Sound of Secrets

by Darlene Gardner

  The truth was he didn't think she was either paranoid or nuts. Something was happening he didn’t understand, though. He felt sure she had a hidden agenda. Until she told him about it, he couldn't help her.

  He was about to follow her to the car, but glimpsed of Danny Peckenbush inside his father’s office.

  "Ah, hell," he bit out. "Why isn’t that boy in school?"

  Intending to find out, he walked across the garage and into the side door to Sam’s office. Danny was in the back, loading soft drinks behind the glass doors of the refrigerator. Sam sat at the cash register, scowling.

  "You come back in here to accuse me one more time?" Sam asked.

  Gray took a deep breath, annoyed all over again that Cara had put Sam on the defensive. If there had been anything to her complaint, which he doubted, he wouldn’t find it out now. "I wasn’t accusing you of anything the first time, Sam. When somebody makes a complaint, like Miss Donnelly did, it’s my job to follow up."

  "I should be complaining about her." Sam spit his toothpick into the waste basket near his feet. "You ever run over anything with your car, Gray?"

  "A deer once," Gray answered. Danny finished his job and slipped silently out the door leading to the garage.

  "You got nothin’ on me. I ran over a kid. Do you know how that makes a man feel? I’ll tell you how. It makes you want to forget it ever happened. It sure don’t make you want to talk about it with some nosy woman. So don’t you come in here telling me I’m the one who’s done wrong."

  "Actually," Gray said slowly, "I came in here to ask why Danny wasn’t at school."

  "Danny?" Sam’s head whipped around. Obviously, he hadn’t seen Danny leave the office. "The boy was helping me out before school started."

  "School started an hour ago."

  "Damnit." Sam’s curse was long and loud. "I told that boy I was tired of getting calls from the school askin’ where he was. I ought to tan his hide."

  "Why don’t you let me handle it, Sam?" Gray had no doubt Sam would do as he said. Sam’s wife had run off when Danny was a toddler and never come back. Gray had a feeling the mechanic either paid too much attention to Danny or none at all.

  He found Danny in the back of the garage, fiddling with the kickstand of his rusty bicycle. He was tall, but so skinny he looked like a boy masquerading as a man. Gray remembered that time clearly, a limbo when you no longer believed in the wonders of childhood but weren’t yet ready for the responsibilities that came with being an adult.

  "Shouldn’t you be in school, son?"

  Danny didn’t meet his eyes, instead inclining his head toward where Cara stood by Gray’s car. Her back was to them, and she seemed to be staring out at the empty road.

  "Did my dad do what she said he did?" Danny’s too-long hair hung into big dark eyes that overwhelmed the rest of his features.

  Gray thought for a minute about how to answer. "I don’t see where he had any reason to."

  Gray couldn’t tell from Danny’s expression if the answer had satisfied him.

  "They still pouring the concrete for the basketball courts today?" Danny asked, a blatant change of subject.

  Gray nodded. "Why wouldn’t they be?"

  Danny pushed the hair out of his eyes, and Gray had a feeling he was about to say something important. Then he swung one of his long legs over his too-small bicycle. "I best be getting to school," he said and pedaled off in the direction of town.

  For half a second, Gray considered getting in his car and following to make sure he got there, but then common sense kicked in. Danny would never open up to him if Gray didn’t trust him to do a simple thing like getting himself to school.

  Cara didn’t trust him either, Gray thought as his eyes found her. She stood off to the side of the gas pumps, her arms folded across her middle and her back to him. She looked brittle. And alone. Gray considered apologizing to her, then reminded himself he didn’t have anything to be sorry for. He didn’t say anything until he was close enough to talk without shouting.

  "Ready to go?"

  Cara wordlessly got into the passenger side of the car and closed the door behind her with a sharp slam.

  She leaned back so that her head fell against the head rest, her eyes straight ahead. "I’d appreciate it if you’d drop me off at the Secret Sound Sun."

  Gray cursed under his breath. Could she be any more stubborn? "I told you to stay away from my father."

  "I’m not going there to talk to your father."

  "Why are you going there?"

  "That’s none of your business."

