Live Ringer

by Lynda Fitzgerald

  The sheriff looked around for Sheryl. When he didn’t see her, he led Joe’s parents toward Marc and Allie. Allie met them halfway. “It’s Allie Grainger, Mr. Odum,” she said, hugging him gently. She knelt beside the wheelchair. “Mrs. Odum, do you remember me?”

  The woman held a soggy tissue in her hand. Her entire body seemed to tremble. Shock? Early Parkinson’s? Her eyes, if red, were alert. “Of course, I do, honey. I heard about Lou. I’m so sorry.”

  Tears burned Allie’s eyes. That this woman could think of Allie with her son lying in ICU. She cleared her throat. “Joe will be OK,” she told them.

  “We know, sweetheart,” Joe’s mother said, gripping Allie’s hand with her own thin one. “Cord called the hospital while we were in the car. We have God to thank for this one, and don’t think we don’t know it.”

  She looked over her shoulder. “You sit down, Howard,” she said. “I want to spend a few minutes with Allie here before we go upstairs.” She looked back at Allie. “They won’t let us see him yet, anyway.”

  Cord lowered Joe’s father onto a chair, and Allie sat so that she could see them both. “I’m so sorry about all this.”

  “Why, sweetheart? It’s not any of your doing. Cord told us all about what happened.”

  Allie glanced at the sheriff, but he looked the other way. “Cord told us it was that Rupert Cornelius,” Mrs. Odum said, shaking her head. “So like his stepma, he was, God rest her soul. She warped that boy. He never stood a chance with her for a mother. His pa tried his best, but what could he do? He was a gentle man. A weak man. No match for the likes of her. I used to work for her sometimes. Cleaning and such.” She started to say more, hesitated, then said, “Well, we’ll say it didn’t work out, but old Mr. Cornelius used to try to help us out from time to time. Near broke my heart when he died. Such a kind man he was. Always doing for others. Well,” she sighed, patting Allie’s hand, “they’re all gone now, and maybe that’s for the best.”

  She smoothed her dress over her thin legs. “Cord tells us you’ll be staying in town, and I want to say I’m real happy to hear it. I know Joe considers you a good friend. He never stopped talking about you, even in all the years you was gone. He’s been real pleased you’re back.”

  Allie couldn’t meet her eyes, but Mrs. Odum didn’t seem to notice. She went on, chuckling. “I remember some of the things you kids pulled back a while ago, but you’ve turned into a real lovely young lady. I know your aunt doted on you.”

  Allie felt her heart swell with more emotion than she could bear. “Maybe I can come see you sometime?”

  “Well, we’d like that a lot, wouldn’t we, Howard?”

  He nodded, smiling at Allie. “That would be real good,” he said, his voice as thin as the man himself.

  Mrs. Odum took Allie’s hand and pressed it weakly. “You come and see us anytime you want. We’ll be pleased to have you.” She looked at the sheriff. “Now, Cord, if you’ll take us to where Joe is, I want to see that he’s still with us. I swear, that boy’s using up his nine lives faster than I can count.”

  Allie marveled at her composure. Mrs. Odum obviously had what it took to be a cop’s mother. No blaming anyone, not even the man who shot him. Only a calm acceptance that this was the way things were and a knowledge that her job was to get on with it. Lou had been like that, willing to play the hand life dealt her. Did that kind of wisdom come with age? If it did, Allie could hardly wait to turn sixty.

  Howard Odum leaned heavily on Cord, as they headed toward the main hospital. Allie wondered why they didn’t have him in a wheelchair or at least a walker, but then realized he probably wouldn’t permit it. Howard Odum had always been a proud man.

  Sheryl came down a few minutes later. “I thought you two would be gone by now,” she said.

  Allie stood. “I thought you might need a ride.”

  Sheryl smiled and hooked an arm around her neck. “You are such a piss poor liar,” she said warmly. “You wanted to make sure I didn’t fall on the floor weeping. Admit it.” She poked her in the arm hard enough to hurt.

  “Easy,” Allie said, rubbing her arm. “You are such a brute.”

