Sinful Suspense Box Set (53 page)

There was a group of picnic tables beneath a copse of shade trees. Once the sun had set and the dog walkers and kids had gone home for the night, we were alone in the park. We sat and shared food. Julian stuck mostly with his donuts and sports drink. With the way his hands were shaking, a good amount of sugar was probably what his body craved the most.

Sugar opened the newspaper. “Here’s your picture.” She held it up. It was the same photo they’d shown on television.

“No idea when that was taken. Do you think it’s a good likeness?”

She looked at it again. “Not really but when you read the description people have given about you, I don’t think it matters. You, according to this reporter, are described as—” She searched for the section and began reading. “Mr. Jameson is a tall, well-built and startlingly handsome twenty-five-year-old male with long black hair and penetrating green eyes. Many of the residents at the Green Willow facility, who knew him, described him as large and menacing. Jameson, as one female resident noted, always looked as if he was one lit fuse away from exploding. According to police, he is considered dangerous. He nearly beat a man to death with his fist. The man, police refer to, was a friend of the late Dr. Kirkendall. After a severe beating at the hands of Jameson, the victim is conscious now and cooperating with police. He has corroborated the story of the ward assistant who witnessed the murders.”

“No more, Sugar. Stop reading.” I yanked out the whiskey bottle I’d been cradling like a fragile baby all day and opened it. I took three long swigs and held it out for Sugar. She shook her head. “Jules, you want a sip?” I asked. “Might take the edge off.”

“Can’t tolerate the taste of it.” He wrapped his arms around himself to stop the shivering. It was a warm summer night, but Julian looked as if he was sitting in the middle of the snow. “What are we going to do, Tommy?” It was the first logical thing he’d said all afternoon. It was hard not having his genius to turn to in a time like this, but as his body sweated off all the prescription drugs, he seemed to be having a hard time holding it together physically. Mentally he’d sort of shut down as if it was some instinctual form of self-preservation that pushed all his energy into surviving the torture of withdrawal. I knew, too well, that time was the only thing that eased the agony.

I gulped back more whiskey. It burned going down, and since I hadn’t had any booze for awhile, it went to my head fast. “I figure, no matter what, I’m doing jail time. As the paper said, I nearly killed a man with my fist. It’s the only part of the story that’s true, and even if he was the real murderer, I’ve got a record of assault. I’m going down with this one. But, I’m just not ready to turn myself in yet.” I looked over at Sugar and Julian. “Sugar, there’s no reason you have to stay. I’ll give you money, and you can get on the next bus—”

“To where?” she asked sharply. “Where the fuck would I go?” Then her voice softened. She looked at me with that face that made me want to pull her into my arms. “I’m staying with you, Tommy. I belong with you.”

Julian was sitting just a few feet away, but at that moment, it was just Sugar and me looking at each other across the picnic table. It was that silent communication we were so good at, where we knew exactly what the other person was thinking. And she knew I was thinking just how badly I needed her.

“I can’t go home either,” Julian spoke, dissolving our exchange of thoughts. “Something is not right. I knew something was not right. It’s never been right.”

My head was spinning with Sugar’s declaration and with the whiskey that was shooting through me. “Shit, Jules, your cryptic statements are too much for me tonight.” With whiskey and smokes in hand, I got up from the table and walked over to a small brick wall, built with the sole purpose of separating the eating area from the kiddie playground. I slid down to the ground and rested my back against the bricks. They still felt warm from the sun. I pulled out a cigarette and sucked down some more whiskey before lighting it.

“Shit, Tommy, you’ve finished half that bottle already,” Sugar said.

