Scott held his nephew’s gaze. The blue eyes that ran in the family stared back at him defiantly.
“Any of you working? In summer school?”
“Nobody’s hiring. Not even Walmart,” Austin said. “Sometimes Matt and I cut grass.”
“I babysit sometimes,” the black-haired girl said.
“That it?” Scott looked around. Nobody said anything.
“What are you going to do?” The blonde’s voice shook.
Scott made up his mind. Hell, he’d known enough wild kids in his life to fill up a stadium. The majority of them had even turned out okay. Luckily, stupid was something most people grew out of.
“First, I want everybody’s name, address, and phone number. And I want to see some ID.”
Two driver’s licenses were produced. The others were too young to possess them. Improvising, he used his cell phone ’s camera to record them giving the information he ’d asked for. The object, besides the obvious, was to scare them into realizing how much trouble they were in.
“Ashley Brookings. I’m fifteen.” That was the blonde girl. She brushed away a tear, and he saw that she had black nail polish to match the mess around her eyes. She gave her address and phone number, adding, “Oh, please don’t call my mom.”
“Matt Lutz. Sixteen,” the kid with the spiky black hair said as Scott next pointed his phone at him. He, too, gave his address and phone number. “Hey, Ashley, the worst your mom’ll do is ground you. Big deal. If my coach finds out, I’ll get kicked off the basketball team.”
“My mom will cry.” Ashley’s lips trembled. Jesus, he was starting to feel like an asshole. Next thing on his list should be kicking puppies. But what else could he do? “She’ll think she’s done a bad job raising me. Because she ’s a s-single mother.”
“You only ever sit on the bench, Matt. It’s not like you getting kicked off the team would be some big loss,” Austin said.
“At least I made the team,” Matt retorted, and the two glared at each other.
“That’s enough,” Scott intervened, and pointed his phone at the black-haired girl. “You. Go.”
“Sarah Gibbons. I’m fifteen.” The black-haired girl looked at him instead of at the camera as she provided the rest of the required information. “I live with my grandparents. Me and my brother. If they find out about this, they’re going to be so pissed at me.”
“They’re always pissed at you,” Austin said. “It’s ’cause they didn’t want to get stuck with you in the first place.”
“That’s not true, Sarah.” Ashley turned reproachful eyes on Austin, who shrugged.
Scott gritted his teeth and aimed his phone at the next kid. If he had it to do over again, he would have just kept on driving when he’d seen the lights on in the house and the vehicles in the driveway. But having stopped, now he was stuck. The kids had broken the law and deserved punishment, but he couldn’t bring himself to call the cops. Getting these kids involved in the juvenile system wasn’t the answer, at least not at this point. Probably calling the parents, grandparents, whoever, was the right thing to do, but he already knew he wasn’t going to do that, either. The thought of the kind of punishment his own father would have meted out to him under such circumstances stopped him cold. His old man would have beaten the hell out of him, not because he ’d been caught with illegal substances but because he would have been infuriated at receiving the phone call.
Right or wrong, he wasn’t taking the chance of bringing something like that down on the heads of one of these kids. Call it a phobia of his.
“Noah Chapman. Fifteen.” The kid with the blond buzz cut and glasses looked scared as he recited his contact information.
“I already told you my name and how old I am.” Austin folded his arms over his chest when Scott pointed the cell phone at him. He provided his address and phone number with a shrug. “Go ahead and call my parents. They won’t give a shit.”
In Scott’s opinion, the kid ’s bravado said volumes about his life, and none of it was good.
“Shut up, Austin,” the girls and Matt snapped at the same time.
“You understand I got to take some action here.” Scott tucked the phone away when he had them all on camera. “Smoking pot is against the law at any age. Drinking alcohol when you’re under twenty-one is also against the law. Besides that, doing either is stupid. It messes up your brain. It screws up your life.”
“Look, we’re sorry, and we won’t do it again, okay?” Chase glared at him, his expression the opposite of penitent. “So, how about you give us a break?”
