Bad Moon Rising (2 page)

BRANSON
, MISSOURI

Holly Jones drifted on the edge of sleep, too
exhausted to fight it, yet too
happy over the day’s events to give in yet to her dreams. She wanted to relive
every wonderful moment. Cherish them. Exalt in the pleasure she had experienced
surrounded by people who loved her. She could still taste the sweet marzipan
icing of her birthday cake. Hear the joyous, if not slightly off-key, rendition
of Happy Birthday, Holly! Candles glowing. Presents stacked high with bright
ribbons and cards that declared her friends’ love and devotion. At long last,
life was good. Life was wonderful! How long had she dreamed of this?

Bright balloons formed a dancing wall around her and
overhead. They made her laugh as she batted them aside, the chorus of Happy
Birthday, Holly resonating in the air as tears rose in her eyes.

When had she last been this happy? She felt as buoyant
as the shimmering balloons that glowed with a strange iridescence from inside,
and when she looked harder she realized that within each colorful globe burned
a birthday candle, and within each tiny flickering flame she saw the faces of
her friends. Peggy Sue Milligan, whose bouffant hair could withstand
hurricane-force winds. Fred Kenopensky, a retired Air Force captain who had
been injured in Iwo Jima and who considered her as precious as the
granddaughter he had lost to breast cancer ten years ago. Clarence McCarthy,
who had taken her under his wing and trusted her enough to manage his prized
gift shop and hinted that soon she would be capable of running the entire motel
so he and his wife Lou Ann could at last retire and enjoy this bit of
Shangri-La in the Ozarks.

She held up her wrist to display the watch Clarence
had given her for her twenty-eighth birthday—a Timex whose face was emblazoned
with the likeness of the Orange Blossom Inn, not the finest watch she had ever
owned, far from it, but the best because it had been given to her out of love.

Suddenly she stood outside of the gift shop, looking
back through the glass doors into Peggy Sue’s smiling, wrinkled face, which was
bracketed by a revolving rack of Branson, Missouri, postcards and another of
plastic key chains.

“Careful ‘round them corners, hon!” Peggy Sue shouted.

No chance of taking any corners on two wheels. Not in
the Ford she had picked up for a whopping thousand bucks before settling into
bright lights, big city Branson— Live Entertainment Capital of the World.

Holly pumped the accelerator three times before the
Taurus started. It humped its way out onto the highway, hesitated, gulping for
gas like an animal gasping in death throes.

Holly struggled to open her eyes. Something had awakened
her. She turned her head and looked at the glowing bedside lamp. She’d fallen
asleep before turning it off.

The phone rang. She glanced at the bedside clock. Two
A.M.

Few people had her number—just those she had worked
with after arriving in Branson six months before. She thought of Captain Fred
and his bad heart, and the fear that something had happened to him since she
had left her birthday party hours ago, or Peggy Sue whose diabetes too often
sent her to the hospital in a near coma.

She slipped from the bed and hurried to the phone,
rubbing her eyes, and froze as she looked down at the caller ID:
out of area.

Only one person outside of Branson had her phone
number, and she had been cautioned never to call Holly unless there was an
emergency. Cautiously, she lifted the receiver to her ear. Too late. Whoever
called had hung up.

Releasing her breath, Holly gently replaced the receiver.
A wrong number perhaps. Sure. That was it.

She glanced around the dimly lit apartment. Sofa,
chair, and formica dining set provided by Lonesome Dove Apartments, as was the
fridge and the bedroom suite. She preferred it that way. No ties. If she needed
to up and leave again at short notice, she needn’t worry about moving anything
but a few pots and pans, linens, and clothes. All could fit neatly in the
backseat of the Taurus.

The kitchen was a narrow rectangular jut off the
dining area. Standing on the kitchen threshold, she dug a cigarette out of the
package she retrieved from the countertop and lit it with a disposable lighter
advertising Owen’s Theater, famous for their celebrity impersonators of Elvis
and Liberace.

Taking a deep drag from the Slim, she allowed her gaze
to shift around the small room, lit only by the night-light she had plugged
into a socket over the stove.

She wasn’t much of a decorator, but had made the room
as homey as possible, a few culinary gadgets hanging from plastic hooks on the
walls, a wire basket of onions, another of ceramic eggs dangling from the
ceiling.

