Peony Street (36 page)

‘We all do things we regret,’ Claire thought.

“Took you long enough,” the taller one said when Hatch rolled down the window to greet them. “You were supposed to be here a half hour ago.”

“Maybe he can’t tell time,” the other one said. “Maybe they just teach readin’ and writin’ but not ‘rithmatic ‘round here.”

Hatch just rolled his eyes and shook his head as the two boys laughed at him. Any sympathy Claire felt immediately evaporated. She and Hannah got out of the car and stood to the side as Hatch backed the wrecker up to the door of the storage unit.

“Why are you here?” the shorter one asked Hannah.

“He’s just giving us a ride,” Hannah said.

The two young men looked at each other, rolled their eyes and snickered at Hannah.

“Weren’t you in the depot this morning?” the taller one asked Claire. “Sittin’ with that crazy old guy?”

Claire felt her blood pressure rise. Hannah gripped Claire’s arm, and she just pretended she didn’t hear the insult.

“Hey, yeah,” Claire said, breaking out her brightest smile. She wished she had on her heels and something more flattering than her mother’s tennis shoes, jeans and a t-shirt.

“I remember you two,” Claire said, as Hannah stared at her in amazement. “Phyllis says you guys love to party. She said you all are hardcore.”

The taller one puffed up a little and the shorter one looked Claire up and down.

“I guess,” the taller one said.

“Phyllis said you were looking for some serious party supplies,” Claire said. “That just happens to be my specialty.”

Now they looked interested. The taller one walked over and motioned to Claire to move away from Hannah. Claire smiled, hoping her rusty frat-boy-charming skills still worked, and followed his direction. The shorter one moved closer in order to hear.

“What have you got?” the taller one asked her.

Close up, she could see that his pupils were already dilated. Claire knew next to nothing about drug culture, as Sloan’s vices were more mundane, limited to cigarettes, verbal abuse, and sexually punitive role playing. She’d just have to pretend to be more knowledgeable than she was. Luckily she remembered some dialogue from the hooker movie for which Sloan had won her academy award. She hoped these two were too young to have seen it.

“I’ve got everything,” she said. “Ecstasy, Vitamin K, smack, meth; you name it, I got it.”

“You got any Oxycontin?” the shorter one said, and the taller one said, “Shut up, Peyton.”

It suddenly struck Claire that Peyton was the name of Meredith’s son, the one who attended Eldridge. Could it be?

“I just got back from LA,” Claire said. “I’ve got some extra-pure blow and some killer skunk that’s guaranteed to blow your socks off.”

“How much are we talking?” the taller one said.

“I let good customers sample everything before they invest. How about we party together and then you can decide which ones you like best?”

“Cool!” Peyton said. “Spencer, we should totally do that.”

“Where’s your place?”

“Tell ya what,” Claire said. “I’ll give you a little something right now if you want.”

“Sure,” Spencer said.

Claire went over to the truck, opened the passenger side door, and leaned inside; giving the boys a good long look at her toned rear end.

“What are you doing?” Hatch asked her.

Claire reached into her purse, took out her smart phone, pressed the commands that caused it to start recording, and stuck it down in her bra. Then she took Hatch’s small, round can of snuff off the dashboard and emptied it into a mint tin she had in her purse. When she looked up at Hatch his eyes were wide and his mouth hung open.

“Pay attention,” Claire said. “Things might get a little crazy here in a minute.”

As Claire passed Hannah she said, “Get in the truck and wait.”

Hannah did as she was told.

When she got back to where Spencer and Peyton stood, Claire said, “Hatch needs to get back to work; does he really need to tow your car right now?”

“Yeah,” Spencer said. “We need it done now.”

“You’re not a cop, are you?” Peyton asked, and Spencer punched him in the arm.

“She’s not a cop,” Spencer said. “The cops in this town are more like the three stooges.”

“So what’s up with the car?” Claire asked.

“We had an accident last weekend,” Spencer said. “We’re just getting it towed to the body shop to get fixed.”

