But right this moment, he wanted to hurt Craig. Wanted to hurt him bad, to smash his face in, to beat the hell out of him for even implying that he or his people might hurt Maggie’s kids.
It took a moment to make his voice work, and it came out rough as gravel with sharp, pissed-off edges. “You want me to talk to Maggie. Convince her that going to jail is the best thing for her now. Make her keep her mouth shut or...”
Craig’s only response was to pointedly look at the picture.
A muffled sound came from the shadows at the back, Goober shuffling his oversize feet, probably moving to stay limber in case he needed to spring into action. Sean and Craig both glanced that way, and Sean muttered, “Freakin’ rat.”
It was hard to tell from Craig’s grin whether he suspected which of them Sean was referring to.
“I know you left Copper Lake for a reason, man, and like I said, normally I wouldn’t ask you to get involved, but when it’s family...we gotta make exceptions for family, right? Little sisters, little nieces... Man, I’m sure you wouldn’t want me sending anyone else, would you?”
Muscles so taut a few were on the verge of spasm, Sean stood. “Yeah, right.” He walked a few paces before turning back. “If she keeps her mouth shut, if she doesn’t roll on you...”
“If she stays quiet and still doesn’t go to jail, I’ll pay for the best rehab around. We’ll get her clean. If she does do time, when she gets out, she and the kids will have a new start. I’ll set ’em up wherever she wants to go. Either way, I’ll take care of her.”
“Okay.” Without further conversation, Sean crossed the bay to the door, let himself out and strode to his car.
Craig’s last words should have been reassuring. I’ll take care of her. I’ll see that she’s safe and healthy and clean and can be a decent mother to her girls. I’ll give her a new life in a new place where no one knows her name or her history. I’ll get her counseling and medical care and help her to live the life she deserves to live.
That was what Sean would have meant by I’ll take care of her.
But Sean wasn’t a cold-blooded killer.
And Craig was.
Chapter 2
As Sophy combed conditioner through Daisy’s silky black hair, the little girl peered up at her. “Are me and Dahlia stupid?”
Startled by the question, Sophy lost her balance and slid from her knees to the floor beside the bathtub. “Of course you’re not stupid. Why would you think that?”
“We played a game at church, an’ the teacher asked a lot of questions. Me and Dahlia didn’t know the answer to any of ’em, and this kid named Paulie said we were stupid. I think any boy named Paulie is stupid.”
Sophy sighed internally. Paulie Pugliese’s father was a deacon, his mother the choir director. They loved their authority in the church and their spoiled brat of a little boy better.
From the far end of the tub, hidden beneath a dress and cap made of fragrant pink bubbles, Dahlia deigned to join the conversation. “Miss Jo said you can’t know a subject you ain’t been taught. She asked Paulie to count to ten in French, and he couldn’t do it. She said he wasn’t stupid and we weren’t stupid. We just needed to learn.”
“Un, deux, trois.” Sophy smiled awkwardly when both girls scowled at her. “Counting in French. Miss Jo’s right. If you’ve never been to church or read the Bible, how could you know what’s in it?”
“It don’t matter.” Dahlia stretched one leg up and fashioned a bubble high heel. “Mama’ll be home soon, and we won’t have to go again.”
“I kinda liked it.” Daisy anticipated her sister’s censure and didn’t wait to respond, “Sorry! But they sang songs, and they had pictures to color, and there were doughnuts. I like doughnuts.”
Sophy pushed to her feet and dried her hands. “You guys get rinsed and dried off and put your jammies on, and maybe we can have our bedtime snack outside.”
Dahlia almost drowned out Daisy’s cheer. “Sitting on dirty wooden stairs? Oh, boy.”
“It may have escaped your notice each time we’ve gone into the shop, but there’s a lovely porch downstairs with flowers and chairs and everything. Go on, now, and help your sister.”
The last wasn’t necessary, she acknowledged as she left them in the bathroom. Dahlia was always quick to give Daisy whatever she needed. Maybe part of it was just being the big sister. Probably a larger part was that their mother had rarely been in shape to help the kids herself.
