I sighed. “Who?” I texted back.
“Your friend from the inspection sticker business. The one you tried to lead down the path to crime and punishment.”
I hit the call button and dialed her number.
“Seriously?” I said. “That guy from Estacado Auto?”
“The one and only. They said on the news today. Apparently they did a number on him, too. He’s still in the hospital.”
“Wow. That’s…weird.”
“We need to interview him.”
“Do we?”
“Absolutely. I’ll come pick you up.”
“Oh, I can’t. I’m going to dinner and the movies with my mom.”
“Oh yeah. I guess we could visit him tomorrow. He might be released, though, and I don’t know where he lives.”
The phone dinged again.
“Hang on, I just got a text.”
I looked at the screen. “Running behind. I’ll catch up with you at the movie.”
Figures, I thought.
“Never mind,” I told Viv. “Dinner plans just fell through. I could maybe do a quick interview before the movie, if you hurry.”
“I’ll be there in five,” she said.
“What’s the guy’s name again?” I asked as I belted myself in. I should not have said “hurry” to Viv. She had her racing model Cadillac and she wasn’t afraid to use it.
“Xavier Barnstable. He’s at UMC. The little girl reporter from the news said he was in satisfactory condition and expected to make a full recovery. But still. Ouch. I wonder if he got a look at them and that’s why they beat him up. Like, maybe he grabbed one of their masks and —” She made a ripping off motion. “So they had to rough him up a little.”
“Something happened. Either that, or maybe they’re just getting bolder with every robbery. You know, escalation. Pushing it further and further every time.”
“Who knows?”
We stopped at the front desk to ask which room he was in, but the unhelpful woman there wouldn’t tell us. “He’s not receiving visitors.”
“Are you sure?” Viv said. “I think he’ll want to talk to us. You should call the room and ask him.”
“I’m sure,” the woman said. She flattened her lips in what was probably meant to look like a smile.
“You should just call up there and see. He knows us. We are helping the police investigate this crime and we can help him.”
“Then you should share that information with the police. I’m sure they’ll be happy to hear it.”
I hooked Viv’s elbow. “Give it up,” I said. “She’s not gonna budge.”
We decided to wander around the building a little to see if we could spot anything that might look like a room under police custody, and it turned out not to be that hard. It was the only room with two cops posted outside it.
For a moment, I thought Viv was going to go for it and try to talk her way past them.
Then Marty came out of the room.
“Hey, Marty!” Viv said, like he was an old friend.
It took him a moment to place us, but when he did, he was friendly enough. “Hey, it’s you two. Say, you didn’t do this, did you? Retaliation for him not giving you the sticker?” He laughed.
My eyes went wide and I looked at the cops. I’m sure I looked guilty.
“Of course not, don’t be ridiculous,” I said, before realizing that I’d probably just made myself sound even guiltier. Quick, change the subject. “How is he?”
Marty shook his head slowly. “They banged him up good, that’s for sure.”
“Did he get a look at them?” Viv asked.
Marty glanced over his shoulder at the cop standing outside the door, and motioned for us to head back toward the elevator. “Not a thing,” he said. “They had masks on, and he said only one of them talked.” He pushed the elevator button.
Once inside with the doors closed, Marty shook his head again. “Poor kid is scared to death.”
“Well, yeah,” I said. “I’d be scared too if someone bashed me over the head with a baseball bat.”
“He’s not scared about that. I have a sneaking suspicion he knows more than he’s saying.”
“Why wouldn’t he say?” Viv asked, then apparently remembered what Marty had said before. “Do you think it’s someone he knows? From, you know, from inside?”
Marty was silent for a moment while the elevator stopped and the doors slid silently open. “I don’t know. I’m not sure what to think. I don’t want to believe he would be in on anything like this. He’s a good kid. He made some bad mistakes and he paid for them. He’s learned from it. I mean, you saw the way he was the other day. He’s determined to stay on the straight and narrow. Just about militant about it. He drives the speed limit on the dot, and before he got a car he wouldn’t even borrow mine because he didn’t want to explain to the police about a borrowed car. I can’t believe he would be involved in something like this.”