She was so damn proud of the cozy apartment—the first
place she had allowed herself to call home for more than a few weeks. Branson,
Disney World of the retired set, had become a refuge where she could disappear
from the ghosts of her past. No reminders here of the bad old days, and of the
mistakes she had made with her life. They only existed in her nightmares.

Take a deep breath, she told herself. It had only been
a wrong number. She was absolutely sure of it.

Holly opened the fridge and extracted a Fuzzy Navel
Cooler, flung the screw cap in the general vicinity of the overflowing garbage
can, and returned to the living room.

Her stomach hurt, as it always did when she allowed
her overactive imagination to get the better of her. Which wasn’t often—at
least not as often as she used to. Her long hours of selling Mel Tillis key
chains kept her mind off of too many what-ifs. Still, the occasional cataclysm
did manage to worm its way into her thoughts when she let her guard down. Like
now.

She drank deeply of the Fuzzy Navel, then smoked
again, and stared at the phone. She could hear her Blossom Inn Timex ticking
in the quiet.

She crushed out her cigarette and poured the remaining
drink down the drain, returned to the bedroom, and climbed into bed. She took a
deep breath and told herself again it had been a wrong number. Nothing to worry
about. Life was good, right? No memories allowed. Not today.

Holly flipped off the light and nestled down, focused
her thoughts on her plans for tomorrow—her day off. Once a week she volunteered
at a local church’s Mother’s Day Out. She relished every second of the children’s
company. Drooling babies and precocious tots. Their innocence somehow
purified her.

Her heavy lids drifted closed.

She lit a cigarette as an odd, gray haze enveloped
her. As she drove down Highway 76, the Vegaslike marquees of the theaters
formed halos of muted colors that melted like streams of watercolor into fog. A
niggling of confusion made her dizzy and, for a moment, it seemed the car was
floating. Balloons surrounded her, drifting like airborne bubbles around her
head.

She turned on the radio and a familiar voice boomed
out at her. “This is KRLA Radio, New Orleans. Shana, baby, you can run and you
can hide, but eventually we’re going to find you. Dr. Yah Yah is going to find
you and when he does—”

The stations changed as if by magic, racing from one to
another, a cacophony of country western, classical, and jazz until it settled
on one that blasted loudly enough to make Holly grab her ears.

“And when he does, Shana, baby, he’s going to make you
very sorry, sorry, sorry. “

She turned off the radio and clutched the steering
wheel, her heart pounding in her ears and the balloons moving rapidly around
her, thumping against the windshield so she couldn’t see. They glowed with a
red, pulsing heat. She thrust her cigarette at them, popping each one, but no
sooner did they explode than they were replaced with others, each one
stenciled with the name Dr. Yah Yah.

Jumping from the car, she found herself in the parking
lot of the Lonesome Dove Apartments. As she sprinted up the three flights of
wrought iron stairs, she heard a phone ring and froze.

Suddenly she stood in her living room, cautiously
lifting the receiver to her ear.

“You can run and you can hide, but Dr. Yah Yah is
gonna get you, baby.”

A sound came from behind her and she spun around, a
scream working up her throat.

Holly sat up in bed, gasping for breath, her gaze
flashing around her small bedroom, to the clutch of helium balloons drifting
along the ceiling. They didn’t glow, just shifted from the gusts of air rushing
from the vent near the ceiling.

A dream. Just a dream—a nightmare. And the phone call
had simply been a wrong number. No need to panic. No point in allowing in all
the old fear. She had locked that away since settling into Branson. Still
...

Leaving the bed, she crossed to the closet door and
slid it open, stooped, and studied the pair of Samsonite suitcases partially
visible behind her measly grouping of dresses and an impressive collection of
different-colored wigs. The cases were there, all right, calling to her.
Just say the word, girlfriend,
and we are out of here.

Paranoia was back. It seeped from her pores in big
drops of sweat that beaded over her lip and between her breasts. It crawled
over her scalp and slid down her spine like cold fingers.

