Autumn Blue

by Karen Harter

  They came running from the kitchen, followed by Duke. The dog barked once before hurling his huge body forward. Deputy Estrada’s right hand jerked toward the gun on his hip. Duke leapt onto Ty, paws on his master’s shoulders, and began licking him as if he were an ice cream cone melting in the sun.

  “Hey, buddy.” Ty ruffled the hair on Duke’s neck.

  Sidney frowned at the deputy and shook her head. Oh, that would have been just great. Their beloved Duke blown to smithereens right before her children’s eyes. Estrada sheepishly dropped his hand to his side.

  “Ty!” Sissy hugged her brother, and his free arm rested on her shoulder though he stood as stiff as a signpost. “Hi, Ty,” Rebecca said, staring at her brother almost shyly. Sissy’s attention shifted to Deputy Estrada. “Why were you sitting out in our driveway so long?”

  “We’ll answer all your questions in just a little while,” Sidney said. “But right now I need you girls to take the dog outside for a while. Put him on his leash, and Rebecca, hold on tight.” Duke seemed torn. The German shepherd loved to go for walks but he kept throwing his heavy body back toward Ty, pouncing playfully at Ty’s feet and then watching over his shoulder for Ty to follow each time Rebecca tried to drag him to the backdoor.

  As soon as the door slammed behind them, the deputies began poking around the living room—halfheartedly, it seemed. Perhaps they didn’t think Ty would be careless or brazen enough to hide something in such a public area. Estrada perused her bookcase where Moby-Dick, Treasure Island, and other classics stood shoulder to shoulder with vegetarian cookbooks and a collection of Oprah’s picks. He pulled a few books out, running his fingers behind them, finding nothing but dust. At least the house looked clean and tidy—not that she needed to impress them. It was just that she had her pride and did not care to be perceived as trailer trash, even—or especially—to these contemptuous deputies.

  Deputy Estrada headed for the hallway. Pushing open the first door, he entered the bathroom. She heard him remove the heavy porcelain lid to the toilet tank, vanity drawers and doors opening and closing. He moved on to Ty’s room, the first door on the left. Sidney and Ty followed him, watching from the open doorway as the swarthy deputy began poking around, running his hands behind things on the shelf, even lifting the golf balls out of Ty’s bird nest to peer beneath them. Whatever he was looking for must be pretty small. Deputy Shingle joined him, lifting the mattress from the bed, running his hand beneath it, feeling the corners of the contour sheet and the freshly washed pillowcases. Sidney glanced at Ty’s expressionless face as the deputy headed for his closet. If Ty had snuck in and hidden something in there, he was Cool Hand Luke. The sooner that awful man finished invading their privacy and got out of there, the better. She just wanted to spend some time alone with her son.

  “Mrs. Walker,” Deputy Estrada said after running his hands through and beneath the dresser drawers, “I’d like to take a look in your bedroom.”

  Sidney’s face grew instantly hot. “Why on earth—”

  “It’s not that I suspect you of anything. It’s just a hunch I want to check out, that’s all. I’m sure you don’t want me coming back.”

  She laughed out loud. He turned to look at her. “Nothing personal,” she added, though somehow it did feel personal, especially now that he was invading her bedroom. Would he go so far as to ransack her lingerie drawer? For the first time, her eyes went to his left hand. No ring. She might have felt a little more comfortable about this if he had a wife—not that that meant anything anymore. She studied his stony face as he surveyed the room. He had dark eyes set like shallow caves beneath a ledge of high forehead, a square granite jaw, and a straight nose. He was handsome, strikingly so, but that hard face and rigid body might have been chiseled out of granite. What woman would want to snuggle up to that on a cold night?

  He walked straight to her highboy, opening the Italian inlaid wood jewelry box she had received as a wedding gift, while his partner stepped into the master bath. The music box began playing a cheery version of “Some Enchanted Evening.” Estrada pushed aside the gold bracelet her father had given her on her sixteenth birthday, her silver locket, Great-Aunt Louise’s sapphire and diamond ring, and a tangle of costume jewelry, picking up her wedding ring from the red velvet lining. She didn’t know why she kept it. Dodge had probably stolen it; there was no way he could have afforded a rock like that back then. Of course that hadn’t occurred to her at the time. She had been blinded—not just by love, but by the brilliance of the three-carat diamond set between two smaller stones. The rest of the jewelry her ex had given her over the years had gradually and quietly disappeared. He would have pawned the ring, too, no doubt, if it had not been snugly attached to her finger.

