For You (The 'Burg Series) (17 page)

Dad could say that again.

He and Mom got out just in time.

Though, bad news for me, when they got out, I got back in.

* * * * *

Mom was cleaning Colt’s house. Dad was over at Dee and Morrie’s doing something Dee needed done that Morrie never found time to do. I had my cell in my hand and I had to make the call.

I’d spent an hour going through the names on that list and looking at every face in Colt’s yearbooks and reading what people wrote in it deciding, from what she wrote, that Jeanie Shumacher was a traitor (she pretended to be my friend!) and a slut (even though now she had three kids, taught Sunday School and used to be president of the PTA). And deciding from what Tina Blackstone wrote she was just a bitch (she’d always been after Colt, even now she’d slither up to him at J&J’s and give him her patented look and although I was avoiding him, I always smiled to myself when I saw him shoot her down, time after time). And I noticed Amy Harris never wrote anything at all.
 

Nothing shot out at me. Most of the names on the list were people I didn’t even remember and only barely remembered when I crossed-checked them with photos. A bunch of them were gone, didn’t live in town or even Indy anymore. I looked, I thought, but nothing came to me.

Nothing but one guy.

I flipped my phone open, found Colt’s name when I scrolled down and then I hit go.

“Feb,” he said in my ear.

“Loren Smithfield,” I said back.

“What?”

If we’d used the word back then, Loren Smithfield would have been known as a player. He was tall, dark blond with a bit of rust to his hair, good build but not an athlete.

No, Lore was the school flirt and definitely the school horn dog.

I had no idea how many girls he nailed. I just knew he nailed Jessie in her senior year of high school after sweet-talking her for the first three. She finally went out on a date with him and on date three, he got in her pants and took her virginity.

There was no date four and Jessie was heartbroken and humiliated even though she tried to hide it.

Loren tried to nail Meems, he tried to nail me, hell, he tried to nail
everybody.

He sat beside me in that Geometry class and he flirted with me outrageously, not something many boys did seeing as they all knew about Colt and me and seeing as, if Colt ever found out, everyone knew he’d mess them up. Loren flirted with me all through school, especially during that class and in our junior year when he sat beside me in Psych.

He was smart, really smart, got good grades but it was more. He was what my Dad would call sharp. He was a quick thinker, good with words, thought things through three times as fast as anyone else which made him an excellent flirt.

He had great handwriting and signed his name cool and weird. Creative. Taking his time, even at the top of tests, putting these rock ‘n’ roll flourishes on it that I always thought were super hip even though he always made me feel a bit funny.

“Loren Smithfield,” I repeated to Colt.

“Feb, Lore doesn’t fit the profile.”

No, it was more that Colt didn’t want him to. Lore was a drinking buddy of Colt and Morrie’s. He didn’t come in regular, say, every night, but he was in J&J’s often enough, a few times a month and when he was he was sitting beside Colt at the end of the bar, Morrie in front of them, all of them engaged in man conversation, some nods, some knowing grins, sometimes low, rough laughter.

“He sat beside me in Geometry class. He flirted with me all through school. He nailed everything that moved.”

There was a hesitation then Colt said, “Lore’s been married three times, three kids, two with the first wife, one with the last. He works for his Dad’s construction firm and he drives a Ford F160.”

“So?”

“February, this guy we’re after, he’s got a desk job. Lore works with his hands. And this guy probably can’t get it up, not unless he’s doin’ somethin’ sick. Lore made those kids the old fashioned way, not through a test tube. And you think Lore would be as successful as he is if he’s into sick shit?”

I knew what Colt was saying. Lore had three wives because Lore had not changed. He still nailed everything that moved. He didn’t search for his pieces out of town but did his thing right under everyone’s noses. His wives, eventually getting sick of it, kicked his ass out.

I’d been around, I knew there were folks out there who liked their kink and sometimes that kink could get dirty and even creepy. But I didn’t figure in this ‘burg, which happened to be placed smack in the middle of the Bible Belt, that there would be that much choice of women who’d put up with dirty, creepy kink.

“And the witnesses saw a silver sedan exiting the alley, not a Ford F160,” Colt continued.

“Loren isn’t stupid, Colt. If he drove a woman into an alley in the morning hours in order to kill her, he wouldn’t use his own truck. He’d rent a car.”

“There somethin’ I don’t know about you and Lore?”

Colt’s voice had turned funny – harder, abrasive, he was pissed about more than me pointing the finger at his buddy Lore.

But I had other things to worry about.
 

I couldn’t say I liked Lore, I couldn’t say I disliked him. He was a good guy mostly, funny, interesting. Still, I avoided him, for different reasons than I avoided Colt. Loren was persistent and I didn’t want to give him the inkling he had a way in because if he had it, he’d never let it go.

This wasn’t easy for me, pointing a finger at someone, even a jerk which Loren definitely was. But we were talking murder.

“No, there’s nothin’ you don’t know.”

“Don’t keep shit from me, Feb, not with this.” His voice was still pissed, actually now it was
more
pissed.

“You think this is easy for me? Lore’s got kids. Jessie slept with him in high school. Turns out it’s him, Jessie’d be creeped out for years. Those kids –”

Colt interrupted me. “That all you got?”

I pulled my hair away from my face, holding at the back and stayed quiet.

