Shadows on the Sand (5 page)

G
reg felt more than heard the hiccup in the conversation, the “uh-oh, did you hear what he just said?” It happened less often these days than it had even a year ago, but every time it did, the barb of pain struck deep and true. He never knew what to do either, to ease his own ache or to relieve the distress of those who suddenly heard what had been innocently said and had taken on a macabre meaning when they thought of his circumstances.

All he’d meant to do was remind Clooney how lucky he was to have Andi. That was all. Probably. He didn’t think he’d even been thinking about Serena or Greggie or Ginny when he spoke, at least not on any conscious level.

Okay, so it bothered him to hear people complain about what he now saw as privilege. Not that Clooney was griping seriously. Still, Andi was here, vibrant and thriving. Pouty, not yet too insightful about character or behavior, especially of the male of the species, but living, breathing. Alive.

Clooney recovered before Carrie. “She’ll make me old before my time is what she’ll do,” he said with an overdone frown.

When Carrie spoke, he’d have thought she missed the awkward moment if it hadn’t been for the slight shake in her voice. “If that gray hair of yours is any indication, Clooney,” she said, “you’re well on your way to ancient without her help.”

Clooney laughed too loudly.

Greg stood beside his stool, staring at his empty plate lying on the counter. He’d eaten all his eggs and toast like a good little boy, and he didn’t
even like eggs, no matter how they were prepared. For some reason they caught in his throat, threatening to make him gag. Yet he ate them day after dismal day.

He just couldn’t face a cereal bowl. His had been waiting for him when he’d gone back into the house that terrible day, a soggy, bloated presweetened mess floating on soured milk.

“Dad, you’ll rot your teeth!” Greggie and Serena had loved to tease him as only five- and seven-year-olds could. “Just because Grandmom never let you have anything but shredded wheat or bran flakes is no reason to be bad now that you’re big.”

“It’s a good enough reason for me,” he’d say as he poured his Lucky Charms or Cap’n Crunch, licking his lips in anticipation of that first sweet burst on his tongue.

“It’s okay,” Ginny would tell the kids. “He’s the one who pays the dental bills.” And she’d pour them their Cheerios or Raisin Bran while she smiled at him.

She had the best smile, the kind that dripped with love and warmed your soul. He never could figure how he’d been lucky enough to get her to marry him. And she’d given him Serena, already a beauty with a steel-trap mind, and Greggie, blessed with Ginny’s warmth and charm.

On his fifth birthday all Greggie wanted to eat at his party were Count Chocula and chocolate Pop-Tarts.

“Sugar, like Daddy,” he said.

The party was a raging success, at least in Greggie’s young mind. Ginny had a hard time making the candles stay upright in the Pop-Tarts, but Greggie hadn’t cared. He had sugar like Daddy.

As Ginny poured the Count Chocula into the kids’ bowls, she’d shrugged. “At least the milk is good for them.”

Greg knew that not facing a cereal bowl was ridiculous, as foolish as
trying to drink away the pain had been. Still, he came to Carrie’s every day and ate eggs.

He stepped away from his stool. “I gotta go. I have to evict a guy named Chaz Rudolph over at the Sand and Sea.”

“Sounds like a fun day,” Clooney said. “Want help?”

“Yeah.” Mr. Perkins sat up as straight as his arthritic back would allow and held out his hand in a gun. “Go ahead, punk. Make my day.”

Greg had to laugh, something he still didn’t do much. “Listen, Dirty Harry, I appreciate your offer. You too, Clooney, but I think the constable and I can manage on our own.”

“I know Chaz Rudolph.” Andi leaned on the counter beside Carrie. “I don’t like him.” She wrinkled her nose.

Greg didn’t like him either. “How do you know him?”

Something in his voice must have alerted Clooney, who went as still as a hunting dog on point.

Andi shrugged. “I met him in here.”

