Chance of a Lifetime (6 page)

This plan had one flaw. Border always ate all his meal and usually claimed he ate Beau’s leftovers in his sleep.

So they went to the third plan. Eat at the Blue Moon Diner. The nightly specials were cheap, and the food good.

The boys split their earnings down the middle. Border was saving for a bigger bike. Beau simply wanted to save all he could. “For a rainy day,” he’d said. “’Cause it’s been raining most of my life.”

They were full and in good moods when they got back from their Sunday meal at the bed-and-breakfast with Grandma Biggs. She’d made a chocolate cake in a square pan and iced it with white frosting. When they’d fought over it, she’d sliced it down the middle and served each half. Border ate his half, but Beau added most of his cake to the stack of take-out boxes Mrs. Biggs always packed.

While Border went in to put up the leftovers, Beau sat down on the porch of the duplex and began to play. Like they always did, the words to a song seemed to dance in time with the music. He’d been working on the beginning of a song about living through the rainy times and learning to dance in the storm.

Last night, when he played the beginning for the Biggs brothers and Ronny, she cried and said it was the most beautiful song she’d ever heard so Beau figured he’d finish it. Tonight her half of the duplex was dark, which was unusual. Most nights her desk light would be shining, telling them that she was studying.

“Wonder where Ronny is.” Border voiced Beau’s question. “I noticed her car is parked out back so wherever she went, she walked.”

Beau looked out into the street. He’d seen her walk at night sometimes when the nights were warm, but tonight was cold. As he watched, a boat of an old Dodge drove by so
slowly they should have tried to charge it for parking. “Well,” Beau whispered, “we know she’s not visiting her mother. The old bag is circling the place.”

Border laughed. “I swear she circles nightly. She’s disowned Ronny, but she’s still trying to keep up with her like Ronny’s a girl and not a full-grown woman.” He waved and the Dodge sped up. “Go home, Dallas Logan, and pester someone else.”

Beau went back to his song. Border listened for a while and then went inside, complaining about the cold.

When Border yelled good night, Beau wasn’t in the mood to crawl under his blanket on the couch. He decided to walk. Maybe Ronny Logan was right, maybe tonight was a good night for a walk.

He liked Harmony best when the town was asleep. He loved to go down to the old town square. There, time seemed to have stood still. It could just as easily have been 1950 as 2012. Nothing much had changed. In the sounds of the night he could hear music. A melody that only belonged to Harmony. Beau hadn’t traveled much, but he had a feeling every place had its own beat, only this was his home. This beat kept time with his heart.

He slowed when he saw the sheriff’s car pulling alongside him.

“You all right, Beau?” Sheriff Alexandra Matheson asked.

“I’m fine. Just listening to the night.” If he’d been anywhere but here, the law officer might have thought him crazy.

“You want a ride home?” she asked.

“No. I’m home.” He smiled, proud of himself for not stuttering.

“All right.” She understood and pulled slowly away.

Before he made it back to the duplex, another song was already dancing in his mind, but he didn’t pick up his guitar when he slipped back into the apartment. He was too busy thinking about how he should change his life and
learn to do some hard living like country songs always talked about.

Funny thing, he thought, how he had nothing much. He could pack all he owned in the trunk of a car and he couldn’t even afford an apartment, but tonight, with the music in his head, he felt rich.

ON WEEKENDS
R
ICK
M
ATHESON USUALLY WORKED LATE
at his office across the street from the courthouse. Or at least he tried to work. He’d been a lawyer for over a year and so far he’d yet to defend anyone he believed to be innocent.

Pacing the small office above a used bookstore, he stopped long enough to watch Beau Yates walk the deserted streets below. The kid had more talent than anyone Rick had ever known, but he wasn’t sure if it was a gift or a curse. He’d heard once that the German word for “poison” is
gift.
Maybe the gifted in the world aren’t all that lucky.

