The Southern Comfort Series Box Set

by Clark O'Neill, Lisa

  Perhaps more depressing than anything else, a wooden privacy fence now ran the length of the lot, separating the property from the neighboring Murphy’s, where once they’d freely mingled together.

  Everything had changed, she thought, looking at the house, which seemed somehow smaller than she’d remembered. Even her.

  She sat in the car, paralyzed, while her internal emotional clock worked furiously toward recalibration. It was no longer the home of her childhood memories, but change or no change, she was here and she intended to stay.

  Sadie approached the porch steps and rapped forcefully on the front door. The brass knocker was black and pitted from prolonged exposure to the salty air. Silence greeted her from within, as she’d sort of suspected it would. When she’d picked up the keys from the rental agent, the woman explained there’d been no contact with the sub-lessee in the past week, and she thought he’d probably cleared out. Personally, Sadie thought that the woman could have put forth a little more effort into checking into the situation – not to mention taking better care of the house – but that was neither here nor there.

  She also felt guilty that she herself hadn’t taken more of an interest in the handling of the property. The sight of that fence, which Patrick Murphy had obviously erected to shield his own immaculately-kept home from the neighboring view, brought a warm flush to her face.

  She knocked again, one more effort at perfunctory courtesy, before inserting her key in the lock. The door swung inward with a creak of hinges.

  No scent of baking cookies drifted out to greet her, no hint of lavender sachets or Murphy’s Oil Soap. Not even the mothballs she’d detested as a kid. The smell was one of mildew and emptiness, of a house which had been lived in but not made a home. Sadie stepped into it with a mixture of warmth and regret.

  Most of the furniture still sat where memory dictated, although it lay covered in an inch of dust. A clunky air-conditioning unit was tucked into one of the windows overlooking the privacy fence, where once she’d been able to see into the big bay window of the Murphy’s kitchen. Another change, but this one was more acceptable.

  Sadie walked down the wide hall, past the powder room, and found herself in her own kitchen. The smell here was even less pleasant. Dirty dishes filled the old porcelain sink, and an overflowing garbage can peeked out from the painted cabinets. “Lovely,” she muttered, wondering what kind of jerk wouldn’t at least empty the trash before moving out.

  She glanced around, noting the small telephone table blooming with the flowers she’d hand painted when she was thirteen. Not much more than abstract blobs of color, but her Granny had oohed and ahhhed. The memory ached, so Sadie pushed it away, focusing on the archaic answering machine hooked up to the rotary phone. Its light blinked frantically in the dimly lit kitchen, a digital “9” flashing in the in-box.

  She crossed to the machine, pressed the play message button, which released the rental agent’s nasally drawl. Two further messages contained more of the same. Sadie hit stop and eyed the nearby stairs. Might as well see what the three small bedrooms and – heaven help her – bathroom looked like.

  Taking the worn wooden treads one heavy step at a time, she ascended into another layer of memories.

  The bedroom which had been used as her grandmother’s sewing room stood silent and dark, and she moved past it to her childhood bedroom. Noticing the faint holes from posters long discarded, she tried to recall the movie hunks and garage bands that must have hung there, but could come up with only vague images. The room itself seemed a pale reflection of the festive retreat it had once been, whatever ghosts of her youth having passed.

  Melancholy over the relentless march of time, she crossed the hall toward her grandma’s room, the space her renter had obviously chosen for himself. The bed – a queen sized four poster that had been her grandmother’s pride and joy – was unmade, an ugly brown comforter and cheap-looking white sheets tangled in an unattractive heap.

  And a pair of… tightie-whities lay forgotten in a corner.

  Gross. The guy had left dirty underwear for her to find?

  This did not bode well for the state of the bathroom.

  Grout which had once sparkled between the old black and white tiles looked gray and dingy with age, and the toilet seat – left up, thank you very much, male renter – was both cracked and stained with urine. She’d be making a trip to Home Depot for a new one before she ever planted her tush on that. The beautiful, vintage claw-foot tub looked like it hadn’t seen a scrub brush since about nineteen-eighty-eight. Wrinkling her nose in disgust, Sadie stepped over to open the shutter-covered window, thinking a little light might make things look better.

