Cal
WHEN
Crystal Brighton, still in her pajamas, came into the kitchen, I glanced in her mother’s direction. I was sitting at the table, having a cup of coffee, and suddenly realized how this had to look. A strange man—well, not totally strange, given that Crystal and I had already met—here for breakfast?
But Crystal didn’t look at me, her mother, or anything else but the clipboard she held in her left hand. She had a pencil in her right and was doodling even as she walked.
Crystal nudged a chair out and took a seat.
Lucy said, “Crystal, you remember Mr. Weaver.”
She looked up from her drawing for half a second, took me in, and went back to her work as her mother set a glass of orange juice in front of her. “Yes,” she said.
“There was a fire last night where he lives and the fire department wouldn’t let him stay the night, so I offered to let him stay in the guest room.”
That caught her interest. She looked at me. “How big a fire?”
“My apartment wasn’t destroyed,” I said, “but the smoke smell is everywhere.”
“Was anybody killed?” she asked.
I shook my head. “No.”
Lucy came around to Crystal’s side of the table and put a bowl of Cheerios in front of her.
“What are you drawing on?” she asked.
“Paper,” Crystal said.
Lucy took the clipboard from her, removed the top sheet, flipped it over, and winced. “For God’s sake, Crystal, it’s the electric bill.”
“Only on one side,” she said. “The other side is blank.”
“How many times have I—” Lucy cut herself off. Maybe she didn’t want to tear a strip off her daughter in front of me. “Please don’t do that.”
Crystal turned to look at me and said, “Did the graphic novel I gave you get burned up in the fire?”
“No,” I said. “It’s okay. It’s still in the car.”
“Did you read it?”
“Not yet,” I said. “But I’m going to. When I do, I’ll let you know what I think.”
She turned her attention to her cereal, shoved a spoonful into her mouth and chewed.
“Better get a move on,” her mother said. “You slept in.”
“I woke up in the night,” she said, “and couldn’t get back to sleep.”
“Well, that’s too bad.”
I felt it was time to go. I took one last gulp of coffee and stood. “I should be on my way. Going to see just how bad the damage is. Thanks for everything. Nice to see you, Crystal.”
“Don’t go just yet,” Lucy said. “Let me get Crystal off to school.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised she wanted to talk to me privately, given that we had slept together only a few hours earlier. I was wondering whether that had been such a good idea. I liked Lucy. I liked her a lot, in fact. The time she had spent in the guest room with me, while tentative at first, had turned passionate, even aggressive, quickly. Lucy had assumed a leadership role I was more than happy to concede to her. I wondered whether, after all she had endured in the last couple of days, she needed to feel she had control over at least this part of her life.
“Sure,” I said, nodding my understanding. “I can hang in for a few minutes.”
But I hadn’t been making an excuse when I’d said I had to go back and check my apartment. Odds were I’d have to find another place to live, if not permanently, at least for a few weeks. If the building was deemed unsafe, I’d need permission just to get my stuff out of there.
What little of it there was.
I thought of Celeste and Dwayne. No way was I bunking in with them while I apartment-hunted. I’d find a motel outside Promise Falls. And I certainly wasn’t moving in with Lucy. I was open to the idea of seeing more of her, but it was a little early to start sharing quarters. And it wasn’t fair to Crystal, having some man she didn’t really know living under the same roof with her.
“Come on, sweetheart,” her mother said. “You’ll be late.”
Crystal shoved one last spoonful of Cheerios into her mouth, then ran back upstairs, clipboard in hand.
“I like her,” I said.
Lucy gave me a dubious smile, as though she didn’t know whether to believe me. She followed Crystal up to the second floor. I could hear muted conversation—mostly from Lucy’s side—about the brushing of teeth, the collecting of homework, the remembering of lunch. That, I guessed, was the brown bag on the kitchen counter. Several minutes later, Crystal returned, snatched the bag off the counter, pivoted, and ran for the front door.
“Read my thing,” she said as she passed me.
“You bet,” I said as Lucy returned to the kitchen.
