Cabin by the Lake (15 page)

“Let’s get out of here,” she said with a troubled look over her shoulder. They took the paddles with them, and before long they were out on the lake, skimming over the surface. It felt wonderful, the soft spring afternoon like a gift after a particularly harsh winter.

She put down her paddle and let Mike handle it alone. She lay back against the end of the boat, her eyes closed and her face turned up to the sun. She trailed her fingers in the water as she listened sleepily to the hypnotic sound of his paddle gently slapping the water.

He looked at her, thinking that he would die a happy man if his last memory was of this moment. Sitting in the canoe on this peaceful lake far from shore, looking at Lydia’s beautiful serene face bathed in sunlight was something he wanted to remember. He loved that tiny smile tugging on the corners of her mouth that he was coming to know so well.

At that moment his phone rang and she opened one eye. She expected him to ignore it, once again.

He accepted the call when he saw who it was. “Sorry, I’ve got to take this; it could be important.”

“What’s up?” he said. “Yes, I did say you could call any time, day or night.” He listened. “No, I’m not busy, but could this wait a few minutes?” He looked around, as if he could find a private corner; then resigned himself to being stuck in the middle of the lake in front of Lydia during the call.

“No, I understand, just tell me what the problem is.” After a minute or so, a smile began to play across his mouth.

“You asked her today? And when’s the prom? Tomorrow night!” He ran his free hand through his hair, exasperated. “That’s what happens when you ask a girl out, Einstein. Sometimes girls say yes.”

She sat up, smiling as she tried to read between the lines.

“I know you need a tux, and that’s not all you’re going to need, but don’t panic. Hang on; I’m going to give you a number.” He thumbed through his directory. “Okay, write this down.”

She could barely contain her curiosity while he read off the phone number.

“Got it? Okay, that’s Max’s Evening Wear, you know where that is? Right. You hightail it on down there when we hang up and tell him I said to take care of it. Yeah, he can text me.” He listened again.

“Wait. You call Sarah, find out what color her dress is, and ask her if she wants a regular corsage or a wrist corsage.” He paused. “Yes, they still do that,” he answered, rolling his eyes. “Then go by Bergin Flowers, order the corsage and tell them to put it on my account. Next—are you writing this down?

“Okay, then call Gordy and tell him I said to arrange for a limo to pick you up, and dinner reservations at wherever you want to go after the prom. Find out where everyone else is going.”

He turned his back to Lydia, as if that would afford him some privacy. He listened again and nodded.  He’d heard this before. “I know Gordy doesn’t like you; big deal, he doesn’t like me either, but don’t let him give you a hard time. He’s the best and that’s what I pay him for,” he said in a low tone. “Yes, he’ll try to play the weekend card, but just remind him—very respectfully, please—that he works for me twenty-four/seven.”

Lydia was once again reminded that Mike was not the homeless vagabond she had thought him to be. The part of his conversation she could hear made her wonder, joking so easily about having someone hired to be at his beck and call. Now he sounded more like someone who might actually have a bit of wealth and power. But that fact was at odds with the way he carried himself. He sure didn’t behave in a way that made her believe he was anything more than an ordinary guy who worked for a living—when he wasn’t hiking strange trails.

He seemed so normal, someone that she got along with well—rich or poor—someone she could fall in love with in a heartbeat. She could freely admit that to herself now. But that was beside the point. He had Kendall, and if that was the kind of woman he was attracted to, she knew full well that he could never be attracted to her. She and Kendall Riley were complete opposites.

“Right. Okay. And Stephen? Next time you want to ask a girl out, just assume she’ll say yes, okay? And no drinking, right? You’re welcome. You owe me big time. Oh yeah, I want pictures. Okay, have fun. ’Bye.”

He dropped the phone in his shirt pocket and looked at her sheepishly.

She shrugged, reassessing her scant knowledge of Mike and coming up with only one conclusion to her questions about the conversation she’d just heard. “Your son, I take it?”

