The First Time Again: The Braddock Brotherhood, Book 3 (2 page)

“These are your citations,” Spoley said.

“Citations? How many tickets did you write? I only went over the speed limit once.”

“Yes, sir.” Spoley smiled a creepily pleasant smile, as if he hadn’t been the cop from hell a short while ago.

“This is your traffic citation.” He handed the multiple-page document to Trey.

 
“Since you refused the breathalyzer, I’m not going to arrest you on suspicion of DUI.”

“I haven’t been drinking. I haven’t had a drink in over a year.”

“So you say.” Spoley used a conversational tone as he glanced over the next document as if checking for accuracy before handing it to Trey. “This is for your expired tag.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve got the new tags. I forgot to put them on.”

Spoley gazed at him steadily, daring him to say more, before he handed Trey another citation. “This one is for violating county ordinance #513849-B.”

“Yeah? What kind of trumped-up charge is that?”

“Indecent exposure.” Spoley touched the brim of his hat and strutted back to his car. He got in, killed all the lights but the high beams, made a U-turn and disappeared into the darkness of a side street.

Trey crawled into the Cayenne’s driver’s seat, easing himself down, babying his knee. Spoley had a chip on his shoulder, but Trey had something Spoley probably didn’t have. Money. Lots of it. A decent attorney ought to get him out of everything but the speeding ticket.

Unfortunately, even after he negotiated the winding country road, located the house and parked in the driveway, the bad feeling didn’t go away. By then Trey had a pretty good idea who Deputy Spoley was, and why he might still hold a grudge.

Chapter Two

Trey reluctantly woke at dawn the next morning. He stared up at the plaster ceiling in what had been his grandparents’ bedroom. The walls were covered in ancient cabbage-rose wallpaper, which he’d already added to his list of things to change.

Experimentally Trey shifted slightly to see how bad things were this morning. Right knee throbbing. Constant twinge in right shoulder.

He reached over and uncapped the bottle of ibuprofen on the nightstand, tumbled four tablets into his hand and swallowed them with a gulp of water from the bottle he’d set next to them last night.

He stuffed the extra pillow under his head and listened to the sounds of the birds waking up. Filmy lace curtains, possibly as ancient as the wallpaper, let the grayish light filter through from outside. Trey knew by the time he got up and made his way to the kitchen, the mountains in the distance would be obscured by fog which wouldn’t burn off until late morning.

He scrubbed his hands over his face and yawned. Carefully, he flexed his left knee, hearing the cartilage in his joints crack and pop from ankle to hip. He lowered the leg and stretched his arms over his head, trying to work out the kinks. He’d learned to be careful, to go slowly, especially first thing in the morning. His body had taken a beating from years on the field. He’d paid for all the success he’d had in his career by feeling this way each and every morning.

His right shoulder protested as he carefully rotated it to warm up the muscles. Probably should ice it once he got out of bed and got moving.

Last but not least he carefully bent his right leg, feeling it resist as he did so. Damn, it hurt. He’d never have the range of motion in this leg he’d once had. He had to get back into physical therapy to give himself the best possible outcome after the last surgery.

Eventually, he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Levering himself up with one hand on the nightstand and leading with his left leg, he got himself upright and limped to the bathroom.

More ancientness greeted him in the form of a claw-footed tub, a pedestal sink and a toilet missing lots of its original enamel coating. Despite its age, the plumbing worked. He peed and washed up, splashing cold water in his face and making a mess of the small space.

He looked down at the puddle he’d created on the curling linoleum. He threw a towel down and used his left foot to move it around to mop up the water. He’d need to find a cleaning service.

Practically dragging his right leg along with him, he made his way to the kitchen. Time stood still in his grandmother’s kitchen. Nothing had changed in years, except the appliances she’d been forced to replace when the old ones wore out.

The round oak table surrounded by a variety of mismatched chairs took up most of the open floor space. The cabinets had gone through a few incarnations of color over the years but were now covered in an off-white shade. Ecru, maybe.

