Colt, Morrie and I used to go with Mom and Dad to the lake. Dad didn’t have a boat but he’d rent one. I’d never got up on skis even though I tried. Colt used to tease that I was lazy but really I preferred tubing. You were totally out of control when you were tubing. You just held on as hard as you could for as long as you could and enjoyed the thrill. I also liked just sitting in the boat and letting the wind whip my hair around my face and beat at my skin. No better feeling in the world than having the landscape slide by while the wind was in your hair, whether you were in a speedboat or on the back of a bike.
I looked away from the back of the RV and out the side window to Colt’s house.
Colt had a crackerbox house in a crackerbox neighborhood that was so much better than Morrie’s neighborhood it wasn’t funny.
It wasn’t because the houses were large and grand and beautiful. They weren’t. They were small and one-storied but they’d been built in a time when houses needed to be put up cheap and space was all important so the houses were small but the yards were huge.
The neighborhood was better than Morrie’s because these houses had been there awhile. There were no rules that said what color you could paint your house or where you could park your car or what you could put in your yard. People had built screened-in porches on the front and decks on the back. They’d built extensions. They’d put in flowerboxes on the front windows. They had playsets and round, above-ground pools in their backyards. They had custom-made wood plaques with flowers painted on them on the front of their houses that proudly announced the Jones’s lived there (or whoever).
They had American flags hanging from slanted poles beside their front doors. Some didn’t fly American flags but purple and white ones, with a bulldog emblazoned on it, the high school mascot. In those houses you knew they had a kid at school, probably an athlete or a cheerleader or the owners were alumni themselves or both. Others were gold and black Purdue flags or red and white IU flags. Others still were seasonal, orange, brown and gold leaf designs in fall, pastel flowers in spring, Easter eggs, Halloween witches, Christmas poinsettias or snowmen.
There were tons of trees planted willy-nilly, not in formation, not in a design some landscape architect sketched on a pad. And the trees were big and tall with wide trunks that grew so far out they’d cracked the sidewalks and full branches that, when they had leaves in a month or two, would throw so much shade during the hot, humid summer months, the entire neighborhood would feel like a cool breeze.
It was a great neighborhood and Colt’s house was the house he bought for Melanie.
Colt married Melanie Seivers about five years after I left. Their divorce was final three years ago but she’d been gone a year before that.
She’d been in the year behind me in school – pretty, dark hair, dark eyes, sweet, quiet, a lot like Amy except Melanie was tall. I knew her in school and I knew her after it. She’d come over with Colt when I was there for family occasions.
You had to hand it to Melanie, even with me being what I used to be to Colt, she was always nice to me. Never made me feel funny, never made me feel like she felt funny around me. She was just a nice gal.
She couldn’t get pregnant though, not Colt’s faulty equipment, hers. She took it hard. Although my parents, Morrie nor Delilah ever talked much about it to me, when Mom called and said Melanie left Colt and they were getting divorced she finally talked about it, though not much.
“Some women… don’t know, Feb… they just see no purpose in life without kids. Melanie was like that, just slipped through Colt’s fingers no matter how he tried to grab hold. She gave him no choice, he had to let go.”
I knew what she meant though not about the kids. He’d had another girl slip through his fingers who he’d tried to grab hold. I figured he knew when to stop trying.
Melanie had moved to another small town at the other side of the city. Not far, as the crow flies, but with the city in the way and having to navigate the highways and by-ways to get from here to there, she might as well have been in another state. I didn’t know what she was doing now without kids or Colt in her life. I did know I thought she was all kinds of crazy for leaving Colt. Colt was a man with all that entailed but even I wasn’t fool enough to think, when you got down to it, he wasn’t a good one.
Once Dad turned off the ignition to the RV, Wilson and me jumped out the side door. I had him in a kitty carrier in one hand, I had my bag in the other and I had my purse slung over my shoulder.
