by Gregory Kay
Her precious little snowflake Rodger was either going to be committed to a six-month rehab today, or he was going to jail today for grand theft of narcotics, and possession of those same narcotics on school grounds with intent to distribute. The latter, combined with his probation violations and previous record, would mean he’d probably be staying there until his twenty-first birthday. Those were the only two choices she had, and she had best make her decision now.
Summoned by Luke's phone call, Rick Corwin, the boy’s father, already upset himself, had walked in smack in the middle of her tirade after visiting his father. Once he heard the details of what had happened and where his moaning father’s pain medicine had gone, he had rounded on her so fast and hard the silently observing Fiona, who Luke had brought as a witness just in case, thought he was actually going to hit the screaming woman.
“Shut up!” he roared, waving a finger an inch from the tip of her nose, “I’ve listened to you about this boy long enough, and now I’m making the decision I should have made months ago! You’ve protected and molly-coddled him until you’ve damned near ruined him!” Pointing at the deputy while still looking at her, he said, “Can’t you see this man is trying to do us and Rodger a favor? He is supposed to take him downtown, and if he does that, he’s going to prison! Luke is trying to keep that from happening, and trying to get the boy the help he should have had months ago; would have had if I hadn’t let you convince me otherwise! Now you shut the hell up, get your ass in there and pack his stuff, because he’s too damned stoned to do it himself, and God only knows what kind of dope he’s got hidden back there he’ll try to take with him if he gets half a chance! Now, damn it, or so help me, I’ll put him in the car and take him to the center with nothing but the clothes on his back!”
Still squalling, Rodger’s mother obeyed, disappearing into the back bedroom while his father shook his head and Luke’s hand at the same time.
“I don’t know how to thank you for this, Luke!”
The deputy looked meaningfully toward the bedroom door.
“I’m sorry it caused you all this trouble on the home front.”
“No; don’t be sorry for that. That was my fault. I was stupid enough to listen to her and all her Dr. Spock horse shit – pardon the language, ma’am – about ‘child raising’ instead of doing what I knew was right and sticking my foot up that boy’s ass years ago. I don’t blame her, or even Rodger; there’s nobody to blame but me, because I didn’t have the balls to go ahead and do what I knew was right.”
Swinging his eyes toward his son sitting miserable and shaking on the couch, having finally come down enough to realize just how much trouble he was in, he said, “I owe you an apology, Rodger. You know I love you, but I haven’t been the father to you I should have; that last part ends as of now. I’m going to help you, no matter what it takes, no matter what I have to do, and whether you or your mother like it or not doesn’t enter into it anymore. You are going to straighten up, even if it kills both of us. Do you understand me?”
“Y-yes sir.”
“Alright. I’m going to take you to get the help you need; it’s not going to be easy for any of us, but we’re going to get through this.
“Luke,” he said, turning back to the deputy, “I owe you for this, and I owe you big. Anything you need, you just ask me, alright? Anything!”
“I didn’t do it for you; I did it for Rodger.”
“I know that, but if you did it to help my son, then you did it for me; I owe you!”
“Alright, already.”
Turning to Fiona, he said, “I’d really appreciate it if this doesn’t end up in your paper...” but she waved his concerns away.
“It won’t,” at least not in any identifiable way, she mentally amended, although the incident itself might be a good human interest tidbit as part of my adventures down here; I’ll just keep it anonymous, “We’ve got so many troubled kids just like him in New York that most of them don’t even make the papers.”
He shook her hand.
“Thank you, ma’am; I appreciate your professional courtesy, one journalist to another.”
She was unable to keep the surprise off her face.
“Journalist? I didn’t know you worked in the same field.”
“Oh yeah; trying to, anyway. With the market as competitive as it is...”
His voice trailed off when his wife called to him in a sobbing voice from the bedroom, and he shook his head.
“You all will have to excuse me; I think she’s about to have a meltdown.”
“We’ve got to get moving anyway,” Luke said, then handed him the bottle of pills, “Give these to your dad and tell him I said hi; if I were you, I’d tell him that you found them rolled under a counter or something so he doesn’t think his grandson...you know. Just don’t tell your wife I’m not still holding them for evidence or she might change her mind, okay?”
This time Luke got a manly hug and an enthusiastic back-pounding instead of a handshake.
Once they were back in the car, Luke turned to her and grinned.
“So, do you think I’m a mean ol’ bully?”
Fiona nodded, fighting a grin and losing.
“Yes, you are, but you’re about the nicest mean ol’ bully I’ve seen. Now I understand why you acted like you did with him.”
“It’s tough love. I’ve known his family forever – Rodger’s grandfather was a friend of my grandfather; he's the one who taught me how to deer hunt – and I’ve known Rodger since he was born. If his only chance is for me to kick his butt like that, I care enough to do it.”
She shook her head.
“I’ve heard my dad say that last part more than once. Like Yogi Berra said once, ‘It’s déjà vu all over again.’”
That one made him laugh out loud as he turned onto 22nd Street, heading toward the river.
“So, what’s this about Mr. Corwin being a journalist? You didn’t mention that.”
