Damage (3 page)

"Big spender," Correen complained.
 

She handed one beer to Ray and kept the other for herself as she led him to a nearby table. Both sat facing the almost vacant interior of the tent. It struck Ray that he typically would have bolted for home by now, especially since it was Sunday, but he found Correen a pleasant diversion from a day spent folding laundry and wishing away the month of March so he could witness the start of the baseball season. He couldn't pin an age on her. She had mentioned children when talking to the sheriff's daughter, Mimi. He was fairly certain he could recall hearing about Evan Wallace getting married shortly after leaving his post as county manager. Five years ago? Maybe six? If she had married young, Correen might be in her mid thirties. She certainly couldn't be any older than forty. Ray's train of thought derailed when she caught him staring at her. She pretended not to notice and pointed her beer bottle at the opposite corner of the tent.

"They're solving the world's problems over there," she said.

Evan Wallace sat at a table with Jared Upton and two men in suits Ray hadn't noticed earlier. From a distance, their conversation appeared businesslike and boring.

"Looks like it," Ray said. "Who are those men?"

"Investors," Correen answered disinterestedly.

"Shouldn't you be over there with them?"

"Good Lord, no!" she said. "This is all Evan's baby."

"But isn't this your land?"

"Not any more," she said. "Now it belongs to LPCC Development, the parent company of Lonesome Pines. Selling off land is how my family has made its money for over a hundred years. If it worked for my ancestors, it's good enough for me. The most important provision for me in this entire transaction was that Evan agree to keep the business dealings to himself and not drag me into them."

"So you won't have to sacrifice time spent with your horses," Ray said. "Right?"

Correen shot Ray a puzzled look. "How do you know about my horses?"

"Mimi McGinnis mentioned them earlier when she pounced on you," he said.
 

"What an awful woman," Correen said, wrinkling her nose at the mention of Mimi's name. "I never did thank you for rescuing me from her."

 
"My pleasure to be of service," Ray said. "By the way she approached you, one might think the two of you are old friends."

"Only when it's convenient for her," she said. "Her father worked for my father years ago. She seems to think that makes us family. You heard the crack she made about sitting with my father at St. Thomas tonight? She'll probably spend the whole evening trying to convince him how horrible a daughter I am for not showing up to dine with him at family night."

"Speaking of Avery," Ray interjected, "what does he think of Lonesome Pines? If I recall correctly, your father wasn't exactly warm to the idea of relying on tourist dollars to support our local economy. I quoted him several times on that subject back when he was still chairman of the county commissioners."

Correen pulled herself to full height in her seat. What she lacked in size she compensated for with her demeanor. She tilted her head forward slightly and her eyes adopted the same steely glint Ray had witnessed in her father's eyes so many times during the years he'd covered county commissioner meetings for the Citizen-Gazette.

"Lonesome Pines isn't a golf course for tourists," she declared. "It will be a private course for residents and guests only."

"Nine months," Ray said.

"What?"

"That's how long I give before you start selling associate memberships to non-residents," he said. "In fact, I'll bet it doesn't even take that long. Evan said in his little speech that the course should be ready for play in fourteen months, which puts opening day some time around May of next year. I'll wager the course is open to the general public by that Thanksgiving."

"Why Thanksgiving?" Correen asked. She had drooped back into her seat again, clearly amused by Ray's conjectures.

"Thanksgiving gives you a solid six months to realize you're losing money hand over fist," Ray said. "And it gives you just enough time to sell rounds of golf to the locals as Christmas stocking stuffers."

Correen locked eyes with Ray. The corners of her mouth twitched into a flickering smirk.

"I'll take that bet," she said at last. "What do I win if you're wrong?"

Ray thought about what he could offer up. Money was out of the question. A man who has to stretch a single box of macaroni and cheese through two dinners shouldn't bet money he can't afford to lose. He opted instead for the only thing a newspaper reporter ever really has to offer anyone: free publicity.

