T's Trial: A Bone Cold--Alive Novel (21 page)

“Why’d she not play? I’ve always taken solace in my music.”

“I don’t know, Sam. She’s never cared to confide that in me, and since she’s started back, I figure it’s none of my business. Maybe she’ll tell you.” Bertie studied the rest of the wall, then her tone became brusque. “This last section’s devoted to Harrison. Pretty self-explanatory.” She turned back to them. “Any questions?”

They exchanged glances. T had a few, but he’d really rather discuss them just with Bertie. He could tell Fletch was curious enough about their relationship already without adding fuel to the fire. They shook their heads.

“Well, then, let’s get out of here.” They stood and followed her out as they’d followed her in. She shut the door firmly behind them. “Goodness, it’s already dark! I hadn’t realized it was getting so late. I’d better be getting on home.” She shuffled toward the door, T in her wake. She stopped as she got to the piano and smiled at the carnage of sheet music and books. “This looks so familiar. I’d forgotten how messy Lyla used to be!”

“What? You should have seen her when she saw this the first time!”

“Well, she really didn’t have anything to complain about. She’s done worse.” Bertie’s hand was on the doorknob. T was standing by the piano bench with his mouth open. “You enjoy boats?”

“Never had much experience.”

“How about you, Mr. Fletcher? I hear you can really navigate your way around in that bass boat.”

He blushed slightly. “That’s about the extent of my knowledge.”

“I’ve got a real nice twenty-five footer, sleeps four. I don’t go out by myself any more, my arthritis is just too picky, but I do enjoy the water. What say I keep you boys out of trouble this weekend and teach you how to navigate?” She looked from one to the other, then they looked at each other. No answer forthcoming, she continued. “You never can tell when such knowledge might come in handy. Like for taking a girl for a midnight spin.”

T’s head pivoted to her. “Sounds good to me. What say, Fletch?”

The manager rocked back on his heels. “I’ve enjoyed the bass boat. Sure, I’ll come. Never too old to learn a new trick.”

“That’s always been my motto.” She opened the door. “Let’s say seven in the morning, dock two slip four at the Lee. The Osborne Osprey. You can’t miss her, she’s the only one like it out there. Bring your swimsuits. Water’s perfect. I’ll be waiting for you. Evening, gentlemen. Thanks for dinner.” She nodded to them and closed the door behind herself.

They stood in silence. Fletch bent to retrieve the pile of staff paper under the piano bench. “Can you believe what a hypocrite Lyla is? She scattered her music, too!” T kept his tone light, joking as he stacked the hymnals.

“Hypocrite, did you say? Is that the pot calling the kettle black?” Fletch moved over to the piano. “What all does ol’ worldly wise Bertie know about you?”

“Nothing.”

“Child prodigy?”

“She’s a good guesser?”

“Are you slipping off and having tea with the old girl? Playing ‘I’ve Got a Secret’?”

“No.” He sat down at the keyboard, placed his hands lovingly over the ivory.

“T, look at me.” He narrowed his eyes in Fletch’s direction. “Just a little explanation, that’s all I’m asking. What does she know?”

“That I love Lyla.”

“And?”

“She doesn’t know anything else.”

“Suspicion?”

“Oh, she’s got suspicions enough for the both of us.” Fletcher raised his eyebrows, his trademark ‘do go on’ look that he knew BCA loved to make fun of when he wasn’t around. “Well, she did wander in with a copy of our favorite smut sheet and held it up to my face and said I was much better looking than T. Or maybe that was C. Gee, I can’t remember.”

“Gee? You’re saying ‘gee’? I’m in a time warp.”

“It’s your time warp, Fletch. You brought us here.”

“So you fall in love with the landlady and ruin her life and somehow it’s all my fault.”

“Her life isn’t ruined. I’ll pull away before I’ll do that.”

“Is that before or after your moonlight sail that Bertie’s preparing you for?”

“Lighten up, Fletch.” He began chording up the scales. “In all honesty, I think Bertie has us figured out. But…” He went down the scales now. “But she’s in our corner. She loves a secret. Most importantly, she loves Lyla and Harrison. So if she’s going to teach me about her boat so I can take Lyla out for a wonderfully romantic evening, then she trusts me not to hurt her. Now,” he finished and began in another key. “Why don’t you trust me, too?”