At the door, we heard Crystal say, “My shoelace is undone!”
“Then fix it!” Lucy said.
We heard some sighing and shuffling, and then the slam of a door.
“And she’s gone,” Lucy said. She filled a mug with coffee, leaned up against the counter, and took a sip. “I think maybe I could use something stronger.”
I smiled but said nothing. I was thinking how much I missed the chaos of a youngster in the house.
“I liked last night,” she said, then grimaced. “I mean, I’m sorry you got burned out and all. But aside from that.”
“Me, too,” I said, standing. I closed the distance between us, slipped my arms around her waist, and pulled her toward me.
Lucy set her mug down, put her arms around my neck and her mouth on mine.
Things went like that for a while. This time, when she went to unbuckle my belt, she was better at it. She slipped a hand down there.
“I don’t have to go in today,” she whispered. “I’m on a bereavement leave. But I can do my bereaving later.”
And I could put off possible apartment-hunting for a while, too.
My cell phone rang.
“Let it go,” she said, her lips on my neck.
“
You
let it go,” I said. “I should get this.”
I put some space between us, reached into my jacket for my phone, and held up my pants with my other hand.
“Hello?” I said.
“Cal, Barry Duckworth. Where are you?”
DAVID
Harwood was still half-asleep. He’d heard his cell ring, grabbed it off the bedside table, put it to his ear, and said, “Yeah?”
Randall Finley said, “Let’s do it.”
“What?” David asked. “Do what? What the hell time is it?”
“It’s uh . . . almost five thirty. This is the day. I’m going to announce. I’m ready. I told you I was ready to move. Things are coming together.”
David threw back the covers, got his feet onto the floor. He switched the phone to his other ear. “Randy, listen to me. We’re
not
ready. You can’t just go out there half-cocked. We don’t have a final platform drafted. We don’t even have a slogan. You need to be more organized before you begin.”
“I’m fully cocked,” the former mayor said. “I’ve got an issue, something to run on, to kick-start things. We can put something out there, stir up some shit, and work on the rest of the stuff over the next few days.”
“What issue?”
“You’ll see.”
“Randy, listen, you can’t keep me in the dark. If you want me to run things, you have to let me run them.”
“You are—don’t you worry—but we’re moving ahead. Call whoever it is you call. TV, Albany papers, fucking CNN, I don’t care. Just get people out here. I’m counting on you to use your connections. You worked in the media—you know how it works. Let’s make it for noon. We’ll do it in the park by the falls. Nice background there, with the water coming down.”
“If you expect people to come out,” David said, “I’ve got to promise them something good. You deciding to run is not enough.”
A pause at the other end of the line. “Okay, you can tell them this. Tell them to expect a bombshell about how things are currently run in this town. Something big. And that’s why I’m running. To straighten things out here.”
“I need something more,” David insisted. “Something specific.”
“I don’t want to give it all away,” Finley said. “It’s like taking some hot chick on a date and you come in your pants while you’re still at dinner.”
David closed his eyes for a moment, kneaded his forehead with his fingers. “I would prefer not to put it to them that way.”
“Okay, tell them it’s about incompetence in the police department. And whether this force has the tools it needs to catch this twenty-three dude.”
“Twenty-three what?”
“Christ, David, do you watch the news?”
“I had some stuff going on yesterday.”
Finley told him about Barry Duckworth’s news conference.
“That’s crazy,” David said. “That’s absolutely crazy.”
“I know,” Finley said, unable to keep the enthusiasm out of his voice. “This plays right into what I’m going to talk about.”
“What’s the thing you’re holding back?”
Or made up,
David thought.
“You’ll find out when everyone else does. But the good thing is, you can take it to the bank. It’s solid.”
David sighed in defeat. “Let me start making some calls,” he said. “Oh, another thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I’d like to talk to Mrs. Finley. Jane, is it?”
“Why do you want to do that?”
“Spouses always figure into a campaign. I want to talk to her about her role.”
“She’s my closest adviser,” Finley said. “That’s her role. You don’t need to talk to her.”
