Nighthawk & The Return of Luke McGuire
Page 36
What happened to your certainty it was David? Amelia wondered. Mrs. Clancy was one of her best customers, and she’d never had a problem with her before, had always thought of her as set in her ways but a good person at heart. But if the woman told her one more time what a wastrel, cad and scoundrel Luke was, she was going to say something rude.
Or at least give the woman a current dictionary, so she could pick out some new words, perhaps rooted in this century.
“Remember your gardenia, Mrs. Clancy?” Amelia said, not caring that she’d interrupted the woman’s latest harangue.
“My gardenia?” the woman said, startled.
“Yes. Remember all the trouble you had when you first got it? All the books you had to consult, to get the soil and conditions just right so it would bloom?”
“Well, of course.” The woman shook her head, but there was a note of pride in her voice. “Took me nearly three years to get that bush to bloom. But now it’s the best in town, probably even in the county.”
“Why didn’t you give up on it?”
“Give up? I knew I just had to find the right combination, and with enough care and attention it would thrive.”
“So you’d say it changed a great deal from the troublesome plant you first bought?”
“Well…yes.”
“If a plant can do it, Mrs. Clancy, why can’t a person?”
There were a few seconds’ delay before the woman got her point. Then she frowned, her face as set as her mind apparently was.
“You’re too generous, girl. Luke McGuire will never change.”
Amelia’s jaw tightened with determination. “You know, walking past your garden today, you would never know what he once did to it. I’ll bet that before he came back, even you had forgotten. But he didn’t. It’s been ten years, and he still feels guilty.”
“As well he should.”
“But don’t you see?” Amelia said, sounding almost urgent, even to her own ears. “If he was as bad as you’ve painted him, he wouldn’t care at all.”
Mrs. Clancy opened her mouth to retort. Then closed it. Her frown deepened.
Amelia could only hope it was because she was having to think about her hatred, probably for the first time in a decade.
When the woman finally left, Amelia breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief. She didn’t know how much more of this advice giving she could take, however well-intentioned it might be. She supposed she should be happy that people cared enough to warn her. And she might be, were it not for the niggling certainty that it was mainly the fact that it was Luke who was garnering her all this concern.
Think about David, she ordered herself.
The problem was, she didn’t know what else to do. To the outside eye, the boy had a good—even enviable, if comforts and money were your standards—home. And his mother had become the proverbial pillar of the community; she might once have been the subject of gossip, but now she was the object of admiration for overcoming a rocky start, and even more for having done it with the drawback of a ne’er-do-well son like Luke.
Too bad they weren’t as generous when it came to that son.
And there she was, back on that channel again. For nearly two days she’d waited, wondered what he was thinking, if she would hear from him, until finally she was convinced she was either losing her mind or a fool, and she wasn’t sure which of the two she preferred.
She’d even sunk to driving by the motel this morning after her kickboxing class—a class she’d attacked with a bit more vehemence than usual—telling herself it was only a block out of her way. His motorcycle hadn’t been parked outside his room, and she was torn between wondering where he was and wondering if he was even still in town at all.
The possibility that he’d simply left without a word to her stung. But she couldn’t deny it was a possibility. He hardly owed her a formal goodbye, just because of one kiss.
David was another matter. Surely he wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye to his brother?
But if David was still angry, as his actions seemed to indicate, he might well be in no mood to see his brother at all. And it was David she should be worried about, not her own silly feelings. It wasn’t David’s fault if she let her imagination run away with her every time she saw his brother.
It wasn’t Luke’s fault, either, really, she admitted wryly as she called up her accounting program on the computer, desperate enough for distraction to tackle even that. He was probably trying to be kind by staying away, so she didn’t get any silly ideas. Any more than she already had, anyway.
When the door alarm activated, she instinctively smiled at the classic voice of Mr. Spock, but inside she was chanting to her heart not to leap, her eyes not to snap toward the door in hope….
It was David.
He looked ragged enough for Mrs. Clancy to have been right about him being out all night. And suddenly she didn’t know what to do or say. The closer the boy got to the edge, the more afraid she was that she might inadvertently push him even further. So when he came to a stop beside the counter, the only thing she could think of to say was, “Are you all right?”
David shrugged.
She tried again. “I heard you got grounded.”
He shrugged again. But this time at least he spoke. “It’s not so bad, if you know how to get around it.”
“Are you getting around it now?”
A third shrug. He was working awfully hard to give the impression he didn’t care. “She thinks I’m in one of her stupid summer classes. And since she’s off on her crusade again, she doesn’t care, really.”
“David—”
“And don’t tell me she does. She doesn’t know how.”
“I won’t try to change your mind about that, David,” she said, not wanting to make it more difficult for the boy to get along with his mother, but not wanting to deny what she suspected was the truth, either. “But if you think you have it bad, imagine how it must feel to be the reason your mother’s on this crusade. To know she blames you for ruining her life.”
