Out Of The Smoke (2 page)

Chapter One

April 2004

Alan McCarthy leaned forward over his elbows on the bar table. “Naw. I don’t want some random lady peaking in all the dark recesses of my bachelor pad.”

Jake Randall, his best friend since seventh grade, laughed so hard he nearly choked on the beer in his mouth. His long hair hung across his eyes, practically covering them. “Man, I think they have some level of scruples they live by. And besides, wouldn’t it be worth it to have a clean place to live?” Jake looked around the table at their other two friends, Mark and Ryan.

All four met on Friday nights at Ike’s Bar and Grill since they’d graduated from law school. No woman, girlfriend, or wife allowed to get in the way of Friday nights at Ike’s. Usually. “Don’t you guys agree?”

“Wait,” Alan interrupted before anyone else could throw in their two cents, “are you saying my place is messy?” He glared around the table, daring any of them to agree.

“Hardly.” Mark repressed a laugh, but his eyes gave him away. “There’s no way my house would be that clean if I wasn’t living with Anna. You win, hands down.” Mark’s girlfriend was by far Alan’s favorite of all the significant others. Why his friend didn’t up and marry her already was a mystery.

“Alan, all I’m saying is that if you’re planning to start working from a home office, you want the place to be impeccable.” Jake leaned back and polished off the rest of his beer while he flagged down their usual waitress, Sharon, to bring another round.

“Plus, you need to concentrate entirely on the business without having to worry about such things as toilet bowls and mops.” Ryan reached for a handful of pretzels and tossed them back into his mouth.

“Easy for you to say. You’ve got a wife to clean up after your sloppy ass.” Alan could only imagine Justine running around behind Ryan trying to keep up with his crumbs.

“Hey, no one’s stopping you from getting your own girlfriend.” Ryan plastered a huge smug smile on his face.

“Right. That’s just what I need. Another woman around to tell me what to do, who to see, where to go. No thanks. I’m fine as a bachelor.” Recent history had not been nice to Alan. His last girlfriend, Claire, had put a ball and chain on him that squelched his free time to nearly nothing. She even imposed on Friday nights, and that was a giant faux pas. Thank God he hadn’t asked her to move in. Lord knows what she’d have done with his life in that event.

Jake leaned forward. “Not all woman are quite like ‘she who shall not be named’. I think it’s time for you to get back out there. It’s been what? Six months?”

“I’m good. The idea of a woman dictating my private life again makes me cringe.” Alan gave a fake chill and scrunched up his face in revolt. “Believe I’ll stick with TV dinners and quiet nights channel surfing for a while longer, but thanks.”

Jake grabbed his new beer and took a swig. “Look, this isn’t about getting a girlfriend anyway. Just because you have one, doesn’t mean you can’t have a cleaning lady also.” Jake sneered at Ryan. “Meredith works, and we have a cleaning lady come every week. I’m tellin’ ya, man, don’t knock it ’till you try it. Let me give you her number and you can see if she has any free days. Just try it a few times and I promise you’ll be hooked.”

* * * *

Liz Parker—she rarely ever thought of herself as a Beth anymore—juggled two plastic grocery bags over one wrist while jiggling her apartment key in the lock. The damn doorknob had never worked properly in the two and a half years she’d been living here, but she was just so incredibly thankful to be a free woman, she never dreamed of complaining to the apartment manager. Mary Ann was kind of a busy body anyway. The less she knew about Liz, the better. Her landlord allowed her to pay in cash every month, and Liz intended to keep that boat from rocking.

With an exasperated huff, Liz set her bags and purse on the concrete slab that served as a narrow balcony to the row of second floor apartments and braced herself against the ghastly orange door with her right shoulder. With both hands free, she could usually jiggle the knob just right to get the key to turn and allow her entry.

Soft laughter to her left made Liz look up and smile at her neighbor, Dorenda Ikeman.

“Door giving you grief again?” She grinned at Liz’s efforts. “I don’t know why you don’t make Mary Ann switch that thing out for you. You’ve struggled with it since the day you moved in. Obviously it isn’t keyed quite right.” Dory chomped loudly on a big wad of pink bubblegum, which was better than the usual cigarette hanging from her lips.

