Authors: Jeffrey Allen
Stay At Home Dead (5 page)
9
Mitch knew the guy at the rental agency and told me he’d take care of getting the rental returned so I could take the new car. It was still too early to pick up Carly, and going home would just mean jumping right back in the car to go get her after a few minutes of doing nothing. I was contemplating how to waste the time when my cell rang.
The number came up as restricted on the readout. I answered it, hoping it was a telemarketer to mess with. “Hello?”
“Who is this?” a disjointed female voice asked.
“Who is this?”
She mumbled something that I couldn’t understand. The voice wasn’t disjointed. It was drunk.
“Who is this?” I repeated.
“How do you not know my voice, Deuce?”
“Deuce” came out as “Douche.” “Because whoever you are, you’re a little hard to understand.”
“Jesus!” A deep, frustrated sigh. “It’s Shayna, you dumb ass.”
Wasn’t expecting that. “Oh. Hi.”
A ridiculous cackle ripped through the phone. “‘Oh, hi’? That’s all I get?”
I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say. She caught me off guard, and it had been a long time since we’d spoken.
“I’m sorry about Benny,” I said finally.
The cackle burst into my ear again. “Benny, Schmenny, Wenny.” She snorted. “I want to see you.”
“Shayna, I’m not sure that’s a great idea.”
“Because you killed my husband?”
“I didn’t kill Benny.”
“Yeah, sure.” She stifled a burp. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to let you take advantage of me. Your precious little what’s-her-name doesn’t have to worry.”
Well, that was good to know.
“Shayna, I don’t—”
“Oh, just shut up and get over here,” she said, running the words together. “My husband’s dead. It’s the do you can least.”
“The what?”
“I don’t know,” she said, sounding like she might fall asleep. “I’m just sad and want to see an old friend. Is that so bad?”
I didn’t have an answer for that.
She cleared her throat. “Plus, I have a crap load of vodka to share with you.”
Who can resist vodka at midmorning?
10
Before I could smack myself in the back of the head, I pointed the new minivan in the direction of Shayna Barnes’s house.
I hadn’t seen her in months, but that didn’t mean I didn’t know where she lived. That was a common thing in Rose Petal. We didn’t need the Internet or Google to find each other. Those of us that had been around long enough, word just got around. I couldn’t think of anyone that didn’t know that we lived in one of the newer subdivisions within Rose Petal. Likewise, it seemed as if I always just knew that Benny and Shayna lived out on the west end of town, right before Rose Petal gave way to the rolling farmland that checkered the landscape out toward Fort Worth.
And I was curious why she had called me. I was sure the vodka was part of it, but it was the rest of the motivation behind her call that was gnawing at my brain, knowing that it was her husband that had been found in my van. Coincidence?
No way.
The Barnes house sat on a corner lot at the entrance to their subdivision. The red brick the house was built from had faded to a dull pink, and the paint around the upstairs windows was peeling and cracked. The lawn was a mixture of brown grass and green thistle, dying of thirst. Weeds snuck out of the cracks in the driveway. The entire home appeared sad.
I turned off the engine and sat there, staring at the big oak front door. I had no business being there. I was there out of selfishness, to try and figure out what had happened to Benny so I could extricate myself from the entire situation. Shayna called me, but I was there for my own reasons.
And that was probably wrong.
I put my hand on the key, ready to turn the car back on and leave, when the front door opened and Shayna walked out.
Actually, she stumbled out.
Her long blond hair appeared dirty, unwashed, sticking out at odd angles. Mascara clung to the edges of her eyes, smeared and blotchy. She wore a wrinkled yellow blouse, untucked from the black, wrinkled slacks on her legs. One foot was bare; the other stuck in a black pump.
She stumbled out of the door and righted herself just before teetering off the front porch. She braced herself against the brick facade. “What do you want, buddy?”
I took my hand off the key, pulled it out of the ignition, and stepped out of the van.
I came around the front of the car and stood on the sidewalk. “Hey, Shayna.”
