For You

  Good Christ, he hated it when she called him Alec. He had no idea why she did it, she knew he hated it, but she did. She’d never called him Colt, even after that night when he’d told her that Alec was gone, that the name his parents gave him and called him was something he didn’t want any claim to anymore. He wanted to be known as Colt, the name he and Morrie made up for him when they were six. The name he’d given himself. He’d begged her to stop calling him Alec but she never did.

  “Just take a minute and think,” he urged, setting his anger aside.

  She closed her eyes, tilting her chin away, pressing more of her weight into her hand at his chest, still not cognizant she was touching him there and he was touching her back or he knew she’d move away. Distance for Feb, since it all went down, was important. Not just with him, with everyone, but he’d noted, and it never failed to piss him off, especially with him.

  She opened her eyes. “Mrs. Hobbs’s class. Geometry. Second period.” She shook her head but said, “We had that class together. She passed the note to me then. I think I threw it away.”

  It hit him and Colt remembered.

  “You fought in the hall,” he said.

  Her eyes widened and she nodded. “Pushing match. Angie started it. Mrs. Hobbs broke it up. Shit,” her head jerked to the side, “I totally forgot.” She looked back at him. “Angie was crying and screaming but more crying. She was out of her mind. They sent her home.”

  “You were crying.”

  That’s what he remembered. He’d seen her eyes red from the tears when she was at her locker. He’d walked her to class. He’d been late to his own. At lunch he’d told Morrie but Morrie had already heard about the fight from someone else. After school they’d made her sit through football practice so they could drive her home. Colt even remembered putting her in his car. She’d been silent. She’d never said why they fought. Feb could be like that, hold things to herself forever, a personality trait she had that was a nightmare he’d lived for way too long. It was just Angie was there one day and the next she wasn’t. Feb had been devastated. Then Jessie’s folks moved to town and Feb and Jessie hooked up, hooking Mimi with them, and Angie was a memory as it was with teenage girls.

  “I still don’t understand. Why’s that note back now?” she asked.

  He was now going to have to ask her the impossible and tear her up doing it.

  “Do you remember anyone from school, anyone from that time, anyone… a teacher, a kid, a janitor, a regular at the bar, anyone, who seemed partial to you?”

  The lines came back at her brows. “Partial to me?”

  “Interested.”

  There it was. The impossible.

  Everyone was interested in Feb, then and now. Everyone was interested in the family, Jack, Jackie, Morrie, Feb, their grandparents before they all passed. Susie Shepherd and her wealthy Daddy may have been King and Princess of Diamonds in that town but Jack and Jackie Owens, their son Morrison and daughter February were King, Queen, Prince and Princess of Hearts.

  Who knew? Feb may have dozens of sick fucks following her, taking pictures of her, stealing her notes, going through her trash, building shrines to her. Hell, Colt knew dozens who jacked off to her regularly.

  His hand tightened on hers.

  “Interested?” she asked.

  “Unnaturally.”

  “Alec, what are you saying?”

  Colt skirted around the issue. “Someone who would take a note you threw away. Someone who would keep it for twenty-five years. Someone who’d mail it to your family’s bar. Feb, someone who was unnaturally interested in you.”

  Her whole body jerked, even her hand then it twisted on his shirt.

  “No,” she answered, sliding straight into the pit of denial.

  “Think.”

  “What’s this about?”

  “Take time, Feb, think.”

  “What’s this about, Alec?”

  He pried her hand from his shirt but gave it alternate purchase, forcing his thumb into her palm and curling his fingers around her hand at the same time he flipped the note and showed her the back.

  Her hand went to her mouth cupping it, what was left of the color in her face draining clean away. He watched her sway and he used his hand in hers to push her back and down, forcing her into the chair. He let her hand go and put his to her neck, shoving her head between her knees.

  “Breathe deep.”

  He listened to her suck in breath.

  Colt crouched in front of her, keeping his hand at her neck.

  After awhile, he asked, “You with me?”

