by Laura Parker
As it turned out, Joe had to give up his shirt in order to make Halle decent. No matter the extremity of circumstances, he had to live in this town and he didn’t want to deal with having to explain to the state senator’s wife why he had arrived in a moment of crisis with a strange woman wearing only a bra and his sweat shorts.
The drive to the McCreas took fifteen minutes. Joe stayed on the back roads where a truck tearing up the blacktop was less likely to draw attention.
“You’ve got to stop them!”
Ella McCrea’s eyes brimmed with tears as she greeted Joe and Halle on the steps of her home.
“It’s all right, Mrs. McCrea. I’m here now,” Joe reassured her. “Has anything happened since we last spoke?”
“Joe,” she whispered, clutching at his bare arm. “He’s got a gun.”
“Lacey?”
Joe saw her mouth tremble as she nodded once. “A handgun. Smith & Wesson. Bill keeps it in his office drawer.”
“Loaded?”
She gave him a look that said “what else?”
The experience of a police officer colored Joe’s unexpressed opinion on the subject. It wouldn’t help now.
He put a comforting arm about the diminutive woman as he guided her back inside. “Okay, Mrs. McCrea. We’re going to get this sorted out.”
Inside he paused and turned to his companion. “Halle? Meet Mrs. McCrea. Mrs. McCrea, this is a friend of mine from New York City, Halle Hayworth. She’s going to keep you company while I talk to your men. Where will I find them?”
“In Bill’s office. Lacey locked himself in there after the fight began at breakfast. Bill got the spare key and went in after him. They put me out when I tried to go in, too.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Must be thirty minutes ago by now.”
“Okay. You’re doing fine.” He lightly patted her shoulder to calm her. “Have you heard anything? Voices? Heavy thuds? Gunshots?”
“Raised voices.” She shuddered, her bones feeling birdlike beneath his broad palm. “Oh, Joe! You’ve got to bring them both out of there safely. You’ve just got to!”
“That’s what I intend to do.” He looked over the woman’s head at Halle. “You and Mrs. McCrea go into the kitchen and have a cup of coffee. I’m going to need a little time.”
“Certainly.” Halle added, “Be careful” with her eyes.
Joe smiled back at her. “You know it, sweetheart.”
“Oh yes, where are my manners?” Mrs. McCrea said but the clawlike grip of her delicate hand remained on Joe’s forearm. “You be careful, Joe. Lacey has his father’s temper but that doesn’t mean he’s not a good boy.” Her chin rounded in righteous anger. “They’re both two bullheaded fools. That’s what they are.”
Joe waited until the women reached the end of the hallway and then disappeared into the next room before he turned toward Bill McCrea’s office. Having been in the house a few days earlier, he found his way there easily.
He knocked, waited a second for a response and then entered.
He hadn’t known what he’d find on the other side of that door but the scene before him satisfied him that, for the moment, the situation was still under control.
Bill McCrea sat in one of the pony-hide steer-hornframed chairs that flanked the desk. Despite his striped bathrobe and slippers he looked anything but rested. His son leaned against the desktop a few feet away.
In profile they seemed two versions of the same man except that Bill McCrea was sweating and Lacey was as pale as a sheet.
Lacey McCrea was even better looking than he appeared in the picture in Joe’s dossier. He was medium tall and lithe-limbed with a shock of golden brown hair dipping across one half of his brow. Lounging against his father’s desk in a plaid shirt and jeans he revealed a natural grace and lean-cheeked sulkiness women would find attractive. If it hadn’t been for the handgun held casually in the youth’s right hand, Joe might have thought he had sauntered in on a friendly father and son tête-à-tête.
“Good morning, Mr. McCrea. Lacey.”
The teenager’s gaze lifted. “Who are you?”
“I’m Joe Guinn.” He took a few steps into the room. “I’m the guy who’s been looking for a runaway by the name of Lacey McCrea. Only you didn’t run away, did you?”
Lacey didn’t reply but his gaze skittered toward his father.
Mr. McCrea smiled nervously at Joe. “Howdy, Joe. Glad you could join us.”