“Maybe he’s not involved. Maybe it’s just someone he knows. Someone he could identify, but won’t. To protect them.”
Marty sighed. “Maybe.”
The three of us strolled toward the front doors of the hospital.
“What makes you sure he’s holding back?” I asked.
“Well, I’m the one who found him, so I heard everything first. He was in a lot of pain, of course, and not talking real good. But he said there were four guys. Then, when he was giving his statement to the police he said there were two.”
“That seems like a fairly easy mistake to make.”
“Yeah. It does.” Marty nodded. “But when he was telling the police it was two guys instead of four, he looked at me like, “Are you gonna correct me.” Kind of worried like.” Marty frowned. “I don’t know what difference it would make, but…”
“Have you heard how much longer he’s going to be in there?”
“Not sure yet. At least a couple more days. Then he’ll need some time to recuperate, of course. Might be a couple weeks or more before he makes it back to the shop.”
“Does he have insurance?”
Marty gave a rueful laugh. “Yep, the kind we all have. The kind that costs an arm and a leg and doesn’t pay for a pinky toe.”
“Do you think he’d talk to us when he got out?”
Marty shrugged. “I couldn’t say. I’ll ask him, though.”
I looked at my watch and gave a little gasp. I needed to be at the theater in about ten minutes.
“Viv, I have to go,” I said. “I mean, we don’t need to rush or anything,” I said, remembering the scary trip to the hospital. “We just…need to leave now.”
It was a scary trip to the movie theater, too. I clung to my seatbelt with one hand and the car door with the other, trying to remind myself to go limp at the moment of impact. “Slow down, would you?”
“You’re the one with a movie to catch.”
“And you’re the one who just got a ticket and could be relying on me and Belle Court to get you around if you get another one.”
I lurched against the seat belt as she threw on the brakes.
After I’d recovered, I said, “Why do you think he would lie about the number of guys there?”
“Who knows. Maybe he really did just get it wrong. He had been hit in the head. He might not have been fully conscious.”
“Maybe. But I think we should assume everything means something, until we know for sure it doesn’t.”
Viv nodded. “Yep. That’s what Matlock would do.”
We were pulling into the movie theater parking lot. “What kind of car does your Mom drive?”
“Mercedes convertible,” I said. “Silver.”
“Ooooh, fancy.” We drove through the parking lot, but didn’t spot the car. “I guess just let me out here,” I said as we pulled alongside the box office. “I’ll find her inside.”
“Do you have a way to get home if she doesn’t show up?”
I opened my mouth to say, “She’ll show up,” t
hen remembered who I was talking about. I did not want to spend money on a cab back to Trailertopia, and I didn’t want to face the awkwardness of a rescue call to Tony.
“Maybe you could just circle the parking lot while I run inside and make sure she’s here,” I said. “I’ll come out and give the thumbs up when I see her.”
I dashed inside, but didn’t see Mom. I checked the ladies room and the concession stand. Nothing.
Frowning, I pulled out my phone and checked messages. Nothing. I texted her: “Sorry, I’m just getting here. Are you inside already?”
No answer, but she might have heeded one of the seven hundred messages they give you to turn your phone off before every movie. I bought one ticket and headed toward the theater. If I saw her, I’d run back out and give Viv the okay to go.
My phone went off just as I was about to hand my ticket to the taker.
I sighed, turning the phone over.
“Sorry, can’t make it after all. Enjoy the show, sweetie!”
I stared at the screen for a long few seconds while the ticket taker held his hand out.
“Ma’am?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve changed my mind.”
I turned and dashed for the door.
Viv was still circling the lot. I ran onto the sidewalk and waved to her.
A group of five or six women were coming up the lot toward the box office. I held my ticket out to them.
“Y’all watching the new Julia Roberts movie? I have an extra ticket. Turns out I can’t use it.”
