Tough Customer

CHAPTER 11

THIS WAS DAVIS COLDARE'S LUCKY NIGHT.

"But not here where somebody might walk past and see us." Lisa Arnold removed his hand from between her thighs, pushed him off her, and sat up, pulling her tank top back into place. "In fact, not in the backseat at all. That is so retro."

Davis, his erection throbbing, his brain foggy with lust, couldn't immediately think of a suitable place other than his car in which to have carnal knowledge of Lisa Arnold. "Uh ... I don't--"

"A motel." Primly she readjusted her denim skirt to cover the area Davis had been exploring. It wasn't virgin territory.

"Motel?" he echoed stupidly. The concept didn't click because of the sensory clutter inside his head.

Lisa opened the car door and got out. "Just drive. I'll tell you where to go."

She had already switched to the passenger seat by the time Davis's cerebral synapses fired. Grimacing, he tucked himself back into his underwear, then, holding up his jeans with his left hand, got out of the backseat and into the front behind the wheel. He started the car and navigated it through the lanes of the drive-in theater, which was open only during the summer months, and where tonight a double feature of slasher movies was playing. Like Lisa and him, most people in the parked cars hadn't come to watch the films.

When the theater exit spilled them onto the highway, Lisa instructed that he turn left and reminded him to switch on his headlights. She reached across the console and slid her hand inside his jeans, squeezing him through his underwear. "Don't lose this before we get there."

"Not a chance," he panted. She began stroking him, and his eyes crossed, making it difficult to keep the center yellow stripe of the two-lane highway in focus.

"Do you have condoms?" she asked.

"Uh..."

"If you don't, I do. But from now on, it's your responsibility to bring them, okay?"

"Okay." He agreed--he would have agreed to anything--when actually all he heard was from now on, which implied a future of sexual encounters.

"Just up there on the right," she said. "I don't know the name of it, but it's got a raccoon on the sign."

He knew the place. The run-down motor court had been there for as long as he could remember, probably much longer than he'd been alive. He'd driven past it countless times without giving it a thought. Never in his wildest dreams would he have imagined he would be coming here with Lisa Arnold, the girl with the most promising put-out reputation in Merritt High School.

He pulled up to the lighted office, where a red neon Vacancy sign blinked off and on. Getting a room might cost him every penny he'd earned mowing lawns this week, but he shot one look across at Lisa and figured if it cost two weeks' income, it would be worth it to get on her. Guys who'd been with her said a blow job was practically guaranteed. But since she had insisted on someplace other than the backseat, maybe she was planning on doing more than her standard b.j. Thinking of the possibilities made his mind reel.

"Can you walk with this?" She tugged on him playfully, and he moaned. If she made him come too soon, he'd die of mortification and then he'd kill her for spoiling it. Giggling at his obvious discomfort, she said, "Guess not. Give me forty bucks."

She released him. He raised his hips off the seat and braced his feet against the floorboard so he could wedge his hand into the pocket of his jeans to get his wallet. He pulled out two twenties, which she plucked from his hand. Shooting him a cheeky grin over her shoulder, she got out. As she walked toward the office, he watched her ass, barely covered by her skirt, covered not at all by her thong, as he'd recently discovered. He groaned with desire.

Working the check-in desk was a fat lady with stringy gray hair and a blue tattoo that covered the entirety of her flabby arm. Looking miffed for being drawn away from the magazine she'd been thumbing through, she grabbed Lisa's twenties and slapped a key onto the counter. The transaction took less than fifteen seconds.

Davis was glad Lisa hadn't been required to sign a register or anything. He was gonna go through with this no matter what, but he'd just as soon his parents never found out about it. Lisa was the kind of girl his dad--his mom, too, during one especially embarrassing conversation--had warned him to beware of.

As Lisa got back into the car, her short skirt rode up her thighs, flashing him a glimpse of the heaven that awaited and obliterating from his mind parental lectures about common sense and morality. Banished by her wink were warnings about fatal diseases and unwanted pregnancies, either of which could destroy plans for a college baseball scholarship and, by extension, his life.

"All set," she said. "Number eight. Straight ahead, on the end."

He got the impression she'd been here before.

