One Way Fare Page 4

  METRO 1890, she read on the side of the train waiting at the platform. No idea what it means, but we’re pretty short on options. The Pitchforks hadn’t followed them yet, but they might just be grabbing a couple bottles of courage first. The train whistle blew and the doors were starting to close. Thomas was leaning harder on her, and she shoved him into the empty car as the train started. She barely got him onto the first bench seat and stared at the hand she pulled from around his waist. Blood, she thought, is really red.

  GABY, Chapter 3

  1972, Seattle

  “If there’s another way to look at this, I don’t know what it is.” Gaby stood up and stretched. Since early morning she and Luic hadn’t left the dining room of his suite for more than a few minutes at a time. As she presented each piece of the puzzle she’d been assembling for the past weeks, he’d become a statue sitting across from her neat piles of notes.

  Luic walked to the door and stared as if he had never learned to work the knob. Without looking back, he repeated, “Not. Harry.”

  “Wait.” Gaby didn’t know what she could say, but the flash of desolated loss in his eyes just before he stood up meant she had to try. “Just … wait.”

  She called home and luckily Mrs. Allen was still there. “An emergency.” Gaby didn’t take her eyes from Luic as she spoke urgently into the phone. “Please stay the night, and I’ll make it up to you somehow.”

  Then she went to Luic and opened the door for him. “What now?”

  “What now” turned out to be a bar near the waterfront. Luic started drinking in the limo. Gaby sat silently across from him. She followed him into the bar, but even with his dark glasses, people quickly recognized him. Leaving his fans without a word, he headed for another bar. It was darker and louder and it took longer, but being spotted signaled his departure. She lost track of the bars and the drinks.

  Gaby was exhausted and frightened when they ended up in the foot passenger line at Mukilteo for the last ferry to Whidbey Island. They hadn’t seen the limo since the first bar, but Luic waved down a cab and handed the driver $100 to take them to the ferry. He still hadn’t said a word to her.

  He strode to the end of the passenger walkway and stared into the water below. She wasn’t sure he even knew she was there. As she listened to the waves slapping their melody against the pier, she thought about the one time she’d heard him sing. For a surprise birthday present, friends had chipped in to get her a ticket to one of his concerts. That night Harry had long since announced their last song, but the audience was on their feet screaming for more. Luic kept giving them song after song. Remembering the poetry of the music he’d written and his joy in sharing with the audience, she wondered now what it would take for the real Luic to come from behind the icy mask. Could he even do that without a thousand screaming fans?

  When the ferry arrived, she touched his arm and led him aboard. On Whidbey Island, they ended up in a small pub, gently lit by lamps advertising different beers. A handful of other customers perched on round stools against the mellow-aged bar and paid no more attention to them than to the animal heads lining the walls.

  Luic sat down and ordered a drink. The bartender looked at her, and she shook her head. When his second drink arrived, Luic spoke to the glass on the table in front of him. “When I was thirteen, I was jumped by a gang at school. They were pretty much beating the shit out of me when Harry came from nowhere and laid into them. They were all bigger and older than either of us, and there was no way he could have done anything but get beat up too. We were both in the hospital for weeks—two broken noses and an assortment of broken ribs, internal injuries … you name it.

  “We win more often now, but I can’t even count the times Harry fought for me. He’s smart and he could have gone to any college, but I wanted to try the band, so he came along. Last year we ended up at a party where everyone was pretty messed up on just about everything you could smoke, sniff, or pop. One guy came at me with a knife. Harry stepped in front of me and got carved across his stomach. We had to do the last three concerts of the tour without him.”

  Luic finally looked up from his drink. “I’m not a good person.” For a moment, his blue eyes were perfectly clear and focused on her face. “I get drunk and I sleep with strangers and I don’t like people. But Harry likes everyone, and they like him. He’s good.” He glared at her. “So no, this isn’t Harry.”

