A Dangerous Affair (5 page)

"Shop's closed," Lloyd mumbled. He stomped the knife with his heel and tossed the broken weapon at the trees. Then he boarded the bus and grabbed the overhead rail, facing opposite the minor irritation in a skirt who claimed a seat between a homeless man and a grandmother clutching her purse.

"You got some serious anger issues," the girl chastised Lloyd. "You need to cool your jets and find some peace."

Lloyd switched hands on the rail. "You need to find better friends."

The girl unwrapped a wad of grape bubble gum and started chewing in earnest. "You got a name?"

"Lloyd."

"What kind of medieval name is that?"

"Mine," Lloyd replied with a hint of attitude. He had enough on his plate without befriending a teenage runaway and all the baggage she brought with her. "Look, I don't know you. You don't know me. Let's leave it at that."

"Where are you headed?" the girl asked. She blew a softball size bubble.

"The same place you should be. Home."

The girl popped the gum with her nail. She tugged at her miniskirt. "What are you staring at?"

Lloyd held his arm out. "Give me your hand."

"What for?"

"Just give me your hand."

The girl held her hand out, nails up.

Lloyd turned her wrist. He ran his finger on her palm, tracing the lines that betrayed her tough girl facade. He followed the life line across the middle of her palm between the index finger and the thumb. He studied the shape of the hand and fingers. "You have great potential. Don't squander it."

The girl tried to pull her hand away, but Lloyd held on.

"You can read a lot from a person's hands. If you believe that sort of thing."

"Let go!" the girl exclaimed. "Or the next thing you're gonna read is my fist in your face."

Lloyd released his grip. "Where do you live?"

"You're looking at it," the girl replied. "I got nowhere to be. My Mom's dead. My Pop's been in jail forever."

"I'm sorry."

She blew a bubble in her mouth and popped it between her teeth. "No matter. I'm an independent business woman now."

Lloyd followed her hand gestures as she talked. A bundle of human potential wrapped in a pretty package with no direction and a welfare net to catch her fall. A girl starving for a hot meal, a clean bed, and a shoulder to cry on. An easy target for a predator lurking in plain sight with the conscience of a serial killer. "So that's your plan?"

"You got a better idea?" the girl asked. She rubbed Lloyd's knee. "I can be anyone you want me to be."

Lloyd pushed her hand away.

"You got a problem dating black women?"

"I have a problem dating children."

"I'm older than you think."

"And smarter than you pretend to be."

The girl rolled her eyes. "What are you? My fairy godmother now?"

Lloyd shifted his weight to his back foot before the bus came to a stop. "I'm getting out. You're staying on."

The air brakes hissed. The folding doors opened.

Lloyd took a crumpled Jackson from his wallet and gave it to the girl.

"What's that for?" she asked him.

"Your ticket home."

Chapter 5

Lloyd recognized the scraggly patch of farmland beyond the town that had sprung up in his absence. In the moonlit distance, single family subdivisions encroached on dormant pastures against a backdrop of felled woodlands laced with sabal palms that once buffered thriving wildlife from human civilization. Two-lane roads had expanded into four. Giant cell phone towers had materialized above the red maple tree lines, like robotic warlords from outer space.

His boots crunched on the gravel driveway winding to the two-story, wood frame farmhouse crowded by overgrown trees and the constant drone of interstate traffic less than a mile away. On closer inspection, he noticed boarded-up windows and frayed blue tarps covering large gaps of missing shingles on the storm-ravaged roof. Tattered sections of weathered fencing and a faded "For Sale" sign were obscured by patches of creeping beggarweed. To the east, a large pond served as a natural habitat for creatures big and small, including the occasional alligator patrolling the water.

Lloyd approached the screened front porch overrun with purple jacaranda shrubs and trumpet-shaped hibiscus flowers. For as long as he could remember, the farmhouse belonged to his adoptive parents who helped a troubled teenage boy and showed him love—the same parents who fought hard to keep him out of prison.

A motion sensor activated a bank of floodlights against the side of the house, exposing the three-car garage.

A patio door creaked open, followed by the click-clack sound of a lever-action rifle.

"Who's there?" an elderly woman wearing a flannel nightgown and straw sandals called out in a raspy voice.

"It's me," Lloyd replied. "I'm home."

Brenda Sullivan stepped around an iron sugar kettle and studied the stranger in jeans and a white T-shirt. She lowered the Winchester rifle and reached for the folded bifocals in her pocket. "Lloyd?"

"I would have called, but I don't have a phone."

"What in God's name are you doing here?"

"I'm on parole," said Lloyd. "I'm a free man now." He advanced up the porch steps and hugged his mother, a woman who'd spent the latter half of her adult life raising two boys with the hope she'd see both lead happy, successful, lives. She'd failed on both accounts.