“Yeah.” The rest of the group nodded and threw in variations on the theme of We’ve learned our lesson; we won’t do it again. All of it sounded about as believable as Chase’s apology.
“Please,” Ashley added in a small voice.
Scott looked at them meditatively.
“I am giving you a break. I haven’t called the cops. And I’m not calling your parents, grandparents, guardians, whatever. Unless you make me.” He paused, watching wryly as they, some more discreetly than others, slumped with relief. “But there are going to be consequences. First of all, we ’re all going to get together again tomorrow. In my office. Chase will tell you where that is. When’s a good time?” He did a quick mental review of his schedule. It was hectic and unpredictable. There wasn’t an ounce of free time in it anywhere to begin with, then add in the fact that he was going to have to deal with the ongoing problem that was his dad and it became impossible. But still he was going to fit them in. Hell, if he couldn’t be there, he’d deputize someone else.
“Before noon,” he added.
After that he had to be in court.
“Why?” Chase regarded him suspiciously.
“Because I think it’s time you gave back to the community,” Scott said. “We ’re going to find you something productive to do. Think of it as your own private pretrial diversionary program.”
“You can’t make us do anything,” Matt said. “Only a judge can do that, and you’ve got to go to court first.”
“I guess we can do it that way, if you want.” Scott’s tone was falsely amiable.
“Matt.” Ashley glared at him.
He visibly wilted. “Just sayin’.”
“I don’t think I can . . .” Sarah began.
“You got here, you can get there.” Scott gave them a grim smile. “Or we can deal with this some other way. Your call.”
“Ten o’clock. We can make it.” Ashley’s tone verged on the desperate. “Can’t we, guys?”
“But my grandma might not . . .” Sarah objected in an urgent undertone.
“You’re supposed to be spending the night at my house. I mean, you are spending the night at my house. We can go by his office before you go home,” Ashley hissed.
“Oh, okay.”
“What about the rest of you?” Scott looked at the boys, who nodded morosely.
“Ten a.m. tomorrow in my office it is, then. You’re not there, I call your folks. Got it?”
“Yes,” Ashley agreed, to the accompaniment of another round of less than enthusiastic nods.
“Good. Now get the hell out of here. Go home. All except you.” He pointed at Chase. “You I want to talk to.”
8
“No way,” Chase protested as his friends, giving one another sidelong glances, headed in a relieved shuffle toward the door. He looked after them in alarm. “Hey, don’t leave me.”
Ashley sent him an apologetic look, and Noah muttered, “Sorry, man,” but still they went. Chase would have followed, but Scott blocked his path.
“You can’t make me stay here.”
“Sure I can.”
“Oh, what are you going to do, beat me up? Like I’m scared of you.”
“You give me any more trouble, and I’m going to call your dad. And that ’s just for starters.”
Chase sneered. “Good luck with that. Last time I saw him he was passed out on the kitchen floor.”
“Tha
t how you were able to steal his truck?”
Chase glared at him. “I didn’t steal it.”
“No way in hell he gave you permission to take it. You don’t even have your license yet.”
“I needed to get something to eat, okay? There wasn’t any food in the house, and he was passed out drunk. I went to Dairy Queen. What was I supposed to do, starve?”
“This place doesn’t look like Dairy Queen to me.”
“Matt and Austin were at Dairy Queen. We called the girls, then picked up Noah.”
“Where’d Austin get the pot?”
Chase shrugged. Scott let it go. “Who got the beer?”
Chase shrugged again. Scott let it go again. He really didn’t want to get into the business of busting half the high school kids in the county.
“How’d you know this house was empty?”
“Grandpa called Dad to come get him out of jail. He said you were a pissant bastard”—Chase reported this with relish—“who wouldn’t do anything to help him. Dad was drunk off his ass, so he couldn’t do anything, either. I don’t think he would’ve anyway, but Grandpa was mad.”
“What ’d you do, listen on the extension?”