  They stayed until the bar closed. The bartender called a cab, and Gaby asked for the nearest motel. The Port Whidbey hotel itself was booked up, the sleepy clerk told her. But they did have a vacancy in one of their waterfront cabins. “Plenty of privacy,” he added.

  Earlier in the evening she had picked up Luic’s wallet. Now she peeled off a few bills and signed “Mr. and Mrs. Parker” into the register. She took a quick look at the cabin, which was tiny but clean and decorated with solid furniture from the thirties. With the help of the cab driver, she managed to get Luic into the cabin where he collapsed on the only bed.

  “I don’t like you.” He spoke with the careful dignity of the truly drunk.

  “Well, you’re not my favorite person right now, either.” He closed his eyes as she pulled off his boots. “But the last ferry is gone, so we’re stuck with each other.”

  “Okay.” He waved vaguely. “I’ll sleep with you. Take off your clothes. And take down the hair thing.”

  “You may be the god of rock and roll. But at the moment, Romeo, you’re drunk and you don’t smell too good. So even if I’m the only girl in the history of Luic to say it, no thanks.”

  He opened one eye. “Not the only one,” he reported sadly. “Happens a lot.”

  She laughed, pulled a blanket over him, and went to work on the room. Luckily, there were only three pictures on the wall, so all she had to do was put the largest into the middle and straighten them. She frowned at Luic’s boots and finally placed one on either side of the little desk chair with his jacket folded neatly on top. In the bathroom she centered the small bottle of shampoo between two slivers of paper-wrapped soap. Two cups covered in plastic went on either side of two stacked cups containing the toothbrushes and toothpaste she’d begged from the desk clerk.

  Gaby looked over the room, sighed, and went over to make the best of the surprisingly comfortable armchair. When she heard him cursing and fumbling his way to the bathroom a few hours later, she smiled and went back to sleep.

  “Good morning,” sang Gaby as she entered the cabin carrying a sack of donuts and balancing two large coffees.

  Luic covered his head with a pillow and moaned. “Stop shouting.”

  “Look what I have,” she enticed. “Coffee and carbs! And aspirin.”

  Another groan was the only answer. She put the coffee and the bottle of aspirin on the table next to the bed and stepped back. It took a few minutes, but the pillow came off and he reached for the bottle. After an unsuccessful one-handed attempt to remove the cap, he imperiously held it out to her.

  “What’s the matter?” Her voice dripped sugared concern. “Did the mean accountant buy the aspirin with the rock-star-proof packaging?” She shook out two tablets and held them out to him. At his narrow-eyed glare, she added two more. He threw them into his mouth and washed them down with the coffee.

  “So, not a morning person,” Gaby observed to the room in general. She took her coffee down to the water lapping gently in front of the cabin. A few minutes later she heard the shower running inside. Taking a sip of her coffee, she looked at her watch and finally went back in to rap on the bathroom door.

  “You’ve been in there for half an hour,” she called through the door. “My sister Carey holds the world record for shower time, but you’re giving her serious competition. How about you save some for the…”

  The door opened and all thought vanished. He stood with dripping hair, one of the little hotel towels trying valiantly to circle his waist.

  “All right,” she said reverently.

  “I think I remember you refusing
to sleep with me last night.” He smirked. “Change your mind?”

  “Hell no. I like the view, but the price tag is way too high.”

  He didn’t look surprised.

  Luic trailed her down to the waterfront where she sat on a beached log. In silence, he finished his coffee and ate all the donuts. Then he absently took her cup and drained it as well. He eyed the donut in her hand, and she defensively stuffed it into her mouth.

  “Nice,” he commented. “Mind telling me where we are?”

  “Do you say that to all the girls who spend the night with you?” she asked around a mouthful of donut.

  “No, usually I start with ‘What’s your name?’”

  Gaby choked on donut. After over-enthusiastic back pounding from Luic, she managed to gasp, “Whidbey.”

  He nodded. “My wallet’s gone.” He didn’t seem surprised by that, either.

