A Dangerous Affair

by Jason Melby

  "Find what you're looking for?"

  Leslie spun around to see Sheriff Blanchart in uniform. "What the hell are you doing here?" She swallowed her heart in her throat. "How did you get in here?"

  "The same way you did."

  Leslie slid her phone in her purse and discretely activated the voice recorder squeezed between her tissues and a can of mace. "You scared the shit out of me."

  Blanchart smiled wryly. "I have that affect on people."

  Leslie kept her distance. "What happened to your face?"

  "Domestic dispute. The perp tried to fight his way free."

  "Did he succeed?"

  "No."

  Leslie sensed a hostile tone in the sheriff's voice. Her instincts told her to cut and run, but her stronger half stood firm. "I've never seen a crime scene this clean before. What are you trying to hide?"

  "What are you trying to find?"

  "I don't have to disclose that to you," said Leslie.

  Blanchart nodded. "I don't have to arrest you for trespassing either."

  "I have the right to search the premises."

  "And what have you found so far?"

  "Inconsistency."

  "Regarding what?"

  Leslie moved closer to the door. The house suddenly felt much smaller in the presence of an armed sheriff with questionable intentions. "Where were you when Deputy Carter was shot?"

  "Read my report."

  "I have. Four times. I'd like to hear it from you." She watched Blanchart adjust the volume on his police radio and tap the nightstick on his duty belt. "Your report says you and Carter cornered Hugo Gonzalez in the kitchen. Deputy Carter snuck out the back, ran around the house, and surprised Hugo from the kitchen window. Carter brandished his weapon, and Hugo turned the shotgun on himself."

  "You have a good memory, Ms. Dancroft."

  "Where were you before Deputy Carter was killed?"

  "Outside," said Blanchart. "Pursuing another perp on foot. Carter stayed behind to secure the scene until help arrived."

  "Which perp?" said Leslie. "Vince Parr, Manny Morallen, or Leeland Marks?"

  Blanchart shrugged. "I didn't get a good look."

  "Did you and Carter clear the house before you chased after this other suspect?"

  "Yes."

  "But you claim you saw Manny Morallen shoot Deputy Carter."

  "Correct."

  "Now I'm confused," said Leslie. "How did you witness this murder if you were otherwise engaged in pursuing another perp?"

  "The suspect got away. I ran back to the house and saw Manny Morallen shoot Deputy Carter in the kitchen."

  "So Morallen just suddenly appeared out of nowhere?"

  "He must have been hiding."

  "You just told me you and Carter cleared the house."

  "Morallen must have come back."

  "Just like that," said Leslie. She faced her purse toward Blanchart to maximize the tiny microphone's reception. "The coroner's report indicates Carter had no defensive marks on his body. No evidence from his nail beds or his knuckles to suggest he struggled with his attacker."

  "Morallen must have caught him by surprise."

  "So Morallen either made himself invisible—or he ran out and came back, grabbed the shotgun from his dead friend Hugo, and shot Carter point blank in the face? Not in the back where he could have snuck up behind him, but front and center before Carter had a chance to draw his weapon."

  "Carter made a rookie mistake."

  "Carter was on the force for three years. His file contains two letters of accommodation, both signed by you. Doesn't seem like the rookie type to me."

  Veins rippled on Blanchart's forehead. "When you work in law enforcement, you put your life on the line every day. You train for it. You prepare for it. But no matter how hard you train or how well you think you're prepared, sometimes the bad guys get lucky."

  "And sometimes the good guys are bad."

  "Careful, Ms. Dancroft. That kind of rhetoric could hurt morale in my department."

  Leslie chose her next words carefully. Her phone vibrated in her purse. "Did you fire your weapon at Morallen?"

  "I never got a clean shot."

  "So Morallen shot Carter point blank and slipped away? Seems unlikely, don't you think?"

  "Like I told you," Blanchart replied, "sometimes the bad guys get lucky. Now you really are starting to annoy me."

