Winter Winds (26 page)

“He lives here in Seaside too?”

Barney nodded his bald head. Joanne had never realized how much she liked bald heads before, at least on young men who made them bald on purpose. “He has the drug store at Ninth and Asbury.”

“Yeah?” Joanne was impressed. “I shop there sometimes. They got great sunglasses, you know the ones with the funky frames that look so cool?” She frowned. “I never saw him there though.” She gestured at the house.

“That’s ’cause you’re never sick, idiot,” growled Vinnie. “You never have to get medicine. He gives out the drugs and stuff.”

“Oh,” she said in a small voice. Vinnie could make her feel so bad so quick.

Barney leaned forward and glared at Vinnie. “You will never speak to the lady like that again.”

Vinnie looked startled, then angry. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’ll speak to the ‘lady’ any way I want.”

Barney reached a huge arm across the seat behind Joanne’s head and gripped the back of Vinnie’s neck. “I beg your pardon?” he said pleasantly, but he must have squeezed hard because Vinnie flinched and went white.

“S-sorry,” he stuttered.

“Don’t apologize to me. Apologize to her.” Barney still spoke pleasantly, but Joanne could see why he had such a fearsome reputation. She certainly wouldn’t want him squeezing her neck like that.

“S-sorry, Jo,” Vinnie managed.

“That’s more like it,” Barney said. “Maybe there’s hope for you after all.” He released Vinnie’s neck, but he didn’t pull his arm back. Instead, he let it lie across the back of the seat, his fingers skimming the back of Joanne’s neck.

Squeezing would be bad, Joanne thought again, but skimming, tickling—wow!

“Now Phil Trevelyan doesn’t concern me,” Barney said, all business once again except for the tickling fingers. “But the woman with him—she’s another matter. She’s Maureen Galloway, the latest addition to the Seaside PD. She’s been in town about two weeks. Before that she worked in Camden in the juvenile unit. She got burned out dealing with the poor kids and the perverts who hurt them. I guess she figured a little town like Seaside would be a safe, quiet place to work. They’re probably using her on this job because they think no one will recognize her.”

“That cute lady with the black curls is a cop?” Joanne couldn’t believe it.

Barney shrugged. “Sad, isn’t it?”

“How do you know that?” She was fascinated that he knew such a fact.

“It’s my job to know things like that,” he said simply. “And see that car parked down the street in front of the white house with the green shutters?”

Joanne squinted through the darkness. “You mean the black one?”

“Good girl, sugar.” Barney gave her neck a light squeeze, and goose bumps spread up and down Joanne’s arms. So squeezes could be good too, in the right circumstances. “There’s a cop inside.”

“There is?” Joanne squinted, but she still couldn’t make out a figure.

“An idiot named Fleishman.”

“It’s a stakeout!” Joanne couldn’t believe it. It was just like TV

Barney nodded. “They want us to take the suitcase so they can catch us with stolen goods. But there’s a potentially bigger problem than the cops.”

“What could be bigger than the cops?” Vinnie asked with a trace of his old swagger.

“That dog,” Barney said. “I don’t like to kill dogs or kids.”

Joanne’s heart swelled. What a great guy Barney was. “I don’t like it either. It’s mean, and it’s not like they did anything wrong.”

He nodded. “People get very upset if you hurt their pets and
kids. It makes the media crazy, too. We don’t want the attention. We’ll have to drug him.” He tapped the steering wheel in a syncopated rhythm as he talked. “Mr. Jankowski gets home from his vacation in Aruba next Sunday. We have until then to get the case.”

“The paintings are worth a lot, aren’t they?” Joanne found herself leaning closer and closer to Barney.

Barney’s fingers stilled on her neck. “How do you know about the paintings, sugar?” Though the words were spoken in a soft voice, his whole body was on alert. She could feel it.

“Vinnie told me?” The question wasn’t because she wasn’t sure of her answer. It was because she wasn’t sure of Barney’s reaction. She knew all too well what Vinnie did when he was displeased with her. She held her breath and only relaxed when his fingers began skimming again.

Barney skewered Vinnie with a look. “You do talk too much, don’t you?”

Vinnie seemed to shrink before Joanne’s eyes. She knew Barney was scaring him big-time.

“Don’t be mad at him.” She laid a hand on Barney’s thigh. “He thought that since I was courier—”

Vinnie grabbed her arm and squeezed. “Shut up, Joanne,” he hissed.