Chapter Twelve
Too Far on the Other Side
Viv and I drove around for a couple of hours and talked to a few people, but turned up no more new information, just what we’d already heard. Xavier Barnstable had been beaten over the head. Most people thought it was the Bandits, but a couple of people thought it was related to his time in prison, rather than the other robberies.
As the time neared for the movie to let out, I asked Viv to take me home. “I need to be there so Frank won’t be forced to make awkward conversation.”
“Do you want me to pick you up for church tomorrow?”
“No, thanks. Les is picking me up.”
I changed into pajamas and curled up on the sofa with Stump to wait for Mom. I fell asleep, waking slightly when Frank covered me with a blanket and left. The next thing I knew, sun was streaming in through the open curtain.
I checked the driveway. No Mercedes. I checked the bedroom. No Mom. I checked my phone. No more messages.
She stumbled in as I was finishing getting ready for church.
“Sorry I never made it back last night,” she said. “Susan and I got to talking and I lost all track of time.”
I made a noise that fell short of being an actual word.
“Let’s you and me go out for breakfast. My treat.”
“It’ll have to be lunch,” I said. “Les is about to pick me up for church. I had hoped we could go together, actually. You can meet some of my friends.”
“Oh, no thanks. I’m not much of a church person.”
“It’s okay. My church is open to all kinds.” I smiled.
“Thanks, but no. Who is Les, anyway? Another guy you’ve got hanging around here?” She looked pointedly at the recliner, now Frank-free. “You’re stacking them up, aren’t you? How does Tony feel about that?”
I didn’t care for her tone or her insinuation, but as Les was on his way at that very moment, it wasn’t hard to remember that I didn’t want him showing up in the middle of a screaming match.
“Tony is very supportive of my having friends of all kinds. He knows that Frank and Les are both part of my support system. So he is fine with it.”
“Your support system?” She laughed. “How is this Les guy part of your support system? Pay any bills for you?”
I looked around the trailer. If she thought I had only gotten this far, even with a sugar daddy…
“Les is my AA sponsor. You know, he counsels me, listens to me when I want to drink. Helps me navigate the pitfalls.” We’ve talked at great length about your visit, I did not say.
She made a kind of “hmph” noise. “I never really saw much good in therapy. I mean, I haven’t tried it, so I couldn’t say for sure. But, it seems to me like, if talking really helped that much, we’d all be perfectly fine. Because nobody ever shuts up!” She cackled at her own joke. “Just get on with it, I say.”
“Well, it is a lot of talking, but more than just random talk. This is more like, talking about the things you don’t want to talk about. The things that all the other talking is meant to cover up. Those kind of middle-of-the-night voices that tell you you’re not worth much.”
“Oh, well, I never did that. I always knew I was a decent person. I had plenty of people who said it for me, but I never been the type to run myself down. I mean, what’s the point in that? What good does it do? Who’s to say one person is a good person and one is bad, right? It all comes down to what you do, and I’ve never done anything bad, so…” She cackled again. “I’ve done a lot of things that weren’t good, but…” She waved a hand like she was shooing a fly. “But so what. All this self-talk stuff. It’s just a bunch of self-involved nonsense. I mean, look at me? I had a hard life growing up. A really hard life. Do you see me moping around, spilling my guts to whoever will listen? Of course not. Like I said. Suck it up. Get up and move on.”
I felt the familiar rise in temper whenever she referred to how “really hard” her life had been. Not that I thought it hadn’t been. Her father had died when she was little, and I think G-Ma went through her own share of dud men and dud jobs before she bought the motel and finally found a bit of stability. Mom had at least a dozen failed happily-ever-afters under her own belt. Even if some of them were her fault, still…that was hard.
But I resented her woe-is-me because she refused to even consider that anyone else’s life had been not that great, too. Even me. Especially me. The many times I had fought with her as a teenager and tried to get her to see that being uprooted every few months was getting old, she would belittle me.
You have no idea how easy you have it, she would sneer.