She slammed the closet door and hastened to the bathroom,
hit the light that exploded through the tiny room from a humming, flickering
fixture over the sink. She bent over the sink and turned on the water. Splashed
her face. Took a fortifying breath. Finally, she lifted her head and focused on
her reflection in the mirror. Her blue eyes were wide and frightened. Her long
hair fell in black waves around her unnaturally pale face. “Get a grip, Holly,
or you’re going to lose it.”

No, she wasn’t going to lose it. Not again. She’d
worked too hard these last few months to put all that behind her.

Almost desperately, she thrust her fingers through her
hair, black as spades with a touch of natural curl that became a bit too wild
to manage in the humidity of New Orleans. Once, while she was living in Charleston, soon after leaving New Orleans, she had considered cutting it. But a man named
Randy, whom she had dated briefly, had convinced her against it. Thank God. She
could cut off her hair, disguise herself in her many wigs, but if Dr. Yah Yah
wanted to find her, he would find her.

And she would be a dead woman.

The phone rang.

It rang again.

Holly slowly turned for the door. She had the feeling
that she was still asleep, that this was yet another twist of her nightmare.
She had a disembodied sensation of floating out of the bedroom into the living
room where light from the porch lamp spilled through the open drapes. A
collection of moths and June bugs, buzzing as loudly as the bathroom bulb
behind her, swarmed around the yellow porch light and slammed with kamikaze
determination against the window.

Again.

She moved to the phone:
out of area
.

Hand trembling, she picked up the receiver, breath
caught in her lungs, and lifted it to her ear.

“Shana, is that you?” came the weak, quivering female
voice.

She closed her eyes, felt the room begin a slow spin
that made her wobble from side to side.

“Shana,” came the urgent, horrified whisper, barely audible
in her suddenly short-circuiting brain. “He’s back. Oh, God, Shana
...
the monster is back.”

NEW ORLEANS
, LOUISIANA

J.D. Damascus had one hell of a hangover.

Not that such an occurrence was unusual. Hell, no.
Since his thirty-third birthday, seventy-five percent of his time was spent
bumping around in a fog of extreme head pain.

Therefore, the ache stabbing through his temples at
the moment was nothing new or unexpected.

Wearing dark-tinted Ray Bans to diffuse the sunlight
from his throbbing eyes, J.D. slouched on a bench under a sprawling oak tree,
legs outstretched, left ankle hooked over the right, and watched the group of
little girls dash like frolicking puppies over the well-manicured lawn, batting
balloons emblazoned with
happy birthday amber!

J.D. grinned.

“John, I’m so glad you could make it.”

Only one person, besides his mother, called him John.

Sliding the Ray Bans down his nose, J.D. looked over
the glasses at his sister-in-law. Beverly Damascus, former Miss Louisiana, smiled and handed him a paper plate heaped with pink and-white birthday cake. “Wouldn’t
miss it for the world, darlin’. You know that.”

She smiled and sat down beside him. Her scent stirred
the hot, still, summer air: Estee Lauder’s Pleasures. He should know. He’d
bought it for her at Christmas.

“The kids are thrilled, of course. First thing Amber
asked this morning was if her Uncle J.D. would be here.” Beverly looked into
his eyes. “I told her it depended on your schedule.”

He put aside his drink and dug into the cake with a
pink plastic fork. “My nine o’clock never showed. Wasn’t a problem.”

“I’ll warn you; Patrick is going to hit you up again
about coaching his soccer team.” He nodded and ate.

She glanced down at the glass of Smirnoff. “Would you
like some coffee?”

“No thanks. Too early in the day.” He winked at her.

She frowned and brushed a tendril of hair back from
her brow. She didn’t even have the good grace to perspire in the damned
suffocating heat and humidity. Beverly Sinclare Damascus always looked as cool
as an ice sculpture. Which is what made her the perfect politician’s wife.
Fires could be raging out of control in the furnace, but damned if she would
show it—except in her eyes. She had the kind of eyes that, if a man had any
heart about him at all, would turn him inside out with a solitary blink.

“You don’t look so good, John.”

“I’ve felt better.”

“That drink isn’t going to help your ulcers,” she
pointed out gently but sternly, or as sternly as the former Miss Louisiana ever spoke. In all the years he had known her— since the days they attended
Tulane together—he had never heard her raise her voice, even to her children,
in the slightest irritated manner.