If Andi met Chaz here, that was okay. No danger. All kinds of people had to eat, even scum like Chaz. As Greg relaxed, so did Clooney. Were all adult males as twitchy about their young female relatives? Would he have been such a guard dog with Serena? With all he’d seen as a cop, probably worse. Oh yeah, much worse.

He walked to the cash register and paid Carrie for his eggs.

She handed him his change, her smile warm and encouraging. “Hope it goes okay. See you tomorrow?”

He nodded, still amazed and appalled at his little dissertation on Carrie’s strengths. He hadn’t thought he knew her at all except as a pleasant blond woman with pretty blue eyes who ran a nice café. Generic stuff. When had he discerned all those character traits and qualities, and why was he so sure he was right? Not that it mattered, of course.

He exited the café and walked into the sea-scented air. He loved living on a barrier island sandwiched between ocean and bay. The Atlantic always calmed him, always soothed him, even when it raged in a nor’easter or a hurricane, even back on his worst days, when he walked for miles along the tide line regardless of the weather. The sea was consistent, dependable in a world gone mad. The tides ebbed and flowed in an eternal pattern. The waves rose and broke, whether gentle in the summer sun or raging, spume flying, in a storm.

And on the other side of Seaside, the bay spread like a blue magic carpet on which he could float in his old, dinged Starcraft, suspended over a teeming, unseen world. He could lie back on the seats and watch the herons soar gracefully overhead, long spindly legs trailing, or wonder at the patience of the cormorants as they spread their wings to dry, or laugh at the gulls screaming at each other as they fought over a scrap of food.

There was no place he wanted to be except Seaside.

As he drove his pickup the two blocks to the rental units located in the block behind the boardwalk, he sighed at the thought of the cocky, scrawny, nasty kid he hoped had left of his own volition.

He hated evictions.

No, wait. What was he thinking? He hated everything about his property manager’s job. It was an honorable job, a worthy job. Many were challenged by it, enjoyed it. It just wasn’t for him. But what was?

He’d had his dream job, but his awful circumstances had killed it. He’d known from the first night in his ghost-filled house that he was no longer emotionally stable enough to be a cop.

“God, why?” he’d cried as he stood by Serena’s bed with its Pepto-Bismol pink quilt pulled up over lumpy sheets. “She was my little girl, my princess!”

In Greggie’s room he stared at the cardboard box full of Legos. He felt his heart catch. “We never built that fort, Greggie. I’m so sorry!”

He wasn’t able to go into the master bedroom. It smelled too much of Ginny.

Earlier that evening, when he’d sat slumped on the living room sofa, his father’s arm across his shoulders as tears ran down the older man’s face, Greg had closed his eyes in pain. And the flames came, crackling, swirling, devouring. He leaped to his feet with a cry and ran outside. He went to the beach for the first of many nights spent walking, walking, his father trailing a few feet behind.

He’d gotten through his family’s funerals, though if he heard one more person say how wonderful it was that Ginny, Serena, and Greggie were in heaven, he’d scream. “God, I don’t want them in heaven. I want them here!”

He managed to hold on through the big trial at which he testified and put Marco Polo away for many years. Then he turned in his badge. He refused to risk the lives of others because his heart, his very ability to think, to reason, had imploded.

The loneliness and the lack of purpose drove him to drink, literally.

“I used to be a cop, a husband, a father, a Christian,” he told his father. “What am I when I’ve lost all those markers except ‘Christian’? And when God lets you lose all that defines you, what does it mean to be a Christian?”

His father didn’t give trite answers. “All I can say, Greg, is that when you’re at your most alone, you aren’t.”

Greg had fallen into managing property through a contact at church, and while it wasn’t what he’d ever pictured himself doing, at least he was good at it. And it wasn’t emotionally demanding—which was a good thing. His emotions had died that long-ago morning.

Most of the time all he had to do to keep his job—and life—simple was make sure everyone’s complaints were acknowledged and all the repairs made promptly. Anyone who stayed in one of the apartment or condo complexes he was responsible for soon learned that he took good care of both the
renters and the buildings. Doing so meant no confrontations, no messy emotions. Good ol’ detached Greg would take care of everything.

