Charlie

by Elin Peer

  That’s why I was surprised when she called out to me.

  She’s gorgeous! I mean, even wearing a red nose and a hairband with reindeer horns sticking straight up, she looked stunning. As always, I’ll try to write everything down as detailed as I remember it.

  I was alone, sober, and on my way home, but I stopped and took in her outfit, which matched what her friends were wearing.

  “Ugly Christmas sweater theme,” she told me and pulled at the red and green knitted sweater she was wearing with the text “Jolly AF” on her front. And then she introduced me to her three friends. “Everyone, this is Charlie, my name twin.”

  One of the three nodded and grinned. “Ah, the one whose coffee you poisoned with your toxic lips.”

  It made me want to turn on my heel and leave because, yeah, I’m the idiot who said I’d throw away the lid of my cup after she took a sip, but Charlie just laughed it off and introduced me, “These are my friends, Sydney, Alicia, and Maggi.”

  The woman she had introduced as Maggi swayed a little and grinned. “You look way too serious and sober on a Saturday night. It’s December. You should be celebrating.”

  Alicia lit up and tapped Maggie on the arm with eagerness. “You know that thing we talked about earlier. The ugly Christmas sweater competition. He should be our ref and decide which sweater is the ugliest.”

  I stiffened. I have a hard time talking to one pretty girl and right there I had four wanting me to engage with them.

  Sydney, a young woman with an impressive afro, pointed to her sweater. “What do you think?” It was dark green with white patterns on the front and it said “Merry Elfin Christmas.”

  “Mine is better, wouldn’t you say?” Alicia, who was another dark beauty, came over to place her hand on my shoulder. Her sweater had two snowmen with carrot noses made of orange fabric sticking out prominently from her breasts.

  Feeling uncomfortable with her touch, I moved a little and looked at Maggie’s shirt. She was the shortest of Charlie’s friends but compensated with high heels and a large bun on her head. Her sweater was blue with a train that said “Bipolar Express.”

  Charlie spread out her arms and grinned. “It’s a tough call, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Am I judging the craftwork of the sweater, the absurdity of it, the fit, the colors, or the creativity? I mean what criteria should I base this important ruling on?”

  “Just pick mine. It’s the only one in 3D,” Alicia begged and pointed to the carrots sticking out.

  I picked Charlie’s, simply because her smile warmed me to the bone. That made Maggie swing a hand through the air and boo at me. “Sober people can’t make important decisions like that. You need to be at least a little drunk to appreciate the humor behind these masterpieces.”

  “Yeah… honestly,” Sydney complained.

  “Don’t listen to them, they’re sore losers.” Charlie gave me a beaming smile that could have melted all the snow in the entire street. But then her friends wanted to go back inside to dance.

  “Let’s move, ladies.” Maggie with the high bun flicked her cigarette butt into a snowbank and moved to the entrance, where loud music was booming.

  “You wanna come bust some moves with us?” Charlie asked me as her friends were dancing up against a bouncer who waved them back inside.

  The idea of dancing with her and potentially touching her was exhilarating, but I was stone sober and too fucking aware that I wasn’t going to impress her with my dance moves, unless swaying from side to side counts, so I excused myself saying, “Ehh… I can’t tonight.”

  Maybe it was the flash of disappointment on her face that made me burst out, “About that day in the coffee shop.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Remember how you asked if I winked at you? I didn’t wink on purpose. It’s my… It’s my Tourette’s.”

  Her eyes widened. “You have Tourette’s?”

  “Yes.” Right then a set of tics underlined it.

  “But I thought Tourette’s was people swearing and cursing at random times.”

  “It can be, but that’s rare.”

  “Liv, are you coming?” One of her friends popped her head out the door and called for her. “Oh, and bring tall and handsome with you. We’ll grind up against his sober ass and bring out the Christmas spirit.”

  That comment made me smile a little.