Lacey came suddenly alert, gray eyes flashing enmity. “You sent for him? Why?”
“I, figured we could use a mediator,” his father answered.
“We don’t need a mediator. This is personal.”
Keeping his stride slow but easy, as if his stroll into the room were the most natural occurrence in the world, Joe walked toward the windows, placing himself in the glare and Lacey in stark relief. “Your coming back sort of ruined my plans to pay my bills but, hey, I can live with it. Do you mind if I sit down?”
Joe didn’t actually sit but propped himself against the edge of the Spanish commode placed beneath the windows, ready for quick action if required.
Lacey watched him, chin tucked. “Like I said, this business is between me and my father.”
“You always do business with a gun?” Joe inquired pleasantly. “I once did but that was because it was part of my job description.”
Lacey’s suspiciously swollen eyes widened. “You a cop?”
“Was a cop. NYPD, like the TV show. Only I never dressed as well nor spent as much time behind a desk.”
Lacey lifted a leg and hitched a hip over the edge of the heavy desk. One bootheel plowed into the plush wine-colored carpeting as he braced himself with a stiff leg clad in denim. “Well, this isn’t police business.”
“In that case, you won’t mind putting that handgun away. It’s not a very good conversation starter. Somebody could get hurt.”
Some new emotion moved through the teenager’s expression. “That’s the point.”
“Don’t smart mouth an ex-cop, son,” Mr. McCrea said derisively. “He’s not easily impressed.”
“You shut up!” Lacey snarled suddenly and Joe understood why Ella McCrea was worried. Lacey had a temper and it was far from under control.
Joe flexed his hands in anticipation of action. If he could just shove McCrea out of the line of fire... McCrea was five feet from him. Lacey was seven, maybe eight feet on the other side. His chances of beating a bullet to Bill McCrea weren’t good. He sincerely hoped it wouldn’t come to that. So far there seemed no reason why it should.
“Suppose you tell me what started this, Lacey?”
“He started it.” Lacey gestured at his father with his empty hand. “He never listens to me!”
“You run off like some delinquent and then come home and expect me to take your insults when I want to know where you’ve been?”
“You don’t care where I’ve been!”
“Now, you listen to me—”
“I’m always listening to you!” Lacey roared back, drowning out his father’s bombast. The gun in his hand twitched. “You talk and talk and talk and all I get to do is listen. No more!”
“Damn fool! You’re just embarrassing yourself to no purpose. Nobody’s going to take you seriously if you don’t start acting like a man.”
“You see?” Lacey gestured toward Joe with the hand holding the gun. “He thinks he knows what a man is. He thinks he knows everything. I wouldn’t put it past him to have bribed that opera company not to take me.”
“I might have,” Mr. McCrea retorted, “if I’d known where the blazes you’d gone. Like I said before, maybe your not making the cut was a sign that you’re not supposed to be a dancer.”
“Oh?” Joe interjected, having calmly waited for an opening. “Did you win your first election campaign, Mr. McCrea?”
The man scowled at him in annoyance. “No.”
“Then, according to your way of thinking, you should have qui
t politics right then and there. Like you’re telling Lacey, maybe it was a sign you weren’t supposed to be a state senator.”
Joe could see that McCrea did not like the comparison. “It’s not the same thing. Anybody in politics can tell you that there were factors beyond my control during that campaign. My opponent was an incumbent, had connections, resources, his share of powerful friends. Joining that campaign was only meant to make my name familiar to the constituency so that the next time out they’d know my face.” He smiled. “They did, too. I won.”
“I see.” Joe only half heard Mr. McCrea’s defense. He was much more interested in Lacey’s reaction to it. “How many professional dance auditions have you gone out for, Lacey?”
Lacey hunched his shoulders. “None, before Albuquerque.”
“Did you embarrass yourself, fall or anything like that?”
“No.”
“I hear you sing, too. Did you sing for them?”
“Yeah.”
“Crack a high note? Miss your pitch?”
“No.” He glared at his father. “The others said I did really good. Better than most.”
“Were you the only one who didn’t make it?”
Lacey grunted. “Not hardly. There were fifty of us and only five positions.”