Colt had been standing in his front yard watching Dad trying to park from attempt two through attempt four. He walked up to me when Wilson and me jumped down from the RV and without even looking at me he grabbed onto Wilson and then leaned around me and grabbed my bag and then he walked into the house.
I looked behind me to see Mom carrying Wilson’s litter box. She jutted her chin to the door and I sucked in a breath, let it out and then followed Colt into my new nightmare.
When I walked into the living room, the cat box was on the coffee table and Colt was crouched in front of it, opening the wire door.
I took this time to look around.
I was surprised to see Colt had pretty much erased Melanie unless she wasn’t that into interior design. The place wasn’t a bachelor pad by a long shot but it didn’t have flowered wallpaper or wreathes made of twigs or little angel figurines (all of which I imagined where the way Melanie would decorate her and Colt’s house).
There was a huge, double-wide frame on the wall, Colt’s purple and white high school football jersey next to his Purdue jersey, both laid out careful and identical, same number on each, sixty-seven, his last name “Colton” across the shoulders. They were pinned to the mat, framed in a box frame on the wall. I hadn’t seen it since he got it and sucked in a quiet breath just looking at it.
Dad had given that to him years ago for Christmas. Colt had liked it so much, after the wrapping fell away he took one look at it, one look at Dad and he left the room. I knew why; men weren’t good with displaying that kind of emotion. Dad got choked up too and hid it behind a cough. Mom just started crying. Morrie had followed Colt.
I shook off that memory because it included me getting choked up too at the time and I didn’t want to do it now so I kept looking around.
In the room there was also a long, wide comfortable couch and armchair that I could tell wasn’t exactly top-of-the-line but it was nothing to sneeze at either. Sturdy lamps with muted shades on top of dark wood end tables, framed photos here and there. I wasn’t close enough to see what was in them but all of them were of people. It was a nice place.
Kitchen to the right, dining area in front of it over a bar. I could see the kitchen had been redone and well, though not recently, but it definitely wasn’t original and someone had put some money into it and I was guessing that someone was Colt and I was guessing that he did it for no-baby Melanie in the hopes that a kitchen would calm the baby craving which was something a man would do or, to be fair, something a caring man would do for a wife who was suffering an ailment he had no way to cure.
To the back, a double-wide opening that led to a den which was where Colt spent his time, I guessed, mainly because it was where he kept his big, flat-screen TV (which was top-of-the line but it was my experience men didn’t fuck around when it came to TVs). There were two big reclining chairs at angles to each other in front of the TV with a table between them, a stereo in the corner, loads of narrow CD shelves chock full of discs around the stereo, neon beer signs that had been retired from the bar on the walls and a fancy pool table at the side. The den was not original to the house, an extension Colt or his predecessor put in. I was guessing on a cop’s salary with that kitchen and the speedboat, the extension was there before Colt bought that house for Melanie.
To the left, a hall which I knew, because I’d been in plenty of houses like this, led to two bedrooms and a bath.
“You’re here,” Colt said and I looked from the doorway of the hall to him.
H
e’d come up from his crouch and grabbed my bag again. Wilson, my fluffy gray, had two kitty paws out of the box, two kitty paws in it and he was looking around, getting his new bearings and probably wishing he had opposable thumbs so he could hack me up, such was his current shitty life finding himself in four different houses in four different days, only one of them home.
I didn’t have time to comfort my cat, Colt was showing what he meant by his words by disappearing down the hall.
I followed. He walked into the room at the end.
When I arrived I saw Melanie was gone from here too. Blue walls. Dark blue bedspread. Baby blue sheets. Over the bed a fantastic sepia print of the inside of Harry’s Chocolate Shoppe, an old bar on the corner of the Purdue campus that Colt, Morrie and I spent a lot of time in. The shot was of the bar and its barback, devoid of people, just the wood, the stools, the shelves, the bottles, the mirror behind the bar, looking as old and cool as it was in real life.
