by Beverly Long
She should be able to go in, tell him what just occurred. Then they could talk about how to avoid the next family get-together. Until. This. Thing. Blows. Over.
But there were two problems with that. One, she was pretty certain that she couldn’t be cavalier about what Danny had said. It wasn’t just the words, it was the look in his eyes. And two, she was more certain that Gabe wouldn’t be inclined to give Danny a free pass on this.
She would be responsible for a terrible rift in the Morgan family.
That was way worse than showing up with store-bought cookies.
Oh, God, she thought, bracing her forehead against the steering wheel. She wanted to be able to make jokes about this, but they were all going to fall flat.
Sort of like her heart felt right now. She loved Danny. Like a brother. Like a brother she’d never had.
And he’d ruined that.
The garage door opened. Gabe stood in the doorway, wearing his oldest sweatpants and a T-shirt with a big hole under the arm. “Hey, I thought I heard the door. What are you doing?”
She climbed out. “Nothing. Just thinking about the day. Glad that I’m home.”
“You look tired,” he said, his tone gentle. “Have you eaten?”
“No,” she said.
“How about a pizza?”
That sounded so nice, so simple.
Not at all like life really was.
But maybe for a minute she could pretend. “Pizza sounds really good. Can you order it? I’m going to take a shower.”
* * *
When A.L. and Tess left the house, she tossed the keys to her SUV toward him. “You can drive.”
The temperature during the day had hovered around seventy-five, but it was going to cool once the sun went down. A.L. had warned Tess to bring a jacket. She’d gone for a lightweight sweater with a poncho over it. He suspected the poncho served two purposes—warmth and to effectively hide her arm. But in the car, she left the poncho off. He was glad that she was comfortable around him.
They had early dinner reservations at a supper club outside of Hayward, Wisconsin. When they arrived, it was just as he’d expected. Dimly lit with dark paneling in the hallways. Brown leather booths and carpet on the floors in the big dining room. A four-piece orchestra playing quiet tunes in the corner.
He ordered prime rib, she chose the salmon. He got a beer, she got wine. She smiled when the server brought them a small relish tray for the table with carrots and celery and cheese spread with a side of cottage cheese and kidney bean salad. There was a separate little bowl of olives and a basket of crackers. “This only happens in Wisconsin,” Tess said. “You just can’t find supper clubs like this anywhere else.”
“I’ll bet you ten dollars that they have spumoni ice cream for dessert,” he said.
“I do not like nuts in my ice cream. I was hoping for a chocolate torte.”
“That might be too fancy for our little supper club.”
“Whatever they have, it’s perfect as long as I don’t have to cook,” she said.
“That shrimp and pasta was a work of art.”
“One of the few things I know how to make. Oh, I take that back. I make a mean baked French toast.”
“So you’ve got dinner and breakfast covered.”
“Very optimistic,” she said. Then her smile faded. “I used to be a glass-half-full kind of girl.” She took a sip of wine. “I miss her,” she added.
“Maybe she’ll wander back, cop a squat and stay awhile. If you don’t kick her out of bed, that is,” A.L. said.
Tess leaned back in her chair. She had worn her poncho inside the restaurant and hadn’t taken it off. “Fun to talk about oneself in the abstract, isn’t it?”
“Is that what we’re doing?” A.L. asked.
“We’re crossing a line item off our bucket list. Because time is short. I know, I know, I’m supposed to be positive...” Her voice trailed off. She looked him in the eye. “To be honest, I’m kind of pissed at you. At this. At how frippin’ excited I am to go on the balloon ride. It was easier—” she looked around and leaned closer to him “—to not care that a crazy-ass was coming after me when I didn’t care about anything.”
She had whispered the last part, but still, he looked around quickly, making sure that nobody was listening. “I am bad, really bad, at giving people advice. But I just heard about somebody recently who is a life coach.”
That made her smile again. “A life coach? Seriously?”
“Why not? But I suspect they are experts in half-empty, half-full kinds of conversations. Maybe even some transformations.”
The server came to clear their salad plates, and Tess grabbed one last carrot before they were scooped away. “I’m up for a transformation. Into a person with two arms.”
He looked close and decided she was joking.
The server brought their dinners, and they ate. “Tell me about your daughter,” she said.
He shrugged. “Smart. Beautiful. Polite.”
“Perfect, then?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Just this week, she skipped school and was found drinking a rum and Coke. And she’s secretly been dating a guy six years older than herself.” The words were out of his mouth almost before he realized. He never felt the need to share, but with Tess, it seemed right. Maybe because she had a daughter. Probably understood that even good kids weren’t perfect.
“Which are you more worried about?”
“The drinking. My sister is an alcoholic.” Fuck, why didn’t he just open his bank account and let her look at that, too?
She nodded. “As is my ex-husband. That’s why we’re divorced. He’s recovering now.”
“She just left her inpatient treatment program halfway through. Thinks she has it under control.”
“That’s not good.”
