Big Daddy Sinatra: Carly's Cry (13 page)

“But it’s not true, man!” Cruikshank
cried.
 
“I didn’t order anybody to do
anything to you or your wife!
 
I didn’t
do it!”

The volunteers nearly ran Brent over
as he hurried into the storefront building.
 
“He’s got a gun!” one volunteer was screaming as he ran out.
 
“Big Daddy’s got a gun!”

Brent ran into the building, pushed
past the last of the volunteers who were running out, and hurried to the back
office where he saw Cruikshank and his father.
 
“Dad, you can’t,” he said anxiously.
 
“Don’t do it!”

Charles heard Brent’s voice.

“Dad, don’t,” Brent said again, and
walked over to his father.

“Tell him I’m innocent,” Cruikshank
said.
 
“Tell him I had nothing to do with
his wife’s shooting.
 
Tell him, Brent!”

Brent, ignoring Cruikshank, attempted
to ease the gun out of his father’s hand.
  
Charles would not relinquish his weapon.
 
Nobody dictated to him, least of which his own son.
 
But he did remove the gun from Cruikshank’s
head.

“I don’t know what you’re talking
about,” Cruikshank said again.
 
“I had
nothing to do with your wife’s shooting.”

“Where’s Norris?” Charles asked.

“I don’t know him.
 
I told the press I don’t know him!
 
People have been claiming he works for me,
but he doesn’t.
 
The news media have been
spreading those lies.
 
I’ve never met the
man before, and I don’t know anything about him.
 
I swear.
 
I don’t know him!
 
Nobody in my
campaign knows him!
 
I’m not guilty, Big
Daddy!”

Charles stared at Cruikshank.
 
The fact that he was pleading innocence only
made matters worse.
 
Now he didn’t have a
clue why Norris harmed Jenay.
 
But he
released him.
 
Cruikshank could be lying,
but somehow he doubted it.

Charles put his gun away, left the
small, storefront campaign building and stepped out onto the sidewalk.
 
Cruikshank began complaining to Brent that
Charles should be arrested for attempting to murder him, but Brent warned that
he would sic his father back on him if he didn’t cut that foolish talk
out.
 
Cruikshank cut it out.

When Brent got outside, Charles was
just standing there, thinking.
 
“What’s
going on, Dad?” Brent asked.
 
“Why would
you think Jeff Cruikshank had something to do with Mom’s shooting?”

“I saw the gunman,” Charles said.

Brent was floored.
 
“You saw him?
 
And didn’t tell me?”

“I saw Norris,” Charles said.

“Who?”

“Abe Norris.
 
That protestor.”

“The one you roughed up this
morning?” Brent asked.

Charles nodded.
 
“He was the shooter,” he said.
  
“I ran after the car, and I saw him behind
the wheel.”

Brent ran his hand through his
head.
 
“Why didn’t you tell me, Dad?”

“Because I need to know what’s going
on!
 
I assumed he worked for
Cruikshank.
 
The press said he worked for
Cruikshank.”

“But Cruikshank’s saying something totally
different,” said Brent.

Charles exhaled.
 
“I know that.
 
But something’s going on here.
 
And it isn’t random, and it isn’t accidental.
 
I don’t want to hear that shit.
 
Not after they harmed Jenay.
 
Something is at work here.
 
Before another member of my family is harmed,
or those fuckers try it again with my wife, I’ve got to find out what.”

Brent nodded.
 
“I’ll put a BOLO, a
be on the lookout
, on Abe Norris.
 
But you’ve got to let me handle this, Dad.
 
We’ll find him, and we’ll get to the bottom
of this.
 
But the legal way.”

Charles nodded his agreement.
 
And he began walking away.

“Where are you going now?” Brent
asked.

“Back to the hospital,” Charles
said.
 
“To be with my wife.”

Brent exhaled, and watched him leave.

“Hope I didn’t disturb you,” Tony
asked when Sharon opened the door of her room at the Inn.

“I was reading,” Sharon said as if it
was a disturbance.
 
She had a book in her
hand.

“Reading what?” Tony asked.

“Re-familiarizing myself with some
liturgy.
 
As Head Mistress of the church
school, I have to make sure the staff and students adhere to certain protocol.”

“So you were reviewing what?
 
The
Book of Common Prayer
?”

“Exactly.
 
Of course its formal name,” she added, “is
far more extensive.”

“
The Book of Common Prayer
,” said Tony, “
and Administration of the
Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church Together with The
Psalter or Psalms of David According to the use of The Episcopal Church
.
”

Sharon was surprised.