For a moment David’s mouth tightened stubbornly. Clearly he was still angry at his brother. But then what she’d said must have gotten through.
“Yeah, I know she blames him. Like there’s anything to blame him for. She’s got such a tough life,” David added sarcastically.
“Do you remember your grandmother?”
“Not really. I was just a baby when she died. And my mother never talks about her much. I think she was a real nasty old witch, though.” He gave Amelia a sideways look. “And yeah, I know, that’s probably why Mom’s the way she is.”
“Doesn’t make it any easier to live with though, does it?” Amelia asked sympathetically.
“I think the old bat was awful to Luke, too.”
Well, Amelia thought, if he realized that, maybe he was coming around as far as his brother was concerned.
“Why don’t you ask him?” When he didn’t answer, she added, “Or are you still not speaking to him?”
David took a deep breath. He stared down at the counter. “I thought he’d understand. I thought he’d get me out of here.”
“He does understand. But unfortunately, everything he said was true. No official agency would let you live with him over your mother. He didn’t make the laws, David.”
His head came up then. “No, but all of a sudden he’s living by them?”
“Is that what you want, for him to break the law for you? End up in trouble all over again?”
David didn’t answer, but he did look uncomfortable. So he wasn’t that angry with Luke. She decided to press the point and maybe wake him up a little about his own actions, as well.
“Or maybe you’d just rather get in trouble yourself, so he can feel even more guilty about the example he set for you?”
His eyes widened slightly, then his gaze darted away, and she knew she’d struck a nerve. With a sinking feeling inside, she realized Mrs. Clancy was probably right about what he’d been up to.
“I can’t help who they blame,” David said; it wasn’t quite an admission, but it was close. She changed tacks.
“Maybe your mother doesn’t care like she should, David. Maybe she never learned how. But you know I care. And your brother cares, too.”
“Yeah?” It was disbelieving, but not sarcastic, giving Amelia hope.
“Yes. He told me you were the only good memory he had of this place.”
David looked startled at that. “He did?”
She nodded. “He came a long way, just to see if he could help. He probably already knew he couldn’t do what you wanted him to, but he came anyway. Because he cares.”
David studied her for a moment. “How come you’re not like the rest of them? You don’t hate him for what he did back then.”
“Well, I wasn’t here then. I didn’t know him—”
“A lot of them didn’t, either. But they heard bad things and they believed them, and hated him even though he never did nothing to them.”
“I try not to judge people on hearsay,” Amelia said, realizing even as she said it that she sounded a bit self-righteous. So she added, with a smile, “And I guess maybe I’ve always had a thing for the underdog.”
Or bad boys, she admitted silently. For whatever reason, it was true. Maybe because she’d always been so blessed good all her life, people who weren’t fascinated her. Of course, it didn’t hurt that this one looked like something from that slightly wicked, wrong kind of paradise.
Mr. Spock spoke again, and this time she looked up eagerly and with hope. David was feeling much more favorably toward his brother now; if it was Luke…
It was Snake. And entourage.
Amelia went instantly on guard.
“Hey, Hiller-man, what’re you doin’ in this place?”
“Just hanging out,” David said, and already Amelia could see the change in him. He was suddenly slouching, and his entire expression had changed to one of cocky insolence touched with chronic anger.
“She’s a little old for you, isn’t she?” one of the other boys said, with a snicker.
“And boring, like these books,” Snake said, giving Amelia a look that reminded her rather forcefully of the knife he no doubt had in his pocket. But he turned back to David then, and Amelia cravenly let out an inaudible breath of relief.
“You want to hang with us,” Snake said, “you can’t keep comin’ here. Makes you look like a wimp, you know?”
“Yeah, sure,” David said with a shrug.
“C’mon, man, we got plans to make before midnight.”
“Sure,” David said again.
And just like that he walked out with them, leaving Amelia stunned anew at the power of peer pressure.
And more worried than ever that David was headed for serious trouble.
“Going to be with us much longer?”
Luke grimaced as he handed the motel night manager another day’s rent for tomorrow. “I don’t know.”
He hadn’t intended to be here this long. And for the past two days, he’d just hung around doing not much of anything, except going through the money he’d allotted for the trip.
He should have just kept right on going, he thought as he headed back toward his room, after he’d left the bookstore that evening. Should have pointed the bike north, and by 3:00 a.m. he would have been home. Back in the mountains, the river country, where he’d finally found his life.
And only the fact that it would look like he was running from Amelia had stopped him from doing just that.
Oh? And wouldn’t you have been?
He’d been hearing way too much of that little voice in his head lately. Once it had encouraged him to take the chances that most of the time landed him in trouble, now it just seemed to nag him. Hoping to shut it off, he retreated to his room, picked up his book, and settled in to read.
He finished the book all too soon, freeing his mind to wander. Except that it didn’t; it went straight back to exactly where he didn’t want it to go.