  “I’ll be right there, Sydney.” Charlie turned her attention back to me. “You were saying?”

  I told her about my involuntary tics. “That’s why I was blinking that day in the coffee shop.”

  “Huh. And here I hoped that you were flirting with me.” She winked and gave a tipsy grin and even now that I’m writing this, just thinking back to how gorgeous she looked at that moment, red nose and all, I get hard.

  I wish I could write that I went inside and danced all night with Charlie, but the shameful truth is that I blew it once again when my shyness spoke for me. “No, I didn’t. I don’t. I mean I didn’t flirt with you.”

  She made a mock face of disappointment and opened her mouth to speak, and just then we were interrupted by a group of five drunken guys who came singing down the street.

  “Hey, Charlie,” one of them yelled and came over to plant sloppy kisses all over her face. I was trying to remember if he was the same one who had wanted a bite of her cinnamon bun the first time that I met her.

  I stepped back and watched her try and push him away, laughing. To my relief he stopped and moved back to his group, who were trying to bribe the doorman to let them in to the bar.

  “One of your girlfriends called you Liv. Which do you prefer more? Charlie or Liv?”

  She was rubbing her pretty cheeks from all the sloppy kissing before. “I go by my middle name Liv or Charlie. As long as you don’t call me Charlotte it’s fine. I never liked that name.”

  “Your last name was Christensen, wasn’t it?”

  “Wow, you remember? Do you have an exceptional memory or something?”

  “Yeah.” I didn’t tell her that I’m bad with names in general. Her name had just been branded in my mind since I first met her.

  The sloppy kisser came back and pulled her with him, insisting that she owed him a dance. It was my cue to walk on, so I raised my hand and told her that I’d see her around.

  The first thing I did when I got back home was look her up on social media. Charlotte is twenty-one and from Chicago like me. What are the odds?

  I was pumping myself up to write her a message but as I looked over her pictures, the same guy kept popping up and her relationship status said, “it’s complicated.”

  Maybe if I wait another few weeks it’ll have changed to single. I hope it does.

  Lowering his diary, I felt weird for having read Charles’ private thoughts about me.

  That night, I’d been convinced that he was out of my league, but felt honored that he took time to talk to me. How in the world had I misinterpreted his shyness for disinterest when I considered myself a people person? I moaned a little thinking about my conversation this morning with Sydney, who had worried about me coming here alone. I had told her that I was blessed with a gift of reading people.

  Apparently not!

  I looked down at the box, where a few items lay at the bottom. A pair of white lace panties, a few folded handwritten notes, a tie, and a black lid to a coffee cup.

  I stared.

  A lid to a coffee cup.

  Is that…?

  Picking up the small lid, I felt goosebumps rise on my arms.

  He saved it.

  As if the sun had broken through the clouds on a hot summer day, warmth spread in my body.

  Reading the last part of his entry again from five years ago, I regretted that I’d never heard from Charles.

  My relationship status of “it’s complicated” had changed to “in a relationship” within two weeks of that night, but it had been a constant struggle between Chad and me, and things had never developed into a strong and c
ommitted relationship like the one I had later on with Miguel.

  Holding the lid in my hands and having read Charles’ words about me, I felt a strong urge to see him again. If Charles was in trouble, I would help him any way I could.

  Putting the lid back in the small box, my fingers touched the handwritten notes and curiosity made me pick them up. The writing was feminine and beautiful and my eyes swallowed the words.

  Charles,

  Please don’t push me away.

  You know my situation.

  I would never ask anything of you, but you have needs and so do I.

  Meet me today in the laundry room at 3:30.

  —T

  Concluding that Charles had a sexual relationship with someone who had access to his house, I picked up the second note and arched a brow.

  Is it wrong that I’m getting addicted to your body? Thank you for making my workday so pleasurable by sneaking in quickies. I don’t want the summer to end and for you to go back to school.