“And you’re worried about the cops seeing it?” Claire said. “Shouldn’t you have it towed at night, then?”

“We don’t have time,” Peyton said, and Spencer said, “Would you just shut up, Peyton?”

“Hit and run?” Claire asked, as her heart began to beat faster.

Spencer shrugged, and Peyton looked down at the ground.

“Hey,” Claire said. “I’m a drug dealer; what am I gonna do, call the cops?”

“What do you have?” Spencer asked her.

Claire took the tin full of snuff out of her pocket and opened it like she was revealing caviar.

“This, my friends,” she said. “Is Jamaican turtle-hash.”

“Do you smoke it?” Peyton asked.

“Yep,” said Claire.

“You have any papers?” Spencer asked his friend, who pulled a small folded box of rolling papers out of his back pocket as he answered, “Of course.”

Claire watched them roll up Hatch’s snuff into a tight little cigarette, and then tried not to wince as they lit it up and sucked in the acrid smoke it produced. They passed it between them a couple times, coughing and trying hard not to show how awful it tasted.

When they offered it to Claire she said, “No thanks, I have to drive to Pittsburgh later to pick up a shipment; that stuff is going to knock you on your asses here in a minute.”

“Cool,” said Peyton as he choked.

Spencer looked a little green around the gills, and Claire had to bite her lip not to laugh.

“So this accident,” Claire said. “You kill somebody?”

Peyton choked harder and Spencer’s complexion turned even greener.

“Cause I heard some guy got mowed down on
Peony Street last Friday night. Was he a friend of yours or a local?”

“We didn’t know him,” Peyton said.

“Shut up!” Spencer said.

“The locals around here are idiots,” Peyton said. “We don’t party with them.”

“Well, I can see how you’d want to get rid of the car,” Claire said, her heart pounding in her chest. “His blood’s probably all over it.”

“There was no blood,” Peyton said. “This hash is amazing.”

Spencer ran to the side of the paved area and puked in the grass.

“He can’t handle it like you can,” Claire said to Peyton. “I can see who the real man is here.”

“Damn straight,” Peyton said. “I’m gettin’ wicked messed up on this turtle-weed and Spencer’s over there pukin’ his guts out.”

“No big loss, I guess,” Claire said. “The guy you hit.”

“That’s what I figured,” Peyton said. “But Spencer’s all freaked out about it. He’s afraid his mother’s going to find out and cut off his money.”

“What about your mom?”

“My mom’s locked up in a loony bin,” Peyton said. “And my stepdad doesn’t have access to my trust fund. I got nothin’ to worry about.”

“Was Spencer driving,” Claire said. “When you hit him?”

“Yeah,” Peyton said, taking a long, choking drag on the snuff cigarette. “We were hauling ass and it was way wicked foggy. We thought it was some stupid local loser but it turns out he was from Hollywood or something. This guy just runs out in the street, right in front of us. We popped him up, man! He hit the windshield and rolled over the hood and landed on the street behind us; Spencer didn’t even stop, he just kept going. We were so messed up; he kept saying ‘it was a deer, it was a deer,’ but I was like, ‘man, that was no deer.’”

“Does anyone else know about this?”

“Just Phyllis; she hooked us up with the guy who owns this place. He doesn’t care what you store here or why you store it, especially if you pay cash.”

Spencer came back over, rubbing his stomach.

“That’s awful,” he said. “How can you smoke that?”

“I’m a real man,” Peyton said. “That’s how.”

“You better let them haul your car now,” Claire said. “Then we can go back to my place and have us a party.”

“Excellent suggestion,” Peyton said. “But you’ll have to drive, Spencer; I’m already wasted.”

Claire waved to Hatch to back up the wrecker.

Hatch backed the wrecker right up to the door. Peyton unlocked and removed the padlock, handed it to Claire, pulled up on the handle of the door, which was just like a garage door, and then lifted and rolled it back.

