“Larry, you more than anyone know how long I’ve struggled to reprogram myself—to put myself back together. And look at me. I’m still so fearful of commitment I don’t even trust myself to have a pet—beyond one I can flush down the toilet, anyway.”
“Your fish are doing fine, by the way.”
Deanna let a sad laugh escape her lips. “I’m just not strong enough.”
“Strong enough for what?”
“To fight against the current. What I’m saying is, I think I proved my own thesis about the inherent absorption of neurotic tendencies.”
“Remind me again?”
“You know. The psychoses of the parents are indelibly transferred to their offspring. I’m talking about the riptide of habit, Larry. Of ingrained behavior. I’m just not strong enough to fight it.”
“Do you think your mother loved you, Deanna?”
Deanna blanched, surprised at the question. “No. Not really.”
“Have you ever considered she felt the same way you do about having pets?”
“Yeah. Sure. I’m the stray she got stuck with.”
“No. I mean your avoidance of them for what you think is their own good.”
“Sorry. I’m not following you.”
“Have you ever thought that your mother had a reason to keep her distance from you? To keep you at arm’s length because she knew her tendency was to do you harm?”
“Wait. Are you saying you think she tried to keep me out of striking range of her craziness?”
“Perhaps.”
Deanna shook her head. “Does that qualify as motherly love, Larry?”
“That’s up to you to decide.”
“I’ll have to think long and hard about that one.”
“Listen, Dee. I love you. You want my advice? Memories are easier to hold onto when you have nothing new to replace them.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The spiders in your nightmares weren’t a sign of psychosis, Deanna. They were real. They were snippets of memories trying to warn you of danger. But they’ve served their purpose. You can let them go now. They’re in the past.”
“I see your point. But—”
“Don’t come back, Deanna.”
“What?”
“Don’t come back. Go make some new memories. Pave over the old, dark ones with sunshine and smiles. Go where your heart truly wants to be.”
Deanna’s heart fluttered. “Really?”
“Yes. Really. Doctor’s orders.”
“Okay.” Deanna wiped away a tear streaming down her cheek. “Thank you, Larry. I love you too, you know.”
“I know.”
“Take care of my fish?”
“You know I will.”
Deanna smiled, clicked off the phone, and looked up at the clear, blue sky. Then she dialed Marcus Blatch to give him the news.
The End
Ready for more?
The next mystery in the Mind’s Eye Investigators series is The Child Within.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZN3RQ3S
When an arsonist’s trail of clues leads back to his own cold grave, the Mind’s Eye investigators are forced to explore his tortured past—and their own childhood demons—if they’re to unlock the secrets that drove him to his evil deeds.
Can Deanna, Blatch, and Smalls track down the fire bug before the whole city goes up in flames? Learn the horrible truth behind his sick pursuit of justice!
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Excerpt of The Child Within
Chapter One
“NURTURE THE CHILD WITHIN you. Neglect it at your own peril. For if that child should wither and die, it will take the best of you with it.”
Slowly, inch by inch, he cracked open the door and poked his face through the narrow slit. His eyes darted left, then right, peering through the sideways curtain of rain. The monstrous thunderstorm roiling above had done its work, aging the afternoon sky prematurely gray—and clearing the streets of prying eyes.
No one was watching.
He stepped out into the deluge. The rush of cold rain soaked through his clothes, slapping his mind awake.
Life surged anew within him. He was—as light as a feather!
Lightning cracked the sky above. He imagined himself riding the wind like a leaf, soaring up to the bolt-lit clouds. He spread his arms and tried to surf the frenetic gusts that swirled around him, clawing at his face and kicking up debris.
He laughed with delight.
She won’t be mad. God’s washing me clean!
A sudden pinch of doubt pursed his lips. He crossed his fingers, just to be safe. As if on command, the torrential downpour subsided to a light, gray drizzle. He turned to go back inside—but something caught his eye.
Looming at him from the damp gloom was a red umbrella.
A sign!
Robert, he thought. Robert’s here!
Frozen with awe, he stood and watched, still and silent as a stone, as the figure carrying the umbrella passed by on the sidewalk and disappeared from view.
“Wait for me!” he almost yelled. Instead, he dashed through the yard toward the figure. As he reached the sidewalk, a sudden thought jerked him to a standstill.
Things didn’t always turn out so well when Robert was around.
He slowed his pace, trailing a safe distance behind Robert as he made his way along the sidewalk’s uneven hexagonal pavers. Mesmerized by the red umbrella bobbing and twirling in the light rain, he forgot about the damp and the cold.
Giddy elation turned his skin to goosebumps.
I’m on a mission—with Robert!
In the dim gray of dusk, he followed Robert down another block and around a corner. He swiped damp hair from his eyes and peered from his hiding spot behind a palm as the figure scurried up the front walk toward a faded, two-story frame house. Robert climbed the sagging front steps, and under the sanctuary of the covered porch, he lowered the umbrella and shook off the rain.
But as Robert closed the umbrella, the curious watcher’s face collapsed along with it.
That’s not Robert! That’s—a woman!