He appreciated that she didn’t try to pretty it up. “I’m afraid that we’re going to lose her.”
“Unfortunately, you can’t want sobriety for her more than she wants it for herself.”
True. “For the record, I’m not crazy about the twenty-two-year-old boyfriend.”
Now she laughed. “I assumed. Listen, kids lie. Kids do stupid things. Dangerous things.” She suddenly looked very somber. “When Marnee was seventeen, she got in a car with an eighteen-year-old boy who’d been drinking. This was after she’d told me that one of her friend’s parents were bringing them home from a concert. Well, the two of them crashed. One-car accident. Fortunately, Marnee wasn’t seriously hurt. The boy was. He lived, but he’ll be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. I was so damn furious, so angry with her. And so damn grateful that I had my little girl still.” She looked at him. “You know that’s the reason they don’t come with a manual. Too complex for anyone to contemplate writing.”
“Nice to talk to somebody who understands that parenting is really hard,” he admitted. “Wouldn’t give it up for the world, but...”
“But sometimes it really sucks,” she finished.
When it was time for dessert, there was indeed spumoni ice cream, but unfortunately, no chocolate torte. She settled on a crème brûlée instead and seemed delighted with her choice. He just had coffee.
He hated to talk business but realized that there was something that he hadn’t asked Tess. “You don’t happen to know a Marie Wallace, do you? She’s a secretary at the Lutheran church?”
“I was raised Catholic, but now I’m not much for organized religion. In the emergency room, they offered me the services of a priest. To read me my last rites.”
“You didn’t take them up on it.”
“I’m not big on last-minute redemption. I think you live your life in a way that you don’t need that lifeline. I may regret that if the balloon comes down tonight.”
“I don’t think there’s much chance of that.”
A.L. shook his head. “From the minute you step back into Baywood, you won’t be alone. Eyes will be on you if you’re outside, and inside the house either Rena or I’ll be there.”
“I want it to stop with me. I want you to get him.”
She was speaking very quietly, and no one was paying any attention to them. But still, a chill went up A.L.’s neck. What if something went wrong? What if Tess was harmed?
He simply wasn’t going to let that happen. “Ready? Or do you intend to lick that plate?” he teased.
She sighed. “I thought about it.” She pushed her chair back and slipped the strap of her purse onto her right shoulder. “I’m going to use the ladies’ room.”
He remembered her comment about not being able to zip and button her own jeans. “Do you...uh...need some help? With zippers and buttons,” he clarified.
She smiled at him and lifted her sweater. “Pull-on slacks. Best thing since sliced bread. But it’s nice of you to offer. Most guys probably wouldn’t have had the courage.”
“I’ll go with you and be right outside the door,” he said.
“I’ll start singing show tunes if I need help.”
“Better than opera.”
They left the restaurant five minutes later and used the GPS on his phone to get them to the launch site. It was a large open space, maybe a couple acres. The balloon was deflated, lying flat on the ground.
They did the paperwork, and the operator was satisfied with one set of identification. Two other couples arrived, and within a half hour, the crew was filling the balloon with warm air and it inflated. Then it was an awkward step over the sides of the basket.
With the six of them, and the pilot, there wasn’t a whole of lot of extra room, especially because they had to leave some space around the burner that shot a flame upward, intermittently adding more hot air to the balloon. The first time the pilot did it, the noise was unexpected and Tess jumped. A.L. instinctively reached out to steady her.
“Thanks,” she tossed over her shoulder, a little breathless. “Didn’t see that coming.”
He laughed and let his arms fall. “What do you think?” he asked.
“It’s gorgeous,” she said.
It was. The fading sun was a ball of reddish orange, and the surrounding sky was jagged layers of pink and purple and dark blue. The ground below was spring green, and the river that the balloon seemed to follow was a winding path of shimmering blue.
The pilot was young, maybe not even thirty, but seemed competent enough. He pointed out a few sights but otherwise stayed quiet.
“I never thought about the fact that they don’t really steer these things,” Tess said. “Like a car or a train, I mean. This is like art. Wind art.”
It was true. The pilot was at the mercy of the wind. To steer, he raised or lowered the balloon to catch a different wind current.
“How high are we?” Tess asked the pilot.
“Right now, about eight hundred feet,” he said. “Watch the dogs. People can’t hear the balloon, but the dogs can. As we glide over, you’ll see the dogs looking up.”
“It’s very quiet,” Tess said to A.L. “More quiet than I expected.”
“If one discounts the occasional roar of the burner?”
“True. Can you take some pictures with your cell phone?” she asked.
“Sure.” He pulled his phone and started snapping. The other riders were doing the same.
At one point, Tess slipped her hand into his. “This is awesome. Thank you for doing this. It means a lot to me.”
He knew he could make some smart remark, brush off her comment. Knew that’s what he probably should do. Instead, he pulled her close, her back to his front, and wrapped their linked hands around her waist. Then he rested his chin on top of her head. “My pleasure,” he said.
