Rob Cornell - Ridley Brone 01 - Last Call (2 page)

I should have treated her like a complete stranger.

Only that, too, would have been a lie.

“Sure,” I said. “What are old friends for?”

“Friends.” Autumn twirled a finger through the napkin shreds. “Right.”

Chapter 2

When I returned home, my ears rang with the strained cries of the drunken and tone deaf. I parked my ‘92 Honda Civic—one of the few things I brought with me from California—in the circular drive of my parents’ house, my vision blurry. My clothes smelled of smoke, my breath of bad gin. I felt hung over, even though I’d only had the one drink with Autumn that I never finished.

Breathing the fresh three AM air, I stood in the driveway for a moment and stared at the house my parents’ songs had built—nine-thousand square-feet, a ten-acre yard, in-ground pool, a kitchen bigger than my entire apartment in Los Angeles. A lot of space for one guy.

I finally staggered inside and upstairs, pulling off my clothes as I went, leaving my shoes at the foot of the stairs, a shirt hanging on the banister, my pants bunched up on a couple steps. I was too worn out from my stint in karaoke hell to worry about tidiness.

Thoughts of Autumn filled my head as I climbed between the sheets. I lay awake in the dark, naked, my hand resting on my thigh. I pictured Autumn in bed next to me—easy to do since we had shared
this
bed in
this
room at least a dozen times. Though my parents had repainted, the furniture remained the same, even sat exactly where I’d left it all. The tattered Guns N’ Roses poster was still taped to the back of the door. A row of trophies from various vocal competitions my parents had forced me into collected dust on a shelf above the bed. I felt like I lay in a buried time capsule, waiting for someone to dig me up.

I remembered the feel of Autumn’s skin, how I would spoon her and rub my hand up and down across her belly, brushing the bottoms of her breasts, caressing the ridge of her pelvis. I imagined reliving those moments. But it felt wrong. She was someone else’s wife, no longer the girl that once promised she’d die before sleeping with another man.

Stupid kid stuff.

I let my fantasy drift like a vapor, pulling my hand off my thigh and letting it drop to the mattress. I closed my eyes and forced myself to lay still, but after thirty minutes without any sign of my falling asleep, I got up and went into the bathroom for a cold shower.

What they say about cold showers? All lies.

Back in bed—and no less frustrated—I sat propped up and watched the window grow brighter and brighter, thinking I should tell Autumn I couldn’t take her case, wondering why I took it in the first place. Not very professional of me. Of course, I didn’t have a license anymore. I didn’t have to be professional.

Somehow I managed to fall asleep for about three seconds. Then I heard shouting and a metallic clanging, like a broken cowbell, outside my bedroom door. I jerked awake so fast I pulled a muscle in my neck.

“Time to wake up,” she shouted. “Get your lazy ass out of bed.”

I pulled the sheet over my head. “Sheila. Seriously. Don’t you knock?”

Sheila Magnor stopped banging on whatever she had used to wake me and said through the door, “I leaned on the door bell for a minute straight. Were you sampling the product last night?”

I whipped the sheet off my head. “No.” But my tongue felt like a sheet of sand, and my head throbbed. I was hung over not from alcohol, but from listening to alcoholics sing. “Just because you have a key, doesn’t mean you live here.”

“Are you decent? I’m coming in.” The doorknob twisted, the door opened two inches.

I was still naked from the shower the night before. “Hold it a sec.”

The door stopped opening, but she didn’t pull it closed either.

“Do you have someone in there with you?”

“No one’s in here, I—”

She swung the door open and barged in. “Fine.”

I tucked the sheet up under my arms like you see women conveniently do on TV, trying to cover as much of my exposed skin as possible.

Sheila halted before my bed, an eyebrow cocked Mr. Spock style. She held a serving spoon in one hand and a pot gripped by the handle in the other—her makeshift alarm bell. Her silver hair was pulled back in a tight bun, showing off the racecar-shaped earrings dangling from each lobe. She wore a pink suit with matching skirt, her lapel sporting a diamond brooch the size of a baby’s fist. In her late sixties, the woman looked fifteen years younger. I think whatever Dick Clark had, she stole.

Sheila, believe it or not, was also the executor of my parents’ will.

“I haven’t heard from you in a while.”