“No, no,” he said quickly. “Just someone I look out for. I don’t have kids.” Then suddenly, as if that hadn’t occurred to him, “Do you?”

“No,” she said, brushing aside his question. “What do you mean, someone you look out for?”

“He’s this kid I met one day while I was out for a jog. There were some boys playing basketball in a vacant lot and a fight broke out just as I was passing. I stopped and broke it up. Stephen stayed after the other guys went home and we had some conversation. Short story, we kind of hit it off and became friends.

“His dad’s out of the picture, his mom is a single parent and struggling, and we started getting together for some one-on-one games. He was on the verge of flunking out of school at that time and we started making these bets about test scores and stuff, and his grades began to improve.”

“What kind of bets?”

“You know, if I won, he’d have to at least make a B on his upcoming algebra test, stuff like that. He’s smart.”

“And if he won?”

He laughed. “If he won, I’d have to come watch one of his ballgames at school or something. The stakes were pretty high. Anyway, this is the end of his junior year and he’s doing really well. He’s a good kid.”

A pontoon boat passed by in waving distance and strains of “Sweet Home Alabama” came thumping across the water. “Tell me about his girlfriend,” she prompted.

“Sarah,” he said. “Stephen’s had a crush on her all year long. There’s been a lot of flirting going on, and I’ve been trying to get him to ask her out, but he was too afraid she’d turn him down.” He threw up his hands in disbelief of the situation. “And then he goes and invites her to the biggest night of the year, on the spur of the moment, and she says yes! I can’t believe it!”

“Good for him!” she said, reaching up and meeting his high five as he leaned forward and swung his hand in the air. He clasped her hand as they slapped, and held on, bending toward her in his excitement, elbows on his knees that almost touched hers.

“And you know what the great thing is?” he asked.

She shook her head, smiling. “Tell me.” She leaned forward, matching his position, their faces now on the same level. She gazed deeply into his eyes, taking full advantage of his preoccupation with Stephen’s plight to study his features up close. He had little flecks of gold in the brown of his eyes, and they sparkled in his excitement, crow’s feet arching upwards at the top of his cheeks.

“Now he owes me.”

“Why is that so great?” she asked, trying to understand his triumphant smile.

“Because,” he said gleefully, “now he has to cut grass this summer.”

She looked confused. “How is that the greatest thing?”

“Because he had plans, now that he’s going to be a senior, to take it easy this summer, lie around the house all day. I’ve been telling him he’s got to work, stay in shape, and earn some money to help out his mother, save for college. You know, all the things old people tell teenagers,” he said laughing.

“Oh, I’m beginning to see your evil plan,” she said, amused. The obvious joy that Mike was getting out of this situation touched her deeply. She put her free hand on top of his and looked at him solemnly, until he grew uncomfortable under her searching gaze.

“What?” he said.

“The way you handled the prom thing, that was probably one of the sweetest things I’ve ever seen anyone do,” she said quietly. “You are a very kind man, Mike Rodgers.”

“Naw,” he said, looking embarrassed. He freed his hand, suddenly aware that she was holding it in both of hers, and picked up his paddle. He began to stroke, changing the subject. “We should probably be heading back. We wouldn’t want to be late for Vivian’s cookout. You want me to drop you off at the pier?”

“Sure, that would be fine,” she said, but she wanted to say no. She wanted to stay in that canoe, holding his hand forever. She’d never met a man like him before. Heck, she never even knew that men like him existed before. And now that she was aware of that information, she knew that she could never settle for anything less. Mike would never belong to her, that was clear, but now he’d set the bar so high for any man she met in the future, she doubted very seriously that she could find one who touched her heart the way he did. Mike was one of a kind.

A little piece of her heart felt as if it died just then. She didn’t have to worry about screwing up anymore and making bad choices. She may have attracted undesirable men to her like flies to garbage, but she knew what choices she’d be making in the future. She knew now that she’d rather be alone for the rest of her life than settle for anything less than the man of her dreams. And the man of her dreams wasn’t interested.

