“It’s tough when you don’t get everything you want, ain’t it?” Pete said.
“Tell Pops to call me on my cell if he wants some help hauling today, ’kay?” Ben said, ignoring the taunt.
“Sure thing,” Pete said, raising his empty coffee cup as though toasting his brother.
Ben slammed the door shut behind him as he walked out. His ears were burning as he went down the driveway to his car and got in. As he sat behind the steering wheel, he realized he was breathing so hard and fast his body was shaking. Forcing himself to move slowly, and feeling every muscle and nerve in his body twitch with tension, he slid the key into the ignition and started up the car.
He had no idea where he was going or what he was going to do. All he knew for sure was that he had to get out of that damned house and away from his brother.
He needed some time alone so he could think things through. He needed to figure out why he had reacted like that, as if he was jealous of Julia Meadows … like he had any kind of claim on her in the first place.
He didn’t like feeling as though he had fallen for her so hard and so fast a simple comment like Pete’s would set him off. It might be a good idea to take the advice of whoever had jumped him out behind the bar and forget all about her.
The only problem was, it was already too late for that.
“You want to explain this?” Louise Marshall said.
She was standing barefoot on the front steps, wearing a tattered pink bathrobe as she greeted Tom, who was striding up the walkway to the house. She held up a battered brown leather suitcase in one hand.
“What the fuck?” Tom said, drawing to a stop.
“I was doing laundry, ’n I dropped a sock behind the washing machine. When I went to fish it out, I found this.”
“Yeah?”
“What do you mean, ‘yeah?’ Would you care to explain why there’s a suitcase filled with what sure as shit looks like cocaine in our basement?”
“What’s to explain?”
“What the —?” Her voice choked off, and something pulsed painfully behind her eyes. “You brought how many bags of cocaine into my house?”
“Oh, so now it’s your house?”
Tom mounted the steps and stood beside her, towering over her.
“I live here, don’t I?” she said. The pain behind her eyes blossomed, and pinpricks of light swam across her vision. She coiled back, expecting to be hit, but she somehow found the strength to say, “You don’t think you owe me an explanation?”
“I don’t owe you doodley-squat.”
He grabbed the suitcase from her, then pushed past her and entered the house. He walked down the short hallway to the kitchen and let out a long groan when he dropped the suitcase to the floor and sat down heavily in one of the chairs at the kitchen table. Louise followed a few steps behind, clutching the neck of her bathrobe closed at her throat.
“Gimme some coffee, will yah?” Tom said.
Louise considered for a moment, then said, “Get your own damned coffee.”
“Jesus H. bald-headed Christ! I come home frigging exhausted after pulling a double shift, and you can’t even get me a goddamned cup of coffee? You should have a whole fucking breakfast waiting for me.”
Louise clenched her fists, wishing she had the courage or strength to go at him. She stared at the suitcase on the floor, her mind churning with things she could say.
Over the last few months … ever since she miscarried … something fundamental had changed in their marriage. She was positive he must be seeing another woman, but she hadn’t found any real evidence.
No lipstick stains on his shirt collar … no strands of hair that weren’t hers … no late night, muffled phone calls …
But that’s the only way she could explain the nastiness, the violence, the way he treated her like he hated her now.
She was convinced he was having an affair.
The only question was: How serious is it?
When she found the suitcase stashed away where he obviously thought she wouldn’t find it, her first thought had been that he was packed and getting ready to leave her. She almost passed out when she opened the suitcase and saw so much cocaine.
More than twenty big bags.
She had no idea what its street value might be, but it had to be thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars worth … maybe even a million.
“I want to know why you have this in my house!”
“You’re forgetting that I’m the one who pays the fuckin’ bills.”
She stepped forward and kicked the suitcase, hearing the heavy bags shift inside as it fell over.
Tom’s eyes fluttered as he looked up at the ceiling for a moment and ran both hands down the sides of his face.
“Truth is, it’s none of your goddamned business, all right?”
Louise felt heat rush to her head.
“It sure as fuck is. If we get busted, I could end up in jail, too, with this much coke in my house.”
“We won’t get busted. I’m a goddamned cop.”
Tom took a deep breath and clenched his hands in his lap. She could see that he was struggling to maintain his self-control, and she knew all too well from past experience that she should drop it — now — before she got hurt.
“It’s not the first time,” he said.
“What?”
“The first time I had — uh, evidence in the house.”
“What do you mean, ‘evidence?’”
One side of Tom’s mouth twitched into a smile as he looked her straight in the eye.
“We’ve been having some problems with stuff going missing from the evidence locker, so the chief asked me to stash this at my house to make sure it’s safe.”
“Bull,” Louise said.
“Go ahead. Call Harlan if you want. Ask him, if you think I’m lying.”
Louise glanced from Tom to the wall phone and then back at her husband. She was actually considering calling his bluff, but she knew he had her. If he was telling the truth, the worst that would happen would be that Tom might get reamed out at work for letting his wife know about what he was doing. If he was lying to her, she’d be putting herself as well as him in jeopardy so when Tom got busted, she’d get busted, too. She stared at the suitcase on the floor, blinking her eyes rapidly to stop the tears that were gathering there.
