Blood Ties (2 page)

He rocked back on his heels, flipping the toothpick vertically in his mouth. “Too bad he run off. I’d have thrown
’em in the back of my truck.” A vision of his pickup truck piled high with an assortment of road kill flashed through my mind. One of my brother-in-laws liked the convenience of a little road-side delivery. His Chevy’s a deer magnet. Eric “The Hunter” had gotten a dose of the Aldridge curse through marriage. His freezer is full of it – frosty, small white packages scrawled in black marker with the flesh it contained, the road he found it on, and the date he threw it in his truck. I avoided eating at his house.

“Got a chain in the back. A friend of mine owns a shop aboot a quarter of a mile into town, up on the corner of Fifth and Garden.”

“Thanks, I really appreciate your help.”

I trailed after him as he walked around my car that was stuffed to the roof with boxes and bags of clothing. He leaned down and peered inside. “Ya a student at that college in St. Germaine, eh? Ya Amerkin?”

He saw my look of confusion. “Ya from the US? I seen yur plates.”

Ahhh.
“From Iowa. I’m just starting at the college.”

He nodded and shuffled back to his truck. He returned with a massive chain and bent down to hook it underneath then sauntered back, hiking his jeans like a nervous tick. Back in his truck, he revved
its engine. It growled like a rabid dog. The gears popped and the truck moved backwards. The chain went taut. The engine squealed.

My car let out a groan as it crawled out of the ditch to perch itself back up on the highway. It had a history with ditches. Given a choice,
the Beast would choose to do a little off-roading when it wasn’t taking out squirrels and rabbits, and like an addiction, it kept going back for more. It’s a miracle I’d never been hurt.

Alby unhooked the chain and walked up to my window. He braced himself with a hand on the doorframe, the toothpick still doing a wet dance in his mouth, bobbing up and down. “Well, ya should be good-to-go.”

“Thanks so much. You’re my angel on the road this morning.”

“Ain’t no problem. Always will
in’ to help out. Now ya be careful driving in this here fog. Wouldn’t want ya to come across somethin’ bigger than a deer. They got moose up here, what’s left of ’em. Guarantee ya won’t just come out of it with just a chicken shit of a dent.”

Chicken shit of a dent? The corner of the
fender was crushed. I hadn’t thought about it, but yep, they had moose up here – a walking half ton of meat with big freakin’ antlers you could hang a couple sumo wrestlers off like ornaments – big pudgy diaper wearing ornaments.

“Yeah, I’ll be careful. Thanks again for your help.”

“Yur welcome. Ya might wanna think about a deer whistle. Spooks the shit out of em.” He walked back to his truck, hiking up his jeans. I snorted. I needed a friggin’ fog horn.

Chapter 2

Sally Statham took a long drag of her cigarette through puckered orange painted lips. She turned her head to the right and kept one bloodshot eye fixed on me as she exhaled, giving a push from an uplift of her chin. I coughed and tried to blink the burn out of my eyes. I leaned away and took in tiny gasping breaths, just enough to keep me conscious.

“Name?” she growled.

“Elizabeth Aldridge.” I gave her a pleasant smile, tinged with optimism. “Optimistic” that I’d be outta there in a flash. After all, it was the “happy” word of the day.

“ID,” she barked.

I handed her my driver’s license. She gazed at it and hitched an eyebrow that had been drawn on with a brown pencil. I looked like I was on meth. My shoulder-length hair, normally a strawberry blonde, was the color of dishwater. It looked like rats had used it as a nest. My blue eyes were so bloodshot they looked lavender. I’d dragged myself out of bed, hung-over, to make it to the DMV before they closed at four-thirty.

The party the night before had been epic.

She squinted one eye. “I don’t want trouble,” she said. Her long nails, painted the same color as her lips, flicked a long ash into a half-f tray. The sun hadn’t been kind to her and she had the wrinkles and sunspots to prove it. A bright neon orange tank top glowed against all that bronze, holding her ponderous breasts like a jock support. Her bleached blonde hair was as scraggly as the plants on her desk.

