Destroying Angels (Leigh Girard Book 1)

by Gail Lukasik

  I threw my bag down on the kitchen table, kicked off my black suede boots and headed for the bathroom medicine cabinet where I kept the Duradrin.

  Standing over the sink, I swallowed two tablets with water and prayed I’d caught it in time. If not, the full-blown pain and flashing light show would soon be upon me, which meant a fun-filled night of light sensitivity followed by vomiting. Usually about six tablets in four hours did the trick, but that definitely meant no chardonnay and no reading tonight.

  I stripped off my ivory-colored, silk blouse and black wool trousers and tossed them into the hamper, as if they had a taint on them. Avoiding my reflection in the full length mirror, I unhooked my bra and slipped out of it, again feeling that jarring sense of disproportion. I pulled on the grey sweatshirt and sweat pants that were hanging on the back of the bathroom door. The tightness in my head was loosening. That was a good sign, but I knew I should eat something too.

  On my way to the kitchen, I saw the red eye of the answering machine blinking. “Now what?” I said out loud, irritably pressing the blue play button.

  Tom’s all-too familiar voice played back. “I’m just calling to see if everything’s all right.” Pause. Long pause. “No need to call if it is.” Pause. Click.

  I punched erase and listened to the tape whirl as I struggled into my jacket and unlaced sneakers. Salinger had the right idea. The night was crisp and black and smelled of dank earth. I sat on the back steps huddled down in my jacket, and rocked back and forth to keep warm. The moon arched over the trees, silvering the field and back lighting the sky. Overhead, two large birds glided and circled. Then suddenly one dove into the field. He rose slowly, his jerking catch held tight in his talons. It looked like rabbit was this evening’s entree.

  I picked up a rock from the ground and threw it into the field, then another, then another and another.

  “Move, damn it,” I shouted. “Get out of there or fight!” Things I couldn’t see rustled in the tall weeds. It was an absurd useless gesture, but I felt better having made it.

  My headache was definitely easing, but now the drug fog was descending. I closed my eyes and leaned back on my elbows, letting the cold air hit my face. Like a series of slides, images flitted across my brain: Ida’s watery green eyes, the ruffled edge of Joyce’s bathing suit, Sarah’s tightly knotted hair, Deputy Jorgensen’s black leather gun holster, Joyce Oleander's rust-brown blood. I opened my eyes, trying to shake free of the images.

  Why had Joyce Oleander done it? Her suicide made no sense to me. According to Joe Stillwater, she was looking forward to running the library and she loved her work in the children’s ward. I didn’t buy Ida’s explanation that Joyce was the victim of post-hysterectomy chemical imbalance. That sounded like medical mumbo-jumbo covering Ida’s refusal to look any deeper. Something had set Joyce upon this course. But what? Joe said that she visited someone in the hospital before her discharge. I had to find out who she visited. It was a long shot, but maybe it tied in somehow with her suicide.

  A high screeching sound broke into my musings. I looked up. The other bird had snagged a rabbit. Its screams sounded almost human. I picked up a handful of rocks and started pitching them into the field. The bird flew away into the trees, his prey now quiet.

  What kept coming back into my mind was Ida’s supposition about Joyce’s fall—that she might have been reaching for the phone. That at the last minute, Joyce might have had second thoughts. And then there was the fact that someone, maybe Ida, had turned her over and not immediately called the hospital or the police. My intuition told me that Ida wouldn’t have been paralyzed by fear, as Jorgensen suggested. She had done just what she said she had done: first called the hospital, then called the police. Regardless, there’d been no crime committed, except Joyce’s crime of taking her own life.

  My sockless feet were numb with cold. I stood up, stamped my feet and peered into the dark. “Salinger!” I shouted. The weeds rustled in the distance. I could just make out the tips of her ears as she ran through the field toward me. “Come on, girl. Time to come home.”

  “No need to call, huh?” I said to myself. “You got that right, Tom.”

  9

  Saturday, November 4, Present day

  “Forget church, forget social clubs, there’s only one place to meet people here.” Lydia Crane cut into her beef Wellington with precision. “Bars.”

