Crushing (The Southern California Wine Country Series) (7 page)

“I just got here,” Nicholas told the detective. He rubbed his forehead where he struck the gravel between the sparse tufts of lawn grass when his house exploded. His date sat on the ground with her dirty arms and legs crossed, looking at the burning house. The officer saw the anger that bunched her eyebrows and stabbed along her spine like a spike into the ground.

Nicholas said, “I bought this house years ago and I only come out here on holidays or work vacations.”

“Where do you work?”

“I head up the IT department of a national trucking company. I work out of their Detroit headquarters.”

“Who is your girlfriend? Seeing each other a long time?”

“No. We met on the plane while sitting on the tarmac for an excruciating delay. A few drinks in the airport bar, I think that is a racket of theirs, and a taxicab ride stuck in LA traffic. Then, when we finally get out here, I find kids broke into my house, threw a huge party, and blew it up in front of me.”

“You have quite a nice tan compared to most people I’ve met from Detroit. You must get out on vacation a lot?”

“I negotiated six weeks of vacation. In addition, I can do remote telecommuting. I get a page on my phone if the servers go down or other problems happen so I log in from my equipment in the house.” He held up his pager. He shrugged; he needed to upgrade the computer systems at the house anyway.

The detective asked him, “How can you prove your story?”

Nicholas reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled slip of paper, “My bags are piled over there. This is my plane ticket and taxi receipt with the date and time stamp. See I just got here.”

“Miss, do you have your ticket?”

Her buzz from the bar had worn off. She replied flatly, “It’s in my purse with the other bags.”

-:-:-:- -:-:-:-

Benjamin turned the wheel of his hybrid vehicle. He knew this gravel road led through several vineyards and would get him on the other major road back home faster. The regular route was a long drive west and then a tedious series of stoplights not timed together to make traffic flow. Set up to reduce traffic speeds but he knew they wasted huge amounts of fuel stopping and starting people. If those traffic engineers only knew how much energy they wasted then the government might fix it.

He looked out the side window. The dirt road was a much better route with the moonlight caressing the grape leaves in their silent but anxious rows. He looked across the car to Ophelia, his girlfriend of six years, a gorgeous woman ten years younger than he. “Look at how the moonlight bounces off the vineyard. Too bad my camera is at home.” He slowed his vehicle to a stop.

“Are you going to propose to me here?”

Benjamin looked at Ophelia, “We’ve discussed that. I don’t want to get married because it didn’t work out before.” He scrubbed his fingers in his blond hair. He looked at Ophelia with his pale gray eyes that might have been bright blue when he was younger before all the heartaches and sadness.

“That was twenty years ago. I’m in my thirties and I want a family – a married family.”

“I know you want that. However, I’m committed to you. Look at how we have been together for six years. It’s working, right?”

Ophelia nodded, “Yes, but I want a ring on this finger.”

“– and the noose of a ring around mine.”

“If that is what you think it is then yes. I want you and I want the world to know you are taken. That I have taken you.” She pushed back her bleached blond hair and reset her glasses.

“Knowing you took my heart is not enough?”

Ophelia slumped back in the seat, “I love you Benjamin, but I want something permanent.”

“I’m permanently yours. A ring does not ensure that. Standing in front of all our friends and family does not ensure that. Only you and I ensure we are permanently each other’s.”

“I want you thinking about kids. I do not want to be one of those pining forty year olds that wonder if they should or if they still can. Reading the supermarket magazines with the beautiful actresses having their beautiful healthy babies in their forties, but never telling the stories of those that saw misfortune.”

Benjamin put the vehicle in gear and drove up the next hill, a ridge between two sloping vineyards. “Fine. We will think about kids.”

“I had a lot of fun with you today at the wineries and dinner was great.”

“I enjoyed our day too.”

Ophelia reached across the car and stroked her hand along his chin, “When we get home I want you in me,” She licked her lip, “And … I’m ovulating.”

