Love and Death in Blue Lake Read online

  Well, okay. She wasn’t going to say she wanted the baby and him and Ruby to be a family. She wasn’t going to say dating first for a while seemed right. She wasn’t going to say anything. She was giving him permission to think about things. This was a big fat complicated mess. He’d worked hard to simplify his life since she’d gone. Now in a matter of hours she’d thrown everything into disarray.

  Eddie got out of the truck and unloaded Courtney’s bike. He kicked the stand down and left the bike there on the sidewalk. For some reason, she was still sitting like she was glued or something to the seat of his truck.

  He opened the door on her side and light flooded the cab of the truck. They stared at one another. She put her hand over her mouth, let out a tiny gasp. Eddie forced himself to stay silent, to not ask “what?” He moved to one side, and finally she slid out without saying a word.

  He opened his arms and held her. “I need to think about some things,” he said again. And then he took both her arms, moved her away like a chess piece, and walked around the road to his side of the truck. He got in and drove away.

  ****

  Eddie seemed damn happy to Bob Bryman. Man loved his bar. He’d told Bob once that it was perfect because he didn’t have to think about anything but serving his customers. Eddie tapped a beer and set it on a cardboard coaster in front of Bob, who was waiting for Lily. She was late. Lily was always late. Not that they’d seen each other much since he’d gone to architect school and she’d gone off to learn videography. Bob was thinking of an earlier time, when he’d been with Lily every day for an entire summer. He wanted more than anything for this summer to be the same, except better.

  “Thanks, Eddie. House hold up okay under the storm last night?” Bob was proud of his first work as an architect, and would not have asked the question, would not be in the bar but at the site, if he didn’t already know the answer.

  “Tight as an enchilada rolled from Tomas Sanchez’s own hands,” Eddie confirmed.

  Bob nodded. “Good to hear.” But really, he didn’t hear, not really. He was too busy thinking about Lily. They had kept up a sporadic connection through college. He refused to go on Facebook, but she found him on another site he frequented, a group of M.Arch. majors. Like a little detective, she found him, and from there they emailed once every month or two. A few texts, fewer calls, never anything personal, except once she said she’d been considering becoming a lesbian. Could you do that? Decide?

  He’d always thought sexuality was determined by DNA, but he looked into it a little deeper and found that it wasn’t quite so simple. Some women had such bad experiences with men that they deliberately crossed over. But then, after a few months, Lily mentioned a guy. Then another guy. Many guys, never the same one twice.

  Eddie set another beer down. Bob hadn’t realized he’d drained the one in front of him, so busy had he been looping round and round his non-romance with Lily. Except she seemed, the last few months, warmer. Called him sweetie, for one thing. Bob pulled out his wallet before he remembered the deal.

  “Your money’s no good here. You built my house, and that’s that,” Eddie said, not stopping to chat. Typical summer evening and the place was hopping. Here came Lily, looking lovely as she ever had, not one day older, and not a bit like a lesbian, whatever they looked like, which had to be because they looked like everyone else, far as Bob knew.

  “Hi, sweetie!” She kissed him. On the lips. Before she scooted her barstool closer to his and sat down. Eddie was there in a flash, and she pointed to Bob’s beer. “Same.” Eddie poured the beer pronto. “And could I have a shot of Stoli?”

  Eddie brought Lily’s shot in a pretty little glass. The kind his brother’s wife liked to buy at antique stores. That’s how Bob met Lily, because of Eva. Lily was not from Blue Lake. She had blown into town, a teenaged runaway who worked for Eva, Bob’s sister-in-law, at Blue Heaven. Then he and Lily went off to different universities, and his brother Daniel and Eva got married and made Bob’s childhood home into a place of their own. Blue Heaven was now run by a staff, and Eva had taken over the bachelor pad Bob had grown up in. That’s just the way it was. He’d had five years to get used to it.

  Lily slammed down the vodka and batted her eyes at Eddie, asked for another. Eddie obeyed with alacrity. So it wasn’t just him, Bob thought. All men were putty in Lily’s hands.

