by Cindy Dees
It was near the end of her shift on Friday when she looked up and saw possibly the one person she dreaded seeing more than Jimbo Billingham walk into the diner. Mona Billingham—Eddie and Jimbo’s mother.
They hadn’t spoken since Eddie’s death. Anna had arranged a small memorial service for Eddie in Los Angeles that had been attended most notably by his mourning drug dealer. Mona hadn’t come to it, which was probably just as well. Instead, the woman had held a big funeral for Eddie in Sunny Creek—and Anna had not been invited. Which was also probably just as well.
When Anna arrived in Sunny Creek a few weeks after the funeral, people were still talking about the drunken wake that the police had to be called in to break up.
Anna hadn’t seen Eddie’s mother since her last, disastrous visit to Los Angeles about a year ago. Mona had screamed at Anna for ruining her beautiful baby boy. There’d been no telling the woman that drugs, alcohol, age, and dissipation were responsible for destroying his looks. Nope, it had all been Anna’s fault, and Mona—drunk herself on the last night of her visit—had declared that Anna deserved to die for what she’d done to Eddie.
Maybe Mona was right. Maybe another woman would have been better for him. Maybe another woman would have propped up his ego and fed his fantasies of stardom. But Anna had been too realistic, too practical, to play along with his delusions.
Come to think of it, right after Mona’s visit had been when Eddie started talking about killing her.
Shaking herself out of the awful memories, she lurched forward to greet Mona. Her feet dragged, and an urge to turn and run as fast as she could in the other direction nearly overcame her. “Would you like a booth today, Mona? Or would you rather sit at the counter?”
Eddie’s mother looked her up and down disdainfully. “You look like crap.”
“Thank you. You’re looking well,” she said pleasantly. No way was she getting into a confrontation with Eddie’s mother in front of a dozen customers, all of whom would gossip like crazy. Anna didn’t even have to glance over her shoulder to know every single person in the diner was watching this exchange with avid interest. “How about a nice booth over here?”
Mona slid into the vinyl banquette and demanded a cup of coffee while Anna handed her a menu. She recalled that her ex-mother-in-law liked her coffee more like ice cream than actual coffee, and Anna loaded up the cup with sugar and milk.
“What can I get for you today?” Anna asked, order pad held at the ready. As if the puny notebook would protect her from Mona’s barbs. Not.
“My son back would be nice.”
Great. It was going to be like that, huh? She gritted her teeth and said politely, “The special today is deep-dish potpie. It’s a mix of chicken and vegetables in a cream sauce, topped by Petunia’s homemade puff pastry. It’s delicious. Can I bring you one of those?”
“Fine,” Mona spat.
Anna escaped gratefully, heading for the order window. Petunia said from the kitchen, “Are you all right, sweetie? I can come out and deal with her if you’d rather not speak to her.”
“No, that’s all right. I can handle her. And we both live in this town. It was inevitable that we would see each other eventually.”
“If you’re sure,” Petunia responded doubtfully. Then, “Mona’s waving for you.”
This time, Anna armed herself with a coffeepot. It wasn’t as if she could actually pour the scalding liquid on the woman’s lap, but the idea of being able to do it comforted her. Lord, she was more of a sadist than she’d ever realized. Either that, or the entire Billingham clan had a special gift for getting under her skin.
“Can I refill your coffee?” Anna asked Mona. When the woman didn’t respond immediately, she started to turn away, grateful to escape.
“Don’t you run away from me, girlie. I have things to say to you.”
“I’m working, ma’am. And I have other customers to take care of.” She let a little steel enter her voice as she added, “This is neither the time nor place for a personal conversation.”
Mona leaned over toward her, and that was when Anna smelled alcohol on the woman’s breath. Uh-oh. As she recalled, Mona was nearly as nasty a drunk as her son.
She hastily refilled Mona’s coffee cup and retreated, ignoring the woman’s demands that she stand and listen to what Mona had to say. Nope. Not happening in this lifetime.
