Random Road

by Thomas Kies

  “Maybe she was grateful that it was over.”

  “Maybe.”

  “How’s she doing now? She seems happy enough.”

  “I think she is. Most of the time. She can be moody.”

  “She’s a teenager.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You know, one minute she can be a regular cheerful kid and the next she can shut herself up in her room like a hermit. I can’t get her out of there with a stick of dynamite.”

  “Has she ever talked to a counselor or a therapist?”

  “Yeah, it was Ruth’s idea.”

  “Did it help?”

  “It might have. What’s normal when something like that happens?” he mused and shrugged his shoulders.

  I could relate to the pain Caroline felt. My dad died back when I was in junior high. When that happened, I was devastated. I was certain it was my fault. When my mom passed away, two years ago, I was older and could handle it more maturely. Mom and I hadn’t been close since dad died.

  “The afternoon we scattered Joanna’s ashes over Long Island Sound, she asked me why I thought her mom had to die,” Kevin quietly said.

  “What did you tell her?”

  He put his fork down on his plate. “I told her that I didn’t know. That God does things we can’t understand.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t believe in God. If there’s a God, he wouldn’t have made Joanna go through that kind of hell.”

  What could I say after that? We sat there and drank our coffee, lost in our own thoughts for what seemed like an eternity, but was really only a few minutes.

  Finally, he tapped the table with his finger. “So, what are you doing this afternoon?”

  I shrugged. “I think I’ll go for a run.”

  Run to tone up my legs and ass, to burn off a couple of pounds of pancakes and to sweat out some guilt.

  Kevin said, “I need to stop by my house to print up an invoice and then I’m driving out to the Elroys’ place out on Connor’s Landing. They’re giving me a deposit check this afternoon. Want to come along and see their house? It’s really something. Afterward, we can take a walk out on Shaker’s Pier, catch some sun, maybe watch the sailboats, grab a margarita, and sit out on the deck over at the Sunset Inn?”

  His face seemed so damned hopeful. How could I say no?

  “I’d like that. I need to get my car and leave it at your place. Okay?”

  In case I feel like dropping by Jim Brenner’s place in the daylight.

  ***

  When I pulled into his driveway, Kevin was getting out of his truck.

  Something about the yard looked different from the last time I’d seen it.

  I got out of my car. “Did you cut the grass?”

  “Yup.”

  “When did you do that?”

  “I got up this morning about five a.m., took a look out the front window and thought it was looking a little raggedy. So I got out the lawnmower and got her done.”

  Guess he was feeling better.

  “You cut the lawn at five this morning?”

  “Yup.”

  “Five o’clock on a Sunday morning?”

  “Yeah.” He unlocked his front door.

  “Your neighbors must really love you.”

  He thought a moment. “Probably.” He puffed out his cheeks and then added, “Not.”

  “What are you doing getting up so early on a Sunday morning?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Couldn’t sleep. I was thinking about you.”

  After he said that, he ducked inside and started up the stairs to the second floor, taking two steps at a time. Once he got to the top, he asked, “Coming?”

  I couldn’t decide what Kevin reminded me the most of, that shy, self-effacing kid I knew in high school or a Labrador retriever.

  I followed him up the steps, but by the time I got up to the second floor, he’d already disappeared. So I stuck my head in the first doorway I came to. It was Caroline’s bedroom.

  The room was very different from the rest of the house. The ceilings and walls were all intact. The room was complete. The walls were painted in a soft shade of coral and covered with posters of actors and pop stars. A comfortable, lime-green duvet was draped over her bed; overstuffed pillows were propped against the oaken headboard. Stuffed animals competed with cosmetics for space on her bureau. The mirror on her dresser was ringed with photos of her friends.

  Caroline was sitting with her back to the door, facing a sunny window and a computer screen, her fingers flying across the keyboard with eye-blurring speed.

  “Hi,” I offered.

  Her hands stopped jamming and she turned, smiling when she saw me. “Hi, Genie,” she said cheerily.

  “Writing a book?”

  She chuckled. “Just talking with some friends. Did I hear Dad come home?” She glanced behind me.

  I watched her computer monitor. Multiple conversations were scrolling down her screen, streaming in real time from who knows how many other homes? Messages firing up through the clouds, bouncing off a satellite locked in an undeviating position hundreds of miles above us, and then racing back down through the atmosphere and magically appearing here in Caroline’s room.

  If someone from the nineteenth century were standing in my place, they’d think it was witchcraft. I’m not a hundred percent sure that it’s not.

  “Yeah, your dad’s home. I think he disappeared somewhere down the hall here.”

  “Well, the house isn’t that big. Either he’s in the john or in his bedroom.” She reached around and picked up a handful of taco chips out of a bowl, dropped them on her desk, and put a couple into her mouth.

  How the hell did that girl stay so thin? I’ve watched her put away the food and if I ate what Caroline ate, I’d be a blimp! I guess at her age, metabolism was everything.