  Sheryl turned to Marc. “Sheryl Levine,” she said, offering her hand. “You’re Allie’s stalker.”

  Allie opened her mouth to speak, but Marc beat her to it. “That’s me,” he said smiling. “Want to make something of it?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Only if you screw with her. You treat her right, or it’s you and me.” Her tone was joking; her eyes were not.

  “Then, I think we’ll probably be the best of friends,” Marc said. “We have the same goal. To see Allie happy.”

  Sheryl studied him for a minute longer. “OK,” she said, knuckling him on the arm. He winced before he could hide it.

  Allie laughed.

  “Let’s all go home,” Sheryl said, linking her arm through Allie’s. Marc fell in behind them. “The sheriff dropped off a car for me. I’ve had Joe Odum’s blood all over me for two days, and I need a shower before I come back to hover at his bedside.”

  Marc drove again when they left the hospital. As they neared the intersection of 520 and A1A, he turned on his left blinker. When Allie reached over and turned it off, he looked at her in surprise.

  “You need to get to your hotel,” she said, not meeting his eyes.

  He eased the car over into the right-hand lane. Neither said anything else until he drove up under the hotel’s portico, although she felt him glance at her from time to time. He put the car in park but left the engine running. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded, afraid to trust her voice.

  “Allie—”

  “I need to be alone. That’s all.” She said it in a rush.

  Marc watched her. “Alone for a few hours, or alone for a few days?”

  Allie didn’t know. She looked at him helplessly. Nodding, he reached over and tucked her hair behind her ear. “Why don’t I check back into the hotel, and we can play it by ear?”

  Allie felt like weeping, but on another level, she felt relief. She couldn’t bear to be with Marc right now. If he knew what Joe had done… . She shuddered. At the very least, he’d insist that they go to the police. He saw things in black-and-white. Joe covered up for a murderer—his wife’s murderer. That made Joe an accessory. He’d demanded money from Cornelius to keep quiet, which was clearly blackmail. In Marc’s mind, Joe broke the law he was sworn to uphold. Allie knew Joe was guilty, too, but nothing seemed clear in her mind. Until it was, she couldn’t face Marc.

  Nor could she face her living room. No elf came in to clean the blood off the floor or wall. It looked like a battleground, and she felt like she’d lost the war.

  Spook cowered shivering under the bed. Allie scooped him up and carried him into the kitchen. Grabbing a dog biscuit off the counter and a diet soda from the refrigerator, she went to the roof deck. “Poor puppy,” she said, stroking his head as she gave him the treat. “I forgot all about you.” After a few minutes, the dog picked up the treat and ate it. After a few more, his trembling eased.

  Allie wished she could let it go as easily. She no longer feared for her life. Rupert Cornelius was dead. She should have been on top of the world, as surely as she was on top of the house, but she carried a dark secret, and the burden was almost more than she could bear.

  She didn’t have to ask herself why Joe did it. She knew. His parents were everything to him. He’d always felt responsible for them. Even as a kid, Allie could remember his telling his mother to sit down and put her feet up. The medical bills from his mother’s stroke and his father’s cancer must have nearly destroyed them, and cops weren’t the highest paid people, even though their lives were at risk every day. Joe must have seen blackmailing Rupert as a way out. What Allie couldn’t figure out was why Rupert hadn’t killed Joe a long time ago. It wasn’t conscience. What difference would one more make? It galled her that she’d probably never know.

  She couldn’t talk to anyone abou
t what she learned. She couldn’t tell Sheryl. It would kill her. The sheriff probably wouldn’t believe her if she could bring herself to tell him, which she couldn’t. She couldn’t tell Marc. She had never felt so alone in her life.

  “He did the wrong thing for the right reasons, Allie. They’re his folks. He felt he had to take care of them.”

  “So, you’re saying it’s all right that he protected a killer? It’s OK that he was blackmailing him?”

  “We look at things a little differently here, Allie. We aren’t so judgmental.”

  “This isn’t about being judgmental. This is about protecting a man who went on to kill four other women.”

  “That’s not on Joe, honey.”

