Rob Cornell - Ridley Brone 01 - Last Call (7 page)

“Oh, damn.”

I slid out of the booth and headed over to let Sheila know we’d lost another employee.

“Ridley!”

I turned toward the call.

A guy trudged toward me. He wore his hair in a devil’s lock, everything shaved except for one long patch that hung down his face. A row of silver hoops ran all the way up one ear, a silver stud pierced his eyebrow, and another silver hoop dangled from his lip. A skull and crossbones silk-screened on his t-shirt peeked out from under his coat.

I took a step back, ready to make a defensive move, until I recognized something in his eyes. I knew this guy.

“Devon?”

He jerked his head back as if surprised I remembered his name. “Yeah, dude. Long time no see, eh?”

In high school I had two good friends—Tom Fortier, and Devon Whitegard. Like three outcasts, we often sat at a corner table in the cafeteria, glaring at the other kids with defiant smirks, as if we had a secret the rest only wished they knew. In reality, we had no clue how to socialize.

“Good to see you,” I said.

He sucked on the hoop in his lip. He hadn’t had any of the piercings or the devil’s lock in high school, but he still looked like the same old Devon—the bony limbs, the stooped posture as if trying to compensate for his height, the bulging eyes.

“Cool,” he said with a nod, coming to some decision. “Can we talk?”

I glanced toward the bar. Sheila poured a line of shots in front of a trio of hairy guys wearing trucker hats and designer shirts.

“Give me five minutes, Dev. I’ve got to put out some fires.”

“Sure, okay.”

“Go ahead and have a seat,” I hooked a thumb toward my booth.

I nudged my way to the bar and waved to get Sheila’s attention.

“What is it?” she asked, hitting me with cinnamon-scented breath.

“Mandy just quit.”

“What did you do?”

“What did I do?”

Sheila cut a hand through the air. “You need to step up to the plate.”

“I was afraid of that.” The opening bars of “Just a Gigolo” by Louis Prima played, and I knew Hal was up again even before he started signing. “Mandy said something about more missing booze.”

A guy at the end of the bar shouted, “Did that old bag finally kick, or can I still get a drink?”

Sheila glanced toward the voice. “I have to take care of this.”

“Yeah, but the booze …”

She shot down the bar without answering.

I bulldozed my way back toward Devon.

“Is this a bad time?”

“I’m sorry, Dev. I wish I could sit and chat, but my only waitress just bailed on me and I need to fill in.”

“Bummer.”

I grabbed a cocktail napkin from the stack on the table, pulled a pen from my pocket, and scribbled my cell number on the napkin.

“Give me a call,” I said, and handed him the napkin. “I swear, sometimes my phone is actually charged.”

Devon laughed automatically, not with any real humor.

“All right. I’ve got to take drink orders.”

He grabbed for my arm and missed, but I stopped.

“I really just wanted to ask you a favor,” he said. “No. Not a favor. It’s like, I need your help.”

My stomach dropped. Not another one. “Listen, Dev. Whatever you heard, I’m not a detective anymore.”

He scrunched his face. “Detective? Naw, man, I wanted you to help me with, with singing.”

“With singing?”

He waved his hands toward the seat across from him. “Sit a sec, dude. Let me lay it out.”

I sat slowly. I’m sure I had a funny look on my face.

“This’ll sound crazy,” he said, splaying his fingers with his hands flat on the table, “but I’ve always wanted to sing like you, okay? I know, it doesn’t seem like my kind of thing. I’m the computer guy, Mr. Techno nerd. But I’ve been watching that show on TV, you know? Where those people get up and sing, and the audience votes, and there’s judges that tell them they suck?”

I wiped my face and glanced toward the stage. Hal gave a few pelvic thrusts in my direction and mimed a toast. His gold chains sparkled. The disco ball sparkled. Everything was so nice and sparkly.