  —T

  Okay, so it was someone working here. I wondered if Mr. Robertson knew about it and how many years ago this affair had taken place. By school, did the woman refer to college? Or maybe high school? I frowned and put the notes back. It wasn’t any of my business. The only thing that mattered right now was finding a way to get Charles out of the cult.

  CHAPTER 2

  Ireland

  Liv

  Six days after my meeting with Mr. Robertson, I found myself standing outside a small bed and breakfast in Ireland. The clouds hung low and the air was humid from this morning’s rain as I waited for the contact that Mr. Robertson had set me up with.

  It had been such a hectic week with my mood swinging like a pendulum between excitement and self-doubt. There were moments when Mr. Robertson’s faith in me made me feel like Wonder Woman flying in to fight injustice. But then I’d get these moments of fear that took my breath away. Rescuing someone from a cult was so far out of my expertise… why would Mr. Robertson trust me with something this important when I had zero experience?

  The small village where I’d been staying for the night was waking up with a car starting in the distance, a man biking past me with a nod, and a cat strolling toward me from the corner of the house.

  It was pretty here. Last night I’d walked around and taken in the lush fields surrounding the village, with its cute houses that spoke of owners who took pride in where they lived. The cat stopped in front of me and meowed as if saying, “Hey there, stranger, I haven’t seen you before.”

  I squatted down to pet him and right away the large cat began to press his body against my leg.

  “You like this, don’t you?”

  His loud purr was answer enough.

  “Found any rats lately? I’m hunting for a big nasty one myself.”

  “Talking to the cat, are ye?”

  I looked up to see a woman in her thirties walking toward us. Her cheeks were red and matched her hair.

  “Never trust a cat. They tell all yer secrets.”

  Standing to my full height I shook the hand she was holding out to me. “Hello.”

  “Hi. I’m Kit. I assume ye’re Charlotte?”

  “Yes, but you can call me Liv.”

  “All right.” She smiled but then her face fell. “What’s wrong?”

  “Eh, I’m sorry, but are you K.C. O’Rourke?”

  “I am. My full name is Kathy Christiana O’Rourke, but I’ve been Kit since I was a wee lass.” Her Irish accent was charming, but she was nothing like I would have imagined from the report she had prepared. It had been so sharp and precise that in my mind I had imagined a former military man was behind it.

  “It’s just that after reading the report, I had this image in my head of you being a gruff former policeman or a retired military sergeant with battle scars.”

  She grinned and began dragging her leg. “I can fake a limp for ye, if that helps, and I could make up a brutal story of being shot by a target that I was surveilling.”

  I grinned back and instantly liked her humor. “You’re fine, don’t worry about it.”

  “Good, but we actually have one of those men in the family. My dad started O’Rourke Investigations. He’s been in the industry for over forty years and the shite he’s seen has made him battle-scarred in here.” She touched her chest.

  “You work with your father then?”

  “I do, but my brother Tommy and I are in the process of taking over. My younger brother is in the gardaí. He just joined the ERU.” There was such pride in her voice that I had to ask:

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that. Did you say that your brother joined the guard? Do you mean the coast guard?”

  She smiled. “No. Our police force is called the garda síochána na hÉireann. It means guardians of the peace of Ireland but we just call them guards or garda.”

  “Oh, all right and you said he joined the RU, what is that?”

  “I said, the ERU. It stands for Emergency Response Unit. It’s like yer SWAT team. They’re legit badasses with their helmets and big guns, blowing doors off their hinges and taking down armed criminals. It’s been Damian’s dream ever since he was a wee fella. He only just turned twenty-seven last month and that makes him one of the youngest to ever make the unit.” She squared her shoulders. “Ninety-five percent don’t even make it through the first two hell weeks. Ninety-five! Can ye imagine how tough ye’d have to be?”

  “Wow, that’s impressive. A whole family of crime fighters. How come you didn’t join the police?”

  She flashed her teeth. “Because the pay is rubbish. I can make more as a private detective. Now tell me, how was yer journey?”