“I’ve been busy.” I glanced down at my body, the sheet feeling so flimsy against my naked skin. My neck and cheeks grew hot.

Sheila followed my gaze, snorted. “Ridley, I practically helped raise you. I even bathed you as a child.”

“Um, that’s great and all, but I’m not a kid anymore.”

“Your modesty is wasted on me.”

“This isn’t a philosophical debate, Sheila. I’m naked under this sheet.”

“I suppose I’ll wait downstairs.”

She left the door open on the way out.

I quickly hobbled into a pair of jeans I found bunched up in a corner, snagged a Led Zeppelin t-shirt off a hanger from the closet, then joined Sheila in the living room.

She stood in the center of the room, surveying the various shapes draped with white sheets. When I came in, she turned to me and crossed her arms. The pot and spoon were gone.

“You must have an obsessive aversion to dust.”

I scratched the back of my neck, looking at the hardwood floor. “Haven’t we had this conversation before?”

“I’m not sure.” She waved a hand at the covered furniture. “It doesn’t appear so.”

“Please don’t get on my case about this.”

“It’s silly. You have this whole house—”

“To myself. It’s more than I’m used to. Way more than I need.”

“If it’s too much work, we could hire a staff. A maid. A chef. There is more to that kitchen than a toaster oven.”

“There’s a toaster oven?”

Sheila rolled her eyes, stalked over to one of the sheet-covered forms, and gripped the sheet as if she meant to yank it off.

“Wait.” I rushed over, pinned the sheet down with a hand. “Leave it.”

“It’s merely a wing chair, Ridley. It won’t run loose and mess the floor.”

She did a pirouette, glided over to a covered couch, and whipped the sheet off like a magician revealing a shocking illusion.

I felt my cheeks turn hot.

“There,” she said and looked at me, chin slightly raised.

I took a couple of deep breathes, reminding myself that she meant well. “What are you doing here so early in the morning?”

“Early?” She offered me a view of her watch. “It’s almost one.”

I squinted at the watch in disbelief. “Shit. I have to go.”

“But—”

I gripped Sheila by the shoulders and pecked her on the cheek. “I’m sorry. I told a friend I’d meet her almost three hours ago.”

“Who?”

I spun around a few times, looking for something without knowing what, or where to even start. The hectic night at the
High Note
, not to mention the lack of sleep, still had my mind fogged.

“Old friend from high school,” I said.

“A girlfriend?”

I stalked into the foyer, scanned the floor, the walls. What the hell was I looking for?

“Why? Jealous?”

“Simply curious,” Sheila said and strolled in to join me. “I’m surprised she hasn’t phoned you.”

I spun to face her and snapped my fingers. “Phone. That’s it. Where did I …” My gaze drifted over to the pair of pants I’d left on the stairs the night before. I bounded up the steps, dug my phone out of the pants pocket, and flipped it open to check for messages.

“Aw, crap.” The phone’s screen was blank, and when I pressed the power button it refused to come to life.

“Let me guess,” Sheila said. “Forgot to charge the battery again?”

I tucked the dead phone into my pocket and thumped back down the stairs, pausing in front of Sheila. I raked a hand through my hair. “Do I look all right? No bed head or anything?”

She pursed her lips and gave me that eyebrow lift again.

I started to bolt for the door, caught myself. “Was there something you needed, Sheila?”

She looked at me for a moment, seeming to think about it, then shook her head. “Just wanted to make sure things are going smoothly at the
High Note
.”

“Picture someone jamming meat thermometers through your ear drums. Other than that, we seem to be misplacing a lot of booze.”

“Misplacing?” Her eyes narrowed and she looked down at the floor as if calculating something. Sheila always looked to me like she was doing math in her head.

“And,” I continued, “my only waitress is on the verge of quitting, probably right after she assaults me with her drink tray. If I didn’t have Paul and Holly on my side the place would probably end up in flames.”

Sheila’s eyes widened. “Why is that?”

“‘Cause I’d douse the place in gasoline and light it on fire.”

“That isn’t funny.”

I held up my hands. “Come visit at the bar sometime. I’ve got to bolt.”

I dashed out. I was halfway to my car when I finally noticed the feel of concrete against my bare feet. I sprinted back into the house.

Sheila stood by the open door, my sneakers dangling from the fingers of one hand.

“Maybe I should put on some socks too, huh?”

