Kings of Mayhem (The Kings of Mayhem Book 1)

by Penny Dee

  “Cade—”

  “It’s Indy!” I said, panicking. “He’s in her room!”

  Lady stood up quickly. “Who’s in her room?”

  “What are you talking about, son?” Mama asked.

  I heaved the words out, “Uncle Calvin.”

  Mama looked at Lady, then a strange look came across Lady’s face and she raced inside with me and my mama close behind.

  Twenty minutes later, I sat on the front porch watching them load Indy’s Uncle Calvin into an ambulance. He was moaning and demanding they give him something for the pain.

  Sheriff Elton was talking to his deputy. Like Indy, Deputy Buckman was new to town. He was younger than Sheriff Elton but he had a beard and it was already turning grey.

  “Christ, her father made a mess out of him,” Buckman said to Elton as they walked toward the police cruiser.

  Sheriff Elton stopped walking and looked at him.

  “The father didn’t do that to him,” he said. “The mother did. Lady Parrish.”

  Buckman baulked. “She did that to him?”

  From what I could figure out, Uncle Calvin was really messed up. Black eyes. Lots of broken bones, including his nose and his jaw. I overheard the EMT say something about busted ribs. He was probably right. I remember hearing them crack when Lady hit him with the baseball bat.

  “You don’t fuck with the women of the MC,” Elton said.

  “Where is the father?” Buckman asked.

  “Out of town.” He gave Buckman a serious look. “If Jackie Parrish had been home, Calvin Winter would be leaving here in a body bag.”

  “And that would be a problem?” Buckman asked. “Seems to me, anyone goes around hurting little girls gets what’s coming to them.”

  Elton nodded. “Oh, it’s coming to him. Believe me. The MC have a special kind of justice for people who hurt kids. Don’t worry, you’ll learn to turn a blind eye.”

  Buckman scoffed. “That’s not something I’m going to need to learn, Elton. Not when it comes to dishing out justice to perverts messing with kids.”

  They disappeared inside the Parrish house and I watched the ambulance quietly pull away.

  I sat with my face in my hands feeling helpless. Indy was with her mama and my mama inside, talking to a policewoman. I wanted to go to her and put my arms around her but my mama said I had to wait until the policewoman had finished talking with her.

  It seemed like hours before they finished. Finally my mama came and got me and led me down to Indy’s bedroom.

  “Five minutes and then we need to go home and give Indy and her mama some privacy,” Mama said. I nodded and opened Indy’s bedroom door. She was curled up in her bed. The lamp on her bedside table was turned on and I could see the tear stains on her cheek as she stared straight into the lamplight.

  “Indy?”

  She didn’t look up, so I walked into the room and sat down on the bed.

  “Are you okay? I asked, uncertain of what to say. “Did he hurt you?”

  She didn’t answer and her eyes remained on the light.

  I didn’t know what to do. Or say. So, I did the one thing I knew comforted her.

  “Do you want me to lie down with you?”

  She looked at me, and although she didn’t move, her eyes said yes. So, I climbed in beside her and wrapped my arms around her. She snuggled into me and I felt her relax. After a while, she finally spoke.

  “He didn’t hurt me,” she murmured.

  “Are you sure? You can tell me if he did.”

  She shook her head. “He didn’t hurt me. But he tried.”

  I swallowed deeply not wanting to think about him hurting her because it made my stomach hurt and the hair stand up on the back of my neck. “What happened?” I asked.

  For a while, she didn’t answer me, and I wondered if she had fallen asleep. Finally, she spoke.

  “He thought I was sleeping, but I heard him open my bedroom door. I pretended to be asleep and prayed he would go away. But he walked in and closed the door behind him. He came to my bed and put his hands over my mouth and then . . .”

  I secured my arms tighter around her. I hoped her Uncle Calvin was hurting bad in the back of the ambulance. I hoped the road to the hospital was bumpy and that he felt every single pothole.

