“It’s not so bad,” Mitch stated. “You guys should’ve worn a costume.”
But Raine had a better notion. “See that woman over there wearing the Dolly Parton get-up.” She waved them in the direction of Charlotte. “You guys should get over there and stand in line to have your faces painted.”
“Get real,” Jenkins stated. “Where’s the beer?”
Mitch thumbed a hand toward his dad wearing jeans and a T-shirt. “He brought his grill around from the backyard to dish up homemade chili and hot dogs. He’s guarding the cooler though and checking ID. That might mean Prentiss has to settle for a soft drink.”
“I turn twenty-one in two weeks,” Prentiss said in protest.
Mitch slapped his youngest crewmember on the back. “I’m just kidding. But know in advance my dad believes Pabst Blue Ribbon is the only beer worth drinking at an outdoor cookout.”
Prentiss stared at the zombie-like creatures, also known as Anniston and Garret. “Their makeup looks like the real deal. It’s pretty cool.”
Raine couldn’t help it. She took the young guy by the hand and led him over to Charlotte. “Come on, live a little. Let her paint your face to look like that. Become a zombie for the night and roam the yard looking for flesh to eat. Or in this case gooey globs of devil’s food cupcakes topped with pink icing, laced with strawberry jam made to look like brains.”
Prentiss laughed. “Okay. I’ll give it a try.”
Raine made introductions and left the two figuring out the best shade of ghoul for the creepiest flesh.
Tessa and Jackson had donned pirate outfits in black pants, hats with bandanas, and eye patches. They went around challenging all takers to a sword fight.
“Livvy would’ve loved this,” Lenore declared. Garbed in a red and gold queen outfit, she scooped up a handful of mini chocolate bars and added it to a little boy’s bag who was decked out like a Lego block. “For the first time since that day in September I feel like she and the kids are right here, looking down on us, enjoying the party.”
Sebastian sauntered over with a vampire on his arm. Dominka sizzled in a tight silver and black dress with a red corset lace-up front and six-inch spiked platinum heels. Showing plenty of cleavage and displaying a pair of fangs over her incisors, she was a cross between a vixen and a creature of the night.
“How’d y’all pull this together so fast?” Sebastian asked Mitch.
“Give Raine one little suggestion and she’ll take it to the next level. She wanted to make sure my mom didn’t sit around tonight and mope.”
“I’m pretty sure she nailed it. You know, Paul Briggs is knocking heads together trying to figure out where that group of assholes went.” He slapped Mitch on the back. “I noticed this morning you didn’t let on you knew.”
“Why should I?” Mitch stated. “I’m not obligated to tell him the whole bunch marshaled their forces on board the Patagonia Pike.”
Raine leaned in, lowered her voice. “We’re going after the gold. You know what that means.”
Sebastian wasn’t sure he did. “Duarte’s bound to get wind of where you head and follow.”
“We’re counting on it. If we aren’t ready to take on the Patagonia Pike now, we’ll never be,” Mitch explained.
“When do you plan to leave?” Sebastian wanted to know.
“Day after tomorrow.” Mitch wasn’t going to ruin the party by advocating Raine and the women stay behind for safety reasons. He knew that would create a different kind of skirmish, one he probably couldn’t win.
Intrigued with the idea of an old-fashioned battle at sea, Sebastian said, “I’d like to go with you.”
Dominka flexed her arm. “I go with you, too. I always wanted to be a fierce pirate and capture gold.”
Sebastian crossed his arms over his chest. “These guys on the Patagonia Pike are a little too dangerous to mess with, I’d prefer you stay here.”
“But I take care of myself,” Dominka insisted.
“No doubt you can. It’s nothing personal. I’m not in favor of Anniston going either.” Sebastian glanced at Raine. “Or any of the women for that matter.”
Mitch wasn’t about to step into that quagmire. Diplomatically, he pointed out, “We could use all the firepower available to us. But we still have a few things to take care of first, a good deal of work to do before we launch.”