  Unfortunately it just highlighted the fact that the marble-topped vanity was encrusted with dried toothpaste residue and remnants of shaving cream. In fact, both a toothbrush and razor lay abandoned near the lip of the sink.

  Feeling uneasy suddenly – because who moves out and leaves their toothbrush behind? – Sadie made a quick inventory of drawers and cabinets, noting a whole host of health and beauty supplies, some of which seemed to date back to her own years in residence. She made a mental note to have it out with the property manager for all those between-rental cleanings she’d paid for over the years.

  Back in the bedroom she found a few more articles of clothing in both drawers and closet, but not enough to make her worry that perhaps her erstwhile renter hadn’t quite moved out. Apparently he just hadn’t been thorough. Or maybe moved out in a rush.

  That was something she could relate to.

  “Okay. I guess I’ll just… get busy,” Sadie pep-talked herself, thinking that she really didn’t want to start cleaning. All she wanted was some more aspirin and a bed. But she didn’t want to waste funds by hiring a service. So she trudged back down to her car, unloaded her newly purchased cleaning supplies, and went to work, determined if not precisely enthusiastic.

  DECLAN kicked back in his leather recliner while he finished the remnants of his lunch. Alone, just the way he liked it. He wiggled the toe that was peeping out of the hole in his sock and turned up the big screen’s volume, simply because he could. No nagging sisters around to tell him to keep it down. No one to complain about his ratty attire. Nobody to remind him that the living room wasn’t meant for dining. Just him, a remote, and a few beers. Everything a smart man could want for.

  He’d just cracked open his second adult beverage when the knock sounded on the front door.

  He froze in the act of bringing the bottle of Harp to his lips. It had been years since anyone had been stupid enough to disturb him at home on this particular holiday.

  It wouldn’t be his family – if there’d been trouble, they would have called, and they’d long ago stopped attempting to include him in the annual consumption of pork roast, hop ‘n john and collard greens that was their particular New Year’s tradition. The year he’d thrown his plate at the wall had pretty much done the trick.

  And he tried to discourage visits from his neighbors as much as was humanly possible.

  He’d put up that damn fence, hadn’t he?

  Maybe he needed to get a Doberman or motion-detecting sirens or something if people around him were going to be so thickheaded that they couldn’t understand he didn’t want to see them. Hell, the damn mat on the front porch said Go Away.

  How much clearer did he have to get?

  When it sounded again, the noise tinny and persistent in his ear, he realized he’d have to handle it. So he set aside his plate and collapsed the footrest on the recliner before stalking toward the door.

  The bell rang again when he was in the middle of the entry hall and he snarled “All right already!” before yanking open the door. The sight that greeted him on the other side of the threshold made him wish he’d just kept his ass planted firmly in the recliner.

  “Declan,” Sadie said, surprise registering on her little elfin face. She fell back a step, wrung her hands together, and looked at him with dismay.
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br />   There was a smudge of some kind of dirt on her cheekbone that he wanted to eradicate with his tongue.

  “I didn’t… I wasn’t expecting…” She glanced at him expectantly, but he wasn’t about to offer any encouragement, so she got that familiar mulish look on her face and managed to stop sputtering. “Is your dad here?” she finally came out with, looking at him like something that grew under logs.

  He crossed his arms over his chest. Why the hell did she keep popping up right in his face? That damn memory zap hadn’t worked, apparently, because he was real clear on her identity.

  Thong-wearing Sadie Rose Mayhew. The new bane of his existence.

  He looked her over from head to toe, noting the hair gone awry – one particular platinum strand curling over her head like a halo – the oversized denim shirt that was now all wrinkled and filthy, and the plain canvas tennis shoes covering her pretty little feet. No sparkles or goo-gaws or improbably high heels this time. He wondered what the hell she’d been up to.

