Woman in Red (37 page)

Colin eyed the antique cherry cabinet where his grandfather had kept a small supply of liquor for the occasional visitor. Colin didn’t know how much, if any of it, was left; he hadn’t bothered to check. It would have been tempting fate and he’d already had one too many rendezvous with that particular siren. But now he found himself wondering if the key to the cabinet was in the same place he remembered it being.

He squeezed his eyes shut, running through all the reasons not to get up and unlock the cabinet. It would wipe out eight months of sobriety, putting him back to square one, and once he started down that road the life he’d been struggling to rebuild would be washed away, too, like so much flotsam with the tide. Also, he’d be letting down people who had come to depend on him, like Alice and Jeremy, as well as destroying any goodwill he’d managed to cultivate among the islanders whom he’d gotten to know and like.

For what seemed like an eternity Colin remained motionless, his eyes shut and his hands balled into fists. A light sweat had broken out on his forehead and he was trembling ever so slightly. An image of Nadine rose up behind his closed eyelids, her angelic face with its devilish smile, her eyes sparkling with the come-hither look she’d worn on that last morning. He held on to it as long as he could and, even after it had faded, it was with the greatest reluctance that at last he opened his eyes.

With a deep sigh of release, or perhaps regret, he rose from the sofa and crossed the room to where the cabinet stood.

It was late in the day and the air cidery with the smell of apples rotting on the ground in the orchards along Fox Valley Road. The season had long since peaked, even for the later varieties, like Winesap. Though only a few short weeks ago, it seemed, the boughs had still been heavy with golden and red Delicious, McIntosh, Cortland, and Pippin. As he drove slowly toward home in his cruiser, Gary Elkin thought back to the days when he used to help out with the harvest in his family’s orchard, before the rise of gourmet outlets had created a demand for newer varieties, many of them imported, that sounded more like fancy drinks—Pink Lady, Jazz, Gala—had pretty much kicked the bottom out of the market for what they’d grown. Between that and the industrial agrigrowers, which had further driven prices down, mom and pop operations like theirs couldn’t compete. When Gary was in the fifth grade his parents had been forced to sell the farm.

He would never forget the day he’d arrived home from school to find his mom and dad seated at the kitchen table
wearing shell-shocked looks, like after the barn had burned down a few years back. Their eyes stared out of suntanned faces the color of the milky tea in mugs before them.
Sit down, Gary. We have something to tell you
, his mother had said, in the same grave tone she’d used when informing him of Grandpa Eddie’s death. She told him they were moving to California, where his father had found a job as foreman with a big grower in Bakersfield. They would be leaving as soon as they’d packed up.

What about the horses, Popcorn and Winkie, and the goats and chickens? Gary had wanted to know, not quite understanding what this was all about.

They’ll be fine
, his father had assured him.
Their new owners will take good care of them.
He’d explained that they hadn’t had any choice in the matter; if they’d tried to hold on to the farm, the bank would have foreclosed. His dad had looked close to tears himself as he’d patted Gary’s hand, saying with a bravado that was unconvincing even to an eleven-year-old,
Don’t worry, son. It’ll be all right, you’ll see. In fact, it’ll be an adventure
.
A brand-new start for us all.

Only it hadn’t been a brand-new start. Rather, it had been the end of an era. The end of living in a community where everyone had greeted him by name and most of his friends were guys he’d known since kindergarten; the end of lazy summer days waking up to the smell of fresh-mown grass and the crowing of roosters, with nothing more pressing on his mind than whether he’d be having pancakes or eggs for breakfast; of his dad letting him practice driving the tractor down the rows of trees, and of helping his mom peel the apples that would go into the pies she was always baking for various charitable causes, so many that their house had
carried the faint scent of cinnamon and apples and golden sugary crusts year round.

In Bakersfield, in place of their roomy old farmhouse, he and his parents and two younger brothers had been shoehorned into a small, one-story house on a street lined with similar houses. The winters were so mild, it had been hard to work up much enthusiasm for Christmas, and the summers hot enough to turn the sidewalk in front of their house into a griddle. The produce on display at the neighborhood Safeway had borne little resemblance to the fresh-picked fruits and vegetables he was accustomed to. And in the school Gary and his brothers had attended, his classes had been made up largely of children of the migrant workers employed by farms and orchards like the one his father was foreman of, Mexicans mostly, among whom he’d been the odd man out.

He’d vowed to himself that as soon as he was old enough to earn his own living he’d return to the island. And so he had, going into the police academy right out of high school, then putting in two years with the California Highway Patrol, and biding his time until there was an opening here. Soon after that he’d met Denise and they’d gotten married and started a family. It wasn’t life on the farm, no, but it was a good life all the same.

Or it had been up until now.

Lately, Gary had been feeling as if the carefully woven fabric of his life were starting to unravel. Or maybe it was just
him
that was coming apart. The very system that had crushed his parents was now crushing him: the incestuous union of commerce and government that he thought of as Them. The irony was that until fairly recently he’d been
one of Them. Each morning when he’d put on his freshly ironed uniform he’d felt proud to be serving his community. Sure, he bent the rules from time to time, but always for a good cause. Like the other day, in not giving the Shepherd boy a ticket for speeding when he’d been going well over the limit, knowing that Marge Shepherd was in the final stages of terminal cancer and her husband Paul was working two jobs to make ends meet.

It had been just his luck that the only time he’d bent the rules for himself, he’d gotten caught. Now he was being blackmailed as a result. Whichever way you looked at it, he was in deep trouble. The kind that had him by the balls and was slowly squeezing him to death.

