Off You Go (3 page)

“
Gina’s not a lesbian, I
can promise you that.”

“
I never rule anything
out.” Humoring her, he continued, “So maybe he broke up with
her.”

“
Of course I’ve thought of
that.”

They talked for a while
longer, and Dewey asked for the keys to Gina’s apartment, her cell
phone, and a list of her family, friends, ex-boyfriends, and
co-workers. He understood Faye’s need to understand why. Over the
past year, he’d spent many lonely nights wondering
why
himself. Why was he
an alcoholic? Why had he done such terrible things to his family?
Why did he have to drink? Why was he such a miserable person? Those
answers might never come, but perhaps he could at least give this
kind woman an answer to her
why
?

***

Faye Callahan drove off in her convertible
BMW well after dark. Dewey decided he’d start first thing in the
morning. He grabbed his mandolin from inside and went back out to
the rocking chair. He tuned the instrument to the chirp of the
crickets and picked around for a while, making up a few melodies
and getting lost in the sounds of the night. He missed his band. He
missed performing. He wished he had never let those guys down, but
that was done. They’d never take him back. It was all too painful,
those last few months when he was falling off stage and singing the
wrong words or mumbling because even the wrong words wouldn’t come
out. At the peak of his collapse, he’d tried to stage dive. Not
something bluegrass fans were accustomed to.

But he hadn’t given up on playing. He was
determined to get back to entertaining people. It was a major part
of who he was, a part of his identity, and that was yet another
hole in his life that needed plugging.

He fell asleep on the
couch with the Big Book on his chest, the one he’d been introduced
to at his first AA meeting. The thing now looked like it had been
through hell, with it’s folded down pages and water spots and
cigarette burns. In fact, it
had
been through hell, and he’d been the one carrying
it through.

***

Despite all the shitty stuff hovering around
his life, Dewey was feeling good as he pulled into downtown
Charleston onto Bull Street the next morning. Damn good, in fact.
Especially compared to the college kid with frizzy hair and
unnecessary sunglasses making his way along the sidewalk, surely
returning from an all-nighter of typical college debauchery.

Dewey remembered those days. He didn’t miss
hangovers one bit. Despite what he did to himself, his brain had
come back to full service, and that was a darn miracle. He had been
at the top of his class back in his high school and close to it at
the College of Charleston, but all that drinking had worked away at
his brain like a wrecking ball. He was thankful that he was able to
recover. He liked his brain.

Bull Street was good living if you could get
it. It ran all the way to the water on one end and right up to the
College of Charleston campus on the other. Gina’s place was in the
middle, not too far from MUSC, the medical university. She had
lived in one of the enormous century-old mansions that—because of
escalating property taxes and dwindling trust funds—had been turned
into funky apartment buildings that were perfect for the more
well-to-do MUSC and C of C students.

Dewey walked down the long porch, passing
two other apartment doors and some wicker furniture. He unlocked
the door to 1-C and entered, closing the door and leaving behind
the sounds of construction at the neighbor’s house. He stood in the
entryway for a moment. How strange and sad to be in the home of
someone recently deceased. The family hadn’t started packing up,
which made sense considering they didn’t even have a body to bury
yet. Dewey had asked Faye to keep things as they were until he had
found her answer, so hopefully any intentions they had were now on
hold.

The apartment looked like Gina had gone to
class and would be back any minute. There were dishes in the sink
and cold coffee in the pot. But it wasn’t dirty at all, especially
not for someone her age. It actually looked like she had a
housekeeper. The wood floors had that extra sheen to them.

Two impressive watercolors
of flowers hung on the wall. He was no expert, but both looked like
originals and looked expensive. Dewey noticed a laptop on the desk
and made a mental note to take that with him. A copy of
US Weekly
and
People
were on the
coffee table. Trashy magazine reading was certainly a much better
vice than the ones Dewey had chosen in the past.

The bedroom was also quite tidy, save the
unmade bed. “Who slept in this bed with you, Gina?” he said out
loud. “Just give me a little clue.” Dewey had been rightfully
accused of talking to himself over the years.

There was another flower painting above the
bed. “Southern women love things to be pretty as a picture, don’t
they?” he said. He stared at a framed photograph of the Callahans
on top of the dresser. Hammond was the father’s name. He had a
thinning head of gray hair that, according to Faye, had once been
red. Dewey planned on looking more into him later. Dewey loved
playing the Bird’s Bay golf course, so he wasn’t exactly a fan of
the guy.

Dewey rummaged around for
a while, searching drawers, cabinets, and closets, looking for
anything that might shed some light. He was hoping he’d find a love
letter or a pair of boxers or even a picture, but he had no such
luck. Nothing that even
suggested
she was in a relationship—which made no
sense.

Dewey decided he better go through the
trash. Not his favorite part of finding answers, but certainly one
that had helped him in the past. Many of those old apartments
didn’t have disposals, so it was a nasty business. Dewey got
through what was in the kitchen without heaving, though. Then he
went outside to go find the building’s main trash. The trash cans
were lined up near the side of the house. He looked inside. They
were totally empty. The garbage men must have been by lately.

He lit up the first smoke of the day and
looked around. Some students were headed to class. One of them was
pushing along on one of those long skateboards that were becoming
so popular. He figured he should talk to the neighbors and climbed
back up the steps to the wrap-around porch. Just as he was about to
knock, an idea came to him. It was a reach, but worth the effort.
The dumpster for the construction site next door was only thirty
feet or so from Gina’s front door. Closer than her own building’s
trash cans.

