3 A Brewski for the Old Man (2 page)

A hulking big boss SUV, black and raised up high over the wheels, crouched in front of the store. Spotlights that were mounted up near the roof, as if they were used for hunting down prey at night, gave it a malevolent, dangerous look. The driver, wearing a taupe-colored uniform, sat in the driver’s seat with both hands locked on the steering wheel and stared straight through us. He was thick-necked with a military-style haircut, the way he’d always worn it.

Next to him, Rena, Lacey’s mother, bent towards him as she spoke, her body soft and yielding, cajoling him. It told everything about their relationship. She reached out a hand to him, touched his arm, her body language saying she was begging. He didn’t respond.

“Oh my god,” I said. The words slipped from me unheeded. This was the man Rena talked about in worshipful tones. This was RJ.

I’d seen this scene acted out before in another time and another place. Only then it had been my own mother begging and pleading for love. Memories full of cruel, torturous emotions swamped me. For years, not a day had gone by that I hadn’t thought about him. Not a day I hadn’t cringed in shame at his memory. Now my feelings had changed. I wasn’t afraid or embarrassed or sad anymore. Now blind rage hurtled through my body like a runaway train.

“Who is that?” I asked, although I knew perfectly well.

“Ray John Leenders,” Lacey hissed. If I hadn’t already guessed, her tone would have told me all I needed to know about what the man behind the wheel had done to her. Bile rose in my throat. I covered my mouth with my hand.

Rena bent forward to gather up her purse, paused, then leaned over to kiss Ray John softly on the cheek, cupping his square jaw with her hand. He didn’t unfreeze.

She hopped down from the vehicle and closed the door gently with both hands. Rena was barely clear of the door when the brutish dark vehicle slammed backwards. The sign on the door said
The Preserves, Security, R.J. Leenders
. The SUV shot forward, hesitating but not stopping at the exit to the parking lot, before it took off down Beach Road.

Rena, stepping delicately across the sidewalk in stiletto heels designed for sitting not walking, tip-toed to the shop. She was really quite young to have a sixteen-year-old daughter, only in her late thirties, and she worked hard to keep her figure and looks. A strawberry blonde, perhaps more blonde than she’d been born, she still had the unlined porcelain skin of red-heads.

She stepped through the tinkling door. “Oh god, these shoes are killing me.” She gave us a glorious smile and minced towards the counter. “Ray loves high, high heels on me but then he doesn’t have to walk in them.” Behind the counter she bent to change into sandals, her breasts falling forward from the low-necked skin-tight tee. Her outfit was years too young for her, but I’d always assumed she dressed like that because most of the people coming into the store were young. Now I remembered that Ray John had always insisted that my mother dress provocatively. You don’t cover up a prize. The whole point is to show off a trophy and have it admired by other men.

“We went to Brandy’s for lunch. I put on pounds.” Her hands stopped digging through her purse. She looked up at us. “What’s the matter?” she said looking from one of us to the other. Panic flooded her face. “What’s happened?”

“Nothing, nothing,” I blurted out in denial. “Gotta go,” I said and fled the store.

Outside the sun was still shining. Seagulls circled and called out over the sand and the heat still pounded down, but I was cold. I stood with my arms wrapped around me, huddled against the building where no one could see me, trying to get it straight. Ray John left when I was barely thirteen but hardly a day went by when I didn’t remember my two years of hell. My pain was fresh and raw again.

“Get it together. Nothing has changed,” I told myself. “Just stay away from him. Go on with your life and forget about the past. Lacey and Rena’s problems have nothing to do with you. There isn’t room in your life for anyone else’s problems.” All good advice and I tried to pay attention, I really did.

I slipped in past the customer leaving Peter Rowell’s bookstore. “Sherri,” he called in greeting. Peter and I had hit it off from the beginning. Not only did we share a love of books, we were both crazy about golf. But I couldn’t share Peter’s other big passion, cricket, a game he’d tried to explain to me but one I’d never been able to grasp. His love of the game was reflected all over the store with the names of book sections written on cricket bats. Pictures of great British cricketers hung above the racks devoted to newspapers and the world’s biggest display of magazines.

“Good morning,” he sang out cheerfully. His sparkling blue eyes and English accent always brightened my spirits, but not that day. “Hi,” I replied.

Peter’s smile melted and his brow furrowed. “Not your normal sunny self today.” He tilted his head to the side. “Are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

A harsh bark of laughter exploded from me. I put my fingertips over my lips to stop the sound. “A ghost, yes, I’ve seen a ghost.” I reached out and spun a carousel display of bookmarks without seeing them. “Do ghosts from your past ever haunt you?”

“All the time.” His voice was soft. “Ghosts can stop the sun.” His gentle smile was full of sympathy. “You can’t run away from ghosts. They always know where to find you.” He reached below the counter and brought out an envelope containing the rent check and slid it across the counter towards me. “You’re working too hard — every hour god sends. You need to get away from here.”

“No matter how many hours I work, there still aren’t enough.”

“You need a vacation. That will take care of the ghosts.”

“And who will do the work?”