She leaned across the desk and a pair of red cat glasses on a chain of miniature dog bones fell off her ample chest to perch
themselves on the desk as if they were giving me a stare down. I smothered a laugh and began furiously chewing my bottom lip.

“You look like trouble.”

I opened my mouth to respond with an obligatory response to that challenge but snapped it shut. It wasn’t worth taking in more rank air. Instead, I wondered how long it would take before I passed out.

Trouble? OK. I’d had a near miss with the law when I stole my team’s basketball championship trophy on a dare and then another time, weren’t our neighbors oh so excited when they found their mailboxes stuffed full of brownies. No big deal. And as far as anyone knew, I wasn’t the one that’d beat up my stalker. He’d transferred schools shortly after that, too embarrassed to sic the police on me. Even if he had, who would have believed a girl half his size had messed him up? Beyond that, I was a model citizen all the way around. Yep.

Sally opened a drawer and fingered her way through hanging folders, her cigarette dangling from between her lips. She pulled some papers out and shoved it along with my license towards me. She popped her smoke out of her puckered lips with a two fingered draw. I scribbled my signature on the apartment lease and slid it back to her with a check for the first month’s rent. With one long nail, she flicked a small manila envelope towards me. I caught it before it flew off the desk.

“No burning carpets, no punching holes in walls or ceilings, no damage to furniture, no smoking,” she warned in a bored voice, her gaze f
ixed on me as she puffed away.

She pulled two glossy pamphlets off a stack on her desk. “There are some trails behind the complex.” She ground out her stub on the tray then picked up a pack of Marlboros and smacked it against her hand. “You won’t have to worry about running into hungry wildlife.” She pulled back her lips in what could have been a smile and flashed a few stained teeth. “They don’t hang around here much … or at least not for long.”

She snapped open her lighter. Neon orange graced the end of the cigarette as she sucked at it like a straw. It made a wet pop when she pulled it out of her mouth. She gave me one squint from her bloodshot eye and yanked her head in a silent dismissal.

I left the office and sucked in fresh air outside her door. A long line of students waited to take my place. From their excited chatter, most of them had to be freshmen like me, unaware of the adventure behind the door. They saw me and stared
at me as if I had two heads. Sally’s gravelly voice bellowed out from her office, “Next,” and the next victim went in. God, if this wasn’t freshman hazing at its worst.

I found my building at the very back of the complex next to the forest. I wasn’t the only one moving in at the last minute. Students filled the parking lot, loading up before they made their way inside like a steady stream of ants. Music pounded from
open windows and a few were grilling on their patios.

I pulled a box out of the backseat and walked to my building. A guy, sweaty and wearing no shirt –
nothing to brag about there – left a game of Frisbee and jogged up. “Hey, let me help you with that. My name’s Dylan.” He wiped the sweat off his brow and gave me puppy dog eyes. He was tall, lanky with mousey brown hair that hung down past his ears in an unkempt, bed head sort of way.

I swept around him. “Hi Dylan and no thanks, it’s not that heavy.”

Another one, just as sweaty, moved to stand in front of me and forced me to stop. He leaned around the box to give me an engaging smile. He was red, beefy, and reminded me of a kid back home turned piano mover. He was a high school dropout, but boy, could he heft those babies around. This guy needed a shave badly, his chest that is. Hair on the upper body of a guy was a definite show stopper for me, repulsive even, though a lot of people think it’s fuzzy sexy nice. Michel had none, front nor back. He’d told me it was an inherited trait in his family.

Shit, there I go again
, thinking of him.

“Really, I’m fine.” I moved forward and he
hesitated, then stepped out of the way. Heat crept up over my face. Definite stalker material. My bad, I’d left my mace in the car.

“Get off her, Jeesuus.”

A girl with green eyes, spiky hair dyed a deep purple and huge hoop earrings wedged herself between them. She had to be around five-five, more than a few inches shorter than me. She wore faded jeans with a few strategically placed rips and a t-shirt with the word “Muse” scrawled across it in brilliant colors. I liked her immediately.