  “Nice,” the deputy said, fondling the gold ring.

  “Put it back,” Ty ordered from the doorway. “That’s my mom’s wedding ring.”

  The deputy’s eyes darted to each of their faces as if to detect any sign of guilt. “Is that right, Mrs. Walker?”

  “That’s right, Deputy.” She caught her reflection in the dresser mirror and tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. “So, it’s a ring you’re looking for.”

  He nodded grimly. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to take this temporarily just to confirm that it’s not part of the stolen property. It’s just procedure, you understand, and I’ll give you a receipt.”

  Tyson spat out a word that shocked Sidney. “I didn’t steal any ring! There’s nothing here for you to find, so why don’t you just leave my mom alone!”

  “I’m not the one that got her involved in this.” He stared hard at Ty for a moment. “I don’t know what kind of a sweet deal you got in court today, but I’ll be talking to your probation officer, and believe me, you better not slip—not once, because I’m going to be your shadow. I’ll be watching. And next time you screw up, you’re not going to get off so easy! Not if I have anything to do with it.”

  12

  MILLARD SAT UNEASILY in his faded blue easy chair, trying to work the morning crossword puzzle, suspecting that hell was not a hot place after all but his own living room in the presence of a sulking teenager. Was he supposed to entertain the kid all day? Pull rabbits out of a hat, maybe do a little tap dance on the old coffee table? He tried to ignore the glares radiating from the sofa where Tyson Walker slouched with his arms locked across his chest. It was like in that article Millard read in the paper about dangerous radioactive waves escaping from faulty microwave ovens. You couldn’t see them, but they were deadly just the same.

  Fifteen weeks. He hadn’t done the crime but here he was doing the time right along with this skinny little delinquent. Millard didn’t get out much anymore, but he suddenly felt trapped. What if he decided to go on down to Clara’s Café to see the old gang one of these Wednesdays? He hadn’t joined them for the weekly ritual since Molly passed on, but the temptation had been lingering at the back of his mind. What on earth had he been thinking when he stood up in court and volunteered himself? It was the boy’s mother, Sidney. She had looked so pale, those wide green eyes of hers so plaintive, so desperate. And then when the officer came forward to haul the kid away, her shoulders had deflated like a parachute hitting ground. He wanted to save her somehow, like she was his own daughter. The next thing he knew, he was on his feet and those fateful words had fallen out of his mouth. Damn.

  Millard finally sighed, dropping the paper to his lap. Hopefully the kid’s mother would bring his schoolwork tomorrow. She said she would try anyway. “Do you have any plans, young man, other than sitting there like a bump on a log all day?”

  Tyson stared out the window. Rain spilled over a blocked gutter on the west side of the house like slender silver prison bars. He shrugged. “I thought you’d have a computer.” The toes of his stocking foot poked at a stack of thin discs on the coffee table. He had pulled them from his backpack that morning while his mother left last-minute instructions and wrote her work number on a pad by Millard’s ph
one. “Everybody has a computer.”

  “Everybody but me,” Millard said, “and about two-thirds of the world, many of whom don’t even have a bed to call their own. What do I need a computer for? I’m not suffering just because I have to crack a book open for an answer every now and then instead of searching all over cyberspace.” Millard congratulated himself for knowing some of the terminology. He had picked up bits and pieces of computer jargon through his reading, but the whole concept of information scattering itself all over space and then coming together in some organized fashion at the click of a mouse still boggled his mind. Sometimes he felt as out of place in this modern world as Huck Finn suddenly catapulted into the flight control center at NASA. He clucked his tongue. “I’ve got the Yellow Pages, a telephone, and a library just down at the bottom of the hill. If I need to add up my bills or figure how many square yards of bark it takes to cover my gardens, I do it the old-fashioned way: pen and paper. Works every time. Don’t even have to plug anything in.”

