Let's Make It Legal (24 page)

“Maybe at first. But in the end, Emily will be excited. She loves challenges.” He smiled. “She’s a lot like you.”

A wonderful feeling of warmth slid through Sydney.

“And Jeffrey, well, he’s little. He’ll adjust fast.” His hand tightened around hers. “I’ve already called a couple of people in Washington. I’ve got some feelers out for jobs.”

The plane had reached the runway, and the pilot said, “Flight attendants, be seated for takeoff.”

They were silent as the plane barreled down the runway, then John reached into his jacket pocket. “You forgot something.” He opened the velvet jeweler’s box and removed her engagement ring. Taking her hand again, he slipped it on. “Don’t take it off again.” But he smiled when he said it.

“I won’t.”

As the plane lifted off, Sydney’s heart soared along with it. She knew the future would always be uncertain, because no one could predict what would happen. She also knew there would be other problems along the way, but together, she and John would face them and surmount them.

The plane climbed and banked, then climbed again.

John squeezed her hand. “I love you,” he mouthed.

“I love you.”

They held hands tightly as the plane broke through the clouds, and golden sunshine, filled with the promise of the days to come, flooded the windows.

The End

From
The Patinville Daily News
front page, August, 1989

Local Police Officer Killed In Baton Rouge Shoot-Out

Sgt. James Edward Kendella, 31, was shot and killed last night during an undercover operation conducted by the Baton Rouge Police Department. Sgt. Kendella, a Patinville resident, had been a member of the Baton Rouge Police Force for ten years. Last night, during a stakeout, Kendella was killed by Tony Abruzzi, a notorious local gangster, who police have long tried to convict. Before dying, Kendella also shot and killed Abruzzi. Kendella’s partner, ex-Patinville resident, Sgt. Neil Cantrelle, witnessed the shootings.

Kendella is survived by his wife, Alice, and their two children, James, Jr. and Lisa. Funeral services will be held at St. Anthony’s Church on Friday at 10:00 a.m. See page four for complete story.

* * *

December, 1992 . . .

The dream is the same as all the others. He is running down a dark, rain-swept street. It is hot and muggy, just like it is every summer in Louisiana. His footsteps echo on the pavement and the street lamps cast long, eerie shadows that look like individual hurdles he must cross.

He rounds the corner, and for one awful moment he cannot believe his eyes. The tableau laid out before him is like a carefully staged scene from a police action movie: the muscular gangster standing in the doorway of the house, the cop on the other side of the street. And then, as if an unseen director has yelled “Action,” the slow-motion movements of the players.

Everything happens at once. Jimmy shouts. Abruzzi whirls around. Gunshots erupt, spitting death. Jimmy folds over like a crumpled doll. Abruzzi staggers forward, then pitches face down across the concrete steps.

Abruzzi’s girlfriend, wearing only a sheer nightgown, stands in the doorway. She stares at Abruzzi sprawled across her porch steps. Her high-pitched scream slices through the dark night. “Toneeeee, nooooo.. . .”

The sound of the gunshots reverberate in the moist, thick air. Neil races toward Jimmy. A siren wails louder and louder. Neil’s heart thunders in his chest, and his breath comes in shallow spurts.

No. No. No, his heart cries. His feet pound across the distance separating him from Jimmy Kendella, his partner, his best friend, the man he loves most in the world except for his father and brother.

No, he whispers, even as he kneels over Jimmy’s motionless body, even as the siren whines to a stop, even as he hears the urgent voices and the clunk of car doors.

No. The word tears through his brain. Like a mechanical doll with jerky, stilted movements, he lifts Jimmy’s head. His hands feel as if they belong to someone else.

No, please God. No, no. no. But even as he prays in desperation, even as his heart pushes into his throat, even as his hands shake in horror, he knows his denial is useless.

Jimmy is dead, shot through the middle of the chest. Blood puddles around his body, and his eyes are open and staring, their expression full of disbelief. Neil leans over him. He presses his ear against Jimmy’s chest.

Hands clutch at Neil. He fights them away. “Jimmy!” he cries. “Jimmy!” More squad cars arrive, brakes squealing, sirens a cacophony of sound surrounding him.