  Now he totally understood about Eva and Daniel. Bob had only been home a few weeks, and he already needed to get out of there. His brother and Eva kissed all the time. In front of him. They chased each other down hallways and up stairs, and Daniel grabbed Eva’s ass once when he didn’t know Bob was coming around a corner. It was truly excruciating to witness. He’d be that way with Lily, if she’d let him. God, he’d been so lovesick back when they were kids that summer.

  After Lily had two vodkas and a half beer, she turned to him with a brilliant smile. “How’s Eva?”

  “She says hi.” There was a red flag waving in Bob’s head he was trying very hard to ignore. Meanwhile, Lily finished her beer and put it on the ledge of the bar like a regular. Eddie filled it with a big smile.

  “Hey, you’re the gal doing the reunion video, am I right?”

  “Yes,” Lily said, not looking away from Bob.

  Lily videotaping the reunion? This was news to Bob. Wait. Maybe Daniel had said something about it last night. Bob had been busy thinking about Lily then, too. She’d texted asking to meet at Fast Eddie’s tonight, and he had thought of nothing but this moment since reading that text.

  “One more for the road?” Lily asked.

  Eddie had kept the vodka bottle close and poured out a neat shot. That gave other people ideas, and soon Eddie was lining up lemons and sugar and vodka shots down the bar. Bob also noticed only Lily got the special glass. He wondered where they were going next. Dinner? The bungalow at Blue Heaven? Lily had texted that she was staying there. Eva only let friends and special customers stay in her bungalow. Eva loved Lily almost as much as Bob had. She’d missed her too, but then Eva had Daniel and Bob had nobody. Now here Lily was, wearing short shorts and a tight sleeveless shirt, showing way too much skin for such a dive bar, no offense to Eddie, but really, the place was a burger joint with a band.

  Lily clicked her fancy glass to Bob’s beer, and they drank up.

  “So you want to go out for some dinner?”

  “Oh no, I’m not hungry. Are you? I’ll have another drink if you want to get a burger.”

  “No, I’m good.” Bob couldn’t eat if Eddie pulled a filet mignon out of thin air. “He won’t let me tip.” Bob whispered this in Lily’s ear, so as not to call attention to his special status. The Brymans had special status in town anyway. Everybody looked up to Daniel and looked out for Bob, but the tourists didn’t know that.

  “Then let’s go!” Lily jumped down off her stool and almost fell off her sandals. She grabbed his arm and steadied herself.

  He looked down at her long legs. Her sandals had some sort of rope-thing for a heel. They made her calves look really good. The red flag in his head waved again. He ignored it as they walked to his car. But while Lily sang along to the radio at the top of her lungs, Bob remembered something Eva had said about Lily having some kind of issues or something with a guy back home. “Lily will tell you when she’s ready to,” Eva had told him before she and Daniel had driven him to college. Lily had never mentioned “home” not even once. She talked about classes and a guy named Dean who was teaching her to shoot a gun and certain cinematographers she admired as if he knew who they were. He’d looked them all up, even Dean who was an old guy, an ex-cop. Bob never asked why Lily wanted a gun. College campuses were scary for some women, but Lily was back in Blue Lake now, and if Bob had his way, she’d never leave again.

  ****

  Lily left Bob in the bungalow’s living room, her hands shaking. She could do this, seduce him. She just felt a little dizzy from drinking all that vodka. She checked her purse, but the gun wasn’t in it. She unzipped her
hard shell black and white polka dotted suitcase: business cards, video equipment, gun. Her clothes were still in the paper bag where she’d thrown them when she’d left home. She had not taken much, only the essentials. She grabbed her gun, secured it in the lock box, put both in the drawer beside her bed. There was not much she’d wanted from home, not much of anything she’d kept from college. What she wanted was a fresh start and a true confession. And she aimed to get both.

  She didn’t know how yet. She had a half-formed plan. It needed an accomplice. Maybe Bob, if she did it with him. But her relationship with Bob was so pure. She really loved him. She thought of Eddie. Would he help? Could she even explain? He’d always been kind to her. And there had to be a reason people called him Fast Eddie.