There was a sadness that shadowed Beau Yates like a broken aura, yet when he played, people felt his music all the way to their souls. The whole town was rooting for him to make it big. Well, everyone except his old man, who preached against Beau to anyone who would listen. Brother Yates was a fire-and-brimstone preacher, taking out what he saw as his son’s failure on the whole town. If his congregation got any smaller, they could meet at a picnic table in the park.

Rick had to give the kid credit. “Beau Yates has something he believes in,” he whispered to himself, “which is more than I have right now.”

When he’d first decided to go into law, he’d thought he’d be fighting for the wrongly accused. He’d fight for rights. He’d fight for truth. But, as it turned out, the ones who needed all that couldn’t seem to find his door. His cousin Liz Matheson had married Gabe Leary, a graphic artist hermit, and pretty much left Rick her small office. Now she worked mostly from home. Most weeks Rick felt he could scratch one of the Matheson names off the sign outside. He was alone, not sure of what he was doing, and broke.

Rick found plenty of crooks caught red-handed who wanted to plead innocent. People who wanted to sue anyone they could find as their get-rich-quick scheme and couples who insisted on beating each other to death in court over scraps from a broken marriage.

Forcing himself to go back to his desk, he stared down at the case file from yesterday’s latest waste of time. A guy, who went by Mouse, had cut his arm climbing out of a house he’d forgotten to make sure wasn’t occupied before he robbed. The police had evidence of his blood on the glass, and they had his fingerprints on all the stuff he dropped when he ran. The old couple, who lived in the place, were easily able to ID Mouse as the robber. To make matters worse for Mouse, his car, parked out front of the crime scene, wouldn’t start. The sheriff picked him up and found him bleeding from the cut and with his pockets full of evidence.

Rick got assigned to the case. To his shock, Mouse insisted on pleading not guilty. The jury took forty-five minutes to make up their minds. Rick figured it would have been less, but the bailiff made a fresh pot of coffee and set out leftover cookies from an office party down the hall.

Of course, Mouse blamed Rick and demanded that the court appoint another lawyer. On his way out in cuffs, Mouse whispered the same good-bye most of Rick’s clients used. Mouse warned him to watch out for accidents, because
it he ever got out, Mouse planned to make sure Rick found a few.

Rick lifted the file and tossed it in the drawer with the other losers. He’d worked two jobs to pay his own way through law school, and for what? To listen to threats. To feel like he needed a shower every time he talked to a client. To make half the money his brother, who’d skipped college, made mowing lawns.

At twenty-eight, Rick should be having the time of his life. He knew he wasn’t bad-looking, was educated, came from a good family, but with the overhead of the office and the cost of keeping up the appearance of being a successful lawyer, he didn’t have enough money for a drink at Buffalo’s, much less to spend on a date.

Flipping off the light, he grabbed his empty briefcase and headed home. Once he was in the hallway, he locked his office, checked to make sure his cousin’s office next door was locked, and walked toward the back exit where he’d parked his car. The place had been silent since the bookstore downstairs closed an hour ago. During the day he could almost believe he was in the center of things—after all, his wall of windows faced the courthouse, but Rick had always thought the building, with its rattling windows and clanging pipes, was creepy at night.

When he stepped out the exit to a small landing, he turned his collar up against the cold and wished he had his coat. But his winter coat was at the cleaners and money would have to be coming in before he could get it out. The sports jacket would have to do for now.

As the door closed, what light there had been in the back of the building disappeared. The one bulb on a pole at the bottom of the steps was out again. No surprise. The building was falling apart. It took him a minute for his eyes to adjust to the night, but then he began down the old back stairs toward his car. Metal steps and been replaced along the way with wooden ones slightly thicker, giving the stairs an uneven stride. He’d walked it in the dark a hundred times before. He knew the way.

Only tonight the third step was made of air. Rick braced himself realizing a board must have broken. His free hand reached for the railing as his foot readied for the fourth step. It was missing also. Just as he began to fall through the hole in the stairs, his hand clamped around the railing and the wood gave.

