by Judy Clemens
“Thanks for everything. I appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome. But Casey…take care of yourself, okay? Do you need money?”
Casey laughed. “Don, you’re the one who signed that agreement with Pegasus. You know I don’t need money.”
He sighed. “I know. But it’s the sort of thing one is supposed to ask.”
“Well, you don’t have to ask me. Good-bye, Don.”
“Good-bye. And Casey?”
“Yeah?”
“Call again soon.”
She pushed the off button and considered the phone. How such a small piece of equipment could betray her… She got back on her bike, taking a last look at the fathers and their kids. Reuben had never gotten to play with Omar at a playground. Never taken him to a ball game. Never got to hear that universal first word. Da-da.
She pointed the bike toward the highway, and began pedaling.
Chapter Twenty
Several trucks sat in the over-sized parking lot of The Burger Palace. Casey looked around to make sure none of the truckers were in their cabs, and picked the trailer with the most remote license plate. Oregon. After carefully wiping the phone of all personal information, phone numbers, and fingerprints, Casey threw it on the cement several times, until the screen was cracked and it would no longer turn on.
She picked up a few stray broken pieces, then ducked under the truck, searching until she found a crevice where the phone would be neither discovered nor dislodged any time in the near future. She stood back up, glancing around again to make sure she hadn’t been spotted, and rode quickly away, not looking back.
The diner, across the street, had a few cars in the parking lot, and Casey realized she was hungry. The benefits of the orange juice had long gone, and her appetite had, for no apparent reason, returned. After seeing the article at the library, she’d been convinced she wouldn’t ever eat again.
She parked the Schwinn along the side of the building and went in the front door, inhaling the rich diner aromas of coffee, hash browns, and grease. The sign told her to please seat herself, so she chose a place at the front window, where a little of the autumn sun stole across the table.
“What can I get you?” The young waitress—Kristi, by her nametag—didn’t chew gum, and she wore low-slung black pants under her pink-and-white striped diner uniform shirt. No fifties diner look for her.
“Is there a daily special?”
“Breakfast is pumpkin pancakes. Lunch is shredded chicken sandwich and mashed potatoes. You could have either.”
“Oh.” Casey picked up her menu and perused the lunch items. “I’ll just have a hamburger. Fries. Cole slaw.”
The waitress took the menu and stuck it under her arm. “Anything to drink?”
“Lemonade?”
“Sure. I’ll be back in a minute.” The girl flashed her a brief smile and left in a wake of hair product smell that rivaled the coffee.
Casey sat back in the vinyl bench seat and looked around the diner. Not a busy lunch crowd, but then, she was early—more like the brunch crowd—and the people of Clymer didn’t seem to have a lot of extra money for the luxury of someone else’s cooking. An older couple sat in the corner booth. A single man at the counter. No one she knew. Which wasn’t at all surprising.
She looked out the window, across the parking lot, and saw the corner of the main HomeMaker building. She leaned forward, toward the glass, to take in more of the factory, and wondered again what had happened to Ellen Schneider. Had she been killed? Or were her friends just wrong when they said she wouldn’t do such a thing as kill herself?
“Mind if I join you?”
Casey looked up, expecting her usual companion, but was pleasantly surprised to see Todd Nolan, the banker, standing beside her table.
“That would be fine. Have a seat.”
He did, and the waitress was soon at the table, setting down Casey’s lemonade and allowing Todd to put an arm around her waist.
He smiled. “How’s your day going, sweetheart?”
The blood in Casey’s veins went cold, and she calculated how quickly she could reach over and suppress his carotid artery, sending him to sleep. Or perhaps she should just kick his shin under the table.
Kristi rolled her eyes and stepped away from his arm. “Daaaad, not in front of the customers.” She looked sideways at Casey. “You two here together?”
Casey let out the breath she’d been holding, and allowed her body to move back into normal “at ease” mode. His daughter.
Todd grinned at the girl. “She’s in the play. Casey, right?”
