3 A Brewski for the Old Man (28 page)

The red light on the roof of his SUV went on and a siren made a woof woof sound. I debated ignoring him. He wasn’t like the real police, was he? Common sense kicked in and I pulled over to the curb and watched him get out of his car, taking his time strolling up to the pickup, checking it out as he came. I turned on the overhead light in the cab, wanting anyone looking out their window to see what went down. But there was no one to see. The houses, with mature and lush plantings, were set too far back from the empty street for the owners, locked inside watching reruns, to hear or see anything. The security guy and I were all alone.

He leaned an arm in my window, a pale hairy arm. “This is a residential area, ma’am. There are children playing here and the speed limit is thirty miles an hour.”

His faded red hair was only slightly thinning; the freckles on his face hadn’t turned into age spots or pre-cancerous lesions, but his body had run well ahead of him into ugliness. His belly sagged over his belt and his shirt was way too tight. His name tag said Mark Cummings. He was the guy who found Ray John’s body.

Anger triumphed fear and words spewed out that were better left unsaid. “I was just visiting your friend, Sheila, your little playmate.” Without ever being word-checked by my brain, the words flew out of my mouth like a bird released from a cage. “You remember, the wild party girl Ray John introduced you to.” I hadn’t even begun to think about this on a conscious level, it was just that wild imagination of mine taking a huge leap. Ray John liked power. While Sheila might not appeal to him, a little old for Ray John’s taste, he wouldn’t be above humiliating her by shopping her around. He probably used her to pay favors and debts and keep a hold on the old men he came up against in the Preserves. If you can’t batter the enemy, find a way of blackmailing them, that’s the way Ray John would work. And farming out Sheila to Mark Cummings would make sure he stayed away from the rec hall when Ray John was entertaining; it would keep Mr. Cummings happy and doing Ray John’s bidding. It would also keep Mark Cummings from reporting Ray John’s involvement with underage girls.

Cummings stepped back from the window of the pickup. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Right, you stick to that story. Were you into little girls too or did Ray John keep them for himself?” He moved, fast and violently.

I jerked sideways, away from his hands.

Knuckles white, he gripped the door with both hands, his jaw working back and forth as he fought for control.

A terrible thought overtook my imagination. Maybe Sheila had called him and he had been coming to help her move my dead body. I put the truck in drive and I straight-legged the gas. Not for a second did I worry about running over him, I just wanted to get away.

I looked in the rearview and saw him running for his car. Stupid, stupid, stupid…pissing off yet another person with a gun. I’d just had one scary person drop off the radar in the shape of Ray John and now I’d gained two more. One day soon my mouth would be the death of me.

I took the first right, wanting to be out of sight quickly and then turned sharply left, watching to see if he was following me.

I zigged through the twisting roads, checking my rearview mirror over and over. Twice I was sure I saw Mark Cummings behind me. My hands tightened on the steering wheel, remembering being rammed by Ray John. Twice the vehicles following me turned into driveways as sweat slid down the sides of my body.

The Preserves is confusing to drive in at the best of times and these were far from the best of times. I was too intent on searching for Mark Cummings and cursing out Sheila to concentrate on my driving and it was only when I made the same weird turn for the third time that I realized I was going in circles. I stopped at the intersection, trying to decide where I was and how to get away. A tall black wrought-iron carriage light spread a soft glow over the road in front of me. The street sign said Turkey Trot. I went left instead of right and this time I came to a bridge over the stream and then to the lake. I followed this street around to the clubhouse and by the time I reached it I’d slipped from anger to melt down. I was shaking. I was a danger to myself and everyone on the road. I pulled in behind the clubhouse and parked, a foolish thing to do. I never for a moment thought that if I wanted to avoid Mark Cummings the one place I shouldn’t be was at the community center for the Preserves, the place where Ray John had been murdered and where Cummings would come sooner or later. But I wasn’t thinking about him coming to the office. I wasn’t thinking, period.

The overhead light I’d turned on when Mark Cummings stopped me was still shining; the light made me feel comforted and safe as I collapsed on the steering wheel, trying to breathe through the panic.