Not that she didn’t have backbone. God, no. He suspected
she had a spine as dense as a steel girder. Must have to have survived the last
eighteen years of marriage to his brother, Eric—God’s gift to government.

He didn’t want to discuss his ulcers at the moment,
though they were hurting like hell.

“You look tired,” he said, changing the subject. “Everything
okay?”

She sank back into the bench and crossed her long,
denim-clad legs—legs that were still deserving of miniskirts and string
bikinis, as was her body. He was certain she didn’t weigh a pound more than she
had when they were friends their junior year at Tulane. Her only signs of aging
were the faintest hint of crow’s feet at her eyes and a sprinkling of gray in
her short brown hair.

Finally, she shook her head, and for a moment appeared
to work up her courage. When her voice finally came, it was breathy with
emotion.

“No, I’m not okay. It’s Patrick. I just don’t know
what to do with him anymore. It’s like I don’t even know my own son any longer.
He’s just so
...
angry all the time.
He stays holed up in his room at night. That’s not like him, John. We’ve always
been so close.” She took a shaky breath. “I even caught him smoking the other
night.”

“Did you kick his butt?” He grinned.

She didn’t, just turned her big green eyes, pooling
with tears, to his.

“Hey.” He put his hand on her shoulder, a mistake, he
realized, but too late. She wrapped her fingers around his wrist, gripping it
fiercely, and laid her cheek against his hand. He swallowed. “Kids are going to
experiment, Beverly. He’s sixteen years old. Think hormones.”

“First it’s cigarettes, then it’s booze, then drugs.”
She nuzzled his hand, lifted her head, and swiped a tear from her cheek. “It
gets worse. I got a call from the school. Seems he got into an altercation with
his teacher. She caught him cheating on a test. And do you know what he said to
her? ‘Fuck you. Expel me and my dad will get you fired.’” She gave a dry laugh
and shook her head. “The sorry thing is, he’s probably right.”

“Have you talked to Eric about it?”

“You’re joking. I haven’t had five minutes alone with
your brother since the Senate recessed, not since Jack announced his bid for
the presidency. They’re holed up in the house now—he and Jack and your father.
They should be out here. It’s Amber’s birthday, for God’s sake.”

“Would you like for me to talk to Patrick?”

“Would you? Oh, John, that would be great. You know
how much he loves you. Maybe coming from you—”

“It’s not a problem.”

“It’s that—Eric is so involved—”

“I understand. No problem, really.”

“He so desperately needs a father figure now.” She
froze and her face blanched of color. “Oh God, John. I’m so sorry. God, I’m so
sorry. What a stupid choice of words.”

He put down the plate of cake. “Forget it. You’re
right. He does need a father figure.”

She reached out and touched his cheek with her trembling
fingertips. “I’m so stupid sometimes. Yesterday was Lisa’s birthday—”

“I really don’t want to talk about it.”

He nudged the Ray Bans up to his eyes and watched
Amber take a ballerinalike twirl on her tiptoes. “I’ll have a word with Eric
before I go. Tell Patrick I’ll give him a call tomorrow night. Maybe we’ll
catch a movie or something.”

She touched him again, her fingertip lightly brushing
against his earlobe. “John—”

J.D. stood and moved up the brick walkway, through the
hot August sun that diffused the color of the flowers flourishing in the
well-tended beds along the path. Last spring, the house and gardens had been
featured in
Southern
Living
magazine
as one of the finest restored landmarks south of the Mason-Dixon line, all
thanks to Beverly, of course, and her fine eye and great appreciation for
historical detail. Eric wouldn’t know the difference between an azalea and a
Venus’s-flytrap.

He dug two Tums from his jeans pocket and popped them
into his mouth. Entering the house through the back French doors, he arrived in
the den just as Eric, his father, and Jack Strong, the Democrats’ brightest
hope for the presidency, filed into the room, their expressions buoyant and
their eyes burning, as always, with steely ambition.

Eric glanced at J.D. and smirked. “You look like hell.”

“Screw you.” He glanced at his father. “Hello, Dad.”

Charles Damascus, former Governor, ignored him and proceeded
to the door where he paused and looked around at Senator Strong. “Golf
tomorrow. Seven sharp.”