I lifted the whiskey and gave the amber liquid a shake. “I’m practicing for the dead man’s walk. You know, final wishes before they march me down that cold corridor to my execution, same corridor all the cold-blooded murderers before me walked. I’m not going to ask for a meal. I mean who the fuck can eat when you’re about to be zapped in front of a roomful of revenge hungry family members and reporters?” My words sounded stretched and slow, but there was no stutter. No fucking stutter. Put another check in the benefits of being off your ass drunk column. “I’m going to ask for a bottle of whiskey, the good shit, none of this eight dollar crap and a pack of cigarettes, and I’m going to make those pig faced prison guards and the executioner wait until I’ve smoked every damn cigarette and sipped every drop of whiskey.”

“It’s lethal injection,” Julian said.

I turned my head without lifting it from the wall. “Huh?”

“They got rid of electric chairs and gas chambers and replaced them with what they consider more humane, lethal injection.”

I laughed. It was my familiar, alcohol-soaked, slurred laugh. I hadn’t heard it for awhile. “More humane, except to the guy on the table.”

“I didn’t say
I
considered it more humane, I said,
they
, the people who decide things like that.”

“Tommy, would you stop talking like this,” Sugar said. I ignored her.

I was feeling sorry for myself, but for a change, it seemed I fucking deserved this self-pity moment. “Injection? They just keep taking the cool out of execution. I mean, whatever happened to the fucking firing squad and the gallows where you’d swing and the whole town could be there and you could tell everyone to fuck off just before they watched your eyes bulge out of your head? At least the electric chair had sort of a cool horror feel to it and the gas chamber, fucking scary to think about. But just getting an injection and keeling over? Fuck, now where’s the glory in that?”

“Tommy,” Sugar barked. “Just shut the hell up.” She got up on those long, smooth legs, which were sometimes wrapped around me in my dreams, and walked over to the playground.  She leaned against the slide and crossed her arms around herself. Julian climbed up on one of the table tops, stretched out and shoved the princess backpack under his head. He shut his eyes, but it didn’t seem possible that he would get any sleep tonight in his agitated state.

I left behind my bottle and cigarette, pushed up onto unsteady feet and plodded over to Sugar. She looked away, not wanting to meet my drunken gaze. I stopped my feet directly in front of her. My lids were heavy, and sleep, even on a picnic table, sounded damn good.

I reached for Sugar’s hand. I was sure she’d yank it away, but she didn’t. Fragile and soft, it stayed tucked in my fingers. I’d been wanting to kiss this girl since the first second I’d met her. There was no one else in the world I wanted to kiss but her. I’d been a fucking saint. We weren’t in the ugly green walls of the recovery center anymore. I leaned forward.

Sugar’s hand came across my face. Even with my nerves numbed by whiskey, the slap hurt like hell, more because it came from Sugar than from the sting it left behind. My head was in a whiskey cloud, but I wasn’t imagining the tears in her eyes.

“You asshole, Tommy. All that time at Green Willow, I was waiting for you to kiss me. I was waiting for you to stop being a chicken shit and kiss me, and now, you finally find the balls to do it just because you’re shitfaced. Keep your damn kiss.” She slid past me and walked toward the restroom. I walked back to the wall where I’d left my whiskey and slid down, the feel of Sugar’s hand still on my face. I gulped back some more booze and relit my cigarette.

As if I was invisible, Sugar strode past me with a block of wet paper towels. She climbed up onto the table with Julian. She replaced the backpack under his head with her lap. He was stiff at first, uncomfortable with the personal attention. Softly, she whispered something to him that sounded silken with comfort, a sound to make him relax. She pressed the cold compress against his head. His fists and feet relaxed. She was like a goddamn angel, a perfect human in every way, and her mom had dropped her out onto a sidewalk at the age of fifteen as if she was a piece of garbage. Her mom was not worthy of a daughter like Sugar, and after my ill-timed attempt at a kiss, I wondered if I was worthy.

Chapter 17

Grass. I was
smelling grass, and not the
good
kind. I opened my eyes and squinted up at the colorful object dangling above my head. It floated down toward my face, and I shot up out of the way. A piñata, I was looking at a giant paper donkey layered with every color in the damn rainbow.

