Buried Biker (15 page)

Of course, the dollar a day had been important to me. Some of the other inmates had people out on the street who sent them money orders for their commissary accounts, but I didn’t know anybody who cared that much about me. I didn’t get any mail at all, much less money orders. So the only money I had was what the laundry job paid.

“How’ve you been?” I asked.

Mandy frowned. “I’ve been better. It’s been a bad day.”

There probably wasn’t much I could do, but I tried to sympathize. “What happened?”

“Somebody stole my car.”

I winced. “From out of your garage?” I asked.

“No. I guess I should have put it in the garage, but I had groceries to bring in, and I’d left it out in the driveway. When I went out to go to work, it was gone.”

If I’d gone out and found my ride missing, I’d be plenty pissed. Of course, that was assuming I ever got a car.

“I had to walk to work,” Mandy continued. “And now I have to go through all this nonsense with the police and the insurance company.”

A chilling thought occurred to me. “It wasn’t a silver Lexus by any chance, was it?”

“No. It was a Mercedes 350 coupe. Bright red.” Tears pooled in her eyes. “I
loved
that car. And I’d just had it a few years. It was almost new!”

“Maybe somebody just took it for a joyride,” I said. “And if it’s recovered, it might be fine.”

“The police said they’d look, but they said there’d been a lot of car thefts lately. Especially nice, newer model ones. They took a report, but they said if it didn’t have a LoJack or something, I’d probably never see it again.”

“So what did you do?”

“I called the insurance company.”

That made sense.

A few people came up to the desk with books to check out. I nodded to Mandy and went to the reading room where they kept recent newspapers and magazines. The last few days’ copies of the
Rothsburg Register
were stacked on a round table in front of a comfy couch and a few chairs. I plopped down in one of the chairs and sorted through the pile of newspapers, pulling out the latest one.

Sure enough, there was the beginning of an article with Carissa’s byline on the front page, continued further back in the paper. And it had a picture, but it was of Carissa. I read the first few paragraphs, then flipped to the rest of it. It was mostly about how Carissa Daniles had just graduated from college and was a new reporter with the paper. For now, she was assigned to the police and court beat, and would be writing feature articles about unsavory happenings in the area.

Fine by me, as long as those articles didn’t feature
me.

“Jesse!”

I looked up. A little girl was flying across the reading room toward me. I barely had enough time to get my arms up to catch her as she landed on me.

Brianna, Kelly’s six-year-old daughter. She buried her face in my chest, sobbing.

Chris, her older brother, was right behind her. “Jesse, what are you doing here?” he asked.

“Reading,” I said. “People come to the library to do lots of things, but reading is one of them.”

“I like to come use the computer,” he told me.

He was only eight, but he was light-years ahead of me on that score. I’d never used a computer.

Brianna settled down in my lap, her face still pressed against my shirt. Since I hadn’t taken a shower after work, I was sure I smelled of oil and sweat, but she didn’t seem to mind. Her mother probably smelled that way after work sometimes, too.

“Why aren’t you guys in school?” I asked.

“No school today. Have you seen our mom?”

I wasn’t going to lie to the kids, but I didn’t have to tell them the whole truth. “Yeah, I saw her at the hospital. She was pretty tired, but she was getting better.”

Chris’s face twisted. “I wish she’d come home.”

My chest tightened. What with their parents’ divorce and all the crap that lead up to it, things hadn’t been easy for them. And now this. “She will as soon as she can. Who’s taking care of you now?”

He nodded toward a petite, elderly woman who was leaning on a cane, making her way toward us. “Aunt Louise.”

I’d met Aunt Louise, who I thought was their father’s aunt, and I knew she would take good care of them. But she was awfully old for the responsibility. And she was taking care of her
own
mother, too, who, if I remembered right, was bedridden.

“Are you checking any books out?” I asked.

“Yeah. We have to go to the dentist with Aunt Louise,” Chris said. “And we’re getting books to read while we wait for her. We have to be very good, and then she might take us for a hot dog.”

Aunt Louise came to a stop next to us and nodded. The side of her face was swollen. “I have a toothache,” she said. “The dentist said he could fit me in, but I don’t have anyone to leave the children with. Mother’s not in any shape to look after them, and Fred hasn’t shown up lately.”

Fred was Kelly’s ex, the children’s father. He was the one who was supposed to be taking responsibility for the kids. They were much better off with Aunt Louise.

I sat up a little straighter, shifting Brianna’s weight in my lap. Should I offer to pitch in? Kelly might not be happy about it, but she wasn’t here. Up until now, she’d encouraged me to spend time with them. I hadn’t done anything that should change that. And this might be the last chance I got to spend any time with the kids. A cold lump formed in my stomach at that thought. I really liked being with the kids.

“Do you want me to keep an eye on them while you’re at the dentist?” I asked.

Aunt Louise looked thoughtful. She knew Kelly let me stay at the house sometimes, but Fred probably knew all about my conviction and being on parole and told her about it. He was trying to get custody away from Kelly, which was problematic, since he was an alcoholic and the kids had been in the car one night when he’d been in an accident. He’d picked up a DUI for that, but it hadn’t stopped the court from ordering that he be permitted to take the kids for visitation.

Of course, Kelly had an alcohol problem, too, although I didn’t think it was as bad as his. And it was a good thing there’d been somewhere for the kids to go with Kelly in the hospital. I knew from my own childhood experience how scary and disruptive it could be to suddenly end up in an emergency foster home. I was glad these kids didn’t have to go through that.

