Love Mercy

by Earlene Fowler

  True to his judge training, Clint waited a long, thoughtful moment before answering. “Dale is this boy’s name?”

  She nodded.

  “How old is he?”

  “Twenty-six.”

  “How old is your granddaughter?”

  She put both hands on her jittery thighs. “I know where this is going. Yes, she was underage when he was seeing her. I’ve tried that card already. That’s why he’s waiting until six before going to the cops while I try to find her. She’s eighteen now, so I’m not sure what the law is on that, but that doesn’t change that she stole his banjo.”

  He nodded. “Yes, you’re right. How much is this banjo worth?”

  She looked down at her hands clenching her thighs. “Twenty-five thousand.”

  Clint let out a low whistle and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his wrinkled khakis.

  “It’s not good, is it?”

  Clint pressed his lips together, his brow furrowed. “No, it’s not. That makes it grand theft. Crossing a state line makes it even worse. The sooner we can find her and convince her to give him back his banjo, the better.”

  “And if she doesn’t, and he goes to the police?”

  He stood up, running his hands down the sides of his slacks. “Let’s not worry about that yet. Let’s find her and see if we can talk her into being sensible. I’m guessing this young man would just as soon not have the police involved. He’s not exactly squeaky clean.”

  “Okay,” she said, feeling both helpless and relieved. If there was trouble, Clint Lawhead was someone you wanted to have on your side. Rett had no idea how lucky she was that Love had so many friends here in Morro Bay willing to help them.

  “I’ll get back in the car and start looking for her,” she said.

  “Good idea. Let me know as soon as you find her. I’ll do some checking on my own. What’s this guy’s last name?”

  She felt like groaning again. “I don’t know. I didn’t even think to ask.”

  “Where’s he staying?”

  “Holiday Inn Express in San Celina.”

  “I’ll make some calls. I should be able to find out his name, and then I’ll see what I can find out about him.”

  “Thanks, Clint. I owe you—”

  “February’s column and some cupcakes,” he finished, laughing.

  “Really, thanks . . .”

  He placed a finger over his lips. “Shhh. Not a bother. Go find your fugitive granddaughter.”

  She was driving down Main Street on her way to the highway, thinking that maybe Rett was trying to hitchhike out of town, when her cell phone rang. She pulled over and answered it on the fourth ring, right before it went to voice mail.

  “Hello, Magnolia? Did you find Rett?”

  “It’s Mel. Don’t you look at your screen before you answer?”

  She slumped back in the seat. “I usually do, but I wasn’t paying attention. I’m a bit frazzled right now. Rett’s run off—”

  “She’s fine. She’s on her way back to your house. Evan’s dropping her off.”

  “How did you . . . What did she . . . Oh, I don’t even know what to ask.”

  “She came in here looking to hide from her pond scum of an ex-boyfriend. She told me the whole story, by the way.”

  She rested her forehead on the steering wheel. “I was going to tell you everything, but it’s been a little crazy since she arrived.”

  “I have the banjo. It’s locked in a closet at the feed store. What are you planning on doing?”

  “I talked to Clint, and things are a little more complicated than I thought. Apparently the instrument is worth quite a bit of money.”

  “If I’d been her, I would have tossed it in the bay.”

  “Please, don’t even say those words out loud! She could go to jail, Mel. We have to get that banjo back to Dale and convince him to leave, to forget this ever happened.”

  Mel was quiet for a moment. Love could hear her soft breathing over the phone line. “Hard to do with a baby on the way.”

  “Yes, it is. But first things first. We need to make sure that Rett is out of trouble, then we can worry about the baby.”

  “Your first great-grandchild.”

  Love lifted her head and looked through the windshield. She could see the old Bay Theater, just recently renovated by its new owner. A quiet, solitary few hours watching a movie sure sounded good right now. “You know, that didn’t even occur to me until you said it. Makes me feel . . .”

  “Old?” Mel laughed.

  She paused a moment, then said, “Yes, but more sad. Cy would have been so excited.”