The long countertop was covered in some sort of reddish linoleum and sealed along the edges with a strip of silver metal.

Above the scratched porcelain sink, double windows offered an unobstructed view of the back of the house, including his grandmother’s now neglected garden. Some of her perennials were still going strong, poking their blooming heads through the overgrowth of weeds.

Another thing for the list. A gardener or a professional landscaper. Maybe both.

Trey limped across the scarred wood floor to the coffeemaker. This, at least, he could handle. By trial and error he’d learned how to make coffee after years of having someone else do it for him. His mother. His wife. A waitress. Room service. His housekeeper, Miriam.

He thought of her fondly. She’d called him “Meester Trey” and performed even the smallest task promptly. Not once had she complained of his less than stellar behavior, not about the mess he’d make of the bathroom or the stuff he knocked over in one of his under-the-influence moments. She never said a word about the procession of women he’d paraded through the house after Hayley left.

Miriam had stayed on until he’d decided he couldn’t possibly remain in the big house outside Jacksonville. He couldn’t stay in Jacksonville period. Too many memories. Too many temptations. Too easy to slide back into the kind of life he’d worked hard to get himself out of.

He’d given Miriam a glowing letter of recommendation and a year’s severance pay. She might be the one person from his past life who didn’t completely hate him.

Trey began to unpack the big shopping bag he’d brought in and left on the counter last night. A few of the basics. He’d go into Hendersonville later and grocery shop. He also had to find an attorney. Another item for his list. Probably that should go at the top. Everything else could wait.

He pulled out the bag of Arabian Mocha Sunani and held it to his nose, breathing in the faint scent through the white bag with the Starbucks logo front and center. He opened the bag and sniffed again at the beans. Intoxicating. He rummaged through the shopping bag for the grinder he’d packed. Or thought he’d packed. It wasn’t there.

Great. How was he was supposed to start his morning without coffee? He thought of hurling the bag of beans across the room to vent his frustration. He wanted to punch something or beat the hell out of something. He couldn’t even get a decent cup of coffee in his own kitchen.

He tried one of the meditation techniques they’d taught him in rehab. Bracing both hands on the counter, head bowed, he took a deep breath, held it, let it out for a count of five. Again. Then again. One more time for good measure. He lifted his head. He still wanted to hit something. Maybe he’d install a punching bag in every room for moments such as these.

Okay. No Arabian Mocha Sunani for him this morning. It wasn’t the end of the world. Maybe Grandma J had left some Folgers or Maxwell House in one of the cupboards. He began opening cabinet doors. His mother had cleaned out the refrigerator and gotten rid of any perishables. But there were a few canned goods and boxes of things like rice and pasta in the cupboards. He saw a larger can at the back of one of the shelves.

“Aha.” It was ground coffee all right. A discount chain store brand and decaf to boot. Karma, he decided. For all those cups of gourmet coffee he’d been served in the past and hadn’t fully appreciated.

Cheap decaf was better than nothing. Maybe he could add some cinnamon from Grandma J’s spice rack to liven it up.

While the coffee brewed, he wrapped an ice pack around his knee and strapped another one to his shoulder. He rummaged in the kitchen drawers until he found a small notepad and a hodgepodge of pens, paper clips and rubber bands.

When the coffee finished he took a mug of it out to the back porch, not quite prepared for the nip in the air. He’d become so used to the heat and humidity in northern Florida, it hadn’t occurred to him he’d need a robe or a jacket. He opened the door to the mudroom off the porch. Hooks along the wall were lined with jackets and hats and scarves. Various boots and shoes were arranged along the baseboard underneath. Some were Grandma J’s and some were Grandpa Mike’s. In a bin nearby were gardening gloves mixed in with a few hand tools, old pots and packets of seeds.

Trey spied Grandpa Mike’s plaid jacket and got it off the hook. It was a little snug across the shoulders, but it’d do. The shoes all looked too small for him.