Lights from another car speeding up the other side of the ridge flashed across Benjamin’s windshield, high beams that blinded him as if looking into the rising sun. He twisted the steering wheel to the side, thinking it much better to strike grape trellis posts and vines than another car. The car flew through the air as if fleeing demons and crashed into Benjamin’s vehicle. Bits of glass shot sideways through the air. The airbags filled his senses with white cloth, dust, and thrown glass. Cuts and scrapes ran with blood down his exposed arms and legs and the side of his face.

Ophelia screamed.

“Ophelia! Where are you injured?” Benjamin yanked at his seat belt that had jammed. He freed himself and twisted in his seat to help Ophelia.

“My leg!” She pushed herself up with her hands on the seat, covered in broken glass, trying to ease the pain in her leg. Then she screamed again, when her arm buckled. Her fractured lower arm split through her skin, showing blood and bone.

Benjamin found his phone on the floor where it tumbled from the console and dialed 911. He gave them the briefest note but left the phone on. Benjamin clawed at his shirt and wrapped it tight around Ophelia’s arm, trying to slow the blood draining from her. He saw the passenger door crushed against Ophelia’s seat. Her leg bent in unnatural ways in several places. Her seat back was mostly broken off. He flipped the lever to mash his own seat down and wrenched on hers, it flopped around, and he dragged her back. A long gash of blood leaked along her thigh, saturating her pantyhose. He found a sweatshirt on the back seat and lashed that around Ophelia’s leg. He pulled the cloth tight and pressed on it hard with his palm, “Ophelia, you have to keep talking. I need to know you are staying with me.”

“Benjamin, you’re a great guy. We’ll make this work.” She coughed, “Ow!”

“Ribs?”

“No. I jiggled my arm.”

Benjamin could hear sirens; he hoped the sound came from the ones he called.

He looked up and saw the other car.

Ophelia said, “You should go check the other car.” Her eyelids had settled half closed.

“I have to hold pressure on your leg. I don’t trust that sweatshirt on its own.”

Benjamin looked at the other car again. Someone banged at broken glass still stuck in the door track. He saw a young woman climb out of the car. He could see in the light still shining from the headlamp that hung by the string of its wire, pointed across the ground. The woman was nearly fine except for some small scratches. He saw her only clothes amounted to a bikini bottom. The woman looked at Benjamin, put her forearm across her breasts, turned, and jogged away barefoot between two rows of grape vines. Benjamin saw a biohazard tattoo on her shoulder blade just as the reaching grape leaves enveloped her in greenery and shadows.

Then the emergency vehicle and police arrived.

Green eyes, black hair, and a zombie apocalypse tattoo was all he could tell them. He remembered the shape of her hips and waist. He remembered how her bare breasts flashed him, but none of that would help the police. The police already knew everything about the car, reported stolen from another site with a girl left for dead.

The detective that arrived shortly after said to Benjamin before the ambulance took Ophelia away, “The girl is good at stealing cars. She even wiped down the pedals that her bare feet touched so we don’t even have a toe print – not that our database might have such a thing but useful for evidence later.”

“Shit!” Amanda wrenched Kyle’s car to the side of the road and stomped on the brakes.

Sardis slid off the seat and thumped against the back of the front seats and into the foot well.

Kyle asked, “What?”

“I borrowed a car to get to the party. It’s still there.”

Sardis moaned awake, holding his side where the drive shaft tunnel traveled, “It’s likely towed.”

Kyle asked, “Where did you park it?”

“We got there after the party was really going, so we were way down the road.”

“I’m sure the car is fine.”

“Julie and a friend were in the back bedrooms. We have to go back.”

Sardis sat up holding his head as the world titled around him, “Haley said everyone left from the house.” He blinked and sat back in the seat, his arms flopping to his sides.

Amanda dug out her phone. She sent a text message to Julie’s phone. Amanda’s arms draped over the top of the steering wheel holding the phone in her hands waiting. The slow idle of the loping engine vibrated the dash with a buzz that shook the steering wheel. Amanda’s phone rang. “Hi Julie. Thank God you are ok.”