  Mel was quiet for a moment. “Yeah.”

  “Oh, Mel, I miss him so much.”

  “Me too.”

  She straightened her spine. There was no time to fall into a funk. “Okay, thanks for helping. I’ll let you know when we need the banjo. Guess I’ll see you at the lighted boat parade tonight.”

  “You bet.”

  When she arrived home, there was no sign of Rett. But as she was opening the side door that led to the kitchen, she heard Ace’s excited barking. She looked out the kitchen window and saw Rett tossing a ball to him on the small patch of backyard grass. She set her purse down and walked out on the deck.

  “Hey,” Rett said, looking up at her.

  “Hey,” Love replied. She watched them play for a while, wanting to put off as much as Rett did the discussion they needed to have. A few minutes passed. “Rett, you know we have to talk.”

  Rett picked up the tennis ball and bounced it up and down in her hand. Ace sat her feet, his dark eyes boring a hole into the bright yellow ball. She tossed it, laughing as he scampered across the yard. Then she turned to Love, her smile falling away when she saw Love’s sober expression. “Yeah, I know.”

  Love went back inside the house. A few seconds later, Rett followed, Ace at her heels.

  “Let’s sit down at the kitchen table,” Love said. “I’ll make some tea.”

  Rett shrugged and pulled out a kitchen chair, flopping down in it, attitude sticking out of her like prickles on a desert pear.

  Love started talking as she filled the kettle with water, figuring it would be easier if they weren’t just staring across the table at each other. “Dale came by. He’s quite angry.”

  “He can join the party,” she said bitterly.

  She nodded, acknowledging that Rett had a reason to be mad. “As hurt as you are—”

  “I’m not hurt; I’m pissed,” she interrupted.

  “Okay,” Love said, turning on the stove and setting the kettle on the burner. “Duly noted. And with good reason. Nevertheless, you being angry at something he did . . .” She paused and added, “Something really, really cruel, doesn’t make it right for you to steal his property.” She grabbed two mugs from the tree and put a tea bag in each one.

  “Doesn’t the Bible say an eye for an eye? That’s what I’m doing. He hurt me, so I’m gonna hurt him. I ought to just chop up that banjo in little pieces and see how he likes that.”

  Love was thankful that the banjo was safely in Mel’s hands. “First, that saying is taken out of context almost all the time. Jesus actually says in Matthew that—”

  Rett glared at her. “Yeah, yeah, that we’re not supposed to actually try to get back at someone who wronged us, but that we’re supposed to turn the other cheek.”

  Love raised her eyebrows, surprised.

  “I spent, like, my whole life in Baptist churches. Some of it rubbed off.”

  “Then I don’t need to remind you that we’re supposed to love our enemies, forgive what they do to us.”

  Her pale blue eyes turned sly. “Like you have my mom?”

  Love turned away, her heart beating double time. Her first thought was, You little brat. Then she had to admit . . . Rett was right. She’d never really forgiven Karla and, to be truthful, she wasn’t sure she wanted to even now. She kept her back to Rett, wishing for a split second that her granddaughter had n
ever showed up at her door. It was hard enough missing Cy, trying to learn how to make a life without him. He’d been gone only a little more than a year. It still felt like one of her arms was missing. And it was hard enough trying to figure out what she should do with August and his obvious descent into dementia, how she could help him and Polly stay at the ranch. Not to mention her friends and the life she had here, the daily problems of just being part of a community. Her eyes itched with the desire to cry. She swallowed hard, tasting bitter salt. She didn’t need a smart-mouthed teenager on top of all that. She just didn’t.

  “Where is Dale now?” Rett said.

  Love turned around and frowned at her. Rett was sharp enough to know when to let something go. The issue of Karla and Love would no doubt come up again someday . . . if Rett stuck around.

  “He’s at the Holiday Inn Express in San Celina,” Love said. “I convinced him to wait until six p.m. before he called the police. I think you need to talk to him.” She set the sugar bowl in the middle of the table.