“Come on, Cantrelle, there’s nothing you can do,” a gruff voice says. The hands pull him away, and he screams.

“Jimmeeeee!”

“ Jimmeeeee!” Neil screamed and sat up in bed. His head was pounding. No. Someone was pounding on the door. Still shaking, it took him a few seconds to distance himself from the dream. Someone really was outside, he thought, as he fumbled for his jeans in the milky moonlight.

“Neil!” a man’s voice shouted. “Open up!”

Neil grimaced. That whiskey voice could only belong to Gastin Nesbitt, who owned the combination bait shop, gas station, grocery store right off Highway One, the overseas highway that linked the islands from mainland Florida over to Key Largo at its northeastern end to Key West at its southwestern end. Gastin, a Conch who had been born and raised on Cudjoe Key, was Neil’s one friend on the island—the only friend he’d made since coming to the Keys three years earlier.

“Keep your shirt on,” Neil grumbled as he padded across the bare wood floor to the door. He released the latch, and opened the door wide, letting the moonlight invade the room. Zoe, his black Labrador retriever, was suddenly at his side, a low growl rumbling in her throat. Gastin’s wiry frame stood silhouetted through the screened door. The diamond-dusted gulf waters shone behind him, and Neil could see Gastin’s rusted Ford pickup truck parked near the steps. Neil rubbed his eyes, trying to dispel the dream that still had him shaky.

“What are you doing here, Gastin? What the hell time is it, anyway?” He held the dog’s collar. “It’s okay, Zoe It’s just Gastin.”

Zoe’s body relaxed as Gastin said, “Your daddy called, Neil.”

“Papa?” Alarm shot through him. His father had only phoned him once before, when his grandmother had died. Réne Cantrelle was not the kind of man who would roust Gastin out of bed in the middle of the night unless it was something important. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s your brother.” Gastin opened the screened door and walked inside. The smell of fish that always clung to him drifted through the air.

“Norman! What happened?” Fear, thick and cloying, choked Neil’s throat.

“He done had a automobile accident. Bad, from what your daddy said. They got ’im in the Mercy Hospital in Baton Rouge, and it’s plenty serious. They don’t know if he’s gonna make it. Your daddy said to tell you to come home as fast as you can. He said they need you.”

Neil broke out in chills as the words hammered through his mind. Norman was seriously hurt. He could die. His father wanted him to come. He stared at Gastin. “What time is it? Maybe I can make the eight o’clock flight from Miami.”

“It’s three-thirty. You’d be cuttin’ it close.” Gastin switched on the nearest lamp. His right cheek bulged, and Neil knew he had a wad of chewing tobacco lodged inside his mouth. “You can come back to my place if you wanna call the airlines. You need money?”

“No, but thanks.” Neil pulled a clean shirt from his makeshift closet, a broom handle laid across two pegs jutting from the wall. He stuffed underwear, a few T-shirts, two pairs of clean jeans, a couple of sweaters, a pair of sweats, and some toiletries into a nylon duffel bag, dressing as he packed. The duffel bag still had some room in it, so he added a couple of paperback books of poetry, and then, as an afterthought, a pair of dress pants and a blue long-sleeved dress shirt, both holdovers from his past.

“You need a ride to Miami?”

Neil shook his head. “No. I’ll go on the bike.” He’d bought a used Harley-Davidson when he first arrived in the Keys. He found it the perfect mode of transportation, using less gas and requiring a smaller place for storage when not in use. “Would you keep Zoe for me, though?”

“Yep.” Gastin leaned down to pet the dog, and Zoe wagged her tail.

Neil knew the dog liked the old Conch. He also knew Gastin slipped Zoe tidbits from the table, something Neil didn’t do. No wonder Zoe liked the old geezer. “And the boat? Will you keep an eye on
The Louisiana Lady,
too?” He was referring to his charter fishing boat, tied up at the dock outside Gastin Nesbitt’s store.

“You know I will,” Gastin said. He walked to the screened door and pushed it open, spitting tobacco juice in a perfect arch. Neil heard the splat as it landed on the hard- packed dirt surrounding the shack. “I won’t let nobody touch that boat, no sirree.” Zoe’s tail thumped behind her as she watched the old man.