Brenda swatted a mosquito with her frail, bird-like arm. She lowered the rifle and peered at him. "You look taller and skinnier than I remember," she said. "Don't they feed you in prison?"

"Three hots and a cot."

"How'd you get here?"

"I took the bus and walked," said Lloyd. He smelled the liquor on her breath as he followed her inside the sparsely furnished home with exposed beam ceilings and wicker furniture. "Where's Dad?"

Brenda ignored the question as she gathered up empty whiskey bottles and threw them in the kitchen trash. "I've been busy."

"I can tell."

"There's sliced bread in the pantry," said Brenda. "I keep a jar of chunky peanut butter. The kind you like. I'll let you open it."

"Is Dad around?"

"Your father's not with us anymore," she said flatly. "He passed away last year."

The words hit Lloyd in the stomach like a
Terminator
punch, knocking the wind out of him before his brain could process the information. "What happened?"

"I'm sorry you had to find out like this. You weren't the easiest person to get a hold of."

Lloyd put his hands on his head. "Jesus, Mom you really should have told me. I can't believe he's gone. What happened?"

Brenda searched the kitchen cabinet for a new bottle. She twisted the cap and filled a dirty glass with Jack Daniels. "It doesn't matter."

"It does to me."

"Your brother never made the funeral. Too busy playing with his little whore to pay his respects."

"Go easy on the sauce," Lloyd cautioned her. "If Dad saw you like this—"

"I'm not his concern anymore." Brenda steadied herself on the counter. "People live. People die. The cycle of life doesn't stop."

Lloyd noticed the family photos on the fridge. Pictures of a happier time. "Where's Josh? Or is he dead too?"

"Don't be morbid. Your brother's still in Lakewood, alive and well. Got himself a girlfriend with a kid that's not his, or so he claims. They share a trailer together."

Lloyd stepped over piles of dirty laundry in the hall and found more empty bottles than he could carry in both hands. "When did you start drinking like this?"

"The doctor says my liver's dying. The rest of me is still trying to catch up."

"You need to quit."

"And you need to mind your manners. It was hard on all of us when you left. Hard on me. Hard on your father. Harder on Josh more than any of us, I suppose."

Lloyd poured the contents of an open bottle of Wild Turkey down the sink. "This stuff'll kill you."

"Hey!" Brenda protested. "I paid good money for that bottle."

"Spend it on something else."

"I'll spend my money on whatever the hell I want."

"Have you looked in the mirror lately?"

"I'm not the one who went to prison," Brenda scolded her oldest adopted son. "If you'd stayed out of trouble, none of this would have happened."

"We've all made mistakes," Lloyd confessed. "I've paid for mine."

"So did your father." Brenda swallowed. Her tongue felt dry. Her hands felt numb. "What are you planning to do now? Sponge off me like your brother does?"

"I'll find a job."

"Doing what?"

Lloyd shrugged. "Anything. Maybe teach."

Brenda snickered. "No school's going to hire an ex-convict. You might as well tape a sign on your forehead."

"I'm still the same man I was before."

"You were the one who could have had a good life. Raised a nice family. Made a name for yourself. But you pissed it away like your brother." She staggered toward him with yellow hues around her red-rimmed eyes. "What happened to you? You were a good kid. Now you come back here with your tattooed arms and your attitude."

Lloyd watched her wobble on shaky legs. "You should have told me sooner about Dad."

Brenda swayed in place. "Your father shot himself in the head." She staggered toward Lloyd, well on her way into a drunken stupor. Her eyelids fluttered. "I buried him at Seaside Cemetery. He always did want to live close to the water."

Lloyd caught her as she passed out in front of him. He checked her pulse before he carried her to her room. Nothing he could say or do would change what happened. That much he knew for certain. Tomorrow would bring a new day, and with it, a chance for a new beginning.

Chapter 6

Jamie used a wooden spoon to chip away at a frozen clump of beef stew in a three-quart saucepan on the stove. An under-cabinet radio played a smooth jazz melody from her favorite radio station. The music carried her to a better place. A time when life was simple and unadulterated from the influence of her significant other. A time when her needs came first, and the dormant temper of Alan Blanchart remained as stationary and uneventful as the leftover entrée on her flat top range.

The music segued to commercials. The washer hit the spin cycle in the laundry room, gyrating the unbalanced load in the oversized tub.

She sliced a cucumber and added it to the grated carrots and diced tomato in the bowl of mixed greens. She sprinkled fresh parmesan and added homemade croutons to the mix the way Alan liked it.

With dinner preparations nearly finished, she hung her apron in the pantry and hauled a load of clean laundry from the dryer to her bedroom.

She folded Alan's shirts in a neat and orderly fashion. She folded his socks and underwear in the same manner, placing each garment in her husband's bureau drawer. Socks to the left. Underwear to the right. White T-shirts belonged in the bottom drawer stacked in piles of three.