Liz sighed and relaxed her arms for a moment. “I’m too embarrassed to find out it’s user error,” she lied with what she hoped was a convincing chuckle. Under the radar was Liz’s only motto.

“I seriously doubt that, chickadee.” Dory blew a huge bubble, popping it with a snap, before she leaned against her doorframe. “By the way, I’m glad I caught you. Do you have any free days you could pick up another client? One of mine gave my number to a friend, but I’m booked solid right now.”

Dory had been a godsend when Liz had first arrived in the small town outside Minneapolis. She’d selected the city purely at random when she left the big apple and the coincidence of moving in next door to someone willing to help her find a job defied logic. They’d been friendly ever since, although Liz was completely aware that Dory would love them to be closer. Liz preferred to keep to herself and not run the risk of getting so involved with anyone she’d find herself needing to lie to in order to keep her past a secret. It was just too risky. How long she could keep this up, she wasn’t sure. But she was saving every spare dime she made to enable her to move again and maybe get a house somewhere else. Live her life comfortably, some small country town where Matthew would never find her.

“As it happens,” she looked up at Dory’s weathered face, “I have Mondays free. My Monday client just transferred to another city. It was a shame too. They paid well, didn’t complain much, and gave good bonuses at holidays.” Liz shook her head in dismay over the loss. It hadn’t helped out with the saving at all. Perhaps this new client would be a perfect way to fill the hole.

“Great.” Dory began to dig around in her “purse”. It was really more of an oversized bag. How the hell she ever found anything in there was a mystery. “I wrote his number on a gum wrapper…”

Of course she did
. Liz stared at the top of Dory’s bleach blonde head while she waited.

“Ah, here it is.” The tiny wrinkled pink wrapper was barely legible when Dory reached out with her long slender fingers to hand it to Liz, her hot pink nails in contrast with Liz’s dull short ones.

“What’s his name?” Liz squinted at the scrawled letters on the scrap.

“Alex…or maybe it was Alan. Yes, Alan.” Dory pushed into her apartment. “Gotta run. Hot date in fifteen.”

“Okay. Thanks for the referral. I’ll give him a call.” Alone again, Liz resumed the wiggling and jiggling of her key, until the door finally gave way and let her in.

On a huge exhale, she meandered with her precarious sacks through the door and kicked it shut. The bags she dropped right inside before she collapsed onto her threadbare sofa. She leaned her head back and stared up at the water-stained ceiling, exhausted. Not the kind of physical tired a person feels after jogging a mile, simply worn out from the stress of feeling like she was on the run every day.

Even after two and half years, she couldn’t stop wondering if someone had seen her at the coffee shop. Or on the street? What if Andrew didn’t actually die that day? What if he actually was one of the few people who’d escaped the building and then told Matthew she hadn’t even been there? But no, Liz knew that couldn’t be true. She’d seen the list of the dead many times. Andrew Thurman was on it. The only glitch in that line of thinking was that Elizabeth Martin was also on it. Still, how could she be sure?

Besides, even if Andrew had died in the tragedy, Matthew was so pig-headed he probably wouldn’t accept that his “Beth” was gone too. He’d either be searching for some proof or trying to torment her in the grave for dying on him.

Liz rehashed her steps following that fateful day for the millionth time. Again, to reassure herself that no one could possibly know she’d escaped.

Moving had been difficult when she’d left the little drug store. Debris covered the sidewalks and streets as though an atomic bomb had deployed. Briefly, Beth considered what it must have been like in Hiroshima or Nagasaki in the nineteen forties.

Losing count of the blocks, Beth put one foot in front of the other, grateful for the hated flats that protected her feet from the broken glass littering the ground. Small favors. Matthew always insisted on her wearing the ugly shoes to keep people from gawking at her legs. Somehow, it was always her fault if someone glanced her way. Dressed in what her husband chose, she certainly never attracted anyone’s attention.

After what seemed like hours, Beth stopped walking and looked around. The air improved the farther she trudged from the chaos. Looking back, she saw only gray clouds in the sky. She remembered the scene like it was yesterday and it gave her a new chill every time she thought of it.