He parked in front of room number eight. Lisa got out. As Davis alighted, he wondered if maybe he should pull his car around to the back of the building, where it couldn't be seen from the road. But his parents had gone to a card party at some friends' house tonight, and they lived on the opposite side of town. His parents wouldn't be driving past here on their way home.

Still holding up his jeans with one hand, he stumbled toward the door, where Lisa was waiting. She handed him the room key. "Be a gentleman."

"Yes, ma'am." He took the key from her and made several stabs at the doorknob, missing the keyhole each time.

Lisa moved close and sandwiched his biceps between her fantasy-inducing breasts. She licked the rim of his ear and whispered, "I hope your aim improves once we get inside."

He rammed the key into the slot and twisted it, unlocking the door. "Don't worry about my aim. I'll hit the target."

"Oooh. Are we talking G-spot?"

He pushed the door open and stepped into the room. He felt along the wall for the light switch. When he flipped it up and the light came on, the last thing Davis Coldare expected to see was the startled, disheveled man standing at the side of the bed.

Berry was lying on her back, staring at the ceiling of the guest bedroom, when Caroline tapped once on the door and asked permission to come in. As soon as she cleared the threshold, Berry asked, "Is he gone?"

Caroline gave her daughter a wry smile. "He passed on dessert and coffee. But he couldn't have stayed even if he'd wanted to. He got a call on his cell phone and tore out of here. Dodge went with him."

"They're a team now?"

"Not exactly." Caroline folded a chenille throw and laid it across the arm of a chair, avoiding direct eye contact with Berry. "Dodge wanted to know the nature of the call, and when Ski told him it was official, Dodge said, 'Fine. Don't tell me. It can be a surprise when I get there.'

"Ski pointed out that Dodge didn't know where he was going, and Dodge said he would after he followed him. I suppose Ski saw the futility of arguing. Dodge climbed into his SUV along with him, and away they went."

Berry sat up. "Maybe the call was to tell him that Oren has been apprehended."

"Let's hope." Caroline sat down on the edge of the bed and reached for her daughter's hand. She placed it palm to palm with hers and linked their fingers. "You're not yourself, Berry."

"Me?" she exclaimed. "I've been thinking the same about you."

"Good try, but that tactic didn't work when you were in middle school, and it doesn't work now. You can't redirect this conversation."

"You've been onto my manipulation?"

"Since you were old enough to exercise it. But I'm not sure manipulation is the correct word. It denotes some mean purpose. You were never mean, just extremely clever."

"Not that clever. You caught on. And here I thought I was being so smart."

"Smart you are." Caroline's tone changed, became softer, more serious. "Also unshakable and in command of your emotions. It's unlike you to fly off the handle the way you did with Ski."

"'Ski'? 'Dodge'? I've never known you to get so chummy with men you've only just met. Although..."

"You're doing it again. This isn't about me. It's about you."

"Although," Berry continued stubbornly, "I believe you knew Dodge Hanley before today. And I'm not trying to divert the conversation away from me and my problems. We'll get to them, I promise.

"But first, I insist on being brought into the loop, because, up to this point, I've been left out." She lay back down and stacked her hands behind her head. "I'm listening. Who is this guy? You met him before today. I know you did. Otherwise you'd be put off by his manner and vocabulary."

Caroline sighed. "All right, I confess. I met Dodge in Houston a few years ago."

"How?"

"Through my friend, when she retained him to do some private investigating for her. She was uncomfortable with the whole idea. It seemed sordid, sleazy, a B-movie-type action to take. Dodge, being Dodge, made her even more apprehensive. So she wanted me to meet him and give her my honest opinion. Did he seem reputable? Worth his fee? That sort of thing. I had no experience in those matters, either, but she valued my judgment of people in general."

"Which friend? Do I know her?"

"Yes, but I can't tell you who it is."

"How come?"

"Because that would betray her confidence."

"Did Daddy ever meet him? Dodge, I mean."

Caroline laughed. "Goodness, no. Can you imagine the two of them even being in the same room?"

Berry smiled. Her dad had been a slender man, not very tall, but so dignified that his modest stature went unnoticed. He was tidy and compact, soft-spoken, cultured, and genteel. The polar opposite of Dodge Hanley.

Caroline was saying, "I didn't tell anyone, even Jim, about the straits my friend was in. It was a messy, humiliating situation."

