Cool Shade Page 12

  She thought about Enid.

  She supposed no news was good news.

  She thought about Eddie, that son of a bitch. In her mind, she pictured him finding her note. Maybe the word scumball had been too mild. Maybe she should have used something stronger like asshole.

  ~0~

  Eddie and Jason walked side by side up the levee, fishing poles over their shoulders, both of them whistling the Andy Griffith Show theme song. They'd caught some pretty good-sized catfish, plus a couple of small bluegill that they'd put back. Jason had enjoyed himself.

  People were always saying that they didn't want to grow up. They didn't mean it. Couldn't mean it. Jason would never grow up.

  They cleaned the fish, then Eddie handed the bucket to Jason. "Don't forget to either put these in the refrigerator right away, or have Adel cook them."

  "Okay." Jason held the bucket tight in both hands, shuffling his feet. "Why don't you come and eat with us?"

  Eddie thought about the times, years ago, when he'd sat at their kitchen table. He shook his head. "No, not today."

  "Sometime?"

  "Yeah. Sometime."

  "Promise?"

  "Promise."

  Eddie watched Jason pedal down the lane on his bike, then he turned to go in the house.

  A note. On the door.

  He grabbed it, and something pink and gooey stretched from the door to the paper.

  Gum.

  At first, he laughed.

  Was she ever pissed.

  Then, he started thinking about the bad locks on her doors. If he hadn't broken in, who had? And would they come back?

  ~0~

  Maddie carefully slid the mousetrap inside the plastic cassette tape holder. On the outside of the case, in magic marker, she wrote the word scumball.

  That should attract his attention, she thought, putting the case in the middle of Eddie's kitchen table. He wouldn't be able to resist a temptation like that….

  Her head. Her head was killing her.

  Maddie groaned and rolled over, hugging the pillow to her, trying to return to the dream, unable to do so because of a throbbing headache. Why'd she drink the whole bottle of wine?

  "Maddie. Wake up."

  Enid. In her dream.

  I've been looking for you, Maddie told her. Wondering where you'd gone.

  "Maddie."

  Maddie came awake with a start, or at least she thought she was awake.

  "Enid?"

  "Hello, Madison."

  Maddie sat up, blinking at the dark shape near the end of the bed.

  She switched on the bedside lamp.

  Enid stood there in all her glory, looking tacky with her overbleached hair, her thick makeup, her mile-long nails. She smelled like a combination of expensive perfume and an ashtray full of cigarette butts on a humid day.

  What a relief. "Enid. My God."

  Maddie felt a rush of kinship, of sisterly affection that caught her by surprise. She scrambled off the bed, took three steps toward her sister, then stopped.

  Enid didn't seem as thrilled with the reunion.

  "I thought you were dead!" Maddie said, trying to make Enid understand what she'd been going through. "I thought you'd been murdered. I thought you'd been in a plane crash."

  Her head took that moment to remind her of her recent overindulgence. Her brain felt swollen, her thoughts muddled.

  Enid.

  Alive.

  "I want the tape."

  No "Nice to see you, sis. How ya been?"

  "What are you talking about?" What was all this about a tape? The whole thing made Maddie's head hurt even more.

  "The demo tape. Where is it?"

  Enid's voice was rougher than Maddie remembered, more gravelly. Hard living. It did that to a person.

  "I've turned this place upside down and couldn't find it. What did you do with it?"

  "You ransacked your own house?"

  "That reminds me. What did you do with my VCR?"

  "I hocked it."

  "I want it back."

  So very Enid in her reaction. "Let's see. You stole my car and wiped out my bank account if I remember correctly."

  "You were fair game. You've always been fair game."

  "Why didn't you just ask me if I had your precious tape?"

  "I didn't want anybody to know I was in town. I owe a lot of people money. I wanted them to think I was dead."

  "I thought you were dead."

  Enid shrugged. “It's not like we've ever been close."

  Maddie's thoughts shifted. In her mind's eye, she visualized the note she'd left for Eddie.