  Leslie watched a patrol car pull up outside. The presence of another officer brought her a modicum of comfort. "What's your relationship to Vince Parr and Leeland Marks?"

  "I can't discuss an open investigation."

  "Do you think it's possible one of them killed Deputy Carter?"

  "No."

  "Because you saw Manny Morallen pull the trigger?"

  "Yes," said Blanchart.

  "Will you testify under oath?"

  "I'm not on trial, Ms. Dancroft."

  "Maybe you should be."

  Blanchart watched his man exit the patrol car and approach the house. "You think I killed my own deputy?"

  "Did you?"

  "Why would I do such a thing?"

  "To protect what's yours," said Leslie.

  Blanchart stared at her, his face expressionless. "You'll have to excuse me, Ms. Dancroft. I have an important event to attend."

  Chapter 49

  Lloyd gathered a stack of damp envelopes from the mailbox at the end of his mother's driveway and carried them to the house. "Mom?" he called out from the broken screen-door he'd fixed twice already. He observed the busted latch where a pair of wood screws had been ripped from the frame.

  "In here," a faint voice called from the bedroom.

  Lloyd poked his head inside the room that smelled of booze and urine. "It's Lloyd," he said in a quiet voice, his attention momentarily distracted by the squalid conditions.

  "I know who it is," said Brenda. "I heard your damn motorcycle two counties away." She propped herself against the headboard with pillows behind her back. Prescription bottles littered the nightstand. "What are you doing here?"

  Lloyd gave her the soggy envelope with her social security check. "I found this in the mailbox."

  "Next time leave it there, for all the good it does. What the hell am I supposed to do with... four hundred and fifty dollars a month?"

  Lloyd set the check by the lamp. "Where's Josh?"

  "He left," said Brenda.

  "I thought he was taking care of you."

  "He took care of me all right. Stole damn near everything but my pantyhose. He would have taken those too if he thought they were worth something."

  "Where'd he go?"

  Brenda cleared her throat. "He didn't say. I didn't ask. He took my good jewelry." She pointed to the antique jewelry chest. "I kept my grandmother's wedding band in there."

  "Did you call the police?"

  "He's my son."

  Lloyd opened the empty drawer. "He's a thief."

  "He's your brother."

  "You should call the police."

  "Nothing good will come of it," said Brenda.

  Lloyd shook his head. "Who's going to look after you when I'm not here?"

  "I can take care of myself."

  "Not like this." Lloyd poured a glass of water from the bathroom sink. A cockroach scurried up from the drain. "You left your door unlocked again. The trash hasn't gone out in days."

  "You told me you would take care of it."

  "You're right," said Lloyd. "My bad..." He held the glass for his mother to drink. "I can't be here all the time. And you can't live like this."

  Brenda touched his hand. "I'm fine."

  "You don't look fine."

  "Dying will do that to you."

  Lloyd set the glass down and reached inside his motorcycle jacket for a greeting card.

  "What's this?" Brenda asked.

  "Open it."

  Brenda opened the Mother's Day card on her lap. "I need my reading glasses."

  Lloyd brought her the glasses from the
dresser. "You need help with these?"

  "I can manage." Brenda put her glasses on and read the card. "You're a little late."

  "I sent you cards from prison. I never knew if you got them or not."

  Brenda kept her emotions in check. "I'm glad you're here. The card wasn't necessary, but thank you."

  "I had flowers on the back of the bike, but they sort of blew away."

  Brenda chuckled. She pushed the covers aside and hugged her son. "Help me up."

  "What are you doing?"

  "I'm getting up to make you a sandwich."

  "I'm not hungry." Lloyd adjusted her pillows and examined the prescription bottles on the dresser. "You need to take your medications."

  Brenda swung her legs out of bed and touched her feet to the floor, sighing with pain. "I'm not an invalid. I can still control my own bladder even without those pills."

  "You still need to take them."

  "They slow me down," Brenda countered. She used Lloyd's massive arm for leverage to adjust herself back in bed. "Another bottle would do me better."

  "You'll drink yourself to death."

  "This body's already gone. My brain just doesn't know it yet."