  I raised a skeptical eyebrow. Lydia and I were seated at a corner table in the hearth room of the Stone Gull Inn—aptly named for the blazing red brick hearth that dominated an entire wall. The muted strains of a classical guitar drifted into the room, along with a potpourri of succulent scents. The historic Stone Gull Inn catered to tourists in the vein of a turn-of-the century hostelry with planked ceilings, white stucco walls, candlelight, strumming guitarist, and serving wenches with cinched waists and prominent bosoms. Both dining rooms had china sideboards whose shelves held delicate dishes painted with pink and white tea roses. The anachronistic atmosphere of the place was just what I needed after yesterday’s frenetic revelations. I had spent most of today sequestered in the cottage, rereading Toni Morrison’s Beloved and trying to ignore the dust bunnies that were haunting my house.

  “I know what you’re thinking. But it’s nothing like Chicago. Walking into a bar is not an automatic invitation to indiscriminate sex.” Lydia smiled slyly.

  “Does anyone think that anymore, with AIDs and STDs?” I countered.

  “People can be pretty careless in the heat of the moment. At least that’s been my experience.” Her eyes widened. They looked golden in the candlelight, like a cat’s.

  Lydia just opened the door to another level of intimacy that I didn’t want to enter. Singles bars, indiscriminate sex, experiences in the heat of the moment were not on my agenda. “So why do people here in Door County go to bars, if it’s not for the sex?”

  “Sex can be part of it. After all, it’s always there lurking around some corner. But the bars here are where people go to talk. If you don’t want to talk, you can listen or 'people watch.' If sex happens, fine. If it doesn’t, that’s fine, too. There are these unwritten rules.”

  “Like a medieval hamlet where every once in a while a person has to be burned as a witch to keep everybody happy?”

  “What?” She looked at me incredulously.

  “Nothing, just something Jake Stevens suggested about Door life.”

  “How’s he to work for?” She smirked knowingly. Sex was certainly lurking around Lydia’s every corner.

  “Enigmatic.”

  “Aren’t they all?”

  “So how do I learn the unwritten rules?” I asked, biting into an artichoke heart. I had ordered the artichoke Romano. The blend of artichokes, asparagus tips, angel hair pasta and Romano cheese was wonderfully rich and satisfying.

  “By experience, my dear, how else?” Lydia took a sip of her dark merlot wine. “I propose a field trip after dinner.”

  “Where?” I was feeling too good for the evening to be over so soon. Thoughts of Joyce Oleander and the way she died could be put on hold for one night.

  “I know the perfect place to show you some local color: Bailey’s Roadhouse.”

  “That dive in Egg Harbor with the fifty motorcycles parked outside night and day? Is this part of your rebellion against that Lake Forest upbringing?”

  “You do have an ornery streak, Leigh. Yes, that’s the place. But don’t be fooled by its appearance. It’s even worse than it looks.” Lydia laughed.

  “You’re not one of those weekend biker chicks, are you, Lydia?”

  “You never know what secrets lie beneath the surface.” Her eyebrows went up and down several times. “Come on, don’t be so uptight. It’ll be good for you.”

  “Like medicine is good for you? This isn’t one of these initiation things?”

  “You are a suspicious person, Leigh.”

  “Goes with the job.”

  “I have a feeling it has nothing to do with the job. L
ook, I go there by myself and my virtue’s still intact. What’s left of it, that is.”

  “All right, I’ll go. But if it's just totally tacky, I'm outta there.”

  “Speaking of your job, did you talk to Sarah Peck about her father's autopsy?”

  “For about nine minutes yesterday. All I found out was that she’s a very hostile person.” My encounter with Sarah Peck seemed almost insignificant in light of what I’d learned from Deputy Jorgensen about Joyce’s time of death, and my supposition that someone besides Ida Reeves may have found her, moved her body, and not called the police.

  “That’s Sarah. I’ve concluded that she gets off on her anger. Check out those streetwalker clothes. They’re so outrageous, they leave you speechless. You don’t know if you should slap her or hug her.”

  “What’s the situation with her family?”

