Shadows on the Sand (31 page)

God, I’ve got to tell You, seeing her all put together and happy stinks. What would our lives have been like if she’d been this way when we were little? You should have changed her back when we needed her!

Mom was busy waving at Mary P, who was behind the counter. Mary P smiled and waved back, then glanced at me with one eyebrow raised in that you-know-what-you-must-do look.

I ignored her as I led the way to an empty booth.

“Lou will be your server,” I told Luke, unable to look at my mother. I gave a little head bob and ran. I slid onto my stool behind the register, nervous sweat wrapping me like a damp beach towel.

Thankfully I didn’t have much free time to worry over them. I had customers to seat, customers to take money from, and customers who wanted to know what had happened to my arm. Then Luke was in front of me with their bill.

I forced a smile, took his platinum card, and ran it. Mom walked to Mary P while Luke waited for the machine to do its work. The women talked for a brief moment; then Mom wandered back to the register.

“I’ll wait outside,” she said to Luke. She gave me a little nod and stepped out into the gusting wind. She lifted her face and let it sweep over her.

I breathed a huge sigh. Safe once more.

“Your baked goods are exceptionally good.” Luke slipped his receipt into his wallet.

I smiled for the first time since they’d walked into the café. “My sister’s the baker. She is great, isn’t she?”

At that moment Lindsay walked out of the kitchen. “We’re going to have to drop the minestrone and the blueberry crumb from the lunch menu, Carrie. What with serving breakfast for Andi, I didn’t get a chance to make them.”

I stared at Lindsay. I hadn’t realized it before, but she was the image of a younger Mom, or rather Mom as she would have been if she’d been clean and sober. I didn’t look much like Mom. I’d always assumed I looked like my father, whoever he was. I might have thought I was a cuckoo in the nest if I hadn’t known Mom’d never have bothered to keep me if she didn’t have to. However there was no doubt about parentage with Linds.

Thinking about the uncanny resemblance and not thinking about what I said, I nodded. “Thanks for letting me know, Lindsay. I’ll take care of the menus.”

She nodded and headed back to her domain. “Oh, by the way, Greg is at the motel with Chaz, the sheriff, and the furniture rental guys. Thought you’d like to know instead of wondering where he was.” She grinned. “It’s SweetCilla on Twitter. She must spend all day glued to her window, reporting every little thing she sees. She tweets that Chaz looks evil.” With a ladylike hoot she disappeared through the kitchen door.

I turned and saw Luke staring after her.

“Lindsay?” he said.

With a sinking feeling, I wanted to deny it, but he’d heard me. I nodded.

He settled his gaze on me, and I thought I never wanted to be a hostile
witness at any trial he was participating in. He skewered me with intense brown eyes. “And Carrie. Carrie and Lindsay Carter?”

I stared at him dumbly. With desperate hindsight I thought I should have changed our names when we came to Seaside, but Atlanta had seemed so far away. What were the odds we’d ever be found out?

“She looks just like her mother.” Luke jerked his head toward the kitchen. “Does she know?”

Again I wanted to deny understanding what he was talking about, but someone like him would just laugh and start investigating us. In no time he’d discover what he was already convinced of. “Lindsay doesn’t know.”

“You have to tell her.”

I nodded miserably. “I know.”

“And you have to tell Sue.”

I glanced at Mom through the picture window, her face still raised to the wind. I loved to do the same thing, to feel the power, to be invigorated.

I turned back to Luke. I had no idea what my expression revealed though I suspected panic. “You don’t understand,” I blurted. “You didn’t know her back then.”

His expression softened. “Ah, but I did.” He stretched out his right hand. “Hi. I’m Luke, and I’m an alcoholic.”

He knew her from AA? What was I supposed to say to that?
Hi, I’m Carrie, and I’m bitter? Hi, I’m Carrie, and I’m having a hard time forgiving?
Or,
Hi, I’m Carrie, and I resent that she looks so good?

What I said was, “Don’t tell her. Please.”

“It’s not my place. That honor is yours.”

Honor. Now there was a laugh.

“Honor your father and your mother.”

The trouble with memorizing Scripture was that the verses came back to bite you at the most inopportune times.

“You have no idea how she mourns for you two.” Luke piled on the guilt. “I can’t tell you the number of nights I’ve held her as she’s cried over the mess she made of her time with you.”

What about the nights I quaked with fear and held Lindsay while my little sister cried herself to sleep? What about the nights I was sure some man was going to break through the feeble barricades to my bedroom and I’d have to use my knife? What about the horror of the night I’d actually knifed Bob?

Luke laughed without mirth. “I understand her grief because I lost my family before I sobered up. At least I get to see my kids every so often and can try to make them forget the father who made their lives a living hell for so many years.”

I had stepsiblings. What a strange thought. How many? Male? Female? And would they like to share horror stories?

He skewered me with another look, making me itch all over. “You know what you need to do.”

And he left.

H
arl pulled open the door to Carrie’s Café. Carrie was behind the register.

“Hello,” she said with a smile. “Counter or booth?”

“A booth.” He glanced at the glass bakery shelves. “And I’ll have two eggs over easy and one of those sticky buns grilled.”

“Lou will be your server.” Carrie indicated her right arm in its cast. “I’m not doing much today.”

“Whoa. What happened?”

“A jetty tripped me, and I broke my wrist.”

He shook his head, trying to look as if he cared. “Hope it’s better soon.”

He slid into the booth and, sure enough, some woman named Lou came to take his order. Where was the kid? She had worked the booths the other times he’d been in. He’d enjoyed seeing her panic when she spotted him.

