by Etta Faire
The wind blew his thick dark hair as he talked. “Think about it, Carly. Why would Meg bring a gun to a search party? Why are they putting together this task force to find Bobby in the first place? Are they really so concerned for Shelby? Or, are they doing a little bear hunting?”
I felt my face lose its color. “I…I… didn’t think about that.”
“Really? Because from my perspective, it looks like you sure took a blind’s eye to some obvious things. Maybe you’ve got some secrets too,” he said, turning on his heel to go inside. He paused at the door. “That wasn’t me out there. But it does sound like a shifter, which means this is serious, and that was a warning.”
Walking out to my car, I was more certain than ever that the members of group two had been the ones in the back of George’s barbershop the afternoon he got pecked.
Why had they practically insisted on me being a part of their group, though?
Whatever “serious” stuff was going on between the shifters, I didn’t want any part of it. I needed to take back control of my life, in more ways than one.
And I was about to start at my house.
Chapter 25
Power
Rex greeted me as soon as I got home, whimpering and pushing his nose into my hand. I cuddled my face into his golden fur and stroked his chin. He seemed different. Depressed, maybe.
I gave him an extra dollop of his favorite food, and warmed it in the microwave, but he didn’t even stare at me longingly like he usually does as he holds in his drool. He looked off around the room, like he didn’t care or even notice there was an extra dollop.
“It’s okay, buddy. I know you miss Jackson. We’re going to get our problems solved today.”
He threw me a hopeful, but doubtful, glance.
I could tell things were changing for him too. Jackson wasn’t here, and I had no idea how my “guest” was treating him.
This fueled my fire more than getting my ex back. Nobody messes with my dog. I kept my breathing calm, though, and my thoughts neutral, mostly because I was pretty sure my own hatred toward Feldman was somehow feeding him an extra dollop of undue power around here.
I turned my phone off and gently placed it on the settee with the bike helmet I was almost certain I was never going to need again.
This was it. I was taking back control. And I didn’t need alarms or protection to do it.
It was evening, but the room seemed darker than usual, the air thick with the seething ghost I’d been channeling with. I could almost smell a faint tinge of sulphur coming from off the walls.
I pictured it lighter, airier, earthier. And I pictured myself indifferent to the fact he was making my house his home. He was merely a pest that I needed to get rid of.
“Feldman,” I said. My voice was stern but even-keeled and powerful.
I was definitely going for powerful.
He didn’t show himself. But it didn’t matter. I sat down on the couch and closed my eyes, drawing the force I knew was here into me.
This was my new way of channeling. This was me, in control. It didn’t take long, which I refused to see as either a good sign or a bad one. I was going to curtail my usual anxious thoughts. I was in control.
But I also wasn’t the least bit surprised when the sound of my clock clicking rhythmically in the background morphed into the clinking glasses and the smell of alcohol and burnt chicken, the exact spot we’d left off at.
I opened my eyes. The dark-haired, gorgeous man I knew as Chance stood by the bar, pouring a beer from the tap. “Are we playing cards or what?” he asked.
Jazz music played in the background. Doc, the ashen-colored “physician” who looked about 60 but I knew was really in his early 40s, staggered to the poker table, his glasses still askew from when Terry pushed him in the hallway. With a shaky hand, he poured himself a whiskey from the bottle by his stack of chips. He teetered as he poured, swaying with what looked like the kind of rational mind that knew it was time to stop drinking, but also wanted “just one more” to maintain the high. And why not? He owned the place now. He could drink all he wanted.
Even though he seemed too drunk to murder someone and get away with it successfully, I couldn’t count anyone out of this equation. Plus, the murderer hadn’t gotten away with it. It was just that no one at the speakeasy had reported it, or mentioned it ever again.
What could’ve motivated the witnesses to do that? To wipe up fingerprints and blood, and hide something so awful to someone they supposedly loved? I quickly ran the scenarios in my head.
