Authors: Meg Muldoon
“We’re gonna have a full house tonight and you need to start getting the bar ready,” she said coldly.
“You know, Courtney, if there’s something you want to say, like you need someone to listen to you? I’m here. Okay?”
She didn’t answer.
“I really think you should call the cops,” I said again, beating a dead horse. “That might mean something.”
“Or it could be that it’s just some brats running wild,” she said. “Now that’s all I want to say on the subject. I hear the bar calling your name.”
I shook my head.
I headed for the door, not responding.
“And Bitters?” she said.
I turned back.
“Don’t you be blabbing about this to that boyfriend of yours. It’s none of Rollins’ business, as far as I’m concerned.”
Her words came out harsh, and I would have normally taken offense at her talking to me like that.
But then I saw her eyes.
Her eyes were saying something else.
There was panic in them.
And I didn’t understand why.
“I won’t,” I said.
She nodded, and leaned down, wringing the sponge free of black paint.
I stepped inside The Cupid, the bad feeling in the base of my chest growing with each passing minute.
We shouldn’t have been opening in this kind of weather.
Chapter 59
It was going to be one of those drunken-shouting, busted glass, black-eye kind of nights that ended with somebody getting hurt and the place being shut down early.
The Cupid was more crowded than it had been since I was a kid. People crammed in, seeking shelter from the snowstorm howling outside. I was running myself ragged trying to keep up with all the drink orders. Courtney was, of course, unhelpful as always and nowhere to be found. Last I saw, she’d been out back behind the bar, chain-smoking and watching the wind have its way with the snowflakes falling from the sky.
Meanwhile, I was working myself into the ground.
But I wasn’t complaining. It was just what I needed tonight.
Despite the dangerous feeling in the air, I was glad to have something to take my mind off of what Lawrence had said earlier about moving on.
I knew the old man hadn’t meant to hurt me. In fact, I knew he’d said what he’d said out of love.
But when it hurts, it doesn’t really matter why someone said something to you. All you feel is the pain.
Rushing around the saloon went a ways to taking my mind off of it, though. If only for a few hours.
I took drink orders for
Cupid’s Slingshots, Grapefruit Rickeys, High Desert Sunrises, Hibiscus Margaritas
, and beer of every variety, forcing myself to smile and talk it up with customers as Hayes Carll and Lucinda Williams and Conway Twitty belted from the stereo.
The jukebox sat unplugged against the wall. Nobody had touched it since Dale’s death.
It felt like the whole town was in the saloon. Faces I hadn’t ever seen before, plus faces I knew all too well. Beth Lynn was there, drinking herself into a Cosmo stupor at one end of the bar, rattling on about how she’d never find the right man. Dry Hack was in his usual spot, knocking back his gin and tonics, mumbling to himself. A dark expression on his face.
Sometimes, someone would hover over the area where Dale’s body had been, then look up at the place where Old Velma used to be mounted, and shake their head.
There was plenty of talk about Dale. About who he might’ve pissed off so badly to end up murdered in his own bar. There was talk of gambling and bad debts and crossed bookies.
In between drink orders, I found myself scanning the crowd without knowing I was doing it.
It took me a little while to figure out I was searching for someone.
“Looking for me?”
My heart sank.
I turned in the direction of his voice, wondering if this was it. If he was here to do what he had threatened to do.
To arrest me for Dale’s murder.
And in front of an entire room of customers.
I took a deep breath.
“Raymond,” I said, coldly.
I noticed he wasn’t in his regular uniform. Instead, he was wearing street clothes, with his beanie cap pulled down over his ears.
He sat hunched on the barstool.
“No, I don’t expect you were looking for me,” he said, resting his chin on his hand. “Don’t expect you’re happy to see me at all.”
He said it in one of those tones that he used from time to time when he was wallowing in self-pity.
“Can you blame me after doing what you did?”
Raymond didn’t answer.
