A shadow falls across my arm. I look up and Luke smiles.
“Did you come out here to cheer me on?”
“No.” Can’t. Think. “I was just here with some friends. I’m leaving.” I continue my walk, my face red. He’d better not think I was checking him out.
“Bella—wait.” Luke runs toward me. “Have you found anything else?”
Just my totally buff editor glistening with sweat. “Er, no. You?”
He lifts up a Gatorade bottle and drinks. “Did some research and found out the lake cabin does belong to Coach Dallas.”
“How’d you get that information, Detective Sullivan? Did you break into his office? Hack his computer?”
He wipes the moisture from his brow. “Googled the address. Much more legal.”
Oh. How unimaginative.
“Now we just have to find out how Carson Penturf ’s suicide and Zach Epps’s wreck are all connected to what I’ve overheard lately.”
“If they’re connected.”
“You know they are, Luke. What does your reporter’s gut tell you?” You know, the one beneath your six-pack abs.
He slowly nods. “They’re related. Just not sure how.”
“We have to get more information somehow. And your idea to have me be a glorified waitress at the football games isn’t cutting it.”
Plus I broke a few nails. So not cool.
Luke’s tanned fingers tap a rhythm on the bottle as his mind works. “Find out from Matt if there’s a party this Thursday night. If so, you have to get an invitation.”
“Okay.” If my mom will even let me go.
“And why don’t you pay Kelsey Anderson a visit?”
“She’s hardly ever at school.”
“You know where she spends her time, Bella.”
I shudder with dread but know the girl could be a source of more information. “I’ll go see her tomorrow night.”
Across the field the whistle blows again, and Luke’s teammates reassemble.
“See you tomorrow. Oh, and, Bella?” He flashes me a wicked grin. “Good luck with your boyfriend.”
chapter twenty-nine
You want me to do what?”
On Monday I sit beside my mother at Sugar’s as Dolly slams down a mug and pours herself a shot of Folgers.
“Cater Jake’s party. It will be a fairly small affair at the house.”
My mom fills a shaker with salt.
Dolly arches an eyebrow. “Who will be there?”
“Jake, some other wrestlers in the amateur circuit, a few select people from the media, and the family.”
Dolly juts out a hip and parks her hand on it. “And?”
My mother blinks rapidly, a sure sign she’s withholding information. “And a few other random people I’ve invited. Can’t remember who.”
“Jillian Finley, I am not going to cook up a spread for the likes of Mickey Patrick.”
“I need your help. I don’t know how to cook. I can’t even manage to squeeze cheese on Triscuits.”
“It’s true,” I say. “She can’t.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to help you. It’s about . . .”
“Dolly, I think you need to—shoot, there’s old man Hodges holding up his coffee cup again. That man’s going to run my legs off.”
Mom bustles away to check on her customer, leaving Dolly, me, and a few questions I’m dying to have answered.
“None of your business.”
I blink at Dolly’s tone. “What? I didn’t say anything.”
She smacks her gum and runs a fingernail through her teased hair. “You were going to. I saw it in your eyes.”
“Come on, tell me what happened with you and your ex-husband. I mean, if the guy’s a jerk, then maybe my stepdad doesn’t need to be working with him.”
She takes a rag and begins scrubbing the counter with a fury.
“He left me, that’s what.”
“For another woman? Is that what bonded you to my mom so quickly? You know she totally relates to that.”
“No, he didn’t leave me for another woman. Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
“Oh, shoot. I do.” I sling my purse over my shoulder. “But we’re not through discussing this.”
When I pull into the parking spot at Truman Manors nursing home, dread expands in my stomach like a balloon on helium. I turn off the key then rest my head on the steering wheel and offer up a small prayer for fortitude. I do not want to go in there. I don’t want to see old people in the last stages of their lives. I don’t want to inhale the smell that could only belong to a nursing home. And most importantly, I do not want to discuss the football team with Kelsey over Zach’s lifeless body.