  “How about games?”

  Millard glanced down at his crossword puzzle, then peered at the boy over his reading glasses. “You want games? Go take a look in that cupboard over there. Under the bookcase. I’ve got Scrabble, checkers, Monopoly. . . .”

  The kid scoffed.

  “Oh, not enough action for you, eh?”

  “Nope.”

  “What kind of games do you like? Those race cars?” His grandson, Pete, had nearly driven him nuts with the loud Indianapolis raceway video game he played last Christmas.

  “They’re okay. But war games are better.”

  Millard nodded grimly. “Shoot-’em-ups.”

  “Huh?”

  “If you ever get yourself into a real gunfight—and I don’t mean with pellet guns—you might start thinking a quiet game of Scrabble looks pretty good.”

  For the first time all morning, the boy turned to look at him head-on. “What do you mean? Were you ever in a gunfight?”

  “Sure was. In the air over North Korea.” The forgotten war, some called it. But Millard would never forget. “Did they teach you about that war in school?”

  Tyson shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

  Millard frowned. It seemed schools nowadays were shooting out ignorant kids like spit wads from a Browning automatic. Back when he taught history at Silver Falls High over in Dunbar, he made sure they knew their stuff or they were back in his class the next year to try again. “Back in the early fifties. I flew an F-86 Sabre. It was a single-seat, single-engine fighter-bomber.”

  The boy turned his body to face him, leaning forward slightly. “Did you shoot down any MiGs?”

  Well, look at that, Millard thought. Maybe there was somebody home behind those dark, sullen eyes after all. He nodded. “Harry S Truman was our president back then. You know all the presidents?”

  Tyson flopped back against the sofa with a scowl. Millard took that as a no.

  Just then the front door flew open. Rita, with a full sack in her arms, froze in the doorway and stared at Tyson as if there were a brown bear with muddy paws sitting there on her father’s white sofa.

  It was the moment Millard had simultaneously dreaded and anticipated with rebellious delight. “Well, shut the door before the rain gets in.” He pushed up from his chair and took the bag from her. “Rita, this is Tyson Walker. The boy from across the street.” He gestured toward Rita with a tip of his head. “My daughter, Rita.”

  “Hello,” she said.

  Tyson didn’t budge. “Hi,” he murmured. The kid didn’t know enough to stand when greeting a lady, but Millard decided now was not the time for an etiquette lesson.

  Rita followed him to the kitchen, where he began emptying plastic containers from the paper sack. “What’s he doing here?” she whispered.

  “Hmm? Oh, the kid? He’ll be staying here for a while. The next fifteen weeks, actually, while his mother is at work.”

  “You’re babysitting a teenager? How old is he?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Why isn’t he in school?”

  Millard peered under the lid of a covered bowl labeled Stew. As usual, someone had picked out most of the beef, leaving only mushy potatoes and carrots in a mud of gravy. “He got kicked out.”

  “Dad, what is going on here?”

  He turned to face his daughter. “The kid tried to rob Mitch Graber down there at the market. He was sentenced to house arrest, except he has to be supervised and his mother works full-time.” He was doing his best to sound nonchalant. “So he comes here during the days until she gets home.”

  “Oh, my gosh!” She rolled her eyes, shaking her head. “You don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into! He almost shot Mitch! I heard all about it down at the Hair Affair. What are you thinking?” She peered around the doorjamb as if to catch the would-be killer and thief in the act of pillaging. Apparently he was not in the middle of a heist. She pulled her head back and closed the kitchen door. “What makes you think he’s not going to rob you?” she hissed. “Or, worse yet, murder you?”

  Millard snickered.

  “This isn’t funny, Dad. You hardly know these people. You’re being taking advantage of just because you’re a widowed old man with a good heart.”

  He felt his blood pressure elevate. “There you go again,” he growled. “You just insist on pegging me as an old man with nothing left to offer this world. You want to take away my car keys and check me into Haywood House, nothing but an old horse waiting for the glue factory. Well, maybe—just maybe, Rita Lynn—your old man still has another race or two in him.”

