by Karen Young
“Diet soda? What the hell are you drinking diet stuff for? You don’t need to lose an ounce. You’re a perfect size.”
“I wouldn’t be if I didn’t.” Color high, she slapped the brace in place with a clang of steel against steel. “Do you know how many grams of sugar are in a can of soda? And calories? Not to mention the caffeine.”
“Whoa, you make it sound like poison,” he said, openly teasing her now.
“It is poison. One of the things that bugs me most is that the kids at school—”
Rachel left them to it. Besides, she could have been one of the host of garden implements mounted on the wall for all the notice they took of her at the moment as Marta launched into her favorite pet peeve and Pete, apparently, was inclined to listen.
She’d wished for some way to bring Marta and Pete together for a long time now, believing Marta needed to deal with the issues that had torn her and Pete apart. In Rachel’s opinion, she’d married Jorge too close on the heels of her broken engagement. But Marta had always denied Rachel’s suggestion that she carried around a lot of unresolved pain from her breakup with Pete. It brought a smile to her lips that fate, and not Rachel, had intervened. However it happened, she thought, opening the refrigerator to get beer and the diet drink, it was about time.
Cam had been wrapping up a job recaulking windows and the door on his front porch when Pete Singletary pulled to the curb in front of Dinah’s home. He’d watched the new police chief saunter up the driveway and enter the garage where Rachel and her friend were wrestling with the assembly of her new shelves. Irritation and a feeling he couldn’t nail down caused him to turn away. Actually, he did know what he felt, but he wasn’t sure what to do about it. He was attracted to Rachel and getting nowhere fast trying to tell himself he wasn’t. And seeing some other dude sniffing around her made him testy. Rachel was way off in dismissing the notion that Singletary was interested in her, he thought, closing the lid of his toolbox with a hard snap. Why else would he show up now? As far as Singletary knew after running into her at Home Depot, the plan was for Nick to install the shelves.
Cam, of course, had seen Nick leave with his buddy and assumed Rachel would wait to put up the shelves until the boy got back, but that stubborn streak he was coming to know all too well had kicked in and she’d apparently decided to tackle the job on her own. He’d been on the verge of offering help himself, but then Marta had shown up and killed his excuse for going over. He’d gone back to caulking, but with less concentration than when he’d begun.
As he cleared away the caulking debris, he avoided looking over, but he couldn’t avoid hearing the voices that drifted across the lawn. Rachel’s comments, sounding husky and musical, were easily distinguished from Marta’s more clipped words, but setting Cam’s teeth on edge was Singletary, whose voice was as smooth as snake oil. The three of them might as well break out the beer and the barbecue grill, he decided grumpily. Make it a real party. Scowling, he gathered up the caulking gun and his toolbox. Hell, it should be nothing to him if Rachel wanted to enjoy the company of a man. She was as good as divorced from that cheating bastard of a husband and better off for it, even if she was a long way from seeing it yet.
With his jaw set, he left the porch carrying his equipment. To get to his own garage, he had to walk between his place and Dinah’s, but halfway there, he heard another burst of laughter from Singletary and stopped midstride, set his equipment down, turned and started across the lawn.
Rachel spotted him before the other two, who were struggling with what looked like the top tier on one of the sets of shelves. “Hi, Cam. Come and join the fun, but don’t volunteer to help. Marta just told me in no uncertain terms that they didn’t need any.”
“I didn’t say nobody could help.” Marta spoke around two screws clamped between her teeth. “Just that you couldn’t. You’ve already mashed your finger and dropped a wrench on my toe.”
Rachel grinned at him, looking as if she didn’t much regret being banished from the workforce. “Would you like a beer?”
“Sounds good.” Instead of waiting for her to bring it out, he followed her into the house. “Where’s Dinah?”
“In Dallas, attending some kind of daylily show with one of her garden club friends. They took Kendall along. She’ll be in heaven.”
“She got her camera with her?”