In the kitchen, she pulled out the industrial-size blender that used to make margaritas when she had friends over but now mostly turned out fruit smoothies. Listening to the up-and-down of the girls’ voices, the words indistinguishable, she spooned in ice cream, milk, a little vanilla and three crumbled chocolate-chip cookies her mother had sent home from dinner with them.
By the time the girls shuffled in, she’d divided the milk shakes between three tall cups, added straws and long spoons, and placed them with a pile of napkins on a tray painted with sunflowers.
Used to her inspections, Dahlia had brought a towel and the wide-tooth comb. Neither of them minded water dripping down their backs from wet hair, Daisy had earnestly explained to her, and Sophy had just as earnestly explained that she did. She gave both heads a quick rub, combed their hair, made sure they wore flip-flops, then picked up the tray of shakes.
After securing the front door behind them, Sophy led the way down the stairs and around to the front porch. With the flip of a switch, two ceiling fans came on, one above each side of the porch. The glass-windowed doors in the center looked in on the dimly lit quilt shop, all bright colors and endless possibilities, and a path led across the tiny yard to the picket fence and the sidewalk.
The evening was relatively quiet. Most church services were over. All the bars were closed. An occasional car passed on Oglethorpe Avenue, and a few couples strolled around the square, their destination A Cuppa Joe or one of the restaurants still serving customers. It was her favorite time of day, a time to reflect, to unwind, to set her worries to rest and consider the next day.
Or to answer questions.
“What is this?” Daisy asked. Dressed in ladybug pajamas, she ignored the rocker and crouched back on her heels, holding the drink in both hands.
“A milk shake.”
She jiggled it. “It doesn’t shake.”
“No, but it can make you shake. It’s cold.”
“What’s in it?”
“Milk, ice cream and a surprise. You have to taste it to find out.”
Hesitantly Daisy put her mouth to the straw and sucked until her jaw puckered. “I can’t get any.”
“It’s got to melt a little first. Use the spoon.” Sophy took a large bite of hers, savoring the richness of the ice cream and her mom’s incredible chocolate-chip cookies.
“Where’d you learn to make it?”
“My sister taught me.”
“Miss Reba?”
“That’s the one.” Sophy used one foot to keep her rocker moving. To Reba’s kids, Daisy and Dahlia had just been two more kids to play with after Sunday dinner. Their mother hadn’t been so accepting.
You brought Hooligan kids into your house? You’ll wake up one morning trussed like a hog with all your money and your car gone.
They’re five and six years old. Where do you think they’re going to go?
Reba had scowled. I see TV. I read the news. The little one works the pedals while the big one steers. Besides, my friend Linda is a foster parent, and she said they couldn’t pay her enough to take those kids again. Her friend Tara fosters, too, and she said they set her house on fire. They climb out windows, they jump off roofs, they run away, they steal. Neither one of them’s ever spent a day in school.
Sophy had given her a dry look. Then they’ll keep me alert and aware and on my toes.
Reba had sighed. Oh, Sophy.
Sophy knew what that meant: poor, childless, clueless Sophy. Overprotected, overoptimistic, all sunshine and rainbows. Reba had f
orgotten the Christmas when Sophy had been threatened by two armed killers in the back room of her shop. She wasn’t Mary Sunshine. She knew bad things happened in the world, and if she could keep a few from happening to Dahlia and Daisy, she would be happy.
“Miss Reba doesn’t like us.” Dahlia sat cross-legged in her chair, all skinny limbs, her usual scowl fading only when she took a bite of ice cream. “She called us Hooligans.”
Heat flooded through Sophy. She’d thought the kids were occupied in the family room with Reba’s kids and her father when her sister had started that conversation. She should have known better. Know-it-all mother-of-four parenting-expert Reba certainly should have.
“She shouldn’t have said that,” Sophy agreed. “It was rude, and it’s not true.”
Dahlia shrugged. “’Course it’s true. Mama says most people don’t like us, and that’s okay because we don’t like ’em back.”
