Out on the Sound

by R. E. Bradshaw

  During the afternoon on Tuesday, they prepared Zack’s room for Molly, with the help of Brenda. Well, Brenda did it and Decky watched. Charlie helped when she could. Brenda essentially changed Zack’s room into a guest room, including new curtains and comforter on Decky’s credit card. Brenda loved to spend other people’s money.

  All of Zack’s things were moved into the giant closet across the hall. Decky got the first look at what it would be like when Zack moved out. She decided she would always let it be his room, until he was ready to give it up. The office was cleaned and readied for Molly’s arrival. Brenda would pick her up at the Maple airport in the morning.

  Brenda laughed as she went out the door, “That ought to get the locals going, a corporate jet. I hope it has big tits painted on the side.”

  Molly and Brenda arrived back at the house just in time for the brunch Decky and Charlie had prepared. Molly looked around Decky’s house, escorted by Brenda, who loved to brag on everything in it. It sometimes embarrassed Decky, but she was proud of it too. It was a dream she had. She made it come true. How cool was that?

  Molly came back to the kitchen island where Decky and Charlie were already seated. She was dressed casually. Well as casually as you can be in a thousand dollar outfit. Decky didn’t know what it really cost, but she couldn’t wait to see what she wore to court.

  “Get out! This is the coolest house I have ever seen.” Some of Molly’s professionalism had worn off. She felt comfortable here. Decky relaxed even more. “I am so glad I decided to stay here instead of a hotel. I even have my own office. Decky you are a genius.”

  “I had a lot of engineering help and professional builders. The money helped.” Decky tried to be humble.

  As Brenda and Molly joined the others at the island, Molly said, “I read your book by the way, the second one. I can’t wait to read the first one. Are they similar?”

  Decky was flattered. She felt the blush coming on. “They are similar in subject matter but entirely different people, more the working class side of my father’s family. They were the men and women who tamed this territory right around here. They drug the chains to map out the land and built the first roads.”

  “That sounds fascinating. I can’t wait to read it.” Molly added.

  “I’ll get you a copy. I’m sure there’s one in the house somewhere.” Decky gushed.

  “Charlie, you have won yourself a very rare kind, the southern gentlewoman writer, only yours is quite the handy woman to have around.”

  Decky felt the full force of the blush hit her forehead. It was the first time anybody had ever said Charlie was lucky to have her. Hell, Decky even thought she was lucky to have Charlie, but someone thought Charlie the winner here. Decky was not attracted to Molly. It was the words that made her blush, because it made Charlie feel better about having jumped into this with Decky without a lifejacket. Any points she could get at this juncture could only help.

  Decky was really pleased when Charlie leaned over and kissed Decky on the cheek. “I know. I can’t believe how lucky I am and she doesn’t even smoke a pipe.”

  “I know one thing,” Molly said between bites of fruit, “after seeing this house we might have to renegotiate my fee.”

  Brenda took care of the news flash, “She sold the second book’s movie rights. She won’t say for how much, but shit look at this place.”

  After brunch, they all loaded into the SUV and struck out for the cottage. Decky described everything she did on Wednesday night. They chose not to let her recreate the speed she had been traveling, explaining her leg was in far worse shape now. Decky thought they were all chicken.

  When they bumped into the opening revealing the cottage, Decky hit the brakes. Someone had painted LEZZIE on the back of the cottage with red spray paint.

  Brenda said from the backseat, “That is fucking amazing.”

  “What?” the other three asked in quiet unison, still looking at the red paint glaring at them.

  “Those little cock suckers actually got it together enough to get a ladder and everything. I am fucking amazed anyone who would do that would have the actual brainpower to pull it off. It must have taken at least a case to work up to this bright idea.”

  Molly jumped out the passenger side door. She reached back into the floor retrieving her brief case. Out of it, she pulled a digital camera. She did all this in a hurry, as if the paint would disappear. “What time is it,” she asked.

  Decky looked on the dashboard clock, “12:30”

  Molly was now focusing the viewfinder on the back of the cottage. “I want to make sure the time and date stamp is correct. This is great. It perfectly depicts the attitude of the community. We’ll have to call the sheriff and have him do an official report. These pictures will document the existence of the graffiti at this time and date, if they are slow to respond.”

  Decky exchanged glances with Charlie, who was in the backseat. Molly was on the ball. They smiled at each other. The shock of the graffiti had worn off by the time the pulled up to the bottom of the steps. Decky didn’t want to have to walk any further than necessary. Brenda walked Molly over to where the wires had been cut, while Charlie helped Decky up the steps.

  Decky and Charlie had not been here since the night it happened. Neither of them said a word as they waited out on the deck for the others to join them. Images of that night flashed in Decky’s head. Noises played loudly on her eardrums even though it was quiet there, out of the wind. Decky looked at Charlie, she was seeing it all again, too. Decky put her arm around Charlie and waited there quietly. Nothing she could say would change the way either one felt, it was best to let it pass.