“Is grass green? Is the sky blue? Of course, she has her camera.” She opened the fridge and pulled out a long-neck beer. “Corona okay?”
“It’s fine.” He took it, uncapped it and, holding her gaze, savored the first cold bite at the back of his throat. Now that he was inside with her and Singletary was outside, he felt less…testy. He motioned toward the garage with his beer and said, “So, what’s with those two? I thought you said they were busted up for good.”
“No, I said they were busted up, but not necessarily for good. And didn’t I say if you were interested in the reasons their engagement was broken off all those years ago, you should ask them, not me?” She leaned against the counter. “And why are you so hung up on Pete and Marta?”
“I’m not hung up on them, but it seems to me if Singletary’s interested in rekindling a romance with Marta, why isn’t he knocking on her door instead of yours?”
“You could ask him that, too,” she said. Turning, she opened a cabinet, reached up and took out a bag of nachos and a large bottle of picante sauce. The bottom of her sweater hiked up, revealing a slim waist and the intriguing flare of her hips in low-slung jeans. She wasn’t pencil thin, but he didn’t particularly like his women skinny. Not that she was his woman, or likely to be, although he didn’t have any difficulty recalling how neatly she’d fit when he hugged her last Saturday. But she had baggage in the form of kids, one of them rebellious, a contentious ex, an ailing mother and financial woes, plus a passel of problems stemming from all of the above.
He watched her remove something in two pieces from underneath the counter, one shaped like the state of Texas and the other a star for serving the chips and sauce. She handed him the jar of picante. “Here, open this for me, will you?”
“Are we having a party?”
“No, but the least I can do is provide snacks while Pete and Marta put up those shelves.”
Setting his beer aside, he twisted the sealed cap from the picante sauce while she tore the bag of nachos open and dumped them into the Texas dish. Since he had the sauce in his hand, he emptied it into the star shape. She took the jar from him and tossed it into the trash. Then, instead of heading for the door with the goodies, she paused. “Before we go outside, there’s something I’d like to ask you.”
“Sure.” But he was warned by the way she looked at him. He raised the long neck to his lips and took a slow swallow. “I think.”
“It’s personal.” She reached for a chip in the bowl.
“How personal?”
“I need to know if you can recall when Jack was—”
He swung away at the mention of Jack’s name and moved to the window above the sink. His first instinct was to get away, get out of her kitchen and stay the hell away from her. “No, the answer’s no,” he told her. “No questions about Jack.”
“Not even if it might help another boy?”
Blind to the view from the window, he imagined another parent getting that fearsome phone call in the middle of the night. He thought of the impact on another parent of a message so grievous that life was changed forever. Real joy was never quite possible and the future was dark as far ahead as you looked. He set the long-neck bottle on the counter carefully and drew a deep breath. “What do you want to know?”
“I know it’s hard,” she said. “I wouldn’t—”
He turned and looked at her. “The question, Rachel. What is it?”
She hesitated but only for a heartbeat. “I counseled a boy who was—is—one of Monk Tyson’s star athletes. If he doesn’t screw up he’s sure to be offered a scholarship so fantastic that most high school football players
can only dream of. But I’m worried he’s going to do just that. I sense he’s dealing with a personal crisis. His grades are slipping, he’s skipping school, he’s binge drinking. He’s had one DUI already and I’m afraid it’s just a matter of time before he has another.” The chip in her hand snapped. “Or worse.”
“You think he’s contemplating escape the same way Jack did?”
“No, I don’t think he’s that desperate. Yet.”
“Then what?”
“Do you…” She looked away, deeply thoughtful. “After talking to him, I just have this feeling…” The chip was now in pieces as she struggled to put her concern into words. Frowning now, she bit off a tiny piece of the nacho. “Something is tormenting this boy.”
“I don’t see how this relates to Jack.”
“I’m wondering if playing sports is right for this student.”
“The kid is unhappy over the prospect of a future of fame and fortune beyond his wildest dreams?”