After dropping Lydia off at the pier, Mike paddled slowly back to the cabin. A gentle breeze ruffled his hair, but he was lost in the torment of his mind and didn’t notice the warmth of the sun on his shoulders or the clouds drifting lazily overhead. In the midst of discovering the canoe and the fun of Stephen’s phone call, memories of his father had been intrusive, knocking around in his head.

His thoughts circled around the same track they’d been traveling since the death of his father. Not death; that sounded so dignified and clean. Murder was the word. Murder was messy and cruel and senseless. He thought he’d walked off most of the hurt and frustration of what happened, but here he was, rehashing the horrible events again.

He could understand now why people said money was the root of all evil. Money should be a gift, a blessing, but it seemed that extreme wealth and the power that came with it was more of a curse. In the wrong hands, that power could effortlessly wreak havoc with the crook of a little finger.

He always struggled with the huge discrepancy between the rich and the poor, but he enjoyed the freedom to use his money to make life better for people he saw in need. That joy was compounded when he discovered the experience of helping someone without that person even knowing where the money had come from.

The same could not be said for his siblings. Jane and Tom followed in their mother’s footsteps. He and his siblings had been like the Three Musketeers growing up, but as they matured, his brother and sister became ever more lazy and entitled.

His mother, Claudia, was the one with the family name and money. When she’d fallen in love with his father, Ricky Rodgers, no amount of bribery or threats from her family could dissuade her from marrying the blue-collar, hard-working contractor who had just started his own company. When her family cut Claudia off, she didn’t care; they’d live on love. But that romantic notion quickly soured as the reality of living like normal people, paycheck to paycheck, became a drudge that she couldn’t bear.

After the birth of her three children, Claudia was on the verge of swallowing her pride and crawling back, defeated, to her family and their money. But Ricky’s business took off in a big way and their lives changed dramatically. Mike could still remember that small house they moved from, where he tagged along after his dad’s every step, but his siblings were too young to remember anything but the mansion they moved to.

It was a constant source of irritation to Claudia that Ricky would not sit back and let his crews do the work, and enjoy his new lifestyle, ready to accompany her to the society functions that made up her life. But Ricky continued to work hard and grow his company, Rodgers Construction, into a multi-million-dollar business, morphing from the creation of small neighborhoods to constructing high-rise apartment buildings.

The one thing that his parents had agreed on—for different reasons—was that their children needed to work for what they had. Claudia’s brush with near poverty made her stingy with her money, even though her trust fund was eventually reinstated, and she refused to set her children up in the lifestyle to which they had become accustomed. It was probably the best thing she ever did for Mike, but it hadn’t set well with his siblings.

Unlike Claudia, Ricky just believed in the reward of good hard work, and wanted his children to appreciate what they had. Mike was the only one of the three who embraced that philosophy.

His brother Tom was the CFO of the company, and Jane held the position of Vice President. Mike reluctantly became the CEO, but a small army of employees (not the least of which was his personal assistant, Gordy) allowed him to do what he loved best—be out on the jobsites with the crews. Many times he had shown up for a meeting in steel-toed boots, hardhat and work clothes, much to the irritation of his siblings.

They all drew excellent salaries, but Tom and Jane were not content with theirs. Tom had a gambling problem at the racetrack and was deeply in debt, and Jane simply couldn’t stand the thought of being one of the working class and having to rub elbows with the rest of the employees. The two of them hatched a diabolical plan to gain an inheritance overnight.

Now, as his thoughts traveled through the past, he hardly noticed his own actions as he automatically pulled the canoe up onto the shore. He sat down, staring across the lake and began to skip rocks on the water, throwing with vicious snaps of his wrist. His mind was mired in the past as he relived the unbelievable horror of what happened. It was hard, sitting on this beautiful shore, to believe what happened was real, and he couldn’t help reliving the events, still trying to sort it out and make sense of it.

