by Elle Rush
“Iced tea with lemon?”
Her secret stash was getting a workout. “You bet. The best of everything for my best girl.”
Chapter 23
Aaron came home from the station and changed into a Henley, heavy jeans, and steel-toed work boots. Then he went into the backyard and murdered a log with his axe. He’d wasn’t fit for human company until he’d worked out some of his frustrations.
First, he spent the morning dealing with the general irritation of dealing with all the paperwork from the Austen Cottage break-in. Now that Shakespeare Drive had developed a party reputation, it would be hard to lose it. He’d already updated his deputies that they’d be doing more drive-bys, trying to stomp out the rumor and party opportunities before they took a firm hold. The last thing he wanted was to get complaints from the local cabin owners; he didn’t have the patience to deal with Neil Dempsey on a regular basis.
Then he’d spent the last hour of his day dealing with Marjory Major. That was time he’d never get back. She tried to get him to press assault charges against Brooke. It was a point of pride that Aaron didn’t brush off official complaints. He investigated, because it was his job. In this case, it wasn’t she said/she said. It was Marjory said/the video showed. Because he’d received no less than three links to the video, as well as a copy that Trevor had taken in the hallway.
He’d tried polite. He soon switched to blunt. “Ms. Major, I’ve seen the videos that various students took of the scene in the hall. If you insist on pressing charges, I will take notes as I watch it and save a copy as evidence. However, if I see it is self-defense as Ms. Portman claimed on the video, that means she was defending herself from your assault, and she can press charges against you. Do you still wish for me to proceed?”
Marjory opened and closed her mouth twice. Aaron saw the dilemma, plain on her face. They both knew what was on the video. Marjorie Major would deny any story the students told, but the video told the unbiased truth. Her reputation was based on the premise that everybody saw her as a paragon of virtue and equality in her role as the senior female member of the school board. She couldn’t afford the truth.
“No,” she finally said.
“Gender bias is a very polarizing subject. I’m sure the board will have a vigorous debate about it before bringing it to a vote, and that’s not including all the input you’ll be getting from parents on both sides of the parking issue. Responsibilities and issues like this are part of being on the school board. It requires a thick skin at the best of times.”
“I don’t like what Jordan Portman said about me.”
“As Brooke Portman pointed out, her daughter wasn’t talking about you. She was talking about the policy. If you feel the policy reflects badly on the board, you are lucky to be in a position to do something about it. But that is not something Jordan Portman or the Holiday Beach Police Department can fix.”
She’d huffed and puffed a little more, then stormed away. Aaron felt dirty for even pretending to feel sympathy for her. His job was hard enough. When he got to do some good, when he helped somebody, when he caught a bad guy, the high was incredible; all the work was worth it. Then there were the days when he was treated like a glorified attack dog, and he wondered if it was worth it to come back to the station the next morning.
Today was an attack-dog day.
All he wanted to do was call Brooke, but since she was the one who he’d been asked to attack, he didn’t know if his call would even be welcome. She hadn’t had a pleasant day either.
The urge to see her face won. If she wasn’t in the mood to talk, she’d let him know. He rolled the water bottle between his hands as he waited for Brooke to answer his video call. When she did, he saw that she was in her bedroom. She was sitting on her bed, with her pillows piled high against a fabric headboard. She wasn’t wearing makeup or a hair band. Instead, her hair was down and tucked behind her ears, and he saw dark rings under her eyes.
“I had a frustrating afternoon with Marjory Major. How was your day?” he said.
Her eyes went wide, and she plastered an obviously fake smile on her face. “Me too! I’ll bet my day was as bad as yours.”
“Are you and Jordan alright? Any further problems from Marjory?” He doubted it. He’d bet that Marjory went home to lick her wounds and plot her next move with the board. Coming after a teenager had already backfired spectacularly. Aaron wouldn’t want to be the paper’s faculty advisor or Principal Kelly, though.
“We’re okay, thank you. Like I told Jordan, dealing with Marjory is too much like Macbeth to worry about. The rest of the board is, if not more reasonable, less volatile.”
“She’s like Macbeth?”
Brooke blew a raspberry, making him laugh. “You know. A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
“I wouldn’t say that to her face.”
On the screen, Brooke shrugged. “I might. At a later date. This afternoon, I wasn’t going to escalate any more than I had to. It was all I could do not to snap at her smug face.”
Aaron sighed and let his head hit the cushion on the sofa back. “Trevor was not impressed with the suggestion that he should lose the parking spot he got by being on the football team. We had another loud discussion about rights versus privileges. I didn’t have much solid ground to stand on since I’d congratulated him when he got it, saying he’d earned it.” His son had made a good point when he said it was a lot easier to suggest others make a sacrifice than it was to be the person making one.
“It’s hard to admit you’ve changed your mind without feeling weak.”
“He thinks it should be phased in so new players don’t automatically get it.”
“It’s still not fair, but it’s a compromise that will only take three years to even out. After how many decades of status quo, that is a relatively fast change. It may not be fast enough for the other students, though.”
“I’m so glad he’s a senior this year.”
