by Judy Clemens
Once my heartbeat returned to normal, I eased through the rest of the alley. I made it to Lenny’s garage without further incident, and found the house key in the nail drawer. As long as I’d known Lenny I’d never had to use his key. I couldn’t even remember why I knew it was there.
The house was silent and smelled stuffy, as if it had been closed for weeks instead of part of a day. For a moment I felt guilty invading his home, but then remembered somebody was out to get him, and was hurting others in the process. It was time to find out what was going on, and if Lenny wasn’t going to tell me, I was going to hunt it down myself.
I wandered into his living room, not sure what I was looking for. Where would Lenny keep details about his past or whatever was haunting him? I couldn’t imagine him keeping a journal, writing secret, innermost thoughts every night before going to sleep. I also couldn’t imagine an address book listing potential enemies. If he wanted to find somebody, he’d probably just start a chain reaction by telling one person, and soon the sought-after would show up at his door.
The room looked like any bachelor’s living room. A TV and DVD player at one end, a stereo surrounding it, and a very sat-on sofa taking up most of the space. At one end of the sofa was a little table for necessities—a lamp, and a coaster for cold drinks. All that hung on the wall were a Harley-Davidson calendar—the kind without the bimbos, thank God—and a few photographs of Lenny and Bart at the Biker Barn.
I drifted into the next room, which was a kind of office. He didn’t have a computer, but there was a desk and a filing cabinet, and not much else. I got through the top drawers of the filing cabinet—utility bills, insurance information, mortgage papers—and sensed I was looking in the wrong place. This was just paperwork, not anything meaningful. I stood up, stretched, and went back into the living room.
I dug around the entertainment center, finding only the things that should be there—DVDs, CDs, TV schedules from the newspaper—and turned to the end table, which had a cabinet in the bottom part. I opened the door and sucked in my breath. Just as in Howie’s safe, here was a stash of photos. I pulled them out and sat on the sofa.
The first print on the pile showed Lenny with a woman and a little girl, probably about two years old. Lenny and the woman were standing on opposite sides of a bike with the little girl on the seat between them, looking terrorized by the flash. The woman, giving something resembling a smile, sparked some feeling of recognition in me, but I couldn’t place her. It kind of gave me the creeps, though, looking at her.
But the person that was supposedly Lenny gave me the biggest shock. He was scraggly and unkempt, his bulk looking more like the unhealthy kind than just the big kind, his current build. He wore black jeans, an unrecognizable black T-shirt, and a jean jacket with the sleeves cut off, which looked like it had never been washed. The hair on the back of my neck rose. Outlaw clubs were notorious for their unwashed colors. Initiation into the ranks was accompanied by a mess of vomit, urine, and other disgusting things, and washing your vest was a serious enough offense to cause expulsion from the club.
What really got me was that underneath the filth and grime there was something I hadn’t seen in him before. Something I wasn’t sure I would have recognized if I hadn’t seen Howie’s picture of me with my father and mother when I was a toddler.
Family pride.
I sat back, feeling lightheaded. Lenny was a father?
Shaken, I took away that photo to look at the one beneath it. This photo was again of the woman and girl, but without Lenny this time. They were sitting on the steps of a front porch somewhere. It didn’t look like this row home. While Lenny’s current house was stone, the one in the picture was clad in what looked like dark, shabby asbestos siding. The picture was a little overexposed, so details weren’t very clear.
After that there were several pictures of Lenny and his biker buddies, surrounded by a surprising amount of beer bottles. Surprising because as far as I knew, Lenny never touched the stuff. But in these pictures his hand often clutched a cold one, and he didn’t look real steady.
I recognized a face halfway through the stack and realized it was Mal Whitney—Sweetheart—looking twenty or so years younger, about Lenny’s present age. His left arm was draped around a woman, presumably the wife he had mentioned, with his right arm cranked up and around Lenny’s neck. The guys grinned like crazy people, but Mal’s wife could’ve been a poster child for endurance. Huh.
At the bottom of the stack lay another picture of Lenny and the woman. This one was close and clear and made a shiver run down my spine. I sucked in my breath, and suddenly realized why the woman looked so familiar. She looked exactly like the nasty biker chick Lenny and I saw at the Biker Barn the other day.
Holy cow. That chick was Lenny’s daughter.
Our conversation from the ice cream stand suddenly came back to me, and I felt like an idiot for not putting it together that day. Lenny had been asking if I remembered my father. He wasn’t concerned about me. He’d been remembering his own daughter, and wondering if she ever thought of him. She obviously hadn’t been a part of his life for many, many years.
I looked back down at the picture of Lenny and the woman. The photo cut off the woman’s right arm at the biceps, but I saw what was probably the very top of a tattoo. A familiar one. My pulse pounded in my throat as I scrabbled back through the piles of photos until I came to one that showed her whole arm. I turned on the lamp, stuck the picture in the bright light, and squinted. The shiver in my spine came back.
I closed my eyes, picturing where I had last seen the fierce snake with the blood red tongue. It didn’t take me long to remember. The nasty chick’s boyfriend had a tattoo exactly like it.