Julie said, “That was crazy, right? I’m glad you are ok too. When I saw the house explode I knew your car should not get left there.”

“Yeah. I’m wondering about going back for it.”

Julie said, “When I saw you forgot to lock the car door, I had Markus hot-wire it for me. He took his car and I drove yours. I waited until I saw you drive away with Kyle. I’ll get it back to you tomorrow.”

“So, things with Markus didn’t work out?”

“Oh, it was a bit … awkward. I’ll tell you about it later.” She pushed the topic away. “Whooo! I feel like such a criminal driving a hot-wired car.”

Amanda thought not the criminal that she felt – a ruddy dirty grime crawled along her skin thinking of the dead girl by the pool. An accomplice as a get-away driver and one who did not even try to help the dead girl. “Thanks, Julie.” Amanda tossed her phone onto the seat between her legs. She put the car in gear and drove back along the road. They exited the dirt road onto the larger paved roads. Amanda remained silent the whole drive, but her mind skidded with conflicting thoughts ranging through scenes from the party, hints she picked up from Kyle and certainly his sketchy brother Sardis. She drove until she saw the lights of the house where she stayed. She eased the car to the shoulder.

Amanda turned and looked at Kyle, “This is where I get out. You can drive now?”

Kyle nodded.

The breeze blew from Kyle’s window toward her. Under the stink of the party, her nose found his musky fragrance. The smell thrust images of his touch and his kisses. His shoulders and torso that shown bare by the flickering flames of the bonfire. Her body wanted him, wanted to follow that smell on the breeze like a cartoon character floating after a freshly baked apple-cinnamon pie. “I can’t believe we ran. We ran from a crime scene. We’re going to hell.”

Sardis said, “You want to be in jail? You would not be an innocent bystander. You’d get dragged along with anyone else left at the party.”

Amanda gripped the steering wheel, “Or dragged along in the rest of your crazy life. A life more risky than I imagined.”

Kyle said, “Hey, forgetting the party, we’re just getting started. It’s a struggle with the band but we have talent. We just need a bit of luck.”

Amanda said, “Sardis, you should turn yourself in, you’re the one that killed that girl.”

Kyle asked, “Why didn't you do anything, Amanda? You knew being detained would be bad. You ran too.”

“I freaked out! We should go and tell the police what happened. Maybe they will think it was all an accident.”

Sardis leaned forward in his seat, his mouth close to Amanda’s ear, growling in low tones filled with drunken anger, “Look, you better not talk to any police.”

Amanda knew the house waited for her. All she had to do was get out of the car and go inside. She knew the high quality of life that Zack and Claire enjoyed and shared with her for being a nanny to their kids. They loved and cared for each other and did not have any of the madness that surrounded Kyle and Sardis. Her body riled against her but her mind retained control, except for her shaking fingers that she hid by sliding them under her thighs. She paused for several seconds that floated for what seemed like hours. “Kyle, I'm done. I cannot be mixed up with anything like this. Don’t call me.” Amanda pushed the car door open and marched to the house. A hot line burned between her shoulder blades from Kyle’s stare but she unlocked the door and never looked back at Kyle or Sardis or even their car as Kyle drove away.

Amanda floated through the house. She stripped off her clothes and flopped down across her bed wearing only her panties and bra. She could not believe how her heart ached for him already, but she knew she was done. She must be done with him. The tears did not agree, or they swam in the soup of all that had happened. She cried into the bedspread and finally fell asleep.

Kyle slid under the steering wheel and bumped the seat back. He watched Amanda march up the steps to the house and twist her key in the knob. The curve of her body and the sheen of her hair faded into the interior. Kyle struck his fist along the top of the steering wheel.

Sardis leaned forward and put his hand on Kyle’s shoulder, “Forget her. She’s not worth it.”

