Mailboat II, page 5
BAILEY
When we got back to the pier, Tommy stayed for the next tour, but I changed into the clothes I’d brought for waitressing and headed across town for my second job. For once in my life, I almost didn’t mind leaving the Mailboat. We got the mail delivered. We gave the tour. But everything just felt weird, and I couldn’t understand why.
I cracked open the back door to the Geneva Bar and Grill and peered into the kitchen. A five-gallon kettle spluttered on the stove and a light glared in one of the ovens, highlighting a pan full of dinner rolls. But the room was empty. Thank God. With any luck, Bud was in the bar with his usual buddies, downing glasses of beer. My hope was that he would be just tipsy enough to be happy, but not so far gone as to be livid when he saw me. I was doing my darndest to avoid him—to avoid explaining why I’d skipped out during my shift last night and gotten his car shot through and stolen. Why I hadn’t come home until after midnight.
I slipped through the door, danced across the tiles to the storeroom, and pulled my time card out of its slot. When exactly should I pencil in that I’d clocked out last night? The schedule and my actual hours didn’t align so good.
The grid on my time card blurred as I stared at it. I was so tired, it was getting hard to think straight. I’d worked a long day yesterday, survived a street shooting, and stayed up half the night being grilled by police, only to roll out of bed early again to run up and down the piers around the lake, delivering mail. And now here I was, putting in a shift at the restaurant. It vaguely dawned on me that no one should be expected to live like this. I leaned forward until my forehead hit the wall and simply stared at the bumps in the paint.
“Hey, where’dja go last night?”
I jumped.
Jimmy Beacon stood at his sink, water dripping on the floor from his sleeves, eyes magnified by his bulging glasses, as if he’d just emerged from a prehistoric swamp.
“Um… I just… I didn’t feel good.”
“Rita was looking everywhere for you. She was ready to explode. She had to work all the tables herself.”
“Yeah, um… it came up really fast.” I turned my back and pressed my time card and pencil close to my nose, hoping he would drop the conversation.
He didn’t. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him fling water off his hands and come around a counter piled with dirty dishes. He wiped his palms down his shirt. “Hey, Bailey, I was wondering if—”
“I’m busy.”
He couldn’t have been more taken aback if I’d slapped him in the face with a fish. “You don’t even know what I was going to ask.”
Actually, I did. He asked three times a week. Do you want to go out for ice cream? Do you want to catch a movie? Do you want to take a walk in the park? And the zinger: Do you want to see my secret lab? Despite putting the words no thanks on automatic repeat, I couldn’t sit down for a break and a glass of soda without him sidling up next to me and talking my ear off.
“Um… Seriously, I’ve been really busy lately,” I said, dog-earing a corner of my time card. “I’m working two jobs this summer.” And like… trying to stay alive.
“You wouldn’t have to work two jobs. Bud would give you all the hours you need here, you know.”
The mere thought inspired an impulse to drown Jimmy in his own sink. Leave the Mailboat? For this place? “Great,” I said out loud, hoping Jimmy didn’t see me roll my eyes. “I’ll talk to him about that.”
His lips spread into a fleshy grin. “You will?”
Oh, God.
“Bailey!”
Bud’s voice hit me like a sonic boom. Jimmy scurried back to his sink and attacked his stack of dishes with gusto. I whirled, trembling. My foster dad filled the doorway to his office, his unshaved face stormy, his eyes glassy but furious. I didn’t need to glance at the bottle in his hand to know he was drunk.
“Get in here.”
His tone told me everything I was afraid to hear. He knew. About his car. About skipping out last night. I was busted ten thousand different ways.
I gingerly stepped toward him. He grabbed my arm, shoved me into the office, and slammed the door behind us. The bottle he thunked down on his desk, which was covered in a snowdrift of paperwork, a few empty beer cans, and a dirty mouse trap. The mouse trap made me think of Humphrey. I began to cry.