I stood up. There had to be something else in the house to give me some answers. Lenny wouldn’t have just these few pictures and nothing else.
I walked back into the office and pulled open more file drawers. Perhaps I was wrong about this room. Perhaps there would be something helpful.
All I could find in the files was business stuff. Nothing to do with Lenny’s personal life. Just taxes, work expenses, and other boring papers. The drawers of the desk were just as fruitless, and there wasn’t any other place in the room to hide anything. I abandoned the office and headed up to the second floor.
When I got to the landing, I hesitated. This was getting really personal now, violating the man’s bedroom. But I stepped into the room anyway, and looked around. The bed was unmade, the sheets tangled and the blanket thrown onto the floor, along with a ratty comforter. The one pillow was scrunched into a little ball. Drawers on the dresser were half open, socks and underwear fighting for space, while the closet revealed a couple of shirts on hangers and several pairs of boots in a heap on the floor. A nightstand held an actual ticking clock, and a pile of change lay scattered across its top. The floor was a black and white mess of laundry—clothes, towels, and handkerchiefs.
“Good grief,” I said out loud.
I stood for a moment longer before wading through the mess to his closet. The shelf was a big fat zero, as was the wall at the back. I had to check, seeing as how Howie’s closet had produced the wealth of family pictures. I picked through the boots and came up with nothing except some disgustingly smelly socks.
His dresser was just as unhelpful—nothing but what should be there. I shoved the clothes into the drawers and somehow got all the drawers to shut.
It was in his bedside table I found what I’d come looking for.
A mess of yellowed newspaper clippings occupied the drawer, and I stared at them, not sure I wanted to know what was in them. The first headline I saw screamed, “Two Bikers Die, Two Injured, in Fatal Blast.” I forced myself to read the whole article even though I felt like throwing up.
The article detailed how the clubhouse for the Serpents motorcycle club had exploded the night before, killing the president and the secretary/treasurer. Lenny Spruce, along with Mal Whitney and a guy nam
ed Scott Simms, had been taken in to “help the police with their inquiries,” being prominent members of another local club. The Priests.
I shoved the entire stack of clippings into one of Lenny’s pillowcases, and practically ran out of the house.
I was ready to climb into my truck when a woman stepped out of the bushes holding a rolling pin.
“Hold it right there!” she said, waving the implement. Her flowered housecoat flapped about her legs, and wild, sleep-flattened hair ringed her head.
If the situation hadn’t have been so serious, I might have laughed. But the last thing I needed was a dent in my head, and I recognized the woman as a friendly face.
“Whoa, lady,” I said. “It’s Stella Crown. Remember? Lenny’s friend? We talked the other night when the cops were here?”
She shone a flashlight in my face and I covered my eyes.
“Take your hand away from your face,” she said.
“Lower the flashlight, then.”
She tipped it so it lighted up my stomach, and I looked at her. She dropped it the rest of the way.
“Sorry,” she said. “I heard your truck out here, and wanted to stop whoever it was. Lenny’s been through enough the past few days.”
I gestured toward the house. “Just checking on things for Lenny. His partner was…in an accident, and Lenny’s crashed at my house right now.”
“I’m sure it’s fine you’re here. But I’ve seen those bikers out back a couple of times this week and I figured you were them again.”
I froze. “What bikers?”
“A guy and girl, if you want to call them that. Scummy folks. Not like you and Lenny.”
“When exactly did you see them?”
“Well, let’s see.” She crossed her arms and the light from the flashlight played on the side of my truck. “A couple days ago. I guess it would’ve been Sunday night. I figured they were friends of Lenny’s, so I didn’t say anything. Then I saw them again yesterday while Lenny was gone. They went into the house and came out again after just a few minutes.”
“Did you tell anybody?”
“Sure. I called Lenny at the Biker Barn right away. They were here early, soon after he’d left for work. I saw them because I was cleaning up the boys’ breakfast stuff.”
“Did you tell the cops about this?”
“I told one of the officers last night, when they were here at Lenny’s. He didn’t seem to think much of it, though.”
Detective Willard would be hearing it again from me, in case it had slipped by him.
“Well, thanks for telling me. I’ll make sure the cops hear about it again.”
She shrugged. “Lenny told me not to bother the cops. That he knew who the bikers were and he’d take care of it.”
I didn’t like the sound of that.
She studied my face and saw I wasn’t happy. “Lenny doesn’t deserve this,” she said. “He never hurt anybody.”
She turned to leave when I walked around to the driver’s door of my truck.
“Hey, lady,” I said.
She stopped.
“Next time you see someone going into Lenny’s house you might want to call the police. I’m not sure how much good a rolling pin would do.”
She looked down at it like she’d forgotten it was there, and gave a little smile. “You never know. This one has seen a lot of action. I make a mean pie crust.”
I slammed the truck door, laughing in spite of the situation. Perhaps I’d finally found Ma Granger’s match.
Chapter Thirty-two
It was quarter to five by the time I made it home, so I got a nice solid forty-five minutes of sleep before heading out to the barn. I would’ve just stayed awake like the morning before, except I fell asleep behind the wheel of my truck as soon as I’d parked it in the driveway. It was amazing I could even sleep, seeing how my yard looked like a bomb had exploded on it. My first sight upon waking was a board that had lodged itself in the side of Howie’s truck.