Barney went very still. “You were the courier, sugar? I thought you just pulled the wrong suitcase off the belt.”

Joanne closed her eyes and hunched her shoulders. Here it came, all the trouble that Vinnie had said Barney was good at making. She waited for those caressing fingers, now stilled, to grab her by the neck and shake the life out of her. She had messed up big-time, and now that Barney knew—and from her own stupid mouth!—she would have to pay. She waited for the pain. When it didn’t come, she cracked her eyes open a slit.

Slowly Barney leaned past her and put his face right in Vinnie’s. “She was the courier?” he said in a very quiet, very scary voice.

Joanne looked from man to man. Something was going on here that she didn’t understand.

Vinnie nodded, his eyes wide. Joanne could feel him shaking where his leg touched hers.

“That was
your
assignment.” Barney loomed over Vinnie. He loomed over Joanne too, but she wasn’t scared because he was looking at Vinnie, not her. Vinnie who apparently was the one in big trouble, not her.

“I was there when Mr. Jankowski laid out your responsibilities.” Barney’s voice was still soft but scarier than ever. “ ‘Go to Chicago and bring back the suitcase.’ How difficult is that?”

Vinnie looked ready to be sick, and Joanne hoped he’d turn away if his stomach did heave. She didn’t want him to spatter her with anything so vile. She wouldn’t be getting her thousand dollars if she read the situation right, and without the money, she wasn’t getting new clothes. He’d better not ruin the few she had.

“I—” Vinnie swallowed and tried again. “I can’t fly.”

Barney looked blank.

“I can’t fly,” Vinnie repeated. “I got like this phobia.”

Suddenly Joanne understood. “You can’t fly because you’re scared? And you made me fly?” She was outraged.

“So why didn’t you just drive, idiot?” Barney asked.

With a disgusted snort, Barney put the car in gear and drove back toward the center of Seaside, one hand draped casually, possessively across Joanne’s lap. When he dropped Vinnie off, he snarled, “I need to make plans, and you need to be ready to do whatever I tell you, moron.”

“Sure, Barney, sure,” Vinnie bleated as he backed away from the car.

“And one more thing.” Barney glanced down at Joanne who still sat plastered to his side, though there was now room to move away, not that she wanted to. “She’s mine.”

Vinnie looked startled, and that made Joanne frown. What did he think? She was chopped liver? Nobody but him could be dumb enough to like her?

“Got that?” Barney smiled at Vinnie like the shark in
Finding Nemo
, all teeth ready to bite if Vinnie made the wrong move. “Mine.”

“Sure, Barney, sure.” Vinnie nodded like a bobblehead doll. “All yours.”

Joanne wondered if she should be insulted that Vinnie gave her up so easily, but when Barney looked at her like he was looking
now, it was hard to even remember that Vinnie existed, let alone be upset by his quick giving her up.

“Mine, right, sugar?” Barney whispered just before he kissed her.

W
HAT IF
G
RANDMOM
loses the store because she can’t pay rent because she’s not making any money?” A woebegone Ryan sat at the dinner table Sunday evening after his visit with his grandmother. “She’s had such a hard life, and the store is her special project, the good thing she does. She can’t lose it!”

His head was propped on one hand while he played with his spaghetti with the other. “And what if we lose the apartment because we can’t pay rent? Where will we live? There’s no family but us.” He didn’t even mention his mother as a possible source of help, which saddened Dori immensely.

“Don’t worry so, Ry,” Trev said as he twirled a forkful of spaghetti. “The church will never let you be homeless, and we’ll do all we can to make sure Mae doesn’t lose the store. The elders and I have already talked about it, and Mr. Warrington has pledged to make up any difference the congregation can’t meet.”

Ryan wasn’t impressed with the assurances. “Like that will happen. Mr. Warrington is real mad at you right now because of Angie.”

“Maybe,” Trev said, “but he won’t take his anger at me out on you. He likes to help people.”

“When it helps him or makes him look good,”
Ryan said cynically “But if helping us was your idea to begin with, we’re in deep trouble.”

Dori looked at Trev who didn’t bother to refute Ryan’s comment. “I take it Jonathan is fairly well off?”

“Rich
is the word, I believe.”

Ryan nodded. “He owns half the businesses on the boardwalk as well as his car dealership.”