She lifted an eyebrow in response.

I pulled to the curb in front of Autumn’s Ranch-style house and hesitated a minute in the car, staring through the passenger-side window at her front porch flanked by square shrubs and floppy plants, a sprig of colorful flowers here and there. When I was growing up in Hawthorne, this section of town had been all woods. Now they’d installed dozens of square blocks lined with houses you could only tell apart from the various shapes of their shrubbery.

Autumn answered the door in a Minnie Mouse t-shirt, the bottom of the shirt covering most of a pair of ratted cut-offs. The casual attire surprised me. Though what was I expecting? A beige trench coat covering a lacy red teddy?

“Hey,” she said and stroked back a piece of her hair that had come free from her ponytail.

“Hey,” I said back.

I watched her eyes. She seemed to watch mine.

She stood aside and gestured me into the foyer. After I crossed the threshold, she closed the door, turned the deadbolt. Locking us in, I wondered, or the rest of the world out?

Hanging on a wall to the right, a collage of photographs gave me my first glimpse of Doug’s face. A few of the pictures featured Autumn by herself, often with a hiking pack, the background various shades of nature—purple mountain silhouettes, exotic thatches of green, a winterscape with fine hairs of tall dead grass poking through the snow. Other photos showed a stranger’s face in close proximity to Autumn’s.

As far as looks went, Autumn couldn’t have picked a guy more opposite than me—straight blonde hair combed neatly with a part, compared to my wavy brown nest; a round, boyish face instead of my sharp chin and cheekbones. In one of the pictures Doug had a fuzzy sweater tied around his waist by the sleeves. Angels would sit in on a poker game with Satan before a fuzzy sweater ended up in my closet. They made me itch.

“That’s him,” Autumn said at my side.

I turned away from the collage, a little embarrassed about get caught gaping. “Just as I pictured him.”

“Yeah, right. I know what you’re thinking.”

“He’s the next best thing to Matt Damon himself.”

“Shut-up.”

“Just being honest.”

She gave me a little “huh” through her half smile, then turned and headed down a hall.

I followed, and we passed through the kitchen, the smell of dish soap fresh in the air, a set of pans sitting in a dry rack next to the sink.

We cleared the kitchen, stepping into the living room. Autumn gestured around her. “My humble abode. I’d give you the tour, but it isn’t much different than any of the others on the block. Welcome to suburbia.”

“It’s nice.”

“Nothing like Dad’s place. Nothing like yours. A step down, but I’m okay with it.”

I smiled, not sure what to say.

A couch sat to my right, a widescreen TV to my left. A remote control big enough to reprogram satellite spy technology lined up with one corner of the coffee table. A cozy setting, but we lingered in the center of the room as if the furniture around us was toxic.

“You want coffee?”

“No,” I said. “Why don’t we… we should go over a few things.”

I saw something change in her eyes. Her face flushed.

A clock on the mantel ticked almost sixty times before I finally asked, “Have you gone through any of Doug’s things? Find anything unusual?”

She shook her head. “He has an office upstairs.”

“He keep his credit statements and stuff like that up there?”

“Yeah. He’s pretty organized.”

“Computer?”

She nodded.

“Do you want me to take a look?”

She led me upstairs to his office, which stood across the hall from the bedroom. The bedroom door hung open. The queen-sized bed’s covers lay bunched at the foot of the bed. Creases in the sheets marked patterns made by two bodies. The smell of sleep, and maybe sex, wafted from the room.

Autumn reached past me and pulled the door shut.

“Sorry. Bedroom’s always a mess.”

In the office, Autumn pointed out which drawer in the filing cabinet held Doug’s credit statements. A PC sat on a V-shaped desk fitted into a corner, the desk’s surface clean and uncluttered. All the pens and pencils sat neatly in a metallic cylinder that matched the metallic in-basket holding a few sealed envelopes. The in-basket matched the desk lamp; the lamp matched the desk.

Pretty organized, or pretty anal?

The PC was on, a screensaver shooting jagged color patterns across the monitor at hypersonic speeds. I sat at the desk and twitched the PC’s mouse to clear the screensaver. “You spend much time in here?”

“This is Doug’s realm.” She pointed to the wall where a few framed articles with Doug’s by-line hung. “While technically he says he’s retired from journalism, I think this space keeps him connected to the work.”