She shoved my overly
persistent help off the sidewalk. They towered over her – big hulking sweaty He-Men.

“Hey, we’re just trying to help.”

“Yeah, sure,” she muttered under her breath, wrinkling her nose.

She turned around and gave me a bright cheery smile. “Don’t mind them. They think they’re the welcoming squad.” She stuck out her hand and her bracelets softly clinked as they bounced against each other. “I’m Jenni
fer, but you can call me Jen.”

I balanced the box on my hip and shook her hand. “Hi, I’m Liz.”

“Freshman?”

“Is it that obvious?”

She laughed. “Don’t worry. I looked the same two days ago. What’s your apartment number?”

I fished around in my back pocket and pulled out a small envelope with “202” scribbled in blue magic marker.

She punched me in the arm. I almost dropped the box. “No waaay, that’s right next door to me. Hi ya, neighbor. Come on, follow me.”

We squeezed past the downward traffic on the narrow stairwell up to the second floor. My one-bedroom was at the top of the stairs. She pulled out my key, put it in the lock and gave it a couple hard twists. The door took a couple of shoves to get it open.

She waved me in with a flash of purple nails and clinking bracelets. “Here you go, home sweet home. Surprise, surprise, it looks just like mine. Ugly as ugly can get.”

It didn’t even come close to what had
been displayed on their website. The brown threadbare carpet matched the scuffed-up laminated furniture. Beige plastic blinds hid a large sliding glass door to a balcony. On my right, an outdated kitchenette looked out onto a small metal table and red vinyl chairs circa ’70s. The whole place smelled like a variety of cleaning products, stale beer and dirty laundry. There was a black and white print of a European city above the stained couch.

I would have lived in the dorms but grandma had insisted I get an apartment, something about Meningitis and fungi. Since she was footing the bill, I didn’t argue. If the apartments looked like this, the dorms had to be disasters.

We went back to my car for another load. She took one look and widened her eyes.

“It’s homey, be nice. The Beast is a bit sensitive.”

“Wow … I’m just saying wow.” Her mouth hung open as she circled around the car. She pointed at the bumper. “What’s this?”

“Its kills.”

She looked at me, wide-eyed. “Whoof.” She bent down to look at the fender. “This one looks new.”

“Yeah, I hit a deer this morning.” A wave of uneasiness followed my words. It had been a deer, hadn’t it?

“Whoo baby, your beastie is quite the death machine. Mine, the deer would just trample it to death. I have to say, you’ve got me beat.” She tilted her head. “You hit it this morning? Shouldn’t there be blood … or nasty shit on it?”

I walked around to where she stood. No blood. Weird, I could have sworn I’d seen it. I slid my fingers over the surface of the crushed metal. There should
be at least a piece of hair, some sort of evidence. I’d hit it pretty hard. “Maybe the fog washed it off,” I offered.

“Yeah, maybe. I hate that shit, makes me feel like I’m in a creepy B werewolf movie every time.”

I opened the backseat door and hunched over, half crawling inside. She leaned against the car, crossed her arms and supervised.

“So where are you from?”

“Iowa. Land of corn, beans and pigs.”

“I knew it
. I haven’t heard one ‘eh’ from you. I’m from Chicago … Evanston. Have you ever been?”

I pulled myself out of the backseat dragging two garbage bags. They were full of clothes. I wasn’t a tidy packer. “No. I haven’t done much traveling.”

“Where in Iowa? I have an aunt who lives in Sioux City.”

“Mason City, the infamous River City.”

A blank look crossed her face.

“Meredith Willson …
The Music Man?”

A bit of bile slid up my throat. It was an
involuntary reflex. It happened every time I thought of Mason City’s most notorious spawn. From the time you were a toddler, they brain-washed you with his music, a required curriculum in their schools. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great place to grow up – get married – have a boatload of kids, well, you get the idea.