  He got ready to argue with her but the dispatcher's voice came over his police scanner. "Unit 1, we’ve got an 18 at 566 Elm Street, complainant Mary Gillick, 9:30. Looks to be a domestic situation."

  "This is Unit 1," Gray responded immediately. "I’m four blocks away and heading there now. Track down Unit 2 for backup."

  He slanted Cara a look while the dispatcher responded to his order. "Tell me I can convince you to get out of the car and let Sam call you a cab."

  Cara shook her head. "I’d rather take my chances with you than with Sam Peckenbush."

  "You’re not going to take any chances," Gray said, pulling out of the service station with controlled speed. "You’re going to sit in the car and, for once, do what I tell you to do."

  Cara braced herself as Gray brought the unmarked police cruiser to a jarring halt in the driveway of a nondescript box of a house. Screams came through the open jalousie windows in an otherwise quiet neighborhood. Dying flowers rimmed the porch, and grass grew in haphazard patches in the front yard. It looked like a place where nothing good happened.

  "No! No! No!" The voice belonged to a woman, her shrill cries so desperate and terrified they seemed to penetrate through Cara’s very bones. "Don’t hit me again. Get away! Get away!"

  "You don’t tell me what to do, bitch." This voice was deeper and meaner than the last, causing Cara to unconsciously back up against the car seat. "Haven’t you learned your lesson yet? You do what I tell you. Or else."

  "You’ve got to help her," Cara said.

  Gray wasn’t listening. He was already halfway out of the car, his hand on the holstered gun at his hip, looking like one of the cavalry rushing to the rescue.

  The woman — Cara assumed she was Mary Gillick — was no longer screaming, but emitting animal-like noises that sounded halfway between sobs and moans.

  "Put the gun down, Mary." The man’s voice was no longer full of bluster, but deflated, like a hot-air balloon that had come to earth.

  Gray swore and turned to gaze at Cara through the open car window. He’d taken off his sunglasses, and he looked dark and dangerous once again, like a man angry enough to kill.

  "Get down and stay down, Cara." His voice was low and urgent. "I mean it. I don’t want you getting out of this car."

  Gray slammed the car door shut. He hadn’t taken more than a step when the front door of the house opened, and a man burst through. He was balding, fifty-ish and below average height with the thick arms and chest of a bodybuilder gone to fat.

  Gray didn’t move. Cara could feel the tension in his body, almost as though she were inside his skin watching the situation unfold. The well-muscled man obviously hadn’t seen him yet. His eyes were riveted to the screen door as he backed slowly down the steps. A second later, Cara saw why.

  "Don’t you run away from me, you son of a bitch!"

  The screen door swung open, propelled by a thong-clad foot. A short, middle-aged woman with disheveled dark hair emerged, the beginning of a bruise under her left eye. In her right hand, she held a gun. She looked a little bit crazed.

  "Stop this, Mary." All of the belligerence was gone from the man’s voice, and he sounded no more dangerous than a whimpering puppy. "You don’t want to shoot me."

  "He’s right, Mary." Gray’s voice was as level and calm as if he were speaking to a clerk in a hardware store. He took slow steps toward the couple as he talked, his hand near but not on h
is holster. Cara wanted to shout at him to retreat. "You don’t want to shoot him."

  The woman’s eyes swung wildly from the man Cara assumed was her husband to Gray, and the motion of the gun followed her eye movement. For a second, the barrel pointed straight at Gray’s chest. Cara’s heart slammed against her ribcage.

  "Don’t move, either of you," the woman yelled with a voice that broke. Her hand shook so hard she couldn’t keep the gun level.

  "Put the gun down, Mary," Gray commanded. "He’s not worth shooting."

  Gray had told Cara to keep her head down, but her eyes were riveted to the scene. From the way Mary held the gun, Cara surmised the woman was a poor shot. She probably couldn’t see clearly through her tears. Gray kept advancing, talking in that soothing voice, not making a move for his gun. If the woman shot, Cara prayed she wouldn’t miss her husband and hit Gray.

  Mary’s hand didn’t even dip, and she sounded on the verge of hysteria. "The son of a bitch deserves a bullet between the eyes for every time he’s hit me."

