by Jeff Shelby
I smiled. “All I'm saying is that I understand his concern. I'm just not sure I'm the right guy to really help him, you know?”
She nodded. “Sure. But he doesn't much like the sheriff and I don't think he knows what else to do.”
“Understandable.” I shifted again, sufficiently cooled off. “Did you used to play out there?”
“Where? On the ranch?” She moved the SUV over a lane. “Oh, sure. I mean, it was sort of like a weird, free amusement park. I got to drive when I was thirteen.”
“Drive?”
She nodded. “Yep. It’s private property and I was expected to help out on the weekends. Which meant I had to drive a pick-up truck to do my chores. It was awesome.”
“And illegal.”
“It’s actually not. As long as the property is privately owned, no license is needed. My dad knows, because he has his workers drive around and most of them don’t have licenses.”
“Learn something new every day.”
“It was fun,” Sarah said. “Made me feel older than I was, and cool. So, yeah, of course we played. My friends thought it was the greatest place ever,” she said. “And my parents just let us roam, you know? I couldn’t drive them around but we could explore wherever we wanted. And if I wanted some time to myself, it wasn't hard to find some out in the hills.”
“I went to the ocean.”
“I was afraid of the ocean.”
“Afraid?”
A shudder ran through her. “Sharks. And stingrays. And riptides.” She glanced at me. “It's like a giant bathtub of danger.”
I chuckled. “You still feel that way?”
“More so,” she said. “Whales, too.”
I laughed and shook my head. “Whales are harmless. As are stingrays and most sharks. Riptides are another story.”
“Anyway,” she said, smiling. “Yes. I played out there in the groves. It wasn't dangerous or anything like that. It was my backyard.”
We drove in silence for awhile, the noontime traffic not slowing us down much. Sarah remembered the way to my place without any reminders from me or her phone. She pulled the SUV to the curb, but didn't shut off the engine.
“Thank you for coming with me,” Sarah said.
“You're welcome,” I said. “It was painless.”
“You don't have to say yes to him,” she said. “It won't bother me at all. Not that you in any way might feel like you have to say yes for me, but I just want you to know that you don't have to. This is his thing, not mine.”
“You don't think I should?”
She flexed her fingers on the steering wheel. “I didn't say that. I think you should do whatever you want to do. I just don't want you to think there's any pressure from me to do it.”
“I appreciate that,” I told her.
She nodded.
“You wanna have dinner with me tonight?” I blurted out.
She raised both of her eyebrows at the question.
It was a more than fair response. I'd blown her off before, then tried to apologize without offering any real excuse. Now I was asking her out. Confusion was the correct response on her part.
“Dinner?” she finally said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Look, I know what I said before. And I meant it. About getting my head screwed on right or whatever. And it truly was the only reason I didn't call you. I am sort of a mess and I didn't want to put you through any bullshit.”
Her eyes were on me but she didn’t say anything.
“But I enjoyed seeing you last night and I've enjoyed spending time with you today,” I said. I glanced down at my hands before bringing my gaze back to her. “I'd like to have dinner with you. And if you say no, that's totally cool and it won't have any effect on what I decide with your dad.”
“You know, you don't have to make excuses,” she said. “About not calling. I'm a big girl. I can handle it.”
“Not making excuses,” I told her, shaking my head. “Swear. Was all me. And maybe I can explain some more of that if you want to have dinner.”
She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel, but kept her eyes on me.
I waited.
“Okay,” she said. “Dinner would be nice. And you don't have to explain anything to me. You don't owe me anything.”
I pushed open my door. “Yeah, I do. I'll try and explain that, too.”
“Noah?”
I got out of the car and leaned down into the open space. “Yeah?”
“It's just dinner,” she said, smiling. “It's not a confessional.”
TEN
“How was it?” Carter asked when I walked in.
“Fine,” I told him. He was sitting at the table, staring at a spiral notebook. “You look like you're cramming for a test.”
He closed the notebook. “Like I ever studied for anything. Fine how?”
I recounted my visit to Valley Center and the ranch.
“That's all kinda weird,” he said when I was finished.
“Very.”
“You gonna take it?” he asked.
“Not sure yet,” I told him, sitting down on the couch. “Not sure there's anything really there, and I don't want to just take the guy's money.”
“But if he's offering then that's his choice.”
“I guess.”
“And maybe it gives him piece of mind if you at least do something and tell him you can't find anything.”
“That's the main reason I didn't tell him no,” I said. “Well, that and I need money.”
“How was Sarah?” he asked, ignoring the last statement.
“Fine.”
“So much fine.”
“She was fine,” I said. “It was fine. She's cool. There was no bullshit.” I hesitated for a moment. “And I asked her to dinner tonight.”
“Dinner?” Carter’s eyebrows went up. “Like a date?”
“Just like.”
Carter let out a long whistle. “Boy. That sounds just...fine.”
“Shut up.”
“Well, I hope you got cash for your fine date because the well is dry here,” he said.
“I'm covered,” I said. “But what gives?”
“What do you mean?”
