Love Mercy (34 page)

“I need your help, Rett,” Mel said, her eyes not leaving the man. “Call Brad and tell him I had to leave. Tell him you’ll stay here until he can come close up.” She grabbed a pen and jotted something down on the wooden counter. “I’ll be back soon.” Rett could feel some kind of emotion radiating from Mel, like a three-way lamp switched on bright—it seemed like fear or anger or something else? Who was this man? Why could he rattle someone as unshakable as Mel?

Without waiting for Rett’s reply, Mel met the man just as he stepped through the doorway.

“Not here,” Rett heard Mel mumble. She pushed past him and with a quick glance at Rett, he followed her without uttering a word.

“Okay, sure,” Rett called after Mel, nervous about what just happened. She looked down at the countertop where Mel had written Brad’s phone number. Under it was written the word
triggers
.

Triggers? What was that? Like on a gun? Was it this guy’s name? Was Rett supposed to tell Brad that? She called the number and got Brad’s voice mail. She quickly told him what Mel said and hung up, wondering what she should do now. She knew she couldn’t leave the store without locking it up, and she didn’t have any idea how to do that. Her grandma. That’s what she should do, call her grandma.

The answering machine picked up after the fourth ring, and Rett left a quick message for Love to call her back at the feed store. Then she tried Love’s cell. Again, voice mail. Why didn’t her grandma answer her cell phone?

What now? For some reason, she knew deep inside that she had to tell someone right away about Mel leaving with that scary-looking man. It didn’t feel right to her, and the burden of being the only one who knew frightened her more than anything ever had.

Magnolia was the next person who came to her mind. She was looking up the number for the Buttercream in the tattered Morro Bay Yellow Pages when a man walked into the feed store. He was an older guy, not as old as her grandma or Magnolia, but not as young as Mel. Forties, she guessed. He wore a fleece-lined denim jacket, Levi’s and muddy roper boots.

“Howdy,” he said in an obvious Texas accent. “Mel around?”

She was silent for a moment, not certain what to say. “Uh, she stepped out for a moment, with a . . . She’ll be back . . . uh . . . soon?”

He cocked his head while she stammered, his brown eyes serious. “Is everything okay?”

She nodded and swallowed hard, not trusting herself to speak again.

Something in his face shifted. He glanced around, taking in the empty feed store. “Are you here alone?”

She hesitated, not wanting to answer a question that would point out her vulnerability. Should she lie and say Brad or Evan was in the back? Would this guy fall for it? Who was he, anyway? She put the banjo case in front of her thinking that if he tried anything crazy she could throw it at him and run.

He walked up to the counter, pulled out his wallet and flipped it open. “My name is Ford Hudson. I’m with the San Celina County Sheriff’s Department. Mel and I are friends. Is there something wrong, young lady?”

She stared down at the badge. It looked real enough, but what if it was a fake? She’d seen on television about how many fake police badges there were out there. She wasn’t an idiot.

“Smart girl,” the man said. “Yes, it could be fake. What can I do to convince you I’m an actual officer and Mel’s friend?”

Before she could answer, the phone rang. It was her grandma.

“Rett, are you okay? What’s going on? Is Dale threatening you?” Love’s voice sounded out of breath.

“No, I’m fine,” she said, keeping her eye on the man. “I’m at the feed store. Did Magnolia call you?”

“Yes, but she said you were on your way home. Then I listened to your message. You sounded scared.”

“I’m okay. You know, like, a lot of people here in Morro Bay, right?”

“I suppose you could say I do. Why?”

She gazed up at the man in the denim jacket. “Do you know someone named Hudson . . . uh . . .”

“Ford Hudson,” the man repeated, smiling. “People call me Hud.”

“Hud?” Rett said into the phone.

“Of course,” Love said. “Hud’s a sheriff’s deputy. He has a daughter around your age. She was in my 4-H group for years.”

“What’s he look like?”

“Medium height. Short, brownish hair, gray at the temples. Has a Texas twang. Why?”

“He’s here looking for Mel and I wasn’t sure—”

“Where did Mel go? Are you at the feed store alone?”