He glared at her as she leaned the umbrella against the wall by the front door and reached inside the pocket of her beige trench coat. Out came a pack of cigarettes. She tugged one loose with her lips, then stuck the pack back into her pocket.
She struck a match.
Oh, no!
Bad girl. Bad, bad Harriet!
Harriet must pay.
Chapter Two
Marcus Blatch was up to his elbows washing meatloaf from the dinner dishes when he heard the first siren. He dropped the sponge and raced into the living room. Through the foggy front windows of the 1930’s Craftsman bungalow, he saw the dim silhouette of a firetruck jostle quickly past on the red-brick street.
A hand landed gently on his shoulder.
“What’s going on?” Deloris asked.
“Not sure, Mom,” Marcus answered, his eyes trained on the window. He turned to face his elderly mother. “You wait here. I’ll go check it out.”
“Be careful,” she said, her delicate features pinched wit
h concern.
“I will. And don’t worry. I’ll be home before your cherry cobbler’s done baking.”
Deloris doled out a resolute smile. She knew nothing she could say would stop her son from helping someone in need. That was his most endearing quality. She handed him an umbrella. “I hope everybody’s going to be all right.”
“Me, too,” he said, putting down the umbrella. “I think the worst of the rain is over. I’ll see you soon.”
Marcus hugged his mother, then slipped out the front door of the house, hoping none of the neighbors noticed.
He only made it ten steps.
“You going down to check out the firetruck?” Art Melman asked from his rocker on the front porch.
According to neighborhood gossip, “Old Man Melman” had been living in the house next door since the giant oaks lining the streets were nothing but acorns. An angry-faced, stick-figure of a man, he’d already been entrenched in his white-brick bunker of a house thirty years ago, when Marcus himself had arrived after being adopted by Deloris and Dave Blatch at the age of thirteen.
While Marcus had stumbled through puberty and learned to drive a stick shift on a rebuilt Ford Mustang, Old Man Melman had supervised his every move from the jury box of his front porch. A cynical sentinel, he’d eyed Marcus with a skeptic’s certainty that any day now the sprouting young misfit would screw up and prove he’d come from bad seed.
Instead of getting giving Melman the satisfaction of making him angry, Marcus had followed his new father’s advice. He’d made it his mission to treat the old man with unwavering respect. But after three decades, the game was wearing thin. Marcus’ attempt to kill his crotchety neighbor with kindness was proving to be a tedious, drawn-out process. In the meantime, Dave, the only father Marcus had ever known, had passed away five years ago, proving the old adage that only the good die young.
“Yes, sir.” Marcus spoke as if addressing a military commander. “Thought I’d see if they need any help.”
The old man’s face soured. “What could you possibly do to help?”
Typical Melman, Marcus thought, ignoring the man’s sarcastic tone. “Well, I was a police lieutenant, in case you forgot.”
“I didn’t forget,” Melman said bitterly. But his eyes conveyed traces of worry—fear there might be some truth to his memory beginning to falter.
Marcus recognized Melman’s self-doubt. He had plenty of it himself. Lately, more and more, Marcus had the niggling feeling that perhaps the old geezer in front of him had been right all along.
Maybe he was no good after all.
At forty-two, Marcus was painfully aware he was on the bullet train to becoming “that guy.” Divorced. Unemployed. Living with his mother. The beginnings of a middle-age paunch setting up shop around his waistline. All he lacked was a basement apartment and evenings spent playing videogames in his boxer shorts with his “internet friends.”
He grimaced and glanced back at his mother’s bungalow. Thank god she doesn’t have a basement ....
“Got yourself another job yet?” Melman barked, looking Marcus up and down.
Marcus rankled. “Yes, sir. I started my own business.” So why don’t you mind yours?
“Uh huh,” Melman said skeptically. “Well, back in my day—”
“Sorry. Gotta run, Mr. Melman. You take care, now,” Marcus said, and took off sprinting down the sidewalk in the direction of the firetruck.
MARCUS SMELLED THE smoke before he saw it.
Jogging west on 12th Avenue, he hoofed past seven or eight beautifully restored wooden bungalows. He crossed Locust Street and ran down the sidewalk bordering another block of the charming, turn-of-the-century homes and tropical, manicured yards that made up the Old Northeast neighborhood of St. Petersburg.
As Marcus reached Oak Street, he spied flames shooting above the rooftops and gasped. People were gathering in the streets, wringing their hands.
“Shit!” he said. The whole neighborhood could burn to the ground!
He hooked a left on Oak Street and sprinted in the direction of the flames. Halfway down 10th Avenue, two firetrucks were unrolling their hoses and hooking up to hydrants. Short of breath and damp from the drizzle, Marcus pushed on until he reached the scene.
It was horrific.
Against a backdrop of dull, gray sky, a two-story, wood-frame boarding house was being gobbled alive by a whirling inferno—a tornado of fire.
Marcus caught just a glimpse of the familiar roofline before it was engulfed in flames. He recognized it as the Melton Arms—one of the many once-stately homes that absentee landlords had cobbled into too many apartments back in the 1970s, when the economy had sagged and property codes had gone “creatively” lax.
