Never Go Home (9 page)

They looked the
same, only grown up and sixty or seventy pounds heavier. One of the guys was
Glenn’s brother. Glenn was Jessie’s husband.

“This must be
twofer day,” one of them said.

“Yeah, two
jackwagons for the price of one,” the other said.

Sean dropped
one leg to the ground. His shoulder grazed my back as he turned. I heard his
other shoe hit the hardwood floor.

I glanced back,
shook my head. “I got this.”

Sean didn’t
move.

I slid off my
stool. “If it ain’t Mutt and Jeff.”

“It’s Matt and
Jed, dumbass,” Jed said.

Sean laughed. I
smiled.

“What’s so
funny?” Matt was Glenn’s little brother. They looked nothing alike.

“Look,” I said.
“I know there’s this long standing thing between you guys and me, but you gotta
let it go. That was almost twenty years ago. You’re living in the past. I’ve
moved on. You should move on. I mean, take your waistlines for example. They’ve
moved on, and out.”

“You’re fixing
to get your face pounded in, Noble,” Matt said.

Words like that
were either followed by a punch or more tough talk.

He continued.
“And then when we’re through with you, we’ll take out your sissy brother.”

I let my arms
hang loose. “Then shut up and do it.”

“What?” Matt
said.

“You aren’t
going to do anything about it. You’re all talk. At least twenty years ago you
had the sack to throw a punch. All those years of sitting on your couch
watching talk shows has sapped you of your testosterone. You go around bullying
people like you used to. Only now you can’t do anything but talk tough.”

Matt narrowed
his eyes. The pace of his breath quickened. His arms shook and his fingers
twitched.

Jed grabbed his
shoulders, and shook him, and said, “Knock him out.”

That was all it
took for Matt to wind up like he was throwing the first pitch out. His entire
sequence was poorly executed. He tossed a lumbering right hook at me.

I leaned back
and avoided the sloppy punch. With my right hand, I gained control of his right
arm. I spun him around, grabbed the back of his head with my left and drove his
broad forehead into the other guy’s nose. Jed went down in a heap. I drove my
heel into Matt’s right knee. He buckled sideways. As he went down, I slammed
his face into the edge of the bar and let go.

Sean pulled me
back from the two bodies on the floor. Both men bled and rocked in place and
moaned.

“Dammit, Jack,”
Eric said from the other side of the bar. “Didn’t I have to ban you from this
place for an incident like this before?”

I shrugged.
“That time was my fault. This guy’s to blame this time. He took a swing at me.”

“And you did
nothing to provoke it, did you?”

I held my hands
up, sure that Eric wouldn’t do anything.

A woman stepped
out from the game room. She had on a sheriff’s uniform. Dark sunglasses sat
atop her head. Her hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail. I recognized her
from earlier when Sean and I drove through town.

She looked at
me, shook her head and continued toward the bar.

Sean grabbed my
shoulder. “Just ease back a sec, Jack.”

She said, “What
happened, Eric?”

Eric said,
“Those two knuckleheads were so drunk they fell off their barstools.”

“Is that
right?” she said. “There’s only two barstools at this end. Can’t fit anymore.”
She reached both arms out wide in front of the endcap, then turned toward us.
She kept her arms out and extended her index fingers. “And you two must’ve
acted the part of good Samaritans and come over to help. Am I right?”

Eric nodded.
Then he looked at Sean and me, pointed to the other side of the room, and said,
“Thanks for your help, now you two go back to your table. The Sheriff can
handle this. I’ll get you a fresh round of drinks.”

Sean tugged at
my shirt. I stared at the deputy as we walked away. She winked at me as I
passed her. We found an empty booth near the back corner and sat down. I kept
glancing at the woman.

“You’ll never
change, will you, Jack?” Sean said.

I hiked my
shoulders an inch in the air. “In my world you have no choice but to act. If
you don’t, you’re dead. You can’t avoid trouble like that. Besides, what was I
supposed to do? Let him hit me? Screw that.”

“You didn’t
have to take out Jed and then slam Matt’s head into the bar.”

“Yes, I did.
Otherwise it’d still be going on. Or they’d show up at your house later
demanding we settle the score, or whatever crap lingo guys like that use.”