“Where’s the girl who usually works here?” he asked Lou. “Is it her day off or something?”

“You mean Andi?” Lou gave him a tired smile. “She didn’t come in today.”

He nodded as Lou left to turn in his order. He had expected to find the kid here. It was time to stop tormenting her and get down to business, to corner her or follow her or do whatever was necessary to get her to tell him what he wanted to know.

She was so different from her sister. Becca was compliance personified. She bought Mike’s line completely, believed in him absolutely.

Harl laughed to himself. If she only knew.

Not that he’d ever enlighten her. He liked her fine just the way she was. She accepted that her job in life was to make him happy, and so she did everything she could to be the perfect little wife. Sometimes her attentions were a bit much, but with his three other wives to temper her time with him, it wasn’t all that bad.

But Andi. She was a chronic headache. She fought the system with everything in her, stirring up constant trouble in the girls’ dorm with her questions and complaints. Even her sessions with Marty, Mike’s first wife, didn’t stop her. If anything they agitated her further. The one place she didn’t cause trouble was the infirmary, where she proved herself a more-than-competent nurse.

If she weren’t such a thorn in his side, he might appreciate her grit. As it was, he’d be happy to send her to perdition. He and Mike used to laugh at the plight of whoever ended up being her husband. Some poor guy had escaped a fate worse than death when the kid ran away.

But if he was right, she was a greater danger to them now than when she’d been at the compound. They had defanged Jason permanently, but she was out there, a loose cannon if ever there was one.

It was all because she’d been best friends with Jennie.

“Hello. Mind if I join you?”

Harl looked up to see a scarecrow of a guy sliding into the booth across from him without waiting for an invitation. Everything about him from his complexion to his twitches screamed druggie.

“I been looking for you,” the guy said.

“You’ve been looking for me?” What could this putz want with him?

“I seen you in here before.”

Harl shrugged. “They have good food.”

Scarecrow Guy rolled his eyes at that disclaimer. “I seen you watching the girl.”

Harl went still. How could that be? He’d been so careful!

“Learned all about you and your boss online.”

How did the Scarecrow know about his connection to Michael and The Pathway? No one else in town did. He frowned. Did they? Harl made himself shrug again as if he hadn’t just felt a bolt of adrenaline flash through his system. “You and millions of others.”

“I got lots of free time, and I been using it watching you lots.”

Scarecrow Guy looked proud of his own cleverness. Harl bit back a sneer. People who so obviously thought themselves clever usually weren’t.

Even Mike.

“Why would you watch me?” Harl asked. “I’m just an ordinary businessman.”

“Right.” Scarecrow Guy smirked. “You and the archangel.”

Harl said nothing. He just stared at Scarecrow Guy as if he were something malodorous underfoot. As Harl had suspected, Scarecrow Guy couldn’t stand being looked down on. He snapped back with a zinger Harl didn’t see coming.

“You know that empty houseboat moored next to your miniyacht?” Scarecrow Guy smirked again. “Well, it isn’t empty after all. I needed a place to stay quick-like, and I thought,
Why not the best?
After all, I deserve it, right? Off-season, the best is one of them fancy unused boats.”

The hair on the back of Harl’s neck rose. The Scarecrow had not only hidden mere feet away, he’d done so without either Mike or him realizing it. They survived by foreseeing and forestalling any dangers. And they’d missed a threat right under their noses.

What had the druggie seen? More to the point, what had he heard?

Harl tried to look as if a trapdoor hadn’t just opened beneath him. “So you’re living there without permission? The cops would find that very interesting.”

Scarecrow Guy didn’t so much as blink. “I don’t think so.”

“And why not?”

“Because, like I said, I seen you watching that girl. Because I got good hearing. And because I been connecting the dots I bet others don’t even know are out there to be connected.” He grinned and the yellow, rotten teeth he revealed made Harl fight the impulse to gag.

“What dots?”

Lou’s arrival with Harl’s sticky bun and eggs prevented Scarecrow Guy from answering.

“Hey, that smells good.” Scarecrow Guy looked at Lou. “I’ll have one of them sticky buns, and you can put it on his bill.” He jerked a thumb at Harl.

Lou looked at Harl, and he gave a little nod. No sense riling the guy until he learned all that the guy knew. As soon as Lou left, the Scarecrow began talking again.

“You know that Jason you killed?”

What did he just say? Harl forced himself to show no reaction.

“You don’t have to play dumb with me.” Again the yellow teeth. “At that party last weekend, I heard Jason talking to the girl who works here, that Andi, the one you been watching.”

“They must be letting anyone into parties these days,” Harl said in an attempt at redirection.

Scarecrow Guy snorted. “They like me and my product. But like I was saying, I heard Andi telling him that she had something you wanted and wanted badly. I heard them plan to meet to talk about what to do with it.”

Harl felt his sticky bun turn from ambrosia to alkali burning his stomach lining.

Scarecrow Guy looked very smug. “Didn’t know she had it, did you? Or didn’t know for sure.”

Harl sucked in a deep breath and took another bite of his bun despite
the fact that it had lost all its taste. He washed it down with a casual mouthful of coffee.

“And I saw you ‘help’ Jason when he left the party.” Scarecrow Guy’s grin was sly. “Drove off with him in his car, you did. Next thing you know, he’s missing, then dead. Murdered, the way I heard it.”

Never had Harl felt such an urge to kill, not even when he’d incinerated his father. No one this stupid deserved to live.

“Now you want the kid.” The Scarecrow rested both arms on the table and leaned way too close, invading Harl’s personal space with his halitosis and body odor. “I know where she is.”