In Harm's Way

by E J Kindred

  “Ladies,” Freddy said, “I’d try to entice you with some pie for dessert, but the Charbonneau Bakery had a fire in the kitchen a few days ago and they’re closed for repairs. I can make pastrami and burgers—”

  “Fantastic pickles,” I said.

  “Yep, pickles and whatnot, but I can’t bake to save my substantial ass, so we’re out of pastries. I do have ice cream, though, so let me know if you want some.”

  Freddy moved on with her coffee pot to nearby tables.

  “Pickles?” Sharon asked.

  “Oh my God, yes. Do you mean to tell me you’ve never tried her kosher dills? They’re heavenly.”

  “I’m not a big fan of pickles.” Sharon tilted her chin toward the front of the diner. “The wives are here.”

  Three well-dressed women stood inside the diner’s door, scanning the room for an available table. A casual observer could think they were sisters, but a closer look revealed differences in age that belied a first impression. They were each tall and slender, with light brown hair. Much to the amusement of some and the puzzlement of others, the doctor’s former wives had become friends and were seen together frequently enough to have been dubbed “the wives.”

  Sharon said, “The doc sure has a type, doesn’t he?”

  Just then one of the wives waved to Sharon.

  “You know her?” I asked.

  “Melissa’s my cousin. Third wife. My uncle wasn’t happy at all when his daughter married the doc. They were together for seven years or so, and when they divorced, he gave her a house and a pile of cash. He’s apparently a better ex-husband than a husband, and they have a terrific friendship. Oh, and get this. A few months ago, he bought her a new Mercedes. From what I heard, Number Four almost popped a blood vessel.”

  “Speaking of which, I gotta go. There’s another party at the Wentworths tonight, and the lady of the house wants me to dress up and serve dinner.” I checked the ticket Freddy left on the table and pulled a few bills from my wallet. “It’s nice to make more money, but I’ll be glad when these holiday parties are over.”

  Chapter Two

  Accompanied only by the ticking sound of the cooling engine and the patter of rain on the roof, I sat in my truck, clutching a sodden tissue as tears streamed down my face. I’d parked under the trees at the far end of the lot, where nobody would see me staring at the charred building and crying. Not for the first time, I was grateful for the fence separating what remained of my dad’s bike shop from the gas station next door.

  No matter how many times I went there, I never got used to what I saw. The wood building was old when Dad bought it, but where others saw a shack, he’d seen opportunity. He shored up the structure and added a brick façade with large display windows on either side of the centrally located door. When I was small, I’d fancied the windows as eyes and the door a nose, and I’d giggle at the thought of walking in through the store’s nostrils. Dad laughed and hugged me and said, “Muy graciosa, niña.” Very funny, little girl.

  He’d hand-carved the sign that hung above the door for decades. The top line read “Velasquez Cycles,” but below that, the signed proclaimed, in much larger letters, “Bikes.” That was Dad, direct to a fault. A recent immigrant, he’d painted the sign in the green, white, and red colors of the Mexican flag. But his favorite part of the design was visible only to those who knew it was there. Down in the bottom right corner, he’d carved “M. Velasquez, Proprietor” in tiny letters. He knew it was old fashioned, but he was proud of moving to a new country, opening his own store, and providing for his family and the community doing something he loved.

  If only I’d left the house earlier that morning, he might still be alive.

  The sign was gone, the windows were shattered, and the blond bricks he’d so carefully mortared were blackened now, scarred by a fire that destroyed nearly everything. The plywood that we’d nailed across the doors and windows was missing and the sign declaring the building as unsafe was lying in the mud, apparent testament to the misguided optimism of someone who thought there was something left to steal. A remnant of crime scene tape flapped in the late November wind, left behind when the rest had been torn away. The bright yellow stood out against the charred brick.

  I mopped my face. As I reached for the ignition key, I was startled by a tapping sound. Outside the driver’s side window, a slender man with dark skin rode a bicycle in a tight circle, coming back to tap the window and wave at me before spinning again. I rolled the window down, squinting against the rain.

