Troubleshooters 05 Into The Night

by Suzanne Brockmann

  As Edna reassured him that the war hadn't yet come to 84 Chestnut Street in Washington, D.C., he looked at Edna, looked at the candle, looked at the bed frame above them. And then he looked at Charlotte.

  She saw the exact moment he realized exactly where he was and that she was lying beneath him. The parade of emotions that crossed his so-expressive face would have been funny if she hadn't felt like crying in sheer relief.

  Shock, horror, disbelief, embarrassment. Desire. She saw clearly from his eyes that she now wasn't the only one who was intensely aware of the way their bare legs were intertwined.

  "Please tell me I didn't hurt you," he whispered as he quickly pushed himself off of her.

  "You were trying to save me," she reassured him. Funny, but she didn't seem able to do more than whisper, either. She cleared her throat. "My dignity is slightly bruised, but that's the extent of any damage. However, I suspect we've irrevocably crossed over to that place where it's not just acceptable but rather necessary now to address each other by our given names."

  He laughed at that, as she'd hoped he would. But then his face crumpled, just like that of the little boy who lived in the house next door, and he started to cry.

  He tried to pull farther away, but this tune she was the one who reached for him and wouldn't let him go.

  There was nothing to say, nothing to do but hold him and cry, too. From all that he'd said tonight, she could begin to imagine the nightmare he—and thousands of other American boys—had lived through. And perhaps worst of all, she could begin to imagine what it had been like at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese had attacked. When James had died.

  They both cried until they were exhausted, until Vince fell asleep. And then Charlotte cried some more.

  And when she next looked up, light was coming in through the windows. She'd fallen asleep right there, in Vince's arms, on the floor beneath the very bed she'd once shared with James.

  Edna was long gone, and the candles had all burned out.

  Vince was sleeping, and she gently pulled free from his embrace and crawled out from under the bed.

  By all rights she should have felt terrible, staying up so late, crying as hard as she had, and then sleeping on the hardwood floor. Every muscle in her body should have ached. Every bone should have felt bruised. Her head should have pounded.

  But as she slipped out of the room to get ready to go to work, she couldn't remember the last time she'd had a better sleep.

  Muldoon had had the evening from hell.

  Mrs. Tucker had followed him into the grocery store.

  It was like something out of a bad movie, and he'd had to dash down the dog food aisle to escape out the loading dock.

  On his way home, desperate for a beer, he'd stopped into the Ladybug Lounge and come across a sailor going head to head with some bikers in the parking lot.

  It took a full hour to get that straightened out.

  He drove the kid back to the base, and then somehow found himself outside of the Hotel del Coronado, where Joan was staying.

  He still wanted that beer, but more than a beer, he wanted to talk to Joan. Who wasn't answering her cell phone.

  Muldoon used his own phone to call the hotel's main number as he walked toward the lobby. Thunder had been rumbling for the past hour or so and a sharp crack made the skies open. He ran, but it was hopeless. By the time he reached the hotel, he was soaked.

  The front desk patched him through to her room, but she wasn't there. After four rings her voice mail picked up.

  He didn't leave a message because he wasn't sure what to say. Hi, I'm really not stalking you. Really. It's just that I can't seem to spend more than a couple of hours without desperately wanting to see you again.

  That would go over well.

  There was a hotel directory in the lobby, and he stopped and dripped for a moment in front of it, attempting to get his bearings. There were several different bars in the Del. The Palm Court had piano music, but the Babcock and Story bar had jazz guitar.

  Joan was definitely the guitar type. He headed for the B&S.

  Come on, Joan. Be there.

  He stopped just inside the bar in part to let his eyes adjust to the dim lighting, in part in an effort to dry off a bit more, but mostly because he had absolutely no clue what he was going to say if he did find her there.

  How about, You aren't going to believe everything that's happened since I walked you back to your car this evening.

  Of course, that didn't explain what he was doing here at the Del.

