by A. J. Lape
He tenderly ran his index finger down my nose, sliding a muscled arm around my waist. “Sure thing, sweetheart,” he murmured. “I love you and want you to be happy.”
Dylan brought out the heavy artillery … I love you.
When his gaze burned over me, I knew that statement was also for Kyd’s benefit. Still, I didn’t know how big of a deal I should make of the declaration. I mouthed “Always,” realizing this was one of those cross your fingers and hope for the best situations. As uncomfortable as it might be, I needed Kyd to answer some questions. Sure enough, Mr.-Do-the-Right-Thing turned on the charm. “Would the both of you like to join us?” he asked.
That was like waving a T-bone in front of a hungry Rottweiler.
Kyd took a tiny step in my direction, flirting. “I wasn’t ready for the day to end,” he sighed.
I rolled my eyes in my brain.
“I’m in,” Big J added.
We made our way over to the clubhouse, containing a gazillion square feet of throw-your-money-away opportunities. Dylan threw his arm around my shoulder as we hustled into Bogeys, one of the more casual dining rooms. Even at “casual,” I couldn’t help but feel like an outsider. Dylan was my link to this side of living. This would never be me. Even if I woke up with dollar bills coming out of my boobs, it would never be me.
While we waited to be seated, Dylan chatted with Big J, and I took the opportunity to dive-bomb Kyd with questions. More specifically, I needed him to introduce me to Hank Henry. First, I had to get past Dylan, though. As awful as it sounded, one surefire way to drop his defenses—short of jumping rope nude—was to hold his hand. If his fingers were wound in mine, he stupidly assumed I was in a heeling position.
I slipped my fingers in his, and yes, … I batted my eyes.
Made me want to puke.
Dylan sighed a blissful sound, as though I defined the perfect female. As he pulled my fingers to his lips, I shut down the guilt and swung my head to Kyd. “Do you know anyone that works here?” I asked.
Kyd lifted a shoulder in a shrug and watched Dylan’s lips on my palm, not making secret his desire to de-tongue him. “Just about everyone,” he clipped, “but you’re the only one I really want to know.”
(cough, bull-crap, cough)
“Herbie and I talked about Hank Henry,” I told him, ignoring his words. “It’s horrible what happened with his son, and it’s wonderful what your father’s doing.”
Kyd lost the flirtatious attitude. He checked his watch, almost as if he was trying to cut the current line of questions short or was supposed to be somewhere else. He explained, “Daddy likes to do nice things, but unfortunately, he tends to trust people too easily. In this case, he got it right.”
I agreed. “Herbie said Hank works in the kitchen. Is this the particular one?”
Kyd motioned toward the silver double-doors, swinging in the rear. “He does. He’s simple, Legs, and I feel sorry for him. I try to run interference whenever I can.”
Bingo for Darcy, I smiled.
Kyd and I pored over the details of the case, and I unfortunately didn’t gain any information that I didn’t already have. But hearing the heartbreak firsthand left me a little empty inside. At least more empty than normal.
When we were seated, Kyd ordered fajitas; Dylan ordered a cheeseburger and fajitas. Plus, he’d probably have the remains of my five-layer nachos. Big J ordered the entire menu.
Twenty minutes later, I’d devoured my food like a caveman and picked at the scraps like a chicken in the farmyard. I longed to be in the kitchen, and short of masquerading as a cook I hadn’t found a path there yet. “Is your meal, okay?” Dylan asked. He wiped his mouth with a white napkin, angling my chin toward him.
Wow, I had a hard time looking him in the face even when I was “sorta” up to no good. My answer came slowly as I gave him a genuine—although guilty—smile. “It’s awesome, and it’s Mexican,” I smiled. “What more could a girl ask for?”
Then, I threw in a quick hug.
As I scooped black beans onto a chip, Kyd expelled an audible gasp, closing his eyes with an “old ball and chain” expression. I zoomed in on Mary Cartwright, the absentee girlfriend, slithering over to our table.
Just when you thought your day was boring.
“Here comes Mary,” Kyd warned almost as an afterthought. He stopped constructing a fajita, dropping everything at once, like his appetite had been flushed down the toilet.