  “It certainly is on Joe. If he put Rupert Cornelius behind bars after he killed his stepmother, he wouldn’t have killed again.”

  “But he didn’t kill his stepmother. Remember? A young drug-head killed her. They never could have proved in a court of law that Rupert had a thing to do with it. He would have gotten off scot-free no matter what Joe did, and Rupert would have destroyed him. What would have happened to his parents then? No, Joe did what he could. He watched Rupert.”

  “So, you’re condoning blackmail?”

  “We don’t condone, here, Allie, and we don’t condemn, either.”

  As conversations went, it wasn’t their most satisfying. It was all very well not to condemn when you were where she was, somewhere beyond the laws of man, but Joe was a police officer. He had been Allie’s friend. She’d believed in him, believed in his honesty and his honor, and damn it, she felt betrayed. And she felt guilty at the same time because he almost died trying to save her. Why couldn’t she let it go?

  She lay back in the lounge chair and stared at the horizon. The afternoon was giving over to evening. The tide was going out; the waves sounded submissive as they whooshed up on the sand. She spotted a cruise ship, a large white rectangle, heading back to Port Canaveral. She wondered idly where it had been.

  Maybe she should take a cruise now that this was over. Maybe she should walk down to Port Canaveral and buy a ticket. To anywhere. She could lock up her little house for a week, board Spook at the vet’s. Feelie could show up at the back door every night, as he tried to make his drunken way home, without scaring anyone.

  Allie watched, as the sky went from blue to blue violet. Visiting hours at the hospital were at 7:30, but she didn’t think they’d let her in to see Joe. She didn’t want to see him, but she did want to be there for Sheryl. Hopefully, his parents were home by now. They were entirely too old and too weak to be spending long periods in the hospital on someone else’s account.

  That was another thing. If she blew the whistle on Joe, what would happen to his parents? They’d never take welfare. She knew that, not only from what Joe said, but also from that time years ago when they’d all been neighbors. Her aunt had given them little presents from time to time, small things that wouldn’t offend. Mrs. Odum always reciprocated in some way, sending over homemade bread or jelly. Or Mr. Odum would come by and do some household chore for Lou. They were proud people. Lovely people. What would happen to them if the truth came out?

  Chapter 24

  Joe was in ICU, they told her when she inquired. Allie took the elevator to the fourth floor and asked a passing nurse where the waiting room was. The harassed-looking woman pointed to the end of the hall.

  Allie spent the afternoon cleaning blood off her floors and wall, the half-hour after that, hanging over the toilet, gagging. Now, there remained only a shadow of what happened—the hole where they’d gouged out the bullet, stains that were too stubborn to come out, memories that were even more stubborn. When Marc called, she told him she was going to the hospital. He asked if she wanted him to go with her, but she told him she wanted some time with Sheryl.

  She picked up a hamburger at Burger King on the way to the hospital, but it still sat forgotten on the passenger seat. Food held no appeal.

  She found Sheryl in the waiting room. Apparently, she experienced no appetite problems. Next to her sat a young intern—surely he was too young to be a doctor—balancing two cheeseburgers on a plate buried under a mound of fries. “Allie!” she called out, then seemed to remember she was in a hospital. Then, in an exaggerated whisper, “Come share my dinner.”

  Sheryl seemed to have done more than shower and change clothes when she went home. Three beers, if Allie had to guess, and she didn’t blame her a bit. She only wished she’d thought of it herself.

  “Sit,” Sheryl said, patting the chair beside her. She motioned at the young man hovering nearby. “Jamie, this is my best friend, Allie. Jamie’s a—” She looked at him. “What’d you say you were?”

  “An anesthesiologist,” he said, looking embarrassed. He began to sidle away. “You’ll let me know if you need anything?”

  “Sure. Thanks for dinner,” she called, as he slipped out the door.

  “Eat,” Sheryl said, pointing at the plate on her lap. She picked up a French fry and dropped it on the floor. “Beer?” Allie asked, shaking her head.

