Nickolas-1 (13 page)

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Morgan had straightened out the bar’s books in about three days of constant work. She knew she was overdoing it, but it was either work hard and fall in bed exhausted, or run screaming from the room. Today, she was working on a website for the bar. Not that he needed one, but she was bored and lonely.

Morgan didn’t understand most of what was on the TV, and less of the music on the radio. She usually preferred the quiet over the constant noise, but just lately she found herself craving someone, anyone, to talk to. So here she was, doing something totally useless. Well, not totally. She was getting some practice.

Morgan had found some old pictures of the bar in one of the hundreds of little cubbyholes she’d found in one of the two bedrooms. He’d told her to throw it all out, but she couldn’t, not without seeing what it was. Some of the pictures were when the bar first opened about thirty years ago. It was fun to see the progression of time in the still lives. She began by scanning them with the printer and placing them in file folders by date and year. That had taken the better part of six hours. She was making a list of other things she found when her email signaled she had a message.

It was the same email address she’d had in prison, so she thought it was from someone there, and was surprised when it was from the woman she’d designed the site for who owned an interior design firm.

Ms. Becky,

I have a client that is in need of your services. He is quite the artist and has decided
to expand his art to the online sales. I told him how you had worked miracles with my
business, and he would like to meet you. I was hoping that we could meet for lunch this
Thursday at Charlie’s on Seventh Street at one o’clock. Please let me know if this is a
good time for you?

Cyndi Penshaw

She could do that from here, she thought. Especially at night when the bar closed down at two o’clock. She could, at the very least, do this until she was able to get around on her foot without crutches. She wouldn’t have to go out into public unless she wanted to.

The following Thursday she was making her way into the little bistro on her crutches. She’d been on them for six days now, and she thought she was getting really good on them.

Morgan saw Ms. Penshaw first, with her steel gray hair wound tightly around her head and her sparkles around her neck and wrist. Morgan had never seen anyone wear so much shiny, noisy things on her person. She was grinning until she saw who her luncheon date was. Byron Grant.

Morgan tried to turn around and go back out, but he must have seen her trying to leave. He was in front of her in a flash.

“Please don’t leave, Morgan. I want to talk to you. No one knows you’re here, I swear. Not even my mother. And Cyndi doesn’t know anything other than I want to hire you to do some web work for me. Please stay?”

“Am I here for a job, or are you gathering intel to tell your arrogant asshole brother?” She hadn’t moved to the door or the table yet.

“Yes, I need you to set me up a site, and no, I won’t do intel for him. I don’t care for him much right now either.” She didn’t move for a few moments then turned and made her way to his table. Cyndi was talking on the phone when they arrived.

“I’m sorry, I have to go. My son is sick at daycare and they won’t keep him with a temperature. I need to go get him. Oh, Morgan, it is so nice to see you again. And I’m so glad you were acquitted of the horrible crime. Byron, call me next week and we’ll nail down a time to fix up that shop apartment of yours.” Then, she was gone.

“If you set this up like this, I’ll brain you with my crutch.” Morgan pulled out Cyndi’s chair and propped her injured foot onto the seat.

“I swear I didn’t. It worked out nicely, though, didn’t it?” He had the most charming grin. She wondered if he knew that. Then she glanced around the room at the women practically drooling at him and realized, yeah, he knew it. And the effect he had on those poor, unsuspecting women too.

“I bet. I find out you set me up, there won’t be a hole deep enough for you to hide in, nor a place far enough away. I know people who know people.” She picked up her menu and started to read it. She was startled when he laughed loud enough that several patrons of the restaurant turned to look at them.

“Ah ,Morgan, you are a card. I think I’ll enjoy this merry-go-round you seem to be running around my brother. Yes, I believe I will.” Morgan didn’t know what he was talking about so she chose to ignore him.

For the time being anyway. After they ordered their food, she pulled out a notebook and wrote his name across the top sheet.

“May I ask you about this bag? It is, by far, the ugliest thing I’ve ever had the misfortune of seeing,” he asked her.

