Payback (39 page)

“Howdy, m
a’am.  You all right? I almost clipped you.”

I tried to look him straight in the eyes, but it was difficult focusing. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that.”

“Oh, honey, you’re about ready to drop. You get in, and I’ll give you a ride home.”

I remember getting into the truck
, and when he asked where home was, I remember saying, “I don’t have one. I’m homeless.”

“Homeless?”

I nodded.

“Are you sure you’re homeless?”

I started to cry. “No one wants me.”

“Oh, I can’t believe that. You’re a pretty little heifer
, and you’re spunky.  I have to get to work, darlin’, so I’m going to take you back to my place. You can sleep it off there. It’s not much to look at, but you’ll be out of the elements and out of the reach of the bears.”

“You think a sloth is sleuthing me?”

“Huh?” he looked at me with head cocked slightly to one side.

“Nothing.”

That’s all I really remember.

Chapter 1
7

Marie’s Old New Beau

“Caden? Have you seen Marie?”
Penny asked.

Caden was standing at the door to the deck in his bare feet and no shirt buttoning his jeans. In front of him was Penny
, holding Jack, who was now leaning forward so that Caden would take him. 

“What time is it?”
Caden asked.

“Seven-thirty. I told her I’d be bringing him back this morning so I could take my friend hiking.”

“Give him to me.”

She gratefully handed Jack over.

“She’s not at the house, and the old truck is gone.  Jason said she was there when he got home at midnight. Her purse and cell phone are in her room. Oh, wait.” Penny pulled her cell phone from her back pocket and then tilted her head. “That’s odd. I just got a text from Ona saying that the old truck is parked near the Palace Bar, but the bar is closed. Do you know what’s going on?” Penny stared up into Caden’s eyes and saw that his face was flushed.

“I think I might have an idea what happened, but I don’t know where she is.”

Brooke appeared in a robe behind Caden.  “What’s wrong?”

“Marie is missing.”

“
Missing?”

“Can you watch Jack while I go look for her?”

“Look for her?  She’s an adult. She’s probably out having a good time. Why do you have to look for her?”

Penny spoke up. “She’s never late when taking over watching Jack. She’s early
, and if she’s even going to be a minute late, she calls me. She’s an hour late and she hasn’t called me. It’s not like her. Marie is fanatical about being on time for Jack.”

“Penny is right, this isn’t like Marie. I need to go find her. Was Jason up?”

Penny nodded. “I think I woke him, so he got up to make coffee.”

“Thanks, Penny. Have a good time on your hike,” Caden said. Turning to Brooke
, he looked her straight in the eye. “You don’t have to watch Jack, he’s not your responsibility, he’s mine. I’ll take him with me.”

She looked crushed and embarrassed.  “Of course I’ll take care o
f him. I’m going to be his stepmother, and I love him.  I just thought we’d have today together to…to  play.”

“We’ll play when I get back.”

Jason was concerned about Marie but was a little reluctant to jump in the middle of what he sensed was a dispute between Caden and Marie. “You think she ran off because of you?  Why? You’ve been a bastard lately, but she seems to give you a wide berth.”

“I don’t want to get into it, but she has her reasons for being upset. Will you go?”

“Yeah, of course. She’s my friend and I’m worried about her.”

They climbed into the new model black Ford 150 and took off in the direction of the old truck, parking next to it when they arrived. There was nothing to learn from the truck except that she had been in the area the night before.

They found Ona serving behind the counter at the coffee shop.  When she saw Caden walk in she knew what was going to happen. Half the restaurant jumped up and rushed towards him. He’d completely forgotten that it was tourist season for Glacier National Park, a time when he usually avoided Whitefish like the plague.

“Caden! Caden!” they all jockeyed to get near him.

There was a little hustling, but Jason managed to keep them away while Ona hustled him into the back where the staff ate. “She hasn’t shown up?”

“No
, and I’m worried,” Caden said.

“I heard from Craig Franklin that he was in the Palace Bar last night when Marie walked in around one.  When he left at one-thirty
, she was on her fourth tequila. I can’t imagine Marie drinking four shots of tequila in half an hour.”