Sophy didn’t know what to say to that, because sadly that was the case. Way back in middle school, when some kids had been giving Maggie a hard time, she’d overheard one teacher ruefully tell another, Everyone has to have someone to look down on. Maggie, it seemed, had gone out of her way to give people reasons to look down on her. Where someone else might have taken it as a challenge to prove them wrong, she’d been in their faces, flaunting every bad decision and behavior.
Granted, she’d never been taught anything different. Her brothers, her father, her uncles...Holigans had made an art of reveling in their reputations.
“I like you,” Sophy said. “And Mom and Dad, and Mr. Ty and Miss Nev and Miss Anamaria.” Lord, it was a short list. It made her heart ache.
Dahlia responded with a disbelieving snort before taking a huge bite of ice cream. On the floor, without lifting her gaze from an ant crawling across the boards, Daisy asked, “What’s a hooligan?”
“Remember, Mama told us. It’s someone who runs wild and breaks all the rules and misbehaves and acts like a heathen.”
“I like running wild and making people shake their heads and say, ‘You ain’t nothin’ but trouble, Daisy Holigan.’” Daisy grinned. “I like being a hooligan.”
Wondering which neighbor or irresponsible family member had told her that, Sophy forced a smile. “You like acting that way. But the secret is, you and Dahlia are clever and smart and capable little girls who can be anything you want to be.”
Another snort from Dahlia, and she’d lost Daisy’s attention completely. The girl had risen to her feet and was avidly staring at the sidewalk—rather, at the dog being walked there.
“Good evening,” the man at the other end of the leash called.
Sophy repeated his greeting as Daisy moved to the second step. “What’s your dog’s name?”
“Daisy! We don’t talk to strangers!” Dahlia whispered fiercely.
“But he’s got a dog.”
Sophy made a mental note to talk to the girls about strangers and ruses involving pets.
“Her name is Bitsy,” the man said. “You want to meet her? If it’s okay with your mom.”
The girls’ voices drowned each other out: “She’s not our mom,” from Dahlia and “Please, can I?” from Daisy.
“Sure.” Sophy followed Daisy into the yard as Bitsy pulled her owner through the gate. Wiggling from nose to tail, the dog sniffed the girl, making her giggle. The sound almost stopped Sophy’s heart. Was that the first time she’d heard Daisy laugh?
The man offered his hand. “Hi. I’m Zeke.”
“Sophy.” She shook his hand, his fingers long and strong, his palm uncallused. She still thought of Copper Lake as a small town, but he was one of the twenty thousand or so residents who weren’t a regular part of her life. He was fair skinned with auburn hair, blue eyes and a grin that had surely charmed more than his share of women. Though only a few inches taller than her, he was powerfully built—broad shoulders, hard muscles, not lean but solid. First impression: he was the sort of guy who could make a woman feel safe.
Though she knew better than to rely on first impressions.
“You picked a perfect evening for sitting on the porch with milk shakes.”
She glanced at the glass in her left hand. “The day’s not over until we’ve had ice cream.”
“A woman after our own hearts. Bitsy loves the ice-cream shop, but we’ve got to be careful. Her vet caught us there once and wasn’t happy.”
A glance at the short distance between the dog’s rounded belly and the ground made that easy to believe. “Cute name,” Sophy said while thinking the opposite. All of the dogs she knew had solid names—that they lived up to—Frank, Misha, Scooter, Elizabeth, Bear. Bitsy sounded so fussy for a grown man’s dog.
Zeke winced. “My daughter named her. Bitsy has a digging fixation, and my ex is a big-time gardener, so Bitsy came to live with me.”
So he was handsome, friendly, liked dogs and was single. Sophy was beginning to wonder how their paths hadn’t crossed before tonight. She thought she’d dated every friendly single guy in town.
Every one of whom had wound up married or engaged. To someone else.
Oh, Sophy. Reba’s sigh echoed in her head. It wasn’t a good time to meet anyone new, particularly anyone handsome with a quick grin. She’d taken on a huge responsibility when she’d volunteered to keep Daisy and Dahlia, and that meant putting her social life on hold.
“Your daughter and Bitsy are lucky you were able to take her.”