“I know you.”

“You know Eddie T.” He abruptly stopped the notes and extended his right hand to Fletcher. “Meet Sam.”

Fletch was stunned. What he believed in was an old adage every culture had a version of. His favorite was: be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. Hell, he finally was.

Chapter Seventeen

L
yla opened her front door cautiously, shushing Harrison who was behind her. Their knocking had brought no results and the dock was empty. She assumed Fletch was already out cruising the lake, and surely at ten in the morning Sam was out of bed. Still, she tiptoed, calling softly. Harrison was sneaking into the kitchen and then checking the hot tub. She quietly went down the hall, but the beds were empty.

“They’re not here. Shoot, where could they have gone?” Harrison flopped down on the couch.

Lyla rested her hands on the tops of her hips. The place showed all the signs of two bachelors. Where to begin?

“I think I’ll walk back to the marina.”

“I think not. You begged to come, you’re in this for the long haul.”

“Mo—om.” He flounced back on the loveseat and thumped his sneakered heels against the floor.

Lyla divided the work between them. She started a washer load of towels and sent Harrison to vacuum. She checked the refrigerator and made a mental note of what seemed to be needed from the list she’d worked with a week before. Had it really been more than a week? Sam and Fletch seemed like a part of her life. More so than any other guests had. She was scribbling a note to ask Fletch if he wanted her to shop for him when the piano tinkled into life.

The tune was barely discernible through Harrison’s amateur efforts. He was struggling from chord to chord, finally giving up and playing the melody only. It was Sam’s jazz song from earlier in the week. He’d obviously worked on it, incorporating, she noted with a bit of pride, some of her ideas.

She laid the pen down and went into the living room. Harrison was concentrating on the scrawl left by the composer. He looked up when she stood beside him. “I just wanted to try it,” he explained. “There’s no fingering and it’s hard. I can’t even reach.” Lyla moved around behind him and easily handled the chord. It was slightly dissonant, in keeping with the style of the piece. “Play it for me, Mama.” Harrison slid over and patted the seat beside him.

“This is hardly doing our work,” she mumbled but she sat down and flipped the score paper back to the beginning. He had worked on it considerably. The accompaniment was fleshed out through three pages now. The timing was strong but varied. There were enough eighth and sixteenth notes to keep her fingers flying. Once she got into the rhythm, it was a fun piece. By the time the left hand quit on the fourth page, she had some definite ideas on editing the score. “You see a pencil?” Harrison spied one on the floor. He retrieved it for her and watched as she erased two chords and rewrote a third.

“Won’t Sam mind?”

Lyla quickly thought about the disruption her life took when he began playing her song from Wes. She owed him this. “Not in the least.”

Harrison listened to her for a minute as she made changes and gleefully rewrote through one score and then another. “I think I’ll go vacuum.” He slid off the bench. Lyla put the pencil in her mouth and clamped down on it as she studied and played what she had written. The noise of the vacuum was effectively blocked out.

Fifteen minutes later, the place vacuumed to his satisfaction, Harrison quickly got her attention by playing the upper keys. She turned to him, her eyes narrowing at the interruption. Harrison immediately changed from complaint to compliance. “Want me to put the towels in the dryer, the sheets in the washer?”

“That would be sweet. I’ll just be another minute.”

“Don’t forget Grandpa said I could work with him this afternoon.” He crossed his arms.

“I know.” Lyla closed her eyes and mentally pulled away from the project. “You win. I’ll quit.” Reluctantly, she put down the pencil and stood. Sam’s silence last night had bothered her. She had expected a phone call after the morning visit. He’d hardly be silent after he saw this! Then she chastened herself: Put your head on straight, Lyla. It was just a goodnight kiss! And a good morning one, she answered back as she picked up the music books and put them in the cabinet. The newly scored piece she left in prominent display on the piano.

She tucked the bench under the keyboard and went to tackle the bathrooms.

*  *  *

T pushed the front door open and appreciated the sympathetic groan it emitted. They stumbled into the living room, dropping their duffel bags by the door, heading for the loveseats. Lying down, T let his feet dangle from one end, his head from the other. “Fletch, tell me, please, please, tell me, she said it was a sailboat.” He closed his eyes and flung one arm over them. “A nice romantic sailboat.”