“An exaggeration, but only slightly.” Trev dumped more salt on his pasta. “Got to keep my blood pressure up,” he said when he saw Dori’s raised eyebrow.

Ryan stirred his spaghetti around and around his plate. “If I was older, I’d quit school and take care of things myself.” He sighed. “I hate thirteen!”

“You know you couldn’t quit school even if you were older,” Trev said. “Mae’d never allow it.”

Ryan made a face and stuffed much too much spaghetti into his mouth. Utterly dejected, he chewed for a moment. Suddenly he sat up and looked at Dori.

“You ran a gift shop, didn’t you?” he asked around his mouthful of food. It sounded more like, “Uo ra a gi sha, din ou?”

Dori put her hands up, palms out to ward off the suggestion, and shook her head. Her life was already too complicated.

“Why not?” He looked at her slyly. “You could be the heroine and save my grandmother from all kinds of financial calamity.”

“Please don’t ask me, Ry.” Though what else she was going to do with her time she didn’t know.

“I think it’s a great idea,” Trev said. “It’ll give you something to do that you enjoy and know. And by the way, these are great meatballs.”

She glared at him. “A gift shop and a bookstore are vastly different. Thanks. Four eggs for every pound of hamburger.”

“Four eggs?” Trev shrugged. “And retail is retail, right?”

And ignorance is ignorance
, she thought but managed not to say.

“Please think about it,” Ryan said. “Please, please.” A basset hound couldn’t have looked any sadder or needier.

That night Dori stared at the ceiling of Trev’s room, talking to herself about why she shouldn’t take on the bookstore. The main
reason for not getting involved was that it would become another link in the chain binding her to Seaside, a chain whose weight was already pulling her under.

But what if Ryan was right, and Mae would lose her store? What would happen to her and Ryan then? But why was saving them
her
responsibility? Trev said the church was going to help. Wasn’t that one of the reasons for churches—to help people?

She finally fell into a restless sleep and woke on Monday feeling groggy and disoriented. The day passed slowly for her with Ryan in school and Trev at work. She wandered the house, making little adjustments here and there, noting things that needed to be bought like decent sheets and colorful towels to replace the mud brown ones.

She read for a while, did the crossword in
The Philadelphia Inquirer
, and eyed the weights a few seconds before sanity returned. She even put on her new black down coat and red beret and took Jack for a walk. She did not think about working at the bookstore, at least not much.

“Bet you haven’t had a bath in all the years he’s had you,” she said to the dog as they entered the house after their walk. She hung up her coat, then led him to the bathtub. She lifted his front legs into the tub, then scooted his hindquarters in. He stood there cooperatively, but he obviously had no idea what she was doing. When she leaned in to turn the spigot, he kissed her lavishly. She sputtered and laughed and gave him a hug.

“You are a wonderful dog. Just don’t tell Trev or Trudy I said so.”

He grinned compliance.

She turned on the water and Jack promptly began drinking. As he drank, she played with the temperature until she felt it was right. Then she dropped the stopper.

As the water rose up his legs, Jack looked nonplussed. Still, he stayed put. He was, after all, a water dog. When she began pouring water over him, he gave her a woeful look, but when she began shampooing him, he seemed to take it as a great scratching. He turned glassy eyed with pleasure. She rinsed him, crooning to him about what a good boy he was. He gave her a slurp from chin to hairline.

She released the water, and he jumped out. Before she had a
chance to duck, he shook, sending thousands of tiny water drops flying around the bathroom. Dori was convinced that an abnormal percentage somehow found her. Still it was worth it. He smelled like Pert and felt soft to the touch.

Just then the phone rang. She ran, dripping, into the bedroom to answer. It might be Meg, or it might be something about her suitcase. “Hello?”

“I need to make a visit,” Trev said without preamble.

If she didn’t know better, Dori would have thought he sounded nervous, but Trev was never nervous. “Okay.” Why he was telling her she wasn’t sure. Did he think he needed to report in any time he left the office? Or get her permission?

He cleared his throat, that special little click. He was nervous! “Would you go with me?”

“Me?” Her voice squeaked. Now
she
was nervous, and being bored suddenly looked a lot better than it had a half hour ago. “Why?” Did he want her to go visit a dying person? Or a shut-in? Certainly he wouldn’t take her to visit Barry the Flasher, though that would be a visit worth the time. She was very curious about him.