Maybe when everyone woke up, they found Feldman dead under the table. And each person knew it had to be one of them who’d done it. That sense of being snowed in, trapped in an old pharmacy with a murderer, not knowing which one of them it was, must’ve been terrifying. Straight out of a horror movie. Or, maybe they’d all done it, Julius Caesar style. Feldman’s ghost probably would have remembered that last one.
Snow had completely covered the only window in the basement, making it unusually dim in the room despite all the lamps.
Fortunately, Feldman glanced by the clock on the back wall and I slowed the memory down enough to read it. 12:15. It wouldn’t be long before this was over.
“I think we should call it a night,” Feldman said. “We’ve got all weekend to lose our money. We’re snowed in.” He turned to Drew and pointed toward the hall. “Do you want to make up the extra beds, babe? The cots upstairs too?”
“Sure,” she said, leaving down the hall to do it.
“I’ll help you, Drewsie,” Richie said, and Feldman eyed him suspiciously.
“I bet you will,” Doc replied.
“Shut-up, Doc,” Richie yelled back, leaving with Drew who was busy telling Richie to never call her that again.
“That name stayed in the orphanage,” she said, curtly.
I listened to the thoughts going on in Feldman’s head at the time of the memory.
Richie thinks I don’t know. Everybody knows he’s got a thing for Drew and always has. A thing for Doc’s wife too. It’s cause he can’t get his own girl. That’s why. They’d all rather shrivel and die than be with him.
Chance paced at the back of the room, spilling his beer as he did. “You all cheat and take my money then you want to quit and go to sleep.” His speech was slurred.
“Nobody cheats,” Feldman said.
Chance’s face was red now. He looked all around the bar, but stopped his attention on Flo, pointing at her. “You. You especially. You can’t go to sleep. You have everyone’s money and I felt it. Right before we took that stupid break, I was on an upswing. You just want to kill my good luck.”
“It only felt like your luck was changing because you bought back in,” she replied, crossing her legs and blowing smoke high above her face. “But I’ll stay up as long as you want, darling.” She looked him in the eye then glanced down at the stack of chips sitting in front of his seat. “I might like that stack too.”
“Cheating sack of…”
Terry stumbled his way over to Chance and, on tiptoes, got right up in his face. “Don’t talk to her like that. In fact, don’t talk to her at all. Don’t look at her. Don’t think about her.” Chance was a lot bigger and thicker than Terry, but something told me Terry could hold his own in a fight.
“Have another drink on Doc, why dontcha?” Chance said. “Drunk piece of crap.”
Terry turned toward Doc. “What’s he talking about?”
Feldman gulped down the shot in front of him and shook his head at Doc. “You told your handyman about our deal?”
“Yeah, so?”
“So, I thought we agreed I’d make a formal announcement this weekend.”
“What deal?” Terry said to his brother. “What’s everyone talking about, Feld? Am I the last to know something?”
No one said a word, so Terry rushed over to Doc, who was sitting at the table, and curled his hand into the front of the small man’s shirt. He yanked him to his feet, practically
choking him. “Tell me or I’m beating the crap out of you.”
“The hell you will,” Chance replied, knocking over a chair to get to the men.
Flo leaned back and watched as her boyfriend raised his fist to an inch of Doc’s face.
“Just give me a reason to beat the crap out of you both,” Terry said. “Is Chance your goon? Your bodyguard? I can take him.”
Doc coughed from beside him. His face turned a different shade of ashen blue.
Pouring another shot, Feldman added, “Let him go, Ter. I sold the bar to Doc.”
“You what?”
“For you. I did it for you.”
“You sold the bar for me?” Terry let go of Doc’s shirt and Doc fell over, relieved, gasping for air.
Terry strolled over to Feldman, smiling. As soon as he got to us, he punched us right in the nose. No warning, no words. A stinging sensation rang through my face, and I felt a little drip fall from my nostril and onto my upper lip, probably blood.
