The Devil's Dance Page 7

  I opened my car door and padded her direction even though everything in me screamed to get back in the car and run. I would’ve liked to believe the wall between us happened when mom left, but it had come between us far sooner, though I never understood exactly why.

  “Hey, Heather,” was all I could manage.

  Her dog started to yip, but she smoothed its head and shushed it. My sister wiped her face with the back of her arm and continued to smoke. Smudged mascara ringed her eyes, and one of her high cheekbones bore a shadow of a bruise.

  “Did Daddy—?” I pointed to her face, and she turned away.

  “No. He’s mean as a pit viper but wadn’t him.” She patted her dog. “Fell over Gizmo when I was hangin’ the wash.” She gestured to a laundry line that sagged with sheets. “Pole caught me in the cheek.” She let out a small laugh. “Daddy said it was an improvement.” Her voice cracked.

  I’d forgotten how cruel my father could be. I chimed from memory. “Hey, Romi. You know you’d be awful pretty except for your face,” I said.

  “And, Heather, you’d be awfully smart if you had a brain,” she replied. She gave a weak smile and we both teared up. “Nothing ever changes, does it?” She scrubbed at her eyes, the cigarette burning away between her dirty fingers. I felt like a coward leaving her behind.

  “I wanted it to,” I said. “I asked you to come to Dallas. Wanted you away from here.”

  She studied the end of her smoke. “Yes, well seems it’s good I didn’t follow. Just end up right back here anyway,” she said, her voice steeped in defeat.

  This was the second time she’d used that verbal slap and it still stung. “Can I do anything right? What was I supposed to do?”

  “You can’t help it. Running’s in yer blood. Just like Mama.” She said the words in a way that it was less of an insult and more of a stoic proclamation.

  “I don’t care what Ferris said. I don’t think Mama ran. She didn’t even take clothes or leave a note.” I swatted at bugs that jumped at my legs from the dry grass.

  “Neither did you.”

  Actually, I had taken clothes and left a note, but there was no point arguing. Not worth the energy. I hadn’t been home five minutes and was already worn out. “Why didn’t anyone else see Mama leaving?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Because Bisby had a population of twenty at the time? Get off it. Reality’s a hell of a lot easier if you accept your lot and know your place.” She stubbed out her cigarette and tossed the butt into a pile of rusting road signs.

  I couldn’t help but think how Mark Cunningham would be so proud of her.

  “What’s with all the—?” I pointed to the piles of debris. “Stuff?”

  “Daddy. You think this is bad, can’t wait for you to see inside.” She braced her knees and winced as she stood, then walked down the stairs and began collecting the pills out of the sawgrass and weeds. She spoke over her shoulder as she searched. “I tried keeping it the way Mama left it, but can only do so much. The man keeps everything.”

  “So it seems.”

  “Hate to admit it, but I was happy when his back got so bad he couldn’t drive. Slowed down his hoarding, though Nana enables. Speaking of which.” She dropped the pills into a baggy that she’d fished from her purse. “Time to go bail her out.”

  “Bail?”

  “Long story. Come along for the ride. Gotta get money, though. Yer in for a good time.” She laughed cynically. “But first things first.” She slipped a ring with two keys out of a side pocket in her bag and gestured to the trailer next door, an old brown single-wide with a rickety porch and a brittle plastic chair near the front door. “You can stow your stuff. The previous owner moved on. Power and water haven’t yet been shut off so I figured you could use a place to stay until we figure out what to do next.”

  “Thanks.” I never thought I’d be so grateful to be able to stay in such a horrid place. I tried not to stare at it too much for fear of crying from gratitude and depression at the same time. “You haven’t told Daddy about me, have you.” The late afternoon sun beat on my head and I felt queasy from heat and stress.

  “One thing at a time, Sis. It’s all I can handle right now,” she said. “Let me help.”

  She placed the tiny dog in her purse as I popped open my trunk.