The trouble began when his father decided the company was getting too big to suit him. Ricky was talking about selling out and starting another company, getting back to his roots with hands-on small jobs. Mike was completely onboard with that idea. Jane and Tom disagreed and could only envision their empire crumbling beneath their feet, their cushy careers going away. They knew that no one but their trusting father would put up with their slipshod way of passing the buck and their hit-or-miss attendance record.

“Murder for Hire!” the headlines screamed when all was said and done. But it had been a long journey to get there, starting with Mike being named as the number one suspect for the murder of his own father.

Tom planned everything. He brought Jane in on the deal because she was the only one of the two who had enough money to hire the hit man, and she’d willingly complied. If their father was dead, they would inherit his fortune now; not later when they were too old to enjoy it. They discussed at length how the accident would happen.

The plan was simple. Tom met a man by the name of Art Devlin at the racetrack over drinks at the bar. Art, a self-proclaimed hit man, bragged that he’d kill anyone for money. Tom was intrigued. He arranged for Art to be hired on as one of the crew for a pet project that Mike and his father shared, the renovation of a landmark movie theater. Normally, it would have been a tear-down, but Mike got Ricky involved and both of them spent a lot of time there. His brother Tom’s sudden interest in the project pleased Ricky; so on the morning of the incident, Tom was there.

On a construction project there are ample chances for accidents to occur. Art Devlin’s job was one of opportunity, sticking close to Ricky on the pretext of learning the trade, and taking advantage of the moment when he could cause an accident to happen to the older man.

Mike made it easy that morning when he and his father argued over whether or not to save the mural painted on the domed ceiling. The argument got heated, Mike claiming it was historical and worth saving, Ricky taking the side of cost efficiency. Arguments between them were not unusual, but were good-natured disagreements, and they always respected each other’s opinion in the end. On this morning they climbed up on the temporary catwalk to take a closer look at the ceiling. Tom and Art tagged along.

Mike’s words, heard clearly by the crew working down below, thanks to the excellent acoustics, would haunt him forever. “I’ll kill you, old man, if you touch this ceiling.” Mike briefly turned his back, and Tom simply saw an opportunity and took it. It wasn’t the plan, but Art was taking too long to get the job done, so Tom simply pushed his father. The older man, always sure of his footing, was taken by surprise and fell. Art was as surprised as anyone else, and even though he wasn’t the smartest man in the room, he began waving an accusing finger at Mike and shouting, “You pushed him! I saw it!” Tom stayed silent, but affected a horrified look, which spoke volumes to the witnesses below.

The second Ricky’s body hit the floor with a sickening thud, all eyes were on Mike. Mike was in shock, dashing down to see about his father, knowing already that he couldn’t have survived the fall, and didn’t immediately respond to Art’s accusations. The men and women below were dumbstruck with what they all were convinced they saw.

What ensued was a nightmare of a media circus. Friends and colleagues dropped out of Mike’s life like rats deserting a sinking ship, including Kendall Riley. Everyone except Gordy and Stephen, that is. Gordy, as self-centered and shallow as he was, refused to believe it; he had known Mike way too long to believe that story. Stephen also never doubted Mike’s innocence through it all.

There must be truth in the saying that there is no honor among thieves, because Art eventually cracked under police questioning. He wasn’t an experienced hit man as he led Tom to believe; he was simply a man who had already done time for murder. When Tom decided that Art didn’t deserve to be paid, now that he had taken care of it himself, Art got reckless with his talk at the bar and the heinous murder plot was revealed. Jane was horrified that Tom tried to pin the murder on Mike, and she eventually crumbled and confessed to her part in the terrible crime.