The Old Northeast neighborhood, along with most of St. Petersburg itself, had languished in neglect for decades, earning itself the unenviable reputation as a has-been city—a place for Social Security pensioners to retire on the cheap in Florida. By 1980, the town had become known mainly for its green benches crammed with derelict seniors idling by and by until their name was called up yonder. As a result, St. Petersburg had been was dubbed, “God’s waiting room.”
But in the mid-1990s, a new generation began to rediscover the forgotten beauty of the city’s quaint old homes and tropical locale. A resurgence spectacular enough to be called a rebirth got underway. By 2007, when another economic collapse had sent other cities stumbling, sassy, shiny, hip St. Petersburg had simply yawned and applied a little more sunscreen.
Despite the city’s glamorous rise, a few holdouts like Melton Arms had remained stubbornly unkempt and unrepentant. Eyesores of the community, the old tenement buildings were deprived of renovation by their cash-cow investors, and protected from code violations by grandfathered-in laws allowing them slip through the cracks.
Melton Arms had been one such annoying holdout. But no outdated law could protect it now.
It was toast.
Marcus watched as firefighters aimed their hoses at the mango trees and artsy bungalows surrounding Melton Arms. He knew what that meant. They’d given up on saving the building and were focusing their attention on containing the fire’s spread.
Marcus glanced around at the sea of people crammed together like cordwood behind a line of yellow police tape. He spied a familiar face. A young, sandy-haired police officer named Jerry Davidson. He’d come on as a new recruit six months ago, shortly before Marcus had quit the force.
Marcus gave him a nod. Davidson nodded back, so Marcus worked his way through the pink-faced gawkers toward him.
“Got you working crowd control?” Marcus asked.
Davidson smirked. “Wow. I can see now why you decided to become a private investigator.”
Marcus fought not to wince. To survive on the SPPD required political savvy and wolf-pack mentality. Successful cops learned quickly to eat their young. Marcus, however, had never acquired a taste for it.
“Good one,” Marcus said jokingly. He grinned at Davidson and noticed the man’s face relaxed a notch. “You know, I never understood how a house could burn down in the middle of a rainstorm.”
Davidson glanced around the crowd, then leaned in toward Marcus. “I heard it had a little help.”
Marcus leaned in closer. “Help?”
Davidson straightened his shoulders and chewed the inside of his lip. He was still contemplating whether to say more when a young boy of four or five snuck past him. He’d wormed his way through the crowd’s forest of legs for a better look at the fire.
Suddenly, the boy darted out beyond the yellow tape.
Before Davidson could react, Marcus reached out and nabbed the red-haired tot by the collar of his Smokey the Bear t-shirt.
“Not so fast, little man,” Marcus said, pulling him back to safety.
“There you are!” a woman called, her face a motherly mask of worry and weariness. She grabbed the boy up in her arms. “Young man, you’re in a heap of trouble!”
The child patted his moth
er’s face, then leaned into her shoulder and sucked his thumb. His mother nearly broke down with gratitude. “Thank you, sir,” she said to Marcus.
Marcus smiled and tousled the kid’s auburn hair. “Don’t be too hard on him. Boys will be boys, after all.”
As the mother and child disappeared back into the throng, Davidson nudged Marcus on the arm. “Thanks.” He leaned closer to Marcus and whispered, “Could be arson. Found a gas can in the bushes.”
Marcus whistled. “Not Smokey the Bear’s, I hope.”
Davidson snorted. “It’s down at headquarters being run for prints as we speak.”
Marcus nodded, then grimaced at the smoldering hull of the boarding house. “Anybody inside when it happened?”
“Won’t know until they sift through the debris.”
An awful groan reverberated through the damp twilight. The two men turned to see the Melton Arms curl in upon itself and collapse. Sparks flew up like the cremated remains of demons, only to be quickly struck down by jets of water from the firemen’s hoses.
Davidson turned to Marcus. “You miss the force?”
“I miss some things about it, yeah,” Marcus admitted.
“Bet Captain Castleberry isn’t one of them things.”
Marcus locked eyes with Davidson. Castleberry had been his boss for nearly two years. The man was a political shark. A master manipulator. And a complete dick. Castleberry had chosen Marcus to mentor, but both men had realized quickly on that neither had anything the other wanted—especially respect. Someone had to go. And, as they say, shit rolls downward.
Marcus hesitated, wondering which way he should he play it with Davidson. Screw it, he thought, and slapped on a wry grin. “I’ll say this much. I’m happy to report I no longer need a hemorrhoid cushion.”
Davidson snorted, his stoic blue eyes suddenly alive with mischief. He opened his mouth to reply, but was interrupted by a crackle from the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt. He unhooked it and held a finger up at Marcus, a silent wait a minute request. Marcus nodded, and turned to watch the final flames flicker out on Melton Arms.
Davidson grunted into the walkie-talkie a few times, then clicked off. “Got a match on the prints,” he said to Marcus.
What She Forgot Page 26