  And why the hell he cared.

  “No,” he finally answered, tone as far from cordial as he could make it. “Why would he be?”

  She took on air like a puffer fish. “Because he lives here?” she suggested sweetly, but her body language gave her away. She was practically vibrating with animosity.

  Better than vibrating with misplaced lust, as his own body seemed hell bent on doing.

  “Actually, he lives in town, has a place a couple blocks over from the bar.” Which was enough of an answer, as far as he was concerned, but his tongue decided to keep on wagging. “His night vision started to get dicey a few years ago, made it hard for him to drive all the way over here after closing, so we swapped residences. He’s got a swinging bachelor pad in the middle of the city and I’m now John-Boy Walton.” He gestured condescendingly at the large, comfortable family home which surrounded him.

  Sadie peered past him, blue eyes narrowed, as if she wasn’t quite sure she believed him.

  “You want to come in here and see for yourself?”

  “What? Oh, no.”

  Of course, he hadn’t intended to let her in anyway. Too many horizontal surfaces for that.

  As he watched, with way too much imagination trying to ruin him, disappointment tugged that mouth into a frown. She had lips to make a grown man weep. And because he could feel his mood indicator shifting from idle to interested beneath his zipper, he snapped at her in irritation.

  “What are you doing here?”

  For a moment she looked taken aback. Then her flaxen brows lowered over eyes as wide and sky-blue as he’d always remembered. “If you must know, I was just doing some cleaning next door, and I thought since it was lunchtime and that your dad probably had the day off, that – ”

  “Wait. Why were you cleaning next door?”

  “I don’t know, because it was dirty?”

  Reality hit him, and it wasn’t pleasant.

  “Shit. You’re moving back in?”

  “That’s right.” She sent her pointy little chin skyward. “Looks like we’re going to be neighbors again.” From her tone it seemed like that appealed to both of them equally.

  Declan felt that like a blow to his solar plexus. Of all the shit to rain down on him today, why did it have to be her moving next door? She obviously had no concept of the privacy fence. Maybe he should stake out some heads or something, like the ancient Romans, as a sort of warning for little blonde trespassers.

  “Don’t come looking to borrow a cup of sugar,” he growled, and she glared at him even harder.

  “Trust me, Murphy, if I wanted something sweet, this would be the very last place that I’d come looking.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  SADIE hit the big box stores, restoring her depleted cleaning supplies, picking up odds and ends for the house, and musing over the whims of fate.

  Fate, Sadie decided, was a bitch.

  It seemed like a huge cosmic joke that her life had come so full circle. Except the Declan of her youth had basically lived to torture her, and the hard-eyed man who’d answered the door yesterday seemed to regard her as the pest. In fact, it seemed like he had an aversion to mankind in general. Sadie couldn’t help but wonder at his absence the previous evening from Kathleen’s New Year’s dinner. She had been there. All the other Murphys had been there. Even Kim, Rogan’s gorgeous FBI agent girlfriend had been there.

  It was like Declan was the Prodigal Son or something, except that Sadie had seen them all interacting at the bar. But there was still no question that he held himself apart. Odd, considering how close-knit they all used to be. Particularly him and Rogan. They’d been almost creepy, at times, as kids, like two bodies with one brain. Kathleen had finally said something about Declan “not doing well” with New Year’s, and from the look on her friend’s face she considered it a subject best dropped.

  Not that she needed to be wasting her time worrying over Declan Murphy, anyway. She had enough to keep her occupied just trying to put the pieces of her own life back together.

  Depositing a final armload of bags on the passenger seat of the Beetle, Sadie fished her key from the front pocket of her purse and cranked it in the ignition.

  Which elicited no response.

  She turned the key back, cranked it again, with precisely the same result.

  “You have got to be kidding me.” She let her head fall onto the steering wheel. Unfortunately the horn was still alive and kicking, and the loud blare caused her to jump.

