3 A Brewski for the Old Man (7 page)

Styles was waiting in the parking lot as I pulled in. He came out to stand beside the driver’s door, not looking at me but behind us at the SUV shadowing us. Styles started towards it but Ray John pulled out around us and took off. I rolled down the window. “Thanks,” I breathed. Styles put both hands on the lowered window. He looked from Lacey to me before he asked, “What happened?”

I raised my shaking hand to the hair fallen from its elastic and brushed it back behind my ear. He reached out for my left hand on the steering wheel and squeezed it. “Take it easy.”

I nodded and combed my hair back from my face with my fingers and redid the elastic. “This is Lacey Cagel.” He leaned around me. “Hi, Lacey.”

Lacey ignored us. She was gripping the door handle, ready to bolt.

“Detective Styles is a friend of mine, a good guy.”

“I don’t want the police,” she whispered.

“You don’t have to do anything but talk to him. We just want you to be safe.”

She swung to face me. “But I can go back to your place, right? I don’t have to go back there.”

I’d already assured her of this at least three times in the eight blocks between the high school and here but I did it again.

“Look, let’s just go across to Fat Tony’s and get a soda,” Styles put in. “We’ll just talk. No one is going to make you do anything you don’t want to do.”

And talk he did, softly and sweetly and with a kindness that would have melted most reluctant hearts — but not Lacey’s. She just sat with the soda between her hands, looking down at it and shaking her head no, and then she excused herself and went to the ladies.

Styles watched her go and then looked into my eyes. “We had a report from the bridge keeper about a black muscle SUV and a red pickup earlier today. Want to tell me about it?”

“It was nothing.”

“Without a complaint I can’t have him brought in.” I shook my head.

Styles sighed. “My wife and I have just separated.” It was the first personal thing Styles ever told me about himself; he wasn’t the kind of guy who shared his life or his emotions. In fact I wasn’t sure he had either. Locked down, solid and in control left no room for warm fuzzy confidences. “I’ve got a nine-year-old daughter,” he said. “How do I stop this from happening to her?”

I gave it some thought. “Well maybe I’m not the best person to offer advice but I think you should tell your wife what happened to me. And tell your daughter, talk to her and let her know there are evil people out there who will try and take advantage of her. Only people who are ignorant can be preyed upon. Tell her she can come to you with anything, you won’t get mad and you won’t judge her.” I thought about it. “Kids need to trust people before they can talk to them.” “Why didn’t you tell your dad?”

That gave me a laugh. “He’s a different sort of parent. Grandma said he went to ’Nam crazy and came back worse and he hasn’t improved with age. I never knew what he’d do or how he’d react. No telling what rocket he’d go off on if I told him this. Someone would have died for certain.”

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty much.” I rubbed a bite of pain in my forehead. “I spent my childhood worrying about the adults around me, adults who acted more like kids than I did. One time, when I was about seven or eight, Daddy came out late at night and started shooting a gun off outside our trailer. Dead drunk, of course — he mostly was back then — he kept calling for the new man in my mom’s life to come out.

“It was dark, probably after midnight. I remember waking up and thinking this was it, this time he was going to kill us all. It always seemed a possibility with my dad. I hid in my closet, pulling clothes over me and hoping he wouldn’t find me. That’s where my mother, Ruth Ann, unearthed me, still curled up in a ball afraid to come out.

“The new guy sharing her bed had already taken off, didn’t even stop to pack. I heard his car leaving as Ruth Ann carried me back to her bed. You see what I mean? If I’d told my dad he would have killed Ray John. For sure. Maybe it would have been a good thing. Back then it didn’t seem such a good idea. I didn’t want Daddy to go to jail, although it wouldn’t have been a new experience for him, that’s for sure.”

“And your mother didn’t tell your father you’d been abused?”

“Nope, no way Ruth Ann was going to give Tully Jenkins anything to get excited about. She knew even better than I did what a powder keg he was.”

“A kid shouldn’t have to think about things like that, shouldn’t have to worry about what their parents are capable of…shouldn’t know the wickedness of men like Leenders.”

“Yeah, well life isn’t perfect.” I was starting to worry about the amount of time Lacey had been gone. Teenage girls like mirrors but this was getting silly.

“There’s no record of sexual abuse on Ray John’s file. Your mother should have told the police when they came.”

“Remember I come from people who aren’t real comfortable telling the police anything. Ruth Ann was afraid that social services would get involved and take me away. We would have been worked over twice, once by Ray John and then by the authorities. Better to look after things ourselves.”

Styles’ eyes slipped to the door of the john; he was getting antsy too. “Those days are gone, Sherri. Now you have to let the law handle it.” He tilted his head towards the ladies room. “Think she’s all right?”

“I’ll check,” I said and started to slide out of the booth. Styles’ hand on my arm stopped me. He picked up his glass and dragged on the watery dregs as Lacey slid back in beside me.

She seemed remarkably better, more composed, calm almost. Now call me suspicious, call me a worrier, but I’ve seen too much trouble not to know something else was going on here.

I was about to find out there was one more problem to deal with…a great big ugly one.

Styles followed us back to the condo. He didn’t need to suggest we stay in the ultra-secure building for the night, I’d already decided on that. We weren’t even going for a walk on the beach. The sand would burn your feet anyway. It had been another scorching day and I’d seen enough fireworks for one day. I just wanted to chill, didn’t even want to talk about what had happened. Lacey had enough pain without me prodding the wound. “Let’s have a swim,” I said. The private pool down on the beach was surrounded by an eight-foot-high spiked wrought-iron fence that kept everyone but the residents of the Tradewinds out. Safe. “No, thanks.”