Casey nodded.
“I just met her last night.”
Kristi still didn’t seem so sure. “Mom know?”
“That I’m in the play? Of course she does.”
Kristi opened her mouth to say something else and Todd patted her leg. “The usual, okay? And not too much salad dressing this time?”
She cocked her hip at him and flounced away, leaving him to chuckle. “You have kids?”
Casey’s throat closed, and she grabbed her lemonade, taking a deep swallow, but choking on the sweet drink.
“You okay?” Todd looked ready to perform the Heimlich, his palms flat on the table, his elbows up, to propel him from the bench.
She set her glass down and wiped her mouth with her napkin. “I’m fine. Thank you.”
He nodded. “No kids, I take it?”
“No.”
He glanced at her hand. “Married?”
She shook her head.
“Kristi’s my oldest. Got two more in high school. All girls.” He smiled. “Whenever they start talking about shopping I get out as quickly as I can.”
Casey cleared her throat. “And that’s why you’re here today?”
“No. I’m working today, at the bank, and just felt like coming by and seeing my girl.” He winked. “My wife is taking the day to clean the basement, so I’m glad it’s a workday, to be sure.” He sank down a bit in the bench seat, as if making himself comfortable for a good long stay.
Casey eyed him over her glass as she took another sip of lemonade, remembering his reaction when she’d mentioned Home Sweet Home. That bead of sweat rolling down his face.
“So what are you doing in Clymer?” Todd asked, interrupting her thoughts. He wasn’t sweating now, and he looked so relaxed his eyelids drooped, as if he were about to fall asleep.
Casey ran a finger down the side of her glass, drawing a path in the condensation. “Just traveling through.”
“By yourself?”
“It works.”
He shook his head slowly, as if not sure what to think of her. “You on vacation? Took time off?”
Casey looked away. “I don’t have a job right now.”
“So how do you afford traveling? Family money?”
Casey’s breath caught. Family money. She pressed her fingers to her mouth. He didn’t know how right he was.
“Sorry,” he said. “I get nosy about money. Goes with the job.”
Casey didn’t say anything, keeping her hand up, staring out of the window until her breath came back and she could talk without her voice shaking. “So,” she said. “Tell me about the play.”
“Twelfth Night?” Todd’s eyes opened wider. “We just read through it last night.”
“I don’t mean the play itself. I mean the people involved. Why you’re in it.”
“Oh.” He shrugged. “What I told you last night. They needed a guy my age, so they called.”
“It’s basically the same group each time?”
He sniffed, flicking a hand over the tip of his nose. “I don’t know. It depends who’s in town, I guess. Before Eric and Thomas came back we were a little hard-pressed for good people, but we got by. Holly’s in everything—well, as long as there’s a role for someone she thinks is attractive enough—and Becca likes to be involved. Leila…well, if Eric’s in it, she’s somewhere close by.”
“Aaron and Jack?”
&nbs
p; He grinned again, a slow smile. “They like the plays. Keeps them out of trouble.”
Casey picked up her fork and twisted it in her fingers. “How about Ellen?”
“Ellen?” His face went white, then red, before returning to its usual color. “She was good. She enjoyed the plays.”
“I’m sorry,” Casey said. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No, no, it’s all right. She was—” He stopped and leaned back as Kristi arrived with the lunches.
She set Casey’s hamburger platter down, then slapped an enormous salad in front of her dad, followed by a bottle of dressing. “There. Put on your own dressing if you’re going to complain.” With another narrowed-eye look at Casey, she stalked away.
Todd winced.
“Should I sit at another table?” Casey asked.
“No.” He held up his hands. “No, if anybody moves, it should be me. But there’s no reason for it. It’s fine.”
They looked over at the counter, where Kristi was scrubbing furiously with a dishrag, her eyes shooting darts toward their table.
“You sure?” Casey wasn’t.
“I’m sure.” He tipped the bottle to drip dressing onto his salad.