The potpie came up on the counter, and Anna mentally girded herself to deliver it. She carried the hot dish over to Mona and set it down on the table. “Be careful. It’s hot.” She looked the woman dead in the eye. “It will burn you if you’re not careful.”
“Are you threatening me? You? Threatening me?” Mona threw her head back and cackled loudly, and heads turned in her direction.
Well, hell. So much for not being today’s hot topic of gossip. She tried so damned hard not to draw attention to herself and to live quietly, but these Billinghams were determined not to let her do that. She supposed she could see their point of view. If someone had killed a loved one of hers, she would be out for blood, too. No doubt about it. Coming back to Sunny Creek had been a colossal mistake.
But in the meantime, she had to deal with her ex-husband’s vicious and inebriated mother—and all the wagging tongues just dying to wag in the other booths.
Maybe she just wasn’t getting enough sleep, or maybe she was tired of being the brunt of all the nasty gossip in this town. But something reckless broke loose in her chest, and she went with the impulse for once and told the unvarnished truth.
“You’re drunk, Mona. Why don’t you go home and sleep it off. If you want to talk with me, come back later, when you’re sober. And then I’ll tell you just what kind of monster your precious Eddie turned out to be.”
She turned on her heel and pulled up short as every face in the diner gaped at her. Tough. They could all just get over the whole cult of Eddie Billingham. It was high time people in this town knew what a terrible man he’d really been.
“Don’t you walk away from me!” Mona screeched.
Anna felt the woman coming and managed to get turned around before Mona’s arms closed around her. She threw her splint up and Mona’s hand slammed into it. Daggers of pain shot up Anna’s arm to her elbow, but the impact made Mona pull back sharply, shaking her own hand.
Anna spoke with icy calm, enunciating each word with precision. “Eddie used to hit me, too. I guess I see now where he learned to do that. He was a mean drunk, too. And by the way, he was drunk pretty much all the time. He used to go to auditions so plastered he couldn’t say his lines, let alone remember them.”
“How. Dare. You!” Mona howled.
“Oh, I’ll dare a lot more,” Anna retorted, advancing menacingly. “I’ve had it with you Billinghams. Eddie made my life a living hell for ten years, and I’m not about to let you and Jimbo do the same thing here.”
She tore off her apron, threw it down on the floor at Mona’s feet and made a beeline for the backroom where dishes got washed. She stormed through the double doors, and as they swung shut behind her, she sagged against the wall, bravado spent.
Dumb, dumb, dumb! She knew better than to antagonize Eddie, and his mother was apparently just like him. She’d all but dared the woman to come after her now. If Mona exercised half the control over Jimbo that she had over Eddie, Jimbo would be knocking down her door, shotgun in hand, before supper tonight.
An urge to run away, to hide under a rock and never come out, washed over her. What the hell had she been thinking? She’d just picked a fight with a deranged drunk, and likely with her deranged, drunken—and armed—son.
Petunia came into the back room and Anna looked up at her miserably. “I’m so sorry, Petunia. You don’t have to say it. I’ll punch out my time card and pick up my last paycheck on Friday.”
“I’m not firing you! I just came back to see if you’re all right. It’s hi
gh time someone called out Mona Billingham. She’s a bully and a bitch, and I couldn’t be more delighted that you finally gave her a dose of her own medicine.”
That was it. Anna broke down in tears and ended up crying on her boss’s shoulder until all her mascara was on the older woman’s blouse.
Eventually, she collected herself enough to mumble, “I’m so sorry I made a scene. The other customers—”
Petunia cut her off. “The other customers are fine. They’ll be thrilled to have had front-row seats at the comeuppance of Mona Billingham.”
“But the diner—”
Petunia interrupted again. “The diner will be fine. If anything, that little show you two just put on will be good for business. Folks will flock to the diner to hear all the dirt. Do you want to take the rest of the day off, or do you feel good enough to go back out there? Your tips are going to be fantastic today. Mark my words.”