“There’s not much I wouldn’t do to make my kid happy...besides get back together with her mom. And I’ve kind of grown attached to the mutt, too.”
A car turned onto Oglethorpe at the nearest cross street, and they both glanced in that direction. The engine made a low growl, one that spoke of power tightly reined in. Sophy wasn’t much of a car person, but she could tell the vehicle was older than she was, was meticulously maintained and pretty much defined the phrase muscle car.
And it was painted a gorgeous deep metallic red. Her favorite color.
The air shimmered and the ground vibrated as the car slowly passed. Okay, maybe that was a little fanciful, but it felt that way. When it was gone and she turned back to Zeke, he was crouching on the ground beside Bitsy, head ducked, coaxing her to offer Daisy her paw for a handshake.
When the dog finally obeyed, he stood. “We’d better head home. She always wants a treat when she shakes, and I didn’t bring any. It’s been nice meeting you, Miss Daisy, Miss Dahlia...Miss Sophy.”
“Nice meeting you, too. Maybe we’ll see you again.”
Zeke grinned as he and the dog headed toward the gate. “You can bet on it.”
* * *
Monday was the kind of late-summer day that helped keep Sean in the South. The temperature was in the low eighties, the humidity down for a change, and occasionally when the wind blew across the Gullah River, he could smell the coming of fall, cooler weather, changing leaves, shorter days.
He’d driven around Copper Lake the night before, noticing how much things had changed and how much they’d stayed the same. New businesses and old ones, new people and old ones, familiar places, even a good memory or two. Charlie’s Custom Rods on Carolina Avenue looked as if the only turnover had been in merchandise. The front plate-glass window that Sean and his buddies had cracked late one Saturday night a lot of years ago was still there, the crack still covered with duct tape grown ragged.
The SnoCap Drive-In was still open, too, though it had had an update on its paint from neon turquoise to a subtler shade, and the same old guy who’d run it fourteen years ago was behind the counter.
The Heart of Copper Lake Motel still stood on Carolina, too, seriously renovated, but he would have recognized it. That was where he’d checked in, taking a parking space on the back side of the building even though his room was on the front.
After a restless night’s sleep, Sean knew the first thing he had to do today was talk to Maggie. He’d left the motel with that in mind but decided to have breakfast first. An hour had pass
ed, and he still sat in the coffee shop on the downtown square, a couple blocks from the jail, nursing his third cup of regular sugar-and-cream coffee, reluctant to confront two blasts from the past at once: the sister he’d let down and the jail where he’d spent more than a few nights himself.
The bell above the door rang every few minutes with customers arriving and departing. Most of them were in a hurry to get to work and paid little attention to anyone besides the couple filling orders. They were named Joe and Liz, husband and wife, he’d picked up eavesdropping, and they were strangers to Sean. He’d seen a few older faces that were vaguely familiar—lawyers, maybe, or probation officers or social workers—but none that he could put a name to.
The knot in his gut knew his good luck wouldn’t last.
Liz was topping off his coffee when the doorbell sounded again. “Morning, Sophy,” she called, then asked him, “Can I get you anything else?”
“No, thanks.” Without glancing her way, Sean stirred sugar and cream into his cup. He’d been concentrating on the scene outside the window—square, gazebo, flowers, war memorials, traffic, pedestrians—for so long that he’d memorized it, but it was better than actually making eye contact with someone.
It beat the hell out of making eye contact with someone who might recognize him.
A young and unhappy voice came from the vicinity of the door. “I. Want. To. Go. To. School.”
“I know you do. You’ve made that perfectly clear. But you’re not old enough,” a woman, presumably her mother, replied. She sounded tired, as if they’d been having this conversation for a while.
“That’s not fair! I’m not a baby!”
“I didn’t say you were. You’ll start next year.”
“I want to go this year!”
Sean had never had conversations like that when he was a kid. For starters, his mother had left them when he was about five, and they’d all been born knowing not to tempt their father with tantrums. Patrick Holigan hadn’t been a talkative lad to start with, but he’d had loads of things to say about what happened to children who disrespected their dear old pop.
Undercover in Copper Lake Page 3