  Right about the time she caught sight of the biggest, scowliest, scariest looking man in history, peering in her driver’s side window.

  He motioned for her to roll it down.

  She hit the door lock, and kept it up.

  Shaking his head in what looked like disappointment, he reached into his jacket. Sadie calculated the odds of making it out the passenger door before he pulled a weapon. Not good, she decided, just as he slapped something against the glass.

  It looked like some sort of… badge.

  Yep, the behemoth was a cop.

  This time when he made the hand rolling motion, she reached down and cranked the handle, cursing her lack of power windows. “Could be the starter,” he said gruffly, while she stared at him in alarm. “Pop the hood and I’ll take a look.”

  Sadie hesitated a moment, until he made a noise of impatience, to which she quickly responded with hood-popping.

  Leaning her head out the window, she watched his massive head and shoulders disappear beneath the hood, and wondered what exactly she was supposed to say to him. You see a lot of action here in the Home Depot parking lot? Know anything about cars? Please don’t kill me and eat my liver for breakfast?

  She was just contemplating making a break for the lumber yard when the passenger door opened beside her. She screamed so loud and jumped so high that her head nearly hit the roof.

  “You okay?” Kathleen quizzed, shoving aside bags to lower herself into the seat.

  Sadie blinked and waited for her heart to start pumping, as she was in danger of blacking out. “You scared me to death!”

  “Sorry.” A tiny smile tugged at her lips. “I take it Mac neglected to introduce himself. He’s not real big on chitchat.”

  “That must be the only thing he’s not big on.” She eyeballed his legs, which could be mistaken for old growth timber.

  Kathleen laughed and ran her fingers through her hair, tucking the chin-length waterfall of red behind her ear. “He can be scary if you don’t know him, but he’s really just a teddy bear.” At Sadie’s dubious look she nodded her head. “Really. And he’s very good with cars. And if he can’t fix it he has a brother that owns a garage.”

  Sadie cast another cautious glance toward the so-called teddy bear and turned back to Kathleen. She wondered what, exactly, she was doing here. “So… are things so dead – ha, ha – on the homicide squad that you have time to tail your friends around?”

  “I wish,” Kathleen snorted. “We were over here chasing d
own a lead on that case we landed New Year’s Eve. I just happened to see you walking through the parking lot as we were going by and asked Mac to pull in.”

  “Ah,” Sadie responded, fascinated by the sight of her friend wearing a gun. The last time they’d lived near each other Kathleen had accessorized with things like belts.

  “It’s dead,” came a deep voice from behind her. “You need a tow.”

  “Uh, thanks,” Sadie smiled awkwardly, leaning back to what seemed a safe distance.

  “I’ll call,” Kathleen offered, already taking out her phone.

  Sadie sighed and cast another wary glance at Kathleen’s partner, who’d gone back around to lower the hood, then plucked the keys from the defunct ignition. The tow truck arrived, Mac directed the driver to his brother’s shop, and Kathleen insisted they give Sadie a ride.

  Following her first – and hopefully last – trip in the back of a police car, Sadie waved off her saviors. She’d spent most of the previous day cleaning the kitchen and it was with heavy heart and weak stomach that she now contemplated the upstairs bathroom. Who knew what various body fluids a single man might have left in the shower?

  She decided to finish cleaning the downstairs rooms first, maybe tackle the bath after dinner.

  Floors were mopped, cushions aired, baseboards wiped and dusted. Dead palmetto bugs big enough to carry off small children swept up and deposited in the trash, along with the desiccated carcasses of several rodents. Sadie shivered in revulsion.

  New paint was certainly called for, inside and out, but that was a project she could tackle when she wasn’t in need of a year’s worth of sleep. Between the stress of leaving Rick, the long trip back east, and the heavy cleaning she’d put in, Sadie was so utterly exhausted by the time she worked her way to the bathroom that she almost didn’t bother. But the thought of a nice hot shower before diving between her newly laundered sheets was enough motivation to keep her moving.