Stay At Home Dead (9 page)

Read Stay At Home Dead Online

Authors: Jeffrey Allen

BOOK: Stay At Home Dead
12.26Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
21
Odell’s truck was a station wagon, a hideous-looking brown and tan thing, complete with faux wood paneling on the sides, circa
The Brady Bunch
era.
He took me around to the back and busted out the comb again, running it carefully through the hair. “So. How’d ya hear about this?”
“Odell, I have to be honest with you,” I said. “I’m still not sure what we’re talking about here.”
He placed the comb in his back pocket and checked his reflection in the dirty back window of the station wagon. “Killer Kids, man.” He nodded approvingly at his reflection, then turned to me. “Gonna be huge, Ace.”
Killer Kids. Of course.
Odell pulled the latch on the back door of the station wagon and rooted around in the interior. Piles of clothes, empty boxes, paper bags, and soda cups flew around as he searched for whatever was beneath.
Finally, he extracted a long yellow tube several inches in diameter and slammed the tailgate shut. He walked around to the front of the wagon, and I followed.
He removed the leather jacket, tossed it high on the hood, exposing rounded shoulders and forearms that were nearly as white as the T-shirt.
“It’s gonna be beautiful, man,” he said, chuckling as he popped the top on the tube and a roll of papers slid out. “I’m telling you.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Me and Benny, we worked our tails off on this,” he said, unrolling the paper across the hood of the wagon. “Shame he’s gonna miss it all.”
I expected blueprints but got what looked like something Carly might be capable of concocting. Crudely drawn buildings in colored pencil were strewn across a long piece of butcher paper. Little cartoonish-looking people were drawn as if walking into the biggest square building on the drawing. A big flag above that building proclaimed
KILLER KIDS
!
My first thought: would the exclamation point actually be part of the name?
“This here’s the main building,” Odell said, pointing to the big building with the flag. “It’s gonna have a couple of gyms, a swimming pool, some party rooms, and some other stuff I’m not sure of yet. Maybe some martial arts type of room, where the little suckers can karate chop wood or bust cement with their heads. I don’t know yet.”
His finger slid to a smaller square adjacent to the big one. “This is the weight room.” His finger slid again, this time to a rectangle colored in blue with a little boat drawn in it. “Outdoor pool here.” He grinned at me. “Kids can swim inside or outside.”
“Sure.” I pointed to a big orange circle next to the outdoor pool. “What’s that?”
“My office,” he said. “Thought it’d be cool to build it in a circle.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that.
His finger moved back across the page to the opposite side of the main building, to a red and black bull’s-eye. “This here, though, is what’s gonna make Killer Kids different.”
“What is it?”
He folded his arms across his chest, the paunch beneath the T-shirt pushing out a little farther. “The weapons area.”
“Excuse me?”
“Weapons, Ace,” he said, craning his neck at me. “We’re gonna teach them little buggers how to shoot.”
I glanced at the bull’s-eye. “To shoot? Guns?”
“Lotta folks own guns around here,” he said confidently. “Huntin’, protectin’ themselves, shootin’ squirrels, whatever. The way I figure, kids better learn how to use those guns and we can teach ’em.”
I scanned the street.
I checked the cars parked next to Odell’s.
I looked behind me.
I was absolutely certain someone was playing a joke on me, but I could find no evidence of cameras in the vicinity, looking to capture my reaction.
I looked at Odell. He smiled back at me, arms still folded across his chest, fake pompadour standing tall.
Odell Barnabas was completely serious.
“You’re going to have a shooting range at a kids’ play facility?” I asked.
“Not a play facility, Ace. I’m callin’ it a recreation complex.”
“You think parents are going to be okay with this?”
He nodded. “Sure. We’re providin’ a necessary service for the little buggers.” He grinned. “Don’t want anyone shootin’ an eye out.” The grin faded into a solemn expression. “I figure we’ll offer a week’s worth of shootin’ lessons to generate membership.” He tapped his skull with his index finger. “Can’t forget the business side of things, Ace.”