“Actually, he’s in the newspaper business, although he writes a lot of his own articles.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah. He owns the local paper, but he found another one – a tabloid-type publication distributed mainly the tri-state area in West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky, and based out of Huntington – that was going bankrupt, and he bought it on a whim; picked it up for a song. He’s good with the local news, but he’d always wanted to own a nationally-distributed newspaper ever since he was in high school journalism class, so he’s trying to make it happen with this new one, trying to expand beyond just this area. The thing is, he’s got the will but not the experience, and he’s running it on a shoestring, so he’s pretty much chief cook and bottle-washer too. Still, he has a dream and he’s trying to make it come true.” He sighed. “Maybe getting his son taken care of will help take some of the pressure off him.”
“Wow! That’s wonderful,” she said sincerely, her voice slightly jarring when they bounced over the railroad crossing. She was thinking that Rick Corwin was an inspiration, even if not as successful as her Uncle Pat, at least not yet. “I guess there are more similarities between here and home than I would’ve ever thought of.”
“I figure you’re right,” Luke agreed, “The culture and environment are different, but people are pretty much people, wherever you go: some good, most somewhere in-between, and then a few who are complete bastards.”
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
To say Clifford Ashley was angry would be the understatement of the year; he was well beyond angry. He was absolutely pissed off!
The executive’s much-coveted corner office and its luxurious furnishings did nothing to sooth his mood, because he was much more focused on what he’d lost, rather than what he had. Actually, he hadn’t lost it; from his point of view, it had been taken from him, and people didn’t take things from Clifford Ashley.
That selfish, unreasonable little bitch!
It wasn’t so much that he loved Fiona; if he’d been able to look at it dispassio
nately, he’d not only have known he didn’t, but wasn’t even capable of it, except in a distant, peripheral fashion, because he was the center of his own universe. Cliff wasn’t one to look at things without passion, however, especially when they challenged his ego. A lack of self-esteem had never been one of his problems, in large part because his over-abundant combination of good looks, practiced charm, money, physical abilities, and a total lack of anything even resembling a conscience meant he seldom faced those challenges, and, the few times they were offered, he simply crushed them out of hand, and did it with so great a sense of satisfaction that it bordered on a sexual thrill.
He tapped his finger hard and repeatedly on the glass protecting his oak desktop, an angry metronome sound.
This was a different sort of challenge, though. Fiona had thrown the glove in his face, in the form of a chocolate cheesecake; then, even worse, she had left him, and still worse than that, he couldn’t find her. Women did not simply leave Clifford Ashley; he left them when he was through with them, not the other way around.
He would eventually find Fiona; that was a given, because he wouldn’t give up until he did so. After that...
He shrugged and his finger ceased its tapping. He’d already thought about it – indeed, he’d thought about little else, until the issue had absorbed him to the point of obsession – and made two plans. Plan A was to turn on the charm and win her back, then, once he was sure she was totally in love with him once more, utterly crush her feelings in such a way that she’d never recover emotionally. If that didn’t work, there was always Plan B. That one was much briefer, much, much more direct, but still just as satisfying, and there was no question but that she’d remember it for the rest of her life.
He felt tight in the crotch of his Armani pants just thinking about it, at least until the phone on his desk rang and broke the mood. Irritated, he pressed the speaker button.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Clifford Ashley?”
Cliff frowned. He had expected to hear his secretary, who never let any calls through without screening them first, but this voice, tinny and distorted by heavy interference on the line, was definitely male, with a weird accent he didn’t recognize. He thought about hanging up, but curiosity got the better of him.
“Speaking. How did you get on my private line?”
“That is not important, Mr. Ashley; what is important is that I have found something you have been looking for, and, for the sake of discretion, I thought it best to bypass your secretary and approach you directly.”
Cliff’s first thought was blackmail, but, even if that was the case, he needed to find out all he could.
“And what, pray tell, would that be?”
“That would be Fiona Pelligatti.”
“Who the hell is this?” he shouted at the phone, and the voice on the other end gave a strange, tittering giggle that was as much of an animal vocalization as a laugh.
“Do you wish to know that, or do you wish to know the current location of the Pelligatti woman?”
Cliff’s face reddened and his fist tightened around the receiver until it threatened to crush it to bits, but he forced himself to calm down.
Finding her is a hell of a lot more important than knowing who this asshole is.
“Tell me where she is.”
He had expected a price tag on the information, but instead the voice from his speaker complied, right down to the room number, casually adding that she was currently with her other lover, a West Virginia law enforcement officer, with whom, Cliff was further informed, she had been carrying on a long-distance relationship for months, and that he had visited her in New York several times.
That particular revelation slammed his ego like a sucker punch, putting Cliff into a cold rage that made Plan B more and more attractive, despite its risks. Still, he couldn’t help but ask, “Why are you doing this, and how did you know I was looking for her?”
“One should not look a gift in the mouth, Mr. Ashley.”
“Horse.”
“Excuse me?”