“Sorry to wake you, but it was the only tree with a solid enough branch to hold it,” the man said. He was wearing a baseball cap and a t-shirt with a dragster on the front. “They put so much candy inside, I’m not even sure we’ll be able to break the darn thing open.” He tied off the piñata and leaned down. “I’m Ross. If you’re looking for Amber, she’s over there helping with the pancakes. We’re all so glad she made it here. We’ve heard so much about her from her great aunt, we were thrilled to see her this morning. She said you guys traveled all night and couldn’t find a place to stay. Shame you all had to sleep in the park.” 

Apparently, I’d drunk myself into a coma, and this guy, for unknown reasons, had popped up in my unconscious visions. “Who?”

“Amber,” a familiar voice said from the opposite side of the tree trunk. Julian, still looking pale and shaky, was holding a plate of pancakes and bacon. “Our best friend, Amber, who we traveled with all night on a bus, so she could get to the reunion. But her great aunt is sick and couldn’t make it to the party. Isn’t that a shame?” Julian looked up from his food for the first time. His eyes were bloodshot, and he looked like shit. “But everyone was anxious to meet Amber because they’d never met her . . . until today.” Julian blinked at me.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I asked under my breath.

Julian motioned across the way.

My head felt like it was being slammed against a brick wall as I squinted across the sunlit park to the group of people standing around the tables. Rainbow colored streamers, that matched the piñata, fluttered in the morning breeze, and two of the park barbecues were clouded with bacon smoke. A large banner had been stretched across the brick wall of the restrooms that read, ‘Sutter Family Reunion’. Country music was rumbling from a pair of gritty sounding speakers, and people were sitting around the park, on the walls, on the slide and the swings balancing plates of food. And, standing at the food preparation table with a bright white smile and that sunshiney attitude, was the girl I loved.

Ross gave the rope with the piñata a strong tug. “Looks like that’ll work. If you’re ready for food, come on over and get a plate. Hannah’s pancakes are the best in the state. She’s won blue ribbons at the state fair.”

My stomach tightened at the smell of food, but I wasn’t hungry yet. “Yeah, thanks. I just need to get my morning appetite churning.” Ross walked away. I scooted closer to Julian, who looked to be having the same appetite problem as me. “What the hell is going on?”

“We woke up, and they were setting up a party. One of the women asked Sugar if she was that pretty, twice-removed niece that Aunt Shelly had been bragging about and then she said how sorry she was that Shelly wasn’t going to make it to the reunion. Then they started cooking pancakes, so Sugar just decided to go with it. We’re her two friends who traveled with her from Colorado to make sure she got here safely.”

I looked back toward the tables. Two women were laughing heartily at something Sugar said. “My god, they love her already, the little con artist.”

“Not surprising. Everyone loves Sugar,” Julian said. “Except her mom, of course. The one person who should love her the most.”

My throat tightened as I thought about the story Sugar had told us so casually, as if every fifteen year old had their mom shove them out alone on the streets. “I’ve never met the woman, but she is someone who I never want to know, the worst the human world has to offer.”

“Yet, she raised a daughter who everyone wants to know, everyone wants to be around.” Julian dipped more bacon into syrup and then licked it. It occurred to me the only thing he was actually consuming was the syrup. He was still craving sugar. Something we had in common, only I craved a completely different kind of sugar.

“But why is she doing this?”

Julian lifted his plate of pancakes. I noticed he’d cut the outer edge off each pancake as if it was the unwanted crust of bread. “Free food.” He dipped a piece of bacon into a puddle of maple syrup and brought it to his mouth with a shaky hand. The aroma that drifted from his plate was slowly untangling the knot in my gut and my mouth watered.

“You’re more talkative today,” I said. “Are you feeling better?” Here he was, a guy who rarely left his room at the center, sitting under a park tree on a lawn that was no doubt sprayed with pesticide and eating a piece of bacon dripping with syrup. “I guess we’re starting to see the real Julian Fitzpatrick, eh?”