“In my prior life,” Tony said, “I studied theology too.”

Sharon smiled.
 
“Good for you.”

“Why did you leave?” Tony asked, as
if he was getting to the real reason for his visit.

Sharon didn’t want this visit.
 
She didn’t want this exposure.
 
She didn’t want to befriend him or anybody
else at this time in her life.
 
She just
wanted to be left alone.
 
“I have a full
day ahead of me tomorrow,” she said.
 
“The rector gave me the rest of the day off.
 
I needed to take full advantage of it.”

Tony understood that.
 
“Certainly,” he said with a nod of the
head.
 
“It’s not the first day of work
you had envisioned, I’m sure.”

Sharon smiled warily.
 
“Not hardly,” she said.
 
“How’s your stepmother?” she asked.

“She’s okay.
 
Sleeping.
 
Resting.
 
She’ll pull through just
fine.”

“Your father seemed really upset.”

Tony nodded.
 
“He loves her.
 
He loves us all.
 
But he loves her.”

Sharon didn’t detect any resentment
in his voice.

“Look, I won’t keep you,” Tony
said.
 
“I know you need some rest
yourself.
 
But I did want to apologize
for my brother.
 
He had no call questioning
you like that.”

“It was okay,” she said.
 
“He doesn’t know me.”

“I don’t know you either,” Tony
admitted, “but . . .”

Sharon stared at him.
 
“But what?” she asked.

“But somehow it seems as if I know
all about you,” Tony said.

Sharon smiled.
 
“So I’m not the only one?”

Tony was surprised.
 
And then he smiled too.
  
But then his smile left, and he turned
serious.
 
“No,” he said.
 
“You aren’t the only one.”
 
Then he exhaled.
 
“I’ll let you get your rest.
 
Goodbye, Sharon.”

“Goodnight,” Sharon responded.
 
And closed the door.
 
But as soon as she did, tears welled up in
her eyes.
 
Did his brother know?
 
Did that police chief have the goods on her?
 
Was this town going to turn on her too?

She was swimming.
 
At least he thought she was.
 
She started out swimming.
 
But then he saw her arms, and they weren’t
stroking as he thought, but flailing.
 
And she wasn’t laughing, but crying.
 
She was crying for help.

Trevor jumped out of his lounger on
the beach, flipped off his flip flops, ran into the water and then dived
in.
 
He stroked his way to where she was
flailing, and reached for her.
 
But she
wasn’t there.
 
He came up for breath,
with his brown hair matted against his face, as he dived back in and stroked
and searched for her.
 
But he didn’t see
her.
 
Then he came back up for breath,
and saw her again.

“Mr. Reese,” she cried.
 
“
Mr.
Reese
!”

She wasn’t flailing anymore, but
going down.
 
Way down.
 
She was drowning.
 
Trevor dove in again, to rescue her, but he
didn’t see her beneath.
 
He searched and
searched, but there was no sign of her.
 
He came back up for air, and didn’t see her at all!

“
Carly
!”
he cried.
 
“
Carly
!” He dived back in again.
 
Came back up again.
 
“Carly!
 
Carly!” But no sight of her.
 
And when he turned around, and around some
more, he realized he wasn’t a few feet from shore as he had thought, but was in
the middle of the ocean.
 
And he was all
alone the way Carly was, and now drowning too.

When he felt a tug, and went under,
he woke up with a hard lift up.
 
He
realized then that he was not in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, but was in
his bed in Boston.
 
And although Carly
wasn’t drowning, she was still alone.

He laid back down, drenched in sweat.

Two Weeks Later

“I’m not a baby, Charles.”

“I didn’t say you were.
 
But you need to give yourself time to heal,
Jenay.
 
You need to give it more time.”

“I gave it more time.
 
The doctor said I could resume my normal
activities within a couple of days after he released me from that
hospital.
 
The only reason I didn’t go
back to work when he said I could is because of you.
 
But I’m fine, honey.
 
I’ll go stir crazy if I have to stay
cooped-up in this house another day.”

They were in their bedroom at
home.
 
Charles, never a morning person,
was still in bed, lying on his back.
 
Jenay
was sitting at her dressing table, fresh out of the shower but had put back on
her bathrobe.
 
She was hot curling her
hair.

Charles let out a tough exhale.
 
Jenay looked at him through her dressing
table mirror.
 
“Everything’s fine,
Charlie.”

“Yeah, well,” Charles said as if he
wasn’t at all convinced, “somebody harms my wife and two weeks later they still
don’t have him in custody.
 
That’s not my
idea of everything being fine.”