“Like what?”
“Like getting into that safe deposit box.”
Raine had spent some time considering that. She was about to announce her grand plan when she looked up and spotted her mother getting out of a ten-year-old Cadillac Sedan Deville.
Freaking out at the sight, she seized Mitch’s arm in a death grip. “Oh no. What’s she doing here? She’s been drinking. She’ll ruin the party!”
Mitch felt Raine’s nails as he watched Marla march her way up the sidewalk, teetering on the brink of falling. “Try to intercept her. If you can, make a beeline for the backyard and I’ll meet you around there. Maybe no one will notice.”
“Fat chance of that.” Before Raine could divert her mother, Marla started shouting, “You’re trying to take Raine off island! It’s not going to happen!”
Raine managed to steer her to the side of the house and corner her there. But that’s as far as Marla would go. “I won’t stand around and let Mitch Indigo take you on one of those crazy jaunts he’s known for. I won’t stand for it! Do you hear me?” Marla shrieked.
“Hard not to hear you,” Raine hissed. “Lower your voice. Look around you. Could you drag yourself out of your own selfishness for once? There are a ton of kids here trying to have a good time. Stop making a scene. Now. You’re scaring them.”
“I’m trying to scare you,” Marla slurred. “I’m trying to keep you from ruining your life. What kind of mother would I be if I didn’t try to stop you from running off?”
Raine tightened her grip on Marla’s arm. “Listen to me. I’m not that eighteen-year-old girl afraid of you. He’s not ruining my life. Now calm down.”
Mitch appeared at Raine’s elbow. “How can I help?”
“Help me get her back to the car.”
“I won’t go. I’m staying right here until I talk some sense into your stupid head,” Marla vowed.
“Nice, Mom, real nice. You’re leaving if I have to drag you to the car kicking and screaming myself. Do you really want to make that kind of scene, here, now, in front of all these people?”
Trying to back up and change direction, Marla almost slipped and fell into the bed of scarlet and burnished marigolds. Instead of realizing her predicament, she pointed a shaky finger toward Mitch. “You almost ruined her life once. I won’t let you do it to her again!”
“This isn’t the time or the place for that,” Mitch chided.
Tanner came over to see what he could do. “We could scoop her up and throw her over a shoulder, carry her that way.”
“Sounds like a plan.” As Mitch fought Marla’s flailing arms, the idea of getting her off her feet didn’t seem feasible. “Just get her back to the car any way we can.”
“Did she drive over here like this?” Tanner asked.
With Mitch on one side and Tanner trailing, Raine steered her mother all the way down the side of the yard to the curb. “Yep. I don’t know how she managed to get that huge boat out of the garage without dinging the fender, but she did.”
“She can’t drive in this condition,” Tanner stated. “I’ll take her back.”
“No, I’ll do it,” Mitch offered.
Hearing that, Marla warned, “You keep away from my car!”
Once they finagled Marla’s weight into the backseat, Mitch got behind the wheel. “Why won’t you ever let Raine be happy,” he snarled as he started the engine and pulled away from the curb. “Can’t you see that she isn’t happy running the restaurant? It’s not who she is.”
“That isn’t for you to say.”
“You’re right, it’s for her to say by standing up to you after all these year
s. You always did favor Danny. It showed. Raine knew that even in school. And the teachers, the teachers were so enamored with Danny, too. She always heard about how Danny aced the algebra test or blew through basketball tryouts to make the team. Even back then, Raine pushed herself, hard, just like she does now to try to get your attention. But you never gave her the time of day no matter what she did.”
“Bullshit. You’re full of it, always have been. You don’t care about her, never have,” Marla charged.
“And you do? Think long and hard about what you want for her. As long as she shows up every day to work, you don’t much care about Raine. You want her to drop dead of a heart attack like her grandfather did? Don’t do that to her, Marla. Don’t.”