He wiped his maple flavored fingers on a napkin, instead of licking them like a regular person. “What you’re looking at is a hybrid Julian. There’s still plenty of benzodiazepine in my bloodstream, but it does feel like that outer shell I was wearing has broken apart some. My head is clearer, but my body feels as if it has been picked up and wrung out by giant steel hands. I’m still in shock from this whole thing, from discovering my father is even more of a monster than I thought.” He looked at me and made direct eye contact, a rarity for Julian. “Trust me, Tommy, when you’re looking at the real thing, the drug-free version of Julian Fitzpatrick, you’ll know.”

Two girls in their early teens giggled wildly and carried a plate of food across the grass. One had a peace sign on her shirt and the other had a tiger. They stopped directly in front of me and nearly giggled the food off the plate. “This is from Amber.” I took the plate. The girl with the peace sign whispered something to the girl with the tiger. “Amber said you used to be her boyfriend but that you weren’t a very good kisser.” They giggled again. I looked past them to Sugar, who waved my direction. I lifted the plate of food in thanks.

“She said that, did she? Well, you tell her, if she’d just give me a chance to give her a proper kiss, then I’d knock her socks off.”

That produced even more giggles. “She’s right. You’re a hunk,” the peace sign girl blurted before they scampered off.

“A hunk who’s a shitty kisser, apparently.” I picked up the fork. Sugar smiled slyly at me as she stood at a portable griddle with a red and white apron tied around her waist and a spatula in her hand. I waved at her.

The pancakes were good. “Shit, I’m so damn hungry, this food is making my eyes water.”

The same second I commented about the tasty food, Julian dropped his fork onto the paper plate. “I can’t eat it. My stomach keeps rolling back and forth between bouts of hunger and nausea.”

“Sorry to hear that, buddy. This is good stuff. Maybe you should take little bites. Who knows when we’ll be able to eat again.” I had to mentally tell myself to slow down and chew or risk choking to death on a pancake.

Sugar placed down her spatula and ran over to help someone move an ice chest across the cement to the shade of a tree. “I wonder where she gets it— that innate need to help people.”

“She’s trying to make things right,” Julian offered.

I looked over at him. “You going to add anything to that little theory?”

Talking seemed to take more energy than he wanted to give but he continued. “She’s trying to erase what happened, to make things right by helping others. She can’t help the little girl or her family, but she can do the right thing by others. Sugar and I have that in common. We both took a life before we even knew what death was.”

“You had no fault in your brother’s death. You weren’t even out of the fucking womb yet.”

“Trust me, my dad never let me forget that it happened. That’s why Sugar and I deal with it differently. She was conscious and technically responsible for the girl’s death. I wasn’t. And while I don’t feel guilt about it, my dad wants me to remember that it happened.”

“See, this is all new, a new side of you. I knew you weren’t overwhelmed by love for your old man, but I didn’t realize things weren’t good between you. I guess that’s where
we
share a common bond.”

He placed his plate on the grass and stretched out his legs. “It’s not that things aren’t good between us. There just isn’t anything between us— period. No hate. No love. No emotional ties at all. My mom doted on me for the first ten years. I was already having problems with anxiety and depression and every other ailment a chemical imbalance could give a growing kid. Then she stopped. My dad told her she was coddling me too much, so she stopped. By then, I was starting to take a lot of different things to curb my idiosyncrasies. My own emotions were shrouded by the pharmaceuticals. So, having my mom turn off her attachment wasn’t all that bad.”

I stared at him for a long second. The strange guy with the climbing obsession and hat collection had a much deeper psyche than I’d given him credit for. Sugar was right. I was too self-absorbed. I’d always just figured I had bigger problems than everyone else, but it turned out my two best friends were right on par with me. Hell, they were even worse off in some ways. They just didn’t deal with it through anger.