“Brent’s men have no clue where that
protestor might be?” she asked.

“They don’t even know who he is.
 
He claimed his name was Abe Norris, but that
was just some name he made up.
 
It’s not
his real name.
 
And other than that,
nobody knows a damn thing.
 
Maybe if I
wasn’t so certain it was Cruikshank, I could have told Brent sooner.
 
Maybe they would have been able to track that
asshole down that same day.
 
But I was
convinced Cruikshank was behind it, and he would give up, not only the guy, but
the reason for his vendetta against me in the first place.”

“What did Cruikshank tell you?”

“He told me nothing.
 
He knows nothing.
 
There’s no vendetta, he claims.
 
It’s all politics.
 
He told me nothing.”

“They’ll find him, Charles,” Jenay
said firmly. “Brent’s good at his job.”

But Charles knew Brent was a
small-town police chief with the resources of a small-town police chief.
 
“What Brent doesn’t know is that I’ve hired
private investigators to work this case too.”

Jenay looked at him. “Private
investigators?”

“That’s right.
 
Five different ones.
  
But they haven’t turned up shit either.
 
I’m wasting my money.”

Jenay could feel his
frustration.
 
“It’ll work out,” she said
to him.

Charles knew she didn’t need this
extra aggravation, so he attempted to minimize his own anxiety.
 
“I’m sure it will,” he said.

Jenay smiled, and refocused on her
grooming.
 
When she finished curling her
hair, she stood up to head to their room-sized closet.
 
But Charles tossed the bedding off of him.
“Let me take a look at the bandage,” he said.

Jenay had already changed it, and it
was fine.
 
But Charles always had to see
it for himself.
 
She walked over to him
as he flung his legs out and sat on the edge of the bed.
 
He was naked, but Jenay wasn’t exactly
dressed either.

She stood between his legs as he
untied her robe, revealing her nakedness.
 
She then removed one arm out of the arm of the robe.
 
An ace bandage covered her small bicep.

“How does it feel?” he asked as he
checked for leakage.

“It feels okay.
 
Most times I don’t even remember that I have
an injury.
 
It hasn’t been a problem.”

Then Charles’s eyes glanced down, at
her flat stomach, at her taut brown breasts, and then he looked into her
eyes.
 
“And what about you?” he
asked.
 
“How are you feeling?”

Jenay smiled.
 
“I’m glad to be getting back to work.
 
Donnie’s running the place in my absence, and
I hear he’s doing a good job, but I’m ready to get back.”

“I can’t understand that boy of
mine,” Charles said.
 
“Sometimes he’ll
rise to the occasion in remarkable ways, and then other times he won’t rise at
all.
 
I wonder if he’ll ever be
consistent, and which Donald will he ultimately become.”

“You mean will he consistently be
good
Donald, or consistently be
bad
Donald?”

“He can go either way,” Charles said
with a smile, “as you have found out for yourself.”

“And how,” Jenay said with a smile of
her own as she removed her robe completely.
 
“I have the invisible scars to prove it.”
 
She tossed her robe onto the bed, and headed
for her lingerie drawer.

But when she began walking away from
Charles, and he watched as the cheeks of her smooth brown ass moved up and down
with every stepdown, tight as hell, his cock began to throb.
 
It had been two weeks, the morning before the
shooting, since he last fucked her.
 
“Jenay?”

She glanced back.

“Come here,” he said.

When she saw his erection, she shook
her head.
 
She knew what he wanted.
 
But now?
 
“Come on, Charles.”

But Charles was not relenting.
 
“Don’t
come
on, Charles
me.
 
Come here.”

Jenay reluctantly walked back to the
bed.
 
Not because she didn’t want to be
with him.
 
She always wanted it.
 
But she didn’t think her heart would be in
it.
 
She was still too focused on how she
was going to react when she walked into the Inn for the first time since the
shooting to even begin to experience any horniness.

Charles had already picked up on her
anxiety.
 
That was why, when she walked
back up to him, he opened his legs wider, pulled her closer and into his arms,
and reassured her even as he kissed and sucked her breasts.
 
“You’re going to be alright, babe,” he said
as he sucked her.
 
“I’ll make sure of
that.”

Jenay leaned her head back as he
sucked her, but the reality of her situation was still front and center in her
mind.
 
“It’ll be my first time back since
the shooting,” she said.
 
“I’m worried
about my reaction.”

Charles looked at her.
 
Jenay was a strong woman.
 
When she admitted a concern so plainly, he
knew it was a major concern for her.
 
“Don’t worry,” he said.
 
“I’ll go
with you.
 