I was trying to picture elementary school kids walking around with goggles, earplugs, and sweeping up their spent brass.
“Don’t you think there might some insurance issues?” I asked, trying to be diplomatic. Explaining that guns and kids and Odell weren’t going to mix obviously wasn’t going to fly.
He looked at me like I was crazy. “Insurance? Ace, my truck here’s covered and I rent my house. Not sure what insurance has to do with anything.”
Oh. My.
“I can get you in for as little as ten thousand,” Odell said, leaning against the wagon. “I’ve got several silent investors, fellas who just want me to turn their money into more money. Of course, you could buy in with more. Bigger buy in, bigger return.”
I needed to change the direction of the conversation before Santa Claus drove by with the Easter Bunny.
“How much did Benny buy in with?” I asked.
He rolled his shoulders a couple of times and fiddled with the cigarette behind his ear. “Thirty. He was workin’ on another twenty.”
“Thirty thousand?”
“Yep. He was all in, Ace.” He shook his head, and his expression soured for the first time. “Not like his wife.”
“Shayna didn’t like the idea?”
He pulled the cigarette off his ear and rolled it around between his fingers. “Shayna. Things got kinda messed up with her, Ace.”
“How’s that?”
He shoved the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and fished out a lighter from his jeans. “Shayna liked me.” He eyed me with a half smile. “If you know what I mean.” He held the lighter up to the edge of the cigarette. “But she never liked the idea of the recreation complex, Ace. And when things ... hit the skids with her, she told Benny she didn’t want him to do it.”
I wasn’t sure if I’d ever met another human being so annoying. He talked in circles, he called me Ace, he wore the most ridiculous toupee I’d ever seen, and he dressed like a goofy Elvis.
He lit the end of the cigarette and inhaled deeply. His cheeks bulged for a moment, and the color rose in his face. Then he spiraled into a coughing fit an asthmatic would’ve been appalled at.
The cigarette fell out of his mouth, and if I’d been inside the restaurant and heard him, I would’ve thought someone was attacking him, his hacking was so loud.
Fake hair and a fake smoker, too, apparently. He got the coughing fit under control and smashed the cigarette under his boot.
“Are you telling me you had an affair with Shayna?” I asked when it appeared he was no longer dying from smoke inhalation.
He grabbed his jacket from the hood of the wagon, extracted another cigarette from an interior pocket, and wisely stuck it behind his ear rather than lighting it. “I’m not telling you anything, Ace.” The half smile appeared again as he slipped the jacket on. “But that girl was a tornado in the sack.”
I wanted to believe he was lying. If you offered any woman the chance to sleep with this guy and, say, Bob the cat, I thought most would’ve taken their time making their decision before settling on Bob. What in the world could Shayna possibly have found attractive about him? For that matter, why would Benny have even been friends with the guy, much less handed over thirty thousand to him?
“So you in?” Odell Barnabas asked. “’Cause I’m really ready to get goin’ on this baby, Ace. And you don’t wanna miss the ride.”
“Gonna have to think on it, Odell,” I said, heading for my minivan. “Gonna have to think on it.”
“Don’t give it too much thought,” Odell called after me. “Too much thinkin’ will get you in trouble, Ace.”
If that were true, Odell Barnabas would probably go his entire life without getting in trouble.
22
It was Carly’s late day at school, when she stayed an extra hour and had lunch at Rettler-Mott. Julianne and I had made plans to have an early lunch. I thought it was a ploy to keep me out of trouble. If that was truly her intent, we should’ve had breakfast.
One of the reasons we’ve stayed in Rose Petal is its proximity to Dallas. A twenty-minute drive to the south and we’re in the middle of a big city. Rose Petal had changed because of its location north of the city. When I was growing up, it felt like a small town. But as Dallas expanded, so did the suburbs and the amount of time people were willing to spend on the road commuting. As a result, Rose Petal was having an identity crisis. It was attempting to hang on to its small town feel while coming to the realization that small towns don’t have populations that are growing by the day.