  "You won’t get any argument from me there—" Gray began, only to be interrupted by the man’s whimpers of protest. He looked like he was about to wet his pants.

  "But," Gray continued, "the courts don’t look favorably on victims who take the law into their own hands. Think before you shoot, Mary. Is shooting him worth spending the rest of your life in prison?"

  Sirens sounded in the distance, signaling the arrival of Gray’s backup. Cara issued a silent prayer. Hurry, please hurry.

  "Maybe seeing this bastard dead is worth going to prison." Mary wrapped the fingers of her left hand around the barrel of the gun so that both hands held it.

  Cara braced herself, waiting for the awful bang that would mean the woman had pulled the trigger. Gray kept walking toward her, and she wanted to call him back.

  "Believe me, I’d shoot him myself if I could get away with it,” Gray said. Again, the man whimpered. "But I can’t, and neither can you. If you don’t care what happens to you, Mary, think about your family. You have a little girl, don’t you? Who’ll raise her after you sacrifice your own life for this worthless piece of shit?"

  Cara held her breath, waiting for Mary’s reaction. The argument must have finally gotten through to her. Her grip loosened on the gun, and it fell onto the cement porch, clattering safely out of range. Mary covered her face with both hands and sank to the floor, sobbing.

  "You’ll pay for this, you bitch. I'm filing charges against you for attempted murder." The man had recovered his voice, and yelled even as two of Gray’s officers surrounded him. "And you." He pointed at Gray. "You son of a bitch. You'll be sorry for the shit you said about me."

  He struggled wildly as the officers restrained him, and his eyes fell on Cara where she sat gap-mouthed in Gray's patrol car.

  "What are you looking at, bitch," he shouted. "You want a show? I'll give you one when these assholes let me go. I'll pound that look off your face."

  Cara's stomach seized, but then one of Gray's deputies wrenched Gillick's arm behind his back. Their gazes broke, and Gillick yelped in pain as the two policemen wrestled him to their car.

  Cara's eyes swung back to Gray, who'd ignored the shouting man as he deliberately walked past him to the porch. She doubted he realized Gillick had transferred his shouted threats from his wife to her.

  Cara watched as he ignored the discarded gun, knelt down beside the woman and gently touched her shoulder. She looked up at him, her face miserable and tear-streaked, and he gathered her into his arms.

  All thoughts of Gillick's threat faded. Cara's breath caught in her throat and tears welled in her eyes. She could resist the tough, suspicious cop who had kissed her on the beach the night before.

  She wasn’t at all sure she could resist the man offering comfort to the battered, sobbing woman on the porch of a rundown house in the heart of a town that Cara had just now realized wasn’t all ugliness.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Tyler hadn’t even reached the front door of the Secret Sound Sun when he spotted Gray’s father walking out of it.

  When he was a kid, Mr. DeBerg had seemed larger than life, a black-haired giant who could command attention with the lift of an eyebrow. He was still an icon, the embodiment of everything good about Secret Sound, but his dark hair had turned white and excess girth had translated into a ponderous way of moving.

  Still, the old man had spunk. It was there in his eyes when he talked about a subject that excited him. It was even there in his outdated style of dressing. He favored long-sleeved white shirts and bolo ties with flashy designs. This one was shot through with color, as psychedelic as anything a teenager would have worn in the seventies.

  "Hey, Mr. DeBerg," Tyler said, knowing the old man wouldn’t correct him. He’d long ago realized Tyler respected him too much to drop his formal way of addressing him. "That’s one hell of a tie."

  "Isn’t it, now?" Mr. DeBerg laughed loudly. "Remember the column I did on the teenager who needed a bone-marrow transplant? After they found a match, she was home recuperating and saw it on the Home Shopping Network. She phoned right in and bought it for me."

  "And since she went to the trouble, you figured the least you could do was wear it," Tyler finished for him.

  "Bingo," Mr. DeBerg said, smiling. "What brings you to the Sun, Tyler? You gonna advertise that business of yours? Did I ever tell you I used to do some yard work myself for extra money when Gray was a boy? Honest work, it was."