  “Joe, what the hell are you doing? Don’t tell me you’ve been out riding in this weather.”

  He rolled up next to my truck and stepped off his bike with one foot. His cycling shorts revealed that his left leg ended below his knee at a prosthesis. He’d had one made just for riding. The shining metal framework included a special attachment for his bike pedal. I was sure that anyone who saw him riding would be startled and impressed at the same time.

  “A little birdie told me I’d probably find you here.” He leaned forward and gave me a smooch on the cheek. Rainwater ran off his bicycle helmet onto my face. I wiped futilely at it with my soggy tissue.

  “Patrick needs to mind his own business,” I said, but we both knew I didn’t mean it. We’d all known each other for far too long. “Aren’t you freezing in that getup?”

  “This?” He ran a hand down his jersey-clad chest, obviously soaked through. “Nah. I just finished about sixty miles out to the Gorge, up and over Mount Tabor and back. I’m toasty warm. A tad damp, though.” He wiped water off his face and laughed. He’d always had a positive outlook, one that losing a leg had dampened only temporarily. His laugh was infectious, but in that moment, I was immune. “Are you going to Grandma Natalie’s?”

  I ignored his question. “Damn it, Joe. How am I supposed to sit here and feel sorry for myself if you’re so fucking happy all the time?”

  “You’re not, sis. That’s the point. I figure my goal in life is to give you perspective.”

  “I hate perspective.” I tried to scowl but noticed something on his cycling jersey. “Team Three and a Half? What’s that?”

  He laughed again. “With your issues about perspective, maybe I shouldn’t tell you.” He made another circle, stopped again by my window, staying on the pedals and balancing himself with one hand on the truck roof. “I wouldn’t want to lift your spirits or anything.” He winked at me.

  “Come on, tell me.”

  “Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. Remember the relay race we have here in Oregon every year?”

  “Sure. Dad liked to be one of the sponsors. Isn’t it something like four hundred miles?”

  “Yeah.” He beamed with pride. “But each team member rides fifty-mile segments. This year, it started in Bend and wound up through the Cascades. I got together with three of the guys from my unit, and we rode it this year.”

  “Wow.” I realized my mouth was hanging open and shut it. “You can’t be serious.”

  “True enough, but we really did do it.”

  “And the name?” I knew that, after a rough time, Joe had recovered remarkably well from his injuries in Iraq, but I still struggled to get my head around this news. A one-legged cyclist in a four-hundred-mile race?

  “You’ve met Brad, right?”

  “Once or twice.”

  “He lost a leg like I did, only above the knee. Eddie lost his lower right leg and his left forearm. And Ryan lost both legs above the knee, so he rides a hand cycle. After a few beers one night, we figured we had about three-and-a-half people on our team. And you know what? We kicked ass.” He gave a whoop of glee and made another circle of the parking lot.

  “I wish you’d told me, you big doofus. I would’ve crewed for you.” From my dad’s days as a race sponsor, I knew that each team needed a support vehicle to provide food, mechanical support, and a place for the riders to rest and prepare for their next leg of the race. A four-hundred-mile relay could easily last over twenty-four
hours, so a support crew was critical.

  “Thanks, sis. We got a few other guys from the unit to do it. It was great to get them all together again.” He rolled his bike back and forth a few inches. “Are you going to Grandma Natalie’s or not?”

  “Yes. Why?” His persistence made me suspicious.

  “No reason,” he said, trying—and failing—to look innocent. “But another little birdie told me you should go see her.”

  “Okay.” I drew the word out, realizing I’d been ambushed by my family. “Throw your bike in the back and come with me.”

  “No way am I putting my beautiful ride in your skanky old truck, but I’ll race you there.” With that, he pushed off and sped out of the parking lot.

