CHAPTER FIFTY FIVE
I
t took three
tries, knocking, before Mitch came to the door. I’d decided the kids weren’t
here since my banging hadn’t started any ruckus. Their daddy was a lot less
scary looking than I had imagined from the restraining order. For one thing,
the Grim Reaper was more cartoonish than demonic and had the motto “Live as if
there’s no tomorrow” ringing it. I suppose descriptions given on a restraining
order might bias a person.
His height was intimidating, but he had the tousled bed-head
and sleepy smile of a young boy. Bare-chested and wearing gray, sweatpants with
a red Wisconsin Badger logo that hung dangerously low on his hips, he looked
like a big, stretched out version of his son.
A vastly sexier version of his
son
, my id hastened to add. I told my id to shut up. I had enough trouble.
“Can I help you?”
For being woken up on a dreary Sunday morning, he was
polite. He even managed a discreet body scan with a slight (gratifying) smile
as he reconnected with my eyes. Apparently, it made a difference when a cute
guy did it. I reminded myself of his married, abuser status.
“I sure hope so,” I finally managed, sounding way too
chipper. I cleared my throat to a less annoying level.“I’m sorry for waking
you. Ha ha ha.” Yes, I actually said, “Ha ha ha.”
Geez, Letty, get a grip!
“I’m
looking for a builder.”
Why did my eyes dart to his muscular arms and broad,
smooth chest?
“I have some remodeling work I need done. I was on my way to
. . . um . . . church—”
Church? Yes, church, go with it.
“—when I saw
your truck. It seemed like a sign.” A sign of insanity perhaps.
My speech garnered me the sleepy smile again, which I was in
no way paying any attention to.
“What kind of . . . job . . . are you looking for?” I was
pretty sure his eyes dipped to my cleavage. Apparently, we had just convened
the first Mutual Chest Admiration Society. I kept my own gaze pinned to his
face and tried not to read anything into his question. It didn’t help that he
ran his hand through his hair, increasing the tousle-factor exponentially.
I’d been dating too many geeks. My bad-boy triggers were
completely out of whack.
“Kitchen,” I said, picking the least romantic project I
could think of. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of concrete work needed in a
kitchen. Except? “Counter,” I added, feeling proud and back in control. The
time I’d spent zoned out watching the DIY cable channel finally came in handy. Concrete
countertops were quite popular. My libido nearly ruined it by conjuring up
images of countertops and jars full of honey and . . . “Are you bondage? I
mean,
bonded
. Your company, I mean. There are two of you?” I pointed at
his truck, just in case he’d forgotten that he had a partner.
His mind had apparently hooked onto my faux pas, his grin flashing
across his face like lightning. “Uh, what? Two of us?” His eyebrows raised,
possibly wondering what my interest was in by having
two
guys for the
job. “My cousin, Tyler. He’s like a brother to me. We’ve been partners for
years.”
Good lord, he was still grinning. He leaned against the door
frame in that timeless, James Dean pose.
I refocused on my purpose for being here. “Oh, I thought
maybe you had a little helper.” I smiled, nodding at the Big Wheel in the yard.
A crease formed in his brow and he straightened up. “Uh,
yeah, but they’re too young to come to a job.” His turn for throat clearing. My
question unsettled him, but I hoped he dismissed it as a brush-off, a reference
to his married state rather than someone trying to locate his wife and kids. I
could tell he was trying to balance not losing a potential client with being
cautious.
“Listen,” he continued, all flirtation cast aside. “Why
don’t you give me a call when you’re ready for the job. I’m gonna have to get
to work now.”
“On a Sunday?” I asked.
Frowning, he stepped back into the house. “I do what I have
to.”
“So do I,” I said to the closed door.
Walking back to my car, I felt Mitch watching me and I
didn’t think he was checking out my butt. He had been well and truly spooked when
I brought up the kids. I resisted the urge to look back, knowing that would
just confirm his suspicions. Instead, I glanced at the truck trying to memorize
the two phone numbers.
Paul was a jittery mess by the time I slid into the driver’s
seat. He had his cell phone out, holding it poised as if to dial 9-1-1 at the
first sign of trouble. Which would leave approximately fourteen minutes for a homicidal
maniac to dismember my body and stuff it down the septic hole in the basement.
More than enough time, but I appreciated the thought.
“Down! Get down!” I shoved his head down past the dash,
trying to fold his gawky frame like an accordion. “I don’t want him to see you.”
“Glack!” he said, or something similar that translates to
“Dear god, my neck doesn’t bend that way. Please stop before I’m paralyzed for
life.”