  Tyler smiled and nodded, because he had told him, many times. "Advertising wouldn’t be a bad idea, but I'm here to track down those community center donations. Gray said you’re not sure who’s handling them?"

  A middle-aged woman who appeared to be in a great hurry nevertheless stopped to say a few words to Mr. DeBerg before she bustled into the newspaper office. A young man who looked in awe of the columnist murmured a greeting as he passed going the opposite way.

  "That’s right," Gray’s father said when they were alone again. "With the paper growing like it is, I’m not sure who deals with finances. I told Gray last night that Curtis can probably answer your questions."

  "I’ll ask him."

  "You do that, son." Mr. DeBerg nodded and cocked his head to one side. "Is it two o’clock yet?"

  Tyler checked his watch. "It’s half past."

  "Late again," the old man said. "I guess I better be moseying along."

  Tyler smiled, remembering all the times he and Tyler had waited for Mr. DeBerg during their childhood when he was supposed to drive them somewhere or pick them up. Gray had celebrated receiving his driver’s license as though he’d won the lottery. "See you around, Mr. DeBerg."

  "I can guarantee that, son," he answered before slowly making his way to his car.

  Ten minutes later, after Curtis Rhett directed him to the community relations department, Tyler stood outside Karen Rhett’s office and watched her talk on the phone. In his hand, he held a cashier’s check for twenty thousand dollars, the exact amount they needed to cover the down payment on the clubhouse.

  As always, when he looked at Karen, he couldn’t help smiling.

  She’d painted her lips to match her hot-pink suit, and she leaned so her hair brushed the back of her chair while she tapped the desk with pink fingernails. He couldn’t see her feet, but he guessed she wore spiked pink heels to match the suit.

  She looked flamboyant and stylish and utterly desirable. Tyler had long ago realized he would have desired her even if she’d been wearing men’s overalls, a long-sleeved flannel shirt and not a touch of makeup.

  Faint creases appeared in her forehead. He could make out enough of the telephone conversation to determine she was talking business to one of her reporters. He waited until she hung up to call attention to himself.

  "When I saw those flowers, I thought they'd suit you.” He nodded toward the showy red blooms on her desk. "I was right."

  Her head jerked up, and her cheeks turned as red as the petals of the hibisc
us. "If you’re waiting for me to thank you for flowers I didn’t want, you’re going to wait a long time," she bit out.

  He cocked his head. The vase he’d picked out at the florist was taller and thinner than the one on her desk. "Isn’t that a different vase?"

  "And your note made no sense,” she said, ignoring his question. “You can't forgive me for slapping you when I'm not sorry."

  Sparks shot from her eyes and pierced his soul, electrifying his smile. She was so full of life and energy, he’d never tire of looking at her.

  She scowled at his growing smile. "What do you want, Tyler?"

  He pulled her office door closed and walked slowly toward her, anchoring his hands on her desk. He grinned down at her and suggestively raised his eyebrows. "Besides the obvious?"

  Before she could deliver another stinging retort, he held up the cashier’s check. "I want to thank you."

  "Thank me?" Caution entered her voice, nudging aside the exasperation. "Thank me for what?"

  "For making a donation to the community center."

  Karen slammed her hand down on the desk so hard that her paper-clip holder rattled and her papers rustled. Her mind worked while she thought about how he could have found out about her donation. She zeroed in on the newspaper's one-woman community relations department.

  "I am going to kill Cindy Lou Baxter," she said through her teeth. "That was supposed to be an anonymous donation."

  "Aw, don’t blame Cindy Lou, honey. You went to high school with her, too. She’s sweet as sugar, but she never could keep a secret. It’s a part of her nature."

  "Don’t call me honey," Karen snapped even though her heartbeat had sped up when he’d drawled the endearment. Dear God, what was happening to her? She actually thought he looked sexy standing there in his blue jeans and the T-shirt that accentuated how wide his chest was.

  "Besides, why wouldn’t you want me to know about your donation?" He grinned again, his teeth white against his tanned skin, his eyes so soft they reminded her of melted taffy that should be savored. "I thought it was downright generous of you."