After Julianne graduated from A&M, she’d gone to UT for law school, something that many folks found sacrilege, myself included. You’re an Aggie or you’re a Longhorn. No one is an AgHorn. Nonetheless, she graduated from law school at UT and immediately went to work for a small firm in Dallas. The small firm had gone from small to medium to large in the decade she’d been there, and she’d been smart to stick around. At thirty-f ive, she was already a managing partner at Gaylin, Olson, and Armstrong.
Her office was over in the Park Cities, a stretch of real estate comprised of both Highland Park and University Park, near SMU. It was prime digs, the land of old Dallas wealth. As a kid, it seemed worlds away. It still felt odd that Julianne worked there every day.
I was stopped at a red light a block away from the office and I could see her out front, talking on her cell phone.
A decade and a half ago, during my first year at A&M, I’d seen her standing outside a bar, talking on a pay phone. Dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. Denim skirt and a long-sleeve blouse. Great eyes, even better legs.
I was with some buddies and waved them on into the bar ahead of me. Too tough to pick up girls when your friends were behind them, making obscene gestures.
She hung up the phone as I approached and looked me up and down, her expression telling me she wasn’t terribly impressed.
I pointed up to the sign above the bar. “This a fun place?”
“If you like beer and being groped,” she replied.
“I like beer, but I
love
being groped.”
She didn’t want to laugh, but she couldn’t fight it off. She gave me the once-over again. “You’re a football player, right? You look like one, all big and ... dopey looking. Should I be swooning?”
“I am not a football player,” I said, the words stinging even as they came out. “I am dopey looking, though. The swooning choice is all yours.”
She smiled. Teeth that matched the eyes and legs. “I think you’re lying. Besides, I know who you are.”
That caught me by surprise. “I wouldn’t lie about being dopey looking. And how do you know me?”
“You
couldn’t
lie about being dopey looking. We went to high school together.” She locked her eyes on me. “You are Deuce Winters, football star to the masses.”
I bent down and rolled up the pant leg of my jeans, exposing the foot-long scar that ran diagonally across my right knee, and tried desperately to remember this girl. I was having a hard time believing I didn’t remember her.
“Ouch,” she said.
“Yeah. You really went to Rose Petal?”
She nodded and brushed the hair away from her face. “I was two years behind you.”
That made some sense. In high school you paid attention to your peers, not the ones nipping at your heels. But girls were a different story. It didn’t matter what year they were. It only mattered how hot they were, and this girl would’ve been hotter than hot as a toddler.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” she asked, amused.
I thought about lying, trying to bluff my way through the conversation. But she seemed too sharp for any of my tricks.
“I don’t,” I said. “I can’t believe it and I’m sorry.”
I let the pant leg fall down and stood back up.
“Do you show your scar to everyone you meet?” she asked.
“Just the ones who accuse me of being dopey looking.”
“Hardly an accusation when you copped to it.”
I laughed. Loudly. She was knockout gorgeous and funny and a wiseass. A sucker combination.
How
had I missed this girl in Rose Petal?
“I take it you don’t like this place,” I said, nodding at the bar.
“Not particularly.”
“Any place you do like?”
She thought for a moment; then her eyes lit up. “Dairy Queen.”
“They don’t serve beer at DQ.”
“No. But they make those big peanut butter parfaits that have an alcoholic effect on me.”
I nodded. “Okay. Would you like to go to Dairy Queen and have a peanut butter parfait? On me?”
She raise a pretty eyebrow. “There’s usually no groping at Dairy Queen. Can you live with that?”
I pretended to think about it. “For one night, I guess I can.”
She stuck out her hand. “I’m Julianne Willis.”
I felt my jaw start to fall. “Willis? Tony Willis’s little sister?”
“One and the same.”