  “It was fine, thank you.”

  “Good. I hope ye’re not too jetlagged ’cause we have a lot of work to do.”

  The cat was still trying to get my attention and it followed us when we began walking the way Kit had come.

  “Do you think it’s hungry?”

  “Nah, it looks overweight, so someone is feeding it. About that, did ye eat breakfast?”

  I nodded.

  “Good. I parked my car around the corner. I’m takin’ ye to meet one of the survivors who lives outside of Derry. That’s why we’re meeting here, up North. I thought about booking ye a hotel in Derry but my da suggested we should expose ye to a bit of the Irish country side. Isn’t it lovely?”

  “Yes. It’s very peaceful.”

  “I’m glad ye like it. Later today, I’ll take ye down to Dublin. It’s a four-hour drive so that should give ye time to read my report, in case ye didn’t already?”

  “I did, and I have questions.” Droplets of rain began falling again but this was October and I’d brought my rain jacket. “You said that there’s been some mysterious deaths.”

  Kit walked over to a Toyota and we both got in before she answered, “Aye, there are five children living in the house and I’ve been trackin’ down the mother of one of them. Turns out she’s dead.” Kit started the car and didn’t wait for me to bugle up before we sped off.

  “But her child is there?” I said and hurried to secure the seatbelt.

  “Aye. It’s a boy, and I only know about it because one of the survivors told me about him.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Nathan. He’s fourteen.”

  “How did his mom die?”

  “Suicide. I’m trying to get more information. Honest to God, I didn’t know we had a cult in Dublin. It’s scary.” It was fascinating how such a severe subject seemed less threatening because of her up-and-down lilt with each word. “I mean, the more I dig around, the more I worry that I’ve fallen over a demon or somethin’.” She made the cross in front of her face. “That man, Bricks, he’s such a menace, ye know, like a weed that keeps poppin’ up in yer garden even though ye try to scrap it. When the English police had him on their radar, he just moved on.”

  I remembered that Conor O’Brien’s real name was Conor Brick from the report, but I w
as getting nervous from the way Kit was driving through the narrow streets of the village, on the wrong side of the road.

  My fingers folded around the panic handle on the door. “Where are we going?”

  “I thought ye’d like to speak to one of the survivors yerself. There’s a woman whom I tracked down a few days ago, and awk… does she have stories to tell.”

  “Can we trust her?”

  “I would na bring ye to her if I didn’t think so. I’m cross-checking her stories and it’s good. Her name is Eileen and she got out of the cult about seven months ago.”

  It took twenty minutes for us to reach Eileen, who lived with her grandmother in another village. The woman had a large overbite that made me think of Freddie Mercury. She was a bit plump and looked like a timid mouse.

  “Won’t you come in and sit down?” She took us through the house to the kitchen, where tea stood ready on the small round dining table.

  “Thank ye for seeing us.” Kit had already introduced us and was now sitting down, placing the case file in front of her. “Liv is goin’ to try and get a man named Charles out, so she can use all the help ye can give her.”

  Eileen poured tea for us and spoke with a distinct British accent. “I wish someone had gotten me out a lot sooner.”

  I gave her a sympathetic nod. “How long were you a member of the mastermind group?”

  “About four years.”

  “Can you tell me about the group?”

  Setting the teapot down, Eileen sighed. “In the beginning, I loved it there. Everyone was so smart and articulate. They had ambitions of making the world a better place and I was flattered that I got to be part of this exclusive group. My friend had been talking about it for months as a secret society that guaranteed future success. I mean, the names of the alumni alone would make anyone desperate to join. According to my friend, O’Brien had worked with several public figures and people you see on TV. Of course, now I know most of those people were never members to begin with, but at the time I thought that his mastermind group was like a modern-day Illuminati for the gifted. My friend kept telling me that O’Brien would only invest his time in you if he thought you were special.”