The Chaplain's Daughter (7 page)

Toby was afraid that he might have overshared with Alyssa.  Why else would she be looking at him without anything to say?  He noticed that the reflection of the firelight brought out the ash blonde highlights in her hair and the roses in her cheeks.  He noticed also that her eyes, which he had always thought were plain brown, were in fact chocolate brown and had green flecks of fire, at least in this light.  Toby’s thought process while less articulate than Alyssa’s, conjured up its own inner dialogue.

“I wonder what would happen if I kissed her?”

“Why, oh why do I want to kiss him right now?’

The rest of the day passed uneventfully.  John noticed that Toby seemed quieter than normal at dinner, but also noted that the tension that had surrounded the dinner table since Toby’s arrival seemed to have eased a bit.  Alyssa had inventory at the campus bookstore this night, so she left as soon as dessert had been served.

Toby spent the balance of the evening in his room with his feet up, listening to music.  Just before 11:00, after John and DeeDee had retired for the night, Toby put on his coat and stepped outside.  The crisp cold winter air was bracing.  Toby shivered a bit, and pulled the collar of his coat up near his ears.  Just then a white Chevy Camaro roared around the corner and hurried to the curb.  Amos jumped out of the back seat and motioned for Toby.

The car was being driven by someone Toby only knew as “Spike.”  They weren’t friends but had been in the same place at the same time occasionally.  Toby had neither a positive nor negative impression of Spike.  He was just a guy.  Spike quickly put the Camaro in gear and headed out of the residential neighborhood and toward the lights of downtown Olympia.  Toby realized that he should have asked a question from Jump Street.

“This ride stolen?”

Amos laughed and threw his arm around Toby’ shoulders.  “Would we do that to ya’, my man?  This is Spike’s ride.”

Toby nodded.  He wondered how Spike could afford such a fine machine, but not enough to ask any more questions.  He was curious why Amos had insisted that this little get together happen in the first place.

Spike downshifted on Capitol Way and roared into an empty parking lot.  During the day the lot was full of shoppers going to South Sound Mall but it was deserted at 11:00 at night.  Spike slid the Camaro to a stop across two parking spots and shut down the engine.  He turned and spoke directly to Toby.

“Amos says you’re cool.  Is he right or ain’t ya’.”

“I’m cool, but what’s this all about?”

“You need cash, I need cash, everybody need cash.  There’s a Dar-Mart up in Tenino that just has one old guy at the till.  I been there a bunch ’a times and it’s always just this one old guy.  People come in all day and all night buying beer, smokes, food, whatever.  He takes their money and never goes to the bank, far as I can tell.  I’ve watched him from inside and outside.  Old guy doesn’t even swipe cards.  Cash only.  Tomorrow night it’s goin’ down.  You in?”

Toby knew that what Spike said was probably true.  Tenino was just a wide spot on a road that wound aimlessly through the fields and forest.  Known for having more chickens than people Tenino was where chicken ranches that supplied Foster Farms were located.  The old guy that ran the Dari-Mart probably knew every one of his customers by name.  Toby imagined that security was at best lax and, as Spike had indicated, probably non-existent.

“How much, ya’ think?” he asked.

Spike lit a cigarette and cracked the window.  He squinted through the smoke as he pondered Toby’s question.  “Three, four thou apiece anyway.  You, me’n Amos.  Enough to have some fun anyway.  Show some bitches a good time.  Score some bling.”

All of that sounded really good to Toby.  He was tired of walking around with empty pockets and no prospects of having any money for a long time.  He had one more question, though.

“No guns, right?

Spike glanced quickly at Amos.  They had talked about this, and decided that the less Toby knew about their plans for firearms the better.  Amos looked impassively back at Spike, who turned back to Toby.

“No guns, it’s cool.  Easy score, in and out.”

Toby looked into Spike’s impassive face and saw the future.  It wasn’t a matter of clairvoyance or being prescient.  It was Toby seeing what Spike’s life, and by extension his life, would be if he let this go on any longer.  Toby knew that, even if this was an “easy score in and out” (and he wasn’t sure it would be that) the next one would go wrong, or the next one after that.  Eventually something would go horribly wrong and Toby would end up dead, or in prison for the rest of his life for being around crime, violence, and destruction.

Toby looked at Spike first, and then Amos.  “Not gonna happen for me.  I’m out.”

Spike snorted in disgust.  “Amos said you were cool.  You ain’t.”