  To those who didn’t know her, Grandma Natalie seemed like a stereotypical grandmother. She kept her silver-gray hair neatly trimmed. She wore light blue jeans and flowered blouses and low-heeled shoes. She was often seen wearing an apron with “Kiss the Cook” embroidered across the front. Her blue eyes sparkled behind wire-rimmed glasses. Her countenance was kindly and caring. People meeting her for the first time often seemed to expect a hug and a plate of cookies.

  They could not have been more wrong.

  I pulled into her driveway and Joe wheeled in right behind me. Before I could shut the engine off, Grandma Natalie came barreling out her open garage door, waving her arms and shouting. I rolled the window down.

  “You’re not parking that chop shop reject in my driveway. Get your miserable hunk of junk away from my beautiful bike.” She stood with her hands on her hips, glaring at me, until I put my truck into reverse.

  She and I had different ideas about what made a beautiful bike. Mine had red handlebar tape, a saddle that fit me perfectly, and clipless pedals. Hers had a powerful engine, a swept back windshield, and cruise control. Yes, at sixty-two years old, my grandmother was a Harley Davidson aficionado. At the moment, her 2005 Road Glide was parked inside the open garage, behind her aging car.

  I humored her and parked on the street, but in truth, I hadn’t been anywhere near her beloved Harley. Joe wheeled his bicycle into the garage and stood with her, he dripping wet and looking as if he knew something I didn’t, and she standing with a smug expression on her face.

  “You both look like the proverbial cat,” I said, as I joined them. “What’s going on?”

  Grandma Natalie tried for nonchalance and failed miserably. “Not a thing,” she said, though she did hug me. “Come on in. I made coffee, and I got Voodoo doughnuts.”

  “Did you get me the bacon one?” Joe’s favorite was the famous maple bar with a strip of bacon on top.

  “Of course. But you’re not parking your soggy butt on my chair. Go change your clothes.”

  Joe kept clothes at Grandma Natalie’s house, did he? A conspiracy was definitely afoot.

  We were seated at the table with our mugs of hot coffee and Grandma’s expertly selected sweets when the kitchen door opened and Patrick came in, impeccably dressed, as usual, in a suit that had to cost more than half a year’s rent for my apartment. No doubt about it, they were all up to no good. Grandma Natalie got him a mug of coffee, and he settled into the chair next to me.

  “When are you guys going to tell me what’s going on here?” I favored each of them with a suspicious glare. “For one thing, it’s a weekday, Patrick. We all know that you don’t leave the office without very good reason, so spill it.”

  “You went to the shop again, didn’t you?” Patrick took a bite of his chocolate éclair. Of course, Grandma Natalie had bought his favorite, too. Clear evidence of premeditation.

  “So what if I did?” I tried not to sigh and resigned myself to finding out whatever plot these three had hatched only when they were ready to let me in on it.

  “I don’t know why you keep going over there, Annie. You can’t do anything about it, and all you do is get yourself upset.”

  “I’m not upset,” I snapped back. “I’m angry, especially at Nicky. If she wasn’t already dead, I’d want to kill her myself for what she did.” That wasn’t all I felt, of course. I’d loved Nicky more than I thought it was possible to love any woman. She and I had talked about marriage, buying our own home, maybe even adopting a kid or two. I was angry with her, but I was also heartbroken.

  Patrick said, “Not a good thing for you to say, considering the circumstances.”

  “I have attorney-client privilege.”

  “Which is waived when you speak in front of third parties.”

  I stuck my tongue out at him. “They’re on my side.”

  He held his coffee mug in both hands and gave me an appraising look. “Okay, fine, you win. I’ll let it pass this time.”

  He rubbed my shoulder in that reassuring way he had. He’d always been a comforting presence in my life, even in the worst of times. I often considered how fortunate I was to have two brothers—what was the phrase? A brother from another mother?—who stood by me, no matter what happened.

  “I don’t know why I go over to the shop,” I said. “It’s hard, you’re right about that, but I can’t quite make myself stay away.”

  Grandma Natalie sat next to me and held my hand. “Maybe it’s part of the grieving process.”