A nice little old lady named Martha Shields approached her on the street. She must have been a sight and terribly confused by then. The sweet woman ushered her into her brownstone, let her clean up, gave her some fresh clothes and a pair of sneakers, fed her a mouthwatering stew, and let her sleep off her stupor on her sofa. Without her help, Beth had no idea how she would’ve escaped New York. She’d had no money and no way to get any.

Without explaining herself in the least, Beth had left the kind woman’s flat the next morning, fed, refreshed, and ready to leave her past behind. But the best thing she’d acquired while staying overnight with Martha was the two hundred dollars the woman pressed into her palm.

Shocked speechless, Beth stared into Martha’s warm friendly eyes with tears in her own.

“It’s all right, dear. I don’t know how, but somehow I know you need this worse than I do…now go.” With that, Martha gently pushed Beth out into the world and on to her new life.

Getting out of the city and halfway across the country had been extremely difficult and took several days. Transportation had been at a standstill. Beth spent the better part of twenty-four hours in a bus station waiting for any available bus heading west. Once she managed to find one, she carefully went from station to station across the northern states until she literally ran out of money. And that was the end of “Beth”. A new life meant a new identity. The name Liz suited her perfectly. Common. Generic.

The first thing she did after stepping off the bus in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was head for a pawn shop. The only thing Liz had of any value two years ago was her wedding ring, and she didn’t care if she ever saw it again.

It wasn’t hard to find a pawn shop in the part of town she found herself in. Without flinching, she’d pulled the ring off and handed it to the manager.

He barely did more than nod at her before turning his bald head down to peak through the tiny magnifying glass he held up to his right eye. He saw this sort of thing every day. Desperate people selling whatever they could to stay alive.

“Ma’am, I hate to break this to ya, but this is fake. The diamond I mean. It’s cubic zirconia.”

Liz stared at him, stunned. Fake?

“There must be a mistake…” Liz stammered. How was she going to live? Where would she get money?

“I’m sorry. You could take it to another shop if you want, but they’re going to tell you the same thing.” He paused and stared at her with only a tiny amount of sympathy playing across his face. He also saw
this
sort of thing every day. “The gold is worth something, of course. I could weigh it for you and give you a quote if you want.”

The ring meant nothing to her. Absolutely nothing. In fact, she never wanted to see it again or have it weighing down her left hand even if he gave her two dollars for it. “Fine.”

Now what was she going to do? Liz glanced down at herself, her purse, her borrowed sneakers. Her loose sweat pants. Her dirty T-shirt from three days of wearing the same outfit. She gasped and reached up to twist her earrings. Her
mother’s
earrings. They were always on her. She never took them off. Surely her mother’s diamonds were fake also. She’d never considered otherwise. Especially considering her mother hadn’t “given” her anything at all. They’d been the only thing Liz had taken from her mother’s apartment after she died.

“Worth about two hundred dollars.” The owner handed the ring back to her. His hand was almost black from handling jewelry and working with filthy objects all day. His nails embedded with grime that would never come out. He was probably much younger than he appeared. Did his line of work make a man prematurely age? Hard to imagine what sort of people came in there each day. Liz shivered and thanked God no one was in there right now.

“How about these?” Slowly, Liz removed first one earring, then the next. The ring didn’t make her flinch, but taking off the earrings made her feel naked.

Please, God, I need your help. Make them be real
. The words rumbled through Liz’s mind while the manager looked at her skeptically, clearly uncertain that she had anything of value at this point. Who could blame him? If her husband was too cheap to buy her a real wedding band, how could she possibly have diamond earrings? To think that he made such a fuss about his hard-earned money spent on a woman he wasn’t even sure was worth it. And that’s how their marriage had begun. From there it had all gone downhill.

With a deep breath, the bald-headed man once again leaned down. Liz held her breath, gripping the edge of the counter. The silence made her aware of the various clocks ticking in the room, random beats with no synchronization.

“Now, these…these are spectacular.” He grinned up at her. Probably for the first time in a week. In fact, his mouth nearly cracked at the action.

Liz’s breath escaped on a long woosh. “Thank God,” she muttered. There was hope.

“I’m Bill, by the way.” He extended his hand to shake hers. Probably reserved the formality for actual customers, which Liz had suddenly become.