Digging through my purse, I pulled out an old receipt and a
pen and thrust them at Paul. Despite my attempt at instantaneously acquiring a
photographic memory, I couldn’t remember more than three digits so I was forced
to sit there and squint at the truck. They really needed to get bigger magnets.
“Write this down,” I said, reciting the phone numbers off the truck to my
crumpled compadre.
“What are you doing?” Paul whispered, apparently forgetting
that not wanting to be seen is not the same as not wanting to be heard. “Let’s
get out of here.”
I pulled the car away from the curb, trying to drive
casually—a difficult thing to portray—and not as though I were a killer-stalker
hunting for his wife and children. After two blocks I told Paul he could sit up
and made a series of right turns that brought me back to the corner of the Dillards’s
street, but on the opposite side from where I’d first parked. A large,
overgrown shrub hid much of my car from casual view, but it also obscured my
vision. Telling Paul to stay put, I got out and scurried up to the foliage,
peeking through the branches so I could watch the house.
Paul powered the window down and whispered, “What are you
doing?”
“Shh!” I flapped a hand at him. I figured we only had a few
minutes before somebody called the cops. If Mitch didn’t act right away, I’d
have to leave.
But he did. A few moments later, he came out of the house,
stopped briefly to pick up the kids’ toys that were strewn about the lawn, and
then climbed in the truck and drove off heading in the opposite direction—thank
god—from my bush hiding place. I hobbled back to my car, knees aching from squatting
for so long. Admittedly, only five minutes, but I hadn’t had a chance to
exercise lately. Months, actually.
Grabbing the keys and my purse, I said, “Come on. We’re
taking your car.”
“We are?” Paul bailed out of my car so fast he almost fell
over. We ran over to his Buick sedan.
“Let me drive,” I said, holding my hand out for the keys.
Okay, I might have snapped my fingers in that “gimme now” kind of way.
“No, you can’t.” He jumped in the driver’s seat and I had no
choice but to get in the other side.
“Then, you better drive fast. You have to catch up to him.”
“We don’t even know where he went. He’s long gone.” Paul
objected, but he headed off in the direction Mitch had gone.
“Just head toward the highway. It’s only three blocks up. If
he turned off anywhere, we’re out of luck, but if he took 53 we can still catch
up.”
“North or south?”
Oh, crud. I hadn’t thought of that. South to Eau Claire or
north. I thought of the deer dangling in Mitch’s garage.
“North.”
CHAPTER FIFTY SIX
W
e didn’t have to
worry about Mitch catching on to his “tail” because we didn’t catch up with him
until seven miles later. Paul and I were both hyperventilating by the time we
saw the back of the pickup hove into view. Me, out of fear that I’d guessed
wrong; he, from the speed at which I insisted he drive in order to catch up to
Mitch. I ended up having to promise to pay any speeding ticket fines, and he
wouldn’t let me talk in case I would distract him.
We were going 72 MPH.
Although he kept a white-knuckled grip at ten-and-two on the
steering wheel, Paul relaxed enough to allow occasional speech once we had the
truck in view and he was able to slow down to a sedate 71 MPH. I made him stay
a quarter mile back to lessen the chance of being noticed. Most of the traffic
at this time of day was heading south; weekenders heading home after a trip “Up
North,” so we didn’t want to get too close.
As we neared the Bloomer exit about sixteen miles out of
Chippewa, Paul said, “How far are we going to go?”
“For as long as we can, I guess. Why?”
“What if we need gas?”
I leaned over to look. Less than a quarter tank.
Way
less.“Really, Paul? Really? I thought you’d be one of those guys who always has
a full tank. Weren’t you a Boy Scout? What if he’s heading to Canada?”
“Well, you didn’t tell me what we were doing. I thought we
were going to just sit there. I brought donuts, didn’t I? Besides, I have to be
careful about how much gas I go through. D’you have any idea how much it costs
to fill this car?”
I forced myself to stay calm, because if I started banging
my head against the dash, Paul would get distracted. I’d been kidding about
Canada, but not by much. Lots of people had cabins hidden away in isolated
areas of Northern Wisconsin. For all I knew, Mitch had stashed his wife and kids
in the family cabin clear up in Hayward or Spooner or points north.
“Besides, I don’t want to put too many miles on. My . . . um,”
he broke off the sentence, his face reddening.
