by Dale Mayer
“If he’s such a slimeball, why does that worry you?” her aunt snapped.
“It doesn’t worry me at all,” she said. “I, for one, am not at all upset that he’s not hanging around here.”
Her uncle looked at her, surprised.
She shrugged. “You know how something about him gives me the creeps and always has.”
“That’s not fair,” her aunt said. “Really, it’s not. He wanted to go out with you. To take you to the school dances and such, but you would never give him even five minutes of your time.”
“He’s creepy,” she said. “And he isn’t someone I’ve ever wanted to spend time with.”
“You didn’t try,” the aunt said. “You should have at least tried.”
“No,” Petra said, “I really shouldn’t have.”
Migi looked at the two men and apologized. “I’m sorry. This tends to be an ongoing issue.”
“What, that she didn’t date your choice in men?” Cain asked in a low voice.
“The man in question isn’t somebody I would spend time with at all,” Petra said. “In fact, I wouldn’t be at all disappointed if he relocated permanently.”
Cain looked at her with interest. She shrugged, but he wanted to know more. A lot more because that was one of the dead guys. He didn’t want to tell her the man was dead though, because that would blow their cover. At the same time, he wanted to know about the rest of them. “Did he have brothers you liked better maybe?” Cain asked.
“He had two brothers,” she said, “but one died quite a few years ago now.”
“Under suspicious circumstances,” the uncle said.
Cain looked at him. “What kind of circumstances?”
Immediately the aunt jumped up. “That’s not fair,” she said. “He was a good boy.”
A story was here, and Cain was bound to get to the bottom of it, but it was Eton who asked, “So, was there a problem between the brothers?”
“And how,” Petra said. “You have no idea. Those three used to fight all the time. But Barlow actually was a good man. I really liked him.”
“But not Chico and not this other brother?”
“No. Tristan was slime too,” she said. “Whereas Barlow would ask a girl out on a date, I heard Tristan was too much like Chico, who just assumed you would go out with him. He’d catch you somewhere, sit down, and take over whatever plans you had for the evening. There is nothing about him that I liked.”
“Well, he’s not here right now,” her aunt said snippily. She got up, cleared away the plates from the table, and headed to the kitchen. Her uncle leaned over, patted Petra’s hand, and said, “You know how she gets.”
“Oh, I know,” she said. “The trouble is, she just won’t hear reason.”
“What reasons?” Cain asked.
“Chico is scum—and he killed his brother Barlow, who was the only good one of those boys. But Chico killed him.”
“On purpose?” Cain asked.
“Not according to him. And, according to the police, it was a bad accident. A bad accident where he ended up with a knife in the chest.” She shook her head. “Sorry. I shouldn’t get you involved in local politics,” she said, “but Barlow was a good man. His father was the mayor at one time, and Barlow had similar political aspirations. Barlow was the eldest, then Tristan, and finally Chico, who is two years older than me.”
“Interesting. I guess I pictured them as older than that,” he said, as he thought back to the gunman. This would have put him maybe in his thirties, early thirties at that. It was possible, but he’d thought the guy had an older look to him.
“If you’d seen him, you’d have thought that too. He lived hard, played hard, and looked hard. He’ll come to a bad end one of these days. His father knows it, and I know he’s already devastated. And given to drink. He hasn’t recovered from the loss of his other son either because, in the back of his mind, he has always worried it was a deliberate killing.”
“Sounds to me like it was,” Eton said.
“It was,” she said. “I saw it happen. I told the cops, but it didn’t matter because it ended up being an accident by the end of the day.”
“You saw it?” Cain asked. He looked at her and frowned.
She shrugged, got up hurriedly from her bench seat at the dining room table, and said, “Dessert time,” as she headed into the kitchen.
Eton heard raised voices in the kitchen and then looked at Cain.
Cain shrugged and looked at him.
“It’ll take a better man than me to go in there,” Eton said.
Cain shouted with laughter, grabbed his glass of water, and headed straight for the kitchen. He heard the old woman, talking this time in a different language—the local dialect—and it flowed fast and hard. He had some knowledge of it, but it wasn’t anything close to this version of it. Finally Migi saw him, and immediately the conversation stopped. He held up his glass and filled it from the sink. Once it was full, he turned and casually walked back to the table. The uncle looked almost a little dazed.
“So, if you lost your job at the factory,” Cain said, “is there any other work around here?”
“No,” the uncle said. “We lost hundreds of young families. It’s really just all us old folks now.”
“Interesting,” he said. “We thought we might go for a walk around town after dinner.”
“Go for it,” the uncle said. “This used to be a beautiful place to live.”
“I’m sure it still is,” Cain said. “It’s just different now.”
The uncle looked at him, grateful in a sadly pathetic way, then nodded. “My great-grandfather used to live here,” he said, motioning around the B&B. “I can’t imagine that it was very easy in his time either. I try to keep that in mind all the time. Just in case.”
“Just in case?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, with a smile. Then he got up, reached for his coffee cup, and headed toward the kitchen.
