, or at the very least how to get them in separate living quarters. And she volunteered to help me brainstorm ideas on how to persuade my mom that her Betts hobby was unhealthy. Dad thought I’d be sleeping at Sky’s which was true-ish. Trudy lived in an apartment complex called Lakeside Shores and Sky had a copy of her key. Sky’s roommate had her boyfriend staying over and they wanted alone-time. Tonight we’d stay at Trudy’s and devise a plan to save the summer.

  When I saw Sky drive up the street, I stuffed a twenty and a lip-gloss into my pocket, grabbed my overnight bag and shouted, “Bye Dad.”

  He stood at the bottom of the stairs and ran a dishrag over an antique Satsuma vase.

  I smiled and waited for the usual round of questions. What were my plans? What time would I be home?

  “I think it’s great that you and Sky are friends. Have a good time.”

  I waited.

  He gave me a hug.

  No inquisition. Weird. Did Dad want private-time with Trudy? EUGH.

  A SMALL BOATHOUSE RESTED on the edge of a man-made lake in the center of a cluster of apartment buildings. Cherry-red and ocean-blue paddleboats with white seats bobbed on ropes that were tethered to a dock. Eight of them were aligned like Bomb Pops in the lake everyone in the complex called “the donut.” Sky thought it looked more like a toilet seat with a patchy mound of grass full of goose crap in the middle. She called it, “the commode.”

  Thunder rumbled above the parking lot, and in the twilight a gust of wind blew rain off wet leaves. I should’ve felt guilty about crashing at Trudy’s without her permission, but rationalized that she committed a worse violation of space invasion to me at our house.

  Before I scooted out of Sky’s black 1975 Trans-Am, she nudged me. “What?” I asked.

  Craning her neck heavenward, she cracked her shoulders. “Be on the lookout for some live space action tonight. I’m on call.”

  Indulging her, I glanced at the sunset. I didn’t see anything that I’d classify as alien. Across a porcelain-blue backdrop, golden bursts intermingled with pink, reminding me of sand art. As a kid, I went through a phase of siphoning colored sand into decorative bottles. I’d concentrate on layering the silky smooth colors, so they didn’t mix, but that never happened. My creations always became jumbled. I needed Sky to focus on earthlings. We had to come up with a solid roadblock that would press between Dad and Trudy’s thing.

  I hid an eye roll from Sky. She’d already given me an earful about her alien fascination. I’d made the mistake of asking Sky if she honestly believed in extra terrestrials, or if she was just enamored by the cute alien in the movie ET. She’d scoffed, shredding the movie improbabilities to pieces—the lack of extraterrestrial dialogue, planet origins, spaceship details, and a conversion of time travel. Then she spent twenty minutes trying to convince me to join MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network.

  Had Sky and Trudy been abducted at some point? That would explain some of their oddities, clothing being at the top of the list. Sky religiously dressed in black or orange—one or the other, never mixing the two. Orange was her uniform color at work, and black was for all other occasions. Tonight she wore monochromatic black jeans, a Flash Dance-esque off-the-shoulder T-shirt, and burnout boots. She and Trudy floated in anti-fashion bubbles.

  I’m not a Sci-fi fan, and my interest in the buffoonery of running around the state to log supposed UFO sightings, or manning phones for emergency calls was zip. Unless there was the possibility of being abducted by a hot spaceman, she had no chance of recruiting me as a MUFON member.

  Using directional tactical questioning, I averted the alien topic. “Which building does Trudy live in?”

  “Nineteen.” She twittered her fingers. “Symbolizes the harmony and knowledge acquired by the sun and the moon.”

  The numerology mumbo crap that she shoveled caused my left eyebrow to arc. She was a bullshit artist, which on some level I admired.

  Knowing Trudy, I had a predisposed idea of her apartment décor, and was curious to see what “the clean thief” had done to make her bolt. When she’d called the police, they’d taken a look at her apartment, but since nothing had been stolen, they said there wasn’t anything they could do. Clean and dusted, Trudy categorized the apartment crime under vandalism. The officer told her that tidying didn’t count as a prosecutable
offense.

  THE FINGER ROOTS OF a willow tree stretched beyond its draping canopy and had shifted the sidewalk in front of building nineteen. I tripped on uneven pavement. Sky steadied my arm. Tonight would help decompress my emotional upheaval, and put a plan of action into place to bring some normalcy to my orbit.

  A juniper bush holding a rifle jumped in front of us. My feet moved into auto-drive, and I bolted behind the nearest car. Sky jumped back and froze at the leaf-covered, camouflaged Sasquatch. He’d been hiding in the shrubs that choked a lamppost. At last count, I had three restraining orders issued, and it wasn’t improbable that Billy Ray, his cousin Jack, or Bridget Bodsworth had come to pop my clock.

  Sky kicked Sasquatch in the shin.

  “Jesus,” he said, rubbing his ankle, “you don’t need to be so violent.”

  Markus Doneski was no Sasquatch. He was a fuck-up whose gene pool included the gift of annoyance. I’d spent an entire semester of Trigonometry with his fingers flicking my back while he spewed a litany of vulgar commentary under his breath.

  As I stepped out from behind the car, he pointed at me and laughed.

  I didn’t know if he lived in this apartment complex and didn’t care. Assholes, I realized, are a lot like freckles. They stick with you and some even grow bigger over time. Drawing a fast bird, I told him, “Eat shit and die.”

  His fake pout flexed the blonde peach fuzz above his lip. He tipped the lid of his twig covered baseball hat. “O’Brien, aren’t you going to introduce me?”

  I lasered Doneski, in an attempt to incinerate the annoying essence of his presence.

  Sky stepped forward, and reached out a hand, “Sorry about nailing your shin. My self-defense kicked into auto.” She introduced herself. “Sky Bleaux.”

  The corners of his mouth twitched, and he attempted a macho head nod. Retrieving a partially used cigarette from behind his ear, he put it in his mouth. “Markus.”