(To go back to Part Six, click here)

Trena’s back hurt already from sitting up reading in her bed again. Harry Potter had been the perfect escape from thinking of what she was about to do. She ducked under her rucksack, full of two changes of clothes and two bottled waters, as she slung it over her head and shoulder.

She winced. “Okay, no more sudden moves like that,” she told herself.

She looked at the book she had just put down. “Sorry, Harry, you’re too much dead weight right now. Keep mom safe.” Guilt washed over her briefly. She knew her mother would worry, but it was the only way to see Ronnie.

Her plan started out difficult. Her mom was working part of a four-on, three-off schedule that got her home late that night, and she always slept in late on those days. She wouldn’t notice anything amiss until Trena was on the bus. That part was a cakewalk. It was the noise that worried her.

And that she had fallen way behind in her upper-body exercises.

Trena walked out of her room and turned down the short hall, all the while looking up at the string hanging from the attic’s pull-down ladder. When she got there, she steeled herself against the coming pain and stretched her arms up to reach the red plastic nub on the end. She barely held back a shriek, and, bracing herself for what she knew would hurt worse, she pulled.

Fire shot down her spine. The springs creaked and the noise she usually liked echoed throughout the duplex along with a tiny yelp she let escape from her lips. She clamped her eyes shut against the pain as she pulled the ladder door far enough that it stayed in position.

The furnace fan roared to life. Trena slowly lowered her arms and froze, listening for any sign of her mother stirring. There’s no way she slept through all that.

Hearing nothing above the heater, she carefully folded down the ladder and pushed her heel against a rung to finish the job. “Just one step at a time,” she told herself as she slowly and methodically made her way up into the darkness.

——-

“So, you don’t have any idea who these guys are, but you took their money?” Detective Kevin Butcher asked.

“Well, technically I haven’t been paid yet,” David said.

“Nice work. You think maybe you should have kept working here for the City?”

“You detected that all by yourself?”

“It’s why they call me Inspector Badass.”

“More like Inspector Gadget.”

Butcher chuckled as he sat and motioned to a chair beside his desk. “You can give your description to our artist later, and I’ll have you look through some mugshots. So, when did you say you contacted the boy?”

David found it strange that this man with whom he’d worked slipped so easily into his role as a cop. Someone he’d previously seen as a goofball sounded oddly professional. He tried to follow along.

“Just less than an hour ago, at a customer’s house.” He didn’t reveal the name because of Louise’s reputation for asking young men to come to her house to fix things, and the gossip that came with it.

“And the kids’ names?”

“Ronnie Batson and Trena Tayback.”

“Did you say, ‘Tayback?’”

“Yeah, that’s right,” David said.

“Like the actor Vic Tayback?”

“I don’t know. Never heard of him.”

“You know, he played Mel on that show ‘Alice.’”

“Sorry, must have missed that one,” David said.

He lifted the lid from a crystal candy dish on Butcher’s desk. It clinked against the dish and sang out a single, pure note. He pulled out an almond M&M.

“Easy on the lead crystal, man,” Butcher said. “My wife would kill me if you broke that.”

“You have your wife’s crystal up here?”

“Yeah. Overflow from the house. Says she doesn’t want to pack it away.”

“It’s lovely, Kev.”

“Bite me, computer boy.”

David told Butcher the whole story of what he did for the big man and his minions. Butcher recorded the conversation and took notes of the details like names and places.

“That doesn’t give me much in the way of finding these guys. So, the only names you know are Jerry and Anthony, and the quote Big Man, as you call him, assigned this Anthony to take care of something you believe they perceived as a problem, but you don’t know what exactly that is.”

“Yes. That’s all I know. But you know where the girl and the boy live now, so you can do something, right?”

“Maybe.”

“What?” David asked, incredulous.

“I mean, yeah, we can do something. We can ask around about these names and check up on the girl and the other kid.”

David relaxed a bit, but grabbed another M&M just for something to crunch. He ate when he was nervous or bored. “You know, I busted my ass back when I was on salary, helping you crack that gambling ring,” he said, a drop of chocolate spit shooting from his mouth on “busted.”

“We’re on it, Dave. Don’t worry. Just go home and get some sleep. You look rough.”

David replaced the candy dish lid and stood, his hands high above his head to stretch his arms. “Yeah, I’m done with the day, and it’s done with me.”

——-

Ronnie turned from the country club’s driveway and quickly sped up to the posted limit. Already convinced the Audi was following him, he wanted to confirm it. A pond owned by a prominent local grocer was at that end of town. It often froze in winter, and the owner welcomed children and their families to skate on it. Ronnie had fond memories of going there with his grandfather and just sliding around in his shoes.

“Grandpa, let’s go to Dolen’s Farm,” Ronnie said.

“Why there?”

“Just to see it. I haven’t seen it since I was little.”

“Okay.”

The Audi followed him into the right lane. Ronnie turned into Dolen’s and slowly cruised by the parking area. Three children climbed out of an SUV and donned skates with two blades on each foot. A golden retriever with white fur on its snout ran up to them wagging its shaggy tail.

“Old Rusty’s still around,” Ronnie said.

He checked the rear view mirror. Noticing that “2much4u” was nowhere in sight, he continued around the pond’s circular drive. Pristine frozen surface spread out in a semi-circle from a sign reading “Danger, Thin Ice.”

He stopped back at the two-lane highway. The Audi still not around, Ronnie pulled into traffic and drove toward his apartments. As they passed “The Venusian Inn,” he remembered the time he insisted his mom take him there. It turned out to have an astronomy theme, not the science fiction slant he had hoped.

“Ronnie, did you hear me?” Grandpa said.

His eyes blinked out of their obsessive flitting between the rear view mirror and the road ahead. “I’m sorry, what?” he asked.

“Do you know many of the gays?”

Oh, no. Not again.

“A few, I guess, but nobody who’s admitted it.”

“So, boys your age don’t want people to know they’re a gay?”

“Not unless they want to risk getting beat up,” Ronnie said.

“When I owned rental properties, I rented to the gays just like I did anybody else.”

Ronnie wanted out of the conversation and out of the car. He loved Grandpa, but the way he came out of left field drove him crazy. He needed to try to contact Trena.

Confident nobody was following him, he relaxed and let his eyes watch out front for a while.

They meandered down the road that followed the river before ending up at the apartments. Large, old cottonwood trees lined the road, barely beyond the river’s floodplain. Old bales of hay from the summer’s harvest dotted the field, their rotting slowed by the cold. When he pulled into the parking lot, he looked to see if his usual spot was vacant.

In it sat a silver Audi A8.

Ronnie turned the car around. “New plan, Grandpa.”

——-

Susan tilted up the two-liter bottle of Coke Zero and the ice cracked under the warm soda’s flow. She tore off a paper towel and held it to her mouth to surreptitiously remove her chewed piece of Nicorette. Her new addiction safely concealed, she grabbed a coaster for her guest. More handsome than I remembered.

“They’re usually back from golf by now,” Susan said.

“No problem, Ms. Batson. I’m just glad you decided to contact me.”

“You can call me Susan.”

“Please, call me Anthony.”

(to be continued)