  “Dysfunctional to the max but hey, whose isn’t?" She pushed her dinner plate aside.

  “Sarah freely admits that her father was a heavy-duty drunk. Did you ever see him drinking at any of the bars?”

  “What do you think I am, a bar fly? Don’t answer that. At Bailey’s maybe, I saw him a few times on Friday nights.”

  “Was he drunk?”

  “Not so you could tell by looking at him.”

  “But you could tell?”

  “Yes.” Lydia was staring over my head, trying to catch the attention of our waitress. I was getting the strong impression that she didn’t want to talk about Carl Peck.

  “Okay, what did he do so that you could tell?”

  She sighed heavily. “Not much, he was just a little too friendly. Kept putting his hand on my arm, leaning in too close, that kind of harmless old man thing. You know, once a stud always a stud.”

  The waitress returned and discreetly slipped the leather bound bill book on our table.

  “So, what’s your story, Leigh? I notice you’re not wearing a wedding band.”

  “Separated. And you?”

  “Divorced. He was a photographer, of all things. But nobody wanted to buy the pictures he took of the nightlife of junkies and bums—magnificent technique, depressing topic. I admit I used the poor guy to irritate my family. More of that rebel stuff, but of course, I’m past all that now.”

  I smiled at her comment. “Are you involved with anyone?” Even though Lydia and I hardly knew each other, it was clear we were willing to speak directly to each other. I was curious, but wanted to keep our conversation away from my personal life. The separation, moving here—it was all connected to the cancer. And I didn’t want to bring down our evening by talking about cancer.

  “It’s not easy finding companionship here, male or otherwise.” She opened the black leather book and squinted at the bill. “Why don’t we just split it?”

  She put two twenties on top of the bill. “Oh, what’s the difference,” she said, pushing back her chair. “It’s over now anyway, so why should I care?” She seemed to be justifying her words to herself. “Rob Martin and I went out for awhile. It’s no secret. But it didn’t work out.”

  Before I could respond, Lydia left the table and headed in the direction of the Women’s Room. Even though I didn’t like Martin, I could see the attraction for Lydia. She had a gift for exaggeration. I had a hunch Lydia was one of those people prone to depression who kept the blues at bay by creating dramatic situations. Martin’s intensity would keep her from depression’s door. I wondered why it hadn’t worked out, since it was obvious she still wanted it to.

  10

  Bailey’s Roadhouse was a battered, claustrophobic bar and restaurant in Egg Harbor along Highway 42, just south of County E. Its white paint was greyed, chipped, and peeling away, giving the outside the appearance of an abandoned ship. The back of the bar overlooked the bay, but a tangle of weeds and trees obscured most of the view. It was Egg Harbor’s last authentic hold out from pseudo-rural renewal. No one came here for the view.

  The interior of Bailey’s fared no better than the exterior. The requisite jukebox played Willie Nelson, and I smelled a permeating odor of stale beer. A dark, gleaming bar dominated the room. It was like an oasis in a desert of wooden tables and chairs stained by spilled drinks. The knotty pine ceiling offered the perfect complement to an entire wall festooned with a collection of beer bottles from around the world. As I walked past the bottles, I read a few unpronounceable German names.

  The only exception to the usual bar decor was a mural that covered another wall. It depicted an old fishing village. I didn’t recognize the place, though I was certain it was one of the local villages. It had a haunting quality, eliciting a way of life that could only be imagined now. In the painting, men in heavy clothing on a trawler near a stone pier struggle with nets brimming with fish. Looking on is a scraggly brown dog. In the distance, another fish-laden trawler heads into shore. The only female in the scene is a yellow haired girl in a blue dress. She fishes off the pier. The artist had muted the colors so that the whole scene looked faded.

  As we made our way to a table, a few customers called out greetings to Lydia. From the benign, “Where you been lately, honey?” to the more hostile, “Slumming?”

  “Don’t pay attention to these losers, Leigh. They resent the fact that I work for a living but don’t have to. Right, guys?”

  “Damn right,” one of the more friendly-looking men answered.