Rett turned her back to Hud, and in a low voice, quickly told her the story. “I left a message for Brad. I can’t leave the store unlocked. She left in such a hurry with this creepy guy who showed up and just told me to call Brad.”

“Let me talk to Hud.”

Rett turned around and handed the phone to Hud. “She wants to talk to you.”

He listened, then said, “I don’t know what’s going on. I just walked in. Maybe Rett can tell me. Okay, sure. Here she is.” He handed the phone back to Rett.

“I’ll be right down,” Love said. “Sit tight. Tell Hud whatever he wants to know. You can trust him.

Rett hung up the phone. “My grandma said you were okay.”

“Can you tell me where Mel is now?”

Rett nodded. “She left with a man. It was kinda strange. I mean, she was sort of jumpy. The guy was big, like wrestler big. He wore a trench coat. He had curly short hair. And a red face. Like he was a drinker.” She paused. “My stepfather drinks a lot, that’s how I know that.”

He put both hands on the counter. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

She told him everything she could remember. “He didn’t say anything, but it was like she knew he was coming or something.”

“Did she say anything about where they were going?”

Rett shook her head. Then she remembered and pointed at the counter. “She wrote Brad’s number for me and something else.”

He came around the counter and looked at the message: triggers. “How long ago did they leave?”

She glanced at the black-and-white schoolhouse clock that hung on the wall next to the doorway. “Maybe fifteen minutes? Twenty? Do you know where they went? Does it help at all?”

He reached over and patted her hand. “It helps tremendously, Rett. You did real good. Is your grandma on her way down here?”

Rett nodded, suddenly afraid for Mel, though she didn’t exactly know why.

“Then I’m going to take off. Don’t worry. I’m pretty sure I know where they went.”

“Okay,” she said, watching him walk out the door. “Good luck,” she called after him. Then added under her breath, “Okay, Mister God, you gotta give Mel a break. She really, really needs your help. Please make everything okay. In Jesus’s name, amen.”

TWENTY-FIVE

W
e’ll take my car,” Mel said, walking toward her truck. w “I’d rather drive,” Patrick said.

“I drive, or I don’t go.” She wouldn’t give in on this point. She knew that it was crazy even going off alone with him, despite the fact that she’d left a clue on the desk that she hoped Rett would pick up on. It would at least give them a place to start looking if she disappeared.

“Whatever.” He grunted and squeezed his hefty bulk into the front seat. “I just want to get this over with.”

“No more than I do,” Mel said, driving slowly down Main Street.

“Where are we going?” he asked. “Why not just go to your place?”

She stopped at the on-ramp to Pacific Coast Highway and glanced in her rearview mirror. No one behind her. She turned to look at him. “I think that little paint job you did on my garage answers any questions about why you are not welcome at my house.”

He had the grace to look embarrassed. His already florid complexion, a rougher, rounder facsimile of Sean’s handsome face, turned a deeper red. “I was just trying to get your attention.”

“It was juvenile,” she said, pressing her foot on the accelerator as they took the curvy on-ramp. “There’s a bar in San Celina where we can talk.”

“Only thing I want to talk about is you giving back the money.”

She didn’t answer but pressed down harder on the accelerator. She contemplated more than one of the passing light posts, calculating how fast she’d have to hit one to kill them both. But, somewhere inside her, another voice, one that sounded suspiciously like Cy’s, argued against that drastic solution.

“Not many situations on this earth are totally unfixable, Mel,” Cy told her once. “With God’s help and a little perseverance, most things can be worked out. The secret is not giving up. If something doesn’t work, you simply try another path.”

They’d been stacking alfalfa bales in the back lot, and she’d not answered. She loved Cy like a father, but when he started talking that God stuff, she just shifted her mind into neutral and let him rattle on. She didn’t want to offend him, but it all seemed just too improbable to her. And ironic, she thought now, coming from someone who died from something that couldn’t be fixed. But she understood what he was trying to get across to her and what he was trying to do: give her hope.

His words about not giving up made her think of Love. If nothing else, what Love had gone through in the last year was reason enough for Mel not to kill herself. She’d never put her friend through that kind of pain. She’d at least try to heed Cy’s advice and try another path with Patrick.