  “I’ll tell him to stop in and see you,” I said. “Okay?”

  She gave me the thumbs-up and then went back to pounding away at her computer.

  Turning away and heading up the hall, I momentarily wondered what Caroline thought of me. Did she think I was just her dad’s old high school friend? Did she have the slightest inkling that we’d been intimate?

  Did she give me a second thought at all?

  When I found Kevin, he was much like his daughter, sitting in front of a computer screen. His fingers moved much more slowly across the keyboard, however. I stood and watched him as he struggled to punch up an invoice.

  It gave me a chance to study his bedroom. Because of the darkness, it was difficult to get a good first impression. In spite of the bright sunny afternoon blazing away outside, Kevin’s windows were completely covered by heavy drapes.

  A tiny desk light perched next to the computer offered scant illumination and it took a second or two for my eyes to adjust. Eventually, I could make out that Kevin’s bed was neatly made. Score one for him.

  His closet doors were missing, much like the cupboard doors in the kitchen, so I could easily see that his clothes were pressed, hung up, and well organized. Score two.

  A couple of paintings of flower gardens hung on the walls, along with a large photo of a woman’s face that I surmised was Joanna’s. That was nice. Score three.

  And on the wall near where Kevin was sitting, there hung a Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar. A skinny blonde was kneeling in the wet sand on a beach, wearing only a tiny bikini bottom, covering her naked chest with carefully folded arms.

  All points lost. If we spent any time together, that would have to go.

  I walked around his bed until I came up behind him.

  Without looking back at me, he sensed that I was there. “I’m almost done.”

  I reached up and pulled open the curtains. The room was immediately flooded by sunshine
.

  Kevin looked up at me, blinking and squinting.

  “Like you said at Flap Jacks, it’s a beautiful day. Plus, how are you going to get a good look at Miss August over here if you don’t get some light in this room?” I pointed my thumb at his calendar.

  He faked a frown. “I forgot that damned thing was there.”

  “Right.” I took the opportunity to take another look at his bedroom in the light. The bed was covered with a light blue, flowered comforter. The walls were painted in a similar, light pastel blue. There were two lamps on his dresser, topped by rose-colored shades.

  It didn’t take a genius to realize that Kevin’s wife had decorated this room. No wonder he kept it dark. He was hoping her ghost was here.

  When he slept, maybe she came to him in his dreams.

  He punched a button on his keyboard and the printer on his computer table whirred to life. “This’ll be out in a minute.”

  I’m not certain if her ghost came only to Kevin and only when he slept. I had a feeling that she might be here in this bedroom most of the time.

  I made a silent promise to myself that I would never sleep in this room.

  Kevin pulled a four-color document out of his printer. “Ready to drive out to Connor’s Landing?”

  And then he did the damnedest thing. He put his arms around my waist, lifted me up and placed me gently on his bed. Then, while lying on top of me, we kissed each other with unbridled passion.

  And that was, of course, when I heard Caroline clear her throat.

  Kevin and I both looked up at the same time, clearly embarrassed to see that his daughter was standing in the doorway.

  “Um,” she said, “Ruth called just before you got home. She wants to know if we want to come over to her house for dinner tonight.”

  Still on top of me, trying to be nonchalant, Kevin asked his daughter, “Do you want to go to Ruth’s for dinner?”

  She frowned. “We just saw her last night.”

  “That’s what I was thinking. I’m going out to pick up a check this afternoon. Gonna’ have money burning a hole in my pocket. How about the three of us go over to Poco Loco for Mexican?”

  Since I was on the bottom and peering over my head at her, it was difficult to see her facial expression. “I could go for some chimichangas,” Caroline said.

  After she left, I mumbled, “Well, that was embarrassing.”

  “Could have been worse.”

  “Yeah, we could have been naked.”

  Kevin smiled. “I think she likes you.”

  “You’re full of shit.” Then I discovered just how ticklish he is.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The old man peered out at us from an open window in the tiny wooden gatehouse. Rheumy blue eyes stared over a pair of spectacles perched low on a nose made remarkable by its living roadmap of red and violet veins. White hair curled out around his forehead and ears from under a baseball cap emblazoned with a green and blue Aztec Security logo. Character was etched around the corners of his eyes and mouth by creases cut like dry riverbeds into his weathered face.

  “Help you?” He put away a newspaper with a partially completed crossword puzzle.

  Kevin smiled and pointed across the bridge. “We’re going to the Elroy house, up on Smuggler’s Road?”

  “Yup,” the old man nodded. Then he came slowly out of the gatehouse doorway, favoring his left leg, and handed Kevin a clipboard. The guard appeared to be somewhere in his early seventies and was dressed in tennis shoes, baggy beige pants, and a light blue polo shirt sporting the same logo as his hat. “Write your name here, please. Press down hard so it shows up on the copy underneath.”