She squinted at me, like I was standing in a fog. “Deuce?”
I nodded.
“Wow. Didn’t think you’d actually come over.” She stood up a little straighter, put her hands on her hips, looked past me, and smirked. “Nice minivan. Come with a diaper bag?”
“Haven’t checked the trunk yet.”
She squinted at me again, trying to see if I was serious. She was my age, thirty-six, but she looked about fifty.
“Benny’s dead,” she said.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
She snorted. “Sure.”
“I am, Shayna. I’m sorry.”
She rolled her eyes. “Please. Benny was an ass.” She lifted a hand off her hip, shot a thumb over her shoulder toward the house. “You wanna drink?”
“No. Thanks.”
“Well, I do.” She turned toward the house. “Guess I’ll have yours, too.”
I followed her inside and shut the door behind me. The house smelled like a bar, stale alcohol and cigarette smoke smothering me. The entryway opened up to an expansive living room, and Shayna plopped herself on a long leather sofa, the coffee table cluttered with a couple of vodka bottles, several glasses, and an ashtray.
She held up a half-empty bottle. “You sure?”
“I’m good.”
“Excellent.” She unscrewed the top. “Don’t even have to use a glass, then.” She held the bottle to her lips and took a healthy gulp. She swallowed, smiled, and set the bottle down. “Bet I look good, huh?”
She looked like someone had parked a boat on her for several days and she had just finally managed to crawl out from under it. In high school she took pride in looking better than every other girl in town. It wasn’t an arrogant thing, but she knew how attractive she was and she took the job seriously. Long blond hair, a face carved in porcelain, features that had been drawn with a steady and exacting hand that was clearly a fan of the curvy women you’d find in comic books. Sexy emerald eyes. She was the one girl that caused all the boys at Rose Petal High to shake their head wistfully as she walked by, knowing that she wasn’t just out of their league.
She owned their league and banned them from playing in it.
Unless, you know, you were a football star bound for supposed greatness.
“You look fine,” I said.
She laughed much too hard and smacked her knee with her hand. “You always were funny, Deuce.” Her laughter came to an abrupt halt, and she eyed me with suspicion. “Why’d you kill Benny?”
“I didn’t, Shayna.”
“They found him in the back of your station wagon.”
“Minivan. I found him. I didn’t kill him.”
“Everyone says you did.”
“Everyone is full of it.”
“He was gonna sue you.”
“I know.”
“So is that why you killed him?”
“I didn’t kill him, Shayna.”
She shrugged and took another swig from the bottle, keeping her eyes on me. She set the bottle back down. “Our marriage sucked.”
Uncomfortable was an understatement for how I felt at that moment.
“Shayna, look, I ...”
“He got fired from his job,” she said, ignoring me. “From the stupid rug store. Who gets fired from a rug store? Is that even possible?”
I figured her questions were rhetorical, so I kept quiet.
“Spending all his time on his big plans to get rich,” she said with contempt. “Didn’t do anything but get him fired and us poor.” She grabbed the bottle by the neck and took a hard pull.
“When did he get f ired?” I asked, more to get her mouth off the bottle than to make conversation.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Two weeks ago. Got caught using the computer at the store for personal business. Working on his business plan.”
“Business plan?”
She stared hard at me and folded her arms across her chest. “Why did you break up with me?”
“You broke up with me, Shayna. Believe it had something to do with me not being a football player anymore.”
She ran a hand through her hair. “Oh. Right. Great move, Shayna. I’ll bet
you
wouldna got fired from the rug store. Not Deuce Winters.”
you
wouldna got fired from the rug store. Not Deuce Winters.”
I wanted to tell her that I most likely never would’ve taken a job at a rug store, but it didn’t seem appropriate.
“What business plan, Shayna?”
She stared at me like I was crazy. “What?”
“You said Benny was working on a business plan. That’s why he got fired?”