It was dark when they reached Triggers, a bar that Mel had gone to a few times on her lonely night drives when grisly memories kept her from sleep. It was down by the San Celina bus station. The bar was a place that didn’t do a thing to attract tourists but prided itself in maintaining its hard-core working-class roots. The flat-roofed, cinder block building had been around for fifty years, had opened and closed at least ten times, and every one of those hard years was apparent in the scarred wooden booths, the chipped dark brown linoleum floor and the rust-stained bathroom sinks. It was past the point of being quaint and was what it was: a place for people down on their luck to sit, drink and brood. The television on the wall was always turned to sports, never CNN. There were only hard-core country songs on the jukebox: Haggard, Jones, Cash, the Williams boys, father, son and grandson. No one knew Mel there—she didn’t frequent it often enough—and the bartenders changed as quickly as the tide. It felt like the right place to have it out with Patrick.

She chose a back booth, and once their drinks came, Patrick started in on her. In the background, Dwight Yoakam wailed about being a thousand miles from nowhere.

“Okay, enough of the bullshit,” Patrick finally said. “Just give me the money, and I’m on the first plane out of here.”

She was ready for him, had been carrying them around since he called, expecting this moment. She pulled her checkbook and savings account statement from her back pocket, slapping them down on the table in front of him. The wooden table jiggled with the force, and his beer sloshed over the rim of the mug, wetting the edge of the blue and white bank statement.

He glanced over them. “What’s this supposed to prove?”

“Look at the balances,” she said, keeping her voice quiet. She needed all the edge she could get, and she’d learned from years on the force that often speaking low commanded more authority than loud blustering. It forced the other person to lean in to hear you, giving you the psychological advantage. “In case you have trouble with numbers, the checking account has approximately nine hundred bucks in it and the savings a little less than a thousand. What don’t you understand? That’s all my worldly goods, right there.”

He shoved the papers back across the table. “Doesn’t prove shit. You could have the money squirreled away in some other account.”

She picked up her own drink, a whiskey over ice, and took a sip. She’d make this last, let the ice melt and water it down. She had to keep her wits about her. “Except that I don’t.”

“Yeah, right.” He gave a harsh laugh and rubbed his knuckles across his strong chin. She could hear the rasp of his beard against skin-covered bone.

“Oh, c’mon,” she said, frustration rising inside her like a teakettle starting to boil. “You saw where I lived. You’ve probably been inside my house. I work at a feed store, you stupid ass. Why would I live like this if I had all this money you think I have?”

He shrugged, drained his beer and let out a soft belch. “You’re not stupid. For all I know, you’re lying low, waiting—”

“Waiting!” she exclaimed, slapping a hand on the table. “For what? It’s been three years. What do you think I’d be waiting for? I have a question for you. Why did
you
wait so long to start harassing me? If you thought I had this money, where have you been?”

He looked her straight in the eyes. “You know why. I told you at Sean’s funeral that I’d never pursue this until our mother died. God rest her soul.” He crossed himself. “I’d’ve never done nothing to hurt her. Sean hurt her enough.”

She wanted to slam her fist on the table.
Not just her.

“Give me the money, and I’ll go away.”

“You’re hopeless,” she said, throwing a ten-dollar bill down on the table. “Find your own way home.”

She jumped up and darted for the door, counting on youth and surprise to give her a head start. The unexpected rain hit her hard in the face the minute she ran over the threshold. The semi-full parking lot was slick with wet oil, causing her to slow just enough for Patrick to catch up with her. He grabbed her upper arm, squeezing it hard enough to make her squawk.

Outweighing her by eighty pounds, he easily swung her around to face him. She twisted from his grasp, attempting to knee him in the groin. She slipped on the wet asphalt, missed and slammed her knee into his thigh. His grip tightened; he fumbled, let go, grabbing her other arm.

Rain blinded her, pelting their struggle. She twisted, turned, using speed and her smaller size to make herself an awkward catch. She wished she had her baton or her hefty police flashlight.