Authors: Gwynne Forster
Whatever It Takes (9 page)
“What's your name?” she asked when he finally pulled out of her after rocking her senseless two more times.
He rolled off her and braced himself on his left elbow. “I'm glad you asked. I might have gotten the wrong impression.”
“What do you mean?” She felt annoyance beginning to churn in her, though she knew it was more at herself than at him.
“A prostitute doesn't ask a man's name, but she doesn't let herself burst wide open all around him, either.”
She sat up. “Are you comparing me to aâ”
“Oh, for God's sake, don't go getting self-righteous on me. You got a helluva surprise. I know what to do with women, and I didn't short you.”
He got up, found her clothes and threw them on the bed. “Come on. I gotta get the truck back before my boss sends the cops out.”
“You what? I haven't had time toâ”
“Look. I can't stand cry babies. You can come back Monday about the same time as you showed up here today. Now, let's get going. Good jobs are hard to get.”
“Now you wait a minute. You're not keeping your end of the bargain.”
“Look, babe. You wanted to steal something in this house. You can do that Monday. Beside, you didn't expect a good lay, and what I gave you was first class. Next time, I'll make you bloom like a flower in the springtime. You and me, babe; we can really get it on.”
She finished dressing, but clothes didn't erase the chill that sent tremors through her. It wouldn't be easy to get rid of him, and after what he'd just done to her, she wondered how she could pretend that he didn't exist.
Chapter Four
Lacette didn't like having friends and members of her family visiting her at the place she worked, but she knew it was futile to tell Kellie not to come to the Belle Ãpoque hotel to “check you out,” was the way Kellie put it. Normally, she disliked being the object of Kellie's concern, considering that her sister had a hidden motive for most everything she did. Before she died, she meant to ask both of her parents how they accounted for the differences between their twin daughters in morality and most any measure of human decency. She didn't consider herself disloyal or even unduly critical of her sister. Kellie was Kellie, and she loved her, faults and all. It was because she understood her sister that she didn't want her coming to the place where she worked. And she specifically didn't want her to meet Douglas Rawlins. Not that he was special to her; he wasn't, but once Kellie made him the object of her attentionâlike a cutting horse separating a calf from the herd, Kellie would kill any chance that a relationship would develop between Douglas and her. Maybe it wouldn't anyway, but she hated the thought of losing another man to Kellie, and especially since Kellie would dump him as soon as she proved she could get him.
With sales dragging as they usually did in midweek, she had time to telephone Bradley. “I'd like space in that building across from the hotel here,” she told him. “It's almost perfect for what I need, the location is great, and I can afford it.”
“I'll see if I can get you a lease for a little less than he's charging. You ought to pay the same per square foot of floor space as other tenants with the same accommodation. Sure you want it, now?”
“Yes,” she said, her gaze on the door of the florist shop and the sign that indicated it was closed. “Thanks, Lawrence,” she added, feeling expansive because Douglas had left for the day and wouldn't encounter Kellie, and forgetting that she didn't call the man by his first name.
“What are you talking to Lawrence Bradley about?” Lacette whirled around to face her sister, who stood, arms akimbo, so irate that her chest heaved and her nostrils flared. “You lied to me. You said there wasn't anything between you and Bradley.”
I ought to let her think whatever she wants to.
“Would you please lower your voice, Kellie. Can't you see that this hotel is quiet and elegant? If you want to act out, go somewhere else, not where I work.”
“Would you please lower your voice, Kellie. Can't you see that this hotel is quiet and elegant? If you want to act out, go somewhere else, not where I work.”
Kellie stepped closer. “You're just covering up, but you're not fooling me,” she hissed. “Why can't you get your own man and stay away from mine?”
“Yours? Did you say yours? I imagine Lawrence Bradley's wife would have a few things to say to you, Kellie. Bradley is taking care of some important business for me. He's my lawyer.”
“You're lying.”
It wasn't often that she got the upper hand with Kellie, and having it brought a sense of serenity that wrapped around her the way fog closes over mountain lakes early in the morning. She folded her arms and rocked back on her heels; there was power in being right when one's adversary was dead wrong, and she could almost feel her chest expanding.
“Lying about what? The man's wife or his being my lawyer? Which one?”