  She felt, however irrational, that her cousin was coming for her, she was next on his hit list. He’d killed her mother, he’d made her seem like a kook to her father, which didn’t take much convincing, and now he owned her family company. But she, like her mom, was a loose end. She shivered. Loose ends got clipped. Steady, she told herself.

  Her cousin didn’t know she had a secret weapon: Dean. Dean, the retired cop who had trained Lily how to shoot a gun straight and true. All the years she shot video, she also shot target practice. It made her feel safe to have a gun because her cousin was a ruthless son of a bitch.

  Everybody said her mom’s accident was just that. A tragic accident. But her mom loved her Caddies and took scrupulous care of them. She was the world’s best driver. It was no accident, but Lily only had one way to prove it. She had to get a taped confession out of the bastard. She called Bob into the bedroom. What the hell. She’d had just enough vodka to live dangerously for a night.

  A knock on the bedroom door. She peeked through a crack, and there stood Bob. Looking as good as he ever did and scaring the hell out of her, because she wanted the security and safety of him, but she had to get him to do just the opposite.

  “Lily.” He stood there with that same stupid look of adoration he always wore; it made her heart sing despite everything. But her heart hammered too, like big drums in a small band. She threw herself at him, and he caught her.

  “Oh Bob,” she said. His arms tightened around her waist, and she burrowed in deeper.

  Bob’s arms felt like home. She buried her nose in his neck, thinking about what she’d just done. How to extricate? Panic was already rising. Damn. She’d been through this with her therapist. She wasn’t even a virgin. But with Bob, she felt like one.

  She pulled away and grabbed his hand, tugging him onto the bed. Then she told him what had happened to her mother. She left out the parts that hurt too much to talk about. She left out the parts that would scare him. She’d already secured her weapon. She liked it better in her pocket, but for now, she was practicing courage.

  Before long, they were making out. It always happened like that. They’d start something she couldn’t finish and predictably, it went the same way this time. Like a bad rerun of a terrible sitcom.

  She started to cry. God she was sick of being so hung up because of that sick bastard. Bob looked worried. Of course he did. He never wanted to hurt her. He never would.

  “Just screw my brains out,” she said through tears.

  “Lily!”

  “Well.” She wiped her face on her shirt. “I love you. You know that. I want this. You know that, too. I was raped, okay? And it happened just a few days before I met you, back when we were just kids, and that’s why all the drama. But I’m over it.”

  Bob put his arm around her. “Honey, I’m not sure you are.” He moved her hair to the side, kissed her neck.

  “Wait.” She had to tell Bob the rest before they could do it.

  She just had to have one person in the world who believed her or at least pretended to, and if she told him he had to believe her before they did it, he’d say he believed her. He’d waited five years for her. He’d do anything. She’d always known that, and it was her safe place. It wasn’t like she took advantage. Well, maybe a little bit.

  She took a breath. “So do you really want to?”

  “Only since the first day we met.”

  “There’s just one thing,” she said. “Before we…you know.”

  Bob looked up at her from where he knelt on the floor, placing his shoes just so. It broke her heart a little bit, the way every sweet thing about Bob did.

  “What’s that?”

  “I have to tell you something, and you have to believe me.” She pulled her shirt over her head, so he could see her pink lace bra.

  “Okay,” he said. She felt him go into complete silent attention. Like he was studying really hard for an exam.

  She unzipped her shorts to give him a peek at the matching panties. Then she got up and unbuttoned his checked cotton shirt. Freshly pressed with light starch. He was perfect, and she was about to wrinkle him. She hung the shirt on the bedpost.

  “Are we going to be naked when we talk, because…” Bob’s voice sounded parched. It was sweet the way he so sincerely cared. He sort of worshipped her. Would it be enough? It had to be!

  She pulled back the duvet and sheets and light summer blanket. An answer and an invitation. He quickly shed his jeans and got into her bed. She kept her underwear on because guys liked that stuff.