I wanted that print, it was fucking fantastic.
But the bed was what captured my attention. It was huge. It had to be a California king.
Colt was a big guy but I reckon even he’d get lost in that bed. Definitely I would. I climbed into that behemoth they wouldn’t find me for a month.
He dropped my bag on the bed and looked at me.
“Sheets changed, bathroom’s through there.” He jerked his chin and I saw that there was a master bath, another extension likely put in pre-Colt and Melanie, through an open door. “You can make yourself at home later. I got somethin’ I need you to do.”
I looked from the bathroom door to Colt but he was already moving out of the room. Again, I followed.
Mom and Dad were in by then. Mom was already in the kitchen making coffee. Dad had Wilson’s empty case and was heading toward a side door in the kitchen, one that probably led to the garage behind the boat. Wilson was plucking his way across the carpet, sniffing, smelling Puck and not liking it. Except for Wilson and me, everyone was no stranger to this house. They were comfortable, at home, welcome and something ugly slid through me that I tried unsuccessfully to ignore.
Colt stopped by the dining room table.
“Got my yearbooks out, need you to look through.” He tapped the set of four large, hardbound, plastic covered books on the table and then he picked up a piece of paper and waved it once before setting it on top of the books. “This is a roster of Mrs. Hobbs’s geometry class, second period, your freshman year. Look at these names, look at the books, think about anyone who might fit the profile we got yesterday, not just names on this list, anyone.” His eyes caught mine. “Your Dad tell you about the profile?”
I nodded.
“Good. Look. Think. Call me.” He was talking in clipped, short sentences and it occurred to me he wasn’t wasting time with me and it occurred to me this was because he was hacked off about something, likely my comment earlier that morning, or me walking out on him when he was being a total asshole last night or the fact I was in his house at all.
He turned to Mom. “Gotta get to work.”
Mom came to the kitchen side of the bar, put her hands on it and said over it, “Why the hurry? I thought you were off the case.”
“Body found early this morning just inside the city limits.”
I drew in breath and it was so loud Colt turned back to me.
“Somethin’ else, looks like a drug sale gone bad.”
Mom shook her head. “I remember a time when we didn’t have homicides and the only drug around was weed.”
“City’s stretchin’, ten more years, it’ll engulf us,” Colt said. “City spreads, crime spreads.”
This was the ugly truth. There used to be miles and miles of cornfields between us and the city. For fifteen years, each time I came home more of those fields were gobbled up by strip malls and housing complexes. We still were protected by a thin shield of farmland but it was weakening fast.
Colt’s attention came back to me. “Scour these books, Feb. Don’t go into J&J’s until you’re done. I’ll expect a call by noon.”
I opened my mouth to say something but he was again moving, around the bar. He went into the kitchen and bent to kiss Mom’s cheek. Dad came in from the side and Colt gave him a wave and then a “Later,” and then he was gone.
“Where’s he goin’?” Dad asked the door Colt closed behind him.
“Work, some drug person was murdered last night,” Mom answered, moving right to the cupboard where the mugs were knowing exactly where to find them.
“Shit, I ‘member a time when worst thing that happened around here was a bar fight at J&J’s. Cops came, tossed the boys in a cell to dry out overnight and let their wives take ‘em home the next mornin’.” He went up to my Mom and kissed the side of her neck. “We got out just in time, Jackie, darlin’.”
Dad could say that again.
He and Mom got out just in time.
Though, bad news for me, when they got out, I got back in.
* * * * *
Mom was cleaning Colt’s house. Dad was over at Dee and Morrie’s doing something Dee needed done that Morrie never found time to do. I had my cell in my hand and I had to make the call.