Cain and Eton shared a look, then stared at the doorway into the kitchen. Cain said, “That went well.”
Eton shrugged his shoulders. “Can’t say I feel like sticking around just now. Let’s head out,” he said.
The two men stood, and Eton called out, “Thanks for dinner.”
As Cain got to the front door and went to close it behind him, he saw Petra, standing there in the hallway, hands on her hips, staring at him, an odd look in her eye. He smiled and closed the door firmly between them.
Chapter 3
Petra heard something that Cain had said as he walked out the door. It had been a very awkward dinner, but the questions from the strangers seemed more pointed than anything. But then she was supersensitive on the subject. As she stepped out on the front porch to have coffee with her father, she held a plate of dinner for him, so she could feed him. She watched the two men as they strolled down the street, stopping to look at various buildings.
She couldn’t imagine what their conversation was about now or what interest this old town could hold for them. And she highly doubted any businesses here were of interest to them. She patted her father’s knee and turned his head, so he looked at her, and said, “Dinner, Dad.” She held up the fork, and, using her other hand, she opened his mouth and put the fork in. As soon as she did that, he chewed.
When he was done, he opened his mouth, and she filled it again and again. It had been like this since not long after he’d come home after the accident. The doctor seemed baffled by it, saying that her father was stuck between progress and this weird decline he was in. He was present; yet he wasn’t. By the time the plate was empty, he settled back to rock gently in place.
“At least you seem happy enough,” she said.
He didn’t speak; he didn’t utter a sound anymore. She spent a few very relaxing minutes enjoying her coffee, then kissed her dad goodbye and got up, taking the dirty dishes inside. Quickly she rinsed them and loaded them into the dishwasher. As soon as she was done, she headed out, picking up her pur
se and sweater.
She called back to her aunt and uncle, “I’m leaving.” Not waiting for a reply, she walked down the steps and across the sidewalk to her car. She hopped in, turned the vehicle around, and headed to her home. Several blocks down the road in the same direction, she saw the men walking. One of them turned to see her coming up behind them, and she lifted a hand as she drove past.
Taking the next corner in front of them, she turned left, and then took the next right, driving past the corner property, where she shook her head sadly. It was Petra’s former family home, a place her aunt and uncle had struggled with because it was bigger and nicer than theirs. It had belonged to Petra’s father, but she had lived there too and, should her sister ever come home, was meant to be a home for her as well. But no more. With a shake of her head, she continued on another block and pulled up outside her apartment.
She didn’t know what it would take to get her sister back here anyway.
Getting out of her car, Petra grabbed her purse and her sweater and headed to her door. Her neighbor’s dog greeted her. Chico often waited for her to come home so he could get extra cuddles. After sharing a big hug and a kiss, she walked over and checked to make sure the dog had food and fresh water on his porch.
“You’ve got both. Now it’s my turn. I’m going inside and getting food and a hot cup of tea.” She gave him an extra cuddle then walked inside her place. Next she put on the teakettle and opened the back door, so she could sit outside with her tea.
“It was a crazy day and a crazy evening,” she muttered to herself. Going through everything she had in the cupboards, she pulled out a cookie from a package, and, with a fresh cup of tea, walked outside to the backyard.
She sat for a long moment, enjoying the sunshine. When she heard a “Hello,” she immediately recognized the voice and knew it was Cain, the one who sat in the front passenger seat in her car on the ride from the airport.
“Hello,” she called back.
Cain and Eton appeared in her backyard. Cain explained, “We have a few questions.”
“Why ask me?” she asked. “What information could I possibly have for you?”
“Well, I guess it depends on your relationship with the family. But we wanted to take a look at the house you were telling us about. The big fancy one, whose father lost the one son and has two others, but one was missing.”
She laughed. “Missing? Is that what you call it?” she said. “That no-good son of a bitch probably ran off.”
“You feel rather strongly about that. Why?” Cain asked.
“Because he more or less ruined my sister before he left,” she said tiredly. “Well, he or his brother Tristan anyway. Both of them for all I know. But she got pregnant, possibly had an abortion, which got ugly between us. She was acting pretty irresponsibly and was always a little standoffish afterward. One day I came home to find she’d packed up and left. There was a note, saying she needed time. She just took off, and I haven’t seen her since.”
“Ouch,” he said. Eton nodded solemnly. “How long ago was that?”
“About eighteen months, I think,” she said. “It’s hard to pin it down. It was around the same time as my father’s accident. I wondered if it all didn’t happen at the same time.”
“Meaning?”
“When he had the accident, there was no reason for him to be driving. There was no reason for him to be out anywhere, unless he was taking my sister somewhere,” she said. “So I’ve always wondered about it.”
“That would be tough,” he said, “losing them both at the same time. I’m sorry. That just makes it even worse.”
“No need for it to be worse,” she said, fatigue heavy in her voice. “As you can tell, it’s not a great scenario at my aunt and uncle’s either.”
“No,” he said. “It sounds like everybody’s having a rough go of it.”