“Are you here on business?” I said. “Come by to make sure your suspect wasn’t skipping town before you could arrest her?”
“Just… get me a drink, would ya, Bitters?” he said, looking away like he was ashamed.
I put my hands on my hips.
“Tequila.A lot of it. And I don’t care if it’s the cheap stuff neither.”
He rested his chin on the palm of his hand again.
Something really had Raymond down.
He should have been working at this hour, but instead he was in here, looking like he had a thirst that might take all night to quench.
I didn’t say anything, though I was tempted to let him have it. I poured him a double shot of tequila, going for a mid-shelf brand.
I may not have been simpatico with Raymond at the moment, but giving him cheap stuff that might hurt him bad the next morning seemed like cruel and unusual punishment. Even for someone like him who might have deserved it.
I slid the drink and a lime slice across the bar.
“Your tune’s sure changed,” I said.
He sucked down the tequila.
“Well, that’s what happens when you lose your job.”
My mouth almost fell open. He looked up sheepishly, and then looked back down again.
“Well, just about lost it, anyway,” he said. “Suspension pending further review.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“You know what happened,” he said. “You were there. Me questioning someone I was recently involved with in regards to a murder investigation was a violation of the department’s ethics.”
He sighed.
“That rat Botkin squealed on me.”
“But I thought you said—”
“I know what I said, Bitters,” he said, knocking back his drink. “Truth is, I got carried away.”
I didn’t say anything. Beth Lynn hailed me for another drink, and I started shaking up a Cosmo for her.
“Raymond, I—”
“Don’t,” he said. “I know it’s my fault. Hell, I know you didn’t kill Dale. I guess… I just couldn’t stand the fact that you don’t care for me the way I care for you. And that you could just move on so quick with that…”
He trailed off.
“I just screwed it all up, didn’t I?” he said.
He looked up with large, sad pit bull eyes.
And all that anger I’d been holding onto sort of just melted away right then and there.
“We’re just not good for each other, Raymond.”
“Dammit, I know that, Loretta,” he mumbled.
He looked up.
“I’ve just had a tough time letting go of you.”
This was as close to an apology as I was going to get from him. But it would be enough. I didn’t need anymore.
“I’ll be back,” I said.
I went across the bar and handed Beth Lynn her Cosmo. She was more than three sheets to the wind by now.
“Bitters, why on earth would the universe pair me up with such a nasty, rude little troll?” she shouted over the music.
I sighed.
“I don’t know, Beth Lynn,” I said. “I’m just a middleman in this.”
“Are you really sure it’s him?” she said. “I mean, what if you’re mistaken? That has to happen sometimes.”
She leaned back in her chair.
“I wish you hadn’t told me,” she said, looking down at her drink. “Better to go around stumbling blind in this world than know that you’re destined for a rude, unpleasant middle-aged reporter in a small town.”
Maybe she had a point in that.
She took a swig of her drink.
“Who doesn’t like to drink, to boot,” she said. “Can you believe that? Me ending up with someone who doesn’t like to drink?”
“What about that thing we talked about?” I said. “You keeping an open mind about all this?”
She waved her hands wildly at me.
“I gave it a shot, Bitters,” she said. “I mean, thanks for your help and all, but I think I’m just going to go my own way from here on out.”
“Yeah, because you were doing so well, what with Kirby and that kid fresh out of the cradle.”
She narrowed her eyes at me, and then threw back the rest of her drink. She leaned forward again sloppily.
“I’m not proud of that, Bitters,” she said. “I know I shouldn’t have been with either one of them. But I know I can do better than this Robert guy, too. So please, just get me another drink, and let’s forget you ever had one of those visions.”
I shook my head.
“One meeting? One lousy, half-hearted attempt at talking to the man and you’re done?”
She tapped her glass with her long nails.
“I want another,” she said.
I let out a disgusted sigh and took her glass.
“That’s it, Beth Lynn,” I said. “I’m cutting you off. You’re drunk, and you’re thinking poorly, and frankly, I’ve got a hot room tonight and I don’t have any time to deal with your drama right now.”