  She nodded and put pressure against his hand, lifting up just a little, her neck arching so she could look at him, her elbows going to her knees.

  He kept his hand where it was.

  “He killed her for me,” she said, her voice hollow.

  Colt shook his head. “You didn’t ask him to kill her. He did it because he’s not right in the head.”

  “We made up,” she whispered, “Angie and me. It wasn’t the same but we made up. We danced to Buster Poindexter’s, ‘Hot, Hot, Hot’ at prom. You were there. Angie and me started the conga line.”

  He was there. He remembered that conga line. He remembered sitting in the back with Jason Templeton who was then a freshman at Notre Dame, both of them watching it and laughing their asses off. He remembered thinking he’d feel stupid, a sophomore at Purdue, coming home, taking his senior girlfriend to her prom. But he didn’t feel stupid. She’d had a blast; Feb always knew how to have a good time and Colt loved it when she did. He remembered the conga line flowing by their table and Feb had grinned at him at the same time she sang the words to the song at the top of her lungs. Then she twisted her neck and looked back at Angie who had her hands on Feb’s waist. They’d laughed in each other’s faces and then Feb, in the lead, always the one who started the party, wound the conga line away.

  “I didn’t want her dead, even back then, when we were fighting –”

  “I know that.”

  She stared him in the eye for a brief moment before dropping her head. “I can’t believe this.”

  “Feb, think,” Colt brought the matter back to hand, “anyone back then who took an interest in you, made you feel funny, anyone that’s still around now.”

  She kept her head lowered and shook it, her long hair sliding across his hand, more of it falling forward around her face.

  Christ, there was so much of it, he’d never seen so much hair, he’d never felt anything as soft.

  He took his hand from her neck and she lifted her head. She looked at his fallen hand before her eyes found his. They were soft and lost for a moment, telling him only he could make her feel found and he almost touched her again, put his hand back where she needed it, before she straightened, ripping that look away from him.

  He wanted it back, so much he felt that weight shift in his gut and the flash of anger at her for taking it away, keeping him out. Fuck, even now she wouldn’t let him in.

  He bit his lip, something he knew he did to control his anger. He had his father and mother in him, straight to his bones and he held close to that control, had to. Both of them could be ugly and violent, with words, with fists. Colt had it too, it came out twice without control, twice he’d nearly killed someone with his fists – one was his own father, the other Feb’s husband.

  “No,” she answered, “no one.”

  “February –”

  “I’ll think, Alec. I’ll think about it. I need some time. But I promise, I’ll think and I’ll let you know.”

  She was looking at him again, straight in the eye. She wasn’t lying. She’d think. But right now this was too much, for anyone. Most people would lose it just from finding Angie’s body. Feb was holding on.

  His anger dissolved. It was no longer his place but he was proud of her.

  “You’ve got my number?”

  Those dents came back at her eyebrows and that lost look came back into her eyes before she masked i
t.

  “Morrie’s got it.”

  Colt straightened and dug in the back pocket of his jeans for his wallet. He pulled out a business card and handed it to her, flipping the wallet closed and shoving it back.

  She stood, his card held in both hands by thumb and forefinger at both bottom edges, her head bent studying the print.

  “I want you to have a care. Keep your cell on you all the time, keep it charged. Let people know where you’re going and when you get there. Don’t ever be alone. You feel something you don’t like, see someone who makes you feel wrong, it doesn’t matter they’re innocent, you tell me, Feb.” Her head came up and she looked at him. “Doesn’t hurt them for me to ask a few questions, dig around.” He watched her suck in her cheeks and he knew she was hesitating, Jack and Jackie’s daughter, through and through. “This is serious, this is murder, Feb. This is about Angie.”

  She closed her eyes tight and looked away but not before he saw them get bright. Then she took in a breath and opened her eyes, the brightness gone, she’d locked onto her control. Looking back at him, she nodded.

  Colt had one more piece of unpleasant business to deliver and he hated it, but he did it.

