by Jared Paul
“She was saying something crazy about my father having killed her husband. I told her that wasn’t possible because her husband hadn’t worked for my father. I’d never met her before.”
Travis rested his chin on his fist. “I never did find out what Roger did for a living, but in this town, it wouldn’t be surprising if he’d come to work for him. Most people work for the town in some form or another.”
Abby swallowed another bite of her pancakes. “What’s Norma’s last name?”
“Daniels.”
Abby dropped her fork. It was rare when it happened, but occasionally lightning struck her brain and she went through A to C without going through B. She had an awful feeling in the pit of her stomach, but shook her head against it and attributed it to the blueberry syrup she’d practically inhaled.
She said, “There was a Roger Daniels that worked for my father. He mowed the lawns.”
“Did you know a woman named Maudette Lawson?”
Abby frowned. “Yeah, she’s my father’s housekeeper. She said that she used to be a teacher, but when the school shut down, she went into taking care of other people’s homes instead of their children. She’s a sweet lady.”
Travis picked up Abby’s tea, took a long pull from it and then set it back down. He turned it around on the table a few times to watch the ice cubes clink in the glass. He said, “When you were coming up to the store this afternoon, did you notice all the cars and people out front?”
“So? There’s cars and people all over the place.”
Travis fixed Abby with a serious look. “Just as you came up with your car, they were loading Mrs. Lawson in the back of Coroner Davidson’s van. She collapsed right there on the store floor.”
Abby put a hand to her mouth. She had actually liked old Mrs. Lawson. She made the best pies on the planet and she liked to talk about her life in a way she’d never heard anybody speak before. She’d lived a full, happy, wonderful existence, and hearing her relate it, it was as if she’d placed you inside. She could make anyone smile.
She said, “You, you don’t think that Norma woman is right do you?”
Despite the heavy atmosphere and the fact that nothing about their conversation had been funny, Travis laughed. He shook his head as he replied, “Honestly, I’d doubt anything Norma said. She told me last year her husband had been abducted by aliens and that the government was going to take him away for experiments.” He chuckled and ran a hand through his hair. “I doubt highly that your father is the mastermind of a murder mystery.”
“Can I get you two the check?”
Travis turned his head to the right to look at the waitress that was now standing at the edge of their table expectantly. He glanced at a clock on the wall behind her and decided, that, while he was enjoying just being in Abby’s presence without the complication of the problems they had weighing on his mind, she needed to be getting home. Work came early for the pair of them.
Out in the parking lot, Travis trailed his feet as he walked Abby to her car. So many nights passed in this fashion, the two of them simply having talked their way through the time that seemed to be in short supply with them. As Abby sidled close to her car, a moment of inspiration took him and Travis picked up his pace and took hold of Abby and crushed her to his body. His lips found hers as if they were magnetized, and as he pressed, she opened her mouth to him and the kiss deepened. He ran a hand along her side and down over her hip to then curve to rest in the small of her back. He could feel her fingertips grazing the flesh of his neck as they tangled in his hair. Though, as all free dives end up, he had to come to the surface for air.
Abby leaned into Travis, her ear to his chest. From their kiss, his pulse had gone from a walk into a gallop. She wished that she didn’t have to go home, that she could just stay as she was with him and not have to worry about the world around her. In part, that was what he had asked her to do by moving in with him, and as awesome as it would be, she didn’t think she was ready to take that step with him. She had a feeling she was making the wrong decision, but fear had a way of making those kinds of choices seem like the right way to go.
********
Abby left her car in the street that ran in front of the Bradley property and decided to sneak into her father’s house as if she were sixteen again and hoping not to get caught by parental eyes in the darkness. Some of the lights were on, shining through the windows and making some of the hedges that lined the walk up to the front door and garage glow yellow. She doubted that her father was still awake, but the man was often forgetful and left the lights on as he pleased. It had been a never-ending battle with her and Mrs. Lawson in turning all of the lights off at the end of the day.
The thought of Mrs. Lawson’s passing made Abby’s heart twist. There were not many people in her life that meant something to her; they either were there one day and gone the next or they died. Like her mother. Abby shook her head, knowing that the direction of her thoughts couldn’t be leading her to a good mood. It wasn’t like her to dwell on things that she couldn’t change or affect. What happens, happens and you deal with it.
Abby refrained from the hello that wanted to leave her lips as she took off her shoes at the door once she was inside. She wanted to let her father know that she was home, but she didn’t want to wake him. He was worse than a Grizzly bear in hibernation if you woke him from a sound sleep. There would be nothing so pressing in the whole of her existence that would make her want to do that.