The joy in being alive lasted all of a minute and a half. Miguel was right — from now on I was going to mind my own business. I’d messed up big-time by getting involved. Lacey wasn’t one bit better off because of anything I’d done; maybe she was even in worse trouble. I vowed right then and there never again to own a gun. They kept ending up in the wrong hands.

But no amount of self-censure could make me believe I deserved what Sheila had done and nothing would ever make me believe she wasn’t considering killing me. The only thing that saved my ass was that she didn’t want to get caught and she knew she couldn’t get away with it. If she had thought she could kill me and make the body disappear, I was dead. I still might be if she could talk Cummings into helping her. Instead of following me, what if he had gone into talk to Sheila? What if she had talked him into helping her to get rid of me? Underneath that beautiful exterior, sophisticated and urban, was a cold calculating creature. “Hello,” a voice said.

I raised my head to see the bride of Chucky. I gave a startled chicken sound. The Kewpie doll from the Royal Palms had turned into some kind of horrible caricature from
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
. “Dammit Janet, you’re too old to catch the bouquet,” flashed through my mind. Didn’t this woman have a mirror? Not even Thia could make this outfit work. The skirt and jacket were black and made out of what looked like material for jogging suits sewn inside out, the seams ragged and curling. I would have thought she’d made a horrible mistake and put it on the wrong way out if it hadn’t been studded with silver grommets outlining where a bra would be on a normal-sized person. “Hi, Sherri.”

“It’s you,” I said, meaning, “it’s you, Anita, and not the bride of Chucky.”

Anita Charters leaned in towards me and asked, “You okay?”

“Almost,” I said and tried to smile, glad to see someone who didn’t want to kill me. She might look like a walking garbage bag but at least she was harmless.

“You have a distinctive license plate,” she said. What in hell was she talking about?

“You really don’t look well.” She moved back from the truck and opened the door. “Come with me, you need a drink.”

She said the magic words — a drink. I’d follow her anywhere for a drink. I turned off the overhead to save my battery and grabbed the keys and my bag.

At first I couldn’t understand where she was going; she didn’t go out of the parking lot or walk around the clubhouse to the path along the lake but headed for the barrier wall around the compound. The wall was faced with cedars. Anita trotted for them at a suicidal speed, determined to smash herself against the concrete, but at the last second slipping between two column-like cedars in the row that fronted the barrier. She disappeared behind the greenery. It was a crazy place to find booze but the promise of a drink was all I needed to follow her.

Between the stucco wall blocking off the street and the thick hedge of cedars was a four-foot-wide grass path. The lights from the back of the recreation center hardly penetrated here, but from what I could see in the dim light it looked as if it was a corridor for utilities. Unconcerned about the lack of illumination, Anita was off, a marathoner in clogs. I figured she must need a drink even more than I did.

We only went about a hundred yards before the path ended in a six-foot wooden gate set in the hedge. Anita opened the gate and went in.

Like an errant child sent for a time-out, the backyard of the house hunkered down in a corner, a triangle up against the eight-foot-high stucco wall in the corner of the compound. Diffused light glowed through a curtained window from the golden stucco house. Totally separate from the other houses, heavy foliage planted up the sides dwarfed the house, and a strange secret garden surrounded an algae-dark kidney-shaped pool built for little people.

The need for alcohol had led me to many a strange place but this one was the strangest of all, eerie even. Anita sped around the flagged edged of the pool towards the back door with me on her heels. She wasn’t getting away from me — I so wanted that drink. A motion detector light came on as we approached the back of the house.

The back door was unlocked. “Come in,” Anita ordered. She marched into the dim interior without waiting to see if I would follow; not even civility was going to stand between her and the booze. I glanced around the backyard, suddenly wary and trying to decide if I would follow her or go back. What was freaking me out? Maybe it was just the leftover fear from Sheila and her pal. But they couldn’t find me here — here I was safe.

The overhead light switched off, plunging the backyard into blackness. Could I find the path back in the dark? How easy would it be to find the gap between the two cedars? It was then I realized what a mistake I’d made stopping at the rec hall. If I went back now who was going to be waiting for me? I shivered and went in.