I’ll rearrange my schedule and
spend the entire day with you.
 
If you
feel any way threatened or anxious or anything like that, I’ll bring you back
home.
 
And tomorrow we’ll try again.
 
And the day after that.
 
Until you’re okay.”

Jenay stared at him.
 
No human being alive had ever treated her the
way Charles treated her.
 
Then she
smiled.
 
“I thought you said I wasn’t
ready to go back to work,” she teased.
 
“Now you not only accept the fact that I’m going back, you’re offering
to go with me?
 
That’s a twist.”

“That’s love,” Charles said as he
turned her around, where her back was to his face, and sat her on his lap.
 
Or more specifically, he sat her on his
penis.
 
“You give me what I need,” he
said as he lifted her small legs over his massive thighs and began rubbing her
pussy.
 
“And I give you what you need.”

Jenay was enjoying his massage.
 
“You think you know what I need?” she asked
him.

He began to rub harder.
 
He began to breathe harder into her ear.
 
“I think I do.”
 

“Oh, yeah?” she asked, her own
breathe becoming labored.
 
“And what’s
that?”

“This,” Charles said as he thrust two
digits deep inside of her and with his thumb began to flick her clit.
 
Only he flicked it with such ferocity that
Jenay’s body began to jerk in reaction.

“Like it?” Charles said as he flicked
her faster and faster, and dug his fingers in deeper and deeper in simulation
of a penis.

“I like it,” Jenay said.

“Like this?” Charles asked, as he
continued to watch her and do her.

“Like that,” Jenay said breathlessly
as he kept doing her and doing her until she was on the verge of cum.

He was studying her.
 
He knew she was near.
 
“Ready to cum, baby?”

“I’m ready,” Jenay said.

“Almost there?” Charles asked, doing
her even harder.

“Almost,” Jenay said in a voice
barely audible.

Then Charles lifted his fully erected
penis, thrust it inside of her super-wet pussy, and began to fuck her at the apex
of her cum.

Her orgasm started within seconds of
his entry.
 
And by the time he was in
full rhythm, stroking her with fast, brutal, unrelenting thrusts, she was
jerking and tightening and pulsating until her toes curled.
 

Charles laid back on the bed, lifted
her legs, and fucked her even harder.
 
He
went down so deep inside of her that his balls were trying to get in too.
 
They slapped against the outer reaches of her
pussy as his rod slammed into the inner reaches.
 
And when he ejaculated inside of her, his cum
was almost watery as it began to fly out of her like drops of rain spewing
out.
 
And then it was white, and thick,
and began to slide out of her vagina, down his penis, like cream.

He pushed into her for the final
push, made a grunting noise that almost sounded like an animal, and then slowly
pulled out.
 
Jenay felt every vein in his
rob, and Charles felt every ridge of her pussy, as he continued to slowly pull
out.
 
She was still pulsating, and was
covered with the level of cream pie that only overdue sex could produce, when
he finally made it completely out.

Carly looked up from grading papers
when the doorbell began ringing.
 
She
knew Donald was downstairs, so she didn’t bother to answer.
 
Like Carly, Donald moved back in with their
parents too.
 
But unlike Carly’s
situation, Donald moved back in after Charles and Jenay demoted him from the
Inn’s General Manager to desk clerk supervisor.
 
But both were there to get back on their feet.

But when he yelled upstairs that the
visitor wanted to see her, she frowned.
 
Looked at her watch.
 
It was just
past seven in the morning.
 
Who in the
world would be visiting her at this hour?

She hadn’t even dressed for work yet,
since she didn’t have to be there until nine, and wore only a pair of Puma
shorts and a Patriots t-shirt.
 
But she
placed her paperwork aside, got up from her bedroom desk, and made her way
downstairs.

“Who is it?” she asked Donald as she
headed for the living room.
 
When she
turned the corner and saw Donald standing there talking, she assumed it was
somebody he knew too.
 
But she was wrong.

“There she is,” Donald said to
whomever he was talking to.
 
“It’s one of
your co-workers from Boston,” he added to Carly with a smile.

When he moved aside, and Carly saw
who he meant, she nearly died where she stood.
  
Coworker her ass.
 
It was her
former boss!
 
“It’s you?” she asked,
stunned witless.
 
“
Mr. Reese
?”

Trevor Reese stood in her parents’
living room.
 
He stood with his long hair
pulled back, his tailored suit buttoned and snug, and his big, violet eyes as
sincere as a hawk’s.
 
“Hello, Carly,” he
said, and although her heart was hammering, he said it without a hint of
emotion.