Twenty
Tuesday, May 17, Day 7
A.L. woke up early. It was still dark and very quiet in the small house. He’d slept in the bed that Rena had slept in the first night.
The ride home from the balloon ride had been quiet, with very limited conversation. He thought Tess might have drifted off a couple times. For his own part, he’d been pretty wired.
He was attracted to Tess Lyons. There was no doubt about it. But for a thousand reasons, which started off with the fact that he was a cop and she was under his protection, he couldn’t act on it.
He thought she’d felt a connection, too, but they hadn’t talked about it. After he’d unlocked the door the previous night and checked the house, she’d waited in the living room. Once he was confident it was secure, she excused herself, saying that she was tired and going to bed. He’d watched a little television and then dragged his sorry ass into the spare bedroom.
Now he swung his legs over the side of the bed. The floor was cold on his bare feet. He silently made his way down the dark hallway and started coffee. When it was brewed, he took a cup into the living room and sat on the couch. He was still there, forty minutes later, when he heard her come down the hallway.
“Good morning,” he said. “Coffee?” He started to rise.
“I can get it,” she said.
She got herself a cup and came into the living room. She took a spot on the couch and pulled the blanket over her legs.
“Want me to turn up the heat?” he asked.
She shook her head. Sipped her coffee. Set the cup down. “This should feel stranger than it does.”
Funny. He’d been thinking the same thing. “Maybe we both adapt well.”
“I think it’s probably because we’ve got a new world here, no patterns, no expectations. If suddenly you’d moved into my house, or I’d come into your space, it would be more jarring.”
“I guess we’ll get a chance to test that out when we’re back in Baywood. I mean, I’ll be at your house.”
“Yes, but in bad circumstances,” she said. “Do you like that term, bad circumstances?”
“I guess.”
“That’s what I decided we have last night. Bad circumstances.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay, you agree? Or okay, crazy lady, keep talking because I’ve had some coffee and I’m pretty Zen right now?”
“I’m never Zen.”
She smiled. “I don’t know you very well, but I suspect you’re right. You did a good job of pretending to be relaxed at the supper club and on the balloon ride, but I could tell that you were still very watchful of others and our surroundings.”
“I’m responsible for you.”
She nodded. “Part of our bad circumstances.”
He supposed it was good that he wasn’t going to have to explain that to her. She got it.
“And I’m not at a hundred percent of my fighting weight,” she said. “Metaphorically, I mean.”
“Not confident of your own decisions,” he guessed.
“Right. That and, up until when you and Rena suddenly showed up, I was pretty comfortable just feeling sorry for myself. And now? Well, I’ve got this thing. I have to help you stop this creep. And that seems really big, quite likely bigger than I can handle. So it doesn’t seem like a good time, again with the bad circumstances, to take on anything else new. A girl has to keep her wits about her.”
“Wise girl,” he said.
“It’s sort of enough for me right now to know that you would have been interested if...these weren’t bad circumstances.”
He stared at her. He could deny it. “In with both feet.”
She picked up her coffee, her eyes still very serious. “And this,” she said, looking at her injured arm, “wouldn’t have been a deal breaker.”
“In no way, shape or form,” he said. It was true.
“Thank you,” she said. Her eyes were bright. “That is plenty
good enough for now, and if we get Perp and I’m alive to tell about it, then maybe we can revisit this conversation.”
“You’ll be around,” he said. He wasn’t going to let anything happen to Tess.
“I hope you’re right,” she said. “Now who’s cooking breakfast?”
* * *
Rena thought about what Matt Connell had told her about a man being murdered at the Gizer Hotel. It had to have been covered by the Bulletin. That was long before online archives, but she suspected that the paper had a physical archive of their old editions.
The newspaper occupied a building right on the river. Most of the building was one story but at the very end, floors had been added on to accommodate the four-story press that they’d purchased in Germany some twenty years before. As an afternoon edition, the paper printed midmorning. She was a couple hours earlier than that but the employee parking lot was full of cars. She pulled into an empty visitor’s spot.
Rena showed her badge to the woman sitting behind the information desk. “I’m Detective Morgan with the Baywood Police Department. I need to find a story that would have been covered in the newspaper in the early to mid-’70s.”
“I’ll ask Tina to come help you,” the woman said. “She’s a wiz with the microfilm.”
Tina was midtwenties, and Rena suspected that she was probably better with a computer than microfilm. “I want to find any coverage that might have been done on a murder that occurred at the Gizer Hotel in the early to mid-’70s.”
“Unfortunately, we don’t have the ability to search the microfilm by key words. So, it’s best to start out with some assumptions and try that first. I suspect a murder would have made front-page news, so I’d concentrate only on page one. And that the headline would have either dead or murder in it, so I suggest you scan for those words. You know,” she said, smiling, “the hardest part of the search is not getting waylaid by other stories. Before you know it, half the day is gone. Sort of like today’s surfing the Web.”