Once I pulled my gaze from the wreckage and got my neck un-cricked I took time to run into the house and change my clothes, unfortunately catching a glimpse of my pasty skin and exhaustion-blackened eyes in my mirror. No wonder the surgeon had been afraid of me—I looked like I’d spent the last week hiding in a closet.
Lucy met me in the barn an hour later, where I was filling feed troughs. The cows were clipped in, crunching on hay.
“Gosh,” Lucy said. “You look terrible.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“No offense.”
I glanced at her, trying to judge if she looked any better than I did. She probably did, but that could’ve just been genetics.
“I’m betting you didn’t get a whole lot of sleep, either,” I said.
She shrugged. “I got a few hours. I’m not feeling too bad, if you don’t count my head drumming a constant beat.”
“Bed sleep okay while you were in it?”
“Sure. And I only woke up twice wondering where on earth I was.”
She cracked a grin, which broke my reserve. I flicked grain off my jeans while I tried to keep myself from blubbering.
“Tess going to school today?” I asked. My voice sounded normal.
“I think so. She had some nightmares about the tornado early last night, but we talked about them and she seemed to sleep solid the last several hours.” She glanced at the house. “I think it will help to keep her routine the same, especially since it’s so new. Thanks to Mallory, she has some clothes to wear, and I’m hoping she’ll share during show and tell.”
“Shouldn’t you be in there helping her get ready?”
“I set the alarm clock in her room, and I’ll pop back in to make sure she’s on her way.”
Lenny’s bike erupted in the still morning, and Lucy and I looked out the window.
“Where’s he going?” I asked. To see Willard, I hoped.
“Said he wanted to visit Bart, and make sure everything’s okay at the Barn.”
“But what about the people that are after him? What if they’re waiting for him?”
Lucy paled. “You think they’ll be there? At the hospital? Or the Barn?”
I rubbed my temples, sighing. “I’ll run after him.”
A cow sneezed on my feet, her nose dusty with grain, and I did a quick side-step. I tripped over my boots and grabbed onto a water pipe.
“Just as I thought,” Lucy said. “You’re in no condition to be protecting Lenny. Isn’t there someone else who could do it?”
I closed my eyes and tried to think. “I’ll call somebody from the club. See if they can help.”
Lucy’s eyes were anxious. “If you can’t find anyone, let me know.”
I nodded.
“Now make the call and go to bed before you hurt yourself,” Lucy said. “I’ll take care of this.”
“All right,” I said. “Thanks.”
In the house, I found the number for Harry, our club president. When I gave him the lowdown, he told me he’d get right on it. If he couldn’t find someone in the next few minutes he’d go himself. Relieved to find backup so easily, I stumbled upstairs, where I tore off my boots and jeans and fell into bed.
I woke to a huge crash outside my bedroom window.
“What the—”
“Sorry!” I heard.
I stuck my face against the screen of the open window to try to get a view into the yard. My driveway was filled with trucks, a Harley-Davidson Fat Boy, and a full-sized Dumpster, while my yard teemed with big, sweaty Granger brothers.
“Huh,” I said. I couldn’t believe I’d slept through all the noise.
I pulled my jeans back on, glanced at the clock, which said it was now late morning, and gulped a Motrin before walking carefully down the stairs, feeling ten times better than I had on my way up several hours before.
“Well, well, if it ain’t the princess,” Jethro Granger said. “Looks like you could use a few more
hours of beauty sleep.”
I glared at him. “How come your son’s so much nicer than you? Zach at least treats me with some respect.”
Jethro laughed. “He knows you could beat him up. I figure I’m pretty safe.”
“Just because your gut would smother me.”
“Okay, kids, break it up.”
An even huger arm than Jethro’s draped across my shoulders and I looked up into the face of Jermaine, Ma’s adopted son and the owner of the bike that sat in the shade of one of my surviving trees. His beautiful skin was the color of a perfect mug of hot chocolate, and the sun reflected brightly off of his shaved head.
“What are you guys doing here?” I asked. “Welding business slow today?”
“We’re the clean-up crew,” Jermaine said. “You don’t think we’d be letting you sit by yourself with all this crap?”
I looked around, startled again by the destruction.
“Good lord,” I said. “You’d think Somebody could give me a little slack one of these days.”
“Not gonna happen you keep taking His name in vain,” Jethro said.
“Uh oh. You becoming Ma?” We all knew better than to blaspheme in Ma’s presence, for fear of the dreaded “hot sauce on the tongue” routine. Even at our age.
“Nope, I just can’t have a sister-in-law with such a potty mouth.”
I stared at him.
“Whoops,” he said.
“I don’t know what Abe’s been telling you—”
“Oh, let it go,” Jermaine said. “Abe’s been saying nothing. Jethro here’s just got a wild imagination. And a big mouth.”
“I call what I see,” Jethro said.
“And what you’re going to see soon is the sole of my boot,” I said.
Jethro looked at Jermaine. “Try to do a little charity work and what do I get?”