All The Way Back

by David Kearns

  Chapter Ten

  There wasn’t a lot of food to work with in the kitchen. I melted a small amount of butter in a pan and sliced small strips of pork into the pan, then washed green beans and put them in with the pork strips to grill. The overhead exhaust fan for the cooktop barely worked, so I opened the sliding glass door onto the deck to let the air circulate. I diced a slice of a Walla Walla onion and dropped the cubes into the pan, then put a glass lid over the pan to try to keep the juices in.

  I took a pair of plates out of the cabinet and set them near the cooktop, then got a pair of wine glasses from the cabinet and filled them halfway with cabernet. I carried the wine glasses, silverware, and placemats out to the deck and put them on the picnic table. Then I went back inside, turned the heat off on the cooktop, and ladled the pork, green beans, and candied onions onto the plates.

  Sandy came out of the guest bedroom in a pair of low-heel pumps, and was wearing blue jeans so tight that they looked like they’d been painted onto her skin. She had on a white blouse and a pearl necklace and bracelet set. Classy.

  “We’re eating on the deck,” I said.

  “It smells delicious. I didn’t know you could cook,” she said.

  “I can grill pork and vegetables with the best of ‘em.”

  “A renaissance man,” she said.

  “Thank you for noticing,” I said. “Genius often goes unnoticed.”

  She smiled.

  I put the plates down on the picnic table and went back inside and turned on the stereo. I put on Pat Metheny’s Offramp album. The strains of Are You Going With Me? filled the house. I went back out on the deck, closed the screen, and took a seat across from Sandy.

  “Thanks for making the trip,” I said. “How much did Eric tell you?”

  Sandy tasted her wine and set the glass down. “He said that Anthony Peck had a vendetta with you, that you needed someone to watch your back, and that I should get here as soon as possible. That’s all I needed to hear.”

  “I appreciate you coming, Sandy, but this could get pretty heavy. You sure you want to be involved in this?”

  She cut a piece of the pork carefully, sliced and skewered a green bean, then put the combination in her mouth. Her forearms were nearly as large as my own, and you could see the muscles and tendons under the skin when she cut the meat. She chewed, swallowed, and washed her food down with another sip of wine. She’d applied makeup expertly before coming to dinner, and her hair was carefully combed, framing her prominent cheeks and slightly upturned nose. She had a muscular build, but her muscles seemed in perfect proportion with her feminine attributes, enhancing the attractiveness that was naturally there.

  “You’re staring,” she said.

  “It’s hard not to stare,” I said. “You look terrific.”

  “A girl likes to hear that occasionally,” she said.

  “And I’m sure you do,” I said.

  “Actually, not that much. Most guys seem afraid of me.”

  “With good reason.”

  She smiled.

  “Seriously though, Sandy, you might want to bow out on this one. I appreciate you coming, but I don’t want anything to happen to you, and this time I think it could.”

  Sandy said “If I may ask an indelicate question, Delorean, why does a mover and shaker like Peck give a shit about a nobody like you?”

  “Because a long time ago Peck was a loan shark in Oklahoma City. When I was about twelve years old, he loaned money to my father for his car business. When my dad couldn’t pay, one of Peck’s thugs named Randall Burton came to my house and killed my parents. Afterwards, Burton tried to kill me, too, but I was armed and I shot him to death. I buried him afterwards and never told anyone about it.”

  Sandy looked at me with a shocked expression.

  “Seriously? Twelve years old?”

  I nodded.

  “Does Peck know you did it?”

  “Not until recently. Someone found Burton’s body, and the police are looking at me for the shooting. Peck knows what the police are up to, according to the detective named Eccles who interviewed me about it.”

  “Are the police going to charge you with anything? What would that be? Concealing evidence of a homicide?”

  I shrugged. “Unknown,” I said.

  “Peck isn’t going to like that very much,” Sandy said. “He’s probably been wondering what happened to his boy Burton all this time.”

  “Right.”

  “You thinking of taking a run at Peck to get even for what he did to your parents?” Sandy asked.

  “I have, but I’ve been warned not to by Eric and by Eccles, too. I get the impression they’re actually scared of what he can do to me and to anyone close to me.”

  “Good thing you’re superman, then, isn’t it?”

  “And I can cook, too.”

  Sandy used her knife to trim the small amount of fat off the last slice of pork on her plate. She skewered the pork with her fork, and then made a delicate circle with the pork to pick a couple of stray bits of candied onion from her plate before putting the last bite in her mouth. Then she drained the rest of the wine in her glass in one long swallow.

  “You sure as hell can,” she said. “What’s for dessert?”