He hung up.
David put the phone on the bedside table, held his head in his hands for a moment, elbows on his knees.
“Something bad?” Samantha said.
David turned, looked at her head on the pillow next to his. “Sorry if that woke you.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I was already awake. I was thinking I got to pick up Carl. Get him back here, get him ready for school.”
Carl was having a sleepover with Ethan at David’s house. David’s sleepover—although there’d been a limited amount of actual sleeping—had been at Sam’s.
The night before, the two had decided to have that dinner—drinks, actually, with some bar snacks, since the two of them had already eaten—right away. The moment Sam had said yes, she’d be happy to go out with him sometime, David had asked, “How about now?”
Sam didn’t feel as though she could say no. The man had, after all, just saved her son from an abduction. When David went back inside and asked Arlene if she could watch the boys for a while, she’d said sure, no problem, they were already getting along just fine, up in Ethan’s room.
Around eleven, David had glanced at his watch and said, “Oh, shit.”
“God, I haven’t been up this late in years,” Sam had said. “Get me back to your place. I’ll grab Carl and get home.”
But something had happened on the way to the car. When he’d opened the passenger door for her, Sam had turned, her face brushing up close to David’s, and he’d kissed her. Hungrily. Sam responded. It was the same kind of instantaneous passion they’d felt in her kitchen weeks earlier.
Her back pressed up against the car, she’d said, “My place.”
On the way, David had phoned his mother. “Where are you?” Arlene had asked, her voice just above a whisper. “It’s past Ethan’s bedtime, but it’s kind of hard to put him to bed when Carl is still here.”
David had said, “Have Carl sleep over.” He’d glanced at Sam, who’d nodded.
“Sleep over?” Arlene had said. “He hasn’t brought pajamas or a toothbrush or a change of clothes for tomorrow or—”
“
Mom
, make it work.”
Silence, for a moment, from his mother. “I’ll see what I can do. Will I see you in the morning, or are you going to Mexico?”
“Thanks, Mom,” he’d said.
And five minutes later they were in Samantha Worthington’s bed. The first time was rushed, frantic. The second, an hour later, was slower, more tender. Sometime around two, they both fell asleep.
So Randall Finley’s phone call, only three and a half hours later, was as rude a wake-up call as one could get.
David quickly explained. “Finley. I’m helping him with his campaign. He wants to be mayor again.”
“I never heard of him,” Sam said, pushing herself up, leaning against the headboard, making no effort to cover her naked breasts with a sheet.
“He was mayor before you moved here. Had a rather spectacular flameout that involved, among other things, an underage hooker. Now he’s trying for a comeback.”
“Can you come back from something like that?”
David thought. “If anyone can, Finley’s the one. Look, I’ve got a ton of calls to make. Mind if I jump in the shower?”
Samantha smiled. “I’ll join you.”
Forty minutes later—nearly half of that in the shower—they came out the front door of Samantha’s house, David walking down to the curb to his car while Sam, her hair still wet, locked her front
door. She had a small bag with her with a change of clothes, and a lunch, for her son.
“You know what might be fun?” Sam asked.
“More fun than we just had?”
“I was thinking—no, forget it.”
“No, what?”
“I’m moving too fast. It’ll sound pushy.”
“It’s okay,” David said. “Just tell me.”
“It’s just, the boys seem to be getting along okay after a bumpy start, and maybe sometime we could do something with them. The four of us.”
“Yeah, sure. I’d like that. What’d you have in mind?”
“I don’t know. A movie, or maybe even—you ever been camping?”
“Camping? Like, in a tent?”
She grinned. “Yes, in a tent. With sleeping bags and burnt marshmallows and mosquitoes. The whole deal.”
“I’ve never been camping. You take Carl camping?”
“A couple of times we’ve gone up to Lake Luzerne. A place called Camp Sunrise.”
As she said it, the sun started making an appearance.
“Let’s talk about that,” David said. “It could be fun.”
As David held open the passenger door, she asked, “How are we going to explain this, exactly, to the boys?”