  "How long has it been since you've eaten?"

  "I can't hold much food down anymore. It never seems to taste right anyhow."

  Lloyd searched the room. "You should be in a hospital."

  "I'm not living in a public spectacle with a bunch of strangers who piss themselves."

  "It beats living by yourself."

  "Don't crack wise with me. Those places kill more people than they help. I might be a lost cause, but I'm not stupid."

  "You'll be more comfortable."

  "No sir."

  "You'll have a nurse to help you," Lloyd challenged her. "They can take better care of you than I can. I'm on house parole. I have a curfew every night. I can't always be here when you need me."

  "Forget it."

  "You'll have three good meals a day."

  "Hardly. Their slop would kill me before my liver does."

  "Just try it out. If you're not happy, I'll bring you home."

  Brenda shed her reading glasses. "Don't antagonize me, Lloyd. I'm not in the mood. I might be an old widow with terminal cancer, but I haven't lost my senses. I just want to be left alone in my own home, on my own terms. Understand?"

  "I'm just saying—"

  "Don't."

  Lloyd felt the avalanche of stubborn attitude prevail. "You deserve a better quality of life."

  "Son, that's the trouble with life. You can want what you want, but in the end, you only get what you get." Brenda leaned back, clearly exhausted from the effort to leave her bed. She pressed her hands on Lloyd's face. "Now tell me, who's the girl?"

  "What girl?"

  "The one you've been hiding from me—I can smell her perfume on you."

  Lloyd moved her hands away. "I'm not hiding anything from you."

  "When do I get to meet her?" Brenda asked. Her smile beamed at Lloyd.

  "It's complicated."

  "Is she younger?"

  "Mom—"

  "Can she cook?"

  "I don't know."

  "Well, you better find out. The last thing you need is a woman who doesn't know her way around the kitchen."

  "You never cooked," said Lloyd.

  "And yet your father loved me all the same after thirty years of frozen dinners. Poor bastard." She scratched her hair. "So tell me how you met her."

  "There's not much to tell."

  Brenda took hold of Lloyd's hand and studied the lines on his palm. "Your father loved you very much. He would want you to know that. The day we brought you into our family was the proudest day of his life. He always talked about you. He always bragged about you to his friends. Someday you will be a great father to your own child."

  "I'm not ready for that."

  "That's not what I see."

  Lloyd gently pulled his hand away. "Why did Dad kill himself? And don't tell me it's between him and God. I need to know whatever it is you're not telling me."

  Brenda shifted her stare to somewhere far beyond the room. "Your father..." She lowered her head and wept quietly. "Two years ago, a postal worker filed an insurance claim through your father's company. Said he had injuries from a work-related accident that left him in a wheelchair. The company got suspicious and asked your father to investigate the claim. He took photos of this man hauling groceries, riding a bicycle... anything to prove the fraud."

  Brenda coughed. She pulled a tissue from the box on her nightstand and covered her mouth. "Instead of submitting his report, your father blackmailed this loser for a split of the insurance payout."

  "Why?"

  "We were buried in legal bills. Lawyers hounded us for years after you went to prison. They were trying to take our house, our land... everything we owned. Your father saw a way out."

  Lloyd scratched the back of his neck. "What happened?"

  "This man threatened to hurt us, but he didn't have the balls. Your father hid the money. He never told me where. He said I was safer if I didn't know. A few days later, this man showed up at our house at night half-tanked and angry at the world, demanding your father give up his share of the settlement."

  "Did you call the police?"

  "And tell them what? Your father was just as guilty of fraud as what's-his-name. Jerry, Juno—Julian. His name was Julian Verne. I remember his face. And his hands. He had tiny hands with dainty fingers like a woman."

  Lloyd paced. He thought about the note his father had left him. "Did Dad talk about this Julian?"

  Brenda rubbed her eyes. "Not really. Julian disappeared for a while. A few months, maybe more. Then he came back. The rotten ones always do. He broke in the house when Josh was here and got in a fight. Josh went crazy, I mean wild-eyed crazy like I've never seen him before. Your brother went to town on Julian with a hammer. Killed him dead on our living room floor. The police arrested Josh and let him go on account of self-defense. But he wasn't the same."

