Authors: Roberta Isleib
I pulled into the driveway behind Dave's pickup, surprised I didn't see him in the yard. After he finished his breakfast shift at Littles' By the Beach, you could usually count on finding him fussing over his domain: polishing the truck, sweeping pine straw off the roof of the house, or pulling interloping Spanish moss off the live oak that screened him from the neighbors on the left. This was a side of Dave I had to admire. Lord knows, hell, we all knew, he'd made a colossal mistake when he refused to sell out so they could build condos on our lot. Now ours was the only one-family home on the block. But damned if Dave let it bother him. He treated the property like it was a Rockefeller mansion, not an asbestos-shingled ranch in the middle of a tacky tourist zone.
I waved at Mrs. Driggers, who lived in the duplex next door and made our business her own. She could have played back the details of any fight the four families within her immediate jurisdiction had ever had. "Hey there, Cassie. You've got comp'ny," she said. She pointed at the unfamiliar Oldsmobile Ninety-eight Classic that was parked behind Mom's rusty Escort.
Just inside, I heard voices from the direction of the living room. A misnomer, if there ever was one. With its white velveteen furniture, artificial flowers with real potpourri scent, and pale blue carpet, this room was not used for living, only to embalm the rare guest. Coach Rupert sat wedged on the sofa between Mom and Dave. Dave had flipped up the foot rest on his section of the Barca-lounger couch, causing Coach to have to hold his weight shifted toward Mom in order to avoid sinking into Dave's lap.
"Damn shame they let Darren Walker go," said Dave, ignoring my arrival. "The Raiders could have made it all the way this year with him at wide receiver, don't you think, Coach?" Mom had that fluttery, anxious look that I knew would translate later into an extra gin and tonic. Coach lumbered to his feet and held out his hand to me.
"Good to see you," he said. "I always had a soft spot in my heart for the Burdette family. Charlie was one of my top players ever."
"Leiner, goddammit," said Dave. "This is the Leiner family now."
Coach grunted. He looked bad, his skin blotchy and loose. Whether from stress, age, or booze, I didn't know. I wondered whether the Nighthawk tattoo on his bicep had sagged as much as the flesh on his neck and jowls.
He turned to face me, his pupils wide and glistening. "Odell talked me into coming to see you," he said. "He thought maybe you could help me out with Kaitlin."
I frowned. It had to be obvious by now, even to Odell, who liked to think the best about everyone until absolutely proven wrong, that I had no connection with that girl. She wouldn't take a tip from me about where to buy a good sandwich.
"I really don't think I can help—"
"I want you to know, I never touched my baby," said Coach, before I could finish my sentence. His voice broke. "I'm so proud of her." Now he looked at Dave. "You know how it is with a daughter. She's the bright light in your life. You'd do anything for her. You'd never hurt her." He sat down hard, dropped his head in his hands, and let out what sounded to be a strangled sob.
My mind raced in a million directions. I doubted Dave could relate to anything Coach said. An expression of disgust flooded his face as soon as Coach mentioned "touch" and "baby." I flashed briefly on the memory of my own father. I doubted he could have related to Coach's misery, either—a man who'd left his daughter at a time when she needed him most. I pushed my thoughts away from Dad, and back toward Coach Rupert. I recalled a game we used to play as teenagers: Truth or Dare. Truth: Did you ever fondle your daughter?
Mom broke the painful silence. "I'm sure everything will work out just fine," she said, patting his knee awkwardly. My mother, master of the meaningless platitude.
"She needs help," said Coach Rupert. "And not from the likes of that asshole who screwed her up. I would have killed the bastard myself, if someone else hadn't beat me to it. She was fine before that. High-strung, yes. If anything, I should have paid more attention to her, not less."
"Leave it in God's hands," said Mom, still patting his knee. This was a new one on me. Mom didn't like to leave anything in anybody's hands, God included.
"That's why I came," said Coach. "Cassandra, I need your help. If only you could try and talk to her." He turned again to Dave. "We all have regrets about how we raised our kids. We should have done this, if only we'd given them that."