Caden was pale. “She’s a real lightweight. Two drinks and she’s dancing on tables.”

“I think you should call Porter and ask him what he knows.”

Porter Hill was the owner of the Palace bar. “Do you have his number?”

Ona gave him Porter’s home phone and waited while Caden dialed. “Porter? It’s Caden Kelly.”

“Caden? What’s up?”

“Marie Morrigan, the woman who came into your bar at one a.m. and started drinking tequila. What can you tell me about what happened last night?”

“Why, is something wrong?”

“She didn’t come home to get her son from the babysitter.”

“Christ, I knew it.”

“Knew what?”

“She ha
d six tequilas in a row, was blind drunk. I took her keys and ordered a taxi. They had to send one up from Kalispell, but while we were waiting, she claimed she needed to go to the bathroom.  I had to help her, she was really wobbly. Well, I don’t know how she did it, but she slipped out the back. I drove around looking for her, but I went south. I didn’t know she had come in from Trego.”

“Any ideas where she might have gone?”

“No, but I know she didn’t go south.”

“Thanks
, Porter. If you hear anything, you have my cell number.” Caden hung up and looked at Ona. “She didn’t go south, and she was shitfaced.”

“Ona?” Alex, one of Ona’s co-worker
s, stuck his head into the room. “I might have some news about your friend.”

They all turned and came to attention.  “What?” they asked simultaneously.

“Henrietta got off work at 2 a.m. at the hospital and was on her way home when she saw a drunk woman climb into a light pickup truck with those naked women mud flaps and a bumper sticker that said, “Don’t Squat With Your Spurs On.”

Ona was quiet as she thought. “I know that truck…oh, it’s Zeke’s truck.”

“Zeke? Who is this Zeke?” Caden asked, looking from face to face.

“He works at the feed lot unloading trucks on the graveyard shift.”

“Where does he live?”

“You know the trailer camp just northeast of here?”

Jason nodded, “I think I know the one you’re talking about. Come on, let’s get going.”

It was six miles out of town down a short dirt road into a
clearing where five single-wide trailers sat at odd angles to each other.  Several water hoses running from a line of bibs snaked through the ground to each of the trailers, providing what water they had.

As they pulled up, an owner of one of the trailers pulled his blinds up and stared. The trailers all had seen better days, probably in the Nixon era. 

“She can’t be here!” Caden cried out.

“How do you know?” Jason asked rhetorically.  “Let’s figure she’s not in that old man’s trailer. So let’s just go door to door.”

“Fine.”

The jumped out of the cab of the truck and knocked on the nearest door. A middle aged woman with a strange resemblance to Roseanne Barr answered the door dressed in a see
-through negligee. “Come on in.  For two at the same time, it’s one hundred. If one of you just wants to watch, it’s seventy-five.”

Caden’s e
yebrows flew up. “Sorry, ma’am, but we’re looking for our friend. Have you seen a woman with blonde hair, about five-foot-four with freckles across her nose.”

“What is this? Don’t you want sex?”

Jason shook his head vehemently. “No, but could you point us to Zeke’s trailer?”

“It will cost you.”

“Ma’am, we just have to knock on a few doors and we’ll find it…” Jason explained, trying to get her to see the illogic of her request.

But Caden pulled out a twenty and handed it to her. “Now, which one is it?”

“The blue one over there.”

“Thank you,
” Caden said quickly and hurried to the blue trailer, praying that they had found her.

Marie’s first thought was that there was the smell of a man, but not a pleasant smell.  This sweat and musk was pungent
, and it seemed to be seeping into her very core.  She opened her eyes and let out a gasp, “
Where am I?”

It was obviously a small, filthy trailer
, with coated dishes in the sink and dirty clothes in piles. Looking down, she wondered where her jeans and top were. All she had on was her panties and a man’s clean western shirt with half-missing snaps. Just as she spotted her clothes, there was a knock on the trailer door.

She wasn’t sure she should answer since it wasn’t her trailer. When she failed to open the door, someone opened it anyway and yelled inside.

“Marie?” Caden spotted her and burst inside.  “Marie!”  He looked from her eyes down to where the shirt hung open just over her breasts.