After pulling an old leather bomber jacket from the deep recesses of a storage chest, Neil lifted his duffel bag, and said, “I’m ready. Let’s go.” He yanked the chain on the ancient lamp, and the room was once more plunged into shadowy darkness.

Following Gastin and Zoe out the door, Neil drew it shut behind him. He didn’t bother to lock it. There was nothing in the cottage worth stealing. If anyone wanted the beat-up footlocker he’d bought for ten dollars at an auction on Sugarloaf Key or the forty-five-dollar air mattress that served as his bed or the old stove that he’d picked up for less than a hundred bucks, they could have them. The only thing of value in the room was the small portable refrigerator Neil had bought new when he’d first come to the island. Even the shortwave radio was a relic.

Neil pulled the bike out from under the thick tarp he used to protect it from the sun and the salt spray.

Gastin opened the tailgate on the truck, and Zoe leaped into the bed of the pickup. Soon Neil, following behind the truck, was bouncing along the unpaved road that would take them to the highway and Gastin’s place. Neil was only partly aware of the isolated landscape dotted with pine, buttonwood, and jacaranda trees as they barreled through the night. Unanswered questions churned through his mind as worry gnawed at him. Would Norman be all right? What kind of injuries did he have? How were their parents doing? His chest tightened. Their parents. They must be terrified.

As fear knotted into a lump in his gut, Neil wished he still believed in prayer.

To read the rest of this story,
click here
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Houston, Texas - Friday, October 28, 1992

Pregnant!

Amy Carpenter couldn't stop smiling. She tapped her fingers against the steering wheel in time to Bonnie Raitt's "Let's Give 'Em Something to Talk About" and grinned from ear to ear.

She knew she shouldn't be so happy. After all, this pregnancy was a bit premature since her wedding wasn't scheduled to take place until the start of her Christmas break—still eight weeks away.

But she didn't care. Joy, like champagne, bubbled inside, giddy and irrepressible. She felt like shouting from the rooftops.

And her parents! They would be thrilled. They wanted grandchildren more than just about anything. Of course, they would have preferred she wait until she was married—especially Amy's mother—but she didn't think the fact that she and Sam had jumped the gun would matter much in the end. It was the baby that was important.

A delicious shiver raised chill bumps on her arms as she thought of her fiancé. Sam.
Oh, Sam, please be happy, too.
She told herself he would be. He wanted kids, and even though he'd said "someday" the one time they'd discussed the subject, Amy didn't think he'd mind if that "someday" was sooner than they'd anticipated.

She wished she could call him and tell him immediately. Unfortunately, where Sam was, there were no phones. Amy would have to wait until she heard from him again.

He'd originally expected to be back in Houston by now. Sam was a staff photographer for
World of Nature
magazine, and he'd thought this assignment to shoot the elusive snow leopards who made their home high up in the Himalayas would only take a couple of weeks, a month at the most. But the snow leopards had proven more elusive than ever, and Sam had been in Nepal more than two months already.

It might not be so bad if she could at least talk to him regularly, but he was in such a remote area that his base camp was a three-day hike, so she'd only talked to him twice since he'd been gone.

If Amy thought her married life would be like this—a long series of absences with no communication—she might not have been so eager to marry Sam, no matter how much she loved him. But he'd promised her he would do his best to avoid assignments that would keep him away longer than a week or two, and he had also promised he would take her along with him whenever he could.

Now that she was pregnant she wouldn't be able to travel with him as planned, at least not until the baby was old enough to go, too, but that was okay. The trade-off was worth it. She was going to be a mother.

A mother. Imagine.

Less than four months ago she'd despaired of ever finding the right man, and now she'd not only found him, but she was going to marry him over the Christmas holidays and have his baby in May. Some days she could hardly believe her good fortune.

She smiled contentedly, her momentary unease gone. As she braked for a red light, her big emerald engagement ring sparkled in the afternoon sunshine slanting through the windshield. Amy twisted her hand a little, admiring the rich color and fire of the stone, which was surrounded by tiny diamonds.