A Thorn Among the Lilies (23 page)

C
HAPTER
51

“H
ow good are you at golfing?” Jonathon asked Carry the morning of New Year's Eve.

“Golfing?” she laughed. “Um, I don't know. I've never held a golf club in my hands. There are no golf courses in Alvin.”

“There are,” Jonathon said, “in fact, two. And today we're going to one.”

“Oh, we are, are we? And where might these mythological golf courses be?”

“That's private information, only given out on a need-to-know basis, and you don't need to know. Just make sure you're wearing comfortable shoes.”

They were currently at Carry's watching television, only for once Carry's eyes weren't glued to the TV screen, they were fixed on the side of Jonathon's head. He was sort of lying down in her lap. She had found herself becoming more and more fixated on him since they first met that day on the sidewalk with all the pizza.

The golf courses, wherever they happened to be, couldn't be very far away on account of Jonathon told Carry they were leaving on foot and wouldn't be taking the bus. That meant they were within walking distance. Now there was one thing Carry was sure of and that was that there were absolutely no golf courses within walking distance from her house.

 

She turned out to be wrong.

Sort of.

The only club she wound up needing for golfing turned out to be a putter. Jonathon took Carry to Jolly Castle Fun Park, an arcade with mini-golf located just off Main Street on Sweetwater Drive. Carry hadn't actually been inside the place for years. It was in a giant castle. Like being in the castle, she hadn't mini-golfed since she was, like, twelve, so she doubted she was going to be any good.

“Oh, it's like riding a bike,” Jonathon said.

“I haven't really done that since I was twelve either,” she said.

“Okay, then it's like falling off a bike. Either way, you'll remember how to do it after the first couple of holes.”

Before they actually started golfing, Jonathon took her for lunch at the castle. It wasn't the greatest of lunches—hot dogs and soda pop—but it was lunch with her boyfriend, and Carry loved the way
boyfriend
rolled around in her head when she thought about the word.

Jolly Castle Fun Park had two different mini-golf courses. One had an aquatic theme, the other a jungle theme. Jonathon bought the tickets, choosing the jungle-themed course. The courses were beneath the castle and they had to walk down two flights of steps to get to the entrance.

Inside, everything was dark. There were floodlights (mainly blue) positioned around each of the holes.

“How many holes are we playin'?” Carry asked, kind of hoping he'd say nine.

“You gotta play eighteen. It's the law.”

“Whose law?”

“The law of miniature golf.”

“Great.”

The first hole was pretty straightforward. Just a straight drive from the tee to the hole with a small bump in the middle. At the other end, a purple octopus wrapped around the outside of the hole with its tentacles reaching in toward the cup. It looked like it should make things easier.

“You go first,” Carry said.

“No, no. Ladies first.”

“You go first, or I wrap this club around your neck.”

“Okay,” Jonathon said. “There are always exceptions.”

Jonathon ended up with a three, which was one over par. Carry ended up with a seven, but it was a sort of cheat seven with Jonathon blocking her ball with his foot as it sailed over the hole, so instead of whipping past it dropped straight in.

“I knew this was going to be a disaster,” Carry said.

“It's not 'bout the score,” Jonathon said. “It's about the fun.”

“I'm not having much fun. I'm losing ridiculously.”

“That's not fun?” Jonathon said. “Just relax. By the end of the course you'll be better.”

 

Jonathon's theory turned out to be totally wrong. By the end of the course, Carry was just as bad as she had been at the beginning of the course. In fact, she was worse because her mood had turned so sour. She wanted to club Jonathon to death for choosing this as their New Year's Eve date. She was so happy when she saw the sign for the eighteenth hole coming into view.

On that hole (which, thank God, was the last hole), if you got the ball into the lion's mouth, you won a free game of mini-golf. Jonathon went first and barely missed. His ball ended up dropping to the edge and rolling away.

Then Carry went.
Please don't let me win a free game,
she thought. She whapped her ball, not taking aim at all, and lo and behold, her ball bounced off the top of the screen blocking bad shots, came back down, and fell right into the lion's mouth. She had won a free game of mini-golf.

It was the last thing she wanted. She raised her club, considering bludgeoning Jonathon with it if he even so much as mentioned playing another round.

“Oh my God, that was great!” Jonathon said, brushing the club she was holding up and giving her a great big hug. “Do you want to play your free game now?”

Carry was too stunned over the hug to answer. Her stomach felt like a burst of sparrows had just flown from a tree growing in its center.

“Well?” he said.

“Well, what?” she asked, having completely missed his original question.

“Wanna play again and use your free game?”

“Right now?”

“Yeah.”

“No!” Carry said, a little too quickly. “In fact, you can have it.” What she did want to do was have him hug her again. Or better yet, kiss her, but she wasn't about to say that.

“No, no. It's yours. We'll use it next time we come.”

She sighed. “Okay. Next time we come.”

She hoped there wouldn't be a next time. Or if there was, they'd just stick to the hot dogs and the soda pop. By far, that was her favorite part of Jolly Castle Fun Park. Oh, and the hugging. Hot dogs, pop, and hugging. Now
that
would be the perfect date.

“What are we going to do now?” Carry asked.

Jonathon checked his watch. “Our reservations aren't until eleven o'clock. That gives us almost eight hours to find something to do until dinner. Sure you don't want to play another round?”

“Very sure,” Carry said. Again a little too quickly.

“Okay. Well, do you rollerblade?”

Carry laughed.

“What?”

“I've never tried, but one thing I'm
not
is athletic.”

“How 'bout bowling?”

“How 'bout we go back to my place and see if my mother is out? Maybe we can snuggle on the sofa and watch television.”

“I like that idea,” Jonathon said.