  “This is it?” she said, her brow furrowed.

  “Clothes, blankets, and a few keepsakes.” I was long beyond feeling ashamed.

  Heather whirled to face me. “This is horseshit. How much did you spend on that college degree?”

  “Almost seventy thousand.” I shrugged.

  “And you can’t get a job?”

  “I really don’t want to talk about it.”

  “No, I’m putting my neck on the line for you, the least you can do is level with me.” She planted a hand on her hip and glared at me.

  “In a nutshell? Phil stole it all and then some. Sold everything I had to pay off the IRS and keep a roof over my head.”

  “But why can’t you get a job? You’re so smart. Genius smart.”

  Yes, and you’re beauty queen gorgeous and you’re here. I didn’t say it. I’d always been as jealous of Heather’s beauty as she’d been of my brains. “Verify,” I said. “I’ve been blackballed. Oh, and I am apparently a major suspect for the FBI. Other than that? Peachy.” My sister drew me into a hug and that startled me.

  “I’m so sorry,” she mumbled in my hair. She smelled of Marlboros and Baby Soft perfume and I missed having her near. She’d always taken care of me growing up and for the first time, I felt some weight shift off my shoulders. For a moment, we were kids playing in the creek, our biggest care in the world was how to entertain ourselves and keep from ending up at the wrong end of a mesquite switch.

  She stroked my back. “That SOB should be chopped up and fed to the coyotes after what he did to you,” she said.

  “I’d be happy for an arrest and maybe finding the missing money, since some of it was mine,” I said.

  “Phil best hope the FBI finds him before I do,” she said and let out a small laugh. “You always were a softie.” She drew back and rubbed my arms. Her eyes were the color of sea glass. I’d forgotten how pretty they were. “Bisby’s a lot bigger. Maybe we can get you back on your feet. Glad you called.”

  “You are?”

  She massaged the muscles at the back of her neck and her glance darted away. “Daddy and Nana are a real handful. You did what you had to, and I guess part of me’s pissed off I didn’t follow. Not your fault. Mine. But we can talk about this later. Let’s get your stuff inside. We need to fetch Nana.”

  Heather and I hefted the few trash bags of my life up the stairs and for the first time I noticed the word Angel written in glitter across the butt of her tiny pink shorts. It wasn’t that she didn’t have the body for the outfit, but if anyone had the beauty and street smarts to score a sugar daddy it would’ve been Heather. Yet, as I recalled, she’d always been too busy with bad boys.

  We struggled in the ancient screen door and deposited my things inside the threshold. I didn’t take a tour, because I could only handle so much at one time and, from the stench of the place, I had my work cut out for me. As I reached the Honda, I noted a familiar odor. Coolant superheated on the manifold. Now I understood the Check Engine light.

  “You have any anti-freeze?” I asked and Heather pointed to a pile of tools under a half-rotted tin overhang.

  “I can drive,” she said.

  “Thanks, but I need to start learning my way around.”

  “Anything of value in your car?”

  “Why?”

  “We’re picking up Nana, so if you want to keep it, I recommend locking it in your trailer or trunk.”

  “No. Don’t own anything valuable. Only this.” I lifted the St. Jude.

  “Right,” she said. “You’d think if Mama was going to ditch us, she could have at least left the other one for me.” Her tone spoke volumes of hurt. She’d been royally ticked when I turned
thirteen and our mother gave me the St. Jude and only appeased when Mama told her that, since, Heather was the eldest daughter, she should get the more valuable of the pair. The necklace would be her gift for graduating high school. In hindsight, Mama was clearly trying to use it as incentive to keep my sister focused on books instead of boys.

