by Paisley Ray
He dropped his sunglasses and tilted my head. “How’d you hide it?”
“Liquid concealer. Take a right.”
“Isn’t this the street your Dad’s shop is on? I thought we were going to Gert’s?”
“I just need to check on something.”
Travis pulled into the gravel driveway. “What do you need to check on? It’s the Fourth of July?”
The parking lot was empty. I stared at the second story window, and swatted Travis’s shoulder. “When’s the last time you climbed a tree?”
“No, forget it. I am not breaking in.”
“My dad owns the building, so technically it’s not breaking in. Besides, we’re not going into the shop, we’re going into the apartment above.”
Travis rolled his window down and cut the car engine.
“Rachael, this is stupid. What do you expect to find in there?”
I slumped my head back and spoke to the upholstered car roof. “I don’t know. Probably nothing. But maybe something.”
“What kind of something?”
“Something to convince my mother she’s better off without Betts. I don’t care if Mom thinks she’s psychic or wants to practice hocus-pocus. I just want her to do it in Canton, without Betts.”
Travis tsked and shook his head.
I got out of the car, and slammed the door. Walking to the driver’s side, I bent my elbows on the open window. “Are you coming, or am I climbing the Buckeye alone?”
Reluctantly he nodded.
He frowned. “Let’s get this over with. Gert promised to show me how to shoot twenty-one monkey.”
“Twenty-one monkey?” I repeated. Aunt G had to be farfing around with Travis. I’ve never seen a Rocking-monkey pool shot.
Travis fitted his hands together, and I plunged my foot into his hand lock. His hands broke, landing me on my ass. “You did that on purpose.”
He made a meager effort to suppress a laugh. “I did not.”
“Squat down,” I said.
“Why?”
“So I can climb onto your shoulders.”
Travis wobbled toward a sturdy branch that met my chest. Scrambling aboard, I asked, “Are you coming?”
He jumped, but his fingertips couldn’t grasp the branch. “I’ll be the lookout.”
As I clambered up the tree, Travis fired useless commentary. “Not that branch. Careful O’Brien. If you fall, you’re going to seriously break something.”
I could see the double-pane window. It was on a swing hinge and hung open. Locusts hummed in the wild browned grass clumps that grew near a vacant building behind the restoration shop.
Travis’s chin tilted up and he held a hand up against the afternoon sun. Since it was a holiday, local businesses were closed. Without car or foot traffic the neighboring parking lots were empty. The eerie quiet ignited paranoia. Spying was an intrusion of privacy. What can I say? We all have vices, and I happen to be more of the discovery type. I filed the activity under “Thwarting bad behavior with bad behavior.”
Shimmying across a limb, I realized cotton Bermuda shorts were not the best wardrobe choice. In direct route to the apartment window, I nicked and scraped the inside of my bare legs.
“That branch doesn’t look strong enough,” Travis warned.
Plush green finger leaves rattled under a breeze. I hadn’t been inside the apartment in years. Edmond used to live up here, but moved out when he found a fixer-upper with a barn out back to restore his Airstream. By then, Dad’s business had picked up and he decided not to rent out the apartment after Edmond. With high priced art being restored below, Dad was careful. The apartment was used for an occasional out-of town-visitor.
The Buckeye tree towered over the upstairs apartment and provided shade from the direct sunlight. As a kid, I fired the glossy nuts from a slingshot at a boy whose dad worked at one of the neighboring businesses. My aim has always been precise and at close range, I’d nailed my opponent on the base of his neck. He grew a raspberry welt the size of a half dollar coin. I had to apologize, and Dad confiscated my weaponry, which put a damper on future attacks.
The branch I climbed across intertwined with others. Even though there were no cars besides ours in the lot, a rush of adrenaline pumped. Within an arm’s reach of the open window, I peered into the loft to make sure it was empty. Through the mesh screen I could see the Amish quilts on the beds. Ceiling beams were exposed, and honey wood paneling covered the walls. Mom had left an oscillating fan running on top of the corner dresser. The double beds took up most of the space. There was an open kitchen with a mini-fridge and stovetop at the far corner. Three doors were closed. One led to an outer staircase that landed out back. The second door, locked from the other side, was a spiral staircase that led into the shop. The third door hid an airplane-sized bathroom with sink and standing shower.