Amos defended Toby, in his own way.  “He just needs to be sure.  He’ll be in when he’s sure, woncha’ Tobe?”

Toby ignored Spike.  He knew that Spike was going to do what Spike was going to do.  Toby thought that, maybe, he could talk Amos down from the plan to take down the Dari-Mart.

“Amos, you don’t need this crap.  Come over to the house where I’m staying tomorrow.  You can meet John and DeeDee.  They can help you like they’ve helped me.” 

Amos looked tempted for a moment, so Toby pressed the point.  “Their daughter Alyssa is pretty hot, too.  You can meet her.”

Toby saw Amos break his gaze and glance at Spike.  The moment that could have turned Amos’ life passed.  Amos gave Spike a crooked smile and said to Toby, “I don’t need no John and no DeeDee.  I’ll take a poke at that piece of tail, Alyssa though.” 

Spike laughed at Amos’ rejoinder so Amos punctuated his words with a lewd gesture with his hips, meant to indicate his intentions for Alyssa Boylan.

Toby shook his head.  “I gotta jet.  Let’s go back.  Good luck tomorrow, but I don’t want any part of it.  Everything we’ve said is between us, though.”

“Better be” Spike muttered as he lit another cigarette and pushed the lighter back in its hole with more force than was absolutely necessary, started the Camaro with a roar and sped out of the mall parking lot.  The trip back to the Boylan’s took less than five minutes and the three guys in the sports car made the journey in silence.  When they got back to the Boylan’s house, Toby got out without a word.  The only voice heard was Spike’s as Toby stepped out of the car and shut the door.  Spike yelled, “Pussy!” at Toby, and took off, smoking his tires all the way around the corner.

Toby took a deep breath of the cold night air, and looked heavenward toward the stars.  It was a clear night, and Toby needed a minute to clear his head from what had just occurred.  He looked into the night sky for almost a minute and started up the walkway that he had swept that afternoon.

As Toby walked slowly toward the house he didn’t see the shades at the upstairs window drop back into place.

Alyssa didn’t know what to do.  She had learned that she truly cared for Toby, really in spite of herself, that morning.  But where had he been with those two guys tonight?  It’s been said that nothing good happens after midnight and Toby had been out and about way after 12:00.  She berated herself for letting her guard down with the troubled house guest.  The budding prosecutor came out in Alyssa again.  Maybe she had been blinded by incipient lust that morning.  Maybe “God, I want him to kiss me” isn’t conducive to finding out the truth about someone.

Alyssa dropped on to her bed in despair.  She couldn’t turn off her feelings for Toby, but her guard was certainly back up.  Wherever Toby was tonight, and whatever Toby was doing tonight, would come out in the end.  She knew that the bad that people do, especially people just out of jail, doesn’t remain hidden from the light for long.  Alyssa also knew that she wouldn’t be able to go to sleep unless she prayed.

“Dear Lord,” she said quietly, “Show me the way that is your Way.  If Toby is really bad let me know.  If he isn’t let me know that too.  Help me discern between the two.  Amen.”

5

Toby slept until noon the next day and stayed around the house until it was time to catch the bus to work.  Tonight was payday, though that meant little to Toby in terms of spending money.  Until he paid his restitution to the state, Toby’s weekly paycheck covered that and rent plus about $22.00.  Even $22.00 was something new, though.  He hadn’t realized a penny of disposable income out of his first two checks because he had to pay the Boylan’s back for the monthly bus pass that took him one way to work.  Toby planned to download some music and go to a movie or something with this week’s “extra.”

Harbor Lights was hopping, just like every night.  As busy as he was, though, Toby had time to joke around with a couple of the servers and Scott, the chef for the night.  Scott was his favorite cook at the restaurant.  They worked well together, and they both liked to talk about the servers when they weren’t in the kitchen.  Toby’s six hour shift passed fairly quickly.  Toby tossed his apron in the laundry basket and picked up his check from the front register just before leaving for the night.

As soon as Toby got on the bike and started the long pedal to John and DeeDee’s house he knew that something was wrong.  The bike wouldn’t seem to hold his weight.  Toby dismounted and pulled the bicycle into the lights that illuminated the parking lot.  The front tire on the bike was completely flat!

Toby looked around, expecting to be completely alone, but he wasn’t!  There was someone walking across the parking lot away from Toby.