If his motivation had been pure greed, Gary might have felt he’d only gotten what he deserved. But he hadn’t taken the money for himself. Ryan had so wanted to go on that summer trip to Paris with his French class, and Gary didn’t have the heart to disappoint him. So when Buck Duggan, the owner of the Kittycat Club out on Route 6, had slipped him an envelope full of cash to turn a blind eye to the things that went on at the club that weren’t strictly legal, he’d hesitated only briefly before accepting it, telling himself it was just the one time, that he wasn’t the only cop on the take, that it wasn’t wrong if it was for the right reasons. All the usual bullshit excuses, in other words. Then, a few months later, the transmission had gone out on Denise’s ancient VW Rabbit, and Gary dipped into the well again—unaware that this time the entire transaction was being videotaped.

And now the mayor owned his ass.

In the beginning, Gary had naively thought that he’d eventually be let off the hook. But now he knew there was
about as much likelihood of that as of peace in the Middle East any time soon. Instead, each time he did White’s bidding, he only dug himself in deeper—not only in spying on his sister-in-law and keeping quiet about how his nephew was being railroaded, but in being forced to lie to his own wife. And that made him angry in a way that, with nowhere to go, was like acid leaking from a corroded battery. It had become a vicious cycle. Each time he lost his temper and lashed out at Denise or one of the kids, he’d hate himself even more, and that would only feed his anger.

Christ. If Denise only knew. If she’d had even the slightest inkling that he’d done his share of the dirty work in making sure nothing stood in the way of the Spring Hill development, by whispering in the right ears, by knowing which county commissioners to butter up and which ones needed a little extra persuasion in the form of a subtle threat. She might not divorce him—he didn’t think she’d go that far—but life would never be the same. There were some things there was no coming back from and this was one.

Now all that was left for him to do was find a way to live with himself. If he could have talked to someone about it, it might have made it easier. But who was there to confide in? Not Denise. Not any of his fellow officers. And certainly not his parents, both retired now and living in Rancho Del Mar. It would have killed them to find out how far he’d strayed from the principles of honesty and integrity with which he had been raised. Principles that had been strictly enforced in their household. Like the time, when Gary was ten, that his dad had caught him pocketing a pack of chewing gum in Mr. Gowan’s store. Gary had not only had to return the stolen merchandise, he’d had to spend the next two weekends
helping out at the store. What would his father say if he were to find out about
this
?

Ironically, the only one who would have understood was Alice. The day she’d come to him, asking for his help, it had been all Gary could do to keep from spilling his guts. But she was the last person he could confide in. If she knew what he’d been up to . . .

Lost in thought, he was surprised to find himself turning into his driveway. He could have sworn it had been only minutes since he’d pulled out of his parking space behind the stationhouse. It was the story of his life these days. One of the guys would comment on something that had happened that day, something he’d apparently witnessed, and he wouldn’t have the vaguest idea what they were talking about. Or Denise would remind him of something he’d promised to do that he had absolutely no memory of.

He suspected it was mainly because he hadn’t been getting much shut-eye lately. These days, he’d wake in the middle of the night, his heart going a million miles a minute and his mind spinning like a wheel in a rat’s cage, and there would be no getting back to sleep.

Well, he would just have to be a man and suck it up. Wasn’t that what his father had taught him to do? And it had always served Gary well in the past: in school with the kids who’d bullied him, while in training at the police academy and later on, as a rookie cop with the veterans who’d made a sport of yanking his chain. This was
his
problem, one that he alone had created, not his wife’s or kids’; there was no reason for them to be dragged into it.

He pulled up in front of the house and got out of the cruiser, his boots crunching on the gravel as he approached along the front path. It was the only sound other than the
distant barking of a dog and the thump of hooves coming from the barn—Taylor’s mare feeling her oats. Through the window, he could see Denise setting the table for supper. She had the phone pressed to her ear as she laid out forks and spoons, all the while talking animatedly to whoever was at the other end. The sight of her smiling and laughing like her old self caused his spirits to lift. Denise had been down in the dumps since excavation on Spring Hill had begun, and his own black moods hadn’t helped. They’d been arguing a lot lately and he couldn’t recall the last time they’d made love.

But the minute he walked in, it was as if a switch had been flipped. The light in her eyes dimmed and her expression became guarded, as she said a hurried good-bye to whoever she’d been gabbing with on the phone. Clearly she was still pissed off about the fight they’d had earlier in the day. A dumb argument over Taylor’s wanting to wear a skirt to school that had showed off nearly every inch of her prepubescent legs, never mind she’d been wearing tights. Gary had refused to let their daughter out of the house until she’d changed into something more modest, and Denise had accused him of overreacting.

“Dinner’s almost ready,” she informed him now in the cool tone he’d become accustomed to of late. “Ryan’s at football practice, so he’ll be a little late.”

“How’s it going with that?” Gary realized with a guilty start that it had been a while since he’d gone to any of his son’s games.

“The coach made him starting quarterback.”

Gary broke into a grin, briefly buoyed by pride in his son’s achievement. “That’s great! We’ll have to do something to celebrate. Maybe go out for root beer floats after supper.”

His wife paused in the midst of setting out napkins to roll her eyes. “Root beer floats? He’s six
teen
, Gary, not six. I think he’s a little old for that.”

“Same as Taylor, right?” The words were out before he realized he’d spoken.

Now Denise was squaring off, hands on hips, giving him that Look. “Are you going to start up with that again? I thought we’d settled it.”