  I called your room, but you weren't there, and since I was driving past, I figured I might as well go out into the pouring rain to see if I could find you, because I have had one unbelievably freaky evening and all I want to do is look into your eyes and tell you about it and laugh. And then I want you to invite me back to your room so we can spend about seven hours straight having incredible, screaming monkey sex.

  That last part might not go over so well, despite the fact that he now realized he'd gotten out of his truck not entirely in search of a beer.

  No, a beer would certainly be nice, but it would be completely unnecessary if Joan were to appear before him and hold out her hand to lead him up to her hotel room.

  And then, as if on cue, there she was.

  He'd been squinting through the darkness at all the little tables that dotted the room, but she was sitting right there at the bar, sipping some kind of frozen drink from a straw.

  And laughing into some other man's eyes.

  Muldoon used the mirror behind the bar to get a better look at the man's face. He wasn't anyone he knew. In fact, the guy was wearing a business suit. He was in his fifties and was overweight and bald, but whatever he was telling Joan had her complete attention.

  As he watched, something the bald guy said made Joan crack up. The man laughed along with her, and the sound of their two voices floating over the jazz guitar was enough to make Muldoon crazy.

  Who was this guy? Was he someone she knew? Or was he someone who was just trying to pick her up in this hotel bar?

  Or maybe she was the one who'd hit on him. Maybe she liked fifty-year-old bald guys. Maybe if Muldoon were a fifty-year-old bald guy, she'd be getting it on with him right this very moment.

  If he were Sam, he'd push his wet hair back from his face and go and sit down on Joan's other side, order himself that beer he wanted. Introduce himself to Baldy.

  But chances were that Sam hadn't had Muldoon's string of bad luck tonight.

  Feeling decidedly pathetic, he cut his losses for the day and went back out into the rain, heading for home.

  "I was just about to turn ten that summer," Mary Lou told Ihbraham, the telephone tucked under her chin as she sat on the floor in the archway between the kitchen and the living room and fed Haley.

  Who'd finally fallen asleep, right at Mary Lou's breast.

  "Janine was thirteen," she said quietly, looking down into her daughter's perfect face. "We were living in New Orleans, and my mother was working as a cocktail waitress. She was actually showing up for work for a change—she was working the late shift, which was just her speed. Have you ever been to New Orleans?"

  "No," Ihbraham said. "I haven't."

  "It's a crazy city. The bars stay open late, late, late—it doesn't matter if it's a Monday or a Friday. Every night is party night.

  "We were living in an apartment that was really nice—it was a palace compared to some of the dumps we'd lived in. And it was huge—Janine and I each had our own bedroom. The only catch was that it belonged to this guy Lyle that my mother had met at the bar, and we had to be real quiet, tiptoeing around the house. He was kind of fat and smarmy, but he worked in an office and actually wore a suit and got a paycheck every week. Which he used to buy us things. Toys and pretty clothes. Books.

  "Things were good. It was the first time I could remember that we didn't use food stamps. Maybe it was the only time...

  "But Janine started acting weird. Like if I came up
behind her and she didn't hear me coming, she would really jump. And she cried a lot—I didn't know what was wrong with her. Why was she crying when we had our new Fat Daddy buying us all those things?"

  On the other end of the phone, Ihbraham sighed, and Mary Lou knew he'd guessed where this story was going.

  "I remember being terrified that Mama would get tired of Lyle and we'd have to hit the road again. I told Janine that if she did, I was going to beg Lyle to let me stay here. I could keep his kitchen clean and do his laundry. And she got real angry at me. I didn't understand why, and she finally told me that if I really wanted to stay here, I'd have to suck on my Fat Daddy's thing, because that's what she had to do, every night after Mama went to work. That was the real reason he let us live here.

  "I was shocked," Mary Lou told him. "I mean, I grew up knowing all there was to know about sex. Mama got drunk and brought men home and wasn't very good at remembering to close the bedroom door. And sometimes there wasn't even a separate bedroom."