“Me too. Of course, in my case, it means whatever college Jordan goes to is going to get three or four years of policy critique.”
“I win.”
“There you go.” She smiled, but stress lines still radiated from her eyes. “At some point, I’m going to have to speak to the school board again,” she said quietly.
“Yes, but you can do it.”
“I know, but I hate…”
Her voice trailed off. Aaron was surprised. She seemed fine with Jordan’s newspaper op-eds. She was already ready to stand up for the underdog in any situation. Did she actually resent the confrontations where she had to fight for the right thing? It had to be exhausting. Was she just doing it for her daughter? “Hate what?”
“Formal public speaking. I can talk to people with no problem, but having to address a group? With notes? One of these days I’m going to snap, and start running round, shaking people, yelling ‘Do as I say!’ We’d all be so much better off if everybody listened to my genius.” She sighed. “But apparently that’s frowned upon. Even when I’m right.”
He laughed. He couldn’t help it. “I’d appreciate it if you held off on snapping at the school board till our kids have graduated.” He leaned closer to the screen. “I’m not going to have to arrest you for beating Marjory with a piece of limp spaghetti someday, am I?”
“I’ll promise to try to do it when you aren’t on duty.”
“You’re all heart, Brooke.”
“For you, I am. How are you doing after this afternoon?”
“I’m exhausted. I came home and chopped a cord of wood to work out my aggravation.”
“How much is a cord?”
Aaron shrugged. “If I have to deal with Marjory again, I’ll be good for firewood until the end of the decade.”
“Poor baby,” she teased.
“How goes your studying for your midterm?” Aaron asked. As soon as it was over, Brooke would have two whole weeks without an assignment or a test, and he intended to make the most of that t
ime with her.
“It’s going. It’s a lot of work, though. I want to stay on the Dean’s List because it will help when it comes to job placements during the internship phase so I can’t let up, but I’ll be glad when the midterm is done.”
“We’ll celebrate when you’ve aced it.”
Her smile at his suggestion made his entire rotten day worthwhile. “I’m looking forward to it already.”
Chapter 24
The only thing that could possibly make homework even more fun was adding trips to the laundry room in the basement between questions. Was there anything better than carrying baskets of dirty clothes down two flights of stairs to a creepy basement?
“I should have called tails,” Brooke muttered to herself. Heads had to do the laundry, tails had to fold it and put it on the appropriate bed or linen shelves. Jordan had lucked out on the folding for the last three weeks. Brooke got the stairclimbing workout.
The basement wasn’t that horrible. It didn’t have damp concrete walls with a single, psycho-attracting, dim bulb swinging from a wire in the ceiling. The well-lit corridor was a butterscotch orange, which wasn’t pleasant, but it was clean and fresh, thanks to Lucy putting on a new coat of paint from one of the surplus cans in the storage room. The laundry room had one cinderblock wall behind the three washers and dryers, but the others were drywalled and painted.
On the other side of the central cinderblock wall were the building’s utility rooms and a workroom for the property maintenance manager. Brooke hadn’t seen inside that room.
The storage rooms along the other three outside walls weren’t as nice. Their doors opened to the main corridor that ran in a U around the building. The plywood walls didn’t reach the ceiling, and the fluorescent lighting ran from one locker to the next. The units were only big enough for a couple bikes or a Christmas tree and a couple boxes, but Brooke was grateful for the extra space.
After she swapped out her clothes for a basket of clean towels, Brooke could have sworn she saw a shadow pass under the door of unit one-oh-two. “Hello?” she called.
When there was no reply, she decided it had to be her imagination. There was nobody living in the associated apartment. She wasn’t going to think about mice or other creatures scrabbling about in the building.
She hefted the basket with the jug of fabric softener nestled in the warm fluffy towels, then marched back up the stairs, determined to make it through the next section of her textbook before the buzzer on the stove told her it was time to switch the wash again.
Brooke kept her eyes open when she carried down the next load, a laundry hamper overflowing with T-shirts, jeans, and twice as many socks as a normal person would need in a week. She also chose her steps more carefully, placing her feet on the steps rather than stomping down them like an elephant.
There was definitely movement behind the storage unit door. A shadow blocked the light twice as she passed by. The washer thumped and rumbled on its final load for the night, so Brooke left her clothes and basket sitting on the dryer and silently reentered the corridor. As she approached storage unit one-oh-two, she heard a distinct scuff of a shoe sole hitting loose gravel on the concrete floor.
She reached out. When her fingertips hit the doorknob, she turned it slowly. Each of the lockers had a handle that only locked from the outside. If it was locked, there was vermin. If it was open, she had much bigger problems.
The knob turned for a quarter rotation before jerking to a stop. It was too far to be locked, and not enough to open the door. Someone was holding it from the inside. She twisted a little further and met resistance.
When she heard a muffled curse, she didn’t stop for her laundry. She didn’t slow down when she lost her slipper on the first-floor landing.
Brooke burst in her apartment and locked the door behind her. “Jordan, stay in the apartment!”
Her daughter came out of her bedroom, her silk scarf wrapped around her hair. “I wasn’t planning on going anywhere, but can I ask why?”