She moved from the foyer and thought to head to the kitchen, but as she passed her father’s study, the door of which was shut tight with the glow of a desk lamp shining underneath, she could hear what she thought was a muted argument. If she didn’t know any better, she would have put money into the theory that her father was talking to himself. She moved toward the door, curiosity besting her, and she was near to touching the handle, when the door opened and a man she had never seen before stood in the frame, his appearance larger than life. It was as if the doorway had been a gateway to a movie, a dark thriller riddled with gangsters, and this man simply walked through it into her reality. As if to convey her thoughts, Abby reached out and touched him.
He wore a leather jacket which smelled of the cattle that had died to make it mixed in a large vat of tobacco, and it was zipped up tight over his flat torso. Faded blue jeans, which were tucked into boots, completed the outfit. When Abby lifted her eyes, she could see a gnarled face that probably once had belonged to a wizened tree, scarred and mean.
Her fingers brushed the leather in front of them and then, startled, retreated to her side. She had never met him sure, but it felt instinctively that she should stay as far from this person as possible.
“Excuse me.”
Abby blinked, not sure if she had said the words or if the man in front of her had, but as she continued to stare at his face, the eyes darkened by the lack of light in the hall, she stepped out of the way and watched as the man passed by her.
“What are you doing lurking outside of my study?”
Abby frowned as her father replaced the man who had stood in the frame of the study’s door. She replied, “I wasn’t lurking. I was on my way to the kitchen when I heard you talking.”
Her father’s next words were not what she would have expected. “What did you hear?”
“Nothing. I thought you were talking to yourself, or that you’d left your television on again.”
She turned, caught the black edge of the mysterious man’s leather jacket disappearing through the front door, and training her eyes back to her father, she asked, “Who is that man?”
“You don’t need to know. He’s my employee and that’s all. You want to be a woman and ask questions, find a place of your own to live in. This is my home and what goes on inside of it is my business.”
Her father, a fat man made round by age and poor diet, put a large hand to the wood paneling of the door frame he was standing in, his grey eyes milky but sharp and boring holes into her. H
e frowned, and the change was dramatically fierce. That frown held a world of judgments in them.
“I don’t need to ask where you’ve been all this time. I told you I don’t want you seeing that boy, and I meant it.”
“And I told you that I don’t care what you want.”
The large hand that had been resting on the frame flew, nearly of its own accord and struck Abby broadside across her cheek. She reeled backwards and stumbled over her feet until she hit against the far wall. The pain radiating over her face felt warm in the wake of the shock that had flooded her the moment her father had backhanded her. He had menaced her, threatened her, but never before had he set his hands to her.
“You’ll leave that boy, or so help me, you’ll be sorry.”
CHAPTER 14
………………………………..
The next morning, Abby stood in her bathroom, looking at her face in the mirror, and thought that with a little makeup, the bruise that colored her cheekbone could be covered up. It had gone purple overnight, and it was sore to the touch, though she figured if his aim had been worse, she might have suffered more than a sore face. If anything, the makeup she’d use to help her forget what happened would keep her nosy co-workers from asking questions.
She didn’t understand what had happened to him that would have made him physically violent with her. Not once in the twenty-two years that she’d been alive had he ever hit her. Not when she’d broken her mother’s China, not when she’d dyed the cat green, and not even when she’d stolen his Mercedes on her sixteenth birthday.
The man that her father has said was his employee had appeared to her as if the only job he was suited for was making babies cry. What on Earth could he have been hired to do? Certainly, it wasn’t to replace Roger Daniels in mowing the lawn.
Abby sighed as she applied the last of her cover up to her cheekbone, and satisfied that no one was going to be able to tell that her face looked as if a plum had been embedded beneath her skin, she turned and made her way for the front door.
As she bent to pick up her purse from where she’d tossed it as she come through the night before, from the edge of her vision, Abby caught a flash of black and thought that the man with the tree face had crept up behind her. When she turned, she was surprised to see a young woman, her face freshly scrubbed for the morning, dressed in a stereotypical maid’s uniform. The one thing missing from the scene would have been a guy in a moustache carrying around a camera to capture the action as he cued the pool man to walk through.
“Who are you?”
The maid smiled, and Abby could tell that the brightest part to her was not in her skull. The maid replied, “My name is Nina Pickett. I’ve been hired to take care of the house. It’s nice to meet you, Miss Bradley.”
Abby raised an eyebrow. Miss, Nina Pick-it-up, had to have come through the same movie portal as the man in the leather jacket. She frowned as she replied, “I guess it’s nice to meet you too. When did my father hire you?”
Nina shrugged, her black hair tickling over her porcelain features as she blinked her brown doe eyes. She put a finger to her chin and answered, “I think it was sometime last week when the call to my company was put through. He told us that the house was in desperate need of someone to come in and clean, but I’ve been wandering around all morning with nothing to do.” Nina stared at Abby, accusing her of being an accomplice to the lie she’d been told.