“Yep.” She licked her lips and made a sound like a balloon losing its air. “So stupid. All those kids running around in some big old gym. Shoot. Benny didn’t even like kids. We didn’t even have kids. But he was gonna dump all of our money into some freakin’ rec center.”
She was making no sense. “Shayna. What are you talking about?”
She polished off the bottle and dropped it on the sofa next to her. “Killer Kids.”
11
“Excuse me?”
She rattled the windows with an enormous belch. “No. Excuse me.” She giggled, then made an exaggerated attempt to sit up straight and smooth out her clothes. “Killer Kids.”
“I’m not following.”
She let out a big sigh, like I was the dumbest person she’d ever spoken to.
“Killer Kids,” she annunciated very slowly. “A place for the little snots to play.” She saw the confused look on my face and sighed again. “Jeez, Deuce. Don’t you have a little kid to ride in that minivan? Okay. Do you know that place Tough Tykes? Over near the high school?”
I nodded. It was, in fact, all the rage. It was like one-stop shopping for children’s activities. Gymnastics, swimming, martial arts, sports, parties. You name it, they offered it at Tough Tykes. We got the big, glossy mailer each month, giving the rundown on all the classes they were offering. It was all housed in a giant warehouse the size of a supermarket, and the classes were outrageously priced. Judging by their usually full parking lot, though, I was in the minority in my opinion on their prices.
“Benny wanted to build one just like it,” Shayna said. “A competitor. He thought he could do it better and make us rich.” She shook her head. “He and Odell had big plans.”
“Odell?”
“Odell Barnabas. One of his partners in the whole stupid thing,” she said, disgusted. “He used to work at the rug store, too.”
“He doesn’t work there anymore?”
“Hell, he got fired before Benny.”
“For using the computer?”
“No.” She waved a hand in the air. “And you wouldn’t believe me if I told you why he got fired. Just believe me that Odell is a freaking moron.”
Sounded like an ideal business partner. “Anyway, Odell and Benny met a few times with Jimmy to find out how to run one of these places,” Shayna said.
“Who’s Jimmy?”
“Jimmy Z. Landry. He owns Tough Tykes.”
That didn’t jibe. “Why did they go talk to the guy who would be their competitor?”
Shayna’s face screwed up in agitation. “I don’t know, Deuce. If he wasn’t dead, I’d ask him for you, all right?” She paused, seemed to reorganize her thoughts. “If you hadn’t killed him.”
There was no conviction in her voice when she said it. She was just trying to provoke me. I didn’t want to make it worse. But it did irritate me just to hear her say that I killed him, as if the more people said it, the more people might believe it.
“Why’d you call me Shayna?” I asked. “Why did you want me to come over?”
“I wish you hadn’t killed him,” she repeated.
“Shayna. Why did you call me?”
“It was mean of you to kill my husband.” Between the alcohol and the grief, it was clear I wasn’t going to get an answer from her.
“I need to go,” I said.
She picked up the empty vodka bottle, spun it in her hands, and mumbled something I couldn’t understand.
“What?” I said.
“I shouldn’t have broken up with you,” she said, her eyes filling up.
Eighteen years ago I felt the same way. She shouldn’t have broken up with me. I was dumb and in love with her then. Couldn’t see beyond her pretty face. She cut me loose three nights after the surgery, me standing on crutches in her driveway, she explaining that she just didn’t have feelings for me anymore. Like the stitches in my knee somehow made me less attractive.
It had taken a while for me to get over it, but when I did, I laughed about it. The superficiality of our relationship, past tense, embarrassed me, and I was glad to be out of it. And then I finally met up with Julianne, because I’d been too stupid to notice her in high school and never thought about being with Shayna or any other woman ever again. I found the best, and once you find the best, you don’t look back.
“I’m sorry about Benny,” I said, heading for the door. “I really am.”
She was sobbing now, but she pushed herself up from the sofa and staggered around the table. “I know. Thank you.” She looked at me through her tears. “I really wish you wouldn’t have killed him, though.”
I got out of Shayna’s house before she could say anything else to me.
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