C
HAPTER
52

L
eah had found the perfect little outdoor restaurant around the edge of Willet Lake: Waves at Willet. She met Dan Truitt there at ten-thirty, so they'd have time to eat before midnight.

From here, Leah and he would be able to see the fireworks across the lake. Leah had already given permission to let Caroline go out on her own, too. This gave further permission for Abe to be in charge of himself (with Dewey). Leah hoped this wasn't a mistake. She was pretty sure she'd made the right choice, though. As she liked to say, Abe was old for his age. Something she worried about constantly. She hoped her being a cop didn't inadvertently rob Abe of his childhood.

“So, Detective Leah Teal, I know very little about you. You got kids?” Dan Truitt asked, after a sip of red wine. Once again, he'd ordered the wine without consulting Leah. At least this time, though, he'd let her order her own meal. He was having the steak and ribs. She was settling for a flame-broiled tuna over rice.

“Yes, I have two. Abe and Caroline. Caroline just turned fifteen, and I guess she acts like a typical fifteen-year-old. You know, she has her moments. Abe will be thirteen in March, but sometimes he seems so much older. He reminds me a lot of his father.”

“What happened to his father?”

Leah's breath caught in her throat. She didn't like discussing Billy's death. “He died when Abe was two. Stupid car accident. He was coming home from working a midnight shift. Thought he could pass an eighteen-wheeler. Ended up in a head-on collision.”

Dan reached out and touched Leah's wrist. “I'm so sorry.”

Leah looked away so he wouldn't see the tears collecting in her eyes. “Yeah, it was hard. It still is a lot of the time. But I'm slowly gettin' over it. I have my son to thank for that.”

“Yeah, children are great, aren't they?” Dan asked.

She met his eyes. “They really are. How many do you have?”

“I don't have any myself. Never been married. Lived with a few women for extended periods of time, though. It always seemed to end up the same way. They'd find something wrong with me and slowly the yellin' and screamin' would set in, and that would turn into them throwin' stuff and me duckin' and coverin' and the police gettin' involved. I mean, I
am
the police, so it was kind of embarrassing. . . .”

Leah laughed. “I guess.”

“I s'pose I'm not easy to live with. The common denominator seems to be me in all these awkward relationships. Which is weird because, in my head? All I want is peace and quiet. I want to just get along.”

“Yeah, I understand, I reckon.”

“Really?” Dan asked. “You're the first person to ever tell me that.”

The moon looked huge and the night was lit by thousands of tiny stars. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. It couldn't have been a more perfect night. Somewhere out on the lake, Leah heard a fish jump.

“Oh,” she said, “you never told me what happened with Cassandra Benson, did you check her out?”

“I went and paid her a little visit. Got a little rough. Had to really pull my testosterone back.”

“Seriously?” Leah asked.

“No, she's eighty-six and in a wheelchair. I don't think she's our serial killer. Not unless she ran the victims down and then knitted them to death. Very nice lady, to be honest.”

Leah laughed. Probably more than she should have. Wine had a habit of doing that to her. “Seriously? She's really eighty-six?”

“Seriously. I was ready to go in all Dirty Harry and I meet Grandma Moses.”

Leah sighed. “We're not gonna figure this one out.”

“Yes, we will. But do me a favor?”

“What's that?”

“Take a break tonight from being a cop? Tell me about your family.”

“Well, my daughter's a handful and I don't reckon she means to be. I honestly think she doesn't reckon she's doin' anything wrong even when she is. It makes it very hard to raise her or to give her any guidance.”

Leah finished the rest of the Cabernet in her glass. Dan refilled it.

“I'm happy you said yes when I asked you to go out on New Year's Eve,” he said.

She smiled, a little bit sadly. “I'm happy you invited me.”

“No, you misunderstand. I'm happy because I made reservations at a different place up in Birmingham six months ago just figurin' someone would show up in my life to go to dinner with so I wouldn't look like an idiot. I didn't want to show up alone. This place is much nicer.” He laughed.

Leah laughed, too. “You're an idiot.” She laughed even more.

“Why are you laughin' so much?”

“Cuz that's what my son would say: ‘You're an idiot.' I just find it funny.”

Dan checked his watch. “Fireworks should start in ten minutes. We're ten minutes out of 1989. How does that feel to you?”

“Like I'm goin' to be another year away from Billy's death and things should be that much easier to cope with.”

“Well, that's positive, right?”

“I suppose.”

“What are your kids doin' right now?”

“Oh, probably gettin' ready to walk round the neighborhood smashin' pot lids together. They're a little on the extroverted side. At least my youngest will be. He and his friend have the run of the house. My older one—my girl, Caroline—is out on her first
real
date. Can't say I'm not a little bit on edge about it.”

“With you as their role model, I bet they're great kids.”

“I hope so,” she said, trying to keep the worry about Caroline out of her voice.

People were gathering along the railing separating the restaurant from the lake. “Come on,” Dan said, “let's have one more glass of wine and go and get good positions for the fireworks.”

“Sounds like a great idea!” Leah said.

The next glass of wine for both of them went quickly. They got up out of their chairs and approached the railing, and while they did, Dan reached out his hand and Leah took it, their fingers intertwining.

Five minutes later, the fireworks started.

Leah stood there, not realizing how beautiful life could be. The lake, the cypress trees, the fireworks glowing red and spreading in the sky, and then white, and then blue, and then pink, and then green and blue all coming together with little sonic booms. It was all so beautiful. She had never stopped to notice the graceful moments of life until tonight and she realized why.

Usually, there were so many fireworks in the sky, it just seemed like daytime. It took someone like Dan Truitt to shake her out of her lonely existence and let her experience life once more from a new point of view.

Inside, her heart beat like thunder. Was she in love? Hardly. Was she enamored? Possibly. It seemed more like a schoolgirl crush than anything else.

But for now, she'd take it.