It was only a kiss, for God’s sake. What was wrong with him? He’d kissed lots of women before. Just because he hadn’t meant to kiss this one but hadn’t been able to stop himself didn’t have to mean anything. Just because he’d only meant to make it a quick, brotherly kiss and had lost control of it didn’t have to mean anything.
The instant fire that had blazed along his nerves was a bit harder to explain away.
He glanced at his watch. Not yet midnight. Maybe he would go for a ride, blow out the cobwebs.
Then again, he thought, maybe not; it might not be late to him, but to most of Santiago Beach it was the middle of the night, and he didn’t want to add fuel to the fire by waking up the whole town snarling up and down their streets. Time was that would have been his sole goal in life, but things had changed.
But he could take a walk, as he often did when he couldn’t sleep at night. It wouldn’t be at all the same here, but maybe it would help.
Or maybe, he thought after he’d been tramping a half an hour along a sidewalk that seemed to him too level and civilized for a real walk, it would make things worse.
He hadn’t intended to do it, but he’d been so busy fighting off the persistent thoughts of Amelia and memories of that kiss that he hadn’t paid much attention to where he was going. And now he was here, as if his feet had remembered the way and forgotten to mention to his mind where they were going.
He stopped at the corner, under the big hibiscus tree, staring down at the big white house in the middle of the block. His mother had been so proud of that house. No doubt she still was. The new husband she’d acquired when Luke was ten would have preferred something less grand, something designed a bit more with children in mind—he’d wanted lots of them, Luke remembered now. But then as later, Jackie got what she wanted. So Luke had spent eight years in that house, afraid to touch anything outside his own room and aware that his mother begrudged him even that much space.
She’d even resented the time Ed Hiller had spent with Luke, and sometimes Luke thought she’d had David partly to cut down on that as well as to insure that Ed stayed in line. The other part was the fulfilling of the one desire her husband had expressed; she’d presented him with a son of his own and expected him to be happy with that.
And Ed had been. He’d loved David with all his heart and still had enough left over to give his stepson a little. He’d wanted more children, and Luke knew he would have loved them all, but his wife had said one was enough. Even then, he hadn’t counted.
He watched the darkened house and wondered if everyone who came back home felt this odd sense of distance, as if what had happened here had happened to someone else. It wasn’t that it was any better, looking back, it was simply that it didn’t matter as much as it once had. Once it had been the core of his life, fueling his anger and drive to make as much trouble as he could. Now…now it was cooling embers, requiring intentional stirring and added fuel to produce any heat.
A movement at the side of the house yanked him out of his reverie.
He leaned forward, eyes narrowing as he looked into the deep shadows along the four-car garage. He’d just about decided he’d imagined it when something moved again, low down, next to the white wall. It was awfully big for a local animal, unless the Langs still lived down the street and still fancied Newfoundlands.
And then the shape stood up, and he knew from the height, the baggy cargo pants and the backward baseball cap that it was David.
He wondered if his brother had taken the same way out he always had, through the bathroom window that opened over the garage roof, then down the back side, where you could just reach the edge of the patio roof. He’d never taken the boy with him, but he supposed he could have watched. And remembered.
David
moved stealthily toward the sidewalk, then up the street, away from where Luke was hidden in the shadow of the hibiscus. As David neared the corner, Luke saw two more figures appear, carrying backpacks. The three waited, and a few minutes later three more arrived. Then the six took off with purposeful yet furtive strides, heads swiveling as they checked their surroundings constantly.
Luke knew that look. He knew exactly how it felt to be constantly on the watch, ready to run if you were spotted by the wrong person.
He also knew what it meant. He’d done it too often himself to forget; David and his buddies were up to something they shouldn’t be.
He waited until they were just out of sight, then started after them. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but he couldn’t not go.
He hadn’t gone far when he realized the follower himself was being followed. A car was behind him, a small black coupe, keeping its distance, but never so far that the driver would lose sight of him. He wondered if maybe it was an undercover police car, but it looked pretty racy for that, unless things had changed mightily at Santiago Beach PD.
His attention now split between the boys up ahead and the car behind, he kept going. It was an odd sort of real, physical flashback to a time when skulking along darkened streets had been a regular habit of his.
They reached Main Street, and Luke knew he would have to be careful now. There was too much open space, too many places where his quarry could spot him. If they turned north, there wasn’t much cover; if they went south, there was an occasional recessed doorway in front of the businesses along the block that would afford some cover, and the courtyard of the community center, with all its trees and benches.
He got lucky, they went south.
He’d been so focused on them for the moment that he didn’t realize the car had stopped until he paused at the corner to let the boys get far enough away. He glanced back; the black coupe was parked now, and just as he looked, the headlights went out. He turned back and leaned to look around the corner; the boys were walking slowly, watchfully, and he knew he had to give them more space.
“Luke!”