Then I let my hair go and repeated softly, “This isn’t easy for me, Colt. It’s not only not easy, I don’t like it,” I paused and swallowed before I finished, “not at all.”

We were both quiet then.

Colt broke the silence and he didn’t sound pissed anymore. “Go back over the list, Feb. There are three men on that list still in town or close to town who fit the profile. And they have silver cars.”

I was a little surprised he knew that much and was that thorough. He knew what he was asking me to do that morning, he knew exactly.

“Who are they?” I asked.

“Not sayin’, just look at the list.”

“I thought you weren’t working this case?”

“Not officially but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna sit on my fuckin’ hands when you’re findin’ dead bodies, cryin’ in my arms and my dog’s dead.”

That made me go quiet again.

Colt wasn’t quiet. “Feb, go back to the list.”

“All right.”

He didn’t say anything for awhile and for some reason I didn’t let him go just stood in his kitchen with him on the other end of my phone.

He again broke the silence by saying, “I’ll talk to Sully. Someone’ll look into Lore.”

That didn’t make me feel better at all but I was glad he trusted me on it.

“Okay,” I agreed.

“Later.”

“Later.”

I flipped my phone shut and went back to the list.

* * * * *

She walked into J&J’s when I was behind the bar.

It was late afternoon but it was Saturday and we had a decent crowd, nothing overwhelming but enough to make me think people had not yet cottoned onto the situation, therefore avoiding J&J’s and me like the plague.

I felt my neck get tight when I saw her.

Susie Shepherd.

I’d never liked her because she wasn’t easy to like. Won every competition going, had so many tiaras she could convince herself she was queen of the world (and I suspected she did). She was also head cheerleader since she was a sophomore. It was unheard of for a sophomore to be head cheerleader the top spot always went to a senior. But Susie’s Daddy made it so, meaning Susie had cheated girls out of the top spot for two years running. I was no cheerleader but I thought that was low.

Since then I kept in loose touch with Wyatt Taylor sharing a drink with him every once in awhile when I hung at J&J’s while I was home. Wyatt had been in Colt and Morrie’s crowd but he drifted away after school mainly because he got a Master’s degree and a great job that meant a lot of travel, even some of it out of the country. Though they remained friendly, he wasn’t exactly in with cops and construction workers.

Wyatt had dated Susie, fallen deep and asked her to marry him. Then she thought she’d nailed it and showed her true colors so he called it off. Told me he got a visit from her Daddy and a trip to Hawaii if he kept his mouth shut about dumping her. He went to Hawaii. Still everyone knew he was the one who dumped her mostly because she was a bitch.

She sidled up to the bar, eyes on me and I was surprised, the way she was acting, that she hadn’t put on rubber gloves and donned a contamination suit and mask. Beer and shots at J&J’s was not Susie’s style.

I’d often wondered how Colt got caught up with her but looking at her I no longer had to wonder. She was always beautiful when she was young and now. A knockout.
 

However, considering all the shit that had come at me the last few days, I totally forgot about her. Now I was going to be sleeping in her boyfriend’s bed.

This was not good.

Morrie was in the office, Dad was down the bar and Ruthie was casing the crowd, getting drink orders.

It was up to me mainly because she came right at me.

“Hey Susie,” I greeted, taking a step toward her as she slid on a stool with a look on her face that said she’d rather the stool was disinfected before she put her immaculate ass on it. “Get you a drink?”

I was trying to be casual. She knew all about me and everyone knew Colt wanted nothing to do with me. Furthermore, her boyfriend was a cop, he’d need to talk, let shit go and she, in my mind, was that source. She had to know the way it was.

“Diet,” was all she said and I turned, leaned, nabbed a glass off the back of the bar then twisted back, grabbed the beverage gun and dunked the glass in the ice bin. “Lots of ice,” I dunked it again, “add a lemon.”

No “please” nothing. I was her minion, this was an order.

I could see she was still a bitch.

I pulled a lemon out of the tray and slid it onto the side of the glass. I even threw in two thin, red straws just to cap it off. That night I was going to be sleeping in her boyfriend’s bed, she deserved more than one straw.

She took the glass, sucked on the straws and turned away. I saw Joe-Bob was watching her like he was a flightless chicken in a coop and a fox just dug under the wire.

Thankfully I was dismissed so I took off, going to office, telling Morrie I was going to restock the fridges then hightailing it to the back storeroom.

When I got out carrying a mixed box of beers, Morrie was behind the bar, his eyes on Susie (who was ignoring him) and his cell to his ear. Conversation in the bar was muted. People were waiting. They knew there was going to be a showdown, Susie was itching for it.

I ignored all this and got down to business with my box and the fridges, crouching low and rotating the new with the old.

It took five minutes from Morrie’s call to Colt arriving at J&J’s. I wanted to escape but I didn’t want what my escaping would say to be said so I just slid the box down to the next fridge and kept right on restocking.

“Colt,” I heard Susie say.

“What the fuck’re you doin’ here?” was Colt’s not-so-friendly response.

This surprised me. I thought he’d ask her outside to go sit in his GMC or take her to the back office. That was Colt’s style. Not confronting her in the bar.

“Having a drink,” Susie replied.

“Bullshit.”

“Now, Colt –”