Destroying Angels (Leigh Girard Book 1) Read online

  “It’s already taken care of.” She pointed to the bartender. He was talking on the phone. “Tony’s calling the cops. And Paulie followed Renn outside to stall him until the cops arrive. Impressed?” she asked, raising her glass of beer for a toast.

  “Impressed,” I answered, clinking my glass with hers. “So, what’s the story between Peck and this Renn guy?”

  Lydia rolled her eyes as if I was annoying her. “You know that wasn’t very smart?”

  When I didn’t answer, Lydia continued. “Renn Woulff. Name sound familiar?” I shook my head no. “Formerly, of Woulff Orchards.”

  “Oh.” I recalled that Woulff Orchards encompassed the largest producer of cherries on the peninsula.

  “Renn sold the orchards to back Peck’s restoration business. At the time, no one could figure out why. I don’t know exactly what happened, but Renn claims Peck cheated him out of his share of the business. Some kind of legal loophole. Ever since, Renn’s turned into a drunken bore. As opposed to being just a bore.” Lydia broke off eye contact and was trolling the room like a sailor with one night’s shore leave.

  “Well, did he?” I asked, not willing to let the subject drop.

  “Speak of the devil.” Lydia grabbed my arm. “Look who’s sitting over there against the wall.” I peered through the smoke and gloom of the bar. Across the room with his back to me sat Jake Stevens. He was with Sarah Peck, who leaned toward him, touching his arm. Even from here, I could see the white roundness of her breasts pushing up against her low-cut blouse.

  Lydia poured me a beer. “Surprised?” She asked with a mischievous grin.

  “To tell you the truth, yes.” What really surprised me was their body language. I couldn’t see the expression on Stevens’s face, but he slipped his hand over Sarah’s in looked like a very proprietary gesture from my vantage point.

  “They’re an off again, on again item. It was rumored that Sarah was seeing Jake even before her divorce was final. Which, of course, made things around the newspaper somewhat tense.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You don’t know?” Lydia smiled, deeply punctuating her dimples. “Rob Martin is Sarah’s ex.”

  My mouth must have hit the table. “Sarah and Rob were once married?”

  “For about a minute. They both grew up here. But didn’t really 'find' each other until they attended the University of Wisconsin. That’s where Rob got his degree in journalism with a minor in environmental studies, while Sarah drifted from major to major. Anyway, Sarah finally found her way back to her first love, painting. That’s her work on the wall.” I stared in disbelief. I would never have pegged Sarah Peck as a frustrated painter.

  “They both had all these plans to make it big. Him writing for the Chicago Tribune, her selling her work in the Chicago galleries. Neither dream panned out, and they both came home dragging their tails between their legs.” There was an edge to Lydia’s voice that confirmed my earlier assessment of her feelings for Martin.

  Sarah had moved closer to Stevens and was whispering into his ear. At least it looked like whispering. From this distance, she could have been using her tongue as Q-tip for all I could tell.

  “Within six months of being back, Sarah filed for divorce. The rest, as they say, is history. Sarah and Rob went their separate ways, though he remained close to the Pecks. They were the family he never had, I guess. Then about six months ago, he became obsessed with Sarah again. Really strange. It’s a shame 'cause he’s a real nice guy. Am I talking too much?”

  I poured Lydia and myself each another beer.

  “Whoa.” Lydia held out her hand to stop me. “I’d like to at least see the tree before I smack into it.” Finally she relented and let me pour, but only sipped at her beer. I gulped mine. I was starting to feel the accumulation of the evening’s alcohol, though it didn’t deter me from another generous gulp. I decided a little oblivion would feel good right now. “So, off or on at this point?"

  “What, them? I’d say on. But we’d have to check under the table to be sure.” Lydia laughed so loud, Sarah looked up. She saw us, said something to Stevens, and he turned around. I gave a cursory wave and instantly regretted it. Stevens ignored it and turned his attention back to Sarah.

  “I just never would have figured those two together. I mean from what I’ve observed in my short time here, Sarah seems a bit obvious for Stevens's taste.” Now I was talking too much.