He looked at Dave for confirmation. Dave's face was flat. No regrets there, I guessed. Not an introspective molecule flickered in that guy's body. Not a glimmer of fatherly feelings, either. Dr. Baxter liked to point out how hard I was on him, how hard he tried to fill Dad's shoes right after he walked out on us, but I couldn't see it. Maybe wouldn't see it. I couldn't get past how he bullied Mom. Or how he seemed to like tearing down and stomping on any dream someone had that was bigger than his own shoelace-narrow worldview.
I stood up. "I'll try, Coach. I can't promise anything." No point in telling him how badly my few conversations with Kaitlin had already gone. Also no point in telling him I didn't know whose story to believe, and didn't even really want to know the truth. Any way it turned out, it seemed like it had to come to an ugly end.
"'Preciate it," Coach said as he struggled out of the sagging couch cushions. "And good luck in Florida. Just don't try to outhit Kaitlin. She's bigger than life on the tee." He winked, shook hands with me and Dave, kissed Mom on the cheek, and left. Just what I needed, another reminder about Kaitlin's superior length off the tee box.
"Get me a beer," Dave told Mom. “That guy makes me sick."
"He said he didn't do anything," said Mom.
"Just get me the damn beer."
Before I could escape to my room, the doorbell rang again. "From the halls of Montezuma..." sang the chimes—one of the first changes Dave instituted after he bought out Dad's share of the house and moved in.
"Show some respect. You owe your freedom to the men of the United States Marine Corps," he liked to tell me whenever we disagreed about anything. As if his years ladling out stew to the recruits at some North Carolina military base had anything to do with earning respect from me.
Mom ushered Detective Maloney into the living room.
"If you don't mind," he said, looking at Mom and Dave, "I'd like to speak to Miss Burdette alone." They left the room, Mom moving slowly and watching back over her shoulder, her forehead furrowed with worry.
"Chief thinks we need you to stay in the area until we get a better handle on the Bencher case," he said. A day that had already been plenty bad enough was now taking a turn for the worse. My lips and tongue felt thick and heavy. For a minute, I had trouble even getting my mouth to form words.
"Please," I said. "This is my only shot, Detective. Please don't take it away. I promise I'll stay in close touch. It's only six days." He thought for several minutes, then gave a small nod.
"I'm going to give you the phone number for Arthur Pate at the Sarasota County sheriff's office. Call him as soon as you get in. He can make sure we get a hold of you if we need to." I nodded. "My ass is on the line here, Cassandra. It's not protocol to allow anyone connected to a murder case to leave the state in the middle of the investigation."
"Maybe you don't believe me," I said, "but I didn't do it. I didn't even know the guy." He shrugged. I guessed he'd heard that one before. "Thanks for letting me go."
The detective grimaced as he stood to leave. "One more thing," he said. He paused, then smiled. "Hit 'em straight. We could use a gal from Myrtle Beach on the Tour. Show 'em we don't just make golf courses, we know how to play 'em, too."
I thanked him again and showed him to the door. Mom reappeared the minute it slammed shut. From the syrupy sound of her voice, I knew she hadn't wasted any time hitting the gin bottle.
"What is it, Cassie? What's wrong?"
"Nothing to worry over, Mom. He just had a couple of questions about the doctor who was killed. He had the office next to Dr. Baxter and they wondered if I'd seen anything funny." Mom didn't like to acknowledge the existence of shrinks, never mind being reminded that her own daughter talked to one.
"I never should have let you play golf. It's brought nothing but trouble to our lives." This was a discussion that could only lead to an unpleasant dead end, one we'd visited frequently over the last several years.
"I have to pack now, Mom."
Her trembly voice followed me down the hall. "By the way, that nice Max Harding called this afternoon. I wrote the message down for you." I came back out of my room and took the scrap of paper she offered. The message was printed in her neat block letters.