“It will make you feel better.”

“I’ve got this sore arm,” she said, rubbing her arm just above the elbow. Lacey always, even in the hottest weather, wore long-sleeved blouses. Her eyes were deeking and diving, her shoulders were hunched.

I grabbed her arm and pushed up the sleeve of her oversized shirt. A new bandage sat among thin white lines of other cuts.

“You’ve been hurting yourself.” Bright, aren’t I? Like I was telling her something she didn’t know. She pulled away from me and I let her go.

“This has to stop, Lace. My god, if you need to hurt someone, make it Ray John, not yourself.” Another stupid thing to say, and one I soon regretted, but tactful and intelligent words aren’t the first to jump to my lips. God would have done us all a favor if he’d just made me mute.

She ran into the den and shut the door. I followed her to the closed door. Sounds from the TV seeped out. I called the Sunset and told them I wouldn’t be back in. Then I went to the kitchen and started cooking up a storm, my new way of dealing with stress.

By the time Marley arrived with chocolate cheesecake, I had steaks marinating, potatoes baking, shrimp boiled and on ice and two veggies ready to cook. Food may not solve problems but it makes them a whole lot easier to bear and it only makes you fat, unlike the nasty dangerous things I’ve done in the past to feel better.

I whispered the highlights of the day to Marley. “Shit,” she said. “What are you going to do?” “Not sure. Any ideas?

“You mean besides sticking to her like honey on bread? I’m there for that. If you’re not around, I will be.”

“But we can’t be on top of her every minute.”

“We can try,” she said, opening the wonking great fridge and taking out a bottle of wine.

“Should we be doing that?” I asked, pointing at the bottle.

“What?”

“Drinking in front of the kid.”

“Oh, you mean in case we add alcoholism to her list of problems.”

“Yeah, something like that.”

She filled a glass and handed to me. “I just escaped from a crowd of people who never let alcohol pass their lips. Even the blood of Christ was grape juice. Didn’t stop them from having all the same troubles as Lacey; in fact, looking at them, pale and pudgy and all those upturned noses, I’d say incest was a real big problem.”

“Oh, you’ve turned nasty and bitter, Sister Marley.” She described something impossible, but colorful, that I could do to myself as Lace came out of the den. Lacey grinned.

“You weren’t supposed to hear that,” Marley told her.

“I’ve just been telling Marley I don’t think she’s going to be a good influence on you and I was right. Just try to ignore everything she says.”

“I will.” Lacey slipped onto a black leather chair at the granite bar. “Can I have some of that?” She pointed at my glass of wine.

“Certainly not.”

“Why not?”

“If you try all the vices now, what will be left for you when you’re all grown up like us?”

She smiled.

“Have a soda instead. Dinner is about ready, just have to grill the steaks.” I lifted the shrimp on their bed of crushed ice to the upper bar and sat the nippy horseradish sauce beside them. “Nosh on these to start, but watch Marley doesn’t knock you off your stool to get to them.”

“Har, har,” Marley yodeled, sliding onto the stool next to Lacey. “Let me tell you about Sherri, the giant of the food world, Travis, who is known across the state for the prodigious amount of food she can eat.”

“Pro-whatis? Where you getting all these big words from, girl?”

“And she’s ignorant too,” Marley added, wiping a gob of sauce off her chin with the back of her hand.

In the middle of disaster came a little core of sanity and delight. When Clay called, he could hear the laughter in the background. “Hey, don’t do too well without me,” he said.

“As if I could. Where are you?”

“The Dry Tortugas.” The Dry Tortugas are a group of islands seventy miles west of Key West. There is no freshwater on the islands, but there are lots of turtles and an old Civil War fort, plus some of the best snorkeling you’ll ever see. “We have to stay here for another day while we wait for the weather to clear.”

“Whose stupid idea was it to hold a race before hurricane season was over?”

“We should be all right, nothing major out there. They’re just being careful. As soon as the forecast clears, the race begins again. I’ll be glad when this trip is over with. You get a whole different view of people when you live on a thirty-foot yacht with them. One’s a control freak who has us polishing teak every spare second, and the other one turns out to be a secret drinker. It starts before lunch and goes on all day. By eight he’s passed out somewhere on deck.” “You miss me, don’t ya?”

“You don’t know how much, which is a good thing. If you knew how much I missed you…well, my life would be hell.”

“Oh, Clay, you are so wrong,” I protested in my best little girl voice. “I’d never take advantage.”

He laughed. “Already my life’s not my own. Neither is my soul. I’m just trying to hold on to a little dignity here.”

Would he come home if I asked him to? Likely, if he was able to find a way off those islands, but it wouldn’t solve my problem. I needed to do that all on my own, needed the space to make a decision. Most of all I had to find the courage to throw my biggest secret out there for everyone to see. “You just be careful. And win that damn race.”

The phone rang. The red dial said two-thirty. Panic. No good news comes at that hour of the night. “Hello, hello,” I shouted. “Bitch. You’re so going to regret this.”

I slammed the phone down. How had he gotten the unlisted number? Rena, it had to be.

I was still awake when it rang at three-thirty. This time when I lifted the receiver I heard another phone pick up. I hadn’t turned off the ringer of the phone in the den. I hit the Off button while the voice on the phone was still spewing obscenities and threats.