I ate all that my stomach would allow and then rifled through the backpack for my sunglasses and toothbrush. The odds were good that someone in this crowd of people had at some point read the paper. And, while they would hardly expect the traveling companion of their dear, sweet grand niece, Amber, to be a fugitive, I was sure it would be better for me to keep a distance from people.

Julian and I kept to ourselves in an area that was closer to the parking lot. We took turns dozing off and watching with amusement as Sugar warmed her way into the hearts of the entire Sutter clan. After a long round of relay games, where everyone fought to have
Amber
on their team, Sugar wandered off to a shade tree with several of the guys, the eighteen to twenty year old set of the Sutter clan. I wasn’t happy about it, but I also wasn’t willing to join in on the conversation.

While Sugar had fun with her newly adopted family, Julian and I made plans. We needed to get to a motel with free wi-fi. We were in desperate need of showers and beds and Julian needed to get to his email. Dr. Kirkendall had sent him something, and now, more than ever, we were sure it had to do with her murder.

Sugar sashayed over, keeping the undivided attention of the Sutter boys. “Are you guys going to want hamburgers? I need to let Francine know. She’s the lady in the yellow apron smacking ground beef into patties.”

“I never turn down a burger,” I said.

Julian nodded half-heartedly.

“Hey, Amber,” one of the guys called to her. “Are you coming back?”

She waved. “Be right there.”

I raised a brow at her. “Those punks might be relatives, but they aren’t looking at you like a cousin.”

She smiled coyly. Something she was very practiced at. That’s when I caught a whiff of a familiar aroma.

“Hold on there, Daisy May, you smell even better than usual.”

Her teeth bit down on her bottom lip.

“Fucking hell, you’re over there smoking weed with them? Damn, I’m jealous.”

Sugar shrugged and walked back to the tree.

Laughter and a thin trail of smoke circled the group in the shade. “That brat. She’s over there getting high without me.”

Julian had been stretched out under full sun. It seemed to have relieved the chills he’d been experiencing. He’d pulled his hat over his face. He lifted it and squinted up at me. “You were free of the stuff for a few months. Is the craving still as strong?”

“It seems that way.”

A car had pulled into the parking lot behind us, but I didn’t pay any attention. My full focus was on Sugar and her little circle of male admirers, who were gazing at her like she was a friggin’ movie star. She smiled at something one of them said and then looked my direction. The smile faded, and she said something to her new friends. They looked back over their shoulders. With movements that were so obvious they were laughable, they put out the joint. Sugar’s tense expression flashed my way again. I looked over my shoulder. A police car had pulled into the lot. Two cops climbed out of the cruiser.

“It’s about time,” one of the women called to the officers. “We’re just about to cook the burgers.”

The cop with a shaved head and round belly pushed his shades up onto his head. “Some of us Sutters have to work. I want mine medium-rare.”

Julian and I picked up our things and walked casually to the far side of the parking lot where we were out of view of the party and its newest attendees. “We need to get Sugar out of there,” I said. “The party is over.” Just as I said it, she came running toward us, looking slightly alarmed, but, at the same time, laughing.

“Go,” she called before she reached us. We turned and ran down the street, away from the park and out of sight of the Sutter family reunion. Out of pity for Julian, who was having a hell of a time keeping up with us, we slowed. When it seemed we were far enough, we walked.

Julian stopped suddenly and, still holding his precious computer, he stooped down and puked up what little food he’d had inside of him.

“You poor thing, Jules,” Sugar said. “I’m sorry about that, but while we were getting ready to put burgers on the grill, my dear great aunt called. I ran.”

I laughed. “They were probably more upset than pissed. Something tells me the real Amber wouldn’t have won them over like the counterfeit one.”

“They were super nice people. It would be cool to belong to a big family like that. Oh, one good thing though . . .” She fished something out of her pocket. It was three joints. “My cousins were very generous. I left with some party favors.”

I grabbed her, and she laughed wildly as I spun her around. “I fucking love you, Amber Sutter.”