“Somebody’s in the storage units.”
“O-kaaaay.” She drew out the single word until it was a question.
“Someone is in the unit for one-oh-two, and it’s supposed to be empty.”
“Please tell me you didn’t go in there like some kind of horror monster bait. You know better than that, don’t you?” Jordan begged.
“I called out, but nobody answered. I didn’t go in,” Brooke hedged. She’d tried to but she was unsuccessful. Jordan was right; she should have known better.
“Are you going to call Lucy?”
“I’m going to call Aaron and ask him to check it out. With all the break-ins around town lately, I don’t think we should confront whoever’s down there on our own.” Brooke dialed and put her phone on the kitchen counter.
She had one sneaker on when he picked up. “Hi, Brooke. I didn’t expect to hear from you until later.” His voice sounded warm and relaxed. She hated to be the person to ruin his mellow mood.
“This is an official call,” she said bluntly.
“Are you in trouble?”
“I think someone has broken into a storage unit downstairs. I’m going to call Lucy to see if she’s allowed somebody in there, but if she hasn’t, I was hoping you could come over.”
“How about I come over anyway? Just to be safe.” She heard movement on the other end of the line and pictured him pulling on his jacket and boots.
“I’d appreciate it.”
“Stay in your apartment.”
“The door is locked, and Jordan is here with me.”
“Don’t go back downstairs. Don’t try to keep an eye on the staircase. Don’t do anything,” Aaron emphasized. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
“I promise.”
It was hard, though. As soon as she hung up, Brooke’s internal voice began berating her for calling Aaron over something so silly. A person broke into a storage unit that she knew was empty. That wasn’t an emergency. They obviously weren’t stealing.
She groaned. What if it was Lucy? What if her friend was sweeping it out for the next tenant and had her earbuds in and was leaning on the door when she tried to open it? That was a much more likely scenario. She was going to scare Lucy to death.
Brooke had to warn her.
Jordan darted in front of the door. “No way, Mom. You’re not going out there.”
“It was probably Lucy.”
“Then you should call her and ask her if she’s in the storage units. Don’t make me miss school for your funeral because you were killed by an axe murderer. I need the grades.”
She did not need ideas like that in her head. “Cookie, you are not helping.”
“Three different channels have slasher movie marathons on from now till the thirty-first. I can’t help it.”
“That’s it. You can only watch PBS from now on.”
“I’m helping to keep you safe.” Jordan pointed at her phone. “Text Lucy.”
L, are you in storage 102 bc somebody is and they didn’t answer so I called Aaron for backup.
She felt even stupider after she sent the text. Lucy was going to think she was an idiot.
Just home. In parking lot. Was w Roy. Who’s in basement?
This was much better and much worse.
Don’t know. A says don’t go look. Stay away. U 2.
I can keep an eye on back door from my car. Tell A.
This was not good.
Doors locked and engine running?
Brooke got a “thumbs-up” emoji as a response. It would have to do. If anything went sideways, Lucy could have a clean getaway.
Jordan breathed in her ear as she read her phone screen over her shoulder. Brooke knew who it was and still let out a short squeak.
“That’s good, Mom. Now we wait.”
For all her daughter’s looks were from her father’s side of the family, Jordan’s personality was a carbon copy of Brooke’s, down to her lack of patience. She lasted four minutes on the
clock before she checked her phone. “What’s taking him so long to get here?”
“The inability to teleport, Cookie.”
Eight minutes after her texts to Lucy, Brooke and Jordan were staked out at the living room window, waiting for Aaron to pull up. At twelve minutes, Brooke let her hand hover over her phone. “Should I text him? I’m going to text him.”
It chimed as her fingers made contact with the screen. This time, they both jumped. “He’s in the parking lot. Lucy’s letting him in through the back door to the basement,” she read to Jordan. That particular door was a fire exit and was only accessible from the inside unless you had a key, which Lucy did.
“Can’t we go to the landing and watch to see who he comes out with?” Jordan asked.
“No, Aaron said to stay inside.” Being a good role model sucked. If Jordan had been at work, Brooke had no doubt she’d be staked out in the stairwell, peeking through the railings like a kid looking for Santa on Christmas Eve.
“Can we open the door with the chain on and listen?”
“No. We wait.”
Even knowing what was happening, they couldn’t hear anything from two floors away. But they didn’t need to wait long.
“Mom, look!” A large figure burst through the front door, raced down the street, and cut between two bungalows. Those houses backed onto another residential street. Behind that was Main Street. Another person chased him despite the first person’s large head start.
Aaron was no slouch; he was in top physical condition. But he was also over forty, and the form he was after moved like someone half his age. The chasee was also motivated not to get caught, which added to their speed. When Aaron needed a second attempt to clear the fence between the houses, Brooke knew he’d lost the race.
She gave him credit for continuing the pursuit but wasn’t surprised to see him return empty-handed. He rounded the corner via the sidewalk with his heavy flashlight in hand. Even at that distance, she saw the frown on his face.
When he reached the apartment building, he looked up. Brooke stepped closer to the window so he could see her. She pointed at herself, then down, asking to join him.