“Make sure the parking brake is released and shift is set in neutral,” Hatch called out to them. Peyton went inside the storage unit and Spencer waited outside.

Claire craned her neck to see the car, which was parked nose-out. It was a very expensive German car, a newer model. She hadn’t expected to feel as emotional as she did when she saw the dent on the front of the hood and the windshield’s spider web of cracked glass. She felt like she might be sick, too.

“You’re lucky there’s no blood,” Claire said, although her jaw was clenched. “Peyton told me all about it. He said you were driving kind of fast and the guy just stepped out in front of your car.”

“Peyton’s an idiot who should learn to keep his mouth shut,” Spencer said.

“No need to worry,” Claire said. “Telling your drug dealer’s like telling a priest.”

“I heard it was some homo from Hollyweird,” Spencer said. “So no big loss.”

“You son of a bitch,” Claire said, and lunged at him.

She caught him completely off guard. She shoved him into the storage unit, where he fell onto the concrete floor next to the passenger side door of the car. Claire had only a brief glimpse of the stunned face of Peyton, sitting inside the car, before she grabbed the strap attached to the storage unit door and pulled it down to the ground. She fumbled with the padlock but got it clasped before the boys began pounding on the door and yelling.

Claire stood back, unsure what to do next.

“Damn, woman,” Hatch said as he sauntered up to the back of the wrecker and leaned on it. “Remind me never to piss you off.”

“That was awesome!” Hannah said, jumping up and down next to Claire. “You knocked that snotty kid on his ass!”

Claire’s heart was racing and she was breathing hard, but she pulled her cell phone out of her bra, ended the recording, and then scrolled until she found the number she was looking for.

“This is Claire Fitzpatrick from Rose Hill. I found the car that killed my friend Tuppy and the people who were driving it,” she said to the person who answered, and then gave directions to the storage unit facility. As soon as she hung up she began to cry.

The young men were banging on the garage door, treating them to a colorful assortment of profane words. Claire couldn’t seem to stop crying. Hannah put her arm around Claire on one side and Hatch put his around her from the other side. Oddly, it felt like a safe place to fall apart.

“You were so brave!” Hannah said. “I’m gonna have to give you a cape and a comic book name.”

“You done good, girl,” Hatch said. “I reckon your friend’s lookin’ down on you from heaven. I bet he’s purdy proud right now.”

Claire imagined Tuppy sitting on a cloud, looking down at how she was attired, in Megamart jeans, puffy white tennis shoes, and a Fitzpatrick Bakery t-shirt, being embraced by a man in dirty coveralls which for some reason had the name “Dwayne” embroidered on the left breast pocket, and by a short woman in a ball cap, sweatshirt, jeans, and hiking boots. She thought pride wouldn’t be the primary emotion Tuppy would be moved to express.

‘Nice shoes,’ she heard him say in her mind. ‘Did Dwayne buy them for you?’
             

‘I’m sorry you’re gone,’ she thought. ‘You didn’t deserve to die that way.’

‘Homo from Hollyweird, Claire? Really?’ he said. ‘That’s my epitaph?’

‘I would say handsome, stylish man about town,’ Claire thought, ‘and a good friend.’

‘Too good for you,’ Tuppy said. ‘And those two boys aren’t fooling anyone, by the way. Be sure to tell them I said that.’

‘Goodbye, Tuppy,’ Claire thought. ‘I’ll miss you.’

‘Don’t call me, Claire,’ Tuppy said. ‘Don’t make it weird.’

Then he was gone.

Claire could tell Sarah’s warring emotions were making her extra irritable. She was thrilled to be able to arrest someone for the murder but couldn’t think of a way to take credit for everything. She listened to Claire’s story and the recording before she asked to see the snuff can. After she sniffed it and made a face, she said, “That’s snuff, alright. What idiots.”

She let Claire wait in the wrecker with Hatch and Hannah while she and her deputies removed Spencer and Peyton from the storage unit and then put them in separate county cruisers. When she finally returned to the truck she stood at the open window looking almost jubilant.