Cleo tossed Matty's jacket, hamster cage, and bag of books into the car. Maya knew every one of Cleo's buttons, but she never pressed them. She just discreetly buzzed around them. "The kids are fine. Bring sleeping bags and they can camp in Matty's room. I just don't think Axell will appreciate roughing it."
"It'll be good for him, and he'd love to meet Jared McCloud. Call and give us a date."
With a blizzard of last-minute admonitions, questions, and reminders, Maya had the car loaded, the children settled, and the engine running. Cleo hated to see them go and wished her sister would just get on with it, before the tears stinging her eyes started to leak.
"I love you, sis!" Maya called out the window as she eased the car down the drive.
Cleo waved and smiled until she thought her face would crack. It was nice that her otherworldly sister had found happiness and love and the good life. Cleo didn't think she possessed what it took to even define happiness.
As the car disappeared past the pines, she swiped an errant trace of moisture on her cheek, kicked a clam shell, and wandered in the direction of the brush on the other side of the drive. Matty's tiny menagerie had grown to a regular zoo with Gene's aid. Feeding and watering the critters would give her time to pull herself together. Then she'd check the freezer to see what she could defrost for dinner. She hated eating alone, without Matty's cheerful chatter.
"Hey, Cleo," Gene greeted her as she pushed through the shrubbery. "I've got 'em fed. What did Matty think of the baby bird?"
"You could have asked him yourself." Cleo checked the water in the bird's box and fed it a meal worm. Gene tended to disappear when Matty was home, but she figured thirteen-year-olds and seven-year-olds didn't mix.
"He's just a kid." Gene shrugged it off. "That new guy sure is building a palace down there, ain't he? Reckon he's rich?"
"Reckon he's got more money than brains anyway." She didn't want to talk about Jared. She'd rather pretend her tenant didn't exist than admit she was curious about what he was doing. He'd had a phone installed before he'd bought a Jeep, and all she ever heard of him was from the end of the telephone wire.
"I'm gonna be rich someday," Gene declared. "I'm gonna have me a fancy car and house."
"You gonna let me come visit?" Sitting on a rotten log, Cleo fed Matty's pet iguana while Petey the Peacock screamed a complaint behind her. She'd never been much of a dreamer, but she could remember her fierce determination to escape the horrors of her life at Gene's age. She knew where he was coming from and all the pitfalls ahead.
She wouldn't tell him how difficult it was to climb out of the hole. She didn't think Gene had a respectable grandfather who would pop off and leave him old buildings as hers had—for what little good the man had done her growing up.
"Sure," he said confidently. "You and Matty can come live with me, if you want."
"And how are you planning on earning these riches?" At least they didn't live in a slum or his first choice would probably be dealing drugs, given his mother's predilections. She shouldn't be so cynical. Linda had been doing well lately. She'd held on to her typist's job for almost six months this time.
"I'm gonna be a wrestler," Gene said with satisfaction. "I don't have to be tall to be a wrestler."
It would probably help, but she wouldn't burst his bubble. "Then you'd better go to school more often and learn how to invest all that money you'll be making. You don't want them thinking you're a dumb jock."
"I'll hire people," he declared airily. "That's what Jared does, I bet. I don't see him studying no books."
"You've met Jared?"
"Nah, I just watched him. He's on the phone or the 'puter all the time. I didn't see him moving in no books, no way."
"That's spying. You ought to go down and introduce yourself. That's the neighborly thing to do."
He gave her that teenager-to-adult look of incredulity. "Right, like he's got time for me," he scoffed. "Maybe he'd want me to shine his shoes."
"Boots," she corrected. "He was wearing cowboy boots last time I saw him."
She wouldn't correct Gene's cynicism any more than she'd burst his fantasies. The kid could very well be right. Neither white nor black, Gene inhabited none of the local racial microcosms. Mother a crack addict, father AWOL, he and his sister lived in a run-down house his mother had inherited, usurped, or stolen from some relative. Some people wouldn't trust him to shine their shoes.