  Brenda came noisily up the steps, leading Molly, talking non-stop about the idiots in this part of the world. It was wide spread illiteracy that she thought caused the whole thing. Even though some of the brightest people in North Carolina had come from the coastal area or had ties to it. Decky had friends from high school that now taught at Duke, Columbia and Berkley. Brenda insisted if she could teach them all to read, she could cure the bigots of the world.

  When Molly joined them, Decky led the way inside. The picture window had been boarded-over, probably by R.C. and the twins. She hadn’t even thought about having it done. They couldn’t turn on the lights, but the ever-prepared Brenda produced a flashlight. The shadows cast through the rooms gave it an even eerier feeling. Charlie walked them through everything that happened before Decky broke in the kitchen door.

  They both told the next part, because Decky hadn’t seen the guy walk up behind her. It was interesting hearing Charlie’s perspective. Even though they had gone over it before, Charlie told the story with more detail this time. Decky was proud of her. Charlie was not emotionally attached to this place. She had no fear. She had been assaulted and someone was going to pay.

  Decky finished up her side of the events after Charlie had been left behind the counter. She told Molly she never saw her father and had no idea anybody was there. Molly had called R.C. earlier and asked him to join them. They had talked on the phone, but it was their first face-to-face meeting. Once he arrived, R.C. was quickly charmed by Molly. He told how the twins had awakened him from a nap in his chair.

  “They came up, banging on the door. One of them said something about stealing his mother’s car. When they finally told me Decky might be in trouble I grabbed my rifle, it’s always by the front door. Lizzie wouldn’t take no for an answer, so we piled in the truck and came over here. I could hear commotion when I came up the steps. I could hear Decky there screaming at somebody. I didn’t make out what she was saying until I hit the top of the steps. I saw the back of a man through the door. It was only a shadow, but I knew it was a man. I stepped around to the picture window. I could see Decky’s face and the gun in the light from outside. I leveled my gun on the shadow’s head and pulled the trigger. I didn’t know Lizzie had followed me until I heard her gasp. She had seen the whole thing. She must have been right behind me the whole time, but
I was focused in on the task at hand.”

  Molly was impressed, “We’re all glad you pulled that trigger Mr. Bradshaw. You did a heroic thing. You tell your story like that on the witness stand and no one will blame you for what you did.”

  “Ma’am, I did not want to shoot that boy, but under the circumstances I did not see a way around it, and call me R.C., everybody does.”

  “Okay, R.C. what happened next?”

  All three who had participated in the events, relayed all they could remember from their own perspective. Charlie had been taken away much sooner than Decky. Decky talked about being questioned and released to the hospital. She told what she could remember of her fight with Lizzie. Not all her memories of Wednesday night were lucid, but some moments with Lizzie were as clear as a bell.

  They moved down to the dock just to show Molly how beautiful the Sound was. Molly listened and observed them all carefully. She sat them down on the bench near the end of the dock, next to the cleaning table. Thankfully, anybody using the cutting surface lately had cleaned it well and the stink was only a pleasant memory for Decky. This was part of life here, in sportsman’s paradise.

  Molly walked back and forth in front of them. She only stopped moving when she was making a point, and only wanted comments when she asked for them. She was summarizing for the jury. Decky was enthralled. Molly wasn’t, however, talking to the criminal jury. She was presenting her civil case.

  “Look at all you’ve lost. This beautiful place will never be the same. It is lost to you all, forever. You’ll sell it if you can, but no one wants a house where such a tragedy took place. What family wants to live in a cottage where someone attempted to murder two women and then was killed on the premises? You will not be able to get full price, even if you can sell it. You’ll probably burn it down and make a vacant lot out of it. A piece of valuable real-estate damaged irrecoverably.”

  “R.C., you have been forced to take a human life, because the county and his family allowed a sexual predator to go free. Why was he here and not back in Chowan County? Because his parents paid for him to play in Currituck, to avoid yet another investigation.”

  Decky didn’t know this. Molly was good. She had done her homework.

  Molly stopped in front of Charlie, “Your reputation has been soiled. You have been through a tremendous shock. Who knows how this will affect your career in the future?” She moved on to Decky. “What kind of affect will this have on your book sales? There may never be a movie and certainly not another movie deal.”

  “These people allowed a predator into your community. They will pay like the tobacco companies to get out of this one. It will never see the light of day in a courtroom. They’ll settle. You just have to decide how much more comfortable you want to be for the rest of your lives. We have them by the balls, excuse me R.C., they don’t stand a chance.”

  Decky was glad her attorney was so convinced they would win a civil suit, but what worried her most was prison time. She had money. What she didn’t want was a big old lesbian girlfriend in the pen.

