It was still light enough that I didn’t need to flip on the overheads and chance giving myself away, but late enough that the chestnut tree outside cast a blanket of shadow onto the front window, making it impossible for anyone passing by to see in. I remembered Hilary, Amelia and I gathering those chestnuts by the bagful when we were kids, polishing them to a glossy sheen and then trying to sell them door to door as wishing stones.
I stepped behind the counter in the front office and pulled open a small wooden drawer. Paint chips fluttered to the floor. Matchbooks, pencils and an assortment of business cards: Ray’s Bar-B-Q, The Doctor’s Inn, Foreign Car Repair, Doogie’s Detailing. Nothing, but I figured anything incriminating was either long gone or well hidden. The next drawer held alphabetized copies of work orders to be done, the next, carbons of completed jobs for the last month also in alphabetical order. I was somewhat surprised that Duane Wainwright even kept records or for that matter, knew his ABCs. It set my image of him askew.
I wondered for a second what he’d do if he came back unexpectedly and found me inside. He’d known me for enough years that he probably wouldn’t freak-out and if he was juiced, which was his condition most of the time, I could make up some half-baked story like I was gathering chestnuts and needed something to put them in.
In the back room, which was his sacred ground, two empty bottles of Jack Daniels stood beside a cot. Grease, dirt or engine oil had left abstract art on the yellowed sheet. I had no intention of venturing close enough to find out which medium was responsible until I spotted what looked like a photograph sticking out from beneath the foam egg crate he used as a mattress. Wishing I’d worn gloves, I grasped the corner of it between my thumb and index finger and slid it toward me. Hilary stared back. She was six or seven years old, her hair in mats, the skin at the edges of her lips tinged a berry color, Kool-Aid no doubt, making her smile seem bigger than it was. She was holding up a wrench and sitting on the concrete floor of the garage, a car balanced above her head on a hydraulic lift. The picture took me off guard. She looked happy, not a familiar look for her. I’d never considered the fact that she might have a few good memories mixed in with all the bad. Obviously, Duane did.
The closet gave up nothing more than filthy boots, three Carhartt work shirts with “Duane” stitched over the pocket and Wainwright’s Garage across the back, and a pair of navy blue Dickey pants rolled in a ball. I took down two boxes from the top shelf and looked for a place to sit. The cot was out of the question and the floor was worse, so I carried them out to the front and stood at the counter. The first held the title to his truck, Hilary’s birth certificate, Mary Katherine’s death certificate and a bunch of photos of people I didn’t recognize except for Rita. I assumed the other faces belonged to his parents and siblings. The second box held five sets of keys, none of which were labeled and only one that was remotely interesting because it was newer than the rest and the keys didn’t look like traditional car or house keys. One was about an inch long, with a tiny distention of metal near the tip no bigger than an infant’s teardrop. The second was a skeleton key, the kind that will unlock an antique attic door. The last thing in the box was a tiny cassette. The kind used in an old telephone answering machine. I wondered how often Wainwright looked inside this box and how likely it would be that he’d miss anything.
Still debating whether or not I should pocket the cassette, I carried the boxes back to the closet, and that’s when the front door opened. For the first time I praised the sound of those annoying bells. I set both boxes on the top shelf then stepped inside, pulled the door behind me and held my breath. Drawers slid out and slammed shut, the cash register opened and a curse whispered too softly to be recognized slipped past my grasp. Footsteps came toward the back room and I started to move a few steps deeper into the shadows of the closet. Instead I tripped over a boot and smacked the wall with the palm of my hand as I fumbled to steady myself.
The bells jingled and the front door closed as abruptly as it’d opened. I’d startled whoever it was, which meant it wasn’t Wainwright coming back after something he’d forgotten. I stepped out of the closet and hurried to the front hoping to see who’d been there. A silver Toyota Corolla took a right turn out of the garage lot and onto Main Street. As soon as it disappeared from view I locked the door, returned the key to the Bronco’s glove box and headed home shaken, not only from what had just transpired, but because a return trip was inevitable. I wanted that cassette.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Amelia was sitting on the floor outside my apartment holding an oversized bouquet of flowers when I got home.
“Where have you been?” she asked. “Ben working late?”
“Those for me?” I nodded toward the flowers, assuming Ben was trying.
“Read the card,” she said.
“Alcohol makes me act like a fool. I’m sorry. Hope you’re the forgiving type.”
It was signed, J.D.
I looked at Amelia.
“I just got them today,” she said.
“Are you the forgiving type?” I asked, opening the door.
“If you need me to be.” She tossed the flowers on the kitchen counter and took a bottle of Merlot from the wine rack. Stitch jumped up on the counter and she ran her hand over his back.
“What kind of car does Dobbs drive?” I asked.
“Corolla.”
“Silver?”
She nodded. “Why?”