“A gift horse; that’s the expression. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”
There was a brief pause, then a very sincere, “Thank you very much, Mr. Ashley! I will note that in the future. I hope to see you in Point Pleasant.”
There wasn’t a single click, but a series of pops and squeals as the call disconnected.
If he hadn’t been so angry, he might have thought about the strangeness of that call a little more before paging his secretary to book a plane ticket for him, and then ordering her to have the IT people come up immediately and run a sweep on his phone lines.
Fiona was surprised by the interior of Luke’s home, for several reasons.
It didn’t surprise her that it took no more than a glance to see it was obviously a man’s abode; with his wife dead for some time now, it only stood to reason. She was willing to bet the late Mrs. Carter had picked out the furniture, but any other woman’s little touches were non-existent; there were no doilies, no throw pillows, no knick-knacks of any kind. There weren’t even any pictures on the walls; the only decoration that hung there was the deer head the wrecker driver had mentioned, with a rack so large it looked like something prehistoric, and a gun rack supporting a scoped, bolt-action rifle, a compound bow, and a pump shotgun, while the gun safe squatting in the corner looked big enough to hold a small arsenal. A bookcase stood a few feet away, and, on the wall opposite the couch and matching recliner was a large, flat-screen TV. The last occupant of the living room was a multi-position weight bench tucked into another corner, with a loaded-up barbell resting on its rack and dumbbells and kettle bells lined up neatly underneath it, all of which looked astonishingly heavy.
In fact, everything she could see was more than neat; it was almost sterile...not hygienically, although it was certainly cleaner than she'd expected a man’s place to be, but emotionally, as if he were desperately trying to remove all traces of any feelings from the place other than a few necessary or intentionally innocuous ones of his own.
That is so sad!
She was jerked out of her reverie when she felt something brush against her leg, and looked down to see a fat, purring calico cat rubbing against her calf.
“Well hello, kitty,” Fiona said, stooping down to pet her, making the feline’s actions much more determined and the purring even louder.
“I see you’ve met Rosemary,” Luke told her, returning from hanging Fiona’s jacket in the hall closet and seeing that his guest had picked the animal up and was cradling it like a baby.
“She’s so sweet! I never thought you’d be a cat person.”
“I’m not,” he assured her, “not really. She was Linda’s, and...well, you know.” He shrugged helplessly, communicating so much anguish in that simple gesture that Fiona’s heart went out to him.
“Anyway,” he went on, steering the conversation back to more comfortable ground with a gesture at the bookcase, “Help yourself; you can use the coffee table, or, if you need more space, we can move everything into the kitchen. And, speaking of the kitchen, would you like some coffee? I’ve got some pop and bottled water in there too, or something stronger, if you’d prefer.”
“Coffee’s fine, thanks,” she told him as she set Rosemary down and crossed the room toward the books. Luke headed for the kitchen to start a pot, and Fiona looked over the titles, stroking her chin in thought.
The bottom three shelves held Linda’s books; that was obvious, from what Luke had told her: UFOs, the paranormal, various Christian books, but the top three shelves...
Glancing back to make sure she wasn’t being watched, she decided to snoop and began browsing the upper shelves instead.
Let’s see: THE ASHLEY BOOK OF KNOTS, which made her shudder in distaste at the memories brought on by the author’s name, MECHANIC’S HANDBOOK, PLUMBING AND HEATING, ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CARPENTERY, HOME IMPROVEMENT GUIDE, a set of FOXFIRE books...quite the do-it-yourselfer. Next shelf looks like all hunt
ing and fishing; not surprising. And on the next shelf we have...
Her eyes widened. The entire shelf was devoted to astronomy.
“Find what you’re looking for?”
Fiona jumped, guiltily, she was sure, when Luke’s voice sounded behind her after he’d come in carrying a cup of coffee in each hand while she was concentrating.
She decided honesty might be the best policy.
“I was just wondering about all the astronomy books; are they yours?”
His cheeks reddened a little and she thought he was going to deny it at first, but he nodded, and there was the slight hint of challenge in his voice when he admitted, “Yeah, they’re mine. What can I say? I like the stars; always have.” The if that makes me a geek, then so be it! remained unsaid, but so plain she couldn’t help but smile at his discomfiture, and couldn’t help teasing him just a little.
“Relax, will you? It’s not like I just found your porn stash or anything!”
“I don’t have a porn stash!” he declared, reddening even more.
Then she giggled and Luke realized she was joking. He laughed too and they both felt like they were in high school again for a few seconds.
She turned back to the bookcase, and Luke’s eyes locked onto her body while thoughts crossed his mind on dusty trails that hadn’t been traveled for a long time.
I don’t know what’s so different about her. Yeah, she’s pretty and all, but it’s more than that. I’d love to hold her again right now; that would feel really good!
“Okay, enough fun; lets get down to business.” Even as she said it, she realized it could very easily be taken for a double-entendre, an instant before she felt both of Luke’s hands moving to her tiny waist, barely brushing the cloth of her blouse.
“Now wait a minute!” she said, turning quickly, only to find her host still standing halfway across the room, several feet between them and both his hands still occupied by coffee cups.