I recognized Mom’s side of the room instantly. Not by the clothes or personal items, but by how she kept them. Her things were stacked and perfectly folded with square corners. The other side of the room was less anal with clothes escaping the unclosed zipper of an over-packed suitcase.
The screen easily popped, and I pushed inside.
“Careful,” Travis warned.
Straddling the window seal, I landed without grace and thumped to the floor landing on the screen. “Shit.”
“What happened?”
I hung my head out the window and dangled the V-shaped screen. “The screen is kind-of bent.”
“The metal should be soft. Try to straighten it on your knee.”
Sitting on a bed I slowly plied it back into a rectangle-ish shape. Eyeing Betts’s stuff, I pegged her as a jewelry hoarder. A velvet carrier lay unrolled on the floor and jangly Victorian-looking pieces poked out. A necklace and matching earrings with cabochon sapphires, and pearls encrusted in diamonds. For someone who professed knowledge rather than material goods as an aspiration, she sure had a lot of expensive looking accessories. I kicked her suitcase lid open with my foot. Closing my eyes, I plunged my hands in. Like wading your feet on the murky ocean floor for sand dollars, my hands were in blind territory, and an unwanted visual of touching her panties made me shudder. On the bottom, I felt a folder and tugged. “Holy Shit!” I rubbed the eye of Horus trinket on my neck. The inner me was right.
“Rach, hurry up.” Travis shouted.
I leaned out the window. “Just a minute.”
The file tab sticker read Geneva McCarty. Betts had stolen the client folder from Dad’s desk. But why?
Popping a window screen out is easy. Putting it back while straddling a tree branch, not as simple. I’d tucked Geneva’s folder down the butt of my shorts, pretty sure I’d given myself a deep tushie paper cut. Ignoring the rough paper on skin sensation, I struggled to fit the bent screen back in place.
A warm breeze fluttered the supple finger leaves, tapping them against one another in a fairy song. Scooting forward, I leaned toward the screen and intended to use brute force.
“Rachael, try to secure the corners in the channel brackets.”
“Why don’t we switch places?” I smarted off.
The branch beneath me groaned and I became hyperaware of holding still. Lifting the screen in place, I jammed my palm against it. Below my thighs a snap echoed, lurching me forward until I face-planted a root that pressed above the dirt. The jolt knocked the wind from my chest, and I completely forgot about my butt cut. My lungs constricted and I lay motionless.
Some smartass crow voiced a series of caws from the tree canopy and I heard Travis’s shoes shuffle across the gravel. He flipped me onto my back. “Rachael, can you hear me?”
I sucked wind and groaned. “How could I not hear you? You’re screaming in my face.”
He pulled a leafy branch with green buckeyes still attached from my hair. Grass blade tips that had gone to seed and turned brown irritated the soft skin underside of my knees. After a minute, I rolled onto my side and sat up.
“Is anything broken?” h
e asked.
After smoothing my hair back and reaffixing my ponytail, I patted my bum shoulder. “Still in one piece.”
“What about your leg?”
A wackadoodle frenemy had driven my roommate’s car over my left leg. I bent and flexed it. “Still working.”
Travis sighed and helped me stand. We moved into the Adirondack chairs. I inspected the cuts and scrapes on my arms and legs, and covered my face with my hands.
“Rachael, let’s just get out of here. I told you, Betts wouldn’t be stupid enough to leave anything incriminating up there.”
I reached down the backside of my shorts.
“What the fuck is that?”
“Betts is a professional con. This is a client file from my Dad’s desk. I found it in her suitcase. She’s using my mother.”
“Are you sure? There could be a reasonable explanation.”
I chortled deep in my throat. “She’s working an angle.”
“What angle? What does a client file provide to Betts?” Travis asked.