Tony was a year ahead of me in school, but we’d played football together since junior high. I vaguely remembered a little sister sitting on the sidelines. The last time I remembered seeing her, she was wearing glasses and had her nose in a book.
I really was a dope.
I shook her hand. Soft, warm, made my heart flutter. “Deuce.”
“I already told you I knew that,” she said, squeezing my hand. “It’s a silly name, by the way.”
“Not sillier than my real name,” I said. “Eldrick. Like my dad. I was the second. Hence, the deuce.”
“Clever.”
“I can’t believe I don’t remember you,” I said.
“Well, Deuce. Play your cards right and I might not hold it against you. And maybe there will be a little groping in your future.”
We’d been together ever since. It was clichéd and silly and cutesy and lame. But Julianne was my best friend, and I thought of our first real meeting every time I saw her standing in the distance.
I pulled up to the curb, and she got in, still yammering on her phone.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’m not impressed, John. We’re planning on filing the motion, and I think you should plan on running for cover.” She listened intently, a thin smile spreading across her face. “Let me know then.” She shut the phone and dropped it in her purse and looked at me. “Hello.”
“Hello. Having fun?”
“Always. I’m suckering that guy so badly, he’s gonna wanna find a new job when I’m done with him,” she said gleefully. “I am so good at this lawyering stuff.”
I checked the mirror and pulled away from the curb. “I never had a doubt.”
“So. What’s up with you?”
“I’m taking you out tomorrow night,” I said.
“Really?” she asked, surprised. “Where? And, more importantly, why?”
“How would you like to go to a witch hunt?”
She clicked her teeth together, then blew air quietly between them. “Before you tell me about the rest of our date, can I get some food in my stomach?”
“Your wish is my command.”
“Right.”
We found a table at a little BBQ joint a couple of blocks away, and she’d polished off half of her brisket sandwich before she could look me in the eye again. “So. This witch hunt. I’m assuming you’re the witch?”
“I’m thinking I should wear a hat and bring a broom,” I said, wiping sauce from my chin. “Really make a statement.”
“I think you should stop trying to be funny and just tell me what’s going on.”
I told her about the meeting at school.
To my surprise, she didn’t chastise me like she had the previous day for doing stupid things. She was actually more irritated than I was.
“Let me get this right,” she said, picking up her sandwich, then dropping it back on the plate. “The WORMS think they can just remove you for no reason?”
“Well, they think they have a reason.”
She made a face like I’d fed her a spoonful of dirt. “Please. Even if you were under investigation—and to this point, as far as we know, you are not—and even with the restraining order on file, none of that has anything to do with you providing snacks to a roomful of three-year-olds on occasion.”
“I tried to tell them that.”
Julianne bit into her sandwich like she was biting off Sharon Ann’s head. “They have so picked the wrong man to fight with.”
I puffed out my chest, grateful for my wife’s belief in me. “Well, thank you. I think so too. If they think they can just push me around ...”
“Because they have no idea what they are going to have to deal with when I get in that room,” she said, stabbing the air with her fork.
“You?” I asked. “When you get in that room?”
She nodded and stared at the fork, thoughtfully. “I just might make them cry. Every single one of them.”
I finished off my own sandwich. “You don’t think I can handle this myself ?”
She threw her napkin on the table. “Of course I think you can handle this. But I think I might be able to help.” She shook her head, narrowing her eyes. “These broads are gonna be so sorry they picked on my husband.”
I wasn’t entirely sure I was comfortable with her fighting my preschool battles. But after getting a load of the look in her eyes at that moment, I wasn’t prepared to do anything but agree with my awesome, awesome wife.

Other books

The Ghost of Mistletoe Mary by Sue Ann Jaffarian
A Love for All Time by Bertrice Small
The Wilt Inheritance by Tom Sharpe
Heart of a Knight by Barbara Samuel
Jumpstart Your Creativity by Shawn Doyle and Steven Rowell, Steven Rowell
You Can't Hurry Love by Beth K. Vogt
The Shining Badge by Gilbert Morris