“Hey, my faucet’s dripping. It drives me nuts.”

“Greg, my toilet won’t stop running.”

“I want to paint my place, Mr. Barnes, and I want you to pay for the paint.”

“I can’t get the air conditioner to come on.” Or the furnace to work or the sink to unclog or …

Most of the complaints were handled with ease. Most of the people were pleasant enough, especially since he never had to see most of them face to face. They worked during the day, and he was in and out of their units without having to talk with them. Just the way he liked it.

Ginny’d die laughing if she could see him these days.

“Greg, it’s my turn,” she used to butt in when he was going on and on about something. “Take a breath and let me give my opinion.”

Now he hardly said anything unless there was no choice. It was like the little black cloud that hovered over him day and night sucked up all his words and transformed them into an invisible dark energy that vibrated about him all the time, buffeting him, draining him.

Except when he went to Carrie’s. For some reason, when he walked into that place, the black cloud stayed outside. No dark energy pulsed inside those walls, and he felt comfortable there. Weird. But nice.

He pulled into the parking lot for the Sand and Sea Apartments and parked in a far slot next to the constable’s car.

The law required that an officer of the court be the one to enter the unit to see if it had been vacated. The landlord might have to pay to file all the proper papers with the court, might have to wait the appropriate amount of time before eviction occurred, might have to change the locks or pay to have them changed, and might have to store at his own expense any furniture left
behind pending a sheriff’s sale, but in this instance Greg couldn’t enter the unit on his own.

He stared at the eight-unit building, unwilling to get out of the car and see if Chaz Rudolph was still in residence. There were four units on each of the two floors, and Chaz’s unit was the one on the first floor to the left of the back entrance.

“You can’t make me leave!” he’d railed just two days ago in a nearly incoherent, highly profane phone message about persecution and unfair treatment. “I lost my job!”

No surprise. With the summer kids gone, his drug business had dried up. So sad. In the old days, Greg would have taken great pleasure in busting him. But the guy was crafty and clever. Sly. He always managed to deal without being caught. Of course, it was just a matter of time before he became overconfident and careless. With guys like Chaz, it always happened sooner or later.

But it hadn’t happened yet, and today Greg had to evict him. Then Chaz would leave Seaside and set up shop somewhere else, polluting another town with his presence and his drugs until another landlord evicted him for nonpayment if the cops didn’t get him first.

Greg slid from his truck and walked to the back entrance of the complex, where Constable Blake Winters waited. Blake was a retired cop, a large man who had eaten more than his share of doughnuts and pasta through the years. He wore a badge on the pocket of his plaid shirt, but he wasn’t armed. Of course, he could have been carrying concealed.

Greg and Blake entered the building, turned down the hall, and knocked on Chaz’s door.

No answer. Relief washed over Greg. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all. Maybe Chaz had gotten smart and left all on his own. Greg pulled out his master key and handed it to Blake, who opened the door.

Both men froze.

Chaz stood in the middle of the living room, in his hands an upraised wooden chair like the ones Greg’s parents used to have in their dining room. He was a skinny kid of about twenty who was using too much of his own product. It showed in his pasty complexion and twitchy body. His dirty dark hair fell over his glazed eyes.

Greg sighed as he eyed the chair. He should have known. At least it wasn’t a handgun of some kind, a very good thing since he didn’t wear his Kevlar these days.

Blake took a step into the room, looking authoritative even without a uniform. “Put it down, Rudolph. You know you can’t go around bashing people.”

Chaz glared, unimpressed. “I’m not leaving here. You can’t make me.”

“Yes, I can. You know I can.”

“Not without a fight.” Chaz licked his lips.

In anticipation or fear? Greg hoped fear. Hopped-up eagerness for a fight was the last thing he wanted to deal with. He stood in the doorway, ready to come to Blake’s aid if necessary.