  “Not to be catty . . .” Lydia batted her eyes, "but since her divorce, Sarah’s been known to take pity on a lot of guys. And Stevens, what can I tell you, he’s a man.”

  I figured she was about to add, "and men are dogs," when the bar door opened and Rob Martin walked in. There was a tenseness in his body, like one sees in a well-tuned hunting dog. He scanned the room, found his prey and headed directly to Sarah’s table. All eyes in the bar honed in on the three of them.

  Stevens indicated with an arm gesture that Martin should join them. Martin remained standing. Instead, he reached for Sarah’s arm. She pulled away from him. Stevens said something that I couldn’t hear, but his body language was conciliatory. Martin ignored him and spoke directly to Sarah.

  “I said no!” Sarah shouted above the bar chatter.

  Suddenly the bar went quiet again. The only sound was Roy Orbison singing that he was all right for a while and could smile for a while. Slowly, Stevens scraped his chair back and stood up. I thought for a moment that he was going to say something macho like, “Let’s take this outside,” or drag Martin out of the bar by his collar. But he just threw money on the table and walked out. Martin stood silent for a moment. He didn’t seem to know what to do. Finally, he picked up Sarah’s sweater from the back of her chair and threw it over her shoulders. And as abruptly as Stevens had left, Martin followed. So much for machismo.

  Sarah downed the rest of her drink, threw off her sweater, and strolled over to the bar as if nothing had happened. Someone made a place for her, and the chatter rose again.

  “How about another pitcher?” I suggested.

  “I’ve had enough.” Lydia seemed to have sobered up. “Let’s go.”

  * * * * *

  Sunday, November 5, Present day

  One in the morning, and I was wide-awake. Salinger was snoring at the foot of my bed. I envied her careless sleep. There would be no careless sleep for me tonight. I knew the drill. Once the middle of the night jolt struck, the only thing that worked short of drugs was to get up and try to figure out what had broken through my subconscious. When I had been in the throes of the cancer, it was no mystery what had broken through. Was I ever going to beat this thing? Could I bear the pain? How long did I have? Would I ever stop feeling singled out for damage?

  I sat up and automatically pulled up my left nightgown strap. In the privacy of my bedroom, I refused to disguise my body. I could have worn pajamas or a flannel nightgown. But I’d always loved the feel of silk next to my skin, especially in the possibilities of a spaghetti-strapped gown, even if all those possibilities were now gone. Surely that wasn’t what had shaken me awake. I was sure all of that had been worked out months ago in the cancer survivor group.

  When Tom and I had resumed our sex life after my mastectomy, my attire had consisted of a cotton nightshirt that buttoned up the front. Not very conducive to erotic ecstasy. In his subtle way, Tom would buy me sexy underwear. “For when you are ready,” he’d say, his eyes soft with understanding. The sexy underwear and his understanding look were all a part of his desire for normalcy, for things to be as they were before. I'd lost the energy to convince him that nothing would ever be as it was before. He had only to take one look at my six-inch scar to realize that, its message emblazoned in angry red.

  I slipped on my robe and tipped-toed into the living room. Salinger reluctantly followed. On the velvet chair was the book Lydia had given me as a welcoming gift. What had she said when she dropped me off earlier? “For the long winter days and nights.” I read the title: Healing throug
h Wild Plants.

  She had driven away before I could properly thank her. Now I figured I’d read a few pages or at least look at the sketches. Then maybe whatever was on my subconscious mind would step forward, or I’d be tired enough to sleep.

  I settled back into the chair, pulling the white crocheted afghan over my feet. Without a fire blazing, the room smelled musty and old. Salinger looked up at me, then paced the room a few times. Finally she decided everything was in order and went back to sleep beneath my chair.

  I scanned the book’s table of contents. It seemed to be a hodge-podge of Native American plant lore, pop psychology, and Door mythology. Must be a local author in town. How was I to take this gift, I mused? I hadn’t told her about the mastectomy. Experience had taught me that cancer was a word better left unsaid. Its mere mention seemed to create a contagion. Besides, I had beaten the cancer. I’d been clean for a while. It was behind me now.