  “Maybe.” I wiped a tear away and turned back to Patrick. “If nothing else, the place looks better. At least the crime scene tape is gone.”

  Patrick said, “The worst of the hazardous stuff, the chemicals, has been cleaned out, but the building might be a total loss.”

  I stared into my coffee, unable to speak for a moment, willing away the tears threatening to flow.

  Patrick put his arm around my shoulders and gave me a squeeze. “It’s okay, Annie. If you want, I can get it taken care of.”

  “But it’s not okay.” I knew I sounded petulant. “It was Dad’s shop. He built his life, our lives, with it. He taught people to love bikes. He helped kids in the neighborhood learn to ride.” I wiped my nose with a paper napkin.

  “He gave me my first bike,” Joe said in a sad voice.

  I squeezed his hand, remembering the skinny black boy with ratty shoes who’d stood outside the shop, day after day, his eyes focused on a scratched and dented red bike someone had used as a trade-in. Dad saw him, too, and after a while, he couldn’t take it any longer. He invited the youngster in and asked his name. After checking with the boy’s mother, Dad gave him the red bike. Joe’s life had never been the same, and neither had ours, because not long after, Joe’s mother died. When Dad learned the young boy had no relatives who could be found, he applied to be Joe’s foster parent. Joe moved in with us and instantly became my little brother, less than a year my junior.

  “Whatever happened to that old bike?” I picked icing off my cinnamon roll and took a bite of the fragrant pastry.

  Joe leaned back in his chair in a nostalgic moment. “I fixed it up and gave it to a neighbor kid a few years ago. Now he’s on his college bike racing team and wants to go pro. Dad said ‘bikes change lives’ so often that he should have had it tattooed on his chest.”

  “Or at least put it on his business card,” I said, remembering.

  Just then, I heard the sound of an engine outside. Grandma Natalie rose from her chair and went through the kitchen door out into the garage. Curious, we all followed her. The rain had let up and the clouds had parted to show patches of blue sky.

  A young man dressed in jeans and a dark jacket with a logo above the breast pocket emerged from a shiny green Subaru wagon occupying the spot in the driveway where I’d tried to park earlier. He carried a clipboard with a stack of papers attached.

  “Natalie Lindberg?”

  Grandma met him near his driver’s side door, where they spoke briefly. She accepted the pen he held out and signed her name where he indicated. He handed her the sheaf of papers and a key fob and they shook hands. He got into a different car that pulled across the end of the driveway and left. Patrick, Joe, and I watched all of this, but I was sure I was the only one who ha
d no idea what was happening.

  “You bought a new car, Grandma?” I asked.

  She handed me the key fob. “Go take a look. It’s only a couple of years old, low miles, in great condition.”

  I slid into the driver’s seat and sighed. Compared to my little truck, the Outback was luxurious. Scanning the dashboard, I saw controls for air conditioning, a navigation screen, and miracle of miracles, heated seats. I started the engine and relaxed in bliss as the sweet sounds of soft jazz filled the car.

  After a few moments, I was embarrassed to see my grandmother, Joe, and Patrick lined up in front of the car, watching my every move. I shut the engine off and got out.

  “Didn’t anyone ever teach you that staring is rude?” I tried to sound miffed, but the comfort of my grandmother’s new car hadn’t yet worn off. “Grandma Natalie, you’re going to love this car.” I held the key fob out to her.

  She didn’t take it. “No, I won’t. It’s yours, not mine.”

  I blinked. “What?” This did not compute. “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s yours,” she repeated. “Not mine.”

  “But—” My brain refused to engage. “I can’t afford this—”

  “It’s a gift, you moron.” Patrick had always had a way with words, in the courtroom and out. “Get it?”

  I stood there, mouth agape, unable to speak for a long moment.

  “No. How? What—”

  Grandma Natalie saved me from my mindless jabbering. “Annie, your little truck is old and worn out and not reliable anymore.” Her tone was gentle and her hand on my arm was reassuring. “I worry about you every time you make the drive into town, that it might break down and strand you somewhere.”