"Cowboy boots!" He rolled his eyes and fed the iguana a lettuce leaf. "Man, all that money, and he's a redneck."
"Don't think so. Sounded Yankee to me. Go on down and say hi sometime when he's not working. Can't hurt."
"Maybe I will. Maybe I can get his autograph. Kids at school would get all bent if they knew I got his autograph."
Cleo wished she had the power to help him with the kids at school, but it was all she could manage to help herself. Maybe she'd go talk to his mother. Again.
* * *
"Forty-nine, fifty." Jared dropped to the floor and contemplated another round of push-ups, but the laptop under his desk shot baleful explosions from its screen saver. He figured he'd either have to move the laptop or attempt something productive.
He wanted that screen credit and all the success it represented, but the idea of dealing with those Hollywood production committees freaked him out after the TV ordeal. The moguls were already making suggestions that had nothing to do with his characters.
His family would tell him to grow up. It would have been more useful if they'd shown him how. With a professor father who lived inside his books and a socialite mother bent on reforming the world to her taste, he didn't have much of a clue.
Figuring the hammers pounding on the floor above didn't help his thought processes much, Jared switched off the laptop. Maybe he could get some business done if he couldn't do anything creative.
Vaulting to his feet, he grabbed the cordless and jogged from the house, out to the sand dune and the limit of his phone reception. He'd already discovered his cellular was next to useless on the island.
The sand slipped and slid beneath his sandals as he climbed upward. Maybe his agent could get another extension on the contract. He'd never get the script done on time, and he could no longer give the movie people their option money back as he'd threatened before. The insurance company was giving him grief about the damned Jag.
Besides, his family would rail him out of town if he gave up. Bad enough that he was a useless cartoonist whose last TV show had flopped. To give up on a lucrative film career would brand him forever as a loser, even if he had enough to live on for life.
He just needed to get his head past that last failure. He'd never failed in his life, and he damned well didn't want it happening again. He had to come up with the perfect script, the perfect characters, ones that would stand up to the test of time and audience.
Broom-riding witches and laughing skeletons were cute, but they didn't have muscle. He needed depth, layers the audience could sink their teeth into.
Why in hell did he think he could do layers? He wasn't Dostoevsky. He was a cartoonist. He thrived on shallow, as his siblings lost no chance in pointing out.
The phone rang, relieving him of that particular introspective agony. Life was too short to waste worrying. Hitting the "talk" button, he grimaced at his brother's announcement on the other end that he intended to drop in for a visit.
"Look, Tim, the house is a wreck," Jared protested. "Take the Miami place if you're looking for a cheap vacation." He rolled his eyes at Tim's response, then let his gaze rest on the peaceful lap of surf below. "I did Mom's charity bachelor auction last year. It's your turn. You know what kind of women will pay to date cartoonists? Crazy ones. But if you're going to shirk your responsibility, take Miami."
He knew better than to bother arguing with Tim. His brothers always walked all over him, but Tim had a way of doing it that made it seem Jared's fault for lying down in front of him in the first place. Hell, maybe it was.
"You'll b
e sorry," he warned. "They've driven me out of the house with the hammering. I'll make certain they bring in a buzz saw before you arrive."
As he hit the "off" button, Jared grinned at the thought of studious, socially-handicapped Tim driving through the maze of witches and warning signs. Maybe he could persuade his landlady to rig a skeleton at the beach house door.
The thought of his entertaining landlady sent him sliding back down the dune. As long as he wasn't getting any work done, he might as well shake the envelope a little. Miss Cleo hadn't bothered to check the progress of the repairs or to offer a neighborly hello. He'd particularly hoped she'd resort to that charming feminine custom of stopping by with a pie or cake to welcome him to the neighborhood.
Well, he didn't write comedy without reason.
Maybe she'd rigged up something new and even more entertaining just for him. He didn't like being ignored. He wasn't used to it.
Okay, take that back. If he was truly honest with himself, he grew up used to being ignored and somewhere along the line had decided he wouldn't put up with it. As a teenager, he'd been damned obnoxious in his pursuit of attention. He'd learned a little finesse since then.