She puckered her lips and gave me a sour look. She got up off her stool and leaned even further across the bar.
“You’re the one’s out of line,” she slurred. “Playing with people’s hearts and claiming to have some sort of insight into who a person belongs with.”
She started pulling out some paper bills from her purse.
“I didn’t see it before, but I see it now,” she said, wobbling back and forth. “You’re delusional, Bitters Loveless. Just
plain
delusional.”
She threw the money down on the bar.
“Why would I listen to someone like you anyway? You can’t even get your own love life together.”
She turned and staggered across the floor. Halfway across the room, she rolled on her ankle and cursed loud enough for the people around her to hush.
She took her heels off, then stomped out of the saloon.
I bit my lip.
Maybe it was because of my already weakened emotional state, but her words had hurt almost more than Lawrence’s had earlier.
My legs suddenly felt wobbly, and that sick feeling I’d had in the base of my chest all night felt like it was climbing up my throat.
“What was all that about?” Raymond shouted over the music.
The entire saloon seemed to be closing in on me.
I suddenly couldn’t breathe.
I had to get out of there.
I slammed the bar rag down, and walked quickly through the back. Past Dale’s office, down the hallway, and out through the backdoor where we got the larger delivery shipments of booze.
I almost didn’t make the trashcan.
I heaved up everything. Everything, and then some.
Chapter 60
I hunched over the garbage can as snow swirled around me, staring down at the bile that had been in my stomach just a few minutes ago.
I stood like that for a while, my knees shaking, waiting to make sure that everything that had wanted to come out had.
Everyone was right about me.
I was delusional.
Waiting for Jacob all these years.Even though he barely called me anymore. Even though I knew that he probably wasn’t ever coming back home to Broken Hearts Junction.
I’d been living in a fantasy land, unwilling to face the thing I knew to be true.
Meanwhile, I’d been wasting my youth, my life, on a man who no longer loved me.
That was what it came down to, in the end.
No matter if he was my soulmate. The bottom line was that he didn’t love me anymore.
I felt more bile coming up. I leaned forward and heaved and coughed and sputtered out some more delusion into the garbage can.
After leaving behind everything that had been in my stomach plus more, I stood up and leaned against the cold brick wall. A stiff wind howled into the side of my face, blowing flakes of snow into my hair. But the cold outside didn’t hold a flame to the cold that I felt inside my heart.
I understood why Zerelda had thrown herself into those icy waters all those years ago.
Jacob hadn’t drowned in a river, but I’d lost him nonetheless.
And the pain was almost too much to bear.
I started crying.
This was how all my dreams and hopes for the two of us ended.
With me throwing up into a garbage can behind the saloon where we met, on a cold and snowy night. Alone, destitute, and with no hope of—
Something on the ground caught my eye, distracting me from my self-pity for a moment.
There had been an orange burst of color that had faded quickly. I knelt down, trying to make out what it was.
I picked up the charred black paper that had been pinned against the ground, dusting off the snow that had started accumulating on it.
I looked around to see if I was really alone out here, and then peered down at it.
It used to be a photo.
Someone had burned the picture, and burned it recently. But the snow must have put out the flame before the whole thing could be destroyed.
I stared at what was left.
There were a couple of teenagers in the picture, but I could only see one of their faces. The other one had turned to ash.
The girl had bright red hair and wore pink lipstick and was smiling coyly at the camera. She was wearing a high school cheerleading uniform. Her hair was tied up in girlish, immature pigtails.
I knew right away it was the girl in my vision, the one that Dale had come running out of the ring to embrace.
And now that I got a good look at her face, I knew for sure that it was her.
Courtney.
But the other one, the other girl in the photo had been mostly burned. Obliterated by—
I let out a groan as the world around me faded and then turned white.
It felt like razor blades were suddenly scratching at the inside of my skull, and I shuddered.