“More like Typhoid Mary if you ask me,” Big J whispered to Dylan. Yeah, I agreed with the pun. Mary looked like she had death on her mind … mine.
Mary was suspiciously absent at the party last night. I found it weird, but by the expression on her face, she found it even weirder. Obviously, there were nuances to anyone’s relationships, but “not inviting” your significant other to an annual shindig couldn’t be a nuance in a healthy one. Dressed in a thigh-high, pink mini, and a tight t-shirt that said, “Make Love, Not War,” Mary was nothing but a contradiction. Her long curly blonde hair and sky-blue eyes represented the classic princess … a shapely princess … she, however, was the evil witch queen.
Big J fingered in his pocket and pulled out his cell phone, scrolling through texts, acting as though this was status quo. All I knew was I needed a boob job and some Rolaids.
Mary stopped in front of Kyd, hands on her hips, sneering, “Hey, Kyd. I’ve been trying to contact you all day. I know you must have an excellent excuse for ignoring me.”
No lie; his hands shook like cellulite legs on a treadmill. After hesitating, he mumbled, “Sorry.”
Mary narrowed her gaze with an air of judgment, flipping her hair for good measure. I must say, I’d only seen that in the movies. Way more dramatic in person. “Very monosyllabic,” she huffed. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”
“Sorry actually has two syllables,” I dumbly mumbled … thankfully she didn’t hear.
“We were playing, Mary,” Kyd muttered.
She let out a snarling humpf. “Is Darcy your plaything?”
I snarfed Coke through my nose. “I plead the fifth,” I coughed. Besides, I’m not even sure I knew what that meant but was certain it included naked bodies. My word, was no one virginal anymore? Kyd handed me his napkin in apology as I sopped up my chin. Trouble was that napkin had a jalapeno nestled inside. I sneezed three times then coughed twice.
Mary’s tone grew even more condescending, nearly peeling the skin right from my body. “Are you here as my boyfriend’s date?” she repeated, leering at me. “God knows he’s always had a thing for you, but I’d assumed he was going through a dumb phase.”
Maybe I should choke the life out of her. Unfortunately, my vocal chords paralyzed, so I couldn’t defend myself with words, either. I was in over my head. I looked to Kyd (no help), then at Dylan who calmly wiped his mouth, and slowly laced his fingers through mine. Like a lion, he was fiercely loyal. In one instant, he poured all of that hot-blooded animal magnetism onto Mary. My temperature shot up. The room swayed. I swear, if there’d been a nun around, she would’ve dropped her robe and begged, Make me a bad-girl, Dylan … please.
“Hi, Mary,” he murmured.
Another hair flip. “You approve of this?”
Dylan didn’t care what anyone thought of him, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t pick up on your emotions quicker than you could feel them. He lifted my fingers to his lips.
“No worries, Mary. Darcy will always be my date, and if you’re to be angry with anyone, be angry with me. I invited Kyd and Big J, and by the way,” he winked, “you look lovely tonight.”
She did look lovely, and thankfully, Dylan had the skills that could diffuse a stick of burning dynamite.
“Is this true, Kyd?” she snapped, scanning his face.
Kyd didn’t say anything; instead, he swayed like a bulldozer had run over him. Dylan rose up, casually pulled a wooden chair from an empty table, scooting it between Kyd and me. “Have a seat,” he said to her. “It woul
d be nice to catch up.”
Mary twirled the gold chain around her neck, gushing to Dylan as she sat down. “It’s great to run into you. Yankee told me she visited with you last night.” I just bet she did.
He smiled graciously and listened to Mary’s latest egocentric escapades as I excused myself to find the restroom. The clock said 7PM. Darcy still had nada. Not knowing what to do, I decided to march into the kitchen. I mean, how bad could that be? Granted it was a lofty goal, but I guess if you were in the shooting mood, you might as well shoot for the moon.
I squeezed between two tables, making my way to the rear of the restaurant. Once I pushed open the doors, my nose was blasted with the smell of food and too much heat contained in one place.