  Whoops.

  Enid made a disgusted sound. "You've screwed everything up."

  "I came here because you were missing."

  "I was supposed to be missing. That was the idea. Now give me the tape, and I'll go missing again."

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "I sent it to you. When you were in Arizona."

  Maddie shook her head. She wasn't getting any of this.

  Enid began to pace back and forth, talking with her hands. "I used a fake name and sent the tape to you in Arizona. But when I went all the way out there to get it, you were gone."

  "It took you two months to get to Arizona?"

  "I was busy trying to find a buyer for the tape. There’s so much involved when you do something of this magnitude. I even bought myself a new identity, but I'm not telling you what it is. I wanted Enid to vanish. I wanted to be presumed dead. That was the whole idea. I didn't want anybody looking for me. The tape, Maddie. I have somebody willing to pay me a quarter of a million for it."

  "What could be worth that kind of money?" Maddie asked, more to herself than Enid.

  "'Cool Shade.'" Enid smiled, proud of herself.

  It made Maddie think of times when they were little and Enid had done something bad. She'd never seemed to feel remorse or guilt, only self-satisfaction. Enid had worried her then, but Maddie had hoped with time, her sister would develop a conscience. It looked as if it hadn't happened. An interesting case study. A possible answer to the age-old question of whether or not a person is born with a sense of right and wrong.

  "You took the tape from Eddie’s house," Maddie said.

  "He was passed out. I wasn't expecting to find anything like that. I was looking for some pot or crack or something. Anything. What I found was the tape."

  She plopped into a chair, crossing her bare legs, swinging a foot with red toenails and strappy sandals. "Eddie Berlin." She gave her head an indignant toss. Her eyes hardened.

  A woman scorned.

  "That asshole. He didn't want me. He called Al for a hooker, and when I got there, he looked at me, then told me to leave! To leave! And then he passed out."

  "And that's when you found the tape."

  "I needed some kind of compensation, something for my trouble. I should have kept the tape myself, but I panicked. I thought he'd notice it was gone and put it together. So I mailed it to you. I wasn't worried about you playing it. In your letter, you said you couldn't play music with words at that piddly little station." She let out a bitter laugh. "I should have kept it. He never even missed it."

  Until yesterday.

  "Where's the tape, little sister?"

  Maddie rubbed her head, trying to stall, trying to think.

  "A quarter of a millions dollars," Enid said, as if her words might help Maddie remember.

  "The tape isn't yours to sell." Why did she bother trying to appeal to a conscience Enid didn't have?

  "I'll give you a fourth of the money."

  Enid thought everybody was like her, they just didn't know it yet. And that someday they would come around, realizing what fools they'd always been by clinging to ideals that got them nowhere.

  Enid jumped to her feet.

  The longer Maddie stalled, the angrier Enid became. "You were always so goody-goody, so Miss Perfect."

  She stepped closer, the light falling across h
er face, a face that looked older than it should. Her inner arms were bruised. Junkie.

  "That's a lovely shade of purple there," Maddie said blandly, all the while a black despair sinking into her heart. How did a person come to this?

  "Shut up and get me the tape."

  Maddie grabbed her jeans and put them on, slipping them under the oversized T-shirt. "I can't believe I wasted my time coming here," she said, zipping her pants, shoving her feet into a pair of clogs.

  "All of our lives are a waste, no matter where we are, no matter what we're doing," Enid said. "Don't you get it, Maddie? What have you accomplished in your years of self-righteousness? Found a cure for cancer? How about AIDS? Or even the clap?"

  "We don't have to all be stars," Maddie said quietly, more to herself than to Enid. She had to believe that every life was important. If not, she couldn't exist. Couldn't live. "We can cherish the quiet moments. We can live day to day."

  Enid let out a snort and shook her head. "You haven't changed. You're the same fool you always were. This is it. All there is. People scrambling, scraping, getting what they can while they can."