  “. . . he told me not to say anything. That I would get in trouble if mama heard us. That she would tell my daddy and he would be mad at me. I knew what he was doing was wrong, but at the same time, all I could think about was how his fingers smelled like tobacco smoke and the empty beer bottles your daddy keeps in the garage.” Indy’s breath left her in a big exhale. “He told me I was his special girl, that special girls got special gifts from their uncles. He kept his hand over my mouth. But his other hand slid up my leg to my panties. That was when I bit him, hard, and when he let me go I jumped out of bed and kicked him right in his privates. That was when my mama walked in.”

  She twisted her head to look at me.

  “Thank you for telling my mama, Cade.” She hugged my arm tightly.

  I felt sick. I didn’t know what her uncle would have done to her if her mama hadn’t rushed in.

  “I’ll always be here for you, Indy.” I pressed my lips to her hair and settled in behind her. “That’s my job.”

  Indy tangled her fingers in mine and exhaled softly. “I don’t want us to ever fight again.”

  “We won’t. We’ll stay best friends forever.”

  “Promise?” she asked.

  I nodded and closed my eyes. “We’ll be best friends for the rest of our lives.”

  INDY

  Now

  The next morning, I rose early and went downstairs for coffee. To my surprise, my mom was up, sitting on the couch looking through old photo albums. I thought about going to her and giving her a hug, but it seemed so alien to me so I poured us a coffee, instead.

  “Morning, baby,” she said when I joined her.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked.

  She glanced up, her black-rimmed glasses perched on the edge of her nose, and she smiled. “I’ll get there.” She accepted the cup of coffee from me and then patted the space next to her. “Come sit with me for a bit.”

  When I settled next to her, she passed me one of the photo albums.

  “I have to find a photo of your father to put on the casket,” she said. She sipped her coffee as her eyes passed over the page of the open album on her lap. “If you find a good one, holler.”

  I hesitated. Reminiscing always made me morose. Teary, even. So, as a rule, I made a point of never looking back. But my mom needed help, so I put my coffee cup down and opened the photo album. Immediately, my eyes met those of my nine-year-old self staring out from an over-exposed photo. I was standing with my brother Bolt who was holding a kitten toward the camera. A sudden jab of sadness hit me in the heart and I quickly turned the page. More photos of Bolt and me followed. Fourth of July firework celebrations. Thanksgiving. Christmas. Us sitting at the base of the ginormous Christmas tree my mom spent almost an entire day putting together and decorating, surrounded by discarded wrapping paper. Bolt and me eating the Christmas cookies my mom always made, our mouths full of the crumbly goodness I hadn’t tasted in almost two decades. I bit my lip. I could almost taste the cinnamon sugar.

  The last photo was of the four of us. A family photo. Probably the last one taken before things fell apart.

  I closed the book and mindlessly reached for another. This one was circa my mid-teens and was full of photos of me and the other MC kids. Abby. Isaac. Cade, and his brothers. His sister Chastity. It was funny, when I recalled my teenage years, I recalled the heartache and the anger toward my father. But in the photographs, I was always smiling. Always laughing or looking happy. Especially when I was with Cade.

  I looked at a photo of the two of us. It had been taken at a club barbecue when we were about seventeen. Cade had his arm slung around my shoulder, and my arms were wrapped around his waist. I was smiling up at h
im with the dreamy look of a teenage girl in love. He was looking down at me, his dimples deep in his cheeks, and his beautiful eyes focused on me like I was the only woman in the whole world. You could see how in love we were. You could see how happy we were together.

  Pain trickled into my chest and I turned the page before my mind went there and asked the question I had asked myself a billion times over the past twelve years. How did we not work out?

  “Here we go,” my mom said, removing a photo of my father from the sticky, plastic page. She handed it to me. My father was smiling, which was a rarity in itself, and he actually looked happy. I flipped it over to see if there was a description on the back. Jack Parrish, 1999. Veterans memorial run. Destiny to Biloxi. I handed it back to my mom.

  “That’s a good one,” I said. “He looks happy.”

  My mom smiled, but when her eyes fell to the photograph they turned misty. She absentmindedly played with the crown pendant around her neck. “I know you won’t believe me, but your father was a happy guy when I met him. Carefree. Charming. A bit of a good old boy, but a gentleman just the same. We were happy for a real long time, Indy. He was just heartbroken at the end.”