Five minutes later, I finally talk myself out of the car and into the lobby. On each side of me are seating areas and big-screen TVs.
On my right is a glass case that houses ten or so chirping birds.
Trapped and on display. Is this supposed to cheer the residents up?
It makes me want to grab a fire extinguisher, bust through the glass, and yell, “Fly away, birds! Go! Go!”
I turn my head from the captive pets and focus on the other side.
And there sits Luke, playing checkers with an elderly man.
“And that’s the game! I win again.” The man holds out a wrinkled hand and Luke places cash in it. “You want to play another one?”
Luke sees me and stands up. “No, you cleaned me out, Mr. Murphy.”
“You can’t handle this, can you?”
“Nope.” Luke laughs and ambles to my side.
“When you’re man enough to face me again, I’ll be waiting.”
“See you next week, Mr. Murphy.” Luke places his hand at the small of my back and leads me through the lobby and past the nurses’ station.
“What are you doing here?”
He shrugs an arrogant shoulder. “Waiting on you.”
“Really? Because it sounded to me like you’re a regular here.”
“I don’t know what that man’s talking about.” Luke taps his temple. “He’s a bit senile.”
I punch his shoulder. “Luke Sullivan, you do have a heart.”
“Tell anyone and I’ll kick you out of the class and send you to—”
“Tire Changing 101?”
I follow him down a hall, passing door after door. Some rooms I have to look away. The residents remind me too much of the trapped birds. Some sit alone in their rooms, empty eyes staring at flashing TV screens. Others yell and call out in barely decipherable words.
“It’s not easy being here, is it?” Luke stops before room 202.
I shake my head. “Is this his room?” Unlike the others, this door is closed.
“This is it. Are we ready?”
“You’re going with me?”
“Of course.” His head tilts and his voice lowers. “You didn’t think I’d let you go alone, did you?”
“Because you don’t trust me to get the information?”
He opens his mouth, pauses, then starts again. “Let’s just do this.”
Luke knocks softly, then pushes on the door.
Kelsey sits in a chair shoved next to the bed. The bed where her boyfriend lies, unmoving, with machines pumping and tubes weaving a pattern around him. I swallow hard.
She looks up from her vigil. “Hi, Luke.” Her pale eyes dim a little as I step out from behind him.
“I brought you some snacks.” Luke reaches into his messenger bag and pulls out some crackers and a bottle of water. “Nurse Betty at the front desk said you’ve been forgetting to eat lately.”
She takes the food and manages a smile. “His color’s good today, isn’t it? He looks kind of peaceful.”
My eyes are drawn to Zach, who looks anything but peaceful.
“Kelsey, I have a favor to ask,” Luke says as I sit down in a vacant chair. “I know this is the last thing you want to talk about, but Bella and I have reason to believe that any information you can give
us about Zach’s wreck would be helpful to something we’re working on.”
She bites into a cracker. “Are you gonna tell me what this is about?”
Luke sighs. “No.”
Seconds pass, the only sound being the push and pull of Zach’s ventilator.
Kelsey considers her fingernails for a moment. “Okay.” She reaches for her water bottle. “What do you want to know?”
Luke doesn’t hesitate. “Why do you think Zach didn’t let you go to the last few parties with him?”
She stares at her boyfriend and smoothes a piece of hair from his cheek. “I don’t know. I guess I’ll never know.”
Luke sits on the arm of my chair. “Which players was Zach closest to?”
“That was kind of odd last year. He was always best friends with Budge.” She looks directly at me. “Your stepbrother and Zach were inseparable. But during the fall semester Zach and Budge just went their separate ways. Zach started spending more and more time with the team. He mostly hung around Dante and that guy who got suspended this year—”
“Reggie Lee,” Luke supplies.
“Yeah . . . Sometimes he hung around Jared Campbell. There were some others.”
“These parties—were they at a cabin?”