  "What happened to Dad?"

  Brenda coughed in her hand and shuddered in pain. "I came home one night and found him dead in the yard. He still had the gun in his hand."

  Lloyd stared at her in disbelief. "Why didn't you tell me this before?"

  "Because nothing good would come of it. Your father was a good man who made a bad decision he couldn't live with."

  "Dad wouldn't take his own life."

  "Don't be so sure," said Brenda. "Sometimes you never know what you're capable of until you face your own demons."

  "But Dad hated guns."

  "Your brother hated needles. It never stopped him from shooting poison in his veins." Brenda touched her hand to her side. "Your father's gone. There's no point in digging up the past."

  Lloyd saw the torment in her eyes. "What if I could buy you a new liver?"

  Brenda smirked. "Are you nuts?"

  "Maybe, but I think I know where Dad hid the money."

  Chapter 50

  Lloyd mounted his bike in the rain outside Sonny's Car Wash and followed Jamie's red Volvo to an old self-storage lot that had gone bankrupt in the housing bust. He rode through the waning daylight hours, absorbed in the notion of burying himself inside a woman who stirred a passion within him so overwhelming he would rather starve than endure another day without her.

  He followed the four-door sedan to the back of the secluded storage property built from cinderblock walls and dismounted the Triumph in his wet leather jacket. Soaked to the bone, he raised the corrugated aluminum door on the eight-by-ten unit filled with old boxes and a rusted bicycle on flat tires.

  Jamie hugged him in a long embrace. "I can't stay long," she said.

  Lloyd wrapped his arms around her and kissed her neck. "I'll take as long as you can spare." He kissed her soft lips and ran his fingers through her hair. "I can't stand to be away from you." He kissed her ear, brushing his razor stubble against her soft cheek.

  Jamie presse
d her hands to his solid chest and gently pushed him away. "We can't do this any more."

  "You don't mean that."

  Jamie touched his face. "This is a mistake. What we're doing is wrong."

  Lloyd slid his hands along her slender arms. He held her gaze and said, "Not for me. Not for us. Tell me you feel the same way."

  "I can't," said Jamie. "I'm sorry."

  "That's not what your eyes are telling me."

  Jamie reached for Lloyd's hand and pulled it toward her. She drew him closer and laid her head against his chest. "Just hold me," she whispered. She felt the tingling sensation from her lover's touch. She'd crossed the line so many times she'd lost sight of where it was. Every effort to expel Lloyd Sullivan from her life met with genuine resistance from her heart.

  Lloyd unfastened her bra from the back, skillfully working his fingers on the hook and loop clasp. He lifted her shirt far enough to kiss her tender breasts. "I missed you."

  Jamie rejected his advance. "I can't tonight. Alan will smell the sex on me."

  "Then why are you here?"

  "Because a life without you is a life without meaning. I want you in my life. I need you in my life. I just don't see how that can happen."

  Lloyd caressed her face. "If I could have but one wish come true in this lifetime, it would be to make you happy. I think about you every second of every day. Our time together is priceless to me. I would never take you for granted. I would never hurt you. In my life I've never met a woman as remarkable as you."

  Jamie closed her eyes, straining against the pressure to let herself go. "You spent a long time in prison."

  "Long enough to decide what I can live with and what I can't live without."

  "I have to go."

  "Stay with me," Lloyd implored her. "A little longer." He lifted her shirt higher, exposing the scar tissue on her back from a cigarette lighter and a leather belt. "What happened," he asked abruptly, confounded by the unexpected brutality.

  "Don't—"

  "I'm not judging you."

  Jamie pulled her shirt down. "Then let it go."

  Lloyd studied her expression. "Did someone hurt you?"

  Jamie looked away. "It doesn't matter."

  "It matters to me." Lloyd held her close and kissed her forehead. "Did your husband do this to you?"