“The whole thing's immaterial to me. I dropped him.”
“If you dropped Bradley, why should you care who he hangs out with? Anyhow, he's not making time with
me.
” She held up a sheaf of papers. “Look, Kellie, I have to tally the day's take and place these orders. That's a lot of work, and I have to pack up in an hour.”
me.
” She held up a sheaf of papers. “Look, Kellie, I have to tally the day's take and place these orders. That's a lot of work, and I have to pack up in an hour.”
Always quick to change the subject when a conversation wasn't going her way, Kellie's face bloomed into a wide smile. “Oh, that's great. I wanted to borrow your car to run down to Ceresville. I'll be back before you finish that. I just want to drop something off.”
Lacette spun around, thinking she heard someone say “Don't do it.” It was so real, a human voice, but how could that be when only she and Kellie were in that booth? She shook it off.
“Okay, but be back here in an hour. I promised Aunt Nan I'd drive her out to Frederick Fairgrounds to see the Christmas Fair. It closes at six.”
“Not to worry. There isn't a thing to do in Ceresville but leave it.”
Lacette handed her car keys to Kellie and then turned her attention to a man who subsequently ordered a bread maker, two cookbooks and a chef's apron. Her curiosity piqued, she asked if he planned to give cooking lessons.
“Oh, no. Nothing of the sort. I'm going to use these cookbooks to learn to cook, but I know I won't learn how to make bread, so . . .” he pointed to the machine.
“Why can't you learn to make bread?” she asked him.
His shrug indicated that he thought the matter of little import. “Both of my parents mess it up every time they try, so I figure it's not in my DNA. Besides, it's just bread. I want to learn how to make biscuits and cornbread.” He looked hard at her. “Do you eat in the restaurants in this hotel?”
She shook her head. “They're too expensive, though I hear the food is good. I eat mostly at home.”
“These restaurants offer you gourmet this and gourmet that, and it's getting to be that way everywhere you go, but from time to time, I have to have me some soul food. First thing I did when I got back from Afghanistan was head to Mica's in Baltimore and get me some stewed collards, some good old fried lake trout and cornbread. Man, that's food.”
She smiled in agreement, hoping he would move along and she could get her work done. She had to abide by the company rule requiring her to do daily accounting. The man finally left, and she set about her work. When she finished and looked at her watch, she saw that it was seven-fifteen. Where on earth was Kellie? Immediately, she remembered the voice admonishing her not to lend Kellie her car, but she had ignored it, something she rarely did. Calls to her parents inquiring whether they had heard from her sister brought negative responses, and a premonition settled over her and hung there like an ominous cloud.
She didn't think she had ever been so happy to see anyone as she was to see her father when he walked up to her booth. “If she hasn't come yet, she won't be here any time soon,” he said. “I'll drive you home.”
“But, Daddy, maybe she's in trouble.”
An expression of sadness settled over his face, “I checked with the police. They don't have anything on her.” He took her arm. “Come on. She's all right. The Lord wouldn't take Kellie now, because she's got too many sins to atone for.”
Marshall's sense of humor was capable of seeping out during his most serious moments, and it raised her spirits as it always did, but only for a moment, as she vacillated between fear for her sister and anger at her for not keeping her word.
“Where could she be?” Cynthia asked them when they entered the parsonage.
“As reckless as she is sometimes, there's no telling,” Marshall said, his tone dry with seeming impatience.
Lacette stared at him, appalled that he didn't sit down in what, a few weeks earlier, had been his own home, until her mother invited him to do so. She didn't need more evidence that, in his mind, he no longer belonged there.
“She said she'd be back before six,” Lacette told them, her jangled nerves causing her to repeat what she'd told them earlier. Unable to stand the tension, she wrapped her arms across her waist and walked to the hall window to look for signs of her car, or at least its headlights. She walked back into the living room, rubbing her arms, deep in thought, and sat down, but only for a second before going back to the window for another look.
“If she's all right, she'd call, wouldn't she?”
Marshall threw up his hands. “Lacette, your sister is not concerned about whether anybody is worried, and you know it.”
“Why are you always down on her?” Cynthia asked her estranged husband.