“Get more help. How long has it been since you played golf? Before you played every day, now…” He lifted his shoulders. “It isn’t worth it, Sherri. Listen to a man who knows what he’s talking about.”

There was no use telling him I was barely breaking even financially and one more person on the payroll would tip me over into bankruptcy.

“Buy a good mystery and sit out on the beach for the afternoon.”

“Ah, so now I see. You aren’t interested in me; you’re just trying to drum up business.” I smiled to show him I didn’t for a moment believe it.

“Business is important but life comes first.”

“Did Clay put you up to this? It’s exactly what he was telling me just before he left.” Never mind that Clay had even more money in the Sunset than I did — the hours I’d been working were leading to arguments between us. Clay told me that if he’d known he was never going to see me he wouldn’t have come into the Sunset with me. In frustration he’d left two days before to crew in a yacht race from Miami to Cuba.

“How is the race going?” Peter asked. “Have they left for Cuba yet?”

“Nope, still stuck in Miami while protesters block their boats and federal agents search them. Their plan was to be gone for ten days, two weeks at the most. I don’t think they’re going to make that schedule now.” What I didn’t tell Peter was that I was happy with this delay. It would buy me a little time. Clay had said things had better change when he got back, an ultimatum I hadn’t decided how to handle.

“Well, if Clay and I are both telling you the same thing, it must be true.”

“I’ll think about it on the way to the bank,” I promised. And I did. There were things I didn’t want to face, didn’t want to deal with. Running away and starting over suddenly seemed very attractive.

When I returned with Lacey’s burger and fries, Rena was busy with a customer. Lacey and I went to a small curtained-off office space at the back of the store and huddled on two little stools with our knees nearly touching. Lacey was dressed in khaki cargo pants and an oversized long-sleeved shirt over a tee. Unlike her mother, she never dressed suggestively but seemed to hide inside her clothes.

I handed Lacey a paper sack and said, “I’m taking the night off. Want to come to my place for dinner and a movie?” Even as I was asking I was calling myself all kinds of fool. I didn’t want to know what was going on because then I’d have to deal with it. Miss Emma always said, “Don’t rake the coals, ’less you want to start a fire.”

Surprise lit Lacey’s face — and why not? While I’d always been friendly towards her we were really too different in age to hang out. Somehow, without out really articulating it to myself, I’d decided I had to tell her what Ray John had done to me, to warn her if it hadn’t already happened to her and let her know she wasn’t alone if he’d already messed with her. That was all I was prepared to do, that much and no more.

“Yeah,” Lacey said, cautious and uncertain. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

Lacey stopped dead in her tracks. “Wow.” She turned around in the circular marble foyer of Clay’s penthouse. “Wow,” she said again when she had completed the circle.

“That’s what everyone says.” I pushed past her and led the way into the body of the apartment. “I’m denim and flip-flops and this is definitely haute couture.”

I gave her the tour of Clay’s penthouse apartment. Oh, excuse me, Clay always corrects me here, our penthouse apartment. Very little, besides my clothes swimming in the walk-in closet of the master bedroom, belongs to me, and those few things I brought with me scream out for attention, they look so out of place.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Lacey said.

“Neither had I until I moved in to the Tradewinds but it didn’t take long to get used to.”

“He must be really rich.” Her face turned red. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

I laughed. “Let’s take our pizza out to the conservatory. It overlooks the gulf.”

I threw the crust of my pizza back into the cardboard box. “I have to tell you something, Lacey.”

Her forehead wrinkled and she became very still. She waited. The bad news instinct in this kid was on full alert.

“When I was eleven, almost twelve, Ray John Leenders moved in with my mother and me.”

Storm clouds formed in her eyes. I hurried on. “Not long after, he started trapping me in the hall or in the kitchen, anywhere, and touching me. I couldn’t tell my mother. She loved him. She was wrapped up in him just like Rena is besotted with him now. I didn’t want to make Ruth Ann choose between us and I guess I was embarrassed. Besides, I didn’t think she’d believe me. I tried to stay away from him. I stayed at friends’, begged to stay over at Marley’s, anything not to be around him. Mom was a waitress and worked long hours so she wasn’t always there, but Ray John was. And if I stayed at someone else’s house, he’d come looking for me. Everyone thought it was so nice that he looked after a kid that wasn’t his own.”

She dropped the pizza onto her plate and stared down at it, body drooping, while I rushed on. “Things got worse. One day he tried to rape me but I got away.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Walking down memory lane stunk. “This time I told my mother. She believed me all right. I don’t know why I doubted her.” I pulled my hair back from my face and let it flop down my back. “Anyway, she was waiting for him when he came home. She lit right into him, said she was going to turn him in.”

“He beat her, punched her right in the face. I got out an old shotgun of my dad’s and threatened to kill him if he didn’t stop. The damn shotgun wasn’t even loaded. Didn’t find that out ’til later but Ray John didn’t know it.”

“The thing was, the neighbors heard the ruckus and called the sheriff. The sheriff came in and found me holding the shotgun and screaming at Ray John that I was going to kill him.”

Lacey’s hands were trapped between her knees, shoulders hunched and eyes on the floor.