“You're telling me not to ask for money,” I said. “You're a little dull where you'd normally be hitting me with some sharp remarks, and you were studying a freaking notebook. What gives?”
He grunted, walked into the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, and returned to the room with it.
He sat down on the arm of the couch. “Work's a little hard to come by right now.”
“Work? You're looking for a job?”
He unscrewed the cap and tossed it at me. “My kind of work. That notebook. I actually keep records on things I've done for people in the past. Names, phone numbers, that kind of thing. I was looking to see who I could call.”
The kind of work Carter normally did didn't really fall into any normal parameters. Most of the time, I didn't ask what he was doing because I knew it probably skirted the law. Or worse. So I'd adopted a ‘don't ask, don't tell’ policy.
“Just not much going on?” I said.
“Just not a lot of people returning phone calls,” he said, downing half of the bottle. “Seems I'm a little too hot to touch right now. And, yeah, normally I'd make some snappy remark to top that off with, but I'm just not feeling it.”
“What do you mean too hot?” I asked.
He shrugged his massive shoulders. “I think people are a little...cautious right now. That's all.”
“Cautious because of me?”
He shrugged again. “Cautious because of a lot of things.”
“Shit,” I said. “I'm sorry.”
“Not your fault.”
“It's absolutely my fault,” I said. “They're worried I'm being watched or still under investigation and they don't want you to bring any of that to them.”
He shrugged again.
“Shit. I'm sorry.”
“You already sa
id that. Literally those exact same words.”
“Because I am.”
“It's fine,” he said. “To use your favorite word.” He finished the water. “I'll get it worked out. People will be overwhelmed by...my charm.”
I knew he was trying to be funny, but it wasn't taking the sting out of the guilt I felt. He'd gone out on a limb for me, essentially brought me back from the dead, and now he was being looked at as damaged goods. It was fallout I hadn't thought about, hadn’t even considered.
“I gotta shower,” Carter said, setting the empty bottle on the counter. “When I'm done, I'll give you a list of my first date do's and don't's.”
“Not a list I need.”
He chuckled as he disappeared down the hallway.
I waited until I heard the shower going and then pulled out my phone. I scrolled through the numbers in the directory until I found Henry's. I’d put it in there before leaving the ranch. My finger hovered over his name on the screen.
I really wasn't sure I could do much for him. At best, I thought I might be able to tell him I'd looked and found nothing. I could do the due diligence if he wanted me to do it.
And if I did it, I'd at least feel like I was working again.
And maybe that way I'd be able to help Carter out until things were rolling again.
I tapped the screen and waited for the phone to connect so I could tell Henry Dowdell I'd take the job.
ELEVEN
I'd texted Sarah and offered to pick her up, but she said we could just meet wherever we were eating. I suggested a small taco shop in Old Town and she said she'd meet me there at seven. I went down to the water in the afternoon, but the water was mostly flat and I ended up doing more paddling than surfing. I came back to the house, took my time showering and getting dressed, then headed toward Old Town.
Traffic was light on the five as I went south, and the breeze off the bay was strong, rushing through the open windows of the car as I drove. I was grateful to exit the freeway before I could make out Coronado in the distance. Out of sight, out of mind. Or something like that.
I found a parking space just down the street from the taco shop and Sarah was waiting for me out front. Her hair was down, framing her face, and she wore a white v-neck T-shirt over denim shorts and thick-heeled white sandals on her feet. A small, black leather backpack was slung over her shoulder, different from the one she had with her the night she found me at the bar, and silver triangles dangled from her ears. She smiled when she saw me.
“I was early,” she said.
I nodded at the shop. “This okay? I know it's pretty casual.”
“It's great,” she said. “I didn't have to iron any nice clothes.”
I laughed and held open the door to the restaurant.
The inside smelled like tortilla chips and oil and carne asada. The menu consisted of a hastily scrawled list on a permanently stained whiteboard mounted above the counter. Sarah ordered rolled tacos with guacamole. I asked for a California burrito, chips and queso, and a bottled Pacifico.
“Make it two,” Sarah said. “Pacificos, not burritos.”
The girl behind the register nodded and punched it all into the register. She pulled two Pacificos from the fridge behind her, jacked the caps off of them and placed them on a tray with the chips and queso. I handed her some cash and she gave me the receipt and a plastic table number. By the time we slid into a small table near the front window, the same girl was delivering the piping hot food to the table.
“Holy crap, this smells good,” Sarah said, eyeing all of the food in the paper boats.
“It'll taste better,” I promised. “This place rocks.”
“Have you ever been to a small place like this in San Diego that doesn't?”
I crunched on one of the chips and shook my head. “Nope.”
She scooped up some of the guacamole onto one of her rolled tacos. “I will take this over any place that I need to shower for.”
I laughed.
She held the taco in front of her mouth. “I mean, I did shower. But you get it.”
“I get it.”
We ate in silence for a few minutes. I appreciated that we could just sit there and eat and she didn't feel the need to force conversation. I had enough going on in my head as it was and it was nice to be sitting there with her as I tried to sort it out.
She pointed at the half of my burrito that was left. “I don't know how you can eat an entire one of those things and look the way...you look.”