  "I'd rather be a fool than a vulture feeding off other people." Maddie walked toward the door.

  Enid jumped to her feet, putting her arm across the opening. "Where are you going?"

  "To get the tape. It's outside. In my car. In the glove compartment."

  Enid laughed, a gust of cigarette breath hitting Maddie in the face. "You always thought I was an airhead, didn't you? You wait here." She left, running down the steps.

  By the time Maddie got downstairs, Enid was rushing in the front door, tape in hand.

  "I'll get my things and go," Maddie said, anxious to get out of there before Enid tried to play the tape.

  "Don't you want to hear it?"

  "No."

  But Enid was already in front of the stereo. She pushed the power button and slipped in the tape.

  At first it was just the hiss of the tape moving over the pickup.

  Then voices.

  People talking, muttering, like far-off crowd noises.

  Enid frowned and turned it up.

  That just made it hiss more. She pushed the Fast Forward, stopped it, then listened again. More distant voices, like something picking up the wrong track, or like a tape that had been erased but not erased completely.

  Frantic, Enid fast-forwarded to the end, flipped it over, and tried the other side.

  Blank.

  Enid was about to lose it. "The song. The song is gone!"

  Maddie shrugged. "Cassette tapes don't last forever. Maybe the heat in the car fried it."

  Enid let out an enraged shriek. She'd always been a screamer, always had a temper, but still, Maddie was unprepared for her next move.

  Enid hit her.

  Not a wimpy, girlie shove, but a hard opened-palmed slap against her face, knocking Maddie against the wall, bringing tears to her eyes.

  Enid was right, they'd never been close, never gotten along, but even in the years when they had no contact, Maddie had always clung to the notion that Enid was still Enid.

  This wasn't Enid. This was somebody else. Somebody Maddie didn't know or want to know.

  "Get out!" Enid screamed, her face red, flecks of spit flying from her mouth. "Get out of my house!"

  Maddie was only too glad to comply. Whoever said blood was thicker than water didn't have a relative like Enid.

  Chapter 22

  Mr. Self-Destruct

  Maddie was sure she hadn't gotten all of her things, but she didn't care. She just wanted out. She had Hemingway. He was all that really mattered.

  Three trips and Maddie’s car was loaded, with Hemingway yowling in his cage on the passenger seat. Still wearing her gray sleep shirt over a pair of faded jeans, Maddie slid into the driver's seat and reached for the key.

  As soon as the engine turned over, she got an unpleasant reminder. No muffler. Her car sounded like a dragster. The mouse that roared.

  Maddie put the vehicle in gear. The car limped away from the curb, the headlights illuminating nothing but what was directly in front of her.

  A fitting analogy of her life. In her case, she could only hope that it was the destination that mattered most and not the journey.

  She squinted in the rearview mirror and spotted a flashing red light. Great. A cop.

  She pulled over and cut the engine.

  Blessed silence.

  "Do you realize what time it is?"

  What a coincidence. A cop copping an attitude. The weirdest things went through her head at the oddest times.

  "According to my watch"—she lifted her arm— "almost two o'clock."

  "We had several calls earlier today complaining about the noise your car is making."

  She looked past him to the row of residential housing. "Sorry."

  "We have a noise ordinance in Chester."

  She could tell he wanted her to beg, to explain, to grovel, only to give her a ticket anyway. She wasn't playing that game. She pulled out her Arizona driver's license and handed it to him so he could write his ticket.

  He scribbled on his tablet. "Are you living here or visiting?"

  "Living here temporarily." No way was she going to fork over the money for plates and a driver's license.

  He handed her license back. "If you're going to be here any longer, you have to get a new license and plates, or apply for a temporary residence permit."

  "Yeah, I'll be sure to do that." Just as soon as I win the lottery.

  "I'm going to have to impound the vehicle."

  Was her guardian angel taking the day off? Had he quit the job completely? Was he sitting somewhere, telling another angel just how impossible his last case had been?

  "You're kidding," Maddie said, even though she knew he wasn't.