So much for being a cook…
My conspicuous lack of expertise in a kitchen was evident. I knocked over a tray of ice water, bent over to help the server, then rose up, and cracked my head on his elbow. Scrambling to pick up the broken glass, I subsequently tripped yet another server, fool enough to stand by me. Before I could mutter “Sorry,” minestrone soup dripped down my white shirt from yet a third party.
Someone held out a towel and dabbed at my arms. “Girl, you’re a walking disaster,” he chuckled.
Yeah, I was a keeper. When I smeared a carrot into the fabric, I gave up figuring I was making it worse. “I guess you’re not going to hire me now, are you?” I laughed.
“I’ll just tell the boss it was me. I’m not the most coordinated of individuals, either. I’m Hank Henry,” he smiled. I blinked. Opened my mouth. Then did the whole ritual again three times. Lo and behold, I stared speechless into the face of the man I’d been searching for … call me lucky.
Or destined for a bullet of some kind.
Hank looked nice enough … but what did I really know? There was a lumberjack look about him: big, burly, and getting by on his own brawn. His face was round like Cisco’s, with light blond hair, clothed in head-to-toe Serendipity black. On further review, I didn’t think he was the “bullet kind” because even though he had a ready smile, his eyes were undeniably sad—like they’d seen more pain than any one person deserved.
We cleaned up the broken glass, shoved it in a tan plastic container and onto a cart bound for the industrial-sized dishwasher.
Focus, Walker, I told myself. “I’m Darcy,” I said.
“Nice name.”
“Different, I suppose. Do you have a minute?”
He inspected his watch. “Walk with me, I’m on a break. What is it you’d like to know?”
Everything.
He pointed to the back entrance of the kitchen. Hank said a few goodbyes as a cook threw a bag of what I assumed were food scraps into his hand. “She’s with me,” he said to a frowning coworker.
No doubt we were breaking Department of Health Codes, but what the heck, I reveled in dodging all things healthy anyway. As we strolled outside, the heat beat down like you were revolving in a microwave. “Are you feeding a pet?” I asked, wiping the sweat from my brow.
He nodded. “My dog bunks over at a friend’s home while I work. I like to take him a treat on my break.”
After talk about essentially nothing, God help me, I couldn’t find an appropriate opener. “So have you had your dog long?”
“My son picked him out at Christmas.” He paused, looking down at his feet. “I lost my son six months ago.”
Insert a kidney punch to the back.
“What happened?” I asked even though I knew the answer.
“Cisco just vanished,” he explained, his eyes brimming with pain. “It was big news for a while, but I’m afraid people have forgotten him … but I won’t.”
My word, he was pulling a page out of the Darcy Walker playbook. I thought back to my own childhood. Wherever I happened to be, I looked for someone that was never going to come back. Heck, I still did. But it hurt worse when those around you forgot what your pain was about. That stunk, on like a billion different levels—a billion levels too painful to name.
It seemed like a millennium had gone by before I found my voice. “No one has any information?” I whispered.
A yellow finch desperately hung onto a magnolia bush as it whipped around in the wind. It reminded me of Hank: trying to hang onto something amidst an element he had no control over.
He stared blankly at his black sneakers. “A group of private investigators check in with his mother, and a detective calls to give me updates. But that’s all I’m going on right now. I just let Lola take care of it.”
I decided to play along. “Lola is Cisco’s mother?”
He nodded. “It never worked out between us, but we talk.” He gazed at the sky, clearing his throat. “I just hope whoever has him…”
He stopped mid-sentence, unable to continue. Then I remembered what Lincoln said. Retrace Cisco’s steps. What did he like? Who were his friends? Did he have any enemies?
“Tell me about him.” I waded carefully through the conversation, careful to put everything in the present tense.
Hank’s eyes lit up like the sky during the Fourth of July. “He always smiles, and he’s smart. But he’s not like other boys. He does like to play ball, but he likes bugs and stuff. I got him this ant farm, and he’d sit by that thing for hours and watch them work.”
“What else?”
“He likes frogs and geckos, so I bought him a book to help him identify the ones he caught. He went to the park to look for them.”