“I had to hold the phone to Dad’s ear. I told you, he was drunk off his ass, and he kept dropping it.”
Scott let out a sigh. The reason he didn’t have kids was that he had no desire at all to be a parent. The very thought of it made him go cold all over. But here was his nephew, already dabbling in trouble, looking at him like he was public enemy number one while living with his near-alcoholic-if-he-wasn’t-there-already dad with his grand-father’s indisputably alcoholic genes predisposing him to more of the same.
Clearly some attempt at guidance was called for.
“The bottom line is, pot’s illegal. Stay away from it, period. And you know alcoholism runs in the family, right?”
Chase snorted. “Duh.”
“That means you could get it, and the way to get it is just start drinking. A few beers here and there. Doesn’t sound like it could lead to anything bad, does it? But it does. It makes people like us crave more, until we wind up being a pathetic old drunk like my dad or passed out on the floor like yours.”
“What, you never have a beer?”
“Nope.” He and Ryan had followed the classic paths of an alcoholic’s children. Scott, having seen the misery alcohol caused, never touched the stuff. Ryan was the opposite: He ’d started drinking as a kid even younger than his son was now, had been a hard-partying hell-raiser for years, and was well on his way, in his younger brother’s humble opinion, to winding up just like their dad. Only maybe not as mean. Scott hoped. “Look, your dad’s a good guy, but he’s made some bad choices, as he ’d be the first to tell you, and nearly every one of them that I’m aware of happened because he was drinking.”
“Like losing his job.”
Until three years ago, Ryan had been a manager of a chain of local Jiffy Lubes. Decent pay, good benefits, nine to five, five days a week. Steady. When his marriage had started going south, he’d started drinking heavily, which had eventually led to his getting fired. Undoubtedly it had been traumatic for the kid.
“Yep.”
“Like my mom’s divorcing him.”
Okay, Scott didn’t want to go there. He didn’t really know all the ins and outs of that, and he didn’t want to. But he had little doubt that Ryan’s drinking had something to do with it.
“I’d say it was a contributing factor.”
“Like them having me.”
Ah, shit. He could see from Chase ’s face that this was sensitive psychological stuff that he didn’t have a clue how to deal with.
“I don’t know about that.” Okay, maybe that was a little bit of a cop-out. He tried again. “But I do know both your parents love you a whole lot.”
Chase looked revolted. Scott didn’t blame him. The uncle he barely knew talking about the parents who were pretty much missing in action loving him had to sound lame at the very least.
“Look, I promise I’ll never drink another beer or smoke another joint as long as I live, okay? So, can I go now?”
Scott believed Chase’s promise just about as much as he believed there would be snow on the ground in the morning, but there didn’t seem to be much point in beating the subject to death. This was something he was going to have to take up with Ryan—when he was sober. Which brought up another problem. Actually, a slew of other problems. Starting with, where to take the kid?
“We’ve established your dad ’s passed out on the floor, so I can’t take you to his apartment. Where’s your mother?”
“Oh, didn’t you know? She got married last week. She ’s off on her honeymoon.” The way Chase said that last word was downright savage. “They’re going to be moving to Cincinnati, where Don—that’s her new husband—has a job. I already told her I’m staying with my dad.”
Well, that explained Ryan’s bender. He’d always hoped to get back with Gayle. Way to go, brother.
“Hmm,” Scott said, temporarily at a standstill.
Chase scowled at him. “Anyway, what do you mean ‘take me’? I drove myself here. I can drive myself home.”
“Yeah. No. No more driving without a driver’s license, you hear me? Number one, you get caught and you’ll be in a whole heap of trouble you’d rather not be in. Plus, you won’t be able to get your license until you’re eighteen. Wait a few months, and you can drive as legally as anyone else.” Scott didn’t bother to try to determine if that was making a dent. “You can spend the night with me tonight, and I’ll take you home in the morning.”
“I have to get the truck home before my dad wakes up.”
The look that accompanied that said volumes. First, Ryan had no idea that his son drove his truck—good to know—and second, Chase, under certain conditions, was afraid of his father.