“They might
still show up.”

He had a point.
If those two were anything like they used to be, any scenario was possible.

“If they do,” I
said, “I promise they’ll beg for a beating like I just gave them.”

Sean leaned
back a few inches. He stared at me without speaking. I don’t know if he’d ever
seen me make a threat like that. He had always had his suspicions about what I
did. I never told him. I simply avoided the question. Perhaps that last
statement convinced him that my standard, “Government work” response was a
cover up.

I calmed down a
notch. “Adrenaline, Sean. That’s all.”

“Whatever,” he
said, pointing toward the bar. “We got a visitor incoming.”

The woman’s
thick-soled boots rapped against the floor. She walked slowly, confidently. She
stopped in front of the table. I didn’t look up.

“Hello, Sean,”
she said.

Sean nodded and
said nothing.

“And hello,
Jack,” she said.

I looked at
Sean. He stared blankly over my head. I looked up at the woman. “Do I know
you?”

“You don’t remember
me?” She feigned being hurt.

“No, I don’t.
And Eric said the Sheriff would come take care of this. Where is he? I don’t
see Sheriff Woodard over there.”

“I’m Sheriff
Woodard, Jack.”

I turned in my
seat and looked up at her again. “Sheriff Woodard had one kid. A girl. I used
to babysit his daughter. You are not her. She was rail thin, bucktooth and
covered in freckles.”

The woman
smiled. Her teeth were perfect. Her body was too. “Some of the freckles are
still there. Just too dim in here to tell.”

“April?” I
said.

“Hi, Jack.”

“You’re the
sheriff now? What happened to your dad?”

“Heart attack.”

“I’m sorry.”

“He did it to
himself. Doctor warned him that his fifth would be his last. And it was.”

“Wow, I’m
really sorry.”

“Don’t be, he’s
OK now, taking it easy.”

Sean slid out
of the booth. “Why don’t you sit, April? Catch up with Jack for a few. I’ll get
some drinks.”

“Water for me,”
she said as she took his seat, smiling. “You look good, Jack.”

“I try,” I
said, still a bit stunned that the awkward little girl I knew twenty years ago
sat across me as a fully developed woman. “You look… great.”

“Time can do
that.”

I thought about
the last time I’d seen April. She was still a kid, and I hadn’t left for the
Marines yet. I remembered taking her to the movies a week or so before I left
for recruit training at Parris Island. I was eighteen, she was eight.

I heard Matt or
Jed say something. Sean’s voice rose a notch. I looked across the bar. Sean
stood at one end. Jed and Matt stood by the front door. They both looked at me
and pointed.

“This ain’t
over Noble,” Jed said.

April stood,
put her hand on the butt of her pistol and walked toward them. Her steps were
no longer slow and cautious. She said, “Yes it is. Now you two get out of here
before I haul your drunken asses in.”

The men glared
at her, then me, then Sean, and then left.

April returned
to the table. She exhaled loudly and shook her head.

“Sorry about
that,” I said.

She shrugged.
“Those guys are my biggest headache. I pray every night they give me one reason
to lock them up for good.”

“What about
Matt’s brother, Glenn?” I said.

April looked
toward the bar, acted like she didn’t hear me.

“April?”

“I know where
you’re going with this, Jack.”

“Are you in
charge of the investigation of Jessie’s death?”

She nodded. The
look she gave me told me to stop. I didn’t.

“What do you
think?”

“I can’t say.”

“I’m gone in a
day or two. You can tell me.”

“No, Jack, I
can’t. I’m not prepared for this. We don’t have the staff for this. My dad
would have handled an investigation like this alone. He’s not in the department
anymore, so it’s all up to me.”

“Did you reach
out to him for help?”

“No, I can’t do
that to him. It could do him in. I’m supposed to have a detective from the city
on his way, but so far, nothing.”

Something about
the way she spoke led me to believe that she didn’t think the case was as cut
and dry as a suicide. She removed a straw from its wrapper and cast it aside.
Starting at one end, she ripped the wrapper down the middle. She glanced at me.
I remembered that look. She was scared.

“There’s more,
isn’t there?” I said. “You think she was murdered.”