“You’re a rotten son-of-a-bitch, you know that?” she finally said.
Tom looked at her, his expression all but saying: Got’cha, bitch!
“So,” he said. “You gonna make me some breakfast or what?”
He looked at her with an insipid smile she wanted to wipe off his face with a frying pan if she had to. She told herself to let it go. In a sense, Tom was right. It wasn’t any of her business. She obviously wasn’t any of his business. He pretended not to notice her at all as he eased back in his chair and loosened his belt. He unbuttoned the top three buttons of his work shirt, reached inside, and scratched his chest.
Louise started to turn to the counter to make him breakfast, but then she stopped. Moving quickly, she snatched her car keys and purse from the counter and was out the door and in her car before Tom could so much as get out of his chair.
As she started up the car and backed out of the driveway, she had no idea if she was relieved or hurt that he wasn’t standing in the doorway or running down the driveway to beg her not to leave him.
She had all the proof she needed to know that while he might not be packing to leave her — not yet, anyway — he was up to something he didn’t want her to know about.
And as she sped down the road, not even thinking about where she was going, Louise decided that she didn’t want Tom Marshall in her life anymore.
From here on out, it was simply a question of how she could get away from her husband without getting hurt any more than she already had been.
So much for “’till death do you part,” she thought.
After his encounter with Pete, Ben drove down to
Lucy’s Cove and watched the ocean’s restless, eternal beat until his mind cleared and his blood pressure went back to somewhere around normal. He drove back home, showered, and considered going back out to “Grave’s Edge” to see his mother again, but honestly, he didn’t think he could handle it alone.
Maybe if he and Louise went over together again, it would be easier to face what was happening to his mother. He had been so disturbed by her condition they had to leave before showing her the photos of the boat launch.
“For all the good that would do,” Ben muttered. His neck and scalp felt cold and tight, as if the blood had drained out of his head.
No matter what they did, their mom wouldn’t have any idea what was going on and never would.
Ever.
What he really wanted to do was call Julia and see if they could spend some time together. He had no idea what her days were like. She hadn’t talked much about her routine and what it entailed, helping her father. It certainly must be a lot harder, more demanding that simply trundling him off to a nursing home and waiting for him to die. Then again, he hadn’t asked. He had no idea what her father’s medical condition was, but it certainly couldn’t be as bad as what was happening to his mother.
So why not call her up and see what she was up to?
Why couldn’t they get together, hang out, have some laughs, maybe sleep together, and leave it at that? He didn’t see anything wrong with a little casual sport fucking. He sure as hell wasn’t looking for a serious relationship, much less in the market to get married.
But Julia was different, somehow.
The old Gunner confidence that came so easily to him with every other woman he’d ever known disappeared when he was with her. The jealousy Pete had aroused in him was something he’d never felt before. He decided it might be good to take a day off, let things settle down, maybe try to find out who her other guy was … if he, in fact, existed. Pete may have been saying that because he could see how much it galled him.
So if he didn’t call Julia, what did that leave him for the day?
His options were limited. He could go down to The Local and see who was there. Like the saying goes — “It’s five o’clock somewhere.”
Another option was to start looking around for work. After being through what he’d been through, he had promised himself he would take as much time off as he needed to get his head together after some of the shit he’d seen … and done.
He could always go down to the wharf and see if his father needed help, but he wasn’t about to volunteer. He’d never enjoyed being out on the water, and he was content to wait for his dad to ask him. He certainly didn’t need the money. He had enough in savings, and if he pitched in and helped with expenses living at home, he could get by for quite a while.
He knew he should check in at the VA hospital in Augusta. Back in Iraq, you were supposed to suck it all up and deal. If you asked for help, there went any chance for promotion. You were a pussy or a fag. So you drank too much, or drugged, or had dreams. Or offed yourself.
But he wasn’t in Iraq anymore. And the dreams were getting worse. Back home, nobody would give him shit if he admitted he had a little PTSD.
Shit, he thought. What is a “little” PTSD? Denial is what it was. Fuck that!
He knew he needed to get his shit together, but that would take time.
What had happened in Iraq had happened. It was over and done with. He could accept all of it — good, bad, and indifferent. He had seen what he had seen, and he had done what he had done, and that was the end of it.
As bad as Iraq was, being back home had its own parcel of problems. He knew that as soon as he saw a car hauling ass up the driveway. A plume of dust rose in its wake as it squealed to a stop. He didn’t realize it was his sister until the car door opened, and Louise got out. He went to the side door and met her on the side steps.
“We gotta talk?” she asked without preamble. Her hair was a mess, and her face was pale and slick with sweat. She was breathing like she’d just run a marathon. And she was barefoot and wearing nothing but a tatty pink bathrobe.
“Yeah … Sure.”
Ben stepped back so she could enter the house before him.
Even before she spoke, he knew what was coming, and an unaccountable fury filled him, wrapping around his heart like burning hands.