“He just broke into Wainwright’s garage.”
“How do you know that?”
“I was hiding in the closet.”
“What the hell? You broke in?”
“Technically, I didn’t break in. I got the key from its hiding place.”
“The Bronco?” Amelia asked.
I nodded and couldn’t help but grin.
“Jesus,” she said. “What were you doing there?”
“Looking for something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Anything.”
“Even if you found something it wouldn’t hold up in court, would it? Not when you get it like that.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I might be able to find a way.”
“Cecily, don’t get sloppy. If we’re going to get him we’ve got to do it right. What do you think he was doing there?”
“Probably looking for something, same as me.”
“But I bet he knows what it is he’s looking for. Did you find anything?”
“An answering machine cassette and some weird-looking keys. When Dobbs startled me, I put everything in the closet where it was. Now I’ll have to go back.”
“That’s theft.”
“I just want to listen to the tape. Nobody keeps those things unless there’s something important or incriminating on them.”
“You’re going to get in trouble,” Amelia said.
“I know a good lawyer.”
“Speaking of that, where is he?”
“He moved out.”
“Cecily, that’s awful. When?”
“Yesterday. He’s still got stuff here so he’ll be back, but the decision’s been made.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, just needed to be alone I guess.” I refilled my glass. “He’s disappointed in me. Says I’m risking my career by continuing to investigate Dobbs and that I’m losing sight of what’s important.”
“Justice for a friend isn’t important?”
“Not if it jeopardizes all I’ve worked for.”
; “Do you feel that way?”
“I’m here and he’s not. What does that tell you?”
Amelia came over and wrapped her arms around me. “I’m sorry, Cec. So it’s over, as in final?”
I nodded. “I think Ben and I both knew we weren’t right together. It was going to end at some point.” I took a swallow of Merlot hoping to dissolve the lump in my throat. “So what are you going to do about those?” I asked, nodding to the flowers to change the subject.
“Call to thank him and set up another date, dinner at his house. Tell me what to look for.”
“Are you insane? He beat you up last time.”
“I can do it.”
“Not a chance,” I said. “Unless...”
“Unless what?”
“Unless we go together.”
“Break in?”
I nodded.
“Say when.”
After she left, I poured another glass of wine and went into the bedroom. I hadn’t realized how exhausted I was until I curled up on cool sheets. I’d always seen Amelia as the most fragile of the three of us. After all, Hilary had grown up with a drunken, hateful father and been raped. I’d put in years being tormented by a delinquent brother and ignored by a mother who was literally blinded by the light. Amelia came from a family whose greatest upheaval was her decision not to attend Juilliard. I’d always thought she lacked the chutzpah to survive the tough stuff. Now she’d dangled herself in front of a thief and a rapist by her own choice and had moved on to breaking and entering. Balls come in all shapes and sizes.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
It hit me again the next morning as I poured only one cup of coffee that Ben was really gone. I sat at the green granite counter ignoring Stitch’s dirty look. Now that it was done, I had to admit I felt relieved and relief is not what a woman in love should feel after her boyfriend moves out. I was sad too, but in a nostalgic sense. I’d miss him coming in sweaty from his Sunday morning run with a bag of bagels in his hand and I’d miss the make-up dinners with wine and candlelight. Mostly I’d miss the feel of his arm around me in the middle of the night. Ben was a good man, and we might have had a nice life together, but nice isn’t real. Life gets dirty and messy and difficult and when it does, you have to know that you’ll come out on the other side still together. Ben and I couldn’t do that and it wasn’t even as bad as it would get, yet. It was right that he’d left. His hands were clean and mine were about to get a whole lot dirtier.
I swallowed a bite of bagel and called Nick.
“I’m going after him myself,” I said when he answered the phone.
“Good morning to you too.”
“We know that he pulled off the robbery with Wainwright. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Now he’s here looking for the money and Wainwright knows where it is. I know it in my gut.”
“Guts don’t hold up in court,” Nick said.
“That’s why I’m going to find something that will.”
“Why don’t you let me find something and you keep your distance. Our boy isn’t the ladies’ man we thought he was.”
“What do you mean?”
“He did a number on the little 7-Eleven cashier.”
“What? Why?”
“I didn’t ask, but she went to work this morning sporting a shiner with an egg-sized welt beneath it.”
“We need to make sure she doesn’t report it.”
“This coming from you?”
“I don’t want anything throwing a wrench into my plans. I’m holding out for the big kill.”
“Sounds like you might be losing your focus. He’s escalating at the expense of the women around him and you’re suggesting they do nothing? You want to wait until he rapes someone again?”
The question cut and I didn’t grace it with an answer.
“I’ve still got some friends at the station. I can see that he’s arrested and held for a while. It’ll get him away from these women and buy me time.”