“Absolutely,” she said. “It is what it is, but I don’t understand why you’re so interested in all this.” She looked from Cain, who was doing all the talking, to Eton, who remained silent this whole time but fully aware.
“Because it’s an oddity,” Cain said cheerfully. “Just blatant curiosity really. Chalk it up to ignorant Americans.”
She laughed. “I highly doubt that,” she said. “I don’t think you do anything without good reason.”
He looked at her in surprise.
She shook her head. “No, don’t look at me like that,” she said. “You guys are guys on a mission.”
At that, they both stopped and studied her. “And why do you say that?”
“You’re not tourists,” she said. “Not even part-time. You obviously came here for a reason, but I just haven’t figured out what it is yet.”
Cain gave her a half smile and said, “Well, maybe we’ll check out the father’s house, and we’ll see for ourselves.”
She hesitated, then said, “I’ll come with you.” She walked down the front pathway, opened the small gate, and let herself out.
“Is there a reason why you’d join us?”
“Because his father has always been a crazy-ass son of a bitch,” she said. “After losing the one son, he got even worse. Drinking more and more.”
“Of course,” Cain said, “but how crazy?”
“Gun-shooting crazy,” she said briefly. “And, if he doesn’t know who you are, he’ll probably shoot you without asking questions.”
“Nice town,” Cain said.
She looked at him, shook her head, and said, “No, it’s not. Not at all.”
“Why do you stay?”
She shot him a hard look. “So that my sister has someone to come home to. Besides, I can’t just walk away from my father.”
“You’d make better money elsewhere.”
“No doubt,” she said, “I would. And I’ll get there one day. But, in the meantime, my father is like a living ghost, and my sister has left home for God-knows-where. The only family I have left are my aunt and uncle.”
“And they’d be lost, if you didn’t continue to pay for your father’s care.”
“Exactly,” she said. “So I’m kind of stuck, just waiting for somebody to crack open this stalemate that my life has become.”
“Careful what you wish for,” Cain muttered. “Sometimes what we think we want isn’t really so, and we don’t figure that out until after the fact.”
She looked at him, gave a hard laugh, and said, “What I can tell you is that something has been going on in this town for a long time, and that means I’m a big part of it, whether I want to be or not.”
He stared at her for a moment, gave a clipped nod, and said, “Good. I want to see him then.”
She shook her head at him, in shock. “Didn’t you just hear me?”
“Oh, I heard you,” he said, “but it could be exactly what we’re looking for.”
*
I shouldn’t have said that much, really, Cain thought to himself. But, as she led the way at a clipped pace, he found himself falling in line beside her, Eton trailing closely behind. “Are you always this edgy?”
She shook her head. “No, just today, I think,” she said, visibly trying to relax.
He reached out, picked up her arm, hooked it through his, and said, “We’re just out for a nice friendly stroll,” he said. “Come on. Relax.”
She looked at him in surprise, stared down at their linked arms, and shrugged. “This won’t get me relaxed. No way, no how.”
“Why not?”
“Because we’re going to his place, Morgan’s place,” she said. “Something about that man I don’t like.”
“All the better to hang on to me then,” he said quietly. “So what’s the deal?”
“Like father, like sons.”
“Did one of them ever hurt you?”
She shook her head. “Not badly,” she corrected. “A couple times I thought it would get uglier with Chico, but he just stuck to name calling and threats.”
“Fear is a wonderful deterrent. Did he hav
e a job?”
“Yeah. Anything anybody would pay him for,” she snapped. Then she took a slow, calming breath. “Like I said, he’s just bad news.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” she said. “I thought I was getting over it. But it seems like just the mention of his name is enough to set me off.” She looked up at him. “So, now that you found out what we know about him, will you be leaving town?”
He gave her a look.
“Well, I can see that you’re not here for anything else but that family, so let’s figure out what you need to know, and then, at least, you can get on with your life. Unlike the rest of us.”
“What if I told you that he was dead? Chico, I mean.”
“I’d probably laugh and cry and maybe shout with joy,” she said bluntly. She stopped and looked up at him, searching his gaze.
He shouldn’t have mentioned anything about that either.
“Well? Is he?”
“Possibly,” he said. “We think so, but we’re still waiting for a positive ID.”
She fell into step once more, and they moved forward again.
Cain glanced at Eton, who just shrugged. There was no real way to understand or to know the best way forward at this point.
“It’ll break his father’s heart, if he’s dead,” she said.
“Because of the loss of the other one?”
“No. Because Morgan would probably want to kill Chico himself,” she said, with a bitter laugh. “The father used to be a mercenary in the military,” she said. “So, if you’re planning on going up there, be prepared. He’s also crazy with grief and anger. Plus drunk.”
“You think he figures this one, Chico, killed the other boy, Barlow, like you said?”
“Absolutely. I told him flat-out what happened. But then he bought off the police, so that Chico at least had a clean record. That’s kind of Morgan’s thing. He said he didn’t want anybody else to know about it, and I’d better shut up or else.”
“Or else?” Cain asked softly.
She looked up at him, smiled, and said, “Welcome to the backwoods of Sicily.”