“So … will you talk to him?” Louise said after she’d told Ben everything that had happened this morning. She had calmed down some, but her eyes were filmed with a frantic light. They kept darting from side to side, and she couldn’t look him straight in the eyes for very long.
Ben didn’t like what he had heard, but he wasn’t sure it was his place to have a little “heart-to-heart” with his brother in law. Tom had been a year behind Ben in school, so they’d run with different crowds. Frankly, they had never really liked each other.
Ben wished now he had told Louise what he thought of Tom before they got married. Then again, Tom had gotten her pregnant, and maybe he had done the right thing, marrying her. Still, what he was doing was no way to treat his wife … especially after losing a baby. He couldn’t very well tell Louise it was her crap and she’d have to deal with it. Their parents had taught them that family stuck together, no matter what. Cop or no cop, Ben absolutely wasn’t going to stand by idle while someone was abusing his little sister.
“What do you think‘s really going on? You’re positive he wasn’t telling the truth about the evidence locker?”
“Jesus, Ben! Get real. You actually think Harlan’s going to ask a friggin’ patrolman to keep that much coke at his house?”
“There’s a lot?”
“Um-hmm. A lot.”
Ben grunted and stroked his chin, gazing out the window at a patch of cloudless blue sky.
“It doesn’t add up,” he said, “that’s for sure. You think maybe he’s gonna try ’n sell it on the side and make a few extra bucks?”
“A few? For Christ’s sake, you should see how much of that shit there is! It’s gotta be worth thousands — maybe millions. I dunno. But you know, sure as shit, eventually the cops are going to notice those bags have gone missing.”
Ben started to say something but thought better of it. The pieces were starting to fall into place.
Tom wasn’t planning to sell the coke he’d stolen and surprise her with a vacation or a brand new house, that was for sure. He was going to sell it and use the money to take off. Since what he’d done constituted a felony, he damned well better have a ticket to someplace out of the country. But it was clear that Tom had no intention of taking his wife with him. This wasn’t something you’d spring on a spouse. It took planning. He couldn’t imagine even someone as stump-stupid as Tom Marshall saying something like, “Hey, Honey … I scored a couple a’ hundred large … What say we pack up and move to Jamaica”?
And as soon as this occurred to Ben, something else snapped into place.
That night out behind The Local … He hadn’t recognized the voice of the guy who had blindsided him. He’d done a good job of disguising it, and the alley had been too dark for him to see his assailant’s face.
Now, Ben was convinced it had to have been Tom.
He’s the “other guy.”
The son-of-a-bitch has his eye on Julia and is planning — maybe foolishly hoping — she’ll run away with him.
“So leave him,” Ben said simply, hoping what he’d been thinking didn’t register on his face. “Leave the son-of-a-bitch. Pops’ll always let you move back in.”
She stared at Ben, her eyes glassy, her face as pale as marble. She swallowed once, hard enough to make a loud gulping sound that, under other circumstances, would have made them both crack up. But the fear and pain … the look of absolute helplessness in her eyes touched Ben.
“Look, I … I know I gotta do that eventually,” she said, her voice barely audible. Then she let out a deep sigh. “People around town are gonna talk.”
“They’ll talk anyway,” Ben said. �
��They’re already talking about that bruise on your face, and from what I hear, it ain’t the first.” Louise blanched at that. “I don’t mean to be cruel or anything, but if he’s the loser I always thought he was, I’d say get out now while the getting’s good … before you get seriously hurt … or worse …”
Her hand went to the cheek where Tom had smacked her the other day. The swollen bruise had turned dull purple with irregular yellow edges. Tears filmed her eyes, and when she sniffled, her throat made a choking sob.
“I’m telling yah,” Ben said. “You gotta leave him. And the sooner the better.”
“But Tommy’s —”
“Tommy’s a douche bag. Anyone who beats his wife deserves whatever shit comes down on his head. I don’t give a flying fuck about Tommy Marshall, Lou-Lou. I care about you.”
Ben slid his hands across the table, took hold of her folded hands, and squeezed them tightly. He was surprised how fragile they felt, and he had the unnerving thought that someday his sister was going to be as frail as their mother was now. Hopefully that wouldn’t be for a long time, but it would happen eventually.
He smiled wanly, remembering what a little toughie she had been when she was young. She’d pitch right in with Wally and the boys, loading lobster traps onto their father’s truck to take down to the wharf, hefting bait barrels, and hand-hauling traps when the winch on the Sheila B. wasn’t working right.
Now, seeing her so wounded and afraid, his heart went out to her.
Ben smiled reassuringly and took a breath, holding it for a count of five before letting it out.
He didn’t like what he was thinking about Tom Marshall.
If he went over to talk to him, he was afraid he would lose his shit right there on the spot, and they’d end up at each other’s throats. Still, his little sister needed help.
“Okay,” he said. “You want me to talk to him, I will, but I guarantee it won’t do any good.”
“All you can do is try. Please. I want this worked out so I don’t have to be afraid of him. I want to get out of this at least with my dignity intact.”
The Cove Page 12