Abby doubted highly that this was the first time that poor Nina wandered around with nothing to do. She offered the woman a smile, picked up her purse and hoped that meeting Nina wouldn’t set the standard for how the rest of her day was going to go.
********
Travis waited outside of his sister-in-law’s work building, thinking to head her off before she went in so that he didn’t have to go inside to have a word with her. It was a very little known fact about him, but he hated the feel of anything sterile. Hospitals especially. The white bleached, cleaning fluid infused wasteland of sterility made him feel as if he was drowning inside of a bottle of rubbing alcohol while wearing the world’s most constricting neck tie. The only reason he could stand to go in was because he believed in doing his job and not letting his personal weakness affect the way he set about doing it. It stood to reason then, why no one would ever know that Cory’s morgue was the worst place he could imagine being inside.
“Travis?”
A smile that could stretch around the Earth cracked Travis’ face and as his brother’s wife walked up to him, he gave her a hearty hug. Despite the reason he was here, he couldn’t help the warmth Cory’s happiness inspired in him.
“Are you dying?” Cory said as Travis let her go. She seemed surprised by the intensity of his hug.
Travis playfully punched his sister-in-law’s shoulder and shook his head. “What? It’s not like you’ll need a Tetanus shot.” He set an arm around her and gave her an extra hug from the side. He supposed that his newfound friendliness toward Cory came from the fact that most of the tension and desolation he met every time he was near her had dissipated. She was a ball of sunshine.
Travis sobered. “I came here to ask you a few questions.” He could tell that his sudden switch from the warmth he’d been feeling to chill seriousness had caught Cory’s attention.
“Sure. What’s on your mind?”
Travis folded his arms to his chest, and as they were standing just outside of Cory’s building, he leaned against the brick of the wall. “I’m sure you heard about what happened yesterday. Have either of them come across your table?”
Cory shook her head and replied, “Mrs. Lawson’s son did not want her to have an autopsy. As far as I know, she’s being kept at the mortuary to be prepared for burial. As for the man, nothing seems to be out of the ordinary. Heart failure. There wasn’t an autopsy needed there either.”
Travis frowned. He didn’t quite know how to express to Cory that he thought that it was too much of a coincidence that two people who knew each other happened to die of heart failure on the same day.
He said, “Is there a way you would be able to run a test for poison or anything like that? I’m having a hard time believing that they both died naturally. I knew Mrs. Lawson and Roger, neither of them had trouble with their hearts. They worked together, Cory. It smells bad; the whole situation is a hot Dumpster.”
Cory shrugged. “What do you want me to do, Travis? There is a lot of tape to cut through in getting the permission to do what you’re asking. Ben Lawson was adamant; he said it was against his mother’s wishes to have anything done to her body after her death.”
“Was he here?”
“Sure. Only really to identify his mother and gone before there could be any discussion about trying to find her precise cause of death. I didn’t see a reason to keep her here; it wasn’t as if she’d been attacked. You were there, right? An old woman collapsing in a convenience store isn’t a story worthy of a front page.”
Travis frown deepened. Cory’s tone told him that she wished him luck with whatever hunch he was going to follow after, but that if he wanted her help, he’d have to pull all of her teeth. He sighed. “Thanks for the talk, Cory.” He glanced at his watch, a gift his brother had given him, and he added, “Louis gets itchy if I’m not on time to start our shift. He’s more irritable lately because he’s not allowed to drive the cruiser.”
Cory put her hands on her hips. “He deserves whatever he gets. I can’t believe he’d try to play grab hands at my wedding.”
She stuck out her tongue and Travis smirked. She was right, Louis deserved a little punishment for thinking with the brain in his pants instead of the one in his head. He headed back to his car and Cory stopped him by taking hold of his right forearm.
“Is everything okay? When you get serious, I start checking the ground for ice cubes.”
Travis chuckled through Cory’s joke about hell freezing over and let it slide off his back. He knew that Cory thought the world of him, saw him for who he really wa
s instead of what other people thought of him. She’d taken a bullet to her thigh to help prove his innocence, and there was nothing on the face of the planet that would knock her off the pedestal where she belonged in his personal pantheon of incredible women.
He placed a hand to her shoulder and said, attempting to mean it, “Nothing I can’t fix. Don’t worry about me.” He forced a smile.
As he walked away with Cory’s eyes at his back, he wished he was able to make himself believe that.
********
When lunch rolled around, Abby was ready to pack up camp and head home to the bed she knew was waiting for her. Her body simply hadn’t wanted to come to work, and as she looked at the lunch she’d picked up from the cafeteria located inside of the nursing home where she works, she thought she might hurl all over the table she’d plopped herself in front of. Was she sick?
“Girl, you look like a hot mess. What’s eating you?”