“Yes, I know, but I need it.” She looked at him and saw the blatant curiosity in his eyes. “No, I guess I needed it. It was your mother’s idea, actually, to make this thing.”

“Mom’s? Oh no, she wouldn’t have been caught dead with that color paisley.

I know. When I was in first grade, I made her this bracelet thing out of those brightly colored beads they have. It was so pink, it defied reason. She told me it was very lovely, but pink, especially Barbie pink, was not her thing. I took it back to school the next day and made the art teacher let me make her one that was all black. Mom wore it for years.”

Morgan smiled at the memory. “No, she didn’t give it to me; she tricked me into making it. My hand had been...I had to crush my hand between the top of the bed Randall had me cuffed to and the concrete walls to escape from him.

He’d gone up to the main part of his house to get his gun to kill me, he’d said.

“I’d been raped, you see. Not just by him, but several of his friends too. He’d kidnapped me and kept me tied in his basement as entertainment for him and his buddies. I didn’t care...I didn’t care if I died, but there was no way he was living.

So I got away and killed him.

“Physical therapy hadn’t been started soon enough, so I needed to have my hand broken again to have the bones set correctly. I refused to do the exercises.

“Your mom was one of the regular people who came in and gave those silly pep talks and whatever. She once told us how we could make a better life for ourselves. If we just applied as much energy into getting up off our collective asses and getting reformed as we did trying to hustle people, we’d be millionaires. She wasn’t a popular speaker.

“She told me that if I made this bag and made it well enough that it didn’t fall apart the first time I used it, she’d never pick at me again to do crafts with her. Anything would be worth not having to do crafts. She used enough glitter and glue on stuff it looked like Tinker Bell threw up on us.

“It took me nine months to cut the material out perfectly. I had to read up on how to use a pattern first, you see. Then it took me another six months to make my hand wrap around the scissor handles. It was only nine pieces of material, and I had to cut some of the pieces out four times before it was right. The sewing machine posed another problem. I had to gently guide the material through the foot and not screw up the thread too. I’d never worked on anything so hard in my life. And true to her word, I never did another craft with her. She also got me another trial. Once the DA looked my sheet over, they decided it was a miscarriage of justice and I got out.” She looked down at her plate, just realizing that she hadn’t spoken that much in five years.

“Poor Morgan. It can be bad enough to be stuck in a whole house with Mom, but at least I can step outside. Being stuck inside a prison without the ability to escape must have been like a nightmare.” She laughed with him. She liked this Grant. He was fun and smart.

By the time lunch was over and he paid the bill, she was going to meet him at his studio a week from Friday.

“This is a really nice camera. I’d like to buy it from you. That is, if you’ll take payments. I don’t have a lot of ready cash like this.” She didn’t have any cash at all and they both knew it.

Byron thought about it for a few minutes, listening to the shutter click and the flash light before answering. He knew that she’d hate the idea of owing him money, but she needed it. “Keep it.”

“This is a really expensive camera. I can’t keep it. I’ll make you payments.” She took six more pictures while he waited.

“How expensive? You know, I don’t care. I don’t want it, you do. So what’s the problem?”

“The problem is that it’s a really expensive, top of the line camera. It practically does all the work for me. And it costs almost six grand.” He watched her stiffen. He loved making her mad. She got all indignant and stuffy when she was. “Really. Wow, Toni must have wanted something really nice to have spent that much on me.” He didn’t like talking about Toni, but somehow, telling Morgan didn’t feel so whiny. He put the finished piece of pottery on the shelf next to him and looked at Morgan. “It’s from my ex-wife.

Whenever she spent money on me, she wanted twice as much spent on her.

Toward the end of our marriage, I stopped caring what she spent and she stopped being discreet about her affairs. It ended. That particular gift has been sitting in my spare bedroom since a couple of years before our divorce. So, as a favor to me, I’d like for you to have it. If you don’t take it, Morgan, I’ll make sure that it’s in the next pick up for the trash company just to spite you.” He watched as she glared at him.