The blush caught my attention. I thought about his
reluctance to let me drive and his concern about mileage and gas use, and took
a good look around the interior of the car. Spotless. A tiny white statue of a
saint, an ever-present reminder of the dangers of travel, was fixed to the
dashboard. A box of tissues swathed in an intricate white-and-yellow crocheted
cover rested on the seat between us. But it was the earthy, cola scent of Youth
Dew that confirmed my suspicion.
“Paul, is this your mom’s car?”
He went scarlet. “She just doesn’t like it if she thinks
I’ve been cruising around wasting gas.”
Cruising around?
I decided—for once—not to crack a
joke. I’d been a little snippy with Paul lately and making fun of his mother’s
perception of him as a man-about-town or the fact that he was driving a
mommy-mobile would be excessive, even for me.
“Maybe you could just tell her you were helping a friend,” I
said.
He liked the friend part, I could tell. His already
impeccable posture straightened another notch and he smiled. He even punched
the speed up to a rousing 76. Luckily we didn’t have to maintain such a
dangerous pace for long.
Mitch took the exit at Hwy. 64, heading east toward the
little town of Cornell.
Half a mile later, the “low gas” light came on and the
little alarm went ding, ding, ding.
I
went home and
took a nap. I’d run out of ideas, I’d slept badly the night before and gotten
up too early, and my head hurt. Drinking was no longer an option, but self-pity
sleeping ranked high on my reality evasion techniques.
When I woke, it was raining. It was also the next day. It took
my foggy brain a while to accept that the clock read 5:47, because it was very dark
outside. Twilight came early in the fall, but not
this
early. The
glowing red AM light on the alarm clock finally clued me in to the fact that after
getting home from my adventures with Paul, I’d slept through the rest of Sunday.
Monday morning was too much reality to face without warning, so I snuggled back
under the covers.
The steady downpour drummed on the windows, making my
apartment a cozy haven. Siggy lay curled up next to me, sleep-buzzing.
Unfortunately the sound of the rain made me realize that not only had I slept nearly
eighteen hours, I’d not gone to the bathroom in that length of time either.
After using the facilities, I wrapped myself in a fuzzy
throw blanket and shuffled out to the kitchen. The apartment was cold; I
refused to turn the heat on before November, but in Wisconsin that meant
wearing layers indoors as well as out. I peeked into the fridge, but there was
nothing I felt like eating. I grabbed a box of cereal from the cabinet and ate
a handful, dry.
Penance for my stupidity.
Of course, the phone rang just as I’d palmed a handful of
dry cereal into my mouth. My greeting sounded particularly crunchy.
“Letty? It’s Astrid.”
Holy crap. “Astrid? What’s up?”
“We had a visitor this morning. Have you been harassing
Mitch and Karissa Williams?”
“Harassing? No. Of course not.” Stalking might be a better
term, but why quibble?
“He was really angry, Letty. I was afraid some of the women
might see him and be triggered. Apparently he thinks you’ve been
misrepresenting yourself and trying to weasel information from him about
Karissa’s whereabouts. Those were his words.”
“Really? How weird.” My heart was racing and my mouth had a
pile of sand disguised as breakfast food wadded into the side of my cheek. I
decided to go with part of the truth. Sometimes that worked as good as a lie.
“I did go to talk to Karissa a while ago. Just to check on her since Regina had
been seeing her. I told you guys that.”
No, I didn’t
.
“No, you didn’t. Anyway, Clotilde would have a fit if she
knew you were upsetting a former client. Maybe you meant well, but you’ve got
to remember how afraid and distrustful these women have to be. They’re on
constant alert.”
They weren’t the only ones.
“Look, Astrid, I was just
trying to fulfill Regina’s wishes. You know? And I was worried that she and the
boys had been re-traumatized.”
Damn!
I wished I hadn’t brought that up.
“By, um, hearing about the accident.”
“I understand. If you promise you’ll be more careful next
time, I won’t mention it to Clotilde. She seems to be really stressed lately. I
think she’s been worried about Karissa, too. Will you be coming in this
morning?”
“Why do you think Clotilde is worrying about Karissa? Did
she say something?”
“Oh, never mind. I’m sure it’s my imagination. Are you
bringing that man back? I think that’s another thing that’s bothering Clotilde,
and I’m sorry to say I agree with her on that one. We just haven’t had good
experiences with male therapists working here.”
“I didn’t set it up, Astrid. It’s just his internship.
Besides, Paul is as harmless as you can get.”
“Maybe to you, but this is a refuge, Letty. It just feels
strange. He did look pretty mild, though, from what I saw. Just follow
Clotilde’s instructions and keep a close eye on him.”