  “Tomorrow, first thing, you need to write a list.”

  “A list?”

  “Anyone who wronged you, anyone you felt slighted by –”

  “Alec –”

  “Anyone someone not in the know might think did you harm or upset you.”

  Her eyes went bright again and her bottom lip quivered. “Alec –”

  He hated to see her lip move like that, knowing her throat burned with the effort at fighting back the tears but he had to be relentless, lives were at stake. “If this is about you, we need to lock it down.”

  “People are gonna –”

  “Freak,” Colt nodded, “but better they freak and stay breathin’ than –”

  “They’ll hate me,” she whispered.

  “They won’t. But if they do, they’re stupid. This isn’t about you. This is about a sick fuck who’s out of his mind. They blame you, you’re better off without them.”

  “Easy for you to say, people like you.”

  “People like you.”

  Something in her face shifted, he couldn’t read it, it was there and gone. But whatever it was, it made that weight in his gut feel even heavier.

  “Feb, I’ve no idea what this fuckin’ guy is thinking, but I’ve gotta –”

  She lifted her hand and waved it between them, the movement desperate. “I’ll write a list.”

  It was on the tip of his tongue to say, that’s my girl.

  He didn’t say it.

  It was then the full realization dawned that this business was going to take its toll. On Feb, on him, likely on Morrie and undoubtedly on Jack and Jackie who, as soon as they heard what was going on, would be back. They were probably already on their way.

  And the toll to be paid was not just because of Angie’s murder and Feb’s admirer but because Colt and Feb had no choice but to be wound together again after years of being unraveled.

  “Can I go back to the bar now?” she asked.

  Colt nodded.

  “You wanna talk to Morrie?”

  Her question struck him like a blow, she knew him so well. And a thought he hadn’t contemplated, hadn’t allowed himself to contemplate for two years came into his head.

  How in the fuck could this woman who was laced into the fibers of his life be so fucking removed?

  Colt nodded again.

  Feb lifted her chin and without another word walked out the door.

  When he lost sight of her, Colt’s neck twisted and he bit his lip.

  It was either that or tear the fucking office apart.

  Chapter Two

  Pete

  I’d been up for two and a half hours by the time Morrie stumbled into the kitchen.

  It had not been the most joyful two and a half hours I’d ever spent, drinking coffee and filtering through the silt of my life trying to think of anyone that some unhinged psychopath might have decided done me wrong. Even if I did it after I’d done my yoga which usually left me feeling mellow.

  In that time, I’d also come to the conclusion that this new living situation was not going to work.

  Delilah, Morrie’s wife, had left him just over a year ago, taking the kids with her. It hadn’t been long in coming but still Morrie, like any man, hadn’t been paying attention. Her defection surprised him. He’d suffered her leaving like a blow. But after we’d taken over the bar, Delilah had changed.

  Dee could tell it like it was but still, she used to be sweet as syrup, patient as a saint, a great Mom, a good wife to Morrie but she liked Morrie working construction. Out early, home early, at the dinner table with the family. Not out at noon, home after three in the morning, rarely seeing her or his kids.

  She didn’t get it about J&J’s. Delilah didn’t understand the importance of J&J’s. Not even when Mom and Dad retired and I came back just because Morrie wanted me to help him run the bar so the family wouldn’t lose J&J’s and also so the town wouldn’t lose it.

  Dee knew me; we were close even with the distance. She knew nothing would bring me home, except J&J’s.

  So Dee had their old house and Morrie had a new pad – an apartment, a new complex in town. So new, it was void of personality and I hated it. So did Morrie. There were lots of things to hate about it but mostly I hated the trees. The trees that landscaped the outside were thin, the fluorescent tags from the garden store still on them, held up with sticks and wire to help them bear the brunt of winter and wind; the leaves in summer not throwing enough to make but a hint of shade. They’d probably be beautiful in about ten years, but now their existence screamed “New!” and something about it I did not like. It seemed weird in my town because the rest of the town felt old, established, settled and safe. It wasn’t that I didn’t like change, I was used to change, a lot of it. It was just that I didn’t like change in my town.