Kyle cranked the shifter into gear, “She’s worth it. We’re just not up to her worth.”

Sardis shrugged and leaned back in his seat as the car motioned down the road. “There is a pile of ass out there to be had.”

“When was the last time you had a girlfriend?”

“Last week.”

“No. You had a chick from the bar for a night and she was gone the next day. I mean a girlfriend.”

Sardis kicked Kyle’s seat, “That’s the best kind of girlfriend!” He laughed, “One who is gone the next day so you don’t have to get in fights over nonsense about calls or anniversaries or birthdays or all that shit about
communication
. I leave whenever I hear those fighting words.”

“You are such a charmer. One day your charm won’t work so well at the bar.”

“Switch over to the side of quantity rather than pining for quality and you’ll do better.” Sardis looked out the window, “Shit. You can be hung-over and still get ten times the girls I do. Cruel world to play that game.”

“Clean up your language and you would find more girls interested.”

“More of those grabbing girls looking for
meaning
in the
relationship
and demanding general drama and mayhem. What I do is simple. The girls I find want it simple. The ones who understand it ring me up.”

“On my phone. I know it’s not exactly a busy call center.”

“It might ring more if we had a regular place with a shower and a bed.” Sardis scrubbed his scalp with his fingers. “Let’s find an unattended swimming pool. That new subdivision is about half-vacant with foreclosures. The still occupied ones should have something.”

“Shouldn’t we just go to the truck stop?”

“That’s a pit filled with stinky long haul pits. It’s ten miles out and ten back. We’d burn all our fuel.” Sardis tapped the seat, “That dirt road over there is the truck entrance. Just follow along it.”

“What are you doing?”

“Keep driving.” Sardis knocked his shoes and socks off.

“Whew. Put those back on.”

“If we had more regular cash I’d get some foot cream.”

Kyle knew Sardis would keep his thoughts off Amanda. Sardis had a way of consuming his and everyone’s attention with his antics. “I’d go without tomorrow’s sandwich if we could guarantee fixing that shitty dead skunk odor.”

Sardis pulled himself out the window and climbed on top of the roof. “Drive slow and I can look over the fences into the back yards and see if any clear pools remain unguarded.”

Kyle slowed the car. Sardis stood up, his moist feet gripping the smooth lacquer.

Sardis knocked on the roof and Kyle pulled the car off the dirt road and tight against the slat fence.

“Sardis! We should look first.” Kyle whispered, seeing the top of his brother’s head disappear over the wood wall. Kyle rummaged in the backpack on the floor and pulled out a cake of white soap stored in a wrinkled plastic bag. He looked both ways along the road and then slid to the car roof and dangled over the wall. He dropped to the ground and scooted close to Sardis to crouch behind a tiny forest of trees that came up to their eyes. Not much better than a hedge.

Sardis said, “I don’t see any lights in the house. The houses on both sides are closed up and their pools are swamps, abandoned for a long time.”

Kyle said, “I’m going to look in the house to make sure no one is here.”

“You do that. I am going to check out the pool. Give me the soap.”

Kyle gave Sardis the bag with the soap and he moved toward the house. Kyle peered through several windows and saw a place furnished in a contemporary design. Maybe they were in the middle of moving or just left behind what did not fit in their van. No evidence of a dog or a homeowner with a handgun.

Sardis slipped into the pool and scrubbed his head with the soap. Kyle dropped his jeans by the edge of the pool and waded down the steps. They both knew to keep their splashing and talking quiet.

“Hey boys. Can I come over to play?”

Kyle and Sardis spun around at the voice.

“Hello, Haley.” Sardis scrubbed his finger in his ear, wincing his eyes.

Kyle whispered, “Where did you come from?”

“Over yonder,” she giggled. Her face washed in the aqua light reflected from the pool. “I left my ride in the field, it broke down, and so I am walking home. Then I recognized your car and climbed up to see what’s up.” A smile curled her lip. “Oh … nice. I do see what’s up.” She climbed over the fence and stood before the two brothers. “You look like twelve year olds seeing their first naked boobs.”