“Thank you. I’ll...I promise to think horrible thoughts of Toni every time I use it. And I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up...” She swayed suddenly and grabbed for something to catch herself. He jumped up from the chair he was sitting in and made a grab for her.

“Sit down. There’s a chair just behind you.” He gently lowered her into the chair and pushed her head between her legs as she slumped forward. She took several deep, calming breaths.

“I haven’t been...I forgot to eat this morning, that’s all. I’m okay now, you can let me up.”

“No, you’ll stay there just a little while longer while I get my heart out of my throat. Morgan, I swear if you try to sit up once more, I’m going to paddle you.” When he thought he could walk without falling on his own face, he spoke to her again. “I’m going over to the fridge and get you a pop. You’ll stay here until I get back, you hear me?”

“I’m not a child. And I don’t want a pop. It has a lot of calories in it that I don’t want.” He growled and went and pulled the can from the little refrigerator anyway.

Unwanted calories. If she didn’t need those extra calories, he’d eat his next commission check.

“Here, drink this, and shut up about it. I’m going to ask you some questions.

You aren’t going to like them, but I expect you to answer them.” He took the can from her and popped the tab and handed it back to her. When she didn’t drink right away, he lifted her hand and the cola to her mouth.

“What kind of questions? I’m fine, really.” She didn’t try to get up this time, but did continue to glare at him.

“You’ve been coming here for what now, five weeks? In that time, this is the fourth time you’ve gotten dizzy. When was your last menstrual cycle?” Her mouth opened and closed several times before she reached out and pushed him to his butt.

“None of your business. What are you, pretending to be a doctor? I haven’t had sex since I was raped. Satisfied? That was five years ago. I’m reasonably sure if I was gonna get pregnant, I’d have figured it out by now. Even you should know that much about the birds and the bees.”

“Are you saying you and Nicky didn’t have sex at Thanksgiving? Because if you didn’t then I...” When she paled to a deathly shade of white and looked at him, he knew in that moment every name he’d called Nicky that day was true.

The lying bastard had taken advantage of her. “I’m going to kill that son of a bitch.”

“No, I can’t be...he didn’t...he...I’m going to be sick.” She stood so suddenly that he didn’t have the chance to stop her, but let her go tearing to the bathroom in the back of the shop.

After a few minutes, he stood up and went to the door. Listening carefully, he heard the water running and her crying softly on the other side of the door.

He knocked gently and waited for her to answer. Just when he was about to knock again, she answered him.

“I just need a few minutes.” He didn’t move, but waited for her to come out.

“He told me that...he didn’t finish, you see. He said that he wasn’t going to let me trap him. I didn’t know what he was talking about. He thought... he said that I was trying to trap him into marriage. Marriage. I wasn’t. Your nephew was doing a book report on his hero and he’d asked me to help. I was doing research all right, but not how he thought. Jacob had thought of his Uncle Nick as a hero.” He heard her sobbing again and his heart hurt for her.

Bryon now understood her terror at finding him in the restaurant that first day. She’d been afraid of Nicky showing up. And he remembered that report that Jacob had done on Nicky. Jacob had won first prize for it. They’d gone to lunch at the school together just last week.

Byron wanted to go into town and find his brother and castrate him. Slowly.

And with relish. Fucking prick. He wondered what else had been said between them. It had to have been enough to drive her from the house in the middle of the night. She had opened her foot wound and had bled all over the staircase and pooled in the kitchen where she’d used the phone. There had been blood on the receiver when they’d come down that morning.

“Morgan, honey, are you all right?”

Byron realized that she’d been quiet for a little while and he was worried. He tried to take inventory of the room, wondering if there were any drugs or sharp knives or anything she could be using. He didn’t think so, but if she didn’t answer soon, he was going to break down the door. He stepped back when he heard the lock click and the door opened slowly. When she did finally come out, her eyes were swollen and red.

Byron wanted to hug her, hold her tightly in his arms, but he knew she wouldn’t like that. He also knew that she wouldn’t take his sympathy either.