She shrugs at Luke’s question. “A few—they’d change up the location I think.”
“Did he ever mention anything unusual going on there?” I ask.
“No. He got really tight-lipped about their get-togethers in the end. Said I would’ve just been bored, that they were just talking football and planning for the next night’s game.”
“Why would they drink the night before a game?” I wonder aloud. “If they are all so obsessed with winning, how stupid is that to wake up on game day with a hangover?”
“Did you see anybody drunk out there?” Luke lifts a dark brow.
“I didn’t see any signs of people getting hammered. At least not the players.”
Kelsey stretches her back and yawns. “I remember the last few parties I went to, Zach would drink a single beer. It was so unlike him. His daddy’s a drunk, so Zach couldn’t stand alcohol much. And when I’d ask him why he was drinking, he’d say, ‘Liquid encouragement,’ like he needed bolstering or something.”
“Encouragement for what?” Luke asks.
“I don’t know.”
“You mentioned that you had asked a lot of questions, Kelsey.” I lean around Luke and catch the fading scent of his cologne. “What sorts of things didn’t add up to you?”
“His car. The fact that he was driving it so fast—and so crazy.
That wasn’t Zach at all. He loved that Camaro. It was his baby.
Washed it every Sunday by hand. He didn’t use it like a hot rod. He was always so careful with it.”
“It’s only natural to want to show off at least once if you have a car like that—see how fast she’ll go.”
“Not Zach. He was fanatical about that car. Wouldn’t let anyone else drive it. He wouldn’t have done anything that might’ve so much as put a scratch on it.”
“Accidents happen,” I say.
Luke twists around. “But the police report says that some of the players witnessed Zach bragging about his car. Said he wanted to prove what it could do.”
“He was at one of those parties. The guys denied it was a party to the police, but that’s what it was. Zach hadn’t let me go. When the police checked out the scene, everyone had cleared out. Only a few of the guys remained, like they were just hanging out for the evening or something. Reggie told the police that Zach left, tires squealing, his engine roaring. Reggie said they tried to talk him out of it. It was raining that night.” She shudders. “So dangerous. And stupid.”
I take a deep breath and try to align the facts. “Kelsey, I understand your reservations, but as someone who’s not as close to the situation, it kind of all makes sense. It was an unfortunate accident, but it sounds like your boyfriend just overdid it and lost control of the car. What’s suspicious about that?”
“Nothing.” She runs a hand over her tired face. “But the phone call certainly was.”
Luke sits up straighter. “Call?”
Kelsey’s hand begins to tremble. “Zach called me from the car— during that joyride. He was panicked, talking nonsense. He kept saying, ‘I didn’t want to do it. He made me do it. He made me.’ Told me he couldn’t see a thing, and if he scratched the paint his dad would kill him. Then he said something I’ll never forget.”
Kelsey sits down on the bed beside her boyfriend. I hold my breath and wait for her to speak.
“He said, ‘Stupid coach’s son. Trying to make us into something we’re not.’” The tears flow freely down her cheeks. “Then I heard it. The crash.” Her voice gains in intensity, grows stronger. “You find out what happened. The police wouldn’t listen to me. And every time I tried to talk to the players, they’d tell me to let it die. Something isn’t right here, Luke. Something happened that night, before the wreck.” She chokes on tears.
Luke goes to her and wraps her in his arms. “We’ll find out what happened.” He rests his head on hers, and his eyes lock with mine. “And I think our Coach Dallas is the guy with all the answers.”
chapter thirty
By Wednesday morning, Luke’s kinder alter ego is as dead as my MasterCard.
“Absolutely not.”
“Why?” I ask him for the tenth time. My temples pound with a stress headache that Tylenol can’t touch. The only prescription is Luke getting out of my face. “We need answers.”
“You are not going to ask Jared Campbell if he knows his stepbrother is evil.”