Casey slid the pickles off of her hamburger and placed them on the side of her plate. She didn’t think she should ask him to resume where he’d left off talking, as it obviously disturbed him.
“Tell me about Eric,” she said instead.
A glob of salad dressing landed on his salad, and he tried to scoop it back up with a spoon. “I’m not sure what was going on with them.”
“Who?”
The tips of his ears went red. “Eric and Ellen. Isn’t that who we were talking about?”
She blinked, then filled a few seconds putting ketchup on her plate. She dipped a fry and held it. “I guess so. But I was just wondering about Eric—why he left, and why he came back.”
“Oh.” He let out a breath, a smile flickering across his mouth. “That’s easy. He left, going down to Louisville, to get away from his family. And he came back to deal with them.”
Casey held the fry halfway to her mouth. “To deal with them? What do you mean?”
“Well, his dad’s not exactly the most popular guy in town, so Eric had some major fences to mend.”
“People don’t like his father? Why?”
“Why do you think?” Todd gave a half-hearted laugh. “Because he’s getting ready to put this entire town out of work.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Eric’s father was Karl Willems? The CEO of HomeMaker? The man who saw Becca’s pretty face and didn’t remember it?
Casey sat astride her bike outside the diner, a bag of leftovers dangling from the handlebars. Once Todd had hit her with that bombshell, she’d lost her appetite again. He’d finished up his salad, his natural lethargy kicking in so they didn’t have to talk, and left his daughter a huge tip, paying also for Casey’s lunch.
It made sense, Karl being Eric’s dad. It explained Eric’s feeling of protectiveness of the townspeople, his disdain for Karl Willems, and even his presence at HomeMaker, when Casey had ridden over the day before. It didn’t explain why he hadn’t told her. But then, she could make a guess at that.
Sliding her doggie bag to the middle of the handlebars for better balance, Casey thoughtfully rode toward the B & B. Poor Eric. He comes home, most likely to try to ease some of the pain his father has caused, only to fall in love with a HomeMaker employee who subsequently is fired, and then dies. Whether she committed suicide or not wasn’t irrelevant, of course, but whether it was by her own hand or someone else’s, the end result was the same. The tricky part was that if she did kill herself, not only was that hugely horrible, but it meant that Eric’s father had essentially killed her.
Casey shook her head, but stopped quickly, as it made her wobble, and she hit a pothole, sending her almost into the path of a car traveling toward her. A Bug. She stopped before she crashed into the curb.
Leila screeched to a halt and glared at her through the windshield. She rolled down her window. “Why don’t you watch where you’re going?”
“Sorry.” Casey held up a hand. “Lost control for a second.”
Leila looked in her rearview mirror, but no one was coming. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
Everyone was so concerned about that.
“Just had lunch at the diner.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean here in Clymer. We don’t need you.”
Casey sighed. “I’m just traveling through.”
“Well, then, why don’t you keep on going? We’ll find someone else for the play. That lady that was there last night.”
Casey nodded. “I appreciate the thought you’ve put into it.”
The girl frowned, obviously not sure whether Casey was being sincere or not. “Eric just lost his girlfriend, you know.”
“Yes.”
“So it’s not fair, what you’re doing.”
“What am I doing?”
She rolled her eyes. “Going after him, of course. You should just leave him alone.”
“I’m not—”
But a car was coming, and Leila gunned her engine, her tires squealing as she raced away. Casey wondered if the girl knew how to drive without burning rubber.
Letting Leila go with a shake of her head, Casey’s mind went back to the blow she’d just been given. Eric was Karl Willems’ son? It just didn’t seem possible.
Casey took a turn up an alley she thought would be a shortcut back to The Nesting Place. But she’d turned off a road too early, and the alley deadended at someone’s garage. Turning around, she took the next road to the left, and rode on the sidewalk until she found the next alley. This one went through farther, taking her behind Home Sweet Home, and eventually past the theater.
The theater. Where she’d felt closer to Reuben than she had in some time.