SORRY ABOUT RUNNING OFF LAST NIGHT. CAN WE GET TOGETHER WHEN YOU GET BACK IN TOWN?
Mom had underlined "sorry" and "get together" with her yellow highlighter.
"He left numbers for his office and his car phones," said Mom. "He was such a sweet boy. He sounded like he really wanted to see you."
"He's married, Mother," I said. I wadded the note up and shoved it in my pocket. "I'm going to pack "
Cashbox the cat was stretched across the end of the bed, obscuring everything but the
C
and the
e
in the
Cassie
that was embroidered in loopy script on the pink gingham bedspread. My collection of stuffed cats lined the shelves above the bed: Mothball, Fuzzy Wuzzy, Wuzzy Fuzzy, Licorice, Tangerine, and Queenie. All of them neatly mended in spite of their dyed rabbit-fur coverings worn shabby and thin with age. My golf trophies were pushed to the back of the shelf, the taller ones poking up like dandelions through the carpet of fake fur.
Mom preferred to keep this room, like my relationship with her, firmly planted in the era when I was still ten years old. Well before I'd really gotten involved in what she called devil golf, before Charlie had pushed her away, and even before Dad had run off with Maureen. Maureen of the neon spandex and buns so tight she could send Morse code signals just by squeezing the muscles in her ass. I rubbed Cashbox behind the ears until he rumbled with satisfaction.
I lay down next to the cat and picked up the golf club I kept beside the bed. It was a Ben Hogan blade nine-iron, part of the hand-me-down set my father let me fool around with once I turned eight. I fit my fingers into the training grip I'd glued onto the end of the shaft, and flexed the club. I always thought more clearly with my hands in the proper overlapping position.
What had life really been like in the Rupert household? According to Kaitlin, Coach's so-called love for her had gone well past acceptable fatherly affection. His story, which couldn't have been more different, seemed a whole lot easier to believe. Was he capable of shooting the man who'd put those ideas in her head? Where was the fine line between loving a child too much and not nearly enough? In my case, Odell insisted that the reason my father stopped calling was because having just a little contact with me hurt more than having none at all. But all I felt was the gaping emptiness of his absence and the rage of my mother's blame. The phone rang downstairs, interrupting my gloomy ruminations.
"It's for you, dear," Mom called up the stairs. "It's Joe somebody."
"Hey, Doc," I said, picking up my pink Princess extension. "You won't even believe what's going on here."
I told him about Dr. Bencher's murder, the scratches on Kaitlin's wrist, the visit from her father, and Detective Maloney's insistence that I keep in contact with the sheriff in Florida.
"So let me get this right," said Joe. "You think the guy was alive when you came into the office?"
"I'm no doctor," I said. "But honest to God, it looked like his lips were moving. And the sucking noises ... it was horrible."
"I can't believe they think you killed him," said Joe. "Maybe they figure you saw something that could help solve the case, coming in so soon after he was shot."
"Like what? The murderer leaving? That seems too obvious."
"Were Bencher's lips just twitching or do you think he was trying to tell you something?"
"If he was, we sure weren't speaking the same language. He was well on his way to another world when I found him."
"What about the papers you tried to clean up? What was written on them?"
By now, Joe's questions were reviving the scene in my mind in sickening detail. "I can't think about this anymore. It's making me want to barf. Honestly, I didn't see anything, except a gruesome display that's going to provide the material for a lot of future nightmares."
"Sorry," said Joe. "We'll drop it. So then Kaitlin cut herself the next morning—that fits perfectly with my borderline diagnosis."
"The weirdest thing is how easily she seems to be able to shake all that off—one minute she's in the pits of despair, the next she's publicly feeling up this hunk out on the range. Maybe she's got a split personality."
"Probably not," said Joe. "Just a real good way of shutting off her feelings. You could take a half page from her in that department. Forget all this and focus on your golf."
"Hah. Easier said than done. I can't wait for you to get to Venice. I need professional help. You, my friend, are just the man for the job."