“Some of those people,” Devon continued. “They can’t even carry a tune. Even I can carry a tune. So I’m thinking, they’re going to have new tryouts this summer. I know I won’t win. But if I make the first round?” He clapped his hands, then pumped his fists. “Free trip to Hollywood, right?”

“Why would you need my help?”

“The longer I can stay in the game, the longer I get to stay in Hollywood. You could give me a few lessons—”

I waved him off. “I don’t sing anymore, Dev.”

“I’ll pay you.”

“It isn’t about money. I haven’t sung in a long time.”

“Not even in the shower?”

I hummed sometimes. I sang under my breath. And in the car, windows rolled up and the radio blaring, I’d give my lungs a workout. But it wasn’t the same. “Listen, Dev. It’s stupid, but I made a promise a long time ago that I wouldn’t sing anymore. I wouldn’t make a very good teacher.”

“Come on. It’ll be like Master Jedi and apprentice. You can show me the ways of the force.”

“I’m no master.”

Devon cupped his hands over his mouth and spoke in a deep voice while breathing heavy, impersonating Darth Vader. “Ridley, you are my vocal teacher.”

I laughed. He would never outgrow his Star Wars obsession. It was good to see some things hadn’t changed.

He dropped his hands from his face. “Will you do it?”

I let my laughter peter out. “I’m sorry, I can’t.”

“You’re serious?”

“Trust me,” I said, “there are dozens of listings in the Yellow Pages for voice teachers that will do a damn good job.”

“Whatever, man.” He stood and tossed the napkin with my number onto the table. “If I’d wanted some random person out of the phonebook, I wouldn’t have come to you.”

“Ridley,” Sheila shouted from the bar. “Could use a little help.”

I acknowledged her with a wave and turned back to ask Devon if we could meet up at a later time.

He had already left.

Lakeland Cemetery, a well-groomed rolling pasture of green that would make most golfers envious if it weren’t for all the tombstones, sits at the heart of Hawthorne. My parents were buried on the west side of the cemetery, and while their every living moment had revolved around flamboyance, in death they had settled down to simplicity—two inconspicuous grave stones, side-by-side and flush with the ground.

I stood by their graves, looking down at the marble rectangles imbedded in the grass. My wet eyes felt cold in the night breeze, and the skin around my eyes sticky. I barely felt the tingle in my arm from where I’d picked out the few pieces of glass.

Technically the cemetery was closed, but a hundred dollar bill could get you into almost anywhere if passed to the right hand. One of the advantages of being a millionaire was that you never seemed to run out of those hundred dollar bills.

Something I was still trying to get used to.

I crouched, plucked away some grass that had started encroaching on my mother’s stone. I brushed dirt off the surface. I traced her carved name with the tips of my fingers.

“This is the part where I start talking to you like you’re here,” I said. “Only you’re not here. You can’t hear me, and no matter how many times I say I’m sorry, it’s too damn late.”

A blacktopped road snaked through the cemetery. Light posts that cast a surprisingly sharp light, more on par with a parking lot than a cemetery, lined the road. My parents sat close enough to the road for the light to reach me, but while I stood on my mother’s side, my body cast a shadow on their graves.

I straightened and strolled over to my father’s side, circling the space where I imagined they lay, never crossing over.

I bent, plucked a weed that wasn’t really in the way, and touched his cold gravestone.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

I brushed my palm over the grass, the tips of each blade tickling my skin until a chill shook me. I made a fist to chase away the chill.

“Why did you leave it with me? You knew I hated that place.”

Of course, they didn’t answer.

I listened to the breeze. The breeze actually sounded like a voice as it whispered in my ears, but I couldn’t make out any words.

I stood, jammed my hands back into my jacket pockets, and started walking toward my car. Then I stopped. I looked at the car, the streetlight reflecting off its sleek surface. It wasn’t my car. It was their car. My car was a Honda Civic, not a BMW. This wasn’t me. None of this was me.