When the truth finally came out, Mike’s so-called friends returned in droves, stating they never believed it for a minute, and issuing invitations to join them at the club for dinner and such. But Mike was left with a hollowness that he couldn’t fill. He couldn’t just pick back up where he left off. That’s when he decided to leave, telling no one but Stephen and Gordy that he was going to walk wherever his feet took him, until he could get things straight in his mind. They both honored his request for limited communication, texting only when absolutely necessary, and he felt lucky to have these two loyal people left in his life.

Tom was sentenced to life in prison with no chance for parole. Jane got twenty-five years to life, and Art got off lucky with a slap on the wrist in exchange for his testimony. Claudia was in seclusion somewhere in the Swiss Alps where she had been since the trial began, unable to bear the scandal.

Mike had no family now, to speak of. He missed his father so much that the mere thought of him felt like a hand squeezing his heart. He hadn’t known that his brother had grown to hate him. He knew they had been traveling separate paths for a long time, but he couldn’t fathom the kind of hatred that it must have taken for either of his siblings to do what they did.

And all that money was his now, but it didn’t mean a thing. He’d seen the corruptive power of money first-hand, and he wanted no part of it anymore. He toyed with the idea of giving it all away.

Except, it sure had felt good this afternoon when Stephen called, to be able to take care of this thing that was so important to the boy, with just a snap of his fingers. He was still convinced that money was a powerful tool if used to make the world a better place.

And Lydia, sweet Lydia, she was so amazed at what she witnessed in the canoe. Well, she didn’t know the half of it, and he didn’t want her to. His life was a mess, and he was not willing to drag her into the ruins that he was dealing with. But oh, how he wished things could be different.

He tossed one last pebble into the lake and got up to take a shower, and perhaps rinse some of the dark thoughts from his mind before Vivian’s cookout with Dugger.

At that moment, dark thoughts also occupied Rocco’s mind as he lay in the underbrush and peered through his binoculars. Lydia happily scurried back and forth from the house to the picnic table, and her every move irritated him. He watched as she shook out the tablecloth and covered the picnic table, and brought out the dishes, arranging everything just so. She was acting like one of those High Pointe kids, he thought, carrying on with her life, pretending to be someone special.

He watched her light the charcoal in the grill, and soon the aroma drifted over to him, making his stomach growl. He hadn’t had a decent meal in a week and he was starving. He scratched the skin around the waistband of his pants. He’d forgotten about chiggers and how the itching drove him insane when he was a kid. He remembered the outdoors as being more welcoming than what he was dealing with now. He was miserable with bug bites and wanted nothing more than to finish his business with Lydia and move on.

He had been extremely disappointed when she ignored his text messages. She should have been scared and texted him back. She should have recognized him from his genius reference to her old nickname. She should have been asking where he was and what he wanted. He’d planned some scary back-and-forth texting that would have left her terrified.

But maybe she didn’t check her texts. Having cooled his heels in prison for so long, he didn’t trust this new technology, where no one communicated in person anymore.

He couldn’t wait.

Now his plan was to go old-school, and he fingered the note that he had written, tucked in his pocket. He planned to sneak into the house and leave it on her pillow. That would get her attention. He wanted her to be afraid. He wanted her to feel his presence and fear for her life.

Watching, he saw the old geezer in the pickup truck pull in and park. Gramps and Lydia’s aunt eventually settled themselves in the yard, and he knew Lydia was alone in the house. Now might be a good time to actually finish his business. And wouldn’t that old couple be surprised when they found her. He was nothing, if not flexible. If the opportunity presented itself; he would grab it.

But before he could reach the house he saw that hippie, Mike, appear. Lydia came out immediately with a platter in her hands and joined the group.
Okay, back to Plan A,
Rocco thought, empowered by his ability to think on his feet. He grinned, imagining how her face would look when she saw the note he was going to leave for her.

He moved carefully through the brush, crawling when necessary, around to the front of the house. He knew her bedroom was upstairs because he’d studied the lights that went on and off at night, and had seen her through his binoculars, moving around. She slept upstairs, in the bedroom on the left.