  Rett contemplated the information. “You know what? I will.” She went to the wall phone, dialed a number from heart. She waited, obviously getting his voice mail. Where was he that he couldn’t answer his cell phone?

  “Dale Bailey, this is your old pal, Rett Johnson. Y’all better leave me and my grandma the heck alone, or I’ll throw your precious banjo in the ocean and see how well it can surf. And you know I’ll do it too. You call the police, and I swear I’ll tell them you and I were doing it when I was fourteen. No, make that twelve, you lyin’, cheatin’ water moccasin.” She set the phone down in the cradle and smiled at Love. “He didn’t pick up, but I left a message.”

  Love tried not to show the dismay that permeated her body like a super virus. “Well, that’s not likely to be much help,” she eventually managed to get out. She definitely needed to talk to Clint again. And maybe Rocky. Both legal and spiritual intervention was, no doubt, going to be required.

  “He’ll back off for a little while,” Rett said. “I’m going to take a shower. Aren’t we going somewhere tonight?” She looked much too happy for someone who would possibly be going to jail by nightfall.

  “The lighted boat parade,” Love said, trying to erase the mental picture of Rett’s thin body in a baggy orange jumpsuit. Her granddaughter’s constant bouncing between confidence and despair was beginning to wear on Love. Sometimes Rett seemed like a ten-year-old and sometimes she seemed like she was forty. “We watch it from the Embarcadero.”

  “Cool,” she said, smiling. “What time do we leave?”

  EIGHTEEN

  Mel

  Hey, Mel, get a shot of this!”

  Brad or Evan—she couldn’t tell because of the garish Santa Claus mask—held a Christmas-light-covered kayak paddle over his head. The tiny bulbs twinkled like Disney fireflies.

  She centered on the grinning Santa through the Canon’s screen and snapped a couple of shots, then gave him a wave. Surrounding him were five other kayaks, all the paddlers wearing masks. There were two Santas, two elves, a Scrooge and a shark with glow-in-the-dark teeth and a Christmas wreath around its rubbery neck.

  She walked along the crowded Embarcadero looking for a good spot on the dock to take photographs. The boys had loaned her their new Canon digital with a zoom lens. They’d worked the afternoon shift, giving her time to sit in the back office, read the instruction book and figure out the camera’s bells and whistles. It was a relief to have something complicated and foreign to concentrate on. It certainly beat worrying about when Patrick would pop up like some papier-mâché monster on a third-class carnival ride. Unwanted surprises made her think of Love and her on-the-lam granddaughter.

  Shock was not an accurate enough word to describe what she felt this morning at the feed store when she found Rett standing in front of her, her pale, round face tear-streaked, her expression, half-scared, half-mad.

  “What’s wrong?” Mel demanded, thinking the girl and Love had gotten into a fight.

  Rett’s haltingly told story made Mel soften her harsh tone. Her heart went out to the girl. She certainly knew what it felt like to go all stupid over a guy.

  Except, a little voice inside smugly commented, she’s a kid and you’re thirty-five you-should-know-better years old.

  After hearing the girl’s story, Mel agreed to hide the banjo until Rett could talk to this guy. But Mel didn’t promise not to tell Love what was going on. So, when Evan showed up, she asked him to drive Rett home, and she called Love. She didn’t like getting involved with this—mediating family problems had been her least favorite part of being a cop—but Love was her friend. When Evan returned to the feed store, Mel went home, telling him she’d see them tonight. She didn’t tell him about the banjo. The less people who knew, the better.

  She walked along the Embarcadero, her eyes involuntarily scanning the crowd, searching for Patrick’s ruddy face—an older version of Sean’s lean good looks. It annoyed her that Patrick had the advantage, that he could show up any moment without warning, and she’d be forced to deal with him on the spot. How could she convince him that she didn’t have any of Sean’s stolen money? How could she keep him from ruining this new life she’d carefully constructed? She knew she should have told Love about her past a long time ago, but there never seemed to be a right moment. She was fairly certain Love would have understood, would have believed that Mel was innocent. At least she hoped so.