“SCOTT!” Toby yelled.  No response.  Toby took off across the parking lot, yelling, “SCOTTY!” as loudly as he could.  Toby caught up with Scott and grabbed him by the arm.  Scott jumped, startled by Toby’s touch out of the music that he was listening to on his iPod. He took the Beats earpiece out of his ears.

“You scared me,” he said accusingly to Toby who was trying to catch his breath.  Toby gulped for air and said.  “I have a flat tire.  Can you help me?”

Scott wanted to help his friend out by driving him home and offered to do just that, but Toby knew that Scott lived in Mountlake Terrace, which was 50 miles from Harbor Lights and 90 miles or more from the Boylan’s house in Olympia.  It would be almost 3:00 in the morning by the time Scott took Toby home and backtracked through Tacoma and north on the Interstate through Seattle and into Snohomish County.  Toby knew that Scott wouldn’t mind but he also knew that Scott was the lunch chef the next day.

“I don’t want you to give me a ride home.  Just take me somewhere so I can get air in the tire,” Toby said, forestalling Scott’s offers.

Toby and Scott muscled Toby’s bike into the back of Scott’s Toyota Corolla, and went out looking for air for Toby’s deflated front tire.   The first service station that the two young men tried offered air for free but the hose failed to respond when Toby connected it to his tire.  The second station offered air for $1.00 but only accepted quarters in payment.  Scott had three quarters but Toby was without any 25 cent pieces.

Finally, after almost 40 minutes of looking, Toby and Scott found free air and a delivery mechanism that actually worked.  Toby connected the air hose to his tire, pressed the button, heard a satisfying “whooshing” noise, and saw the tire fill up.  Triumphantly he unhooked the hose, put it back in place around its carriage…and watched in dismay as the bicycle tire gave the air back to God.  Obviously the tire was damaged.

Scott helped Toby put the bike back into the trunk and offered a suggestion.  “Just come home with me tonight.  You can sleep on the couch in my living room and I’ll bring you back into Tacoma tomorrow so you can get the tire fixed.”

Toby agreed and got in the front seat of the Corolla.  He would call the Boylan’s tomorrow and tell them what had happened.  As Scott pointed his car toward the north, Toby fell asleep in the passenger’s seat.  Scott woke him when they arrived at Scott’s apartment in Mountlake Terrace.  Toby fell back to sleep in Scott’s living room, still fully clothed.

The next morning Scott routed Toby out of a dead sleep at 9:00 a.m.  “Hey, get up!  I have to be to work by 10:30.  Let’s go!”

Toby shook his head to clear out the sleep fog and got in the shower by finding his way through the steam left behind by Scott’s just-completed shower.  Ten minutes later he was pulling on his clothes from the night before.  Meanwhile Scott dropped a couple of pieces of bread in a toaster and gave the resultant breakfast to Toby to eat on the hour plus ride back to Tacoma.

“There’s a bike shop near the restaurant.  I’ll drop you there,” Scott said as they passed through Seattle.  “You might have picked up a screw or glass or something on the road.”

Toby knew that he probably should have called the Boylan’s as soon as he had awakened but with the rush of needing to get on the road he hadn’t made the call.  He told himself that he would as soon as the tire was repaired.

The bike shop owner repaired Toby’s tire in about 10 minutes.  As Scott had surmised Toby had run over some glass at one time or another on his way home from work.  The small hole had started a slow leak, and the damage gradually spread until the tire wouldn’t hold any air at all.

Toby paid the repairman $7.50 for the repair and rode the bike to the restaurant.  When he got to Harbor Lights Toby used a phone in the back room to call the Boylans.  Alyssa answered on the third ring.

“Hello.”

“Alyssa, it’s me, Toby.

“Okay.”

“I had a flat tire last night and stayed with Scott from work.  I’m staying in town until after work tonight.”

Alyssa paused for a second and then just said, “’Kay,” and hung up.  Toby looked at the now disconnected phone in his hand in puzzlement before hanging up.  He knew that Alyssa and he would never be close friends or anything like that but her curt attitude just now on the phone surprised him.  She had been short with him in conversations before but this was borderline rude!  Toby guessed that the hot chocolate a couple of days earlier was just an aberration, and that he was still unwelcome in her home.  Either that or she was in the middle of some kind of female problem that he didn’t EVEN want to know about.  In any case he decided to fall back on an axiom that he had heard in jail more times than he could count.

“Women are weird.”