Petunia turned out to be right. The diner had a heavy turnout for supper, and Anna’s tips ran at least double their normal amounts. People went out of their way to smile at her, too, although no one brought up her ugly confrontation with Mona even once.
It was kind of wonderful how supportive everyone was. Until she had to go home and face her empty house, and the long night to come, alone. That was when she missed Brett the most.
He’d installed insulation in her attic as part of his home improvement kick last week, and the place was toasty warm now, partially thanks to him. She ate a sandwich that Petunia sent home from the diner for her and went to bed early. Sleep was her only relief from the loneliness and wistful thoughts of Brett.
Tonight, regret for her rash words to Mona kept her up, tossing and turning for hours after she turned off the lights. Brett might have a monster case of survivor’s guilt, but she was suffering from straight-up guilt. Plain and simple. On nights like this, she wished the police had charged her with some crime. At least she would feel like she’d paid an appropriate price for freezing on that fateful night that destroyed what was left of her life.
She jolted awake to a loud crash a little after 2:00 a.m., sitting bolt upright before she was sure what had even woken her. Terrified, she crept out of her bed and peeked out into the hallway. All was quiet now. She listened fearfully at the bedroom door for a long time and heard nothing.
A little braver as the silence stretched out, she tiptoed into the living room. A cold breeze stopped her in her tracks as her eyes adjusted to the light from the streetlamps.
One of her front windows was broken. A brick lay on the floor of her living room along with a bunch of shattered shards of glass. Shocked, she retreated to her bedroom to put on shoes and fetch her cell phone. She called the police and finished dressing while she waited for them to arrive.
She moved around the mess, which she hadn’t touched at the request of the police, and opened the front door. Joe Westlake stood there in his sheriff’s uniform and a thick, fleece-lined jacket.
“Anna? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. My window’s not, however.” She stayed by the door as the sheriff moved around her living room looking for clues and taking pictures. Finally, he picked up the brick itself.
“Huh. No note. Usually brick throwers like to deliver a threat along with the brick.” He looked up at her keenly. “Which means whoever tossed this at you likely thinks you know why it got thrown at you. Any idea who might hold a grudge against you?”
“I can think of two people. Jimbo and Mona Billingham.”
“Have either of them threatened you in any way?”
“Both of them. Jimbo tried to strangle me at a barbecue a couple of weeks back at Runaway Ranch. There were a bunch of witnesses. And Mona and I had some words earlier today at Pittypat’s.” She confessed, “I might have lost my temper a little bit at the end. I told her Eddie was awful and a drunk and used to hit me.”
Although sympathy shone in his eyes, Joe said evenly enough, “I never liked that guy.”
“How is it you and Brett saw him for what he was, but all of us girls thought he walked on water?”
“We played sports with him. He showed his true colors then.” She rolled her eyes and he added, “Don’t beat yourself up over it. Lots of abusers are charming bastards on the surface. It’s how they attract their victims.”
He turned over the brick and examined it with interest. “Is it just me or does this look old?”
She looked at the pale, rose color of the brick and its chipped and worn edges. “You’re right, it does. Some of the buildings on Main Street are about that color, and they were built before 1900, weren’t they?”
He nodded. “I’ll have one of my guys take a look down in the old part of town for any buildings that have had work done and might have left old bricks lying around.”
“In that case, anyone could have picked it up.”
Joe frowned. “We’ve had several cases of vandalism in this neighborhood recently. Rumor has it a developer is trying to buy up the houses in this area so they can be knocked down and a commercial business park built. Has anyone approached you to buy you out?”
“No. This is the first I’ve heard of it. I’ll have to ask the neighbors if anyone has approached them.”
“Let me know what they say,” Joe responded.
“In the meantime, do you have a piece of plywood around here that I can use to board up that window for you?”