"Cheating husband?"

"All I'll say is that she was desperate, or she would never have sought the services of a private investigator."

Berry mulled over her mother's wording, then asked softly, "Is that why you sought his services? Do you regard my current situation as desperate?"

"Not yet. He'll help keep it from becoming so."

"He's a street fighter."

"I'm sure."

"Irreverent, disrespectful of authority, and beyond the pale."

"I doubt he lets rules get in his way."

"He's unrefined."

"You should have seen him in Mabel's Tearoom."

Berry laughed. "You took him to a tearoom?"

"I had to meet him somewhere." She thought for a moment, then added, "Actually, he handled it with more aplomb than one would expect."

"He's kinda cute," Berry said. "If you're into scruffy."

"I hadn't thought of him in that way."

Berry gave her mother a playful nudge. "Come on. He's cute. Admit it."

"Some women might find him attractive."

Berry grinned at the evasion, mainly because her mother was working so hard at being evasive.

Following an acceptable period of grieving for her dad, Berry had encouraged her mother to start dating, especially when Caroline moved to Merritt, where no one had known her and her dad as a couple. The town had a large retirement-age population. There were a lot of unattached men of suitable age and means available.

Caroline would hear none of it.

"I'm done with that," she had said when Berry suggested she get back in circulation. "I had a good marriage. I had the love of my life. I will never have another."

But Berry continued to hold out the hope that her mother would meet a man who would change her mind. She was beautiful and smart, lovely and fun. She had much to offer, and Berry hated the thought of her living the rest of her life as a single.

"I like Dodge," Berry said now, almost expecting her mother to challenge the definitive statement.

But she didn't. In fact, Caroline was quite earnest when she asked, "Do you?"

"Yeah, I do. Warts and all. What I like best is that he makes no excuses for his warts."

"Then I'm glad I made the decision to retain him."

Worriedly, Berry pulled her lower lip through her teeth. "His purpose is damage control. Is that it?"

"Partially. His investigative skills could also be useful to Ski."

"If he'll use them."

Caroline nodded pensively. "Men are territorial. But Ski strikes me as someone too intelligent to decline help when and if he needs it."

Berry took one hand from behind her head and laid her forearm across her eyes. After a moment, she said, "The affair with Ben."

"You're a grown woman, Berry. Well past having to account to me about your relationships."

"Oh no?" Berry peered up at her from beneath her arm. "Isn't it you who's been giving me none too subtle hints that you'd like to have grandchildren before you're too old and decrepit to play with them?"

Caroline smiled. "I still wish for grandchildren. But," she added with emphasis, "I also understand how important your career is to you, because mine was to me. Simultaneously building a career and raising a family can cause conflicts."

"I haven't ruled out having a husband and children, Mother. My biological clock gongs whenever I see women my age with a toddler or two, husband smiling on with adoration. I'd like that very much.

"But let me assure you, Ben Lofland wasn't a prospective life partner. He and I spent a few harmless nights together. Our affair was hardly worth the federal case that Deputy Nyland made of it."

"He didn't make a federal case of it."

"Close."

"There must be a reason for his preoccupation with it."

"He told you the reason. Oren's motive."

Caroline settled an intuitive look on her, the kind that mothers specialize in.

"What?" Berry demanded.

"Nothing. Never mind."

"What?"

Caroline shook her head. "A wild thought. Groundless probably. Pardon the interruption. What were you saying?"

Exasperated, knowing there was more than her mother was willing to say at the moment, Berry tried to remember where she'd left off. "I refuse to wear a hair shirt because of those sleepovers."

"The affair would have taken on less significance if you'd been up front about it."

"I know," Berry admitted. "I should have come clean about it."

"Why didn't you?"

"Amanda. I didn't know if Ben had told her about us, but I was guessing that he hadn't. In which case, I didn't want to spring a past affair on her when she was having to cope with his getting shot, undergoing surgery, all that. I was afraid that, if I told Ski, it would open a can of worms, unnecessarily. I kept quiet to spare Amanda's feelings and to spare Ben trouble with the wife whom he loves and adores. So much for my good intentions. They blew up in my face."

Caroline spoke quietly. "From here on, I advise you not to withhold anything from Ski."