He leaned forward and pressed his thighs with the palm of his hands. “Because I want her to do what's right. If she told Lacette she would return that car to the hotel garage before six o'clock, she should have had it back there before six and not a minute later. Her word's not worth two cents unless she wants something, and you can thank yourself for that; you coddled her and indulged her from the day she was born. If you don't want me to lay it out for you chapter and verse, don't lean on me when I tell the truth about her.”
Lacette looked from one to the other, seeing contrition in her mother and either anger or disgustâshe couldn't make out whichâin her father's visageâindeed, his whole demeanor. She waited for her mother's denial of his accusation, but it was not forthcoming, and she wondered if they'd fought behind the closed doors of their bedroom while their children believed that only loving energy flowed between them. If it had been the perfect marriage that she and Kellie believed it to be, would their mother have reacted to the split as if she had just been released from a maximum security prison, a bird out of a cage?
At midnight, Marshall called the police station, reported Kellie's absence and gave descriptions of her and the car.
“Just a minute, sir,” an officer said, “I think a highway patrolman phoned in something about that. Seems the lady didn't know that a car runs on gas.”
“Officer, do you know where she and the car are?”
“Well, sir, no, I don't. The patrolman located her on Route 70 just this side of New Market. She'd been traveling at a fast clip, and when she slowed down all of a sudden, he thought she might have been sick, but she was out of gas.”
Marshall thanked the officer, hung up and told them what he'd learned. “She probably called AAA. I'm going home. Let me know if you need me, Lacette.”
She walked with him to the front door and kissed him on the cheek. As he reached for the knob, the door opened with some force and sandwiched him between it and the wall. “Oops,” Kellie said. “Sorry. I didn't expect to bump into anybody; figured everybody would be in bed.”
“Did you, now?” Marshall said, his anger almost palpable. “Apologize to your mother and your sister for worrying them half to death. Where is the car?”
“Uh . . . the car . . . I left it on Route 70. Lacette, why didn't you put some gas in the car? If it hadn't been for that nice highway patrolman, I'd still be sitting there. He waited until I caught a ride back to town. A real nice man, and white, too. Never know who you'll run into.”
Marshall stared down at her, blocking her way. “If you were not a female, I think I would smack you.”
She recoiled, backing away from him. “What did you want me to do? Stay out there all night on that highway? Besides, Daddy, I was hungry, and the couple who gave me a lift took me straight to Mealey's.”
“Why didn't you at least telephone your mother so that she wouldn't worry about you? We all know you don't care how you make your sister feel.”
“Daddy! How can you say that?”
“Easily.” He looked at his wife. “She's all yours, Cynthia.” He walked back to the door and stopped. “Lacette, I don't think we should leave the car out on that highway all night. By tomorrow morning, it won't have a single tire. I'll take you by a filling station where we can get a couple of gallons of gas, and you can bring the car on home. Where are the car keys, Kellie?” She fumbled in her pocketbook until Lacette's heart thudded from fear that Kellie might have left the keys in the car. Kellie found the keys and handed them to her father.
“Let's go, Lacette.”
Kellie threw up her hands as if she were helpless. “Sorry, Lace, but you ought to keep your tank full.”
Lacette didn't answer her; she couldn't, for nothing that came to mind was suitable for her parents' ears. They found the car intact, although its shiny white coat had been defaced with mud from the tires of passing cars. He put the gas into the tank and trailed her home, and she wasn't surprised to receive his early morning call the next day.
“Can you spare twenty minutes for coffee before you start work this morning?” he asked her.
“Yes, if I hurry. Where do you want me to meet you?”
“We can have it in the hotel, and you won't have to go out of your way.”
She hurried to complete her set up before her father arrived and finished as he walked into the booth. “This is very elegant,” he said. “How's it going?”
“Great. The company wanted to extend my stay here, but I'm planning to open my own business the first of March, and I need at least two months to work at that. Bradley has taken care of the necessary papers, and next week I'll sign the lease for space in the Catoctin Building across the street. If you'll meet me after work one evening, we can go over and look at it.”
In the coffee shop, he ordered black coffee and a brioche for himself, coffee and buckwheat pancakes for her. When the coffee arrived, he took a few sips, savored it and placed the cup in its saucer.
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