  She turned away and then turned back, taking a deep breath and stepping closer to him. “Dad, you’re not thinking straight. I’m not saying you’re senile, believe me. But you’re more vulnerable now than you used to be. I know you don’t recognize that, but sometimes the people around us can see things we just can’t see. Why do you think so many scams are directed at the elderly? They’re from an era where they learned to trust everybody, and without a spouse there to discuss things with, well, sometimes people get sucked into things. Like signing over their entire net worth to perfect strangers. It happens all the time.”

  “Is that what this is about? You’re afraid I’m gambling with your inheritance?”

  She looked shocked and hurt, and he immediately regretted his words. His son, Jefferson, was gone now. Rita and the grandkids would get it all. This encounter was turning out all wrong, though honestly it was what he had expected. It was just that he had hoped, for a fleeting second anyway, that his daughter might be proud of him.

  She lifted her chin defiantly. “I just think you’re in over your head, that’s all.”

  He touched her elbow. “He’s just a boy. I still know a thing or two about boys.”

  “This isn’t sweet, benign Jefferson, Dad. I got the willies the moment I saw this kid.” She ran a hand through her short red hair. “He can’t be trusted. I know you think I’m wrong—and I hope I am. But I saw something in his eyes, something that tells me you’ll regret this.” She shuddered. “Maybe we all will.”

  13

  SIDNEY PACKED the girls’ lunches as well as a bag with oranges, a fresh loaf of nutty bread, and cheese for Ty and Millard to share. She reminded Ty to feed the dog, signed Rebecca’s field-trip permission slip, braided Sissy’s hair. “All right, girls, make sure you lock the door behind you when the bus comes. We’ll be just across the street.” She grabbed her coat. “Come on, Ty! Let’s not keep the man waiting!”

  She rushed across Boulder Road, Ty lagging behind her. It was 8:15. She had forty minutes max before she would have to leave for work. Jobs didn’t spring up like fir saplings in Ham Bone and she certainly didn’t need any more stress in her life.

  Yesterday, day one of Tyson’s sentence, had not gone well. Millard had practically pushed Ty out the door when she came for him after work. She felt the tension snapping between man and boy like a fuzzy sock being pulled from the dryer. That evening Ty had take
n his aggression out on Duke, wrestling wildly on the living room floor. The dog, of course, sprang up and barked between pinnings, swinging his scythelike tail at full speed as if to make up for all the evenings his boy had been gone.

  Millard was just presenting Ty’s probation officer with a cup of coffee when they arrived. The man set it on the coffee table and stood holding out his hand. “Mrs. Walker, Mark Dane.”

  He was tall with receding brown hair and a neatly trimmed beard. There was confidence in the way he stood, the way he gripped her hand and looked her directly in the eye. “Mr. Dane, thanks so much for meeting us here. This is certainly above the call of duty.”

  “Oh, I like getting out of the office every once in a while. We can do things here in the county that just can’t be done in the big city justice system.” He turned to Ty, offering his hand. “Tyson, I presume.”

  Ty’s head was lowered. He raised his eyes warily, extending his hand as if using his arm for the first time after having a cast removed. After the obligatory handshake, he slumped into an upholstered chair by the window. Millard shot him a disapproving look. Surely a young man from his generation would have shown more respect.

  They all sat. Mr. Dane took a sip of coffee, his head drawing back almost imperceptibly as he stared into the mug and then put it down. Apparently he wasn’t used to instant coffee, which was what Sidney had seen Millard prepare for himself when she brought in lunch yesterday morning. “All right, Tyson,” he said, “let’s get started. I’m going to go over the court requirements with all of you to make sure that everyone understands. My job is to monitor your adherence and to report to the court immediately any failure to comply. Your life is not your own right now. Consider yourself in jail”—he glanced around—“but with the benefit of windows and home-cooked meals.” He leaned forward. “Look at me, young man.”

  Ty dragged his gaze from the wall to the officer’s face.

  “I have no problem with sending you back to juvey.” Mr. Dane’s voice was firm and steady. “Where you do your time is up to you. So make sure you’re getting all this, because I’ve spoken with Judge Renkin and you’ve been shown all the mercy you’re going to get.”