Berry lowered her arm and looked straight into her mother's eyes. "For instance, you think I should tell him about the phone call I placed to Oren the day before yesterday?"

Caroline looked at her aghast. "Phone call?"

"Thursday afternoon. Oren and I talked for several minutes."

"I don't understand. You came here to escape him. Why on earth did you call him?"

"To make amends."

"For what, for heaven's sake?"

Berry worked her way to the other side of the bed and swung her feet to the floor. Moving to the window, she looked out toward the lake, although all she could really see was her own reflection in the windowpane.

"In order to explain, I have to back up," she said. "Do you remember-- Of course you remember," she said ruefully. "The day of my big blowup?"

Caroline said nothing. Berry turned her head. Her mother was looking down at her hands. "You were upset, Berry. Justifiably upset. You didn't mean what you said."

"Don't excuse the inexcusable, Mother. At the time I meant it."

A co-worker had received a commendation from an account manager on the day the same manager had criticized some of Berry's work and had gone on to shoot down all her suggestions for correcting it.

Stung and angry, she'd sought out her mother at her real estate office and, for half an hour, had vented her outrage. She'd cited how unfair the criticism of her work had been, how lackluster the praised campaign was. "Which only goes to show how lousy this manager's taste is!" she had exclaimed. "And I have to answer to him. My position in the company is dependent upon this bozo's crummy opinion."

Caroline had tried to placate her, but Berry had refused to hear the reason behind her mother's observations. She'd discounted Caroline's advice to carry on and not to let this minor setback become a major self-fulfilling stall.

"You work harder than anyone I know," Caroline had told her. "You're the most dedicated employee that company has. You're talented. Eventually the right people will notice, and your labor, as well as your patience, will be rewarded."

The soft-spoken encouragement had only caused Berry to seethe. She'd gone to her mother for sympathy and got banalities instead. Seeing red, she'd sneered, "Or, in order to get to the top of my profession, I could skip all that kowtowing and do what you did. I could marry the boss."

Even as she spoke the words, she'd known them to be untrue. For years Caroline had worked diligently late into the evenings, on holidays, and over long weekends. Her success was well deserved, based on intuitiveness and hard work, not nepotism.

Berry had also known how wounding the words were and had regretted them the moment they were spoken. But she hadn't apologized. Instead she'd stormed out, leaving her mother reeling from the unexpected and unwarranted onslaught, the source of which was something deeper than anger and disappointment. With that outburst, Berry had revealed a long-harbored resentment of her mother's achievements.

"When I got home," she said now, "Oren was there waiting for me." She laughed drily. "I remember thinking that I probably deserved that for being so hateful to you. He'd brought me Chinese food. He admonished me for working too hard, too long, for not eating right, and for not taking care of myself properly.

"I was in no mood for more gentle chiding, especially his. So I lost it. I yelled at him, told him to take his moo goo gai pan and get the hell off my porch and out of my life. I told him that I'd had it, that if he bothered me again, I'd sic the police on him.

"At first, he responded weepily. How could I be so cruel as to break his heart, crush his spirit, destroy his dreams? I listened to a few minutes of that, and then I cut him off. I told him that he was a joke to everyone who knew him, but particularly to women. I told him that he was boring, that he was a pest, just wrong, and that I wasn't the only one who thought so. I told him that he was creepy and pathetic, and that I couldn't stomach the sight of him."

She rubbed her eyes, wishing she could rub out the memory, too. "I must have struck a chord. Several, in fact. Because he flipped out. Right before my eyes, he morphed into the Oren Starks rendition of Mr. Hyde. Outside a movie theater, I'd never witnessed such a dramatic transformation.

"His face became congested and red with fury like I'd never seen before, Mother. He shouted, 'You can't do this to me! I don't deserve this!' He threw the carton of food against my front door. It split open, splattered. He called me horrible names. Said awful, obscene things. He said it was no wonder that I didn't return his affection when Ben Lofland was fucking me."

She shuddered. "I can't even bring myself to repeat all he said, and you don't want to hear it. He ended with a chilling vow to make me sorry for rejecting him. In language more elaborate than that, but that was the gist of it.

"I went inside and bolted the door behind me. I had my cell phone in my hand ready to call 911--that's how afraid I was--but he drove away. I went into the bathroom and threw up. When I was done and was washing my face, I looked into the mirror above the sink."