“No.” She licked a bit of salt from one finger, unconscious of the effect on Cam. “But something’s…wrong. Monk Tyson is obsessed with those athletes, especially the gifted ones.”
“Is that how this relates to Jack in your mind?”
She raised her eyes to his. “Did you ever get a feeling from Jack that he was being pressured? Or that there was anything…unusual…or—I don’t know—anything at all that troubled him about Monk Tyson’s sports program?”
“…some trouble with guys on the team. I was thinking maybe you could come down and—”
The words in Jack’s last phone call were seared into Cam’s mind. He’d been too distracted to listen then, but after it was too late, he’d been unable to turn them off. He’d replayed their conversations, studied every e-mail, relived their visits, all as he searched for a clue…anything that would have—should have—alerted him that his son was in crisis. He’d found nothing.
“Did Jack ever say that he suspected something more was happening in Monk’s organization than simply playing ball?” Rachel asked.
“What are we talking about here, a weird club of some sort? Devil worship? Sex, drugs, porn? Stuff like that?”
Rachel spread her hands, mystified. “Again…I don’t know. But I keep thinking about Nick telling you he was uneasy when he should be feeling just the opposite. I know how much baseball means to him. Do you think he’s sensing something that’s…I don’t know, not right? Is that what he was hinting at that day when he was in your kitchen?”
“I don’t know. Didn’t you ask? You said you planned to talk to him.”
She was shaking her head. “He was instantly defensive when I brought it up, as he is when I try to talk to him now about anything. Even the most trivial stuff.”
“Tell you what,” he said, knowing he was digging himself a hole that might swallow him up, “why don’t I try to have a conversation with him? If he’s comfortable talking to me, then it seems reasonable to take advantage of it.”
“Would you?” she said, looking relieved, then added, “But only on the condition that you tell me exactly what he says.” She studied the bowl of chips, frowning. “I may be off in left field here, but I’ve felt some uneasiness for a while now, and after talking with this particular student, it’s stronger than ever.”
“You had this uneasy feeling before Jack died?”
“No, not then, no. It was afterward.” She turned and rinsed her hands, then ripped off a paper towel. “Or maybe after losing Jack, I was simply more alert.”
“Jack tested positive for drugs at the autopsy,” Cam said. The words were as caustic as acid in his mouth. “You must know that.”
“Yes, but Jack was not a user, I know it. I never believed the answer to the mystery of…what he did was due to drugs. I don’t know why he took whatever it was that night, but from what I knew of Jack, I really don’t think he had a problem.”
“Thank you,” he muttered. She looked as if she wanted to give him a hug and he knew it would feel good to get a hug from Rachel. He didn’t have any trouble recalling how she’d felt snuggled against his chest in his kitchen last week, soft, womanly and, at that moment, a little fragile. He’d wanted to do a helluva lot more than hug her. Still did.
Unnerved at how far he’d let his libido take him since last week, Cam grabbed his beer. “I had a lot of trouble trying to fit in that part of the puzzle myself,” he said. “I talked to several of the boys Jack had mentioned when we were together talking about school and ball, girls and dates. Nobody admitted ever seeing him take drugs. He had too much to lose, if you think about it. Monk Tyson runs a tight ship and nobody who wants his approval fools around with drugs. Or at least, that was the word I got.”
“Not even steroids?”
“Not even steroids.” And no amount of digging had unearthed a clue that proved otherwise. Immediately after Jack’s death, Cam had spoken to Tyson directly and had heard the same thing from “The Man” himself. Tyson had seemed genuinely baffled by the suicide of one of his most promising athletes. Same thing with Preston Ramsey. The principal had actually been shocked that Cam searched for anything behind Jack’s suicide other than the usual, which was a troubled teenager unable to cope. Tragic, but not really uncommon. Clearly, he’d believed Cam to be in the throes of major denial. Cam, dissatisfied and sensing there was something if only he could isolate it or find a kid willing to talk, had then fallen back on what he, as a writer, did best: research. Still, his poking and prying had turned up nothing. Zip. Nada. He’d scrutinized everything about the school, its faculty, after-hours social events, clubs, incidences in the past, you name it. Finally, he’d been forced to admit he was at a dead end.
