I Have a Secret (A Sloane Monroe Novel, Book Three) (7 page)

“That’s not—”

“Why are you here, Sloane?” 

I shrugged.  “I had some free time, and after the cruise I thought—why not come for a visit?”

He shook his head.  “Your eye twitched.”

“What?”

He took his finger and pointed it at my left eye.  “In school your eye always twitched when you were feedin’ me a line of bullshit.”

That isn’t true, is it?

He leaned against the door of my car, folded his arms and slanted his head to the side.  “Try again.”

I wasn’t in the mood to play games, and it was obvious he was keeping me from nosing around at the crime scene.  “Can you move?  I need to go.”

His backside remained glued to the door.  “Why?  You just got here.  Were you plannin’ on gettin’ a workout in, or did you have an uh, more sinister idea in mind?”

“Get out of my way, Jesse.  I mean it.” 

He didn’t budge. 

“Trista told me you were here.”

I stepped back.  “So you know?”

“You’re helping her find the person who supposedly murdered Doug?  Yep.”

I’d forgotten how hard it was for people in small towns to keep their mouths shut. 

“And what, you showed up to tell me to mind my own business and offer me a personal escort off the property?”

He laughed.  “Naw.  I’m here to ask you to dinner.” 

“What?”

He leaned forward, shoved his fingers through the belt loops on both sides of my jeans, and yanked my body toward him until our waists were pressed against each other.  “Have dinner with me, Sloane.”

I wrapped my hands around his wrists and pulled back, but it was to no avail.  “Let go.”  

“You’re not the only one who wants to know what happened to Doug.  He was my friend too.”

“You, Doug, Rusty, and Nate.  The four of you were like your own little version of the Rat Pack in school and now two of the four are dead.  Coincidence?”    

“Look, you have questions, I might have answers.  Did ya ever think of that?”

I doubted it.  “I’m busy tonight,” I said.

“How ‘bout tomorrow night?”

His tight grip on me combined with the rancid odor of his over chewed piece of citrus gum gave me the urge to teach him a lesson he’d never forget, but I resisted.  I needed answers, and it was worth a couple hours to find out what he knew—if anything.  “Dinner.  And it’s not a date.”

“I know, you’ve got a boyfriend…for now.”

At seven pm I walked into the Tehachapi Cultural Center and sat in the middle of a semi-circular row of chairs.  Men and women flanked both sides of me.  Some smiled and gave a curious nod; others avoided direct eye contact altogether and gazed at the floorboards, their shoes, and any object that allowed them to pass the time in silence without any verbal exchanges. If there was a mood to the room, it was a somber one. 

After a few minutes, a man emerged from the corner of the room where he’d been in deep conversation with a long blond-haired woman.  He stood at a wooden podium that looked like it belonged in front of a casket at a funeral home.   “You’ve all probably heard by now a member of our group was killed on the class reunion cruise several days ago,” he said.  “I’d planned to read from the
Big Book
tonight and follow our regular course like usual, but many of you were good friends with Doug, and out of respect for his passing, I thought you might like to share a few of your thoughts and memories first.

A man a couple chairs to my left raised his hand.  The speaker at the podium tilted his head toward him to indicate his request was granted.   The man relayed a story about how Doug had given him a loan at the bank after every other bank in town turned him down.  Similar comments floated around the room until almost every person had their say.

While I sat and listened my eyes veered back to the blond woman who sat silent, disengaged from the conversation going on around her.  The woman’s thumb and pointer fingers were pressed beneath her eyelids like she was trying to form some kind of invisible shield, but it didn’t hide the fact she was crying.   Tears dripped over her light pink fingernails and ran down the backside of her hand until it was almost completely soaked. 

A minute later, the blond woman stood up, turned to the man at the podium and whispered, “Excuse me, I need to go,” and then she bolted for the door.  I followed. 

When she reached the parking lot, I broke my silence.  “Are you all right?”

She pivoted on her black suede boot and squinted.  “Why are you following me?”

“I wasn’t.  I mean, I guess I was, but I saw how upset you were in there and—”

“Who are you?  I know everyone in this town, but I haven’t seen you before.  People don’t just pass through and poke their head in on an AA meeting, so what are you doing here?”

“I’m an old friend of Doug’s from high school.” 

She dried her eyes with her hand and shook her head.  “You couldn’t be.”

I shrugged.  “Why?”

“Because if you were, I’d know you.”

“What’s your name?” I said.

“What’s yours?”

“Sloane.”

We both stood there while her brain ran a scan of all prior Sloane’s she may have known in her life.  And then, a recollection.  “Is your last name Monroe?”

I nodded and she rushed over and threw her arms around me.  My arms remained at my side—stiff and wishing for immediate release.

“I can’t believe this!” she said. 

I couldn’t believe it either.  I patted her on the back a couple times and tried to understand why she’d latched on to me.  She pulled back after a minute, rested her palms on my shoulders, and tipped her head to one side.  “Wait.  You don’t recognize me, do you?”  

“I’m sorry, no.”

She let me go, stepped back and pointed at herself.  “I’m Heather Masterson.”

Still nothing.

Her eyes lit up.  “Remember that time in school when you came around the corner and found me in the trash can?”

I flashed back to a memory from my senior year of a scared young girl with a mouthful of tinsel teeth.  “Some of the varsity girls put you in there as part of freshman orientation.”