Just then Toby’s boss, James Drake, came around the corner and stopped.  “Toby, you’re here.  Do you want to work a double shift?  The lunch dishwasher never showed.  Work his shift and then your own and I’ll throw in an extra employee meal for you.”

Toby was already on his way to the apron room when James had finished talking.  The overtime would pay for the tire repair as well as give Toby a tiny bit of breathing room from a financial standpoint.  Toby smiled to himself and thought of something that he had heard from John Boylan more than once.

“God works in mysterious ways, indeed.  That’s what makes Him such an interesting guy.”

Toby discovered a couple of things about working lunch shift and then dinner shift back to back.  First, he found a level of tired in an 11 hour shift that he had never known in a six hour shift.  Second he found that, either the tips at lunch weren’t as good as the tips at night, or the lunch servers weren’t as willing to tip out the kitchen help.  Toby was used to getting about $7.00 a night from the girls that served dinner.  Today, after two grueling shifts in a hot kitchen, Toby was tipped out a whole $9.80.

Too tired to worry much about it, Toby hauled his weary body on to the bike and started for Olympia.  It was a trip that he usually made in just less than two hours.  He knew that it was going to be longer than that tonight.  “God, I’m tired,” he said aloud as he entered Pacific Highway for the ride to John and DeeDee’s house.

Toby was usually left to his own devices in the mornings after he worked.  No calls for breakfast or requests for chore activity.  This was not to be the case the morning after his double shift.  At 8:30 sharp there was a rap on the bedroom door.

“Toby.  Come downstairs, please,” John said.

Toby rubbed the sleep from his eyes and quickly dressed.  He was curious what would have made John wake him so early.  When he walked into the living room he saw John, DeeDee, Alyssa and two men that he didn’t recognize.  John spoke first.

“Sit down, son.”

Toby sat on the couch, but leaned forward suspiciously.  He had been around enough to know a cop when he saw one.  Both strangers in the room wore burr haircuts and expressions as non-nonsense as their hair.  The older one spoke to Toby.

“Mr. Jacks, I’m Detective Langley and this is Detective Munroe.  We want to ask you a couple of questions.  Is that okay?”

Toby nodded but stayed silent.

“Where were you two nights ago, about midnight?”

Toby drew a blank for a moment and his face showed it.  Then he answered, “I went to my friend’s house because I had a flat tire.”

“What’s your friend’s name?’

“Scott.”

“Will Scott confirm that you were with him?”

“Yeah.  What’s this all about, anyway?  I ain’t done nuthin’ wrong.”

The police officer appeared to not have heard a word that Toby had said.

“Do you know Amos Frockle or Spike Farrot.?

Toby had his first inkling about what this was all about.  He had assumed that the cops were there to mess with him.  Now he knew what they were driving at.

“I know Amos.  I might’ve seen Spike a couple times.  We ain’t friends.”

“Are you telling me that you haven’t seen Amos or Spike since you got out of jail?”

Toby looked quickly around the room.  John and DeeDee looked worried.  Alyssa just looked mad.  Toby suddenly felt awfully alone.  Alone and scared.

“I don’t want to answer any more questions.”

The officer put his notepad in his pocket and stood up.  “You don’t have to answer any more questions right now, then.  We were hoping that you would be more cooperative, though.”

He got up and moved toward the front door.  His partner fell into step behind him, after thanking John and DeeDee for their time.  Just before they left the older officer turned around and spoke to Toby.

“Who did you say you were with two nights ago?”

Toby answered, “Scott, from work, I work at Harbor Lights.”

“What is Scott’s last name?”

Toby’s face fell.  He just knew the chef as Scott.  If he had ever been told his last name he didn’t remember.  He didn’t think that he had ever known what it was.

“I…I don’t know,” Toby said.  The officer stared Toby down before delivering his parting shot.

“Don’t leave town, Mr. Jacks.  We’ll be seeing one another again.  Get in touch with your attorney if you want, but we WILL be seeing one another again.  Have a nice day.”

John closed the door behind the departing officers.  He turned around slowly and looked at Toby.  “We need to talk, Toby.  All of us, I think.”

DeeDee and John sat on the couch opposite Toby.  Alyssa stood with her arms folded, near the fireplace.  John looked Toby in the eyes and spoke, “Toby you need to tell us straight out if you’re in trouble.  We’ll get in touch with your attorney, or another one maybe, but an attorney nevertheless.  But you need to be straight with us and I mean really straight and right now.”