She paused, then said slowly, "That's when I saw what I'd become. I barely recognized myself, Mother. I was as much a monster as Oren. I had been cruel, I'd said terrible things to him, I'd been horrible to you, the person I love and respect more than anyone in my life. And why? Because I was upset over a hand-slapping I'd received at work."

She turned to face Caroline. "I wanted to succeed at all costs. Ambition had consumed me. I'd lost all perspective. I was jeopardizing my relationships with co-workers, with friends, with you."

Dashing tears off her cheeks, she continued. "Oren made me fear for my life that day. But I was just as scared of the person I'd become. I stayed up that entire night, with all the lights in the house on, afraid he would come back, also afraid that I would change my mind about doing what I had decided must be done. By morning I was packed. I came here, hoping that I would find some balance in my life, find the me that had somehow got lost."

She returned to the side of the bed and sat down beside her mother, who placed her hand between Berry's shoulder blades and began to massage the spot. "I'm proud of you."

Berry looked at her and sputtered a laugh. "

Proud? After what I've just told you?"

"It's hard to be that brutally honest with oneself, and even harder to act on a self-realization." Caroline kissed her brow. "You called Oren on Thursday afternoon to apologize for the things you'd said to him that afternoon?"

"More or less. I also told him that Ben and I were about to put the finishing touches on the campaign he'd been working on when he was dismissed. It had turned out well. He could be proud of it."

"How did he react to all this?"

"Neutrally. I was actually surprised. He didn't issue dire threats, but he didn't say, 'Let bygones be bygones,' either. When I finished, he said 'Okay,' and hung up. I dusted my hands. I thought we were square. That is, until he ripped open the shower curtain."

"Surely you didn't tell him that you and Ben would be working here on Friday."

"Of course not. But I'm almost certain he's been watching my house, the office. He's smart enough to have figured out that I've been working from another location. He must have followed Ben when he left his house Friday morning to come here.

"Maybe Oren was sitting all day in his car near the road where they found those tire tracks, biding his time, waiting until dark, waiting until he thought he would catch us in bed together."

She raised her hands to her forehead and massaged it, pressing her fingertips hard against her scalp. "What haunts me, Mother, what I fear, is that, by making restitution with Oren, I unwittingly set Ben up to get shot."

"Berry? Sweetheart, wake up."

Berry turned onto her back, moaning for having been shaken out of a deep slumber. She pushed strands of hair off her face and opened her eyes. Her mother, wearing only a short cotton nightgown, was bending over her.

"What time is it?"

"Five-fifteen."

Berry groaned. The lengthy self-castigating conversation with her mother had left her too restless to sleep. After hours of tossing and turning, she'd relented and taken a nonprescription sleeping aid. Now, after less than three hours' sleep, her head was muzzy from the medication, her eyes dry and gritty.

But her mother's tone, her entire aspect, conveyed urgency. "Get up and get dressed. Dodge just called. He said we should come as soon as possible."

Berry threw off the covers. "Come where?"

"To the sheriff's office."

"Have they arrested Oren?"

"Dodge said he would explain when we got there." Caroline was already on her way out of the bedroom. "I'll meet you downstairs."

Berry put on a pair of old jeans and a T-shirt, brushed her teeth, pulled her hair into a ponytail, and, in under five minutes, met her mother at the back door. Caroline set the alarm as they left the house and told Berry that they would take her car and that she would drive.

When they reached the courthouse, they were surprised to find a deputy sheriff obviously waiting for them. He waved Caroline into a reserved parking space and touched the brim of his uniform hat as they hurriedly alighted.

"Ladies. I'm Deputy Stevens. Ski said for me to bring y'all right up."

He led them to an entrance on the ground level that was reserved for personnel only. He punched in a security code on a keypad. The door unlocked with a loud metallic click. He shepherded them inside, then into an elevator, also designated for official use. It whisked them up to the third floor.

The elevator opened directly into a large squad room. The first person they saw was Dodge, who apparently had also been on the lookout for them.

He wasted no time on greetings. "Hated to drag you out of bed. But Ski thought you should hear this, thought you," he said, addressing Berry specifically, "might be able to help."

"Help how? With what?"

Dodge scowled. "Oren Starks has killed a kid."