Betts was a fool to come to Canton. What did she think, that she’d screw with Dad and my life a little more? Did she think that since she had Mom on her side, she could pick us off next? “I’m not sure what her plan is, but I’m onto her, and I’m having a premonition. I will uncover her veil of hocus-pocus.”
NOTE TO SELF
May have touched Betts’s underpants in my reconnaissance operation. Gnarly!
Climbing trees is not as much fun as I remember. Recovering from bumpy buckeye landing, branch bruises, and a deep paper-esque laceration on my ass.
I am onto Betts. Can’t wait to chew her up and spit her out. The spit out portion will blow her aura.
CHAPTER 10
Vanished Under a Kaboom
Italian-style Fourth of July was a new tradition, thanks to Trudy. Instead of hot dogs, hamburgers, and potato salad, my dad, Travis, Gert, Sky, and I gorged on antipasti salad, lasagna, Italian sausage, peppers, onions, and assorted mini-cheesecakes for dessert. It was takeout, and way better than the last fondue Thanksgiving Trudy had hosted. I was actually okay with it.
Travis and I met Dad, Trudy, and Sky at Aunt G’s. Dad didn’t know about my altercation with Betts and I wasn’t sure if he or Aunt G had invited Mom and her. If they’d been invited, I wasn’t sure they’d show.
Trudy went all out arranging platters of meatball and calamari appetizers with mini flag toothpicks. Gert rounded up Travis, Sky, and me for a game of twenty-one monkey. I half-listened to her rules. “One cue ball in the pocket—orders a drink. Seven in the pocket tastes the drink. Fourteen drinks the drink. Last ball in pays for the round unless the person who sunk fourteen hasn’t finished. Then they pay.” She sounded convincing, but I’d known Gert all my life, and I’d never played twenty-one monkey. I was sure she’d made up the game on the spot.
“But we’re not in a bar,” Sky said.
Aunt Gert selected her cue. “We’ll improvise.”
“Why’s it called ‘twenty-one monkey?’” Travis asked.
Chalking her cue stick, she confessed, “Because that’s the most rounds I’ve played in a single night.”
“Tonight may be a record-breaker,” Travis teased.
Leaving caution behind, I sipped a strawberry daiquiri with blueberry whipped topping, a holiday cocktail that Trudy had handed me. I asked her if it was healthy, and she assured me it was not.
Trudy and Dad slipped outside, and I rested my back against the wood paneled walls that Dad had sanded and stained when I was a kid. I liked how it felt against my skin, sturdy and polished, the way my life used to be.
Sky nudged me. “Are you okay?”
Outside Gert’s picture window, I could see Dad seated in a chaise lounge next to Trudy. He laughed as she fed him something drippy off a toothpick. I couldn’t remember ever seeing him happy like that. Could I be wrong about Trudy?
“I’m great,” I said, completely lying. “You know that night we spent at Trudy’s?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you come back later and spot clean her place?”
“Oh shit. I completely forget. Did my sister say something?”
“No. No one said anything. It’s just that Travis has been staying there and her apartment is way cleaner than we left it.”
Sky contorted her face. “Are you sure? Who could get in there, and why would they want to?”
“Your shot,” Gert called to Sky.
What was going on? Doneski? No. He’s a creep, but not a neat freak.
Travis caught my eye, and I smiled at him. It was good to have his company, and I’d miss him when he left. He’d helped me out of the expo center, and scooped my flattened ass out from under the buckeye tree. I wouldn’t subject him to Dad’s ballistic reaction, and wait until tomorrow after he left to tell Dad about Betts and what I found.
Dad shouted my name in a non-festive tone. His call was the kind that set creases into his forehead. The tone was the one he used when I was in trouble. At the front door, he gripped my arm and tugged me outside causing daiquiri to slosh out of my glass. Trudy stood behind him and bit her lip. She spent more time looking at her shoes than at Dad or me.
Making squinty snake-eyes at the girlfriend, I had an inkling what had upset my dad, and would’ve like to have spit venom at her if I knew how. I mouthed, “Thanks,” under a flat smile.