I kept my mouth shut, because I realized nothing good was going to come out if I opened it. It was silly. We would descend into an argument about whose life was harder. It was just silly.
Finally, I took a deep breath and said, “I think that’s Les. I’ll be back around noon, and we can get some lunch. If Stump starts to freak out after I’m gone, just tap on Frank’s window across the yard, and he’ll come take care of her.”
Les and his wife, Bonnie, weren’t there yet, but I stood out by the curb and waited anyway. Les took one look at me and knew things weren’t going well.
“That bad, huh?” he said into the rear view mirror once I had climbed into the back seat.
I shook my head. “She stood me up yesterday. And this morning she thinks I’m a silly tramp who doesn’t need things like support systems or therapy.”
Les was silent as he drove us out of Trailertopia. Bonnie turned and patted my knee over the seat.
“I’m okay,” I said with a smile. “Just a few more hours to get through.”
Les didn’t speak again until we got to the church. After he put the car into park and killed the engine, he said, “You know Salem, there’s a good reason God gave us the commandment to honor our father and mother.”
“And why is that?”
“Because we probably wouldn’t, if he hadn’t. Family is too hard sometimes. We need that commandment to hang in there. Keep hanging in there. Otherwise, our humanness would eventually cause us to break every tie.”
After church, we walked back toward Les and Bonnie’s car. Les had his head down, apparently lost in thought. As he unlocked the door, he turned to me.
“Salem, listen. Don’t miss a chance to make peace with your mother. You might be tempted to just keep your head down and get through the next couple of hours. And that will be fine.
But if God is orchestrating these events to put you two together for a purpose, he’s going to keep at it until that purpose is done. He wants to heal you. He wants families to be whole. He wants people to be whole. That’s love, even if it is scary and awkward sometimes. You might as well let it happen.”
“Les, can I be honest with you?”
“Of course.”
“I honestly don’t know if I want to make peace with my mother.” There. I’d said it. And when I said it, I knew I’d never said anything truer. I wasn’t proud of myself. I wanted to believe I was one hundred percent the victim, and any relationship difficulties Mom and I had were entirely on her side: her failure to make us a stable home, her willingness to pawn me off on G-Ma at every opportunity, her penchant for taking off with one man after another, making no effort to keep in touch with me, her habit of putting everyone else before me.
But even if she was making an effort…I wasn’t sure I wanted it. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be around her. Which made me…what? Not a great daughter, that’s for sure. I steeled myself to hear how Les would react to that.
“I know that, Salem.” He said it like it was no big deal. “I mean, I can certainly understand it. She hurt you. Even when it’s your mother, it’s hard to want to be chummy with someone who’s hurt you that deeply. But listen to me. You have to do it anyway. It affects every other relationship you have.”
“I have a lot of relationships, Les, and not one of them is remotely involved with my mother. There’s you, there’s Viv, there’s Tony, people at work. Mom doesn’t know any of you.”
“But we do know you, Salem. And your relationship with your mother affects you. We’re not all separate people, Salem. Think of it — ” He stopped, and I heard him sigh, like he was grasping for a way to make me understand. “Think of it like streams.”
“Strings?”
“No, streams. Like rivers. Your stream meets up with my stream, with Viv’s stream, with Tony’s stream. Our streams run together, separate, run together with someone else’s. So everything that’s in my stream mixes with yours, if only a little bit. But it’s there. We think of our lives as these individual segments, but it’s all mixed in there, Salem. We can’t just say, “I’m going to pick this and this to carry downstream with me.” It’s all mixed in together. Nothing is compartmentalized. We have to clean up our streams, if we want to bring anything good and clean to everyone else’s. Don’t miss the chance, if it presents itself. You said yourself, you only have a couple more hours to get through. If the opportunity presents itself to hash things out over the next few hours, even if it’s awkward or painful, take advantage of it. Making peace isn’t just about the absence of conflict, Salem. Sometimes peace is on the other side of conflict.”
Caught in the Crotchfire Page 25