Terry raised his fist like he was going to do it again, but this time Feldman was prepared.
He blocked his brother’s punch and sent one swinging himself. The side of our fist landed squarely along Terry’s jaw, making my hand sting. It was the kind of hit you knew was going to hurt both of you for a while.
Terry landed on the side of the table first, toppling it over, sending chips and drinks falling. A glass broke and Doc got up and moved away from Terry’s limp body laying on the floor in front of him.
“I think we’ve all had enough for tonight,” Doc said, finally adjusting his glasses. “We need to talk, Feldman.”
Chance laughed. “How we gonna settle up? Because the chips are down, and I think I was up.”
“We’ll figure it out tomorrow.” Feldman’s fist still stung. He shook it out then pointed to the floor where his brother lay unconscious. “Take him to one of the back rooms, will ya?” he said to Boyd and Chance, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his nose.
Boyd shook his head. “I can’t believe you did that.” He grabbed Terry’s arms while Chance took his legs. “And not this. Terry had it coming. I mean I can’t believe you sold the bar.”
“Ah, you’ll get over it or you won’t,” Feldman replied. “Either way, my days here are done. I am the proud owner of an art studio now. I’m investing in a great local artist.”
Chance looked down at the lifeless man he was helping to carry. “Who, this guy? What a great investment.”
Drew and Richie raced into the bar area. “What in the world was that noise?” she asked. “Sounded like the roof caved in.”
“I’ll tell you later,” Feldman said. “Mr. Hyde reared his ugly head again.”
Drew nodded as she and Richie walked over to him, but her eyes lingered on Feldman’s nose, making him feel self-conscious. “Put Terry in the green room,” she said to Boyd and Chance, her eyes still on Feldman’s nose. “Blanche is sleeping in the blue one.”
Flo followed the men out with her boyfriend. The side of Terry’s face was already forming a black-and-purple swollen bruise.
“Like I said before, everything has its price,” Flo said as she sashayed past us and over to the hall. “Sometimes, you pay with your face.”
Drew and Richie stared at Feldman for a full thirty seconds before he said anything.
“Okay, I’m selling the bar,” he finally admitted, lifting the table and setting it upright again. His nose still stung and he dabbed at it with his handkerchief. “Terry found out and we got into it…”
Richie pushed Feldman away from the table. His beady eyes were already reddening. “I heard you might be thinkin’ about that, but I said, ‘No, Feldman would tell me.’”
Drew looked down at her feet. “We’ll talk about this later,” she said, walking away.
Richie wasn’t done. He shoved Feldman against the table. “Who you selling the bar to, Felds? Cause the only one here able to buy it is the only one here who would be very bad for business.”
“For your business,” Doc said. Richie took a step toward him and Doc backed away.
Feldman waved them both off. “I’m gonna go check on my brother. You guys’ll work out a deal, I’m sure.”
“I’m sure we will too,” Richie said. “Or this place is toast. And I am not one to be messed with. I got people everywhere. So many connections on so many levels. They’ll do anything I want. Burn this place to the ground if I gave ‘em the go ahead.”
His voice faded out as Feldman passed into the hallway. Burn this place to the ground…
Richie’s own house had burned to the ground while he was in jail, a suspicious fire. I wondered now if he’d set it himself.
Boyd and Chance were coming out of the back room as Feldman was going in.
“Thanks for your help, fellas,” Flo said.
She was standing at the nightstand, tugging off her earrings. She ran a hand through her short blonde hair then, when she saw Feldman in the doorway, motioned toward the bloody lump in her bed. “Who could ever have guessed a drunk losing his free pass to drink would be so angry about it?”
Feldman bit back anger. “It’s better this way.”
“Never said it’s not. You just can’t be surprised, is all.” She pulled off her dress shoes next as Feldman stood watching her.