  Without thinking, I took her hand and gave it a squeeze.

  “I like to think he wasn’t always like that,” I said. “Broken and angry.”

  A monster.

  “He was a strong, proud man. Formidable but fair. Then he got sick.” She looked at the picture. “He sure did love you kids. I hope you know that.”

  I looked away. My had father lost interest in me a long time ago.

  “No point in getting all misty-eyed now. Think I’ll go get ready for the day.” Mom sighed and stood up. “Before I forget, Sheriff Buckman dropped off your rental earlier.” She nodded to a set of keys sitting on the coffee table.

  When my mom left to get dressed, I looked down at the photo album in my lap. I flipped through the pages, skimming over the photos of a life I could barely remember.

  The last photo in the album was taken at a New Year’s Eve celebration at the clubhouse. I touched the photo with perfectly manicured fingertips. An eighteen-year-old version of me smiled brightly back at the camera as if someone had just said something hilariously funny to her. Her long blonde hair swirled around her face and her eyes sparkled with youth and happiness. Her arms were wrapped around a very young Abby, who looked like Suzi Quatro, circa her Devil’s Gate Drive days. We looked happy. So carefree.

  So cool.

  I looked down at my sensible black pants and polyester blouse. Somewhere in the past twelve years I had swapped cool for conservative. And instead of feeling relieved at the change, I felt a weird loss of identity.

  I miss you.

  I frowned and quickly closed the book.

  I had left the MC to pursue a different life and to become a different person. And I did just that. I was nothing like the carefree, rebel chick in that photograph. I was grown up and responsible.

  I glanced back at the album. It represented a life I had buried.

  One that needed to stay buried.

  Pushing it aside, I stood up and collected our empty coffee cups. As I walked into the kitchen, my eyes caught on the series of dashes and dates marked into the doorjamb, and I stopped.

  Childhood height charts.

  I remembered standing there as a child, restlessly complaining to my mom as she recorded my height with a pencil and wooden ruler. I ran my finger up the doorjamb stopping at each age until I reached the last two. Indy age 12. Bolt age 14. There were none after that.

  I took the coffee cups to the sink to wash. The rumble of a motorcycle broke into the early morning quiet, and when I looked out the kitchen window I saw Cade pull into the Calley driveway, wearing his Kings of Mayhem cut and looking like the devil he was in his aviators and well-fitted t-shirt.

  He was just getting home.

  “Old Mavis will have a field day over him revving his bike like that at seven o’clock in the morning,” my mom said as she came down the stairs.

  “She’s still alive?” I asked. Old Mavis was the cranky old lady who lived across the street. “She was a hundred years old when I was eight.”

  “Yeah, that one is too stubborn to die,” Mom said, looking for her keys in her purse.

  Old Mavis dressed in floaty, Stevie Nicks-style clothing, circa Tell Me Lies, and had lashings of greying dark hair. When we were kids, Bolt convinced me she was a witch.

  “Does she still think she is married to a three-hundred-year-old pirate?” I asked, remembering the stories about her. Old Mavis was batshit crazy and honestly believed she was married to a ghost. A pirate ghost. Some nights you could hear her arguing with him, although it was very one-sided.

  Mom laughed. “Yep. They’re still together and just as much in love as the day they met via a Ouija board.” She dug deeper into her purse for her keys. I smiled and felt a sudden pang, knowing that my mom was going to be just fine. I took in her black pants and Sticky Fingers pastry shirt.

  “You’re going to work?”

  “Life goes on, Indy.” She gave up on finding her keys in her purse and sighed. I leaned over and grabbed them off the ceramic pineapple key holder on the counter and handed them to her.

  “It’s Bob Ellis’ sixtieth birthday celebration tomorrow and he still needs his cake,” she said. Bob Ellis was the town mayor. “Plus, it’s Joker’s birthday celebration at the clubhouse tonight, and who else in town is going to make him a cake with a burlesque girl popping out of the top?”

  A cake of a stripper bursting out of a cake. Of course.