Jack Strong flashed Charles his best John Kennedy
smile and gave him a thumbs-up.

J.D. moved to the French doors and watched his father
walk down the path toward Beverly, who remained on the bench just as he had
left her.

“Hello to you too, son. How nice to see you. How are
you, by the way?
I’m fine, Dad.
Terrific, son, how would you like to join us in a
round of golf in the morning?
Love to.
Great. Seven sharp.
Wonderful. See you then. My
best to Mom.” He gave a thumbs-up and turned back to his brother. “Son of a
bitch can kiss my ass.”

While the senator made himself comfortable in a chair,
helping himself to Eric’s stash of expensive and illegal Cuban cigars, Eric
planted himself on the edge of his authentic Louis XVI desk and crossed his
arms, waiting.

“We need to talk,” J.D. said.

“Busy.”

“So I gather. It’s important.”

“Make it quick.”

“This is private.”

“You need money, right?”

“Since when have I ever come to you for money?”

“Maybe if you’d rope in a better clientele than
hookers and whiplash victims, you wouldn’t be on the verge of rolling belly up.”
He looked over his shoulder at Jack. “Right, Senator?”

Senator Strong smiled around his cigar. “I’m staying
out of this. Wouldn’t want to lose the vote of one of my constituents, after
all.”

J.D. gave a sharp laugh. “I wouldn’t vote for you if
you were the only candidate on the ballot. I rank your ethics just one rung
above Sammy ‘The Bull’ Gravanno.”

Jack’s eyes narrowed and his bright smile dimmed. “Careful,
J.D. Although I highly respect your daddy, I wouldn’t hesitate a minute in
pulling a few strings to get your law license rescinded. Such as it is.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Jack shrugged and took a deep drag on his cigar before
replying. “You ain’t been worth a damn as an attorney since you left the D.A.’s
office. Fact is,
boy,
you’re
nothing more than a laughingstock anymore. A sleazy ambulance chaser whose
clients are nothing more than a lot of derelicts and prostitutes. It’s no
wonder your daddy has disowned you.”

“You son of a—”

“Here now.” Eric placed himself between J.D. and the
senator. “If you’ll excuse us, Jack, my brother and I will just step into my
office for a few minutes.”

Eric took a hard, warning hold on J.D.’s arm and ushered
him out of the room, into his office, and slammed the door. His face beet red,
he said, “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing coming to my house and
insulting my guest?”

“In case you aren’t aware, it’s Amber’s birthday.”

“And your point is?”

“I think your wife would appreciate a few minutes of
your time.”

Eric walked to the window and looked out at his wife. “I
saw the two of you talking. If I was a suspicious man, I might believe you had
a thing going on.”

“Patrick is having problems.”

He turned away from the window. “Is that so?”

“He needs his father.”

“I wasn’t aware that you had, between your vodka
binges, gotten your shrink’s shingle.”

Trying hard to rein back his temper wasn’t easy—just
ask the judge he’d slugged when the jury had cleared Marcus DiAngelo, of the
Lucky Lady, of gambling corruption. He had never slugged his brother, but he
was as close to it in that moment as he was ever going to be.

His hands fisted, he stared into his brother’s eyes.
Eric was a chip off the old block, no doubt about it. If cloning human beings
had existed forty years ago, J.D. would happily wager that Eric had been
spawned in a petri dish. The amount of compassion Eric and their father had
squirming around in their hearts would fit on the tip of a straight pin.

“There’s no use in talking to you,” J.D. said. “There
never is.”

As he turned for the door, Eric slammed one hand down
on J.D.’s shoulder. “I’ll forgive you for coming into my house and insulting my
friend. And I really don’t care what you think about Daddy. But you keep your
sanctimonious nose out of my family life. My kids are none of your business,
J.D. And neither is my wife.” Eric jammed one finger into J.D.’s breastbone and
finished, “You best remember that if you know what’s good for you.”

It was probably a mistake coming here,
considering his mood. But
often, the serenity of the place brought him as much peace as it did heartache.
And it was definitely preferable to drowning himself in the Smirnoff bottle he
had tucked away in the Mustang’s glove compartment. His ulcers simply wouldn’t
tolerate it at the moment, and he was out of Tums.