“The dentist is just down the street,” Aunt Louise said. “What would you do with the children if I left them with you?”

“We could stay here in the library,” I said. “Read books or use the computers. I don’t imagine you’d be gone much more than an hour or two, do you?”

“I hope not. You’ll be sure to stay in the library? Not take them anywhere else?”

“Yes, ma’am. We’ll stay in the library.” I tried to look reliable, but I’m not sure I was successful.

She made up her mind. “All right. I’ll be back as soon as I can be. You children behave and don’t make noise. It’s a
library.
”

“We’ll go into the children’s section,” I said.

Aunt Louise nodded and turned to leave.

“Jesse,” Chris said.

“Yes?”

“Do you know if the Goddess and the kittens are okay? Some of PopPop’s friends weren’t being nice to them.”

The Goddess was the cat I’d found and Kelly had taken in. She was a quiet cat who’d pretty much stay to herself, but some of the bikers were likely to kick any animal that got in their way. The Goddess might just corral the kittens down in the basement or something and hide from people. I hoped so.

“She’s probably fine,” I said with more assurance than I felt. “She’d keep her kittens out of the way of people who didn’t like cats. And your mom had that great big bag of cat food in the kitchen, so even if nobody remembered to feed them, they’d knock that over and eat from the spilled food.”

She’d knocked it over a few times when I’d been over there and she didn’t think we’d fed her quickly enough. I couldn’t imagine any of the bikers bothering to clean up spilled cat food.

Holding Brianna, who still had her face buried in my shirt, I stood up and took Chris’s hand. He was too old to wander away or anything, so he didn’t
need
me to hold his hand. But I could remember times when I was a scared kid and would have been grateful for a strong, supporting hand to hold, even if just for a few minutes.

A number of preschoolers and their mothers gathered around in the children’s room of the library for the daily story times. A bunch of older kids were there, too. Apparently there was no school today—otherwise Aunt Louise would have taken Brianna and Chris, and not had to worry about them while she was at the dentist. I wasn’t sure why—was this a minor holiday of some sort? Didn’t Presidents Day or something come around now?

We got a fair number of stares as we came in. I was still in my dirty work clothes, in need of a shave, and my face was still bruised. I was aware that both of the kids looked as miserable as they felt. I wished I’d had a chance to take a shower and change. I didn’t have many clothes, but not all of them were
this
grungy.

The computers were all in use. Chris went to the desk and signed up for a session, but he’d have to wait his turn. Brianna got some books for me to read to her. She loved to have books read to her, but I knew Kelly struggled with reading and didn’t do it much. Brianna seemed to have inherited the same problem, but Kelly refused to have her tested for special education, which would have given her some extra help in reading in school.

We settled into a couch in a corner where we couldn’t be seen very well and where we were out of the way of all the hustle. Chris brought a book for me to read, too. They sat on either side of me, both snuggling in against me. They needed as much comforting physical contact as they could get.

Truth be told, so did I.

I tried to just savor the moment and put out of my mind the fact that Kelly would have been livid if she could have seen us.

When Chris got called for his time on the computer a few minutes later, Brianna climbed into my lap and leaned back against me. She stuck her fingers in her mouth and looked at the pictures in the book as I read the story.

We were just finishing
Horton Hatches a Who
—Brianna usually laughs out loud at the rhymes, but today she just stared intently—when someone came around the corner of the shelving that shielded our little hideaway.

Two uniformed police officers, a man and a woman.

My throat closed up, and I stopped breathing. Brianna shrunk back against my chest. Chris abandoned his computer and came dashing to us.

“Just want to ask you a few questions,” the man said, his hand resting on his holster. “Stand up.”

Please don’t pull out a weapon here
, I thought, but I didn’t say anything to him. To Brianna, I said, “I have to stand up now, honey, so you’ll have to get off my lap.”

She didn’t move. I eased her into the seat next to me and stood. Chris stood there blankly. I said, “Can you sit next to her, please?”

“Why are they bothering you, Jesse?” Chris asked, a hitch in his voice. “They tell us in school policemen are supposed to be our friends, but sometimes they
hurt
you.”

“Policemen
are
your friends,” I said. “Remember the time they gave you and Brianna teddy bears? And they don’t want to hurt people, but sometimes there’s an accident or something.”

The woman cop waved the librarian over. “We don’t want to upset everyone if we can handle this quietly. Is there an office or someplace we could take him to for a few minutes?”

The librarian nodded toward her office, which had a big glass window opening into the children’s room. “You could use that office. There is a shade you could draw.”

“Okay. Can you stay with these kids for a few minutes?”

Motherly concern clouded her chubby face. “I suppose.”

I stood up and looked questioningly at the male cop. “Cuffs?”

“Not in front of the kids if we can help it,” he said. “You gonna be compliant with my orders?”

“Yeah.”

He took a firm hold on my arm and propelled me ahead of him toward the office.

“Where are you taking Jesse?” Brianna wailed. “He’s my mommy’s boyfriend.”

“Hush, Brianna,” I said. “This is a library. We’re supposed to be quiet. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” I looked at the female cop’s narrowed eyes. “Or Aunt Louise will come. You’ll be fine.”

Which was more than I could say for me.

We got into the office, and the female cop drew the shade, then closed the door and stood in front of it. She unsnapped her holster and rested her hand on the butt of her service gun.

“I’d just as soon we handle this without creating a fuss with all the kids in here,” her partner said, letting go of my arm. “I’m gonna search you for weapons. Face the back wall. Put your hands on your head and interlace your fingers.”