“Have you ever discussed this with Ramsey?” he asked Rachel now.
She tossed the paper towel. “What would I say? Preston would have dismissed a hunch as vague and unproductive. And if I were to stir up anything that reflected negatively on the school without being able to point clearly to facts as opposed to ‘a feeling,’ it would not bode well for the future of my job.”
“So you didn’t make the effort.” He didn’t give her a chance to reply, but added, “So, if there was, or is, something weird going on—your word, not mine—aren’t you concerned that another boy might wind up like Jack?”
“That’s the only reason I risked mentioning it, since I knew it would upset you.”
“Hmm.” Cam, thoughtful and less defensive now, leaned against the countertop, idly turning the long-neck bottle round and round. “How much more digging did you do?”
“I spoke to Jack’s mother.” At his sharp look, she gave another spread-hands-so-sue-me movement and barely paused. “I hoped to get some insight into Jack’s state of mind at the time, but she was not helpful. She was too shocked and stunned by what happened and still deeply grieving. Understandably so. I waited a while—a month or so—then called her again, but she still couldn’t come up with anything. I asked her to call me if she thought of anything, but she never did.”
“Cara was probably even less aware of Jack’s state of mind at the time than me,” Cam said, trying to keep the old bitterness out of his voice. “She was all caught up in reeling in the new man in her life. Jack and his problems were a distant second.”
“Sometimes it’s hard to read teenagers, regardless of what’s going on in your personal life,” Rachel pointed out gently, then added, “even when the signs are right under your nose.”
She was in her psychologist mode, Cam thought, probably reading in his face the fact that he still had not forgiven Cara for screwing around with Anthony Rosetti while Jack needed her. “For what it’s worth, she later married the guy,” he said, making an effort to sound less unreasonable. “I guess they’re happy.”
“If that’s true, then I’m glad,” Rachel said. “She surely deserves to be happy, considering her loss. For a mother to lose a child is—” She stopped, making a small, apologetic gesture. “I’m sorry, that goes for fathers, too. I didn’t mean to sug
gest—”
“It’s okay. Cara seems to have adjusted. It’s a good thing. More power to her.”
“Yes, a very good thing.”
And why haven’t you adjusted? Cam could see the thought on her face. And what he felt was probably hanging out there for her to make whatever psychologists made of these things. He didn’t like her reading his face…or his mind, but he’d brought it on himself by talking about Jack. Anytime he went there, a toddler could tell what he felt.
Rachel busied herself taking down a tray from an overhead cabinet and placing napkins on it. “I was wondering…considering that she seems to be getting on with her life, if she might have a clearer perspective now about what was going on before Jack died.”
“Who, Cara?”
She smiled. “Weren’t we talking about Cara?”
“Yeah, but you threw me a curve with that ‘perspective’ business.”
“What I was getting at,” she said with gentle patience, “is that Cara might be able to tell you something now that escaped her then. A person’s reaction to grief and shock is never predictable. Some go into a self-preservation mode that excludes anything except the basics of life—eating, sleeping, working, simply getting through the day. Most eventually work through it and life goes on. Memory returns.”
Definitely wearing her psychologist hat. “Okay, I’ll accept that. What about it?”
“Assuming she might have remembered something, you won’t know what it is if you don’t ask.”
He crossed his arms over his chest, not giving a damn what she read into his body language. “You’re actually suggesting that I go over and ask Cara if she’s willing to answer some questions about Jack, five years too late?”
“It’s never too late and I think it makes sense, don’t you?”
“That’s assuming she’ll let me inside the door,” he said, openly sarcastic. “This is a woman who cheated on me, who neglected Jack while setting up the next sucker, who spends most of her time making her life as cushy as possible for herself, and you want me to pay a visit and make nice?”