He stopped at the house to sketch a hasty line drawing. He did everything on computer these days, but he still had a quick hand with a pen. An original drawing spoke more eloquently than computer printouts.
He rolled up the sketch, tucking it into a cardboard tube for protection, and slipped on a shirt, before jogging up the sandy path toward his landlady's house. He'd been meaning to explore more of his surroundings anyway. Anything was better than staring blankly at a computer screen while listening to the roof being torn off above his head. His eccentric landlady qualified as far better than just "anything."
A flash of red caught the corner of his eye, and Jared turned to investigate the thicket of scrub brush to his left. He didn't figure snakes came in red, but he was being extra cautious these days. He'd had the notion that Cleo Alyssum lived alone on this swampy end of the island, but if there were others about, he'd be interested in knowing it. He had a sneaking suspicion that snakes didn't fly any better than frozen turkeys.
The bushes moved in a wave proceeding in the general direction of the pines further inland. He wasn't much interested in exploring jungle, but he could skirt around the thicket and look for a higher, dryer path.
He hoped he wasn't tracking a wild animal. He didn't want to end up like his pal Freddy, dead of a heart attack at thirty-two. Of course, Freddy had been at his desk, not stalking panthers.
Every time he thought of Freddy, Jared's heart raced as if he were having an attack. They'd been buddies since the age of ten, freaks together, him and Freddy and Dirk, the Three Musketeers. Freddy had been the chubby boy everyone laughed at, but he had the drive and ambition Jared had never possessed. Freddy had sworn he'd be a millionaire by thirty, and he'd done it. He'd also sworn he'd be married to a supermodel, but he'd died single and childless, and his wealth had gone to charity.
Maybe Freddy's death was the reason he couldn't concentrate these days, something about staring into the face of eternity caused one to reevaluate priorities.
He didn't want to reevaluate anything but his reason for signing that damned contract.
Call it denial, but to his way of thinking, living in the moment made more sense than regretting what was past or worrying over what lay ahead. If he had a heart attack chasing a wild animal in a red shirt, so be it. He spotted the flash of red again, darting between the pines.
Wild animals didn't wear red shirts. From the small bare footprints in the loose soil, he calculated it had to be a child.
He let the kid run ahead and feel safe. Did his landlady have children? She hadn't looked the motherly sort. He could imagine her as a sculptor, wielding torch and metal, but not a mother.
Brushing past another of those damned prickly bushes, he stumbled on something in his path. Righting himself by grabbing a pine trunk, Jared jumped, startled, as a heavy rope fell in front of his face.
Before he could react, a net dropped from the tree and engulfed him in folds of rotting cords.
Chapter 5
"I don't think you're supposed to say those words," a girl's whispery voice commented thoughtfully from the depths of shrubbery.
Jared shut up and glanced around. He had a bad habit of not filling his pockets before leaving the house, so he didn't have his penknife on him. He could sever the rotten cords of the net he was caught in if he used some muscle, but he preferred using brain instead of brawn. So far, he hadn't succeeded in untangling the trap, and resentment simmered at being discovered in such a foolish situation.
"Help me out of here, and I won't say them," he promised in a voice gruffer than usual. He'd embarrassed himself plenty of times before, but not in recent memory. He preferred his suave, urbane image to that of class clown these days.
"Gene keeps hoping he'll catch a panther." An awkwardly tall, skinny girl drifted through the shrubbery, eyeing the tangle of cords and ropes hanging from the tree limb. "I can't imagine what he'd do with one if he caught it."
Jared would guess her to be about fourteen or fifteen, although garbed as she was in a loose dress several sizes too large, it was hard to tell. She looked at the tree and rope and anything but him. Her wiry brownish-blond curls fell in her face and stuck out all over her head without any indication that brush or comb had ever touched them. Her dusky complexion and frail features possessed an ethereal quality that—had he been a fanciful man—would have given him pause to wonder if fairies inhabited the island.