“That’s pretty steep competition.” Joe spared a glance at Mr. McCrea. “Lucky thing you never had to run a campaign in a field that broad, isn’t it? Might have taken you half a dozen primaries to have become known.”
He looked back at the teenager. “Sounds to me like you made a respectable showing for your first time out.”
Lacey motioned with the butt of his gun. “Tell him that! Not that that was the point. I needed that job worse than the others.”
“Why worse?” Mr. McCrea prompted. “You got everything you could ever need and then some here with your mother and me. When did I ever not give you what you needed?”
“I need my freedom!”
That sudden piercing wail of pain shot up Joe’s spine and reversed his position on the situation. Lacey might look in control but he was sitting on a keg of emotional kerosene and his dad was, however well-intentioned, tossing burning matches his son’s way.
“I tell you what. Since you and I don’t see eye to eye with your dad on this, why don’t we excuse him? You can leave us, Mr. McCrea.”
The older man gripped his chair arms as if he thought Joe might try to physically eject him. “I’m not going anywhere until Lacey comes to his senses and puts that damned gun away.”
Lacey puckered up. “Not until I’ve made my point.”
“What point are you trying to make?” Joe asked smoothly.
Lacey plowed a hand through the hair hanging over his brow, lifting it up and away to reveal a widow’s peak. “That I can make a decision without him.”
Joe’s heart rate doubled as Lacey pointed the gun barrel in the general direction of his father. “That gun have a safety, Lacey?”
“Yeah.” He grinned. “It isn’t on. I checked.”
“Don’t smart off!” his father began only to fall silent as the barrel steadied at his chest.
Joe didn’t move. “You know, Mr. McCrea, I think Lacey’s got a point. You give a lot of orders for a man who doesn’t like taking them himself.”
He rose slowly as if he only needed to stretch his legs. “My dad was a lot like you, laying down rules and issuing orders like he was a drill sergeant in boot camp. Mostly I answered ‘Yes, sir,’ and then did as I pleased.” Joe smiled as if in memory and came up behind the elder McCrea. “He hated it like everything when I disobeyed him but he could never say I wasn’t polite.”
The tightness in his chest eased a fraction as Lacey smiled and the gun in his hand sank back to rest along the length of his thigh. “That’s good, Joe.”
Joe nodded amicably. “I’m not saying a son doesn’t owe his father due respect. I’m only saying there comes a time when respect and obedience aren’t the same thing. People agree to disagree all the time, don’t they, Mr. McCrea?”
“I suppose. But Lacey’s my son—”
“And so due your respect,” Joe cut in, wanting to gag the man. No wonder his son was feeling desperate. So was he.
He moved in to stand directly behind the senator and lay a heavy hand on his right shoulder. “Why don’t you do some of the talking, Lacey. Your father and I will listen.”
Joe’s grip on McCrea’s shoulder tightened significantly as he felt the man gather himself to speak.
“Go on.”
Lacey shrugged. “This is stupid.”
Joe stood motionless and silent.
Lacey glanced up after several seconds. “You want to know what I feel? I feel like dirt! Less. Marcie’s the eldest, can do no wrong. Charlotte runs her own business. The family success story. Deirdra’s given him four grandkids. I wasn’t supposed to be. I was the afterthought, the mistake.”
He glared at his father, teeth bared in primitive aggression. “I hear you and Mama talking. ‘Thank goodness the caboose was a boy,’ you always say. That’s my place, right? Last. No possible use but to carry on the family name. Big stinking deal! I don’t want it. First thing I’m going to do when I get out of here is legally change my name!”
Joe’s grip nearly snapped the man’s collarbone but Mr. McCrea would not be quelled this time. “That won’t change who you are,” he thundered. “You’ll still be my son”
“I know,” Lacey said bleakly. “That’s why I’m thinking about something else.” His gaze dropped to a contemplation of the gun weighing down his hand. “There’s ways of beating you, old man. Ways.”
“Like running away?”
Lacey glanced up in surprise as if he had forgotten Joe’s existence. “No. He’d just send you or someone like you to find me and drag me back.”