She said
nothing.

“OK, I get it.
Look, if you need someone to talk to about this, I’m all ears. I have some
experience investigating.”

“Something like
this?”

“Close enough.”

She nodded,
slapped the table with her palms and got up. “I should get out of here.” She
took a step away, stopped, turned and held out her card. “Call me tonight and
we’ll discuss the case.”

I reached for
her card. It was printed on heavy paper, thick and coarse. She didn’t let go.

“That’s my
cell. I can be reached anytime, for any reason. If those guys come around
bothering ya’ll, let me know.”

I nodded. She
let go. Her footsteps reverberated through the floor until she reached the
door. She exited without looking back.

I couldn’t
escape the feeling that when I called her to discuss the investigation, things
were going to change. And not in a good way.

I slid into the
booth. Sean returned, set a beer in front of me and then slid in on the
opposite side of the table.

“Where’d she
go?” he said.

“Left.”

“You all
right?”

“Yeah. Memory
lane and all that.”

He left me to
my thoughts. I let the music and the beer drown them out. Fifteen minutes later
we got up. Each of us dropped a twenty on the table. We cut across the bar and
stepped out into the humid early afternoon air.

“I don’t
understand how you live like this,” I said.

Sean laughed.
“Come on, you did it for almost twenty…”

I waited for
him to continue. He didn’t.

“What’s wrong?”

“Look at that.”

I glanced up
from the sidewalk. Someone had vandalized his car. Across the windshield,
they’d written, “Die Nobles.”

We approached
his Mercedes cautiously. I stopped a couple feet from the window, leaned over
and put my hands on my knees.

“That ain’t
paint, Sean.”

“What?” He
stood next to me. “What is it then?”

“Blood.”

“God, that’s
disgusting.”

The water
from the hose mixed with the caked blood on the windshield. The fluids combined
into a runny, red river that ran down the glass, took a detour to the side, and
fell to the ground where it puddled. After the windshield was clean, he aimed
the stream toward the bloody puddle and forced it toward the drain.

“At least
it’s not ours,” I said.

“It could
have been,” he said. “Is this how you act all the time?”

Apparently
cleaning blood off his car set off Sean’s rage, and his big brother instinct.

“No,” I said.
“Just most of the time.”

He shook his
head and continued pushing the pool of faint red water away from his car.

I walked
toward the road. It was just after twelve o’clock now. The lunch rush had
begun. Everyone flocked to one of the four places to eat within town limits.
That’s how many there used to be, at least. Maybe there were more now. If I
really wanted to know, I’d ask Sean. Turns out, I didn’t.

I spotted the
same beat up Tercel from the retirement home parked across the street in the
Burger King parking lot. It faced me. There was no front tag. I shrugged it off
as a coincidence. After all, if I’d have been paying better attention, I
probably would have recognized half the cars in the facility’s lot.

I turned
around and walked toward the bay where Sean now dried his car with the cheap
towels he had purchased out of a coin-operated machine. He worked the blue
cloths back and forth across the window, then the hood, and finally the bumper.

He’d worked
up quite a sweat. As a result, he took off his shirt. Fortunately, he wore a
white tank for an undershirt.

I approached
him, stopping in front of the Mercedes. “About done?”

He nodded,
said nothing.

“What do you
want to do now?”

He looked up.
“Want to take Kelly out fishing?”

“Sure, why
not.”

The drive
back to his house took fifteen minutes. We didn’t say a word during that time.

We found
Kelly on the couch playing a video game. She jumped at the idea of spending
part of the day on the water. Sean went to find his wife. Kelly spent the next
five minutes telling me about all the manatees that inhabited the water nearby.
I figured she thought I grew up somewhere else. I knew all the facts she
presented. I let her talk anyway. She filled me in on everything she knew about
the creatures. Turned out to be a lot. I picked up a few new things.

After a bit
of convincing, Deb decided to go along, though she made it a point to tell me
that she wasn’t much of an angler these days. We piled into her suburban. Their
boat was docked a few miles away and it was a quick trip over. After we parked,
I grabbed a cooler out of the back. It was loaded with sodas and beer and
sandwiches. Everything we needed for a day on the water.