Okay, so it doesn’t sound so good coming out of Luke’s mouth, but in my head it made a lot of sense. Jared’s so nice, so innocently naïve. I really think he’d tell me if he knew Coach Dallas was up to no good.
“What did the coach possibly stand to gain by pressuring Zach to drag race his car?” Luke taps his pencil to his chin.
“Maybe when he was in high school a girl stomped on his heart, cheated on him, and the other guy drove a Camaro. And so he wants to see all of them turned into scrap metal.”
“This is not some low-budget horror movie we’re working with here.”
“It could happen,” I mumble.
“Have you talked to your stepbrother? Does he know anything?”
“Budge won’t even talk to me about it. For that matter, he won’t talk to me, period.” Which would be a total gift from the heavens if I didn’t need information concerning his former best friend.
“What about Reggie Lee? Kelsey said he gave a statement to the police about Zach on the night of the accident. We need to work on that angle.”
“I heard he moved out of town. When are we ever going to see him?”
“He still goes to my church sometimes. We could talk to him Sunday.”
“If he’s there.” I sit on the table and swing my legs, admiring my last new pair of Michael Kors flip-flops. “Sounds like a long shot. We need to be more aggressive than that.”
The bell rings, and I hop down.
“Bella, leave the aggressive stuff to me.”
My heart quirks in my chest. I may not like this guy, but that sounded so hot. “Um . . .” Focus, focus. “What?”
His eyes sear through mine. “Your days of taking off alone to trail some guys into the woods are over. No more careless moves.
We work together on this or I pull you from the story.”
My headache pushes tight on my skull. “I don’t need you to watch out for me, Luke. I can take care of myself.”
“Yeah, okay, whatever. Think about me saving you in the woods.”
Strangely enough, I do. A lot.
“If you go and do something rash, not only will you get hurt or in trouble, but you’ll get the paper in trouble.”
“Oh, right.” My heart sinks a bit. “Wouldn’t want you worrying over your paper.”
He stands up, planting both palms on the tabl
e. “It’s not just that—it’s . . .”
“Yes?” I lean in.
“The more we find out, the more I’m convinced the people involved in this could be dangerous. It would have to take a lot of intimidation for somebody like Zach Epps to cave in to peer pressure.”
At lunch I sit beside Lindy, with a sullen and silent Matt across from us. Neither one of them says a word. The tension is thicker than cafeteria gravy.
“So . . .” I sprinkle sugar into my tea. This stuff grows on a person. “FCA was good this morning, eh? I liked what the speaker said about forgiveness and accepting others as they are.”
Matt glares over his sandwich. “I’ve heard better messages.”
“Yeah,” Lindy adds. “And the donuts were stale.”
“Um, Matt, I was wondering if there was another party this Thursday. I had fun dancing. Meeting people.” Not to mention eating Fritos and following people into the woods.
“I’d like to go too.”
Eating stops as we stare at Lindy.
“I would. I have a new outfit and there’s someone that I want to see it. I think he’ll be there.” She giggles as she waves to a few guys across the cafeteria.
Oh no. I’ve created a monster. A flirting, party-going, man-eating monster. While I encouraged this in the beginning, it’s not natural for Lindy. It’s like asking the football team to wear tutus. Not a good combo.
“Who’s this guy you like, Lindy? Just tell me. You used to tell me everything.”
She bites into her salad and smiles coyly. “One guy?” She spears a tomato. “I have a few options I’m pursuing, actually. And things are going . . . really well.”
Matt looks to me for confirmation. I stretch my cheeks into a stiff smile.
“I’m not going Thursday night, so I guess you’ll have to scope out your guys somewhere else.”
Lindy cuts him a dirty look. “You’re just trying to keep me away from the party.”
“Like I care if you’re going. You do whatever you want, but I won’t be there.” He grabs his tray and stomps away.
I grasp a piece of my hair and inspect the ends. “That went well.”
“Bella, it’s not going well. This wasn’t part of the plan.”
A Charmed Life Page 19