  Lydia ran her fingers through her auburn hair, which, loose from its braid, gave her a feral quality. I suspected a fierceness to her. She’d be an ardent friend and an awesome enemy. She ordered a pitcher of beer from the waitress who looked old enough to be collecting social security. Probably one of the legions of retirees who lived in Door on meager pensions and worked minimum wage jobs to get by.

  “Impressed?” Lydia asked.

  “Oppressed is more like it,” I answered, waving my hand through the dense smoke.

  “Only restaurant on the peninsula that has an all-smoking dining room.” Lydia pointed toward a side door.

  I started to ask her about the mural when the sound of shattering glass drew everyone’s attention toward the bar.

  “See what you made me do!” a man shouted. He looked as substantial as a scarecrow. He was middle-aged and wore muddy jeans and a faded-black tee shirt emblazoned with “Jack Daniels” across his back. It was unclear whether he was talking to the bartender or the woman on his right.

  The bartender tried to give him a rag for his hand, which was dripping blood, but he threw it on the floor. “He owes me. He owes me big time.”

  The bartender leaned close to the man and said something.

  “I’m not drunk.” He directed his remark toward the woman on his right, who stood up so quickly that her barstool fell over. She had long, straight brown hair that reached halfway down her back. Her thin nose was slightly askew to the right. I wondered how many times it had been broken, and by whom.

  “Where d’you think you’re going?” he called after her. The woman kept walking as if she hadn’t heard him. “I said get back here, bitch.” Before he could finish, she was out the door.

  The bartender grabbed the man’s arm to restrain him from following her. But the man jerked his arm away and slid sideways off the barstool.

  “I don’t have to take this shit.” He looked around the room, swaying with the effort to stay upright. Everyone looked down at their drinks, trying not to make eye contact with the man. I wasn’t about to take my eyes off him.

  “Sure, look away. But you know that bastard cheated me. I dare one of you to say he didn’t.”

  “Aw, Renn, sit down,” a guy playing darts shouted across the bar. “You’re ruining my dart game.”

  “You know where you can stick those darts, Charlie.”

  “Chris sakes, Renn, they haven’t even buried the guy yet. Show some respect,” answered Charlie.

  “Respect, respect . . .” The drunk’s face went dark-red with rage. “What respect did he give me? Dirty, cheating son of a bitch. I’ll fight anyo
ne who says he wasn’t.” He staggered forward, right toward our table, with his fists raised. “C’mon.”

  I didn’t have time to even push back my chair before he was lurching over me. I smelled whiskey, cigarettes, and greasy food emanating from him.

  “What’s this?” he slurred. He unballed his fists long enough to point at me.

  “This is Leigh,” I said. I had had just enough wine at dinner to blurt out what I felt and still make sense. “And that,” I pointed in the direction of the bar, “is a bar stool. Why don’t you go sit on it.” I didn’t like drunken bullies and I didn't like feeling scared. My usual defense was an aggressive bluff. If this had been a classroom, there’d have been an eraser bouncing off his greasy head. To my disgust, he pulled out the chair next to me and sat down. Everyone went back to what they had been doing, and the low buzz of conversation once again filled the room.

  “You know I’m right,” he spat across the table at Lydia. He was missing about four of his upper teeth. I doubted if he even knew how he’d lost them.

  “Are you talking about Carl Peck?” I asked.

  “Who the hell else?” He wiped his bleeding hand across his shirt. “And what do you care?”

  “Don’t. Just curious. How did he cheat you?”

  “Who’s idea do you think it was? Huh? Mine! Who did the leg work? Not that bastard Peck. Then he cuts me out of the business. Go on and tell her.” He glared at Lydia.

  “Whatever you say, Renn.” Lydia looked around the room as if for rescue.

  He looked down at his bleeding hand, as if he’d just noticed it. “I gotta go. Regina. Gotta find Regina.”

  “Why don’t you have a cup of coffee with us first,” I suggested. I wanted to know more about Renn’s connection with Peck.

  “What? No, I told you.” He pushed his chair back, turned and headed for the door.

  “Isn’t someone going to stop him?” I asked Lydia.