She pulled the shirt over her breasts and clasped it closed with her fist. “Where am I?”

Caden looked over his shoulder at Jason with bewilderment and then approached Marie, who was busy searching for a clock.

“What time is it?”

“Ten-thirty.”

“Oh, crap! I’m late. Penny was going to bring Jack back at eight this morning.”

“Jack is with Brooke right now.”

“I bet she loves that—having to step in and play mommy because I’m AWOL.”

“She’s doing me a favor.  Now let’s find your clothes and get you home.” He reached out and grabbed her elbow.

“Stop it!” she barked
, as she jerked her elbow out of his hand.

“What?”

“I can’t be near you!”

Caden’s face flushed as he turned and looked to Jason for support. Jason gestured for Caden to
leave.  Hesitating, Caden eventually stomped out of the trailer.

“He’s been going crazy trying to find you.  What are you doing here?”

“I don’t know…I remember trying to walk back to Trego, but I kept getting honked at. A man in a truck gave me a lift. I don’t remember anything after that.”

“You don’t remember how you got your clothes off?”

Marie shook her head. “I don’t remember what happened after that.” She reached down and grabbed her top and jeans and then made a face.  “Yuck, I must have thrown up on my top.”  The soiled top dangled from her two fingers. She grabbed an empty grocery bag and threw the top inside of it. “I hate to steal this shirt, but I need it.”  After pulling the jeans on, she reached in the back pocket and found her driver’s license and what was left of her money. She threw ten dollars on the counter and followed Jason out the door, finding her sneakers under a chair as she was leaving.

Crawling in the back, Marie rolled up into a ball. 

Caden turned in his seat as Jason drove out of the trailer lot, “You have to know that when I—”

Her head
popped up, eyes so full of hate Caden’s face went ashen. “No, no, no! You don’t get to say anything.”

“But I just want you to know that yesterday—”

Holding up her hand and shaking her head, she cried so loud that Jason swerved. “
Don’t! Don’t! I want nothing to do with you!”
Marie’s eyes brimmed with tears that spilled down her cheeks.  “I can’t take any more promises, lies, flattery, insinuations…” she stared into his eyes and shook her head as a sob escaped. “I just can’t. Every time I start to feel hopeful, the rug gets jerked out from under me. I keep giving you chunks of my soul,” the sobbing barely made her comprehensible. “If I keep giving you chunks of my soul, I won’t have anything left to give Jack. So, if you have
any
feelings for me, please leave me alone.
Please, Caden, please!

The excruciating agony in her eyes and her voice stopped him in his tracks.  She was right…they were both in limbo…a hell consisting of a void that neither could fill for the other. He had to back off, let her go
, if they were to both survive and move on.  He was an idiot to think that they could be friends, considering their past.

Caden nodded and then turned back so that he faced the dashboard. They traveled in silence the rest of the way. When they arrived, Jason and Caden spoke for a few minutes after Marie made a beeline into the house to get Jack. 

“You are a fucking idiot!” Jason yelled, his jaw clenched. “I don’t know what you did yesterday, but it’s pretty obvious that you screwed her over.  I suspect that she was waiting up for you while you were over here having make-up sex with Brooke.  I don’t know what you said to her to get her hopes up, but you have to stop it. Now!” He took a deep breath and bent over, placing his hands on his knees.  “And by the way, if we were taking a vote, I’d vote for Marie over Brooke. Live with Marie if you aren’t going to marry her, but for God’s sake, you need to ask yourself if you’ll be able to live without her.”

Marie came out with Jack and climbed in the truck. Jason shook his head in disgust at Caden as he jumped behind the wheel and drove home. Caden watched them disappear out of
sight before going back inside to “play” with Brooke, as promised.

The following week, whenever Caden wanted to see Jack, he’d ask Jason to bring him down to the house or out to the stables for a ride. Marie refused to go on set until Jeremiah showed up at the cabin one day. 

“I need you on the set tomorrow. It’s the love scene, and I’m not enamored with the dialogue. I want to run the scene, and if we need to make changes, you need to be there.”