  She turned up one of the short T-piers that led to the edge of the bay. People stood three deep next to the metal railing, waiting for the boat parade to start. The air was crisp and cold, and the crowd murmur was congenial as people sipped mugs of hot chocolate, coffee and apple cider. Kids ran in circles, frantic and chirpy as seagulls, high on salt water taffy, the laughing crowd and the coming Christmas holiday. In the distance, she heard a boat horn sound—three short blasts—the signal for the parade to begin. Anticipating the boats, the crowd’s collective sound rose, their laughter took on a sharp vibrato. A man with wide shoulders pushed in front of her without excusing himself. She shook her head but just turned around, looking for a less crowded spot when she ran right into August Johnson’s broad chest.

  “Hey, missy,” he said. He wore his standard faded denim overalls and a red plaid flannel shirt.

  “Hey, August,” she replied, letting the camera drop to her chest, held in place by a thick strap. “I thought you and Polly reserved a table at the Shrimp.”

  His gray eyebrows furrowed. “Now what would we be doing with shrimp at a roundup? You know Mr. Hearst only serves tri-tip. Polly’s back at the house making her pumpkin cobbler. She’ll be coming by right about suppertime.”

  Mel stared at him a moment, at a loss for words. She searched his red-rimmed eyes for a twinkle, indicating that he was joking. They were friendly, normal-looking. This was August Johnson, Cy’s father, the man who taught her how to drive a tractor, how to mend a barbed wire fence and tell the difference between a wild mushroom you could eat and one that would kill you.

  “August, we’re at the lighted boat parade.” She talked slowly, choosing her words carefully. “In Morro Bay. The Christmas boat parade.”

  His heavy brows remained together. “We’re going to the parade in Morro Bay, me and Polly. I’ll pick her up in the truck right after I find those calves.” He peered over Mel’s shoulder, and she turned around, half expecting to see a herd of bawling calves waiting to be tagged and vaccinated. Instead, she saw a family of five dressed alike in green Christmas sweaters decorated with Rudolph and his red nose.

  She lightly touched his forearm. “Let’s find Polly. We have to help her carry that cobbler.”

  His eyes darted from side to side. He looked down, then back up and gave Mel a tentative smile. “Apples make good cobbler, but I believe I like pumpkin better.”

  “Me too,” Mel said, gently leading him down the street toward the Happy Shrimp. “Let’s find Polly. I bet she’s waiting supper on us.”

  He nodd
ed, going along with Mel with the trusting innocence of a child. That frightened her more than anything when she thought about all the psychos waiting to prey upon the weak and the helpless.

  A block away from the restaurant they saw Benni Harper and Ford Hudson walking toward them.

  “Hi, August,” Benni called out. She wore a bright emerald cowboy shirt and a black felt cowboy hat with tiny green and red bells circling the narrow hatband. “You’ve got people looking for you, mister.” She gave August a quick hug. Her animated face belied her worried eyes.

  “We’re going to pick up Polly,” August said, smiling at her. “She’s bringing her pumpkin cobbler to the roundup. Got calves waiting.”

  “I love Polly’s cobbler,” Benni said, looping her arm through his. “Let’s go find her.” Catching Mel’s eye, she raised one eyebrow a fraction of an inch.

  August narrowed his eyes, peering over at Hud. “I don’t recognize you, young man. You must be new. You can show us what you can do by tagging those calves. But be careful, the chute’s been a bit cranky lately.”

  “Yes, sir,” Hud said evenly, touching a finger to the rim of his gray felt cowboy hat. He wore dark jeans and a fleece-lined Levi’s jacket. “I’ll be real careful.”

  “We might be able to keep you on if you can do the work. But Mr. Hearst don’t hold with slackers. Keep that in mind.” He shook his head. “That’s a mighty fancy hat to be wearing to work on calves. I’d put it on a post if I was you.”

  “Good idea, sir,” Hud said, his face completely serious.

  At that moment, Gabe, Benni’s husband, walked up. “August, your beautiful bride is looking for you.” He and Benni exchanged troubled looks.