When Trudy’s head surfaced, she grew puppy eyes and behind dad’s back mouthed, “Sorry.”
Dad lifted his sunglasses onto his head, and squinted at my cheek. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“I’m not playing that game.”
I threw my hands up. “What game?”
Dad paced and ran his fingers through his hair. “Rachael, your mother and Betts assaulted you and you didn’t tell me.”
“Technically the slap was battery. And Mom didn’t launch it, Betts did when she allowed some demented spirit from a client enter her weakened aura.”
He stopped pacing. His face went all glazed-donut, and I wondered if he’d become possessed.
I turned my palms up and shrugged.
“My God, Rachael,” he shouted. “This is not normal.”
“Agreed.”
Dad wrapped me in his arms, and kissed my forehead. He whispered, “You need to tell me about these things when they happen.”
“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to lose her again. Betts is the problem, not Mom.”
“Your mother has taken us both on an emotional roller coaster. I’ve played nice, letting her and that woman stay above the shop. I hoped that she would repair some of the damage, at least between you two.” Dad held me by my shoulders. “But I will not tolerate violence.”
Dad’s voice sounded so raw. I decided to fess up about my entry without permission discovery. “Dad, promise you won’t be mad at me if I tell you something important?”
“What?”
“Promise.”
“Rachael, I promise.”
“I kind of climbed the buckeye when Mom and Betts weren’t in the apartment, and kind of found Geneva McCarty’s client file in the bottom of Betts’s suitcase, and I kind of took it.”
Red blotches crept up his neck and onto his cheeks. “When was this?”
“Just before lunch.”
“Were you alone?”
“No, Travis was with me.”
“Where’s the folder?”
I pointed toward the car. “In the glove box.”
“Go get it.”
A hiccup erupted from my throat. “Dad, you promised you wouldn’t be mad.”
“I promised not to be mad at you, and I’m not. I am mad as hell at your irresponsible mother and her sidekick.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Get Travis. I want you two to come along. Betts is no longer welcome under my roof.”
“But if you kick Betts out, Mom will leave.”
Dad dug the car keys f
rom his pocket.
THE NIGHT TURNED DARK, and random rocket blasts popped off in backyards. Charcoaled hot-dog-scented air blew into the open window. From the back seat of Dad’s two-door vintage truck, I leaned forward and stuck my head between my dad and Travis.
It was the Fourth of July, and all of normal America was at a picnic waiting for the fireworks show. But my family was no longer normal. As much as I struggled with Mom and Dad’s girlfriends, I didn’t want to lose either of them over their choices in companions. Mending my relationship with my mom was not going well. Since she’d been back she was distant, and I needed to figure out a way to reconnect before it was too late.
Dad pulled into the gravel driveway outside the restoration shop. Craning my neck, I fixated on the buckeye. Its spindly leaves and knotted branches merged, creating a tent of opaque gloom over Dad’s shop and the lawn below. “No light, no cars. It doesn’t look like anyone is there.”
Dad opened his door and grabbed Geneva’s client file. “You two stay here. I’ll check.”
“She’s my mother.”
The interior car light shone on Dad’s grumped face.
“Betts slapped me, not you, and I’m the one who found Geneva’s file. I should be there to confront them.”
I squeezed out the driver side.
Dad grimaced.
Still seated in the front of the truck, Travis seemed unsure whether or not this was a family-only meeting.
“Come on in the shop,” Dad told Travis. “You can wait downstairs while Rachael and I check the apartment.”
Dad punched the code and high-pitched beeps disarmed the alarm system. I flicked a set of lights, and Travis settled on a stool near the tiffany chandelier.
“We shouldn’t be long,” Dad said.
“When you rekeyed the locks last Christmas, did you re-key this one.”
Dad’s face frumped, and he blew out steam. “No. Only the external locks. No one ever stays here, so I didn’t think I needed to.” He held his voice low. “Travis, would you do us a favor? If you hear Maeve and Betts arriving, call up to us.”
He and I climbed a set of stairs, “Do you think they’re here?”