  He knew her so well. Knew to prop himself on pillows, his erect penis modestly covered by the sheets. She hadn’t even caught a glimpse of it. Such a gentleman, her Bob. God she loved him and she hoped after what she had to tell him he still loved her. She reached over him to get the gun.

  ****

  Lily in pink underwear was spectacular. Lily in pink underwear holding a gun was stunning. She’d just demonstrated her ability to lock and load like a criminal or a cop. She’d explained about Dean, her cop daddy. He got all that. She was afraid of rape on campus. She was afraid of campus shootings in general.

  He nodded, his stomach twisting like one of those soft pretzels they sold on the beach snack shack.

  As crazy as her story was, she handled her gun with a professionalism that made him feel confident. She slid it back from where she’d taken it, into the night table drawer, inside a lock box. Good. Then she said, “I need it to get my cousin to confess that he raped me and killed my mom. I’m going to hold the gun on him and film his confession.”

  Bob had lost his erection the minute she’d pulled the gun from the drawer. He never thought she was going to shoot him, well, maybe for a split second, but she had not pointed it at him and he’d settled down, that image of her, gun across her heart, burned onto his brain. He didn’t think too much about the stir happening in him again. She was damn hot. He was only human. But maybe there were issues here he needed to understand, hard-on and all. With another part of his mind, he thought that if it was anyone but Lily, he’d already be the hell out of there.

  “Your cousin killed your mom? Like on purpose?”

  “Yep. See, she believed me about the rape. It was a real sore spot between her and Dad because he believed my cousin. They were close. Are. He always wanted a son, and I’m not a guy…” Her words were slowing down, even slurring a little bit.

  All that vodka finally catching up to her, he’d bet. Bob’s ribs could barely contain his beating heart. What she’d been through. What she wanted to do. “What can I do?” He was in. He might be sorry at some point, but right now he had to help his sweet sad girl.

  He ran a hand over her pearly skin again and took her into his arms. Her breasts mounded against his chest and he let his hands move over her in what he hoped was a strong yet comforting way. “I’m so sorry about your mom. When?”

  “Christmas. Just after.”

  “You never said.”

  “I was having a hard time. I still am, but I’m seeing a shrink, and like I said, I have a plan for justice.”

  Bob didn’t utter another word. He just held her and stroked her hair. His poor Lily was more damaged than he had ever imagined. He wanted to avenge that. It burned in hi
s gut.

  “What happened is he tampered with her car. She loved her car, and she was an excellent driver. Now you know that four-way stop on Highway 15?” It was a flashing light. The only one for a stretch of miles. “Well, there’s an old utility pole on the right, just past the crossroads. And Mom, according to witnesses, blew through the light, swerved to miss another car, and crashed into the pole. Killed instantly.”

  Now Lily was crying. Bob felt her tears run down his chest. He held her tighter, questions forming, logic asserting itself.

  “So what I need from you is to tell me there is a way someone could tamper with her brakes so that nobody would ever know. Her brake lines were not cut, nothing was wrong at all with the car. But he did it. I know he did.”

  Bob might not be a cop, but he needed to know some basics. Who these witnesses were, and where had the cousin been, and how he had conveniently planted a car at that intersection. A convergence of unlikely events at the very least. Still, he’d work with the assumption that she was right. She needed somebody on her side and that person was him. She’d chosen him. So he’d get answers to questions like the road conditions. It had been winter. Could have been ice. So many questions. But he wasn’t going to ask Lily, not right now. Just now she needed comfort and to know he was on her side. Questions would only upset her, and right now she needed someone to believe her. He was going to be that someone. Because he loved her and because he remembered something a mechanic buddy had told him once.

  “So then, do you believe me?”

  “I do.” He believed she believed it, anyway.

  She stumbled out of bed, plucked a box of tissue from her dresser, and he got the full view of her long legs and full breasts. God, he wanted her. She blew her nose—hell even that seemed sexy to him—and dove back under the covers, cuddling up to him. He held back his anger at the cousin, but some of it came out in the way he grabbed her and held her tight against him. His fingers lightly dug into her tender skin. He kissed her