Sardis said, “Your top got caught in the fan motor?”

“No, you ass.” Haley pushed down the rest of her bikini and walked to the water’s edge. She looked down at the two of them surveying her body. She stepped forward and dropped smoothly into the water. She came up, used an elbow to steady herself at the edge of the pool, and swept her hair back from her face.

Kyle said, “Your face is cut.”

“No shit.” She wiped away a spot of blood that appeared after the water softened the scab. “It stings a little in this water.”

Sardis swam closer to Haley, “Were you stalking us? Following us since the party?”

“You saw my body out of the water. Do you think I need to stalk anyone? That’s a nice hair cut Kyle.” She swam away from Sardis and Kyle. “This water feels good.”

Kyle reached up to the side of the pool and poked the bar of soap into the plastic bag. The water sucked the plastic flat to the cement and he had to dig at it with his thumb. He dipped below the water and ruffled the soap out of his hair. He bobbed up and squeezed the water from around his eyes. When he opened his eyes, Haley was only a dozen inches from him. Her eyes followed his. The underwater lights outlined the swells of her breasts. He could feel the heat from her body swirling in the small currents her hands stirred in the water. He also saw discoloration along her arms and shoulder. “What are those bruises?”

Haley kicked away from Kyle, arching her back and floating away, her nipples spiked toward the sky. “Nothing you two would care about.” She asked, “Kyle, why aren’t you with the body shot girl?”

Sardis said, “We dropped her off at her house.”

“Too much excitement for little miss perfect?”

Kyle put his hands on the edge of the pool and vaulted out of the water. He spun and sat on the cement so his legs dangled in the water. He leaned back, supported by his hands on the cement.

Haley curled like an otter below the water’s surface and crested near Kyle’s knee. “You do that much better.”

Kyle asked, “Do what?”

“Sit at the edge of the pool.” She put a hand against Kyle’s knee and rubbed her fingers closer to his body. Kyle’s body awoke to her touch. He moved his leg away and slid back into the water. Haley pulled herself closer to him using the pool edge and then a hand against his neck, her lips found his. Haley’s tongue slithered into his mouth. His body wanted her. The water moved between them and his manhood bobbed free as driftwood. Haley’s hand slid down over his stomach and lower, stroking along his body as she maneuvered her hips against him. Kyle moved his arms and slid deeper into the water. He surfaced a few feet away.

“You don’t want this?” She pushed her nipple above the water line.

Kyle said, “Not tonight.” He swam to the side of the pool that had steps and walked out of the water. He watched Haley’s eyes trace his every move as he slopped along the edge of the pool, the water running from him in rivulets and leaving wet prints behind. He picked up his clothes and put his pants on without underwear, having forgotten to get a clean pair out of the plastic grocery bag bundle he had from their last laundromat trip. He jumped against the fence so his fingers reached the top and he pulled himself up. With a swing of his leg over the top, he was on the car. Kyle looked over the fence and saw Haley had already floated to Sardis.

Haley whipped her head around, “You might want to turn the radio on, Kyle. I get loud.”

Sardis looked at Kyle and shrugged. A grin spreading across his teeth.

Kyle waved his hand in dismissal, but turned back, “I’m taking the car. You can meet me at the usual spot. It’s a short walk from here, across the citrus farm.”

Haley asked, “The tree?” She paused, and then covered with, “The trees at the park? I bet you two sleep at the park.”

Sardis pulled Haley to him and kissed her neck. Haley giggled and her hand waved a cute goodbye to Kyle like a kindergartner on her first day of school. Kyle slid through the window into the car. He dug his keys out of his pocket. The car started and he punched in the radio that blared someone’s mournful song of forgotten loves they wished they had loved more before they were gone forever.

Why am I so hung up on this girl Amanda? I would have taken Haley’s offering without hesitation before. Now? What is it about Amanda that causes me to want to be a better man?