I spun around to tell my parents to forget it, I was done trying, I didn’t belong in Hawthorne, I never had, when my cell rang. The sound startled me.

I flipped open the phone, checked the caller ID.

Autumn.

I started to close the phone, which would automatically send the call to voicemail. I wasn’t in the mood to talk to her. I’d done my job. She didn’t need me anymore.

The phone rang again.

I wondered how her argument with Doug had gone, what he might have said about me, if she had explained who I was to him. I wondered if she’d decided to confront him about the mysterious woman, even though she’d forced me to take back the pictures.

I wondered why was she calling me so late?

The phone rang a third time.

I answered.

It wasn’t any kind of word that met my ear; the breeze had sounded more voice-like. A high pitched keen came through the phone and set my teeth on edge, stood up the hair on the back of my neck.

“Autumn?”

Another strained sound came through the phone, then a choking cough. She was trying to speak, but couldn’t. It sounded like someone was strangling her. My mind flashed to a picture of Doug with his hands around her neck. I tried to get a grip before jumping to any conclusions.

“Autumn, are you hurt?”

“Blood,” she wheezed, then the phone disconnected, though I couldn’t tell if she’d hung up or if my cell’s signal had faded.

I checked my bars. I had a full set. There weren’t many things getting in the way of a signal in the middle of a cemetery. I started to dial her back, then ran for the car instead, thinking about the only word Autumn had managed to speak.

Blood
.

Chapter 6

I didn’t bother knocking, threw the front door open and charged into the house. “Autumn?”

I froze in the foyer, listening.

The smallest gasps, as if from a child, echoed in an otherwise black hole of silence.

My hands shook as I rushed down the hall and into the kitchen. When I rounded the corner, I found Autumn lying on the kitchen tiles, her face mashed against the floor as if trying to cool her flushed cheeks.

A sharp, sticky smell hung in the air.

I crouched by Autumn’s curled body, rested a hand on her shoulder. Her phone lay face down a few feet away, bleating incessantly from being left off the hook. I sensed the dead presence in the living room without having to look up. Was it the smell? Or was the living room somehow cooler than the kitchen, an absence of life sucking away the heat?

I glanced up from Autumn for a second, expecting to find him on the floor. Instead, Doug lay draped on his belly over the coffee table, arms and head dangling over the edge nearest the couch. His legs, tangled together at the ankles, trailed away from the table like a pair of loose braids. A messy hole marked his back. Blood seeped out from under his chest, probably from an exit wound, and lacquered the table. A line of spittle hung from his slack jaw all the way to the floor.

Autumn shuddered under my touch. I bundled her close to me and lifted her from the floor, straining my back against her limp weight. If not for her breathing, she could have passed for dead herself.

I carried her to the front sitting room and set her in one of a pair of matching wing chairs.

She did not stir.

“Autumn.” I brushed her cold cheek. “What happened?”

She moaned, but her eyes were closed and her face cocked away from me. She might have been dreaming for all I knew.

I dug into my pocket for my cell phone.

Autumn’s eyes fluttered open. “What …”

I brushed some hair away from her forehead. “I’m calling the police. I’ll have them bring an ambulance.”

A shock of electricity could not have snapped her to her life more quickly. She shot out a hand and snatched my wrist. “No.”

The muscles in my arm tensed, not against her grip but against what I was afraid Autumn might say next.

“No?”

The way she looked past me, staring as if seeing something play across the air in front of her like a movie, sent a prickle up my spine. Until now, I’d reacted on instinct, rushing to make sure she was safe. But the tumblers finally fell into place, the combination of events unlocking the pattern and inevitable conclusions.

“What happened, Autumn?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t know, or can’t say?”

She shook her head.

“Do you know how this looks?” I asked.

Her lips peeled away from her teeth. Her voice came ragged, as if she spoke through a torn throat. “It looks like someone killed my husband.”

“What happened?”