“What park was that?”
“It’s right by his house off Conroy Road. Some older kids there weren’t so nice to him because they thought he was weird.” No, “weird” was when your six-year-old sister was a freaking nudist. Liking frogs and geckos was refreshingly normal.
I stumbled around, finally asking what I’d been dying to. “Would any of them … hurt him?”
He adamantly shook his head. “No, they just laughed at him.”
Glancing down at my watch, I knew Dylan must think this was the longest bathroom break in history. Either that, or he’d buy it was bad Mexican.
Hank sensed I needed to go. “Hey, we didn’t talk about you working here. I’m sorry, let me introduce you around.”
I squeezed his forearm, adding a warm smile. “You know, I’ve already got something else in mind. Thanks for speaking with me.”
We both were livin’ on a prayer. Final assessment? Hank was hiding nothing and honestly struck me as a little milquetoast. He took people at their word, and as Kyd claimed, seemed simple. But what did I learn? He trusted Lola. Lola spoke with the private investigators regularly, but Lola, however, sent funky vibes to Troy. If I had any hope of procuring more information, I needed to get closer to her.
Hustling back inside, I pulled my iPhone out of my pocket and stood in the nearest corner, dialing in her digits I’d memorized. My stomach dropped all the way to my feet when I got a “Beep, this number is no longer in service.”
My word, I’d caused the woman to disconnect her phone.
Shoving that guilt far down into my conscience, I dodged a cook sliding a plate of fries under the heat lamps and spun around a server balancing three plates on her arms. Heavy-footing it to our table, I noticed that Kyd, Mary, and Big J had departed.
Dylan, however, moved like a hamster on a wheel. He checked his wristwatch, running a hand through his hair, giving a description of me to a more-than-accommodating teenaged girl. His hand went up to his neck mimicking a 5’9” posture, motioning that I had blonde hair just like hers. When our eyes met, an exhale of relief washed over him, quickly followed by his trademark what-in-the-heck-were-you-doing look because I don’t trust you.
“Hey, are you okay?” he murmured when I made it to the table. “You practically fell off the grid.”
“I kind of ran into some soup,” I shrugged.
His eyes darkened as they scanned over the goopy brown stain, and for some reason, I got all warm inside. Fever warm. You’re-in-trouble warm. Dylan pulled me forward by the lape
ls of my shirt, and the rest of the room melted away. “Lucky soup,” he grinned.
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”
Albert Einstein
10. FREAK SHOW
WELL INTO THE WEE HOURS of Monday morning, I was crashed on the white leather couch I’d made a makeshift bed at midnight. Across from me, Lincoln haplessly recited the skills of criminals—career criminals—specifically Turkey Cardoza. He’d finished polishing his gun, Jackal, and I’m not sure he was totally awake. He talked too freely, and if he harbored the secrets to National Security, it was probably best they took him off the nightshift. No word yet on what went down in his midnight meeting, but he’d been uncharacteristically loose-lipped. I remained hopeful I could piece something together in between the incessant rambling, and the quote, “I need more bullets.”
He’d called Willow twice with no answer, and it was my guess he didn’t want to sleep because he knew he’d wake up and relive the same pain all over again. I knew from firsthand experience sometimes that term “a good night’s sleep” didn’t erase what was wrong in your world. All it did was bring the problem into the next day.
He mumbled, “Turkey’s not dumb, Darcy. He’s set up some legitimate businesses, which a lot of the time makes it hard to pin the bad onto you. The weird thing is that no one has taken him out because of his conflicting loyalties. I’d take him out on his mouth alone. That tells me he has something substantial on all three families.”
No objection from me there. It always amazed me how the ponkeys in that people-you-love-to-hate camp could slide by without a scratch. Especially someone as triple-dipping as Turkey in his business dealings.
“You’ll get him,” I encouraged.
Lincoln gazed down the barrel of his gun. “Willow’s boyfriend?” he grumbled. Oh boy, I laughed to myself. On one hand, he was talking about a career criminal. On the other, he was referring to his daughter’s significant other.