I shrugged. “Surfing burns calories like nothing else, I think. Plus, they taste good.”
She laughed. “Maybe I need to start surfing.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But there might be sharks. And stingrays.”
“Never mind.”
“I'm glad you said yes to this.”
She smiled. “Me, too.”
“I told your dad I'll take the job.”
She snapped her last taco in half. “I know. He called me. I hope you did it for the right reasons.”
I wasn't sure my reasons were right, but I hadn't said yes because of her, so I felt like I was hedging close enough to the truth. “I did. Wasn't because of you.”
She nodded. “Okay. I hope you can help him.”
“I'm not sure I can, but I'll try.”
“All you can do.”
I picked up my beer and took a long sip. I set the bottle back down on the table. “I'm sorry I never called you.”
“You already said that and I told you that you didn't need to apologize for anything.”
“I feel like I do. So I am. I'm sorry.”
“Unnecessary apology accepted. Again,” she said, picking up her own beer and tilting the bottle in my direction. “It's fine.”
“And I wanted to explain some things to you.”
“Didn't we agree this wouldn't be some sort of confessional meal?”
“No. You said that. I didn't agree to anything.”
A corner of her mouth turned up into a smile and she lifted the bottle to her lips. “Hmm.” She took a drink and set the beer back on the table in front of her. She picked up a chip and dunked it in the queso. “You're not going to let this go are you?”
I shook my head.
She finished eating the chip and sighed. “Fine. Give me a bite of your burrito and I'll listen.”
I pushed the boat with half of the burrito in it toward her. She bit off a large chunk and groaned with pleasure as she savored everything inside of it.
She pushed the boat back toward me. “Jesus, that's good.” She wiped at her mouth with a napkin. “Okay. I'm all ears.”
I took another drink from the beer. “When I met you, I was pretty fucked up. I honestly don't remember what I told you, so here's the short version. Before my father was executed on death row, he essentially arranged for the murder of my girlfriend by another man. I killed that guy and then went to Florida. Partly to get away from here, partly to hide.”
Sarah tucked her hair behind her left ear and studied me. She said nothing.
“When I came back, the thing where I met you? That was a kind of quid pro quo thing. I did it in exchange for not being chased on the guy I killed. I'm not sure if it's totally settled, but I held up my end and I think I'm in the clear, at least for now.” I paused and gripped the bottle a little tighter. “But I'm still a little fucked up by the whole thing.”
“I don't think anyone would expect anything else,” she said quietly.
The door to the shop opened and three college guys stumbled in, laughing and shoving at one another.
“I don't know,” I said. “I don't know what the expectation is.”
“I know that I apologized before, but I'll say it again,” she said. “I'm sorry for the way I first reacted to you when I read about...what happened.”
“Unnecessary apology accepted.”
She smiled. “I mean it. I jumped to some unfair conclusions.”
“I don't think anyone would expect anything else
.”
“You're using my words.”
“It's some sort of weird psychological bullshit trick to build rapport, I think. Is it working?”
She laughed. “I think it is.”
I laughed and took another drink from the beer. The college guys were at the counter and ordering, still laughing, as they reached for their wallets.
I leaned forward. “And I want to be clear on this because...just because, I guess. I want you to know what's going on in my head.”
“Alright.”
“I'm not fucked up over the guy I killed,” I said. “I planned it, I waited on him, and I felt nothing when I did it.” I shook my head. “I have absolutely zero remorse. I'm not sure how healthy that is, but I'm not sorry I did it.”
She took a drink from her beer and pulled the bottle slowly away from her lips. “Okay.”
“I understand if that freaks you out or makes you look at me differently,” I said. “And if you want to leave now, we can.”
The college guys settled into a booth across from us. Two of them took notice of Sarah. I didn’t blame them. She looked terrific.
“Tell me about her,” Sarah said. “Your girlfriend.”
My stomach knotted quickly and I took a long, deep breath, then exhaled. “Her name was Liz. She was a police detective. We ran hot and cold for a long time before we finally figured things out and got on the same page. It was mostly me needing to grow up. I guess I finally did.” The knot tightened in my gut. “Calling her my girlfriend feels weird because she was more than that and I didn't really see my life without her.” My eyes started to water and I looked down at the beer and took a quick drink to steady myself. I cleared my throat. “It was my fault that she was killed. My fault. And it's with me every single day. I'm not sure it will ever go away.”
She nodded, her expression softening. “I can't imagine it would. I'm sorry.”
I nodded and took another drink. “I feel like it's getting better, but it sort of ebbs and flows. She left me her house. I avoided it for a long time. But at least now, I'm starting to think about what I need to do with it. Baby steps or some shit like that.”
“Baby steps aren't bad.”
“So,” I said, taking another deep breath and leaning back in my chair. “I just want you to know what's going on with me. I like you. Very much. I liked you when we met. I like you now. But I don't want to keep anything from you, and I don't want you to feel like you can't ask me questions. About any of it.” I paused. “Because I'm not even sure what liking you even means right now, if that makes any sense?”