  I leaned over onto Kevin’s lap and looked up through the window. “Is there a guard on this bridge all the time?”

  He bent down, put his arm on the door panel and gazed at me through the open driver’s side window. “Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, even Christmas.”

  “Can you tell me who was working this past Wednesday night?”

  He squinted at me and frowned. “Who wants to know?”

  Playing a hunch that I might have hit pay dirt, I whispered to Kevin, “Give me a minute.”

  I deftly got out of Kevin’s pickup and walked around the front bumper. Holding out my hand, I announced, “I’m Geneva Chase. I work for The Sheffield Post.”

  He tapped his finger against the logo on his hat. “Yeah? I got orders that any questions from the press should go to the home office. We’re not even letting any of those damned TV trucks across the bridge.”

  I cocked my head. “Yeah, I understand that. This is all off the record.”

  He shook his head, taking the clipboard back from Kevin. “Don’t care. All questions go to the home office.”

  I sighed, stepped up a little closer, and gave him a smile. When I asked him my next question, I let my voice drop a little and put my lips near his ear. “I promise not to tell where I got the information. It’ll never be in the newspaper and nobody will ever know. Can’t you just tell me who was working that night?”

  Older men like it when blondes flirt with them.

  “I’m not supposed to.” His voice got a little quieter.

  I nodded and looked him straight in the eye. “Whoever was on duty, it must be really scary to know that a killer was out there on the island. It takes a very brave man to work out here alone at night. It’s got to be spooky as heck.”

  He cocked his head and offered a tiny grin, letting me see his yellowed teeth. “Most times it’s kind of nice, being out here all by myself late at night. I got a tiny light in the hut and I get a lot of reading done, mostly mystery books. It’s real quiet. You can hear the waves lapping around the timbers of the bridge. Sometimes you hear a school of bluefish when they all come to the surface. In the winter you can even hear harbor seals when they swim ashore.”

  I was right. This was the guy who was watching the gate on Wednesday night!

  “You work days and nights?”

  “No, no.” He held up a hand. “Right up until that night, I worked from eleven at night until seven in the morning, Monday through Friday. Nice and quiet. I love that shift. I always know it’s time to go home when the sun creeps up over the water.”

  “No more?”

  He could see Kevin was listening, so the old man took me gently by the arm and led me around to the other side of the gatehouse. From where we were standing, I could still see the short wooden bridge across the narrow waterway and the rest of the island beyond. Two waterside mansions were easily in sight, even though the owners had tried to hide their presence behind high stone fences partially covered by hydrangeas, roses, and ivy. Sheffield Harbor was off to our left, Long Island Sound to the right.

  The humid air was still and the water was dead calm. I had no problem hearing the old man’s words even though they were little more than a whisper. “My wife won’t let me work nights no more. She says it just ain’t safe.”

  “I don’t blame her for thinking that. By the way, what’s your name?”

  He hesitated. “You ain’t writin’ any of this down, are ya’?”

  I got up close to him again and put a finger on his chest. “This is between me and you. I call it color, background information. You’ll never see it in the paper.”

  “I could lose my job. Social Security and my pension pay most of the bills, but I need to keep working so we can afford Loraine’s prescription medicine. She had pneumonia last winter and still can’t shake an infection got lodged in her chest.”

  “Nobody will ever know I was ever here, cross my heart.”

  He held out his hand, which I took with my own. He said, “Donnie Burke.”

  “Donnie Burke. Nice to meet you. You were working that night?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Bet the cops spent some time talkin
g to you, huh?”

  Donnie rolled his eyes. “Hours. They took my clipboard from that night, kept asking me the same questions over and over again. Guess they thought that if they asked ’em enough times I’d give ’em a different answer.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “That Wednesday night, hardly anyone came through here ’t all. Night was quieter than usual. Only folks comin’ or goin’ were residents…that and those people that came visitin’ the Chadwick house at a little after midnight, God rest their poor souls. George Chadwick come through first, that night. Told me that two more couples were comin’ up to his house for a visit.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, but you know something?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know what George was doing up at his place, but I don’t think they were there for just a visit, know what I mean?”

  I shrugged.

  “He has a lot of parties up there.”

  “Parties?”

  “Parties.” Donnie winked.

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh, yeah.” He used an appropriately conspiratorial whisper. “It’s so quiet out here that I can hear ’em some nights. Drinkin’, laughin’, carrying on.”

  “Carrying on?” I thought about what Ted had told me last night about their swinging.

  “Carrying on, doing things to each other. Most times they come off the island drunk as skunks. Sometimes, they don’t come out ’til they’ve slept it off.”

  “What happened last Wednesday night?”

  “I told the cops that after the last car went through, it got real quiet. And then I heard what I thought might be screaming.”

  “Screaming?”

  Donnie whispered, holding up his hands. “Most times when I hear screaming its ’cause somebody’s drunk and they’re just having a good time.”

  “How about this time, Donnie? Did it sound like they were having a good time?”