She gaped, surprised at how thoughtful an offer that was. She wasn’t accustomed to law enforcement officials being anything other than pitying and/or condescending toward her. “As a matter of fact, I do. The sheets I used to cover the window frames until I get these windows are still in the garage. There’s a box of screws on the top shelf on the right side of the garage that I used to secure them.”
“Stay inside. It’s cold out and you’re not dressed for it. I’ll be back in a minute.”
She noted that he took a stroll around her front yard with a flashlight before he headed down her driveway toward the shed. Since he didn’t stop to take any pictures, she assumed he didn’t find any tracks.
With what little help she could provide one-handed, Joe boarded over the window.
As they stood back to survey their handiwork, she asked him, “Did your arson specialist find out anything about how my car burned up?”
“Someone doused it in an accelerant, probably gasoline, but the final tests aren’t back yet to confirm that. The arsonist lit it on fire with a plastic cigarette lighter that was found at the scene.”
“Did you find any evidence that someone ran me off the road?”
He shrugged. “I have a reliable eyewitness account. That’s all the evidence I need. As for the identity of your attacker, I’m afraid I’ve got nothing. Dozens of people in this area own pickup trucks similar to the one Brett described. Have you by any chance remembered anything more about the driver?”
She answered regretfully, “I barely got a look at him or her. I was paying attention to the road. The person was wearing a baseball cap. That’s about all I noticed.”
“I’ll have cruisers check on your house several times a night until we catch whoever’s harassing you. Let me assure you, I take this very seriously. You have a right to feel safe in your own home and in Sunny Creek.”
She deeply appreciated his concern, but she also knew full well she’d brought all of this grief down upon her own head. She showed him to the door and he departed, leaving her alone once more. She cleaned up the glass and, at long last, crawled back into bed.
* * *
Morning came with heavy gray skies and a promise of snow. She greeted the new day bleary-eyed from lack of sleep and no closer to knowing what she should do. Stay or go. Make a stand here in Sunny Creek or cut her losses and run. Again.
Thoughtfully, Anna walked to the diner to begin her shift.
As luck would hav
e it, a woman Anna knew to be the county clerk came in for lunch, and Anna took advantage of being her waitress to ask, “Is it true that a developer has been trying to buy up properties over in the old lumber mill district?”
The woman shrugged. “I can tell you that as properties go into foreclosure, they’re being snapped up fast at the auctions.”
Auctions? That sounded alarming.
“Why, just next week the Rogers property will go on the block. Such a sweet old couple.”
Anna stared, stunned. The Rogers were retired teachers whose backyard butted up against her back fence. “I spoke with Mrs. Rogers just a few days ago. She gave no indication at all of a problem, and I would think she’d be devastated at the idea of losing their house.”
“We’ve been sending the homeowner letters for upward of two years, trying to get the back taxes paid,” the clerk responded.
“Mr. Rogers is deep into senile dementia. Are you sure he’s even been opening the letters?”
“Oh, dear. I didn’t know. He taught me history many years ago. I think I’ll just stop by to speak with them after work today.”
Anna moved away, satisfied to have used the town gossip network for good. If she couldn’t beat it, she might as well join it.
Just when she thought her life couldn’t possibly get any worse, she was reminded that somebody else had bigger problems than she. Poor Mrs. Rogers.
After her shift, Anna walked home, but bypassed her house to stop in at a neighbor’s house. He was an artist who, like her, had recently moved to the neighborhood, lured by a cheap house he could renovate. The fellow was distressed to hear about the Rogerses’ plight and offered to pitch in a few hundred dollars to help them out.
Too bad she’d alienated Brett already. His family had more money than it knew what to do with. Paying a few back taxes on a modest home would be nothing to them.
But maybe she could get all the neighbors to pitch in a little. It wasn’t often that a person got to pick one’s neighbors, and even more rare to have a chance to pick neighbors like the Rogerses. Maybe everyone on this block could have a neighborhood yard sale and raise more money. Energized, she canvassed all the neighbors around her and found that few could afford to pitch in cash. But most were willing to pitch in time or old stuff for a sale.