  So what did Lydia think I had to heal from? As usual, I was being paranoid or worse, narcissistic. What had one of the women in the group said to me, “You think because you have cancer the whole world begins and ends with you.” She had had a relapse. At the time, I had chalked her remark up to projection.

  Out of curiosity, I paged through the section on white wild flowers. Maybe I could identify those rampant weedy things in the field behind my house. There was a photograph that looked exactly like those daisy-like white flowers with yellow centers. Asters, so that’s what they were. There were so many of them that I’d written them off as some kind of weed. What else but weeds could be so prolific? Their fecundity was frightening. Their lack of restraint seemed beyond any necessity, as if something had gone out of control, this field so choked with flowers that it looked like an angry, white flurry.

  From a distance, I couldn’t distinguish one flower from another. Only when I ventured to the edge of the field, knelt down and looked closely could I see each flower’s compact neatness. Each one seemed to be holding itself quiet under the immense pressure of sun and rain, as if this quiet composure could stop their compulsion to reproduce.

  I pictured my American beauty roses back home, their pink petals so frail and faint they almost looked like skin. Years of bone meal, insect repellent and careful pruning had produced niggardly flowers that some years didn’t even open. I suppose it didn’t help that they were sandwiched between two arbor vitaes and shoved against the stockade fence.

  I turned back to the book. It claimed that the Zunis had special uses for this plant. “One of them involved a treatment for arrow or bullet wounds performed by members of the Priesthood of the Bow. Apparently a tea made from the entire plant is applied to the wound to cleanse it. By applying this mixture and then pressure, the missile is extracted and the wound healed." Pretty impressive: healed by flowers. If only it had been that easy and romantic to heal what had ailed me.

  Automatically I lifted my left arm slowly and then brought it down even more slowly. This was one of the exercises I did regularly to keep from developing lymphedema, or fluid buildup, in my left arm. This was a constant threat since I was minus twenty lymph nodes. I swallowed hard against the memory of that first day after the breast had been removed along with the twenty lymph nodes. Like a nightmare I couldn’t shake, I kept waking up and seeing the drain attached to my left side, siphoning fluid from me like an insatiable monster. The drain had felt hard and round like a tennis ball under my arm. And the needle inserted in my side had been thick and metallic. It looked like something used on horses. No one had prepared me for the drain or the feeling that whatever it was taking away was already gone.

  Later that evening, several friends from work had come by with flowers, yellow roses. In the dimly lit room, I had heard one of them gasp and then a thud. Apparently she had seen the drain and the blood-tinged liquid accumulating in the bottle, and she had passed out. I never saw her again. After that, every time I smelled the cloying scent of roses, I felt sick.

  I shook my head as if that could dispel the memory, and looked down at the book. "Mythic elements" was the only section on asters left to read. “Comes from the Latin and Greek word meaning star. This star-shaped flower is sacred to all the gods and goddesses on Mount Olympus. In France and Germany, aster flowers are burned to keep away evil spirits. Associated with elegance and daintiness, used in talismans of love and considered the herb of Venus, the goddess of love.” Considering these wild flowers were going wild behind my cottage, there was an irony here I didn’t want to pursue.

  Maybe Martin should consider wearing a sprig of asters to gain Sarah Peck's attention. Or better yet, he should just give up. Obsession was never seductive. Besides, based on what Lydia had told me, Sarah seemed to have other fields to plow. I still couldn’t figure out the connection between Stevens and Sarah. He just didn’t seem like the kind of guy who was led around by his privates. Needless to say, it was none of my business.

  Too many asters, too many drinks tonight. Tomorrow I’d call Eva Peck and persuade her to tell me about her husband's autopsy report. Then I’d track down that children's ward nurse and find out who Joyce Oleander visited in the hospital the day she was discharged. I also wanted to talk to Renn Woulff when he was sober, if that was possible. I took a deep breath. I was doing it again, trying to order things, find answers to questions that didn’t concern me. So much easier than fixing yourself.