  But there were three bedrooms and the all important two baths. One bedroom for Morrie, one for his son, Palmer, the other for his daughter, Tuesday.

  That was how much Dee had changed. Morrie had been named after Jim Morrison who our father idolized. I had been named after the month Valentine’s Day fell in, Mom’s favorite holiday and my middle name was Valentine, not to mention Mom said I was conceived on that day. Morrie had talked Dee (and she loved him so much it didn’t take much effort) into keeping the family tradition, naming his son after Robert Palmer, since Morrie was a Led Zeppelin freak. He’d also talked Dee into naming their daughter Tuesday, which both of them swore was the day of the week she was conceived, which also happened to be Valentine’s Day that year. Dee had barely made a peep naming her kids these crazy names.

  Then again, Morrie and I never suffered from our names and Dee had loved my brother back then. Loved him enough to let him name their kids. Loved him so much she couldn’t hack doing without him, seeing her family losing out to a bar.

  All this meant I didn’t sleep on their pull out couch in their TV room, which was what I did all those years when I came home, sometimes, the times I didn’t stay with Mom and Dad, doing the rotation, sharing my time between family members. I’d come home for Christmas or Thanksgiving or some other family event, like the kids’ birthdays or Mom and Dad’s 40th anniversary. Instead, all this meant I slept in Tuesday’s single bed last night.

  My bed at home was a queen. Some nights I slept like the dead. Other nights I moved.

  Last night I moved and almost fell out of Tuesday’s bed twice.

  And my cat Wilson, unused to his new surroundings, steered clear.

  I couldn’t sleep without Wilson on my feet or, when I was moving, he slept somewhere close. Wilson was a cuddler. He liked my warmth and even when I shifted he didn’t mind, he just shifted with me.

  So I didn’t sleep.

  I hadn’t slept well, not for years. But at least I slept some.

&nbs
p; I needed to go home.

  Morrie went straight to the coffeepot and poured himself a cup.

  He didn’t speak or look at me until he was well into his third sip.

  Then he did. “See this arrangement is gonna work out great.”

  I loved my brother but he was such a fucking man.

  He slept in his own bed, a big bed, in his own home. I slept in a foreign bed, a little bed, away from my home. But he got up and there was coffee brewed, coffee he didn’t have to make, so it was all going to work out great.

  “Morrie, this isn’t going to work. Tuesday’s bed…” he looked at me, “I don’t sleep enough as it is.”

  “Colt’s couch pulls out.”

  Oh fuck. No way. No way in hell.

  “I’ll move in with Jessie.”

  Jessie’s husband was a chemist, he worked at Lilly and he got paid a shitload. They didn’t have kids because that would cut into Jessie’s affinity for having fun whenever the hell she wanted and doing whatever the hell she liked whenever the hell she felt like it. They had a three bedroom house. One bedroom Jessie converted into a workout room. One had been decorated by some interior designer that Jessie hired when she’d got a wild hair up her ass. It had a double bed with a big, down comforter on it and lots of toss pillows and I knew Jessie put mints on the pillows when her Mom and Dad or her sister and her sister’s husband would come to visit.

  I could do mints while I was displaced because some creepy, sick psycho had fixed onto me and was murdering people I liked and sending me notes from high school and forcing me to spend time with Alec, time where he touched me.

  “No offense but Jimbo is a dweeb and he doesn’t own a .45,” Morrie dismissed my suggestion by slightly insulting Jessie’s husband who was, unfortunately, a dweeb but he also wasn’t a pushover.

  I changed the subject. “Please tell me you don’t have a gun in your house with kids.”

  “I do. I’m an American. I know how to use it, my kids know to avoid it and it’s locked in a safe anyway so they couldn’t get it even if they wanted to make trouble.”

  I let it go and tried something else. “Al’s not a dweeb and it’s highly likely he owns a gun.”