He throttled me by both my shoulders. “Where’s my car?”
“I’m sorry,” I whimpered.
“So it was you? You took it, didja? When did you get a driver’s license? Huh? Huh? When did I give you permission to drive my car? Answer me, kid.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “I looked for you. I couldn’t find you.”
“Oh, and you were gonna ask to drive my car?”
“No, I was going to tell you somebody got kidnapped. Out in the parking lot. I followed them. That’s why I took the car.”
His eyes widened into an insane sort of frenzy and his fists tightened on my arms. I had to get the rest out fast, before he dismissed the whole thing as bullshit and started belting me.
“There was a shooting!” I squeaked. “Two guys kidnapped one of our customers, and they tried to kill him. I mean, they did—they killed him. But he killed one of them back. The other one got away in your car. I don’t know where he took it. I’m sorry.”
I was shocked how stupid the whole thing sounded as it tumbled out of my mouth. I’d lied to Bud once or twice to get out of a beating, but now that I was telling the truth, it sounded like the worst fantasy a three-year-old could have drummed up.
So I was pretty surprised when the fury melted off Bud’s face, replaced by a satisfied smile. He let me go and dropped into his office chair, which groaned alarmingly under his weight. “Kidnappers, eh?” he asked. He grabbed the whiskey and drank straight from the bottle. “That’s funny.” He laughed. “So they stole my car, did they?”
I nodded.
He smiled and nodded. “Guess I better file a report with the cops then, huh?”
I nodded again, wondering when he would snap out of it and start pounding the crap out of me. But the longer he sat there, the more I felt something was crazy wrong. I wondered if I should be looking for the signs of a stroke or something. None of this made any sense. But then again, my life rarely did.
“Nobody you ever seen here in my place, were they? The kidnappers, I mean?”
I shook my head.
“Good. That’s real good, Bailey.” He took another swig. “Come ‘ere.” He held an arm open.
I took a tentative step forward, uncertain whether I should expect a fondling or a beating. He reached out the rest of the way, reeled me in, and patted my butt affectionately.
“I’m glad to hear it, Bailey,” he said.
I finally asked it out loud, eyebrow raised. “Are you okay?”
“Had a bit to drink,” he said. “I was worried.”
“About your car?”
He laughed. “Yeah. About my car.” He swatted my rear again. “Now you go clock in.”
I was relieved to get out of that room—and stunned that I’d gotten off without a beating. Still, my heart was pounding. I couldn’t make heads or tails out of what had just happened. So I simply penciled made-up hours onto my time card, tied on my apron, slipped past Jimmy as fast as possible, and hit the floor.
CHAPTER TWELVE
JIMMY
Jimmy shoved his glasses up his nose and watched Bailey as she hurried into the dining room, tying her apron strings over her pert glutei maximi. They were curvilinear in just the right degree so as to provoke hormonal reactions in adolescent males—such as himself. The effects were not unpleasant. In fact, they brought to mind a number of experiments he wouldn’t mind running with her…
None of which he’d ever run before, but that was beside the point.
She was what common folk would refer to, colloquially, as “hot,” though she did not fall under the same classification as their classmate Michaela Stewart. Michaela was destined for the fashion runway no doubt—and that was all her brains were good for, expending her full concentration towards balancing on pinpoint heels while swinging her hips provocatively and applying another layer of lip gloss. Granted, she did play a competitive round of tennis.
Bailey, conversely, was more like the cute girl down the street, and even if she wasn’t a genius, at least she was good in school. They said she got A’s in almost every class. Genius would have been more attractive, but it was perversely hard to come by. Jimmy should know. None of the kids at Badger High were his equal when it came to brains. In fact, in his studied opinion, neither were the teachers.
Jimmy threw a consortium of kitchen cutlery, freshly cleaned, into a giant kettle for easy transport and hauled it all into the kitchen. He shoved knives into drawers and hung ladles above the stove.