“You don’t tell me what to do or say, ‘Mr. I don’t stick around Indigo Key.’ My daughter is rooted here and no matter what you say or do, she’s obligated to stay and help me and her grandmother. That’s the way it works in our family. So just get that in your head, buddy boy. She’s not going anywhere.”
“We’ll see about that,” Mitch muttered as he pulled in front of the Cape Cod. After dragging her out of the car, he left the woman standing next to her front door, while costumed trick-or-treaters bypassed the hysterical Marla, who just wouldn’t shut up.
After walking back to Quay Avenue, Mitch stood on the sidewalk taking in the chaos on the front lawn. This had to be the very definition of suburbia, maybe even domesticity—decorating your house for a crazy holiday like Halloween, opening it up to neighbor kids, and then letting them run wild.
It was madness like this he’d avoided for the last dozen years or so.
Panic wanted to lodge in his windpipe so he couldn’t breathe. But then he caught sight of Raine in the middle of entertaining two little boys, brothers dressed up like Minions.
His heart felt like it fluttered out of his chest. He walked up behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist. “You’re the prettiest zombie here.”
“I’m sorry my mother ruined the party.”
“She didn’t ruin anything,” Mitch insisted. “She probably thinks she did, but she’d be wrong.”
The claim didn’t make Raine any less upset. But since there were so many people around she tried not to let it show on her face. “Not for lack of trying.”
“Does she do this kind of stuff often?”
Raine thought back to other times when she’d had to rescue Marla from an embarrassing tirade at the restaurant. “She’s always been high-strung. Danny was usually the only one who could talk her off the ledge.”
Mitch frowned. “That sounds a little psychotic.”
“More than,” Raine noted.
“Let’s go find a dark corner and make out,” Mitch suggested, nibbling a line down her jaw, trying to get her mind off her mother.
She bumped his shoulder. “In front of all these kids? Look at your mom. She’s having a blast, as much fun as they are.”
He glanced over to see his mother twirling in a circle with a cluster of girls decked out in blue and green mermaid outfits. “She needed this.”
“Yeah, she did.”
“Thanks for coming up with the idea.”
“I was happy to do it. Lenore is so different from my mother. Yours always manages to stay so grounded while mine exhibits a regular flair for drama. And that was long before Danny ever died. You shouldn’t take what happened tonight personally.”
“I don’t.”
“Good to know. Because if my mom can’t latch on to making some type of melodramatic statement about something, she’ll create it out of thin air. That’s what she did tonight. She was probably sitting at home feeling sorry for herself, scared I’d take off and leave her in the lurch.”
“We must’ve gone through twenty packages of hot dogs,” Tanner said, wandering over to where the couple stood. Knowing Raine was still embarrassed over her mother showing up, Tanner gave her a hug. “Don’t spend too much time fretting about tonight. By tomorrow no one will remember it.”
“It could’ve ruined the party.”
“But it didn’t. Just a little blimp on the radar screen. Life’s full of them. I want to thank you for helping put all this together. Lenore really had a blast. First time since Livvy and the kids died that she got her mind off everything and was able to have a little fun. You did that.”
Mitch looked around at all the trash. “It was fun until cleanup time rolled around.”
“Piece of cake,” Tanner boasted. “Toss it all in huge garbage bags and be done with it. We’ll have this wrapped up in no time.”
Prentiss and Blaine came over to show off their zombie faces.
“Thanks for having us over,” Prentiss said. “I had a nice time.”
“Did you have a beer?” Mitch asked.
“Your dad’s a stickler for dates.”
Mitch hooted with laughter. “Yeah, he is.”
Chapter Twenty-Four - Justice
November began with a rare storm that shoved through the Key, battering the skiffs and catamarans in the marina like they were no bigger than matchboxes. The wind and rain rocked the houseboat, but it was the roar of thunder that woke Raine.
She sat up, blinked, tried to get her eyes to adjust to the light. The Halloween party had gone on well after midnight. The decision to sleep late had seemed logical. But Mother Nature had other ideas.
Groggy-eyed, Mitch heard a phone ding somewhere in the room but ignored it.