His long frame tumbled, bumping into poles a few times before he landed with a thud on a broken slab of concrete below that had once been the steps to the bookstore’s back door.

Thoughts tumbled with him. He could be hurt, or die here in the dark. Someone had cut the steps away. He still held his briefcase. A moment later, reality hit along with the pain. He couldn’t breathe! He couldn’t move!

Rick heard the clock tower begin to chime the hour as if ticking away the seconds he had left of consciousness. He tried to shift away from something stabbing in his back. Concentrating, he fought to stand. Opening his mouth, he struggled to yell. Nothing worked. All he could feel or think about was the pain.

Finally, he managed to pull his phone from his belt with one bloody hand. He held down the number one praying that he’d be able to hold it long enough before he passed out. In the low glow of the phone he thought he saw a shadow of a man dart into the alley thirty feet away.

“Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?”

Rick closed his eyes and let the phone slip from his fingers as pain won the battle.

He drifted in the night, trying to find the way back to the world. In the distance, he heard a siren. Then what seemed much later, someone called his name. Finally, light danced across the darkness like a ball.

“Rick,” a woman yelled. “Rick!” She was moving closer. “Oh my God, Rick!”

Someone had found him. He tried to call out but couldn’t.

“Phil, call an ambulance,” the woman snapped orders as her hand touched Rick’s throat. “Then call the hospital and tell them we’re bringing Rick Matheson in. They’d
better be ready. Looks like a head injury, back injuries, and maybe broken bones in legs.”

The light moved closer to his face. “Rick,” a woman said again. “Can you hear me? It’s Alex.” Her badge flashed in the light of others moving in. “We’re not moving you until the EMTs get here, but don’t worry, I’m with you.” He could hear clicking on a phone, then her hushed words. “Dispatch, call Hank and tell him I’ve found his cousin. He’s hurt bad. The ambulance has been called, but he can get here first.” She paused for a few seconds, then added, “Back of used bookstore.”

She knelt close, shining the light on his face. “Rick, hang on. Hank’s on his way. We’ll get you some help.”

“Thanks for coming,” he tried to say, but he wasn’t sure the words came out right. A coldness crossed over him and he drifted into a place where there was no thought, no pain.

When he pulled back to the world again, he was surrounded by light so bright it hurt his eyes. For a second he thought he might be in heaven, but the sound of two women arguing almost made him wish for the blackness again.

He managed to open one eye a slit. Dr. Addison Spencer was yelling at his cousin’s wife, Alex Matheson, the sheriff.

“I’m taking him in to examine him, Sheriff,” the slim blond doctor yelled. “As soon as I know he’s not bleeding internally, I’ll let you question him.”

Alex wasn’t giving an inch. “I have to know who did this. The steps were cut, Doc. Don’t you understand? Someone tried to kill him.”

Dr. Spencer wasn’t slowing down. “Get out of my way or I’ll have you kicked out of my hospital.”

Alex looked like she might argue. She closed her mouth so tight white lines formed around her lips as she nodded once. “All right. Take care of him first, and then I’ll find out who did this.”

The doc gave a signal to move the bed, then turned back to Alex. “I’ll make sure you get to ask those questions as soon as possible.”

“In the meantime I’m posting a guard.” The sheriff’s
words ended with the closing of a door and people in masks rushing toward Rick like vultures at a fresh kill.

He lay perfectly still, but he felt like the six-foot buffet at the Golden Corral with everyone poking on him. Slowly, the pain eased enough for him to take a deep breath, but he didn’t want to look at what they were doing. Someone was cutting his clothes off, needles were stuck in his arm and someone had taped something cold to his chest. He guessed he was lying nude for a viewing. In his shattered thoughts, he got the idea that if he didn’t open his eyes maybe no one could see him if he couldn’t see them.