“We don’t have to explain,” he said. “We’re adults.”
“You telling me Ethan won’t have questions? Carl sure will.”
David smiled resignedly. “My mom, too.”
Sam grinned at him. “Should I be seeing a man who still lives with his parents?”
“I don’t live with my parents—they live with
me
. And not for much longer, I hope.”
David closed the door, walked around to the driver’s side, and got in behind the wheel. Sam leaned across, kissed his cheek, and said, “This was good. I like you. But I’m not one of those girls
who’s going to be waiting for you to call. You call, great. You don’t, I’ll get the message. I can handle it. You don’t have to worry about me.”
David turned in his seat and looked at her. “I’ll be calling.”
Sam’s face had appeared ready to crack into a thousand pieces. Now it didn’t have to. “Okay,” she said.
“Let’s get our boys ready for school,” he said, and turned the key.
• • •
The car pulled away from the curb. Half a block back, Ed Noble sat in Garnet and Yolanda Worthington’s Cadillac and watched them leave.
The two of them together, he thought. The fucker who kicked his face in, and Carl’s slutty mom.
He could take care of everything at once. Kill two birds with one stone. Literally. Make Garnet and Yolanda’s troubles go away, and get even with that Harwood guy. Yolanda could give him the money Garnet was seriously thinking of giving to Samantha to shut her up. What a stupid idea that was. Okay, Ed probably wouldn’t get as much as Samantha might have, but it’d be a nice chunk of change.
The kid would end up back with the grandparents, and everything would be fuckin’ hunky-dory. Except for maybe the fact that Ed was going to have to hide out for the next several years. But with
that cash to keep him going, that wouldn’t be a problem. It wasn’t like Ed had close family he’d miss. His parents were dead, and he had just the one sister, who, last he heard, was living on the street in Pittsburgh.
Once he came into some money, the last thing he’d want to do was have her find out. She’d want to upgrade her Frigidaire shipping container to a cardboard Miele box.
It had been quite a scene in the hotel room the night before when Yolanda urged her husband to consider Ed’s idea of taking Samantha out of the picture altogether. The guy just about blew a gasket. Saying they were in enough trouble as it was. Yolanda arguing that they were already in up to their necks—they might as well go for broke.
Garnet’s face had gone deep red. Ed was pretty sure he was going to grab Yolanda by the throat and strangle her.
So Ed spoke up, said, “Okay, okay, forget it.” Gave Yolanda a wink, then said maybe it was time for him to move on. If Yolanda could give him a lift to the bus station, or get him to Albany, where he could catch a train, he’d get out of their hair once and for all.
Yolanda piped up, “That sounds good to me.”
Garnet said, “Get him the hell out of my sight.”
Once Yolanda and Ed were in the parking lot, she handed him the keys to the Caddy. “Do what you got to do. Once it’s done, Garnet will come around. I’ll pay you well—don’t you worry about that. All I got to do now is sit in the coffee shop long enough for him to think I actually drove you to the bus station.”
Ed took the keys and was heading for the driver’s door when Yolanda said, “Hold up a sec.”
She was reaching into her purse for something, handed it over.
Ed got in the car and went hunting for Samantha. She showed up at her house around midnight, with the Harwood guy. When he didn’t come back out after half an hour, Ed knew the guy was getting his knob polished, and probably wouldn’t be coming out till morning. So he parked on the street and set his phone to wake him
up at six. When he opened his eyes, Harwood’s car was still there. Half an hour later, the two lovebirds came out.
He’d follow them, see where things led. Wait for an opportunity. He knew this much: He wasn’t going to try to run them off the road. Garnet would be some pissed if he put a scratch on his Caddy. He had options, what with Yolanda giving him that little something before he got in the car. Ed reached over to the passenger seat, made sure it was still there.
A pistol. A Ruger LCP. A perfect gun for a woman, light, easy to carry in a reasonably sized purse. Ed didn’t mind that it was a bit girlie if it did the job.
Yolanda had said, “I carry it around a lot. You never know when you are going to run into bad people.”