  “Do you want to come with me?” she asked. But we both knew it was a question asked out of obligation. I was a disaster when it came to baking, and my mom had given up teaching me years ago. I might be great with a suture, but I was a nightmare with an icing bag.

  Plus, once she got to her shop, I knew she would lose herself in her work for hours, and that was exactly what she needed. If I hung around, I would only distract her.

  “I might drop by and see Bolt,” I said.

  My mom smiled softly. “It’ll do you some good to see your brother.”

  I wasn’t sure about that. It hurt to see Bolt. But I returned her smile, because God knows she didn’t need something else to worry about. “It’s long overdue.”

  “Sure, baby girl.” Mom paused at the door and turned back to me. “Are you okay going to see him by yourself?”

  “Yes, of course,” I said. It was a lie. I didn’t know how it was going to feel standing in front of my brother after all these years.

  “It’s been a few years,” she said.

  I gave her a reassuring smile. “Then we’ll have a lot to catch up on.”

  She nodded. “Okay, baby. I’ll see you here later and we’ll go to the clubhouse together, okay?”

  We shared a smile before she walked out and closed the door behind her. My mom may be small in stature, but she was a tough cookie. She was no stranger to grief. She knew how to cope. I watched her hop into her Mercedes convertible and disappear down the road. She was going to be just fine.

  I didn’t go to see my brother because I wasn’t ready. Or I was a coward. Either way, it wasn’t time. Instead, I headed to the morgue to drop off the photo of my father. As soon as I entered the little building beneath the hospital, the hairs on my arms stood on end. It was funny how I could see death everyday, but the moment I had to step into a morgue or a funeral home, I got the creeps.

  They asked if I wanted to see my father. Figuring it was better to get it over and done with, I agreed, but when it came time to walk into the room, I couldn’t. I hesitated, apologized, and then fled.

  Outside, I ran into an old face I hadn’t seen in twelve years.

  Abby Calley.

  She was Cade’s cousin.

  And Isaac’s twin sister.

  And at one time, my best friend.

  Abby was pure biker chick. Except she was the blinged-up version. She didn’t wear a l
eather cuff on her wrist, she wore a cuff made of black Swarovski crystals. Her tank top wasn’t cotton, it was sequined and glittery, and her jeans weren’t a simple blue or black, they were a pair of bedazzled awesomeness. She didn’t do vanilla, and she didn’t do bland. She did dazzling. With a side serving of biker cool.

  But today she was in scrubs. Mom had mentioned she was a radiographer at the hospital.

  We stopped a few yards away from each other.

  “Abby,” I said, feeling an immediate awkwardness radiate between us.

  “Well, I’ll be goddamned,” she breathed.

  In high school, we had been inseparable. We did sleepovers, smoked pot, and dreamed big. We also hung out with Cade and Isaac, and the four of us were the popular kids you didn’t fuck with. She was there from the very beginning when Cade and I finally hooked up, and she was by my side when it all fell apart.

  We had tried to stay in touch. Well, actually, that wasn’t true. She had tried; I didn’t. After moving to college, I went quiet, forgetting to reply to emails and text messages. I was always too busy to answer her phone calls. Eventually she gave up trying and stopped contacting me. I told myself it was what happened. Lives moved in different directions and friendships faded. But the truth was, I had pushed her away. I had pushed all of them away because I wanted to put it all behind me. The club. My father. Cade.

  “You’re back,” she said.

  Twelve years of silence filled the space between us. Loudly.

  “I got in yesterday.”

  She nodded. Then, like she didn’t know what else to do, she said, “I’m sorry about your daddy.”

  I nodded back. Just as clueless. “Thank you.”

  Being Isaac’s twin sister, she shared his blonde Viking looks. Long hair. Ice blue eyes. Flawless skin.

  And like her cousin Cade, she had the same shadow of resentment in her eyes.

  “You’re wearing scrubs,” I said, because stating the obvious seemed to be all I was capable of doing.

  “I’m a radiographer,” she smiled awkwardly. “It’s not as fancy as a doctor, but you know, it pays the bills.”