  "In order to get it back, you'll have to have the muffler repaired, plus pay the towing and impoundment fee. Impoundment is fifty dollars a day, so the quicker you get things taken care of, the better."

  What a guy.

  He didn't offer to help her with her stuff. Instead, he stood and watched as she unloaded Hemingway and one of her suitcases. She'd have to get her other things later. When, no if, she reclaimed her car.

  The cop reluctantly offered to give her a ride somewhere, which only served to remind her that she had absolutely no idea where she was going. "No thanks. You've helped me enough already."

  No reaction.

  The tow truck came.

  Maddie sat on her suitcase and watched as one end of her car was hoisted off the ground, watched as it was towed down the tree-lined street.

  The cop followed the tow truck, leaving her alone in the darkness, leaving her contemplating the houses full of people with normal lives.

  Hemingway let out a tiny, frightened meow, reminding Maddie what an unfit mother she was.

  "I'm sorry, Hemingway. You should be living with some sweet old lady, eating expensive cat food and using the kind of litter that clumps."

  He meowed again, seeming to agree.

  Maddie got to her feet, put her head and one arm through the shoulder strap of her purse, picked up Hemingway's cage in one hand, her suitcase in the other, and started walking in the direction of the radio station.

  One block later, she stopped and shifted her loads to opposite hands, then continued. Two blocks later, she heard a kind of light popping over her head. It started out slowly, then gradually increased. She stopped and looked up at the tree leaves. Something fell on her face. Something wet and cold.

  ~0~

  Enid sat on the edge of the bed, chewing the skin around her fingernails. What the hell was she going to do now? Call Al, she supposed. It hadn't been a bad life, a hundred bucks a lay. Sometimes, if the client passed out, you could get a lot more. And if the client was someone well-known, especially someone in politics, you could blackmail them.

  No, it hadn't been bad.

  Pound, pound.

  Someone at the front doo
r.

  Had her little sister come back? She hoped not.

  Maddie. She'd always expected too much from Enid, more than Enid could ever give. There had been a short time when Enid had tried to please her younger sister, tried to live within her ridiculous, idealistic boundaries. But that hadn't been Enid. She'd smothered in that place.

  There was the pounding again, followed by a man's voice shouting Maddie’s name.

  Enid jumped from the bed, ran down the steps, sidestepping the mess she'd made earlier, and unlocked the door.

  Eddie Berlin.

  Well, well.

  Standing there blinking his eyes against the glare of the porch light.

  Just as good-looking as ever. She'd do him for free anytime.

  "Where's Maddie?"

  "Eddie, right?"

  She struck a sexy pose, hand braced on the door edge, one bare leg lifted, toes pointed. Just looking at him made her horny. She'd do it with him right there on the front porch. Wouldn't that give old nutty Evelyn something to sputter about?

  Berlin wasn't her usual type. She liked guys who worked out, who were more physical than mental. She preferred her men hot and dumb. Eddie didn't fit that mold, but he made her want to drop her panties and lift her dress.

  Those eyes. God, those eyes. She'd forgotten the sex appeal that oozed from him.

  At the moment, those eyes were frowning at her. "Eden? Or is it Enid?"

  Bastard. Stinking bastard. "Don't you remember the names of the women you fuck?"

  He recoiled, giving his head a little shake as if he couldn't have heard right. "Oh, I remember you."

  But he didn't remember sleeping with her, Enid realized. Which was probably because he never had.

  He was looking for Maddie. Why was he looking for Maddie? What would he want with her? With her plain face, her plain body, her plain lifestyle. Last she'd known, her little sister was still a virgin, holding out for who knew what.

  Had her little sister done Eddie Berlin? The idea made Enid furious. The bitch. The sneaking little bitch.

  "My sister's not here, but I am."

  He didn't even blink, didn't even act as if he noticed her. He was too busy trying to piece together information, too busy checking out the trashed room behind her.

  "You do Maddie, too?" she asked.

  He reached for her.