She laughed.  “Yeah, they spilled that plate of spaghetti on my head too.  You helped me out and gave me one of your sweatshirts from your locker since mine was soaked in red.  I idolized you after that.”

“You were a few years younger than we were.  I didn’t think you knew Doug very well back then.  Did you meet in AA?”

She nodded.  “I was his sponsor.”

“But I thought sponsors—”

“Had to be the same sex?  They probably prefer it, but there weren’t enough of us, and it’s not like there’s a rule against it.  Doug chose me, and I didn’t want to say no.”

“What do you mean—chose?”

“He’d come to a few meetings and heard me talk about how long I’d been sober and said he was moved by my story of sobriety and by what I shared with the group.  After that he asked me to be his sponsor.”

Heather rubbed her hands up and down her bare arms.  “Do you, ah, drink coffee?  There’s a great place around the corner if you don’t have any plans.”

I smiled.  “Your car or mine?”

The diner was closed when we got there so we opted for hot beverages from a metal dispenser at a gas station and sat in my car with the heater on high. 

“Have you been to AA before?” she said.

I shook my head.  “First time.”

“It’s a great group.  You’ll like it.”

“Actually, I’m not umm…”

She reached out her hand and pressed her fingers into my arm.  “It’s okay…I know how you feel.  It’s always hard the first time.  The good thing is you took a step today that will change your life.”

I felt too guilty to continue the farce any longer, especially when she was a recovering alcoholic herself.  “I don’t have a drinking problem.”

Her face twisted into ten different kinds of confused before she said, “You don’t have to deny it any longer. Once you attend a few more meetings you’ll realize we’re like the family you never knew you had, and now that you have us, we’ll always be here.”

“No listen,” I said, “I wasn’t there because I have a problem.”

She shook her head like she still didn’t believe me.  “Why else would you go?”

“How long were you Doug’s sponsor?” I said.

“A few months.  He said he’d been trying to come for years, but it’s not easy.  If you can make it through the door and face your friends and neighbors, it’s considered a big deal, especially in this town.” 

“I wonder what made him commit.”

“Trista.”

“She made him go?”

Heather shook her head. “She’d started taking med’s. I guess that reality gave him the push he needed.”

I took a sip of my drink and set it down in the cup holder. “Why?”

“Doug said she was depressed. He blamed himself and thought if he could stop drinking, maybe she’d start to care again.”

“What made him think she didn’t?”

Heather shook her head. “I don’t know what kind of dose they had her on, but it was high enough to make her behave like she was in a coma. He’d come home and she hadn’t made dinner like she usually did, the house was a mess, the twins had destroyed the place…”

“And where was Trista while all this was happening?”

“In bed most days with the door locked behind her.  The kids basically fended for themselves.”

“You seem to know a lot about their situation,” I said. 

She shrugged.  “I guess.”

“Do all sponsors get this involved in their partners personal life?”

Heather scratched behind her ear. “He needed someone to talk to, and I was there.”

“Well then, it was good he had you for a friend.”

She placed her coffee cup on the center console between us. “Yeah, I guess that’s why I got so emotional in there.”

“If you two were so close, maybe you can tell me why you think he’s dead,” I said. 

“Whoa—what makes you think I know?”

I wiggled my arms up and down. “You seem to know everything else.”

“I was shocked when I found out what happened. Everyone loved Doug.”

“I’ve heard that a lot lately,” I said, “but at least one person didn’t feel that way.”

“I don’t understand what you mean. I was told he got drunk and fell over the railing on the ship.”

I shook my head. “I was there, on the boat. I saw the surveillance camera. He didn’t fall over the side; he was stabbed and then thrown over.”

She clasped her hand over her mouth and flicked her head from side to side. “Rusty died from a stab wound too, didn’t he?  I can’t believe it. What does it mean? I don’t understand what’s happening.”

Heather stuck a couple fingers in her mouth and bit down. 

I looked away.

“I know I shouldn’t,” she said. 

“What?”

“Bite my nails. Can’t help it. I always do it when I’m nervous. Sometimes I bite them down so far, they bleed.”

I turned back around and was glad to find her hands in her lap again. “Is there anything that connected Doug to Rusty over the past year?”

“Nothing. They were opposites in every way. Everyone in town adored Doug, but people always had some kind of beef with Rusty.”

“Over what?”

She rolled her eyes. “Everything. Rusty didn’t have the best temper. Most people around here just tried to stay out of his way.”

I thought back to all the suspensions he received as a teenager for fist fights. “I remember what he was like when we were younger.”

“Take high school and multiply by five and you’ll get the man Rusty turned into after he graduated.” She turned her body to the side and faced me. “Wait—is that why you’re here? The murders? Are you involved?”

“I’m curious about what really happened to my old friend.  Aren’t you?”

She nodded.

“Good, so if there’s anything else you can tell me…”

“I thought I already did.”

It was about to get real. From the moment our backsides slid into the leather seats of my rental car, I’d watched her—her hand gestures, her body movements, the way her eyes flickered to the side whenever something I said pressed her uncomfortable button. Over the years I’d learned it wasn’t always what people said that gave me the answers I was seeking, it was what they didn’t say.   

“So far you’ve only told me what you wanted me to know,” I said.  “What I’m interested in is what you’re not saying.”