"If I'm wrong, you'll get a full-page spread on the astounding success of Lonesome Pines Country Club," he said. "I'll even throw in a feature article on your horse farm for the sports section. But what do I get if I'm right?"

Correen hesitated and looked around the tent for inspiration. "Oh, I know! A year of free golf at Lonesome Pines. Do you play?"

"I've never even played miniature golf," Ray said.

"Then I'll throw in free lessons from whatever golf pro Evan hires," she added.

"Deal," he said.

They clinked their bottles together to make it official.

Sunday, Part IV

Time melted away. The hour Ray told himself it would take to get the basics before ditching the groundbreaking turned into three, in part because he always underestimated the amount of time he would spend at events, and also because he was enjoying his chat with Correen Wallace. His happy distraction ended when the meeting of the minds across the tent broke up and Evan Wallace came to collect his wife.

"What have you two troublemakers been up to over here?" he asked. The question seemed a lighthearted one, but Wallace appeared genuinely interested in knowing what they had been discussing. His wife dismissed his piqued curiosity with a wry smile and a wave of her hand.

"I've arranged for a full page article to be printed about Lonesome Pines Country Club in the Citizen-Gazette," Correen told her husband, whose face lit up at the prospect. "However, we will have to wait until Christmas of next year."

"Thanksgiving," Ray corrected.

"Yes, that's right," she agreed. "Thanksgiving."

Evan Wallace furrowed his brow and glanced at the empty beer bottles on the table behind them. "Exactly how much have the two you had to drink while the rest of us were hard at work?"

"Nowhere near enough," Correen said. She stood and stretched to kiss her husband on the cheek. "Now, you owe me an anniversary dinner."

Ray waved them off, Correen barefoot with her red flats in her hand, Evan stick-straight and just as picture perfect as when he had entered the tent. They made a handsome couple.

The band had long since packed up and gone. Ray finished his beer as servers gathered soiled linens and divided the remaining food and table centerpieces amongst themselves. Watching half empty trays of jumbo shrimp, crab cakes and grilled asparagus being squirreled away by the hired help reminded Ray he was hungry. He checked his cell phone. It was almost five o'clock. If he hustled, he stood a good chance of meeting up with a few of his coworkers who frequented a pub not far from his apartment.

The idea of the Sunday get-together at the pub didn't usually appeal to Ray. Not only did he see enough of the people from the Citizen-Gazette during working hours, he never seemed to have the same quantity of expendable income as everyone else. A ten dollar entree and a couple of three dollar beers tonight at The Bump & Run Pub would mean bagged peanut butter lunches for the next two days. This evening, however, either because the one beer already in his veins wanted company, or because of his desire to continue the kind of friendly banter he had shared with Correen Wallace, he decided a night at the pub was worth the extravagance.

The peeling paint on the cinderblock building was complimented nicely by the gravel parking lot that hadn't seen new stone in at least a decade. Wide ruts of bare dirt and clay matched the mottled brown color of Ray's aging car. He bounced it through the lot to an open area where he parked next to the only car he recognized, a pristine yellow Volkswagen Beetle.

Unlike many of the golf-themed restaurants and shops that served tourists along the streets of Glen Meadows, The Bump & Run Pub was an unsightly dive. The menu listed basic bar fare and the tables were coated with years of grease. On bad days, the pungent odor of unchanged mop water permeated the pub. Those were the days Ray would refuse to stay, regardless if it meant eating alone elsewhere while the rest of the Citizen-Gazette crew happily risked food poisoning.

He spotted Becky across the dim interior once his eyes adjusted. He passed the only other guests, a pierced and tattooed couple sharing nachos, on his way to the bar.

"What's up, boss?" he asked, taking a seat beside her and looking around the pub. "Where is everybody?"

A mass of kinky, light brown hair turned to reveal the pale moon-face of Becky Hussey, managing editor of the Citizen-Gazette and Ray's immediate supervisor.
 