Something else to take up with Ryan.
Christ in heaven, why didn’t I just keep driving?
“Here ’s the situation: We ’ve got two vehicles here and only one of us has a driver’s license. That would be me.”
He supposed he could drive Chase, in the truck, to his apartment, where the kid could spend the night, then take him, again in the truck, over to Ryan’s early in the morning. Which meant he’d have to get a taxi or some other ride to work—problematic but doable. Which also left his car here at his father’s house, which left him without wheels until he could get back out here to pick it up. Scott thought of his upcoming day again. Not so doable.
“I can’t go home without that truck.” For the first time, panic was there in Chase’s voice.
Scott frowned. This was something he wasn’t going to be able to avoid, he could see. “You afraid of your dad?”
“If he finds out I took his truck? Hell, yeah.”
“What will he do to you?”
Chase folded his arms over his chest. “Kick my ass. What do you think?”
Another conversation he needed to have with Ryan. At this rate, he and his brother were going to be talking more in the next twenty-four hours than they had in years.
Something to look forward to.
“How about if I come in with you and explain the situation to him?” Scott asked.
Chase looked at him in undisguised horror. “You’re not going to tell him about this, are you? You said you weren’t going to tell any parents.”
Yeah, but your parent is my brother, he thought, but didn’t say it.
A workable solution to the transportation difficulty had just presented itself to Scott. Lisa was without a car. He and Chase could spend the night in the farmhouse, and Lisa, driving his car, could follow them into town in the morning. He could drop Chase and the truck off at Ryan’s and then drive Lisa on to work. It involved more contact with her than was probably good for him, but it solved everybody’s immediate problem. Of course, if Ryan happened to wake up before morning and realized that his truck and son were missing, Chase was basically toast. B
ut Scott wasn’t too worried about that. From long experience with their dad, he figured that Ryan, drunk, would sleep like the dead for hours.
“Okay, I’ve got it figured out. You and I are going to spend the night here. In the morning, a friend of mine who lives nearby will follow us into town, driving my car. I drop you and the truck off at your apartment, then go on to work in my car.” A glance at his watch told him that it was almost eleven-thirty, too late to call Lisa and apprise her of this change in plans. Well, he’d tell her when he drove the car down in the morning. He couldn’t see any reason she ’d object to it. Not even to piss him off.
“And you won’t tell my dad about any of this, right?” Chase gave him a hard stare. Only if Scott looked closely could he see the anxiety beneath it.
Scott sighed.
“I’m thinking about it,” he said. He was dog-tired and hungry enough to eat just about anything the old man had in the refrigerator. He headed toward the kitchen, which was dark except for the faint light from the rising moon that poured in through the window over the sink. One of the kids must have turned the light off after disposing of the beer. Scott flipped it on again, and the overhead fluorescent fixture gave a buzz like an angry wasp as it blinked its way toward full illumination.
“You hungry?” he asked over his shoulder.
“You got to promise me you won’t tell my dad.” Chase followed him.
The small room was still as ugly as ever. The same scarred green Formica countertops above mustard-yellow cabinets that matched the walls, an old gas stove, a chipped white sink, and the folding card table that had always served as a kitchen table standing in the middle of the floor. Only the stainless-steel refrigerator with ice and water dispensers was new. It had been Scott ’s gift to the old man to replace the one that had died, which had stood in the kitchen since Scott had been a boy. He only hoped there was something edible in it.
“Your dad’s my brother. I don’t feel right about keeping this from him.” Scott opened the refrigerator door as Chase, obviously appalled, went off on a rant that boiled down to the universal teenage lament of That’s not fair, to which he half listened. As he would have expected, the shelves were stocked with beer, with a couple of wine coolers and a bottle each of vodka and gin thrown in. Food consisted of some leftover pizza—no telling how old it was—some tuna or chicken salad in a Saran Wrap-covered bowl that looked old, too, maybe half a package of sliced bacon, and some eggs.
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