“I want Dobbs walking around until he gives us something that’ll stick. We’re going to watch and wait.” I decided not to mention breaking and entering.
“Watching and waiting is getting people hurt.”
“It’s the way I want it. At least for now.”
Nick exhaled his frustration into the phone. “You hired me. We’ll play by your rules.”
I checked the time. I had to be in court in an hour. “What are you doing for dinner?” Eating breakfast alone sucked. I figured dinner would be worse.
“Pick you up at six?”
“I’ll cook.”
“Even better,” he said and hung up.
I left my apartment and headed for the courthouse hoping I wouldn’t run into Ben. Luckily, I had a hearing that would take most of the morning and keep me out of the halls.
As in most custody battles, the court ruled in favor of the mother with supervised visitation for the father and though I know a lot of dads get the short end of the stick, this one got more than he deserved. As the judge voiced her decision, he shook his head to the right, tossing back unwashed, uncut, uncombed blond hair, revealing a red-rimmed drooping eye. Too much partying the night before or else something had penetrated his veins early this morning. He looked at his seven-year-old daughter and grinned. She pressed her face against her mother’s stomach. Supervised visitation for this slime was a gift.
At noon, I stepped out of the federal building into the sunlight. Normally this is when I relax, but not today. I’d wanted to be a lawyer since I was in high school, to see that victims got justice and perpetrators got nailed. I knew I was doing it for Hilary, ensuring that others got what she never had, and in some convoluted way I was also relieving myself of the guilt I’d carried since childhood. So now, as I headed for the 7-Eleven, I had to remind myself that even though what I was about to do went against everything I believed in, everything I stood for personally and professionally, it was for Hilary and it was the right thing to do.
I pushed open the glass door. The store was empty and I stepped up to the counter. The cashier looked all of seventeen. She had a plastic nametag on that read Brittany.
“I’m Cecily Minos,” I said. “I’m a lawyer in the DA’s office and I know J.D. Dobbs. Did he do this to you?”
She looked back at me out of one good eye, the other sealed shut by angry red and purple skin, shiny and swollen. She nodded.
“Have you gone to the police?”
She shook her head.
“Are you going to?”
She shrugged.
“I’ll make you a deal. If you let this incident go, I’ll haul him straight to court if he touches you again. Can you do that?”
“I wasn’t gonna do nothin’ anyways.”
“Well, you should if he does it again, but call me first. One more thing,” I said. “You can’t tell anyone about this conversation. Is that clear? Especially Dobbs.”
She nodded.
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
I handed her my card. “Call me if you have any problems. I mean it, day or night.”
She took the card from my hand and nodded again.
I went back outside and continued down the sidewalk, feeling lower than I’d ever felt in my life. What the hell had I just done? But if she let me do things my way, she’d get justice in a roundabout way I rationalized, attempting to raise my status from scumbag to jerk. It didn’t work.
At six o’clock the buzzer rang and I hit the button to unlock the entry door for Nick. He walked in with a manila envelope in one hand, a bottle of Pinot Grigio in the other. “Wasn’t sure if this was work or pleasure. So I brought both.”
I reached for the wine.
“Good choice,” he said.
I pour
ed two glasses and we touched them together before taking a sip.
“Ben working?”
“Ben moved,” I said and felt Stitch watching me from his place on the counter.
Nick didn’t say anything and I didn’t offer an explanation. Instead, I handed him two plates and silverware. After setting the table, he lit the tall-stemmed candles in its center and dimmed the overhead light. I raised my eyebrows.
“Setting the mood is as important as setting the table, you know.”
I turned away so he wouldn’t see me smile and avoided Stitch’s eyes as I pulled steak tips from under the broiler.
Halfway through dinner we’d finished his bottle and I opened one of mine. Ever since he’d asked I’d felt like I had to explain Ben’s departure, but wasn’t sure how to begin. Finally, I said, “Ben wasn’t too pleased about my encounter on Jewels Island.”
His hand stopped midway to his mouth and he raised his eyes to mine, waiting for me to continue.
“He basically told me to choose. Him or Dobbs.”
Nick tried to cover his smile. “I don’t have to ask who you picked.”
I nodded. “It kind of changed things.”
He set down his fork and cupped his hand around mine, brushing his thumb over the ridges of my knuckles. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Some men aren’t very good with tough stuff.”
“And some are?” I asked.
He looked at me for a minute before answering. “Some learn to be.”
He kept his hand where it was while we finished eating, his thumb continuing its caress, but when it found the scars on my palm, I drew my hand away. He held my eyes, but didn’t say a word. I got up and carried our plates to the sink. When I turned back to the table he was standing in my path.
I didn’t have to think twice. I moved into him, wrapped my arms around him and tipped my face to his. It felt like the most natural thing in the world. “I’m not easy,” I said. “I just know what I want.”
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