  “Molly, I appreciate your enthusiasm, but what I want is to not go to prison. Of course, I don’t speak for dad and Charlie, but I’d really like not to go to prison.”

  Molly assured them that no one was going to prison. This case was absurd. The District Attorney thought so. He had told Molly unofficially that someone up the food chain felt the need to clear the air. The D.A. had picked an assistant to prosecute the case, not the one involved in the previous Bagley litigations. The less significance he felt they gave the case, the better. Who knew how deep the Bagley pockets were? It was hard to tell with old money.

  Still, in the unlikely event the case made it to Superior Court, he said he would refuse to prosecute it. He had a conflict of interest, due to the ongoing internal investigation of the Chowan County D.A.’s office. This was just some politician in Raleigh repaying an old debt to the family, nothing more. The Bagley’s were just too proud to admit their son was a sexual deviant.

  Molly went on, “This is merely a formality that you have been forced into. The fact the family and an official in the D.A.’s office are involved in influencing the bringing of the charges, makes them even more culpable in the civil case. This will not be comfortable for any of you. Your personal lives will be put out there for all to see. That’s what they’re banking on, public opinion, and your being afraid to come out in public as a lesbian. Public opinion has no place in a courtroom and I intend to keep it out.”

  Charlie chuckled, “Tell that to O.J.”

  “No matter what they dredge up, it will not mitigate the fact this man broke into your home and tried to kill you. We have witnesses to your behavior at the restaurant Charlie, thanks to Brenda. The twins will testify about the phone call. The alarm company will supply records indicating time of the power loss. Charlie has a receipt from the gas station. This coincides with the time frame we have developed for the assault and, if it becomes necessary to involve her, we have Mrs. Bradshaw.”

  Decky brightened visibly at the possibility that Lizzie would not be needed to testify. She was more positive than ever that Molly was the right attorney for the job. If she could keep Lizzie off the stand, Decky would double what she was paying her.

  The meeting on the dock adjourned. Molly asked R.C. to give her a lift to the courthouse. She needed to speak to the sheriff and a familiar face was always nice to have along. Decky doubted seriously that Molly needed any help with sheriffs and deputies from places like this. She had made her fortune busting their cases. Molly climbed right up in the seat of the truck with her dad’s dog and off they went.

  Decky, Charlie and Brenda returned to Decky’s house. Decky called the sheriff’s office to report the vandalism at the cottage. Brenda ran to the store for steaks to cook on the grill. Chip would be coming over to take care of dinner. He was a great cook and Decky looked forward to having a meal prepared in her house, by a chef like him.

  Decky and Charlie used the quiet time, when it was just the two of them, to crawl into bed and take a nap. When they awoke an hour and a half later, Miss Kitty and Dixie were curled up in the bed with them.

  Decky smiled at Charlie. “One big happy family.”

  #

  Chip cooked the steaks to perfection, crusted with Cognac pepper. He added twice-baked potatoes to the menu and, on the side, a beautiful green garden salad. Chip gave credit for the salad to Brenda; after all, she had picked out the vegetables at the roadside stand. They ate out on the deck and no one mentioned the case at all. The pall having lifted for a while, it was a pleasant evening between old and new friends.

  After the meal, Brenda and Chip cleaned up the dishes and excused themselves to go home. This left Decky and Charlie to entertain their guest. Molly was most interested in them personally, how they met, everything about the last two weeks. She claimed it was so she would not be surprised in court, but after listening to the story she said, “It just fascinates me how you two got together. It’s a fairy tale, well except for the ex, the fight, the mother and the dead body. It really is quite sweet.”

  They all laughed, and then Molly asked Decky, “Are you prepared to come out of the closet in open court? It will then be a matter of public record.”

  Decky snorted, “I don’t think I can get much further out of the closet at this point.”

  “What people suspect, does not hold up in court. You would have to be caught in the act of a sexual nature with a woman in order for the court to recognize anything other than an admission from you. Being a suspected lesbian is much different than seeing it on a court document, a public court document, I might add.”

  Charlie added her thoughts on the matter. “I guess that puts you right up there with Rita Mae. You will forever be known as ‘the lesbian writer’ instead of just a writer.”

  “Too bad I didn’t screw somebody famous. I could write a loosely based fictional account of the affair and make a fortune.” Decky thought this was funny, so did the
other two.

  “Really, I’m set. If I never sell another book, I’ll get by. I just want to be proven innocent, no matter what I have to say under oath. As I said, I just really don’t want to go to prison. I’ve been having nightmares about large women fighting over whose bitch I was going to be.”

  Charlie asked, “Where am I in these dreams?”

  “They fought over you already, now it’s my turn.” Decky said seriously. She was really having these thoughts. It was making her crazy.

  Molly went over the court dates and appearances. The date had been set two weeks to the day from the incident. Molly had been able to rush things through due to her contacts in the DA’s office. Everyone wanted this over and done with.