  “And shooters,” Sheryl said, picking up another fry. “I thought I should celebrate. It’s not every day a girl almost loses her guy two days in a row.” She looked thoughtful, then giggled. “I guess it couldn’t be, could it?”

  Allie laughed with her. “Logistical impossibility,” she agreed. “How is he?”

  “He’s super. They said he has the constitution of a horse. He’s off the ventilator. They’re changing the bandage and doing yucky stuff right now, so I decided to have some dinner. Thought it would straighten me out. Not so far, though.”

  “You’ve eaten only one French fry, Sheryl,” Allie said, snitching one off her plate. “Eat.”

  Sheryl picked up a hamburger and dropped again. She shoved the plate onto the chair next to her, spilling most of the fries on the floor. Then, she gripped Allie’s hand. “He’ll make it, Allie.” Tears filled her eyes. “I thought he was a goner. His heart stopped. I didn’t know if they could bring him back. Even if they did, I didn’t know if he’d been gone too long, if there’d be brain damage, but the doctor said there isn’t. He’s lucid.”

  She seemed to realize she was crushing Allie’s hand. “Oh, God, I’m sorry,” she said, releasing it. She helped Allie straighten her fingers. Allie hoped she’d have feeling in them again someday. Sheryl grabbed a fry, but she couldn’t fool Allie. She recognized a prop when she saw one.

  “You probably think it’s pretty strange that I’ve got a thing for Joe, don’t you?” Sheryl said, nibbling on the end of the fry.

  Allie felt so much love for this woman, this bundle of contradictions, that it almost took her breath away. For all her toughness, Sheryl was as vulnerable as a newborn chick. She fought to hold back the tears. “It’s not exactly a surprise. Lou told me about it.”

  Sheryl thought it over. “She did, huh? And here, I thought I was so sneaky”

  “You were, but not much got by her.”

  “Ain’t that a fact,” Sheryl said, smiling wistfully. “God, I miss her.”

  “Me too,” Allie said, even if she felt so angry with her she could spit. So much of this might have been avoided if Lou had warned her.

  “Did you ever figure out about her boyfriend?”

  Allie had forgotten all about that. “No, I keep forgetting to ask her.”

  Sheryl looked at her strangely. “What do you mean, you keep forgetting?”

  Allie studied her friend. Could Sheryl handle it? “We have these conversations in my head. Imagination, probably, but I ask her things.” She snuck a peek at Sheryl, but her attention was riveted on the little glass rectangle in the ICU door. Allie knew Sheryl hadn’t heard a word she said.

  Finally, Sheryl’s diligence paid off. A nurse in blue scrubs appeared in the doorway. “He’s all covered,” she told Sheryl.

  Sheryl snorted. “Didn’t want me to see his bare little arse,” she said, “like I didn’t see enough of it last night. C
ome say hi,” she said, reaching down to grab Allie’s hand. Allie let herself be dragged into Joe’s cubicle. To refuse would have required an explanation, and she had none to offer.

  Joe was conscious, although he seemed to be heavily sedated. He turned his head to look at them when they entered. The smile that started to his lips when he saw Sheryl died when he saw who walked in with her.

  “Look who’s here,” Sheryl said, pulling Allie into the room. “Our third musketeer.”

  Joe started to speak. He stopped and cleared his throat. “Hi, Allie.”

  “Hi, Joe.”

  Sheryl took the lead—a good thing, since Allie couldn’t speak. Sheryl prattled on about Joe’s parents and the weather outside and what they would all do when he got out of the hospital. That got Allie’s attention.

  “I think Allie should take us on a vacation. To Mexico, maybe. She can afford it. Right, Allie? It would be fun. The three of us again. We can eat and drink margaritas until we’re sick and lie in the sun and dance until dawn. Doesn’t that sound good?”

  She seemed to notice the silence for the first time. She looked from Joe to Allie. Allie felt Joe’s eyes burning into her conscience. She couldn’t meet his eyes.

  “Hey, guys, am I the only one here? Hello, people,” Sheryl said.

  Allie looked up and directly into Joe’s eyes, which were opaque with guilt. She felt as if someone slugged her. “I have to go,” she said abruptly.