"It's about time one of you showed up," she griped. Her head tilted slightly and a question showed in her narrow brown eyes. "Aren't you supposed to be covering the groundbreaking at Lonesome Pines?"

"Done," he said. "I just came from there."

"How was the food?" Becky asked the way someone who hasn't eaten in three days might ask.

"Better than usual," he answered. "But not as good as it should have been. Way too many smoked items. Apparently, they're expecting a wave of Scandinavian golfing millionaires to settle the neighborhood. So, what happened to the rest of the gang?"

Becky shrugged her shoulders and held up her hands, letting them drop noisily back down on the bar. From beneath her stool came the muffled rhythm of a techno-pop tune. She picked up her purse and found the phone in time to answer it. The conversation was brief, and Becky's participation curt. She threw the phone back in the purse and dropped it to the floor.

"Well?" Ray asked.

"That was Charlie," she said.

"The non-boyfriend boyfriend?"

"Watch it," Becky warned. Clearly, she was in no mood for good-natured ribbing. "Everyone's crapping out. Toni's parents are in town, so she's going out to dinner with them. Walter only shows up if Toni's coming because he's trying to get in her pants, so he won't be here. Anita has play rehearsal tonight, Mac's at his son's hockey game, and no one can get hold of Scott."

"And Charlie?"

"He said he doesn't feel like it," she said in a mocking tone.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Becky finished the last drops hiding underneath the ice in her glass while Ray stared at the bottles behind the bar and recalled details from the groundbreaking he could use when writing the article for Monday's edition of the Citizen-Gazette.

"I think I got some good shots today," he absentmindedly said.

"Did you use the new camera?" Becky asked.

"Yes."

More silence.

"Can you go for another drink?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, nodding cartoonishly.

"Should we just go ahead and get good and drunk?" he asked.

Becky slapped her hand down hard to signify her approval, startling the young blonde bartender who had been sitting on a stool hunched over a paperback novel at the far end of the bar.

"Two more of whatever that was," Ray ordered, pointing at Becky's empty glass. He turned back to Becky. "Keys."

They each took a set of keys from their coat pockets and placed them on the counter. Ray worked his fingernails into the coiled metal to remove the thick car keys from both rings. Once finished, he reached over the bar and dropped them into an oversize martini glass where they joined one other lonely key. Ray glanced around again and saw only the one couple still seated at their table eating nachos.

"Did somebody forget to come back for their car?" Ray asked the bartender when she presented their drinks.

"Huh?" she asked, then looked in the glass. She shrugged and leaned back to yell into the kitchen behind the bar. "Marco! Do you know whose key this is?"

A short man with receding hair pulled back in a long ponytail poked his head through the open doorway. He smiled when he saw Becky and Ray, and stepped out to greet them. His young bartender towered over him.

"Yeah, yeah," he said. He turned the key over in his wet hands. "This is all I have to show for hiring that alcoholic you recommended to me. That's why I had to bring her in." He twitched his head toward the blond girl standing next to him. He snapped the key down in front of Ray. "Hard to run a bar without a bar manager."

Back about seven or eight months earlier, Ray talked Marco into interviewing his high school friend. Jake had been clean for almost a year at that point and had committed to cleaning up and living a productive life. Even Ray's cousin Billy, the sheriff's deputy, had reconnected with their old fraternity brother. Through the fall, Jake could often be found at Billy's home on the weekends, helping out with projects, watching football, or playing cards with Billy and his wife, Amy. Jake finally seemed to be taking charge of his life instead of following his addictions.

Then, five days ago, he vanished. Marco immediately panicked and took inventory of his liquor supply, but Jake hadn't stolen a single bottle. Even his till, up to the last night he worked, balanced out to the penny. There was no sign of theft, or embezzlement. No sign Jake had fallen off the wagon. He simply didn't show up to work. Since then, as far as Ray knew, neither he nor any of their mutual friends had been in contact with Jake.

"Drunk bastard shows up here yesterday, just like that out of nowhere, and asks me to open a tab for him," Marco said.