  “I took it.” He must be feeling better, she realized, because the eyebrow was back in play. “You were handing out hundred dollar bills right and left. As your accountant, I thought it would be better if I took charge of the finances.” She thought for a moment. “But if all your cab drivers get $100 tips, I’m revising my theories about where your money has actually gone.”

  He held out his hand and she slapped down his wallet. “There are receipts for everything I spent,” she pointed out. “In order and itemized.”

  He stared.

  “What?” She sounded defensive.

  “I can honestly say this is the first time a woman I spent the night with gave me itemized receipts. Who are you?”

  “I’m a normal accountant.” It was a prayer and an anthem.

  “And I told you I’ve never been normal.” He reached out to tuck a strand of pale, windblown hair behind her ear. Before she could move, he wrapped an arm around her and leaned forward. The other hand caressed her cheek and slipped around to cradle the back of her head. She smelled the shampoo on his still-damp hair and felt the bristle of his beard. And then he kissed her.

  One of Gaby’s friends in college loved romance novels and had collected a stack of them. After too much wine one night, they took turns reading the last page, the one with The Kiss. As each read her page aloud, she compared the descriptions of heaving bosoms and melting everything else to her own experiences. While Gaby didn’t have much to add, in the telling she tried to make the most of her few relationships.

  But nothing in her own experience or those related by her girlfriends over their wine prepared her for Luic. She was leaning into him, her mouth already opening, when she felt him smile. It was as though one of the waves softly rolling at their feet had reared up and slapped her with a face full of icy water.

  “Hey!” She pulled back and stood up. “We are not going there. You didn’t have to ask my name this morning because I’m your accountant. I have responsibilities and you have…”

  “What do I have?”

  “A lot of missing money and a best friend who has questions to answer.”

  It was past noon before Luic’s limousine crossed on the ferry and arrived at the motel to pick them up. While they waited, Gaby checked in with Mrs. Allen and assured her she would be home before the twins got back from school. On the trip back to Seattle, she told him her sister would love to see his limo. “Last Christmas, Connor and Carey got my little car a present. It was a bumper sticker that said, ‘Don’t honk. I’m pedaling as fast as I can.’“ Luic watched her face light up with gentle laughter as she explained. “He was my father’s car, an elderly lemon-yellow VW bug, the old kind with the engine in the back. Dad showed me how to take care of him. I named him Gus, and he has his aches and pains, but I love him. I feel like I’d be cheating on him to ever get a different car.”

  Luic told her he would be working on the last two new songs for Kaleidoscope that afternoon, but he would have the driver drop her at the ferry terminal before he headed back to his hotel.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” she said. “Why do you live in a hotel? And why Seattle, for that matter?”

  “It was about as far as I could get from Louisiana, and I don’t like LA. I was thinking of buying a place on one of the islands.” He looked her directly in the eye. “But it turns out people who live on islands can be pretty nasty.”

  “A joke?” she marveled. “Were you actually attempting humor?”

  As the limo paused outside the ferry pier, he put a hand over hers. “Last night… Why did you do it? Is there something you want?”

  Gaby pulled her hand away. “Oh, Gabrielle,” she gushed. “Dearest Gaby! There are no words to express my thanks for taking care of me last night. You are truly a wonderful human being!”

  She looked at him expectantly.

  “I never asked you to do it,” Luic said.

  She waited.

  “But thanks,” he ground out reluctantly.

  “Baby steps,” she told him. “Eventually you’ll be able to say thank you all by your own widdle self.”

  He gave an unwilling grin.

  As she left, she called over her shoulder, “Of course, maybe I just did it for the job security. You wouldn’t want me spreading the news Bad Boy leMuir knows how to use the T-word.” His laughter followed her as the dark-tinted window closed.

  As she climbed the hill from the ferry terminal at Bainbridge, Gaby heard her name. Turning around, she saw Harry coming toward her. “Could we get a cup of coffee?”