  She looked down at Haley, who was sleeping on her lap. How could her mother have done that? How could her mother not have loved her and Janine as fiercely as she loved this little girl? But Mary Lou knew that it wasn't that her mother had loved her any less. But rather that she'd loved alcohol more.

  "I knew what Janine was saying was something that some men liked. And I also knew that some men liked little girls— enough of my mother's parade of boyfriends had waggled their things at us, starting back when we were real small. But once they did, and once we told Mama, she kicked them out on their butts faster than you could blink.

  "And I have to confess, there was a time or two when Janine and I told stories that weren't true—like, Mama, he touched my booby!—-just to get rid of a boyfriend that we didn't want hanging around.

  "Well, when Janine told me this about Lyle, I went running to Mama. And I told her what Janine had told me, only Janine, she denied it. Flat out. She said I was making things up, that I was mad because Lyle bought Janine a new sweater and he didn't get one for me. And Mama believed her. I got sent to bed without supper for telling stories.

  "Janine kept telling me, too, that she'd made it all up, but I knew she hadn't. I knew. So I pretended to go to bed early, and I hid in her closet. And sure enough, after Mama left for work, Lyle came into Janine's room. And sure enough..."

  That image of Janine and Lyle was still crystal clear in her head, even after all these years. And it still made her sick. It still made her want to cry.

  "What did you do?" Ihbraham asked gently. "Poor little one, only ten—what could you do? You had already told your mother. Who else was there to tell?"

  "Well, hell, I told her again," Mary Lou said. "I went screaming out of that closet. Scared the shit out of Lyle—too bad I didn't give him a heart attack—and ran all the way to the Shamrock Cafe, where Mama worked. I told her what I'd seen.

  "Only Lyle had called ahead with some story about a big fight I was having with Janine. Mama marched me back home and locked me in my room. I was scared to death—I didn't want her leaving me there with him—but Janine just wouldn't tell the truth. I remember I was crying and saying, 'Tell her! Tell her!' She told me later that she was tired of always moving, and she figured this wasn't so bad—she could live with this."

  Ihbraham sighed again.

  "So there I was, locked in my room," Mary Lou continued. "I locked the door from my side, too, and I even pushed my dresser in front of it like I'd seen people do in the movies. And sure enough, Lyle came rattling my doorknob, talking about punishment, about how I was going to have to pay, about how he could do whatever he damn pleased and no one—no one—would ever believe me. He told me what he was going to do to me when he got that door unlocked, about what he was going to do to me every night from that night on." She paused. "I won't repeat it here, but I remember it. Every god-awful word."

  "I'm so sorry," Ihbraham said.

  "I would kill a man who said those things to Haley," Mary Lou told him.

  "I know," he said. "And I would help."

  "He tried to get into my room, but Janine hit him," she told him. "Over the head. With the biggest, heaviest cooking pot she could find. In the movies that usually knocks a person out. But all it did was piss Lyle off. I could hear him beating the crap out of her on the other side of that door. He beat her, and he raped her, and I was sure he was going to kill her. So I did the only thing I could do. I went out the window, and I jumped off the roof. I broke my wrist in the fall—Lord Jesus, did that hurt—but I ran for Mama anyway, screaming bloody murder.

  "Well, I guess third time's a charm, because this time she did believe me. And she grabbed this man who was the bouncer at the bar, and we all ran home. And one look at Janine... Well, there was no denying what had happened.

  "And that was that," she said. "The end of our childhood. We moved out, of course. Moved back to Alabama. My mother pretty much quit on us after that—her drinking got crazy out of control. I think the guilt really ate her up inside. I did all the cooking and cleaning, because Janine had a whole lot of healing to do—she's still struggling, even now."

  They were both silent for a moment.

  "I would have killed him," Mary Lou said again. "A man who hurt my baby? He would not have seen another sunrise."

  She watched Haley's eyes move slightly beneath her closed lids as she dreamed, a smile on her perfect little face.

  "I would have killed him," Mary Lou said. "But my mother—all she did was try to drink her own self to death. I will not be like her. I will not."

  At least not tonight.