She walked toward him, one shoe off, one on. “I work better without an audience,” she said, closing the door. Before she closed it all the way, she stopped and pointed down the hall at the dent in the wall from the horse. The dent was still there but the horse was missing.
Feldman muttered curse words again.
“Anybody could’ve taken that thing while you were fighting with Terry,” she said. “Hell, Terry could’ve taken it before the fight, thinking it was funny. It’s one of those things in life you just have to laugh off.”
“Easy for you to say,” he said, looking her up and down.
“Nothing’s ever easy,” she said, closing the door.
It was dark in the club after I fast forwarded through much of Feldman’s memories. They were mostly of people staggering drunkly off to bed, and there wasn’t anything more with the horse after that. Apparently, after the fight, hiding a bank around the bar had lost its fun for whoever was doing it.
Doc and Feldman were the only two still up. We leaned against the bar. Most the lights were off, causing Doc’s face to take on a ghostly hue illuminated by the couple lamps dangling over our heads. He raised his glass. “To the dream,” he said. “May we all find it for ourselves someday.”
“Or die trying,” Feldman replied, raising his glass of beer and taking a sip. “It’s gonna be strange, coming here as a customer.”
“Don’t worry. You’re a good friend. I’ll only charge you double.” He took another slow sip off what was probably a gin and tonic and let it linger on his tongue before swallowing. “Please tell me you don’t regret selling.”
“No. It’s time for me to move on. Gonna help Terry find his dream, whether he likes it or not. The drunk bastard. He’s too young to give up like he’s doing.”
“And what about you? You gonna settle down?”
“I’m too old not to, I guess. Whatever settling down means. Pretty sure it means giving up.”
“You’re forty-two. You talk like you’re seventy-two.”
“And you talk like I’m twenty-two. It’s time for me to realize where I’m at in life. You’ll be better at runnin’ this joint than I ever was. Richie and Terry walked all over me. It’s hard to turn a profit when you’re as soft as a doormat.”
“And that’s what I wanted to discuss with you earlier,” Doc said. “Richie.”
Feldman shrugged and chugged his beer. “I’m sure you two will reach an understanding.”
“He hates me.” Doc drank slowly, savoring every moment. He squeezed the lime into his glass and swished it around. “He blames me for everything, you know? For you selling the bar. You should’ve heard him when you left. He accused me of black
mailing you into selling. Just because that’s what he’s capable of…”
Doc closed his eyes as he talked. He opened them again, but barely. They were little slits. “Every time he loses, he blames me. He blamed me for that horse race way back when. We all lost a bundle when you talked us out of betting on the favorite. But he blamed me. Blamed me for never having a date in high school, for failing algebra twice, because I wouldn’t let him cheat off me. And now, he blames me again. It’s always everyone’s fault but his own.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Feldman said. I could tell our eyes were getting heavier too.
“I think I need to do something drastic.” Doc said. “Something big, to show that awful dick I will not be trifled with.”
Feldman laughed. “Go to bed, Doc. We’ll figure it out.”
“Something very, very ruthless and unsettling,” he said then staggered off toward the hall. “But I’m certainly not paying for police protection. Not from that guy. I told you to make sure he knew that before I bought the bar.”
“Blue room,” Feldman reminded him. “Blanche is waiting in the blue room.”
He staggered into the doorway before making it to the hall. And I realized, through Feldman’s blurry vision, that the drink we just had was likely drugged.
Chapter 26
You Gamble. You Lose
I fast-forwarded through his memories just a bit, past him finishing the beer and staggering around, picking things up while he muttered to himself that he wasn’t the maid around here.
It was much easier now that I was in control. That I pictured Feldman’s memories as nothing more than the pages of a textbook that I could skim through for the most relevant parts.
I stopped and rewound when I realized Feldman had just mindlessly picked up a book from the floor by the bar.
He was laughing that he wouldn’t have to pick up after drunken jerks anymore. His days of bartending, serving, and cleaning were done.