He did happen to possess an unfortunate penchant for fantasy, but he preferred superheroes to fairies.
"If you'll just grab that rope over there, I think the whole thing will lift up." Fairies and red-shirted wild animals and witches and skeletons—this island was turning into a real menagerie of cartoon characters. If he couldn't get something out of this, no one could.
She looked doubtfully at the heavy rope but gravitated toward it, giving it a slight pull that produced little effect.
"Tug harder," he urged, searching around his feet for the opening. He saw movement with her next tug and pounced on it. Whoever had rigged this trap hadn't intended it for people, at least. "A little harder, and I think I've got it."
The cords rippled, and he gathered as many as he could, locating the edge of the net and lifting until he had a space large enough to duck under. "Who is this Gene and where do I find him?" he called over his shoulder as he disentangled himself.
No reply.
Free at last, he let the net fall to the ground, and swung around to see what the girl was doing.
She was gone. He hadn't heard a sound.
What in hell kind of rabbit hole had he fallen into?
* * *
Sweat pouring down his back, his cardboard tube battered and torn from swatting flies, mosquitoes, and hanging vines of indeterminate nature, Jared emerged from the thicket path into a clearing littered with makeshift stick cages and wooden crates.
Well, at least he knew he and his landlady weren't entirely alone out here. The paths wandering through swamp and scrub brush were too narrow to have been made by wild horses. He hadn't seen a sign of animal life since setting out, but he had seen the girl and a red shirt. He thought.
In the clearing hidden by a thicket of palmettos, a baby bird cheeped from a cardboard box filled with grasses and matchbox feeders. An iguana lay sleepily in a cage beneath a spreading live oak. A variety of colorful lizards scattered into hiding beneath a loosely stacked pile of rocks. And a potbellied pig snorted through rubbish inside a wire fence. Quite an assortment. As a kid, he would have loved this.
With interest, he peered into an elongated crate big enough to hold a refrigerator, and stepped back instantly. Snakes. Black ones.
He didn't get angry often. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been angry. But this was the outside of enough, and he'd been pushed as far as his temper would permit. It hadn'
t been his imagination that had ruined his antique Jag and nearly killed him. It had been a genuine live snake. Just like these.
An unearthly squawk nearly startled him out of his shoes, and Jared swung around in time to confront the beady eyes of a malicious-looking peacock. A snake, and a peacock, then. They'd been real enough. He definitely hadn't been hallucinating.
And they'd been put in or thrown at his car deliberately.
He still couldn't figure out how to blame his landlady for the trick, since she'd been inside the house at the time and had left before him. So it had to be the fairy girl or the red shirt. A woman like Cleo Alyssum might possess a couple of delinquent brats, although she didn't look old enough to have teenagers.
Hell, what did he know about women and kids anyway? His comic strip was more about himself than real teenagers.
Grabbing an abandoned box and snatching one of the smaller snakes from its wooden pit, Jared set off down still another path.
The guard peacock strutted after him, screeching its fool head off.
Watching warily for any more traps, Jared stalked through the underbrush until he heard the sounds of shouting. Well, she was definitely at home then. It was time he had a little confrontation with one Cleo Alyssum.
* * *
"You can't keep skipping school, Eugene Watkins! You'll have the truant officer out here hunting you down. If I remember rightly, they lock kids up for not going to school around here." Dressed for work, truck keys in hand, Cleo had spotted the splash of red behind the palmettos and tracked him down before leaving. She held him by the back of the shirt now and wished she could shake him until his teeth rattled.
"They ain't never gonna find me!" Gene shouted defiantly. "They don' care if I'm there or not. They can't teach me nothin' I don' know already."
"I don't care if you never learn anything, but you have to have that piece of paper saying you're educated, or you'll not get anywhere in this world! Otherwise people will think you're a lazy bum and they'll never hire you." Cleo supposed that wasn't the most effective argument, but she couldn't think of any other right offhand. She knew whereof she spoke though. If only kids could be inoculated with experience along with their vaccine shots.
Imperfect Rebel Page 4