Tiny wall sconces lit the hall, throwing tall eerie shadows onto the ceilings and casting barely enough light to see. Anita had disappeared but I could hear her. I went down the dark corridor to the front of the house. The room I entered smelt musty and disused, like a load of wet laundry forgotten in a washing machine for days, but what the hell, it came with a drink.

The twilight had already slipped into full night when I had left Sheila’s. Although the street lights were on, the plantings seemed to have grown up over the windows of Anita’s house, barring any light from the outside. Or maybe no light standards were placed in front of this forgotten house. Either way, no light shone in the windows. Anita switched on a table lamp. Its glow was swallowed by the heavy dark furniture that sat on nearly black hardwood floors. My eyes settled on a silver bar cart. That was all I was interested in.

“Sit,” she ordered.

I sat. I would have sworn Anita Charters was a silly ineffectual woman incapable of giving anyone orders but she was doing a pretty good job of sorting me out.

She went to the bar cart, opened the ice bucket and frowned. “I’ll get ice.” She clumped out, not an ounce of grace in her. Watching her go I realized for the first time that she was bowlegged. I sank back on the cut-velvet sofa and closed my eyes, grateful to be safe. From an adrenalin high, I was sinking into an exhausted funk. A drink was just what I needed and within minutes I had a very hearty Scotch in my hand. “The police came to see me,” Anita told me. I sipped my Scotch so not interested in her problems.

“Someone told them I had a gun.”

“You did, you told them you had a gun.”

“What? I did not.”

“Well, you pretty much announced it in the Sunset. There’re no secrets in bars.”

She worked that one around for a while as I made inroads on my Scotch.

“Why were you at Sheila’s?” she asked. She waved a hand.

“Oh, don’t waste time trying to deny it. I was playing bridge. Janie’s husband came in and said he saw you at Sheila Dressal’s.”

“Who is Janie?” One of us wasn’t making sense. I took a nice bracing glug of the Scotch. Who the shit cared what the crazy woman was talking about as long as the ice didn’t melt in my drink? I hate watered-down Scotch.

Anita had also lost interest in this Janie person. “R.J. Leenders was a pig. He deserved to die.”

“Oh yeah, we can all agree on that. Is this Glenlivet?”

“Yes.”

“Thought so,” I said, proud of my palate, but then the smoky taste of ten-year-old Scotch is pretty distinctive. “He deserved it,” Anita said again.

Hadn’t I already agreed with her on this point? I rolled the glass between my hands and tried to decide if I was going to call the police and have Sheila charged with threatening me. It was going to be my word against hers, but should she be allowed to get away with it? She might kill someone the next time. But the cops couldn’t arrest you for what you might do, or we’d all be in jail.

I rubbed my forehead. I was starting to feel a little wasted but then it had been that kind of a night. “Where’s Thia now?” I don’t know why I asked this question but it seemed important.

Anita’s head shot up and her jaw jutted out. She said, “Never mind. You forget about Thia. She’s going to New York. She’s going to have a career, going to be famous. Thia has it all.” And Anita didn’t, a duck giving birth to a swan. “When’s she going to New York?”

“As fast as I can get her there.” Anita was trying to protect her daughter, wanted to get her out of Florida before some nasty truths came out. How much did Anita know about Thia and Ray John? Or did she have another reason for wanting Thia away? Would she cover for her daughter if she knew she was a murderer?

If I committed a murder, would Ruth Ann cover for me? I already knew Tully would. Maybe that was just how things were with parents. And if Anita was trying so hard to protect Thia, did that mean she knew Thia had killed Ray John? Shit, I didn’t want to know. Miguel was right, I should just mind my own business and let the rest of the world do the same. Look where it had almost gotten me with Sheila.

She pointed at me with her highball. “I bet that Sheila was the one mouthing off about me having a gun. She was in the Sunset last night.”

“Look, all the cops had to do was run your name through the gun registration. They could find out for themselves if you had a gun. They’re probably running a check on everyone in the Preserves.”

She thought about it and then drank about half her drink, “Maybe, but Sheila has always been jealous of me.” I managed to keep my thoughts on that to myself. “Or that Mark Cummings told them. He likely killed RJ. He drove in right after that girl left,” Anita said and emptied her glass.