  Gaby looked at her watch. She still had about an hour until the twins got home. “Okay, but it has to be fast. I have things I have to do.”

  Harry stepped over to the coffee cart by the ferry and came back with two cups. Silently she led him up to a tiny park overlooking the water. They sat on either side of a picnic table. He took a long sip, staring beyond her at the rare sunlight glittering off the waters of the Sound. “How much do you know about what’s going on?”

  “All of it,” she bluffed. “I know about the fake oil wells and the movie investments.”

  He could raise an eyebrow just like Luic. She noted absently that it had no effect on her. “And the rest of it: construction projects waiting for permits, foreign investments which never quite materialize… I could give you a list, but I have a feeling you already know. But there is one thing I still don’t get.” She looked directly at him. “You’re the only one he cares about, and it’s destroying him to think you’re behind this. If you asked him for the money, he’d just give it to you. So why are you doing it?”

  Harry was silent.

  “I know about you,” he said at last. “You’re a harmonia, and your family comes from Null City.”

  Gaby got carefully to her feet, bracing her hands against the table to make sure her knees wouldn’t buckle. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I have to leave. If you follow me, I’ll scream for the police. My family is from right here on Bainbridge Island, and people know me. They will stop you.”

  Harry watched her go. As she reached the edge of the park, he called after her. “There isn’t much time left. If you want to save him—as well as yourself and your family—you need to hear what I have to tell you.”

  Gaby broke into a run. When she reached the top of the hill, she glanced back. Harry was still on the bench staring after her.

  “How did it go with your young man?” Mrs. Allen smiled as she patted dirt around the last of the marigolds she’d been planting along Gaby’s front walk.

  “He’s not my young man, he’s my employer.”

  The older woman pushed back the bushy, gray curls escaping from her scarf and held out a hand for Gaby to help her to her feet. “Yes, but how does he do on The List?”

  Gaby grimaced. Mrs. Allen worried that raising the twins meant Gaby wouldn’t ever have time to fall in love herself. In a weak moment, list-maker Gaby had shared her boyfriend requirements checklist. It was short, only three items, with the most important one in the middle, of course:

  1. Sense of humor

  2. Devoted
to family

  3. Class—Manners and Education

  “He doesn’t fit a single thing on the list,” Gaby admitted. Never a fan of The List, her friend looked pleased but changed the subject. “Did your parents’ friends find you?”

  “Friends?”

  Mrs. Allen’s round face broke into a delighted smile showing her dimples. “A nice young couple came by this morning.” Dusting off dirt from her hands, she pulled her glasses up from their chain around her neck. She reached into her pocket and peered at the piece of paper she retrieved. “Mr. and Mrs. Villenulle, they said their name was.”

  Ville nulle? Null City? Nobody who really came from there would ever utter that name to a stranger. Gaby was motionless. There’s a big difference between knowing a moment will come and knowing that with your next breath it will be here. She knew when she moved again her old life would end.

  “They said they knew your parents but had just heard about the accident.” Mrs. Allen had gone ahead of her into the house, and her voice floated back to Gaby. “They’ll be in the area for a while and will try to get back again for a visit.”

  Since their parents’ death six years ago, Mrs. Allen had worried about Gaby and the twins. While their small inheritance paid for her education and Gaby worked several part-time jobs to pay their rent and take care of Carey and Connor, Mrs. Allen had been the constant in their lives, providing love and sympathy and stability. Clearly, the older woman was pleased to find they might have other friends.

  Gaby had never told her the truth about her parents’ murder or about any of the differences separating the Parkers from their fellow Islanders. She knew Mrs. Allen guessed there was something unusual about her young friends, but she never asked for more answers than Gaby was willing to provide. Gaby produced a shaky smile and said she didn’t know the couple, but it would of course be nice to talk to her parents’ friends. She surprised the older woman with a tight hug and kiss on the cheek, thanked her for her help with the twins, and presented her with the cheesecake from Lundy’s she’d balanced on her lap all the way back from New York.