  I closed the book and put it on the floor. Come to think of it, a bouquet of asters would be more appropriate for Lydia.

  * * * * *

  January, 28 years earlier

  It was too cold in the room. The holy water had dried on her pillowcase. And the nightmare was starting again.

  It always started the same way, with someone calling her by name in a low voice, barely audible. Then the inevitable shift into dream. This time it had been triggered by a movie. In the movie, the vampire sucked blood from the neck of a young woman and then she became a vampire. She had no choice. That was the way it worked. You either died or became one of them.

  In the dream, he was outside her bedroom window. She could see his face, white and drawn and hungry. His eyes were red like the eyes of animals at night. He smiled deliberately, and his fangs appeared.

  “Like nails,” she thought.

  She tried to get out of bed, but he was in the room. His face in the dresser mirror, his body on the sheets, his breath already inside her. So the scream caught in her throat like the things he was saying.

  “Pretty, you’re so pretty and soft.”

  She pushed one hand against him, but it disappeared into the folds of his body, which became first a cape, then wings beating, beating into her flesh.

  Like a dog barking, the whooping broke through the dream. It wasn’t until he slapped her face and threw the water at her that she realized the whoops were coming from her.

  After that she avoided mirrors at night.

  11

  Sunday, November 5, Present day

  Eva Peck insisted on meeting at my cottage after her church service, something about it being "more private." She was probably afraid her daughter might show up again and whisk her out of the room before she could tell me whatever was on her mind. I brewed another pot of coffee, having consumed most of the first pot in an attempt to pry myself awake. I still felt fuzzy from last night’s nocturnal musings. Somewhere around three, I had made another attempt at sleep and succeeded.

  This grey, rainy morning wasn’t helping my fatigue either. Masses of storm clouds layered the sky, and the wind rattled the windows to the staccato accompaniment of a steady rain. I had every light on in the living room, but it still seemed like the middle of the night.

  Even on a sunny day, my cottage was a dusky place. I had removed the heavy, green brocade curtains in the living room in hopes that a few slivers of light might get through the wall of pine trees that surrounded the place like the briar wall in Sleeping Beauty. I figured the curtains were originally meant to provide protection from the elements, before
central heating. Now they invited a damp mustiness that only sunlight could banish.

  Although the textured-plaster walls were white, they did nothing to lighten the tiny rooms, whose ceilings were too low for this century. I had taken down the widow’s brooding oil paintings of fourteenth century German hamlets, and hung my scant collection of black and white photographs. Most of mine were desert shots, stark contrasts between sand and sky. They didn’t lighten up the place, but at least it didn’t look like the Brothers Grimm lived here. This was only temporarily "my" place, so I resisted the urge to paint the kitchen cabinets yellow or to buy the burgundy and emerald Persian rug I'd coveted at a resale shop in Sturgeon Bay. What was mine here included Salinger, my books, my photos, and my clothes—things that could be packed in a hurry and fit in my truck.

  A loud rapping on the door interrupted my musings. I opened the door to Eva Peck’s back. She turned quickly toward me.

  “I wasn’t sure you were home. I knocked several times,” she said, waiting politely for me to invite her in.

  “Sorry, I didn’t hear you. Come in. ” I led her into the house and took her rain poncho. It was soaked, as if she’d walked the whole way.

  “Is your dog friendly?” Salinger was giving Eva the once over and circling her feet.

  “She’s harmless,” I said, waiting for Eva to sit down. She chose the sofa, the darkest spot in the dark living room.

  “Oh, before I forget, this is for you.” From her voluminous black-patent leather purse, she fished out a hand-painted tin. She handed it to me. “I baked them this morning. I hope you like chocolate-chip cookies.”

  “I like anything with chocolate in it. Thanks.” I took the tin from her and put it on the side table.“Before we get started, would you like some coffee? I just made a fresh pot.”

  “No, no thank you. I had my one cup for the day. Too much caffeine makes me nervous. Besides, it’s not really good for you.”

  I would never have taken Eva Peck for a health nut. I flipped open my notebook and sat down in the velvet chair. Salinger nestled at my feet.