Not Raine. She picked up the device and waved it around. “Anniston and Garret are watching a forensic team dig near the bridge.”
That had him rolling out of bed. “I’d like to go out there.”
“Feel free to see what it’s all about. But I think I’ll pass.”
“Come on, go with me, a few hours at least before you have to head to work. They won’t be pulling a body up during that time. It’ll take at least a day or two to locate any remains, if there are any out there at all.”
“Just what a girl wants to hear before breakfast.” But she saw this meant something to him. “Okay. Give me time to get dressed. But you’re buying me breakfast.”
“Will a bagel and coffee do?”
“Cheapskate,” she mumbled, dashing into the bathroom and closing the door.
“What, no coaxing you back to bed?”
Silence from the other side of the door.
Finally, after several long minutes, he heard her say, “It’s hard to feel sexy when my mother made an ass out of herself last night in front of a lot of people.”
Since they’d discussed Marla’s public intoxication until almost two, he decided to let the mood pass before addressing it again. With no other choice, he pulled on his jeans and T-shirt.
In the kitchen he put on coffee, toasted the bagels himself and without cream cheese anywhere in sight, opted to spread butter on the bread instead. Raine finally appeared but headed straight out to the deck without a word to him.
After finishing with the bagels, he dug out a jar of peppered pear jam from the fridge, grabbed two mugs of coffee, and piled everything on a wide turquoise tray. He carried it outside where Raine sat, staring out at the spatter of drizzle as it plopped on the water.
They sat in silence and watched the sun rise out of a bank of dark blue clouds, spreading its sunny beam across the harbor. Thunder rumbled again and shook the house, but the rain was already moving further east.
Raine sipped her coffee and spread jam on her crusty sesame seed breakfast bun. “Storm didn’t last.”
“Still spectacular though,” he noted over the rim of his cup. He could tell something whirred around in her head. But what came out of her mouth next caught him off guard.
“What’s it like being at sea during a storm? Is it scary?”
He studied her face before taking a sip of his coffee. It stirred him up that she would even bother to ask. And he wanted more than anything to be completely honest with her. “Sometimes. You’ve ridden out countless tropical depressions and hu
rricanes here. Storms are as much a part of island life as a seafaring sailor’s. You get used to the tantrums of Mother Nature and do your best to prepare for anything she throws your way. You follow your instrumentation, the best satellite weather radar available, and do the same thing a commercial jetliner does. You avoid towering walls of water, hurricane force winds, or sudden squalls that pop up from time to time.”
“Does all that precaution work?”
“Sure it works. I’m here, aren’t I?”
“I’ve never been to sea for long periods of time, just those day fishing trips we used to go on. Do you think I’d get seasick on a longer cruise?”
“Did the surf bother you back then?”
“No. Not really. It never has. I always considered myself a good sailor. And I live on the houseboat which rocks all the time. I don’t even think about the motion anymore.”
“Then you’d probably be fine. You were okay on the Patagonia Pike, right?”
She made a face. “That nausea was from the drug Sinclair gave me. I was fine by the time you took me aboard The Black Rum.”
“Then there’s your answer. When’s the last time you dived?”
She blew out a breath, nibbled on her bagel, thinking. “That would be last summer with Livvy.”
“Livvy?” That surprised him. “I didn’t even know she could dive at all, never bothered to learn when we were kids because she didn’t care that much for boats. She’d surf or snorkel in the bay all day long, but put her on a boat and she got seasick every time.”
“She did that day, too. It was my day off and Ally and Blake were with your mother. It was just the two of us. Apparently she’d taken lessons from Dave Oakerson’s bunch. Someone there taught her how to dive. She’d bought the gear and everything. That day she wanted to practice. So we loaded up everything in Walker’s boat and took it out for a short distance in Sugar Bay. Livvy upchucked almost immediately.”
“That sounds like her. Was she a good diver?”
The Indigo Brothers Trilogy Boxed Set Page 87