“Long and short of it was the sheriff took him on out of there. No charges were filed. Thing was, Ray John was a deputy sheriff.”

She shrank into herself, making herself as small and self-contained as possible. She wouldn’t look at me, didn’t acknowledge my words in any way as I blundered on. “That was fine with me. I didn’t want anyone to know what he’d been doing to me. I just wanted him gone and now he was. We never saw him again. I always thought the sheriff made it pretty clear to Ray John what would happen to him if he ever bothered us again.”

Lacey was staring at her lap, her hair falling in front of her face like a veil.

“I don’t figure Ray John has changed his ways, Lace. For a long time I didn’t realize that, didn’t realize he’d likely go after some other young girl, thought I was the only one. But I wasn’t, was I?”

She stayed silent. I waited. Finally she shook her head no. “Shit,” I said, then, “tell me.”

She did. Tears and choking sounds jumbled the words but she finally got it all out. It had been a lot worse for Lacey.

“I’m so sorry this happened to you, Lacey. I feel responsible. If we’d charged him back then maybe he would have gone to jail or something. Maybe this wouldn’t have happened to you.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “RJ is responsible for this, not my mom, not you…RJ.” “We need to call the police now.”

“No, no.” She shook her head wildly and threw herself forward, grabbing my wrist. “Don’t do that.” “But you can’t go back there.”

“Can I stay here?” She was begging not just with words but with her whole being.

I wanted to say, “God no.” My own problems were more than enough to keep me up nights and I was no one’s idea of a substitute parent, plus I really didn’t know her.

But just as quickly as that thought entered my head came the denial. I knew her. Lacey was one more ghost, the shadow of the girl I used to be and if I didn’t help her I was as guilty of her abuse as Ray John. I was stuck in her life the minute I looked out that window but what in hell was I letting myself in for?

Lacey called her mother on the phone and told her I’d invited her to stay out on the beach with me until Clay returned. She told her mom about the lap pool and gym and the tenth-floor penthouse with its conservatory full of orchids and the view out over the Gulf of Mexico. Told her mother about the amazing sunset and how much she wanted to stay. Finally Rena gave in.

“All we ever do is fight,” Lacey told me. Relief from the bickering was probably what finally convinced Rena to let her stay, no solution to the situation but a time out for everybody.

Clothes were the next problem. I drove Lacey off the island, over the humpbacked bridge to the mainland and the neat subdivision of small ranch houses from the sixties where Rena and Lacey lived with Ray John. As we drew near the house, my pulse rate increased and sweat gathered in my armpits and around my hairline despite the air conditioning going full blast.

“He won’t be there,” Lacey said, as if she’d read my thoughts.

The house had white aluminum siding with black shutters. Along the front were shrubs, trimmed in perfect geometric shapes, nature tortured into submission. Tidy, tidy, tidy. Ray John was raised and trained in the military. He was a fanatic about neatness and controlling his environment, everything just so.

The shiny black painted door opened as we approached. Lacey didn’t say hello but just slipped in past her mom, saying, “Sherri will take me to school and I’ll come to the store when I get out.” Already halfway down the hall, she called back, “It will be great.”

Rena crossed her arms over her chest. The apprehensive look on her face told me she regretted letting herself be talked into this and was having serious second thoughts. “I’m not sure about this,” she began.

“Really, Rena, I’ll enjoy having company.”

“I’ve heard,” she sucked her lips in-between her teeth and bit down on them. “Well, I’ve heard some things about you.” Embarrassment made her add, “Really, Sherri, I think you’re great. You’ve been really good to us with the store and everything, but I heard your husband was murdered.” She lifted her shoulders in embarrassment. “People say things.”

“Did they tell you that a man was sent to jail for that?” I was betting she didn’t know how close I’d come to being arrested for Jimmy’s murder.

“Yes.” But still she frowned. “There was that thing last year, those other murders.”

“Odd, isn’t it? They’re the only murders we’re ever likely to have here on Cypress Island and I was touched by them all. But that’s just because it’s a small town. Everyone here could say the same thing. They knew the people who were murdered plus the murderer.”

She nodded, taken in by my logic but still not convinced a murderer wasn’t going to jump out of the bushes if I was around. For a while that was pretty much how everyone in town felt about me. No one wanted to get too close in case they became an accidental target, but time had mellowed their discomfort.

“I just don’t want anything to happen to Lace.”

“Of course not. Neither do I.”

Lacey bolted out from behind Rena with a suitcase and a bookbag. The kid must have had the suitcase already packed to be back so quick. Lacey scooted past her without stopping to say goodbye, just calling, “See ya,” over her shoulder as she bolted to the pickup. Rena watched Lacey flee, opened her mouth to say something and then closed it. She hugged herself tighter. “I guess it’ll be all right.”

The truck door slammed. “Really, it will be fine,” I told her.

My mobile rang as I pulled out of the drive. “You’re kidding,”

I said when I heard who was calling and what they wanted. Now for sure I wasn’t going to be lonely and that was fine with me. I’d spent the two nights since Clay left with the lights on ’til morning. Company was just fine with me.