He’d gone to the nth degree all last semester to discover the correct combination of courtship rituals that would win Bailey’s attention, but she remained stubbornly disinterested. Turning down a private and massively exclusive invitation to his scientific lab had been the lowest blow yet. Despite their intellectual disparity, they were nearly the same in height and weight, and equally outcast from society, which statistically made them a good match. Furthermore, her good looks would only enhance his carefree appearance as a man who devoted his time to learning and science, not fashion.
He used the sleeve of his tee shirt, still damp with dishwater and hanging below his elbow, to scrub away the reddish-brown ring stuck to the rim of the kettle. He grinned. Much better. He threw the kettle on a shelf and stalked confidently back to his soapy domain.
Never before had he invited someone to his secret lab—and she’d had the audacity to turn him down. Didn’t she realize the honor? He would have shown her his groundbreaking experiments—stuff that would land him in history books someday. She would have been beside herself with awe. She would have begged to know more about every detail—and he would gladly have enlightened her.
All those hours she spent at the library, her nose in a book… had he mistakenly believed she was a fellow intellectual?
No. He was never wrong. She was merely playing hard-to-get. Didn’t females play little games like that? How obnoxious.
He scraped limp veggies and dried gravy into the trash and lined up the dishes on the plastic tray.
He’d show her. He’d show everyone what a genius he was. And then Bailey would regret turning him away.
The bomb was almost ready.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
BUD
Bud finished off the whiskey and tossed the empty bottle into a corner of the room, where it crashed into a pile of other empty bottles and cans. Somewhere beneath that mess, there used to be a garbage bin—the little type people put in fancy-ass powder rooms. It had a friggin’ bird on the side and the whole bit. Or was it a flower? He couldn’t remember. It had been too long since he’d seen it. Happily, the empty containers weren’t all from today. He’d be wasted if they were.
Haha. He was wasted.
Reaching unsteadily across his desk, he grabbed his cell phone. When he flopped back into his chair, it nearly tipped over and dumped him out. He muttered under his breath and tried to focus on the phone screen. After he finally found the call app, he chicken pecked at the numbers. He had to backspace a few times, and eventually just started over fresh. Finally, he got the number in and hit the call button.
The other line picked up almost immediately. “Well?” The Man was eager.
“Hey, handsome.”
There was a pause. “Are you drunk?”
“What else would I be?”
“It’s two in the afternoon.”
“It’s five o’clock somewhere.” Bud laughed and belched.
“Is there a point to this conversation, or are you simply dialing people at random?”
“Hey, man, don’t get your shit in a twist.” That wasn’t the right expression, was it? Hell. “I got news. We don’t gotta worry about Bailey.”
“Is that so?” His tone was unconvinced.
“She don’t know nuthin’.”
“And how did you conclude that?”
“I asked her.”
“You didn’t…” He sounded as if he were about to have a heart attack. “Weber, what did you tell her?”
“That I was there? Hell, no! What do you think I am, stupid?”
The silence on the other end of the line dragged out a little too long. Disgruntled, Bud sat up and grabbed an empty beer bottle to fidget with.
“Look, all I had to do was ask what happened to my car. She spilled everything. I flat-out asked her if she recognized the guy who got away—you know? So I could find out who the frick was kidnapping my customers. Know what I mean?” He fumbled the beer bottle, sending it over the edge of the desk. “I’m tellin’ ya, she ate the whole thing. She don’t have a clue it was me.”
“I suppose I’ll just have to take your word for that.”
“Aw, c’mon, man, what do I gotta do to convince you?”
“Quite frankly, there is nothing.”
“Crap. I suppose I shouldn’ta called you drunk.”
“It would have helped your cause. Did you dispose of your car?”
“It’s in the bottom of a lake somewhere.”
“Where?”
“Dude, I don’t even know. I’ve been drunk ever since.” He laughed. “I don’t even remember how I got home.”
There was an audible sigh. “Very well, then.”