Joe shrugged. “So what? You’ll be eighteen in a few months, right?”
“So?”
“So, he won’t have any legal right to send someone after you. You’ll be free to do what you what.”
Lacey shook his head. “You don’t know him. He’s got connections, knows people. He thinks I’m going to a military academy but he’s wrong. I won’t go there.”
“Then don’t.” Joe shrugged. “What can he do? You’re a little large to tuck in his vest pocket. He’d look pretty stupid carrying you hog-tied to the front door of the school. The media would have a field day. He’s up for election. I don’t think it will come to that, do you?”
“No.” Lacey stared at his father. “I was thinking about making it so he can never get to me again.”
Joe’s second hand came down heavily on the father’s shoulder. “That’s a consideration. Dead is an option. It certainly makes a statement. Just about every young man with an overbearing father figure has thought about it. You know Hamlet?”
“The movie with Mel Gibson?”
Joe smiled. “Yeah. That one. Remember how he thought about offing himself but then decided that he’d rather have revenge?”
“He died anyway,” Lacey said contemptuously.
“Exactly. Everybody dies anyway. That’s the point. So why not go after what you want from life first? It’s not like you’re going to miss out permanently on the experience we call dying.”
Lacey half smiled and set the gun on the desktop. “You’re weird.”
Joe smiled back. “Look, I’m not saying living with your dad’s a piece of cake. But you’ve got options, Lacey.”
Lacey glanced at his father. “Six months and I’m out of here. And I’m not going to Harlingen in the meantime.”
Mr. McCrea shook his head. “You don’t have to, son. However, I do think we need to talk about things.”
“But not now,” Joe said crisply and moved to the desk to scoop up the gun. As he pushed the safety into place he said, “You need to go and tell your mother the theatrics are over, Lacey.”
“She knows!” Ella McCrea burst through the door and hurried over to throw her arms about
her son. “Lacey, Lacey, my baby! You know I love you!”
“Listening at keyholes?” Joe asked in an aside to Halle who came up beside him.
“Absolutely.” He saw that her eyes were shining with unshed tears. “You were brilliant. Absolutely brilliant!”
Joe hugged her with his gaze. “I was lucky. That kid has something he wants to do really badly. When dealing with a person with a gun, it helps if he has a reason to want to live.”
Mr. McCrea came up to Joe, looking every one of his sixty-plus years. He held out his hand. “You just did a fine job, Joe. No need to fret about your bills. You’ll find my generosity equals my thanks.”
Joe shook his hand. “I won’t accept anything more from you than this handshake, McCrea. You were lucky just now. There’s a lot of accumulated hurt and rage in your son. I advise you all to seek family counseling. If you don’t work it out now you may never see Lacey again after his eighteenth birthday. You’ve got to ask yourself if keeping him off the stage is worth that.”
The older man bit his lip and wagged his head. “Until today I never knew he hated me so much.”
“He doesn’t hate you. He wouldn’t have come back if that was the case.” He waited until the man’s eyes had come back to his face. “Lacey’s tired of failing you, Mr. McCrea. You need to make it possible for him to make you proud.”
“On the football—”
“Anywhere, McCrea. You need to be proud of him anywhere he is, doing whatever he’s doing.”
McCrea nodded. “You’re right. I suppose it wouldn’t kill us if he went over to Dallas to attend that arts magnet high school. But it’s hard, you know. Men in tights!”
Mrs. McCrea eyed Joe suspiciously as she approached. Reaching up, she captured his chin between her thumb and forefinger. “What happened to your face? Joe Guinn! Have you been in a fight?”
“Joe’s been busy earning his Good Samaritan badge this week,” Halle offered for him. “He saved a woman in Dallas from assault and another one from incurable loneliness.”
The look he gave her curled her toes.
Ella McCrea nodded as she studied Halle with wise eyes. “I suspect you’ve had something to do with his sudden change about. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him smile before today. You must come ’round for lunch one day soon, Ms. Hayworth.” She glanced at the two men in her life with maternal indignation. “I should like the opportunity to erase the impression that Tyler folk have no manners.”