“I’d have sworn she did.” Fletch’s eyes were fixed on a point just beyond his toes. “Midnight sail. Didn’t she say that?”

“Fletch, we were suckered.” They sat on in silence. “Lyla was here today.”

“Place is clean.” Their voices were monotones. “Wonder if she left supper.”

“No, not what I meant. I smell her. She wore my perfume.” A smile escaped from his lips. It was brief.

“We could have jumped ship, you know. I spotted our dock once. Over the side,” he skidded his hands together, “gone before she knew what hit her!”

T chuckled softly. “Yeah, that’s us, rats over the side of a sinking houseboat.” He turned on his side to face Fletch. “Can you believe? She said it was the only one out there. Who else would have a houseboat?” He started laughing. “The ol’ girl just wanted it cleaned up.” He raised on an elbow and mimicked Bertie. “Mr. Fletcher, the decks haven’t been washed in ever so long!”

“But you got to clean the head.” He was laughing so hard, tears started running down his cheeks. “If C could have seen you!”

“I won’t tell if you won’t.”

Fletch looked at him. “Um, I don’t know. It has definite blackmail potential.”

“How about when you went overboard because you were leaning out too far over the top?” His arms made a diving motion into the air.

“I see absolutely no reason to tell anyone about this—” he sought a word, “adventure.”

“Amen.” T nestled his head on the arm of the loveseat. “But we do have houseboat privileges now.”

“Just what I was aiming for. How to back, how to turn, how to clean the head.”

“If you’re good, I’ll show you how.”

“I’ll pass, thank you.” He scooted deeper into the cushions.

“What about supper?”

“What about it?”

“I’m starving, Fletch. Go warm up leftovers.”

“Go warm them up yourself.”

“I barely had the energy to climb up the steps from the dock. How am I supposed to open the refrigerator?”

“Try the peanut butter in the pantry. Door’s not as heavy.”

“What if I start the hot tub and you make the sandwiches?”

“Well, that sounds like an equal distribution of the labor.” Neither moved.

T tried again. “What if you make supper and I put the wet clothes in the washer and start the hot tub?”

“Closer. You are getting closer.”

“I don’t know how to do anything else to get closer.”

Fletch smiled. “Okay. On the count of three we both get up and get busy.” T nodded. “One, two, three.” Neither moved. “T—”

“All right, all right.” He swung his legs over the edge of the cushions and sat up. “If she hadn’t provided such a good lunch, I’d probably be near death right now.”

“Cold fried chicken, hard boiled eggs,” Fletch started repeating the menu as he stumbled off toward the kitchen. T veered to the bags by the front door, taking in the neatness of the area around the piano. When he raised his eyes to the music stand, he immediately noticed the penciled changes.

“I thought you were worn out,” Fletch admonished from the kitchen doorway. He held a jar of peanut butter in one hand, a slice of bread in the other. T stood at the piano bench, letting the tone of a lone note hang in the air.

“She messed with my music.” T was following the last page with his eyes. He didn’t need to play it to hear the complexity, feel the subtleties. He flipped back to the beginning. She hadn’t touched it.

He seated himself at the piano and began to play in the middle of the third page. Fletch stood over him. “Chunky or smooth?”

“Oh, Lyla’s smooth. She’s probably been waiting all week to get her hands on this.”

“The peanut butter, dumb ass.”

“I’m not hungry.” He was intrigued and a touch perturbed. What she had done he liked. Better than his own. Damn, she was as good as he was!

“I’ll make you one of each.” Fletch ambled back to the kitchen, then returned for the duffels. So much for a division of the labor.

Twenty minutes later, Fletch sat
au naturel
in the hot tub. There were no remains of his two sandwiches. The soft drink can was empty, the ice cream carton held only a spoon. He had left the door to the house open slightly and the strains of the piece T had been working on all week drifted out. Fletch’s expertise was limited, but still he recognized the parts T had not composed. Good girl, Lyla, he chuckled as he watched the last light of day disappear. Give him a run for his money.

He wasn’t surprised to find T standing at his side. He pointed to the full plate on the decking.

“I’m not—well, maybe I am a little.” He reached for them and the first was gone in three bites. “Are you in there nude? Jeez, Fletch, that’s disgusting!”

“This from the man who owes his sobriety—nay, even his life!—to his own strip act.”