  I didn’t say anything more as I tiptoed through the grass, shifting from city mode to country mode. Had to be careful where I stepped and what I touched out here. Several Black Widows lingered in the corners of the makeshift shed and I kept a wary eye out for scorpions and rattlers as I gingerly extracted the yellow bottle of anti-freeze from a knotted nest of at least twelve sets of jumper cables. Heather wasn’t kidding about Daddy’s hoarding. After a few minutes hunting, I found an old red work rag, stiff with dirt, then popped my hood and emptied the entire bottle into the radiator. I should have checked my fluids before getting on the road, but Sawyer had gotten me so upset I’d forgotten.

  When I fired up the Honda, I noticed the Check Engine light disappear. Finally, something in my favor. I drove my sister to the end of the trailer park and sat in the Honda as she walked up the heat-buckled steps of an old Airstream that resembled a silver Twinkie left in the sun too long. She pounded on the door until it opened, then chatted in low tones to a shadowy form inside. She handed the baggy of Daddy’s pills to the person inside and the hand, in turn, gave her a wad of cash. I sat there stunned. I’d just witnessed my own sister dealing drugs.

  She slipped in the car and counted the cash. “Should be enough. Here’s ten for gas.” She handed me the bill and I reluctantly tucked it in my pocket.

  “Did you just do what I think you did?”

  Heather made a face. “Don’t get all high and mighty. Daddy’s the only trailer trash in the nation who isn’t standing in line for an OxyContin habit.” She wadded the money in her bra and lit a cigarette, and I didn’t mention that I really didn’t like smoking in my car or anything more about the drugs. Who was I to judge anyway?

  “Son of a bitch needs it,” she finally said. “The pain in his back is part of what makes him so damn mean.”

  “I recall he was already plenty mean to start with.”

  She shook her head. “Nothing like this. Two crushed discs after he fell off a rig, but he refuses surgery and won’t take any drugs. What should I do? Let a bunch of painkillers sit on the ground for a kid to find? Maybe develop a habit myself?” She blew out a long plume of smoke, then, in a faraway voice, said, “If I had any sense, I’d swallow the next bottle he throws at me. Exit, stage left.”

  I placed my hand on hers. “We’ll get through this.”

  “We got bail money. That’s what counts,” she said, her voice flat.

  “Does Nana do this often?”

  She arched a perfect brow. “Only about once a month.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I really should let her go to jail. Have the county lockup babysit her for a while.” She smiled crookedly. “Probably take them less than three days to drop her wrinkly ass off at our door begging us to take her off their hands.”

  I frowned. “That doesn’t make sense. If she’s being held, doesn’t she eventually go to trial? Does she have a lawyer?”

  “Oh, Romi, you have so much to learn,” she said and petted Gizmo quietly as I drove toward town.

  I squinted ahead at the strange new roads. “You’ll have to tell me where to go. I don’t think I can find the courthouse. You were right. I hardly recognize the place.” I gaped at all the new trendy shops, new roads that hadn’t existed before. I tried to ignore the people who seemed offended by my car and the cloud of black smoke now pumping from the tailpipe.

  Fabulous.

  “We aren’t going to the courthouse,” she said in a weary tone that told me she’d done this too many times before.

  “What’s this about the trailer park being sold?”

  “Thirty days. Town’s claiming eminent domain. They’ll pay us what the trailer’s worth, which should be enough for a couple weeks in a motel. I’ve got a little money saved. Been working at the Vista Grande Resort. Pay’s not too bad and they offer full benefits.” She glanced at me. “You still know how to scrub a toilet or did you forget how in that fancy college?”

  I ignored the jab. “Can you get me work?” I asked, hopeful. “I can scrub a toilet and make a sink shine. Learned from the best.”

  Heather grinned. “Mama sure could clean. Always said no one cleaned better than a Scandinavian woman.”

  “Norway, Mother Land of OCD,” we said at the same time and I laughed with her. It felt good to laugh.

  “Turn here.” She pointed to a road that led into a budding development. The roads were freshly paved with concrete. All the lots were all marked and cleared, ready for contractors to lay the plumbing and rebar and pour foundations. Other than a smattering of empty Bobcats parked on the road, the neighborhood was all but abandoned. I noticed two boys walking back and forth in the distance.