“So what you got for me to do now?”
“Nothing. I need to rework the plan. I didn’t foresee that we’d have to get Fritz and Jason out of the way. I thought they’d be on board. I was counting on them.”
Homie wasn’t as brilliant as he pretended to be, in other words. Bud smirked, but quickly wiped it away. “Hey, man, you still got me,” he said, trying to sound genuine and concerned. “I can do whatever you want.” Despite losing a car to the cause, The Man was still good business. If Bud had known he could make this kind of money, he never would have worked his butt off running a bar.
“I appreciate your enthusiasm, Weber, but there’s nothing to be done now. The situation is too hot. I need you to lay low for now.”
“All right, all right, all right, sure,” Bud mumbled, nodding.
“Call me if anything changes—especially if Bailey remembers you were there.”
“Wow, you’re, like, obsessed with that.”
“Weber—”
“Okay, okay, I got it.”
“Good.” The line went dead.
Bud threw his phone down. Bastard couldn’t even spare a good-bye. But his orders were clear. Sit. Wait. Do nothing.
He smirked.
He had other plans. He had a certain score to settle.
SUNDAY
JUNE 22, 2014
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ROLAND
Roland Markham drew his knife through rind and yellow pulp, making a pile of lemon rings on his cutting board, each slice glistening in tart juice. As he dropped the rings into a pitcher of iced tea, glowing in morning sunlight, he couldn’t help but feel a little lonely. It had only been two days since a policeman had knocked on his door in the middle of the night, bearing the news.
Roland gave the iced tea a swirl with a long spoon. This had been their tradition—his and Charles’—going back to the days when the kitchen had been filled with the chatter of their wives as they prepared the refreshments and the laughter of the children as they ran through the house in bare feet and swimsuits.
The years had turned, the children had grown and scattered, Charles had divorced, and Roland’s wife had passed on. But as the two men had turned old and found themselves alone and with fewer commitments, they had gravitated back toward their tradition.
Even though things had only become increasingly awkward.
Charles had been dreaming. Had been for as long as they’d known each other. Roland was straight as the day was long—that was all there was to it. As it was, Charles’ hopeful advances had accomplished nothing but to put them both at risk. There would have been a scandal if anyone had found out. Neither man’s career would have survived.
It was ironic, really, that they’d remained friends at all. Inexplicable. For the sake of appearances—maybe even for the sake of old friendship—they had both mastered the art of ignoring the elephant in the room. Or at least Roland had.
But now Charles was gone. Dead. A casualty of those very dreams. The man had been convinced, apparently, that he could finally win Roland’s devotion by seeking revenge for the death of Roland’s son, so many years ago. But who, after all, was really to blame? Fritz and Jason, for leading Bobby astray? Or Wade Erickson, for firing the bullet that had killed him? Or was there anyone to blame at all?
How much responsibility was due to Roland himself?
He sighed, leaning on the counter, and dwelt on the harrowing possibility that he had never even known his own son. Had missed Bobby’s entire boyhood. His entire adulthood, brief as it had been. How much had Roland himself become like his own father? And his grandfather before him? Always tied up at The Bank. Always away in The City. Roland’s life had become an endless ream of figures, zero through nine, in various combinations, punctuated only by commas, decimals, and dollar signs.
And somewhere between the bundles of cold, hard cash, a boy had become a man… and died. Died in an illicit pursuit of the very thing the Markhams apparently loved so dearly: cash. Died alone, perhaps, even surrounded as he was by his partners in crime, Jason and Fritz.
Yes, Bobby had died very much alone.
Roland rinsed the knife and cutting board under a stream of water, then stowed them in a rack in the dishwasher and dried his hands on a towel. Well, Charles had accomplished what he’d set out to do. Fritz and Jason were dead, the both of them.
Fritz had no parents left to mourn his loss.
But Roland didn’t have to stretch his imagination far to know what Tommy felt now.