He settled himself in one of the chairs on the porch with his coffee and notepad on the table nearby. He took a sip of the coffee. It was drinkable. That’s about all he could say for it. Steam rose out of the cup, mimicking the swirls of gray that obscured the mountain view.

Trey began to write.

Find an attorney

Buy a coffee grinder

Grocery store

Cleaning service

Landscaper/gardener

He sipped more coffee, knowing he had to add a few more things he’d prefer not to do. As part of his new self-discipline, he also knew he’d do them anyway.

Physical therapist

He needed someone good, and he sure as hell hoped he could find someone in Hendersonville. It was a decent-sized town, the county seat and only about ten miles from Edna Falls. There was a small hospital there, so it stood to figure there’d be most other medical services available as well.

Therapist

As much as he’d resisted therapy, he had to admit it had helped him get through that initial year of sobriety. Brad had never seemed to tire of throwing whatever Trey said back in his face and forcing him to figure out how to deal with his own problems and
issues.
Trey knew he needed someone like Brad to keep him accountable.

Trey put the pen down and gazed out at what was now his property. The old barn needed some shoring up and a paint job. Probably a new roof as well. Some of the outbuildings were near collapse. He’d probably let them or tear them down himself.

He hadn’t figured out what he was going to do now that he was here. He didn’t fancy himself much of a farmer. He doubted he’d want to be tied down to livestock around the place, although that’s what Grandpa Mike had done. Farmed. Raised cows and pigs and goats. Grandma J gardened and sold a lot of what she grew, vegetables and such. Apples from the orchard. Homemade jellies.

He’d inherited his grandparents’ home and their land by virtue of being their only grandchild, his mother the only one of their three offspring to bear a child. His aunt Mamie was considerably older than his mom, who was the youngest. She’d married late in life, maybe too late. She and Uncle Orrie never had any kids. Uncle Kurt, well, what could one say about Uncle Kurt? That he was the forgotten middle child between the two sisters? That he was gay?

It wasn’t something the family ever mentioned, but Uncle Kurt was the equivalent of the elephant in the living room everyone tiptoed around. He lived in Asheville and owned a couple of successful art galleries. If he was part of a committed relationship, he’d never admitted to it, at least not while his parents were alive. Vaguely, Trey wondered if things would be different now that Grandma J was gone.

Trey went back into the kitchen, shrugged out of the jacket and poured more coffee. Taking it with him, he got the shower going and stood under the hot spray for a long time, musing about changes he could make to the house. A bathroom that would suit his needs with a big Jacuzzi tub and a shower stall with jets everywhere and a bench in the middle so he wouldn’t have to stand up the whole time. He groaned at the thought, even though the ice pack and now the warm water helped ease the stiffness in his knee.

He wanted to preserve the architectural integrity of the old farmhouse. He’d have to find a good contractor to help him figure out how to do that and still get all the modern updates he had in mind.

Two hours later he parked on Main Street in Hendersonville and got out of the car. His stomach growled, the lone granola bar he’d eaten after his shower a distant memory. There was a diner down on the corner of Main and Spring Street where he could get some breakfast.

He stopped outside the plate-glass window to feed quarters into the newspaper machine for a copy of the
Hendersonville Herald
. Maybe there’d be ads for lawyers and therapists in it.

Martha’s Home Cookin’ did a brisk business for a Thursday morning, but there were a few empty tables and one booth. Trey was not immune to the speculative glances sent his way when he walked through the door, nor to the brief lull in conversation before it surged again and ratcheted up a notch or two. He heard his name whispered once or twice—the curse of being a former local with a former claim to fame. There was no way he could hide in his hometown. He’d gone to junior high and high school in Hendersonville, as did every kid who resided in Edna Falls. He didn’t expect to reconnect with anyone he’d known in his formative years because he’d made no effort to keep in touch with them. He hadn’t attended his ten-year high school reunion, and since college, even his visits to his parents had been brief and none-too-plentiful.