  “Who’s that?” I pointed.

  “Oh, Josh and Keith. Good kids. Play football. Their dad, JC owns the hardware store.”

  “JC. The one we went to school with?”

  “Who else? Though no idea what the hell the boys are doing out here.” Her forehead furrowed and she stared at the pair until we turned.

  We continued to weave down roads cut through the hills and I finally asked, “What’s going on?”

  She didn’t answer, merely pointed for me to turn again. When I rounded the corner, I spotted the dark blue Charger with a light-bar parked at the end of a freshly paved cul-de-sac, a snow-white head barely visible over the back seat.

  “Park there.” Heather unbuckled her belt and was out of the car before I could kill the engine. I saw a uniformed figure step out of the police cruiser and wanted to hide, but it was too late. The officer strode past my sister and b-lined for me.

  Oh hell.

  I’d recognize that turd Robby Meyerson anywhere. Heather used to beat him up for picking on me. When Heather told me he’d gone to Miami to become a cop, I hadn’t believed her. Men like him with badges and guns were never good.

  He ignored Heather, who tried to intercept him, and swaggered my direction, resting his hand on his gun as if he might need to draw his weapon at any moment. Assclown. He approached my window, never removing his mirrored sunglasses.

  “Am I imagining things or is this Romi Lachlan?” He smacked his gum. Some things never changed.

  “Yes, Robby. It’s me,” I said, eyes straight ahead.

  He tapped his badge. “It’s Officer Meyerson to you. That’s the problem with your kin. No respect for authority.” He checked my inspection and tags then rapped on the windshield. “Inspection’s out. And I happened to notice your exhaust system clearly isn’t up to State emissions standards. Can’t have you poisoning Mother Earth, especially in front of all the tree-huggers who live here now.” Meyerson pulled out his ticket book. “Need license and insurance.”

  “Yessir,” I mumbled.

  “There ya go.” He grinned. “And they say all the Lachlans are trouble. But not you.”

  I handed him my license and insurance card. Heather made a questioning gesture and I shrugged. She lit another smoke and stood watching us.

  Meyerson studied my license. “You take a good-lookin’ driver’s license picture, though you are far better-lookin’ in person. For what it’s worth, I always thought you were the prettier sister.” He raised his eyebrows and muttered, “Certainly the classier one.”

  I didn’t answer and squelched the urge to beat his ass for the comment about my sister. Though the fact that she was dressed like she belonged east of Vine Street, Hollywood, and not in The Bible Belt didn’t help. Gizmo growled from the hollows of my sister’s handbag.

  Meyerson rested his hand on my arm and instead of flinching I forced a courteous smile.

  “You’re looking at a couple hundred dollars in citations here. But I could forget these minor offen
ses if you gave me good reason not to keep writing. An old friends discount of sorts.”

  “Officer, I have a headlight out, too. Go check. I think you should add that to my tickets,” I said.

  He eased his glasses down on his nose where I could see his eyes. His nose still had a slight bulge from where Heather had broken it when we were kids after Puddin’, my cat, turned up dead. I’d refused to let him copy my homework, and the penalty for saying no to Robby was steep. My pale yellow Puddin’ was gutted and hanging from a fence post the next day and my sister was suspended for a week for beating up Robby.

  Daddy forbade pets after that.

  “Have it your way,” he said. “Your sister tried the hard way, too. You’ll come around.” He chuckled low then pushed up his glasses and wrote out my tickets. He pivoted and walked over to Heather and they spoke. Meyerson kept his back to me, probably so I couldn’t witness my sister pass him the wad of cash.

  Dirt bag.

  A moment later, he opened the back of the cruiser and helped Nana outside and un-cuffed her. Why the hell did he need to cuff a seventy-three-year-old woman? I wondered, and then Nana took a swing at him. Heather tackled her in the nick of time.