I’d spent an hour going through the names on that list and looking at every face in Colt’s yearbooks and reading what people wrote in it deciding, from what she wrote, that Jeanie Shumacher was a traitor (she pretended to be my friend!) and a slut (even though now she had three kids, taught Sunday School and used to be president of the PTA). And deciding from what Tina Blackstone wrote she was just a bitch (she’d always been after Colt, even now she’d slither up to him at J&J’s and give him her patented look and although I was avoiding him, I always smiled to myself when I saw him shoot her down, time after time). And I noticed Amy Harris never wrote anything at all.
Nothing shot out at me. Most of the names on the list were people I didn’t even remember and only barely remembered when I crossed-checked them with photos. A bunch of them were gone, didn’t live in town or even Indy anymore. I looked, I thought, but nothing came to me.
Nothing but one guy.
I flipped my phone open, found Colt’s name when I scrolled down and then I hit go.
“Feb,” he said in my ear.
“Loren Smithfield,” I said back.
“What?”
If we’d used the word back then, Loren Smithfield would have been known as a player. He was tall, dark blond with a bit of rust to his hair, good build but not an athlete.
No, Lore was the school flirt and definitely the school horn dog.
I had no idea how many girls he nailed. I just knew he nailed Jessie in her senior year of high school after sweet-talking her for the first three. She finally went out on a date with him and on date three, he got in her pants and took her virginity.
There was no date four and Jessie was heartbroken and humiliated even though she tried to hide it.
Loren tried to nail Meems, he tried to nail me, hell, he tried to nail everybody.
He sat beside me in that Geometry class and he flirted with me outrageously, not something many boys did seeing as they all knew about Colt and me and seeing as, if Colt ever found out, everyone knew he’d mess them up. Loren flirted with me all through school, especially during that class and in our junior year when he sat beside me in Psych.
He was smart, really smart, got good grades but it was more. He was what my Dad would call sharp. He was a quick thinker, good with words, thought things through three times as fast as anyone else which made him an excellent flirt.
He had great handwriting and signed his name cool and weird. Creative. Taking his time, even at the top of tests, putting these rock ‘n’ roll flourishes on it that I always thought were super hip even though he always made me feel a bit funny.
“Loren Smithfield,” I repeated to Colt.
“Feb, Lore doesn’t fit the profile.”
No, it was more that Colt didn’t want him to. Lore was a drinking buddy of Colt and Morrie’s
. He didn’t come in regular, say, every night, but he was in J&J’s often enough, a few times a month and when he was he was sitting beside Colt at the end of the bar, Morrie in front of them, all of them engaged in man conversation, some nods, some knowing grins, sometimes low, rough laughter.
“He sat beside me in Geometry class. He flirted with me all through school. He nailed everything that moved.”
There was a hesitation then Colt said, “Lore’s been married three times, three kids, two with the first wife, one with the last. He works for his Dad’s construction firm and he drives a Ford F160.”
“So?”
“February, this guy we’re after, he’s got a desk job. Lore works with his hands. And this guy probably can’t get it up, not unless he’s doin’ somethin’ sick. Lore made those kids the old fashioned way, not through a test tube. And you think Lore would be as successful as he is if he’s into sick shit?”
I knew what Colt was saying. Lore had three wives because Lore had not changed. He still nailed everything that moved. He didn’t search for his pieces out of town but did his thing right under everyone’s noses. His wives, eventually getting sick of it, kicked his ass out.
I’d been around, I knew there were folks out there who liked their kink and sometimes that kink could get dirty and even creepy. But I didn’t figure in this ‘burg, which happened to be placed smack in the middle of the Bible Belt, that there would be that much choice of women who’d put up with dirty, creepy kink.
“And the witnesses saw a silver sedan exiting the alley, not a Ford F160,” Colt continued.
“Loren isn’t stupid, Colt. If he drove a woman into an alley in the morning hours in order to kill her, he wouldn’t use his own truck. He’d rent a car.”
“There somethin’ I don’t know about you and Lore?”
Colt’s voice had turned funny – harder, abrasive, he was pissed about more than me pointing the finger at his buddy Lore.