“
If you have something you
want to hide,” he said, “you don’t throw it in your own trash. You
find somewhere else to put it. Maybe…just maybe,” he asked Gina,
“you had the same thought. Did you?” He crossed over into the
neighbor’s yard. The dumpster was in the driveway. A couple workers
were on the other side of the house and couldn’t see him. He put
his hands on the edge of the dumpster and hoisted himself up so he
could see inside. He started looking closely, scanning for
something out of place. It was full of scraps of wood and nail
boxes and rebar and PVC pipe and everything else you could imagine,
but he didn’t see any domestic trash bags or anything else that
appeared unusual. “Well, it was worth a shot,” he whispered to
himself.

Right as he started to turn away, he noticed
a pink box. He looked closer. It was packaging he knew all too
well. And it was certainly something that didn’t have any business
being in a construction site dumpster. He made sure the workers
hadn’t noticed him, then lifted himself up and climbed inside.
Moving carefully, he snatched the box and climbed back out.

He might have just figured it all out.

CHAPTER 4

Back in Gina’s apartment,
Dewey Moses put the box that read
First
Response
on the counter. He and Erica had
used the same kind for both of their girls. Two of the happiest
moments of his life had been seeing the double lines that meant
“positive.” Dewey opened the box and dumped the contents onto the
counter. There it was, a used pregnancy test. Guess what…the lucky
girl was pregnant.

The chances that the test was Gina’s were
obviously quite slim. He guessed there were plenty of women who had
to be discreet with pregnancy tests after they used them, so just
about anyone with a vagina could have thrown that box into the
dumpster. Maybe a friend of his could grab some fingerprints or DNA
from the plastic. He put the test, a hairbrush for fingerprint/DNA
comparison, and Gina’s laptop in his attaché and left the
apartment. The idea of Gina being pregnant made the whole deal much
sadder.

An Asian woman was now sitting in one of the
wicker chairs on the porch, her bare feet kicked up on a small
table and her eyes focused on a book.

“
What you reading?” Dewey
asked.

She pulled away from the
book and looked at him with gorgeous cinnamon eyes. Her looks
derailed him for a moment, but Dewey kept his cool and waited for
an answer. She showed him the cover and said, “
A Crown of Swords
by Robert
Jordan.”

“
I know it
well.”

She grinned. “No, you don’t.”

“
I’ve read them all.
Fantasy is my thing. You know he lived not too far down the road,
right?”

“
I heard that. On Tradd
Street.”

“
That’s right.” Dewey was
impressed. She was on the seventh book of the
Wheel of Time
series, a feat in and
of itself. At around one thousand pages each, you really had to put
your heart into it. “The next one comes out soon,” he
said.

“
Are they still as
good?”

“
Every bit. Don’t listen
to anyone who tells you different.” Dewey smiled, keeping his eyes
from wandering. There were some fine legs in his lower peripheral
vision, but he wasn’t going to let them come into focus. He was
married, period.

She set her book down on the table and
asked, “Were you a friend of Gina’s?”

“
No. I never met her. I’m
helping the family clean up her affairs.” The lies came out so
easily these days. “Did you know her?”

“
As neighbors do. We
didn’t spend any time together other than bumping into each other
and having a quick chitchat. I’m a little older. Why do you
ask?”

“
She was dating someone,
and he left a few things in her apartment.”
And the lies keep coming!
“No one
seems to know anything about him.”

“
I saw a few guys come and
go over the year I’ve lived here but never met anyone.”

“
Were any of them
older?”

She grinned. “What is ‘older’ these
days?”

“
Not you, rest assured. I
just mean…anyone ten-plus years older than her.”

“
Not one that I saw.
Except for her dad. He came over once a week or so.”

Dewey stuck out his hand and introduced
himself. She said her name was Candice, and they shook. She held
onto his hand a little too long, and Dewey had to stifle a blush.
Sometimes you meet people that you’re automatically comfortable
with. Like you were good friends in a past life, and in this one,
you can bypass all the formalities. Candice was a case in
point.

“
What’s on your bedside
table?” she asked, finally letting go of his hand.

Dewey felt a moment of
invasion before he realized what she was asking. “Oh, I’m halfway
through
The Malazan Book of the
Fallen
series by Steven
Erikson.”

“
Sure. I’ve heard about
them. Are they good?”

Dewey lit up.
“
Are they good
?
There’s ten books and I’m reading them for the
second
time, so yeah, they’re good.
He reinvented the genre. You need to finish the
Wheel of Time
series,
and then run, don’t walk, to the store to get
started with
Gardens of the Moon.
It will change you.”

“
Okay, you are as much of
a geek as me.” She named several other epic fantasy series, and
Dewey had read them all. She’d read her fair share, too. He could
count on one hand the women he’d met in his life—including his
wife—who were fantasy buffs.

Dewey knew their connection was starting to
lead to trouble, so he thought he’d wrap it up. “Anyway, I could
talk all day about this stuff, but I have to run. Can I ask a
favor?”

“
Sure.”

“
If you see anyone come
by, would you please give me a ring?”

“
I can do
that.”

Dewey pulled out a pen and wrote down his
name and number in the small composition book he always kept in his
pocket. He ripped out the page and handed it to her.

She touched his fingers, and it seemed
intentional. “You should take my number down, too,” she said, with
a cunning man-eater smile. “Just in case you’re looking for another
fantasy.”

For reasons that Dewey couldn’t figure out,
women had been hitting on him ever since he’d gotten married, and
it was getting worse lately. He’d turned into a magnet for strong,
aggressive women. Didn’t they see the ring?

Dewey took her number down and got out of
there like he was running from a gator.