  Chapter 10

  Joan was waiting out in front of the hotel when Mike Muldoon pulled up in his truck.

  "That was fast," she said as she climbed in.

  "I don't live too far from here."

  His hair was still wet from his shower and his cheeks were freshly shaved, making him look even younger than usual. He'd worn his uniform, as she'd asked, and he looked sharp and wrinkle-proof and completely awake despite the ungodly hour.

  The cab of his truck smelled like freshly roasted coffee. There were two Starbucks cups in the holder that pulled out from the dash. "Oh, my God," she said. "Please say that one of those is for me."

  He smiled. "One of those is for you."

  "Have I told you yet this morning how much I love you?" she said as she fastened her seat belt and reached for the nearest cup.

  "There's cream and sugar and a couple of scones in the bag."

  Joan laughed. "Scones?"

  "You seem the scone type." It was early enough that the streets were empty of traffic, and he did a smooth U-turn right there, heading back toward the causeway.

  "The scone type?" The coffee was heated to near nuclear temperatures and burned all the way down. It was lovely.

  "You know. A caffeine addict who can't drive past a Starbucks without stopping," he said. "You go in there often enough, sooner or later you're bound to buy a biscotti or a scone. I figured scone."

  "We can't see each other anymore," Joan told him, taking another long sip. "The mystery has completely gone out of our relationship."

  He had a really lovely laugh. And the way his eyes crinkled at the corners was lovely, too. And his teeth. Definitely straight and white and very lovely. In fact, the sunlight was sparkling in a lovely way off the gleaming and equally lovely hood of his truck. This entire morning had a lovely rating of about five million.

  Except, of course, for the fact that she'd woken up at 4:30 A.M. because it was really 7:30 back in the real world. Which was decadently late for her.

  She couldn't go back to sleep—not after last night's phone call from Gramps telling her that her brother Donny was wearing his foil-covered hat again.

  As long as she was awake, she might as well get this visit over with.

  "So where to?" Mike Muldoon drove like a young man. Like he loved driving his truck as only a still-young man could, carelessly caressing the wheel and the stick shift with his bi
g, graceful hands, elbow resting on the open window. It was very different from the desperate way some men loved their sports cars when they hit middle age.

  "I'm not sure how to get there from here," she admitted. "I have the address, but—"

  "There's a city map in the pocket on your door," Mike told her, slowing down. "What's the street?"

  "Westway Drive." There were a lot of maps in that pocket, including what looked like a detailed terrain map of Afghanistan. "This would probably be easier if I put down the coffee, huh?"

  But he'd already sped up again. "Don't bother. I know where Westway is. Lieutenant Starrett lives over on Westway."

  "Starrett... Mr. Texas, right?"

  "Right." He shot her a look. "So what's my nickname today?"

  Uh-oh. Joan played it dumb. "Your what?"

  "Starrett's Mr. Texas. What are you calling me? Am I still Junior?"

  At this moment, she thought of him as the apple in the Garden of Eden, perfect and shiny and treacherously tempting. But no way in hell would she ever tell him that.

  "No more Junior," she said. "I think of you as 'Mike the adorable SEAL who brings me coffee even when I so rudely wake him up at four forty-five A.M. on a morning when he doesn't have to get up until eight.' "

  He nodded. "It takes a little bit longer to say than Junior, but I definitely like it better." He glanced at her again. "Adorable, huh?" He cleared his throat. "You think?"

  He was driving, so he couldn't hold her gaze. Still, Joan was grateful for the opportunity provided by the bag of scones. She dug into it. "You know damn well that you're adorable in every possible way, little brother. You want one of these?"

  "Yeah." She put one into his outstretched hand and their fingers touched. "Thanks," he said. "Sis. Actually, when I think of myself, I think math geek. Not so much adorable"

  Joan had to laugh at that. "No, no, no," she said. "Math geeks don't become Navy SEALs. They become accountants."

  "I hate to break it to you, Joan, but when I was a kid, not only was I a math geek, but I was an overweight math geek."