She jerked to a stop, made a U-turn, and pedaled back toward the Albion.
The parking spaces in the back were empty, and the heavy steel door was locked. She walked her bike around to the front of the building and parked the bike just off the sidewalk, underneath the marquee. These doors were open.
Stepping into the lobby she took a deep breath, wallowing in the familiar smells of dust and old wood. Newer theaters might have better technology—although not always—but nothing could beat the atmosphere of a space that had seen a multitude of performances. No matter that this place had shown movies for years. It was still a performance space, where people came to escape from reality, if only for a couple of hours.
The theater was dark except for one blue light on the stage, lit to prevent people from falling off the edge in the dark. Casey walked down the aisle, running her hand along the tops of the seats, until she stood before the stage. The polished wood on the stage floor was smooth under her fingers, and she placed her palms face down, searching for any soul, any life that had been left by actors in bygone days.
She propelled herself onto the stage, landing easily on the balls of her feet. She jumped up and took that into a spin, parrying across the stage, remembering choreography from one of her best attempts at stage combat. Romeo and Juliet.
A pencil lay in the dusty wings of the stage, and she grabbed it, holding it up like a sword.
“Draw, if you be men.”
With a yell she threw herself toward center stage, parrying, slicing, stabbing, spinning, twirling, feinting…until her breaths grew deep and fast, and sweat stood out on her face. A flat slap at Abraham, a thrust toward Balthasar…
“Part, fools!” she said as Benvolio. “Put up your swords; you know not what you do.”
She twisted her arm, her pencil beaten down by Benvolio’s sword, and stood in the center of the stage, imagining the lights on full. Ambers, and blues, and yellows. She closed her eyes.
And heard a door open.
With a few strides she was behind the curtain. Why she felt the need to hide, she wasn’t sure,
but the urge was so strong it was almost suffocating. The curtain bunched at the side of the stage, and she squeezed behind the folds, wincing at the thought of her body oils touching the expensive fabric.
“So, this is your new digs?” The voice was raw. Unrefined. Too close. “Not as nice as the last, but hey, not everything can be Derby City.”
“It suffices.” Thomas. Casey would know that voice anywhere now.
“Oh, it suffices. Hear that Bone? It suffices. Glad you haven’t lost those big words since coming back to Buttfuck, Ohio.”
“Taffy…”
“Oh, sorry, Thomas. Sorry. Didn’t mean to offend your sensibilities.”
They were silent for a few beats.
“So, Tommy boy,” Taffy said. “Is it here?”
“No, it’s not here, Taffy. I told you. I don’t have it.”
“But you’re getting it.”
“Soon. I told you.”
“Oh.” Taffy laughed. “You told me. That’s right. Ain’t that right, Bone?”
A muffled grunt. Bone, Casey guessed.
“I sure hope it’s coming soon, Tommy, because some people are getting a little concerned that it’s taking so long. They want us to make sure it’s not that you’ve forgotten.”
“You don’t have to threaten me. Or send other people after me, for God’s sake. My word is good.”
“Oh, your word is good. Too bad your luck ain’t good, too!” He laughed again, a full belly laugh this time. The laughter quickly died out, to be replaced by the same raw timbre as before. “And we’re not sending other people after you, Tommy boy. If you’ve got me and Bone, who else do you need?”
Thomas was silent.
“I asked you a question,” Taffy said. “You need reminding other than me and Bone? You need someone else? Cause if you do, we can arrange that.”
“No, Taffy. No, I don’t. I just thought…”
“What?”
“Nothing. Nothing, Taffy. I’ll get it for you. Soon.”
Taffy grunted. “So why don’t you show us your office?”
“I don’t really have an—”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. No office for the hotshot director?”
Casey peeked out the edge of the curtain, and saw the man Taffy on the audience level, looking over at Thomas. Thomas faced away from her, so she had a good look at the other guy. Big. Thick. Uncomfortable. She watched him as he talked, his eyes narrowed at Thomas, even while his voice held its mocking tone.